Armchair Enlightened Despot

Protecting the Group at the Expense of the Individual

2012-01-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court has held that the Lutheran Church cannot be bound by federal employment laws:

The court called the government's claim that religious organizations are no different than other organizations "hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations."

The First Amendment does not give special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations---it gives special solicitude to the "free exercise" of religion, without reference to institutions. This could be construed as applying to individual persons rather than organizations and, given the Bill of Rights' emphasis on individual liberty, that is likely the intent behind the text. Of course, that's not how the Supreme Court has viewed it, either now or in the past, when it held in Yoder v. Wisconsin that Amish children could be denied an education beyond the 8th grade because their parents' religious belief was a "true and objective religious practice" and not an individual standard.

This is deeply disturbing because by elevating a group's beliefs and practices above the law---particularly above the protections that the law provides for individuals---it allows for the very tyranny the Bill of Rights was intended to prevent. Individuals within these groups are denied their full individual rights, as the claimant in this recent case was. They lack legal redress for many of the wrongs done to them by these institutions and are less able to challenge their worst practices because the law is helpless to intervene. This is the tyranny of the majority in microcosm, and it is the flexuous law of the land (I say flexuous because Congress has outlawed female genital mutilation despite its status as a religious practice and has allowed the state to intervene when parents have refused to seek medical treatment for their seriously ill children because of their religious beliefs).

We can claim to be a nation at the forefront of personal liberty, but this noli me tangere policy for religions pushes us back in the pack.

Freedom of Speech for Genocide Deniers

2012-01-23T16:14:00.000-08:00

While France's senators congratulate themselves for their commitment to historical rectitude at the expense of personal liberty in the case of the Armenian genocide, they might want to mull the words of the late, great Christopher Hitchens (actually, it would have been better if they had considered his views before they passed the Gayssot Act in 1990, but what can you do?):

Well, if everybody in North America is forced to attend, at school, training in sensitivity in Holocaust awareness and is taught to study the Final Solution, about which nothing was actually done by this country [Canada] or by North America or by the United Kingdom while it was going on, but let’s say as if in compensation for that everyone is made to swallow an official and unalterable story of it now, and it’s taught as the great moral exemplar, the moral equivalent of the morally lacking elements of the Second World War, a way of stilling our uneasy conscience about that combat. If that’s the case with everybody, as it more or less is, and one person gets up and says, “You know, about this Holocaust, I’m not sure it even happened. In fact, I’m pretty certain it didn’t. Indeed, I begin to wonder if the only thing is that the Jews brought a little bit of violence on themselves.” That person doesn’t just have a right to speak, that person’s right to speak must be given extra protection because what he has to say must have taken him some effort to come up with, might contain a grain of historical truth, might in any case give people to think about why do they know what they already think they know. How do I know that I know this, except that I’ve always been taught this and never heard anything else?

Movies That Should Not Have Been Made

2012-01-21T02:30:00.000-08:00

A new film from a convicted child rapist (also known as Carnage)

and one about Nazi sympathizers in love (also known as W.E.)

Have pedophilia and fascism really become such small issues that they can be brushed aside for the greater demands of cinema?

(As for Madonna's contention that Wallis Simpson and Edward Windsor were not Nazi sympathizers, people don't have affairs with Joachim von Ribbentrop and stay in constant communication with him at least through Spring 1940 unless they are sympathetic with National Socialist ideals. They probably don't agree to be feted by Hitler in 1937 either, but that could be excused by great stupidity and ignorance.)

Passage of the Day

2012-01-06T00:56:00.000-08:00

From The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) by Steven Pinker, agrarian grotesquerie:

In Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, the historian Ben Kiernan notes another curious feature of utopian ideologies. Time and again they hark back to a vanished agrarian paradise, which they seek to restore as a healthful substitute for prevailing urban decadence. In chapter 4 we saw that after the Enlightenment had emerged from the intellectual bazaar of cosmopolitan cities, the German counter-Enlightenment romanticized the attachment of a people to their land---the blood and soil of Kiernan's title. The ungovernable metropolis, with its fluid population and ethnic and occupational enclaves, is an affront to the mindset that envisions a world of harmony, purity, and organic wholeness. Many of the nationalisms of the 19th and early 20th centuries were guided by utopian images of ethnic groups flourishing in their native homelands, often based on myths of ancestral tribes who settled the territory at the dawn of time. This agrarian utopianism lay behind Hitler's dual obsessions: his loathing of Jewry, which he associated with commerce and cities, and his deranged plan to depopulate Eastern Europe to provide farmland for German city-dwellers to colonize. Mao's massive agrarian communes and Pol Pot's expulsion of Cambodian city-dwellers to rural killing fields are other examples.

We have this streak in American society as well, though it has resulted in substantially less violence. From Jeffersonian democracy to the Populist Movement to the sometimes counter-Enlightenment 60s and, recently, to the often overlapping, backward-looking ideals of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Movements, we have seen anti-cosmopolitanism and (in the case of the first three at least) pro-agrarianism with undertones of revolution (sometimes violent revolution in the case of the first two). That we have managed to keep this counter-Enlightenment tendency in check is a testament to our strong cosmopolitanism and classical liberal roots.

Now We Have the Power to Cause Cancer?

2011-12-29T16:40:00.000-08:00

Hugo Chavez has long accused the US of outlandishly malevolent behavior, so I suppose his latest accusations shouldn't be surprising, but they still are:

Would it be so strange that they've invented the technology to spread cancer and we won't know about it for 50 years?" Chávez pondered, one day after Argentina's president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and would undergo surgery in January.
Speaking on Wednesday during an end-of-year address to the armed forces, Chávez hinted that a spate of cancer among the region's leaders could be a US plot – although he conceded he had no proof and did not want to make "reckless" accusations.
"I repeat: I am not accusing anyone. I am simply taking advantage of my freedom to reflect and air my opinions faced with some very strange and hard to explain goings-on," he said at the event, broadcast live on state television.

You are making accusations when you state such reflections publicly, and you are trying to influence your citizens to believe that American officials could/would do such a thing. No one deserves to have cancer, but I think Chavez definitely deserves a bout of food poisoning for his comments.

15-Year-Old Afghan Bride Tortured

2011-12-29T14:17:00.000-08:00

Married off at 14, Sahar Gul was tortured and starved by her husband and in-laws for refusing to work as a prostitute:

The girl was left starving after being detained by him and his family for several months.

The case came to light this week when police rescued the teenager, Sahar Gul, who had been locked up in the basement of her in-laws' house.

Police say that she had had her nails and clumps of hair pulled out.

In addition they say she had chunks of flesh cut out with pliers.

The BBC also has video, but it's just awful.

Paul in the Lead in Iowa

2011-12-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess it's no more surprising than Gingrich's period of popularity . . . or Cain's . . . or Perry's. Of course, it'll all be over when people dig up his racist newsletters, but it should provide some nice fodder for Stewart and Colbert in the meanwhile, if the story stays dormant until they come back from vacation.

Freedom!

2011-12-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

À la Monty Python

Okay, I No Longer Like the Beatles

2011-12-27T23:59:00.000-08:00

How could they think that threatening to kill a woman made for a cute and kicky song? (h/t: Steven Pinker)

"Run For Your Life" Lyrics

Well I'd rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or I won't know where I am

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end'a little girl

Well you know that I'm a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind
And I can't spend my whole life
Trying just to make you toe the line

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end'a little girl

Let this be a sermon
I mean everything I've said
Baby, I'm determined
And I'd rather see you dead

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end'a little girl

I'd rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or you won't know where I am

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end'a little girl
Na, na, na
Na, na, na
Na, na, na
Na, na, na

Oh god, there's video of a kid singing it. What is wrong with people?

"How do you construct otherness?"

2011-12-27T16:22:00.000-08:00

Nanette Snoep, curator of the exhibit The Invention of the Savage: Human Zoos at the Quai Branly museum in Paris, asks this question, arguing that the displays in the exhibition trace the evolution of Europe's 16th century fascination with native "marvels" to its 19th century formulation of hierarchical racial theory and exploitation of natives in zoo-like shows.

I really don't see that there is much of a substantive difference between the two periods. In early European encounters with remote societies, the people in those societies were viewed as things or phenomena ("marvels"). Europeans lacked the familiarity with these groups to view them as human beings. As technology shrank the physical distance between them, Europeans were increasingly able to see them as human and also to see them as competitors for lands that technology allowed them to access and exploit, so they developed feelings of hostility and superiority towards them.

This is not behavior that is unique to the European society of the last few centuries, as Steven Pinker points out in his latest book. Competition for land and its resources makes people (and chimpanzees, apparently) hostile towards whoever occupies the land they want. The assumed inferiority, even the genetic inferiority, of the occupiers is implicit in this dynamic---I and the group to which I am genetically related can take this land from your group and perhaps kill most of you because we are better than you; your difference from us is your inferiority. All human societies have done this in the past. The only thing that made Europe different from the typical society in this period is that the typical society was limited to attacking its nearest neighbors, while Europe was able to make far-flung societies its neighbors (hence, its competitors) and also to come up with increasingly complex justifications for its violent behavior.

What is more, it was fairly literate and could preserve its atrocious deeds and theories for future generations to look back on in horror. That is what this Paris exhibition is: a uniquely well preserved record of a society acting out its basic human need for conquest and superiority, not of Europe constructing otherness to justify its uniquely terrible actions. How can one hold a society responsible for creating something that has existed for as long as there has been human society?

Real Scrooge Traded in Meal, Not Meanness

2011-12-23T22:48:00.000-08:00

Via Marginal Revolution, vindication for a slandered Scotsman (and relative of Adam Smith):

Dickens was in the capital to deliver a lecture to an audience of Edinburgh notables. He was wandering the city, killing time before the talk, when he visited the Canongate Kirk graveyard.
There, as revealed by his diaries, he saw a memorial slab which read: "Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie - meal man". The description referred to his main trade as a corn merchant. However, the author mistakenly translated it as "mean man".
Though he was shocked by the description, it gave him food for thought and two years later, art imitated life - or so the author believed.

Apparently, the corn merchant had earned a reputation as a kind of lecherous Fezziwig rather than a Scrooge and was said to have impregnated a servant girl on a tombstone. Somehow I doubt Dickens would have moralized with him about that behavior before a grave.

"Germans do have a sense of humor."

2011-12-23T15:58:00.000-08:00

This is the sort of thing where if you have to say it, it's probably not true, or at least by saying it, you're calling it further into question. Stephen Evans of the BBC does back up his assertion with an example, though:

Take Loriot, the comic who died in August. He was a national treasure and genuinely very funny. Just watch his sketch of two Germans in bed in a language lesson for foreigners. It picks up on the German habit of linguistic punctiliousness - it's a slow burn but very funny when you get it.

"[V]ery funny when you get it"? I think we've identified the problem.

[The image above is of the adored German comedian Bernhard Victor Christoph Carl von Bulow (aka "Loriot") in a sketch]

Did the Syrian Government Bomb Its Own Security Bases?

2011-12-23T15:27:00.000-08:00

It certainly looks like it. With Arab League monitors just having entered the country, the timing is too convenient, and suicide bombings far better suit the government's narrative that the protestors are "terrorists" than the protestors' narrative that they are anti-corruption, democracy activists facing slaughter by government troops. The fact that 5,000 of the protestors have been killed since March and yet there has been no indication of terrorist activity before this suggests that the protestors are being truthful when they disclaim any involvement in these bombings, while government officials are being--- blood-soaked liars.

The Tyrant is Dead. Short Reign to the Tyrant.

2011-12-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

The Kim dynasty weakens with each succeeding dynast. Let us hope that Kim Jong-Un is the link that finally breaks.

Christopher Hitchens: He Didn't Suffer Fools

2011-12-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

. . .and he never accepted that it was a virtue to suffer them. Such was his greatness.

Saudi Arabia: Sexual Activity through Driving

2011-12-02T16:25:00.000-08:00

Saudi Professor Kamal Subhi has issued a report to the Shura Council arguing that, if women are allowed to drive, it will be the "end of virginity" in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, male virginity is not a concern of the Islamic state because there is no mention of restrictions on men's mobility. For a council composed exclusively of men, the Shura seems overly fond of dictating the behavior of its female electorate---or what would be its female electorate if women were allowed to vote. So far, its list of rules that need to be in place to control women's sexuality includes:

1) No voting
2) No driving
3) No traveling unaccompanied
4) No showing any part of the body except one's eyes
5) No showing one's eyes if they are "tempting"

and, of course,

6) No being raped

I think that most women in Saudi Arabia would prefer any supposed risk to their chastity to life under these "protections," but then, it's never been their choice to make.

Pulled Mugabe Fast-Food Commercial

2011-12-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

South African fast food chain Nando's decided to stop running the ad after threats were made to its Zimbabwean staff.

Rick Perry Time Warps to 1971

2011-11-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

(h/t: Bloggingheads)

Countries Where It is Illegal to be Raped

2011-11-10T15:35:00.000-08:00

Afghanistan

Bangladesh

Iran

Pakistan

Saudi Arabia

Somalia

United Arab Emirates

List is likely not exhaustive

Update: It is not illegal to be raped in Afghanistan so long as you agree to marry the sub-human trash who raped you.

Big Bullies

2011-10-31T17:59:00.000-07:00

Responding to Britain's threat to withdraw aid from countries where homosexuality is illegal, Ugandan presidential adviser John Nagenda stated,

Uganda is, if you remember, a sovereign state and we are tired of being given these lectures by people. . . . Those who have more should give to those who have less. It's as simple as that . . . . [T]his kind of ex-colonial mentality of saying: 'You do this or I withdraw my aid' will definitely make people extremely uncomfortable with being treated like children.

He actually seems to be demanding that the UK treat Uganda as a child, giving it unconditional support rather than engaging with it as a political equal. To his mind, whatever ills a country commits against its own people are its prerogative and should not affect its relationships with other countries, but this has never been the case, even among developed countries. Economic sanctions are a time-honored means of registering disapproval of a country's conduct, and Nagenda would like Uganda to be made a special exception to this rule because of its relative economic weakness, not treated as an equal political actor that can hold its own in the international arena. Clearly, Ugandan politicians are conflicted in their embrace of equality.

Passage of the Day

2011-10-25T18:52:00.000-07:00

From Madame Curie: A Biography (1938) by Eve Curie, Pierre Curie writes of the cruel necessity to serve one's dream

Weak as I am, in order not to let my mind fly away on every wind that blows, yielding to the slightest breath it encounters, it would be necessary either to have everything motionless around me, or else, speeding on like a humming top, in movement itself to be rendered impervious to external things.

Whenever, rotating slowly on myself, I attempt to speed up, the merest nothing---a word, a story, a newspaper, a visit---stops me, prevents my becoming a gyroscope or a top, and can postpone or forever delay the instant when, equipped with sufficient speed, I might be able to concentrate within myself in spite of what is around me.

We are obliged to eat, drink, sleep, laze, love; that is to say, to touch the sweetest things in this life, and yet not succumb. What is necessary is, in doing all that, to make the anti-natural thought to which one has devoted one's self remain dominant and continue its impassable course in one's poor head. One must make of life a dream and of that dream a reality.

Occupy Wall Street and the Parable of the Drum Circle

2011-10-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

The protestors are struggling to rein in the drummers amongst them:

It seems a core group of beat-niks in New York’s Zuccotti Park has been holding marathon jam sessions from mid-morning until late at night every day, punishing the eardrums of their fellow protesters and the surrounding neighborhood. Teachers at a school across the street have complained they can’t teach. And the local neighborhood community board is holding a meeting Tuesday night in which it could revoke its support of the protests if it’s not satisfied that the noise will subside.

The drummers’ refusal to be silenced has opened cracks in the leaderless movement. The general assembly that has formed to oversee the protests proposed to limit the drumming to two hours per day, but the drummers fought back. One 18-year-old drummer told New York Magazine, “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest. They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.” The circles have continued.

Megan McArdle connects this back to the movement's central deficiencies--its unwillingness to create an authority structure and its unwillingness to decide on a message:

[I]f there's no authority, you basically have to get consensus on every. single. little. thing. This takes time. That time is not spent accomplishing anything. It is, however, spent building up factions and petty resentments over past arguments. Eventually, a combination of personal friction and lack of obvious progress causes the group to disband.

If Occupy Wall Street wants to achieve something other than a modicum of media fame, it's going to need to do what its pseudoorganizers have so far resisted in the name of inclusivity (and maximizing participation): define what the group is for, what it wants to do, and what sort of behavior gets you kicked out.

I don't think that the movement is capable of deciding these definitions. It can't decide what it is is for or what it wants to do because, like the Tea Party, its members have been brought together by a shared rejection of economic and political events and the institutions that they hold responsible for those events. They do not have a positive policy agenda. The movement also can't kick anyone out because that would militate against its populist message. These inherent constraints will likely prevent it from becoming politically effective.

A Great Loss

2011-10-05T17:36:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs has passed on.

Here is his 2005 Stanford commencement address for a small dose of the inspiration has he has given to the world.

Slings and Arrows

2011-09-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

Having just finished watching Slings and Arrows a second time through, I am more certain than ever that it is the best thing to have ever come out of television---yes, it's even better than The Wire and 30 Rock, though I realize that those are uneasy comparisons. I shall continue to preach the gospel of Slings and Arrows periodically until 1) television produces something better, 2) everyone with a Netflix subscription has ordered it, or 3) I grow tired of watching it, none of which is very likely ever to happen.

Lonely Guinea Pigs Create Opportunity for Arbitrage

2011-09-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

Tyler Cowen ends his tale of legally required guinea pig matchmaking in Switzerland with this soon-to-be-classic line:

Attention all you hedge fund readers: if these people can arbitrage and convexify their guinea pig market, you’d better not bet against their currency peg.

"I won't have to miss you"

2011-09-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Fresh Air's Terry Gross has a poignant interview with Maurice Sendak.

Sejin Seo of AIMS is a Con Artist

2011-09-19T00:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't wanted to write about this incident on my blog, but it has come to my attention that my former employer, Sejin Seo, who stole a great deal of money from me, is still operating in the nonprofit sector and may be victimizing others. I have limited means of publicizing this information as a warning to others, but hopefully, anyone who googles her will come across this post.

In Fall 2009, I had worked and (I thought) been friends with Sejin for more than a year when she asked me to undertake the travel expenses associated with a lecture tour for a North Korean refugee who was working with our nonprofit, AIMS (the Agency for International Migrant Support). She promised to pay me back shortly after. I stupidly trusted her enough to agree and, largely because of her constant rescheduling of the events, the costs ended up totaling more than $8,000. This sum represented almost all of the money that I had saved over the previous year from teaching English in South Korea.

After the tour, I began asking about repayment, and she stated that her bank in Korea needed to verify the charges on the credit cards that I had used to pay for the tour's expenses before it could make the transfer. This struck me as strange, but again, I was stupidly trusting (okay, just very stupid) and gave her my credit card information. She proceeded to run up charges on my credit cards! She then tried to explain them away as a glitch in the Korean banking system and asked me not to register them as fraud because she was taking care of the mistake. Thankfully, there was a limit to my stupidity and, and I did report the fraud and had those charges wiped out. That was when I ceased to hear from Sejin about repayment, about the work of the nonprofit---about anything. Soon after, AIMS collapsed, with Sejin and the other co-director, Timothy Lee, accusing each other of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit. I'll avoid comment on that debacle.

Bottom line: SEJIN SEO IS A CON ARTIST. DO NOT HAVE ANY DEALINGS WITH HER.

Here is a link to her LinkedIn Page.

And here is a link to a Free Korea post about AIMS, with a reference to the group of Yale interns we had in the summer of 2009 (who later complained extensively about Sejin), comments by Sejin, and an accusation in the comments about Sejin's being a scam artist.

Two Reasons to Be Wary of Perry

2011-08-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Matthew Yglesias via Brad DeLong:

1. He believes that federal banking regulation is unconstitutional:

“if the Constitution were shown the appropriate respect, Washington regulation writers wouldn’t have to worry about underrepresented views, because they wouldn’t have control over them in the first place.”

2. He believes that the "private enterprise" of World War II put an end to the Great Depression:

Rick Perry says that the Depression didn’t end “until World War II, when FDR was finally persuaded to unleash private enterprise.”

Why can't the Republicans put forward a non-extremist, non-revisionist candidate?

The Utility of Corruption

2011-08-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

Glenn Loury and Megan McArdle discuss those situations where a greased palm is better than a clean one.

The Interrupters

2011-08-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

Terry Gross interviews documentarian Steve James about his new film, "The Interrupters," which follows former gang leaders in Chicago who intervene in potentially violent disputes to mediate between and advise both sides. She also interviews Ameena Matthews, one of the violence interrupters, who is absolutely amazing in her ability to empathize with and reach the young people caught up in the violence of Chicago's western and southern neighborhoods.

Books!

2011-07-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

They're kind of a dark bunch this time around.

1. (science/history) The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An oncologist follows the artfully cruel disease from its first appearance in the record of history to the latest efforts to efface it.

2. (economics/history) The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money by J. Bradford De Long and Stephen S. Cohen. A concise account of how global trade evolved while America had the money and an explanation of why things won't be so bad we don't have it anymore

3. (literature) Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock. A cycle of short stories that is as well crafted as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio but about a very different place and time in that state [Just a warning, this is definitely a shower-after-reading book]

4. (biography) Escape from Slavery by Francis Bok. Bok recounts being kidnapped as a child during a bloody incursion by northern Sudanese militants into the area around his southern Sudanese village in the late 1980s, his life as a slave, his escape from torment 10 years later, and his journey as a refugee through North Africa and the US.

5. (literature) Camel Xianzi (or Rickshaw Boy) by Lao She. Like Jude the Obscure in tone and plot development but with rickshaws---and, yes, camels do make a brief appearance

6. (biography) All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael MacDonald. MacDonald reveals the violence and dashed hopes of the neighborhood through a family narrative stretching from the '60s to the '90s. With the recent arrest of Whitey Bulger, it is especially worth reading

7. (biography) Brother, I'm Dying by Edwinge Danticat. An absorbing narrative about two generations of a Haitian family on the island and in the US

8. (literature/history) All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell. The first in a three-part series on the Haitian revolution, this book can push your belief in human decency over a cliff, but the writing is so exquisite that you'll let it go before willingly setting the book down

9. (literature/history) Devil's Dream by Madison Smartt Bell. As well written as All Souls' Rising, this fictional account of the life of Nathan Bedford Forest somehow ends up being less disturbing---but not by much

10. (literature) Death is Not an Option by Suzanne Rivecca. Very cleverly written short stories about female responses to different forms of victimization in the Midwest

[The image above is of the Persian queen Atossa, who directed her slave to perform the world's first known mastectomy on herself in the 5th century BC. She survived.]

The Bond

2011-07-29T23:10:00.000-07:00

In an interview with Radio Times, the president of the Humane Society, Wayne Pacelle, discusses the bond between humans and animals and the current cruel practices that violate our ethical obligations to them.

Blaming the West for a Practice in the East

2011-07-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

Drawing on the arguments of journalist Mara Hvistendahl, the BBC's Soutik Biswas puts forward the idea that Western countries are responsible for the practice of sex selective abortion in Asian countries because

-During the Cold War, "Western money . . . was used to set up an extensive network of family planning advisors and doctors [who] encouraged women to opt for amniocentesis"
-In the 1960s and 70s, "influential US experts supported sex selection in academic papers and government-sponsored seminars."
-Kissinger stated in a classified memo that "abortion is vital to the solution" of population growth
-"The World Bank and other organizations pressured the [Indian] government to 'adapt [adopt?] a paradigm' where population was the problem."
-"The Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation poured money into 'research into reproductive biology."
-In the 60s, embryologist Sheldon Segal (of Norplant fame) showed doctors at India's top medical school how to test for sex chromatin
-Early sex selective abortions in India were performed openly at government hospitals

The last point doesn't even involve Western actors, but setting that aside, Hvistendahl's investigation of this issue provides evidence of nothing except Western governmental support of family planning (which included abortion but not specifically sex selective abortion), support among some Western academics for sex selective abortion, the funding of reproductive research by Western foundations, and the communication of scientific knowledge by a Western researcher to his Indian colleagues. How any of those factors or the World Bank's supposed pressure on the Indian government to "'adapt a paradigm' where population was the problem" could cause individual Asian couples to choose to abort their daughters remains unclear to me.

Yes, scientific knowledge originating in the West made sex selective abortion possible in these societies (though the practice of female infanticide already existed in China and India), but it did not encourage them to avail themselves of the opportunity. If it did, then there would be similar distortions in gender ratios wherever ultrasounds, amniocenteses, and abortions are available. The fact the practice is limited in its occurrence across the globe militates against this and offers hope that it can be stamped out in those areas where it persists.

Ibsenian Satire, or An Utterly Impossible Prig

2011-05-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

I love and respect Ibsen immensely, but the sardonic take on his plays in Mr. Punch's pocket Ibsen (1893) by F. Anstey is just too good:

OLD WERLE

Ha!--I am a wealthy merchant, of dubious morals, and I am about to marry my housekeeper, who is on intimate terms with the Norwegian aristocracy. I have a son who loathes me, and who is either an Ibsenian satire on the Master's own ideals, or else an utterly impossible prig--I don't know or care which. Altogether, I flatter myself my household affords an accurate and realistic picture of Scandinavian society!

(h/t: Aaron Matz's Satire in an Age of Realism (2010))

Greatest Literary Compliment Ever

2011-05-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

The uncensored version of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray was recently published for the first time by Harvard University Press. Even when it was cleaned up, the 1890 text was still dirty enough to inspire this review by the Daily Chronicle:

[I]t is a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French Decadents – a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction

What author will ever have the honor of such a review again?

(The image above is of the Harvard University Press cover with Caravaggio's Narcissus as the cover art.)

Mortenson's Fraudulence, Financial and Otherwise

2011-04-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

Jon Krakauer, a former supporter of Greg Mortenson's Central Asia Institute, sifts through the evidence of his deceit. Although the lies about the events of his life are pretty awful, his financial malfeasance is the most disturbing. In her 2004 letter of resignation, CAI's chief financial officer Debbie Raynor recounted:

On May 27, 2004, I again reported to the Board the serious

situation as it related to overseas expenses. At that time, there

was over $100,000 in unaccounted overseas expenses. Mr.

Mortenson agreed to provide all documentation for overseas

expenses. To date, he has not produced the promised docu-

ments in any meaningful manner. In fact, currently CAI has

spent over $270,000 in cash and wire transfers [emphasis by

Raynor] without proper documentation as to the disbursement

of this money. There is no record to who ultimately received

these monies or the manner in which it was spent.

Mr. Mortenson has reported that measures have been

implemented to resolve the unsubstantiated overseas docu-

mentation; however, no specifics have been forthcoming.

In August 2004, I learned that information given to me

to be placed in the Annual Report is untrue and therefore

fraudulent.

Krakauer further notes that the CAI sees none of the profits from Mortenson's books or speaking engagements but has paid for all of the expenses relating to them. It's truly stomach-churning.

Death Rate Per Watt Produced

2011-03-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

The first box is "nuclear." These facts are sometimes lost in the contemplation of the worst case scenario, but even then, as Brad DeLong points out, "the very worst case scenario for coal plants aggregated is . . . global warming."

Most Sexist Poem in Existence

2011-03-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

I didn't think that it was possible to unite all of these themes in a single piece of writing. Well done, Wordsworth. All of your work is now loathsome to me, but well done.

A Perfect Woman
SHE was a Phantom of delight
          When first she gleamed upon my sight;
          A lovely Apparition, sent
          To be a moment's ornament;
          Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
          Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
          But all things else about her drawn
          From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
          A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
          To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.     
                    
          I saw her upon nearer view,
          A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
          Her household motions light and free,
          And steps of virgin-liberty;
          A countenance in which did meet
          Sweet records, promises as sweet;
          A Creature not too bright or good
          For human nature's daily food;
          For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
          Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.             

           And now I see with eye serene
          The very pulse of the machine;
          A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
          A Traveller between life and death;
          The reason firm, the temperate will,
          Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
          A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
          To warn, to comfort, and command;
          And yet a Spirit still, and bright
          With something of angelic light.

Benghazi "like hell"

2011-02-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

The situation in Libya tragically represents how, even when they share a similar impetus, the outcomes of revolutions remain deeply context-specific:

"Dozens were killed... not 15, dozens," the unnamed eyewitness said, adding that he had helped take victims to a local hospital.
A Benghazi resident told the BBC that security forces inside a government compound had fired on protesters with mortars and 14.5mm machine guns - a heavy machine gun typically produced in the former USSR.
They were, he said, machine-gunning cars and people indiscriminately. "A lot [of people] have fallen down today," he added.
Other witnesses spoke of snipers firing at protesters from rooftops and there were widespread reports of foreign mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa being brought in to attack protesters.
A doctor told the BBC that situation in the city was "like hell", saying he had been seeing people with gunshot wounds being carried into his hospital all day.

Great Gatsby the Nintendo Game

2011-02-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

Now you can be Nick Carraway, taking down boozy party-goers and flappers doing the Charleston (at least, I think that's what they're doing) in The Great Gatsby for NES. Recently recovered at a garage sale, this "unreleased localization of a Japanese cart called 'Doki Doki Toshokan: Gatsby no Monogatari'" is now available online. I haven't been able to bring down the glasses of Eckleburg at the end of the second level, but it's a very fun game at least up to that point. (h/t: Caustic Cover Critic)

Update: The Atlantic has uncovered the true origins of the game:

But here's what really happened: Charles Hoey, a developer at the San Francisco-based Barabarian Group and Great Gatsby fan, was messing around with Photoshop one day when he hatched the idea for the game. Hoey partnered with Pete Smith, an editor at Nerve.com, and released the game about a year later. According to The Washington Post, Hoey and Smith considered creating "a full literary classics arcade" with Jane Eyre as their next submission but instead decided to put the source code online for other developers to make their own classic NES games.

Update: Beat the game. The last level is kind of anticlimactic.

Egyptian Independence Day

2011-02-11T15:13:00.000-08:00

Be master of your destiny, o my country, and be happy!

-Mostafa Saadeq Al-Rafe'ie

Uprising in Egypt

2011-01-25T11:04:00.000-08:00

If the protests in Tunisia were of great moment for the Arab world, those in Egypt will likely prove to be still more so. This is not only because of Egypt's greater size and influence, but also because the Egyptian protesters' clear emulation of their Tunisian counterparts lends support to the idea of a Domino effect in the region. Though this might just be wishful thinking on the part of outside observers like myself, Marc Lynch offers several reasons to be optimistic about its coming to fruition:

More broadly, it's astonishing how much is now in motion in Arab politics after such a long period of seeming stagnation. There's a vivid sense of an era coming to a close and an uncertain new vista opening. Even if Al Jazeera's release of the so-called "Palestine Papers" doesn't bring down Abu Mazen's negotiating team or the PA it feels like the autopsy of a long-dead peace process. Hezbollah's Parliamentary maneuver to bring down the Hariri government and replace him with veteran politician and businessman Najib Miqati, a response to the Special Tribunal's reported indictments which has sparked violent protests by Hariri backers, may mean an end to the era of U.S. alliance with a March 14-led Lebanon. It's hard to know where to focus --- but in fact I continue to see these seemingly unrelated events as part of a broader story of the crumbling of an Arab status quo which has long seemed unsustainable.

I dearly wish this to be true, though apparently crumbling regimes have an annoying way of proving solid.

People Have to Be Taught Not to Abuse Animals?

2011-01-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

NPR covers the Humane Society's End Dogfighting campaign, which includes the provision of pit bull training classes. An attendee at one class admitted to his abuse of dogs:

"We used to fight dogs, and the ones [with] the most injuries, we used to just hang them and kill them, beat it to death, set it on fire, drown it — all of that unhumane stuff," Murphy says.

This is truly abhorrent. To me, such behavior seems depraved to the point of psychopathy. How the Humane Society can expect to effectively dissuade animal abusers from committing these deeply evil acts by offering basic training classes---classes that begin with the instructor having to tell the attendees not to hit their dogs---is beyond me. One would not resolve the situation of parents' beating their children or setting them on fire--"all of that unhumane stuff"---by allowing them to retain custody of their children and simply asking them to bring the kids along to parenting classes, yet somehow this arrangement is permissible when it comes to animals? Have they any less capacity for feeling the effects of physical abuse? Does their suffering count for so little? The individuals who commit such acts should at the very least be banned from keeping animals (ideally, they'd be placed behind bars on lengthy prison sentences). They should not be allowed to replace their dead victims and instructed not to hit the new ones.

Blood Libel

2011-01-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

I've been somewhat sympathetic to Sarah Palin's plight in the days since the attack on Rep. Giffords. Whatever allusions she has made to violence in her speech and online materials, she clearly has not intended for actual violence to take place, and there is no direct connection between the suspected gunman and her political movement. Moreover, I agree with Ross Douthat that any attempt to show that ambient rhetoric has *caused* a specific human action is an exercise in futility, particularly in the present case where we know so little about the actor's motivations.

That said, Palin really could not have found a worse way to defend herself against the growing criticism than to compare the argument of her critics to a "blood libel." Given the historical meaning of the term, it's as if she were comparing criticism of her to the persecution of Jews. I really hope that she didn't understand the full significance of her words and that she will apologize for or at least cease her use of the term, not because such statements contribute to a climate of real and rhetorical violence, but because it would be the decent and courteous thing to do.

"Crosshairs of a gun sight"

2011-01-09T14:06:00.000-08:00

Rep. Gabrielle Gifford describes personal threats and attacks on her office last year and relates them to the intense rhetoric surrounding the health care debate.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(h/t: Brad Delong)

The latest news on the BBC is that Rep. Giffords is doing well following surgery. One can only hope that she will make a complete recovery.

"Yes, he's pro-free-market, but he also has a real passion for poor people"

2011-01-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne praises President Obama's new senior economic advisor, Gene Sperling, while damning the general morality of his philosophical position.

Not that Dionne's comments are the most direct example of this, but it's strange how acceptable blatant ad hominem attacks like the you-don't-care-about-poor-people argument have become in otherwise polite discourse. I've found this to be especially true in academic writing. This is troubling because, while it makes perfect sense for someone who has Marxist inclinations and believes that capitalism is a zero-sum game to consider capitalism to be antithetical to poverty reduction, it is not reasonable for that person to believe that those who argue in support of capitalism also believe that it is a zero-sum game and, therefore, do not care about poverty reduction but only about exploiting zero-sum transactions for the benefit of particular individuals and groups. Personally, most of my support for capitalist systems stems from their encouragement of non-zero-sum behavior and their history of large-scale poverty reduction---with their tendency to promote democracy, innovation, and individual choice making up the balance. It is disheartening to have one's commitment to the welfare of others called into question because one disagrees with the common narrative about how it can best be advanced.

A Product Centuries in Development

2011-01-06T20:11:00.000-08:00

. . . is now the latest in monitor cleaning technology.

(h/t: Swans on Tea)

Passage of the Day

2010-12-17T17:50:00.000-08:00

From The Black Album (1996) by Hanif Kureishi, '60s-inspired communism lauds religious extremism and condemns 'complacent' liberalism:

'I was at Cambridge in the late sixties, you know.'

'The best years?'

'Not by a long way. But I took part in the rebellion. Sartre was my god.' Brownlow glanced at Shahid, as if afraid he'd patronized him by mentioning someone he hadn't heard of. 'And Fanon, of course . . . Students were a united force back then---this was when humane education counted. I remember thinking, we've smashed through the barrier, the walls of fear and deference have come down, we no longer have to grovel to the gods of authority. We can write the terms of a more sensual history.' Brownlow stopped then, waved his fist and began to sway from the waist down, while chanting to the rush-hour crowd, 'LBJ, LBJ, how many kids you burned today? LBJ, LBJ, how many kids you burned today?' He looked wildly at Shahid, then wanted to put his arm around him but stopped himself. 'Know that?'

'Not till now.'

'Sorry for saying this, but how incredible it is just that there are kids who never tasted that combustible freedom. But you guys, Riaz and Chad, and the women, too, in the most reactionary period since the war, you're doin' it, you're not isolated from the people and you're not intimidated! You are the modern---with grandeur and dignity on your side, oh yes!'

'But in the sixties, you know, man,' Shahid said, 'when society was on fire, you didn't like censorship, did you?'

'We were blowing all the doors open---blowing them off their hinges, blowing away their houses!'

'Really blowing times.' Shahid continued, 'But recently Deedee, Ms. Osgood [Brownlow's wife], I mean, mentioned a phrase that was used then. She still stands by it, too: "all power to the imagination."'

Brownlow said impatiently, 'She must have picked it up from one of our friends.'

'You're in favor of censoring this writer [Salman Rushdie], then?'

Brownlow withdrew his arm and blinked. 'I see what you're getting at. If only---if only this were merely a book matter. But you don't believe the liberals---who are working themselves into a pompous lather---are fighting for literary freedom, do you?'

'I think---'

'They're just standing by their miserable class. When have they ever given a damn about you---the Asian working class---and your struggle? Your class is arguing back. No one will colonize you, put you down, or insult you in your own country. And the liberals---always the weakest and most complacent people are sh***ing their pants because you threaten their power. Liberalism cannot survive these forces. And if you meet any of them, be sure to tell them that their pants are going to be on fire pretty soon.'

'What d'you mean?'

'You know what I mean, Brownlow said with a fierce laugh. He swerved away past the security guards and gave the peace sign. 'Ciao.'

Twenty-four hundred years after Pericles' funeral oration and we are still arguing about the inherent weakness of liberal societies and the need for social organizations of fascistic unity and discipline and even violence (often propounded by those who are avowedly anti-fascist). It's so disgusting.

Passage of the Day

2010-12-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

From The Black Album (1995) by Hanif Kureishi, the banal hatefulness of extremism:

Twice he'd visited the large, cool building with the posse, to watch Riaz's Sunday talks. They were well attended by a growing audience of young people, mostly local cockney Asians. Not being an aged obscurantist, Riaz was becoming the most popular speaker. He must have tasted the atmosphere of his time without drinking it in, for he entitled his talks 'Rave to the Grave?,' 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve,' 'Islam: A Blast from the Past or a Force for the Future?,' and 'Democracy is a Hypocrisy.'

Sitting barefoot and cross-legged on a low podium in gray salwar, with a bowl of flowers in front of him, Riaz didn't use notes and he never hesitated. The momentum of his conviction made him fluent, amusing, passionately coruscating. He appeared more comfortable addressing a crowd than being with one person. He never ran short of words or appeared uneasy. No subject could hold him. He may have begun his talk under the guise of discussing Islamic identity, for instance, but soon he would be expatiating on the creation of the universe, the persecution of Muslims world-wide, the state of Israel, gays and lesbians, Islam in Spain, face-lifts, nudity; the dumping of nuclear waste in the Third World, perfume, the collapse of the West, and Urdu poetry.

Even if he'd opened by wryly saying, 'Today I'm not going to blast anything,' he would start to rage, fist in the air, throwing down his pen, creating a frisson of humorous agreement in his audience. Then, pretending to be contrite, he'd beg the brothers to apologize to anyone they might have argued with, and to love those of other religions.

The Civil War Was Indeed About Slavery

2010-12-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

"The Daily Show" succinctly counters the Sons of the Confederacy's revisionist history.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

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Hostage Taking and Colonial-Era Racism

2010-12-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

Wow, Obama is really dissatisfied with the new tax deal and making some unfortunate comparisons to justify his decision. First the hostage-taking metaphor and now this:

'I couldn't go through the front door at this country's founding, and you know, if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn't have a union.'

It might not be the best idea to compare the tax compromise with 18th century racism---at least, not when your aim is to convince the Democrats to sign off on it.

Challenge for the Academic Adrenaline Junkie

2010-12-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

---> How to make oneself work on papers that aren't due for 2-5 days. I think that if I sit in front of a computer screen in the library long enough, my will to goof off and finish reading the Amitav Ghosh novel that I just started will eventually shrivel and die and be replaced with a will to be productive. Of course, I can't count on this strategy as easily as I can my 12-hour rule of productivity before a paper comes due, but I will try this week, at least, to reform myself.

The Maccabeats Rock the Festival of Lights

2010-12-02T20:27:00.000-08:00

(h/t: Bloggingheads.tv)

The Father of the Community

2010-12-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

NPR looks at the legacy of welfare capitalist George F. Johnson. Just as I have never understood why family businesses are believed to be better than others because they enshrine the principles of nepotism in their management decisions, I do not understand why welfare capitalist businesses were seen as preferable to other enterprises because of their paternalistic ideals.

A Brief Incident of Human Apathy

2010-11-20T23:49:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I went shopping at Coach with my mother and sister, hoping to find a new purse for the latter to replace the one that is getting on in years. As we were looking at purses near the door, the alarm sounded, and we turned around to see two men in sweatshirts with at least a dozen purses dangling from their arms like over-sized bangles. The men stood still and blank-faced for a moment as the head clerk approached them, calling out almost cheerfully, "Excuse me, sir!" before seeing all of the bags and apprehending the situation. The men then bolted through the doors and into the parking lot, with the head clerk and another clerk following far behind. They jumped into a waiting car and proceeded to flee the scene---if "flee" can be used to describe what seemed like an absurdly normal speed at which to drive when making a getaway. As this was happening, everyone in the store stood still, gasping and murmuring. My hand flew to my mouth, and I saw tears in my sister's eyes. Watching the man who kept looking back towards the store and grinning as he ran and the head clerk tottering after him in heels, I felt that I was witnessing a clash between the civilized world with the world of apathetic cruelty. The ease with which human beings embrace evil behavior has always left me flummoxed and inwardly wincing---whether from the idea of human indifference or the pain that it causes, I can't quite tell---though lately, every incident of evil behavior that I come across, great and small, has generated a vertigo-like feeling as I sense the world as it should properly exist being upset by a force that I cannot understand. I suppose that this will sound naive or excessive to many. I am certain that I am not naive, but perhaps my reaction to the quotidian evils of existence, some of which others do not even seem to notice, is excessive. It's just all too much.

Why do People Like Thomas Jefferson?

2010-11-12T19:41:00.000-08:00

Seriously, the man was a racist, a sexist, a plagiarist, a hypocrite, an incompetent statesman, possibly a rapist or at least a man who abused his power for sexual purposes, and . . . oh, yes, he owned other human beings! Why does he continue to inspire admiration in the hearts of people like artist Maira Kalma, who in an NPR interview aired today said that she"[doesn't] believe in politics" but loves Thomas Jefferson, or the loyal listeners of The Thomas Jefferson Hour who tune in each week to hear the third president hold forth on the events of his time and the present day. The program is now working on "The 35 Words Project" to translate the famous sentence "We hold these truths . . ." into as many languages as possible. These words are rightly celebrated, but they really aren't Jefferson's. Their phrasing is nearly identical to passages in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and John Locke's Second Treatise on Government. Not only did Jefferson not contribute anything of original value to those 35 words---he didn't believe in them. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, he argued that:

The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life.

He lived his life as a sybaritic dilettante who allowed other human beings to toil on his behalf so that he could have the luxury of easy credit for his imported wine and the amusement of building and rebuilding Monticello and of inventing such useful gadgets as the revolving book stand, which had already been invented. He wrote derivative discourses on freedom and paeans to the common man while living off the slave labor of hundreds of his fellow human beings and developing a debt that would ensure their continued servitude after his death. So what, exactly, is there to like?

*In case you were wondering, yes, I have made this rant many times before. Hopefully, posting this will exorcise my anti-Jefferson demons, and they won't continue to come spilling out every time I hear him praised.

Killing the Victim

2010-11-12T18:17:00.000-08:00

Iraqi women who have been kidnapped but managed to escape and return home face murder at the hands of family members if they admit to having been raped. NPR interviews one woman, Uhud, who insists that she was not raped by her captors but who remains vulnerable to honor killing.

Ise in Ur Univerz, Makin it Sparkle

2010-11-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

Photographer and illustrator Boya Latumahina (h/t: Modcloth) takes that most earth-bound of creatures, the house cat, and repositions it space. Unsurprisingly, the subjects in her work seem rather perturbed by the change, though that just makes Latumahina's portraits of our future feline overlords all the more convincing. We wouldn't expect them to be pleased by having to set the order of the universe among the stars when they would rather be giving into gravity on the living room floor.

Flouting the Pontiff

2010-11-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

The best response to the Pope's notorious homophobia: a kiss off

(h/t: Bloggingheads)

News for Academics: Marx Was a Westerner

2010-11-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the Western cultural baggage of capitalism is continually cited as a reason for treating it with deep suspicion but socialism and communism are viewed as being entirely culturally mutable? Why is acceptance of capitalism taken as a demonstration of cultural imperialism while acceptance of socialism is seen as a demonstration of cultural autonomy? Surely, Marx was as much a Westerner as Adam Smith. His philosophy wasn't cleansed of Western cultural influence simply because it found fault with that culture. Adam Smith, too, found plenty to critique about the West and its divergence from the ideals of his philosophy, yet his association with that culture is still recognized. So how can academics continue to write sentences like this one from Joseph Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, and Mayumi Karasawa's Preschool in the Three Cultures Revisited (2009) that elide the Western origins of socialism:

We draw here on the work of Jurgen Schriewer (2000; 2004) and Gita Steiner-Khamsi (2000; 2004), who suggest that there are alternations between period of closing off to the outside (as, for example, China did from 1950 to 1978 and especially during the Cultural Revolution) and periods of systematically importing ideas from abroad (as China did in the 1920s and again the late 1980s and 1990s).

Right. China was closed off from the rest of the world between 1950 and 1978 and didn't accept any influence from the West in the form of Marxism, Leninism, or Stalinism. Mao's Cultural Revolution, in particular, didn't draw any inspiration from Stalin's Cultural Revolution and its Marxist underpinnings. Perish the thought . . . and bury it deep so that those who remain sympathetic with Mao's ideals can continue to claim that, flawed results aside, at least China did its revolution its way.

Cheering Up the Melancholy Dane

2010-11-07T14:44:00.000-08:00

The opening song of the wonderful show "Slings and Arrows" offers Hamlet some advice in the imperative:

Passage of the Day

2010-10-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

From The Book of Rites as quoted in The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (2010) by John Vaillant, an unusual but apt comparison:

Confucius was passing by Mount Tai when he saw a distraught woman weeping by a grave. Resting his hands on the wooden bar at the front of his carriage, he listened to her wailing. Then, he sent a student to speak the following words: 'A great misfortune must have befallen you, that you cry so bitterly.' She answered, 'Indeed it is so. My husband and his father have both been killed by tigers, and now my son, too, has fallen prey to them' Confucius asked, 'Why do you remain here?' She answered, 'No callous government rules here.' Confucius said, 'Remember that, my students. Callous government is more ravenous than tigers.'

A Second Life

2010-10-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

NPR has a series on the "Secret Life of Girls," an episode of which follows the life of Theresa Sparks, who might become the first transgender member of San Francisco's board of supervisors:

"My dad's always been a good leader," Adam [Sparks] says. "To be successful in one life is hard enough. To be successful in two is certainly harder. My dad is very driven in whatever world she is in at the time. Hidden or not, she'll get it done."

So James Jones Isn't the Kool-Aid guy?

2010-10-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

Robert Farley and Michael Moynihan have a wide-ranging diavlog about foreign policy's lack of influence in the coming elections, the politics of the Nobel Prize in literature, the rise of right-wing parties in Europe, and more. Great stuff.

"If you keep refusing you can look for your head on the floor"

2010-10-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

With the expanding power of al-Shabab, rape and forced marriage are on the rise in Somalia:

"Women cannot move or sit outside. They can't even walk with their brother," says the aid worker [at a Somali refugee camp in Yemen].
"Unmarried women are forced to marry and if she refuses they say she's a non-Muslim. Many parents choose to send their girls away with relatives and friends so as not to be forced into marriage or raped.
"If a woman refuses a forced marriage, we have reports of them being beheaded and their head sent to their father."

The stories of these women are heartbreaking, especially that of Hawo Yousef, whose husband was bludgeoned by an al-Shabab militant while attempting to protect her from being raped. She set out with her two youngest daughters to find refuge in Yemen, only to have her children thrown into shark-infested waters by smugglers irritated by their crying:

"I had no ability to take back my kids from them. And I saw my kids dying on the sea. That compelled me to be mad."

. . . "Now I heal that wound," she writes in the letter, asking the international community for help.
"But sometimes I remember and really I am in very bad situation with no choice what to do. I have no relatives here and I hope you consider my situation. Thank. Yours. Hawo tent no:- 69pt"

Hopefully, the charitable spirit of the international community will be able to rally once again to assist these women.

Cold War Winners and Losers

2010-10-07T15:03:00.000-07:00

This chart was particularly welcome after suffering through a two-hour lecture and lauding session for dependency theory, as were Brad Delong's associated comments:

Now you can argue that the difference in human well-being is less than this gap in material wealth. Cuba, after all, has a high life expectancy and a low level of inequality.
Or you can argue that the difference in human well-being is much, much greater than this gap in material wealth:
[Image of stacked skulls from Pol Pot's Cambodia?]
Put me down on the much, much greater side of the argument.

Finally, a materialist perspective!

No Scientists Were Involved in the Production of this Paper

2010-10-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Stumbling upon this UNICEF paper that happens to share the same name as the study on Kenyan education that I was actually looking for, I was struck by the author's views on what makes teaching science to girls and assessing their progress so difficult:

Assessment itself is not value- free and many of the assessment processes that are used in schools actually support ways of assessing understanding that boys seem to find easier than girls do. (Hildebrand, 1996) Especially in subjects such as Science fields of knowledge can be distorted by:
· Generating a catalogue of facts for students to recall and presenting science as if it is possible to produce absolutely objective truths
· Pretending that a scientific method exists when most real scientists are funded by politically driven sources
· Teaching with the expectation that only a super intelligent elite can ever understand science’s concepts (Lemke, 1990 as quoted in Hildebrand, 1996)

First of all, her examples have nothing to do with assessment but rather deal with the ways in which the lessons are presented. Second . . . what in the heck is she talking about? "[A]s if it is possible to produce absolutely objective truths," "Pretending that a scientific method exists"---one doesn't produce objective truths; one arrives at them through methodical observation and the challenges of one's colleagues, which bring them as close to absolute objectivity as is humanly possible, and the scientific method is not a utopian concept crushed by corruption; rigorously pursued, scientific methodology corrects for human bias. Finally, it would be a very poor excuse for a teacher who would convey to his or her students the sense that only "a super intelligent elite" can understand science, and he or she would need to be immediately run out of the classroom on a bunsen burner. It is not a standard belief in science and never can be if the field is to remain true to its tradition of skepticism and inquisitiveness in all things. It is distressing that the UNICEF Education Officers for whom this paper was written will not be trained to convey this in their future work.

Oildorodo Day

2010-09-23T00:14:00.000-07:00

NPR reports on Taft, California's preparations to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its Lakeview Gusher's first eruption, which resulted in the largest oil spill in US history. My family's known history (we are a very forgetful people) began with Taft and the work that its derrick-studded landscape offered to generations of men in my family, so I find this anniversary particularly meaningful. Though the continued necessity of oil and other flawed energy sources is much to be lamented, the history of their development and production offer reason for celebration.

(The picture above is of the Taft oil fields, taken by photographer Edward Burtynsky.)

The French Sound La Retraite

2010-09-07T14:41:00.001-07:00

Retraite can mean retreat, retirement, or pension, and it seems that any of the above would be an appropriate rallying cry for the current strikes in Paris. The unionists want to retreat from the economic realities that would call upon them to retire at age 62 instead of 60 and to collect their full pension at 67 instead of 65, calling such measures "slave-driving," without, of course, proposing alternative, non-slave-driving measures. How very childish---and Californian---they are being.

Passage of the Day

2010-09-04T16:31:00.000-07:00

From A High Wind in Jamaica (1929) by Richard Hughes, a schooner maneuvering across the sea:

Captain Jonsen remained on deck all night, whether it was his watch or not. It was a hot night, even for those latitudes: and no moon. The suffused brilliance of the stars lit up everything close quite plainly, but showed nothing in the distance. The black masts towered up, clear against the jewelry, which seemed to swing slowly a little to one, a little to the other, of their tapering points. The sails, the shadows in their curves all diffused away, seemed flat. The halyards and topping-lifts and braces showed here, were invisible there, with an arbitrariness which took from them all meaning as mechanism.

Looking forward with the glowing binnacle-light at one's back, the narrow milky deck sloped up to the fore-shortened tilt of the bowsprit, which seemed to be trying to point at a single enlarged star just above the horizon.

The schooner moved just enough for the sea to divide with a slight rustle on her stem, breaking out into a shower of sparks, which lit up also wherever the water rubbed the ship's side, as if the ocean were a tissue of sensitive nerves; and still twinkled behind in the mere paleness of the wake. Only a faint tang of tar in the nostrils was there to remind one that this was no ivory and ebony fantasia but a machine. For a schooner is in fact one of the most mechanically satisfactory, austere, unornamented engines ever invented by Man.

A few yards off, a shoal of luminous fish shone at different depths.

But a few hundred yards off, one could see nothing! The sea became a steady glittering black that did not seem to move. Near, one could see so much detail it seemed impossible to believe that there a whole ship might lie invisible: impossible to believe that by no glass, by no anxious straining of the eyes, could one ever see.

The Trader Joe's Song

2010-08-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Via NPR, a song that reflects the true spirit of a beloved grocery store chain.

Where are the Editors?

2010-08-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

As a former English major, I am probably overly sensitive to errors of grammar and consistency in the texts that I read. I am aware of this and try to overlook the occasional errant sentence, such as "I greet [him] with a smile as warm as a frozen fountain dripping with ice," which can crop up in the best of fictional writing, but when it comes to logical contradictions in non-fiction, I find these editorial mistakes to be incredibly irritating and difficult to get beyond. This is especially true when they are found towards the beginning of a massive history by a preeminent historian that I was greatly looking forward to reading. How is a reader supposed to get through the ~900 pages of Simon Schama's history of the French Revolution when it contradicts itself within the first 100 pages---and on the issues of privilege and taxation, too, which are kind of important:

[I]t was in the aftermath of both the Austrian and Seven Years' wars that Controllers-General who attempted to perpetuate temporary wartime direct taxes ran headlong into powerful and articulate political resistance. The reason for all that indignation in the name of French 'liberties' was that these taxes were levied on all sections of the population, irrespective of social rank. It may seem odd to us that the French 'public' (for there was already such a thing called 'public opinion') did not see this opposition as motivated by the selfish protection of privileged tax exemptions. But in the 1750s and 1760s, when these attacks on 'ministerial despotism' were launched, that political 'public' consisted, for the most part, either of people already within the system of privilege or those who had a good chance of entering it.

Two pages later. . .

Fiscal immunity as a feature of privilege was, then, being steadily broken down, to the point that well before the Revolution leading aristocratic writers could cheerfully propose its abolition altogether.

Where were Schama's editors? If they were asleep at the wheel after only 66 pages, what are the next 800 going to be like?

Humbling Grad Students, with Pictures

2010-08-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

The illustrated guide to a PhD

(h/t: Swans on Tea)

Catalonia Bans Bullfighting

2010-07-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

True, the ban was largely motivated by political considerations, not sympathy for the stabbed and slain animals, but any reduction in human cruelty is a thing to be welcomed, however it comes about.

(h/t: Bloggingheads)

Passage of the Day

2010-07-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

From The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather, a history professor articulates Weber's anti-scientific theory of disenchantment---without direct reference to Weber, but it's fairly clear that that's where he's coming from:

'No, Miller, I don't myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn't given us any new amazements, except for the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn't given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins---not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It's the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You'll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don't think you help people by making their conduct of no importance---you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance as miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.

'Moses learned the importance of that in the Egyptian court, and when he wanted to make a population of slaves into an independent people in the shortest possible time, he invented elaborate ceremonials to give them a feeling of dignity and purpose. Every act had some imaginative end. The cutting of the finger nails was a religious observance. The Christian theologists went over the books of the Law, like great artists, getting splendid effects by excision. They reset the stage with more space and mystery, throwing all the light upon a few sins of great dramatic value---only seven, you remember, and of those only three that are perpetually enthralling. With the theologians came the cathedral-builders; the sculptors and glass-workers and painters. They might, without sacrilege have changed the prayer a little and said, Thy will be done in art, as it is in heaven. How can it be done anywhere else as it is in heaven? But I think the hour is up. You might tell me next week, Miller, what you think science has done for us, besides making us very comfortable.'

It's interesting that the professor describes science in terms of "dexterity and sleight-of-hand." Such words seem to have been strongly associated with scientific innovations almost from their first recording. The name of the great craftsman Daedalus (admittedly, a mythical character, but one who represented real artisans) meant "cunning worker," and the historian John R. Hale attributes the impressive naval innovations of the ancient Athenians to the value that their society placed on "metis," or "craft, cunning, skill and intelligence, the power of invention and the subtlety of art." Cather's professor is joined by Plato in disapproving of both this quality and its results. They argue that there is little or no value in being comfortable, in achieving victory over natural or human enemies through guile instead of brute exertion. Thankfully, they tend to lose out to those who are in favor of greater "comfort" (less death, disease, starvation, poverty, environmental damage---the little things in life). Sadly, they also have their moments of victory.

Passage of the Day

2010-07-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

From the opening paragraphs of Nana (1880) by Émile Zola, an absorbing description of a Parisian theater before the show begins:

At nine o'clock the Variety Theatre was still almost empty. In the balcony and orchestra stalls, a few people waited, lost amidst the garnet-coloured velvet seats, in the faint light of the half extinguished gasalier. The huge crimson curtain was enveloped in shadow, and not a sound came from the stage behind. The foot-lights were not lit up, and the seats of the musicians were unoccupied. High up, however, in the third gallery, close to the roof---displaying figures of naked women and children floating among clouds, to which the gas imparted a greenish tinge---were heard the sounds of shouts and laughter above a continual hum of conversation, and a crowd of men and women, all wearing the caps of the working classes, were seated in rows reaching almost to the gilded festoons of the ceiling. Now and again an attendant would appear, fussily conducting a lady and gentleman to their seats---the gentleman in evening dress and the lady slim and slightly stooping, and glancing slowly over the house. Two young men suddenly appeared in the stalls close to the orchestra. They remained standing, looking round about them.

'What did I tell you, Hector?' exclaimed the elder---a tall fellow, with a slight black moustache. 'We have come too early. You might just as well have allowed me to finish my cigar.'

An attendant passed by at this moment. 'Oh! M. Fauchery,' she said familiarly, 'it will not begin for half an hour.'

'Then why on earth do they say nine o'clock on the bills?' asked Hector, whose long thin face assumed an expression of intense annoyance. 'This very morning Clarisse, who is in the piece, assured me that the curtain would go up at nine, precisely.'

For a minute, they relapsed into silence, as they raised their heads and gazed into the shadows of the boxes; but the green paper, with which the latter were lined made them obscurer still. Below, the small boxes under the balcony disappeared in total darkness. In the balcony boxes only a very stout lady, leaning heavily on the velvet covered balustrade was to be seen. To the right and the left, between high columns, the stage boxes, hung with drapery deeply fringed, remained empty. The body of the house, decorated in white and gold relieved by pale green, seemed to disappear filled as it was with a misty haze arising from the subdued light emanating from the huge crystal gasalier.

(The image above is from the movie Children of Paradise. This passage strongly reminds me of the theatre in that fantastic movie, but unfortunately, there don't seem to be any good pictures of it available on Google.)

The Pursuit of Precision Farming

2010-07-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

Of the many agricultural statistics Robert Paarlberg presents in his new book, Food Politics, the most impressive are undoubtedly those associated with the production gains and environmental savings that accrued to the developing world through modern agricultural reform. For example, the fact that India increased its production of wheat from 12 million tons of wheat on 14 million hectares of land in 1964 to 57 million tons of wheat on 24 million hectares in 1994 mostly because of its introduction of genetically modified seeds is mind-boggling---even more so when one considers that it would have required 60 million acres of farmland to produce the same amount of wheat using the old seeds, so this reform also resulted in the preservation of 36 million hectares of uncultivated land!

The most intriguing statistics, however, might be those that are related to environmental improvements in developed countries. It seems that strong economic and social pressures have contributed to farmers' adoption of precision farming techniques, which have significantly reduced the environmental impact of food production:

In 2008, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris published an important review of the environmental performance of agriculture in the 30 most advanced industrial countries in the world (those with the most highly capitalized farming systems). The new data showed that between 1990 and 2004 total food production in these countries increased in volume by 5 percent from an already high level, yet adverse environmental impacts were diminished in nearly every category. The area of land taken up by agriculture declined 4 percent. Soil erosion from both wind and water was reduced. Water use on irrigated lands declined by 9 percent. Energy use on the farm increased at only one-sixth the rate of energy use in the rest of the economy. Gross greenhouse gas emissions from farming fell by 3 percent. Herbicide and insecticide spraying declined by 5 percent. Excessive nitrogen fertilizer use declined by 17 percent. Biodiversity also improved, as increased numbers of crop varieties and livestock breeds came into use.

Of course, it would be great if we could speed this trend up a bit. We certainly have the means to do so. As Paarlberg notes in another section of his book, the agricultural industry receives an obscene amount of financial support and tariff protection from the governments of most developed countries, and it is all but politically impossible to reduce these subsidies. If they can't be reduced, however, they can be leveraged. The next Farm Bill's financial provisions could be tied to specific environmental and efficiency standards (efficiency would need to be included to avoid the promotion of low-tech, high acreage farming), with penalties for substandard farms and perhaps additional rewards for those that excel. On the negative side, this could create problems for small farms, which often lack the capital that they would need to match their larger rivals' environmental achievements, but if their preservation is deemed to be more important than their environmental cost, then these farms can be given somewhat lower standards in the categories where they find it most difficult to compete. What is critical is that farms be given additional incentives to compete in the area of conservancy and that taxpayers be better compensated for their largesse. Paarlberg's research suggests an agricultural future of lessened environmental impact---both for its own sake and for the sake of productive efficiency. We should rush to meet it.

(The picture above is an airborne infrared image of a soybean field that shows very little variation or environmental stress.)

The New Mesmerism

2010-07-05T23:05:00.000-07:00

Now with "natural frequencies" instead of "magnetic fluid"

Suggestibility still required

Shiva's Critique of Agricultural Development

2010-06-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

While looking for books on agriculture in India, I came across Vandana Shiva's 1992 work The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics. Couple the book's title with the fact that Shiva's academic background is in philosophy, and you can pretty much guess what her critique of agricultural development in India is going to look like---non-materially focused and anti-scientific. The product description certainly doesn't disappoint:

Set in the context of a sophisticated critique of the privileged epistemological position achieved by modern science, whereby it both aspires to provide technological solutions for social and political problems while at the same time disclaiming responsibility for the new problems which it creates in its wake, the author looks to the future in an analysis of the new project to apply the latest Gene Revolution technology to India and warns of the further environmental and social damage which will ensue.

It's interesting how Shiva uses the term violence, which has a strong physical connotation, to characterize non-physical changes in Indian society and politics, as though she wishes to lend material significance to non-material, cultural issues. Of course, she can only achieve this semantically not logically because the Green Revolution wasn't violent in the way that, say, the Cultural Revolution was violent---resulting in citizens' deaths or other material injuries. Quite the contrary, as Robert Paarlberg argued in an article published today in Foreign Policy:

Thirty years ago, had someone asserted in a prominent journal or newspaper that the Green Revolution was a failure, he or she would have been quickly dismissed. Today the charge is surprisingly common. Celebrity author and eco-activist Vandana Shiva claims the Green Revolution has brought nothing to India except "indebted and discontented farmers." A 2002 meeting in Rome of 500 prominent international NGOs, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, even blamed the Green Revolution for the rise in world hunger. Let's set the record straight.
The development and introduction of high-yielding wheat and rice seeds into poor countries, led by American scientist Norman Borlaug and others in the 1960s and 70s, paid huge dividends. In Asia these new seeds lifted tens of millions of small farmers out of desperate poverty and finally ended the threat of periodic famine. India, for instance, doubled its wheat production between 1964 and 1970 and was able to terminate all dependence on international food aid by 1975. As for indebted and discontented farmers, India's rural poverty rate fell from 60 percent to just 27 percent today. Dismissing these great achievements as a "myth" (the official view of Food First, a California-based organization that campaigns globally against agricultural modernization) is just silly.
It's true that the story of the Green Revolution is not everywhere a happy one. When powerful new farming technologies are introduced into deeply unjust rural social systems, the poor tend to lose out. In Latin America, where access to good agricultural land and credit has been narrowly controlled by traditional elites, the improved seeds made available by the Green Revolution increased income gaps. Absentee landlords in Central America, who previously allowed peasants to plant subsistence crops on underutilized land, pushed them off to sell or rent the land to commercial growers who could turn a profit using the new seeds. Many of the displaced rural poor became slum dwellers. Yet even in Latin America, the prevalence of hunger declined more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2005.
In Asia, the Green Revolution seeds performed just as well on small nonmechanized farms as on larger farms. Wherever small farmers had sufficient access to credit, they took up the new technology just as quickly as big farmers, which led to dramatic income gains and no increase in inequality or social friction. Even poor landless laborers gained, because more abundant crops meant more work at harvest time, increasing rural wages. In Asia, the Green Revolution was good for both agriculture and social justice.

Shiva's critique is "sophisticated" precisely because it elides this kind of material alteration in Indian farmers' well-being. She chooses to focus on the abstract, epistemological issues at play in agricultural development, but then she also wants to give them the urgency that material issues like hunger, poverty, and death carry with them, and so the word violence is front-and-center in the title even though it has little connection to her subject. Agricultural practices are never beyond criticism, but they should be beyond such paltry and misleading criticism as Shiva's.

Getting Food in Gaza

2010-06-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

Disgraceful.

(h/t: Bloggingheads)

Barnett Sums Up the Israel Situation

2010-06-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

And all of the sums involved are negative:

As usual, a strategy of disconnecting your enemy from the outside world empowers those ruling elements who prefer a firm grip over the masses to their individual empowerment.

More prosaically, the blockade has failed in all of its goals: the Israeli solder taken hostage is still a hostage, weapons galore still make their way into Gaza via tunnels, Israel is becoming more isolated diplomatically while Hamas is winning sympathy and still overshadowing the far more quiet and more competent West Bank Palestinian leadership. In short, all trends are heading south.

Read the whole thing.

Mental Health Break

2010-06-09T18:28:00.000-07:00

Sloths being adorable

HBO Documentary on Neda Agha Soltan

2010-06-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

(h/t: Bloggingheads)

Episcopalian In-Fighting

2010-06-07T21:42:00.000-07:00

Speaking of the negative fallout from hatred, though of a different kind, the rift in the Anglican church over homosexuality continues to widen, with the Archbishop of Canterbury vowing to crack down on "rebel Anglicans" on both sides of the issue. As the (nonreligious) daughter of an Episcopalian priest this conflict has a special resonance for me, but the moderate politics and general via media of Anglicanism also give the church's internal struggles great significance for other organized religions as gay rights continue to gain acceptance among the faithful.

To give an idea of what is at stake in this debate, I thought that I would quote from a letter that the Presiding Bishop and Primate, Katharine Jefferts Schori, recently circulated among Episcopalians on the occasion of Pentecost:

Pentecost is most fundamentally a continuing gift of the Spirit, rather than a limitation or quenching of that Spirit.

The recent statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the struggles within the Anglican Communion seems to equate Pentecost with a single understanding of gospel realities. Those who received the gift of the Spirit on that day all heard good news. The crowd reported, 'in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power' (Acts 2:11).

The Spirit does seem to be saying to many within the Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God's good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones. The Spirit also seems to be saying the same thing in other parts of the Anglican Communion, and among some of our Christian partners, including Lutheran churches in North America and Europe, the Old Catholic churches of Europe, and a number of others.

That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality. This Episcopal Church is a broad and inclusive enough tent to hold that variety. The willingness to live in tension is a hallmark of Anglicanism, beginning from its roots in Celtic Christianity pushing up against Roman Christianity in the centuries of the first millennium. That diversity in community was solidified in the Elizabethan Settlement, which really marks the beginning of Anglican Christianity as a distinct movement. Above all, it recognizes that the Spirit may be speaking to all of us, in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree. It also recognizes what Jesus says about the Spirit to his followers, 'I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come' (John 16: 12-13).

The Episcopal Church has spent nearly 50 years listening to and for the Spirit in these matters. While it is clear that not all within the Church have heard the same message, the current developments do represent a widening understanding. Our canons reflected this shift as long ago as 1985, when sexual orientation was first protected from discrimination in access to the ordination process. At the request of other bodies in the Anglican Communion, this Church held an effective moratorium on the election and consecration of a partnered gay or lesbian priest as bishop from 2003 to 2010. When a diocese elected such a person in late 2009, the ensuing consent process indicated that a majority of the laity, clergy, and bishops responsible for validating that election agreed that there was no substantive bar to the consecration.

The Episcopal Church recognizes that these decisions are problematic to a number of other Anglicans. We have not made these decisions lightly. We recognize that the Spirit has not been widely heard in the same way in other parts of the Communion. In all humility, we recognize that we may be wrong, yet we have proceeded in the belief that the Spirit permeates our decisions.

It would be disappointing if the Anglican traditions of tension and tolerance were to end in a decisive split between the church's conservative and liberal elements.

(The image above is of delegates for the Los Angeles Diocese of the Episcopal Church turning in their ballots after voting in the election of two assistant bishops in December 2009. Rev. Mary D. Glasspool was elected to fill the second position, making her the first openly gay female bishop in the Church.)

When Did Anger Become a Desirable Emotion?

2010-06-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

While watching an episode of the Colbert Report that centered on Obama's lack of expressed anger toward BP for its handling of the oil spill, I was surprised at (read: disgusted, immiserated by) so many people's elevation of this pointless and harmful emotion. Anger indicates hatred, the very worst of all human tendencies. How can it possibly lead to any kind of positive result? I can understand feeling anger over the BP incident, but to give free rein to that anger or to berate the president for not expressing it is childish and rotten behavior---childish because only children would be expected not to have control over their baser impulses and rotten because these individuals want to excuse their own behavioral shortcomings by having the president join them in their ugliness. That this criticism of Obama has been so widespread and unremitting only makes it worse. Are we really a nation of people who welcome hatred into our hearts and then demand that our leaders give it refuge in their own?

(The image above is of Obama during one of his visits to the Gulf Coast in May.)

Passage of the Day

2010-06-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

From Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) by David Foster Wallace, leaving:

'All right. I am. okay, yes, but hang on a second, okay? I need you to try and understand this. Okay? Look. I know I'm moody. I know I'm kind of withdrawn sometimes. I know I'm hard to be in this with, okay? All right? But this every time I get moody or withdrawn you thinking I'm leaving or getting ready to ditch you---I can't take it. This thing of you being afraid all the time. It wears me out. It makes me feel like I have to, like, hide whatever mood I might be in because right away you're going to think it's about you and that I'm getting ready to ditch you and leave. You don't trust me. You don't. It's not like I'm saying given our history I deserved a whole lot of trust right off the bat. But you still don't at all. There's like zero security no matter what I do. Okay? I said I'd promise I wouldn't leave and you said you believed me that I was in this with you for the long haul this time, but you didn't. Okay? Just admit it, all right? You don't trust me. I'm on eggshells all the time. Do you see? I can't keep going around reassuring you all the time.'

Q.

'No, I'm not saying this is reassuring. What this is is just trying to get you to see---okay, look, things ebb and flow, okay? Sometimes people are just more into it than other times. This is just how it is. But you can't stand ebb. It feels like no ebb's allowed. And I know that's partly my fault, okay? I know the other times didn't exactly make you feel secure. But I can't change that, okay? But this is now. And now I feel like anytime I'd just rather not talk or get a little moody or withdrawn you think I'm plotting to ditch you. And that breaks my heart. Okay? It just breaks my heart. Maybe if I loved you a little less or cared about you less I could take it. But I can't. So yes, that's what the bags are. I'm leaving.'

Gaza as Soweto?

2010-06-02T03:54:00.000-07:00

A great early discussion of the Gaza flotilla incident in the context of the Israeli blockade

Hmong: Appalachian Americans of the East?

2010-05-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

In addition to having a proudly independent and typically isolated mountain culture, the Hmong seem to resemble Appalachian Americans in their traditional cultivation of a mind-altering substance. The historical arc of the Hmong's opium farming and its affect on their relations with outsiders is stunningly similar to the Appalachian Americans' experience with whiskey.

From The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1998) by Anne Fadiman:

Although they harvested enough rice, corn, and vegetables for their own needs, the only crop the Hmong could indisputably grow better than the lowland Lao, because it was specifically suite to the cool temperatures and alkaline soils of the highlands, was the opium poppy. . . . [E]ver since the end of the eighteenth century, when the British East India Company introduced the opium poppy to China, the Hmong have been master opium growers, drawn willy-nilly into an international trade they neither created nor controlled. In Laos, the French colonial government encouraged them to pay their taxes in raw opium in order to supply the official lowland network of government-licensed opium dens. The Hmong complied with ease.

. . . The Hmong kept less than ten percent of their opium yield for their own use and sold the rest. It was their only cash crop. One could hardly invent a more perfect commodity for mountain transport: easily portable, immune to spoilage, and possessing a stratospherically high value-to-weight ratio. One kilogram of opium was worth as much as half a ton of rice. The saddlebags of a single modest caravan of ponies, led by a lowland merchant, could carry a village's entire annual output of crude opium bricks. The Hmong accepted no paper currency for their opium, only silver bars or piasters, which they melted won to make jewelry or hoarded for brideprices. Opium production equaled wealth. No wonder that when Christian missionaries first came to Laos, they often found small, meticulously wrapped balls of opium in their offering plates. No wonder that the parents of my interpreter believed that May Ying---Opium Poppy---was the most beautiful name they could give their daughter.

The Hmong grew their opium, as they grew their rice and corn, as a slash-and-burn crop. (The more polite agricultural term is 'swidden.') . . . . In the 1950s, it was estimated that the Hmong of Laos were burning about four hundred square miles of land a year and, by letting the topsoil leach away, causing enough erosion to alter the courses of rivers. Opium was a particularly egregious offender, since instead of eventually reforesting like rice swiddens, old opium swiddens became covered in a coarse grass called imperata, which even animals refused to eat.

Okay, so there is the major difference that the French colonial government in Laos integrated the controlled substance into its tax system without disrupting the local economy while the American post-colonial government in Appalachia . . . er, didn't. Still, those local economies operated similarly, with barter systems that centered around opium or whiskey and that supplemented resources drawn from slash-and-burn subsistence farming.

It's interesting to consider what might have happened if the French had chosen the American method and alienated the Hmong with high excise taxes that had to be paid in currency or if the Americans had used the French method to swell the government's coffers. As Fadiman points out, during the wars in Vietnam and Laos, America relied on a "counterinsurgent network of Hmong guerillas that the French had organized in northern Laos two decades earlier" to resist the Japanese and then the Viet Minh. Would such a network have existed without France's early and continued support of the Hmong's opium trade? On the other side, would Appalachian Americans have been more sympathetic to the Union cause during our own civil war if they had not had such a negative experience with the government's disruption of their economy?

(The picture above is of a Black Hmong girl in Sa Pa, Vietnam.)

Passage of the Day

2010-05-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

From Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778) by Frances Burney, London's middle-class coffee house culture becomes an upper-class "coffee-room" amusement:

When the opera was over, we went into a place called the coffee-room, where ladies as well as gentlemen assemble. there are all sorts of refreshments, and the company walk about, and chat with the same ease and freedom as in a private room.

(The first painting above is of an 18th century English coffee house---though it looks like it might have been closer to the early- to mid-18th century than to the later period that Burney is writing about. I couldn't find an image of an 18th century coffee-room, but you can compare the first painting with the second painting of the Ranelagh House, another typical gathering place for the upper-class London set, and get a sense of what the atmosphere at a coffee-room would have been like.)

Passage of the Day

2010-05-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

From Intruder in the Dust (1948) by William Faulkner, a rather anguished---and unconvincing---argument against the forced desegregation of the South:

*Please excuse the awkward quotation. It's taken from a section towards the end of a four-page-long sentence that doesn't really have a grammatically correct beginning . . . or middle or end because it's in Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness style. It's a bit of an exercise in patience*

---to defend not Lucas [a black man wrongly accused of murder in the novel] nor even the union of the United States but the United States from the outlanders North East and West who with the highest of motives and intentions (let us say) are essaying to divide it at a time when no people dare risk division by using federal laws and federal police to abolish Lucas' shameful condition, there may not be in any random one thousand Southerners one who really grieves or even is really concerned over that condition nevertheless neither is there always one who would himself lynch Lucas no matter what the occasion yet not one of that nine hundred ninety-nine plus that other first one making the thousand whole again would hesitate to repulse with force (and one would still be that lyncher) the outlander who came here with force to intervene or punish him, you say (with a sneer) You must know Sambo well to arrogate to yourself such calm assumption of his passivity and I reply I don't know him at all and in my opinion no white man does but I know the Southern white man not only the nine hundred and ninety-nine but that other one too because he is our own too and more than that, that one other does not exist only in the South, you will see allied not North and East and West and Sambo against a handful of white men in the South but a paper alliance of theorists and fanatics and private and personal avengers plus a number of others under the assumption of enough physical miles to afford a principle against and possibly even outnumbered a concorded South which has drawn recruits whether it would or no from your own back-areas, not just your hinterland but the fine cities of your cultural pride your Chicagoes and Detroits and Los Angeleses and wherever else live ignorant people who fear the color of any skin or shape of nose save their own and who will grasp this opportunity to vent on Sambo the whole sum of their ancestral horror and scorn and fear of Indian and Chinese an Mexican and Carib and Jew, you will force us the one out of that first random thousand and the nine hundred and ninety-nine out of the second who do begrieve Lucas' shameful condition and would improve it and have and are and will until (not tomorrow perhaps) that condition will be abolished to be not forgotten maybe but at least remembered with less of pain and bitterness since justice was relinquished to him by us rather than torn from us and forced on him both with bayonets, willynilly into alliance with them with whom we have no kinship whatever in defence of a principle which we ourselves begrieve and abhor, we are in the position of Germany after 1933 who had no other alternative being either a Nazi or a Jew or the present Russian (European too for that matter) who hasn't even that but must be either a Communist or dead, only we must do it and we are alone without help or interference or even (thank you) advice since only we can if Lucas' equality is to be anything more than its own prisoner inside an impregnable barricade of the direct heirs of the victory of 1861-1865 which probably did more than even John Brown to stalemate Lucas' freedom which still seems to be in check going on a hundred years after Lee surrendered and when you say Lucas must not wait for that tomorrow because that tomorrow will never come because you not only cant you wont then we can only repeat Then you shall not and say to you Come down here and look at us before you make up your mind and you reply No thanks the smell is bad enough from here and we say Surely you will at least look at the dog you plan to house-break, a people divided at a time when history is still showing us that the anteroom to dissolution is division and you say At least we perish in the name of humanity and we reply When all is stricken but that nominative pronoun and that verb what price Lucas' humanity then

This passage came to mind as I was reading the coverage of Rand Paul's recent statements. While I disagree with Paul's position on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (see Kaphtor's post for an alternative libertarian view of the issue), he clearly isn't motivated by the same racial anxiety or outright racism that has animated other opponents of federally imposed desegregation, like Faulkner, and his opinions deserve a measure of tolerance.

The Divine Ms. Behn

2010-05-23T00:11:00.000-07:00

In the biography The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (1996), Janet Todd remarks on the 17th century playwright's failure to live up to the Woolfian ideal of "what a woman author should be":

In the early twentieth century, when woman's unique moral standard was doubted, other aspects of the 'ingenious Mrs. Behn' came to the fore: that she was the first professional woman writer in England and, for the twenty years of her writing life, the only female playwright. Virginia Woolf understood the significance: 'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds'. Unfortunately, the professional significance was so strong for Woolf that she lost sight of any literary merit. In this she was a woman of her time, for she wrote when literature was thought able to transcend its historical moment and when it had to refuse the contamination of politics. Romantic notions of art as self-expressing were not, however, current in the Restoration and men openly wrote for money and political purpose, as did Behn.

The woman Virginia Woolf praised in Aphra Behn's place was an invented one, a sister Judith for the great literary icon, the Renaissance William Shakespeare. Judith Shakespeare was a failed Romantic, a woman who grew suicidal under her injuries and failed even to enter the stage door in her quest to write plays like her brother. Behn, who did enter, was reduced to a hack---her mind unfree because she wrote for money. She became a 'middle-class woman with all the plebeian virtues of humour, vitality and courage; a woman forced by the death of her husband and some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits'. The fact of her writing 'outweighs anything that she actually wrote'. Here the very professionalism which prevented Behn from ending up suicidal kept her from the ranks of the great artists. Woolf overlooked the motive that persuaded Judith's brother, William, to write.

Since Virginia Woolf's time, the second wave of feminism has washed over Aphra Behn. In this she became the subject of two full biographies. Yet, in the 1970s, she was not much examined as a writer, for reasons clear in Woolf's remarks: she did not conform to the notion of what a woman author should be, a suffering soul working against patriarchal oppression, in deep conflict with men. Behn acknowledged the conflict between the sexes, but felt both sides were deeply implicated in it. Patriarchy was all-enveloping, but it was a cultural construction in which everyone had some stake and share. She depicted herself as confident, engaged, and knowing. There was no panoply of feminine shame or modesty, no sense that she wrote because impelled by some inner force. She wrote because she was good at it and made money.

What horror! ---a woman with her own sense of self who wrote for her own reasons. Didn't she realize that her being a woman should have dictated every thought that flowed through her mind or out of her pen? Apparently, "a room of one's own" was meant for boxing female writers in as much as it was for letting their creative energies out. Thankfully, Behn's mind was too great to allow for such containment.

(The image above is a painting of Behn by Sir Peter Lely. I accidentally put up a painting of Nell Gwyn when I first published this post---big mistake---but I think I got it right this time.)

Books!

2010-05-20T15:05:00.000-07:00

1. (literature) Broken April (1978), The Seige (2009), The File on H. (1981), and The Three-Arched Bridge (1978) by Ismail Kadare.

Pretty much anything by Ismail Kadare, I'd venture, is skillfully written and delineates an enthralling aspect of Albanian culture or history. Thankfully, he's been very prolific.

2. (biography) If This is a Man (1947) and The Truce (1963) by Primo Levi.

Levi was one of 650 prisoners who left an Italian detention camp on February 22, 1944 for Auschwitz, and he was one of three who survived. In these twin works, Levi records his experiences in the concentration camp and on the journey home to Italy in what he describes as "the calm, sober language of the witness, neither the lamenting tones of the victim nor the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge."

3. (literature) Every Man Dies Alone (1947) by Hans Fallada.

Fallada evokes the atmosphere of Berlin during Nazi rule, using the fictionalized story of a middle-aged couple who started distributing postcards with anti-Nazi messages after losing their son in the war.

4. (literature) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Bronte.

Sadly regarded as the least talented of the Bronte sisters, Anne actually appears to have been their equal in skill and emotional insight (excepting perhaps the depth that Charlotte achieved in Jane Eyre). According to Charlotte, Anne suffered during the writing of this novel, which centers on an abusive marriage, because portraying some of the characters' immoral behavior was emotionally painful for her, but she persevered, convinced that she must warn others against the social evils that she had witnessed even in her short and largely secluded life.

5. (biography) The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Everything that could be spoken of in polite society about the Brontes in general and Charlotte in particular, from the pen of Charlotte's friend and fellow novelist

6. (literature/biography) Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859) by Harriet E. Wilson.

Wilson fictionalizes her own experiences as a black servant girl in the North, leaving most of the details intact in this highly affecting account of racism and abuse.

7. (literature) Roxana, or The Fortunate Mistress (1724) by Daniel Defoe.

Written in much the same style and spirit as Moll Flanders, this novel contains the confessions of a superficially contrite woman whose career as a mistress embraces merchants, nobles, and royals in Britain and on the continent. It's less a warning against immorality than a covert argument for feminism, with the bonus of elucidating common trade practices among Europeans at the time.

8. (literature) The Greenlanders (2005) by Jane Smiley.

Smiley adopts the flat writing style of the Edda to describe the lives of the Norse Greenlanders who settled on the island in the late 10th century and mysteriously disappeared some time during the 15th.

9. (literature) The True Deceiver (1982) by Tove Jansson.

A starkly written psychological "thriller" about a social outsider who insinuates herself into the life of her famous neighbor over the course of a long winter in a Finnish village

10. (social theory) Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives (1991) by Lindsey Harlan.

Why do India's Rajput women continue to practice strict purdah and to venerate satis (women who have chosen to die on their husbands' funeral pyres)? Through hundreds of interviews with Rajput women, Harlan constructs an account of their religion that helps to answer these questions.

11. (biography/social theory) I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced (2010) by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui.

A nine-year-old Yemeni girl is forced to marry a man more than three times her age, leading to her rape, physical and mental abuse, and loss of any future beyond an effective slavery within her husband's home---a situation that is both understood and sanctioned by nearly every adult around her. Unwilling to remain a victim, she escapes to a Sanaa courthouse and petitions a judge directly for a divorce, becoming the first child bride in Yemen to challenge the legality of her marriage.

(The image above is of a tower in Tethi, Albania where men who are the targets of family blood feuds can seek refuge from their pursuers. The Albanian blood feud and other aspects of traditional Kanun law are the main subjects of Ismail Kadare's novel Broken April.)

Help Give a Microloan to a Student!

2010-05-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

Following Kiva's lead in using internet-based microloans to assist entrepreneurs around the world, Vittana is connecting online lenders with international students in need of educational loans. The nonprofit's mission is to help students who live in countries where college loans are not available to finance their education. Online lenders can invest $25 or more in a student's education and receive repayment after the student graduates and finds work. To minimize the risk that the student will drop out of school or not repay his or her loans, Vittana focuses on funding short vocational programs and the last year of college. It also works with local microfinance organizations, which verify the student's enrollment and past performance or, in the case of vocational programs, "clear dedication to learning a new set of skills." It's a wonderful way to help others realize their academic and professional aspirations.

(The picture above is of Vittana borrower Eduardo Castro Quiroz and his mother, Martha. Because of the loan he received from Vittana, the 23-year-old Peruvian college student will be able to complete his degree in business administration at la Universidad de Callao and become a business owner. You can read more about him on the Vittana blog here.)

This One's For the Captive Audience Back Home

2010-05-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

After an international investigation determined that a torpedo launched from a North Korean submarine was indeed responsible for the blast that brought down the South Korean naval ship Cheonan and killed 46 sailors last March, the North Korean government responded to the findings in its typical fashion:

Pyongyang rejected the claim as a "fabrication", South Korea's Yonhap agency reported.
It said the North threatened war if sanctions were imposed by the South.

These statements are probably only meant for internal consumption, since the average North Korean citizen is just about the only person left on earth who is not familiar with the two great truths of North Korean foreign policy: 1) the government will never admit to any wrongdoing whatsoever, even beyond the point of plausible deniability; 2) the government will always make statements---either threats or overtures----that suggest it has not already decided to renew war with the South, even though it has and is only waiting for more favorable circumstances (or for more internal political pressure to build up, whichever comes first).

Not only the response to the attack, but the attack itself seems to have been aimed at a domestic audience. For one thing, the NK government isn't using international interest in the situation as an opportunity to denounce the SK government and decry the injustice that is being done to it by the international community, which it typically does when it wants to be placated (see public statements after reneging on all agreements with the South, launching last year's nuclear test, and expelling South Koreans from Kumgang as recent examples). For another, its troubles at home are increasing. The government's crackdown on markets and foreign currency has led to inflation and public displays of discontent (second link has extensive description). It desperately needs a distraction.

Even better than a mere distraction would be a common enemy, and even better than a common enemy would several common enemies. As North Korean history has shown us, there's nothing that brings this little hermit kingdom together quite like having hostile forces to draw in against. By protesting its innocence in the Cheonan attack, the government probably hopes to regain the sympathy of its citizens and refocus their anger onto the international community that is needlessly persecuting their country. This isn't as difficult to accomplish as it might seem. Most North Koreans still believe that the North went to war with the South in 1950 only after the Southern army invaded their territory, not the other way around. It will be interesting to see if this somewhat weakened government, faced with the growing availability of communications technologies, will be able to pull it off.

(The picture above is of the bow section of the Cheonan being salvaged from the sea.)

A Thank You to the President on My Birthday

2010-05-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a provision in President Obama's healthcare reform package that allows children to stay on their parents' healthcare plans until they turn 26 (and to Kaiser Permanente for choosing to institute this policy on June 1st instead of September 1st when the law will come into effect), I am turning 25 today and not losing my healthcare coverage! Woohoo! . . . God we need a better healthcare system.

Birds with Chains in Contemplation

2010-05-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

I'm don't know if Thomas Eakins had Carel Fabritius' The Goldfinch (1654) in mind when he was painting The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton (1900), but the two are eerily similar in theme and composition---she says, having next to no training in artistic analysis. Fantastic paintings both.

Crossing the Gender Divide, Going One Way

2010-05-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

So, I'm about half-way through economic historian Deirdre McCloskey's memoir, Crossing (1995), about her male-to-female gender transformation, and as sympathetic as I am with Ms. McCloskey's journey, I must admit that I find many passages in the book to be disappointing from a feminist perspective.

Ms. McCloskey seems to have a very clear image in her mind of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, often using phrases like "a man's way of thinking" (in reference to cost-benefit analysis) and "the loving and womanly effort to do justice" (in reference to women’s acceptance of her new identity). Frequently, these gender distinctions seem to place women on an elevated moral plane, relative to men:

I tried to be like a woman in my interactions. At the formal dinner I was seated with five women around me and fell into womanly conversation with them. I think I succeeded, using the Tannen rule: women are egalitarian. They look to an apparent man for the lead because men are always seizing the initiative, establishing hierarchies. I tried not to.

Donald [McCloskey's name before her transition] went to the year's first faculty meeting at the Department of History and found himself playing his usual role as smart aleck, pushily male, presuming to take up emotional space the way men do. He found he still liked doing it, or maybe by now it was automatic. He was angry at himself: Jesus, what a stupid performance. I don't deserve to be a woman. Could I absorb the "dose of humility" for a woman's role? (author's bold type)

On the one hand, these kinds of hard gender distinctions might provide a sort of comforting guidance for individuals who are seeking to cross over from one gender to another and wish to modify their outward behavior to suit. After all, it would be difficult for someone who has lived his entire life as a man to openly embrace a female identity without feeling some pressure to change his former mannerisms and “act like a woman” in order to make his public transformation complete. On the other hand, these distinctions do function as stereotypes and play into the idea that women and men have complementary but mutually exclusive social roles: separate but (un)equal.

Is the stereotypical argument that men speak and women listen any more legitimate from a feminist perspective because it comes with the sympathetic aside: ugh, men are such egoists and women are such martyrs? I don’t see how. Women often hold their own in conversations with men, and in those instances where they don’t because they don’t wish to cross the line into “unwomanly” behavior, is that the kind of gender self-consciousness that should be promoted? As a woman who likes to converse on an equal footing with men and typically uses “a man’s way of thinking” to arrive at conclusions, I wish that McCloskey had demonstrated in her book a greater open-mindedness in matters of gender.

Disagree with Humility, Always with Humility

2010-05-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

Via Kaphtor, John Cleese warns against the temptations of the dark side.

Passage of the Day

2010-05-09T01:41:00.000-07:00

From Stoner (1965) by John Williams, three graduate students in English---true reflections of their department---discuss the purpose of academia:

"Have you gentlemen ever considered the question of the true nature of the University? Mr. Stoner? Mr. Finch?"

Smiling, they shook their heads.

"I'll bet you haven't. Stoner, here, I imagine, sees it as a great repository, like a library or a whorehouse, where men come of their free will and select that which will complete them, where all work together like little bees in a common hive. The True, the Good, the Beautiful. They're just around the corner, in the next corridor; they're in the next book, the one you haven't read, or in the next stack, the one you haven't got to. But you'll get to it someday. And when you do---when you do---" He looked at the egg for a moment more, then took a large bite of it and turned to Stoner, his jaws working and his dark eyes bright.

Stoner smiled uncomfortably, and Finch laughed aloud and slapped the table. "He's got you, Bill. He's got you good."

Masters chewed for a moment more, swallowed, and turned his gaze to Finch. "And you, Finch. What's your idea?" He held up his hand. You'll protest you haven't thought of it. But you have. Beneath that bluff and hearty exterior there works a simple mind. To you, the institution is an instrument of good---to the world at large, of course, and just incidentally to yourself. You see it as a kind of spiritual sulphur-and-molasses that you administer every fall to get the little bastards through another winter; and you're the kindly old doctor who benignly pats their heads and pockets their fees."

Finch laughed again and shook his head. "I swear, Dave, when you get going---"

Masters put the rest of the egg in his mouth, chewed contentedly for a moment, and took a long swallow of beer. "But you're both wrong," he said. It is an asylum or---what do they call them now?---a rest home, for the infirm, the aged, the discontent, and the otherwise incompetent. Look at the three of us---we are the University.

[. . .] "We're all poor Toms, and we're a-cold."

"King Lear," Stoner said seriously.

"Act Three, Scene Four," said Masters. "And so, providence, or society, or fate, or whatever name you want to give it, has created this hovel for us, so that we can go in out of the storm. It's for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that's just protective coloration. Like the church in the Middle Ages, which didn't give a damn about the laity or even about God, we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive---because we have to."

Finch shook his head admiringly. "You sure make us sound bad, Dave."

"Maybe I do," Masters said. "But bad as we are, we're better than those on the outside, in the muck, the poor bastards of the world. We do no harm, we say what we want, and we get paid for it; and that's a triumph of natural virtue, or pretty damn close to it."

Masters leaned back from the table, indifferent, no longer concerned with what he had said.

Gordon Finch cleared his throat. "Well, now," he said earnestly. "You may have something in what you say, Dave, but I think you go too far. I really do."

Stoner and Masters smiled at each other, and they spoke no more of the question that evening. But for years afterward, at odd moments, Stoner remembered what Masters had said; and though it brought him no vision of the University to which he had committed himself, it did reveal to him something about his relationship to the two men, and it gave him a glimpse of the corrosive and unspoiled bitterness of youth.

The picture above is of University of Minnesota faculty in full religio-pedagogic regalia at a 2008 graduation ceremony.

A Question of Authenticity

2010-05-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

In a Bloggingheads plug for his new book The Authenticity Hoax, Andrew Potter opines on the elusive nature of the term authentic. He's much more sympathetic to the term's use than I am.

It seems to me that whatever positive function authenticity might have---Potter's not very clear on this---it can hardly make up for the term's two clearly negative functions: as a justification for nostalgia (e.g. the pre-modern world was characterized by authentic connections between human beings and between human beings and the earth) and as a cudgel to be used against those who do not share one's worldview or material circumstances (e.g. liberal residents of the coastal states are not authentic Americans; people in the middle class do not lead authentic lives). In short, it's a word that appears only to be useful for complaining and passing judgment on others.

Take Potter's example of the issue of globalization. Potter offers the opinion that globalization is often detrimental to isolated societies because it erodes some of their cultural authenticity through contact with outsiders. This argument appeals to our romantic sense of these cultures as untouched and unchanging expressions of man's natural self, as societies that are still innocent in a way that ours will never be again. . . and it relies entirely on non-empirically-supported nostalgia.

For one thing, even relatively isolated cultures are never static. They face internal promptings to change, so the cultural practices that one might say are authentic for a particular culture will never be the same over time, with or without any external influence. If lack of change is the test of a culture's authenticity, then no culture can claim it. If, on the other hand, the test of authenticity isn't a complete lack of change but only a lack of change in response to external influence, well, that's slightly less impossible. It's still highly unlikely that any culture would qualify, though, given the human tendency to move about, and it's even less likely if one defines "external influence" as influence emanating from a neighboring tribe or other nearby social groupings. Would one say, for example, that the now mostly Buddhist culture of Bhutan is less authentic today than it was before it was influenced by groups of monks fleeing Tibet in the 9th century? Or is it only the influence of Western outsiders that can lessen a culture's authenticity?

More disturbing than the nostalgia involved in the anti-globalization argument is the patronizing judgment. Outsiders who argue that isolated cultures should remain as they are now so as to hold onto their authenticity seem indirectly to be saying that the members of these societies shouldn't be allowed to choose for themselves how they want to respond to the influence of other cultures---that it is always wrong for them to accept any aspect of another culture as part of their own, even as a matter of personal choice. Still worse is when insiders police each others' behavior in order to maintain their culture's authenticity or seek to remove inauthentic individuals from the society. This inevitably conflicts with widely respected values of individual freedom. Returning to the example of Bhutan, the country's institution of a government-enforced dress code may not have been a very troubling instance of encroachment on citizens' personal liberty for the sake of authenticity, but its expulsion of more than 100,000 ethnic Nepali citizens in the 1990s certainly was. Ideals of authenticity inevitably lead to questions of what (or who) qualifies as authentic, which never seems to end well.