Some online friends and I were having a discussion on civil society and violence in Libya and elsewhere, in relation to the recent violence in the Middle East (most prominently the murdered Americans) over the "Innocence of Muslims" movie. It got me thinking, and this is my attempt to lay my thoughts out more clearly.
We all agreed that the recent violence is not caused by Islam per se. That is, Muslims may be offended because they are Muslims, but they are not more likely to react violently because they are Muslims. Rather, the explanation lies in the specific situations of the countries where the violence occurred. Good evidence for this is the lack of violent protests in America over the movie -- American Muslims may be (rightly) offended, but they aren't killing people or demanding that a movie be banned.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Stating the Obvious
I have nothing to say about Romney's assertion that 47% of the country are moochers living tax-free. Others have dealt with the salient points better and earlier -- that it is untrue (the majority of Americans who do not pay income tax pay payroll taxes, and most of the rest are retired, and the rest are mostly the very poor or students, making less than $20,000 a year*), that is is rather rich for a man who pays 13% in taxes to call people paying 18% in (payroll) taxes freeloaders, that this is perhaps one of the dumbest things Romeny has done yet.
So I'm going to reach back a news cycle (to an event that's ongoing, if forgotten) and state the obvious: we are not at war with Islam.
This is not because Islam is a 'religion of peace,' since it is no more peaceful than Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism.** Indeed, few religions are 'religions of peace' in any meaningful way -- off the top of my head I can think of Quakerism, various Anabaptist sects (Mennonites, the Amish), Jehovah's Witnesses and Jains. That is to say, these religions a) have no religious conflicts fought in their name and b) are actually pacifistic.
Nor are we not at we not at war with Islam because there are muslims that like us or at least don't hate us. As moving as the protests held in Benghazi against the murders were, they are beside my point.
So I'm going to reach back a news cycle (to an event that's ongoing, if forgotten) and state the obvious: we are not at war with Islam.
This is not because Islam is a 'religion of peace,' since it is no more peaceful than Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism.** Indeed, few religions are 'religions of peace' in any meaningful way -- off the top of my head I can think of Quakerism, various Anabaptist sects (Mennonites, the Amish), Jehovah's Witnesses and Jains. That is to say, these religions a) have no religious conflicts fought in their name and b) are actually pacifistic.
Nor are we not at we not at war with Islam because there are muslims that like us or at least don't hate us. As moving as the protests held in Benghazi against the murders were, they are beside my point.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
The Right to Be an Asshole and Liberal Democracy
The people who attacked and killed the American ambassador in Benghazi are murderers. Our president said that we are working with the Libyan government to bring those responsible* to justice, and I hope that we do so, and quickly. 'Pastor' Terry Jones and others like him, on the other hand, are assholes (trying deliberately provoke a religious war is, among other things, a dick move). And unlike the murderous militias with RPGs, they have every right to be assholes, even though their assholery is of a rather purposeful nature (Jones seemed rather thankful that Americans died in order to show the world what muslims were 'really like').
The right to be an asshole -- of the hateful, offensive, or simply noxious varieties (Nazis, Fred Phelps, NAMBLA**) is a critical right that we Americans enjoy. It is the most radical outgrowth of free speech. But people are not born respecting free speech anymore than they are born respecting the integrity of the political process. Free speech is something that requires a civil society truly dedicated to it, and laws and institutions that defend it. It is rather recently that Americans could safely say things that offended others -- 200 years ago, Americans didn't recognize the right of papers to say nasty things about Adams and Hamilton. 150 years ago people rioted in similar ways when a newspaper badmouthed slavery. 80 years ago people beat up those who spoke out for labor. 50 years ago people were killing people who spoke out against segregation, and, and these examples only cover speech that has merit, not some idiot's offensive ramblings. It has taken years of hard work, a more tolerant and less violent civil society and some people giving up their very lives in order for Fred Phelps to have the right to say the things he does.
And so it is no surprise that people in Egypt and Libya do not recognize the right to be an asshole. Having elections is relatively easy, but it will take years of building for those nations (so recently under despots) to have the kind of civil society that can tolerate offensive speech. Hopefully free speech will still be fashionable when that building is complete.
*who do not seem to have been an angry mob, but instead a well armed terrorist militia of some kind.
**provided that they just talk, not act out whatever vile or perverse beliefs they have
The right to be an asshole -- of the hateful, offensive, or simply noxious varieties (Nazis, Fred Phelps, NAMBLA**) is a critical right that we Americans enjoy. It is the most radical outgrowth of free speech. But people are not born respecting free speech anymore than they are born respecting the integrity of the political process. Free speech is something that requires a civil society truly dedicated to it, and laws and institutions that defend it. It is rather recently that Americans could safely say things that offended others -- 200 years ago, Americans didn't recognize the right of papers to say nasty things about Adams and Hamilton. 150 years ago people rioted in similar ways when a newspaper badmouthed slavery. 80 years ago people beat up those who spoke out for labor. 50 years ago people were killing people who spoke out against segregation, and, and these examples only cover speech that has merit, not some idiot's offensive ramblings. It has taken years of hard work, a more tolerant and less violent civil society and some people giving up their very lives in order for Fred Phelps to have the right to say the things he does.
And so it is no surprise that people in Egypt and Libya do not recognize the right to be an asshole. Having elections is relatively easy, but it will take years of building for those nations (so recently under despots) to have the kind of civil society that can tolerate offensive speech. Hopefully free speech will still be fashionable when that building is complete.
*who do not seem to have been an angry mob, but instead a well armed terrorist militia of some kind.
**provided that they just talk, not act out whatever vile or perverse beliefs they have
Friday, August 31, 2012
Expanding the Canon - Aldo Leopold
As a preface, this is the first of an irregular series of 'Expanding the Canon' posts, which will highlight a work I (or my co-writers) think is worth being placed within the canon of Great Books, or works of art, or whatever. It's a bit different than 'The Greatness of X' because it doesn't argue simply that a work is great on its own merits, but that it adds something to the sum of human thought that is unique and inarguably worthwhile. These are works I think are worth putting up there with Aristotle, Kant and Kiekegaard, works that shape the way we think.
The first thinker in this series is Aldo Leopold and his works, A Sand County Almanac and Round River .
------
This past week I was on vacation to the beautiful, savage Northern Appalachians of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. Being surrounded by the natural world tends to get me more impassioned about the politics of the environment, and makes me think more about them. The forests seem solid, and in general seem healthier than those further south, but they're incredibly fragile, and seeing healthy hemlocks was bittersweet, since I don't know if they'll be there in 10 or 20 years, and I didn't see a single healthy beech -- bark disease had reduced most of them to pockmarked, oozing husks*.
Somewhere during the week my thoughts drifted onto Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, one of the greatest works of nature writing and probably one of the most famous. I've thought about it every now and again, on and off for the past few years, and the more I think about it the more I'm struck by its greatness.
The central idea in Leopold's work is the Land, and its moral value. He explores the land scientifically in his accounts of ecological succession, lyrically in his vivid depictions of the seasons and the landscape (descriptions which remain scientific) and philosophically in his argument in favor of a land ethic.
The first thinker in this series is Aldo Leopold and his works, A Sand County Almanac and Round River .
------
This past week I was on vacation to the beautiful, savage Northern Appalachians of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. Being surrounded by the natural world tends to get me more impassioned about the politics of the environment, and makes me think more about them. The forests seem solid, and in general seem healthier than those further south, but they're incredibly fragile, and seeing healthy hemlocks was bittersweet, since I don't know if they'll be there in 10 or 20 years, and I didn't see a single healthy beech -- bark disease had reduced most of them to pockmarked, oozing husks*.
Somewhere during the week my thoughts drifted onto Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, one of the greatest works of nature writing and probably one of the most famous. I've thought about it every now and again, on and off for the past few years, and the more I think about it the more I'm struck by its greatness.
The central idea in Leopold's work is the Land, and its moral value. He explores the land scientifically in his accounts of ecological succession, lyrically in his vivid depictions of the seasons and the landscape (descriptions which remain scientific) and philosophically in his argument in favor of a land ethic.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Two Virginia Icons and the Limits of Faith and Reason
If you read this blog at all, you'll know I'm from Virginia. Fairfax county, sure, but born to a father from Richmond and raised with the myths of my native state. The glorious past of the mother of presidents and all that. Probably the most captivating part of those myths were the heroes -- Washington, Madison, Patrick Henry, JEB Stuart, Lighthorse Harry Lee, Jefferson, Robert E. Lee. A whole host of dead patricians (or men of patrician pretensions) related through distant cousins and marriages of convenience. But the ones that I liked best were Jefferson and Robert E Lee, for reason's I couldn't say. Perhaps the idealized portrait of Jefferson the intellectual spoke to my own pretensions as a precocious 11 year old, or Lee's idealized, fatherly image image (filtered third hand from people who had read Douglass Southall Freedman) reminded me of my own father.
Now I no longer adhere to those myths*, though in many ways I'm glad I was raised with them -- myths can become touchstones even when they are abandoned or actively renounced. Jefferson's hypocrisy about liberty and slavery, his refusal to free his slaves even when his revolutionary friends did their utmost to push him to do so, all of these have replaced the icon of my youth with something much more complicated. With Lee, it seems as though the saintly figure portrayed by the myth had little relation to the deeply flawed man who broke his oath to his country and went to war to defend a nation built on slavery and built for its perpetuation.
Now I no longer adhere to those myths*, though in many ways I'm glad I was raised with them -- myths can become touchstones even when they are abandoned or actively renounced. Jefferson's hypocrisy about liberty and slavery, his refusal to free his slaves even when his revolutionary friends did their utmost to push him to do so, all of these have replaced the icon of my youth with something much more complicated. With Lee, it seems as though the saintly figure portrayed by the myth had little relation to the deeply flawed man who broke his oath to his country and went to war to defend a nation built on slavery and built for its perpetuation.
Cognitive Bias and the Supposed Appeal of 'Bad Boys'
The estimable Coates has a post up about Caitlinn Flannagan's piece about Kennedy from a while back. It was a piece that I never finished because a) Caitlin Flannagan and b) Boomer Kennedy nostalgia -- neither of which are things I'm a fan of.
The text quoted in Coates's post is vintage Flannagan - a ludicrous attempt to universalize her own tastes and experience to all women, the sort of thing that offends me because I resent the implication that my wife, my best friend and all the other women I like and respect are actually pertpetually adolescent daddy's girls who want a man who will mistreat them. But that's less what concerns me.
Flannagan makes a particular claim that 'a significant number of women' are drawn to Kennedy because he treated women horribly*. More generally, that a 'significant number' of women are attracted to men who treat women badly, because they treat them badly. Coates goes on in comments to argue that this statement is truer if universalized -- that there's a decent number of people, male and female, who are attracted to people who mistreat them, or who are bad for them.
Intuitively, I wanted to agree with that. I've known women with abominable taste in men and men with abominable taste in women (and women with abominable taste in women and men with abominable test in men). But I suspect that in both cases I may mistake where the attraction lies due to my own biases. That is to say, just because someone (person A) is attracted to a person (person B) who cheats on and belittles their romantic partners doesn't mean that cheating and belitting is the reason for the attraction. But to an outside observer, cheating and belittling are the salient characteristics of person B, particularly when we see them treat our friend like crap. Because we define person B in terms of cheating and belittling, we may be blind to what's actually appealing about them to person A. Person B could be attractively assertive or flirtatious, person A could just be desperate etc. Just because we mentally define people in certain ways doesn't mean that others do as well.
A fictional example of the bias at work is the common misreading of Pride and Prejudice that sees Lizzie Bennet being attracted to Darcy's seeming callousness and general jerkassitude. In fact, the sequence of events in the book is 1) Lizzie is attracted to Darcy 2) he's a bit of a jerk 3) she gives up on him 4) he's a real jerk 5) he apologizes 6) she accepts 7) happily ever after. But because we, as readers remember the hostility between them in steps 2-4, this becomes what's salient in their relationship. Since the mutual hostility is, for us, Lizzie and Darcy's defining feature, his jerkish attitude is 'what she sees in him' -- not that he's wealthy, handsome, kind to his servants and loyal to his friends. Because most of the action of the novel revolves around his pride and her prejudice, readers naturally asssume that the key to the underlying attraction is said pride and prejudice, not the fact that Lizzie and Darcy are both pretty attractive (if prickly) people.
*(I don't mean the adultery thing, I mean the just-about-raping 19 year old white house staff and then having them fellate his friends thing).
The text quoted in Coates's post is vintage Flannagan - a ludicrous attempt to universalize her own tastes and experience to all women, the sort of thing that offends me because I resent the implication that my wife, my best friend and all the other women I like and respect are actually pertpetually adolescent daddy's girls who want a man who will mistreat them. But that's less what concerns me.
Flannagan makes a particular claim that 'a significant number of women' are drawn to Kennedy because he treated women horribly*. More generally, that a 'significant number' of women are attracted to men who treat women badly, because they treat them badly. Coates goes on in comments to argue that this statement is truer if universalized -- that there's a decent number of people, male and female, who are attracted to people who mistreat them, or who are bad for them.
Intuitively, I wanted to agree with that. I've known women with abominable taste in men and men with abominable taste in women (and women with abominable taste in women and men with abominable test in men). But I suspect that in both cases I may mistake where the attraction lies due to my own biases. That is to say, just because someone (person A) is attracted to a person (person B) who cheats on and belittles their romantic partners doesn't mean that cheating and belitting is the reason for the attraction. But to an outside observer, cheating and belittling are the salient characteristics of person B, particularly when we see them treat our friend like crap. Because we define person B in terms of cheating and belittling, we may be blind to what's actually appealing about them to person A. Person B could be attractively assertive or flirtatious, person A could just be desperate etc. Just because we mentally define people in certain ways doesn't mean that others do as well.
A fictional example of the bias at work is the common misreading of Pride and Prejudice that sees Lizzie Bennet being attracted to Darcy's seeming callousness and general jerkassitude. In fact, the sequence of events in the book is 1) Lizzie is attracted to Darcy 2) he's a bit of a jerk 3) she gives up on him 4) he's a real jerk 5) he apologizes 6) she accepts 7) happily ever after. But because we, as readers remember the hostility between them in steps 2-4, this becomes what's salient in their relationship. Since the mutual hostility is, for us, Lizzie and Darcy's defining feature, his jerkish attitude is 'what she sees in him' -- not that he's wealthy, handsome, kind to his servants and loyal to his friends. Because most of the action of the novel revolves around his pride and her prejudice, readers naturally asssume that the key to the underlying attraction is said pride and prejudice, not the fact that Lizzie and Darcy are both pretty attractive (if prickly) people.
*(I don't mean the adultery thing, I mean the just-about-raping 19 year old white house staff and then having them fellate his friends thing).
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
The Non-Review in the Age of Youtube
The Onion AV Club, an outfit that I generally respect, has a pretty bad review up about the latest Old Crow Medicine Show album. I don't say it's bad because it's a 'C-' and I like the band in question (though I wouldn't have noticed or cared if it was, say, Lana Del Ray). I don't say it's bad because it gets the album's name wrong. I don't say its bad because I necessarily disagree with the rating. I haven't heard the album, and so I don't know if it's any good. But here's the thing -- reading the review, I still have no idea of whether the album is any good -- and that's the purpose of a review - "I haven't heard this, should I check it out?" The reviewer is clear that they don't like the album, but since their tastes aren't mine, I need information beyond their simple opinion -- that's why I'm reading a review and not just browsing letter grades.
There's about 2 sentences describing the actual music (and they're vague and uninformative) and a lot of tangential comments about the hokiness and authenticity (or not) of Old Crow Medicine Show's lyrics. In truth, the review takes 2 paragraphs to say 'More of the same from OCMS." As a sentiment, that can be a valid part of a review, but it is not, in itself, a review. There's no substantial comment on how individual tracks compare to their previous work and only a vague idea of how the album sounds as a whole (I'd guess its more like OCMS's middle period and less like Tennesse Pusher, but I don't know for sure because the reviewer doesn't actually tell me.
I wonder if this kind of music non-review is becoming more common these days, when Youtube makes the old role of reviewers that I just described somewhat obsolete. After all, if I wanted to I can hop onto Youtube, fire up some tracks off the album and form my own opinion. This being the case, its understandable if reviewers treat their reviews as a blog post to share their opinion and whatever else they want to talk about. But this new model misses something -- at its heart, good reviews are a formalized way of recommending a work to someone (or not). When I recommend my friend a record, I don't say 'I like it, you should check it out' or even just why -you- like it, but you try to convey the contents. I might say to a friend 'I like The Gault because it reminds me of a mash-up of Joy Division and black metal. The production is reverby and stripped down, the vocals are emotive and the guitar riffs are repetetive but really compelling. Oh, and the female vocalist is an alto, and I like the deeper range.' And a good music review echoes that tone. Artificiality has its place in writing, but I do think writing is most effective when it echoes the way we talk to each other (albeit in a more formal form). If we abandon that, we really lose something.
There's about 2 sentences describing the actual music (and they're vague and uninformative) and a lot of tangential comments about the hokiness and authenticity (or not) of Old Crow Medicine Show's lyrics. In truth, the review takes 2 paragraphs to say 'More of the same from OCMS." As a sentiment, that can be a valid part of a review, but it is not, in itself, a review. There's no substantial comment on how individual tracks compare to their previous work and only a vague idea of how the album sounds as a whole (I'd guess its more like OCMS's middle period and less like Tennesse Pusher, but I don't know for sure because the reviewer doesn't actually tell me.
I wonder if this kind of music non-review is becoming more common these days, when Youtube makes the old role of reviewers that I just described somewhat obsolete. After all, if I wanted to I can hop onto Youtube, fire up some tracks off the album and form my own opinion. This being the case, its understandable if reviewers treat their reviews as a blog post to share their opinion and whatever else they want to talk about. But this new model misses something -- at its heart, good reviews are a formalized way of recommending a work to someone (or not). When I recommend my friend a record, I don't say 'I like it, you should check it out' or even just why -you- like it, but you try to convey the contents. I might say to a friend 'I like The Gault because it reminds me of a mash-up of Joy Division and black metal. The production is reverby and stripped down, the vocals are emotive and the guitar riffs are repetetive but really compelling. Oh, and the female vocalist is an alto, and I like the deeper range.' And a good music review echoes that tone. Artificiality has its place in writing, but I do think writing is most effective when it echoes the way we talk to each other (albeit in a more formal form). If we abandon that, we really lose something.
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