Some crap about rights

I've been attempting to be a better citizen and read the news more often. The first thing that came up in the New York Times this morning was about the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on the second amendment. The funny (or sad) thing about a lot of those amendments: they aren't written very clearly. I mean, if I wrote a sentence like the following in a philosophy paper, MacAvoy would have had my ass: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Who writes like that? And I've read some books from that era; David Hume, for example, knew how to construct a sentence. But he was writing about causation (among other things). Which is more important: metaphysics, or the codification of rights for a nation's citizenry?

It's not like I've never read that sentence before, but reading the differing opinions of Scalia and Stevens really highlights the ambiguity. Perhaps we could disambiguate without the loaded content. Take the following: "A well-greased bearing, being necessary for a skateboard's rolling smoothly, a skateboarder has the right to WD-40." [Editor's note: Do not, under any circumstance, use WD-40 for greasing your bearings. They will rust out and your skateboard will not roll smoothly, regardless of your rights.] Alright, so we have a thing (the bearing), its function (providing smoothness to a skateboard's rolling), and a right that people enjoy to contribute to that thing doing what it is supposed to do (allowing the ownership of WD-40). It is as if the first two-thirds of the sentence ("A well-greased bearing, being necessary for a skateboard's rolling smoothly") provides justification for the last clause. On this reading, you might just as easily rewrite the sentence as follows: "Given that a skateboard's rolling smoothly requires a well-greased bearing, skateboarders have the right to WD-40."

Alright, now consider the following scenario: Some advances in skateboard bearing technology leaves greasing your bearings unnecessary. While these advances are being made, countless skateboarders have been injured by the spontaneous combustion of cans of WD-40. If the declaration of skateboarders rights says "Given that a skateboard's rolling smoothly requires a well-greased bearing..." then if some event makes this statement untrue, would the final clause not be called into question? No longer does a skateboard's smooth rolling hinge on it being greased, so the rights might then need to be modified (especially since these poor kids keep losing their hands in tragic WD-40 accidents). It seems like it reads more like an "if-then" statement. IF a skateboard's rolling smoothly requires a well-greased bearing, THEN a skateboarder has a right to WD-40. It would be like saying, "given that the man murdered his wife, he must serve life in prison," which reads a lot like, "if the man murdered his wife, then he must serve life in prison." This isn't to say that the final clause is necessitated by the first part of the sentence (that would be one of those fallacy things...Denying the antecedent, I believe). Even if he didn't kill his wife, the man might have done something else to justify his lifetime incarceration. Similarly, there might be some other really good reason for skateboarders to own WD-40, but the development of new technology and the danger of WD-40 should give legislators pause to reconsider this particular bestowal of rights.

So does any of this work for the second amendment? Is it equivalent to say, "Given that a well regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be be infringed"? I'm sure Scalia would say it is not equivalent, but he hasn't returned my e-mails, so who knows. But if it is, if Scalia is wrong, then can we not likely agree that a well regulated militia is not necessary for the security of a free state? Might we not then pause and reconsider the nature of the right to bear arms? I suppose that is what the Supreme Court did yesterday. And I'm not sure if I disagree completely with the decision; I just feel like we might do well to come up with a clearer statement regarding the right to bear arms and how it might be justifiably infringed upon. I think it is consistent with liberalism to have the right to protect yourself, and even to hunt so long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. So what am I saying differently? I don't know. That was a bit of a waste of time, now wasn't it?

Love Story

Sometimes, despite all the infidelities, you can still return to your first love. It is true: she must look past your indiscretions over the years, your distractions that kept you away from her; you must look past all the pain she has put you through, all the money you have spent on her. Perhaps you will be stronger for it, more committed, more devoted. Indeed, the benefits might be innumerable, their value, unmeasurable.

I say this with the confidence that comes only with experience. These past few months I have fallen back into a routine that I thought I had long abandoned. One I think my mother wished I had given up on. I sense she has never been incredibly comfortable with the twelve year, off again, (mostly) on again relationship. Despite all the ups and downs, I once again find myself skateboarding again.

It is not completely like riding a bike: I doubt I will ever again throw myself down a thirteen set or a handrail. I don't foresee myself pushing physical limitations for the sake of video footage. And I will probably never receive free boards or wheels again. But in some ways this is freeing. Knowing that I am once again skating for the pure love of it, for the communal aspects of it, for the thrill of it, knowing that makes it all the more fun. Knowing that at a quarter century I can still go to the local skatepark and find like-minded people is reassuring, given that I will likely be moving again in the years to come. And admittedly, knowing that I can still garner a few cheers for a solid landing is rather satisfying.

Sometimes it is rather nice to rekindle an old flame.

Skating in the Woods

Original video can be viewed here (and presumably made to fit the screen):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2iY22iQjwY

Meeting people is easy

Chuck Palahniuk opens his book of essays with the following: "If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people." Perhaps this provides some explanation for my affinity towards his novels; I have been that person. The ways I have attempted to connect with other people include taking up skateboarding, being active in my church youth group, involving myself in the punk rock community, driving back and forth from Nashville, joining the Philosophy Club, and most recently, going off to grad school. While Palahniuk's examples tend to be a bit more absurd (starting fight clubs, joining masochistic writing communities, and most recently, signing up for a marathon porn shoot), there are certain themes that permeate his novels and tease out a salient feature of contemporary society. To my knowledge, there has never been a time when the majority of people spend a significant portion of their lives worrying about things not intrinsically tied to their survival. Let's call it leisure time. With this leisure time, we have come to fill our lives, not with people intrinsically tied to our own survival, but with people largely of our own choosing who enjoy filling their leisure time in similar ways. Let's call them friends. But as Philip Larkin has famously pointed out about your mum and dad, I think the same might be said of our friends: They fuck you up.

It seems that finding groups of people with similar interests isn't all that difficult, but making connections with those people gets harder with age. For better or worse, I spent the vast majority of my life in one city. As a result, I have spent a great deal of my mature(?) life with a small group of incredibly close friends. For this I am thankful. But that doesn't mean it didn't fuck me up. It's sort of like the time someone told me my parents' relationship gave me unrealistic expectations for a marriage (to which I replied: "But it is a realistic expectation"). Having my history with Kevin, Chase, Jason, Bobby, my coworkers from JCPL, my fellow students in the Philosophy Department, and all the other friends that have passed through Johnson City, contributed to me creating certain standards. Let's call them high expectations. As is the case with all expectations, when they aren't met, it can be a bit of a bummer. Which explains why I was only half-joking on all my trips back home when I said I might just stay in Johnson City.

Lately things have taken a turn for the better. I feel much more comfortable in my surroundings; I've created connections with some really great people; I'm trying not to take myself so seriously. But old habits die hard. Having the group of friends that I did back home--a tight knit group of intelligent, like-minded individuals (who sometimes tend towards the offensive and wildly inappropriate)--contributed to me creating certain intellectual dispositions. Let's call them prejudices. They're prejudices because as much as I would like to think all my beliefs and ideas are well founded on solid facts and sound argumentation, that's not the whole story. The truth is: They're prejudices because when my friends joined me in a chorus of "hoorah"s and "booh"s to the things we did and didn't agree with, I felt more justified in my agreement or disagreement. Let's call it herd mentality. Keeping the mentality when the herd is far away is not always so helpful. It has been pointed out that I have a tendency to be...let's say...less than charitable with alternative ways of thinking about the world. It is said that I can sometimes be dismissive. It is rumored that I can be a bit of an asshole. Let's call it self-awareness.

While the moral of the story is probably something like: "If you want to make connections with people you have to allow for a little rewiring," I'll admit I'm not overwhelmingly optimistic. Not to be too deterministic, but I do wonder how much change we are capable of achieving by our own lights (see Rickety Rosie). But maybe it is just an issue of mindfulness; now that I am more aware of my tendency to be dismissive of thoughts not my own, of how this might come off to people, I might just raise a red flag when I catch myself doing it. I might just take a breath, step back, and listen to what others have to say. Let's call it growing up.

Slight change of pace

From Jonah Lehrer to Chuck Palahniuk:

"We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us how to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer."

"Cassie said maybe if she was stupid and desperate, really clutching at straws and emotionally needy, utterly destroyed, she'd accept my proposal--so I figured there was still hope."

And now on to Philip Zimbardo...

Quotes that started my day...

...Both from Proust Was a Neuroscientist:

"To understand ourselves as works of fiction is to understand ourselves as fully as we can." I wish I had that one when I was working on my thesis.

"To say that we should drop the idea of truth as out there waiting to be discovered is not to say that we have discovered that, out there, there is no truth." --Richard Rorty

Love as a practice, love as liberalism: Towards a pragmatic conception of love

I have always found it a little funny (or disconcerting) that doctors and lawyers are said to 'practice' medicine and law, respectively. One would like to think that, when going under the knife or in front of a judge, these seasoned professionals would be done practicing and be ready to play for real. But when I think about it, it makes more sense to say these are practices. Both arts strive to meet the ideals of health and justice, ideals that may never be fully realized. And thus, they continue to practice, in hopes that they will bring their clients closer to these ideals even when they cannot be fully achieved.

Over the years I have spent no small amount of time pondering the nature of love, romantic and otherwise. Though it will likely come as no surprise to anyone else, no amount of reading brought me any closer to a conception of love I found adequate for something that is so central to our lives. I had long thought of love as a feeling or an emotion you have towards someone, but the more I read about evolutionary psychology and cognitive science, the more I recognized the contingency of such feelings: mix the right combination of attraction, physical contact, and hormones and the feel-good neurotransmitters start raging. Then give it a little time, and the feeling just isn't the same. So I'm no longer very happy talking about being "in love," or something of the like. It just seems too fleeting and impermanent. Lately I've been wondering if thinking of love as a practice might be preferable. Just as the doctor seeks the ideal of perfect health, the lawyer, true justice; so too do we seek to treat those we love with complete consideration of them as individuals. While we may never achieve these ideals, we continue to practice, to strive to enrich their lives and our own. How we might go about doing this speaks to my title: love as liberalism.

Perhaps we would do better to retire the old cliche: "If you love someone, let them go," in favor of: "If you love someone, let it go." What I mean by that is: let go of all the fairy tale romances and unrealistic expectations that have been handed down to us; let go of the false ideals and imaginary constructs of who that special someone will be; and let them be who they actually are. With all their strengths and weaknesses, all their hopes and desires. Maybe I'm sounding a bit Kantian, but if we treat people in ways that not only allow for, but also value, the will of the individual, then maybe we will be better suited to reach the ideals of caring consideration that love calls for. And while we may sometimes fall short; we may sometimes project our own image of a person on who the person really is; we can always keep practicing. We can try to quit imagining those we love as fitting a role in our preconceived plan. Rather, we can see how our plan might change with respect to their own. Of course, liberalism calls for us to allow people to act freely so long as it does not infringe on the freedom of others, thus we must be cognizant of the treatment we receive from those we love. I have found that it can be too easy to get into the habit of sacrificing so much that you end up breeding resentment. And it is hard to treat people with caring consideration when you resent them.

I call this conception of love pragmatic because I think it fits with the view that language is socially constructed, and words are tools rather than reflections of a reality that exists outside of our social practices. If we view love as a practice, as a way of treating people in caring consideration for all their aspirations, then the benefit is a prescription for our activities rather than a description of our current emotional state. And I think this to be a good thing, because a constant activity has the potential of transcending the contingencies of our sometimes erratic feelings. Some might argue that this takes the romance out of love, but I would disagree. I think the value of romance is found in the expression of a genuine appreciation of another person, however you might choose to express it. And I take this to be the constant goal of love's practitioners.

How I spent the last hour of my shift...

http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html

It's your one-stop shop for offensive humor that leaves no category of political incorrectness untouched. Favorite quote so far:

-"Can we agree that the great lesson of the Iraq war is YOU GOTTA PICK UP THE TRASH?"
-"Exactly. It's like, the more someone is surrounded by garbage and sewage, the less grateful they are to us."
-"But that's Freedom Sewage! It was pooped out by a liberated people! You guys talk as if it smells bad."

Comedic genius if I've ever stumbled upon it.

Preaching to the Choir: Some Thoughts on Faith and Politics

- "So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true...will be true for us alone." Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 220 (emphasis added).

- "We shall dismiss religious experience if we follow Wittgenstein, Sellars and Brandom in thinking that there is no intermediary called 'what the experience was really like' in between the altered state of the nervous system associated with the onset of the claimed experience and the resulting discursive commitments undertaken by a member of a language-using community." Richard Rorty, "Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God," Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Studia Europaea, XLI, I, 2001, 59.

Here we have two quotes from two very different thinkers, expressing very different positions on the nature of religious belief. And yet, I agree with both. Sort of. Perhaps I should say I am sympathetic with both. On one level, I agree with Rorty (surprise, surprise): The kinds of things people talk about when they talk about faith are often incommunicable to people outside of that community (the community of 'God-talk' language users, in Rorty's terminology). On the other hand, I think Obama is making a valid observation: Many people believe--and therefore think it to be true--that they have experienced things which are unintelligible without reference to a higher power, whether it be Yahweh, Jesus Christ, or Brahman. On a philosophical level, I think Rorty is correct to point out that identifying the causal antecedents to such experience will hinge on the way an individual frames their greater narrative, and the intelligibility of that narrative will depend on a community understanding the proposed framework. Yet on a practical level, I don't find this to be an argument that is going to reach the communities that do accept such a framework. Rorty's larger point is that the question of God's existence is not a matter of evidence-gathering and argumentation. Rather, the question of anything's existence is a matter of how a community of people talk about things, what they say about those things, and what utility such linguistic patterns offer. He refers to this discourse as "cultural politics," and while he argues that talk of religiosity is a form of cultural politics, I think he misses a major point: Insofar as our current culture readily subscribes to some form of religious talk, those of us who do not engage in such discourse will always be at a disadvantage in communicating our ideas. And leftist intellectuals wonder why so many people are "too dumb" to agree with them.

First, I think it important to point out the notions of truth being bandied about. Rorty basically agrees with William James in his attitude towards truth and reality, "that arguments about relative utility are the only ones that matter...Another way to put James' point is to say that truth and reality exist for the sake of social practices, rather than vice versa" (Rorty, 41). That is to say, truth is an attribute we tie to certain statements that are useful in communicating with other people or in adapting to our world. When one asserts, "it is true that the earth revolves around the sun," one is saying, "it is more useful to proceed on the premise that the earth revolves around the sun as opposed to any of the alternative premises previously offered." While this is all well and good in the empirical sciences, things get trickier when you turn to cultural practices, such as religion. One has to start asking things such as this: "What is the utility in claiming that Jesus Christ died for our sins and will one day return to bring about the end of days?" Or: "What use is it to believe that the Qur'an is the divine word of Allah communicated to the prophet Mohammed?" The answers to these questions are pretty simple to me, as I tend to think the questions answered by religion are better answered by other means; but I in no way hold the majority view. In fact, the beliefs people hold about religious matters often stem from experiences they frame in religious terms. Circular as it may be, the pure subjectivity of it speaks to people's sense of self and meaning, and therefore must not be ignored.

I have been arguing with people about religion for years, and I feel fairly confident that I have not converted a single person to my way of thinking. I don't think this is a result of bad argumentation on my part; I think I have some pretty strong arguments against a theistic God and for a secular world view. But these arguments either fall on deaf ears or are received merrily by people who already agree with me. I think I am ready to concede that I will never turn anyone into a godless heathen, and that as long as my arguments for other issues disregard religious persuasion, I think they might be doomed. The point is: faith and religious conviction often constitute fundamental aspects of people's sense of self and community. People who use God-talk and people like me are engaging in a different language game (as Wittgenstein would put it). We will sometimes have different vocabularies for similar situations. But this is a feature of the kind of society that I deeply value. Rorty is right to say, "it is a feature of what we have come to think of as a desirably democratic and pluralist society that our religioun is our own business--something we need not even discuss with others, much less try to justify them, unless we feel like doing so" (Rorty, 58). And I might agree, on an ideological level, with those that "think we should stop talking about God--that God-talk, as well as talk about a higher plane of existence than that of the material world, is a bad thing" (Rorty, 38). But on a practical level, it will do no good to continue banging our heads over issues that are often unimportant on an interpersonal level and unlikely to be settled by argument. I think this is a lesson for secularist and religious person alike, because as soon as one chooses a particular religion it becomes much easier to ignore other kinds of vocabularies. What we need to do is learn these other vocabularies and seek agreement by utilizing them. Rorty is right to place religion in the realm of cultural politics, but if members of the intellectual left fail to recognize the importance of playing alternate language games, they will continue to fail in affecting actual politics.