Saturday, February 27, 2016

Cancun and the Real Meaning of R&R (and Deconstruction)



I took this photo this morning in Cancun, 7:30 AM. I walked about a mile up the coastline and back. 

Linda and I sat in the sun on the beach for about 6 hours today. Had a great lunch. Did a lot of R & R - Relaxing and Reading. Tonight I told her, "I don't know what I would do if you didn't like to sit on the beach and read. She said, "We are birds of a feather." Maybe pelicans, since we saw a lot of them today.

I am going to make my way through two books while I'm here. The first is Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk In a Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle. I really got into this today. Turkle is a great scholar, and understands the effect digital media have on today's youth and young adults. The reality is that texting is eliminating face-to-face conversations and community. We have a world of kids who have lost the ability to empathize. Face to face is always better than texting. Turkle demonstrates this empirically and passionately. And, she is sympathetic. She's not blaming kids for what they are turning into.

The second book I'm reading is Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction, by Christopher Butler. Butler does a nice job explaining things like deconstruction (which does not mean what most people think it does; viz., as a synonym for destruction, or tearing down). He points out inherent contradictions within postmodernism, shares clearly about postmodern fear of metanarratives, and shows how interpretation is everything (how interpreting just one word can take you through the entire dictionary).

Linda read an entire book today (she reads faster than I do) - 10 Ultimate Truths Girls Should Know. She really liked this book, and thought of a lot of people she would want to read it. 

Tomorrow in Cancun - sunny, 77 degrees, and more R&R.