Happy Thanksgiving weekend! I am spending it in Boulder, CO, one of the most beautiful cities in America.
From "Static Poems"
Deafness to imperatives
is profundity in the wise man,
children and grandchildren
don't bother him,
don't alarm him.
To represent a particular outlook,
to act,
to travel hither and yon
are all signs of a world
that doesn't see clearly.
--Gottfried Benn
(in Poetry, 11/09.)
Adult authoritarians tend to be highly ethnocentric and heavy users of the "consensual validation pill" (Newcomb, 1961). They travel in tight circles of like-minded people so much, they often think their views are commonly held in society, that they are the "Moral Majority" or the "Silent Majority." It has been hard to miss the evidence that certain kinds of religious training have sometimes helped produce their ethnocentrism and authoritarianism.
...(They) are scared. They see the world as a dangerous place, as society teeters on the brink of self-destruction from evil and violence. This fear appears to instigate aggression in them. Second, right-wing authoritarians tend to be highly self-righteous. They think themselves much more moral and upstanding than others - a self-perception considerably aided by self-deception, their religious training, and some very efficient guilt evaporators (such as going to confession). This self-righteousness disinhibits their aggressive impulses, and releases them to act out their fear-induced hostilities....
Bob Altemeyer
--"The Other 'Authoritarian Personality'"
From "What's Bad"
Seeing a cold beer when it's hot out,
and not being able to afford it.
...
Hearing the waves beat against the shore on holiday at night,
and telling yourself it's what they always do.
Very bad: being invited out,
when your own room at home is quieter,
the coffee is better,
and you don't have to make small talk.
And worst of all:
not to die in summer,
when the days are long
and the earth yields easily to the spade.
--Gottfried Benn
(in Poetry, 11/09.)
Reading a newspaper is like reading a novel whose author has abandoned any thought of a coherent plot.
...
The Reformation...owed much of its success to print-capitalism. Before the age of print, Rome easily won every war against heresy in Western Europe because it always had better lines of communication than its challengers. But when in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his theses to the chapel-door in Wittenberg, they were printed up in German translation, and 'within 15 days [had been] seen in every part of the country.' In the two decades 1520-1540 three times as many books were published in German as in the period 1500-1520, an astonishing transformation to which Luther was absolutely central. His works represented no less than one third of all German-language books sold between 1518 and 1525. ...'We have here for the first time a truly mass readership and a popular literature within everybody's reach.' In effect, Luther became the first best-selling author so known. Or, to put it another way, the first writer who could 'sell' his new books on the basis of his name.
...
In pre-print Europe, and, of course, elsewhere in the world, the diversity of spoken languages, those languages that for those speakers were (and are) the warp and woof of their lives, was immense; so immense, indeed, that had print-capitalism sought to exploit each potential oral vernacular market, it would have remained a capitalism of petty proportions. But these varied idiolects were capable of being assembled, within definite limits, into print-languages far fewer in number. The very arbitrariness of any system of signs for sounds facilitated the assembling process. ...Nothing served to 'assemble' related vernaculars more than capitalism, which, within the limits imposed by grammars and syntaxes, created mechanically reproduced print languages capable of dissemination through the market.
These print-languages laid the bases for national consciousnesses in three distinct ways. First and foremost, they created unified fields of exchange and communication below Latin and above the spoken vernaculars. Speakers of the huge variety of Frenches, Englishes, or Spanishes, who might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation, became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. In the process, they gradually became aware of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in their particular language-field, and at the same time that only those hundreds of thousands, or millions, so belonged. These fellow-readers, to whom they were connected through print, formed, in their secular, particular, visible invisibility, the embryo of the nationally imagined community.
Benedict Anderson
--Imagined Communities (one of the most fascinating and insightful books I have ever read - a book that can change the way you understand the world.)
27 November 2009
07 November 2009
House of Representatives passes health care reform legislation, 220-215
The House just passed health care reform legislation. The bill is flawed, but this is a huge victory for President Obama and the Democrats. And more importantly, it's a step toward a more generous and decent America.
Tens of millions of currently uninsured Americans will have health insurance once health care reform becomes law, and health care expenses will be reduced for everyone. Families and individuals shouldn't have to go bankrupt because they get sick, and they shouldn't have to forgo essential treatment because they can't afford it - those are the fundamental, big-picture ethical imperatives behind the reform effort. This is real "values voting." It isn't perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
Tens of millions of currently uninsured Americans will have health insurance once health care reform becomes law, and health care expenses will be reduced for everyone. Families and individuals shouldn't have to go bankrupt because they get sick, and they shouldn't have to forgo essential treatment because they can't afford it - those are the fundamental, big-picture ethical imperatives behind the reform effort. This is real "values voting." It isn't perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
Two cents about COIN
My latest op-ed, "Two cents about COIN," appeared today on Antiwar.com. It discusses the the growing faith of U.S. political and military leaders in the military doctrine of COIN, or manpower-intensive counterinsurgency warfare.
You can find the op-ed here as well as pasted below; if you enjoy it, please consider sharing it on your Facebook wall, mentioning it on Twitter, or linking to it on your blog. Thanks, as always, for reading.
---
Two Cents About COIN
Ryan McCarl
The war in Afghanistan, according to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recent assessment, is "a situation that defies simple solutions or quick fixes. Success demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign." McChrystal and other American leaders calling for a "surge" of additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan to mirror the alleged success of the "surge" in Iraq are voicing their belief that the doctrinal framework for the original surge – COIN, or manpower-intensive counterinsurgency warfare – is a widely-applicable tool in asymmetric warfare that the U.S. ought to employ in Afghanistan.
Top decisionmakers in the U.S. military, including Gen. McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, continue to express their faith in the doctrine, which they played major roles in creating. Prominent Republicans in Congress, who almost unanimously support sending more troops to Afghanistan, have endorsed a nation-building strategy that relies heavily on COIN over a counterterrorism strategy that focuses on targeting al-Qaeda and other militants from a distance. Several key figures in the Obama administration also appear to favor that approach.
It may be true that, as military expert Stephen Biddle said in recent Congressional testimony, "the U.S. is an unusually experienced counterinsurgent force today," and "the new Army/Marine counterinsurgency doctrine…is the product of a nearly unprecedented degree of internal debate, external vetting, historical analysis, and direct recent combat experience."
But these very factors that have encouraged so many highly capable U.S. leaders to sign on to "COIN" should cause observers to be wary of the doctrine and the currency it increasingly enjoys in the American political debate. After all, the more enthusiastic we are about the potential of COIN warfare, the more blind we will be to its costs, which are enormous.
We can and must think about contemporary problems – such as what strategy the U.S. should pursue in Afghanistan – through the lenses of relevant theories and historical analogies. But it is foolish to think within the box of a single analogy, such as the Iraq "surge," or a single theory, such as the idea that we can succeed at counterinsurgency and nation-building by deploying generous numbers of ground troops and focusing on winning the "hearts and minds" of local communities.
Our need to make quick decisions and cope with a complex world creates a powerful incentive for us to create "rules of thumb," default beliefs, habits, choices, or courses of action that we adopt almost without thinking. And yet when those in the halls of power make major decisions on the basis of such "rules of thumb," the results can sometimes be disastrous. It behooves political observers to be aware of new decision-making habits, and the spread of some new piece of "conventional wisdom," in their leaders.
It is important to remember that military leaders have a major incentive to endorse a COIN approach in Afghanistan. According to General Petraeus and other experts, most successful COIN operations require very high numbers of U.S. troops on the ground – numbers that may be politically and logistically impossible for the Obama administration to accept.
Because the number of troops that can be reasonably demanded for a COIN operation is essentially limitless, mission failure can be blamed on the executive branch for not sending enough troops rather than on military leaders, the combat environment, or the COIN playbook itself. As Gen. McChrystal wrote in his assessment: "Success is not ensured by additional forces alone, but continued underresourcing will likely cause failure."
Organizational psychology and the logic of bureaucracies provide more clues into the wave of COIN-fever that appears to have struck so many of our political and military leaders. Simply put, it was neither easy nor cheap for the military to develop COIN doctrine as we attempted to salvage the war in Iraq in recent years, and now COIN feels like hard-won wisdom that we should put to the test in another theater of war. It’s a classic case of sunk costs: it is felt that we paid too much for COIN to abandon it now.
Policymakers’ belief in the power of COIN may encourage them to see military solutions where none exist. If the U.S. opts to send tens of thousands of additional ground troops to Afghanistan in order to pursue a comprehensive COIN strategy, it will be taking on a great deal of risk and incurring substantial additional costs in pursuit of a highly uncertain outcome.
---
Ryan McCarl is a writer and educator. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and he maintains a blog at www.wideawakeminds.com.
You can find the op-ed here as well as pasted below; if you enjoy it, please consider sharing it on your Facebook wall, mentioning it on Twitter, or linking to it on your blog. Thanks, as always, for reading.
---
Two Cents About COIN
Ryan McCarl
The war in Afghanistan, according to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recent assessment, is "a situation that defies simple solutions or quick fixes. Success demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign." McChrystal and other American leaders calling for a "surge" of additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan to mirror the alleged success of the "surge" in Iraq are voicing their belief that the doctrinal framework for the original surge – COIN, or manpower-intensive counterinsurgency warfare – is a widely-applicable tool in asymmetric warfare that the U.S. ought to employ in Afghanistan.
Top decisionmakers in the U.S. military, including Gen. McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, continue to express their faith in the doctrine, which they played major roles in creating. Prominent Republicans in Congress, who almost unanimously support sending more troops to Afghanistan, have endorsed a nation-building strategy that relies heavily on COIN over a counterterrorism strategy that focuses on targeting al-Qaeda and other militants from a distance. Several key figures in the Obama administration also appear to favor that approach.
It may be true that, as military expert Stephen Biddle said in recent Congressional testimony, "the U.S. is an unusually experienced counterinsurgent force today," and "the new Army/Marine counterinsurgency doctrine…is the product of a nearly unprecedented degree of internal debate, external vetting, historical analysis, and direct recent combat experience."
But these very factors that have encouraged so many highly capable U.S. leaders to sign on to "COIN" should cause observers to be wary of the doctrine and the currency it increasingly enjoys in the American political debate. After all, the more enthusiastic we are about the potential of COIN warfare, the more blind we will be to its costs, which are enormous.
We can and must think about contemporary problems – such as what strategy the U.S. should pursue in Afghanistan – through the lenses of relevant theories and historical analogies. But it is foolish to think within the box of a single analogy, such as the Iraq "surge," or a single theory, such as the idea that we can succeed at counterinsurgency and nation-building by deploying generous numbers of ground troops and focusing on winning the "hearts and minds" of local communities.
Our need to make quick decisions and cope with a complex world creates a powerful incentive for us to create "rules of thumb," default beliefs, habits, choices, or courses of action that we adopt almost without thinking. And yet when those in the halls of power make major decisions on the basis of such "rules of thumb," the results can sometimes be disastrous. It behooves political observers to be aware of new decision-making habits, and the spread of some new piece of "conventional wisdom," in their leaders.
It is important to remember that military leaders have a major incentive to endorse a COIN approach in Afghanistan. According to General Petraeus and other experts, most successful COIN operations require very high numbers of U.S. troops on the ground – numbers that may be politically and logistically impossible for the Obama administration to accept.
Because the number of troops that can be reasonably demanded for a COIN operation is essentially limitless, mission failure can be blamed on the executive branch for not sending enough troops rather than on military leaders, the combat environment, or the COIN playbook itself. As Gen. McChrystal wrote in his assessment: "Success is not ensured by additional forces alone, but continued underresourcing will likely cause failure."
Organizational psychology and the logic of bureaucracies provide more clues into the wave of COIN-fever that appears to have struck so many of our political and military leaders. Simply put, it was neither easy nor cheap for the military to develop COIN doctrine as we attempted to salvage the war in Iraq in recent years, and now COIN feels like hard-won wisdom that we should put to the test in another theater of war. It’s a classic case of sunk costs: it is felt that we paid too much for COIN to abandon it now.
Policymakers’ belief in the power of COIN may encourage them to see military solutions where none exist. If the U.S. opts to send tens of thousands of additional ground troops to Afghanistan in order to pursue a comprehensive COIN strategy, it will be taking on a great deal of risk and incurring substantial additional costs in pursuit of a highly uncertain outcome.
---
Ryan McCarl is a writer and educator. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and he maintains a blog at www.wideawakeminds.com.
05 November 2009
A limited ecumenism
My latest op-ed, "A limited ecumenism," appeared today in Sightings, the newsletter of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. It discusses the Catholic Church's recent outreach to traditionalist Anglicans. Sightings is a free online publication sent out twice a week to over 7,000 scholars, ministers, students, and others interested in the intersection of religion and public life; you can subscribe to it at the Sightings subscription page. Sightings is also online at http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/.
You can find the op-ed here as well as pasted below. Thanks, as always, for reading.
---
A Limited Ecumenism
Ryan McCarl
As reported in Sightings last Monday, the Vatican announced two weeks ago that it was setting up a new canonical structure, or Apostolic Constitution, to facilitate the conversion of disaffected Anglican traditionalists to Catholicism; the converts will be able to “enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” in the Vatican’s words. Married former Anglican clergy will be allowed to become Catholic Priests, though not Bishops.
The Vatican portrayed the move as a response to requests from Anglicans and as representative of its broader “commitment to ecumenical dialogue.” Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and symbolic leader of the Anglican Church, and Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, released a statement confirming the Vatican’s narrative: “The Apostolic Constitution is further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition.”
But what leaders of the two churches depicted as an historic, ecumenical move toward Christian unity, others saw as something considerably more complex. Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic writer who has often been critical of Pope Benedict XVI’s leadership, used economic analogies in describing the move as a power grab. “Married priests are fine…as long as they help build market share,” he wrote, paraphrasing what he sees as the Vatican’s new position on clerical chastity. The move “essentially junks an entire tradition of ecumenical dialogue in favor of a quick and sudden merger and acquisition.”
Such analogies, while jarring, may be worth exploring further. Organizations and societies learn from each other’s successful practices, and religious organizations are no exception. The language and efficiency of the Vatican’s announcement made the policy appear to be as carefully scripted and “rolled-out” as a new product by an electronics manufacturer or a new policy by a political leader.
The Holy See demonstrated that it, too, can masterfully employ the techniques of “spin,” omnipresent in both consumer and political marketing. And still other political analogies may apply: Is the Vatican practicing religious realpolitik, strengthening itself at the expense of a weakened and divided adversary?
In short, this development may tell us more about the contemporary Catholic Church than about divisions in the Anglican Church. Perhaps most interestingly, the Vatican's plan suggests that current Catholic leadership sees liturgical procedures and even the chastity of priests as somewhat flexible, but its stands against homosexuality and the ordainment of women as fixed and beyond debate – indeed, even as a source of common ground with other socially conservative Christian groups.
Many of the Christian churches place a high value on reconciliation and unity. But few see unification as an aim that trumps the aims of conscience, that is, of right doctrine and right orientation toward God. In evaluating the Vatican’s move, observers will have to ask themselves whether reconciliation ought to come at the price of continuing and even strengthening the exclusion of women and gays from full and equal membership in the Church.
References:
Donadio, Rachel and Laurie Goodstein, “Vatican Bidding to Get Anglicans to Join Its Fold,” New York Times, 10/21/09. Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/world/europe/21pope.html.
Holy See Press Office, “Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering the Catholic Church,” 10/20/09. Online at http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/24513.php?index=24513&po_date=20.10.2009&lang=en.
Nichols, Vincent and Rowan Williams, “Joint Statement by The Archbishop of Westminster and The Archbishop of Canterbury,” 10/20/09. Online at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2572#.
Sullivan, Andrew, “Married Priests Are Fine…,” The Daily Dish, 10/20/09. Online at http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/married-priests-are-fine-.html.
---
Ryan McCarl is a writer and educator. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and he maintains a blog at www.wideawakeminds.com.
You can find the op-ed here as well as pasted below. Thanks, as always, for reading.
---
A Limited Ecumenism
Ryan McCarl
As reported in Sightings last Monday, the Vatican announced two weeks ago that it was setting up a new canonical structure, or Apostolic Constitution, to facilitate the conversion of disaffected Anglican traditionalists to Catholicism; the converts will be able to “enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” in the Vatican’s words. Married former Anglican clergy will be allowed to become Catholic Priests, though not Bishops.
The Vatican portrayed the move as a response to requests from Anglicans and as representative of its broader “commitment to ecumenical dialogue.” Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and symbolic leader of the Anglican Church, and Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, released a statement confirming the Vatican’s narrative: “The Apostolic Constitution is further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition.”
But what leaders of the two churches depicted as an historic, ecumenical move toward Christian unity, others saw as something considerably more complex. Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic writer who has often been critical of Pope Benedict XVI’s leadership, used economic analogies in describing the move as a power grab. “Married priests are fine…as long as they help build market share,” he wrote, paraphrasing what he sees as the Vatican’s new position on clerical chastity. The move “essentially junks an entire tradition of ecumenical dialogue in favor of a quick and sudden merger and acquisition.”
Such analogies, while jarring, may be worth exploring further. Organizations and societies learn from each other’s successful practices, and religious organizations are no exception. The language and efficiency of the Vatican’s announcement made the policy appear to be as carefully scripted and “rolled-out” as a new product by an electronics manufacturer or a new policy by a political leader.
The Holy See demonstrated that it, too, can masterfully employ the techniques of “spin,” omnipresent in both consumer and political marketing. And still other political analogies may apply: Is the Vatican practicing religious realpolitik, strengthening itself at the expense of a weakened and divided adversary?
In short, this development may tell us more about the contemporary Catholic Church than about divisions in the Anglican Church. Perhaps most interestingly, the Vatican's plan suggests that current Catholic leadership sees liturgical procedures and even the chastity of priests as somewhat flexible, but its stands against homosexuality and the ordainment of women as fixed and beyond debate – indeed, even as a source of common ground with other socially conservative Christian groups.
Many of the Christian churches place a high value on reconciliation and unity. But few see unification as an aim that trumps the aims of conscience, that is, of right doctrine and right orientation toward God. In evaluating the Vatican’s move, observers will have to ask themselves whether reconciliation ought to come at the price of continuing and even strengthening the exclusion of women and gays from full and equal membership in the Church.
References:
Donadio, Rachel and Laurie Goodstein, “Vatican Bidding to Get Anglicans to Join Its Fold,” New York Times, 10/21/09. Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/world/europe/21pope.html.
Holy See Press Office, “Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering the Catholic Church,” 10/20/09. Online at http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/24513.php?index=24513&po_date=20.10.2009&lang=en.
Nichols, Vincent and Rowan Williams, “Joint Statement by The Archbishop of Westminster and The Archbishop of Canterbury,” 10/20/09. Online at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2572#.
Sullivan, Andrew, “Married Priests Are Fine…,” The Daily Dish, 10/20/09. Online at http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/married-priests-are-fine-.html.
---
Ryan McCarl is a writer and educator. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and he maintains a blog at www.wideawakeminds.com.
28 October 2009
Empathy across neighborhood lines
My latest op-ed, "Love Thy Neighbor: In the wake of an attack on the Men’s Cross Country team, it’s time to rethink University-community relations," appeared in the Chicago Weekly today.
You can find the op-ed and add your comments here, and I've also pasted it below. Thanks, as always, for reading.
---
Love Thy Neighbor: In the wake of an attack on the Men’s Cross Country team, it’s time to rethink University-community relations
Ryan McCarl
The University of Chicago is a bastion of resources and privilege in a largely underserved and segregated South Side. The University and many of its students regularly engage in outreach and volunteer programs aimed at bridging the gap between the University community and the broader South Side, and Hyde Park is often hailed as one of the most integrated neighborhoods in the United States. But there is an undeniable separation—an invisible wall—between the University and its surroundings.
Every day, the wall is breached by students working in local schools through the Neighborhood Schools Program, by local residents seeking treatment at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and by members of the University staff who live in nearby communities. The constant movement of people and capital between the University area and surrounding areas is a movement across the barriers of income, class, and often race, and such movement is critical to reducing tensions between the communities and promoting empathy, awareness, and mutual understanding.
But the decision to cross barriers is rarely risk-free. It often requires going outside of one’s comfort zone and making oneself feel vulnerable. Sometimes the experience is rewarding, but that is not always the case.
Members of the University of Chicago cross country team often see much more of the South Side than the average University of Chicago student. Their runs of four, eight, or twenty miles carry them all around the city, through neighborhoods where their presence as a large group of often scantily-clad, mostly white runners speeding along down the middle of the street comes as a surprise to the residents they encounter.
I ran with the team for four years as a student. I remember positive experiences of having moments of connection and shared humor and understanding with some of the people we passed on our runs, of having friendly snowball fights in the winter, and of seeing communities that I would never see if not for those runs. The places I saw helped to shape my social, political, and economic awareness.
I also remember negative experiences: having rocks thrown at us by students, being cursed at and called racist and homophobic epithets, encountering big-and-mean-looking stray dogs, and having two teammates shot with a BB gun.
Earlier this week, the team was running their “Garfield Loop,” a run west on Garfield, past the Dan Ryan interchange and toward Midway Airport, when the team was shot at with paintball guns fired by an eastbound car. One team member was struck between the eyes, and the paintball buried itself in his right eye, where it caused substantial damage. His iris is now partially detached; cells deep in his eye are traumatized; and his vision in that eye is 20/60 instead of the 20/20 it was previously. It is probable that the injury will affect his vision for the rest of his life.
Is there a moral to this unpleasant story? Let’s hope it isn’t, “Don’t run through unsafe neighborhoods; stick to the treadmills or the lakefront parks.” It is essential that University of Chicago students accept some personal risk in order to spend time in the neighborhoods around their school. Like all great cities, Chicago is flawed, but Chicago’s particularly egregious flaw is its sharply drawn, if invisible, barriers between communities separated by de facto segregation, uneven development, and unequal opportunities for work and education.
The only way to break down those barriers is through the continued exchange of people, conversations, and capital: we must visit each other's homes and communities, walk awhile in each other’s shoes, and see the places where each other lives. We must see and hear our neighbors in order to empathize with them and see them in the fullness of their individuality and their common humanity. Knowledge and empathy go hand in hand.
The joyriders who shot my teammate in the eye with a paintball gun would not have done the same to their own family and friends, those they care most about. May we all work to expand the circle of those we care about to include all our neighbors; let us see these neighbors as neighbors, as our human family, rather than as distant others from whom we may safely separate ourselves.
---
Ryan McCarl is a writer and educator. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and he writes about education at www.wideawakeminds.com
You can find the op-ed and add your comments here, and I've also pasted it below. Thanks, as always, for reading.
---
Love Thy Neighbor: In the wake of an attack on the Men’s Cross Country team, it’s time to rethink University-community relations
Ryan McCarl
The University of Chicago is a bastion of resources and privilege in a largely underserved and segregated South Side. The University and many of its students regularly engage in outreach and volunteer programs aimed at bridging the gap between the University community and the broader South Side, and Hyde Park is often hailed as one of the most integrated neighborhoods in the United States. But there is an undeniable separation—an invisible wall—between the University and its surroundings.
Every day, the wall is breached by students working in local schools through the Neighborhood Schools Program, by local residents seeking treatment at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and by members of the University staff who live in nearby communities. The constant movement of people and capital between the University area and surrounding areas is a movement across the barriers of income, class, and often race, and such movement is critical to reducing tensions between the communities and promoting empathy, awareness, and mutual understanding.
But the decision to cross barriers is rarely risk-free. It often requires going outside of one’s comfort zone and making oneself feel vulnerable. Sometimes the experience is rewarding, but that is not always the case.
Members of the University of Chicago cross country team often see much more of the South Side than the average University of Chicago student. Their runs of four, eight, or twenty miles carry them all around the city, through neighborhoods where their presence as a large group of often scantily-clad, mostly white runners speeding along down the middle of the street comes as a surprise to the residents they encounter.
I ran with the team for four years as a student. I remember positive experiences of having moments of connection and shared humor and understanding with some of the people we passed on our runs, of having friendly snowball fights in the winter, and of seeing communities that I would never see if not for those runs. The places I saw helped to shape my social, political, and economic awareness.
I also remember negative experiences: having rocks thrown at us by students, being cursed at and called racist and homophobic epithets, encountering big-and-mean-looking stray dogs, and having two teammates shot with a BB gun.
Earlier this week, the team was running their “Garfield Loop,” a run west on Garfield, past the Dan Ryan interchange and toward Midway Airport, when the team was shot at with paintball guns fired by an eastbound car. One team member was struck between the eyes, and the paintball buried itself in his right eye, where it caused substantial damage. His iris is now partially detached; cells deep in his eye are traumatized; and his vision in that eye is 20/60 instead of the 20/20 it was previously. It is probable that the injury will affect his vision for the rest of his life.
Is there a moral to this unpleasant story? Let’s hope it isn’t, “Don’t run through unsafe neighborhoods; stick to the treadmills or the lakefront parks.” It is essential that University of Chicago students accept some personal risk in order to spend time in the neighborhoods around their school. Like all great cities, Chicago is flawed, but Chicago’s particularly egregious flaw is its sharply drawn, if invisible, barriers between communities separated by de facto segregation, uneven development, and unequal opportunities for work and education.
The only way to break down those barriers is through the continued exchange of people, conversations, and capital: we must visit each other's homes and communities, walk awhile in each other’s shoes, and see the places where each other lives. We must see and hear our neighbors in order to empathize with them and see them in the fullness of their individuality and their common humanity. Knowledge and empathy go hand in hand.
The joyriders who shot my teammate in the eye with a paintball gun would not have done the same to their own family and friends, those they care most about. May we all work to expand the circle of those we care about to include all our neighbors; let us see these neighbors as neighbors, as our human family, rather than as distant others from whom we may safely separate ourselves.
---
Ryan McCarl is a writer and educator. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and he writes about education at www.wideawakeminds.com
20 October 2009
Readings from Solomon's "Judaism: A Very Short Introduction"
Martin Buber and Emanuel Levinas put their faith in the God of relationships. Alles Leben ist Begegnung ('all life is encounter'), declared Buber, and the important thing is to get your relationship with God and with people right (I-Thou, rather than I-It); from that relationship, which is the essence of Revelation, ethical action flows; laws and rules are feeble attempts to capture revelation, and doomed to inadequacy.
...
Genesis 1:27 states clearly enough: 'So God created humankind in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.' This implies that in using our concept of God to model human behavior we should not distinguish between male and female.
...
Emil Fackenheim grounds his theology in the actual resistance of Shoah [Holocaust] victims to whom no realistic hope remained: 'A philosophical Tikkun ['repair', 'restoration'] is possible after the Holocaust because a philosophical Tikkun already took place, however fragmentarily, during the Holocaust itself'; the rebirth of Israel, and a new constructive dialogue with a self-critical Christianity, are essential to this process. Fackenheim is also noted for his statement that there should be a 614th commandment, surplus to the 613 of tradition - to survive as Jews, to remember, never to despair of God, lest we hand Hitler a posthumous victory.
...
Is there such a thing as a 'just war', and if so, what are the conditions of engagement? Out of this debate emerged the novel concept of tohar ha-nesheq ('purity of arms'), which demands inter alia that the fighting force take special risks to avoid harm to non-combatants and to minimize enemy casualties.
...
Many Jews, including secular ones, see Israel as the fulfilment of the 'national' aspirations of the Jewish people; after thousands of years of minority status, of being alienated from the host societies, and in many cases actually prevented from becoming full citizens of the lands in which they lived, they feel that they have at last 'come home' and are able to control their own destiny within the normal limitations of independent statehood. Israel is perceived as a secure haven for persecuted Jews; had Israel existed during the years of the Holocaust, Jews would have had somewhere to turn to. Moreover, Israel provides the opportunity to live a fulfilling Jewish life free from the inhibitions and restrictions of minority status.
...
Large numbers of men and women have abandoned organized religion, some because they have found it intellectually untenable, more because they have found it emotionally unsatisfying, most because they have found that its demands inhibit the personal freedom which they regard as a fundamental human right. If Western Christianity has been most strongly affected, Western Judaism runs it a close second, for both have their home in the lands which modernity and the Enlightenment were nurtured.
...
The downside of the emphasis on family values is the danger of marginalizing the stranger, the single, and the unattached.
...
The 'heroes of the spirit,' Elijah shows the conventional rabbi Baroka, are not the ostentatiously pious, not even the learned and devout like Baroka himself.... They may appear to be quite ordinary individuals, not even religious in a conventional sense, whose quiet deeds enhance the quality of life around them - the carers, the compassionate, those who use their talents to ease the burden of humanity.
Norman Solomon
--Judaism: A Very Short Introduction
12 October 2009
Readings from the stories of John Cheever
It was after four then, and I lay in the dark, listening to the rain and to the morning trains coming through. They come from Buffalo and Chicago and the Far West, through Albany and down along the river in the early morning, and at one time or another I've traveled on most of them, and I lay in the dark thinking about the polar air in the Pullman cars and the smell of nightclothes and the taste of dining-car water and the way it feels to end a day in Cleveland or Chicago and begin another in New York, particularly after you've been away for a couple of years, and particularly in the summer.
...
I took the eight-ten train into town in the morning and returned on the six-thirty. I knew enough to avoid the empty house in the summer dusk, and I drove directly from the station parking lot to a good restaurant called Orpheo's.
--"The Cure"
"The sun is in your hair."
"What?"
"The sun is in your hair. It's a beautiful color."
--"The Chaste Clarissa"
I felt that he was a captive of financial and sentimental commitments, like every other man I know, and that he was no more free to fall in love with a strange woman he saw on a street corner than he was to take a walking trip through French Guiana or to recommence his life in Chicago under an assumed name.
...
"Is divorce so dreadful and of all the things that hold a marriage together how many of them are good?" She sat down at the table. "In Grenoble," she said, "I wrote a long paper on Charles Stuart in French. A professor at the University of Chicago wrote me a letter. I couldn't read a French newspaper without a dictionary today, I don't have the time to follow any newspaper, and I am ashamed of my incompetence, ashamed of the way I look. Oh, I guess I love you, I do love the children, but I love myself, I love my life, it has some value and some promise for me and Trencher's roses make me feel that I'm losing this, that I'm losing my self-respect."
...
Walking down Lexington Avenue, we heard the drone bass of a church organ sound from the sky, and we and the others on the sidewalk looked up in piety and bewilderment, like a devout and stupid congregation, and saw a formation of heavy bombers heading for the sea. As it got late, it got cold and clear and still, and on the stillness the waste from the smokestacks along the East River seemed to articulate, as legibly as the Pepsi-Cola plane, whole words and sentences. Halcyon. Disaster. They were hard to make out. It seemed the ebb of the year - an evil day for gastritis, sinus, and respiratory disease - and remembering other winters, the markings of the light convinced me that it was the season of divorce.
...
I think that the seriousness of the day affected the children, and when they returned to the house, they were quiet. The seriousness of it kept coming to me with the feeling that this change, like a phenomenon of speed, was affecting our watches as well as our hearts.
...
Now when I come home in the evenings, Ethel is still sitting on the stool by the sink cleaning vegetables. I go with her into the children's room. The light there is bright. The children have built something out an orange crate, something preposterous and ascendant, and their sweetness, their compulsion to build, the brightness of the light are reflected perfectly and increased in Ethel's face. Then she feeds them, bathes them, and sets the table, and stands for a moment in the middle of the room, trying to make some connection between the evening and the day. Then it is over. She lights the four candles, and we sit down to our supper.
--"The Season of Divorce"
It is true of even the best of us that if an observer can catch us boarding a train at a way station; if he will mark our faces, stripped by anxiety of their self-possession; if he will appraise our luggage, our clothing, and look out of the window to see who has driven us to the station; if he will listen to the harsh or tender things we say if we are with our families, or notice the way we put our suitcase onto the rack, check the position of our wallet, our key ring, and wipe the sweat off the back of our necks; if he can judge sensibly the self-importance, diffidence, or sadness with which we settle ourselves, he will be given a broader view of our lives than most of us would intend.
--"The Summer Farmer"
28 September 2009
Excerpts from Jonathan Glover's "Humanity"
Jonathan Glover's Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century is one of the best and most important books I have ever read.
Excerpts below:
---
An extimate for the period from 1900 until 1989 is that war killed 86 million people. Eighty-six million is a small proportion of all those alive during the ninety years, and is a small number compared to those who have died from hunger and preventable diseases. All the same, death in twentieth-century war has been on a scale which is hard to grasp. ...If these deaths had been spread evenly over the period, war would have killed around 2,500 people every day. That is over 100 people an hour, round the clock, for ninety years.
...
One of this book's aims is to replace the thin, mechanical psychology of the Enlightenment with something more complex, something closer to reality. A consequence of this is to defend the Enlightenment hope of a world that is more peaceful and humane, the hope that by understanding more about ourselves we can do something to create a world with less misery. ...We need to look hard and clearly at some monsters inside us. But this is part of the project of caging and taming them.
...
Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all blur the boundaries of selfish concern. Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too. The deeper levels of relationships are denied to people who hold large parts of themselves back. And to give yourself means that part of you belongs to the person you care for. There is a constant pull towards new kinds of sympathy and commitment. Narrow self-interest is destabilized.
...
Happiness depends on psychological integration, or wholeness. We need to be at peace with ourselves. Inner conflict is a threat to happiness. Disharmony involves slavery to madness, and allows the beast in man to gain control.
...
Claims to be treated with respect are often linked to standing within a group. The claim of an outsider may be minimal. Sympathy has similar limitations. The sympathies which really engage us are often stubbornly limited and local. I may move mountains for my child, but perhaps I will not cross the street to be a good Samaritan to a stranger. Sympathy may hardly extend to those outside a particular community. These limitations help to explain a moral gap which is increasingly evident. Many moralities are "internal," giving weight to the interests of those inside a community, but doing little against the common indifference or even hostility towards those outside. It is increasingly obvious that this moral gap is a human disaster.
...
(In 1991), Amnesty International recorded protests against human rights abuses in over 50 countries, the protests to thirteen countries making specific reference to torture. These are the kinds of thing that many of us have a vague background awareness of, without there being much publicity unless the perpetrators are some currently loathed regime, or unless some highly visible Westerner is among the victims. The reality is that in many countries torture of the most revolting cruelty happens routinely, often under the auspices of governments with good relations with Europe and the United States, sometimes using equipment knowingly supplied by Western companies. There is little reason to think torture is in retreat. The festival of cruelty is in full swing. What is it about human beings that makes such acts possible? Three factors seem central. There is a love of cruelty. Also, emotionally inadequate people assert themselves by dominance and cruelty. And the moral resources which restrain cruelty can be neutralized.
...
For some, especially when the victims are women, the pleasure of cruelty is sexual.
...
Ideas about how to live should be shaped partly by awareness of collective disasters.
...
Atrocities are easier if the human responsibilities are weakened. Torturers have to suppress sympathy, or "squeamishness" as they come to think of it. One way is to stress that victims do not belong. They are usually assigned to some other, stigmatized, group.
...
We are a species both brutal and sickened by brutality. This conflict between our cruelty and our aspirations goes as far as we can see back in human history.
Jonathan Glover
--Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
04 September 2009
Readings from Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning"
I am currently reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl, a psychiatrist, was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, for several years. He survived the experience and went on to develop the theory of "logotherapy," a branch of psychoanalysis that focuses on human beings' "will to meaning." The part of the book that discusses Frankl's memories of his camp experience is, like any Holocaust memoir worth its salt, extremely disturbing and difficult to read, but it ought to be read in spite of that. Here are a few (non-graphic) excerpts from the book, which I highly recommend:
---
Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb. My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing - which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
...
If there is a meaning of life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life.
...
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.
...
I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument - they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. His work could not be done by anyone else, any more than another person could ever take the place of the father in his child's affections.
...
Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
...
I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on us in different hours - a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God - and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly - not miserably - knowing how to die.
...
When we spoke about attempts to give a man in camp mental courage, we said that he had to be shown something to look forward to in the future. He had to be reminded that life still waited for him, that a human being waited for his return. But after liberation? There were some men who found that no one awaited them. Woe to him who found that the person whose memory alone had given him courage in camp did not exist any more! Woe to him who, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all he had longed for! Perhaps he boarded a trolley, traveled out to the home which he had seen for years in his mind, and only in his mind, and pressed the bell, just as he has longed to do in thousands of dreams, only to find that the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again.
Viktor E. Frankl
--Man's Search for Meaning
---
Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb. My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing - which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
...
If there is a meaning of life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life.
...
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.
...
I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument - they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. His work could not be done by anyone else, any more than another person could ever take the place of the father in his child's affections.
...
Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
...
I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on us in different hours - a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God - and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly - not miserably - knowing how to die.
...
When we spoke about attempts to give a man in camp mental courage, we said that he had to be shown something to look forward to in the future. He had to be reminded that life still waited for him, that a human being waited for his return. But after liberation? There were some men who found that no one awaited them. Woe to him who found that the person whose memory alone had given him courage in camp did not exist any more! Woe to him who, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all he had longed for! Perhaps he boarded a trolley, traveled out to the home which he had seen for years in his mind, and only in his mind, and pressed the bell, just as he has longed to do in thousands of dreams, only to find that the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again.
Viktor E. Frankl
--Man's Search for Meaning
24 August 2009
Discovering the letters of Justice William O. Douglas
I was sorting through some books in my closet yesterday, and I discovered a fantastic book which drew me away from my regular reading: The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of William O. Douglas, edited by Melvin I. Urkofsky. William O. Douglas was a brilliant, contrarian Associate Justice on the Supreme Court as well as a transformative environmentalist and New Dealer who crusaded against rampant speculation and corruption in the financial industry. His writing is insightful and often hilarious. Here are a few samples:
To Ramsey Clark, 4/28/70:
On my visit to Baghdad, I went to the University with my interpreter to see what books, if any, they had on our Constitution or Bill of Rights or Jefferson, Madison, democracy, etc.
That library was bare on those subjects. So when I returned, I prepared what I called the Douglas Eight Foot Shelf which I thought should be in every underdeveloped nation. I thought then - and still think - that those ideas are more important than military missions.
To Max Radin (professor at Berkeley Law School), 5/27/46:
...If you are willing, I will ask you to find me a law clerk each year....I need not only a bright chap, but also a hard-working fellow with a smell for facts as well as for law. I do not want a hide-bound, conservative fellow. What I want is a Max Radin - a fellow who can hold his own in these sophisticated circles and who is not going to end up as a stodgy, hide-bound lawyer. I want the kind of fellow for whom this work would be an exhilaration, who will be going into teaching or into practice of the law for the purpose of promoting the public good. I do not want to fill the big law offices of the country with my law clerks....
To the Wall Street Journal, 10/16/78
To the Editors:
Notice of my demise has been emanating from several sources recently, not least of which is your Journal.
Please be advised that I am today joining the ranks of citizens known as octogenarians and I assure you that I was never in a position to be resurrected in order to achieve such standing.
To Edward L.R. Elson, 12/7/77:
...Concerning my funeral arrangements...From my hobo days, I knew the famous songwriter Woody Guthrie who wrote a song called "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land." It reflects not a socialist dream of mine, but many of the freedoms that are explicit or implicit in the Constitution, such as the right to move from place to place to look for a job or establish a new home, and the right to move interstate without payment of a fee, as some states within the last thirty years have tried to impose. In other words, it expresses the vagrancy issue as I have expressed it and as it has become in-grained in the law. (See my opinion in Papachristou et al v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 [1972].)
To Peter K. Westen (Douglas' law clerk, now a highly-respected professor at the University of Michigan Law School), 10/1/68:
(After chewing him out for various mistakes): You might think these things over, because the first case we have to dispose of when I get back is the case of P.K. Westen.
To Ramsey Clark, 4/28/70:
On my visit to Baghdad, I went to the University with my interpreter to see what books, if any, they had on our Constitution or Bill of Rights or Jefferson, Madison, democracy, etc.
That library was bare on those subjects. So when I returned, I prepared what I called the Douglas Eight Foot Shelf which I thought should be in every underdeveloped nation. I thought then - and still think - that those ideas are more important than military missions.
To Max Radin (professor at Berkeley Law School), 5/27/46:
...If you are willing, I will ask you to find me a law clerk each year....I need not only a bright chap, but also a hard-working fellow with a smell for facts as well as for law. I do not want a hide-bound, conservative fellow. What I want is a Max Radin - a fellow who can hold his own in these sophisticated circles and who is not going to end up as a stodgy, hide-bound lawyer. I want the kind of fellow for whom this work would be an exhilaration, who will be going into teaching or into practice of the law for the purpose of promoting the public good. I do not want to fill the big law offices of the country with my law clerks....
To the Wall Street Journal, 10/16/78
To the Editors:
Notice of my demise has been emanating from several sources recently, not least of which is your Journal.
Please be advised that I am today joining the ranks of citizens known as octogenarians and I assure you that I was never in a position to be resurrected in order to achieve such standing.
To Edward L.R. Elson, 12/7/77:
...Concerning my funeral arrangements...From my hobo days, I knew the famous songwriter Woody Guthrie who wrote a song called "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land." It reflects not a socialist dream of mine, but many of the freedoms that are explicit or implicit in the Constitution, such as the right to move from place to place to look for a job or establish a new home, and the right to move interstate without payment of a fee, as some states within the last thirty years have tried to impose. In other words, it expresses the vagrancy issue as I have expressed it and as it has become in-grained in the law. (See my opinion in Papachristou et al v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 [1972].)
To Peter K. Westen (Douglas' law clerk, now a highly-respected professor at the University of Michigan Law School), 10/1/68:
(After chewing him out for various mistakes): You might think these things over, because the first case we have to dispose of when I get back is the case of P.K. Westen.
19 August 2009
Interview with the University of Chicago Magazine
UChiBLOGo, the blog of the University of Chicago Magazine, interviewed me about Wide Awake Minds and the idea of self-education today.
Check it out here, and please pass the interview along to others if you enjoy reading it. Thanks for helping to spread the word about self-education!
Check it out here, and please pass the interview along to others if you enjoy reading it. Thanks for helping to spread the word about self-education!
Readings from Charles Taylor and Erich Auerbach
One way to put the question I want to answer here is this: why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?
...
Important as science is to our present outlook, we mustn't exaggerate its causal role here, and make it the main motor of the transformation. Our encasing in secular time is also something we have brought about in the way we live and order our lives. It has been brought about by the same social and ideological changes which have wrought disenchantment. In particular, the disciplines of our modern civilized order have led us to measure and organize time as never before in human history. Time has become a precious resource, not to be "wasted". The result has been the creation of a tight, ordered time environment. This has enveloped us, until it comes to seem like nature. We have constructed an environment in which we live a uniform, univocal secular time, which we try to measure and control in order to get things done. This "time frame" deserves, perhaps more than any other facet of modernity, Weber's famous description of a "stahlhartes Gehäuse" (iron cage). It occludes all higher times, makes them even hard to conceive.
...
Augustine sees ordinary time as dispersal, distensio, losing the unity, being cut off from our past and out of touch with our future. We get lost in our little parcel of time. But we have an irrepressible craving for eternity, and so we strive to go beyond this. Unfortunately, this all too often takes the form of our trying to invest our little parcel with eternal significance, and therefore divinising things, and therefore falling deeper into sin.
Charles Taylor
--A Secular Age
If it is true that man is capable of everything horrible, it is also true that the horrible always engenders counterforces and that in most epochs of atrocious occurrences the great vital forces of the human soul reveal themselves: love and sacrifice, heroism in the service of conviction, and the ceaseless search for possibilities of a purer existence.
...
To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legend.
...
The Old Testament, in so far as it is concerned with human events, ranges through all three domains: legend, historical reporting, and interpretative historical theology.
...
The Homeric poems, then, though their intellectual, linguistic, and above all syntactical culture appears to be so...highly developed, are yet comparatively simple in their picture of human beings; and no less so in relation to the real life which they describe in general. Delight in physical existence is everything to them, and their highest aim is to make that delight perceptible to us. ...(The Homeric heroes) wake every morning as if it were the first day of their lives: their emotions, though strong, are simple and find expression instantly.
...
Far from seeking, like Homer, merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, (the Bible) seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history. This becomes increasingly difficult the further our historical environment is removed from that of the Biblical books; and if these nevertheless maintain their claim to absolute authority, it is inevitable that they themselves be adapted through interpretative transformation.
...
It is easy to separate the historical from the legendary in general. Their structure is different. Even where the legendary does not immediately betray itself by elements of the miraculous, by the repetition of well-known standard motives, typical patterns and themes, through neglect of clear details of time and place, and the like, it is generally recognizable by its composition. It runs far too smoothly. All cross-currents, all friction, all that is casual, secondary to the main events and themes, everything unresolved, truncated, and uncertain, which confuses the clear progress of the action and the simple orientation of the actors, has disappeared. The historical event which we witness, or learn from the testimony of those who witnessed it, runs much more variously, contradictorily, and confusedly.... Legend arranges its material in a simple and straightforward way; it detaches it from its contemporary historical context, so that the latter will not confuse it; it knows only clearly outlined men who act from few and simple motives and the continuity of whose feelings and actions remains uninterrupted.
Erich Auerbach
--Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
...
Important as science is to our present outlook, we mustn't exaggerate its causal role here, and make it the main motor of the transformation. Our encasing in secular time is also something we have brought about in the way we live and order our lives. It has been brought about by the same social and ideological changes which have wrought disenchantment. In particular, the disciplines of our modern civilized order have led us to measure and organize time as never before in human history. Time has become a precious resource, not to be "wasted". The result has been the creation of a tight, ordered time environment. This has enveloped us, until it comes to seem like nature. We have constructed an environment in which we live a uniform, univocal secular time, which we try to measure and control in order to get things done. This "time frame" deserves, perhaps more than any other facet of modernity, Weber's famous description of a "stahlhartes Gehäuse" (iron cage). It occludes all higher times, makes them even hard to conceive.
...
Augustine sees ordinary time as dispersal, distensio, losing the unity, being cut off from our past and out of touch with our future. We get lost in our little parcel of time. But we have an irrepressible craving for eternity, and so we strive to go beyond this. Unfortunately, this all too often takes the form of our trying to invest our little parcel with eternal significance, and therefore divinising things, and therefore falling deeper into sin.
Charles Taylor
--A Secular Age
If it is true that man is capable of everything horrible, it is also true that the horrible always engenders counterforces and that in most epochs of atrocious occurrences the great vital forces of the human soul reveal themselves: love and sacrifice, heroism in the service of conviction, and the ceaseless search for possibilities of a purer existence.
...
To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legend.
...
The Old Testament, in so far as it is concerned with human events, ranges through all three domains: legend, historical reporting, and interpretative historical theology.
...
The Homeric poems, then, though their intellectual, linguistic, and above all syntactical culture appears to be so...highly developed, are yet comparatively simple in their picture of human beings; and no less so in relation to the real life which they describe in general. Delight in physical existence is everything to them, and their highest aim is to make that delight perceptible to us. ...(The Homeric heroes) wake every morning as if it were the first day of their lives: their emotions, though strong, are simple and find expression instantly.
...
Far from seeking, like Homer, merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, (the Bible) seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history. This becomes increasingly difficult the further our historical environment is removed from that of the Biblical books; and if these nevertheless maintain their claim to absolute authority, it is inevitable that they themselves be adapted through interpretative transformation.
...
It is easy to separate the historical from the legendary in general. Their structure is different. Even where the legendary does not immediately betray itself by elements of the miraculous, by the repetition of well-known standard motives, typical patterns and themes, through neglect of clear details of time and place, and the like, it is generally recognizable by its composition. It runs far too smoothly. All cross-currents, all friction, all that is casual, secondary to the main events and themes, everything unresolved, truncated, and uncertain, which confuses the clear progress of the action and the simple orientation of the actors, has disappeared. The historical event which we witness, or learn from the testimony of those who witnessed it, runs much more variously, contradictorily, and confusedly.... Legend arranges its material in a simple and straightforward way; it detaches it from its contemporary historical context, so that the latter will not confuse it; it knows only clearly outlined men who act from few and simple motives and the continuity of whose feelings and actions remains uninterrupted.
Erich Auerbach
--Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
15 August 2009
Quotes from Hugo Black and Lon L. Fuller
Every departure from the principles of the law's inner morality is an affront to man's dignity as a responsible agent. To judge his actions by unpublished or retrospective laws, or to order him to do an act that is impossible, is to convey to him your indifference to his powers of self-determination.
...
I believe that if we were forced to select the principle that supports and infuses all human aspiration we would find it in the objective of maintaining communication with our fellows. ...How and when we accomplish communication with one another can expand or contract the boundaries of life itself.
Lon L. Fuller
--The Morality of Law
The Court's justification for consulting its own notions rather than following the original meaning of the Constitution, as I would, apparently is based on the belief of the majority of the Court that for this Court to be bound by the original meaning of the Constitution is an intolerable and debilitating evil; that our Constitution should not be "shackled to the political theory of a particular era," and that to save the country from the original Constitution the Court must have constant power to renew it and keep it abreast of this Court's more enlightened theories of what is best for our society.
It seems to me that this is an attack not only on the great value of our Constitution itself but also on the concept of a written constitution which is to survive through the years as originally written unless changed through the amendment process which the Framers wisely provided. Moreover, when a "political theory" embodied in our Constitution becomes outdated, it seems to me that a majority of the nine members of this Court are not only without constitutional power but are far less qualified to choose a new constitutional political theory than the people of this country proceeding in the manner provided by Article V.
Justice Hugo Black
--Harper v. Virginia State Board of Education (dissent); 383 U.S. 663 (1966)
No one may be compelled against his conscience to render war service involving the use of arms.
--Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article IV
I cannot consider the Bill of Rights to be an outworn 18th Century 'strait jacket' as the Twining opinion did. Its provisions may be thought outdated abstractions by some. And it is true that they were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century wherever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many. In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights.
Justice Hugo Black
--Adamson v. California (dissent); 332 U.S. 46 (1946)
All excerpts from Lloyd, Introduction to Jurisprudence (4th ed., 1979).
...
I believe that if we were forced to select the principle that supports and infuses all human aspiration we would find it in the objective of maintaining communication with our fellows. ...How and when we accomplish communication with one another can expand or contract the boundaries of life itself.
Lon L. Fuller
--The Morality of Law
The Court's justification for consulting its own notions rather than following the original meaning of the Constitution, as I would, apparently is based on the belief of the majority of the Court that for this Court to be bound by the original meaning of the Constitution is an intolerable and debilitating evil; that our Constitution should not be "shackled to the political theory of a particular era," and that to save the country from the original Constitution the Court must have constant power to renew it and keep it abreast of this Court's more enlightened theories of what is best for our society.
It seems to me that this is an attack not only on the great value of our Constitution itself but also on the concept of a written constitution which is to survive through the years as originally written unless changed through the amendment process which the Framers wisely provided. Moreover, when a "political theory" embodied in our Constitution becomes outdated, it seems to me that a majority of the nine members of this Court are not only without constitutional power but are far less qualified to choose a new constitutional political theory than the people of this country proceeding in the manner provided by Article V.
Justice Hugo Black
--Harper v. Virginia State Board of Education (dissent); 383 U.S. 663 (1966)
No one may be compelled against his conscience to render war service involving the use of arms.
--Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article IV
I cannot consider the Bill of Rights to be an outworn 18th Century 'strait jacket' as the Twining opinion did. Its provisions may be thought outdated abstractions by some. And it is true that they were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century wherever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many. In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights.
Justice Hugo Black
--Adamson v. California (dissent); 332 U.S. 46 (1946)
All excerpts from Lloyd, Introduction to Jurisprudence (4th ed., 1979).
01 August 2009
How to Think About Politics
"How to Think About Politics," my most recent essay, is being featured in the August issue of Fogged Clarity. I've also pasted it below. If you enjoy it, please consider linking to it, sharing it, or passing it along to others who might be interested. Thanks, as always, for reading.
---
How to Think About Politics
Ryan McCarl
First, question everything, beginning with the political ideas you inherited from your parents, family, community, church, and school.
Create an inventory, in your mind or on paper, of these ideas: what are your strong, visceral, “gut” feelings about the political parties, religion in schools, the legalization versus criminalization of abortion, taxation, drug laws, and so on? What about your ideas about other races and social classes, and about race and class relations in general? Interrogate your emotional, pre-rational political ideology: why do you think it is the case that some people are poor, others wealthy, and others starving? Do you admire military power, or are you suspicious of it? How do you react to talk of America’s present and past wars – World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan?
The first step to becoming a serious political thinker is to distance yourself, at least temporarily, from what might be called your “political inheritance” – the political ideas and values that you were infused with as a child and young adult.
Many of these ideas may be worth keeping, of course, and it is perfectly acceptable to venture into the wilderness of new ideas and then return, older and wiser, to where you began – but it is unacceptable to never waver, even in thought, from the political ideas you grew up with. You must rediscover these ideas to make them truly your own.
The second step is to understand your own interests and distance yourself from them for the purposes of political thinking.
Your self-interest, whatever it may be, can probably be translated into a political and economic ideology: you are in a union, so you support unions and vote for pro-union politicians. You are an investment banker or venture capitalist, so you oppose anything – including unions – that could interfere with economic “efficiency,” that is, with your ability to “restructure” businesses and shift resources around to make a profit. You own a home in an almost entirely white, middle-class suburb where your kids attend a top-tier public school, so you oppose policies such as intradistrict school choice and property taxes that could, you feel, threaten your lifestyle.
But mature political thinking requires that you think about politics in terms of the public good and what is best for society (or humanity, even) as a whole. That does not imply that mature political thinking requires a “liberal” political ideology: it is quite acceptable to believe, conservatively, that radical or revolutionary changes to the status quo would do more harm than good, or that the way things are should be tweaked and adjusted rather than significantly changed, or that the public welfare is best served through deregulation, lowered taxes, and the privatization of public institutions. But whatever political ideology you adopt, you must, if you want to begin thinking seriously about politics, adopt it for some reason other than the health of your pocketbook.
Of course, it often happens that people consciously or unconsciously wrap their self-interests in a veil of ideology – they disguise the fact that their political views are a function of their self-interest by speaking in terms of the public good, and often they even believe their own disguise. But serious thinkers must honestly examine their own views and biases, look at their own ideas with critical eyes, and constantly work to create distance between their self-interest and their political views. If these overlap, it must be by accident and coincidence.
Question yourself, your ideology, your vocabulary, and the beliefs behind your beliefs. And also question every overt and covert political statement, every candidate’s speech, every newspaper opinion column, every dinner-table rant, every historical narrative, and even every piece of art or literature. Politics touches everything and everything touches politics. Cultivate your awareness of the political dimension of the world, a dimension that is often hidden beneath the surface of things. A map, for example, seems straightforward and self-evident – but what part of the world did the mapmaker select as central? Which continents’ sizes are distorted?
And speaking of looking beneath the surface of things: advanced political thinking requires a partial distancing from the rancorous spats and celebrity politics that are all-too-often the central focus of 24-hour cable news stations, political talk shows, and the most popular political blogs. Thinking politically does not mean choosing a side, stepping into the echo chamber, and becoming one more unimaginative partisan foot-soldier – it is better to keep one foot in the fray and one foot in the slightly-removed world of philosophy, theory, scholarship, history, and literature.
For me, this means reading both conservative and liberal blogs and websites, but favoring those that are more thoughtful and less reactive. More importantly, it means monitoring the amount of online, print, and cable news I consume, and giving primacy of place in my reading to good books – which are intrinsically more thought-out, edited, careful, and less bound to a specific historical moment than even the best newspapers and websites.
The third step toward mature political thinking involves understanding that we look at political issues through certain lenses – lenses of theory, of history, and of our biases and ideologies.
The best political thinkers do not get trapped in one lens. Rather, like an ophthalmologist conducting an eye examination, they shift from lens to lens and look at a problem through as many lenses as possible in order to identify which lens best clarifies the problem and points the way to a possible solution.
Let’s take the contemporary debate about school reform and vouchers as an example. Conservatives use the analogy of market economics to argue that if we privatize schools and school services and create a more competitive school system, the outcome will be better and more educationally efficient; liberals argue that it is a profound mistake to think about schooling in economic terms, and that we should focus on improving the public schools, which reflect our moral commitment to providing equal educational opportunity to every American child. But why not look at education through both lenses – the lens of economics and the lens of ethics? And also the lenses of history and law?
Take practically any political or economic problem and gather a room full of academic specialists: one each in political philosophy, political psychology, law, evolutionary biology, theology or religious studies, women’s studies, history, economics, sociology, and anthropology. Each of these experts will speak intelligently about the issue, looking at it through the lens of their discipline. And each will have something valuable to contribute to the debate.
And so we arrive at a final guideline for engaging in serious political thought: become a lifelong self-educator, and never stop critically examining your own political ideas and those you find in contemporary debates.
Political issues are infinitely complex, and the political loudmouths of our world who claim to have it all figured out are cashing in on a lie. You, their target consumer, have the power to reject the narrow wares they peddle and turn to better, more thoughtful sources.
If there is one slogan and sound-bite that is worth adopting, it is this: “Well, it isn’t really that simple.”
---
How to Think About Politics
Ryan McCarl
First, question everything, beginning with the political ideas you inherited from your parents, family, community, church, and school.
Create an inventory, in your mind or on paper, of these ideas: what are your strong, visceral, “gut” feelings about the political parties, religion in schools, the legalization versus criminalization of abortion, taxation, drug laws, and so on? What about your ideas about other races and social classes, and about race and class relations in general? Interrogate your emotional, pre-rational political ideology: why do you think it is the case that some people are poor, others wealthy, and others starving? Do you admire military power, or are you suspicious of it? How do you react to talk of America’s present and past wars – World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan?
The first step to becoming a serious political thinker is to distance yourself, at least temporarily, from what might be called your “political inheritance” – the political ideas and values that you were infused with as a child and young adult.
Many of these ideas may be worth keeping, of course, and it is perfectly acceptable to venture into the wilderness of new ideas and then return, older and wiser, to where you began – but it is unacceptable to never waver, even in thought, from the political ideas you grew up with. You must rediscover these ideas to make them truly your own.
The second step is to understand your own interests and distance yourself from them for the purposes of political thinking.
Your self-interest, whatever it may be, can probably be translated into a political and economic ideology: you are in a union, so you support unions and vote for pro-union politicians. You are an investment banker or venture capitalist, so you oppose anything – including unions – that could interfere with economic “efficiency,” that is, with your ability to “restructure” businesses and shift resources around to make a profit. You own a home in an almost entirely white, middle-class suburb where your kids attend a top-tier public school, so you oppose policies such as intradistrict school choice and property taxes that could, you feel, threaten your lifestyle.
But mature political thinking requires that you think about politics in terms of the public good and what is best for society (or humanity, even) as a whole. That does not imply that mature political thinking requires a “liberal” political ideology: it is quite acceptable to believe, conservatively, that radical or revolutionary changes to the status quo would do more harm than good, or that the way things are should be tweaked and adjusted rather than significantly changed, or that the public welfare is best served through deregulation, lowered taxes, and the privatization of public institutions. But whatever political ideology you adopt, you must, if you want to begin thinking seriously about politics, adopt it for some reason other than the health of your pocketbook.
Of course, it often happens that people consciously or unconsciously wrap their self-interests in a veil of ideology – they disguise the fact that their political views are a function of their self-interest by speaking in terms of the public good, and often they even believe their own disguise. But serious thinkers must honestly examine their own views and biases, look at their own ideas with critical eyes, and constantly work to create distance between their self-interest and their political views. If these overlap, it must be by accident and coincidence.
Question yourself, your ideology, your vocabulary, and the beliefs behind your beliefs. And also question every overt and covert political statement, every candidate’s speech, every newspaper opinion column, every dinner-table rant, every historical narrative, and even every piece of art or literature. Politics touches everything and everything touches politics. Cultivate your awareness of the political dimension of the world, a dimension that is often hidden beneath the surface of things. A map, for example, seems straightforward and self-evident – but what part of the world did the mapmaker select as central? Which continents’ sizes are distorted?
And speaking of looking beneath the surface of things: advanced political thinking requires a partial distancing from the rancorous spats and celebrity politics that are all-too-often the central focus of 24-hour cable news stations, political talk shows, and the most popular political blogs. Thinking politically does not mean choosing a side, stepping into the echo chamber, and becoming one more unimaginative partisan foot-soldier – it is better to keep one foot in the fray and one foot in the slightly-removed world of philosophy, theory, scholarship, history, and literature.
For me, this means reading both conservative and liberal blogs and websites, but favoring those that are more thoughtful and less reactive. More importantly, it means monitoring the amount of online, print, and cable news I consume, and giving primacy of place in my reading to good books – which are intrinsically more thought-out, edited, careful, and less bound to a specific historical moment than even the best newspapers and websites.
The third step toward mature political thinking involves understanding that we look at political issues through certain lenses – lenses of theory, of history, and of our biases and ideologies.
The best political thinkers do not get trapped in one lens. Rather, like an ophthalmologist conducting an eye examination, they shift from lens to lens and look at a problem through as many lenses as possible in order to identify which lens best clarifies the problem and points the way to a possible solution.
Let’s take the contemporary debate about school reform and vouchers as an example. Conservatives use the analogy of market economics to argue that if we privatize schools and school services and create a more competitive school system, the outcome will be better and more educationally efficient; liberals argue that it is a profound mistake to think about schooling in economic terms, and that we should focus on improving the public schools, which reflect our moral commitment to providing equal educational opportunity to every American child. But why not look at education through both lenses – the lens of economics and the lens of ethics? And also the lenses of history and law?
Take practically any political or economic problem and gather a room full of academic specialists: one each in political philosophy, political psychology, law, evolutionary biology, theology or religious studies, women’s studies, history, economics, sociology, and anthropology. Each of these experts will speak intelligently about the issue, looking at it through the lens of their discipline. And each will have something valuable to contribute to the debate.
And so we arrive at a final guideline for engaging in serious political thought: become a lifelong self-educator, and never stop critically examining your own political ideas and those you find in contemporary debates.
Political issues are infinitely complex, and the political loudmouths of our world who claim to have it all figured out are cashing in on a lie. You, their target consumer, have the power to reject the narrow wares they peddle and turn to better, more thoughtful sources.
If there is one slogan and sound-bite that is worth adopting, it is this: “Well, it isn’t really that simple.”
28 July 2009
A vacation and a reading list: a personal update
It's hard to believe how quickly things happen. My summer term - roughly six hours a day, five days a week of education classes - is drawing to a close, and as of Friday afternoon I'll be free for an entire month (the life of a student is good - certainly beats two or three weeks of vacation over the course of a year). I'll be in Colorado (Boulder, Telluride, Denver) for almost two weeks, in Chicago for one, and in Muskegon for one - as well as a few days of camping in Northern Michigan with friends.
Whenever I prepare to travel, my thoughts quickly turn to the question of what books I will bring along and read. I always make absurdly ambitious reading lists and pack way, way more than I could ever hope to finish, and this time is no exception. I am bringing four:
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. About the rise of secularism in Western society. Considered one of the most important books in the field of religious studies in recent decades. Weighs in at a hefty 776 pages.
John Cheever, Collected Stories and Other Writings. Cheever is one of the best short fiction writers of the 20th century. 969 pages.
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Publishers Weekly says: "The author, beginning with Homer and the Bible, traces the imitation of life in literature through the ages . . .touching upon every major literary figure in western culture on the way." A key work in 20th-century literary criticism. 574 pages.
Dennis Lord Lloyd of Hampstead, Introduction to Jurisprudence. A vast, out-of-print, fantastically rich collection of writings on the philosophy of law and political philosophy - a mangled old book I believe I picked up for free in the box outside of the Powell's Books in Hyde Park, Chicago. 981 pages (but I'll skip writings that I don't want to read for whatever reason). From the Independent's interesting obituary of Lloyd: "As important to generations of students has been his encyclopaedic Introduction to Jurisprudence (1959). Lloyd was working on the sixth edition when he died. It was through this book that law students in much of the English- speaking world came to read Kelsen, Olivecrona, Savigny, Geny, Pashukanis, giants of continental juristic thought otherwise largely inaccessible. The recipe of wise text and suitably chosen extract remains a model guide to the study of legal thought. To the text he brought his own philosophical training, his culture and his erudition. The Introduction has its detractors but it remains the standard student text on the subject."
Will I succeed in finishing all of these, or any of them? Most likely not. If history is any guide, I'll buy some other book or books during vacation and distract myself with those, or I'll get heavily involved with my writing, almost as a way of avoiding my reading with a good conscience. But if I restrict my book-reading to these four tomes and read around 118 pages a day for 27 days, I could do it - so that's the bar I'm setting for myself.
I can't wait. Two more days of finishing my summer projects, and I'll be free to travel, read, and write without restrictions for an entire month.
Whenever I prepare to travel, my thoughts quickly turn to the question of what books I will bring along and read. I always make absurdly ambitious reading lists and pack way, way more than I could ever hope to finish, and this time is no exception. I am bringing four:
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. About the rise of secularism in Western society. Considered one of the most important books in the field of religious studies in recent decades. Weighs in at a hefty 776 pages.
John Cheever, Collected Stories and Other Writings. Cheever is one of the best short fiction writers of the 20th century. 969 pages.
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Publishers Weekly says: "The author, beginning with Homer and the Bible, traces the imitation of life in literature through the ages . . .touching upon every major literary figure in western culture on the way." A key work in 20th-century literary criticism. 574 pages.
Dennis Lord Lloyd of Hampstead, Introduction to Jurisprudence. A vast, out-of-print, fantastically rich collection of writings on the philosophy of law and political philosophy - a mangled old book I believe I picked up for free in the box outside of the Powell's Books in Hyde Park, Chicago. 981 pages (but I'll skip writings that I don't want to read for whatever reason). From the Independent's interesting obituary of Lloyd: "As important to generations of students has been his encyclopaedic Introduction to Jurisprudence (1959). Lloyd was working on the sixth edition when he died. It was through this book that law students in much of the English- speaking world came to read Kelsen, Olivecrona, Savigny, Geny, Pashukanis, giants of continental juristic thought otherwise largely inaccessible. The recipe of wise text and suitably chosen extract remains a model guide to the study of legal thought. To the text he brought his own philosophical training, his culture and his erudition. The Introduction has its detractors but it remains the standard student text on the subject."
Will I succeed in finishing all of these, or any of them? Most likely not. If history is any guide, I'll buy some other book or books during vacation and distract myself with those, or I'll get heavily involved with my writing, almost as a way of avoiding my reading with a good conscience. But if I restrict my book-reading to these four tomes and read around 118 pages a day for 27 days, I could do it - so that's the bar I'm setting for myself.
I can't wait. Two more days of finishing my summer projects, and I'll be free to travel, read, and write without restrictions for an entire month.
27 July 2009
Ben Evans and Fogged Clarity on WGVU
Ben Evans discussed Fogged Clarity, the arts review I co-edit, on WGVU (West Michigan's NPR station) this morning - listen to the interview here.
If you aren't familiar with Fogged Clarity, consider spending some time exploring the work on the site. In just six months, the Clarity has established itself as one of the most innovative and successful online arts reviews in the country. Each issue (released on the first of each month) features an interview with a major writer, artist, or musician; poetry; short fiction; "polemics"; visual art; and a featured music album. The July issue was the first to feature a short film. The caliber of the contributors is incredible for such a young publication.
In addition to the monthly online material, the Clarity is setting up live music-and-poetry concerts across the country. The first was held in June in Whitehall, MI; the next two will be held in New York City in September. And Ben (Executive Editor of the Clarity) is finalizing plans for a college tour in Chicago and a concert in Seattle.
Should we finish the books we begin? It depends.
In an article published in Friday's Washington Times, economist Tyler Cowen makes several interesting and provocative arguments about reading and books.
1. "What should you do when, 20, 50 or 100 pages in, you realize you just don't like a book?" Cowen says: "Give up."
2. "We should treat books a little more like we treat TV channels," (Cowen) argues. No one has trouble flipping away from a boring series."
3. "(Cowen) notes that many up-and-coming writers complain they can't break through in a best-seller-driven marketplace. 'We're also making markets more efficient," Mr. Cowen says. "If you can sample more books, you're giving more people a chance.'"
The article goes on to discuss several other readers who advocate quitting "boring" books: "One of her online friends reminded her there's even an abandonment rule: The 'Deduct Your Age From 100 and Read That Many Pages Before Giving Up on a Book' rule"; and "Having an e-book reader has made Ms. Wendell more ruthless. "I'm holding 100+ books on one device. If one isn't floating my boat, I can move on to something else by pressing one button," she points out."
So should we finish the books we begin? The short answer: it depends. On what? That's more difficult, but it depends on something more than how much we are enjoying the book.
Why did you pick up the book in the first place? If you are reading for pure entertainment, it makes sense to put the book down if you aren't feeling entertained after giving the book a fair shot. But surely most readers read for more than pure entertainment; if "entertainment" were the ultimate goal, there would be no reason to prefer an entertaining book over an equally or more entertaining movie, television show, or video game. In fact, I suspect that the widespread idea that books are primarily sources of entertainment is partially responsible for the decline of book-reading, especially among young people, in recent decades.
I choose and read books that are rewarding and that will enrich my understanding of the world, of myself, and of the human condition. If they are entertaining or exciting at the same time, so much the better, but that isn't the primary goal. In fact, my idea of what is "entertaining" has shifted. I have conditioned myself to prefer forms of leisure - i.e., reading good books, practicing banjo and listening to music, engaging in good conversation, watching good movies - that are rewarding and educative. So even if I am reading a book that I must struggle to get through, that to me is often more entertaining than reading, say, Angels and Demons.
There are, in short, problems with considering a book's excitement and ease the most important factors in deciding whether to read it or finish it. We build our literacy and expand our understanding by reading material that challenges us, just as a musician continually improves his or her proficiency in an instrument not by playing the same basic tunes over and over, but by constantly pushing his or her limits by tackling new, more frustrating and difficult works and techniques.
I have as much trouble as anyone with finishing books, but some books are worth finishing regardless of whether I feel like finishing them. The other week, I completed Moby-Dick after a slow, gradual, four-month effort. Moby-Dick would certainly fail the "entertainment" test for the vast majority of readers, including me. And yet it is now one of my favorite books, because Melville's incredible use of language and his insights into religion, human nature, and life itself made Moby-Dick matter to me: I read it in the hope that it might change the way I write, think, and see the world.
Steinbeck writes in East of Eden: "You can start reading if you want and it will raise up your lid a little." That's as good a statement as any of what good books are for.
(Hat tip for the link to the Washington Times article: Andrew Sullivan)
1. "What should you do when, 20, 50 or 100 pages in, you realize you just don't like a book?" Cowen says: "Give up."
2. "We should treat books a little more like we treat TV channels," (Cowen) argues. No one has trouble flipping away from a boring series."
3. "(Cowen) notes that many up-and-coming writers complain they can't break through in a best-seller-driven marketplace. 'We're also making markets more efficient," Mr. Cowen says. "If you can sample more books, you're giving more people a chance.'"
The article goes on to discuss several other readers who advocate quitting "boring" books: "One of her online friends reminded her there's even an abandonment rule: The 'Deduct Your Age From 100 and Read That Many Pages Before Giving Up on a Book' rule"; and "Having an e-book reader has made Ms. Wendell more ruthless. "I'm holding 100+ books on one device. If one isn't floating my boat, I can move on to something else by pressing one button," she points out."
So should we finish the books we begin? The short answer: it depends. On what? That's more difficult, but it depends on something more than how much we are enjoying the book.
Why did you pick up the book in the first place? If you are reading for pure entertainment, it makes sense to put the book down if you aren't feeling entertained after giving the book a fair shot. But surely most readers read for more than pure entertainment; if "entertainment" were the ultimate goal, there would be no reason to prefer an entertaining book over an equally or more entertaining movie, television show, or video game. In fact, I suspect that the widespread idea that books are primarily sources of entertainment is partially responsible for the decline of book-reading, especially among young people, in recent decades.
I choose and read books that are rewarding and that will enrich my understanding of the world, of myself, and of the human condition. If they are entertaining or exciting at the same time, so much the better, but that isn't the primary goal. In fact, my idea of what is "entertaining" has shifted. I have conditioned myself to prefer forms of leisure - i.e., reading good books, practicing banjo and listening to music, engaging in good conversation, watching good movies - that are rewarding and educative. So even if I am reading a book that I must struggle to get through, that to me is often more entertaining than reading, say, Angels and Demons.
There are, in short, problems with considering a book's excitement and ease the most important factors in deciding whether to read it or finish it. We build our literacy and expand our understanding by reading material that challenges us, just as a musician continually improves his or her proficiency in an instrument not by playing the same basic tunes over and over, but by constantly pushing his or her limits by tackling new, more frustrating and difficult works and techniques.
I have as much trouble as anyone with finishing books, but some books are worth finishing regardless of whether I feel like finishing them. The other week, I completed Moby-Dick after a slow, gradual, four-month effort. Moby-Dick would certainly fail the "entertainment" test for the vast majority of readers, including me. And yet it is now one of my favorite books, because Melville's incredible use of language and his insights into religion, human nature, and life itself made Moby-Dick matter to me: I read it in the hope that it might change the way I write, think, and see the world.
Steinbeck writes in East of Eden: "You can start reading if you want and it will raise up your lid a little." That's as good a statement as any of what good books are for.
(Hat tip for the link to the Washington Times article: Andrew Sullivan)
21 July 2009
Quotes from Michael Walzer and Harold Bloom
At the very center of conservative thought lies this idea: that the present division of wealth and power corresponds to some deeper reality of human life. ...They want to say that whatever the division of wealth and power is, it naturally is, and that all efforts to change it, temporarily successful in proportion to their bloodiness, must be futile in the end.
Michael Walzer
--"In Defense of Equality" in Howe, ed., 25 Years of Dissent
For why do men write poems? To rally everything that remains.
...
Shelly speculated that poets of all ages contributed to one Great Poem perpetually in progress.
...
In the contemporary poems that most move me...I can recognize a strength that battles against the death of poetry, yet also the exhaustions of being a latecomer.
...
Freud recognized sublimation as the highest human achievement, a recognition that allies him to both Plato and to the entire moral traditions of both Judaism and Christianity. Freudian sublimation involves the yielding-up of more primordial for more refined modes of pleasure, which is to exalt the second chance above the first. ...To equate emotional maturation with the discovery of acceptable substitutes may be pragmatic wisdom, especially in the realm of Eros, but this is not the wisdom of the strong poets. The surrendered dream is not merely a phantasmagoria of endless gratification, but is the greatest of all human illusions, the vision of immortality.
...
Poetic history, in this book's argument, is held to be indistinguishable from poetic influence, since strong poets make that history by misreading one another, so as to clear imaginative space for themselves.
...
More than any other purely secular author, Shakespeare makes history more than history makes Shakespeare.
...
A good biography of Shakespeare, like Russell Fraser's, is preferable to any historicism, because at least we are alone with Shakespeare and Fraser, rather than being propagandized by an academic sect or coven.
...
Shakespeare's energies so fuse rhetoric, psychology, and cosmology that we cannot distinguish them from one another in his greatest plays.
Harold Bloom
--The Anxiety of Influence
Michael Walzer
--"In Defense of Equality" in Howe, ed., 25 Years of Dissent
For why do men write poems? To rally everything that remains.
...
Shelly speculated that poets of all ages contributed to one Great Poem perpetually in progress.
...
In the contemporary poems that most move me...I can recognize a strength that battles against the death of poetry, yet also the exhaustions of being a latecomer.
...
Freud recognized sublimation as the highest human achievement, a recognition that allies him to both Plato and to the entire moral traditions of both Judaism and Christianity. Freudian sublimation involves the yielding-up of more primordial for more refined modes of pleasure, which is to exalt the second chance above the first. ...To equate emotional maturation with the discovery of acceptable substitutes may be pragmatic wisdom, especially in the realm of Eros, but this is not the wisdom of the strong poets. The surrendered dream is not merely a phantasmagoria of endless gratification, but is the greatest of all human illusions, the vision of immortality.
...
Poetic history, in this book's argument, is held to be indistinguishable from poetic influence, since strong poets make that history by misreading one another, so as to clear imaginative space for themselves.
...
More than any other purely secular author, Shakespeare makes history more than history makes Shakespeare.
...
A good biography of Shakespeare, like Russell Fraser's, is preferable to any historicism, because at least we are alone with Shakespeare and Fraser, rather than being propagandized by an academic sect or coven.
...
Shakespeare's energies so fuse rhetoric, psychology, and cosmology that we cannot distinguish them from one another in his greatest plays.
Harold Bloom
--The Anxiety of Influence
20 July 2009
The Wide-Awake Mind: An Invitation to Self-Education
In the next six months, I hope to complete a draft of the manuscript for my first book, tentatively titled The Wide-Awake Mind: An Invitation to Self-Education.
In my latest post on Wide Awake Minds, my education and self-education blog, I explain what I mean by the term "self-education." Read the post here, and please pass it along to others who might be interested. I want to spread the word about this project, and I want to gather as many stories from lifelong learners and self-educators as I can. The first interview - with 55 year-old San Francisco self-educator Race Bannon - will appear on Wide Awake Minds within the next week.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
In my latest post on Wide Awake Minds, my education and self-education blog, I explain what I mean by the term "self-education." Read the post here, and please pass it along to others who might be interested. I want to spread the word about this project, and I want to gather as many stories from lifelong learners and self-educators as I can. The first interview - with 55 year-old San Francisco self-educator Race Bannon - will appear on Wide Awake Minds within the next week.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
18 July 2009
Recent posts on education at Wide Awake Minds
A few of my recent posts at Wide Awake Minds, in case you missed them:
-A few of the things you can do in a great university, in which I argue that if students want to make the most of their school years in general and their college years in particular, they must take ownership of their education and elect to do what is difficult. I propose a few of the ways in which college students can do so.
-Thinking critically about critical pedagogy, in which I encourage my readers to recognize the reality and complexity of cultural and institutional racism, but also to think critically about the theoretical lenses of critical pedagogy (a framework aimed at correcting racism and other power disparities). This post sparked a great discussion in the comment section as well as some fruitful email exchanges.
-Beyond "preparing our kids for 21st-century jobs" - a call to do away with sloganeering about education as job-preparation, and a brief sketch of the case for universal liberal education.
-Ideas about education from Deborah Meier, one of the greatest progressive educators of our time.
-On language learning textbooks - A personal account of my love of language learning textbooks, and what I have learned from them about how and why we should learn world languages.
If you enjoy Wide Awake Minds, please take a moment to link to it on your blog or social network or pass it along to someone who might be interested in reading it.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
-A few of the things you can do in a great university, in which I argue that if students want to make the most of their school years in general and their college years in particular, they must take ownership of their education and elect to do what is difficult. I propose a few of the ways in which college students can do so.
-Thinking critically about critical pedagogy, in which I encourage my readers to recognize the reality and complexity of cultural and institutional racism, but also to think critically about the theoretical lenses of critical pedagogy (a framework aimed at correcting racism and other power disparities). This post sparked a great discussion in the comment section as well as some fruitful email exchanges.
-Beyond "preparing our kids for 21st-century jobs" - a call to do away with sloganeering about education as job-preparation, and a brief sketch of the case for universal liberal education.
-Ideas about education from Deborah Meier, one of the greatest progressive educators of our time.
-On language learning textbooks - A personal account of my love of language learning textbooks, and what I have learned from them about how and why we should learn world languages.
If you enjoy Wide Awake Minds, please take a moment to link to it on your blog or social network or pass it along to someone who might be interested in reading it.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)