Thoughts on Indolence

Affirming Life and Consenting to New Life

2011-04-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

Let us consider the mildly controversial claim that some people should not reproduce. Children are vulnerable, impressionable, sentient beings that simply aren't given a fair shake in certain circumstances. If one does not have the physical, emotional, or economic means to support a needy child, then one ought not put oneself in the circumstances where a pregnancy is likely to occur. I don't think this should be a matter of public policy, of course, but I think it should be an ethical consideration for anyone. But what about the more controversial question: Should anyone reproduce? This is a question Peter Singer raised last year in a provocative "Opinionator" post on the New York Times website. He argues that when people weigh the factors for having a child, they rarely "ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself." He concludes by admitting that he thinks life is indeed worth living, but asks the question: "Is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?" I take this to be the important ethical question at the heart of the issue. As Singer is a utilitarian, it is worth considering how that ethical orientation would approach the question.

The simplest formulation of utilitarianism calls for an action to be judged as ethical if it produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. How one would go about weighing one person's happiness against another person's unhappiness is a question that will be put aside for the moment. On this formulation, the question of having a child should be pretty straightforward: If you think more people will experience more happiness due to the child coming into existence, then by all means, pop that sucker out. My problem with this argument, however, is the limited epistemic position in which we find ourselves. How can we possibly predict something like that? One way to answer that might call you to ask yourself: How would your own life's happiness balance sheet pan out? Have you experienced more happiness than suffering? Have you brought more people more happiness than suffering? This second question might be difficult to answer, but Friedrich Nietzsche suggests a way you might approach the first question:

How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you -- all in the same succession and sequence -- even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a speck of dust." Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or did you once experience a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, "You are a god, and never have I heard anything more godly." If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you, as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?" would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? -- The Gay Science: 341

This quote is representative of an idea that pops up in different works by Nietzsche, often referred to as "Eternal Recurrence", or "Eternal Return." Though some philosophers have taken this idea from Nietzsche as a kind of metaphysical or cosmological proposition, I think of it more as a useful thought experiment: Is the life I'm living now one I would choose to live over and over again? If not, what must I do about that? This is an issue I have turned over in my head for years. In the absence of religious sentiment, one is left to wonder how meaning in one's life is to be derived. Nietzsche's eternal recurrence parallels nicely with a lyric I heard last night in a Murder By Death song: "There's still time to start again." If my undergraduate thesis led me to a major insight, it is the notion of the self as an ever expanding narrative. Our view of our selves is found in the story we tell about ourselves, and this frees us to move forward with the idea that we are contributing to an ongoing story. I think the core of this idea is well articulated in a quote from Chuck Palahniuk's essay, "You Are Here":

Controlling the story of your past -- recording and exhausting it -- that skill might allow us to move into the future and write that story. Instead of letting life just happen, we could outline our own personal plot. We'll learn the craft we'll need to accept that responsibility. We'll develop our ability to imagine in finer and finer detail. We can more exactly focus on what we want to accomplish, to attain, to become. -- Stranger Than Fiction, 37.

And as Murder By Death reminds us: "There's still time to start again."

This is why I think it is wrong to dismiss Nietzsche as a nihilist, because it is this idea that I find to be wholly life-affirming. He provides an alternative to the view that our lives are lived to achieve some goal in the afterlife. He says that our life is to be lived in the here and now, and we are to make the most of it. We are to choose the life that we would be willing to live over and over again.

Perhaps this is the litmus test we must pass in order to feel confident that our children's happiness is likely. If we don't pass this test, if we don't find our lives to be the kinds of things we would want to live again, why should we think our children would come to a different conclusion at some future date? To be sure, our children will likely face external constraints and concerns that are unpredictable and unanticipated, but humans have always had to find meaning in limiting circumstances. But if we look at ourselves, and those around us, and see a pattern of finding meaning and value in life's pursuits, then perhaps that is enough.

Or is it?

Perhaps it does not make sense to compare the meaning we find in our own lives with the possible pleasures some new life might hold. Indeed, our own lives are a given. We are already here, and given the circumstances, we should probably make the most of it. Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer before him, and Buddha long before either of them, conceded that life necessarily entails suffering. Nietzsche found sympathy with Silenus, of Greek mythology, who said, "that the best thing for a man is not to be born, and if already born, to die as soon as possible." One might also look to the contemporary poet, Philip Larkin:

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself. -- "This Be the Verse"

As Singer points out, there is a sort of asymmetry in the proposition of bringing a new life into the world. Perhaps it is the case that a new life will enjoy more pleasure than suffering, but there would be no suffering at all if that life was not brought into the world in the first place. And what of all the unknowns? What if the life that is brought into the world does not have the resources, whether they be cognitive or physical, to fashion the story he or she would want to relive over and over again? These are the questions that are difficult to answer without the benefit of omniscience. So what is a person to do?

One can tease out some themes from the preceding examples. Schopenhauer was a bit of a bastard with a misogynistic streak; Nietzsche, brilliant as he was, had no luck with the ladies and was crippled by physical ailments; Larkin is grouped in the literary movement known as "Angry Young Men." One might come to the conclusion that angry, pessimistic people who have little love for humanity are not the best to turn to when considering the future of humanity (though I think this applies more so to Schopenhauer than to Nietzsche). If one turns back to the utilitarian perspective, then he or she must consider examples of parents who have benefited greatly from their children, and whose children have, as a whole, been rather happy, and perhaps even contributed something to the greater good. If one resembles those parents more closely than the Schopenhauers of the world, then he or she might come to rather different conclusions than the latter. I think it is important to take seriously the concerns of Steven Pinker, who wrote in an article entitled, "My Genome, My Self," that his unborn children would have very likely suffered from "familial dysautonomia, an incurable disorder of the autonomic nervous system that causes a number of unpleasant symptoms and a high chance of premature death," given his genetic make-up. But we make decisions every day that could have ethical consequences for other people. We do not refrain from driving to work because of the slight possibility that we might hurt someone else in the process. We take care not to do things that would endanger other lives, and we act in ways that we think will benefit others' lives. Perhaps this is the best we can do when considering future generations.

What chance, a neo-Enlightenment?

2010-12-21T06:26:00.000-08:00

"Have courage to use your own reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment.
- Kant, What is Enlightenment?

Carpooling proves to raise a lot of interesting topics for discussion. Yesterday, as Joe and I ascended the last crest before Oneonta, he asked me if I thought a neo-Enlightenment was possible. In the last week, Kant seems to be nipping at my heels. Not only did the above quotation appear in an article I was reading the other day, but Stanley Fish quoted him today, from the same essay, in an article on education. If the "courage to use your own reason" is the motto of enlightenment, enlightenment itself is "man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity". Given the state of our times, it is safe to say that a neo-Enlightenment would be welcome. If only society could emerge from its self-imposed immaturity; if only using reason was the motto of the age...

It it useful to consider the conditions of the first Enlightenment, if we are to consider the possibility of Enlightenment 2.0. Granted, as a historian of 20th century U.S. history, I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of the era in all its complexity is limited. But there are a few things that stand out. First of all, Europe experienced a cultural revolution upon emerging from the Dark Ages, culminating in an appreciation for the Greeks, the artistic gems of the Renaissance, and the invaluable invention of the printing press. There is probably a chicken or egg dilemma here, but I think it is arguable that advances in technology allowed for scientific discoveries that challenged the influence of the church on the intelligentsia. The use of reason to explain natural phenomena, aided by technology, provided greater explanatory power than scripture. And thus, reason prevailed. For a spell.

The modern era, ushered in by the Enlightenment, is marked by its confidence in humanity's ability to grasp the nature of the world. Through reason and scientific inquiry, so the modernist would say, we can understand how things work, how we can make predictions about these things, and how we can master these things. And yet, this worldview was confined to a limited population. The intellectuals of this time were few, and the masses, well, massive. Literacy being what it was, the dissemination of intellectual life being what it was, the complexities of the Enlightenment were limited to a particular audience. Modern democracy stemmed from the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment was not necessarily democratic. So it goes.

Fast forward a bit: in the 21st century, we see some pretty harsh critics of this Enlightenment project, at least as far as reason is concerned. From the intellectual left, we find postmodernists abound, with their emphasis on the relationship between knowledge and power. As some would have it, "reason" is a social construct used as a weapon to gain and maintain power and order. From the spiritual right, we see attacks on science, on the grounds that it cannot grasp the totality of the human experience without recognition of spirituality. Scientific theories and explanations do not trump sacred texts, because, well, the Bible told them so. The 24-hour news cycle and the outlets of the internet provide venues for nearly every voice, no matter how extreme, and serve every audience, no matter how uninformed. At least on this translation, there is some irony in Kant's exaltation of using "your own reason", where reasonableness becomes totally subjective. Not quite what he had in mind, I presume.

In an exchange with a Jewish scholar and educator, David Brooks records the following:

"'We live in a relativistic culture,' she told me. Many people have no firm categories to organize their thinking...When they go in search of answers, they generally find people who offer them comfort and ways to ease their anxiety."

I find this to be a pretty fair assessment of our cultural climate, at least in much of the West. So the question is: Is this the stuff from which an Enlightenment springs?

I offer two possibilities; one is rather pessimistic, and the other is optimistic, requiring an explanation of what that Enlightenment would look like.

The first possibility: No way do we become more Enlightened. On the one hand, the Enlightenment happened, in part, because the Dark Ages yielded next to nothing in the way of material comfort or hope for the masses. If you want to put food on the table or organize a society, science and humanism does a lot more work than scripture. On the other hand, the Enlightenment happened in a rather controlled environment, where a limited number of people had access to the tools of discovery and the tools of dissemination. We look back to these times, as they have been canonized, because there were likely few alternative voices with which to contend. Rather short-sighted individuals could argue that the current state of affairs is comparable to that of the Dark Ages, as the middle class is hurting and there's not as much hope as we would like. But that is why I call them short-sighted. There has likely never been a more affluent and comfortable age. What would precipitate a shock to the system that would lead us toward, and not away from, more reasonableness? Perhaps not a lot. And second, the controlled environment is gone. Try as it might, the intelligentsia no longer gets to control the conversation. The conversation is controlled by mass media, which seeks to offer comfort and ease anxiety. And when mass media offers no such consolation, there is always the internet. No matter what your belief, no matter how unwarranted it might be, you can find vindication somewhere. So who needs "reason"?

In short: All of us. And this is my optimistic possibility. Given the economic upheaval of the last couple of years, and given the struggles we will likely face in years to come, cooler heads must prevail. When it comes down to fairly simple questions, such as, "How do I explain what has happened?" and "How do I predict what is going to happen?", reasonable, scientific thinking does us a lot more good than appeals to postmodern hegemony or sacred texts. I am not sure we have gotten to the point where it really hits home, because as I mentioned above, we are still incredibly comfortable. If the 24 hour news cycle continues to polarize, and the government ceases to govern, the populous will reach a breaking point. If the effects of climate change start to really affect people's lives, they will start to pay more attention to the scientists. As long as we have the comfort zone that allows us to believe what we want to believe, we'll go on believing anything. But I do not think we will have this comfort zone forever. At some point, we will have to start believing what is actually the case. And at the point, we may very well experience a neo-Enlightenment.

I have this hope that better ideas will win out in the end. If the 20th century is any example, then it is true that we sometimes have to endure horrors before those better ideas win out. If the waves of left- and right-leaning irrationality are to abide, it will likely require a shock to the system. With any luck, it won't be to the scale that the shocks of the Holocaust or the gulags were to fascism or communism. In any case, if we are going to steady the collective ship, if we are going to give future generations a chance, then we will do better with the prescripts of reason than those of our immediate impulses, of those things that will bring us comfort, of those things that will ease our anxiety. In short, a neo-Enlightenment would be the concession of complacency to reason.

The threats of, and to, a cultural front

2010-09-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

"The most important thing that they will tell you they're trying to do is a cultural movement, not a political movement. They're trying to reeducate the whole country, change the way Americans think about their relationship to government. Move us back to a more self-reliant, independent sort of watch dog against government mentality."
- Jonathan Rauch, on the Tea Party Movement

In the wake of a few more Republican primary upsets due to Tea Party backing, I heard an interview with Jonathan Rauch on NPR this morning. The preceding quote struck me, as my primary associations with the tea party were the overtly political rants of the Palin/Beck stripe. Though the threats of a Tea Party culture had been brought to my attention by fellow malcontents, it wasn't until this morning that I really pondered the consequences of a very new, very different, cultural front than those that have come before. The questions I would like to raise are related to the strengths and possible weaknesses of a new form of cultural politics.

If you have picked up a work of academic history published in the last ten or twenty years, it is likely that "culture" played very heavily in the introduction of the monograph. After many a historiographical tide has receded, the cultural approach to history has stood strong. I will not pretend to understand the intricacies of how this has taken place, or all the details that make this approach more attractive, but I think there are a few points that can be agreed upon. "Culture", taken as an abstract, is a product of the contingencies that spring up from the grassroots of a particular group of people. Defining a culture is typically an attempt at articulating the feelings, values, and attitudes of a large group of people, despite the often disparate or contradictory nature of the individuals' feelings, values, and attitudes. As a culture takes hold, it becomes the driving force for historical development; politics is merely the articulation (or manipulation) of the culture. I am probably being over-simplistic, but this gets at the idea.

If the essence of "culture" has been honestly represented, an important characteristic emerges. Culture is not rational. Far from it, culture is an amorphous blob that is constantly reworked to adequately explain a particular set of circumstances. The definition of a single culture might shift dramatically depending on the circumstances, and any attempt to codify a consistent or coherent system will likely fail. And that's only in the rear-view. The more important aspect of cultural fronts is their ability to motivate people towards particular ends, regardless of the consistency or coherency of the culture as a whole. If one knows how to manipulate it, one can tap in to the common values and fears of a group of people and direct it towards a common goal, regardless of the particular individuals' interests. If one surveys the demographics of the Tea Party, I don't think this cultural interpretation would be highly contentious. And if historians are right, then this is exactly the threat. If the Tea Party truly becomes a cultural front, it has the potential of transforming any sense of national identity, and a very different kind of "change" would likely follow.

Contrast this, for a moment, with many of the leaders of the left-leaning variety. In a totally unscientific approach, let's take the last three democratic presidential candidates: Gore, Kerry, and Obama. If one could find a consistent thread weaving through the political positions of these three figures, I think it would rest in an overt and unapologetic faith in reason. Sarah Vowell's characterization of Al Gore as a big nerd could easily be applied to Kerry or Obama, though the latter was able to veil his nerdiness with equal amounts charisma. At least on the campaign trail. The problem with Obama's presidency is that his policy has too closely resembled the political philosophy he has outlined in his writings, rather than the excitement found in his speeches. I don't mean to say that the democrats have been consistent or coherent, but they have couched their arguments in those terms. And if current polls say anything, it's that this approach is not convincing. While the Tea Party seems to grow.

I think it would be fatalistic, and perhaps ahistorical, to say that left-leaning Americans are doomed, that their political efforts will be consumed by the cultural tide of the Tea Party. Rather, elements of the "Tea Party Culture" so closely resemble the counter cultures of yore that its more nefarious efforts will likely fail. Like so many of the cultural fronts or counter cultures that have preceded it, too much emphasis has been placed on opposition, rather than practical solutions. One might argue that the Tea Party's anti-government perspective could easily be viewed in the reverse, as a libertarian expression of individualism. But the questions to be asked of a Tea Partier are: What would the constructive movement look like? Are we to cut taxes entirely and live off no more than we can supply for ourselves? Are we to cut out all taxes unrelated to defense spending so we can adequately protect ourselves from the dangers of foreign attacks, and nothing else? How do you define which government interventions are justified and which are not? I have yet to see a coherent and practical plan from the Tea Party that would simultaneously meet their anti-government impulses as well as their expectations of a just society.

I would not be so presumptuous as to say that such a plan will not emerge. But at present, I haven't seen it. This was exactly the problem of the counterculture of the '60s: you either became politically active on multiple, sometimes contradictory fronts, or you dropped out entirely. Those who erred on the side of the former (i.e., the political), probably didn't achieve a lot in the short term. But the fact that we are a more progressive and accepting society today than we were then might say something about their efforts. On the other hand, those who erred on the side of the latter (i.e., the cultural), have made little a mark. Without a positive platform, they had little to stand on. An overly optimistic person might argue that the better ideas of the Tea Party culture will slowly become the norm. For example, the government might eventually start spending with a keen eye on what it is bringing in. I don't think I'm that person, but I would like to be.

In the 1930s, in the middle of a depression, a socialist ideology became entwined with multiple threads of American culture: music, plays, movies. They became commonplace in a way that made them seem nonthreatening. But if you looked for nonthreatening, socialist culture in the '40s, you would likely come up empty-handed. It could be argued that World War II and the birth of the Cold War was solely responsible for such a drastic shift. But I think a convincing case could be made for the way the Roosevelt administration adapted policy to meet the needs of the day, muffling the cries for revolution. It will be interesting to see what future historians will say about the culture of the Tea Party, and perhaps more importantly, the Obama administration's response.

The New Tragedy

2010-08-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

Spoiler alert: If you plan on watching Brothers, Million Dollar Baby, or Revolutionary Road, the following post might give away important thematic details.

I have noticed a trend in recent years, regarding critically acclaimed films. They have to end badly. Very badly. I conducted an informal poll and found a trend: when asked what was the most depressing or disturbing film of recent memory, many people responded with movies that received Oscar nods. Million Dollar Baby, Revolutionary Road, and Brothers come to mind. I have seen all three of these movies, and in all three cases I can comment with approbation of the convincing performances portrayed by the actors and actresses. But by the end of all three, I was left with a lingering question: "Why did I just watch that?" To be clear: I'm not one to shy away from things because they might contain uncomfortable truths. As a history major, much of my interest was in uncovering such things. And yet, contemporary cinema often leaves me wondering if there isn't something sadistic in the production of certain films, or perhaps something masochistic in spending two hours watching them. The problem that has been nagging me the last few months is this: Why do some movies with unpleasant themes entertain me, while others leave me in a dreadful mood? On these rare occasions when I feel something can be learned from a philosopher, I rejoice.

It should come as no surprise that those folks who expend so much energy pondering the meaning of life and the nature of things would be attracted to the aesthetics of tragedy. Ever since Aristotle (and arguably in the writings of the pre-Socratics), tragedy has been a preoccupation of philosophers. Of all the philosophers, one of the most interesting accounts has been that of Nietzsche's. Nietzsche was a lover of the Greeks, and in his analysis of their tragedies, I think there is much to be learned. The primary distinction Nietzsche made, when discussing art, was that between the forms that he categorized as the Appolonian and the Dionysian. While the Appolonian is characterized by an effort to represent something perfectly, the Dionysian is found in those arts that are expressive, experiential, performative. In the case of the former, you might think of sculpture, such as Michelangelo's David; in the case of the latter: Sophocles's Oedipus. Whereas one might judge the quality of the Appolonian by how well it represents its subject, the Dionysian must be judged by the extent to which viewers were lost in its performance. Tragedy, as a Dionysian art, was meant to pull its viewers in collectively, to instill a sense of identification with the subject matter, to bring recognition to the human condition. Though there are comparisons to be made between the contemporary films mentioned above and the Dionysian, the differences are what lead to my discomfort.

It should be noted that much of Nietzsche's admiration for Greek tragedy came from its recognition of the inevitable pain of human existence. Yes: Life is hard, then you die. But Greek tragedy stared that fact in the face and made the most of it. Above all, the viewer was to be wrapped up in the drama, and ultimately vindicated by the honor of those who may very well come to a bad end. Tragedy, as an art form, was a way of staring suffering in the face and saying "Yes!" to life. It is hard for us, in contemporary society, to understand the audience's experience of Greek tragedies. But I have heard it likened to a rock concert where everyone is lost in the music. When we think about much of the content of pop music, we are not hard pressed to find examples of loss, of pain, of suffering. And yet, when we are swaying to the rhythm of these songs of love's victims, we are somehow transcending the pain of it all. So the question is: Why is there no transcendence to be experienced in the death of Kate Winslet's character in Revolutionary Road, in the alienation of Tobey Maguire's character in Brothers, in the mercy-killing of Hilary Swank's character in Million Dollar Baby? Here is my attempt at an answer.

The content of the films listed above is nothing short of overly-dramatic, however believable. At least in two of the three cases, much of the impact is in how believable they are. One well-acquainted with history (or at least of Mad Men) can imagine the sense of desperation in the '60s housewife. One that has been conscious in the last decade can recognize the returning veteran's disconnect with everyday life. But the similitude of the representations with that which is being represented is exactly the problem. If Nietzsche's insights are correct, and I think they are, then different forms of art serve different purposes. When the Appolonian and the Dionysian are confused, so too are the results of the combination.

Thanks to the technological developments in movie-making, and the skill of our thespians, contemporary films can represent the suffering of tragic figures with a great deal of precision. Just as Michelangelo represented the ideal form of David in marble, directors can now depict the pain of the traumatized veteran in digital clarity. And yet, that is not what tragedy set out to do; tragedy was meant to recognize suffering, but not represent it perfectly. Tragedy was meant to pull the viewers out of their own suffering, even if only to reconcile theirs with those of tragedians. Precise representation was the stuff of the Appolonian, of sculpture, of painting, perhaps of photography. Film, theater, music; that is the stuff of the Dionysian. When we seek the experiential in film, and return with precise representation, we are left wanting.

A bit of autobiography might explain my apprehension of the level of detail in which human suffering is depicted. It was the punk scene that pulled me out of my adolescent funk. Crammed into a living room with a couple of dozen like-minded individuals, bouncing to the discordant rhythm and screaming vocals of a touring band, the self is easily lost to the energy of the crowd. The motivation behind the music: irritation. The attraction to the music: frustration. The collective reaction to the music: catharsis. The experiences I had in the small punk scene of a southern city were the stuff of Dionysian dreams. We didn't always know why we were so pissed. We didn't always convey our anger artistically or realistically. But in the midst of it, we stared our suffering in the face and we said "Yes!" to life. It wasn't about getting things exactly right, it was about getting it out. If our goal had been representation, we would have been left wanting; since our goal was expression, we were fulfilled.

I won't pretend to know how closely films should stick to their representations of reality. I won't pretend that my opinion is the last word on this matter. But I do think there is something to be said for our attentiveness to what our art is meant to do, and how we intend to approach it. Representation and expression, Appolonian and Dionysian: perhaps, apples and oranges.

Still on the east coast, after all these years

2010-07-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

I once dreamt of a life as a professional skateboarder in San Diego. In this dream, diurnal as it may have been, this protagonist fashioned a life of his own making in a new and brighter locale. As meager an existence as it may have been, a one room apartment filled with books and CDs would be the home base between late night filming sessions and multi-week, multi-state tours. I pictured myself alone. At the time that was what I was used to and what I most feared. But alone in California seemed much less frightening than alone in my home town. As soon as I finished up with school and saved up enough money and had enough of a cushion and had everything in its right place I would set off on my great adventure so I could be who I really was. And yet, New York is California only to the extent that their economies might soon resemble each others'.

One could easily surmise that my failure to make it any farther west than Indiana is equivalent to my failure to ever prefix 'skateboarder' with 'professional'. There might be some truth to this, to the extent that I would have gladly relocated had some skateboard company decided to put me on their payroll when I was 16 and not nearly as good as sponsored skaters 2 years my junior at the time (Tosh Townend comes to mind). This is not to undercut the appreciation I have for the free wheels Accel sent my way, but I don't think a lack of significant sponsorship was the major stumbling block. In all honesty, I think the emergence of a certain kind of peace of mind was, and is, responsible for my continued presence on the eastern side of these states united.

According to Katherine Dunn, according to Chuck Palahniuk, "everyone looking to make a new life migrates west, across America to the Pacific Ocean" (Palahniuk, 2003, p. 14). I haven't thought about my long-dead dreams of moving west for years, until tonight. Though Dunn was speaking of the Pacific northwest, rather than southern California, this sentence struck a chord. In retrospect, I realize that my goal of moving to San Anything had much less to do with my career aspirations of becoming a professional skateboarder than it did my hope for "a new life." Any life. Any life, at least, that wasn't the one I inhabited in my mid-teens. Geographical displacement served as the change that I was too unimaginative to bring about in myself.

Call it inert, call it stoic, call it what you will, but I think there is something to be said for the peace of mind that comes with identifying fulfillment with the potentialities of the moment rather than those of an unpredictable future. There was a moment in my very first bedroom that was not in my parents' house when I realized I might have a role to play in education. Reading Lies My Teacher Told Me while recovering from knee surgery sparked the idea that I might have more important projects upon which to embark. Looking back, I can associate that moment with a great letting go. A letting go of the expectations that I assumed others had of me and a letting go of that other life in southern California I assumed I needed to fulfill. I will be the last to argue that we have a predetermined part we must play in our lives, but I do find it interesting that an educational role that has proven to be amorphous in its direction has been the center of gravity in my meandering path over these last 8 years. I may not be teaching US history (however revisionist) to high school students as I once thought I would be, but I am just as content as an advocate for information literacy in central New York as I would be in any other locale. In discovering a vocation that suited me wherever I might find myself, I quit equating happiness with a far-off land.

Towards reconciliation...

2010-07-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

"Writers on exotic cultures can be tempted to present them as embodying hermetically sealed total views, able to accommodate any objections, with no loose ends and no invitations to criticism or further inquiry. Such bodies of belief may also be represented as shared by all members of the culture in question. The aliens are taken to accept the local tenets down to the last detail, as if critically or skeptically minded individuals are unknown in foreign parts." Michael Williams, Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology

A typical introduction to philosophy will likely cover the subject of logical fallacies, or improper ways of arguing. One of the most important of these, as a result of it being one of the most common, is known as the "straw-man argument". Just as a man made of straw is much easier to knock down than an actual man, a straw man argument is much easier to topple than the real argument that is up for debate. The tactic is to say something like: "Proponents of health care reform want to see a socialized health care system in the United States, and we have all seen how well that worked in the USSR, so boo to health care reform". In reducing a multiplicity of nuanced arguments for a particular kind of health care reform to a simplistic depiction, the opponent of health care reform might seem to have taken the day, at least to the uncritical observer. But I think we can all agree this is just bad form.

When reading the above quote from Michael William's Problems of Knowledge, it occurred to me that I might be guilty of the very fallacy I told my students they would be hammered on if I saw it in their papers. Of course I didn't think of this until I had already accused my opponents of doing the same, but such is the rule when I find three fingers pointing in my direction.

Let us consider the exotic culture of academe. Within this culture, there exists no shortage of sub-cultures that will likely be further sub-divided, and on and on. Of particular interest for this discussion is the cultural shift, of sorts, that has taken place over the last half century or so. Let's call it "the post-modern turn". At the risk of oversimplification (note the irony, given the point of this post) this cultural shift is a reaction to the modernist tradition that placed a great deal of faith in humanity's rationality, and the notion that such rationality could unveil the workings of the universe so that we could better control it. As such, post-modernists looks at their precursor's tradition with a critical eye, paying particular attention to the ways in which those in power defined the subjects and methods of inquiry, and how that power influenced our body of knowledge. Coming from a philosophy department steeped in the analytic tradition, most of my former professors would likely be pleased that I have been actively decrying the post-modern perspective whenever I am granted the opportunity. This is done, of course, on the grounds that its all just a bunch of anti-Western, relativistic nonsense. Ah, but there's the rub.

The problem that one often runs into when describing a culture, as Williams points out, is that one attempts to describe it as static, as some sort of monolith. This is not done in the spirit of the talking heads you see on TV, who mean-spiritedly attempt to make the other side out to be a bunch of buffoons, but in the same way one creates a straw-man of sorts. It is easier to extract some of the most unique and salient features of a particular worldview and treat them as universal than it is to understand the nuances and variations within particular belief systems. Thus, when I lump "post-modernism" together as "a bunch of anti-Western, relativistic nonsense" I may very well be accused of constructing a straw-man. For shame. Indeed, post-modernism is no monolith. But then, neither is modernism.

My problem with post-modernism is that it so often treats the modernist (or Enlightenment, if you prefer) tradition as a monolith. On this view, the modern world is constructed by powerful white men with an undue faith in progress at the expense of everyone else. While there is a great amount of truth to this, from a historical perspective, I am uncomfortable with throwing the baby (as in the body of knowledge thus created) out with the bath water (as in the unfortunate history of oppression and suffering). The problem with this argument, of course, is its a bit of a straw-man. Just as the knowledge rooted in modernism, and the proponents thereof, cannot be pigeon-holed by the post-modernists' picture of the tradition, neither can post-modernism be likewise reduced by yours truly. The fact that I have found quite a few proponents of post-modernism to be of the relativistic stripe does not mean they all decry objective truths. The fact that many a modernist believed in the benefits of eugenics (or any number of other unfortunate consequences of positivism) does not mean we all do.

What's my point? I suppose my point is this: we have a lot more to gain from taking each other seriously than we do from ignoring entire bodies of knowledge on the basis of which team the proponents are playing for. This might seem to be a rather common sensical proposition, but I think it is worth remembering in an academic culture that prides itself on ever-narrowing areas of expertise. For U.S. culture more broadly, perhaps it is a good reminder for everyone, in our current political environment, that good ideas do not come exclusively in shades of red or blue. But that's probably a post for another day.

The Revolution Will Not Be Attended...if we don't do anything about it.

2009-12-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

I watched a film tonight called The Examined Life, and a political philosopher named Michael Hardt discussed a very different type of revolution than that of which we traditionally think. Hardt conceived of a revolution that did not replace an unpopular or illegitimate ruler with some other ruler, but that empowered the people to become rulers, to provide a true democracy. My first thought was that this was rather attractive. My studies in history have left me with the impression that revolution is often a tenacious campaigner that rarely keeps promises. The liberators so often become the tyrants. But if the liberators are legion, what benefit tyranny?

My second thought, based partly on my recent experiences in the world of higher education, is: But where is the legion? Where are the masses that want to constitute the true democracy? I don't mean to present yet another cynical critique of American complacency and apathy. In all seriousness, I mean to investigate the level of desire for self-direction that people actually have. In the library and in the classroom (next semester), I hope that my teaching reflects my sincere belief that there is great value in information and education, and that respect for that value can yield incredible results. I want to believe that any person's intellectual curiosity and motivation and exploration can bring about transformative change, in his or her life and in the lives of others. But what of those that show no signs of intellectual curiosity? What of those that seem to have little interest in their own autonomy?

An example: In a recent instruction session for an education class, I was walking around the computer lab speaking with students that were having trouble formulating a research topic. In many cases a brief discussion about their career goals and the kinds of problems they might encounter in those careers yielded interesting and engaging topics. One student began exploring the literature on teaching methods for special education, while another focused on discipline in primary education. The final student with whom I spoke, however, had another problem entirely. In this case it wasn't selecting the best keywords and subject terms for the database; it certainly wasn't narrowing down the overwhelming number of results. It was the fact that she wasn't interested in anything. At least that's what she told me. To my question: "What are some of your interests? What do you see yourself doing in education?" came the response: "Nothing."

It is likely that my face betrayed my sense of befuddlement, but I persisted: "You must be interested in something...What is it that made you choose education? What kind of issues do you see yourself facing in education?" I was thinking "What motivates someone who is interested in nothing to get out of bed in the morning?" In the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that the student was considering changing her major to nursing, but I would be surprised if a similar disinterest will not be found in the new career path. The sad thing is, and this is the really sad thing, this seems not to be a tiny minority. I am finding myself in more and more conversations with students who seem to have little to no interest in anything outside of their own world, nor do they seem to want to take the reigns of their own intellectual or educational development. The qualities of responsible and engaged citizens these are not.

One way to approach this issue is to turn to some form of essentialism that holds that individuals possess certain capabilities and limitations that determine their potential station in life. This view is not without its proponents. One of the authors of The Bell Curve, Charles Murray, has recently proposed an education system that resembles Plato's Republic. Such a system would weed out those of inferior capacity and funnel them into the jobs that require a minimum in the way of intelligence. There is a small, fatalistic part of me that wonders if this is not possibly the case. Do there exist lost causes that simply do not care about their intellectual development, that have little interest in the direction of their lives? Perhaps there is evidence for such conclusions. But perhaps there is an alternative that might yield more desirable results.

One of Hardt's main points was that too often revolutions have worked on the premise that the new citizens will have to be instructed by the newly empowered leaders to be a proper part of the body politic. In contrast, Hardt argues that citizens must be trained to be citizens only by being allowed to be citizens. To learn to be a part of a democracy is to take part in democracy. On this view, it might be argued that the students I encounter in the educational setting have not been treated as such. They very well might have been taught by those who had the view that their students must passively absorb rather than actively learn. It would be naive of me to expect a student who has never been prompted to steer the helm of her educational vessel to walk into the library and navigate the troubled waters of information in the way that I might hope. It is therefore my job to figure out ways in which years of programming might be debugged so that students understand the active role they have in the educational process.

The truth is, I might be wrong. Students might have been given every opportunity to direct their studies and investigations. They might have looked at those opportunities and thought, "Why bother?" They might have grown comfortable with putting forth minimal effort and receiving just as much as they needed to get by. But they might not have. And what do I, what do we, have to lose? It won't kill me to spend more time making my teaching more student-centered and more empowering. Convincing a few more students that there is an intrinsic value to being self-directed learners and participatory citizens is better than "Nothing."

A day on the job

2009-10-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

He says to me: "You don't got a weak stomach, do you?"

I say: "I don't think so, no."

He says: "You ever seen maggots?"

I think to myself: "Have I ever seen maggots?" I think: "Yes? No?"

I say: "I'm pretty sure I have, a couple of times."

He doesn't say anything.

It's one of the first cans. I dump it in the truck and the overworked bag splits open. I see maggots for perhaps the first time. It's not the sight of them. It's not the smell. It's the sickly-sweet combination of the two that doesn't get me. I find that I don't have a weak stomach after all. I look over to my colleague who is on the third can to my first. He is effortlessly heaving the waste of East Nashville while I struggle with the least of it. He pays me double at the end of the day for getting the job done quickly, for not stretching it out so I get more hours. He gives me an application, if I'm interested.

I write this because in reminiscing on the only job I've ever had that really sucked (and that I only worked one day), I recognize how fortunate I am to have a job I really love. And I didn't even hate it that much. How many of us have looked at the man on the back of the trash truck, wind blowing through his hair, and thought: "Wouldn't that be cool."

And it is.

Even if you are going 45 down Harding Ave. in the middle of Nashville, TN. It really is.

But I can safely say I am doing something now more suited to my goals and interests. Having put in a solid three months on the job, I feel confident saying I chose the right career after all.

Without justification?

2009-08-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

I wonder about what it is to say: it is because...

I did this because...

It must be because...

When so much might be explained by: It is because it is.

I did it because I did it.

It must be because it is.

Causality is a messy business.

How often can we really explain why things are the way they are, or why we did what we did, or why something must have happened? At least with certainty. My estimation is: not as oft' as we would like. This is not to say that it can't be done, or that it should not be for what we strive. But I ask that we think of these questions in terms of 1) our ability to provide relevant evidence, and 2) our motives for searching for such evidence.

My inquiry is two-, no, threefold: where such justifications are personal and where they are historical, and whene'er the twain shall meet. When we are trying to answer the 'because' questions, are we not often seeking justifications? And when we seek justifications, are we not seeking righteousness? Or at least 'rightness'? On the personal level, we are psychologically disposed to construct narratives that are coherent and justifiable. We attempt to couch our actions in a particular history, setting precedents for future behavior or justifying those of the past. We don't know all the facts, nor do we remember all the details, and we thus fill in the gaps.

It's called confabulation.

It's a hell of a drug.

There might be particular reprehensible actions that we can make little sense of, and in this absence we create stories that might assuage some guilt or responsibility. Or there might be habits that we excuse in light of other behaviors. In either case, for our own psychological health, we attempt to explain how such things are explainable, and thus, void of culpability.

Is the telling of history so different? Are we not constructing a narrative that validates our dispositions or villainizes our opponents? We know not all the facts, we know not all the motivations, we can little conceive of all the circumstances, yet we paint the brush as broadly as we need it to be. So long as we can make sense of it all, in a way that appeases our moral dispositions, so it is so.

What I wonder is this: I wonder if we are not better off dealing in tautologies. If we explain our actions in terms of the actions taken; if we explain our history in terms of the facts known. If we accept that causality is a messy business and we best seek the simplest explanation: I overindulged because it suited me to do so; the American empire arose because it did; conflicts perpetuate themselves because that is the nature of conflicts. Perhaps if we accept this simplicity we can accept that resolution requires a renunciation of aged and unhelpful practices.

I only say this because: So long as we justify harmful practices in acceptable moral terms, we do little justice to the latter.

Reflections on things to come

2009-08-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

I came in on 46 and I will leave by way of 37.

Never again will I drive the roads between Bloomington and Johnson City. In a few short weeks I set off in a northeast direction, rather than the southeast route to which I have grown accustomed. And the direction home will no longer be the same. I will wind through Appalachian mountains, nary a Midwestern plain to be seen. Walker Percy said that the Midwestern sky was "the nakedest, loneliest sky in America," and this is not a sentiment I have never felt. But in the last year, I have come to find an appreciation for this strange netherworld between south and north, east and west. I have tried to be a billy to these fine hills.

I have never had a move quite like this; where I have equal parts sadness to my hopeful excitement. Where I am not longing for an escape but looking forward to a new chapter in the story I started here. I only hope that I will get to keep many of the cast of characters that have put so much into this production. To have stumbled upon so many fine people in such a brief period of time is beyond fortuitous.

And yet, I wonder how Bloomington will weather the tides of memory. While it now stands as a foundation of sorts: in life, in love, and in work; it is a transitory place. It is a place where many will remain no longer than I did. Every return trip will likely contain fewer reunions. Yet the same can now be said about Johnson City, and I still look forward to every homecoming with the same enthusiasm. May the same be said about Bloomington in years to come.

I came in on 46 but I will return by way of 37.

An Ode to Spicoli; or Some More Crap About Rights

2009-03-20T20:55:00.000-07:00

If you have some prior knowledge of my thoughts on faith, fate, and other teleological phenomena, you might suspect that I would be dubious of things happening for a reason. But from time to time, I find coincidence interesting enough to comment upon. Tonight I watched one of the first great movies I have seen in quite some time. Milk is brilliant. Sean Penn deserved the Oscar, Dustin Lance Black deserved the Oscar. The United States deserves a slap on the wrist.

I returned to Nashville, TN for the first time in over two years this week. I was flooded with memories from my time there with my wife. Most of them were good. I have no regrets from my time there. But I was also reminded of the lapses I had while there. I remembered the conversation I had on one of those first visits. Sitting outside a restaurant, discussing many innocuous things, a not-so-innocuous issue came up. I remember the words: "I would be heartbroken if my brother told me he was gay." I was shocked.

These were strange words for me to hear. At that point, I was immersed in the punk scene, where matters of sexuality had moved beyond Judeo-Christian expectations. I was used to a discourse that found homosexuality to be anything but strange. But here I was, faced with a well-educated and incredibly bright individual that saw such a lifestyle to be antithetical to happiness. This was 2003. Give or take. Milk was set in the late 1970s.

I do not know if I have anything incredibly original to say here. My point is this: my point is that prejudices of a past that no longer benefit contemporary society should be discarded. My point is that a society that allows people to flourish and be happy is better than one that imposes restrictions that benefit no one and oppress many. My point is that as long as we favor oppression over acceptance, we will fail to meet the moral imperatives of thoughtful people, be they religious or secular.

I will step off my soap box now.

Some crap about rights

2008-06-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

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

Meeting people is easy

2008-06-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-06-10T06:15:00.000-07:00

...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

2008-06-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-06-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

- "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.

Some thoughts on words

2008-05-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

In one of the many pseudo controversies of this exciting primary season, Barack Obama was criticized for borrowing words to defend his use of words that were argued to be just that: words. In his speech, borrowing from Governor Deval Patrick, Obama referenced a few influential grouping of words: those spoken by Martin Luther King Jr., those inscribed in our Declaration of Independence, and those offering hope to Americans in the wake of the Great Depression. What is tellingly lacking in Obama's appropriation is an additional phrase, coined in JFK's inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country." Patrick relied on this in his response to accusations of him providing words without substance. Obama did not. And I think this to be indicative of a subtle shift in the trajectory of contemporary American liberalism.

Contrast JFK's inaugural address to a typical refrain in a recent Obama speech: "I believe it's time for Washington to work for your hopes, for your dreams." JFK's speech was a call to arms from an avowed Cold Warrior to a public that was not so evidently committed to the perceived requirements of America's clash with international Communism. It called for the people to "pay any price," to "bear any burden," in order to contain and combat the spread of Communism throughout the globe. What became clear through the course of the decade was the lack of unanimous support for such sacrifice. One might argue that a great deal of Americans were more interested in their own hopes, their own dreams. If the rise of the 1960's counter culture tells us anything, it is that the quest for self-fulfillment often took priority over the call for national solidarity. While intellectuals and politicians from William F. Buckley Jr. to Ronald Reagan capitalized on this rupture in American consciousness to usher in the rise of modern conservatism, Obama's platform is indicative of liberalism striving towards the rational conclusion of the premises implicit in the counter culture. By their lights, it would seem that the role of government is to provide an environment amenable to individualism and private self-realization rather than to promote communalism and public solidarity.

It might be argued that Obama's popularity results from his ability to speak the the collective narcissism of our age. That a generation crying "Me, me, me!" responds well to a politician so disposed. And this might be right. But I'm not convinced that this is the most significant conclusion to be drawn. If one looks at the policies of a government committed to granting individual liberty, then one finds a break from a country's monarchical colonial government; the emancipation of slaves; the slow process of extending the borders of citizenship regardless of sex and race. To be sure, these efforts were not without flaws--the Revolutionary War granted freedom only to landed white men; emancipation was followed by Jim Crow; the expansion of citizenship is not without its exclusions--but it is clear that we are a better place because of these developments, and it is not clear that we would be as well-off if the government had not been proactive in extending the benefits of liberty to more and more people. Furthermore, I have trouble imagining a plausible alternative.

The current understanding of a nation tends to focus on what Benedict Anderson calls an "imagined community," a collective imaginary of bonds that tie different people from different places into a singular whole. The problem in imposing such a conception of a nation on the United States is the conflicting narratives that construct individuals' sense of national identity. Over the centuries and across the land no essential element exists to found an immutable, immortal sense of national identity. But we do have some evidence that an environment amenable to individual flourishing so long as it does not impinge on that of another tends towards more peaceful and tolerant societies. Is this individualistic? Is this narcissistic? Perhaps, but perhaps it is also pragmatic. Perhaps we must ask our country to do for us so that we may do for it. All of this is to beg the bigger question: Which candidate is likely to move towards what I take to be the desirable end? That, I suppose, is for each of us to decide.

[Editor's note: The above political commentary is admittedly idealistic and perhaps leaning towards utopian, but it's the best this humble author can muster before noon on Memorial Day. Do read with a charitable heart.]

Music, memory, catharsis

2008-05-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

[The Blood Brother's abrasive "Jennifer" cuts the tension in my car like a knife.]
S: "What do you like about this music?"
D: "I don't know, there's just something about it..."

This is a dialog that has taken place a number of times over the years, with different artists being the cause for concern. The Blood Brothers are probably the most popular targets of such dismissive interrogations (I can hardly translate the sense of disdain in the voice of the inquisitor). And this morning, I believe I found the answer.

"While the cultured public thought music was just a collection of consonant chords played in neat meter, Stravinsky realized that they were wrong. Pretty noises are boring. Music is only interesting when it confronts us with tension, and the source of tension is conflict. Stravinsky's insight was that what the audience really wanted was to be denied what it wanted" (from Jonah Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist). If this doesn't get to the heart of the Blood Brothers' caustic cacophony of sound, I don't know what does-the unpredictable changes in tempo, the back and forth between fitful screams and pleading vocals, the abrupt conclusions of songs seeming to only be reaching their climax-these are the aspects of the Blood Brothers that hit me on a visceral level. Literally.

Lehrer's discussion of Stravinsky's genius speaks to a number of intuitions and curiosities that have long accompanied my appreciation of music. It has always seemed that music hits me in a far different way, on a much deeper level, than any other form of art. Schopenhauer placed music as the highest form of art in its ability to "transcend the will" (which I think translates to something like, "takes us out of ourselves," or perhaps more accurately, "breaks us free from our rational selves"). Furthermore, I have pondered for many years what it is in music that seems to tie me more concretely to my past experiences. This curiosity was further intensified by Lehrer's exploration of Proust's method in writing In Search of Lost Time. In that chapter, it is argued that our memories are most saliently tied to taste and smell, because of the way those senses are wired in the brain. This seemed counterintuitive to me, due to my own experience of memories being triggered by particular objects (from sight) and even more so by music. It turns out there is a method to my madness.

When Stravinsky's "The Rites of Spring" premiered in Paris, it inspired a riot. One is struck by the image of a crowd of bourgeois rising up in protest against a ballet, but so the story goes. On Lehrer's account, the plasticity of the brain allows for rewiring when faced with new phenomena. In listening to music, the brain unconsciously seeks patterns and imposes them on our auditory experience. When faced with dissonance, the brain has to a little extra work, and releases dopamine in the process. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter most intimately tied to our feelings and emotions, and in its release we experience a visceral reaction to our auditory inputs. This explains the rise one might feel in one's chest when responding to a song for the first time or experiencing a band's break from tradition in a live show. And more importantly for my purposes, it explains my deep attachments to certain albums and songs. The ones that I always return to when they fit my mood so perfectly. In joy, in anger, or in despondency, the right song is mine with which to identify, no matter how ambiguous the words or the structure might be. It is why I can't listen to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's live version of "Master and Everyone" without thinking of a particularly emancipatory time in my life; The Decemberist's "Engine Driver" without thinking of a overwhelmingly helpless period; or The Blood Brother's "U.S.A. Nails" without identifying with the ambiguous frustration implicit in its precise imprecision. Because in my own subjective experience, it seems my memories are tied not so much to cognitive reconstructions or narratives, but to the feelings I experienced (or project myself to having experienced) alongside whatever event the memory is tied to. And if a piece of music speaks to the same feeling that coincided with a particular event, it seems no great leap to see the connection. If the soundtrack to a particular event-say, Iron & Wine's Our Endless Numbered Days with a particularly lovely day on the couch with a particularly lovely lady-fits so perfectly with the experience, then how could I expect not to go back to that day every time "Love and Some Verses" pops up on the iPod shuffle?

I think this speaks to the cathartic, as well as the nostalgic, potential of music. When I find myself in a rut and want to feel anything else, to get out of my head, the dopamine distributing dissonance of the Blood Brothers might be all I need. It is why I turn to Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," when I want to feel the sting of nostalgia tied to simpler times in Nashville. And it is why the randomness of my iPod's shuffle can put me on an unpredictable roller coaster of memories and feelings long thought forgotten.

Zen and the art of cognitive maintenance

2008-04-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

What follows is something I wrote a few days ago but didn't post (ironically) because I thought it might be taken the wrong way by some of my potential viewers. Then I remembered that the point of the stupid thing was to remind myself that I would do well not to worry so much what other people think. Since I waited to post this, I thought I would add an epilogue tracking recent progress. I might be on to something after all.

The more things change...

...you know the rest. I'm finally writing a post that speaks to my blog's name. I started this thing because I've been in a rut, socially and academically, and was hoping to spark some discussion. While that might not have yet been achieved, it at least motivates me to put thoughts together in a more or less coherent fashion.

So about this rut. I had a bit of an epiphany today while on a hike (it certainly didn't take place during my visit to the therapist, which included a 10 minute discussion about her daughter's difficulties with standardized tests). I've experienced a general malaise the last few months, and I think I have pinpointed its resemblance to things past: the sense of alienation and role playing (not the good kind) I experienced during the closing months of my ill-fated marriage. To be brief, as my marriage took a turn for the worse, I realized a big part of the problem stemmed from my inability to express myself because of the bad reaction such expression would receive from Carrie. And here I am again: with the distinct feeling of anxiety that stems from regular self-censorship and role playing; followed by overimbibing; culminating in erratic, self-destructive behavior. Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, anyone?

I don't like to give Freud too much credit for anything, but he did have some plausible theories regarding the consequences of repression; my disagreement with him lies in his reliance on an unconscious censor, whereas I see the censor to be very much conscious, whether we like to admit it or not. The idea is: if you push things down long enough, and expend enough energy doing it, the effort will eventually waver and all that crap you've been pushing down will come right back up, with all the force and none of the control the ego might normally muster. In my case, this seems to follow the consumption of one too many beverages (my dreams are typically just as boring as my waking life).

Since I hate Freud, I might take the perspective of Cheri Huber, a Zen Buddhist of whom I very much admire. Her basic argument is that the more we resist the things we hate about ourselves, the more strength they have in directing our behavior. In Huber's view, the correct method of dealing with self-hate is acknowledging our faults or mistakes, taking note of them, but not attaching ourselves to them; not identifying with them; certainly not resisting them. Rather than dwelling on our perceived inadequacies and thinking, "I hate that about myself. Why do I always do that? I'm such an idiot," Huber thinks it better to look at the behavior and say, "Hmmm, that's interesting." My understanding is that in detaching oneself from the situation, rather than identifying oneself with it, it is easier to try to calmly assess the causal factors, make a note to self, and move on. If one would prefer a more scientific take, the most common and successful form of psychotherapy, cognitive restructuring, prescribes a similar method. When one begins feeling anxiety, for example, one might acknowledge the numerous physiological manifestations (increased heart rate, shortness of breath, etc.) and try to passively observe, rather than actively identify with the physical sensations in order to change the psychological connections previously associated with such phenomena.

So how does this all come together? The longer I stayed with Carrie, the more clear it became that a number of my core attributes and values were not particularly welcome in day to day affairs. The more I tried to ignore or suppress these characteristics of myself, the more they built up until they came to a head in none too pleasant ways. In trying to be the kind of person I thought she wanted me to be, I came to feel a sense of alienation between myself and the role I was playing as her husband. Similarly, since my arrival in Bloomington, I have found myself surrounded by a number of people who I don't find to be particularly amenable to my true nature (which is basically that of a skeptical, cantankerous asshole). In trying to play the various roles I see as more appropriate to my core audience, I am constantly repressing my natural inclinations and reactions, only to find them resurface in none too constructive ways. This of course leads to me beating myself up over these slip-ups, leading to further repression...you get the point.

I don't know if this is a particularly stunning breakthrough, and I'm not exactly sure what behavioral changes it will entail, but I'm pretty sure that if I'm going to be me, I'm going to have to be the skeptical, cantankerous asshole some of you have come to know and love (or at least put up with). And with any luck, I'll get through yet another semester from hell and hope for a better one to follow; or at least a better attitude towards it. Fingers crossed, eh?

Epilogue: So that was Tuesday, if I remember correctly. Here it is Saturday, and I can already tell a difference. Last night, for example, I ended up on the same roller coaster I was stuck on a couple of months ago. As I drove away from from the apartment of the former subject of my affection, I noticed myself growing frustrated and angry. And I thought to myself, "Hmmm, look at that. Dunstan is getting worked up again." Then I was able to laugh. I think that is one of the most important parts, following the stepping back and the observation: the ability to laugh at silly mistakes. Last weekend's mistakes, for example, I just look at and chuckle. I think, "There went Drunkstan again, silly bastard." Then I laugh. And I get on with it. I think my biggest problem is that I tend to take things way too seriously, and in giving them the weight that I do, I crush myself. But right now I feel much lighter, thank you very much, and I intend to stay that way. At least until I move in with my new roommate who cooks the most incredible meals, determining my future existence to be that of a certifiable land whale.

Indolence upon indolence

2008-04-19T07:52:00.001-07:00

At this point in the semester, you aren't going to get anything interesting out of me. So I'll just pass on things that I wish I had thought to write. Such as the following little snippet:
Dating the poorly-read

I might have a post in the near future on the successes of mindfulness/cognitive restructuring; so long as the benefits seem to last longer than four days. Here's to hoping.

Cultural offering

2008-04-11T08:09:00.001-07:00

This poem should have been the preface to Rorty's Achieving Our Country. If you don't read the whole poem, just note the brilliance of these two simple lines:

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Feel-good theism

2008-04-06T07:02:00.000-07:00

I just got off the phone with K____, who is reading Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. He is finding many of the arguments quite compelling, just as I did when I read it about a year ago. And we discussed how this begs the question: "Why is it that people like us find these arguments convincing while it is obvious that a majority of Americans (and people throughout the world) are not so compelled?" In fairness, as I understand it, K____ has never had any intuitions or predilections about the existence of God or the messianic status of Jesus, and I could rightly be labeled a flip-flopper, as I've gone back and forth on the issue over the years. But maybe there is something to be said for the fact that I have had different intuitions at different times, and certain arguments have proven to stick with me more so than others. But that doesn't tell me much about why people like K____ and I remain in the minority. Here's my hypothesis: Much of contemporary America has subscribed to a strange form of theism that defies both traditional Judeo-Christian conceptions of the nature of God as well as grounds for reasonable exchange.

I know that sounds like a rather strong statement, so I would like to make a qualification. I have a number of friends with very interesting theological positions and well thought out arguments for those positions. These are people that are well read in both the bible and theological literature and have a great deal of knowledge that grounds their intellectual/faithful position. What follows does not reflect those individuals, and people like them. Nor do the preceding qualifying statements reflect what I take to be the mainstream in American religion. Though I'm certainly willing to field objections. That being said, here's what I take to be the problem...

Traditional Christianity, founded in the New Testament as prophetic substantiation of the Hebraic literature that preceded it, provides a distinct (yet sometimes ambiguous) vision of the nature of God. As in most conceptions of a theistic God, the Christian God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Furthermore, this God sent his son to die on the cross for the sins of mankind. Finally, certain (yet sometimes conflicting) prescriptions are set forth for followers of Jesus to live by. While I will not attempt to lay out all the specifics, I take the fundamental tenets to be a commitment to God the father and his word (as inscribed in the Old Testament), love of mankind, and adherence to traditional Judaic morality (as codified in the ten commandments and the books of law). Not inessential to the Christian world view is the belief that in the end, God is going to somehow sweep in and right the wrongs of time immemorial. This last claim is perhaps controversial, but I don't think the words of Jesus can properly be understood without some recognition of this apocalyptic world view. While this all seems straightforward, I find it not to be reflected in much of the dialog (or lack thereof) pertaining to contemporary American faith. Rather, what I find instead is what might be understood as "feel-good theism", or perhaps "Oprah spirituality" if you would prefer.

What I hear so much in conversation and in past philosophy classes is an adherence to a God that is good, and provides meaning, and will accept you for whoever you are. While none of these claims are necessarily opposed to the outline I provided above, I find furthermore, either explicit in articulation or implicit in behavior, a pattern of inaction. What I see so often is not a lifestyle reflective of Christian belief, but an individualistic lifestyle that takes the mere agreement with above principles to be enough. What I hear so often are justifications for arguably unholy behaviors on the grounds that, "God knows me and my flaws and is accepting of all my illicit behavior [even if I am making no effort to alter that behavior]." What I find even more confusing is the pluralism of this feel-good theism. My impression of the Judeo-Christian God is that he is a rather jealous God who is wholly uninterested in alternative religious allegiances. Yet what I hear so often is the fuzzy acceptance of all forms of spirituality, no matter how incongruous they may be with the gospels. "It doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you believe in something, and my God will be down with that." The point is, in some ironic reversal, the feel-good theists have created God in their own images. I take this to likely be a product of a society that has grown increasingly individualistic since the end of World War II. A society where belief is not required to be founded on external justification but on what makes one feel good, or what best lines up with private goals and aspirations (no matter how inconsistent those goals and aspirations might be with civic or religious responsibility). You might rightly wonder, "So what? What's got you so worked up about this?" So I'll tell you...

The biggest problem with this kind of belief is, as Sam Harris might say, it is a complete conversation stopper. There is no way of arguing with such positions, regardless of what unfortunate behavioral outcomes might stem from them. Letter to a Christian Nation can never convince a feel-good theistic nation (even if it has enough trouble reaching a Christian nation). There are no grounds for reasonable exchange when belief rests on some sort of psychological need rather than evidence or justifiable argument. And this strikes me as bad for democracy. If the goal of democracy is to achieve a better society through persuasive discourse, I take better forms of persuasive discourse to be that which stems from the presentation of evidence and factual information. Otherwise debates are reduced to rhetoric. Which I take to be a bad thing. Admittedly, the realist in me recognizes that this might be the case regardless of religious or political persuasion, and the pragmatist in me wonders if I shouldn't just learn to play the game. Regardless, the idealist in me hopes that the epistemological impact of post-war individualism will one day retreat to allow for more reasonable democratic exchange. Fingers crossed, eh?

The Self and its Discontents

2008-04-05T06:53:00.001-07:00

I am currently reading Bob Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles and while I'm not particularly taken by Dylan's prose, I have found one aspect of his development relatively interesting, insofar as it relates to some of the material I covered in my undergraduate thesis. As many of you probably know, Bob Dylan was once Robert Zimmerman, until he decided to change his mid-west persona to become the folk singer with whom we are all now familiar. The way he tells the story, he felt he wasn't Robert Zimmerman; he didn't identify with anything from his past in small-town, conservative, Cold War America. And thus he became Bob Dylan. While this point might merely be metaphorical, in many ways he sounds like he is describing a reinvention of himself without regard to his past. If anyone is familiar with some of the ideas I developed in my thesis, one might guess why I find such a proposition puzzling: Can someone feasibly conceptualize oneself divorced from the past to which one's present necessarily refers? My intuition is that such a feat could not be accomplished without some level of psychological discord.

If any of the claims in my thesis bear some resemblance to reality, I think the most promising candidates are found in my discussion of the self, and how it is to be rightly understood. The simplified version goes something like this: The self is no more (or no less) than the narrative that an individual constructs to explain the individual's situation at the present moment. In matters of personal identity, when philosopher's ask what it is that makes a person the same person at t1 and t2, I think the answer is to be found in his or her own narrative. To put it plainly, the self is simply the story that one tells to provide coherence to one's current situation with reference to one's past. And this is where I find difficulty in the intelligibility of Mr. Dylan's story.

In developing my view of the self, I built off of Richard Rorty's philosophy, mostly from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity and an essay on what he takes to be Freud's contribution to self understanding, "Freud and Moral Reflection." Rorty sees a normative dimension to the narrative conception of the self. When people are given choices on how to act or what to do in a given situation, they should ask themselves: "What kind of action would I perform that would make for a story I would like to tell later?" or "If I do this rather than that, what kind of story would I have to tell about myself later?" [Editor's note: Though this looks (and is) rather subjective, Rorty's pragmatism precludes options that would result in the suffering of others. To be brief, these kinds of questions relate to the development of one's self, and pertain to projects of private self-fulfillment. Rorty sees nothing incongruous between such projects and those of social solidarity, i.e., those of ethical/political spheres.] I will admit that a logical contradiction does not seem to arise in what Rorty takes to be essential to the self and what Robert Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan, claims to have done. It seems logically possible to say that Robert Zimmerman looked at the narrative that led to a particular moment, at which point he said: "From hereon, I am Bob Dylan, and I want the story I tell later to contain no elements of Robert Zimmerman's life." But logic and experience rarely match up as neatly as we might like.

Elsewhere in Rorty's political philosophy, he speaks of the importance of a certain kind of nationalism. Rorty's nationalism is one that recognizes the failures of the past, but calls for the individual to identify with the kind of liberal democracy he or she wants to achieve; this nationalism assumes that such national allegiance will translate to a commitment that inspires proactive involvement in a better future. Implicit in this conception of nationalism (I think) is a subscription to a narrative conception of national identity: The nation is no more (or no less) than the narrative constructed to explain the nation's situation at the present moment. Achieving desirable ends seems improbable without recognition of the nation's past. Practical adjustments to national failures seem wholly unrealizable without such recognition. So should we expect anything less from the self?

This is my intuition that stems not from logical conclusions but experiential premises: A decision to reinvent oneself is necessarily predicated on a past that would make such a decision intelligible. Therefore a total disavowal of that past is unintelligible. For why would one feel the need to reinvent oneself, from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan, in the absence of a prior story that doesn't jibe with the story one wants to tell in the future? If this reinvention attempts to erase the past that provides its explanation, how can one not feel a sense of alienation from oneself? It would be as if someone creates an artificial break in a narrative and attempts to render coherent a life lived without precedent. Would it not be better to acknowledge and own the past that led to such a decision, rather than attempt to divorce oneself from oneself? I admit that my hang-ups on these issues reflect the sense of alienation I experienced in my past endeavors to reinvent myself in ways inconsistent with the life I led prior. Based on my own personal experience, I wonder if there exists some substratum of beliefs and values that is so entrenched in our narratives that any attempt to reinvent the self in ways incongruous will only result in alienation or anxiety. Regardless, I wonder if there isn't something more universal here than my own personal experience. Or maybe, as Scot Kotterbay would say, I'm just smoking crack.

Jason Hurd, ladies and gentlemen

2008-03-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

He's still fighting the good fight...

Quote for the day

2008-03-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

This could have come straight out of Catch 22 (which I finished yesterday; highly recommended). But it actually came from an American-born Japanese student during the escalation of the Sino-Japanese War:

"This dying for your country is not my idea of living a long life."

That's right up there with one of my favorite Bertrand Russell quotes:

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."

Words for the non-committal.

Fitna update

2008-03-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

Here are some alternate translations of verses cited in the Fitna film (below):

[8:60] You shall prepare for them all the power you can muster, and all the equipment you can mobilize, that you may frighten the enemies of GOD, your enemies, as well as others who are not known to you; GOD knows them. Whatever you spend in the cause of GOD will be repaid to you generously, without the least injustice.

[47:4] If you encounter (in war) those who disbelieve, you may strike the necks. If you take them as captives you may set them free or ransom them, until the war ends. Had GOD willed, He could have granted you victory, without war. But He thus tests you by one another. As for those who get killed in the cause of GOD, He will never put their sacrifice to waste.

[4:89] They wish that you disbelieve as they have disbelieved, then you become equal. Do not consider them friends, unless they mobilize along with you in the cause of GOD. If they turn against you, you shall fight them, and you may kill them when you encounter them in war. You shall not accept them as friends, or allies.

It seems that the main difference is the qualification that these things can be done in warring circumstances. I'm no Arabic scholar, so I wouldn't know how to get to the heart of these translations, but I thought it was only fair to post them. Regardless, my central concern remains: Within the context of a liberal democracy, that rests on the viability of open, reasonable exchange, antiquated texts simply don't do us a lot of good. I think Sam Harris said it well when he said that reference to such texts or beliefs is simply a conversation-stopper. When trying to come up with practical answers to contemporary problems, I don't see the benefit in simply pointing to a text, whether it be the Bible, the Quran, or the Constitution. I have similar problems with Supreme Court decisions that treat the Constitution and its amendments as if it was a sacred document that is without error.

Cultural offering

2008-03-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

One of my fellow librarians passed this on to me, I thought it was pretty neat:
Book art

Time to kill?

2008-03-28T08:06:00.001-07:00

Here's one way to waste the day:
Cute with Chris
Click on View Recent Episodes for a good dose of web video humor. My favorites are his renditions of T Pain's brilliance (just google 'cute with chris t pain' to see for yourself).

Fitna (schism)

2008-03-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't quite decided how I feel about this. When I get the chance I'm going to go through and check the quotes from the Qur'an to see if there are alternate (less sadistic) translations. Regardless of theological interpretation, the fact that some of these views speak to an audience at all is troubling, raising the question: How does a liberal democracy confront decidedly illiberal ideologies within its borders? Hopefully I'll have that all figured out by the time Jason and I run for the presidency.

Oh, for fu...

2008-03-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

According to the (I assume flawless) polling of CNN, 47% of Democrats plan to vote for McCain if their candidate doesn't win the primaries. Granted, in 2004 I thought, "no way is America going to RE-elect (or elect) Bush," and we see how right I was. But seriously, I really didn't think we would have another 4 years of a Republican executive. If Democrats can't realize the lack of difference between Obama's and Clinton's policy positions, and can't realize the drastic difference between either of them and McCain, maybe they deserve whatever is coming to them. There goes the idea that democracy rests on rational discourse. Maybe Gorgias was right after all.

Oh, and happy birthday Viagra. 10 years strong, apparently.

Why I am so old...

2008-03-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

Perhaps not as inspiring as "Why I am so clever," or "Why I am a destiny," but if you were expecting the prose of Nietzsche, you were looking in the wrong place to start.

Seriously though, you might reasonably ask yourself, "Why is a 24 year old claiming to be old?" It's all relative, you see. You must consider context. When a 24 year old rolls up to the local skate park, chances are good he will have 10 years on 50% of the population. So that's a start. But the other thing is my attitude towards the youth of today. Those darn kids. Because back in my day, ("When I was their age," if you will), skateboarding had a social element to it. Yes, skateboarding has always been an 'individual' sport, but that's only part of it. That part's about the freedom of going out and skating by yourself and not needing a team or a coach or what have you. The other part, and perhaps one of the most important parts, was the sense of community you got by recognizing a fellow traveler by the torn up sneakers and logo-laden t-shirt. This was the part that allowed you to walk up to a complete stranger in a new place and start a conversation because you already knew that you had at least one thing in common (with the likelihood of many more things, given the circumstances). But alas, those days are behind us. Or so it would seem. Most days when I get to the skate park, usually earlier in the day when there is a smaller crowd, my greetings go unheard. Those greetings being the ones I extend before I realize the floppy hipster hair-do is covering up the ear buds connected to the iPhone that will inevitably be answered as the skater lazily cruises through the middle of the park, oblivious to his surroundings. The whole iPod at the skate park thing only furthers my contention that technology is slowly sapping our ability to communicate with each other like normal humans (as I type away at my blog). The fact that I have composed the above rant proves that I am, in fact, so old. Oh, and my knees hurt. I can't even sit cross-legged anymore.

And we respected our elders. We gave the old man credit when he actually landed a flip trick, no matter how sloppy. Because, hey, at least he didn't early-grab. Little punks.

Got Faith?

2008-03-23T06:09:00.000-07:00

These guys do:

These guys don't:

Happy Easter everyone!

Website

2008-03-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Skateboard culture time waster:
Epicly later'd

Melodrama

2008-03-21T19:30:00.001-07:00

So I'm watching a basketball game (not something I do often) and I've determined one thing: Basketball players are overly dramatic when it comes to injuries. I just watched a guy rolling on the ground screaming and making terrible faces because he came down on his ankle a bit wrong. It was apparently so bad that he had to sit out for like, five minutes. Not to say that skateboarders are way tougher or anything, but I can't help but remember the time Jake Brown fell about 30 feet to flat on a vert ramp and walking away after regaining consciousness (see link below for video documentation). I guess he should have milked it and made a bigger show out of it; after all, he did break a couple of bones and suffer some internal bleeding. But twisted ankles do hurt. Real bad.

Jake Brown Slam

Barack Obama Speech

2008-03-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

I assume many of you have already seen this, but if not, I highly recommend it. I kept hearing people say it was the best speech they've heard from this generation and I assumed they were blowing hot air. But I think I can get on board. I can't remember the last time I heard a politician sound so insightful. But enough from me, here's Obama:
Obama speech, 03/18/08

Impossible Subjects Book Review

2008-03-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

I write this partly so people know that I write about history from time to time. Also because this is really an important book, even if it isn't always easy to get through. It illustrates the historical contingencies that underlie a number of legal categories that we take as given, such as 'illegal immigrant' and it raises issues about what such categories say about a supposedly liberal democratic society. This is probably the worst work I have done in grad school, to be honest, so don't be surprised if you catch yourself thinking, "Wow, Dunstan has lost his touch." Oh, and here's a taste of what I'm doing with library science:
FBI Pathfinder
Women's History Selected Bibliography
Without further ado...

Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Illegal immigration has become, in recent years, an issue of seemingly grave importance in the minds of many Americans. It is seen as a natural label for those who have crossed U.S. borders without going through the proper channels. Mae M. Ngai’s Impossible Subjects challenges such a naturalized view of the illegal immigrant, arguing that the very phrase denotes a relatively recent phenomenon born of restrictive policies that were themselves products of American views of race, citizenship, and the nation in the twentieth-century. In doing so, Ngai suggests “that a historical perspective might show us how sovereignty’s content and relationship to other legal and moral norms are contingent—and, therefore, also subject to change” (12). Drawing largely from immigration service records, judicial and congressional decisions, as well as oral histories and contemporaneous periodicals, Ngai uses the experience of numerous immigrant groups to persuasively ground her argument. While her use of sources might strike some as indicative of a top-down approach, and the structure of the work sometimes rejects a smooth narrative, both features ultimately prove to serve her purposes well.
Impossible Subjects spans the years bridging the first restrictive quota immigration bill, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, and the more liberal, yet still restrictive, 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. Ngai begins by documenting the changing attitudes following the first World War that led to more racialized and territorial legislation. New racial concepts and stronger borders resulted in different trajectories for European and non-European immigrants, in terms of racial formation and “prospects for full membership in the nation” (13). The Johnson-Reed Immigration Act’s passage imposed a numerical limit on immigration and created a quota system founded on nationality and racial desirability, placing illegal immigration at the forefront of immigration law (17). Ngai goes on to show how the policing of the borders and the accompanying deportation policies further solidified illegal immigration’s status.
On establishing ideological premises of illegal immigration, Ngai provides case studies for four nationalities acutely affected by judicial and legislative policies. She argues that the U.S. treatment of Filipinos and Mexicans in the 1920s betrays a colonial relationship, the former explicitly due to their colonial status, and the latter implicitly due to their migrant status within the American politic. Mexican workers in the United States created a system of ‘imported colonialism,’ or a “de facto socio-legal condition embedded in formally noncolonial relationships and spaces, in which free citizens of Mexico, an independent nation-state, voluntarily contracted to putatively free, waged labor, within the United States proper” (129). The third section shows what effect international relations had on policy towards Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans and in what ways these relations differed from those with immigrants of European descent. Ngai tells a different story of the Japanese American internment, focusing on the multiplicity of loyalties of those interned, leading to renunciation in a number of cases. Following World War II and the Communist takeover of China, fears of Communist Chinese loyalty during the Cold War led to a campaign calling for the confession of ‘paper sons.’ This campaign revealed complex networks of real and fabricated familial relations and acted to further cement racialized notions of illegal immigration, even as it attempted to project benevolence in accepting honest Chinese Americans into American membership. Finally, Ngai reconsiders the scholarly acceptance of the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 as an inherently liberal measure. In fact, the act “promoted both greater inclusions and greater exclusions” (263). While abolishing the national origins quota system, it also restricted immigration from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin American to a greater extent than ever before. The book concludes by noting the paradox of this act actually increasing levels of illegal immigration.
The strengths of Ngai’s work are unique insofar as they initially presented themselves as weaknesses and eventually came to crystallize as assets to the project at hand. Regarding sources, Ngai’s reliance on congressional and judicial decisions at first came off as unhinged from the socio-cultural climate in which these decisions were made. However, on reflection, I realized that this utilization of sources solidified her initial claims that the laws not only reflect the popular sentiment of a particular time, but go further in codifying the normative conclusions such sentiment entails. Her analysis of these texts highlights the naturalization of ideas and inclinations that at one time were not so natural.
Regarding structure, I was at first put off by the lack of narrative flow between sections and chapters. The work reads, at times, like a collection of essays with brief introductions to each theme. But again, on reflection, I found this to reaffirm her contention regarding the contingency of different alien groups becoming illegal. In many ways the judicial treatment of different nationalities within the United States lacks a smooth narrative flow, and reflects the specificity of particular conditions that allowed such policies to take hold. No better chapter illustrates the matter of contingency than that dealing with Filipinos, who act as a unique case study due to the colonial conditions that grounded their initial status in the U.S. and the multiplicity of classifications that took place within a single generation. In this chapter, Ngai argues that “Filipino migration lay bare contradictions between the insular policy of benevolent assimilation and the immigration policy of Asiatic exclusion, which had fully matured by the 1920s and domestic racism generally” (97). The United States initially accepted Filipinos into America as U.S. Nationals, neither alien nor citizen. Filipino migration to the U.S. increased during the 1920s, only to be met by racial violence fueled in part by fears of perceived economic competition and gendered prejudices. In response to this violence, supporters of exclusion called for the independence of the Philippines with the intention to repatriate Filipinos in America who desired to go back to the Philippines, without the option of returning to the U.S. Though full exclusion did not succeed, due to Filipino alliance in World War II, Ngai sees the Filipino in America “to return to a state of invisibility” (126). Thus the Filipino experience stands out as an example of how the contingencies of domestic and international policies prove to categorize individuals in decidedly illiberal ways.
Overall, I found Ngai’s Impossible Subjects to be an engaging and thought-provoking read. The work was able to document a unique historical phenomenon that presents serious difficulties to liberal democratic thought without coming off as overly preachy. While it is obvious that Ngai has an ax to grind over the consequences of classifying individuals as ‘illegal aliens,’ it is equally apparent as to why this is, and should be, the case. In a time when illegal immigration is listed amongst Americans’ top five chief concerns, it behooves us to recognize what a recent phenomenon this issue is, and the racialized thinking foundational to its existence.