My speech to the graduates

Canvassing for a Vote by William Bingham (1852)

In early April, I was invited by Coe's chapter of Phi Kappa Phi honor society to address their annual induction ceremony and banquet, on a topic of my choice. Of course, it was going to have something to do with urbanism. The motto of Phi Kappa Phi is "Let the love of learning rule humanity."

A complete community constituted out of several villages, once it reaches the limit of total self-sufficiency, practically speaking, is a city-state (polis). It comes to be for the sake of living, but it remains for the sake of living well.... Hence, though an impulse toward this sort of community exists by nature in everyone, whoever first established one was responsible for the greatest of goods.--ARISTOTLE, The Politics, 1252b25, 1253a30 

Have you ever noticed how you feel different in different places? Maybe it's because of the things that are there to do, or the people you're with. Or maybe it's different qualities of the places themselves.

About 15 years ago, I began teaching a first-year seminar called A Sense of Place. The more I taught the course, the more I read about the phenomenon of place, and the more I encountered a vocabulary of sorts describing how places are put together and why that matters:

• blocks of buildings that are built to the street are more welcoming than when they're stuck behind swaths of parking lots
• buildings with first-story windows are more welcoming than when they present blank walls (like garages)
• buildings that look timeless or historic are more welcoming than buildings that look like they were thrown up yesterday and might not be here tomorrow--and if they actually are historic, they can provide familiarity
  
• wide streets with fast cars are less productive than narrow streets with slow cars
• in general, areas built to human scale--in other words, accessible to people walking--are more welcoming and more productive than areas built to auto-scale

Now, my 20s were by far the most mobile, peripatetic decade of my life, and perhaps you are about to find that, too, to be the case. It can take awhile to find your place in the world, and you can be, as I often was, thrown back on yourself, working through temporary jobs and temporary leases and friends of convenience. But I hope that even amidst the unsettledness, you will take time to notice the place (or places) where you find yourself. I hope that you will come to understand the attributes of good places, to appreciate them, and even to look for them. 

All that will make you a deeper, more informed consumer of places. But I'm not here to advocate consumerism, even the deeper variety. I'm here to advocate citizenship.

We hear a lot about citizenship these days, but rarely in a way that guides our ways in life. Maybe citizenship comes up in the context of the convoluted set of rules that automatically winnow us in because we were born in the United States, while winnowing out immigrants who have to figure out this system while also navigating the turbulence of their own lives. At most, maybe we're asked to stand for the national anthem or get teary when someone mentions the troops.

Well, you should stand for the national anthem, and you should at least appreciate when people commit a large chunk of their lives to service. But there's more to citizenship than that...

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

One of the earliest, and still one of the best, discussions of citizenship is in Book III of Aristotle's The Politics. Aristotle starts by rejecting definitions of "citizenship" based on residence or legal status; he eventually works round to the idea that "citizen" is not something that one is but something that one does. 

Comparing a community to a ship under sail, Aristotle argues that a citizen--like an oarsman, or a lookout, or a captain--contributes their distinctive skills to the collective effort, but what unites them all is their concern for the well-being of the community--because it is in a strong community that we live our best lives. "A good citizen," says Aristotle, "must have the knowledge and ability both to be ruled and to rule, and this is the virtue of a citizen, to know the rule of free people from both sides" (1277b15). Sometimes you make decisions, sometimes you act on decisions made by others, but both ways you are responsible to a group of people who aren't you, in a place common to you all.

And why do you do this? Why would you do this? Because this is what makes your life better, what makes your life worth living. Aristotle's whole Politics begins with the claim that communities are formed for "the good life"--a quality of life that people are unable to attain on their own, or even in small like-minded groups. 

In the diversity of a large community with all the different skills and ideas and possibilities, our world is broadened in delightful and surprising ways. People who turn their backs on these possibilities, out of fear or narrowness or egoism, miss out on a lot of what life has to offer. "Anyone who cannot form a community with others," concludes Aristotle, "or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city-state--he is either a beast or a god" (1253a25).

Jose Antonio Vargas (from joseantoniovargas.com)

Depending on which first-year seminar you had, you might have read Jose Antonio Vargas's book Dear America [Dey Street, 2018]. Starting with the subtitle, "Notes of an Undocumented Citizen," Vargas expresses Aristotle's idea of citizenship as a life of participation in community: Citizenship is showing up. Citizenship is using your voice while making sure you hear other people around you. Citizenship is how you live your life. Citizenship is resilience (Vargas 2018: 199-200).

And all that participation and resilience occur in a place. The citizen not only understands and appreciates the qualities of their place, they contribute to making that place better for everyone around them. Maybe you'll teach, or coach basketball, or join a church, or help plant a community garden, or be a regular at a nearby bar or coffeehouse. When you escape the bubble of self-concern that politicians and corporations are always trying to put you in, when you are part of a diverse community, when you worry less about the price of toys or not being able to find a parking place, you will be on the way to the good life.

[I realize what I'm saying here sounds like a challenge, or even a reproof. But I really mean it to be an invitation--to a much richer life than you get from consumption, or achieving individual autonomy, or following "the rules"... whatever they are.]

I feel the need to say this tonight, because as we all know, the siren song of individualism is strong. Sometimes it's born of our own impatience and frustration, but a lot of times it's being used to sell something... some thing we don't need and maybe shouldn't have. In this world we are surrounded by messages telling us we will be happier when we think more about ourselves, because we deserve a better lifestyle--more fun, hipper clothes, better-tasting beer, all with free parking for my new car which by the way is guaranteed to turn the heads of my sourest neighbors. 

Sometimes all we have to do is vote for the candidate who promises to take what we deserve away from whoever has it now, and give it to us, the people who should have had it all along. But more often than not, a product is being sold, or a collection of products, like the homebuyers with their "must-haves" on the cable network HGTV. We are consumers! In a market system! Our job as consumers is to demand! Everything we have, everywhere we go, should have the attributes that we demand. Supplying is the job of the rest of the world.

Detail from The Temptations of Jesus (1481-1482)
by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510)

Rugged individualism-with-cool-new-stuff is an attractive illusion now, and probably always will be with us in some form. Even Jesus had to deal with it.... It's a strange story, about the one Christians believe is the Son of God, but it appears in two of the four gospels [Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13] and is mentioned in a third [Mark 1:12-13], so it must be important. Before Jesus begins his earthly ministry, he is driven out to the wilderness where he fasts for 40 days--that's Bible-speak for "a really long time"--and is tempted by Satan. Satan invites Jesus to turn stones into bread, to accept power over all the kingdoms of the world, and to throw himself off a high place to see if angels would catch him. Each time Satan tempts him, Jesus refuses, with a well-chosen verse from the Torah thrown in for good measure. Eventually the Devil gives up.

A story like this has a lot of dimensions, and a lot of potential meanings. I think it is intended to show Jesus's essential humanity--that while on earth he dealt with the same fears, the same needs, the same desires we all do. The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) called them "gain, glory and security," the three reasons humans are inclined to "invade" or act violently towards one another. In the wilderness, Satan offered Jesus ways--corrupt ways, but ways--to satisfy those needs. In each temptation, Satan was inviting Jesus to fulfill his own desires, to relieve his own suffering, to enjoy himself for once, and in all things to think of himself first.

Just like Jesus, we get hungry. The challenge is when we get so hungry, or frightened, or frustrated, that we act to the detriment of others.

Moreover, a lot of the time, your ability to act for the greater good is constrained by public policy decisions made long ago. (Try living car-free in Cedar Rapids!)

For example...

• For decades American towns have been marred by traffic engineering efforts to move motor vehicles through them faster, turning livable places into "auto sewers" (cf. Marohn 2021). Interstates have been built through what were once thriving neighborhoods--think I-94 in Chicago or Minneapolis, or I-380 here for that matter--where mostly nonwhite residents lacked the political power to protect themselves or their places. Elsewhere, widened city streets encourage vehicles to go faster, resulting in higher numbers of pedestrian deaths. And traffic still is terrible.
  
• Franchise chain operations proliferate, often abetted by local policy favors (cf. Mitchell 2006), though there's plenty of documentation that locally-owned small businesses keep more money in the community. I understand the attraction to local public officials of big projects with "game-changing" impacts, and the attachment people have to brands like Red Robin or Starbucks, yet those places don't build our communities the way local business does.
• Do you hunger to look good at a low low price? Last week a nearby church showed the 2015 documentary The True Cost, which depicts the heavy environmental, social and health costs borne by people around the world--particularly in textile-producing places like Bangladesh, Haiti and Vietnam--by so-called "fast fashion" sold in stores like H & M. The low prices we pay at these stores come at substantial cost to others.

Even when structures force our hand, as educated people, we at least have the obligation as well as the ability to think about changing policy when we can, and in the meantime about the consequences of our decisions beyond our narrow desires. 

So what am I selling here, self-denial and privation? Good heavens, no, I'm not as sad a sack as all that. As an introvert, I'm not opposed to autonomy, either. But as educated people, we know that autonomy is not ultimately fulfilling, any more than stuff or privilege is. As both Aristotle and the authors of the gospels knew, the good life is unthinkable outside of community. What brings people the most joy, the most inspiration, and all the skills we ourselves don't possess is... other people. Other people! And that includes family, friends, neighbors, random encounters with strangers--everyone who populates our community. 

I hope you will find pleasure in your lives, that you will find plenty of enjoyment and amusement and love and security and rest. I hope, if you drive, you'll have some place convenient to park your car. But as a professor, for a few more weeks at least, I'm here to profess something, and what I'm professing is this: Don't settle for going through life as a consumer. Be a citizen. 

SEE ALSO: 

"Young People of Today, Embrace Walkable Urbanism!" 22 April 2022

"Jesus in the Polis?" 16 August 2013

2022 homily on the temptations of Christ by Pope Francis