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Sunday, April 20, 2003
Regret
Which has more integrity: the life we think we ought to live or the life we end up living instead?
The common sense answer is that our ideals have more integrity. Even if we never attain them, we will get further by aiming high and falling short than by aiming low to begin with. If ideals don't have more integrity, why would they be ideal?
There is another way of thinking, however, that places more trust in the decisions we actually make. For Montaigne, the distrust of ideals stems from his concern that our ideals are too abstract, too disconnected from our mundane existence. The 20th century certainly produced its share of moral monsters driven by intellectual fantasies. Nietzsche distrusts ideals because he thinks he knows where they come from: the priests who preach self-denial in order to make a virtue out of their own lack of vitality. Even if you don't buy that account, it is worth considering that most of our ideals are formed in childhood, which ought to make us all a little suspicious. Hegel doesn't like ideals so much either, because he believes, like Marx who followed him, that the truth works itself out in practice. Our ideals, by this account, only arrive after the fact, and should never displace the concrete relations that we develop on a case by case basis.
I am drawn as well to this distrust of ideals. It seems to me that I don't make decisions well until the moment in which they need to be made. Before and after the moment, I forget too much, but in the moment my mind somehow sums the matter up, even if I am not fully self-conscious of what is going into that sum. I trust myself so much in those moments that even when I screw up I don't usually feel much regret. It is as much fantasy to believe that we can pin-point our mistakes in hindsight as it is to believe that we can pin-point them in advance.
Many avoid regret in a different manner. They live by the book, some book, maybe The Book, but some code that is well-accepted by those around them. If they follow the book and something goes wrong, then they know that they have "done their best." Besides, every decent book has exculpatory explanations as to why things sometimes go wrong. Regret comes only if you tried to deviate from the book and failed. Of course, according to the book, everyone who deviates from it will fail eventually. Since I don't put much stock in regret, it doesn't bother me that people have different strategies for dealing with it. But I think, in this instance, that a steep price has been paid.
Eddie 11:58 PM
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Jesse James
My wife and I were watching the last minutes of a truly awful Western, called "American Outlaws," the other day in the hotel. After a couple of minutes, I said that I couldn't believe that anyone was still idolizing Jesse James. I had in mind an article I read sometime in the past year that explained that Jesse James was motivated by the thought that Civil War could be continued against the North through acts of violence. How did that slip past the screenwriters? My wife agreed, and cited the event that woke her up to the truth of Jesse James: Brady Bunch episode #87. If you are like me, you will be horrified to find out that there was a Brady Bunch episode where Bobby idolizes Jesse James only to have his father change his mind. How does Mike do this? By introducing Bobby to an old man whose family was murdered by Jesse. Furthermore, the episode features Bobby dreaming that Jesse James has murdered his entire family as well.
I was stunned. So, of course, I instantly googled it, to find out the sordid details and how others responded. Many had exactly the same experience as my wife, and had the episode come to mind in the context of thinking that others were depicting these outlaws too romantically. Some were reviewing American Outlaws, while another was commenting on a book entitled True History of the Kelly Gang.
How had I missed this seemingly unforgettable experience, or not have heard about it from others? My wife suggested that everyone was too scarred to remember it or, if they do remember it, to share it with others. Maybe I did see it too, but have buried it deep into my subconscious. Let us all share our pain so true healing can begin.
Note: I thought I would share these pages that I discovered on my search for the real Jesse James.
An episode guide for "Three Boys and Three Girls" (the "Brady Bunch" in German).
Celebrities missing fingers.
Someone trying to get arrested.
The christening of a blog.
plus A site for danger seekers.
Eddie 10:39 PM
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Life
I'm back up in Milwaukee and will be here through tomorrow. My wife and I now have an infant son. Technically, the state of Wisconsin now has him, but we should be able to finalize the adoption in Georgia within a couple of months. I may post tomorrow but Thursday sounds more likely. Thanks for stopping by.
Eddie 10:44 PM
Sunday, April 13, 2003
Villepin
There is an interesting book review in a recent issue of the New Republic (April 14, 2003) of a book written by Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister. The book's title, translated, is The Hundred Days, or the Spirit of Sacrifice. It turns out to confirm what many of us already believe, that the French leadership is driven largely by nostalgia. David Bell, the reviewer, writes:
The really disturbing thing about the work is its politics. In a word, de Villepin has none. Instead he worships at the altar of two holy things: French grandeur and political power, as incarnated in history's "great men."
Bell writes also:
In other words, "great men" are not great because of a thirst for justice or a belief in liberty (say, Lincoln or Mandela). They are great as a consequence of their pure energy, their daring vitality. In The Gargoyle's Cry, de Villepin muses in similar fashion about contemporary France's slide into "torpor" and "resignation," and longs for a great effusion of collective will -- not in the service of some great and worthy political goal, but for its own sake. "Our country," he writes, "advances only in crises and in tragedy." Coming from a French foreign minister, passages such as this are merely overdramatic, but think of how they would sound in the mouth of a German. There is something deeply unattractive about de Villepin's orotund and overheated paeans to his country: they combine romanticism with jingoism, and do not exert themselves about the moral substance of their national self-love.
As Bell's reference to Germany suggests, Villepin's writing is reminiscent of an earlier fascism that found power through Mussolini and Hitler. That brought to mind for me a question: have the French ever shown restraint? They have been restrained, and defeated, sometimes with the effect of putting them on the side with the United States and Britain. But have they ever done anything to suggest that they are different in kind, even today, from the Germans and Italians of an earlier era?
Law, generally speaking, involves restraint: I agree not to stray beyond certain boundaries, as long as everyone else agrees and lives up to that agreement. International law involves even greater restraint, since there is no police power to back it up. Those, like the French, who want international law to be taken seriously have a particular burden to demonstrate that international law isn't just a continuation of politics by other means. Villepin does not seem to be adequate to that burden, and his position of power suggests that France generally is not adequate to it either.
Eddie 10:31 PM
Saturday, April 12, 2003
David Bloom
Earlier in the week I read about the death of David Bloom, the NBC embedded journalist. After reading that his death was not combat related, I thought something like "how odd" and then forgot about it. Then yesterday, the debate coach at my school asked me if I had known David Bloom. "You mean the Claremont debater?" I asked, wondering why the coach had the tone of voice as if he were talking about the dead. Clearly I had not put two and two together myself.
I had debated in high school until my senior year, and I had no intention of picking it back up in college. Competitive debate is one of the most peculiar activities imaginable, and if you've seen one you'll know what I mean. Anyway, a friend of mine in college decided he was interested in trying it out, and so I tagged along myself. Our coach set up a meeting of the newbies with David Bloom, who was a senior and had been one half of the top-ranked team in the country going into the final tournament of the year. He very graciously talked to us about what is required for a small program to be a national success, a problem in debate akin to the problem of a big law firm having more manpower for research than a small one. Bloom knew what he was talking about, since he and his partner, Greg Mastel, were at the time the only debaters at the school and, as best I remember, they didn't even have a coach.
I only met him that once, but it was a source of pride for all of us that the school had some recognition in the debate community at large. At some point I know that I had learned that David had gone into journalism and was sometimes on television, but I don't watch television news and so eventually forgot about it. So it simply didn't occur to me that the David Bloom in Iraq was the same person who had left enough of an impresson on me that I knew instantly who my colleague was talking about, even though David last debated 18 years ago. I regret his passing, and the fact that it was only in his passing that I made this connection.
Eddie 3:41 AM
Friday, April 11, 2003
Cars
It is always great to read somebody writing about something they love.
Eddie 5:36 PM
Thursday, April 10, 2003
India
A reader pointed me toward this page called the South Asia Analysis Group, and in particular some essays from someone named Dr. Subhash Kapila. Kapila offers the following summary of his position:
Gulf War II- Military Implications for India: A Recap.
Summarised, the following was reflected in the paper under discussion by this author:
* India needs to take note of the distinctive characteristics of the United States rationales and impulses for “War s of Pre-emption” and also its military characteristics.
* While United States and India may not be on a collision course presently, it does not take long for the international equations to change.
* United States in its declaratory policies has asserted that the emergence of the regional dominant powers is unacceptable for its national security interests.
* India is indisputably the natural pre-eminent power in South Asia and US-India contradictions are bound to emerge on this score.
* India cannot mortgage its national security to future pious intentions of any major power.
* In brief, therefore, India in terms of lessons from Gulf War II needs to build up at crash speed her strategic assets:
1. ICBMs
2. SLBMs
3. Aircraft
4. Anti-missiles Systems
5. Air Defence systems
6. Military Satellites.
In conclusion, it was pointed out that historically and contemporarily, two stark facts which stand out, which need to be noted by India are:
* Japan would not have been subjected to atomic bombings by USA, if it had the similar capability.
* Iraq would not have been subjected to Gulf War II if it had credible WMD capabilities. Why is North Korea with proven WMDs being not subjected to similar treatment by USA as Iraq?
The answers to the above are obvious and it is this which must galvanize India into building of her strategic assets to pre-empt “Wars of Pre-emption.”
I have a number of quick thoughts.
1. It is entirely rational for every nation to work from the supposition that the United States cannot always be trusted. The Second Amendment would indicate that we should even hold this opinion of ourselves.
2. Legitimating pre-emption in foreign policy will encourage nuclear proliferation. I still think that pre-emption has a proper place in a world threatened by terrorism, but this is clearly a downside to the position.
3. The author of this piece seems to me to be using the Gulf War II as a pretext. Notice how his argument depends heavily upon a document ("its declaratory policies") produced by someone in the United States government. Notice how no American takes these academic papers very seriously. Notice too how every single comment he quotes is in support of his argument. Don't these guys even know how to fake rational debate? It is like Hussein winning 100% of the Iraqi votes.
4. India's decision about beefing up its military is not a decision made simply in the context of American foreign policy. I don't have the first clue as to what India should do defensively, but I'm pretty sure that Pakistan is a more serious concern than we are.
5. As many have pointed out, Americans don't really have much stomach for lengthy, intensive operations in other countries unless there is a pressing case for self-interest. Everyone is saying that the neocons are trying to get us to push our weight all over the world, and maybe they are, but there is no precedent for that in American history that I know of. Most of us would like to go back to being unable to pick Iraq out on a map. The U.S. government can definitely make policy relating to other countries, and even exert force on a small scale (CIA, Special Forces, etc.), but there are limits to what Americans will accept. I see no real justification for the fear that we are going to try to take over the world.
6. All the weaponry this guy is pushing India to develop is both too little and too much. It is too little because there is no way in the foreseeable future that India can match the U.S. in spending on military matters. It is too much in that it would seem that the regional second strike capability that India already possesses is sufficient to deter us from anything other than a matter of grave national security. If you are going to learn the lesson of North Korea, get it right.
7. Finally, even if the citizens of India have a distrust of the United States, do they have a great trust in their own political stability? I'm far from an expert in the area, but India does not strike me as a country that has its head screwed on entirely right. Otherwise, why would so many intelligent and hard-working Indians come here to study and work? Is it really a good idea to give more military power to leaders in such a situation? It may seem odd to say that one might want to keep oneself weak, but strength in the wrong hands is even more dangerous. At my university, for example, we won a huge grant from the Mellon people to create a whole new structure in the university to advance the idea of vocation. It was my opinion at the time that we would be better off to turn the money down, on the supposition that the university administration is not competent to handle this kind of money. And I believe I have been proven right. We now have a whole administrative branch soaking up all of this grant money, but the grant won't last forever. Do you think the administrative branch will leave when the grant does? So the development of military strength in and of itself is no great virtue; without a healthy civil society, this strength will be a danger to others and to oneself. I believe that we do have a healthy enough civil society right now to bear the responsibility of being the world's greatest superpower, but I don't have as much confidence in everyone else. This might be nationalist pride, but I don't think so.
Eddie 11:47 PM
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
Bubba Free
I don't think that I have ever had anyone send me links via e-mail about subjects that might interest me, but I actually had two today. One e-mail was related to my post on sovereignty and had links to a site concerned primarily with the foreign policy concerns of India; I hope to write about that tomorrow. The other came with the subject heading: "Its time to throw Socrates and ALL those boring geeks away." My interest was piqued, so I looked into the body of the e-mail and found the following:
I wish to refer you to a truly illuminated understanding of quite literally everything from the greatest philosophical genius that ever lived in any time or place---alive here and now.
Who is that genius? None other than Avatar Adi Da Samraj, who is described here:
Who He Is
Avatar Adi Da Samraj was born Conscious as Perfect Love, Bliss, and Happiness—a state He calls "the 'Bright'". And He is here to make it possible for everyone to Realize that Perfect State.
Many who have started by reading Adi Da's Words have gone on to enter into a relationship with Him as His formal devotees. And they have done so because they made the most amazing discovery of their lives:
Avatar Adi Da Samraj is not merely a highly developed human being. He is able to speak the Truth for Real because He is Himself the Living Divine Truth, Appearing on earth in a human body. In other words, He is the Eternal Real God—not the "Creator-God" of traditional religion, but the Very Divine Heart of Reality Itself—Appearing bodily for a time in our midst. He is the One Whom beings have prayed to and hoped for throughout the ages—the Promised and long-Awaited God-Man to come.
Avatar Adi Da does not ask you to merely believe this about Him. He simply invites you to come to know Him—by freely considering His Words, and fully feeling their impact on your life and your heart.
We invite you to consider Divine Identity, which describes ways in which Adi Da Samraj may be recognized and understood.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj is currently in His 62nd year, and primarily resides in California, Hawaii, and Fiji. A summary of His Life and Work is offered in Biography.
Over the years, Avatar Adi Da has been known by different Names (including “Bubba Free John” and “Da Free John”). The history and meaning of these are discussed in Names.
To be honest, I'm not much into this sort of spirituality. I have thought from time to time about moving away from my Protestant background, but the truth of the matter is that I'm not a very good Protestant and I don't expect to be very good at any of the other faiths either, so why burden people I haven't ever met? At least the Protestants more or less accept me and consider me benign. I may not be so lucky elsewhere.
All the same, I think it is about damn time that we have a Bubba for our personal savior, even if he does live in California.
Eddie 11:37 PM
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Sovereignty
The debate over the legitimacy of the war has been difficult in large part because few will state openly their full reasons, whether pro or con. For those favoring war, the reasons given were plausible but somewhat unprecedented. Freeing people from their dictators may be a good plan, but it is not our normal way of doing things. Also, the evidence connecting Iraq to terrorism didn't seem that strong; it did seem quite believable that Hussein might employ such tactics, but so might a lot of others, and some already have, like the Saudis. Fear over Hussein getting nuclear weapons was real too, but it might be counterproductive to fight a war on those grounds. Nothing will prompt nuclear proliferation more than despots thinking that they must get some nukes quickly to keep the Americans from using force. The reason we went to war, I believe, was that it fit a larger strategy of bringing reform to the Middle East. The thinking has been that terrorism can best be fought by encouraging political developments in the places that spawn terrorism. This may mean democracy, or it may just mean reminding these Arab princes what American military power can accomplish. Hussein thus was a good target: everybody hates him (including other Arab countries), he certainly would do whatever harm he could get away with, and he was in violation of the truce formed after the first Gulf war. Taking out Hussein was thus a way of starting reform and setting a new precedent for how America will respond to potential threats.
The argument against war, I believe, has been motivated primarily by a fear of the unspoken objectives given above. It was a hard position to articulate, however, partly because it relied on persuading others about what was really going on, partly because it relied on an image of the United States far more negative than most people would find compelling, and because the anti-war people have their own somewhat secret agenda. They want a true international world order backed by robust international law. Why? Well, for various reasons. One reason is that the left typically believes in concentrations of power, because concentrations of power make social control so much easier. (Thus they prefer both big government and big business.) Another reason is that an international order with equal representation will facilitate the transfer of wealth from first world to third world economies. Also, an in keeping with my previous two posts, the left is much more cosmopolitan than the right. Anyway, the anti-war people can no more publicize this aspiration than the pro-war people can their position, and so the anti-war crowd brought forth a host of terrible arguments, like "Give inspections a chance!" and "At least Hussein was elected!".
American aggression is thus a problem for the anti-war crowd because it looks to them like a violation of national sovereignty, and a stability of sovereignty is necessary for the stable formation of an international order. Only the international order should be given the authority to rescind sovereignty. But what is sovereignty really? Even if one were to believe that the United Nations or some similar body should be given the authority to recognize sovereignty, on what basis should it do so?
Rousseau and other political thinkers have argued that sovereignty cannot simply be equated with political power. Those who rule do not necessarily constitute the sovereign authority, and those who are ruled may be incapable of constituting that authority either. Before there is a state, Rousseau claims, there must be a single people, otherwise political rule can be nothing more than one faction subjugating another. And being a single people is no pro forma matter; a single people will be a people with abiding common interests. This points to a difficulty, as many have noticed, with the post-war politics of Iraq. It seems fairly clear to me that there is no such thing as the Iraqi people. There are at least three peoples who have been placed together by various accidents of history. This suggests a federal structure of government, although even a federal structure presupposes that most everyone has some interest in the success of the structure as a whole and not just their part of it.
I have previously thought that the anti-war left, with its dreams of an international order, resembles the progressive politics of Woodrow Wilson, for whom I have no great love. I am coming to think, however, that they cannot even live up to his standards, because Wilson emphasized the self-determination of a people. Wilson, like Rousseau, did not identify sovereignty with power. The desire for self-determination might set limits to the legitimate use of American power in some instances, in order to respect the choices of foreign peoples, but it also might justify the use of American power to support peoples against the dictators keeping them down. The anti-war position, however, has lost even the idealism of an earlier progressive politics.
I do not really hope for a new American foreign policy grounded in a notion of us as the world's liberator, nor am I against international bodies to help keep nations in conversation. It seems to me, however, that our participation in international bodies should be predicated on the older notion of sovereignty that I have given above. There will certainly be countries, like France, who will oppose us with the consent of their people. We may respond accordingly, but this does not call into question the sovereignty of these nations. There are many other countries, however, where the rulers cannot be described seriously as representative of their people. We need to make it evident that we feel no compulsion to respect the rights of these rulers to govern. We may well work with them, as it suits our interest, but we would not limit ourselves on any other basis. From this basis legitimate international bodies might be born.
Eddie 11:42 PM
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Socrates, Pt. 2
[This is the second half of the paper I delivered on Saturday in Atlanta. The first half is the post previous to this one. The title of the paper is "The Provincial Socrates." Please let me know if you need citations beyond what are given in the text.]
Returning to Socrates, we are faced with the remarkable fact that Socrates never traveled outside of Athens except for military service. Indeed, as we learn from the dialogue Phaedrus, he rarely even went past the city walls into the countryside. Socrates reminds Crito of this fact (through the persona of the Athenian laws) in order to explain why it would be unjust for him to flee Athens to avoid punishment. Nor does he show a great deal of concern for other lands. In the Theaetetus, when he asks Theodorus about who the promising students of mathematics are, he makes it clear that he is only interested in hearing about the young men of Athens.
To be sure, Socrates is not a provincial in the strictest sense of the term. Athens itself was a cosmopolitan city, which may have decreased his need to elsewhere. Furthermore, he is familiar with other places, and is willing to praise others, as he does at the beginning of the Republic when he states that the Thracian display in the festival was equal to the Athenian. And as the gadfly of Athens, he is more than willing to challenge the Athenian ways and beliefs. In one of his few political assignments, he challenges whether the Council has acted justly and refuses to help carry out its actions. He is willing even to take on Homer and the traditional stories of the gods. Nevertheless, Socrates is not a citizen of the world. He is a citizen of Athens. His country, right or wrong.
Why does Socrates, the ancient paradigm of the philosopher, distinguish himself from the sophists who traveled from town to town teaching their wisdom? Why does he live his life in just one city, even after it has unjustly sentenced him to death?
As he argues in the Crito, we have a duty to be particularly committed to that which has brought us into being and has sustained us. In the Euthyphro, he questions Euthyphro on how anyone can properly take his own father to court, whether guilty or not. He seems to reject Euthyphro’s claim that the law is the law, and that he should treat his father as he would anyone else.
The cosmopolitan might grant that, whatever our commitment to humanity in general, in practice our actions are usually directed in more limited ways. I believe, however, that Socrates limits himself for reasons beyond just practice and duty. I believe he limits himself for the sake of truth as well.
In the Meno, Meno presents his famous paradox against the possibility of learning: either we already know something, or we don’t, and if we don’t then we won’t recognize the truth when we run across it. Socrates responds with the myth of recollection, whose upshot is that all learning must come from within. In the myth, this “within” is presented in terms of past lives, but in the subsequent geometry example with the servant, it seems that knowledge emerges from opinion, i.e., those beliefs that we trust because they are so familiar. At the end of the dialogue, Socrates claims that whatever virtue we have is a consequence of this true opinion, which he also calls a gift from the gods.
Respect for what is peculiarly our own thus stems from a belief that truth cannot simply be found or bought in exchange. We need a Socratic midwife to help us develop wisdom from within. The midwife image also conveys the fragility of this act. There are no guarantees that we can become pregnant or that our pregnancy can be brought to term. In less metaphorical terms, we must take care to assist the development from opinion to knowledge.
The care for this development explains the importance of education for Socrates, a theme taken up at length in the Republic. The task is to develop a spirit both courageous and open; hence the need for gymnastics and music. Socrates offers a surprising image of this education: the dog. The dog, who is gentle toward friends and harsh to enemies, has a spirit that is at once gentle and high-spirited. These qualities, Socrates claims, make the dog a philosopher, because the dog places his trust in what is familiar. As Heraclitus tells us, dogs bark at strangers.
To conclude, when Socrates heard that the oracle at Delphi had said that no one was wiser than he, Socrates talked to everyone who might be wise, whether citizen or stranger, to find the truth of the matter. He discovers that no one is wise, which he interprets to mean that only God is wise. The cosmopolitan is right then to claim that wisdom attaches itself to no special place, that no one can claim exclusively to have God on their side. But the force of this claim is limited: if wisdom attaches itself to no special place, here is as good as anywhere. Socrates pushes the point further: here might be better than anywhere. If the true is the good, we will best find the true in the place that has been most good to us. We should strive then to imitate the dog, who is loyal to his own beyond even his own self-interest, and who is suspicious of all else.
Eddie 10:54 PM
Socrates
[I delivered a brief paper Saturday in Atlanta at an academic conference. Here is the first part of it. The title of the paper is "The Provincial Socrates". If anyone needs citations beyond those given, please let me know.]
In an essay entitled “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Martha Nussbaum described the cosmopolitan ideal in the following terms: “…we should give our first allegiance to no mere form of government, no temporal power, but to the moral community made up by the humanity of all human beings.” Given the stoic origins of the concept of the cosmopolitan, and given the stoic idolization of Socrates, it is perhaps not surprising that Socrates has been taken as a fellow believer. Indeed, Cicero claims that “when Socrates was asked which [country] he belonged, he would say ‘To the world,’ for he thought that he was an inhabitant and citizen of the whole world.” (Tusculan Disputations, 108) This quotation is a late attribution, however, and I intend today to point to some of the evidence that Socrates, at least the Socrates of the Platonic dialogue, was not in fact a cosmopolitan, and to speculate as to why not.
I would like to acknowledge that the philosophical appeal of the cosmopolitan is strong. It would be tempting to locate the cosmopolitan impulse in philosophy’s striving for universal truth, but it is not just philosophy that is interested in such matters. Common opinion naturally presumes its insights to be universal. As children, we believe that what is familiar to us is what holds for everyone else and are disturbed to find people living differently from ourselves. Even as adults, our minds naturally seek to defend us from the foreign; we are quick to be contemptuous of the unusual. Philosophy then is not distinctive in aspiring to the universal. What makes philosophy distinctive is a recognition that the familiar is not necessarily the true, and it is in this way that philosophy shows its cosmopolitan spirit.
Our image of the cosmopolitan is the world-traveler who knows from experience that every provincial believes his own ways superior to all others. As Montaigne reports, “a German becomes ill if you give him a mattress to sleep on, an Italian if you put him on a feather bed, and a Frenchman if he has to sleep without curtains and a fire.” ("On Experience") It is easy to be amused at such things, and amusement is one of the marks of the cosmopolitan. What is it, however, that we are actually supposed to learn from the cosmopolitan’s travels?
Montaigne’s travels taught him to be suspicious of universal claims altogether. Life is not about sticking to a script, but about adaptation: “the soul’s greatness consists not so much in climbing high and pressing forward as in knowing how to adapt and limit itself.” ("On Experience") Travel introduces us to a range of human adaptations, encouraging us to find our own way through. Descartes, on the other hand, drew a very different conclusion from his travels: “I learned to believe nothing very firmly concerning what I had been persuaded to believe only by example and custom.” (Discourse on Method) If no custom stands out from any other, why be attached to custom whatsoever? And so Descartes gives us an architectural plan that reappears throughout modernity: to tear down the haphazard structure of human history and start anew. From Montaigne and Descartes then we get two competing conclusions: all custom works equally well and all works equally poorly. But how far can this wisdom take us?
Eddie 5:23 AM
Friday, April 04, 2003
Losses
The first is the passing of Michael Kelly, the columnist and editor. Kelly sometimes strayed into diatribe more than I would have liked, and his single-minded bashing of Gore while writing for The New Republic -- though enjoyable -- led to his unfortunate departure from one of my favorite magazines, but he had been one of the writers over the past 6 or 7 years that I respected the most. Like many people, including myself, he understood and documented how Clinton diminishes everything he touches, including the Democratic Party. Many people see the Clinton-hating of the Right as pathological or opportunistic (and it sometimes is), but it should be remembered that Clinton actually advocated for a number of policies that conservatives support. Nor were most conservatives greatly fond of George Bush, Sr. I'll admit to voting for Clinton in 1992. The visceral contempt for Clinton came not so much from opposition to policy (health care reform was largely Hillary's bag, or so we could tell ourselves at the time) but from his complete lack of respect for institutions. (I'll enumerate them for you if I must, but I prefer not to go down that unpleasant memory lane.) Kelly managed early and often to give voice to the outrage many of us felt at the time. Every loss in this war is a real loss to somebody, but this is the first one to hit me personally. I will miss him, even though I never met him.
The second loss is Philosoblog, which is probably pointless for me to link to since a good bit of my traffic has found its way from there to begin with. Jim apparently has too much on his plate to keep up the site to his standards, and so is backing away. The first week or two of writing my own blog consisted of arguing with Jim over the nature of conservatism, an attack that probably struck him out of the blue, since he didn't know me from Adam. That wasn't so long ago (December 2002), but it seems like forever, which is probably a testament to how blogging changes your sense of time. (I would say that daily or near-daily writing for others intensifies your experience of each day; I can't imagine a better reason to do it.) Anyway, I thank him for the many great posts that have made us all think and for the attention he has given to my own writing. Thanks, Jim. We all await your return, since I doubt anybody thinks you can keep yourself away forever.
Eddie 4:48 PM
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Rumsfeld
Mickey Kaus seems to be going back and forth on whether Rumsfeld has been putting our troops at risk by keeping force numbers low. Why might Rumsfeld do such a thing? According to the argument against him, it is because he wants to show (contra the Powell doctrine) that the U.S. doesn't need to put all of its power into these operations (otherwise, they won't happen very often) and that the strength of our military will increasingly come from the Navy and Air Force, not the Army. The argument against Rumsfeld is being made most consistently by Josh Marshall.
Others have countered with what seem to me are powerful arguments. First, the initial phase of the war emphasized speed in order to secure vulnerable assets, pin down Iraqi forces, possibly induce quick surrender, and avoid being targets for WMDs. A larger force would presumably deploy and move slower. Second, it isn't apparent in what way we've had difficulty meeting objectives with our current numbers. We may ultimately need more troops to secure and hold all of these cities, but it isn't important to take all of these right away. We want to avoid street-fighting as much as possible anyway for the sake of our soldiers and Iraqi citizens. To do this, it seems the better course to strike occasionally as targets present themselves, rather than trying to slug it out toe to toe.
For those of you who know your military history, isn't this doctrine quite a bit like the blitzkrieg tactics employed by the Germans in WWII? My understanding of blitzkrieg is that one should surround and bypass the infantry strongholds in order to strike supply lines and soft targets usually placed in the rear of a military's front lines. Sherman did something similar when he bypassed the Confederate soldiers on Kennesaw Mountain north of Atlanta. Why is this considered such a revolution in tactics?
Also, am I the only one who thinks Marshall has ulterior motives for trying to beat up on Rumsfeld? Namely, to find a way of showing that Bush and his administration don't really support the troops and to argue against a military strategy that might make these kinds of conflicts more likely.
Eddie 11:32 PM
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
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