Category Archives: pk pulpit

my attempt at writing serious entries.

oh no, not a post on Christianity!

i recently came across an excellent article in Harpers regarding the state of Christianity in America. it is definitely worth a read, not so much because it bashes on Christians, but because it’s an eloquently written observation of some troubling trends in our nation’s interpretation of the religion.

i won’t bore anyone with my own thoughts on the matter, and frankly, i find it very uninteresting to even engage in discussion about the topic of whether or not to be Christian. hey, if it works, just do it! if not, find something else. i’ve been in the realm of “something else” for quite a while now.

okay, i won’t let myself off that easy. i did come across two papers from my sophomore year that deal directly with my views on religion. i’m not as passionate about such things anymore, but it was nice to read something from a time when i took many things much more seriously. it even sounds like i followed politics very carefully and hoped for some sort of social changes in the world. well, little has changed in terms of core beliefs, but i guess i’m not so sure i can make all that much of a difference anymore. sharing very liberal pieces of writing is a start:

On Self and Religion – I begin by interviewing my Hindu friend Samir about the impact of religion on his life and then proceed to write about my own dealings with religion, particularly the interaction with my parents, who both attended Christian seminaries and led ministry for a number of years. I think I wrote this one pretty last-second because the quality is second-rate.

The Korean Church Effect – this is a politically charged paper that many of you may find disagreeable. I’ve met many faithful Christians who find ways to balance faith with liberal and socially progressive beliefs, but the conservative ideology still exists among most Korean American Christian groups. And you may find that some of the themes in the Harpers article are also in my paper, such as the idea of Christianity catering to a self-obsessed mindset that obstructs community action.

as a parting note, i just want to mention one song that really struck me when i heard it for the first time several years ago. it was 2pac and Outlawz’s Black Jesus and it talks about the idea of a black Jesus who understands the plight of blacks – “somebody that hurt like we hurt, somebody that smoke like we smoke, drink like we drink.” Imagine that – in America, where the dominant image of Jesus is an Anglo-Saxon hero who happened to live in Israel (and whose teachings supposedly “enlightened” slaves brought over from Africa) – to call out for a dark-skinned Jesus with an affinity for African American culture… it’s nothing new. all ethnicities, cultures, and denominations shape Jesus in their own ways, much like Western Europeans gave Jesus a lighter hue, African Americans decided to make him dark, and Asians…

the thing about design

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there is something intensely satisfying about design. and i’m not only talking about graphics. when i think of design, it takes on many meanings, but at its core, i think design is, more or less, the way things are put together. and this entails the amount of care and effort a designer puts into it.

of course, on a daily basis, we mostly associate design with the visual because the first thing we do with things is look at it. but good design – and i’ve found that this always holds true – is not so much the aesthetic value of the end product, but all the work that has gone into making the end product feasible and meaningful.

take interior design, for example. you can load your room with the nicest paints, the most expensive furniture, and the most ambient lights, but if there is no application of design skill, your room becomes a mere warehouse. there is no unifying expression of these elements that is suppose to constitute a well-designed room. the same goes with many other things – websites, magazines, buildings, cities, hair, etc. this is why a lover of design should not limit himself to just one area – a lover of design appreciates all design because the same basic principle of care, effort, planning, and skillful execution are all there. and if you are able, you will find ways, either consciously or subconsciously, to embed intellectual expressions into your work: a drawing may contain irony or satire on various levels; a clay model may represent a post-modern condition ; a color scheme for a room may be an homage to a description in a famous novel.

this is probably one of the reasons i love films. while films are not often associated with design, i always find myself viewing film as one of the ultimate expressions of design; where else can you incorporate style, realism, narrative, the arrangement of sets and bodies, the technology of cinema, and the psychology of the viewer all into one neat piece of art? it is a design medium that requires the totality of a designer’s faculties as an artist and coordinator. no wonder it takes so many people to create films. and a good film is often a rare find.

i sit in my cubicle each day and execute another kind of design. it is one done on Microsoft Excel, the bane of an analyst’s existence, as many would say. it involves capital structures, collateral portfolios, and various mechanisms that measure interest and principal payments along with the hedges and waterfalls. believe it or not, there is an incredible amount of design that goes into the process, not only in the way you execute Excel to carry out the various functions, but in the way things are laid out for others to understand and the methods of combining all the little pieces into some complex, well-oiled structure. sure, the glory of the product being shown on the silverscreen is absent, but underneath, there is an eery similarity to it all. it is just about adjusting to the language and being willing to express yourself in a different way. each day, i find myself making this transition little by little, and while there are moments of frustration when an endless sheet of numbers just doesn’t make any sense, the feeling is often not too far off from the experiences of sitting alone with a pile of tapes wondering how i’ll ever cut up and edit a film that bears any meaning.

in the end, a good design is a good design, no matter where you find it.

kanYe West and the kitsch thing

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i am usually skeptical about celebrities who show their humanitarian stripes in public. i was unmoved by all the celebrity hype surrounding the G8 and talks of ending world poverty. Watching Brad Pitt talk about it in a solemn tone didn’t inspire me at all. I was disappointed that John Mayer wasn’t one of the performers that day. Kanye West, however, did perform. And he also gave a solo performance on Sunday, regarding the recent Hurrican Katrina tragedy.

in what was a live NBC-produced program to raise money for the Red Cross, Kanye departed from the teleprompter and let out a torrent of criticism and opinions that probably made many people very uncomfortable (from WashingtonPost.com):

West: I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, “They’re looting.” You see a white family, it says, “They’re looking for food.” And, you know, it’s been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I’ve tried to turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I’m calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help — with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way — and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us!

and after Mike Myers feebly (and confusedly) read his line off the teleprompter, it came back to Kanye, who said:

George Bush doesn’t care about black people!

although the West Coast never got to see the Kanye rant, it was one of those great, unexpected television moments. i am a Kanye fan because he is creative, arrogant, funny, and in such instances as this one, bold. who truly knows what Kanye’s motivations were in doing what he did? did he want to create more buzz, maybe boost up some of his album sales (his 2nd album was released last week), or maybe distinguish himself as a socially conscious rapper? i especially liked his attack on Bush because Bush seems to have been spared by the public and the media for his inability to respond quickly (look at polls that basically excuse the president – ABCNews.com).

whenever tragedy hits, there’s always going to be a great deal of kitsch that comes about (i am using “kitsch” as kundera described it in unbearable lightness of being, which i just finished earlier today) where the images of loss and angst are nicely balanced with images of people helping each other and celebrities writing big checks. this is how we go about systematically mourning tragedy and then adjusting ourselves back to a “normal” state. but with every major crisis like this one, there are opportunities to question certain things and examine some issues that challenge our conventional views of our institutions and the way things are. then again, the entire practice of “looking underneath” and “challenging conventions” has become a mainstream, money-making industry (e.g. Michael Moore, anti-Bush movements), so i can’t be sure that we gain much from crisis to crisis. we just seem to go through set motions.

one more thing – i liked this New Yorker piece by David Remnick on Bush’s missteps in dealing with Katrina. he throws up the kitschy veil of “non-partisanship” to relieve himself of accountability:

“…he knew that he had delivered a series of feeble, vague, almost flippant speeches in the early days of the crisis, and that the only way to prevent further political damage was to inoculate himself with the inevitable call for non-partisanship: ‘I hope people donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t play politics during this period of time.’”

Mother Nature and her weapons of mass destruction.