I've been reading John Leland's book Hip: The History. It is an interesting cultural history with an interesting thesis. One of the things I've noticed is that Leland's descriptions of hip often converge on descriptions I'd like to claim for the church. That is, given Leland's definitions and descriptions I keep seeing the church as hip, even cool, but mostly hip.

Of course, hip and Christianity don't overlap completely. I don't think anyone would find that surprising. There are aspects of hip that don't apply to the church and aspects of the church that are not hip. And yet, I think the two converge enough for us to speak of a "hip Christianity." These posts are devoted to test that hypothesis.

To begin, what is hip? Let's start with word-origins. Linguists believe the word hip comes from the Wolof verbs hepi or hipi meaning, respectively, "to see" or "to open one's eyes." Thus, Leland concludes that hip is, in essence, a form of enlightenment (p. 5). This is a fruitful beginning for our purposes as it suggests that hip can be taken as a theological or religious construct.

Leland contends that the origins of hip, as a place of enlightenment, emerged out of the intermingling of black and white cultures in America. Hip began as the edge between black and white cultures. Consequently, hip tends to mark the boundary between culture and counter-culture. Between establishment and rebellion. Majority and minority. Further, the mainstream culture often pursues hip, attempting to co-opt it. Theft is a large part of hip's history. Elvis stole the blues. Designer jeans are made to look old and ripped. Constantine stole the church.

So hip is always moving. Staying out in front of a mass-market culture trying to sell rebellion and cool to a bunch of squares. Consequently, a large part of the enlightenment of hip is knowing what is truly hip versus simply a fad or a trend. Being hip is knowing what is authentic and real. And the masses are no guide. For the minute hip is popular it is no longer hip.

I expect you can see how this core notion of hip is a nice metaphor for the Christian experience. First, the church's location in relation to culture places it in the space of hip. In its counter-cultural stance the church is in a mode of rebellion. And as with hip the church is constantly struggling to stay a moving target. Trying to remain hip rather than being co-opted by the mass-market culture. When can we know when a church becomes co-opted? Well, it's a question, to use the categories of hip, of separating the squares from the truly hip. This is hip's "ability to see." It's the apostle Paul's discerning the spirits.

The applications are obvious. When we enter a church are we encountering a truly hip experience? Is the life we find in that place organic, authentic and counter-cultural? Or has the hipness and coolness of the church been merely purchased? Has the veneer of hip been plastered onto the church? That is, might this church look counter-cultural and rebellious but, at root, be wholly co-opted by the mainstream culture? And finally, if the history of hip is any guide to discernment, a truly hip church wouldn't be very large or popular.

In short, the history of hip suggests that hip has always been seeking a counter-cultural life that has spiritual integrity. For most of hip's history this integrity has been found in rejecting consumptive existence and narrating life around artistic or intellectual values. Hip is the story of coffee-shop philosophers, beat poets, bohemians, and jazz musicians. And much of this seems to parallel the heart of the church where consumptive existence is eschewed in favor of a common spiritual life. If so, then perhaps hip and Christianity go together quite nicely.

It is a noteworthy fact that torture is at the heart of the Christian story. And it centers on issues of sovereignty. By refusing to renounce his claim of kingship, an act of both blasphemy and treason, Jesus of Nazareth was tortured and executed by the religious and political powers. Further, the followers of Jesus willingly submit to torture and execution to live and die by their claim that their ultimate allegiance is not to any earthly king, prince, kingdom or nation.

My interest in Kahn's analysis in Sacred Violence rests on his notion that torture exists in the space of sovereignty. As noted in Part 1, liberals contest this location, claiming that torture is illegal, that its proper location is in the space of law. Since liberals and conservatives cannot agree upon the location of torture the political discussions are stymied. The fundamental assumptions are disjointed.

But what struck me about Kahn's analysis is that where the politicians and pundits might be stymied the thoughtful Christian has some wiggle room. Specifically, a part of the problem with the political debates about torture (e.g., Cheney vs. Obama) is that each party claims the same sovereign. Both have given their highest allegiance to the United States of America.

If Kahn is correct that torture is best located in the space of sovereignty it strikes me that Christians don't have to argue in the categories deployed by liberals and conservatives. That is, the categories of the Enlightenment need not apply to Christian discourse. Liberals and conservatives may disagree on the location of torture but they don't disagree about their sovereign allegiances. This makes the conversation difficult for them. Christians, by contrast, can sidestep this entire debate. That is, for the Christian the location of torture is largely irrelevant because the Christian doesn't hold the Untied States to be the ultimate sovereign. Jesus was tortured about just this issue: A refusal to recognize Caesar as king. (If he had done so with Pilate he would have gone free. John 18-19.)

The point, for me at least, is that I don't think liberal Christians are best served by arguing that torture is illegal (although it may well be). Further, I don't think that liberal Christians are best served by arguing that torture is immoral. At least if that argument is governed by Enlightenment warrants for morality. Because I think Kahn is correct: Those arguments tend to lead to an impasse. I think the Christian response to torture is best argued by an appeal to allegiances.

And, surprisingly, this analysis reveals something of the power of the Christian worldview. That is, I don't think atheists like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris can contribute much to the torture debates beyond what is currently being said. Enlightenment categories are a bit impotent here. Just watch TV. But the Christian appeal to the cross breaks the debate open in a fresh and novel way.

In short, the debate about torture is fundamentally, if Kahn is to be believed, a religious debate. It's not a legal or moral debate.

I entitled these posts Torture & Allegiance because I think Kahn is correct, torture exists in the space of sovereignty. Thus, arguments about illegality or morality tend to get stuck when people share the same allegiances. But Christians don't share those same allegiances. So the conversation is more fluid for them. Christians are playing a different game than the one the pundits are playing. That is, I don't think Christians should side with Limbaugh or Olbermann on this. A Christian response should be cutting across the debates on TV and on the political blogs. This is not to say that a Christian can't put on the hat of a citizen and wade into these waters. It is just to say that a distinctly Christian response to torture begins and ends in a very different place. It will begin and end with the torture of Jesus.

A couple of you wondered in the last post if Kahn's locations of sovereignty and law (from his book Sacred Violence) are really so discrete. Which is a fair criticism. In this post I want to try to illustrate those spaces a bit more and show how, in my opinion, they do provide an interesting lens upon various aspects of political life.

An interesting illustration concerning the locations of sovereignty and law is how Kahn relates the two foundational documents of America--The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--to those spaces.

Kahn sees the Declaration as a document of sovereignty. It is a document that rejects the sovereignty of the British King and establishes a new political order. It is, at root, a declaration of war. It is a revolutionary document. From the final section of the Declaration:

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

For Kahn, the Declaration is not a social contract or set of laws. It is a document that breaks and reorders sacred allegiances. It redefines enemies and friends. And, to accomplish this destruction of one sovereign to create a new one, the signers were willing to die ("mutually pledge each other our lives"). As Benjamin Franklin quipped after signing the Declaration, "We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

In contrast to the Declaration, the Constitution of the United States is a social contract. It is not a document of revolution or war. The Constitution doesn't create a new sovereign, it orders one by establishing the law. From the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The point for Kahn is that while the Constitution provides stability and the rule of law, The Declaration of Independence is a radicalizing influence in American life. The Union was created by revolutionary bloodshed. Thus, built into the American political system is this notion that new revolutionaries can throw off a tyrannical or dysfunctional national government. The Civil War was fought about just this issue. Thus, when Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address he reaches back to the Declaration rather than the Constitution:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

The political point between Lincoln and the South was this: Who gets to claim the Declaration? Who gets to define sovereignty? The answer isn't abstract. It is a matter of war. Of killing and being killed. Thus the religious language of the Gettysburg Address:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate... we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The point for contrasting the Declaration and the Constitution is that they illustrate Kahn's distinctions between law and sovereignty. The Declaration, as a document of sovereignty, is a document about allegiances, revolution, enemies, tyrants and war. The Constitution is about justice, social contract and law within an already established union. Again, the Declaration creates the Union and the Constitution orders it.

Why go into this distinction? Well, it allows us to track the cross-currents in American political speech. Specifically, speech that appeals to the Declaration will be revolutionary speech, speech about the dissolution of the Union, of creating a new sovereign. That is, speech that appeals to the Declaration will raise the specter of tyranny and make calls for revolution. This kind of speech is volatile because it is speech about war. Speech motivated by the Declaration is inherently violent speech.

Such speech raises the same question faced in the Civil War. Is this revolutionary speech treasonous? In rejecting the sovereignty of the Union who gets to claim the Founding Fathers? Those claiming the Declaration (revolution) or those claiming the Constitution (union)? Regardless, as witnessed in the Civil War, a debate about sovereignty is a debate conducted in blood.

Let me continue to illustrate the differences between law and sovereignty by taking up another illustration used by Kahn. How should we see someone like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? McVeigh took his political cues from the Declaration of Independence and considered his attack to be understood as a rejection of American sovereignty. Notice the equivalency he makes in this description of his motives for the bombing:

Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. (see enclosed) Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective, what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal , no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy, or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel.)

Here is where I think Kahn's analysis is interesting and helpful. McVeigh wanted to locate his action in the space of sovereignty. He wanted his action to be against The United States of America. That is, McVeigh doesn't see his act as criminal, as existing within the space of law. McVeigh is aiming at something deeper than law. His is an act of war. In short, he wants to be seen as a martyr.

Pushing against this, the American judicial system wanted to deny McVeigh his access to that location. McVeigh was, simply, a criminal. McVeigh wasn't a revolutionary martyr. He was a psychopathic killer. By denying McVeigh martyrdom, by locating his action within the space of law rather than revolution, the American government denied McVeigh his route to heroism. Martyrs are heroic, even to false gods. But criminals are never heroic.

The point is, the location of McVeigh is critical to how, politically, one sees his actions. If one locates McVeigh in the space of sovereignty then he's a hero to a revolutionary cause. But if you locate McVeigh in the space of law he's just a cold-blooded killer. Location is everything.

The point for today's post is that I think Kahn's division between law and sovereignty isn't wholly without merit. It might not be able to shed much light on the torture debates, but it is a useful hermeneutic to analyze American political discourse. Because there sure has been a lot of talk lately about revolution, tyranny, and secession (recall I live in Texas). Plus, Kahn's model allows us to examine how one's location in the political landscape is fraught with meaning (e.g., Are you a criminal or a patriot?). Location defines heroes, martyrs and criminals.

I have been reading Paul Kahn's book Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty. Since the release of the Bush torture memos I've been thinking through Kahn's analysis as I watch the reactions coming from the political left and the right on this issue. More specifically, I've been wondering what a distinctively Christian approach to this issue might me.

Kahn's basic point in Sacred Violence is that the debate between liberals and conservatives on the issue of torture is being conducted upon a foundational misunderstanding. A misunderstanding which leaves, and will continue to leave, liberals and conservatives at loggerheads.

Kahn's analysis is that there are two distinct forces governing political life: Law and sovereignty. Law is the shorthand for our social contract, the agreements we negotiate to live collectively. Law is the great product of the Enlightenment and liberal democracies. By contrast, sovereignty involves the sacred rights of a king or government to rule. By calling sovereignty sacred Kahn means that this is the space of sacrifice, the space of killing or being killed. The space of war, revolution, torture, terror and martyrdom. At stake in sovereignty is a deeper question than law: What, politically speaking, am I willing to die for?

According to Kahn, the mistake liberals have made is that they think the issues of sovereignty have been left behind or trumped by the Enlightenment. The era of the Divine Right of Kings, the scaffold, the rack and the guillotine have been surpassed by democracies and the rule of law. But Kahn argues that this is a misreading of history. The sacred space of sovereignty is still very much with us, only in a different guise. Rather than a single divine sovereign, a King, demonstrating power through torture (e.g., the scaffold), we have a democratic sovereign where every citizen is expected to take up arms in defense of a sacred union. The location of sovereignty has become internalized, it is a matter of allegiance. Kahn points out that this sacred pledge to sacrifice is best demonstrated by the naturalization oath one must take to become a United States citizen:

I hereby declare, on oath,
that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;
that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law;
that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law;
that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion;
so help me God.

In sum, liberals, working with Enlightenment categories, fail to understand that torture is located in the space of sovereignty. By claiming that torture is illegal or immoral liberals are, in the conservative mind, missing the point. The point, for the conservative, isn't about Kantian ethics (e.g., the Golden Rule) or utilitarianism (e.g., Does torture promote our interests in the long run?). The point is one of loyalty, of sacred allegiance.

This disjoint is most clearly seen in the ticking time bomb debates. If a terrorist had set up a bomb to detonate in a populated area and you had the terrorist in custody would you torture the terrorist to get the location of the bomb so that thousands of lives could be saved?

There is a lot of conversation swirling around the ticking time bomb scenario. Does the ticking time bomb apply to the US torture situation? Is torture effective in getting information? And so on. These are all important questions but, at the end of the day, Kahn suggests that they continue to miss the critical issue: Would you, in fact, torture someone in the ticking time bomb scenario?

If you answer yes then you admit that torture has a location, a place in our political world. We might not agree on the exact location or how large the area is, but we agree torture exists within the horizon of our world. For the liberal such an admission feels like a failure. Something medieval has slinked from the past into the Age of Reason.

But if you say no in the ticking time bomb scenario, even on moral grounds, your fundamental allegiances are called into question. You, as a part of this social contract, are not willing to protect your fellow citizens and neighbors. This is essentially a religious failure.

Now, for a moment, I don't want you to approach this issue as a Christian (if you are one). I want you to approach the issue as a secular politician, as someone whose sacred allegiance is to the United States of America. For the liberal politician we can see how the ticking time bomb places them in a bind. As a liberal the politician does not want to admit that torture has a location in our world, particularly our world. So he can't say yes, I'd torture. But he also can't say no as such a response implies that he would, for moral quibbles, fail to protect the US people.

The point here is that, although there are vitally important debates going on about the utility (e.g., is the information reliable, impact upon American's reputation, motivation upon terror recruitment) and morality of torture, the debate about the legality of torture, for Kahn, misses the point. Torture is an act of war. War isn't illegal. War is in a different location. Torture exists in that same space. This is why conservatives keep saying "this is a war" through the torture debates.

War and the Enlightenment social contract exist in two different spaces. Liberals want to eliminate torture by an appeal to the social contract (law, morality, reason) while conservatives locate torture in the space of sovereign warfare and sacrifice, a place outside the law. With the location of torture unspecified liberals and conservatives cannot reach an agreement. Each is working with two different sociopolitical topographies.

Some thoughts on the banality of evil and American torture prompted by this post by Andrew Sullivan.

The phrase "the banality of evil" comes from Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem, a book about her covering of the Adolf Eichmann trial.

Eichmann is often called “The Architect of the Holocaust” because he was the SS Officer charged with handling the logistics of the mass deportation of the Jewish population to the ghettos and, eventually, to the extermination camps. Eichmann was, in essence, the Bureaucrat of the Holocaust. The Organizer and Paper-Pusher of Death.

After the war Eichmann escaped to Argentina and lived under a false identity. He was eventually captured by Israeli operatives on May 11, 1960. Eichmann was secretly taken to Israel to eventually stand trial for crimes against humanity and the Jewish people.

Unable to cover the Nuremberg Trials, Hannah Arendt was keen the cover the Eichmann trial which took place from April 11 to August 14, 1961. At the end of the very public trial Eichmann was found guilty on all counts and was sentenced to death. Eichmann was executed on May 31, 1962.

Arendt, being a Jew, wanted to cover the Eichmann trial to have her own personal confrontation with Evil. She wanted to stare the Devil in the eye. She came looking for the Monster.

But what she found was something quite different. Eichmann was bland, nice and, oddly, intellectually shallow. By the end of the trial Arendt concluded that Eichmann was more of a fool than a monster. Arendt wrote: “Everybody could see that this man was not a ‘monster,’ but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown.”

The aspect of Eichmann's mind that struck Arendt was its superficially. Here are some of the ways Arendt describes Eichmann in her book:

“utterly reluctant to read”

“his almost total inability to look at anything from the other fellow’s point of view”

An Eichmann quote: “Officialese is my only language.”

“ruined by modesty”

“the hollowness of respectability”

“genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché”

“this horrible gift for consoling himself with clichés”

“an inability to think”

“He did his duty…obeyed orders…a job”

Arendt's conclusion by the end of the trial was that evil isn't deep. Rather, evil is shallow. Specifically, evil is a kind of mindlessness. A mindlessness that gets trapped inside a paper-pushing bureaucracy and which blandly follows orders. In short, Eichmann never took the trouble to think.

This analysis of evil's mindlessness is what led Arendt to conclude that evil is banal. Evil isn't demonic or spooky or occult. Evil is workaday. Evil is paper, files, chains of command, bureaucracy, duty, and rule-following. Evil is a mindless worker bee. Evil is a bureaucracy that separates moral reflection from behavior. Evil is thus ordinary and common. A pervasive moral mindlessness and shallowness. Evil is a failure to think, to reflect, to object, to question, to rebel. Evil is a being a cog, a foot soldier, a patriot and a citizen.

i.
Three jokes:

#1.
Question: Why was Helen Keller such a bad driver?

Answer: Because she was a woman.

#2.
Question: What is great about having Alzheimer's on Easter?

Answer: You can hide the eggs and look for them.

#3.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world.

Those who know binary and those who don't.


ii.
Why are jokes both wonderful and so potentially hurtful?

Ted Cohen in his book Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters sheds some light on the dual nature of jokes by examining the structural features of the joke. Specifically, Cohen notes that most jokes are highly compressed which demands that the listener fill in the background assumptions, values, and beliefs that make the joke work. If the listener cannot fill in this background he doesn’t “get it” and the joke fails to produce spontaneous laughter. Curiously, if you don’t “get” a joke no amount of post-joke explaining, filling in the background you were supposed to produce on your own, makes the joke suddenly funny to you. You can’t explain a joke into being funny. You either get it, or you don’t.

The point for Cohen is that this feature of a joke—its demand for you to supply the background information—makes jokes forms of community building. As Cohen notes (p. 28, 29, italics in original):

…you need to begin with an implicit acknowledgment of a shared background, a background of awareness that you both are already in possession of and bring to the joke. This is the foundation of intimacy that will develop if your joke succeeds, and the hearer then also joins you in a shared response to the joke. And just what is this intimacy? It is the shared sense of those in a community. The members know that they are joined there by one another…When we laugh at the same thing, that is a very special occasion. It is already noteworthy that we laugh at all, at anything, and that we laugh all alone. That we do it together is the satisfaction of a deep human longing, the realization of a desperate hope. It is the hope that we are enough like one another to sense one another, to be able to live together.

In short, when someone likes our jokes we’ve found a soul-mate, a kindred spirit, someone who sees the world like I do. This is the joy of laughter and humor. But there is a dark side here as well. This very feature of jokes makes them potentially harmful and forms of exclusion.

Take, for example, the three jokes given at the start of this post. All three are compressed and require you to fill in backgrounds and stereotypes. For example, the Helen Keller joke works only if you share a stereotype about women drivers. The binary joke only works if you know that 10 in binary code is equal to 2 in our base ten system. Those shared stereotypes and knowledge make the jokes work.

But what if you don't know that 10 in binary is equal to 2 in base ten? Does my explaining this to you make you laugh? No. In fact, if you have to have a joke explained to you it only intensifies your feeling of exclusion. Getting it or not getting it immediately marks insiders and outsiders. No amount of post-joke explanation will offset that initial realization that you were "too stupid" to be on "the inside" of the joke's borders.

Further, if the inside of a joke is a stereotype then the joke doubles the wound. A few of you might have found the Helen Keller joke offensive for just this reason. You are excluded by the joke and offended by the negative stereotype that functions as the mechanism of exclusion.

How about the Alzheimer's joke? Is it funny? It all depends upon who makes the joke. If a person suffering from Alzheimer's tells the joke then we see the joke as funny, as a form of dark humor and self-deprecation. An Alzheimer's patient has a right to tell this joke because he is an insider to the world of the joke. Told by an outsider the joke can be cruel and mean. This is why black comedians can use the n-word in their routines and white comedians cannot. (Much to the befuddlement of my students.) It's a matter of insiders versus outsiders.

In sum, jokes are boundaries. Jokes mark off a shared space. A space of shared attitudes and experiences. A joke is compressed because it functions as a kind of test. Do you share my view of the world? Are you with me? Are you an insider or an outsider? This facet of jokes--tests of inclusion--is why jokes are both wonderful and wounding. They are wonderful when they are shared. But jokes wound when they exclude people and when they deploy toxic stereotypes. Further, jokes become contested when outsiders attempt to enter the space (i.e., tell the joke) before gaining the consent of the insiders. This is why the ethnicity of a person telling an ethnic joke is vital to understanding the nature and function of the joke.

Jokes are complex and morally treacherous. They bring us together and force us apart. They embrace and exclude.

The final research paper I recently presented with students was research conducted by Sarah Kratzer, Kristen Lewis, Brit'ny Spain and Annie Van Cleave.

The particular focus of this research was the use of insult as a form of flirtation. As we all know, teasing is a multifaceted communication strategy that plays off of multiple layers of meaning. Specifically, the overt content of our speech might be very different from the intentions behind our speech. We say one thing but mean another. In teasing, we generally say something mean but intend something nice. This discrepancy and incongruity gives teasing its humorous potential. When executed well and received well it is a witty form of communication.

But it often doesn't go well. The ambiguities of teasing make it prone to misunderstanding and abuse. Teasing and sarcastic comments can misfire. Further, we can use the ambiguity of teasing to avoid responsibility for our words. When we tease we can claim that "I didn't mean it" if our audience takes offense. This self-defense is an appeal to the two layers of teasing. We are claiming that our audience is taking us too literally and should be attending to the non-literal intent of the tease (the nice part). We are basically accusing the audience of not getting the joke. And yet, we might really have wanted to hurt the person. Our true intent really was at level one, the mean literal layer. So the nature of the tease allows us to both make our point, hurtfully so, while also disavowing any mean intent. We get to have our cake and eat it too. Teasing provides us cover.

This is why, the students and I reasoned, people might prefer to use teasing as a flirtation strategy. Although teasing is risky it does provide some cover and protection.

The goal of the research project was to assess the personality correlates of people who report using insults (teasing) as a flirtation strategy. Although the students examined a host of variables I'd just like to focus on three.

First, building off of Neu's analysis and the findings in our last post, we predicted that narcissists would be more likely to tease as a flirtation strategy. They may do this for two reasons. First, if an insult is a kind of dominance display (see last post) then it seems reasonable to expect that narcissists would be more likely to use insults as a communication and flirtation strategy. Second, as we noted above, insults might provide protection for the narcissist's ego if the romantic overture is rejected. The narcissist can play the "I didn't mean it" card. Interestingly, this protects the narcissist from a social shame but it can also function as a form of self-deception if the narcissist tries to convince himself that, in truth, he really wasn't interested in this person when, in point of fact, he was interested. Ah, the games we play in our head...

The second set of predictions focused on humor style. Specifically, researchers have distinguished between a variety of humor styles. The two we focused on were affiliative humor and aggressive humor. Affiliative humor is humor aimed at relationship enhancement. It is humor that brings people together. Aggressive humor is humor that functions as a form of power and dominance. It involves teasing, sarcasm, put-downs and generally laughing at people rather than with them. Our expectation was that aggressive humor styles would predict insult use as a flirtation strategy.

The final set of predictions focused on social distress and discomfort. We predicted that people might use teasing as a communication strategy when they feel anxious in social situations. Again, this might be due to the fact that insults provide cover and protection from social failure or rejection.

So what did we find? Generally speaking the predictions were confirmed. People who were more narcissistic, who had more aggressive humor styles and who were more distressed in social situations were the most likely to report that they used insults as a form of romantic flirtation.

I think these results are interesting in that they complement what we noted in the last post. Specifically, in the last post we noted how ego issues can make you more vulnerable to feeling insulted. In this post we note that ego issues can make us more prone to using insults.

In short, it's a prickly world. We are constantly offended by people in the world while, at the very same time, we lob our own insults, snarkiness and sarcasm into the mix. It's a cycle of abuse, shaming and put downs. And, sadly, much of this comes packaged as the Trojan Horse known as humor. It's a Trojan Horse that allows us to say one thing but mean another and then exploit that flexibility to hide our true intentions. We can be drive-by and hit-and-run offenders.

This research hits home. Although I don't flirt with insults, my humor has an edge. Consequently, I frequently hurt people with my sense of humor. To cope with this I work on two spiritual practices. First, I try to slow down. In the words of the bible, "be slow to speak." Being a bit more slow with humor allows me to gage the emotional state of the person I'm talking to. I try not to hit someone with humor right out of the gate. Too often, by being too quick with humor, I've misjudged people's moods, joking around when they are in no mood or, perhaps, even experiencing grief and pain. They came to me for solace and I hit them, upon first greeting, with "wit."

Second, I've learned to apologize. If you use ambiguous communication strategies you have to live with misunderstandings. The only thing you can do is be quick to notice when misunderstandings occur and be quick to apologize and ask for forgiveness.

You may have seen this, but if you haven't please go and watch this video. After you do, come on back.

This performance, in so many ways, is such a profoundly spiritual lesson. One of the judges spoke of cynicism. How diagnostic that is of both myself and the age we live in. No one expected this kind of beauty, of song and spirit, existed within Susan Boyle. We were prepared to laugh at her and judge her for our own amusement and entertainment.

But the power and grace of her performance judged us all.

Last week I talked about the first of three papers I recently presented with ACU students regarding insult psychology. The second paper I'd like to discuss is research conducted by Ryan Gertner, Grace Lozano, and Jasmine Bass concerning the psychology of insult sensitivity.

Last week I wrote about blasphemy, insulting God's Honor. But what about the insults we all face on a daily basis? To dip into the world of insults, the students found an internet site that gathers the current top insults floating around in the world. At the time of the presentation the top five insults were:

Your birth certificate is an apology from the condom factory.

If you were twice as smart, you'd still be stupid.

Shut up, you’ll never be the man your mother is.

It looks like your face caught on fire and someone tried to put it out with a fork.

I would ask how old you are, but I know you can't count that high.

Some of these are pretty funny. But beyond the content of the insult, what about how we react to insults? We all know that people vary in how prone they are to feeling insulted or offended. Some people are very thin-skinned while others have thick-skin. Some people are routinely offended by things that others seem to easily brush off. The question our research attempted to address was the following: What are the psychological correlates of insult sensitivity? What predicts being thin or thick skinned?

The first thing we had to do was measure insult sensitivity. Although self-report isn't the best method for a construct like this, we began there for convenience. Toward that end, we asked participants to imagine themselves in the following scenarios and then rate how insulted or offended they would feel in each:

1. You are talking to a co worker and they respond with “f**k you” and walk away.
2. You are in an important conversation and someone walks up and interrupts you.
3. You wave and greet a co worker and they intentionally do not acknowledge you.
4. Someone gives you “the finger” in a traffic jam.
5. You are sharing a concern or complaint and the person rolls their eyes at you and walks away.
6. The people close to you forget your birthday.
7. You are sharing a goal or dream with a friend and they respond by saying, “I do not think you are capable of that.”

After creating this rudimentary measure of insult sensitivity we began to theorize about the psychological traits that might predict insult sensitivity. Two ideas came to mind.

First, insult is a form of anger, often mixed, if the insult hits its mark, with feelings of deflation and shame. Consequently, we made two predictions. First, if insult is a form of anger it seemed reasonable that people prone to anger would be more likely to feel insulted. Second, we also expected neurotic people to be more prone to insult. Neuroticism is a person's vulnerability to negative emotional states (e.g., anger, stress, worry, sadness). Thus, if insult is a species of anger and dejection we expected people prone to these emotional states to be more sensitive to insult.

In sum, our first set of predictions suggested that insult sensitivity was an emotional issue, specifically an emotional regulation issue. People prone to feeling anger or dejection were predicted to be more vulnerable to insults.

Our second set of predictions followed the thinking of Jerome Neu in his book Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults. Neu's basic argument is that insult is an assault upon the ego. Often an insult is an assertion of dominance via an attempt at humiliation. Neu writes that, “Insult is about humiliation and the assertion of superiority, the assertion or assumption of dominance.”

Following Neu, we posited an ego-based model of insult in contrast to the emotion-based model discussed above. Specifically, if insult is an assault upon the ego then people with inflated egos should be more sensitive to feeling insulted. Consequently, we predicted that narcissism would be positively associated with insult sensitivity.

Summarizing, our research attempted to test two rival models concerning insult sensitivity. Is insult sensitivity an emotional regulation issue? Or is insult sensitivity due to protecting the ego and its feelings of superiority?

Our research found no significant associations between insult sensitivity ratings and the emotion measures (anger proneness and neuroticism). However, insult sensitivity was associated with narcissism. Specifically, the larger the ego the greater the sensitivity to insult. It seems that insult is more about ego than emotion.

I find these results interesting. Specifically, I was surprised to discover how research about insult sensitivity led us to reflections about humility. It had not occurred to me, prior to the research, that being thin-skinned might be a symptom of pride. Conversely, I had not considered that one of the benefits of humility might be a relative immunity to insults. This finding is intriguing in that psychologists have wondered about if humility has any mental health benefits. More specifically, we all know that humility has enormous social benefits. We all like to be around humble people. But are there psychological benefits to being humble? Because it seems that having a humble ego might predispose a person to low self-esteem. But this research on insult sensitivity suggests that one important psychological benefit of humility might be a relative immunity to insult. This leads to an interesting paradox: The humble person can easily brush off insults while the prideful person can't let them go. That is, although a narcissistic person might have a great deal of ego-strength and confidence, a large part of his inner life will be dominated by perceived social slights and insults. The prideful heart is a constant buzz about status and social standing, mixed with feelings of anger and dejection. By contrast, the humble heart seems to sail through the world of social status, critique and commentary with calmness and tranquility.

My wife was poking fun at me this week. She asked, "Why are you writing about blasphemy during Passion Week?"

My response, "Oh. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that."

Basically, I'm liturgically clueless.

To make up for that, here, in between Good Friday and Easter, are some of my posts about the cross and Easter:

Regarding the death and burial of Jesus, here are some reflections on the Isenheim altarpiece. Many consider the Isenheim Crucifixion the most profound depiction of the death of Jesus.

For another take on the death of Jesus here are reflections about Orthodox icons of the crucifixion.

And see here for a primer on classic accounts about what actually happened on the cross.

My preferred reading of the cross is Girardian. See here for how S. Mark Heim applies this reading to the crucifixion accounts. For a lighter account of the scapegoating idea, here are reflections from Heim and Jurgen Moltmann applied to Charlie Brown as Christ Figure.

Moving to Easter, I particularly like how the Orthodox focus on the Harrowing of Hell in contrast to the empty tomb.

In a more quirky essay, some reflections on astronomy and the church controversies surrounding the proper dating of Easter.

Finally, using self-reference and cognitive science to think about why the stories of Good Friday and Easter so transform our lives.

Have a happy and blessed Easter weekend. For me and my family, we've dyed over 40 eggs. Ah, the nostalgic smells of vinegar...

The stimuli the students and I used to assess blasphemy sensitivity were mild compared to the tour of blasphemy we overviewed in the last post. For a few reasons:

1. No literature exists on blasphemy sensitivity. So, we didn't need to start big. Any exploration, even with mild stimuli, would be a novel contribution to the research literature.

2. Extremely offensive stimuli wouldn't create a variety of responses. We needed something that would "split" a group of average religious people into two broad groups, those more offended than not versus those more amused than offended.

What we did was to look for visual stimuli, the kind you might get forwarded as a joke through e-mail. We settled on two pictures of Jesus for our Christian participants. This was the first stimulus:



And this was the second stimulus (which you might have seen before as it was a bit of an Internet meme):



We asked our participants to look at each picture and rate how offended versus amused they were by the picture. As you might expect, these ratings were negatively correlated. The more offended you were by the picture the less humorous you found it. Conversely, the more humorous you found the picture the less offended you were.

The research question was: What kind of religious person would be most offended by the pictures? The students constructed the following profile for blasphemy sensitivity:

Older
Orthodox
Devout (i.e., religion is "important" to the person)
Dogmatic (i.e., resistant to changing religious beliefs)
Anxiety about God (e.g., fear that God would reject/judge you)

These predicted associations are not surprising. They are commonsensical if you know religious people. However, as noted above, no one has ever gone out and measured/tested these associations. Thus, obvious or not, good science recommends that you empirically log even the most "obvious" data points to build the foundation for future research. And sometimes even "obvious" trends don't hold up. Surprises do occur.

In our study the predicted trends were confirmed. Persons who were older, orthodox, devout, dogmatic, and who were worried about God's judgment were the most offended by the stimuli.

I think these findings are interesting. I'm particularly struck by how a view of God (and worries about God's judgment) is implicated in blasphemy sensitivity. In my experience, the people most upset by religious issues are those who live with the fear of an angry God. God is irascible. A grumpy old man. This suggests that a great deal of blasphemy sensitivity is narcissistic. That is, the root fear isn't that you are in danger of God's judgment but that my association with you is putting me in jeopardy. As a consequence, I distance myself, push you away or, in extreme cases, kill you. You are a threat to God's feelings about me.

But there is another side to blasphemy sensitivity. Is nothing to be considered sacred? Can Calvary be a joke? Where is the line?

In sum, the study was an interesting start. Lots of questions, empirical and theological, remain.

Finally, just yesterday, I found the following stimulus that I think would have been perfect for our study:



Is this funny? Clever? Offensive? Blasphemous? You can join the exploration. Evaluate your own reactions and show the pictures to others and see what you find.

Last week it was my privilege to present research with ten amazing students at the annual Southwestern Psychological Association conference. The students presented three papers in a symposium entitled Sticks and Stones: The Psychology of Insult. What I'd like to do in the next few posts is walk through some of the more interesting aspects of this research.

The first paper I'd like to discuss was entitled Defending God's Honor: The Relationship Between Religiosity and Blasphemy Sensitivity. The student authors were Mary Walrath, Elena Kua, Nathan Sharp and Anne Weaver. The symposium theme was insult psychology and this particular paper examined feeling insulted on behalf of God, usually in the face of a stimulus that is considered to be blasphemous.

Blasphemy is generally defined as "irreverent behavior toward anything held sacred." In the face of this irreverent behavior certain religious persons or populations respond in extreme ways. In short, reactions toward the blasphemous have a social cost. Often a high social cost. The students walked through four recent examples.

The first example is Westboro Baptist Church whose website is www.godhatesfags.com:





The "Pray for More Dead Soldiers" and "God Blew Up the Shuttle" might need some explaining. Members of Westboro believe that God is judging America for her tolerance of the gay community (among other things). Thus, American deaths from things like the Shuttle explosion or military casualties are symptoms of God's judgment upon America.

Relevant to our research, Westboro justifies its hate speech by positioning itself as the defender of God's Honor in the face of a blaspheming nation.

A second example from Christianity was the outrage generated by Andres Serrano's Piss Christ:



Piss Christ is a picture of a crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist's urine. When displayed publicly in 1989 a storm kicked up, public and Congressional. The debate around Piss Christ centered on the proper role of art and the use of public funding to support art such as Piss Christ. Regardless, the public outrage surrounding Piss Christ (and work like it) swirls around the notion of blasphemy, the proper treatment of the sacred.

Turning to Islamic outrage, the attacks of 9/11, the defining event of the first part of the 21st Century, was crucially linked to the blasphemies Osama Bin Laden and his followers perceived in American culture:





For example, in 2002 Bin Laden wrote in a "Letter to America": "You are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind: You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator." In short, America offends the Honor of God.

A final example cited by the students was the outrage in 2005 generated in the worldwide Islamic community by the publication of political cartoons in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten:



As you can see, many of these cartoons depicted the prophet Muhammad in an unflattering manner. The worldwide protests produced more than 100 deaths. Again, the central issue is blasphemy.

These four examples were presented by the students to illustrate the social costs of defending God's Honor. Blasphemy impacts everyone. Blasphemy, and responses to it, is a prime mover in human affairs. Depressingly so. Consequently, the goal of the research was to try to begin to systematically explore what we called blasphemy sensitivity. Who is most likely to be offended by blasphemous stimuli?

More on that question in the next post. In the meantime, be careful who you say "Oh my God" around...

In this final post of this series I want to take stock and offer some tentative "recommendations" about how the church and individuals might move in an alone, suburban and sorted world. Taking stock, we've noted the following across the previous posts:

1. Americans are socially disengaged. Mainly in the area of bridging connections, connections with people different from ourselves.

2. Bridging to difference is becoming more difficult as Americans have, over the last 30 years, been sorting themselves into communities of sameness. As our communities grow less diverse our communities of like-mindedness grow more extreme. Difference begins to seem deviant and demonic.

3. Finally, Americans have lost their third places. Consequently, even if I wanted to make bridging connections I run up against the Problem of Place: We have nowhere to go to meet people.

Now, my concern in working though all this material is less about dealing with American loneliness than about American insularity. No doubt the trends above are implicated in the epidemics of loneliness and social isolation. But I'm more interested, in this series at least, in thinking through issues of welcome, inclusion, conversation and hospitality. Let me give two personal examples as illustrations.

During the lead up to the last election (McCain versus Obama) a friend of mine (a Democrat) was talking with a female friend of his (a Republican). They were talking about how both candidates were running away from the Bush/Cheney years like they were poison. The Republican friend was confused by this. Why so much anger and disappointment with Bush/Cheney? In her personal sphere she knew of no one who had expressed disappointment with Bush/Cheney. In fact, all her associates had expressed great pride in the Bush/Cheney record. Then the Republican friend made this statement: "I don't know anybody who even knows anybody who is upset with President Bush."

The irony here was that she was talking with a person who was a Democrat, was voting for Obama and was very upset about the Bush/Cheney years.

This shouldn't be surprising. We've noted in this series how in our sorted world incidents like this are growing in regularity. In sorted communities minorities go silent to get along with bosses, work associates, neighbors and church friends. When that happens the majority group starts living in an echo chamber, living in a world where they don't know anybody who even knows anybody who dissents from the majority view. This, despite the majority swimming in a sea of dissent. In fact, the friend you are talking to disagrees with you. Strongly perhaps. They are just keeping their mouths shut. It's easier that way.

So, my concern here is that if we never get to interact with difference (political, sexual, religious, socioeconomic, ethnic, etc.) on a daily basis we lose the skills needed to be a good person. Rather than knowing actual poor people, gay people, Muslim people, or people from the other political party, we increasingly deal with abstractions and stereotypes: The poor, the gays, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans. We argue with a faceless demonic Other. Little do we know we are hurting a coworker, neighbor, church friend, child or family member. A real person we know and love. Or, at the very least, a person who we would come to love if we found ourselves in the same bowling league (see Part 1).

The second personal example that makes me concerned about all this has to do with missional initiatives at my own church. My church is made of up three discrete groups. The first two groups are White and middle-class. The first of these groups comes from the University where I work. The second group are people who work in the city. Unfortunately, these two groups have some trouble mixing with each other. The University group is basically one large office group who takes their Water Cooler conversations into the church. This group shares common interests and concerns. Workplace issues are natural conversation starters. And yet, this common conversation can be off-putting to those who don't work at the University. The University group comes off as a clique. Further, the University group tends to be more Democratic while the non-University group is more Republican. This also creates distance.

The third group is the group the church is reaching out to in the community. This group is less affluent and educated and is more Hispanic than White. It is also more unchurched. Unsurprisingly, this group has struggled to feel included by the two other groups (the White, middle-class, educated group).

There is no easy solution to dealing with this problem. And I think many churches struggle with this issue. My observation, based upon this series, is that much of the problem involves both skill and place. Over the last few decades in America we've lost the skills of social bridging. From both want of opportunity and social sorting. In addition, my church as few third places in her life, locations where the groups can regularly and informally mix to form connections and relationships. The church does try programming to address these issues but, as we've seen with third places, social mixing needs to be voluntary. You can't force people to mix.

So what are we to do about all this?

Well, it would be totally ridiculous to expect a blog post to turn the tide. The trends we've been discussing are the product of millions of isolated social decisions being made every instant, every day. Further, although I've insinuated that many of the choices leading to the alone, suburban and sorted world are bad choices, people are clearly making these choices because they see some good in living the way they are living. I'm not arguing for the notion that life in the 50s was better than life today. I think the most I'm willing to say is that millions of micro-level choices have macro-level implications and goods at the micro-level (e.g., moving to a nice neighborhood where my neighbors look like me) might not translate into macro-level goods (e.g., we end up sorting ourselves into communities of like-mindedness). The truth of the matter is that I don't think these trends can be changed. Unless something drastic happens. (For example, when oil and gas run out I think America will shift back to a pedestrian, bicycle lifestyle. Corner stores will begin to out-compete a drive to a WalMart on the edge of town. And once the corner store is back the neighborhood third places start moving back in.)

That said, with an eye on the church, let me drop a few ideas about living in an alone, suburban and sorted world:

1. Third places inside the church.
More and more people drive to church, drop their kids off and then head to a local coffeeshop. Church life is too stuffy, irrelevant, and programmatic. The trouble with this "Church at Starbucks" trend is that we remain sorted. We go to Starbucks with our friends. Church at Starbucks promotes bonding but not bridging. But if the third place was at the church then the various groups within the church would be more likely to mix and learn the skills of welcome and inclusion.

2. Churches running third places.
I think churches are ideally suited to own and run third places. Not needing to run a profit, a church could drop a coffeeshop or donut shop or even a local pub in the neighborhood where the church is located or reaching out. The church-run third place would be a location where the church could mix with herself and with her neighbors. Instead of hiring a community or pulpit minister you hire store managers, baristas or bartenders. The third place should seek to hire both church members and people in the neighborhood.

3. You become the third place.
In the end, we can become the third place. We can invite people over to play cards or join a bowling league (Part 1). We can move to neighborhoods that are diverse. We can frequent the third places of our town, seeking to become one of the regulars.

Importantly, we can learn to welcome difference to encourage people to share their views and who they are. If you are a Republican in a Red State you can encourage your Democratic friends to speak freely (How? Try speaking kindly of Obama.). You can encourage your gay friends to come out with you (How? Say you love Rachel Maddow.). If you are a Democrat in a Blue state you can let your Republican friends tell you why they think Rush Limbaugh makes good points (How? Speak kindly of the GOP.). Yes, debate will ensue. But if you get to this point in your life you'll know how to talk, listen and disagree in a way that elevates rather than diminishes the two of you.

I, personally, have tried to become a person where Republicans and Democrats, gay and straight, atheist and believer, saint and sinner can speak freely in my presence. It's not that I don't have any strong opinions. I do. It's just that I need to know who you are, and you need to know who I am, if we are to begin the process of loving each other, living with each other and eventually disagreeing with each other. I might yell at you. And you might yell at me. But only when we are truly and deeply in love with each other. I don't yell at strangers. Yelling is a family activity. The regulars at the third place can yell at each other. They don't yell a the stranger who just walked in. Yelling is too intimate, too loving an act, for people who don't know each other.

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows
your name.
--Theme song from Cheers

After arguing for the importance for the third place in our lives in his book The Great Good Place, Oldenburg surveys the characteristics shared by third places.

According to Oldenburg, the characteristics of third places are:

1. On Neutral Ground
Third places are not hosted places. No one is guest, no one is host. The place is shared or neutral. This allows for independence and freedom. As Oldenburg summarizes, "There must be places where individuals may come and go as they please, in which none are required to play host, and in which all feel at home and comfortable."

According to Oldenburg, the reason third places need to be neutral is that they help resolve a paradox of social mixing. Specifically, we need a degree of distance and autonomy from the very people we might seek to associate with. Our interactions need to be voluntarily initiated and dropped if we are to agree to participate in them. Anyone who has ever been forced into social mixing knows exactly what Oldenburg is talking about. Churches make this mistake all the time. Compulsory mixing is forced and effortful and we quickly avoid or distance ourselves from it. Oldenburg cites Richard Sennett's assessment: "People can be sociable only when they have some protection from each other." The protection offered by the third place is that one can come and go and interact with others as one pleases.

2. The Third Place is a Leveler
Third places welcome everyone, no membership is needed. Also, Oldenburg writes, "a transformation must occur as one passes through the portals of the third place. Worldly status claims must be checked at the door in order that all within may be equals. The surrender of outward status, or leveling, that transforms those who own delivery trucks and those who drive them into equals, is rewarded by acceptance on more humane and less transitory grounds. Leveling is a joy and relief to those of higher and lower status in the mundane world."

3. Conversation is the Main Activity
This doesn't mean that games (darts, pool, cards, dominoes) can't be a critical feature of third places. My family's favorite stop in Brooklyn, NY when we visit my wife's sister is Floyd's which has an indoor bocce court.

4. Accessibility and Accommodation
As for timing, third places need to be open during those hours when we are released from work or home. Typically, early in the morning, after work, and after dinner. Also, third places need to be close to where people live or work.

5. The Regulars
A core group of regular clientele, often different at different hours of the day, gives a third place its heart and soul. Regulars create the sense of welcome and community. This is what separates a typical Starbucks from a true third place coffeehouse. Without a regular clientele a Starbucks just has a group of isolated customers, most of whom have headphones on. If conversation is the central activity of the third place a group of regulars is the embodiment of that conversation.

6. A Low Profile
Third places are plain and casual. You come as you are. And if you come in with a tie on you loosen it or take it off.

7. The Mood is Playful
Oldenburg writes, "joy and acceptance reign over anxiety and alienation."

8. Home Away from Home
In the words of the song, a third place is a place where everybody knows your name. And they're always glad you came.