Eye Contact

One early morning in 2011, 5 foot 1" me stands up in front of his rowdy peers and clears my throat. Our National Junior Honor Society officer speeches were being given that day, and I was running for the position of President. I knew my chances were slim; I was running against Sean Mulligan, who could swoon anyone (girl or boy) into liking him. Nevertheless, I stood up on the podium and delivered my shaky, cliché speech that my mom had helped me write.

Needless to say, I lost the election. My speech was too weak, my confidence too low, and my voice too many octaves high. For the next couple of months, I rarely though about public speaking. But at the next year's NJHS induction, Sean gave a speech to all the new inductees and their parents. He was incredible: for such a young kid, he was well-articulated, funny, and clearly had fun with giving his speech. From that moment on, I fell in love with public speaking. 

Since 7th grade, I have had a couple of opportunities to speak publicly. Even though my speeches had many weaknesses, I still loved giving them. The first of these speeches I gave was ironically at the National Honor Society officer elections. I was again running for president. My speech's content was solid, however, I struggled to make eye contact with the audience and to give the speech at an appropriate pace. Nevertheless, I won the election.

This led me to my next two public speaking opportunities: speaking at the NHS induction and (even more ironically) the middle school NJHS induction. I gave my NHS speech about character. Again, the content of my speech was solid; yet, I was nervous and still struggled to make eye contact. My pace improved significantly. At the NJHS induction, I hit my stride. I felt very comfortable as a senior talking to eighth graders. My content was great, my pace ideal, yet again, my eyes would drift to awkward places.

Obviously, the aspect of my public speaking that needs the most work is my eye contact. If I can improve on this, as well as perhaps regulate my pacing in nervous situations, I think I will turn into a solid public speaker. I guess I'll find out next Wednesday! 

Victim of her Circumstances

In 1971, psychologist Phillip Zimbardo led an experiment known as the "Stanford Prison Experiment." In this experiment, a simulated prison was set up, and subjects were chosen randomly to either play the role of prison staff or prisoner. The only instructions they were given were to act according to their role.This led to disaster- even though the prison set-up wasn't real, some guards ended up violently abusing prisoners. The ethics of the Stanford Prison Experiment are certainly questionable, but there is lots to learn from it. 

The New York Times asserted that "Mae, then, is not a victim but a dull villain." In my opinion, this statement slightly oversimplifies the issue. I would restate their analysis to say: over the course of the novel, Mae becomes increasingly convinced that immoral actions against privacy are actually moral. To the world and to the readers, she is a villain; but in her own mind, she is a hero. Today, I will explain the factors that led Mae to believe so strongly in her immoral actions. 

Mae espouses the role that the company expects her to be: an activist against privacy. In the Stanford Experiment, there were several factors that allowed for such a dark outcome For one, the participants were isolated from anyone not participating in the experiment. Mae lives her entire life within the confines of The Circle, and only surrounds herself with Circle employees. By isolating herself from those who don't share The Circle's values, she never hears opposition to those values. This further ingrains those ideas into her mind as justifiable and right.

Additionally, the participants at Stanford knew that their experiment was being run by the prestigious scientist Phillip Zimbardo; thus, they have little reason to believe that anything they do could be immoral. In Mae's case, she is constantly reassured by the Circle higher-ups that her attitude against privacy is morally correct. This reassurance from people stronger, more influential, and wealthier than Mae completely eliminates any doubt from Mae's head that her anti-privacy attitude has any negative bearing. 

Overall, just like the Stanford Prison Experiment, Mae is a perfect example of what can go wrong in a "cult-like" situation. It is my strong suspicion that Dave Eggers is trying to point out where he sees our society might be headed. An increasingly globalized world will have increasingly similar ideas, which could effectively lead to a large-scale, real-world example of The Circle. This example reminds us of the importance of bipartisanship, and how uni-partisanship can lead to extreme ideas and a lack of moral evaluation. 

The Tear

Perhaps one of the smartest, funniest, and creative minds of our generation- comedian Louis CK- spit some fire in a conversation with Conan O'Brien:

"Underneath everything in your life there's that thing, that empty-forever thing, that acknowledges that it's all for nothing. It dawns on you: life is tremendously sad. So when it hits us when we're driving, thats why we text and drive! I was in the car and a Bruce Springsteen song came on. When I heard it, it gave me a like fall-back-to-school depression that made me really sad. I reached for my phone. Then I said, you know what, don't. Just stand in the way of the sadness, and let it hit you like a truck. I pulled over and I just cried." 

As someone with a long emotional history, I've learned that to deal with sadness, you must embrace it. This is unavoidable. Unfortunately, it's often our first instinct to run away from sadness when we first sense it. The faster you run, the more it will poke at you. The more it will tease you. The more it will convince you the opposite of the truth. The character Mae in The Circle learns to run away from her sadness through the use of technology, social media, and other various distractors. The more she attempts to "sew the hole" within her, the larger it grows. We will examine both the ways in which she avoids her depression, and the environment that allowed for this problem to arise. 

Throughout various points of the novel, it is mentioned how a "tear" opens up within Mae. While Dave Eggers never fully explains what this tear means, we can infer it to be Mae's dissatisfaction with herself; her deep inner sadness. Eggers describes the tear as "growing within her, opening quickly, a fathomless blackness spreading under her" (336). Rather than facing her sadness head on, Mae engages in various distractions such as checking "to see if Mercer's site was still down," pouring herself "far too much [sake]," and other online and social media-related activities (336). Mae finds that "the tear" will disappear after it visits for a while, only to return stronger. This implies that the activities that Mae uses to run away from the tear only perpetuate it more. This is perhaps Dave Egger's subtle way of hinting to us that we can only live with sadness once we embrace it.

It is worth noting that this defense mechanism isn't unique to Mae. In fact, we all use it to some extent. As long as someone is aware of when they're running away from their sadness and makes an effort to deal with it, they should be well-off. However, the environment in which Mae resides facilitates the growth of the tear. Everyone around her uses technology, social media, and every state-of-the-art thing in existence. Thus, she has a myriad of ways to avoid the tear. This defense mechanism is less Mae's "fault" and more a product of her surroundings.

The approach to mental health problems often seem counterintuitive. In fact, you might be surprised to hear that a therapist treating a patient with a phobia will often recommend that the patient expose themselves to their phobia. In the end, however, it makes sense; if we can accept the way things are, they will not surprise us. Sadness has a harder time overtaking us if we know it's coming. 

Eugenics in Disguise

Many times, people interpret evolution and natural selection as processes that are "supposed" to happen. They think they're natural occurrences that shouldn't be messed with. But from a secular perspective, no one has told us what we're "supposed" to do! We aren't born with instructions on how to operate society! The point: just because natural selection and evolution occurred in the past does NOT mean they need to continue. This might sound like an argument against eugenics. Well, that's because it is!

The Circle seems to espouse several ideas that eugenics also holds: settling for nothing less than having the most, knowing everything, and reaching "completion." The Circle leaves no room for imperfection. Eugenics allows nothing but "perfect" genes and effectually reaching "completion" of removing "bad" genes. While the aim of these principles is to improve society, they fail to view the issues from alternative perspectives. Society functions best with moderate principles that result from a give and take of two sides (The push/pull of democrats vs. republicans, capitalism vs communism). I disagree with the "Secrets are lies, sharing is caring, privacy is theft" mantras of the Circle because of the imbalances that ensue and their inherent immorality.

Often times, extreme ideologies (such as the Circle's mantras) work well on paper, but ignore the complexity of reality. Eamon Bailey states, "I truly believe that if we have no path but the right path, the best path, then that would present a kind of ultimate and all-encompassing relief" (Eggers 293). This statement assumes that humans taking the "right path" in every situation would create the ideal world. However, in a crime and corruption-free world, what is good if there is no evil to compare it to? Does anyone truly know joy if they have not known suffering? This philosophical idea-  that good can only exist when juxtaposed with evil- is what the Circle ignores with its mantras.

If we were to completely disregard my assertion that the mantras ignore said philosophical idea, we could still assert that the mantras simply lack morality. Let's examine what these statements imply. "Privacy is theft" implies that having privacy steals something from someone. That "someone", we can assume, is society. Thus, it implies that society deserves to own someone's privacy more than the person deserves to. Therefore, we conclude that this mantra is built on the assumption that society's progress is more important than the individual. As we can observe with other ideologies that are built on the same assumption (i.e eugenics), valuing society over the individual is simply immoral. In a world built off of this assumption, an individual's happiness and well-being matters less than society's advancement.

The conception of perfection deceives. Perfection requires sacrifice and immorality, and can often achieve the opposite of what it aims to. I am against the Circle's mantras due to the disparities they encourage and their negligence of perfection's evils. On paper, these mantras seem to work perfectly, but as is the case with most ideologies, their downfalls appear when they are put into effect in the real world.

An Abstract Commensalism

It's Friday. My nervousness and anticipation for tonight show through the six pit-stained shirts rotting in the hamper. There's still two hours left until she comes over. I've already played the whole evening in my head a thousand times, so I'm left with virtually nothing to do. After two more hours dragged by, I hear a knock on the door. It's my date, Brooke (not using the real name for sake of anonymity). I welcome her into my home, and we sit. We pick our respective brains, beginning to learn just how compatible we are with one another. How exciting! The first feelings of love for young Jesse and Brooke.

In attempt to ruin my life, my dad walks in the room and decides to join Brooke and I. After that point, the night really sucked. The message that many teenagers can relate to in this situation is that benefiting from intimacy entirely depends on privacy. The intimacy that Brooke and I shared made us both happy. When my dad joined our conversation, he took took away the privacy of it, and thus  rendering our intimacy fruitless. This phenomenon of intimacy hinging on privacy can be seen in daily life: a third wheel ruining a couple's time together, inside jokes only working in certain groups, etc. The Circle often does the same to its members: strips them of their privacy, exposes their intimacies, and in so doing destroys the value of intimate relationships- the exclusive connection between a close group of people. As is evidenced in The Circle, intimacy and privacy have a commensalist relationship where intimacy depends on privacy, yet privacy does not require intimacy. 

An attractive sense of mystery can often show up as one of privacy's benefits to intimacy. In The Circle, Mae is drawn to Kalden by the privacy (or mystery) of their relationship. After she says to Annie that she is "intrigued" by him and Annie asks what she knows about him, all she can remember is that "he's thin. Brown eyes, tallish" (Eggers 169). After Annie admits that she's concerned by the lack of information she has on Kalden, Mae ignores the concern and justifies it by saying that "She trust[s]ed" him. Essentially, she is drawn to the fact that no one knows anything about him. The privacy of their relationship allows their intimacy to actually mean something. 

Perhaps a more obvious example of this commensalist relationship can be found in the interactions between Francis and Mae. Mae is content with her relationship with Francis. She finds him awkward yet adorable. However, when he removes the privacy from their relationship by telling the public at a Circle event that he would like to date her, she is turned off. Thus, when the privacy is gone, the intimacy means nothing to her. 

Privacy and secrecy in a relationship mean that the connection is wholly unique and exclusive. The plot of the circle provides a breeding ground of explanations as to how these two traits interact. 

Cult or Community?

A couple of days before I left for Penn State, my best friend Shaf and I were having our last meal together at IHOP to commemorate our years of friendship. As soon as we'd began reminiscing and evoking feelings of nostalgia, I hear, "WE ARE!" I reluctantly turn towards the door to find a fellow Penn State student beaming his bulging eyes at me expectantly, surprised and elated, as if he'd never seen another Penn Stater before. To respond, I eked out an unenthusiastic "Penn State." Not only was I upset that my special time with Shaf had been interrupted, but I was also reminded of one of the things I was not looking forward to at Penn State.

What many people consider to be a tradition of school spirit and loyalty, I think of as a cult mentality. The constant "WE ARE!'s," the nasty looks when I wear my brother's Pitt shirt, or even the "Fuck Temple" chants heard around campus feel hostile in nature (and unnecessarily so). In essence, Penn State praises those who "go ham" for the Lions. Just as Penn State values loyalty, The Circle requires loyalty, albeit in a subtle fashion. Additionally, the rating system by which Mae is evaluated has striking similarity to the grading system at Penn State: the higher the rating (grades), the brighter the future. In short, certain aspects of both Penn State and the Circle have the intention to better their respective campuses, but end up making both places a more stressful environment.  

While I can manage stress from school, I cannot handle stress from upsetting others. On a particularly notable occasion, someone asked me if I had bought football tickets for PSU. When I said no, they replied, "Why did you even go to Penn State then?" Needless to say, this interaction made me feel like I'd betrayed this person. This example implies that it is less important to be getting an education at Penn State than it is to show support for the school's football team. This explains why this person questioned my purchase of football tickets rather than which classes I enrolled in. Often, it is suggested that in order to be a true "citizen" of Penn State, you must strictly adhere to certain traditions that are in no way linked to actually getting an education. Likewise, the Circle subtly requires loyalty through actions that have no direct link to the company's products and services. For example, the campus has (at the beginning of the novel) "180 rooms," and "with ten thousand or so people on campus, there's always a percentage of people who work late, or just need a nap during the day" (Eggers 30). While the Circle does not directly require people to stay in its dorms, the tightly-packed work and social schedule practically forces certain members to sleep on campus, and thus, in a subtle fashion, the Circle essentially requires many members to spend their entire lives within its confines. Also, Dan proclaims that "one of our slogans, as you probably know: [is] Community First" (Eggers 47). Here, Dan shows how the circle heavily suggests that loyalty to the community is even more important than the work employee does. At Penn State, I often feel that my loyalty to the school is valued more than the work I do towards my education.

While I personally value my education more than school spirit, I also feel the pressure that results from the importance of my GPA. In my case, I must maintain a certain GPA to keep the scholarship I've been awarded. Often times, it feels like rather than pursuing fulfillment and success, I'm only chasing a number between 0 and 4. The bottom line: my future somewhat depends on this number. Similarly, Mae's average customer rating correlates with her future at the company. If she falls below 95, her work ethic is subject to question. In fact, when she achieves an above-average rating for a newbie, the higher-ups gratify her for having obtained a number. In the end, the question to ask is, should so much weight be placed on a single number, or are there more wholistic approaches to evaluating a student/employee?

Penn State offers a myriad of opportunities, waiting to be explored by anyone who has the initiative to pursue them. As does the Circle- with all of the extracurriculars, clubs, and parties going on, it's sometimes difficult to differentiate it from an actual college campus. However, certain foundational values of both institutions create the opposite effect of what they intend: they cause stress and imbalanced priorities. As I progress through my years here at Penn State, I hope my awareness of these foundational dissonances allows me to evade the negativity they create. (Hopefully Mae can do the same... we shall find out ;)

Image Credit: Ben Stanfield

Dissecting my Identity

Through the years, I've realized that if I am happy with my identity, I am happy with my life. My identity is an aggregate of every major choice, hobby, activity, relationship, and passion I have had in my lifetime. The more time I spend on things that are a part of my identity, the more that I get out of life.

So when Robin told us to choose a topic we were passionate about, I knew I would best suited writing about a component of my identity. I have narrowed down my options to "The Evil Secret to Six Pack Abs" (an exposé of the fitness industry and subsequent advice on making realistic fitness goals) and "The Musical Anomaly" (A detailed history of jazz in the United States, as well as its effect on other genres).

My ties with the fitness industry are twofold. First off, I have been lifting weights consistently for over a year. I get nothing but satisfaction from seeing my strength, physique, health, and happiness increase as a result. Secondly, I do a fair amount of research on the "behind-the-scenes" of the fitness industry. It doesn't take much to see that the advice that many popular fitness moguls offer is purely for financial gain. Many of them promise quick results (e.g, "Six-pack abs in 10 days GUARANTEED") with exercise programs that simply don't make sense. Even worse, many of these moguls lie about them being natural (not taking steroids) and then promise for a real average natural person to look like them if they purchase their "super-effective" supplements. Between my passion for fitness and anger with industry surrounding it, I feel that I can produce substantial content.

While my anger could fuel my writing, my passion and reverence for jazz history could also. I have played jazz bass and piano for over five years now. I am a part of Penn State's jazz band, "Centre Dimensions," I have attended masterclasses from many of the living jazz greats, and I've poured countless hours of research and practice into perfecting my jazz skills. While I don't think particularly highly of my level of playing, I feel that I have a sufficient grasp of the jazz concepts to be able to offer some interesting thoughts on the subject. Jazz history is full of racism, self-empowerment, eclectic approaches, and most importantly, Kenny G (Not!). I believe that Jazz is one of the most unique musical genres of all time, and I'm prepared to explain how it has gotten to this point.

Leave your preference in the comments below! What would you like to read about more? Either way, I am stoked to be writing about something that so frequently appears in my thoughts and daily life.