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Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Afghanistan
This made me laugh, so I thought I would pass it along:
Apple's fear that dropping bombs on civilians wouldn't "win Afghan 'hearts and minds' " and that the country would prove ungovernable even if the United States won turned out to be unfounded. Two weeks after his comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam, the allies liberated Kabul, and 16 months later the place is at least as governable as San Francisco.
Eddie 10:03 AM
Monday, March 31, 2003
Faithfulness
I've started talking about the concept of faithfulness with one of my classes, and here are what I consider some interesting points:
1. It is not altogether clear why faithfulness has faith as its root concept. To have faith is to trust, which suggests that to be faithful is to be full of trust. But that is not the immediate connotation of the term. Rather, to be faithful is to be trustworthy. To be full of trust does not seem identical to being trustworthy. Take someone like Peter Arnett. This jackass trusts deeply that his fellow Americans will not drop him into a plastic shredder when he returns home, a fate that would surely await him if he were an Iraqi journalist saying such things abroad. At the same time, his "interview" on Iraqi state television, which may have the result of stiffening Iraqi resolve, indicates that he is a thoroughly untrustworthy man. He is unfaithful, and yet he has faith.
Or maybe he doesn't. He may trust that Americans won't turn on him, but maybe he doesn't consider this to their credit. Surely the Iraqi forces see our humanitarianism as a weakness to be used against him. Maybe Arnett's unfaithfulness is a clear sign of his loss of faith in his homeland.
2. Does being faithful mean living up to the expectations of another or doing what is good for another? Socrates seems to choose the latter when he tells the story of a man who has loaned out his sword but later, in a state of madness, asks for it back. Socrates claims that a true friend would not return the sword, knowing that the one gone mad would be a danger to himself and others. So the true friend in this case displays faithfulness by not living up to expectations.
At the same time, whenever we fail to live up to the expectations of others, we create distance between us and them. If we expect them to come around to our point of view, that may be ok, but otherwise we know that we are weakening the bond. This seems like unfaithfulness. Surely we can't be faithful just by following our own standards of what is good for everyone else.
Eddie 11:26 PM
Saturday, March 29, 2003
Property
I have been thinking today about the claim from Bush and others that the oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. I agree, but think about how odd it would be to hear him say that the oil of the U.S. belongs to the American people. Actually, I'm not even sure I can imagine it.
The belief in property is so strong in this country that people fail to see property as convention. That doesn't mean that property is arbitrary; the Constitution is convention as well, but I wouldn't call it arbitrary. Nonetheless, property exists only insofar as society acknowledges it. There are indeed good reasons for society to be conservative in this acknowledgment, such that what someone claims as their own today will continue to be recognized as such tomorrow, but there aren't any further appeals to be made once society decides to stop recognizing it.
It is unclear, however, how an original claim to property can be made legitimate. In the case of things made, the case is not so hard: if you make it, it is yours. But what about raw materials, like oil, or real estate, that have value prior to having anything done to them? In some cases, property rights could go to the one who discovers the land or the raw material. This is analogous to the case of things made, in that the property right is developed to encourage and reward initiative.
With Iraqi oil, however, there is a very valuable raw material that has already been discovered. Who gets it? If we say that the Iraqi people get it, are we advocating some kind of socialist state-run industry? Or do we expect the state to claim it only temporarily, and then auction it off to the highest bidder? Obviously (to me), this shouldn't be our decision to make, but I am interested in how it gets made at all.
Eddie 11:08 PM
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Doggerel
This is what Aaron calls the Derailers' song given in an earlier post. Aaron is judging the song by the standards of poetry, which he recognizes that it isn't. And, judging by his comment to my post, sometimes he even likes doggerel! I'll see if I can dig up some of the stuff I wrote back in college and send it to him.
Anyhow, it is interesting to me how aesthetic and intellectual standards must adjust to the medium. I don't think that Derailers' song is terribly interesting to read, which probably means that the post itself isn't very well-suited for a blog, especially since the song is fairly obscure. (You can hear a clip of it here, though.) As a song, I am moved by the lyrics, but I'm not when I just read them off the screen. What should we say about this? Is there a loss of truth as the words lose their musical context?
I ran into something similar a couple of years ago when I decided to look closely at some of the Baptist hymns that I love. Here is one from Fanny Crosby called "Blessed Assurance" (found at Hymnal.net):
1 Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine;
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.
2 Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
3 Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest;
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.
I don't think these verses will pass Aaron's strict standards, since they don't do much for my much lower ones. In fact, aside from the aesthetic judgment, I don't think that I can even affirm these words when merely read from the page. What foretaste of glory divine could Fanny be talking about? Visions of rapture? Lost in His love? My experience of religion is more like Job arguing with God or Jacob wrestling with the angel, who was kicking Jacob in the ass, not bringing whispers of love. Were I to encounter these words just on a piece of paper, I probably wouldn't bother to read to the end.
It turns out, however, that I did not encounter them first just on the page. I encountered them while singing them, and I have sung them many times. And when I sing them, I somehow can affirm them. When we get to the "this is my story/this is my song" stanza, I get chills, even though I don't think I've ever wanted to praise my Savior all day long. (If this is what heaven looks like, I hope we can find a loose definition of what constitutes "praise".)
I believe, then, that these lyrics speak somehow to the truth, even though the truth slips away from them when I am just reading them and not singing them. The Enlightenment response would be that the music is somehow stirring my passions and obscuring my reason. A counter-Enlightenment response might be to say that the music is stirring my passions and correcting the limitations of my reason. I would prefer to say that rational insight is not native to any particular form of expression, but finds its way in whatever form is available to it.
Eddie 12:34 AM
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Milwaukee
That's where I am tonight. I flew up today to see a new baby boy who, if things go according to plan, will be my son in a couple of weeks. I'll try to write something more substantial tomorrow, but a couple of thoughts:
1. Aaron is cracking on another one of my loves, but he puts so much thought into it that I can't hold it against him. I'll respond soon.
2. As I was flying in to Milwaukee, I saw something beneath the clouds that I just couldn't figure. "How can I be over the ocean?" When I think of what goes by the name "lake" here and compare it to what we call a lake where I'm from, I get a little embarrassed.
3. I was looking at one of the baby's records and saw this on one of the lines: "9# 5 oz.". After wondering why the 9 was followed by a pound sign, I realized that this was the first time I had ever seen the pound sign used to denote, well, a pound. (Laugh with me, not at me, please.)
Eddie 12:49 AM
Monday, March 24, 2003
Cycles
In his book The New Science, Giambattista Vico argues that there are three stages of human history: an age of barbarism, an age of heroes, and an age of reflection. In the first age, humans live isolated in the state of nature. At some point thunder roars down and frightens some of the savages into religion. These men, having had their minds turned away from immediate need, clear the forests and build settlements. These men are the heroes that inspire ancient mythology. Over time, the heroic mentality transforms into something more refined, more reflective. This is modern man as we know him.
Vico spends most of the book on the heroic, but ends with a discussion of the last age. In the last age, human beings become more rational but also more thin-skinned. There sensitivity is such that it becomes harder and harder for them to live together, even though the settlements have turned into cities and everyone is packed together. In response, people turn ever more inward, to find space between themselves and their neighbors. Ultimately, Vico claims, people become so isolated (even though they still live next to each other) that it is as if they had returned to the state of nature. Such a culture is about to come to an end. (Rousseau, by the way, makes a similar argument as the one given here.)
When I watch the TV coverage of war, I get the sense that Vico is right. No matter how good we become at minimizing casualties, we simply become more sensitive such that 50 casualties after 5 days of fighting seems like a lot. And, good God, sometimes our troops actually have to slow down and fight! Everything must be coming apart!
Vico's philosophy would suggest that it would be in the cities, where high culture is more likely to be found, that this return to the state of nature becomes most pronounced. He calls it the barbarism of reflection. Given the demographics of the last election, perhaps he was right about this also. The left, which finds most of its base in urban areas, has lost the sense that there is anything worth taking risks for. Like the inhabitants of Hobbes' state of nature, in which human life is famously "nasty, brutish, and short," their main concern is security. And they have become so sensitive to opposition that they have largely absconded from responsible debate. Instead, like the last inhabitants of an empire that has lost its vigor, they seem ready to just watch it all come crashing down.
Eddie 11:51 PM
Sunday, March 23, 2003
Derailers
I had an interesting realization tonight while listening to the Derailer's song "Your Guess As Good As Mine". [What? You haven't heard of the Derailers? Think Buck Owens and honky-tonk and other country influences too obscure for me.]
I'm bad about not listening to song lyrics all the way through. Even when I try, as soon as something interests me I stop hearing what follows. Anyway, in this song, the singer starts off saying:
Every time we talk, you keep asking me
Where our hearts are headed and how it's gonna be
Well it's too soon to tell, I can't make that call
I'm not a fortune teller, I don't have a crystal ball
Your guess is good as mine, I'm playing it by ear
And I'm not really sure, where we go from here
Where our love will lead, we may learn in time
Baby your guess is good as mine
I probably listened to this song 30 times without paying attention past these first lines. It seemed pretty simple: a woman is bugging her boyfriend to think about the future, and he isn't that interested. I've probably been in the situation myself, but it doesn't sound too fascinating. Tonight, however, I finally heard the next lines:
Don't worry 'bout tomorrow, forget about the past
Let's enjoy the moment, don't leave the best for last
There may come a day when we can reminisce
Right now we better concentrate on every single kiss
My lazy interpretation seems less viable now. If it were just about a girlfriend bugging her boyfriend about the future, you would expect that she would be looking for serious commitment, like getting engaged. Concentrating on every single kiss, however, seems a lot earlier in the relationship, so it is unlikely that marriage is on the horizon.
My second thought then was that this is simply a philosophical statement of carpe diem. Looking around the internet for the song lyrics, I discovered that other people hear this the same way.
But then I thought: why is she concerned about the future so early in the relationship? Isn't it likely that she's deciding if he's worth giving it up for? And isn't his worth exactly what he is trying to get her not to think about?
This isn't carpe diem exactly, and I don't think he's concentrating on every single kiss, but I wish him luck.
(Aaron, does this constitute a private reading?)
Eddie 10:31 PM
Saturday, March 22, 2003
U-2
Defense Tech writes about our using the U-2 in this war for surveillance. The U-2 is around 45 years old and can accomplish surveillance that satellites can't. Read more here. (Link found also via Defense Tech.) My favorite paragraphs:
The spy equipment largely takes care of itself, leaving the pilot to fly the plane in its demanding configuration along carefully planned routes. New digital “glass” cockpits have been commissioned for the 32 planes currently in service, but many dials and gauges are still 1950s-era technology. That becomes a special challenge as the U-2 is known to be one of the hardest aircraft to land. With a single gauge to monitor two tanks worth of fuel, the pilot must all but stall the plane on descent to find out which wing is heavier, and then transfer fuel to get balance. “You have to pretty much be a test pilot on every flight,” says Memrick.
The U-2 must then be flown over the runway, where a fellow pilot on the ground races ahead in a Camaro and calls out the last few feet of altitude. At just one foot off the ground, the pilot brings the tail wheel down, the nose flares up and the U-2 drops onto its larger main gear.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Eddie 12:17 PM
War Thoughts
1. Even if the war finishes as well as it has begun, I don't think that there should be too much concern about the U.S. adopting a policy of rampant militarism. Since the first Gulf War, Americans have come to expect minimal U.S. casualties. With the extreme care being taken now to minimize Iraqi casualties, including Iraqi soldiers, Americans may come to expect all of our military actions to play out this way. I'm guessing that Americans will become more comfortable with easy interventions but less comfortable with conflicts that threaten serious sacrifice.
2. It is regrettable that following this war is a form of entertainment. I'm not blaming anyone, since I think the news shows have tried to treat this with the sobriety that it deserves, but it is easy to forget that there are good people fearing for their lives right now.
3. WTF are the Turks doing moving into northern Iraq? I hope beyond words that we don't betray the Kurds. I hate the realpolitik of the State Department with its narrow notions of stability and national interest.
4. The prospect that we have taken out much of the Iraqi high command is promising, but should we fear the precedent of targeting individuals and not forces in general? I think targeting these people is morally and strategically correct, given the lives it may save, but the policy may create other instabilities down the road.
5. Does anyone else think that the bombs dropped on Baghdad today were extra loud and smoky? Is there a little shuck and jive to the shock and awe?
6. Watching this huge operation unfold with such grace and power makes me proud. Imagine if we held ourselves to these standards in other areas, instead of looking for reasons to fail?
Eddie 12:34 AM
Friday, March 21, 2003
Distractions
I have been pretty much useless lately, or at least more useless than normal. There is the war, of course, about which I read much and have little to add, but also my wife and I are about to adopt a baby boy. He has not been born yet, but the birth mother is due Sunday. My wife has gone to Toronto for a short academic conference but then will fly Sunday to Wisconsin (where the birth mother lives) and to stay until we bring the baby home. I will go up as soon as the birth mother goes into labor.
It turns out that Wisconsin adoption law is unusual. Every state is different, but most states allow the adoptive parents to keep the infant (in-state) until the waiting period is up. During the waiting period, which varies also from state to state, the birth parents have the right to change their minds. In Wisconsin, however, the infant is placed into foster care until a court hearing, which can happen from a week to a month after the birth. My wife intends to stay for the duration, so she may not be back for quite awhile. Hopefully she will be able to visit with the boy (to be named Isaiah -- a name the birth mother wants for him) regularly. Meanwhile, she is scrambling to try to figure out how to teach her classes from across the country. I may be pressed into service to help out on that front.
During the wait for the court hearing, the birth mother can change her mind. This is perfectly reasonable, although it creates anxiety for us, obviously. We have been in regular contact with the birth mother, and like her quite a bit, so I wouldn't be upset for the child, but it would be hard on us, emotionally and financially. There are a lot of expenses surrounding adoption (legal, travel, and otherwise); we can't afford to have very many failures.
A question: how should we bring the baby home? Flying would obviously be the easiest way, but I don't know if there are any health issues with taking a infant onto a plane. A car ride, on the other hand, would be quite a task; it would be about 16 hours driving straight, and I don't think driving straight would be a possibility. Any thoughts?
Eddie 8:58 AM
Thursday, March 20, 2003
D'Oh!
Via Andrew Sullivan is a story about this guy who intended to chain himself to the Department of Energy building but got the address wrong and then didn't have a key to let himself free. It would appear that in his rush to protest that he picked up the wrong sign as well.
Eddie 8:20 AM
Voodoo Economics
Wednesday afternoon my wife and I signed papers to refinance our mortgage. We got a rate of 5.125%. Long term the effect is to reduce our mortgage from 25 years to 15. Short term we have a reduction in monthly payments of $300, no payment for April (there is a one month gap between the end of the old mortgage and the start of the new), and they are sending us $1100 dollars for reasons I didn't ask too deeply about. The only way any of this makes sense to me is that we folded in our home equity into the new mortgage, and the home equity payments were determined over a 5 year period, so we are really stretching them from 5 to 15. Anyway, I think that is why our monthly payment will be smaller. (By the monthly payment being smaller, I mean our new mortgage versus our old mortgage + the home equity payment.) Whatever the case, it feels like free money.
I never have understood why anyone has ever lent us any money. Given what little equity we have in our house, I am certain that our liabilities are far in excess of our assets, and the situation only seems to get worse over time. And yet, our credit rating has never been better. We get about two credit card offers a day. As long as we can keep making our monthly payments, they will keep stringing us along and even increasing our consumption. Everyone is happy. Somehow.
Eddie 12:21 AM
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Raed
Most of you probably know the site Where is Raed? already, but you should check it out if you haven't before. It is written by an Iraqi in Baghdad (Salam Pax) and gives a unique perspective on the people of Iraq as war approaches quickly. He makes a good argument that regime change is not enough to justify this war, but I think he is missing the point somewhat. (Easy for me to say; I'm not about to have a torrent of missiles raining down upon me.) While we do consider democracy in Iraq a powerful reason for this war, it isn't just for the benefit of the Iraqis. I think the judgment is that democracy will make the world safe from Iraq as well. Cold War logic was built around containment and mutually assured destruction. These don't seem as relevant anymore, and so we must become more willing to move first when danger presents itself. It is undoubtedly a slippery doctrine and I hope we can find a way to shape it up so that it doesn't become a blank check for constant intervention. Anyway, if the stories about American electronic countermeasures are true, I doubt we will be hearing from Salam for a while, but I will be thinking about him.
Eddie 11:38 PM
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Collecting
When I was at Disney's Animal Kingdom this past week, I witnessed a peculiar phenomenon: there were umpteen people dressed up in the costumes of various Disney characters standing around signing autographs and having their picture taken with the kids. They didn't roam the park. Instead, each had an assigned place where the character could be found at different periods during the day. Disney also sold autograph books with a pen. If you really wanted to get all of the signatures, I think it would take most of your day.
Commercially, I understand the appeal of developing the collecting mentality in children. Fast food places get a steady business from kids trying to complete a set of figurines; card games like "Magic: The Gathering" and the infinite variations of it milk a lot of money from people trying to get rare cards or to complete a deck with a particular theme; and my daughter enjoys the American Girl series with all of the dolls, books, clothing, and what have you. At the Animal Kingdom, however, they already have your money. What could motivate actually building little pavilions so people can have one more reason to wait in line?
I'm sure the collecting mentality was around when I was a kid, but I didn't notice it as much then. I had friends who collected football and baseball cards, but they actually played with them, and I don't remember little plastic sheets to protect them. I "collected" comic books, i.e., I didn't throw them away, but they aren't worth much in their current condition.
My first impulse is to attribute the surge in collectibles to our growing wealth and our need to give meaning to our consumption. When my wife married into my family, it was important that she have some token or theme to help others when buying her gifts for Christmas and her birthday. She didn't really have one, so my mother decided to start giving her angel figurines. (My mother had already established the territory of Santa Claus figurines, my sister collects turtle things, and her husband kitsch related to fishing.) This kind of collecting seems to be about establishing individuality, but it doesn't really explain the Animal Kingdom phenomenon either, because everyone was collecting the same signatures.
Nothing related to Disney happens by accident, or without extensive research. What do they know that I don't know? Are they hoping to get my daughter to come back to finish getting the rest of the autographs? Surely they realize these souvenirs are forgotten immediately. I am disturbed.
Eddie 10:44 PM
Saturday, March 15, 2003
Synapses
I've been trying to catch up with the blogging I've missed over the past week, and I've discovered a post entitled"Consciousness" from Jim Ryan in which he says, among other things, that "consciousness is nothing more than synapses firing." Apparently Jim thought he could slip this item in while I was away, realizing that no one else is willing to challenge this nonsense. I am ashamed of you all, naturally, but I am glad too to find how much I am needed.
Let's take a closer look at Jim's argument:
Consciousness (i.e., all mental states) is just states of the brain, functional states, like software being run, but nevertheless physical like software, rather than non-physical. The program running your web browser right now is physical, and, by the same token, so is the consciousness in your brain.
Jim then goes on to point out that we cannot imagine a human being that is physically alive and functioning without consciousness; therefore, consciousness must by physical.
Let me begin by saying that I think Jim's thought experiment fails on its own terms. My inability to truly imagine a zombie, i.e., a human being who functions without consciousness, only proves that consciousness must somehow be connected to the physical nature of the human being for the human being to function in normal ways. Note that the body can function minimally without consciousness. The question then would be how a non-physical entity can interact with a physical entity, which many philosophers have taken up. I don't care to take it up myself, but I don't see the idea as obviously nonsensical.
The point I do want to take up is somewhat different. I am happy to concede that consciousness has a material basis. In other words, without certain material conditions in place, consciousness does not occur. I am happy to concede furthermore that there may indeed be physical processes, such as firing synapses or brain waves or whatever, that can be mapped onto particular mental acts. The question, however, is in what sense consciousness can be identified with these physical processes.
Notice that the way Jim puts it is that "consciousness is nothing more than synapses firing." A mapping between two entities, however, does not necessarily privilege one form over another. Why not say that synapses firing is nothing more than consciousness? Why not treat consciousness as the fundamental entity and explain all of the related physical processes in terms of it? If it is because we think we understand synapses and brain waves better than we understand consciousness, I beg to differ. We have been studying consciousness for quite some time, and have interesting things to say about it.
Or is it because the language of modern science just seems more accessible and demonstrable than the language of philosophy and psychology? Perhaps so, but herein lies the problem. Whatever confidence we have that there is a correlation between certain states of consciousness and certain physical processes, the language of the one simply cannot be reduced or explained by the terms of the other. Again, we may be able to match them up ("when I think of Aunt Mae, my brain wave spikes with an amplitude of 3 and a period of 4 pi"), but the one doesn't explain the other.
As I stated way back when, we can't even pull this reduction off with our familiar definition of water as H2O. Try as you might, you cannot predict the properties of water by examining the properties of hydrogen and oxygen, and there are no rules about the combination that will do so either. Thus, our concept of water is not identical to our concept of H2O. We can establish a correspondence, but not an identity. And note here that we are establishing a correspondence between two physical entities.
The desire to think of consciousness as beyond the physical stems, in part, I believe, from the realization that none of our language of the physical is really adequate to explaining consciousness itself. Our understanding of the physical may help create medicine to fight depression, but it cannot explain what depression is or why it is something that needs fighting. We will have to find those explanations through older, more familiar paths.
Eddie 9:56 PM
Double Standards
Eugene Volokh writes about the the hypocrisy of TAPPED claiming that the right is peculiarly responsible for the shrillness of current political discourse after having just engaged in such discourse himself. I believe the point is even worse than Eugene has indicated. TAPPED seems to be making an argument analogous to the one that excuses racial ill-will from blacks, on the grounds that only whites can truly be racists since whites disproportionately wield power. In this case, since there is no equivalent on the left to conservative media outlets, the right must take most of the blame. Perhaps he would do better to make an analogy between FOX News and BET, which are both efforts to provide an alternative to regular network programming.
Eddie 4:51 AM
</vacation>
Well, I'm back from my trip to Orlando (including the Universal Studios theme park and Disney's Animal Kingdom) and St. Petersburg (including a Phillies-Blue Jays spring training game). As they say, I need a vacation to rest up from my vacation. It is good to be back, though.
Eddie 4:27 AM
Sunday, March 09, 2003
Vacation
I'm about to leave for Florida and won't be back until Friday. Maybe I can post something midweek from my in-laws, but I won't count on it. Thanks again for stopping by.
Eddie 9:12 AM
Saturday, March 08, 2003
Imagine
This is from Shelby Steele's A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America:
Suppose America decided that black people were poor in music because of deprivations due to historical racism. Clearly their improvement in this area would be contingent on the will of white America to intervene on their behalf. Surely well-designed interventions would enable blacks to close the musical gap with whites. Imagine that in one such program a young, reluctant, and disengaged Charlie Parker is being tutored in the saxophone by a college student volunteer.
The tutor learns that Parker's father drank too much and abandoned the family, and that his mother has had an affair with a married man. Young Charlie is often late to his tutorial sessions. Secretly the tutor comes to feel that probably his real purpose is therapeutic, since the terrible circumstances of Charlie's life make it highly unlikely that he will ever be focused enough to master the complex keying system of the saxophone or learn to read music competently. The tutor says as much in a lonely, late-night call to his own father, who tells him in a supportive tone that in this kind of work the results one works for are not always the important ones. If Charlie doesn't learn the saxophone, it doesn't mean that he isn't benefiting from the attention. Also, the father says, "What pleases me is how much you are growing as a human being."
And Charlie smiles politely at his tutor but secretly feels that the tutor's pained attentions are evidence that he, Charlie, must be inadequate in some way. He finds it harder to pay attention during his lessons. He has also heard from many that the saxophone -- a European instrument -- really has little to do with who he is. He tells this to the tutor one day, after a particularly poor practice session. The tutor is sympathetic because he, too, has recently learned that it is not exactly esteem building to impose a European instrument on an African-American child.
Finally Charlie stops coming to the program. The tutor accepts his failure as inevitable. Sadly he realizes that he had been expecting it all along. But he misses Charlie, and for the first time feels a genuine anger at his racist nation, a nation that has bred such discouragement in black children. The young tutor realizes that surely Charlie could have been saved had there been a program to intervene earlier in his life. And for the first time in his life the tutor understands the necessity for political involvement. He redoubles his commitment to an America that works "proactively" to transform and uplift its poor, and that carries out this work with genuine respect for cultural differences.
The following fall, back in college, he tells his favorite history professor that he finally understands what "Eurocentrism" means. "Can you imagine," he says, shaking his head in disbelief at himself, "teaching saxophone to a poor black kid from Kansas City?"
Eddie 12:57 PM
Thursday, March 06, 2003
Voyeurs
In the movie "Being There," Chance the Gardener, or Chauncey Gardiner as he comes to be known, tells people that "I like to watch." Specifically he means television, although others interpret him otherwise (including Shirley MacLaine's character who understands him in a wonderfully naughty way), but it seems clear that the film intends the statement more broadly. Played by Peter Sellers, Chauncey is a kind but vacant character, in whom others "discover" some kind of higher folk wisdom. His emptiness is filled both by an aping of what he sees and by the desires of what others want to see in him. Apparently, the film was a personal project of Seller's, who thought the main character a perfect expression of himself: "Sellers described himself as being 'like a microphone—I have no set sound of my own. I pick it up from my surroundings.' "
We all like to watch, and for the same reason, even if we are not as literally selfless as Sellers. We find ourselves drawn to the lives of others, especially when those lives are portrayed as art, and we find ourselves drawn to the lives that others see in us. In both cases, these lives have been validated as interesting, even if they are inherently no more remarkable than our own.
It is not hard to find fault in this tendency towards voyeurism. For one, we are finding value simply where others find value. Also, we have reason to fear that our own life slips away while being so preoccupied with the drama beyond us. This is a danger of the storytelling arts in general. Plato and Rousseau, among others, have warned us of these dangers. Should our lives be an image of an image?
Without abandoning art, one lesson perhaps to draw is that we should learn to see our own life with the same sharpness of perception as the novelist sees his characters. Alain de Botton credits Marcel Proust with the genius of finding all the great themes of human existence within a seemingly unremarkable existence, Proust's own life. Rather than lament our lack of heroism, and the accompanying lack of bards to sing that heroism, we should learn to become our own bards, even if we are just singing the song to ourselves.
This is good advice, I believe, but it is not enough to turn us from being voyeurs, nor do I think it should, for there is still a fundamental uneasiness about our lives for which we need some consolation. That uneasiness stems from the recognition of the many satisfying but mutually exclusive possibilities within our reach. The choices we make open up other choices but close others off, and there is no going back. We cannot be content simply to acknowledge that these possibilities are equally good, so that we are not losing anything by choosing one at the expense of others, because each of these possibilities brings with it different experiences of the world and the opportunity to develop different aspects of ourselves. For example, I am attempting now to learn an instrument, but I will never develop the ability of one who has made music his life, especially if he started so much earlier than I have. It is hard to reconcile yourself to this fact of your mortality. Even if I'm not going to live forever, I would at least like to find out all that I have inside of me, but this is not to be, and it is not to be for any of us.
There is no fully satisfying resolution for this problem, but there is consolation. I believe part of why we enjoy being voyeurs is that we enjoy getting a glimpse of the lives we let go. This watching need not be the consequence of selflessness (in the sense used earlier), but can be instead a limited form of self-discovery. We watch not out of envy or regret but out of friendship, like when we meet up again with people we knew earlier and discover where life has taken them. It is a melancholic pleasure, to be sure, but it is not false. It is not self-betrayal.
Eddie 11:47 PM
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Nakedness
Den Beste posts today about the nature of honest intellectual debate en route to responding to an ungenerous assailant. Most of his characterization of honest debate is familiar, but it is well-considered and worth a read.
I would add to his points an emphasis on the peculiar way in which honest debate is confrontational. Most forms of confrontation involve the hiding of weakness. Argumentation, however, when done properly, exposes weakness to others. By giving our reasons for our beliefs, we make ourselves vulnerable to refutation and even ridicule. This display of vulnerability is, oddly enough, a form of confrontation itself. It ups the ante. Whoever we are engaging in discussion must decide to become equally vulnerable or make it clear that the stakes are too high.
It reminds of the game of chess. I enjoy chess, and even the study of chess and its history, but the game scares the crap out of me. To play a game of chess is to be fully naked in front of one's opponent. If you lose, you have nothing and no one but yourself to blame. I find the game so draining that I rarely play it, preferring instead games with dice and cards and whatnot. It is easier to enjoy yourself when you think things could have worked out otherwise with only a few changes of luck.
I don't really buy Nietzsche's criticism of Socrates, but he makes an interesting point about Socrates in The Twilight of the Idols. Nietzsche questions how a strange man like Socrates, who spent a lifetime wandering around getting into contentious discussions with people, ever became such an important person for the Athenians. He decides that Socrates was able to tap into the Athenian love of competition by offering them a new game: dialectics. Indeed, Socrates does liken himself to a wrestler, trying to pin down whoever is willing to engage him. And, of course, the Athenians wrestled naked.
Eddie 10:50 PM
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
No Bull
Top 10 Reasons I Should Have Been Asked To Blog For Raging Cow ("milk-based product with an attitude"):
10. I am within 2 standard deviations of the target demographic. (I think.)
9. I am willing to try this.
8. I am only slightly lactose intolerant.
7. I am using one of the sportier standard templates from Blogger.
6. Although I wasn't part of the consumer testing, I too want "new, exciting dairy drink products."
5. The mountain of scorn poured upon me will greatly increase my readership.
4. I'll put my metaphysics up against this guy any day of the week.
3. I think one of those cam girls on the home page is my student.
2. I know the truth behind cow-tipping.
1. My nine-year-old tells me I'm not as embarrassing as I used to be.
Eddie 10:58 PM
Allowing Harm
Jim Ryan has posted on the moral difference between doing someone harm and allowing it. Jim believes that leftists have a tendency to morally equate the two, whereas we should recognize that doing harm is always worse than allowing it, even if allowing it is sometimes wrong too.
I agree that there is a moral difference, but it isn't clear to me that doing harm is always worse than allowing it. For example, my brother and I sometimes play sports together, and a few times he has come close to getting into a fight. If a fight broke out and he was getting hurt, while I just stood by and watched, I believe that my inaction would be morally worse than the action of the person fighting my brother. It is likely that my brother helped provoke the fight, minimizing the other guy's culpability, and I believe I have a special obligation to look out for my brother, so my inaction is particularly egregious.
In every situation, then, where we see active harm and/or the allowing of harm, we ask these questions: "what kind of person would do that?" and "what kind of person would let that be done?". I'm guessing that "the kind of person" in the former is usually quite different from the latter, and probably the former is more often morally worse, but I don't see that we can make any strong generalizations about it.
For myself, I know that I allow harm often out of respect for the autonomy of others and out of a recognition of my own ignorance. A shameful moment for me came about 15 years ago when I was visiting a friend in London. (The real London, Jim.) It was New Year's Eve and we were wandering the city and came upon what appeared to be two young punks beating up a police officer. A crowd had gathered around to watch. We hadn't been there long and I found myself summoning my courage to step forward to do something about it. My friend probably sensed it because she grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the crowd. (I attribute the bulk of whatever misogynistic tendencies I have to this moment.) To my everlasting regret, I let her. Why? I'm not sure, but I think it was probably because of uncertainty. I was young, I was in a foreign city, there were all these other people standing around not doing anything, and my friend was pulling me away from the action. At bottom, I think that I just wasn't sure what I was seeing and what the implications of my involvement would have been. I wish I had acted differently in this case, but I think this motive explains a great deal of our inaction in the face of apparent harm. We just don't always know what we are seeing, and so we leave people to work out their own situation.
We also allow harm sometimes to let actions have their consequences. One of the worst things we can do for someone is to rob their actions of their consequences. In doing so we remove them from reality and delay their maturity. As Jim points out, some people are wicked or lazy, and harm befalls them as a consequence. To not let that happen shields them from the truth of their behavior.
On average, then, I would guess that allowing harm is morally superior to doing harm, but I don't see that this is true as a matter of principle.
Eddie 12:32 AM
Sunday, March 02, 2003
Exile
A quick thought: isn't it a shame that exile is not really an option for punishment anymore? It seems so humane. An exile might even have special status in a foreign land. On the one hand, people might fear wondering what the exile had done; on the other hand, everyone has enough ill-will towards other nations to think well of someone who managed to get himself kicked out.
In class the other day, while discussing Rousseau, I made the point that I don't remember ever having agreed to be a citizen of this United States. What right then does this country have to assume that I am bound by its laws? My students told me that if I didn't like it I could leave. (Have I mentioned how much I love my students?) Anyhow, I'm not sure the point is really true. I could leave, but there are no unclaimed pieces of land, as far as I know of, where I could make my abode. What's the point of leaving one set of rules just to enter into another? This is why exile is impossible too; for the United States to send someone into exile, they would necessarily be sending the person into another country, which is obviously problematic. We certainly don't like it when Castro does things like this.
There are a lot of good stories about exiles, especially in the Icelandic sagas, but hardly any about people who spent their life in prison. I think we've lost something.
Eddie 1:04 AM
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