Ever since I can remember, I have had what you might call a hunger
for life (what German romantics or at least their interpreters
would call Sehnsucht).
As a small child, I couldn't really describe it very well. I
remember standing in the playground outside my old elementary school
(when I was about eight years old, before my family moved from Alabama to Georgia and began homeschooling), thinking to myself, "I must
remember this moment. There are trees over there, wind in my
face, the sun overcast with a few clouds behind me, and a fence right
there in front of me. I must remember this moment, so that I
can look back from the future and see what it was like to exist here
and now." I knew that there was something significant in
that moment. I knew that life was something important. I
knew I had many things ahead of me, many unknowns, and that what I
was experiencing right then was somehow meaningful. But I could
not see how. I did not know what life was. I had the
feeling I was going into something, but I couldn't see what (or what
I was supposed to do about it). As a result, I would repeatedly
stop and try to "capture moments" like this one (which
remains lodged more deeply in my memory than most of the later ones,
though I sometimes think I remember some of them, too--memory being
the tricky thing that it is).
As I grew older, my hunger became more concrete (more identified
with definite things in my personal environment). I learned to
satisfy it with particular goods, goods that I encountered in my
personal experience and cultivated as something unique to me.
These goods could be material things, but in my experience they were
always more. I loved books, not because of the paper or the
particular information that they contained, but because there was
something incredibly vital and satisfying about sitting down for
several hours and reading, learning things about animals, people,
places, and things I had never seen (or at least never recognized:
books taught me that each thing in my ordinary experience contains a
world of context to which I remain always more oblivious than not).
I loved books as an experience more than as things.
Significantly, the experiential value of books was always greater
when I chose my own reading. The books I have enjoyed most
throughout my life (from the time I asked my dad to read me The
Lord of the Rings out loud before bedtime as a five-year-old
until now) have been the ones I picked myself. I don't want the
things people want me to have (books, diplomas, car, house, family,
kids, jobs, career, cursus
honorum). I want the experiences I choose for myself
(reading, working, friendship, love, victory and defeat, birth and
death, virtus).
I didn't have words to say this as a little kid, but it was true then
and remains true today.
As I grew up, I learned more about the hunger I carried inside.
I learned that it could be destructive as well as constructive.
The most powerful illustration of its awful power was provided by my
interaction with institutions. Naive and idealistic (like many
before me and many since), I identified unreservedly with the groups
of people around me, constructing my own virtus deliberately
to reflect communal values in the social groups where I
participated. I aimed to be a perfect picture of Mormon virtue
(as taught in my local LDS ward), martial virtue (as taught in my
local martial arts dojo, which was run by a Southern Baptist
preacher), and political virtue (as taught all over in my family,
church, the dojo, and eventually the American universities where I
studied). Looking back, I think that this mistake is inevitable
and even good, but that doesn't make it universally, unreservedly
good (or safe: life is always dangerous, lethally
so). Sometimes, my eagerness to serve the collective paid off
in good ways: I became a good student, a strong kid, and a hard
worker. Other times, not so much: I also became neurotic,
pessimistic (depressive and obsessed with ways in which I fell short
of perfection), and a glutton for others' approval (eager to confess
sins and receive absolution, eager to be commanded in all things,
slow to do things on my own initiative that might turn out "badly"
for my standing with the group that I worshipped too much).
Also, I occasionally lost sight of my own ideals. I was so
concentrated on doing my part for the group that I forgot to take
care of myself. Serving visions of God and fellowman and
country, I lost sight of myself. I lost my own vision.
Committed to collective values, I didn't notice that my own values
were becoming increasingly incoherent and even irrelevant (as I
deliberately smothered my own idea of good to pursue somebody
else's).
For years I did my best to ignore my own visions of good (which
were scarcely coherent anyway, in part because I feared the threat
their coherence might pose to the incoherence increasingly apparent
in the collective values around me). But it was all in vain.
The day finally
came when I awoke--when I found myself sitting under my own bohdi
tree, standing on my own mount of transfiguration,
hearkening to the daimonion
on my own shoulder. The issue of my awakening has been both
positive and negative. On the positive side, I have become much more
aware of what it is that I really value. This makes me easier to
relate to as a person, and has made my friendships more authentic and
enduring. On the negative side, people do not always like what I
value, particularly when they know me only through my ideas (which
occasionally sound much crueler and/or crazier than I like to think I
really am). Expressing my personal virtus makes me obnoxious
to people who wish that I would just sit quietly and like (or at
least pretend to like) what they want me to. Inasmuch as I too feel
dislike, I understand on some level the disgust that I inspire, and I
think I have come up with some good ways of dealing with it—ways of
relating to myself and others that allow us all to be authentic
without compromising unnecessarily or impossibly our conflicting
ideas of what constitutes happiness. In the posts that follow this
one, I want to share some of my ideas about happiness—my own vision
of what “the good life” looks like. While this vision
necessarily includes the visions of others, I don't mean to dictate
what people should like or do. My vision of happiness won't be
yours, and that is as it should be. Like my vision or not as you
please. My aim is always to make it as little obnoxious to you as
possible, as little restrictive of your own moral autonomy as nature
allows.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΟΣ
Ingenium misera quia fortunatius arte / credit et excludit
sanos Helicone poetas / Democritus,
bona pars non unguis ponere curat, / non barbam, secreta petit
loca, balnea vitat.
Poetam bonum neminem (id quod a Democrito et Platone in scriptis relictum esse dicunt) sine inflammatione animorum existere posse et sine quodam adflatu quasi furoris.
Some people in the knowledge business talk about "making a career" in terms of (1) picking out a problem to solve, (2) solving it (immediately), and (3) publishing about it continually. In my experience, this is not what happens. I don't pick problems. They pick me. Try as I may, I cannot get rid of them. I write not for publications, but because I must: even if I were to get a job elsewhere, I would still be thinking about all the same questions that currently engage me (and I would come to places like this to write "articles" only a few people would glance at).
I also don't really do deadlines. When I have to, of course, I am as good as the next guy at penning a rhetorical conclusion and signing off. But that is not always (or usually) the end. It is just a convenient pause for the people who like such things (whose interests I don't mind serving, particularly while they pay my bills). The solving process goes on until it finishes in its own time: usually, this takes longer than it is supposed to (years in many cases--I am only now "solving" in provisionally valid ways ethical dilemmas I started wrestling with as a prepubescent kid). The best problems in the fields I frequent (ethics, literature, philosophy, history) are in some sense insoluble: they require constant provisional solution that can never become too definitive or universal without losing most of its power. I did not know how to say this as an undergraduate ("I am interested in insoluble problems, professor, not the kind that I can comment upon definitively in a five-page response paper with a handful of well-placed references").
At some point in the future, it may become incumbent upon me to work outside my obsession with ethical problems. That is OK. But I will always be thinking about them, not because I must be a professor, but because I am obsessed with these problems. They were interesting to me as a kid. Sometimes they disgust me. Sometimes they attract me. Sometimes I love working on them. Sometimes I hate it. But I have to do it. There is no alternative. No shutting off my brain (or telling it that we are simply not going to worry about the nature of justice).
I imagine other people experience this with other things (e.g. mathematics or music or some other kind of art). Being an artist is being possessed by something larger than yourself, something more vast than your power to control or understand. The artist is not absolute master of his domain. Unlike most people, he doesn't pretend to be. He doesn't feel the need to dominate or "express himself" (what does that even mean?). He sees the marble, the equation, the justice or lack of justice in the world, and he cannot help reaching for it, shaping it, playing with it, seeing how it responds to his inquiries (whose outcome he does not know: all he knows is that it will be beautiful). To be a really great artist, one must first surrender the self (the career, the fixed desires for this or that outcome, the conscious preening that goes on among poseurs who think criticism is not itself a kind of art--not always a very good one). One must give that self up to the art and then see what art makes of it. The result, no matter what it is, will always be more beautiful and more satisfying to the true artist than any accolades or career (which if they happen are merely a sideshow, an accident, an aberration--sometimes pleasant, sometimes not, especially when they get in the way of the art).
Poetam bonum neminem (id quod a Democrito et Platone in scriptis relictum esse dicunt) sine inflammatione animorum existere posse et sine quodam adflatu quasi furoris.
Some people in the knowledge business talk about "making a career" in terms of (1) picking out a problem to solve, (2) solving it (immediately), and (3) publishing about it continually. In my experience, this is not what happens. I don't pick problems. They pick me. Try as I may, I cannot get rid of them. I write not for publications, but because I must: even if I were to get a job elsewhere, I would still be thinking about all the same questions that currently engage me (and I would come to places like this to write "articles" only a few people would glance at).
I also don't really do deadlines. When I have to, of course, I am as good as the next guy at penning a rhetorical conclusion and signing off. But that is not always (or usually) the end. It is just a convenient pause for the people who like such things (whose interests I don't mind serving, particularly while they pay my bills). The solving process goes on until it finishes in its own time: usually, this takes longer than it is supposed to (years in many cases--I am only now "solving" in provisionally valid ways ethical dilemmas I started wrestling with as a prepubescent kid). The best problems in the fields I frequent (ethics, literature, philosophy, history) are in some sense insoluble: they require constant provisional solution that can never become too definitive or universal without losing most of its power. I did not know how to say this as an undergraduate ("I am interested in insoluble problems, professor, not the kind that I can comment upon definitively in a five-page response paper with a handful of well-placed references").
At some point in the future, it may become incumbent upon me to work outside my obsession with ethical problems. That is OK. But I will always be thinking about them, not because I must be a professor, but because I am obsessed with these problems. They were interesting to me as a kid. Sometimes they disgust me. Sometimes they attract me. Sometimes I love working on them. Sometimes I hate it. But I have to do it. There is no alternative. No shutting off my brain (or telling it that we are simply not going to worry about the nature of justice).
I imagine other people experience this with other things (e.g. mathematics or music or some other kind of art). Being an artist is being possessed by something larger than yourself, something more vast than your power to control or understand. The artist is not absolute master of his domain. Unlike most people, he doesn't pretend to be. He doesn't feel the need to dominate or "express himself" (what does that even mean?). He sees the marble, the equation, the justice or lack of justice in the world, and he cannot help reaching for it, shaping it, playing with it, seeing how it responds to his inquiries (whose outcome he does not know: all he knows is that it will be beautiful). To be a really great artist, one must first surrender the self (the career, the fixed desires for this or that outcome, the conscious preening that goes on among poseurs who think criticism is not itself a kind of art--not always a very good one). One must give that self up to the art and then see what art makes of it. The result, no matter what it is, will always be more beautiful and more satisfying to the true artist than any accolades or career (which if they happen are merely a sideshow, an accident, an aberration--sometimes pleasant, sometimes not, especially when they get in the way of the art).
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Modern Sickness
The problem discussed below is ancient, too, but it seems more virulent today (to my biased eye) than in the past.
Mass culture in the United States (and everywhere) creates this strange destructive tendency whereby what is good for one person (under certain circumstances) is assumed to be good (and by extension in some sense obligatory) for all (with no regard for changing circumstances).
Having a house was good in the 50s for some folks. So we must all have houses! Who cares if they are a giant waste of space and nobody can afford them? God will provide (through tithing or taxes, depending on your particular political/religious affiliation).
Going to college works well for some people. So we must all go to college! Who cares if we study art or engineering, if there are jobs or not? God will provide, and when he doesn't we will just pull money out of the sky via quantitative easing and make prosperity last forever.
Having kids can be really rewarding. So we must all have kids, as many as possible, as often as possible. Who cares if we cannot feed them anything worth eating or clothe them in something that isn't a made by slaves in Asia? God will provide (via the crappy products of nice US unions or the nice products of crappy Asian sweatshops: either way he always puts a pile of crap somewhere).
The idea that we should all do the same stuff the same way, following some universal plan, is just pure nonsense--the best recipe for disaster that we have ever come up with. But that doesn't stop us from pushing it. Even when it fails (spectacularly), we simply double down (telling the faithful to pay more tithes and taxes to support even bigger businesses as they behave even more irresponsibly). This modern modus operandi is fundamentally ridiculous. I'm done with it.
Mass culture in the United States (and everywhere) creates this strange destructive tendency whereby what is good for one person (under certain circumstances) is assumed to be good (and by extension in some sense obligatory) for all (with no regard for changing circumstances).
Having a house was good in the 50s for some folks. So we must all have houses! Who cares if they are a giant waste of space and nobody can afford them? God will provide (through tithing or taxes, depending on your particular political/religious affiliation).
Going to college works well for some people. So we must all go to college! Who cares if we study art or engineering, if there are jobs or not? God will provide, and when he doesn't we will just pull money out of the sky via quantitative easing and make prosperity last forever.
Having kids can be really rewarding. So we must all have kids, as many as possible, as often as possible. Who cares if we cannot feed them anything worth eating or clothe them in something that isn't a made by slaves in Asia? God will provide (via the crappy products of nice US unions or the nice products of crappy Asian sweatshops: either way he always puts a pile of crap somewhere).
The idea that we should all do the same stuff the same way, following some universal plan, is just pure nonsense--the best recipe for disaster that we have ever come up with. But that doesn't stop us from pushing it. Even when it fails (spectacularly), we simply double down (telling the faithful to pay more tithes and taxes to support even bigger businesses as they behave even more irresponsibly). This modern modus operandi is fundamentally ridiculous. I'm done with it.
Dealing with Authority
I become involved recently in a conversation about "the patriarchy" (something people who self-identify as feminists often bring up as a persistent source of multiple evils in civil society). Here are some thoughts I had that seemed worth preserving (as something for me to think about more).
In my view, the root problem here is not this or that ἀρχή (Greek for authority among other things), but ἀρχή (-archy) in general. Humans, like other social primates, exist in groups where individuals (disproportionately males) arrogate authority.
In primitive societies, this tendency is arrested by the lack of independence that primitive life carries built-in (as strong as I might be, I can still get injured really badly really easily and/or have a bad day hunting: I need the cooperation of weaker folk to survive). The pill in this egalitarian jam is (1) living conditions are rough and (2) low-level violence is actually rather high (as individuals see opportunities to rise in the fluctuating informal hierarchy and take them: kick an alpha when he's down).
In more modern societies (agricultural instead of hunter-gatherer), hierarchies necessarily become more rigid (less egalitarian). I cannot know all the police personally (the way primitive people know everyone in the tribe by name). Leadership is institutional rather than charismatic and tends to move around less (the chieftain or king or prime minister remains in power on a schedule that is predetermined, often such that one individual holds power his entire life). People become stuck in their social place more firmly (entrenching themselves in inequality as primitives don't). The jam with this pill is (1) living conditions are nicer and (2) low-level violence drops (witness Steven Pinker, though it is not right to read him as saying that civilization is necessarily safer than lack of it in terms of outcomes: the elimination of low-level violence creates high-level violence that is much more lethal in smaller doses).
Education should help us understand (1) where human social order is flexible, so that we can avoid making it hurt us unnecessarily; and (2) where human social order is inflexible, so that we can fight back effectively when we are screwed without destroying the order that we require in order to survive. All human social order kills people. The aim is to die as beautifully as possible, recognizing that we will not all die the same way (or have the same idea of what constitutes a truly beautiful death).
I try not to be a misogynist (and this does not really seem hard to me in practical terms, since I have healthy relationships with good women--relationships in which all parties associate voluntarily because we like what happens when we collaborate).
I don't personally mind if people want to be misandrist: hate men all you like, as long as you don't insist on being my friend (and/or demanding that I join your club and hate myself: I promise I already do, and I don't need any help from people who think the solution to self-hatred is making oneself vulnerable to people who reinforce it).
If people like me and want to work with me, then I want to be there for them as much as I can. If people hate me and wish I would drop off the face of the planet and die, then I want to be there for them as little as possible (as they wish).
In my view, the root problem here is not this or that ἀρχή (Greek for authority among other things), but ἀρχή (-archy) in general. Humans, like other social primates, exist in groups where individuals (disproportionately males) arrogate authority.
In primitive societies, this tendency is arrested by the lack of independence that primitive life carries built-in (as strong as I might be, I can still get injured really badly really easily and/or have a bad day hunting: I need the cooperation of weaker folk to survive). The pill in this egalitarian jam is (1) living conditions are rough and (2) low-level violence is actually rather high (as individuals see opportunities to rise in the fluctuating informal hierarchy and take them: kick an alpha when he's down).
In more modern societies (agricultural instead of hunter-gatherer), hierarchies necessarily become more rigid (less egalitarian). I cannot know all the police personally (the way primitive people know everyone in the tribe by name). Leadership is institutional rather than charismatic and tends to move around less (the chieftain or king or prime minister remains in power on a schedule that is predetermined, often such that one individual holds power his entire life). People become stuck in their social place more firmly (entrenching themselves in inequality as primitives don't). The jam with this pill is (1) living conditions are nicer and (2) low-level violence drops (witness Steven Pinker, though it is not right to read him as saying that civilization is necessarily safer than lack of it in terms of outcomes: the elimination of low-level violence creates high-level violence that is much more lethal in smaller doses).
Education should help us understand (1) where human social order is flexible, so that we can avoid making it hurt us unnecessarily; and (2) where human social order is inflexible, so that we can fight back effectively when we are screwed without destroying the order that we require in order to survive. All human social order kills people. The aim is to die as beautifully as possible, recognizing that we will not all die the same way (or have the same idea of what constitutes a truly beautiful death).
I try not to be a misogynist (and this does not really seem hard to me in practical terms, since I have healthy relationships with good women--relationships in which all parties associate voluntarily because we like what happens when we collaborate).
I don't personally mind if people want to be misandrist: hate men all you like, as long as you don't insist on being my friend (and/or demanding that I join your club and hate myself: I promise I already do, and I don't need any help from people who think the solution to self-hatred is making oneself vulnerable to people who reinforce it).
If people like me and want to work with me, then I want to be there for them as much as I can. If people hate me and wish I would drop off the face of the planet and die, then I want to be there for them as little as possible (as they wish).
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Happiness in Brief
Happiness is a little thing that obstinately refuses to grow bigger. No matter how we beg her to become universal and immortal, she insists on being fleeting and parochial.
Happiness is being right where you are, as the person you are, experiencing whatever it is that you experience. It might be something that many people enjoy, or it might not. What really matters is your attitude towards whatever it is: if you have the right attitude, one that you adopt consciously and deliberately, then you will always be happy, even when "whatever it is" happens to be something that most people would regard as something very bad.
Happiness is breaking your leg and passing out from intense pain at the doctor's office, only to wake up later in recovery and realize that you are not dead. For a moment you don't care about anything else (including the bill you cannot afford).
Happiness is spending years of your life trying to serve people who tell you repeatedly that they hate your guts and wish you would go to hell. You smile and move away as they curse you, spit at you, punch you, and belittle you. You regularly attend meetings where well-meaning fools offer you reasons why other people hate you: perhaps you are a sinful wretch, incapable of showing honest affection; or maybe you just lack some basic social awareness--your smile is awkward, you don't shake hands right, and you have this tendency to babble on instead of getting to the point when people actually let you talk instead of spitting on you. You smile and sit through these meetings. At the end you shake the speaker's hand and say, "Thank you very much." And you mean it.
Happiness is going to school to qualify yourself for a job that ceases to exist soon after you graduate. You smile and release the hope that you had for outcomes that are now impossible. You see that the small things in life are still there for you--family, friends, food, and even work, too (though it won't be the sort of work you imagined doing as a doe-eyed undergraduate).
Happiness is being reminded constantly how people are better than you. You learn not to mind this obvious truth. You stop dwelling on it. You just accept it and move past it, looking for the way to help in situations where "the best" is not what is needed (since you don't have it to offer: why spend time regretting what you never have? that will not make anyone happier).
Happiness is waking up each day and realizing that your dreams have come true, because they are small dreams--little dreams of small happiness that even the most unlucky person might expect to find fulfilled every now and then.
Happiness is realizing that you never wanted much, and that you have almost all of it nearly all the time. If you have it, you don't need more. A little pleasure is sufficient for the greatest happiness humans can achieve. If you lack it, don't worry. Human life is fleeting and yours will change soon (losing whatever it is that makes you miserable right now).
Happiness is being right where you are, as the person you are, experiencing whatever it is that you experience. It might be something that many people enjoy, or it might not. What really matters is your attitude towards whatever it is: if you have the right attitude, one that you adopt consciously and deliberately, then you will always be happy, even when "whatever it is" happens to be something that most people would regard as something very bad.
Happiness is breaking your leg and passing out from intense pain at the doctor's office, only to wake up later in recovery and realize that you are not dead. For a moment you don't care about anything else (including the bill you cannot afford).
Happiness is spending years of your life trying to serve people who tell you repeatedly that they hate your guts and wish you would go to hell. You smile and move away as they curse you, spit at you, punch you, and belittle you. You regularly attend meetings where well-meaning fools offer you reasons why other people hate you: perhaps you are a sinful wretch, incapable of showing honest affection; or maybe you just lack some basic social awareness--your smile is awkward, you don't shake hands right, and you have this tendency to babble on instead of getting to the point when people actually let you talk instead of spitting on you. You smile and sit through these meetings. At the end you shake the speaker's hand and say, "Thank you very much." And you mean it.
Happiness is going to school to qualify yourself for a job that ceases to exist soon after you graduate. You smile and release the hope that you had for outcomes that are now impossible. You see that the small things in life are still there for you--family, friends, food, and even work, too (though it won't be the sort of work you imagined doing as a doe-eyed undergraduate).
Happiness is being reminded constantly how people are better than you. You learn not to mind this obvious truth. You stop dwelling on it. You just accept it and move past it, looking for the way to help in situations where "the best" is not what is needed (since you don't have it to offer: why spend time regretting what you never have? that will not make anyone happier).
Happiness is waking up each day and realizing that your dreams have come true, because they are small dreams--little dreams of small happiness that even the most unlucky person might expect to find fulfilled every now and then.
Happiness is realizing that you never wanted much, and that you have almost all of it nearly all the time. If you have it, you don't need more. A little pleasure is sufficient for the greatest happiness humans can achieve. If you lack it, don't worry. Human life is fleeting and yours will change soon (losing whatever it is that makes you miserable right now).
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
An Academic Humanist's Apologia
For some time I have been watching with interest as people have debated the place that the liberal arts (to which I have dedicated my professional life for more than a decade) have in modern education. I believe in the value of the liberal arts, personally, but I think there are legitimate reasons why other people don't. I think the future of the liberal arts looks better as we artists learn to relate better to others, including those who see us as a waste of space.
Articles like this one are too true for comfort. That said, I don't believe that people like Alan Bloom (cited in the article) are right to blame moral relativism for the death of the humanities. On the contrary, the real reason we care about things like justice is that they differ palpably (and relatively) as different people identify and apply them in different historical circumstances. The virtues are interesting to us precisely because they are not monolithic, uniform, or absolute. We are drawn to them because they are relative.
They are also not guaranteed to make anyone wealthy or "productive" (in the modern sense). They require time, hard work (ponos), and a high tolerance for failure (when you think you know what justice means and the result is blatantly unjust: you must have the acumen to notice this, acknowledge it to yourself and others, and move forward to something new). They teach us how to be happy, not how to have lots of stuff or be "leaders" (which seem to abound in modern society the same way the A-grade does: we are all super-intelligent leaders, so we all wear the same clothes, spout the same platitudes, compete for the same jobs, and expect the same material "rewards" from our moral education).
If people decide that the humanities are not worth paying for, then I will be sorry to lose my chance to be a professional humanist. But I will not stop reading, thinking, or cultivating the humanist virtues that I regard as essential components of my moral integrity. I don't do these things merely to make a living. I do them because I love them. I am a humanist first and foremost because I love humanism, not because I expect to make a comfortable living teaching, reading, and writing in the manner of some really fortunate humanists before me.
Personally, I think part of the problem is that we are currently living in an education bubble similar to the housing bubble that just exploded. Contrary to the rhetoric we often hear bandied about these days, not everyone needs to take a university degree to contribute meaningfully to society. Not everyone needs to take a degree in humanism to appreciate what it has to offer. Not everyone needs to study ancient Greek and Latin to benefit from reading and interpreting the classics. I know this. I currently teach many people who have never had experiences like mine. They will most likely never read all the books I have read (as I have not read all the books read by all the professors I have ever studied with). My purpose as an educator is not to make these students into clones of myself, professional humanists seeking employment with their local university, but to introduce them to the wide variety of tools humanism has come up with over the centuries to enable happy, virtuous living. I don't need to make piles of cash to do this. I don't even require guaranteed benefits (for myself or my dependents). I would never force anyone to take my classes. I would not advise anyone to take out massive loans in order to enroll in them.
I think the value of the humanities speaks for itself clearly enough to remain relevant even if they kick us from the university (so that they can have all the money for more sports and administrators, not to mention all the super-fancy facilities: some students apparently cannot have a real learning experience without an indoor climbing wall, jacuzzis, multiple restaurants, dorms that look like the Ritz, etc.).
Articles like this one are too true for comfort. That said, I don't believe that people like Alan Bloom (cited in the article) are right to blame moral relativism for the death of the humanities. On the contrary, the real reason we care about things like justice is that they differ palpably (and relatively) as different people identify and apply them in different historical circumstances. The virtues are interesting to us precisely because they are not monolithic, uniform, or absolute. We are drawn to them because they are relative.
They are also not guaranteed to make anyone wealthy or "productive" (in the modern sense). They require time, hard work (ponos), and a high tolerance for failure (when you think you know what justice means and the result is blatantly unjust: you must have the acumen to notice this, acknowledge it to yourself and others, and move forward to something new). They teach us how to be happy, not how to have lots of stuff or be "leaders" (which seem to abound in modern society the same way the A-grade does: we are all super-intelligent leaders, so we all wear the same clothes, spout the same platitudes, compete for the same jobs, and expect the same material "rewards" from our moral education).
If people decide that the humanities are not worth paying for, then I will be sorry to lose my chance to be a professional humanist. But I will not stop reading, thinking, or cultivating the humanist virtues that I regard as essential components of my moral integrity. I don't do these things merely to make a living. I do them because I love them. I am a humanist first and foremost because I love humanism, not because I expect to make a comfortable living teaching, reading, and writing in the manner of some really fortunate humanists before me.
Personally, I think part of the problem is that we are currently living in an education bubble similar to the housing bubble that just exploded. Contrary to the rhetoric we often hear bandied about these days, not everyone needs to take a university degree to contribute meaningfully to society. Not everyone needs to take a degree in humanism to appreciate what it has to offer. Not everyone needs to study ancient Greek and Latin to benefit from reading and interpreting the classics. I know this. I currently teach many people who have never had experiences like mine. They will most likely never read all the books I have read (as I have not read all the books read by all the professors I have ever studied with). My purpose as an educator is not to make these students into clones of myself, professional humanists seeking employment with their local university, but to introduce them to the wide variety of tools humanism has come up with over the centuries to enable happy, virtuous living. I don't need to make piles of cash to do this. I don't even require guaranteed benefits (for myself or my dependents). I would never force anyone to take my classes. I would not advise anyone to take out massive loans in order to enroll in them.
I think the value of the humanities speaks for itself clearly enough to remain relevant even if they kick us from the university (so that they can have all the money for more sports and administrators, not to mention all the super-fancy facilities: some students apparently cannot have a real learning experience without an indoor climbing wall, jacuzzis, multiple restaurants, dorms that look like the Ritz, etc.).
Monday, April 22, 2013
Futile Rebellion: Why Terrorists Are Fools
In light of recent events, I have been thinking about my position on violence. I think violence is something necessary to life. I think we are all violent. That said, there are better and worse ways of expressing violence. Methods that involve useless escalation of dead-end conflicts are always worse. Terrorism is a self-defeating, stupid modus operandi, whether the people employing it are heads of state or vigilantes among the people.
Take the case of the Boston bombing that went down recently. Some civilian vigilantes get all riled up (for reasons that I have ranted about here on this blog: they feel threatened by society and its leaders, not always illegitimately). They respond by attacking a bunch of civilians. The final result is that innocent people die, and the crooks whose power the terrorists resent (no matter who they are or how innocent or guilty anyone finds them) obtain even more authority than they had before. The vigilante terrorists actually make freedom less for themselves and everyone else every time they threaten the government's sheeple. Under threat of attack, the sheeple lose what little inclination they might have to preserve the institutions that make us free: institutions like due process of law, presumed innocence, fair trial, and so on. At the end of the day, the terrorists are dead, and the people are more under the thumb of government (well-meaning or not) than ever. The resentment that led the terrorists to strike out against society terminates in a society even more likely to inspire resentment. Attacking the bear with a sharp stick just makes it more dangerous, whether it is a Russian Kodiak or an American grizzly. Stupid terrorists.
The best way to get back at the government is not to need it. The best way to use violence is not to employ it randomly against helpless civilians. The terrorists' problem is that they attack government by mimicking its worst aspects. At least government is accountable, even if only in theory, to someone every time it decides to go haywire and kill a bunch of folks. And seriously, dumb terrorists, have you not considered that governments have you utterly outmanned and outgunned? If you are going to play the game of treating people as human shields, you should be aware that your opponent can cut through the shield much better than you can. The second amendment doesn't exist to protect me from government in modern American society. I don't want a shotgun to protect me from Uncle Sam's tanks, mortars, and nukes. (What good would it be, seriously?) I want a shotgun to protect me from cretins like you. There is the place for legitimate social violence: Some punk goes to blow up a marathon and I take him out.
So much for the vigilantes who run planes into buildings or blow up marathons. Now for the terrorists in government. These people are in a tougher position in many ways than the vigilantes (who should simply stand down, since they do nothing good for themselves or anyone else: if they want to commit suicide, then they would do better to make it a private death). Government is necessary at the moment: it is something natural that all societies have. That said, it has an historical tendency to do bad stuff (e.g. kill crowds of people). I don't want to tell government how to do its job, how to "protect" citizens from themselves. I think it does this job best when we citizens don't need it much. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be blown up by some punk on the subway than be strip-searched every time I get on. Given a choice between vigilante terrorism and government terrorism, I will always choose the vigilantes: I think they are less dangerous. Government here can do its job best when it helps me meet the vigilantes myself, preparing me to respond effectively (rather than imprisoning me in my own house for hours while it takes care of things for me--or pretends to take care of them, at any rate).
Ideally, government does not need police or military for much. It takes free citizens and turns them into its police. We become the police. We become our own government. We become the people making decisions that define our lives. We become the people who get blown up by those stupid vigilantes and keep running anyway--not because we think the police or the military will save us. We couldn't care less about that. We know life isn't safe, and we wouldn't have it any other way. We do not ask for safety or security--we know that these are illusions--but for the freedom to respond appropriately ourselves to the threats that manifest unpredictably in our lives. Good government equips us to meet those threats better, allowing and encouraging access to tools and training that will make more of us better stewards of our own mortality. Good government encourages us to have the weapons, munitions, and physical resources (food, water, shelter) to handle threats in our environment (threats that include but are not limited to idiot vigilantes who decide that the best way to make a meaningful religious or political statement is to blow other people up and bring the heavy hand of military dictatorship down to crush us all).
I have never rebelled violently against government. I never want to. I see that such rebellion would be counter-productive (making things worse for me and for everyone else, not better). If I do rebel, it will be quietly, non-violently, and inobtrusively. I believe in kindness, civility, and decency above all else. I believe in them so much that I am determined to practice them even towards historically rude government (within reason: there are regimes out there that I would oppose actively, either by fleeing the country or taking up arms, but those regimes are not the modern US one). Smart people who know what violence is know its limits. They see that they cannot force themselves unilaterally on others without getting hurt and hurting others unnecessarily in the process. They see that reality, and they respond by standing down--permanently and resolutely--from useless rebellion. Silly as those "occupy this and that" protests are, they are preferable to "blow this or that up" protests. Dumb or dangerous as the Tea Party may be, the "blow stuff up for God" party is dumber and more dangerous. If you want to rebel, do yourself a favor and take the route of Martin Luther King or Gandhi. Find something positive to do, something that isn't hurting other people. Make the beauty you cannot find in the world. You don't have to kill the world to do that. You don't have to hate it. You don't have to fear it. You don't have to care about it. Just let it go and get on with your art. Make an art of life instead of cultivating the art of death.
It doesn't matter if society is messed up. It doesn't matter if other people don't like your art. You can make it and enjoy it. If you love it enough to turn it into life (instead of death), there will always be someone willing to see value in it. Show them that value, and they will become your friends. They will love you and help you make something beautiful--a garden of liberty whose fruits do not depend on regular watering with the blood of innocents (or even of tyrants: give it your own blood before you steal any from another human being). If you cannot do this, then at least have the decency not to involve innocents in your death wish. Do what Buddhist protesters do, and burn yourself to death somewhere in a public place. Make your statement with your own blood, not mine or my kids'. The sympathy I have for your plight--your suffering, your religion, your lifestyle, your family, your art--vanishes the moment you start gunning down random strangers. I may resent the government boot-heel you bring down on my neck, but that doesn't mean I'm not glad when it breaks yours, you cowards, you dogs with no honor.
You deserve the death you get. You deserve it much more than all those people who will suffer because of you--not just the people you personally cut down, but also the other people the government will cut down needlessly because they remind somebody of you. You are an emblem of what is most wrong in all of us--a giant, festering sore on the face of humanity. As long as you persist in keeping the bear of bad government alive and angry, she will never stop tearing the meat off all our bones.
As for that bear: dear representative of the American people, the next time you wonder why vigilantes go nuts and attack you or your people viciously, take a look in the mirror. Look at the blood dripping down your face, the blood of people killed all over the world to keep us "safe" from death (that always gets us anyway), and see what it is that the dumb vigilantes fear. They are dumb because they express fear badly, not because they have it. I fear you, too. But I know better than to go poking you with sharp sticks. And I am too civilized to make others suffer unnecessarily because I am afraid. But I am afraid, more afraid of you than of the terrorists, more afraid of being "saved" than of being blown up. I value freedom over security. I do not waive my Constitutional rights. I do not want you to declare war on anyone or anything as a result of stupid vigilantes going nuts and murdering innocent people. I don't want more military and police. I don't want more laws. I don't want more security. I want you to stand down. Weep with me, if you like. Teach me ways to defend myself better. But don't pretend you can make all the violence disappear by taking absolute command of society. Don't listen to the cowards who want you to promise them the impossible--reward without risk, profit without loss, happiness without sorrow, life without death. I fear your lies more than I fear the terrorists' truth.
Take the case of the Boston bombing that went down recently. Some civilian vigilantes get all riled up (for reasons that I have ranted about here on this blog: they feel threatened by society and its leaders, not always illegitimately). They respond by attacking a bunch of civilians. The final result is that innocent people die, and the crooks whose power the terrorists resent (no matter who they are or how innocent or guilty anyone finds them) obtain even more authority than they had before. The vigilante terrorists actually make freedom less for themselves and everyone else every time they threaten the government's sheeple. Under threat of attack, the sheeple lose what little inclination they might have to preserve the institutions that make us free: institutions like due process of law, presumed innocence, fair trial, and so on. At the end of the day, the terrorists are dead, and the people are more under the thumb of government (well-meaning or not) than ever. The resentment that led the terrorists to strike out against society terminates in a society even more likely to inspire resentment. Attacking the bear with a sharp stick just makes it more dangerous, whether it is a Russian Kodiak or an American grizzly. Stupid terrorists.
The best way to get back at the government is not to need it. The best way to use violence is not to employ it randomly against helpless civilians. The terrorists' problem is that they attack government by mimicking its worst aspects. At least government is accountable, even if only in theory, to someone every time it decides to go haywire and kill a bunch of folks. And seriously, dumb terrorists, have you not considered that governments have you utterly outmanned and outgunned? If you are going to play the game of treating people as human shields, you should be aware that your opponent can cut through the shield much better than you can. The second amendment doesn't exist to protect me from government in modern American society. I don't want a shotgun to protect me from Uncle Sam's tanks, mortars, and nukes. (What good would it be, seriously?) I want a shotgun to protect me from cretins like you. There is the place for legitimate social violence: Some punk goes to blow up a marathon and I take him out.
So much for the vigilantes who run planes into buildings or blow up marathons. Now for the terrorists in government. These people are in a tougher position in many ways than the vigilantes (who should simply stand down, since they do nothing good for themselves or anyone else: if they want to commit suicide, then they would do better to make it a private death). Government is necessary at the moment: it is something natural that all societies have. That said, it has an historical tendency to do bad stuff (e.g. kill crowds of people). I don't want to tell government how to do its job, how to "protect" citizens from themselves. I think it does this job best when we citizens don't need it much. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be blown up by some punk on the subway than be strip-searched every time I get on. Given a choice between vigilante terrorism and government terrorism, I will always choose the vigilantes: I think they are less dangerous. Government here can do its job best when it helps me meet the vigilantes myself, preparing me to respond effectively (rather than imprisoning me in my own house for hours while it takes care of things for me--or pretends to take care of them, at any rate).
Ideally, government does not need police or military for much. It takes free citizens and turns them into its police. We become the police. We become our own government. We become the people making decisions that define our lives. We become the people who get blown up by those stupid vigilantes and keep running anyway--not because we think the police or the military will save us. We couldn't care less about that. We know life isn't safe, and we wouldn't have it any other way. We do not ask for safety or security--we know that these are illusions--but for the freedom to respond appropriately ourselves to the threats that manifest unpredictably in our lives. Good government equips us to meet those threats better, allowing and encouraging access to tools and training that will make more of us better stewards of our own mortality. Good government encourages us to have the weapons, munitions, and physical resources (food, water, shelter) to handle threats in our environment (threats that include but are not limited to idiot vigilantes who decide that the best way to make a meaningful religious or political statement is to blow other people up and bring the heavy hand of military dictatorship down to crush us all).
I have never rebelled violently against government. I never want to. I see that such rebellion would be counter-productive (making things worse for me and for everyone else, not better). If I do rebel, it will be quietly, non-violently, and inobtrusively. I believe in kindness, civility, and decency above all else. I believe in them so much that I am determined to practice them even towards historically rude government (within reason: there are regimes out there that I would oppose actively, either by fleeing the country or taking up arms, but those regimes are not the modern US one). Smart people who know what violence is know its limits. They see that they cannot force themselves unilaterally on others without getting hurt and hurting others unnecessarily in the process. They see that reality, and they respond by standing down--permanently and resolutely--from useless rebellion. Silly as those "occupy this and that" protests are, they are preferable to "blow this or that up" protests. Dumb or dangerous as the Tea Party may be, the "blow stuff up for God" party is dumber and more dangerous. If you want to rebel, do yourself a favor and take the route of Martin Luther King or Gandhi. Find something positive to do, something that isn't hurting other people. Make the beauty you cannot find in the world. You don't have to kill the world to do that. You don't have to hate it. You don't have to fear it. You don't have to care about it. Just let it go and get on with your art. Make an art of life instead of cultivating the art of death.
It doesn't matter if society is messed up. It doesn't matter if other people don't like your art. You can make it and enjoy it. If you love it enough to turn it into life (instead of death), there will always be someone willing to see value in it. Show them that value, and they will become your friends. They will love you and help you make something beautiful--a garden of liberty whose fruits do not depend on regular watering with the blood of innocents (or even of tyrants: give it your own blood before you steal any from another human being). If you cannot do this, then at least have the decency not to involve innocents in your death wish. Do what Buddhist protesters do, and burn yourself to death somewhere in a public place. Make your statement with your own blood, not mine or my kids'. The sympathy I have for your plight--your suffering, your religion, your lifestyle, your family, your art--vanishes the moment you start gunning down random strangers. I may resent the government boot-heel you bring down on my neck, but that doesn't mean I'm not glad when it breaks yours, you cowards, you dogs with no honor.
You deserve the death you get. You deserve it much more than all those people who will suffer because of you--not just the people you personally cut down, but also the other people the government will cut down needlessly because they remind somebody of you. You are an emblem of what is most wrong in all of us--a giant, festering sore on the face of humanity. As long as you persist in keeping the bear of bad government alive and angry, she will never stop tearing the meat off all our bones.
As for that bear: dear representative of the American people, the next time you wonder why vigilantes go nuts and attack you or your people viciously, take a look in the mirror. Look at the blood dripping down your face, the blood of people killed all over the world to keep us "safe" from death (that always gets us anyway), and see what it is that the dumb vigilantes fear. They are dumb because they express fear badly, not because they have it. I fear you, too. But I know better than to go poking you with sharp sticks. And I am too civilized to make others suffer unnecessarily because I am afraid. But I am afraid, more afraid of you than of the terrorists, more afraid of being "saved" than of being blown up. I value freedom over security. I do not waive my Constitutional rights. I do not want you to declare war on anyone or anything as a result of stupid vigilantes going nuts and murdering innocent people. I don't want more military and police. I don't want more laws. I don't want more security. I want you to stand down. Weep with me, if you like. Teach me ways to defend myself better. But don't pretend you can make all the violence disappear by taking absolute command of society. Don't listen to the cowards who want you to promise them the impossible--reward without risk, profit without loss, happiness without sorrow, life without death. I fear your lies more than I fear the terrorists' truth.
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