Final Thoughts on Responsible Citizens of the Floating World

"As Frederick Turner declares, ‘Perhaps the most remarkable fact of the modern world is that now for the first time all the member cultures of the human race now know of each other, and have, more or less, met. There really is no human Other now’" (Burton 10). While where I live in Northern California (and when I say northern, think north of San Jose, north of San Francisco, north of Sacramento) is not by any means culturally diverse, there is a significant latino population. Children now are learning the Spanish language and actually using it, whereas even when I was growing up (which was not too long ago) not being bilingual and not knowing Spanish wasn’t much of an issue. It is a great disadvantage now.

Today we live in a "floating world." It is a world where we are caught between two states of being. Nothing is black or white. Nothing is one way or the other. Nothing is as it was. Throughout this semester we have used five books to study this floating world. The first book, called Artists of the Floating World, by Rob Burton, interprets what we can learn about our floating world from what the other authors have written. Our last blog prompt for this semester poses the question: Amid the narratives of hope and despair that surround [us] (locally and globally), how do [we] choose to be a responsible citizen of the floating world? I would like to look at two authors that we have read this semester to assist in answering this question.

The first book on my agenda is called A Question of Power by Bessie Head. This book was a case study on "framing the floating world" (Burton 10), and we used this book to examine the ideals that we use to frame our lives (religion, race, sexuality, gender, nationality, etc.), and how these frames can be a positive or a negative thing. Burton says that "to be a citizen of the floating world is to make ethical choices when framing our understanding of the world...." (Burton 131). The protagonist in A Question of Power is a woman named Elizabeth. She lives in Botswana, Africa, and has a frameless life. She is half African and half white, and feels out of place wherever she is. She never knew her real parents, and to top it off she suffers from schizophrenia for a few years of her life, which she calls her "journey through hell" (Head 12). Elizabeth lived without frames for a long time, and the hardest time was while she was experiencing her mental disorder, and had nothing to keep her rooted. Slowly, piece by piece, she is able to construct frames that help to pull her out of "hell" and overcome her disorder. One of these frames was the important part she played in the cooperative garden in her village, Motabeng. She was particularly good at growing the Cape Gooseberry and making jams to sell in the Co-op. Eventually "Elizabeth became known as ‘Cape Gooseberry’... a complete stranger like the Cape Gooseberry settled down and became part of the village life of Montabeng" (Head 153). This garden project made her feel like she belonged. If Elizabeth had had her personal frames set in stone, she wouldn’t have even been a part of the garden project, nor would she have been able to adapt like the Cape Gooseberry, a tactic which helped her through her trials. With all the despair going on around us, the ethical and most beneficial way to frame our own personal world is to avoid all the binary traps that we can fall into, and to keep our frames fluid and flexible.

 The next (and I think most important) topic I’d like to look at are the "subalterns in the floating world" (Burton 10), which I will be using a book called Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee to help me. Burton says that "...to be a citizen of the floating world is to be attentive to the subaltern voices that circulate widely in a media-saturated world" (Burton 131). The best examples of this in Jasmine are Lillian Gordon and Taylor and Wylie Hayes. They listened to Jasmine’s (the protagonist) story and helped her when she was in need. They took her in and cared for her, never minding that she wasn’t one of them or even that she was illegal in the United States. They treated her with compassion and humanity. Jasmine found Lillian after she had been traveling for two days, with no food or water. Jasmine had stumbled upon what appeared to be an illegal growing operation, and thinking she was among farmers, tried to ask for food, water, and work. The men laughed at her and pointed their Uzis at her until Lilian came out of the house and yelled at them. "How dare you speak to a young lady in such a despicable fashion. She asked for water– well, get her water, man!" (Mukherjee 130). This was the first kindness Jasmine had seen since arriving in America. Before that the only kindness she saw was from the man who helped her get into Florida, taking a special interest in her, and then he’d raped her. Lillian did all she could to help the subalterns she found. "She wasn’t a missionary dispensing new visions and stamping out the old; she was a facilitator who made possible the lives of absolute ordinariness that we [the subalterns] ached for" (Mukherjee 131).

Taylor and Wylie Hayes were a couple who had a daughter which needed a nanny. Jasmine found them through Lillian Gordon. Jasmine "...became an American in an apartment on Claremont Avenue across the street from a Barnard College dormitory... Taylor and Wylie were [her] parents, [her] teachers, [her] family" (Mukherjee 165). They paid Jasmine $95 a week for being there child’s care-giver, and she saved some of the money and spent the rest on whatever she wanted. Living with the Hayes’ was when Jasmine was actually able to venture out into the world without being scared. She felt confident, secure, and self sufficient. "My life had a new fullness and chargedness to it. Every day I made discoveries about the city, and in the evenings, when I listed my discoveries to Taylor he listened carefully, as though I were describing an unmapped, exotic metropolis" (Mukherjee 184). The Hayes’ allowed Jasmine to be herself, and live her own story. They didn’t try to shape and mold her. "Taylor didn’t want to change me. He didn’t want to scour and sanitize the foreignness" (Mukherjee 185). They let her be herself but still showed her the compassion that everyone deserves.

From these books and others we can learn many lessons on how to be a responsible citizen of the floating world. Keeping our frames fluid and flexible allow us to make ethical choices as to how to frame our world. It allows us to change our frames as our floating world changes. We can also learn that being a responsible citizen means listening to the stories of the subalterns and helping them when necessary, as Lillian and the Hayes’ did. There are many, many people in this world who believe that it is us versus them, local versus global, etc. More people should in a way simplify their thinking to realize that we are all humans, all occupying this Earth together. The examples Cuba and Iran set during the Hurricane Katrina disaster could be followed more often. " Cuba [was] willing to send 15000 trained doctors to work in Gulf Coast hospitals; Iran [was] prepared to send 20 million barrels of crude oil to offset a chronic shortage in domestic supplies" (Burton 135). The world could use a bit more humanity and compassion, and it begins with the responsible citizen of the floating world.