Book Review: WikiLeaks, Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, Part I

After reading WikiLeaks, Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, I posted this blog.  Now I'm posting a book review.

It's going to be difficult to say everything I want to say about this 300+ page book.  It's packed full of detail on one of the most controversial media stories in the last century.  The story is thought-provoking, philosophically rich in the sense that ethical dilemmas present themselves throughout, and it's exciting reading - like reading about James Bond as an internet hacker.  The book starts out describing a very awkward looking old woman, surrounded by "nerdy youngsters" stepping out of a car and hurriedly into a village home in the English village of Ellingham.  

Looking closer, it became apparent that this was a strange looking woman.  The authors write, "She had a kind of hump!"  They continue, "Close up... it was obvious that this strange figure was Julian Assange, his platinum hair concealed by a wig.  At more than 6ft tall, he was never going to be a very convincing female.  'You can't imagine how ridiculous it was,' WikiLeaks' James Ball later said.  'He'd stayed dressed up as an old woman for more than two hours.'  Assange was swapping genders in a pantomime attempt to evade possible pursuers... In a breathtakingly short time, WikiLeaks had soared out of its previous niche as an obscure radical website to become a widely known online news platform.  Assange had published leaked footage showing airborne US Helicopter pilots executing two Reuters employees in Baghdad, seemingly as if they were playing a video-game.  He had followed up this coup with another, even bigger sensation: an unprecedented newspaper deal, brokered with the Guardian newspaper in London, to reveal hundreds of thousands of classified US military field reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many of them damning" (14).  

The book tells the story of Julian Assange - a computer genius who, with less counter-cultural tendencies, could have been a Mark Zuckerburg.  He was born in Australia and lived an outrageous childhood.  The son of a hippy mother and a father who abandoned them.  His mother became involved with a young man named Keith Hamilton who was an amateur musician and a member of a New Age group, the Santiniketan Park Association.  He was a psychopath who allegedly had five identities.  

"The Santiniketan Park Association was a notorious cult presided over by Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a yoga teacher who convinced her middle-class followers she was a reincarnation of Jesus.  Keith Hamilton was not only associated with the cult.  He may even have been Hamilton-Byrne's son.  Hamilton-Byrne and her helpers collected children, often persuading teenage mothers to hand over their babies.  She and her disciples - "the aunties" - lived together in an isolated rural property surrounded by a barbed wired fence and overlooking a lake near the town of Eildon, Victoria.  Here, they administered a bizarre regime over their charges, who at one point numbered 28 children.  There were regular beatings.  Children had their heads held down in buckets of water" (38).  

When Julian's mother tried to leave the group in 1982, Hamilton violently pursued her, trying to gain custody over Julian's half-brother.  "For the next five or six years, the three lived as fugitives" (38).  

Julian began hacking computers when he was 16 years old.  By the time he was 19 he was Australia's most accomplished hacker, and quite possibly involved in launching a computer worm against Nasa's website at the age of 17.  As fits his childhood, he was always paranoid about being followed and tracked.  Part of the success of WikiLeaks was probably the result of this paranoia.  Assange went to great trouble to make sure any leaks provided him were untraceable to their source.  Still, the man responsible for the greatest leak in the last 50 years, Bradley Manning, was caught, though not through Assange or WikiLeaks.  Manning passed along the Apache helicopter video, classified field reports from Afghanistan and Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of embassy memos revealing classified opinions of world leaders.

The book tells the story of Bradley Manning, a Specialist with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, stationed in Iraq.  He spent his work days in a "secured" computer room of the base poring over top-secret information.  The authors report, "For such a young and relatively inexperienced soldier, it was extremely sensitive work.  Yet from his first day at Hammer, he was puzzled by the lax security.  The door was bolted with a five-digit cipher lock, but all you had to do was knock on it and you'd be let in.  His fellow intelligence workers seemed to have grown bored and disenchanted from the relentless grind of 14-hour days, seven days a week.  They just sat at their workstations, watching music videos or footage of car chases.  'People stopped caring after three weeks,' Manning observed" (20-21).

Manning was always a free-thinker - a renegade agnostic in his super-religious small town in Oklahoma.  He had strong liberal political opinions unpopular in his town.  He was also homosexual and therefore an outcast.  A bit direction-less, he followed his father's footsteps and joined the army.  He had a real talent for computer programming, and graduated into the military with security clearance and a job working in intelligence.  

His free-thinking, philosophical mind did not adapt to military culture.  Manning felt like he was not treated with respect and was particularly bitter about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.  He frequently voiced his outrage in chat rooms and his Facebook profile said, "Take me for who I am, or face the consequences."  The US government would face the consequences.  

Given the lax security in the base in Iraq, Manning very simply burned classified information onto CDR's labeled "Lady Gaga" and made contact with Assange.  The only reason he was caught was because he confessed what he did to a hacker friend who turned him in.  

He now sits in solitary confinement in Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia.  At the time this book was published (2011) it's reported: "Although he has not been tried or convicted, he is being made to suffer under harsh conditions.  He spends 23 hours a day alone in a 6ft by 12 ft cell, with one hour's exercise in which he walks figures-of-eight in an empty room.  According to his lawyer, Manning is not allowed to sleep after being wakened at 5am.  If he ever tries to do so, he is immediately made to sit or stand up by the guards, who are not allowed to converse with him.  Any attempt to do press-ups or other exercise in his cell is forcibly prevented" (88).

I will follow up this blog with Part II.

Leigh, David and Luke Harding.  WikiLeaks, Inside Julian Assange's War On Secrecy.  New York: Public Affairs, 2011.

Foucault and WikiLeaks - What If Our Leaders Were Transparent?

A dear friend of mine, Michael Tyler, is an outstanding photographer and an all around creative and free-thinking man.  He's been writing stories for as long as I've known him (a long time), and he's made a lot of them into full-length indie films that he directed.  About a  year ago, he sent me a story called Post Everest.

The basis of the plot is a world in which governments, agencies, businesses, and citizens were made completely transparent.  They were recorded, videotaped, and broadcasted.  People were even recorded in the bathroom.  No place was private.  It's not that someone was watching them at all times, but rather that someone could be watching them at all times.  The result was nuclear disarmament and peace.

Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, argues that this type of "disciplinary mechanism" is not so far fetched.  In fact, it's already instituted in post 1800 society, just not for governments.  The goal of the transparency of individuals is already functioning to a large extent in the modern/post-modern world.

Ok, don't write me off as a conspiracy theorist and check out another website just yet.  I am not saying that we are being videotaped and recorded right now.  Just take Jeremy Bentham's idea for a Panopticon - a circular building with a tower in the center.  The building is divided into cells in which one isolated person would dwell (this person could be a prisoner in the case of a prison, a student in the case of a school, a worked in the case of a factory, etc.).  The isolated subject could not see their neighbor.  They could only see the tower in the center.  The tower would be the place where the guards/teachers/supervisors/etc. would sit.  Through the use of backlighting, they could see into each cell perfectly well while the inhabitant of each cell could not see inside the tower - they could not see if anyone was really in it or not.

Foucault writes, "By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery.  They are like so many cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible" (200).

Bentham never built the thing, but he wanted to, and he came close.  Despite the fact that it was never constructed, it still represents real power relations and existing theories of social manipulation.  Foucault writes, "the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use" (205).

Foucault's work illuminates a mechanism of power unique to the 1800s and beyond (still in effect today).  This is a power that maintains control through the excessive individuation of subjects.  Mechanisms of power today test us, rank us, seek to cure us, aim to normalize us, try to discipline us each, individually.  Michael's book is inspired by WikiLeaks, which adds an interesting twist to the modern world.  WikiLeaks founder, and Michael in his book, ask, what if this "technology of control" and this "apparatus of knowledge" that individualizes each subject and makes him/her transparent was placed in the hands of "the people" themselves?  What if the soldier looking at us from the tower in the world Panopticon was exposed and people, living in cells in the periphery, watched him on the internet?  Would the world finally stop blowing itself up?  Would justice ensue - the same justice that already binds the individual subjects in the modern world?

This is the vision of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.  Leaders must be as transparent as their citizens.  So long as they are not, a citizen's votes are not made with full knowledge and democracy does not work.  WikiLeaks, of course, flooded the media with the greatest leak of confidential information ever, exposing the internal memos of ambassadors and military leaders.  The US panicked - the veil they looked out from was lifted.  Citizens briefly saw them.

Taking from Foucault, it seems Assange wants to take modern means and methods for creating a disciplined and obedient population to its logical conclusion: applying those same means and methods to create a disciplined and obedient group of world leaders.  Michael's book explored the possibility that, if there were no closed door meetings, no classified memos, no anonymous super pacs, no top secret missions, etc. that the result would be a peaceful world.

The idea is totally intriguing.  This type of transparency already exists for the masses, just not the leaders.  Note Foucault's study:  As power became less centralized in monarchies, reforms to the law ensued.  From punishment as excessive example (the scaffold, the public torture, the public confessions) came punishment as regulated, involving time limits, and as increasingly private (punishment happens now behind walls).  At the same time, punishment became increasingly common.  Crimes and their corresponding punishments proliferated and came to increasingly involve violations or private property (as opposed to pre-modern crimes which were most commonly violations of rights).  At the same time, punishments were focused less and less on the crime and more and more on the subject.  Punishments were less about adequately responding to the injustice done and more about healing an evil tendency in the criminal.  Pleads of insanity ensued.  Criminals started serving time in mental hospitals instead of prisons.  Timeframes for sentences were justified by scientific research - how long until the criminal is ready to return to society healed, ready to remain peaceful?

As you would expect, studies on individuals become more and more detailed.  Research identifies "normal" behavior - goals for normalcy are identified, school children are monitored and ranked.  They are individualized and scrutinized.

In the end, we have a radically individualized way of perceiving society that thrives as a result of each individual's discipline and obedience.  A high level of transparency, as a mechanism for ascribing power relationships, can be attributed to such disciplined, obedient masses.  Even Occupy Wall Street is obedient - protestors seek city permits and permissions, facilitate (usually) efficient vacancies, refuse to react violently even as they're systematically and methodically pepper-sprayed or imprisoned.  These docile, obedient bodies are perceived as heroes (and I won't say they aren't brave - they are far more brave then me!).  The perceived heroism of remaining docile even in the face of violence is part of a whole apparatus of power that pervades modern society.

So, what of Michael's idea?  What if the degree of individualization and transparency no longer eluded the highest echelons of power?  So the person providing the order to pepper spray the masses was watched and recorded and understood by the masses...  Would that person, like the occupiers, become more manageable?  Would the same levels of obedience and discipline apply to exposed leaders no longer able to close a door or stamp a document 'classified'?



I will follow up on this with a book review of "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy" by David Leigh and Luke Harding of The Guardian.  After reading Michael's book, I realized I knew very little about WikiLeaks and the greatest leak of classified information in history.  So, when I saw the book on sale at Powell's, I grabbed it.  I'm so glad I did (just as I'm glad I was able to read Michael's awesome work!).

Foucault, Michel.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.  Trans. Alan Sheridan.  New York: Random House, 1995.

On pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 8)

After Anita suddenly left the trail, due to her episode with "Anti-Chub-Rub", described in Part 7, I headed off alone into a storm.  In three days I would reunite with Anita and at that point I'd once again access showers and fresh food.  In the meantime, I had three days of survival ahead of me from Reds Meadow Ranch to Tuolomne Meadows in majestic Yosemite.

The storm got gradually worse.  What started as ominous clouds turned into sprinkles which turned into pellets which turned into hail.

The storm confronting me as I left Anita and started hiking alone

At the same time, I was getting more and more emotional.  There's nothing as bonding as spending over two weeks with the person you love in the middle of nowhere.  My partner was suddenly, shockingly gone.  I started to think about why she had gone out here in the first place.  Prior to this, she'd backpacked for three days - an arduous trek to the top of Mt. Whitney with my father, brother-in-law, and I.  She hadn't trained and the journey up the mountain was tortuous.  I was literally thinking up emergency evacuation plans as we lumbered on and on, being passed on our second day by hikers doing it in one day.  Of all the overnighters, we were the last group to the top.  It took so long to get up there we ran out of water and had to melt snow in our bottles on the way down.  This three day hike, while ultimately a successful summit, should have convinced Anita never to do it again.  Yet she agreed to a three week hike with seven "Whitney's" scattered along the way!  Why would she agree to this?

I realized at that point how much my fiancé loved me.  She knew how important the trek was for me, and she didn't want to miss out on it.  She wanted it to be a shared memory.  She willingly tortured her body to share an experience with me.  Upon realizing this, I wept harder than the rain pounding me. I spent the entire hike that day crying - really crying.  It felt great.  It was such a violent release.  I knew that my partner would do anything for me.

A cold, sad hike

I hurried past lakes as the rain pelted me.  It was freezing.  I wanted to keep warm by moving and moving, so I hiked a long, long way.  That night I had dehydrated salmon - a freeze-dried meal Anita and I were saving for a victorious day.  I thought about her way back to San Jose and what she would say to her Mom and friends.  When I crawled into the tent, prepared for a freezing night, I thought about how Anita was in a bed with blankets.  Then the snow fell.

I woke up to a wintry scene.  I got up, packed everything, and just hit the trail without eating.  It was too cold to sit around.  After hiking a couple miles, the sun was coming out and it was obvious the storm had passed.  I found a sunny spot to cook my breakfast, and admired Ansel Adams Wilderness.

The morning I woke up

I passed by immense lakes, including Thousand Island Lake - one I was anticipating the whole trip after hearing about it from hikers.  It was outstanding.

Thousand Island Lake

Garnet Lake, another masterpiece

Today I would make it over two passes: Island Pass and Donahue Pass.  To my surprise, unlike any other pass on the trail, I didn't even know when I was over Island Pass.  It was so gradual and easy!  Anita would have loved Island Pass.  Donahue Pass, located at the end of a long trek, was not so easy.  It switchbacked continuously and never seemed to stop.  The top marks the border of Yosemite, so while I was mentally and physically fatigued at the peak, I was very satisfied about summiting.

Donahue Pass, finally in Yosemite

Excited to be in Yosemite but exhausted from a very long trip (Anita wasn't there any more to slow me down!), I camped just over the pass, at an entirely too high elevation (I was above 10,000 feet).  The night was, of course, freezing - one of the coldest on the trip.  Still, I anticipated my great reunion with Anita the following day.

My last morning on the John Muir Trail

Having topped Donahue Pass and camped just on the other side, my last day was all downhill.  I descended steeply into Tuolomne Meadows and once down there, casually and comfortably walked the last leg of my trail (the JMT really ends at Yosemite Valley, so I was cutting it short, as Anita and I had planned all along).  I contemplated the valley as I reminisced over the last three weeks.

First of all - the world is an awesomely beautiful and immense place.

Second of all - you don't need much food.  Out here I ate a small fraction of what I eat in civilization, and I worked out ten times as much.  I felt great.  That was a big shock to me.

Third of all (and probably most important) - you have to do these things, and you have to bring the people you love with you.  Life is such a treasure, and if you are in the privileged situation to experience it, you should not lose that opportunity.  The opportunities many of us have in this country are incredible, and they shouldn't be wasted with materialistic obsessions: attempts to hoard stuff or money or accumulate some kind of public recognition.  We all need to think about our future: our personal future, the future of our family, the future of our community, the future of our world.  We need to invest in ways to make that future secure and hopeful.  I'm not advocating against any sort of social responsibility.  I'm just saying, take time every now and then (more often than not) to experience and love the world, even if it might not make, say, economic sense.  I've found that the most important moments of my life were results of going against the grain - by taking the uncomfortable journey, by quitting your job and going, by not heeding the advice 90% of people give you.  In my experience, if most everyone is telling you no (whether explicitly or not), you should deeply consider saying yes.

Tuolomne Meadows, Yosemite

Song: Layers and Layers

A couple days ago I got an acceptance letter from the University of Hawaii's Philosophy PhD program.  Since then, my mind's been racing.  Here's a jam that reflects my mind's jumbled mess!  I just put down drums, then added a melody, then another melody, and on and on.  This will likely be followed up with different versions of the tune - different drums and keyboard sounds.

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 7)

After successfully luring Anita off the oasis of Vermilion Resort, Anita and I set off for the final half of our journey.  We were just days from our next food drop, Reds Meadow.  This campground was snuggled in Ansel Adams Wilderness, and Yosemite stretched out just beyond it.

There were a couple passes left, but nothing comparable in elevation to what we'd already crossed.  We were in great shape (a week and a half of trail will do that to you!) and the weather was perfect.  Things were wonderful.  Further, we knew that we wouldn't be too grimy before we hit the showers at Reds Meadow, just prior to drinking more beer.

Virginia Lake

One thing I noticed on the trail was how accustomed I became to expansive views.  All day, every day, I saw as far as the eye can see: long, expansive lakes, mountains off on the horizon, endless skies, stars millions of miles away - nothing impeded my vision.  It was always a shock every night to climb into the tent because the world shrunk so significantly!  It went from endlessness to the length of your body.  I was never claustrophobic, but experiencing this radical difference made me truly appreciative of open space.  I started thinking about life in San Jose - seeing only as far as the buildings surrounding me.  The city is a box that encloses you.  What a relief it is to experience the world going on forever.

The amazing views from Ansel Adams Wilderness

Anita and I made it to Reds Meadow without any problem.  We picked up our second cache of food, excited to have so many new choices.  Reds Meadow was great.  I got my treasured pancakes and Anita ate her eggs.  We had beer and coffee and life was wonderful.  We just stayed one night.

Cards at Reds Meadow

The next day was my biggest blunder on the three week hike.  To this day, Anita has not lost one opportunity to bring this up with me.  To get to Reds Meadow, you have to go on a side trail.  We exited the JMT south of Reds Meadow, and caught up with it again north of Reds Meadow, just past the breathtaking natural phenomenon: the Devil's Post Pile.

So, I will preference the next sentence by saying that, when we met up with the JMT, it was not at the same spot we left it.  Now the incriminating sentence: I directed us the wrong way on a North/South trail.  We headed south, back to where we'd come.  The problem was, it took us hours to realize it.

Things didn't seem right, but we kept walking.  We were in new territory, but it did feel like we were walking backwards.  I'm sure some social psychiatrists will have something to say about why we both kept going, even as we both questioned ourselves, but we did.  We put miles under our boots, and made an already-late departure that much worse.

I take responsibility.  I was in charge of the map.  If today we are driving in a car, trying to find a friend's house, Anita will distrust anything I have to say about the directions, saying, "You got us lost on the one-way John Muir Trail!"  And that's that.

Devil's Post Pile - an amazing natural phenomenon just outside Reds Meadow

We headed back, having lost substantial daylight.  We only made it out to Johnston Lake (2 or 3 miles from Reds Meadow).  To make matters worse, Anita wasn't well.

Johnston Lake

There's a term for people with inner-thigh fat that rubs together when you walk.  The term is "chub-rub".  Anita taught me this term because she was running into a very serious problem which she coined "anti-chub-rub".  It seems that she lost so much weight in her thighs from the constant exercise, that her pants no longer fit her.  Where they were snug against her inner-thighs, gracefully rubbing together as she walked, they were now loose and baggy.  This caused an anti-chub-rub rash.

A rash will take you out.  You cannot walk with a rash.  I had a feeling when I went to bed that night, hearing of her rash and helping her put cream on it, she wouldn't be able to continue.  In the morning, we ate breakfast quietly and mournfully.  I then looked up at her and asked if she could continue.  She nodded her head no, and wept.

We walked back the short, emotional distance to Reds Meadow.  We were just three days from completing our voyage - just three days from Tuolomne Meadows.  I knew that this was my chance.  It's not often you have the luxury of taking a month off of work to hike.  I knew I had to complete this, but I couldn't imagine it without my partner.  We'd gone through so much.

Still, as a violent storm rolled its way into Ansel Adams Wilderness, I had breakfast at Reds Meadow with Anita, and prepared for a tearful goodbye.  Another couple in the restaurant were opting out themselves because they didn't want to face the coming storm.  I had every excuse to leave the trail with Anita, but I felt a calling.  Yosemite was calling, and as I learned on the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage has to be your own.  It is a radically personal endeavor, even as you become profoundly touched by the ones you are with.

Anita secured a ride from fellow hikers to the nearest town where we agreed she'd get a rental car and head home.  She would pick me up with her Mom a few days later.  I threw on my pack and headed out alone against a fierce wind.  It was not long before the rain poured down on me.

Our last picture together, just prior to heading back to Reds Meadow, where we would mournfully separate

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 6)

The original plan was to stay at Vermilion Resort one night and catch the boat back the following evening. We'd just walk a mile or two inland and set up camp again, giving ourselves a good rest day.  Cold beer will change those plans in an instance.

Great Oregon beer served at Vermilion

Vermilion, an oasis to weary John Muir Trail (JMT) hikers, is a campground with a dynamite home-cooking cafe, a washer and dryer, a shower, and a big shaded porch.  Roaming around are dusty hikers, most of whom are JMT hikers but some of whom are Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) hikers with names like "Cloudkicker".

If we had all independently stumbled into a coffee shop or a restaurant in a city, we would never have spoken.  We would have put up our walls and talked only with those we're comfortable with.  At Vermilion, this diverse group got to know each other quick.  The high Sierra gave us an immediate bond, breaking through any social etiquette.  In fact, we wanted to talk and shout and hit each other on the back.  We wanted to grab our neighbor's backpack and compare its weight.  We wanted to clink beers and talk about the lakes and the bears.  The cafe was one big bustling scene.

Anita and I ordered an enormous dinner upon arriving.  We were shocked to find that we could only eat half of it.  Our waitress exclaimed, "That's a John Muir Trail appetite for you!"  Apparently, despite working out all day, every day, your stomach shrinks so much out there that after a while, you literally cannot eat half as much as you'd be able to eat being a couch potato in the middle of some suburb.  The waitress had the business sense, of course, to withhold that information until you ordered your expensive meal.

Heaven on the JMT

Stuffed for the first time in a week and a half, Anita and I slept.  In the morning, we again ordered big and ate small.  We were clean and our clothes were clean.  We spent time sitting at Lake Vermilion with our new friends, including "Token Asian" (he was named this shortly after meeting our fellow PCT hikers).   We felt great, and I started thinking about our plan to catch the boat back.  Anita, however, had different thoughts on the matter.  Dressed in white with soft, shampooed hair, her body repairing itself after carrying a heavy pack over so many passes, Anita was not budging.

Clean and Beautiful

"Token Asian" - a really strong, happy dude who was unemployed and thought he'd spend some time hiking in paradise

I pleaded - I begged - I thought that we were getting sucked in - that Vermillion would be a place we would not be able to leave - like it was inhabited with invisible sirens taking away our odyssey.  I made a deal, we would stay another night, but we HAD to leave the next afternoon (not much of a deal, just a final plea disguised as a barter).  Anita agreed and we put more beer into our bloated stomachs.

The next day was beautiful.  Again, we sat by the lake, looking out.  We didn't walk, our legs felt wonderful.  As the afternoon approached, Anita was still reluctant to go back to the trail, but she was moveable.  I knew if we said we'd leave in the morning, we would not get up early enough and we'd be out another day, spending more and more money in this black hole of wonderfulness.  Other hikers were planning on taking the morning boat in, but I knew we had to cross the lake this night.

The boat ride to and from Vermilion

We did.  Anita, depressed, followed her trail-hungry fiancé back onto the boat and we left the comfort of civilization.  It turned out to be an amazing boat trip: we saw an osprey dive into Lake Vermilion and come out with a huge fish.  The two guys driving the boat screamed with joy!  It was only the second time they'd seen that happen, and they take this trip twice every day.

In the morning, we woke up late as usual.  We watched the hikers, fresh off their morning boat ride, trek past our tent.  Once we got moving, Anita was again thankful for the solitude of the Sierras.

Lake Vermilion

If I Could Tell My Story

Dear friends and family,

For the second time, I applied to PhD programs in Philosophy.  I applied to three: University of Oregon, University of New Mexico, and University of Hawaii.  A new wave of rejection letters are finding their way to my mailbox.  Oregon recently let me know they are unable to accept me.  The other two are around the corner: I'm sure I would have heard from them by now if I was getting in.  The part that makes me sad is that teaching philosophy is the only career I'm passionate about, and it's been extremely difficult to find work as a lecturer with only a Master's Degree.  The work I have found is always part-time, never includes benefits, and is never enough to support Anita and I.  I'm not giving up, and I might apply to PhD programs again, but at this point I feel my professional career has been marked by very small victories and very big disappointments.  I do not blame these institutions for rejecting me.  The field is incredibly competitive, and I have to face the fact that I do not excel in it.  I'm good at research, but I'm not excellent.  The last conference I spoke at really exposed me - I failed.  I was out of my league in a room full of professional intellectuals.

I continue to study because I need to, but a part of me thinks that I will never receive a PhD.  I do know that I'm an excellent teacher - my student evaluations have always been outstanding.  There's a level of passion and thoroughness I bring to teaching that I don't provide other jobs.  Unfortunately, in my three years of seeking teaching work, I got one class at Humboldt State University and I am part of a lecturer pool with Ashford University, teaching one class every 30-90 days online.  I've received dozens and dozens of letters thanking me for my application, denying me an interview.  It's tough but I won't give up.

That being said, my personal life has been remarkable.  My travels and experiences with my friends and family have been unbelievable, and I am truly grateful.  This song I recorded is meant to express that gratefulness.  In life, I have little to complain about.  I have been incredibly lucky, I've made some incredible journeys, and I will make more.  My family gave me incredible opportunities and taught me how to travel without hotels - sleeping at rest stops in the back of a beat up pickup with an overweight trailer.  Wendy and Jenny helped me radically expand my awareness on the Camino de Santiago.  Humboldt State University helped me expand that awareness further.  Riding my bicycle across the US with Josh will always be two of the best months of my life.  The Peace Corps in Ecuador is a cherished year of my life.  San Jose State University helped turn me on to Badiou and Zizek, who you may have noticed come up a lot in this blog.  Recording multiple rock/folk albums with good friends has been a passionate, creative outpouring of energy.  Meeting and marrying Anita has been a great turning point in my life - a treasured partnership.  Hiking the John Muir Trail with her and traveling to Wales, the Netherlands, and Japan has deepened our already profound relationship.

What's to come?  Topping Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Adams, for one.  And much more, I imagine.  Maybe even another round of PhD applications.



Love,
Mike

On pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 5)

When Anita and I left Muir Trail Ranch, we knew that we were going to make it all the way.  People at the Ranch told us that once we got over the next five miles, the rest was easy.  And they were right about two things, one of which being: the next five miles were not part of that "easy" section!

Picking up the food we mailed ourselves at Muir Trail Ranch

I left Muir Trail Ranch stuffed.  There were tubs and tubs of leftover dehydrated food and energy bars.  After skimping on food for so long, I ate and ate.  Then, unfortunately, we had to climb some of the steepest corners on the entire trail!  It was no golden staircase because it was significantly shorter, but Anita and I quickly became demoralized: this was supposed to get EASY!  Still, we did what we'd done all along - we took a lot of breaks and just kept walking.

It didn't help that we'd just picked up the tub of food we sent ourselves, and went from having almost nothing in our packs to carrying 30 pounds of food.  We were particularly excited about the two cans of clam chowder we'd sent ourselves for our first night out of Muir Trail Ranch.  Cans, because of their weight, are not something you want to carry around in the backcountry, but we could make a one day exception!

Sallie Keyes Lakes - one of my favorite places along the trail.

This is what I woke up to.

That night's dinner, eaten in the same spot we shared with some deer drinking out of a stream, was the best on the trail: clam chowder with crumbled gorgonzola crackers - a Trader Joe's feast!  It's funny, what was such a delicacy out on the trail is something Anita and I have not eaten once since.  We'll eat clam chowder, but not from a can.  It needs to be good chowder from San Francisco bay or Pike's Place in Seattle!

One of the last passes we had to cross: Selden Pass.  It felt like nothing when we topped it.  We were experienced and fit hikers at this point!

We were starting to close in on another big destination - the BIGGEST destination: Vermilion Resort.  It's much more a campground than a resort, but it offered cold beer and hot showers.  It offered restaurant food and a roof.  It offered a washing machine.

To get there, we followed the John Muir Trail right out of King's Canyon and into John Muir Wilderness.  There is a distinct difference between the two.  King's Canyon offers spectacular views, deep valleys, lush meadows, and incredibly tall peaks.  John Muir Wilderness was gorgeous, but much more modest.  It was less Lord of the Rings and more Bonanza, if I had to make a comparison.  It is aptly named John Muir Wilderness because I think Muir would find the modest wilderness equally as beautiful as the extraordinary wilderness.  I remember thinking this when I walked through it.  In King's Canyon, every day offered something radically different to look at, but John Muir Wilderness looked more or less the same.  Sure, there were expansive lakes, but in between, it was more or less the same.  And this is what distinguishes my small mind from John Muir's - I doubt he would have seen "the same" anywhere, and that's why I like this section to be named after him: it is just as brilliant as the rest.

John Muir Wilderness

Vermillion Resort is a boat ride away from the John Muir Trail.  There are two boats a day: one to drop hikers off in the morning and one to pick hikers up in the evening.  We did not want to miss the boat because we wanted our shower desperately (especially Anita).  The day we woke up and made it our goal to get to the boat, I never saw Anita walk so fast.  Typically, I would give her a head-start as I packed up the tent, I'd catch her early, and I'd walk much slower than I'm accustomed to, letting her set the pace.  Not today!  I never caught up to her.  She was jamming.  She smelled 'shower' and practically ran.  Anita and I, two people who are always late to everything, were hours early to the boat ride.

One of the greatest challenges on the John Muir Trail awaited us, two weeks in, camped out at Vermilion.  That challenge was: convincing Anita to leave Vermilion and continue hiking on the JMT.

The question: How do you leave this behind??

Badiou: The Philosophical Act

In 2004, Parisian philosopher Alain Badiou and the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek provided opening comments for their face-to-face staged dialogue.  Much in agreement, the two were very complimentary and ended by referring to the other as "comrade".  This lack of debate was not a problem for Zizek, whose opening discussion was entitled "Philosophy is not a Dialogue".  In it, he asserts, in agreement with Badiou that "philosophy is axiomatic."  He said, "You're sitting in a cafe and someone challenges you: 'Come on, let's discuss that in depth!'  The philosopher will immediately say, 'I'm sorry, I must leave,' and will make sure he disappears as quickly as possible."  The reasons for this are perfectly in line with Badiou's opening comments, which are what I want to present here.

Badiou took time to outline what a philosopher does.  In his theoretical work, he has developed a rich axiomatic theory to explain new developments in politics as well as human understanding and thought in general.  His philosophy can be described as offering a theory of how 'the new' comes to be.  His remarks opening up this dialogue with Zizek give a concise explanation of what his more technical books take pains to outline in overwhelming detail.

The philosophical act is to approach a point of undecidability and, through an inspired moment, assert a new axiom that no previous theory could comprehend.  He gives as an example undocumented workers in France.  The country, given its neoliberal, Capitalist Zeitgeist, is at pains to decide whether these workers are a part of the State or not.  That is, of course they affect the cultural and economic landscape of France, but they are a 'part of no part.'  While existing with the state borders and interacting with the French, they have no legal status.  The same can be said of illegal immigrants in the United States.  Neoliberal, Democractic Capitalism, as it exists in the US, cannot decide whether these economic and cultural contributors are a part or no part of the State.  Badiou argues, "The term 'illegal immigrant' designates the uncertainty of valence, or the non-valence of valence: it designates people who are living here, but don't really belong here, and hence people can be thrown out of the country, people who can be exposed to the non-valence of the valence of their presence here as workers."  You might have conservatives arguing to throw them out, or liberals arguing to bring them in, but neither will happen because its a game played within an institution whose founding ideology can not decide.

The philosophical act does not work within the State's axioms with its problem that is undecidable.  The philosophical act is to assert a new axiom - to invent a new groundwork that can make this decision.  When illegal French immigrants occupied a church in 2002, they were militantly asserting a new axiom.  They worked outside the State's ideology and asserted their place in France.  They demanded they become a part.  They made a decision the State could never come to.

This was simultaneously a philosophical act in a political 'region'.  Other 'regions' where the philosophical act is ripe are in love, art, and science.

To elaborate, Badiou makes the case that philosophers essentially create problems.  He said, "...the philosopher intervenes when he finds, in the present, the signs that point to the need for a new problem, a new invention."  When a philosophical act emerges, a new set of problems occur.  This is because the philosophical act is universal (axioms are not regional or multicultural, but rather assertions - rules that apply to all).  As such, they are incomplete.  They will create their own undecidable points as they are developed.

We see here something essential about Badiou's concept of philosophy: it is positive.  In contrast to post-modern philosophies that condone extreme sensitivity so as not to offend otherness - that is, setting limits - Badiou is interested in tearing down limits and creating new horizons.

Badiou is an outspoken critic of 'human rights', a 20th century phenomenon.  His critique holds that neoliberal arguments for human rights are self-defeating because they are essentially negative.  For fear of violating 'the other', any truly emancipatory, collective project is quickly abandoned.  The fact that a debate ensues over whether or not female genital mutilation is permissible in certain societies, based on arguments for cultural relativism and respect for otherness, is responsible for the lack of mobilization around its eradication.  It's become a point of undecidability according to 20th century human rights declarations.  So, against its motivation to protect people, it has stifled emancipatory projects in light of multi-cultural sensibilities.  This example demonstrates the negativity of the "universal human rights declaration".  The philosophical act will be one that radically dismisses calls for human rights with a new axiom that decides and mandates collective action.  A feature of this act is that it won't debate with an incommensurate theory. Thus Zizek's talk: "Philosophy is not a Dialogue."

We've come to fear such collective, egalitarian action because of the horrors of Stalinism.  Badiou, in agreement with Zizek, argues that Stalinism was a failure, but it was founded on a positive push towards egalitarian reform.  In another text, The Communist Hypothesis, Badiou asks of Stalinism: "Was it a complete failure?  By which I mean: does it require us to abandon the hypothesis itself, and to renounce the whole problem of emancipation?  Or was it merely a relative failure?  Was it a failure because of the form it took or the path it explored?  Was it a failure that simply proves that it was not the right way to resolve the initial problem?"  The essence of communism was admirable and should not be forgotten or dismissed due to its manifestation.  The essence, Badiou would say, was the universal kernel of Communism: egalitarian reform.  We should learn from Stalin's errors and create something new that retains the same drive towards justice.  This is far better, he maintains, than accepting a negative (limiting) foundation riddled with contradictions and critical points of undecidability.

The philosophical act, then, is not deciding between voting Republican or Democrat, but inventing a position that Republicans and Democrats can not possibly incorporate because it's so foreign to their institutional game.  This is, for instance, what the Black Panthers did until they were eradicated by the US government who considered them the number one terrorist threat.  A part of no part, they created their own schools and community kitchens and cultural norms.  As incommensurate with the axioms of the State (axioms that upheld universal human rights except the right for particular groups to organize and become self-empowered), the US government handled them in the only way they could: through violence.  This is the danger of the philosophical act.

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 4)

The morning I woke up in LeConte Canyon, Anita was still asleep, which was normal.  I never forced an early start on her because she was struggling to get any sleep at all, and the morning was usually a time she finally found her rhythm.  Her sleeping bag was rated for zero degrees, but she froze every night.  That was her one big complaint from the trip.  But the morning I woke up in LeConte Canyon, I made my way down to the river and started filtering water, as I usually did while I waited for Anita to wake.  In front of me was a beautiful river and beyond it, a huge meadow.  On this morning, a deer suddenly popped out of the trees next to me, had no idea I was there, and waded through the river to get to the meadow's side.  I sat in silence, like I was in church.  When the deer was in the meadow, she grazed for a bit, and I could tell she was wanting to come back over.  She still had no idea I was there.  I grabbed the camera in time to catch her wading back to my side with very tall, long strides.  Here's the picture:

Right after I took the picture, as I sat back in disbelief at the luck I had in viewing this amazing scene, the deer promptly squatted and pissed in the water, upstream of where I was filtering.  I was then shaken back into the reality that, as beautiful as it was, I was probably drinking animal piss along the way.

Because Anita and I were way behind our plan, we had to seriously reconsider our food.  We restructured our schedule, knowing that this time, if we didn't make our destination, we would be out of food before Muir Trail Ranch, the place we mailed ourselves a bucket full of grub.  As much as our bodies were being honed into shape, I don't think our pace ever increased.  Walking into the night became customary.  My hope rekindled when we started meeting our goals, and we weren't terribly exhausted at the end of each day, like we used to be. 

Here are some pictures from my favorite pass: Muir Pass.  It's a serene, contemplative climb that we made in two days.  Unfortunately, it got colder and colder as we got higher and higher.  We topped it the morning a big storm was rolling in.  Because of the storm, the top of Muir Trail Ranch was freezing, and snow was likely.  There is an emergency hut up there because it is an exposed pass and weather hits it quickly and harshly.  We didn't want to have to use it.  We knew that the only way to face this storm was to get to a lower elevation, and we hurried down the freezing mountain.  

The night before we topped Muir Pass

Helen Lake, close to the top

The emergency shelter on Muir Pass, as "Winter in August" was rolling in.

Appropriately named after John Muir

The other side, as we're coming down, trying to drop elevation in the freezing cold.

The storm really struck us the following day, just one day before we were going to reach Muir Trail Ranch.  We learned later that it would be called "Winter in August."  We were careful in planning this trek to bring anything we might need, including serious rain gear.  When it started snowing on us, we were glad for it!  Our strategy, which was also good for getting to Muir Trail Ranch, was move, move, move!  If you stop and rest, you get cold.  So as it snowed on us (more like large hail that stuck on the ground), we just kept walking.  

As we were walking alongside a raging river, some deer came against us, using the same trail.  To the left of us was a drop-off to the river, to the right of us a steep incline.  The deer didn't know what to do.  It was a mom and two babies.  They stopped, turned around and ran away from us.  But they really didn't want to go back to where they came from, so they quickly stopped, turned around, and ran straight at us!  We were stunned and we froze.  When they go within about fifteen feet, they suddenly jumped off to the side, up the ledge, and timidly waited in the snow, hoping we would just continue on.  It was one of our more intimate encounters with wildlife!  

The snow stopped just as we found a place to rest for the night, which was really perfect.  I set up the tent without being pelted by hail, and we looked forward to sunnier days ahead.  The next morning, we ate our last food: two bars we packed for an emergency.  We were completely out, but just a few miles from Muir Trail Ranch.  I was skinnier than I'd ever been, but not really hungry.  It was amazing to me how little I ate leading up to Muir Trail Ranch.  That all changed when we got there and found tubs and tubs of unclaimed food, free for our picking.  We had a HUGE lunch of cliff bars and trail mix and breathed a sigh of relief as we packed our food that was waiting for us and prepared ourselves for the next leg of the journey to Red Meadows Resort, where our next tub of food was waiting.  

Things can get hairy out there.

The morning we ate our last bites of food, just outside Muir Trail Ranch.

Muir Trail Ranch - where our food was waiting for us.  There are only two passes north of Muir Trail Ranch, neither even close in elevation to what we'd already encountered.  We knew we had made it past the hardest sections of the JMT (and we weren't going to starve to death)!

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 3)

Before starting the John Muir Trail, I was working at REI.  I rang up a customer who was going to hike the JMT north to south, the opposite as us.  We figured we would see each other on the trail.  I had forgotten all about it when we crossed paths with a straggly looking dude who asked if I worked at REI.  We shared stories from the trail, and we had this weirdly deep connection as we were talking - a great appreciation for each other's struggles, and a general understanding of why the other one continued on despite the challenge.  He was supposed to walk with his best friend, who had to drop out early.  Neither was really prepared physically, but when his friend couldn't go on, he recognized that this was a unique lifetime opportunity, and he continued on alone.  As three weeks by yourself can be a real emotional challenge, this was truly jumping into tough terrain.  One thing he told us: beware of "The Golden Staircase."  We would later realize that this warning was not to be taken lightly.

My 'friend,' traveling south

This same day, we spent the entire day walking uphill, just to approach Pinchot Pass.  It was exhausting.  If we were going to get over Pinchot, we would be close to getting back on schedule, but we stopped shy with miles to go.  We were starting to ration our food and come up with a new plan.  But we did discover an effective way to plan our daily mileage - don't aim to go over the mountain, get right under it, start your day out with the final thrust, and spend the middle of the day walking downhill.  With this strategy in mind, we re-mapped out route, and determined that, if we were not going to run out of food, we had to stick to it.

Our schedule, more and more, was becoming very serious - we needed to get to Muir Trail Ranch, where we had mailed ourselves food, or we were going to run out.  I started eating one cliff bar instead of two, and Anita and I shared dinners when we were supposed to eat our own.  One thing I noticed was that I was rarely hungry.  I was eating a third of what I normally ate sitting around at home, and I was exercising all day, breathing thin air, carrying 45 pounds on my back, walking eight hours, topping mountain passes.  My stomach was shrinking, and I was working at a subsistence level.  But my body adapted to it, making me realize we eat WAY too much in the comfort of our homes.

Skinny stomach, powerful legs!

After Pinchot, there was Mather Pass.  We labored over this one - just a bunch of switchbacks up the side of a shadeless pile of rocks.  It was an amazing feat that anyone even built these switchbacks - clinging as they were to what seemed like a cliff.  Anita was burning out, but we knew we had to stick to the schedule.  Our stop and go pace had us looking at the top of Mather for hours as we slowly approached.

Anita struggling bravely up Mather Pass

The view on the top of Mather

Going down Mather was just as tough as climbing it.  It was steep and rocky - hard on the feet and the knees and tough emotionally because progress was so slow in the hot sun.  When we reached the lakes below, we took long breaks.  Well behind our goal for the day, we knew we needed to hike into the night.  At dusk, we stumbled upon one of the most breathtaking views on the entire John Muir Trail: the top of the Golden Staircase.

The view atop the Golden Staircase

Below lies LeConte Canyon - plenty of flat ground - something we were looking forward to.  If we were to keep on pace with our new schedule, we would have slept down there.  The Golden Staircase had other plans for us.  We pulled out our headlamps and started the steepest decent imaginable.  We quickly appreciated that we were not going UP this endless set of switchbacks, which were really stairs.  We saw headlamps coming up from below, just to find a group of ultra-athletic go-getters who were finishing up a thirty mile day (it might have been forty, I can't recall).  As we were struggling to maintain 8-10 miles a day, we were impressed and sort of dumbfounded.  About half way down the staircase, Anita's knees gave out.  She couldn't go on.  Fortunately, there were flat patches here and there, and we found one quickly and set up the tent in the dark.  I went to sleep not knowing if Anita's knees would recover and not knowing if we would make it to Muir Trail Ranch before our food ran out.  I considered possibilities for exiting the trail.  

There's a certain amount of faith you need on a trip like this, and I put my faith in Anita's body and mind to get us through this.  Despite my rational concerns over our food and her knees, I had a sort of religious sense that Anita would carry on.  She's such a strong person and had already overcome some of the toughest challenges on the trail.  I had an overriding sense that we were going to make it.  In the morning, we felt exhausted but revived, and we walked the remaining stairs right into the heart of a majestic canyon.

The morning after sleeping in the middle of the Golden Staircase

Cover Song: Rihanna's "We Found Love"

I'm really stoked about this one.  I couldn't stop dancing when I was recording it.  Here is my cover of Rihanna's "We Found Love".  It sounds alright through computer speakers, but REALLY cool in headphones or through some decent speakers and turned UP!



Here's the original:

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 2)

Click here to read Part I.

My pack was about 50 pounds when we set off in Onion Valley on August 19, 2010.  Anita's pack was likewise packed to capacity.  There's a movement in the outdoor sports world where people pride themselves on carrying as little as possible, often times exposed to the elements with their will and their ingenuity keeping them going.  We were not those people, but I will say that we didn't pack anything that we didn't use.  We started off with what we expected to need for about eight days of hiking.  Eight days on your back is a little hard to conceptualize, but it consists mostly of food, stashed away in boxes that bears can't open.  What wouldn't fit in our bear boxes, we tied up in a tree at night.  Otherwise, clothes for all the potential elements and some sunscreen.

Our first day involved topping Kearsarge Pass at 11,760 feet.

Kearsarge Pass in Onion Valley

We topped it as the sun was setting - a grueling day setting our expectations for the next week.  On the top, Anita felt ill and I felt tired.  The trail was disciplining us.  This is something I expected.  I learned it on the Camino de Santiago.  It's good to prepare yourself - you'll thank yourself for it a thousand times, and it makes your journey safer and more pleasurable.  BUT... whatever you do, the trail will mold you into the shape it needs you to be in.  You don't need to be too concerned - if you are a survivor, a week into any trip, you will be ready for what it has in store for you.  Unfortunately, there is a danger to this logic - we started falling off of our proposed schedule starting on day one when, coming down from Kearsarge Pass, we didn't make it to the John Muir Trail.  We instead camped early at Bullfrog Lake.  As you can see, it was too tempting to pass up.

Bullfrog Lake, our first morning on the John Muir Trail.

We made it to the John Muir Trail the next morning with hopes of making up the couple miles we lost in Onion Valley.  That meant making significant progress over Glen Pass.  That meant topping another 10,000+ mountain.  That was not happening.  At this point, Anita was feeling sick.  Our ascent of Glen Pass was insanely windy, totally exhausting, and extraordinarily beautiful.  On the other side lies Rae Lakes - a huge collection of water.  It looked close from the top, and to get back on pace we had to get well beyond it.  In the end, Anita couldn't go on.  She was totally noxious and we had to set up a sort of emergency camp at dusk.  We simply couldn't descend the mountainside and get to water, but we had enough in our bottles to cook and drink, and we found a spot on the side of the trail to set up our uneven tent to shield us from a vigorous wind.  Anita spent the night fearing that wind was slowly pushing us towards the ledge, working towards a goal of pushing us over to roll our way down to Rae Lakes.  Fortunately, our weight prevented that from happening.  I'll admit, I was a little nervous sleeping there myself.

A black and white showing our tent and the massive Rae Lakes further on down the mountainside.  The wind plus the sloped ledge did not make for a peaceful night.  It was, however, absolutely MAJESTIC to climb out of the tent in the morning.

Anita woke up refreshed and feeling a lot better.  We had to face the harsh reality, unfortunately, that we were now more than a couple miles behind schedule.  Our week of food on our backs was now more than a week's worth of food, even though we didn't add anything to it.  We nervously descended Glen Pass and let the water renew our spirits.  This day was an all-day gradual descent, giving our legs a chance to recuperate.

 Rae Lakes in the morning.

 What more could you ask for?