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Reviews of books, film, and other media
 

The Goode Family

The Goode Family
Mike Judge, John Altschuler, and Dave Krinsky
(ABC, Fridays, 8:30 pm ET)

Earlier this year, I could hardly believe my eyes when I watched the season premiere of The Goode Family, a new animated sitcom on ABC by Mike Judge (along with John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky). The show, which chronicles the trials and tribulations of an environmentally responsible, culturally sensitive middle-class American family, was absolutely hilarious. But it wasn’t Judge’s usual sense of wry cultural commentary that got me (see his other creations like Beavis & Butt-Head, Office Space, and Idiocracy for that). My amazement had more to do with the culture that he was commenting on. Let me explain.

Comedy shows, from Saturday Night Live to The Daily Show to Judge’s own King of the Hill, have made a habit of satirizing the views and values of conservative America. But this new show has targeted a whole new demographic: the vegan, eco-conscious, politically correct, ever-concerned-about-the-global-impact-of-their-every-choice crowd that has made Whole Foods one of the most successful companies in the world and played a significant role in electing America’s first African-American President. And while I found the show to be ingenious (I’m a green, Barack Obama–idolizing kind of guy), it has received some pretty scathing critiques from reviewers of the more liberal persuasion who may not be able to handle it when the joke’s on them.

The premise is fantastic. Helen Goode, a middle-aged activist who sports a “Meat Is Murder” T-shirt for most of the episode, and her husband, Gerald, an administrator at a local community college who rides his bike to work (of course!), are trying to navigate the contradictions inherent in raising their family according to the less-than-a-decade-old moral philosophy of WWAGD? (or “What Would Al Gore Do?”).

They adopted their sixteen-year-old African son, for example, in an effort “to fight racism and inequality in the world.” But much to their bleeding hearts’ dismay, during the adoption process they forgot to check a box on a form and received a child from South Africa—a blond-haired Afrikaner baby whom they named Ubuntu.

Their daughter, Bliss, is a classic case of Gen-Y cynicism, tech-savviness, and sarcasm (not to mention her perfectly slumped text-messaging posture), and she is constantly poking holes in her parents’ worldview. Last but not least is the family dog, named “Che,” after the South American revolutionary and countercultural icon. Che has been put on a strict vegan diet and—unfortunately for the neighborhood pets—is constantly looking to supplement his protein-deficient, organic golden-flaxseed chow with a parakeet, cat, or goldfish.

While the premiere episode was chock-full of penetrating one-liners and awkwardly insightful scenes, one moment in particular stood out from the rest. Helen decides it’s important for her and her daughter, Bliss, to be more open with each other about sexuality. But her plan backfires when Bliss, who is creeped out by the idea of talking sex with her mother, rebelliously joins a Christian-sponsored chastity group. Infuriated by the idea of a Goode family member fraternizing with “those abstinence people who wear American-flag pins,” Helen voices her concerns to her husband, hoping for sympathy. But Gerald’s response presents her with one of the hilarious contradictions faced on the path to perfect political correctness: “Maybe we shouldn’t be so judgmental,” he says. “Don’t we always try to celebrate people’s differences and learn from them?” To which Helen responds, “Sure, if they’re, like, Native Americans or backwards rainforest tribes. But not these people!”

Ouch! With scenes like this, which are so implicating for a dyed-in-the-wool liberal that one can’t quite decide whether to laugh or squirm, it’s no wonder that many reviewers have claimed that the show is a conservative attack on progressive values—another battle in the culture war in which liberals are finally getting a dose of the ridicule that they’ve been dishing out for years. But in actuality, the show’s creators are anything but anti-green. In fact, their own ability to perfectly convey the mood and subtle contradictions of this worldview stems from the fact they themselves grapple with and embody everything that appears on the screen. Watching interviews with the writers, animators, and actors reveals a familiar and sophisticated sort of insight into the postmodern condition that could only come from their being tortured by it themselves and thus searching for some way to gain objectivity on it all. As Altschuler said in a recent CNN interview, “The whole show is about the knots we’ve found ourselves put in.” (Che, for example, is based on his friend’s vegan dog.)

The show’s creators believe that The Goode Family is a perfect response to the cultural zeitgeist in which moral dilemmas like those faced by the Goodes (Paper or plastic? Organic or local? What should we call minorities?) have become commonplace. But a flurry of reviewers—most notably those from National Public Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times—have begged to differ. The Times’ Ginia Bellafante called the show “aggressively off-kilter with the current mood” in her review, suggesting that poking fun at wind power and organic food is oh-so-mid-nineties, and wondering why anyone would want to criticize ideals that have become broadly accepted. Others have said that the premise is too easy a target and that the jokes will soon get old.

But I think that the reviewers miss a pretty significant point when they write the show off as merely outdated and tired. (Perhaps the show makes fun of a world that, for them, hits a little too close to home.) What is most interesting to me about The Goode Family is that it shows how the once countercultural values of the sixties have become so popular that an entire network TV show is dedicated to poking fun at them (much like King of the Hill poked fun at the older and much more established “barbecue and Jesus” culture of Middle America). In other words, it seems that what we consider mainstream has evolved, and now those who are pushing the mainstream edge may no longer be progressives who are dissing conservatives but those who are starting to see through the progressive worldview itself—from the inside out. As Variety magazine’s Brian Lowry points out, “Assuming liberals can laugh at their own foibles, ABC might just have TV’s first true Obama-era sitcom on its hands.”

The premiere episode’s final scene perfectly sums up The Goode Family’s fundamental mood. When Ubuntu takes the family Prius out for a ride and apologizes to his father for wasting gas, Gerald offers some fatherly advice: “That’s okay, Ubuntu. The important thing is that you feel guilty about it.”

The show may not offer any grand solutions, and it will no doubt ridicule some pretty noble causes. But the fact that it dares make fun of a worldview that, as Mike Judge says in the trailer, often leaves its adherents feeling “forever guilty about being a human being on the planet” gives it a five-star rating in my book.

–Joel Pitney

 

Integral Philosophy

Integral Philosophy
Steve McIntosh with Jeff Salzman and Michael Zimmerman
(2-DVD set, produced by Boulder Integral, published by Now & Zen, $19.95)

Boulder-based integral philosopher Steve McIntosh is fond of saying that rigorous philosophical inquiry has, in many ways, become a lost art form. Gone are the days of Socrates dialoguing with his students on the streets of Athens. And you’re pretty unlikely to walk into the local Starbucks and find yourself in the midst of a fiery debate over the finer points of Voltaire’s latest treatise, as might have been the case in an eighteenth-century Parisian coffeehouse. But this kind of high-level relentless creative pursuit of the truth is exactly what McIntosh brings to the table with his new DVD set, Integral Philosophy, published earlier this year.

Shot against the black Charlie Rose-esque backdrop of Boulder Integral’s beautiful new recording studio, the DVD set features McIntosh engaged in two passionate dialogues with Boulder Integral founder Jeff Salzman and University of Colorado philosophy professor Michael Zimmerman. Titled, respectively, Foundations of Integral Philosophy and A Conversation on Evolution, the DVDs are intended both to convey the fundamental pillars of the integral worldview and to explore how this emerging new perspective helps solve many of our most nagging philosophical dilemmas, from the hard problem of consciousness to the question of whether evolution has direction. But even more than providing an overview of integral thought, the DVDs offer a glimpse of philosophy-in-the-making, as these three thinkers push the margins of their own understanding in what ends up being two very creative conversations.

In the first session, Salzman interviews McIntosh about the foundational insights of integral philosophy—most notably, that consciousness evolves. McIntosh, who authored Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution (2007), starts by laying out a historical context for the emergence of the integral worldview. He explains how it represents the next step in human consciousness and culture beyond the traditional, modern, and postmodern worldviews that currently shape the lives of most people on the planet. He then goes on to explore the rich “internal ecosystem” of values and perspectives that peering through the integral lens reveals.

One of the most important tenets of the integral worldview is the idea that evolution is not a random process but has a direction—namely, from simpler forms of matter, life, and consciousness to more complex ones. In the second DVD, McIntosh and Zimmerman discuss how this teleological understanding of evolution will define the twenty-first century and radically change the way we think about spirituality, science, and morality. Laying out a fascinating history of evolutionary theory, McIntosh and Zimmerman explore the true essence of evolution and make the case that any future theory must, at its core, include an appreciation for consciousness.

Conveying something as subtle and ephemeral as a new worldview, which has its own assumptions, terminology, and ways of making sense out of reality, is no small task—especially in two hours. And the concept-rich, stream-of-consciousness nature of both conversations will likely make it hard for the uninitiated to keep up. But for anyone familiar with basic integral concepts, that fluidity is also part of the charm, and the DVDs transmit the dynamic co-creative nature of the process that these philosophers are engaged in. I wouldn’t necessarily give this to my grandmother as an integral primer, but I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see for themselves what the leading edge of philosophy looks like today.

–Joel Pitney

 

King: Postsecularism The Hidden Challenge to Extremism

Postsecularism
The Hidden Challenge to Extremism
by Mike King
(James Clark and Co., 2009, paperback $52.50)

Mike King is that rarest of breeds: an original thinker. An artist, graphic designer, and animator, he is also a self-proclaimed jnani or knower of Truth, a Reader at London Metropolitan University, and a director of the Scientific and Medical Network, a UK group that combats scientific materialism. Postsecularism is King’s sequel to his acclaimed first book, Secularism, which traced the historical roots of the rise of secular society. In his new book, he unites the strands of his diverse interests, making a powerful analysis of the rise of extremism—from the fundamentalist right in Christianity and Islam to an increasingly vitriolic atheist elite. Carefully argued, erudite, and often dense, Postsecularism holds out hope for a way to move beyond this polarized extremism to a post-secular world that King sees emerging.

King’s take on extremism, observed in both the traditional religious right and in the secular liberal atheists, is fascinating and perceptive. He claims that we are at a cultural impasse, where each side of the debate is blind to or rejects out of hand the assumptions of the other. Western culture moved out of medievalism into modernity, he explains, by creating a “détente” between science and religion, viewing them as “non-overlapping magisteria,” or parallel domains that never meet. Yet, since 9/11, there is an increasing urgency from each side to prevail over the other. Some of this, he suggests, comes from the fact that there are fundamental epistemological and spiritual questions that are unresolved in Western culture, creating a dualistic split between mind and body, spirit and matter.

In fact, one of King’s most unique points is that the Western Enlightenment—from Voltaire through the German idealists—was a failed “religious revolution . . . rather than the success of a secular revolution [which intended] to destroy religion.” [28] The true goal of the Enlightenment philosophers, according to King’s reading of their work, was to move Western culture from a devotional religious context that denied the world to a context that emphasized direct knowledge, or mysticism, and embraced the life process. But the project failed, resulting in a split between devotional traditionalists and an “autistic” secular scientific community that cannot discern the sacred or deeper dimensions of experience. King argues that the way forward is through a rational mysticism that would both validate the sacred depth dimension and encourage true intellectual rigor in engaging with it. Through a series of chapters in the last part of the book, he points to evidence for such a perspective in the domains of physics, consciousness studies, transpersonal psychology, the New Age, the arts, and more.

King’s opus is often difficult, demanding familiarity with his complex and multidimensional terrain, but is always worth the effort. Every few pages there is simultaneously a revelatory shock of recognition and the realization of how new King’s view is. Postsecularism offers a transformative analysis that doesn’t simply revisit the calcified positions that have contributed to our cultural lockdown but illuminates a potential integration that could contribute significantly to resolving the entire debate.

–Elizabeth Debold



 

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This article is from
The Evolving Faces of God - New perspectives on the meaning of spirituality for our time

 

September–November 2009