Went out to the hills with friends this weekend, wandered back into the woods, slipped on ice, dripped red blood all over the nice white snow, and ended up with stitches over my right eyebrow. Now I look like a goon, and I very much hope that the swelling goes down before class tomorrow.
My friend Brendan (who is quite a talented writer) is making his way through the novels of Robertson Davies, and he seems to be enjoying them as much as I did. Our conversations this weekend reminded me of the ways in which Mr. Davies's books changed the course of my thinking. Here's to a writer with a real vision of the deep comedy in the world, and to my favorite of his characters: poor Hector Mackilwraith.
17 February 2008
15 February 2008
"Beauty is the true form of distance."
So I'm stumbling on through David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite, a work that I am only able to grasp by impressions, when I can grasp it at all. The first part is all about the narratives of the sublime in continental philosophy, from Kant and Nietzsche on up to Derrida, Deleuze, Foucalt, and Levinas. What is it that keeps me trudging through these wild grasses looming so high over my head?
Well, the prose is splendid. And when I cheat ahead with the index, I find sentences such as this:
“Bach is the greatest of Christian theologians, the most inspired witness to the ordo amoris in the fabric of being; not only is there no other composer capable of more freely developing lines or of more elaborate structures of tonal mediation (wheresoever the line goes, Bach is there also), but no one as compellingly demonstrates that the infinite is beauty and that beauty is infinite.”
Well, the prose is splendid. And when I cheat ahead with the index, I find sentences such as this:
“Bach is the greatest of Christian theologians, the most inspired witness to the ordo amoris in the fabric of being; not only is there no other composer capable of more freely developing lines or of more elaborate structures of tonal mediation (wheresoever the line goes, Bach is there also), but no one as compellingly demonstrates that the infinite is beauty and that beauty is infinite.”
13 February 2008
Poor, poor Archbishop!
It's gloomy and dismal in New York right now, but I take comfort in the fact that I am not Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. You'd think that being the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion would be something of a cushy job, but that's just not the case, certainly not now, with the American Episcopal church and the conservative African bishops at each others' throats. I'm sure that Archbishop Williams, a theologian and poet, doesn't want to go down in history as the man who let the Anglican church fall apart, but it looks like it might happen. So when things get bad, I think to myself: at least I'm not the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Then, last week, in a speech and a BBC interview, Rowan Williams allegedly proposed “constructive accommodation” for Muslim communities in Britain who wish to use Sharia law. At least that's how the New York Times reported it. But at least the Times reporter added this:
“The archbishop’s speech was made at the Royal Courts of Justice, before an audience of leading judges and lawyers. Typically, it was steeped in historical and philosophical nuances that risked being lost in the headlines.”
It seems that other newspapers were not so kind. There were calls for resignation. There was a delightful Chaucer spoof (“Whan in Februar, withe hise global warmynge / Midst unseasonabyl rain and stormynge…”). Spengler was vividly critical:
“Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.”
I'll admit a cynical thought that crossed my mind: the Archbishop is trying to lose his job! He wants to get kicked out for something that doesn't have to do with gay bishops! But then I read the speech. Philosophical nuances indeed.
I wonder if the Archbishop could have made the same point using a less controversial example. His basic point seems to be that if the law treats religious duties as voluntary, it can't make sense of the claims of religious people for exceptions: religious holidays, conditions for employment, etc. There is, I think, an implicit condition running through the entire speech: if certain people are duty-bound to abide by religious law, and this does not bring them into serious conflict with the spirit of the national law, and religious authorities can tell the court that these obligations aren't frivolous or imaginary, then the courts should take these obligations seriously. A judge could distinguish, for example, between a Catholic doctor who won't perform an abortion, even to save a life, and a Catholic doctor who won't perform a tracheotomy, even to save a life.
Williams wanted to avoid the difficulties of the “primitivist” reading of Sharia in order to focus on the theoretical aspects of law and communal identity. It's right there in the beginning:
“Even when some of the more dramatic fears are set aside, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about what degree of accommodation the law of the land can and should give to minority communities with their own strongly entrenched legal and moral codes.” (emphasis added)
To which one could conceivably respond: what if in reality these dramatic fears are entirely justified? (This question is, of course, not one that I can answer.)
In the BBC interview, Williams seems very confident that there exists an interpretation of Sharia law that is largely compatible with the British common law tradition, citing Muslim scholars and legal theorists. But what of the situation on the ground? I don't know anything about religious life in Great Britain, and I don't think I learned anything from this speech.
I am so glad that I am not the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Then, last week, in a speech and a BBC interview, Rowan Williams allegedly proposed “constructive accommodation” for Muslim communities in Britain who wish to use Sharia law. At least that's how the New York Times reported it. But at least the Times reporter added this:
“The archbishop’s speech was made at the Royal Courts of Justice, before an audience of leading judges and lawyers. Typically, it was steeped in historical and philosophical nuances that risked being lost in the headlines.”
It seems that other newspapers were not so kind. There were calls for resignation. There was a delightful Chaucer spoof (“Whan in Februar, withe hise global warmynge / Midst unseasonabyl rain and stormynge…”). Spengler was vividly critical:
“Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.”
I'll admit a cynical thought that crossed my mind: the Archbishop is trying to lose his job! He wants to get kicked out for something that doesn't have to do with gay bishops! But then I read the speech. Philosophical nuances indeed.
I wonder if the Archbishop could have made the same point using a less controversial example. His basic point seems to be that if the law treats religious duties as voluntary, it can't make sense of the claims of religious people for exceptions: religious holidays, conditions for employment, etc. There is, I think, an implicit condition running through the entire speech: if certain people are duty-bound to abide by religious law, and this does not bring them into serious conflict with the spirit of the national law, and religious authorities can tell the court that these obligations aren't frivolous or imaginary, then the courts should take these obligations seriously. A judge could distinguish, for example, between a Catholic doctor who won't perform an abortion, even to save a life, and a Catholic doctor who won't perform a tracheotomy, even to save a life.
Williams wanted to avoid the difficulties of the “primitivist” reading of Sharia in order to focus on the theoretical aspects of law and communal identity. It's right there in the beginning:
“Even when some of the more dramatic fears are set aside, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about what degree of accommodation the law of the land can and should give to minority communities with their own strongly entrenched legal and moral codes.” (emphasis added)
To which one could conceivably respond: what if in reality these dramatic fears are entirely justified? (This question is, of course, not one that I can answer.)
In the BBC interview, Williams seems very confident that there exists an interpretation of Sharia law that is largely compatible with the British common law tradition, citing Muslim scholars and legal theorists. But what of the situation on the ground? I don't know anything about religious life in Great Britain, and I don't think I learned anything from this speech.
I am so glad that I am not the Archbishop of Canterbury.
11 February 2008
Culture, culture, culture...
My good friend Hope has requested that I resume posting, so I'll give it another shot, assuming that I can think of anything to say (and that I can finish learning how to type in DVORAK).
I love very much the old fellows over at Touchstone's Mere Comments, and never more than when they get cranky. I can't possibly do what they do, but it's not that I disagree with them. It's more that I don't have the life experience or years of pent-up frustration to write such beautiful diatribes: vibrant denunciations that, at moments, rise to the effect of poetry. Of course, for every jeremiad, they write scores of constructive posts, but these don't usually go beyond the realm of the very interesting. Incidentally, I've considered posting on their message board, but the folks who post regularly can be fairly ferocious.
One example was S.M. Hutchens's “Reverie in E Minor,” in which he discussed the havoc his generation wrought on the music of church culture.
“My generation, my abysmally stupid and culpably foolish generation, had the opportunity to keep the good--for there was very much good here--discard the bad, and bring in a golden age of church music, an age of beauty and invention, now in obedient harmony with the Great Tradition, with good theology instead of bad, and with an eye trained upon the history of whole Church and its music. Instead, however, it went as bad as it possibly could, seizing upon all the old mistakes it could find and amplifying them.”
I am no fan of the Baby Boomers – thanks for the Social Security burden and the national debt, jerks! – and it always warms my heart to see them called “abysmally stupid and culpably foolish,” but I probably shouldn't be too hasty to judge until we see how my generation turns out. The more interesting question is whether or not Mr. Hutchens is correct in his judgment of rock music:
“Instead of turning their people toward the richness of the Christian musical tradition, their teachers spent their time justifying and promoting the music of rebels and drug addicts, now half-converted into something called ‘Christian rock.’”
And a few paragraphs later:
“The argument is that bringing them in will get them to heaven--but how can you show them heaven when you are presiding over a little piece of hell--a place where people are given vast quantities religious stimulation under the name of the “gospel,” the end of which can only be the a vast burned-over district where they have been effectively inoculated against Christianity by Evangelical religion, just as one is inoculated against Mozart by a steady diet of rock, or the realities of the world, including its beauties, by drug-eating, or against the power of words by overwhelming waves of pictures?”
Rock music: created by rebels and drug addicts to inoculate the youth of the world against Mozart. As someone who likes the stuff, I'm loathe to agree with him, but I think that I have to do it. Last night, I listened to the first hour or so of Bach's Mass in B Minor, wishing that I could understand it better than I do. Some mathematical types love Bach, and it's not hard to see why. But even with the words and liner notes in front of me, I had trouble keeping my mind on the music. I don't have the descriptive vocabulary to follow the music in its intricacies, and my ear's patience has no doubt been destroyed by several years of listening to Guided By Voices. Ah, well. There's time yet for me.
So, I thought I had my fix for the week, until I came across Dr. Tony Esolen's “The World that Has No Music in its Soul.” He starts from the wonderful article that writer/composer Webster Young published in the latest Intercollegiate Review, which was, in fact, the article that gave me the inclination to get out my Bach CDs. At any rate, Dr. Esolen argues that Webster Young's hopes for a revival of a “common language” for classical music may be premature:
“When Palestrina wrote his Masses, he was inspired by prayers that washerwomen and plowboys had heard every week of their lives; it was part of their common, lived experience. Without that inspiration from something beyond Renaissance Italy, and something the composer shared with all kinds of people who were not composers or singers, you do not get the exalted music and theology of the Credo of the Mass for Pope Marcellus. . .
“But what happens when you don't have a culture? I've argued this before, but it bears repeating. I'm taking the word literally. You have a culture when you cultivate those beliefs, customs, celebrations, and virtues you hold most dear; and in this sense culture is by nature conservative and often proudly local. That's why totalitarian systems despise it; it stands in the way of the flattening of variety that the modern state demands. But this consumer society of ours despises it, too. It stands in the way of the itch for the new-and-improved, for novelty for the sake of vanity. The last hundred years, in part through no consciously evil plan, has seen the gradual replacement of culture with mass entertainment.”
Read the full essays for the full effect. I'm not optimistic that my generation can do any better, but at least it's nice to hear a warning from the older crowd.
I love very much the old fellows over at Touchstone's Mere Comments, and never more than when they get cranky. I can't possibly do what they do, but it's not that I disagree with them. It's more that I don't have the life experience or years of pent-up frustration to write such beautiful diatribes: vibrant denunciations that, at moments, rise to the effect of poetry. Of course, for every jeremiad, they write scores of constructive posts, but these don't usually go beyond the realm of the very interesting. Incidentally, I've considered posting on their message board, but the folks who post regularly can be fairly ferocious.
One example was S.M. Hutchens's “Reverie in E Minor,” in which he discussed the havoc his generation wrought on the music of church culture.
“My generation, my abysmally stupid and culpably foolish generation, had the opportunity to keep the good--for there was very much good here--discard the bad, and bring in a golden age of church music, an age of beauty and invention, now in obedient harmony with the Great Tradition, with good theology instead of bad, and with an eye trained upon the history of whole Church and its music. Instead, however, it went as bad as it possibly could, seizing upon all the old mistakes it could find and amplifying them.”
I am no fan of the Baby Boomers – thanks for the Social Security burden and the national debt, jerks! – and it always warms my heart to see them called “abysmally stupid and culpably foolish,” but I probably shouldn't be too hasty to judge until we see how my generation turns out. The more interesting question is whether or not Mr. Hutchens is correct in his judgment of rock music:
“Instead of turning their people toward the richness of the Christian musical tradition, their teachers spent their time justifying and promoting the music of rebels and drug addicts, now half-converted into something called ‘Christian rock.’”
And a few paragraphs later:
“The argument is that bringing them in will get them to heaven--but how can you show them heaven when you are presiding over a little piece of hell--a place where people are given vast quantities religious stimulation under the name of the “gospel,” the end of which can only be the a vast burned-over district where they have been effectively inoculated against Christianity by Evangelical religion, just as one is inoculated against Mozart by a steady diet of rock, or the realities of the world, including its beauties, by drug-eating, or against the power of words by overwhelming waves of pictures?”
Rock music: created by rebels and drug addicts to inoculate the youth of the world against Mozart. As someone who likes the stuff, I'm loathe to agree with him, but I think that I have to do it. Last night, I listened to the first hour or so of Bach's Mass in B Minor, wishing that I could understand it better than I do. Some mathematical types love Bach, and it's not hard to see why. But even with the words and liner notes in front of me, I had trouble keeping my mind on the music. I don't have the descriptive vocabulary to follow the music in its intricacies, and my ear's patience has no doubt been destroyed by several years of listening to Guided By Voices. Ah, well. There's time yet for me.
So, I thought I had my fix for the week, until I came across Dr. Tony Esolen's “The World that Has No Music in its Soul.” He starts from the wonderful article that writer/composer Webster Young published in the latest Intercollegiate Review, which was, in fact, the article that gave me the inclination to get out my Bach CDs. At any rate, Dr. Esolen argues that Webster Young's hopes for a revival of a “common language” for classical music may be premature:
“When Palestrina wrote his Masses, he was inspired by prayers that washerwomen and plowboys had heard every week of their lives; it was part of their common, lived experience. Without that inspiration from something beyond Renaissance Italy, and something the composer shared with all kinds of people who were not composers or singers, you do not get the exalted music and theology of the Credo of the Mass for Pope Marcellus. . .
“But what happens when you don't have a culture? I've argued this before, but it bears repeating. I'm taking the word literally. You have a culture when you cultivate those beliefs, customs, celebrations, and virtues you hold most dear; and in this sense culture is by nature conservative and often proudly local. That's why totalitarian systems despise it; it stands in the way of the flattening of variety that the modern state demands. But this consumer society of ours despises it, too. It stands in the way of the itch for the new-and-improved, for novelty for the sake of vanity. The last hundred years, in part through no consciously evil plan, has seen the gradual replacement of culture with mass entertainment.”
Read the full essays for the full effect. I'm not optimistic that my generation can do any better, but at least it's nice to hear a warning from the older crowd.
27 January 2008
On Hiatus
I like the name of this space, but I'm not making any headway on the blogging side. Perhaps I will return in some time, when I have something more to say, but what I know is and always will be just a tiny, tiny dot on the big basketball of what there is to know.
Yours,
-William
Yours,
-William
10 January 2008
The Birth of the Consumer Republic
Michael Sandel, in Democracy's Discontent, sees the birth of the consumer-oriented political culture in the the writings of Walter Weyl and, more generally, in a strand of Progressivism that didn't quite match up with Woodrow Wilson or Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election.
In this book, I am stumbling on to these old arguments, stacked up and dusty in cobwebbed corners, and the nostalgic impulse to try to bring them down, to make use of them, nearly overwhelms me at times. Some might truly be warped and broken from disuse, but it can be hard to distinguish that which was unjustly forgotten from that which was put away for good reason.
I'm still in this book's headspace; I'll try to sort out its arguments when I finally get through it.
In the republican tradition of political economy that informed nineteenth-century American debate, producer identities mattered because the world of work was seen as the arena in which, for better or for worse, the character of citizens was formed. Consumptions, when it figured at all in republican political economy, was a thing to be moderated, disciplined, or restrained for the sake of higher ends. An excess of consumption, or luxury, was often seen as a form of corruption, a measure of the loss of civic virtue. From Jefferson's agrarian republicanism to Lincoln's celebration of free labor to Brandeis' call for industrial democracy, the emphasis on producer identities reflected the attempt to form in citizens the qualities of character necessary to self-government.I don't really know what to say about this, which is, I suppose, a terrible fault for a blogger.
A politics based on consumer identities, by contrast, changes the question. Instead of asking how to elevate or improve or restrain people's preferences, it asks how best - most fully, fairly, or efficiently - to satisfy them. The shift to consumer-based reform in the twentieth century was thus a shift away from the formative ambition of the republican tradition, away from the political economy of citizenship. Although they did not view their movement in quite this way, the Progressives who urged Americans to identify with their roles as consumers rather than producers helped turn American politics toward a political economy of growth and distributive justice whose full expression lay decades in the future.
In this book, I am stumbling on to these old arguments, stacked up and dusty in cobwebbed corners, and the nostalgic impulse to try to bring them down, to make use of them, nearly overwhelms me at times. Some might truly be warped and broken from disuse, but it can be hard to distinguish that which was unjustly forgotten from that which was put away for good reason.
I'm still in this book's headspace; I'll try to sort out its arguments when I finally get through it.
07 January 2008
Sophistry, just in case
Truth can be manipulated for personal gain.
(From Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine, a wonderful little site.)
(From Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine, a wonderful little site.)
06 January 2008
Done Packing
There is a 13-hour train ride tomorrow. I've got a stack of books in my rucksack. Might try to rip through Graham Greene's The Third Man, an "entertainment" that he wrote so that it could be made into a film. I haven't seen the film because I've wanted to find time for the book first. Then I've got the Barth and the Hart to work on.
It seems that with every page I turn these days, I find that I really don't know much of anything at all.
It seems that with every page I turn these days, I find that I really don't know much of anything at all.
03 January 2008
The Ocho Begins
Two nice starts which turned into two bad semesters, with a bad summer in between, and some terribly bright moments for contrast: that was my 2007. Good riddance.
At least I read some good books: Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, Witness to Hope by George Weigel, After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, and Watership Down (for the first time!). I love my friends as much or more than ever. I suppose I now possess bits of self-knowledge that I was previously lacking. Yet the good things I can carry with me, the bad I can leave behind. And so, onwards.
On another note, this country needs to consider quite seriously the possibility of switching to a parliamentary government.
At least I read some good books: Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, Witness to Hope by George Weigel, After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, and Watership Down (for the first time!). I love my friends as much or more than ever. I suppose I now possess bits of self-knowledge that I was previously lacking. Yet the good things I can carry with me, the bad I can leave behind. And so, onwards.
On another note, this country needs to consider quite seriously the possibility of switching to a parliamentary government.
27 November 2007
Time Magazine: 100 best Novels
TIME Magazine's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present
I've read 23 of them, and I'm glad that most of them made it, although I'm not quite sure about Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I'm glad that William Faulkner and Graham Greene each got two novels on the list. And there's a few that I'd really like to read in the near future, among them: Joan Didion's Play it as it Lays and maybe something by Saul Bellow.
Also worth reading are the original reviews of many of these books. Some of them, such as Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, were at first reviled. Others were immediately recognized as masterworks. My favorite, however, is the 1966 review of The Lord of the Rings, which describes what was evidently a major Tolkien craze on college campuses:
I've read 23 of them, and I'm glad that most of them made it, although I'm not quite sure about Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I'm glad that William Faulkner and Graham Greene each got two novels on the list. And there's a few that I'd really like to read in the near future, among them: Joan Didion's Play it as it Lays and maybe something by Saul Bellow.
Also worth reading are the original reviews of many of these books. Some of them, such as Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, were at first reviled. Others were immediately recognized as masterworks. My favorite, however, is the 1966 review of The Lord of the Rings, which describes what was evidently a major Tolkien craze on college campuses:
The hobbit habit seems to be almost as catching as LSD. On many U.S. campuses, buttons declaring FRODO LIVES and GO GO GANDALF—frequently written in Elvish script—are almost as common as football letters. Tolkien fans customarily greet each other with a hobbity kind of greeting ("May the hair on your toes grow ever longer"), toss fragments of hobbit language into their ordinary talk. One favorite word is mathom, meaning something one saves but doesn't need, as in "I've just got to get rid of all these mathoms." Permanently hooked Ringworms frequently memorize long passages from the trilogy and learn how to write Tengwar or Certar, two peculiar and ancient-looking scripts that Tolkien invented on behalf of his mythical creatures. The most ardent readers of all are likely to join the nation's fast-growing Tolkien Society of America, which publishes magazines containing learned disquisitions on the elaborate genealogies and intricate rules of grammar that the author attached as appendices to the trilogy.
25 November 2007
The Undemocratic High Church
I went to this morning's 9:00 service at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. It was a step out of reality, into some other, older world. Perhaps it was a taste of what Tolkien's hobbits felt upon their arrival in Rivendell. The church itself is a beautiful Gothic building, dark and immediate when compared with the light, wide-open glory of St. Patrick's Cathedral, just a few blocks away. Upon entering St. Thomas, one sees at the far end of the sanctuary a solid wall of beautiful statuary: Christ Jesus surrounded by the saints.
The service used the old, beautiful language of pre-modern liturgy. There was a small choir, consisting of little kids with angelic voices. But the musicians were mostly hidden from view; organ music flew out and over from the chancel. An acolyte swung the incense at the offering: something I had heard about but never before seen. And taking the Eucharist there was unforgettable. As we processed up the aisles toward the alter, I felt ever smaller and ever more unworthy. Kneeling only feet from the back wall, I had to crane my neck to glimpse the statue of Jesus high over my head. I took the wafer and wine, prayed, and made my way back to my seat, blinking my eyes and holding my face in my hands.
In short, this was the opposite of all the seeker-sensitive services I have ever attended. The recent Willow Creek revelations - that market research and focus groups somehow failed to yield authentic discipleship - almost seem to belong to a different planet. Indeed, after the service, I found myself reluctant to walk back out to Fifth Avenue, which is again styling itself as Christmastown, USA. So-called contemporary services, on the other hand, always seem to be of one mind with consumerism.
But a high-church mentality is also somewhat opposed to the democratic spirit itself, or at least to its overly individualistic manifestations. At St. Thomas there are vestiges of the old aristocratic culture, not in the sense that anyone is excluded, but in the sense that there is an emphasis on order and beauty, and there is a King at the center of all things. It's an ancient conception of authority: power derived, not from the people, but from above.
I suppose there's not much of a political point to this, except to say that we in a democracy probably need a few undemocratic institutions to help us along. When we know something of the alternatives, we can better evaluate our own democracy. Modern democracy, as well as several Protestant denominations, are rooted in opposition to this sort of aristocratic spirit. I'm not qualified to remark on the theological implications of this opposition, but I will say that encountering the old world can be refreshing to the soul of the beleaguered and wandering democrat.
The service used the old, beautiful language of pre-modern liturgy. There was a small choir, consisting of little kids with angelic voices. But the musicians were mostly hidden from view; organ music flew out and over from the chancel. An acolyte swung the incense at the offering: something I had heard about but never before seen. And taking the Eucharist there was unforgettable. As we processed up the aisles toward the alter, I felt ever smaller and ever more unworthy. Kneeling only feet from the back wall, I had to crane my neck to glimpse the statue of Jesus high over my head. I took the wafer and wine, prayed, and made my way back to my seat, blinking my eyes and holding my face in my hands.
In short, this was the opposite of all the seeker-sensitive services I have ever attended. The recent Willow Creek revelations - that market research and focus groups somehow failed to yield authentic discipleship - almost seem to belong to a different planet. Indeed, after the service, I found myself reluctant to walk back out to Fifth Avenue, which is again styling itself as Christmastown, USA. So-called contemporary services, on the other hand, always seem to be of one mind with consumerism.
But a high-church mentality is also somewhat opposed to the democratic spirit itself, or at least to its overly individualistic manifestations. At St. Thomas there are vestiges of the old aristocratic culture, not in the sense that anyone is excluded, but in the sense that there is an emphasis on order and beauty, and there is a King at the center of all things. It's an ancient conception of authority: power derived, not from the people, but from above.
I suppose there's not much of a political point to this, except to say that we in a democracy probably need a few undemocratic institutions to help us along. When we know something of the alternatives, we can better evaluate our own democracy. Modern democracy, as well as several Protestant denominations, are rooted in opposition to this sort of aristocratic spirit. I'm not qualified to remark on the theological implications of this opposition, but I will say that encountering the old world can be refreshing to the soul of the beleaguered and wandering democrat.
13 November 2007
Listening Plans
I've been using Pandora and last.fm to find new music. So, for no particular reason, here is a short list of musicians whose albums I will buy as soon as I have a large amount of money and nothing else to spend it on, which is to say, several years from now. It's all the exact same kind of thing, I suppose.
-Bonnie "Prince" Billy
-Richard Buckner
-Smog
-Iron & Wine
This is how I turn into even more of a boring indie-folkster.
-Bonnie "Prince" Billy
-Richard Buckner
-Smog
-Iron & Wine
This is how I turn into even more of a boring indie-folkster.
11 November 2007
Mr. McCaughan Goes to Washington
Have you heard of Mac McCaughan? He's a hero.
Mr. McCaughan spent the 1990s as the frontman of Superchunk, a rock band from Chapel Hill. At the same time, he helped found and build Merge Records. Merge began by releasing albums by Superchunk and some friends of the band. Over the years, some of their bands got pretty famous: Merge handled big releases for Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, M Ward, and The Arcade Fire, among others.
Do you know these bands? Spoon and The Arcade Fire both had top-ten albums on the Billboard charts this year. But you probably didn't heard them on the radio; they don't get much play.
Anyway, the Senate Commerce Committee invited Mr. McCaughan to talk about non-commercial radio at a hearing on "The Future of Radio". And his argument made sense to me.
Commercial radio is an entirely artificial market. The government takes a narrow slice of bandwidth and allows people apply for licenses to use it. "Deregulation" of the airwaves is not a free-market measure. The government can easily price small operations out of business. But this is emphatically not in the public interest. It's not just music that suffers when the large conglomerates take a larger market share. Local news, opinion, sports, and culture also suffer.
This may be a moot point, as broadband wireless may soon enable people to listen to internet stations. But as long as the government has control of the available bandwidth, it needs to make room for the little guy.
Mr. McCaughan spent the 1990s as the frontman of Superchunk, a rock band from Chapel Hill. At the same time, he helped found and build Merge Records. Merge began by releasing albums by Superchunk and some friends of the band. Over the years, some of their bands got pretty famous: Merge handled big releases for Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, M Ward, and The Arcade Fire, among others.
Do you know these bands? Spoon and The Arcade Fire both had top-ten albums on the Billboard charts this year. But you probably didn't heard them on the radio; they don't get much play.
Anyway, the Senate Commerce Committee invited Mr. McCaughan to talk about non-commercial radio at a hearing on "The Future of Radio". And his argument made sense to me.
Low-power, college, NPR and other non-commercial broadcasting enterprises are extremely important today, especially as local information and entertainment options become scarcer. Commercial radio is about aggregating the largest possible number of listeners in a targeted demographic. Community-based radio is about serving its audiences. It has the unique power and the desire to be a conduit for news and culture, and is essential to the diversity that defines cultural life in this country.
Commercial radio is an entirely artificial market. The government takes a narrow slice of bandwidth and allows people apply for licenses to use it. "Deregulation" of the airwaves is not a free-market measure. The government can easily price small operations out of business. But this is emphatically not in the public interest. It's not just music that suffers when the large conglomerates take a larger market share. Local news, opinion, sports, and culture also suffer.
This may be a moot point, as broadband wireless may soon enable people to listen to internet stations. But as long as the government has control of the available bandwidth, it needs to make room for the little guy.
10 November 2007
The Rambler
I needed a break, so I stopped by the magazine store on 35th Street. I suppose my idea was to look for something with a CD in it, so I could find some new music (I've become hermetic in my tastes). Nothing looked interesting; everything was glossy and popular. You can't sell a magazine about unpopular bands, but that's what I wanted.
So I went back to the magazines about writing. And I saw the Rambler.
Last year, it caught my eye because it featured an article by a professor I knew in Chapel Hill. Sure enough, it's published in my favorite University town.
The November/December issue's cover shows a woman with an upside-down umbrella leaking rain on her. And the magazine isn't about much more than that. It's got articles about small things: old stories, food, fatigue, airplanes. No commentary on current events, no policy articles, no strategic national institutions. There are some very pretty photographs. It's evocative of real life, which is what we have left after our ambitions are spent, on the other side of dreams, when we can see the work of our hands and tell others how it came to be.
You strive, strive, strive, and need a break. Here is a place for small stories, inconsequential to big missions, but absolutely necessary to the good life.
So I went back to the magazines about writing. And I saw the Rambler.
Last year, it caught my eye because it featured an article by a professor I knew in Chapel Hill. Sure enough, it's published in my favorite University town.
The November/December issue's cover shows a woman with an upside-down umbrella leaking rain on her. And the magazine isn't about much more than that. It's got articles about small things: old stories, food, fatigue, airplanes. No commentary on current events, no policy articles, no strategic national institutions. There are some very pretty photographs. It's evocative of real life, which is what we have left after our ambitions are spent, on the other side of dreams, when we can see the work of our hands and tell others how it came to be.
You strive, strive, strive, and need a break. Here is a place for small stories, inconsequential to big missions, but absolutely necessary to the good life.
04 November 2007
Global Warming as a Noble Lie
In The Republic, Plato's Socrates argues that the citizens of his city-in-speech will never accept the class system that they need unless they are made to believe a myth about its origins. The founders of the city know that the story is false as can be, but they can’t allow the citizens to question the established order. In other words, sometimes you need a whopper of lie to get things done.
Could global warming be such a lie? It depends on what one means by “global warming.” If you say that human activity has changed the composition of the earth’s environment, and that this could potentially have unforeseen consequences, then there’s no argument. But if you say you know exactly what those consequences will be, then we have a problem.
As far as I can tell, the scientists know exactly what is going on. They know that very few systems are more complex or unpredictable than the weather, and they have done an excellent job showing that the earth’s atmosphere has indeed changed over time, going through both long and short cycles of heat and cold. A good scientist knows that mathematical models are approximations, often useful, but certainly prone to error.
These models are the source of all predictions of increasing global temperature, changing weather patters, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and, finally, the submerging of Manhattan. All of these models must account for a staggering array of variables; they must balance effects that may work against each other – for example, the warming of the air and the melting of the ice caps both would simultaneously heat and cool the ocean. That’s a simplified example, but it illustrates the difficulty in any kind of prediction. And we don’t even know what would be happening to the environment even if humans never existed.
So all our predictions are in some way contingent. If one model proves to be accurate over time, then perhaps we could really start to trust it. For now, though, we should all be aware that something gets completely lost between the scientific papers and the headlines.
Why, then, are there so few vocal dissenters in the science community? Why don’t more scientists speak out against the blatant misinterpretation of their work?
Because the poisoning of our atmosphere is a real problem, but nobody will care unless there’s a catastrophic consequence around the corner. The real case – that we are making radical changes to our environment which may or may not be irreparable – would never be listened to by a population that is just fine with a national debt up in the trillions and a creakingly damaged social security system. Who cares if it might go wrong? No, to get anything done, you have to be able to show that there’s an impending crisis: in other words, people will die unless we do something.
So maybe global warming is a noble lie. We let the media trumpet its disaster-movie version of the truth, hoping that it will spur some kind of change.
But for those of us who aren’t comfortable with lies, no matter how noble their purpose, there is no other course besides a deep reexamination of our culture’s consumption mentality. And that, my friends, is a topic for another time.
Could global warming be such a lie? It depends on what one means by “global warming.” If you say that human activity has changed the composition of the earth’s environment, and that this could potentially have unforeseen consequences, then there’s no argument. But if you say you know exactly what those consequences will be, then we have a problem.
As far as I can tell, the scientists know exactly what is going on. They know that very few systems are more complex or unpredictable than the weather, and they have done an excellent job showing that the earth’s atmosphere has indeed changed over time, going through both long and short cycles of heat and cold. A good scientist knows that mathematical models are approximations, often useful, but certainly prone to error.
These models are the source of all predictions of increasing global temperature, changing weather patters, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and, finally, the submerging of Manhattan. All of these models must account for a staggering array of variables; they must balance effects that may work against each other – for example, the warming of the air and the melting of the ice caps both would simultaneously heat and cool the ocean. That’s a simplified example, but it illustrates the difficulty in any kind of prediction. And we don’t even know what would be happening to the environment even if humans never existed.
So all our predictions are in some way contingent. If one model proves to be accurate over time, then perhaps we could really start to trust it. For now, though, we should all be aware that something gets completely lost between the scientific papers and the headlines.
Why, then, are there so few vocal dissenters in the science community? Why don’t more scientists speak out against the blatant misinterpretation of their work?
Because the poisoning of our atmosphere is a real problem, but nobody will care unless there’s a catastrophic consequence around the corner. The real case – that we are making radical changes to our environment which may or may not be irreparable – would never be listened to by a population that is just fine with a national debt up in the trillions and a creakingly damaged social security system. Who cares if it might go wrong? No, to get anything done, you have to be able to show that there’s an impending crisis: in other words, people will die unless we do something.
So maybe global warming is a noble lie. We let the media trumpet its disaster-movie version of the truth, hoping that it will spur some kind of change.
But for those of us who aren’t comfortable with lies, no matter how noble their purpose, there is no other course besides a deep reexamination of our culture’s consumption mentality. And that, my friends, is a topic for another time.
28 October 2007
Karzai asks US to Stop the Planes
I'm watching 60 Minutes right now. It's a segment on bombings in Afghanistan: specifically, a bombing that killed nine civilians in a small village. Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, asks the United States to roll back its bombings. He believes that the bombings hurt more than they help.
The resurgence of Taliban forces in Afghanistan is usually overshadowed by the bigger problems in Iraq. But it should be troubling to us nonetheless. According to a Wall Street Journal article from October 14th, Tangling with the Taliban, there are still over 40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, with many of them working to stop Taliban forces which number between five and twenty thousand - it's hard to tell.
NATO forces have to pick up a lot of slack when the Afghan government can't provide basics, often taking up police duties in troubled areas.
A New York Times article from August 12, How a 'Good War' In Afghanistan Went Bad, quoted a high-level American commander in Afghanistan who argued that the US has failed to provide the proper sorts of experts to help build the Afghani infrastructure. For example, the official says that there are only a handful of American agriculture experts helping in agriculture, which is 80% of the Afghan economy.
A former CIA official, Robert Grenier, contended that the CIA shifted its best counterterrorism agents to Iraq. It's hard to question the article's logic: if not for the war in Iraq, our most qualified people would all be in Afghanistan. But things looked pretty good in spring of 2005.
Except for one thing: the Taliban forces weren't defeated; they were in Pakistan. And they came back in spring of 2006.
It's not as bad as it could be; it's not as bad as Iraq. Still, just looking through the news reports, it's not hard to see that, if not for the war in Iraq, things could be much, much better. There were a few of us, at the time, who said that the United States should make sure it takes care of the one country it took over before it tries to take over another.
It's far too late for that now. As long as we're tied down in Iraq, we will have to rely on blunt measures like air strikes is because our troops and special forces are in Iraq. So here's another reason to create Kurdistan* and balance our forces. We still owe a lot to the people of Afghanistan.
*I know this isn't realistic at the moment.
The resurgence of Taliban forces in Afghanistan is usually overshadowed by the bigger problems in Iraq. But it should be troubling to us nonetheless. According to a Wall Street Journal article from October 14th, Tangling with the Taliban, there are still over 40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, with many of them working to stop Taliban forces which number between five and twenty thousand - it's hard to tell.
NATO forces have to pick up a lot of slack when the Afghan government can't provide basics, often taking up police duties in troubled areas.
A New York Times article from August 12, How a 'Good War' In Afghanistan Went Bad, quoted a high-level American commander in Afghanistan who argued that the US has failed to provide the proper sorts of experts to help build the Afghani infrastructure. For example, the official says that there are only a handful of American agriculture experts helping in agriculture, which is 80% of the Afghan economy.
A former CIA official, Robert Grenier, contended that the CIA shifted its best counterterrorism agents to Iraq. It's hard to question the article's logic: if not for the war in Iraq, our most qualified people would all be in Afghanistan. But things looked pretty good in spring of 2005.
Except for one thing: the Taliban forces weren't defeated; they were in Pakistan. And they came back in spring of 2006.
It's not as bad as it could be; it's not as bad as Iraq. Still, just looking through the news reports, it's not hard to see that, if not for the war in Iraq, things could be much, much better. There were a few of us, at the time, who said that the United States should make sure it takes care of the one country it took over before it tries to take over another.
It's far too late for that now. As long as we're tied down in Iraq, we will have to rely on blunt measures like air strikes is because our troops and special forces are in Iraq. So here's another reason to create Kurdistan* and balance our forces. We still owe a lot to the people of Afghanistan.
*I know this isn't realistic at the moment.
20 October 2007
Good Sentences from Esolen and Spengler
Wandering about on the Internet, I found some good sentences, both a bit polemical, enjoyable nonetheless.
The first is from Anthony Esolen on the Mere Comments blog over at Touchstone Magazine. Perhaps it's been said before, but it's probably worth saying again. He's talking about California's gender-identity-neutral textbook legislation (on which I will decline to comment):
Next, we have Spengler commenting on Turkey and the Armenian genocide (the article itself is well worth your time, although I have my reasons for disagreeing with its final analysis), employing what writers often refer to as "vivid imagery":
Wish I could have found something on the other side of the aisle from Esolen for this post, but nothing jumped out at me. (Spengler, interesting as he may be, isn't on one side of the aisle as much as he's in the viewing gallery, or perhaps in another room altogether...)
The first is from Anthony Esolen on the Mere Comments blog over at Touchstone Magazine. Perhaps it's been said before, but it's probably worth saying again. He's talking about California's gender-identity-neutral textbook legislation (on which I will decline to comment):
But school administrators know best, yes they do. Why, they've taken a three-hour seminar on sex, and some of them, it is said, have actually engaged in the activity. They can't be counted on to perform the modest but necessary tasks for which they have been hired. Our graduates can't tell us anything about Alexander Hamilton, or read The Federalist, or understand what simultaneous linear equations are all about, or identify the passive voice. If condoms were commas, we'd be in big trouble, because I never meet a college freshman who knows where to put one.
Next, we have Spengler commenting on Turkey and the Armenian genocide (the article itself is well worth your time, although I have my reasons for disagreeing with its final analysis), employing what writers often refer to as "vivid imagery":
America is not responsible for chaos in the Middle East. The Middle East has known nothing but chaos for most of its history. The colonial policy of the European powers after World War I left inherently unstable structures in place that must, one day, meet their reckoning. But America’s obsession with the surgical implant of democracy in the region forces it into a murderous game of whack-a-mole with a welter of armed ethnicities.
Wish I could have found something on the other side of the aisle from Esolen for this post, but nothing jumped out at me. (Spengler, interesting as he may be, isn't on one side of the aisle as much as he's in the viewing gallery, or perhaps in another room altogether...)
14 October 2007
Primaries: An American Comedy
The New York Times has a Candidate Appearance Guide that by itself shows the problem with primaries. I shudder to about think what the Founders would say if they could see how this. With all due respect to Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, which are probably wonderful states full of kind and gentle people, this part of the election cycle is rotten.
I wonder what it would be like to experience an election cycle as an Iowan. In North Carolina, we hardly ever had candidates eating in local diners or speaking at town-hall meetings. But I suppose I'm lucky; the attention lavished on South Carolina probably helps the candidates hear about at least some of our regional concerns. If I had grown up anywhere between Wisconsin and Washington State, I probably wouldn't have even had that luxury, as that geographical stretch appears to be a wasteland as far as primary campaigning is concerned.
Could we come up with something more rational? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could come up with some sort of rotation system? Every four years, a different group of states could get some time in the spotlight. That would better represent the spirit of our republic over time.
Unfortunately, that's not a workable solution. As Americans, it seems like we prefer an irrational grassroots system to a bureaucratically designed solution. After all, who could possibly come up with an impartial selection? New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina may be an arbitrary handful of states, but they assumed their importance by jostling ahead of the other states. Now that other states are pushing their primaries further forward, it's starting to get ridiculous, but at least it's a uniquely federal form of silliness which gives the states some individual importance.
It's a weird system, and I can't say that I like it, but I'll go with it for now.
I wonder what it would be like to experience an election cycle as an Iowan. In North Carolina, we hardly ever had candidates eating in local diners or speaking at town-hall meetings. But I suppose I'm lucky; the attention lavished on South Carolina probably helps the candidates hear about at least some of our regional concerns. If I had grown up anywhere between Wisconsin and Washington State, I probably wouldn't have even had that luxury, as that geographical stretch appears to be a wasteland as far as primary campaigning is concerned.
Could we come up with something more rational? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could come up with some sort of rotation system? Every four years, a different group of states could get some time in the spotlight. That would better represent the spirit of our republic over time.
Unfortunately, that's not a workable solution. As Americans, it seems like we prefer an irrational grassroots system to a bureaucratically designed solution. After all, who could possibly come up with an impartial selection? New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina may be an arbitrary handful of states, but they assumed their importance by jostling ahead of the other states. Now that other states are pushing their primaries further forward, it's starting to get ridiculous, but at least it's a uniquely federal form of silliness which gives the states some individual importance.
It's a weird system, and I can't say that I like it, but I'll go with it for now.
11 October 2007
What's Up With Ayn Rand
I found Ayn Rand disturbing from the moment I first read one of her novels. A post on the First Things blog does a pretty good job of explaining the feeling:
Rand’s Ideal Man could never be a schoolteacher, say, or a physical therapist, or a claims clerk in the Social Security Administration. He must not be short-winded or fat. He must be perfection in action—gifted and brave, uniquely talented, and utterly free of irrationality and fear. He must, like Roark, defend the premise that no man should ever compromise his individual will or submit to pathetic notions of “sacrifice”; he must recognize that men of genius like himself will forever fight the lazy, inferior parasites who seek to take what superior minds have made. He must, in short, look like Gary Cooper and think exactly like Ayn Rand.
. . .
What made Rand’s works controversial, then and now, was their unashamed elitism and atheism—their contept for the values and attitudes held by most human beings who must make their way through the real world with the usual sets of weaknesses and strengths.
Rand hated religion as much as she hated communism; for her Christianity was, of course, the religion of fools and slaves. Rand’s “marginalia,” culled from the books in her library and published in 1998, are particularly revealing: . . . [C.S.] Lewis, Rand averred, was a “driveling non-entity,” a “mediocrity,” and “scum.”. . .
The book’s big event—a national strike involving disgruntled industrialists and tycoons—might have made a good Preston Sturges comedy. But Rand turns it into an earnest melodrama touched up with nobody-can-stop-me arias, paperback sex scenes, and attacks on jack-booted Washington bureaucrats: It’s Tony Robbins meets Harold Robbins meets the Cato Institute.
07 October 2007
Dr. Dobson's Threat
It's old news by now, but forgive me for playing catch-up. I've been busy.
On September 30th, the New York Times reported on a secret meeting of Christian conservatives that produced a resolution to support a third-party candidate if Rudy Giuliani gains the Republican presidential nomination. The group included Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, whose opinions are perhaps the most influential in conservative Christian circles. Dr. Dobson published some comments on the resolution in a New York Times op-ed on October 4th.
Dr. Dobson's threat is a big one. As we learned in 1992 and 2000, neither of the major parties can afford to have a large segment of its core voters defect to a third party. The mostly anonymous religious conservatives are serious here. Dobson argues that there are certain things on which Christians just can't compromise:
They haven't gotten it. President Bush spent all his political capital on the war effort, leaving him no room to enact any pro-life policies on the level that social conservatives desired. Yes, he got the votes he needed, but he had to make promises he couldn't keep. Of course, there are always excuses, and I suppose that the voters who would be most likely to be upset about a lack of pro-life progress will also be the ones who will be most forgiving of what I will generously call slow progress in Iraq.
But even if they are letting Bush off the hook, they still expect the GOP to follow through on its pro-life commitments, and they know Giuliani is not the man to fix the problem.
As for the Christian Right, now would be a good time to do some soul-searching. The GOP has gotten the votes and support it needed and generally gone about its business. What has the Christian right gotten in return? Money, power, scandal. . .
Dobson's move makes a great deal of sense from the social conservative perspective. If the GOP is not willing to recommit to the promises its made, the social conservatives will be right to bolt.
On September 30th, the New York Times reported on a secret meeting of Christian conservatives that produced a resolution to support a third-party candidate if Rudy Giuliani gains the Republican presidential nomination. The group included Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, whose opinions are perhaps the most influential in conservative Christian circles. Dr. Dobson published some comments on the resolution in a New York Times op-ed on October 4th.
Dr. Dobson's threat is a big one. As we learned in 1992 and 2000, neither of the major parties can afford to have a large segment of its core voters defect to a third party. The mostly anonymous religious conservatives are serious here. Dobson argues that there are certain things on which Christians just can't compromise:
I firmly believe that the selection of a president should begin with a recommitment to traditional moral values and beliefs. Those include the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage, and other inviolable pro-family principles. Only after that determination is made can the acceptability of a nominee be assessed.Social conservative disappointment with the GOP has been brewing for some time now. The pro-life movement expected some real action under the Bush administration. I remember the sense of excitement during the end of the Clinton administration: they really believed that the Republican Party would respond to their concerns. Socially conservative Christians responded to Karl Rove's famous (or perhaps infamous) mobilization strategy, but they wanted something in return.
They haven't gotten it. President Bush spent all his political capital on the war effort, leaving him no room to enact any pro-life policies on the level that social conservatives desired. Yes, he got the votes he needed, but he had to make promises he couldn't keep. Of course, there are always excuses, and I suppose that the voters who would be most likely to be upset about a lack of pro-life progress will also be the ones who will be most forgiving of what I will generously call slow progress in Iraq.
But even if they are letting Bush off the hook, they still expect the GOP to follow through on its pro-life commitments, and they know Giuliani is not the man to fix the problem.
As for the Christian Right, now would be a good time to do some soul-searching. The GOP has gotten the votes and support it needed and generally gone about its business. What has the Christian right gotten in return? Money, power, scandal. . .
Dobson's move makes a great deal of sense from the social conservative perspective. If the GOP is not willing to recommit to the promises its made, the social conservatives will be right to bolt.
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