July 2012

The Examined Life

By in books, history, philosophy No Comments

Adrian Wooldridge:

Both men specialised in mixing history and philosophy. Berlin abandoned the analytic philosophy of 1930s Oxford for the history of ideas. He wanted to explore the great issues at the heart of political theory by interrogating the great thinkers rather than play games with words. Trevor-Roper believed, like the 18th-century historians who were his models, that “history is philosophy teaching by example”. He argued that historians should study problems that illuminated the human condition, such as the relationship between religion and social change or the state and the society that supported it. And he believed that historians can make a unique contribution to studying these problems by escaping the tyranny of time and place: he viewed Nazi Germany through the eyes of Tacitus, and McCarthyite America through the eyes of Erasmus.

This mix of worldliness and unworldliness—familiarity with affairs of state coupled with philosophical detachment—holds the key to the continued appeal of both men. They chose to address big subjects rather than solve academic crossword puzzles. They wrote for the educated public, not just cloistered scholars. Berlin produced a stream of essays on great political thinkers ranging from German nationalists to Russian novelists. Trevor-Roper roamed across the centuries: though his first love was the 17th century, he also wrote about Hitler’s Germany, the rise of medieval Europe, and, in one of his liveliest books, an Edwardian fantasist, forger and sex maniac, Sir Edmund Backhouse.

I haven’t ever read Trevor-Roper—though I suppose I’ll almost be compelled to now—but Isaiah Berlin has always been a joy for me to read. Not quite as succinctly quotable as other favorites (“a formidable polymath, and a prodigious, if donnish, talker,” as Arthur once said to me) he’s still one of my formative influences. I actually had both John Gray’s and Michael Ignatieff’s biographies of him on the bedside table when I happened upon this article. Serendipity.

A River of Filth

By in foolosophy, nietzsche No Comments

Truly, man is a river of filth. One must be like an ocean to be able to receive a river of filth without being contaminated by it.

— Nietzsche

Walter Kaufmann

Shakespeare, like the Greeks before him and Nietzsche after him, believed neither in progress nor in original sin; he believed that most men merited contempt and that a very few were head and shoulders above the rest of mankind and that these few, more often than not, meet “with base infection” and do not herald progress. The prerogative of the few is tragedy.

…The difference between comedy and tragedy—as is more evident here than almost anywhere else—lies in the point of view. In essentials, Troilus and Cressida agrees with Hamlet; if anything, the poet’s disillusionment has become still deeper in the comedy: he no longer expects anything of men and has ceased to be disappointed by their meanness and stupidity, their lechery and their disloyalty. He almost seems more concerned to show that those who dwell on these faults are in danger of becoming doubly mean by their resentment, like Thersites. The noble man, like Hector, wastes few words upon the wretchedness of mankind and lives and dies nobly.

Cool Heads Have Failed; Now It’s Time for Me to Have My Turn

By in crime and punishment, revillaging, socmed, the madness of crowds No Comments

Kelly Bourdet:

Both young men pled guilty to felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism charges, receiving what Dietrich called “a slap on the wrist” as punishment for sexually assaulting her.

…Because Dietrich’s rapists were tried in juvenile court — and because David Mejia, an attorney for one of the young men, reported that their motion to hold Dietrich in contempt was an effort to enforce the law that protects juvenile actions from disclosure – I strongly suspect that the specifics of the plea deal classified the boys as juvenile offenders. The details of the young men’s plea deal have not been made public.

…Like other acts of vigilante, social-media-fuelled justice, Dietrich’s actions assure that the names of her rapists will be available to anyone with a search engine.

…Chris Klein, an attorney for one of the young men, said publicizing their names may create problems for them in the future. And that’s the point. There is a sector of society that believes that publicizing the names of sexual predators denies them of their rights and future opportunities. But this point of view only reflects the relative flippancy with which our culture views rape itself. It’s only when individual survivors of sexual assault and our society as a whole can hold rapists accountable for their actions that we can begin to confront the prevalance of sexual assault.

The Internet is proving to be an important means for survivors of sexual assault to reaffirm their own narratives and to hold sex criminals responsible for their actions. An entire cultural structure and, subsequently, the very court system in which she sought justice put pressure on Savannah Dietrich to stay silent about her rape. I’m so glad she didn’t.

I’m feeling very Socratic today. All I know is how little I know, but I’m surrounded by people who know just as little, yet are convinced that they have certain understanding of huge, complicated issues. So, yes, there’s a lot that I’m ignorant and unsure of in this case, but then again, that’s true of every other idiot with a broadband connection and ten minutes invested in reading possibly-incomplete and misleading news reports of it, so, what the hell, here’s what I’ve been thinking:

As the bolded line above reminds us, we don’t actually know yet what their punishment will be. It would be perfectly understandable if anything less than drawing and quartering would feel unacceptable to Dietrich, but, harsh as it may sound, we might want to take her opinion on the severity of punishment with a grain of salt for now. Maybe they are getting off lightly. We don’t know yet. Christ, I have yet to even read an article that makes it clear exactly how serious a juvenile felony conviction is, and whether that alone will cause immense educational/employment obstacles for them.

Some reports I’ve read have indicated that the gag order only holds until sentencing anyway. But even if that isn’t the case, there wasn’t any immediate need to convene an Internet tribunal. The boys weren’t going to escape or be forgotten in the next few weeks. We could have afforded to wait until their actual sentencing before deciding to trumpet their names across the web. And to continue the above point, perhaps we should wait until we know what that sentence is before deciding that they won’t suffer enough and casually doing what we can to increase it. Are they remorseful? Are they the sort of kids who might be humbled and changed for the better by community service rather than prison? I don’t know, and I doubt anyone else does either.

If, as a general rule, progressives see the “get tough on crime” push toward trying juveniles as adults as lamentable, perhaps they might want to think carefully before deciding that cases like this constitute an exception. And on a slightly related theme, do we really want to crowdsource serious legal matters? It feels like a significant step in the direction of Idiocracy to make American Idol-style online voting a factor in punishing criminals.

Spike Lee’s vigilante, social-media stupidity should have served as an object lesson on fanning emotions into mob action within a medium where consequences can easily and quickly multiply beyond expectation. Here’s all I’m really saying: what they did was terrible, and they should be ashamed. But I can easily imagine the possibility of a time, maybe a few decades from now, when circumstances will have changed enough, when they will have changed enough, that a fair-minded person would agree that they don’t deserve to be hounded mercilessly by self-styled Erinyes anymore. But we don’t know yet to what extent such inescapable scrutiny may preclude such a turn of events.

Birdbrains of a Feather

By in conspicuous crusading, free speech, moralizing, the madness of crowds, tribalism No Comments

Jonathan Merritt:

Should they swear off the legendary chicken sandwiches to support gay rights? Or could they eat one of the filets anyway, knowing their dollars would be but a drop in the bucket for a chain that has more than $4 billion in annual sales and donated a pittance to groups they may disagree with? I’d argue the latter — and this has nothing to do with my views on gay marriage. It’s because Chick-fil-A is a laudable organization on balance, and because I refuse to contribute to the ineffective boycott culture that’s springing up across America.

…I’m flummoxed that so many consumers are so quick these days to call for boycotts of any company that deviates from their personal or political views. For one thing, boycotts rarely cause actual pocketbook – rather than PR — damage. Most consumers don’t care enough to drive an extra mile to get the same product from someone else. And that’s especially the case for companies as large as Chick-fil-A, which has prime locations on many college campuses where there is little head-to-head competition.

But my bigger question is this: In a nation that’s as divided as ours is, do we really want our commercial lives and our political lives to be so wholly intermeshed? And is this really the kind of culture we want to create? Culture war boycotts cut both ways and are much more likely to meet with success when prosecuted by large groups of people, such as Christian activists, who are more numerous than gays and lesbians and their more activist supporters.

…From a business standpoint, some might say Cathy’s comments were imprudent if not downright dumb. But in a society that desperately needs healthy public dialogue, we must resist creating a culture where consumers sort through all their purchases (fast food and otherwise) for an underlying politics not even expressed in the nature of the product itself.

Someone somewhere on the Internet made the point already: most of the people threatening to boycott probably wouldn’t eat there in the first place; the people who do will largely shrug their shoulders and tuck in to another sandwich. More useless theater. But what exactly is it supposed to accomplish? As he says above, do you really think this is going to affect the company’s bottom line? Even if it did have a serious chance of doing that, what would be the goal? To put the chain out of business? To make it so that one less conservative Christian has political or economic clout? To convince him to see the error of his ways? To flex some muscle, make an example, send a message? Or is it just to flatter your self-righteousness and give credence to the delusion that much of what you do in your personal life matters at all in the big scheme of things?

Whether the nation is divided or not, I simply don’t want to live in a culture where everything from food to clothes to entertainment has to pass through a political filter before it can be appreciated. Politics is a regrettably-necessary evil. It’s one of the most disheartening, debasing, unrewarding activities that humans have ever invented, and it seems to be a magnet that attracts a disproportionate number of sociopaths. What kind of warped personality wants to increase its scope and presence in everyday life? Lest you think, though, that I’m simply incapable of idealism, let me assure you that I simply prefer to dream of a day when people stop treating every difference of opinion like a contagion that must be immediately quarantined and stop using economic sanctions as a loophole to reach the same results as literal censorship. I know, right? I’d like to envision a state of affairs where people realize that the fate of the world doesn’t hinge on winning whatever argument they’re having at that moment. I’m crazy like that.

Leaving aside my idiosyncratic definition of the good life, I agree that most consumer boycotts are ineffective knee-jerk reactions that rarely outlast the temper tantrum that spawned them, and I suspect that they’re quickly becoming just one more cynical means of signaling, that is, meaningless in and of themselves, only useful as a way of strengthening group identity. Sort of like any other vapid party where scenesters show up to see and be seen. No one but the most naïve still believes that this week’s boycott will actually accomplish anything, but it provides a chance to attract praise from someone important for a really dazzling outfit really stirring blog post or tweet. Dude, Arianna’s totally checking your Twitter feed out! You might be front-paging at the HuffPo next week if you play this right!

People can spend or withhold their money however they want, of course. But if you don’t want your money to end up being pocketed by conservative businessmen or invested in unpalatable companies and politicians at some point in the financial cycle, you might want to consider going off the grid, making your own clothes, and growing/hunting your own food.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Horde

By in atheism, conspicuous crusading, history, moralizing, race, the madness of crowds, tribalism No Comments

Oh, my aching head:

As he notes, we’ve got a problem with people who are furious that atheists dare to consider sexism and racism to be serious issues that we should deal with now. He takes the side that I knew he would, that these are problems we should address, because secular thinkers should be best equipped to deal with them.

As skeptics we should objectively examine the impacts of social discrimination, and identify the best ways to promote diversity and inclusiveness. By definition, prejudice depends on not having all relevant information, and as skeptics we are ideally suited to develop and promote arguments for inclusiveness and human rights, based on the evidence of the benefits to individuals and society. We could use this research to tackle the emotional and irrational thinking behind racism, sexism, homophobia, and other prejudices and discriminations. It’s at least as interesting a topic as many we discuss, and a more useful topic than most.

I am fully in agreement. This is the necessary job of this generation of atheists and skeptics, to extend our principles to embrace topics of wider social import… So on one side we have smug jerks who hate the idea of being progressive, but on the other, on my side, we’re quite ready to cut the troglodytes loose, and we’re quite ready to move on without them… Michael has stepped into the no-man’s land between the raging forces, and it’s a gallant effort. But judging by the comments already on his article, he hasn’t convinced the smug anti-progressives that maybe they should embrace a wider scope for atheism, and he really hasn’t tried yet to convince the people on the other side that maybe the angry sexists and racists and sneering self-satisfied libertarians are worth bringing on board. I’m inclined to say they’re not, until they grow up and change.

All right, go ahead and pluck that low-hanging irony fruit. I know you want to. Yes, PZ is actually calling other people smug, sneering, self-satisfied jerks. I know, I know. Get it out of your system.

Now, then. Right away, in the first excerpted paragraph, we encounter his amazingly sloppy conflation of atheism and secularism. As we should all be aware, they are not synonyms, and it does not follow that being either atheist or secularist gives you an intellectual head start in the attempt to end sexism and racism. The Founding Fathers were mostly secular intellectuals; do we want to use their views on race and women’s rights as guidelines? Of course, he likely knows better. This is probably just an example of what happens when you form a clique where your ideas are always being reinforced (especially one that takes immense pride in its hostile stance toward outsiders); you tend to assume everyone already knows what you mean, you start using shorthand for convenience rather than carefully spelling out your ideas, which allows misunderstandings, mistaken assumptions and lazy thinking to spread, and whoa, whaddaya know, turns out that even comrades can end up having intense emotional disagreements over who’s more deserving of carrying the banner for the cause of rationalism.

Maybe there’s a lesson in there about how group dynamics can influence psychology and undermine intellectual rigor and communication. Eh, we can come back to that another time.

You wouldn’t know it from the professor’s insistence that he’s already punched Social Justice into his Progressivist History GPS, so let’s go, let’s go, we’re gonna be late, come on, you irrational reactionary troglodytes, honk honk hooonnnnnkkk, but there’s a, uh, rational case to be made that atheism and/or skepticism already have an enormous task in front of them just trying to reduce religiosity and magical thinking, and therefore activist efforts will be more effective with a tighter focus. Too much mission creep, and you end up becoming a vague protest against “everything bad” while accomplishing nothing in particular. There is no clearly right or wrong strategy here. The quickest way to achieve anything like your social justice goals might involve putting atheist agitation on hold and partnering with progressive religious groups to combat sexism, racism, homophobia, militarism, etc. Value pluralism, you know.

Getting back to that startlingly blithe assumption that atheists would make great philosopher-kings, it is obviously a complete non-sequitur that a particular constellation of left-wing political beliefs necessarily follows from one’s conviction of the nonexistence of something called God. Having accomplished the relatively unremarkable task of reasoning your way to disbelief in a monotheistic deity, you’re not necessarily qualified thereby to design an ideal society, explain how it would operate in practice, or organize all the necessary maneuvers leading to it, even leaving aside the immense problem of accounting for all the variables that could possibly produce a different result than the one intended. Jacobins, Bolsheviks and Maoists all started from rational Enlightenment principles. The fact that they ended where they did should, if nothing else, make one suspect that people too, uh, smugly enamored of how “ideally suited” they are to resolving social problems with their superior reasoning may eventually end up simply rationalizing their behavior in any event.

No, I’m not saying that the FTB crowd is going to eventually seize power and start executing whomever they don’t imprison in labor camps. I’m just saying that my 19 year-old asshole know-it-all self could be just as supercilious about all those morons who can’t see how obvious it is blah blah blah, and hindsight has shown me what a fucking idiot that guy was.

You Can’t Figure Out the Bag I’m In

By in art, books, identity, music, tribalism No Comments

Nick Hornby:

Wilson asks the question: Why does everyone hate Céline Dion? Except, of course, it’s not everyone, is it? She’s sold more albums than just about anyone alive. Everyone loves Céline Dion, if you think about it. So actually, he asks the question: why do I and my friends and all rock critics and everyone likely to be reading this book and magazines like the Believer hate Céline Dion? And the answers he finds are profound, provocative, and leave you wondering who the hell you actually are—especially if, like many of us around these parts, you set great store by cultural consumption as an indicator of both character and, let’s face it, intelligence. We are cool people! We read Jonathan Franzen and we listen to Pavement, but we also love Mozart and Seinfeld! Hurrah for us! In a few short, devastating chapters, Wilson chops himself and all of us off at the knees. “It’s always other people following crowds, whereas my own taste reflects my specialness,” Wilson observes.

…We forgive people who can’t sing or construct a song or play their instruments, as long as they are cool, or subversive, or deviant; we do not dismiss Dion because she’s incompetent. Indeed, her competence may well be a problem, because it means she excludes nobody, apart from us, and those who invest heavily in cultural capital don’t like art that can’t exclude: it’s confusing, and it doesn’t help us to meet attractive people of the opposite sex who think the same way we do.

Do you think I’m smart? Or a good writer? A stand-up fellow, even? Better than average, at least? Well, I’ll assume so, if for no other reason than the fact that you willingly return here to read. Anyway, the reason I ask is because I’ve dutifully taken in critically acclaimed albums and books that made no difference in my life at all. They didn’t open up new ways of experiencing the world. They didn’t inspire me with new artistic possibilities. The qualities that others praised as innovative and mesmerizing struck me as trivial or overblown. Conversely, I’ve been lifted into a buoyant mood by simple ear candy, making my mind feel alert and engaged, facilitating the energy and awareness that sometimes leads to keen observation and penetrating insight. I’ve been inspired by brilliant metaphors and turns of phrase found in otherwise forgettable fantasy fiction. The Muses seem to delight in popping out of the strangest hiding places.

If you like what you see here, you should know that an awful lot of unimpressive pieces helped construct the mosaic, is what I’m saying.

Aesthetic taste just isn’t a reliable indicator of overall character, the best efforts of so many pop culture cliques to try to reassure themselves otherwise notwithstanding. I find that most of the people I would call truly interesting are the ones whose taste is scattershot and contradictory without betraying any shame over “guilty pleasures”. And I’m bored silly by all those poor little insecure magpies, collecting various pop culture objets d’art, hoping for some vicarious transmission of superiority thereby.

Will No One Rid Me of This Travesty of Justice?

By in conspicuous crusading, crime and punishment, moralizing, revillaging No Comments

PZ:

I’d like to know the names of the two boys who took advantage of an inebriated minor who was passed out at a party: they apparently assaulted her while she was unconscious, took pictures of the attack with their cell phones, and sent them around to their friends. I guess this was their idea of bragging. I’d like to know because I never want to have anything to do with them, ever.

You know, if you feel they got off too lightly and want to do your part to keep the option of vigilante justice alive, whether it take the form of social shaming or actual violence (it’s hard to predict what exactly will happen once you tickle the Internet’s amygdala), have the guts and honesty to just fucking say so. Don’t disingenuously pretend that your only concern is that two Kentucky teenagers might somehow end up in rural Minnesota one day where you might accidentally hold the door open for them and wish them a good morning instead of spitting in their faces.

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

By in conspicuous crusading, moralizing, ohferfucksake No Comments

Jamie Frevele:

I kinda think Madonna is pushing her luck here. Just a little. As in: Hey, Madonna — you are just one of the people that history will forever refer to as one of the horrible people in the story about the Aurora movie theater shooting. While obviously not nearly as horrible as the person who committed the crime, nor as horrible as the people who believe that the massacre would have been prevented if the people in the audience either had more guns/religion, or even more courage. (Really.) But as an American musical and pop culture icon with many fans, when you are told that after a mass shooting that injured almost 60 people and killed 12 that using fake firearms in your show for fun is a bad idea, you should get your head out of your ass and listen to them. No one cares if this has been part of your tour since before the incident took place. The incident happened, and you have to do something different for a little while (not forever!), so as to avoid looking like an insensitive dick.

I love the last line: “It’s just so…tacky.” Madonna! Tacky! The hell you say!

But before we attempt to calculate exactly how long the moratorium on fake guns in stage shows should extend in order to effectively communicate…something, allow me to say this: Madonna is a hollow entity (and why you’re looking to her for reassurance and behavioral cues at a time like this is far beyond me). Her performances are meaningless events. Plastic guns are empty symbols that do not contribute to real violence, and renouncing their public use for an indeterminate length of time is an insultingly insignificant gesture that does nothing to reduce it. Either work to change the political reality surrounding guns in America, or grieve quietly and move on, but insisting that everyone else enter your hall of mirrors is useless and annoying. Your tantrum, while undoubtedly heartfelt, is only slightly less unnecessary than a compilation of celebrity reactions to the shooting, the audio clips of the 911 calls, and other self-serving pageview bait. Consider this: maybe what you should really be offended by is the ease with which you can apparently be placated by superficial pantomime.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go organize a moment of silence on Twitter.

1 2 3 4