A husky's quest for identity

Photo by xlinnea from Imgur

Tally's a husky who was brought up by cats, and now she acts like one. Check out these photos of Tally, and you'll see her striking different feline poses just like a pro. This is not the first story of its sort, but it had me pondering about the power of social conditioning. What if you take enough huskies out of their "normal" environments and throw them in with the cats, will they start to tuck in their legs and tail when they lay down or even enjoy playing with cardboard boxes? Would such experiment change our perception of huskies and what they're capable of? If we let this experiment happen for long enough, would we eventually start to forget that huskies were "built" to endure extreme weather conditions and can be agile yet resilient, out there in the vast wilderness.

The huskies turned cats scenario is far-fetched, I know, especially if we take into consideration the important role that nature plays in the development of any living creature. Yet, just like Tally's, we've heard of stories of children who were brought up by animals and who adopted their behavior. Too often, we underplay the power of social conditioning, especially when dealing with children and teenagers.

The fact is that we all have our fixed notions of what adolescents are naturally capable of doing and not doing, and we condition them based upon those beliefs. We'll say that adolescents can not handle autonomy, so we deliver learning to them instead, and do all the thinking for them on how to go about finding the answers that we've created for them. And we don't realize that it's that very approach that is stifling autonomy in the first place because we're conditioning students to think within the limiting confines of what we call best practice. And why do we do that? Because we, in turn, have been conditioned to think and act in this way through that same system and sadly, that's all we know.

But just as some environments can stifle autonomy, others can stimulate it. This semester, I've seen my kids push boundaries. Equipped with only an overarching question-- how free are you?--and their own ingenuity, they were able to create their own projects from scratch. They're breaking down the classroom walls and going out in the field: they're pitching business plans to local supermarkets which will allow artisanal fishermen to receive a fair price for their daily catch; they're interviewing taxi drivers and experts to learn about informal economics and how it's saturating this sector; they're writing children's books and negotiating with local bookshops so that they can finance their undertaking. This came with many iterations and students have felt overwhelmed at times by all the uncertainty. But they're blossoming and it's been great for me to witness that process.

So let's go back to that "what if" scenario I started this post with. Wouldn't it be a pity to live in a world where all huskies were reduced to laze around the house playing with a yarn ball or hiding in a cardboard box. "That's extremely unlikely," many of you will say. Fair enough. But what if I applied that same example to children and adolescents. Would it be so far-fetched then?

A man-made tragedy

Some of my best childhood memories take me back to the Mediterranean Sea.  I remember how as a child my mother would take me to Birzebbuga Bay and I'd spend countless hours in the warm, turquoise waters playing with my red miniature makeshift ferry boat, shuttling Playmobile figures to imaginary destinations.  In all my imaginary trips, those passengers always made it safe and sound to their destination. While my head wondered in the sheltered confines of that bay, I felt just like those Playmobile figures; I was out of harms way. 

Just like me, the immigrants who sat sail from Africa use makeshift boats, but they're long haul voyages aren't imaginary. And they get to see a much different side of the Mediterranean: it's dark, it's freezing, it's savagely rough.   

Yet every week, refugees mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa, pay large sums of money in search of the greener pastures in Europe. But sadly, many of those frail vessels end up capsizing. Many immigrants have been rescued, but many others perish in the Mediterranean. Just imagine, only last night around 600 immigrants lost their lives off the coast of Libya. 600 bodies, including those of women and children dispersed in the vast waters of the Mediterranean. CNN estimates that only this year 1500 people have drowned in the Mediterranean.

The EU says that this matter needs to be tackled at its root, and many unwittingly-some knowingly- claim that the root cause is Libya's unstable government. If the government was legitimate, they say, there would be no boats leaving Libya in the first place. But that's only the tip of the iceberg: what many forget is that for decades Africa has been crippled by unfair subsidies and tariffs, aid has been ineffective, and most importantly, when the colonialists divided their priced toy-continent in the 19th and 20th century, they didn't take into consideration the ethnic and cultural divisions that they were subjecting the new states to. The fact is that, after its colonization, Africa was never really put into the condition to thrive as a continent. And that's on all of us.

There's a graveyard on Europe's doorstep, but many are turning a blind eye. We're all bystanders and just because we don't get to see the bodies of the sunken ones, it doesn't mean they're not there. So I cannot but think of those thousands of people who have perished in the inclement sea and whose stories have perished with. 

Selling out

Artwork by Gus Design courtesy of Design Crowd

When I write, I usually tend to put on something soothing, maybe some Ludovico Einaudi or an instrumental soundtrack to think better. This time though, I'm going for U2. I could be listening to One or Where the Streets have no Name; they're wholesome, they're U2 classics. But for this particular post, I'm blasting some brassier, unmelodious U2 stuff. This album is one misunderstood work of art. 

Some of you haven't even heard of POP, but if you're U2 die-hard fans, and I'm sure there are a few still around, then there's a good probability you dislike this record. The release of POP had been rushed. The band simply ran out of time in the making of it, so since it had already been pushed it back several times, the band went on to publish an unpolished version of POP.

Not only was this album unfinished, but the record's rawness didn't quite soothe the fan's refined palate. So they dismissed it as U2 going all techno. The band was a sellout. They couldn't have been more wrong.

This album can be deceiving because many will struggle to find meaning beneath the cacophony of Mofo or the triviality of Discotheque. The tracks in POP are layered differently, but they all ultimately expose the listener to the state of bewilderment we're often faced with, call it faith, call it relationships or call it our own identity. POP might sound rough and incomplete, yet, in many ways, the record's imperfections reflect our own. 

But I'm not here to defend POP. I'm just nostalgic for the U2 that once was. In the 90's this band was at the peak of its fame, yet Bono and Co still pushed their creative confines. It was exactly that kind of mindset that led to the inception of Achtung Baby. POP might not be up there, but it's a unique and highly creative work of art from that same period.

After the release of POP, U2 decided to go back to basics. The idea behind the album that followed POP- All that you can't leave behind- made sense at the time, but it all went awry after that. The last two studio albums have been pathetic versions of the ballsy band U2 once was.

The Guardian's Kitty Empire epitomized it best on her review for their most recent work, Songs of Innocence: U2 is trying to sound "like Coldplay sounding like U2." U2 hasn't been the only band to meet this fate; the list of musicians, ranging from REM to Dave Matthews, is endless. So what is it? Do these artists just grow old? Do they simply run out of ideas? I doubt it. How would you then explain those artists like Beck, who've been around for decades, and whose music is still eclectic and relevant? 

Like Beck, U2 was taking those great leaps in the name of art. Like Beck, they were experimenting and willing to seek new journeys. In fact with POP, the band was not selling out, far from it. If anything, the band started to sell out the very moment it tried to sound like the old U2. The irony. 

And as I internalize all this, there's a question that keeps pestering me. Who am  I? Beck or U2?