The remarkable thing about the world is not that men have told stories about unicorns, but that, before he saw it, no man would have dreamed of inventing the narwhal. This fact struck me the other day, as I contemplated one of our society’s most pervasive myths. Some have deemed it Progress: it is the notion that for most of human history, we told ourselves silly fairy tales to explain natural phenomena, but only recently we have uncovered sensible explanations for why the world is the way it is. In fact, the march of science has actually produced far stranger accounts of how natural phenomena occur than the ancients ever could have, and we, perhaps more strangely, have accepted the notion that these wild “How” accounts actually cover the far more mysterious question of “Why.”
Twenty-five hundred years ago, most men thought that the earth was the center of the universe. The universe itself had existed from all eternity (albeit in a chaotic mess), and was composed of four elements. A few esoteric thinkers speculated about atoms composing all matter, but none would have dared divide those tiny bricks. The sun was a flaming chariot, driven by a god, and on the fringes of the human orbit lived some strange creatures: trolls, unicorns, dragons. To an ancient, the cosmos had a neighborhood feel: mostly it was organized around earth, and the parts worth seeing never ventured out of eyesight for more than a few hours.
Now, consider the modern, scientific account of the history of universe, beginning with some sort of cataclysmic event billions of years ago, during which not only form and order came into being, but matter and time itself. The resulting composition of this matter was into bits too small even for scientists to see (electrons and protons, not to mention quarks, gluons, and muons), and these bits combined into, not four, but 212 different varieties of atoms, or elements. Earth only comes on the scene after billions of years, a tiny planet circling one of millions of stars just in our own galaxy, which in turn was one of millions rushing through the universe, which some scientists now speculate may be one of many. There was a peculiar anthropomorphic comfort in the thought that the sun was a god, with his man-like shape; scientists have conceived of the infinitely more frightening notion that all the stars are in fact enormous balls of flaming gases whirling through space in some kind of cosmic juggling act. The ancients thought that a few odd dragons skulked about the neighborhood; scientists counter instead that, tens of millions of years ago, thousands of varieties of those monstrous reptiles ruled the earth, and the greatest among them they call a Tyrant Lizard King (Tyrannosaurus rex). Sure, the ancients believed in trolls and unicorns, but scientists believe in such fantastic creatures as the gorilla, the narwhal, and the platypus. Finally, scientists lately have begun preaching such paradoxes to perplex even the most mystical Hebrew prophet, such as the notion that light is both a particle and a wave.
A comparison of the two accounts shows plainly that the classical account of nature is in fact the commonsensical, precisely because men made it up. If men were to invent a cosmos, four elements, a single planet, and a few variations on some basic animal shapes is probably all they could manage. The scientific account of the universe reveals a place far beyond the human imagination, a place of such wild complexity and startling intricacy that every new discovery carries with it the thrill of the unknown.
Strangely, however, as science has offered ever-wilder explanations of how the universe works, its adherents have developed a sort of determined indifference to its accounts. The ancients trembled before their simple explanations: they worshipped their chariot sun, while we hardly spare a thought for a nuclear explosion, compared to which Nagasaki was a pinprick, happening continuously in the neighborhood for eons. Perhaps the ancient, with the simplicity of his thinking on nature, was able to grasp an obvious fact that eludes many moderns. If you had asked an ancient, “Why does the sun rise?” he would have replied, “The god wills it.” Ask a modern materialist the same question, and he will prattle off something about gravity and the earth’s rotation. However, such a response is as much a non-sequitur as if, asked why Billy went to the store, the scientist replied, “He drove down Elm, turned onto Park, and turned left at the BP.” The ancient knew that understanding how something worked was not the same as understanding why, and that the appropriate emotion to fill the gap between those two explanations was wonder. Ironically, science has offered us a world of impossibilities to explain, but a purely scientific worldview deprives us of any means of explaining it.
We must regain the skill of asking, Why. When we do so, we will find that the universe is a very exciting place, that the cosmos is busier than Herald Square at rush hour, that our every cell contains coded messages, that there seems to be some kind of Mind lurking behind every wild invention creation offers up, but one far more grand and imaginative that our own.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
An Expert in the Immediate
I think the news might be bad for my health. The pain always begins with my neck: the other day, I slumped on the couch, computer cradled in my lap, chin resting uncomfortably on my chest, a sharp line of pain tracing the faint outlines of my contorted vertebrae. From this position, my gaze swam dizzily in the stormy sea of headlines that convulsed across the BBC homepage. I read, “Police Tighten Cordon on Bhutto,” and felt a tiny stab of anxiety twist my gut. As I swept on—pollution in China, shrinking icecaps, a credit crunch (Like the cereal? I muse soundlessly)—my heart began to flutter and chirp, rattling the bars of its rib cage. I swallowed hard, and forced myself to click on an article about the impending crisis in the Balkans. I read about Russian aggression, religious animosity, the foundering international effort, as the words of Bismarck, Kissinger, and Colin Powell echoed hauntingly in my mind like Macbeth’s ghosts, speaking of unending and indeterminate conflict. That centuries’-old problem, residing at the intersection of world war and genocide, settled its great weight on my brain, leaving me a dull ache against my skull that mingled with my eye-soreness, and blurred my vision momentarily.
The various policy-induced pains plaguing my body suddenly spiked sharply; I slammed my laptop shut, and tossed to the side as I sat up, rubbing my eyes wearily. Looking up, I noticed a tan paperback nestled shyly beneath a stack of papers on the table before me. The book was worn and creased and leathery, as inviting as a grandmother’s hug. I leaned forward and picked it up, wincing as my joints groaned in protest, but smiling despite the stiffness upon reading the title: Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson. Opening the yellowed pages, the first two lines I read swept through my soul like a fall breeze off the Hudson, driving before them all thoughts of policy and death:
“The murmur of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.”
In many ways, Emily Dickinson has always represented to me to me the antithesis of the American Dream: a recluse, misunderstood and scorned even within her family, she disdained social and material conquest, instead making her friends among daffodils, and her fortunes collecting sunsets. I imagined her strolling through her father’s garden, bending down to peer at a primrose, solemnly observing a bee buzzing among the petals, feeling a thrill of wonder at the magic and mystery of things flying, growing, living.
I contemplated a life lived simply, occupied with simple beauty and daily frustration, utterly detached from the great march of societies, from the cosmic spectacle of war and peace, of disease and famine and science clashing across distant lands with fanciful names. Who was this woman? I wondered, marveling at 1700 poems written solely about a garden, the hills behind it, the streams that watered it, and the sunsets that touched it. An expert in the immediate, this poet—I answered my own question, setting the book down quietly. After a moment, I glanced at the clock, and leaped up frantically, late, as always, for work.
Perhaps an hour later, I arrived at the restaurant, and set about preparing the space for the night’s crowd of socialites, tourists, and alcoholics. Myself, and a few other bussers, sat at a table in the back, folding coarse napkins into neat squares, and building them into narrow towers, slowly walling ourselves off into fragile linen ghettoes. As I fell into an easy rhythm of folding, my mind wandered back to Balkans, first glancing in at the paralyzed deliberations of the UN, then flitting across the Atlantic to hover over Belgrade and Moscow, weighing the fate of men I had never met, wondering at the decisions of men I did not understand.
When my mind roams, my body seems to power down: my eyes glaze over, my mouth hangs slack. As my own napkin-stack threatened to rise above my eye level, I suddenly felt another’s questioning stare—I snapped back to reality, to find Milan, sitting directly across from me, paused in his folding to look at me with puzzlement. “Sam—Ees ok?” Concern seeped, thick as syrup, through his Slavic accent and broken English.
I started to reply, but then I saw him, truly saw him. Milan, the forty-something lawyer, newly arrived from Uzice, Serbia. I remembered his recalling the atrocities carried out against Muslims in his town, the terror of hearing NATO bombs blast apart his neighbor’s house. I remembered him tenderly describing his wife, taken from him three years before by cancer. I studied his pale florid features, his gleaming bald pate, his inquisitive eyes surrounded by the creases and furrows etched by life’s cares. Perhaps for the first time, I truly saw him, and I realized that I did in fact have a Serbian problem, but that it lay, not in the Balkans, but just across a few feet of wood.
As an idiotic grin split my features, Milan’s expression grew more concerned. Rising partway from his seat, he pressed: “Sam, vat ees matter?”
I could only shake my head and laugh. Tearing down that linen wall into two stacks, I leaned across the table and grabbed some of Milan’s unfolded napkins. He gave his own, guttural Slavic-giggle, and urged: “Vell?”
I smiled still broader, and waved dismissively—“It’s nothing, Milan. I just heard the murmur of a bee.”
The various policy-induced pains plaguing my body suddenly spiked sharply; I slammed my laptop shut, and tossed to the side as I sat up, rubbing my eyes wearily. Looking up, I noticed a tan paperback nestled shyly beneath a stack of papers on the table before me. The book was worn and creased and leathery, as inviting as a grandmother’s hug. I leaned forward and picked it up, wincing as my joints groaned in protest, but smiling despite the stiffness upon reading the title: Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson. Opening the yellowed pages, the first two lines I read swept through my soul like a fall breeze off the Hudson, driving before them all thoughts of policy and death:
“The murmur of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.”
In many ways, Emily Dickinson has always represented to me to me the antithesis of the American Dream: a recluse, misunderstood and scorned even within her family, she disdained social and material conquest, instead making her friends among daffodils, and her fortunes collecting sunsets. I imagined her strolling through her father’s garden, bending down to peer at a primrose, solemnly observing a bee buzzing among the petals, feeling a thrill of wonder at the magic and mystery of things flying, growing, living.
I contemplated a life lived simply, occupied with simple beauty and daily frustration, utterly detached from the great march of societies, from the cosmic spectacle of war and peace, of disease and famine and science clashing across distant lands with fanciful names. Who was this woman? I wondered, marveling at 1700 poems written solely about a garden, the hills behind it, the streams that watered it, and the sunsets that touched it. An expert in the immediate, this poet—I answered my own question, setting the book down quietly. After a moment, I glanced at the clock, and leaped up frantically, late, as always, for work.
Perhaps an hour later, I arrived at the restaurant, and set about preparing the space for the night’s crowd of socialites, tourists, and alcoholics. Myself, and a few other bussers, sat at a table in the back, folding coarse napkins into neat squares, and building them into narrow towers, slowly walling ourselves off into fragile linen ghettoes. As I fell into an easy rhythm of folding, my mind wandered back to Balkans, first glancing in at the paralyzed deliberations of the UN, then flitting across the Atlantic to hover over Belgrade and Moscow, weighing the fate of men I had never met, wondering at the decisions of men I did not understand.
When my mind roams, my body seems to power down: my eyes glaze over, my mouth hangs slack. As my own napkin-stack threatened to rise above my eye level, I suddenly felt another’s questioning stare—I snapped back to reality, to find Milan, sitting directly across from me, paused in his folding to look at me with puzzlement. “Sam—Ees ok?” Concern seeped, thick as syrup, through his Slavic accent and broken English.
I started to reply, but then I saw him, truly saw him. Milan, the forty-something lawyer, newly arrived from Uzice, Serbia. I remembered his recalling the atrocities carried out against Muslims in his town, the terror of hearing NATO bombs blast apart his neighbor’s house. I remembered him tenderly describing his wife, taken from him three years before by cancer. I studied his pale florid features, his gleaming bald pate, his inquisitive eyes surrounded by the creases and furrows etched by life’s cares. Perhaps for the first time, I truly saw him, and I realized that I did in fact have a Serbian problem, but that it lay, not in the Balkans, but just across a few feet of wood.
As an idiotic grin split my features, Milan’s expression grew more concerned. Rising partway from his seat, he pressed: “Sam, vat ees matter?”
I could only shake my head and laugh. Tearing down that linen wall into two stacks, I leaned across the table and grabbed some of Milan’s unfolded napkins. He gave his own, guttural Slavic-giggle, and urged: “Vell?”
I smiled still broader, and waved dismissively—“It’s nothing, Milan. I just heard the murmur of a bee.”
Sunday, November 11, 2007
THE DAM HAS BROKEN: POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN THE INTERNET AGE
It seems that America’s political life is on exodus to the Internet. A recent PEW/Internet study of the 2006 midterm elections found that the number of Americans researching candidates and issues online doubled from the last midterm election, and rivaled the usage figures for the 2004 Presidential election (a marvel, considering that many Americans completely ignore those “off-years”). All told, 31% of Americans (45% of internet users) used the Internet in some form during the election season; however, 35% of broadband users under age 36 said that the Internet was their main resource during the campaign, while only 18% of that demographic relied primarily on televised news. If these trends continue, as they almost certainly will, success on the Internet will increasingly determine the outcome of elections.
The Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index rates Barack Obama nearly twice as successful in Internet campaigning (based on his Google page rank, presence in online news outlets, and popularity on social networking sites, blogs, and YouTube) as any other candidate. In exactly what does Senator Obama’s popularity consist? What kind of political discourse—an explicit or implicit dialogue among politicians and citizens—does such a campaign engender?
As a case study, consider a thoughtful, 20 year-old college student in Manhattan. Concerned about the upcoming election, he pulls out his laptop, and goes online to do some research, navigating to Google, the most popular Internet search engine. Say he searches for “Obama” (which will yield nearly 44,000,000 hits, four times the total for “Romney”)—what will he find? The third hit yielded in the search (after the campaign website, and a Google Books listing) is the Wikipedia article under the Senator’s name, which, according to Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post, is frequently vandalized—anonymous editors insert false information, epithets, and even change “Obama” to “Osama.” After some popular news sites, Google’s sixth and seventh offerings are Senator Obama’s Myspace (the web’s most popular social networking site) profile, and a collection of YouTube videos attached to his name. The eighth hit is an advertisement for Obama t-shirts and yard signs.
Now, suppose this student navigates to the Barack TV page on YouTube, which houses over 252 videos, each generally under three minutes long, with anywhere between 5,000, and 20,000 views. The exceptions to this rule are videos such as his appearance on Saturday Night Live, “Vote Different,” a satire on a popular 1984 Apple advertisement mocking Hillary Clinton (produced independently by a web designer who works for Obama), and “I got a crush on Obama” (produced by BarelyPolitical.com, and inserting a swaying, R&B-singing teenage girl into Obama’s campaign speeches) —YouTube lists these videos with 650,000, 3.8 million, and 4.2 million views, respectively. Thus, the videos that aspire to serious political engagement tend to be sound bytes, two-minute long clips that cannot hope to offer a thorough treatment of an issue; but even these are largely ignored in comparison with the wild popularity of comedic pieces.
Of course, while Obama is most popular online thus far, his Internet presence is typical of the pool as a whole. Three of the top eight hits in the Google search for “2008 presidential candidates” are Wikipedia articles. Three of the first eight hits in a Google search for “Hillary Clinton” are a Wikipedia article, a YouTube video, and a Myspace page. The ninth hit in a Google search for “Rudy Giuliani” is a YouTube video of the Mayor in drag, flirting with Donald Trump (479,000 views). The popular “Five Brothers’ Blog,” created by Romney’s five sons, exposes the mundane details of life on the campaign trail—the most recent post includes pictures of Craig Romney feeding a hippo. Hillary Clinton has a “campaign headquarters” on the virtual reality network “Second Life,” which hosts frequent (virtual) political rallies and debates. Though managed by unpaid devotees, the virtual headquarters remain in close contact with the real world campaign.
Now, some might scoff that this only proves that Obama’s—and others’—popularity on the Internet is not really political, at all—real politics, they will insist, consists in candidates’ themselves engaging social issues (or at least carrying out ad hominem attacks under the guise of debate). They might also note that many citizens do use the Internet in service of traditional politics, pointing to findings in the 2006 election PEW/Internet study which show that Internet users who rely primarily on the Internet for research are actually better informed on a range of issues than those who focus on television and print media, or even to the CNN/YouTube debates, which allow individuals engage one-to-one with candidates by submitting questions online. Indeed, they potentially have a powerful argument: the Internet has brought nearly every aspect of human knowledge, from the dialogues of Plato to the population of Dubai, to the fingertips of anyone with a connection, free except for the cost of signing on. If politicians and politically minded citizens could focus the Internet’s role to that of an information disseminator and harvester, America might witness a Golden Age of civic wisdom and engagement.
Sadly, this argument fails because it fundamentally misunderstands this new medium—the Internet does not merely offer new tools to carry out politics, but redefines the discussion altogether. In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman traces the epistemological changes wrought by the invention of the telegraph, prior to which, he insists, political exchange was reasoned and sophisticated to a degree unimaginable today, such that, “The Gettysburg Address would have been largely incomprehensible to a [modern] audience.” He cites the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which “complex rhetorical devices—sarcasm, irony, paradox, elaborated metaphors, fine distinctions, and the exposure of contradiction”—so abounded that they compared to “expository prose lifted whole from the page.” The telegraph changed all that, flooding the minds of Americans with a torrent of disconnected facts: everything from the weather in Wyoming to the marriages of European nobility became daily currency. Communicating with this new medium, which grinded every thought into glimmering fragments amid a tornado of data, could only result in disorientation and confusion. In turning information into a commodity product, the telegraph cheapened all knowledge, and buried noble thought in a haystack of ignominy. On the Internet, where pornography, Wikipedia articles, and Myspace profiles vastly outnumber works of antiquity and scholarship, one finds this devaluing principle of telegraphic discourse taken to its fullest extent.
For a candidate to stand out amid the Internet’s welter and waste, where every voice is lost in cacophony, and every image hidden by a thousand competitors, he must shout the loudest, and shine the brightest. He no longer even has the hope of a passive audience for his thirty-second television advertisements: on the Internet, users must largely come find the candidate. They must click on the brightly flashing ad, watch the amusing YouTube video, or befriend him on Facebook. The candidate will only succeed online by appealing to his audience; and appealing to the Internet culture of frivolity may mean becoming frivolous oneself.
A recent online ad for the CNN/YouTube debate summarizes the issue nicely:
“What will you ask them? Healthcare? Iraq? Instant replay for baseball?”
Funny, yes, but it illustrates an important point—a society in which anyone has immediate access to the highest levels of political debate cannot avoid the cheapening of its political life. Reading the Republic, or following a five-hour lecture requires intense study, and thoughtful meditation. Needing nothing more to engage the future President than a laptop and a broadband connection leaves open the option of engaging him with trivial, inane thoughts. When technology makes it possible to communicate anything at practically no cost, can the end result be other than a society of students mindlessly browsing through Facebook profiles during class, blissfully unconcerned that Aristotle (or a detailed analysis of the 2008 campaign) lies just a few keystrokes away? The Internet demands a trivial political discourse precisely because it engulfs meaning in a flood of triviality, which will always command the attention of average man. Philosophy is such hard work; Myspace offers the comfort of mental-immobility.
A final illustration may point to the apocalyptic judgment awaiting the Internet culture. A Facebook group promoting the fictional candidacy of comedian Stephen Colbert for President (“1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert”) grew to over 1,000,000 members within a week, making it the most popular political group on the site, far more so than a similar group for Senator Obama. Colbert has enjoyed such success online because he specializes in the sort of frivolity that flourishes on the Internet; the serious political candidates have only managed half-hearted attempts at engaging this burgeoning culture. This is the truly successful Internet campaigner, and, possibly, a model for successful Presidential candidates in the generations to come.
The Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index rates Barack Obama nearly twice as successful in Internet campaigning (based on his Google page rank, presence in online news outlets, and popularity on social networking sites, blogs, and YouTube) as any other candidate. In exactly what does Senator Obama’s popularity consist? What kind of political discourse—an explicit or implicit dialogue among politicians and citizens—does such a campaign engender?
As a case study, consider a thoughtful, 20 year-old college student in Manhattan. Concerned about the upcoming election, he pulls out his laptop, and goes online to do some research, navigating to Google, the most popular Internet search engine. Say he searches for “Obama” (which will yield nearly 44,000,000 hits, four times the total for “Romney”)—what will he find? The third hit yielded in the search (after the campaign website, and a Google Books listing) is the Wikipedia article under the Senator’s name, which, according to Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post, is frequently vandalized—anonymous editors insert false information, epithets, and even change “Obama” to “Osama.” After some popular news sites, Google’s sixth and seventh offerings are Senator Obama’s Myspace (the web’s most popular social networking site) profile, and a collection of YouTube videos attached to his name. The eighth hit is an advertisement for Obama t-shirts and yard signs.
Now, suppose this student navigates to the Barack TV page on YouTube, which houses over 252 videos, each generally under three minutes long, with anywhere between 5,000, and 20,000 views. The exceptions to this rule are videos such as his appearance on Saturday Night Live, “Vote Different,” a satire on a popular 1984 Apple advertisement mocking Hillary Clinton (produced independently by a web designer who works for Obama), and “I got a crush on Obama” (produced by BarelyPolitical.com, and inserting a swaying, R&B-singing teenage girl into Obama’s campaign speeches) —YouTube lists these videos with 650,000, 3.8 million, and 4.2 million views, respectively. Thus, the videos that aspire to serious political engagement tend to be sound bytes, two-minute long clips that cannot hope to offer a thorough treatment of an issue; but even these are largely ignored in comparison with the wild popularity of comedic pieces.
Of course, while Obama is most popular online thus far, his Internet presence is typical of the pool as a whole. Three of the top eight hits in the Google search for “2008 presidential candidates” are Wikipedia articles. Three of the first eight hits in a Google search for “Hillary Clinton” are a Wikipedia article, a YouTube video, and a Myspace page. The ninth hit in a Google search for “Rudy Giuliani” is a YouTube video of the Mayor in drag, flirting with Donald Trump (479,000 views). The popular “Five Brothers’ Blog,” created by Romney’s five sons, exposes the mundane details of life on the campaign trail—the most recent post includes pictures of Craig Romney feeding a hippo. Hillary Clinton has a “campaign headquarters” on the virtual reality network “Second Life,” which hosts frequent (virtual) political rallies and debates. Though managed by unpaid devotees, the virtual headquarters remain in close contact with the real world campaign.
Now, some might scoff that this only proves that Obama’s—and others’—popularity on the Internet is not really political, at all—real politics, they will insist, consists in candidates’ themselves engaging social issues (or at least carrying out ad hominem attacks under the guise of debate). They might also note that many citizens do use the Internet in service of traditional politics, pointing to findings in the 2006 election PEW/Internet study which show that Internet users who rely primarily on the Internet for research are actually better informed on a range of issues than those who focus on television and print media, or even to the CNN/YouTube debates, which allow individuals engage one-to-one with candidates by submitting questions online. Indeed, they potentially have a powerful argument: the Internet has brought nearly every aspect of human knowledge, from the dialogues of Plato to the population of Dubai, to the fingertips of anyone with a connection, free except for the cost of signing on. If politicians and politically minded citizens could focus the Internet’s role to that of an information disseminator and harvester, America might witness a Golden Age of civic wisdom and engagement.
Sadly, this argument fails because it fundamentally misunderstands this new medium—the Internet does not merely offer new tools to carry out politics, but redefines the discussion altogether. In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman traces the epistemological changes wrought by the invention of the telegraph, prior to which, he insists, political exchange was reasoned and sophisticated to a degree unimaginable today, such that, “The Gettysburg Address would have been largely incomprehensible to a [modern] audience.” He cites the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which “complex rhetorical devices—sarcasm, irony, paradox, elaborated metaphors, fine distinctions, and the exposure of contradiction”—so abounded that they compared to “expository prose lifted whole from the page.” The telegraph changed all that, flooding the minds of Americans with a torrent of disconnected facts: everything from the weather in Wyoming to the marriages of European nobility became daily currency. Communicating with this new medium, which grinded every thought into glimmering fragments amid a tornado of data, could only result in disorientation and confusion. In turning information into a commodity product, the telegraph cheapened all knowledge, and buried noble thought in a haystack of ignominy. On the Internet, where pornography, Wikipedia articles, and Myspace profiles vastly outnumber works of antiquity and scholarship, one finds this devaluing principle of telegraphic discourse taken to its fullest extent.
For a candidate to stand out amid the Internet’s welter and waste, where every voice is lost in cacophony, and every image hidden by a thousand competitors, he must shout the loudest, and shine the brightest. He no longer even has the hope of a passive audience for his thirty-second television advertisements: on the Internet, users must largely come find the candidate. They must click on the brightly flashing ad, watch the amusing YouTube video, or befriend him on Facebook. The candidate will only succeed online by appealing to his audience; and appealing to the Internet culture of frivolity may mean becoming frivolous oneself.
A recent online ad for the CNN/YouTube debate summarizes the issue nicely:
“What will you ask them? Healthcare? Iraq? Instant replay for baseball?”
Funny, yes, but it illustrates an important point—a society in which anyone has immediate access to the highest levels of political debate cannot avoid the cheapening of its political life. Reading the Republic, or following a five-hour lecture requires intense study, and thoughtful meditation. Needing nothing more to engage the future President than a laptop and a broadband connection leaves open the option of engaging him with trivial, inane thoughts. When technology makes it possible to communicate anything at practically no cost, can the end result be other than a society of students mindlessly browsing through Facebook profiles during class, blissfully unconcerned that Aristotle (or a detailed analysis of the 2008 campaign) lies just a few keystrokes away? The Internet demands a trivial political discourse precisely because it engulfs meaning in a flood of triviality, which will always command the attention of average man. Philosophy is such hard work; Myspace offers the comfort of mental-immobility.
A final illustration may point to the apocalyptic judgment awaiting the Internet culture. A Facebook group promoting the fictional candidacy of comedian Stephen Colbert for President (“1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert”) grew to over 1,000,000 members within a week, making it the most popular political group on the site, far more so than a similar group for Senator Obama. Colbert has enjoyed such success online because he specializes in the sort of frivolity that flourishes on the Internet; the serious political candidates have only managed half-hearted attempts at engaging this burgeoning culture. This is the truly successful Internet campaigner, and, possibly, a model for successful Presidential candidates in the generations to come.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
RICH, PARCHED, AND SICK
To Western sensibilities, China is a nation of contradictions. The streets of glittering Shanghai or Hong Kong, lined with modern skyscrapers and luxury shops, attest to the unprecedented transformation overtaking the country in recent decades. Industrial cities such as Wuxi, with its hundreds of factories lining Lake Tai, are the engines of this progress: they make the toys, phones, t-shirts, cars, and computers whose profits have lifted nearly 500 million people out of poverty over the last thirty years. Yet, nestled tight against the wealth and hope are the terrifying consequences of these changes.
For problems, look no further than Wuxi itself, where 95% of industrial waste and sewage runs, untreated, into Lake Tai, causing outbreaks of algae that in 2006 that forced the citizens to go without tap water for months. The Northern city of Shijiazhuang, (population two million) is rapidly running out of available drinking water: municipal wells have already drained an estimated two-thirds of the city’s groundwater, even as parched villages outside the city often depend for weeks at a time on tanker trucks that deliver fresh water. Ironically, in 2005 massive flooding in the southern province of Guangdong killed more than 500 people over the course of two weeks. Acid rain sears 30% of China’s landscape, and dust storms whirl off the North China Plain to blanket coastal cities (Beijing alone suffered eleven such storms in 2000), while grain production on the Plain fell by 50 million tons between 1998 and 2004 (a figure larger than the total grain harvest of Canada).
In many ways, nature has dealt China a bad hand—with over 22% of the world’s population, it has just 8% of its water. Further, the geographic distribution of water is decidedly lopsided: 81% of the water resides in the south, which has just over 50% of the population. This accounts for the absurdities of half the population of the verge of death-by-thirst, and the other half drowning in floods.
However, geography alone could not manufacture a crisis on this scale. Rather, in its scramble to modernize, China has embraced unsustainable industrial and agricultural practices, trading short-term growth for long-term viability. The practice of monoculture, and the overuse of pesticides have created a new Dust Bowl out of the North Plain, where the depletion of 40% of the soil has led to those falling harvests and dust storms. Further, China’s industries, given very little oversight by local governments, produce so much waste that half the rivers running through China’s urban centers have been deemed unfit even for irrigation, and emit more sulfur dioxide (a principal cause of acid rain) than in any other nation.
Over the past decade or so, Chinese officials have steadily warmed to the need for change. Indeed, in a nation where 320 million people lack adequate drinking water, and unsustainable economic practices (and the health problems arising from them) cause an estimated loss of 15.1 billion dollars per year, it must have taken doublethink on a grand scale to prevent any action heretofore. Impressed with the need for change, the government has attacked the problem from several directions, all of them beset with serious problems. Two examples will suffice: construction just recently commenced on the South-North Water Diversion (SNWD), a series of parallel aqueducts that will siphon water from the wet south, and send it thousands of miles to the thirsty north. Aside from costing nearly $60 billion, and having no hope of completion before 2050, 25 years after most of the north will have run out of water, the SNWD faces the real prospect of having no water worth drinking to funnel, if factories cannot contain their pollution. A second method adopted by the Communist party has been noisy and grandiose national legislation on the subject of environmental reform, most of which is simply ignored at the local level, where politicians often own or collude the industrial sector. China faces some serious barriers to change: the government must find ways to end the corruption of its local officials, as well as interest the corporations themselves in changing their practices, perhaps through market-based incentives such as tax credits or quota systems, which are common in the West.
Western critics of China’s environmental degradation must remember that, historically, such is the fate of any developing nation: at one time, both the U.S. and Britain suffered similar circumstances. Before Western activists, politicians, or corporations can point fingers, they must consider how their resources—the wealth of the richest nation on Earth—could be brought to bear on the problem, whether through investment in infrastructure, the construction of environmentally-friendly factories, or even direct, humanitarian intervention in current crisis areas.
For problems, look no further than Wuxi itself, where 95% of industrial waste and sewage runs, untreated, into Lake Tai, causing outbreaks of algae that in 2006 that forced the citizens to go without tap water for months. The Northern city of Shijiazhuang, (population two million) is rapidly running out of available drinking water: municipal wells have already drained an estimated two-thirds of the city’s groundwater, even as parched villages outside the city often depend for weeks at a time on tanker trucks that deliver fresh water. Ironically, in 2005 massive flooding in the southern province of Guangdong killed more than 500 people over the course of two weeks. Acid rain sears 30% of China’s landscape, and dust storms whirl off the North China Plain to blanket coastal cities (Beijing alone suffered eleven such storms in 2000), while grain production on the Plain fell by 50 million tons between 1998 and 2004 (a figure larger than the total grain harvest of Canada).
In many ways, nature has dealt China a bad hand—with over 22% of the world’s population, it has just 8% of its water. Further, the geographic distribution of water is decidedly lopsided: 81% of the water resides in the south, which has just over 50% of the population. This accounts for the absurdities of half the population of the verge of death-by-thirst, and the other half drowning in floods.
However, geography alone could not manufacture a crisis on this scale. Rather, in its scramble to modernize, China has embraced unsustainable industrial and agricultural practices, trading short-term growth for long-term viability. The practice of monoculture, and the overuse of pesticides have created a new Dust Bowl out of the North Plain, where the depletion of 40% of the soil has led to those falling harvests and dust storms. Further, China’s industries, given very little oversight by local governments, produce so much waste that half the rivers running through China’s urban centers have been deemed unfit even for irrigation, and emit more sulfur dioxide (a principal cause of acid rain) than in any other nation.
Over the past decade or so, Chinese officials have steadily warmed to the need for change. Indeed, in a nation where 320 million people lack adequate drinking water, and unsustainable economic practices (and the health problems arising from them) cause an estimated loss of 15.1 billion dollars per year, it must have taken doublethink on a grand scale to prevent any action heretofore. Impressed with the need for change, the government has attacked the problem from several directions, all of them beset with serious problems. Two examples will suffice: construction just recently commenced on the South-North Water Diversion (SNWD), a series of parallel aqueducts that will siphon water from the wet south, and send it thousands of miles to the thirsty north. Aside from costing nearly $60 billion, and having no hope of completion before 2050, 25 years after most of the north will have run out of water, the SNWD faces the real prospect of having no water worth drinking to funnel, if factories cannot contain their pollution. A second method adopted by the Communist party has been noisy and grandiose national legislation on the subject of environmental reform, most of which is simply ignored at the local level, where politicians often own or collude the industrial sector. China faces some serious barriers to change: the government must find ways to end the corruption of its local officials, as well as interest the corporations themselves in changing their practices, perhaps through market-based incentives such as tax credits or quota systems, which are common in the West.
Western critics of China’s environmental degradation must remember that, historically, such is the fate of any developing nation: at one time, both the U.S. and Britain suffered similar circumstances. Before Western activists, politicians, or corporations can point fingers, they must consider how their resources—the wealth of the richest nation on Earth—could be brought to bear on the problem, whether through investment in infrastructure, the construction of environmentally-friendly factories, or even direct, humanitarian intervention in current crisis areas.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Questioning de Tocqueville
Here is a glimpse at Alexis de Tocqueville's thoughts on the tension between character and Constitution:
"When the people are enlightened, awakened to their interests, and habituated to thinking about them...the collective force of citizens will always be more powerful to produce social well-being than authority of government" (DIA, Part 1, Ch. 5).
From the ratification debate surrounding the Constitution onward, a central theme of American political debate has revolved around whether the foundation of society lay in the efficacy of its laws, or in the virtue of its citizens. It seems that Tocqueville came down more on the Anti-Federalist side of the debate; I'm still wondering where to place myself.
Perhaps the most fruitful way to proceed through this subject is to define it, to draw its borders into focus, and give us a space in which to think. Before I can outline a firm position on this subject, I need to answer several questions.
Is the law essentially a tool for restraining corrupt human nature, or a tutor for cultivating virtue? Can it be both?
The Founders took pride in the fact that the Constitution does not fight human selfishness, but is fueled by it--does seeking an improved society through increased legislation expand a system that encourages vice?
In other words, can the "authority of government" ever legitimately (i.e. Constitutionally) be brought to bear on something outside the realm of self-interest? Perhaps the text of the Constitution itself could help us here; thinking quickly, it seems to me that the Framers intentionally took pains to limit the efficacy of government regarding traditional seats of virtue (i.e. religious, family, communal life). Legislation on such matters usually must proceed in a roundabout fashion (i.e. the Congressional authority to regulate interstate commerce).
Tocqueville spoke of the people's "interests"; Aristotle was convinced that any just society required a shared view of the common good--do American citizens as a whole even have a concept of a shared interest, such that a grassroots movement could truly effect social change?
I learn one fact, and, like pulling a thread from the dazzling tapestry of life, I draw ten questions along with it. Paul put it well: "If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know" (1 Cor. 8).
"When the people are enlightened, awakened to their interests, and habituated to thinking about them...the collective force of citizens will always be more powerful to produce social well-being than authority of government" (DIA, Part 1, Ch. 5).
From the ratification debate surrounding the Constitution onward, a central theme of American political debate has revolved around whether the foundation of society lay in the efficacy of its laws, or in the virtue of its citizens. It seems that Tocqueville came down more on the Anti-Federalist side of the debate; I'm still wondering where to place myself.
Perhaps the most fruitful way to proceed through this subject is to define it, to draw its borders into focus, and give us a space in which to think. Before I can outline a firm position on this subject, I need to answer several questions.
Is the law essentially a tool for restraining corrupt human nature, or a tutor for cultivating virtue? Can it be both?
The Founders took pride in the fact that the Constitution does not fight human selfishness, but is fueled by it--does seeking an improved society through increased legislation expand a system that encourages vice?
In other words, can the "authority of government" ever legitimately (i.e. Constitutionally) be brought to bear on something outside the realm of self-interest? Perhaps the text of the Constitution itself could help us here; thinking quickly, it seems to me that the Framers intentionally took pains to limit the efficacy of government regarding traditional seats of virtue (i.e. religious, family, communal life). Legislation on such matters usually must proceed in a roundabout fashion (i.e. the Congressional authority to regulate interstate commerce).
Tocqueville spoke of the people's "interests"; Aristotle was convinced that any just society required a shared view of the common good--do American citizens as a whole even have a concept of a shared interest, such that a grassroots movement could truly effect social change?
I learn one fact, and, like pulling a thread from the dazzling tapestry of life, I draw ten questions along with it. Paul put it well: "If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know" (1 Cor. 8).
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Moral Fragments
Can anyone tell me where to find the anti-life and anti-choice bumper stickers? I didn’t think so. Is it not true that any discussion of morality and public policy seems quickly to devolve into shrill assertions of disputed values? As a whole, the West’s political discussion of morality seems to consist of antagonistic individuals desperately clinging to fragments of a larger worldview, and engaged in a discourse that both aspires to rational universality, and flounders amid chaotic subjectivism.
The first sign of a splintered morality is a shift from dialogue to shouting matches. Indeed, many current political thinkers demonstrate this with their astonishing ability to talk past one another. The implicit dialogue between an op-ed by Anna Bernasek of the Times (arguing the necessity of broad equality of income to social justice), and a Wall Street Journal piece calling for tax cuts to ensure free wealth-creation is about at the level of grade school name-calling. The abortion debate has somehow pitted the sanctity of a woman’s body against a child’s right to live. Marriage, President Bush insists, is “a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society,” to which Stephanie Coontz of the Times responds, “Marriage has been in a constant state of evolution since the dawn of the Stone Age.” Just war theorists join Clausewitz in accepting the death of the few to save the many, while Wendell Berry and his followers decry any action that knowingly takes a life, despite the costs.
Each of these paralyzed arguments shares a common trait: if one only accepts the initial premises, the conclusion follows logically. If bodily self-determination is the highest good, then abortion ought to be legalized. If equality of income yields the best kind of society, America ought to create a more progressive tax system. If there is no justification for willingly taking an innocent life, America ought to stay out of all wars. We have no problem teasing out our arguments; we just can’t seem to agree on the premises.
Politicians recognize this problem, and have sought a solution in a fulfillment of Kant’s dream of a rational morality. Thus, Barack Obama has called for a policies rooted in “universal, rather than religion-specific, values,” while Hillary Clinton insisted, “I don't think this [abortion] debate should be about ideology - it should be about facts, and evidence.” Denis Kucinich went so far as to argue, “By removing the trappings of religion from our public…institutions…we actually increase the freedom of everyone to freely and openly practice the beliefs of their choice.”
However, far from having found a few “first principles” by which to define some sort of common good, American politicians consistently voice uncertainty and confusion amid the chaotic demands of conflicting moral premises. John McCain trumpets the morality of democracy-building, while John Edwards calls poverty, “the great moral issue of our time.” Even Mike Huckabee, with his remarkably well-grounded emphasis on a consistent pro-life stance that does not merely “end at the birth canal,” could only describe executing the death penalty as the most difficult part of his job as governor. In the circus of American politics, these public figures pick one or two of many issues to stand upon, demand a rational discussion, free from the local prejudices of religion, and yet find themselves with no justification for their narrowly defined morality outside their own preferential assertions. Thus, the conversation devolves quickly into finger pointing and shouting, with seemingly no way to bridge the gap between competing premises.
Historically, most cultures have taken a very different approach to morality, creating systems that could possibly overcome some of the shortcomings of American rational-assertiveness. First, nearly every major worldview has viewed morality, not as a series of distinct precepts, which could be examined and debated in isolation, but as an integral whole. Jews have Torah, the Law; the Chinese have the Tao, the Way; Hindus have Rta, or Order; Christians have the way of Jesus, and his Greatest Command, which draws all others into itself. Second, each of these cultures has developed a praxis that provides a context in which moral action and discussion can take place. Plato remarks in Book 5 of the Republic that only men whose souls had been tempered by years of “music and gymnastic” could ever be fit to discern justice. Likewise, in Hebrew Psalms, it is the Law, not reason, which provides a lamp to man’s feet; a comprehensive morality tutors a flawed rationality. Christianity seeks to create a new society rooted in sacrificial love by ordering its followers around the Eucharist, a common, egalitarian meal, commemorating the sacrifice of Christ; likewise, Muslims act out their zealous pursuit of submission to God through their five daily prayer hours. Now, these moral systems may assume different premises at the outset, but they do so with the assumption that in order to engage the worldview, one must accept it as a whole. Even further, to grasp it fully, one must first order one’s life according to its praxis, and let that shape his understanding.
In America, men commonly seek to use their reason to construct a moral system from the ground up, and the resulting creation of whim, chance, and confusion is a shabby structure indeed, fit only for housing a few moral precepts, plucked from a larger traditional system either at random, or with sinister intent. It is as though the West, which clung for centuries to the Judeo-Hellenistic worldview, delicate and beautiful as stained glass with its complex and nuanced morals informed by a richly symbolic praxis, had suddenly let the treasure crash to the ground, and shatter into a thousand fragments; America is now picking up the pieces, but finding itself bloodied by the lone shards of its disjointed morals.
The first sign of a splintered morality is a shift from dialogue to shouting matches. Indeed, many current political thinkers demonstrate this with their astonishing ability to talk past one another. The implicit dialogue between an op-ed by Anna Bernasek of the Times (arguing the necessity of broad equality of income to social justice), and a Wall Street Journal piece calling for tax cuts to ensure free wealth-creation is about at the level of grade school name-calling. The abortion debate has somehow pitted the sanctity of a woman’s body against a child’s right to live. Marriage, President Bush insists, is “a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society,” to which Stephanie Coontz of the Times responds, “Marriage has been in a constant state of evolution since the dawn of the Stone Age.” Just war theorists join Clausewitz in accepting the death of the few to save the many, while Wendell Berry and his followers decry any action that knowingly takes a life, despite the costs.
Each of these paralyzed arguments shares a common trait: if one only accepts the initial premises, the conclusion follows logically. If bodily self-determination is the highest good, then abortion ought to be legalized. If equality of income yields the best kind of society, America ought to create a more progressive tax system. If there is no justification for willingly taking an innocent life, America ought to stay out of all wars. We have no problem teasing out our arguments; we just can’t seem to agree on the premises.
Politicians recognize this problem, and have sought a solution in a fulfillment of Kant’s dream of a rational morality. Thus, Barack Obama has called for a policies rooted in “universal, rather than religion-specific, values,” while Hillary Clinton insisted, “I don't think this [abortion] debate should be about ideology - it should be about facts, and evidence.” Denis Kucinich went so far as to argue, “By removing the trappings of religion from our public…institutions…we actually increase the freedom of everyone to freely and openly practice the beliefs of their choice.”
However, far from having found a few “first principles” by which to define some sort of common good, American politicians consistently voice uncertainty and confusion amid the chaotic demands of conflicting moral premises. John McCain trumpets the morality of democracy-building, while John Edwards calls poverty, “the great moral issue of our time.” Even Mike Huckabee, with his remarkably well-grounded emphasis on a consistent pro-life stance that does not merely “end at the birth canal,” could only describe executing the death penalty as the most difficult part of his job as governor. In the circus of American politics, these public figures pick one or two of many issues to stand upon, demand a rational discussion, free from the local prejudices of religion, and yet find themselves with no justification for their narrowly defined morality outside their own preferential assertions. Thus, the conversation devolves quickly into finger pointing and shouting, with seemingly no way to bridge the gap between competing premises.
Historically, most cultures have taken a very different approach to morality, creating systems that could possibly overcome some of the shortcomings of American rational-assertiveness. First, nearly every major worldview has viewed morality, not as a series of distinct precepts, which could be examined and debated in isolation, but as an integral whole. Jews have Torah, the Law; the Chinese have the Tao, the Way; Hindus have Rta, or Order; Christians have the way of Jesus, and his Greatest Command, which draws all others into itself. Second, each of these cultures has developed a praxis that provides a context in which moral action and discussion can take place. Plato remarks in Book 5 of the Republic that only men whose souls had been tempered by years of “music and gymnastic” could ever be fit to discern justice. Likewise, in Hebrew Psalms, it is the Law, not reason, which provides a lamp to man’s feet; a comprehensive morality tutors a flawed rationality. Christianity seeks to create a new society rooted in sacrificial love by ordering its followers around the Eucharist, a common, egalitarian meal, commemorating the sacrifice of Christ; likewise, Muslims act out their zealous pursuit of submission to God through their five daily prayer hours. Now, these moral systems may assume different premises at the outset, but they do so with the assumption that in order to engage the worldview, one must accept it as a whole. Even further, to grasp it fully, one must first order one’s life according to its praxis, and let that shape his understanding.
In America, men commonly seek to use their reason to construct a moral system from the ground up, and the resulting creation of whim, chance, and confusion is a shabby structure indeed, fit only for housing a few moral precepts, plucked from a larger traditional system either at random, or with sinister intent. It is as though the West, which clung for centuries to the Judeo-Hellenistic worldview, delicate and beautiful as stained glass with its complex and nuanced morals informed by a richly symbolic praxis, had suddenly let the treasure crash to the ground, and shatter into a thousand fragments; America is now picking up the pieces, but finding itself bloodied by the lone shards of its disjointed morals.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
"The Most Natural Defense of a Free Country"
Virginia Tech. Columbine. Jonesboro. These names need no elaboration; they instantly evoke images of fleeing students and body bags strewn across hillsides, and their syllables echo with screams of terror, and the roar of pistol-fire. These names seem to pronounce a prophetic doom over our society, and like any good oracle, a fierce debate rages over their meaning. Teens steal guns from home, construct bombs, and scheme to slaughter an entire public high school—what must we do?
The gun control movement, led by organizations such as the Brady Campaign and Handgun Control, offers one response, essentially seeking to sever the supply chain that enables public shootings, by sharply curtailing average citizens’ rights to own weapons. With ever-more stringent background checks, waiting periods (thought to prevent “crimes of passion”), and “gun-free zones,” gun-control advocates envision a relatively weaponless, and therefore (they reason) relatively peaceful, society. By this argument, if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had not had access to high-powered weapons in their parents’ house, then the thirteen victims of the Columbine massacre would not have died.
University of Chicago economist John Lott has offered a powerful critique of this notion. Restricting the supply of a good principally drives the price up, creating powerful incentives for vendors to find ways to deal illegally. Gun control laws, he insists, have had this effect. Lott argues, “Concealed handguns by permit holders are virtually never involved in the commission of crime, let alone murder”; rather, almost all criminal use guns they purchased illegally on the street. As government officials have found in the case of alcohol, narcotics, and now firearms, trying to stamp out a trade rich with profit opportunities inevitably devolves into a national game of Whack-a-Mole.
Lott defends the notion that to prevent violent crime, particularly public shootings such as Virginia Tech, we must shrink the demand—we must make attempting such slaughter prohibitively risky, so that the killers will choose to stay home. In his view, the best approach to this end is to pass right-to-carry legislation that would allow “law-abiding citizens with no history of serious mental illness” (he might have said “virtuous and healthy,” a crucial point that bears meditation) to carry concealed arms. Consider—if only 5% of the country had concealed weapons permits, then the likelihood of someone in a crowded public area (a school, a restaurant, a park) being able to respond to an attacker with force is virtually certain.
The often-untold history of multiple shootings defends this theory. When a teen stabbed his mother, stole a rifle, and began to terrorize a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car, and wounded the shooter. In a similar incident, a restaurant owner held a school-shooter at bay with a shotgun, ending the killing nearly ten minutes before the police arrived. Even more telling, public shootings were commonplace in Israel, until after an expansion of right-to-carry laws, when terrorists found civilians returning fire. Indeed, Lott found that states with right-to-carry laws saw an average decline of 89% in murders per 100,000 people within the first year, while states without such laws consistently account for almost 90% of multiple-shootings.
Now, Lott acknowledged the limitations of his theory: “The deterrent effect depends on how many potential offenders are close enough to the margin so that the passage of a shall issue law changes the net benefit from positive to negative.” In other words, such economic modeling only works with people exercising the rational faculty of cost-benefit analysis, people with enough of a stake in a the normal social sphere to be deterred by the thought of resistance and imminent death. Lott’s theory accounts for the vast reduction in multiple shootings: most potential killers now stay home, having calculated the odds and found them slim.
However, the killings that continue to occur involve a different kind of person, one indifferent to Lott’s models. In an article on Slate.com, Dave Cullen described the Columbine killers: Klebold was “depressive and suicidal,” and Harris a malevolent sociopath, devoid of conscience. Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 33 during his rampage at Virginia Tech, was treated for severe anxiety and speech impediments throughout his adolescence, and wrote such graphically violent poetry for a class that the teacher threatened to quit if he were not removed. Mitchell Johnson, one of the twelve year-olds involved in the Jonesboro killing, had a history of sexual abuse as a child. Indeed, Lott observed, “Half of 100 multiple-victim public murderers had received formal diagnosis of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia.”
Lott’s economic model of deterrence works only in a society of virtuous, decent, courageous citizens, a society where public killings remain a horrific novelty, a society where average men and women would risk their lives for strangers. Ultimately, the issue of public killings devolves principally to citizen-virtue, not gun control. The government can insure that the “demand” for public killings stays low by cultivating those virtues, whether by honoring in its tax codes the family structure that stewards it, offering affordable psychiatric treatment to the wounded children who could wield tomorrow’s guns, or educating parents to identify the signs of serious emotional disturbance. Alexander Hamilton thought armed civilians “the most natural defense of a free country”; we ought only to restrict gun ownership when we cannot trust the average citizen to use them wisely and courageously.
The gun control movement, led by organizations such as the Brady Campaign and Handgun Control, offers one response, essentially seeking to sever the supply chain that enables public shootings, by sharply curtailing average citizens’ rights to own weapons. With ever-more stringent background checks, waiting periods (thought to prevent “crimes of passion”), and “gun-free zones,” gun-control advocates envision a relatively weaponless, and therefore (they reason) relatively peaceful, society. By this argument, if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had not had access to high-powered weapons in their parents’ house, then the thirteen victims of the Columbine massacre would not have died.
University of Chicago economist John Lott has offered a powerful critique of this notion. Restricting the supply of a good principally drives the price up, creating powerful incentives for vendors to find ways to deal illegally. Gun control laws, he insists, have had this effect. Lott argues, “Concealed handguns by permit holders are virtually never involved in the commission of crime, let alone murder”; rather, almost all criminal use guns they purchased illegally on the street. As government officials have found in the case of alcohol, narcotics, and now firearms, trying to stamp out a trade rich with profit opportunities inevitably devolves into a national game of Whack-a-Mole.
Lott defends the notion that to prevent violent crime, particularly public shootings such as Virginia Tech, we must shrink the demand—we must make attempting such slaughter prohibitively risky, so that the killers will choose to stay home. In his view, the best approach to this end is to pass right-to-carry legislation that would allow “law-abiding citizens with no history of serious mental illness” (he might have said “virtuous and healthy,” a crucial point that bears meditation) to carry concealed arms. Consider—if only 5% of the country had concealed weapons permits, then the likelihood of someone in a crowded public area (a school, a restaurant, a park) being able to respond to an attacker with force is virtually certain.
The often-untold history of multiple shootings defends this theory. When a teen stabbed his mother, stole a rifle, and began to terrorize a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car, and wounded the shooter. In a similar incident, a restaurant owner held a school-shooter at bay with a shotgun, ending the killing nearly ten minutes before the police arrived. Even more telling, public shootings were commonplace in Israel, until after an expansion of right-to-carry laws, when terrorists found civilians returning fire. Indeed, Lott found that states with right-to-carry laws saw an average decline of 89% in murders per 100,000 people within the first year, while states without such laws consistently account for almost 90% of multiple-shootings.
Now, Lott acknowledged the limitations of his theory: “The deterrent effect depends on how many potential offenders are close enough to the margin so that the passage of a shall issue law changes the net benefit from positive to negative.” In other words, such economic modeling only works with people exercising the rational faculty of cost-benefit analysis, people with enough of a stake in a the normal social sphere to be deterred by the thought of resistance and imminent death. Lott’s theory accounts for the vast reduction in multiple shootings: most potential killers now stay home, having calculated the odds and found them slim.
However, the killings that continue to occur involve a different kind of person, one indifferent to Lott’s models. In an article on Slate.com, Dave Cullen described the Columbine killers: Klebold was “depressive and suicidal,” and Harris a malevolent sociopath, devoid of conscience. Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 33 during his rampage at Virginia Tech, was treated for severe anxiety and speech impediments throughout his adolescence, and wrote such graphically violent poetry for a class that the teacher threatened to quit if he were not removed. Mitchell Johnson, one of the twelve year-olds involved in the Jonesboro killing, had a history of sexual abuse as a child. Indeed, Lott observed, “Half of 100 multiple-victim public murderers had received formal diagnosis of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia.”
Lott’s economic model of deterrence works only in a society of virtuous, decent, courageous citizens, a society where public killings remain a horrific novelty, a society where average men and women would risk their lives for strangers. Ultimately, the issue of public killings devolves principally to citizen-virtue, not gun control. The government can insure that the “demand” for public killings stays low by cultivating those virtues, whether by honoring in its tax codes the family structure that stewards it, offering affordable psychiatric treatment to the wounded children who could wield tomorrow’s guns, or educating parents to identify the signs of serious emotional disturbance. Alexander Hamilton thought armed civilians “the most natural defense of a free country”; we ought only to restrict gun ownership when we cannot trust the average citizen to use them wisely and courageously.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Which Christianity?
It was a historic night for King's--our fledgling college hosted a debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens on the topic, "Is Christianity the problem?" Overall, I feel nothing but elation for the outcome. The debaters (both social critics and columnists) displayed poise, wit, and an incredible command of history, while King's created a forum in which to present itself to New York as a serious voice for cultural change. Let's do it every week.
However, I definitely have some reservations about the course the debate took. It seems that the topic question divides somewhat neatly in two, namely, "Which Christianity?" and then, "Is that Christianity bad for the world?" The debaters spent most of their time camped in the second question, with Hitchens asserting that Christianity (or its "parodies," i.e. Islam) had proven itself primarily as an agent of oppression and degradation, and D'Souza countering (mostly convincingly, in my mind) that Christianity had in fact created an unprecedented culture, one rooted in love and self-sacrifice. Yet, this aspect of the debate seems, in reality, least controversial--I think everyone in the audience would have agreed that Church history consists of a muddle of light and dark, of beautiful ideals (or at least ethical precepts), imperfectly lived out.
However, much less clarity emerged on the issue of the fundamental nature of Christianity. Hitchens had no real complaints about Christian ethics; he merely asserted that they were not original to Christianity, that pure reason or common sense could supply mankind with the Golden Rule, and the like. Conversely, Hitchens displayed a bitter, even vitriolic distaste for Christian theology (or what I might characterize more broadly as the "Christian worldview"), which he characterized as a creation-hating, sado-masochistic system catering to snivelling, grovelling, irrational bullies who use their dated, corrupt, contrived book to oppress others, even as they fawn and abase themselves before a God who at best could be a petty tyrant, and at worst is nothing at all. To Hitchens, Christian theology is ultimately centered in the gruesome, arbitrary, and unjust human sacrifice of the Cross, and cannot mount any more powerful moral exhortation than "Turn, or burn!" To Hitchens, the greatest argument for the evil of the "good news" is that it has duped billions of people into embracing a worldview that is at its heart irrational, inhuman, and anti-life (in the sense that it ultimately negates all material existence with apocalyptic judgment).
When Hitchens described in his disbelief in such a system, his hatred of it, I wanted to leap from my seat and give a shout of affirmation. Unfortunately for Hitchens, with all his rancor and wit, he was (in my view) emphatically not describing the gospel of Jesus. Still more unfortunate, D'Souza never clearly articulated an alternative to Hitchens' portrayal. I have outlined my understanding of the Kingdom more fully elsewhere on this blog site (see especially "Jesus," "Dreaming Reality," "Choices," and "Capitalism and the Kingdom"), so I won't delve into the details here. However, one of Hitchens' points makes me especially nervous, because I don't think mainstream evangelicalism has articulated an appropriate response to it. He castigates the church for its dualism, for its patient resignation to endure material existence, in the hopes of some better, spiritual existence after death. He despises this attitude; so do I. Here's a basic fact about the narrative of the Bible--Genesis begins with the creation of the earth; Revelation ends with the re-creation of the heavens and the earth. The Bible does not end in some heavenly realm, but on earth. The gospel does not negate creation; it restores it. Hitchens needs to get his facts straight, and D'Souza should have helped him.
I think that Hitchen's characterization of Christianity creates an irresolvable tension, which he failed to address. If, as he asserts, Jesus' teachings on the nature of God, humanity, and creation at large are fundamentally corrupt and malicious, inhuman and irrational, how on earth could Jesus have produced an ethical system of such resounding beauty? How could a sado-masochistic worldview produce the Sermon on the Mount? To alleivate this tension, it seems that Hitchens must deny at least one of three things: his description of the Christian worldview, the historical validity of Jesus' teachings (i.e. Jesus never actually said those things), or the moral value of the teachings themselves. He lives by the teachings, so the third option is out; he clearly knows very little about historical criticism of the Bible, so I won't even bother to challenge him there; thus, all that remains to him is to acknowledge his inadequate understanding of the gospel itself.
However, I definitely have some reservations about the course the debate took. It seems that the topic question divides somewhat neatly in two, namely, "Which Christianity?" and then, "Is that Christianity bad for the world?" The debaters spent most of their time camped in the second question, with Hitchens asserting that Christianity (or its "parodies," i.e. Islam) had proven itself primarily as an agent of oppression and degradation, and D'Souza countering (mostly convincingly, in my mind) that Christianity had in fact created an unprecedented culture, one rooted in love and self-sacrifice. Yet, this aspect of the debate seems, in reality, least controversial--I think everyone in the audience would have agreed that Church history consists of a muddle of light and dark, of beautiful ideals (or at least ethical precepts), imperfectly lived out.
However, much less clarity emerged on the issue of the fundamental nature of Christianity. Hitchens had no real complaints about Christian ethics; he merely asserted that they were not original to Christianity, that pure reason or common sense could supply mankind with the Golden Rule, and the like. Conversely, Hitchens displayed a bitter, even vitriolic distaste for Christian theology (or what I might characterize more broadly as the "Christian worldview"), which he characterized as a creation-hating, sado-masochistic system catering to snivelling, grovelling, irrational bullies who use their dated, corrupt, contrived book to oppress others, even as they fawn and abase themselves before a God who at best could be a petty tyrant, and at worst is nothing at all. To Hitchens, Christian theology is ultimately centered in the gruesome, arbitrary, and unjust human sacrifice of the Cross, and cannot mount any more powerful moral exhortation than "Turn, or burn!" To Hitchens, the greatest argument for the evil of the "good news" is that it has duped billions of people into embracing a worldview that is at its heart irrational, inhuman, and anti-life (in the sense that it ultimately negates all material existence with apocalyptic judgment).
When Hitchens described in his disbelief in such a system, his hatred of it, I wanted to leap from my seat and give a shout of affirmation. Unfortunately for Hitchens, with all his rancor and wit, he was (in my view) emphatically not describing the gospel of Jesus. Still more unfortunate, D'Souza never clearly articulated an alternative to Hitchens' portrayal. I have outlined my understanding of the Kingdom more fully elsewhere on this blog site (see especially "Jesus," "Dreaming Reality," "Choices," and "Capitalism and the Kingdom"), so I won't delve into the details here. However, one of Hitchens' points makes me especially nervous, because I don't think mainstream evangelicalism has articulated an appropriate response to it. He castigates the church for its dualism, for its patient resignation to endure material existence, in the hopes of some better, spiritual existence after death. He despises this attitude; so do I. Here's a basic fact about the narrative of the Bible--Genesis begins with the creation of the earth; Revelation ends with the re-creation of the heavens and the earth. The Bible does not end in some heavenly realm, but on earth. The gospel does not negate creation; it restores it. Hitchens needs to get his facts straight, and D'Souza should have helped him.
I think that Hitchen's characterization of Christianity creates an irresolvable tension, which he failed to address. If, as he asserts, Jesus' teachings on the nature of God, humanity, and creation at large are fundamentally corrupt and malicious, inhuman and irrational, how on earth could Jesus have produced an ethical system of such resounding beauty? How could a sado-masochistic worldview produce the Sermon on the Mount? To alleivate this tension, it seems that Hitchens must deny at least one of three things: his description of the Christian worldview, the historical validity of Jesus' teachings (i.e. Jesus never actually said those things), or the moral value of the teachings themselves. He lives by the teachings, so the third option is out; he clearly knows very little about historical criticism of the Bible, so I won't even bother to challenge him there; thus, all that remains to him is to acknowledge his inadequate understanding of the gospel itself.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Radiohead's "In Rainbows" points to new pots of gold
On October 10, Radiohead uploaded its newest album, "In Rainbows," to the Internet, and allowed fans to pay whatever they wished for the DRM-free recording. In the time it took Thom Yorke to click, "Send," everything changed. For the entire history of the music recording industry, a band looking to produce an album faced an arduous quest, requiring the assembly of a motley fellowship of producers, agents, audio technicians, advertisers, photographers, manufacturers, distributors, even lawyers. The album itself had to trek from writing table to studio to lab to factory to distributor to retail store before it ever graced the ears of a fan.
As I said, everything has changed. The blossoming Information Revolution has created a global economy, in which anyone can create practically anything, and trade with anyone, anywhere. Radiohead (helped, of course, by their fabulous wealth) recorded "In Rainbows" from home, using studio-quality equipment that allows bands to become musicians, producers, and technicians at once, cutting costs by tens of thousands of dollars per day. If you doubt the efficacy of such an attempt, listen to the music--$500 headphones might reveal the shortcomings of the recording, but the quality is identical to their prior albums on the $20 iPod earbuds that we all use. Now, once they had a finished product, they were truly finished--no subesequent supply chains of production, no mark-ups along the distribution line. They uploaded one, digital copy, and every subsequent copy purchased incurred exactly zero marginal cost, making every sale almost pure profit, especially relative to the expensive production systems of traditional records. Singer Thom Yorke, summed the issue nicely in a comment to TIME, " “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one."
Radiohead's radical move represents an intelligent response to this newfound Global Village, where information diffuses at an incredible rate among millions of users, defying even the most violent attempts to thwart its flow (compare Napster's spectacular downfall with the continued growth of P2P networks). Increasingly, the hype surrounding a new album breaks days before the release, when a pirated copy (often originating from within the studio itself, cf. Underoath's recent album, "They're Only Chasing Safety") leaked to the Internet soars into millions of downloads within days, or else dissipates after the release, as illegal downloads steal revenues from retailers. If music-lovers will bypass $15 prices regardless, why not allow them to set a price reasonable for themselves? After all, some money is surely preferable to none. The initial sales dispersion of "In Rainbows" is telling--about one-third of the downloads received no payment (except for the 45 cent credit charge levied on everyone), but high numbers of outrageous bids (upwards of $21) have brought the average price to about $8. Whether from guilt, philanthropy, or elation at collaborating directly with their band, many customers have found incentives to pay outside mere material self-interest.
Changing technology has made the recording industry unprofitable; Radiohead's new approach admits these realities. Do not, however, assume that the age of professional music has ended. Album sales have always paled before the profits from concerts and lower-cost merchandise, and both industries are booming. Further, this new medium of sale will likely open hitherto unexpected profit opportunities. For instance, the required credit card form forced every customer, even those who paid nothing, to give their name, email, and home address--this information is a valuable on its own, and the marketing schemes and products sold using it could be more valuable still. Innovation always comes from unexpected directions--that's what makes it so profitable. In the early part of the 20th century, when labor groups and economists alike bemoaned the inefficient, oligopolistic, government-collusive railroad industry, two men invented the airplane, and revolutioned transportation. I sense a similar change is afoot for the recording business.
As I said, everything has changed. The blossoming Information Revolution has created a global economy, in which anyone can create practically anything, and trade with anyone, anywhere. Radiohead (helped, of course, by their fabulous wealth) recorded "In Rainbows" from home, using studio-quality equipment that allows bands to become musicians, producers, and technicians at once, cutting costs by tens of thousands of dollars per day. If you doubt the efficacy of such an attempt, listen to the music--$500 headphones might reveal the shortcomings of the recording, but the quality is identical to their prior albums on the $20 iPod earbuds that we all use. Now, once they had a finished product, they were truly finished--no subesequent supply chains of production, no mark-ups along the distribution line. They uploaded one, digital copy, and every subsequent copy purchased incurred exactly zero marginal cost, making every sale almost pure profit, especially relative to the expensive production systems of traditional records. Singer Thom Yorke, summed the issue nicely in a comment to TIME, " “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one."
Radiohead's radical move represents an intelligent response to this newfound Global Village, where information diffuses at an incredible rate among millions of users, defying even the most violent attempts to thwart its flow (compare Napster's spectacular downfall with the continued growth of P2P networks). Increasingly, the hype surrounding a new album breaks days before the release, when a pirated copy (often originating from within the studio itself, cf. Underoath's recent album, "They're Only Chasing Safety") leaked to the Internet soars into millions of downloads within days, or else dissipates after the release, as illegal downloads steal revenues from retailers. If music-lovers will bypass $15 prices regardless, why not allow them to set a price reasonable for themselves? After all, some money is surely preferable to none. The initial sales dispersion of "In Rainbows" is telling--about one-third of the downloads received no payment (except for the 45 cent credit charge levied on everyone), but high numbers of outrageous bids (upwards of $21) have brought the average price to about $8. Whether from guilt, philanthropy, or elation at collaborating directly with their band, many customers have found incentives to pay outside mere material self-interest.
Changing technology has made the recording industry unprofitable; Radiohead's new approach admits these realities. Do not, however, assume that the age of professional music has ended. Album sales have always paled before the profits from concerts and lower-cost merchandise, and both industries are booming. Further, this new medium of sale will likely open hitherto unexpected profit opportunities. For instance, the required credit card form forced every customer, even those who paid nothing, to give their name, email, and home address--this information is a valuable on its own, and the marketing schemes and products sold using it could be more valuable still. Innovation always comes from unexpected directions--that's what makes it so profitable. In the early part of the 20th century, when labor groups and economists alike bemoaned the inefficient, oligopolistic, government-collusive railroad industry, two men invented the airplane, and revolutioned transportation. I sense a similar change is afoot for the recording business.
Monday, October 8, 2007
THE THIRD WAY
Popular culture espouses two, competing narratives of American history, each evaluating the whirlwind of globalization, and America’s growing inequality. (An aside: Every individual combines and develops the various worldviews available to him uniquely; however, any coherent thought requires some level of generalization, to which we now turn.) The liberal-progressive sees the prime mover of history as a social struggle towards equality, and thus dismisses globalization, calling increased taxation to redistribute its benefits. The conservative-capitalist sees history as an economic struggle for wealth, and thus embraces the possibilities of globalization, calling only for a leveling of opportunity. The latter narrative offers powerful critiques of the former, but American culture has yet to produce a third way that might overcome the pitfalls of the conservative-capitalist vision.
In 2003, John Edwards neatly summarized the liberal-progressive stand, decrying "two Americas...one privileged, the other burdened...one America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks." Indeed, trends in recent American history could make sense in that light. Over the past thirty years, the annual income of the poorest 20% has risen 10%; the top one percent has experienced 157% income growth in that time, and the average CEO’s salary (composing roughly the top .01% of the population) has risen nearly 3600%. In fact, that very .01, 13,000 individuals with an average income of $17.6 million, have earned almost 30% of the gains recorded by the top 10%. Indeed, America’s per capita GDP is far greater than Sweden’s, but so is its illiteracy rate, and infant mortality, while life expectancy here is shorter than in the socialist bastion. To the liberal-progressive, such inequality is the source of strife and misery; to right the world, he claims, we must redistribute the burgeoning riches of the wealthy to the poorer classes, by taxing a growing percentage of his income.
A second narrative at play in America offers some profound criticism of the liberal-progressive’s history. To a conservative-capitalist, such as Steven Landsburg of the Wall Street Journal, world history until about 1800 was a haze of squalor, misery, and oppression, with a few aristocrats living in palaces financed by the blood and sweat of peasants. Then, about 1800, a confluence of technology and liberty allowed millions to get rich, almost overnight. This overwhelming progress has only intensified over time, so that today, the average income increases by about 2.3% a year, meaning that incomes nearly double every half-century; even the “poor” in America enjoy luxuries beyond the imagination of any feudal lord: indoor plumbing, television, cars.
The conservative-capitalist sees growing income inequality as merely a new chapter in this story of boundless growth. Over the past thirty years, incredible strides in communications technology, particularly the information-sharing capacities of the Internet and fiber-optics, have created a global economy, one in which companies can extend their manufacturing- and supply-chains across continents, in which programmers in India and Palo Alto can seamlessly collaborate in real-time. A few visionary individuals—Bill Gates, Page and Brin of Google, Taguchi of Toyota—have seized the opportunities afforded by this new technology, and they have been rewarded fabulously for their efforts. Far from the source of the problem itself, these captains of industry are showing a new way forward, and even carrying the rest along with them: Windows’ uniform software platform, and Google’s database have allowed millions of others to innovate as well. Indeed, over the next ten years, America will likely gain 13.5 million new jobs, most of them in the technology and services sectors made possible (or profitable) by globalization. Of course, some Americans (as many as 800,000) will lose their jobs, as low-skill manufacturing and service work travels to cheaper labor markets. However, the capitalist-conservative would demand, not redistribution, but greater government spending in education, and some short-term financial assistance, to help the displaced workers develop new skills to engage the changing economy. Greater taxation, they insist, will only worsen matters by hobbling innovation and growth. In fact, the richest 1%, earning 17% of the GDP, pays 37% of all income taxes. Increasing their burden will not create more jobs to better American lives.
The conservative-capitalist offers a powerful critique of the liberal-progressive narrative, powerful principally because it seems mostly true: the world really is getting richer, and most Americans will likely catch up to the super-rich eventually. However, the conservative-capitalist, with his ultimate appeal to the quest for wealth, has little defense against the stark figures of American living standards. Yes, we are richer, we have more things, but we also die sooner, and work more than almost anyone in the West (the richest 10% of Americans work almost twice as much as the poorest 10%). In America, almost 1.2 million people a year die of heart disease; in Britain, one of Europe’s unhealthiest states, barely 120,000 people die from heart attacks yearly. America has more McDonald’s than any other nation, with nearly 1 franchise per 10,000 people. Americans also drink (on average) 216 liters of soda a year, more than anywhere else in the world. Could there be a connection here?
Free markets are not the disease afflicting America, but they do facilitate the disease, a cancer called consumerism. Consumerism is marketing-turned-religion, and its creed is, “More, and cheaper.” More food, cheaper, leads to McDonalds. More detergent, or blue jeans, cheaper, leads to Wal-Mart, and the death of Main Street America. Has Wal-Mart exploited the American people by selling them cheap underwear? Of course not—Americans have debased themselves by equating wealth with health, and thus sacrificing much that is wonderful to trivialities. More wealth, cheaper (e.g. faster) leads inevitably to Enron, and a culture of corporate corruption. The 20th century, with its gulags and Great Leaps Forward, proved the bankruptcy of Equality as an ideal; the 21st may well prove the bankruptcy of the idol of Wealth. As a culture, we need to articulate in vision of life in which men consist of more than the sum total of their possessions.
Perhaps the gospel, with its stunning alternative to consumerism, could show America a way forward. The gospel offers a better story; one of God’s restoring all of creation to shalom, or wholeness. The gospel calls for a new kind of society, one in which people give generously out of the prosperity they graciously receive, one in which forgiveness and mercy—not greed and malice—act as arbiters between men, one in which each thinks of others—his neighbors, his enemies, his environment—before himself. In the Kingdom, we can say, “Enough!” In the Kingdom, we do not hunger for things we don’t need, and that cannot satisfy. In the Kingdom, we do not poison ourselves, or pillage our home, for the expedience of the moment. In the Kingdom, our mantra is not, “More, and cheaper,” but, “Enough, and better.”
In 2003, John Edwards neatly summarized the liberal-progressive stand, decrying "two Americas...one privileged, the other burdened...one America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks." Indeed, trends in recent American history could make sense in that light. Over the past thirty years, the annual income of the poorest 20% has risen 10%; the top one percent has experienced 157% income growth in that time, and the average CEO’s salary (composing roughly the top .01% of the population) has risen nearly 3600%. In fact, that very .01, 13,000 individuals with an average income of $17.6 million, have earned almost 30% of the gains recorded by the top 10%. Indeed, America’s per capita GDP is far greater than Sweden’s, but so is its illiteracy rate, and infant mortality, while life expectancy here is shorter than in the socialist bastion. To the liberal-progressive, such inequality is the source of strife and misery; to right the world, he claims, we must redistribute the burgeoning riches of the wealthy to the poorer classes, by taxing a growing percentage of his income.
A second narrative at play in America offers some profound criticism of the liberal-progressive’s history. To a conservative-capitalist, such as Steven Landsburg of the Wall Street Journal, world history until about 1800 was a haze of squalor, misery, and oppression, with a few aristocrats living in palaces financed by the blood and sweat of peasants. Then, about 1800, a confluence of technology and liberty allowed millions to get rich, almost overnight. This overwhelming progress has only intensified over time, so that today, the average income increases by about 2.3% a year, meaning that incomes nearly double every half-century; even the “poor” in America enjoy luxuries beyond the imagination of any feudal lord: indoor plumbing, television, cars.
The conservative-capitalist sees growing income inequality as merely a new chapter in this story of boundless growth. Over the past thirty years, incredible strides in communications technology, particularly the information-sharing capacities of the Internet and fiber-optics, have created a global economy, one in which companies can extend their manufacturing- and supply-chains across continents, in which programmers in India and Palo Alto can seamlessly collaborate in real-time. A few visionary individuals—Bill Gates, Page and Brin of Google, Taguchi of Toyota—have seized the opportunities afforded by this new technology, and they have been rewarded fabulously for their efforts. Far from the source of the problem itself, these captains of industry are showing a new way forward, and even carrying the rest along with them: Windows’ uniform software platform, and Google’s database have allowed millions of others to innovate as well. Indeed, over the next ten years, America will likely gain 13.5 million new jobs, most of them in the technology and services sectors made possible (or profitable) by globalization. Of course, some Americans (as many as 800,000) will lose their jobs, as low-skill manufacturing and service work travels to cheaper labor markets. However, the capitalist-conservative would demand, not redistribution, but greater government spending in education, and some short-term financial assistance, to help the displaced workers develop new skills to engage the changing economy. Greater taxation, they insist, will only worsen matters by hobbling innovation and growth. In fact, the richest 1%, earning 17% of the GDP, pays 37% of all income taxes. Increasing their burden will not create more jobs to better American lives.
The conservative-capitalist offers a powerful critique of the liberal-progressive narrative, powerful principally because it seems mostly true: the world really is getting richer, and most Americans will likely catch up to the super-rich eventually. However, the conservative-capitalist, with his ultimate appeal to the quest for wealth, has little defense against the stark figures of American living standards. Yes, we are richer, we have more things, but we also die sooner, and work more than almost anyone in the West (the richest 10% of Americans work almost twice as much as the poorest 10%). In America, almost 1.2 million people a year die of heart disease; in Britain, one of Europe’s unhealthiest states, barely 120,000 people die from heart attacks yearly. America has more McDonald’s than any other nation, with nearly 1 franchise per 10,000 people. Americans also drink (on average) 216 liters of soda a year, more than anywhere else in the world. Could there be a connection here?
Free markets are not the disease afflicting America, but they do facilitate the disease, a cancer called consumerism. Consumerism is marketing-turned-religion, and its creed is, “More, and cheaper.” More food, cheaper, leads to McDonalds. More detergent, or blue jeans, cheaper, leads to Wal-Mart, and the death of Main Street America. Has Wal-Mart exploited the American people by selling them cheap underwear? Of course not—Americans have debased themselves by equating wealth with health, and thus sacrificing much that is wonderful to trivialities. More wealth, cheaper (e.g. faster) leads inevitably to Enron, and a culture of corporate corruption. The 20th century, with its gulags and Great Leaps Forward, proved the bankruptcy of Equality as an ideal; the 21st may well prove the bankruptcy of the idol of Wealth. As a culture, we need to articulate in vision of life in which men consist of more than the sum total of their possessions.
Perhaps the gospel, with its stunning alternative to consumerism, could show America a way forward. The gospel offers a better story; one of God’s restoring all of creation to shalom, or wholeness. The gospel calls for a new kind of society, one in which people give generously out of the prosperity they graciously receive, one in which forgiveness and mercy—not greed and malice—act as arbiters between men, one in which each thinks of others—his neighbors, his enemies, his environment—before himself. In the Kingdom, we can say, “Enough!” In the Kingdom, we do not hunger for things we don’t need, and that cannot satisfy. In the Kingdom, we do not poison ourselves, or pillage our home, for the expedience of the moment. In the Kingdom, our mantra is not, “More, and cheaper,” but, “Enough, and better.”
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Character versus Constitution
(For Politics 213)
In the months following the Constitutional Convention, a fierce debate swept across the country, over the precise nature of the problems besetting the fractured Union. The Federalists, who supported ratifying the Constitution, argued that solving American political difficulties mainly consisted in creating the proper legal framework: in this view, the Constitution is a complex machine, driven by individual self-interest, which receives human nature, and produces liberty on the other end. Conversely, the Anti-Federalists argued that American political stability rested primarily in the virtue of its citizens. The Federalists saw the greatest hope for peace in a system of checks and balances that would prevent tyranny at any level; the Antis- countered with a vision of an nation full of citizens who loved liberty, and also loved their neighbors.
Ultimately, the Anti-Federalists had the weaker argument, and so lost the debate. They placed more confidence in men, individually and collectively, than prudence merited. However, the true legacy of American political life lies in the tension between these two arguments. In the 85 years following the Constitution's ratification, America showed a distinct love for complex legislative solutions to its great national challenge: slavery. The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise Tariff Act, the Compromise of 1850 were nothing more than elaborate chains to restrain the beast that raged within America. For eight decades, legislators devoted all their energy to the minutest details of the law, never bothering to question whether two groups divided by such a yawning moral chasm could agree to disagree indefinitely.
Perhaps men must always learn important lessons through painful experience: it took a Civil War to awaken America to the reality that the moral content of its citizens played a crucial role in the application of its laws. The War was never fundamentally about states' rights, or even about the Constitutional allowance of slavery: 500,000 men bled and died to decide whether America would become a nation of slaveowners, or a nation of free men.
While the Civil War showcased the need for attention to citizen-virtue, the war itself ended in still more legislative compromise. That was why the 14th Amendment, victory though it was, did not truly mark a period of equality and prosperity for blacks. Indeed, the nadir of racism and oppression really came during the 1920's--blacks only began to make true strides within society once the Civil Rights movement shook the racist culture of America to its core. The effects of Constitutional change can only come with significant cultural change: the character of the citizenry upholds the Constitution.
The history of racism and civil strife sheds light on the moral dilemmas racking the country today. In many areas, we have never abandoned the notion that politics is a purely technical matter, operating independently of the culture in which it resides.
Can anti-poverty legislation help a population increasingly bound to an ethic of entitlement and sloth? Will any amount of pro-life legislation end the murder of babies in a society increasingly indifferent to human life? Will any amount of Social Security ensure the welfare of the elderly in a society that increasingly scorns family solidarity? Will any amount of military spending secure American liberty, if Americans themselves are callous towards liberty (cf. either the Patriot Act, or Abu-Ghraib)?
More than ever, we need to listen to the losers from our history: if nothing else, perhaps we could take away some measure of humility.
In the months following the Constitutional Convention, a fierce debate swept across the country, over the precise nature of the problems besetting the fractured Union. The Federalists, who supported ratifying the Constitution, argued that solving American political difficulties mainly consisted in creating the proper legal framework: in this view, the Constitution is a complex machine, driven by individual self-interest, which receives human nature, and produces liberty on the other end. Conversely, the Anti-Federalists argued that American political stability rested primarily in the virtue of its citizens. The Federalists saw the greatest hope for peace in a system of checks and balances that would prevent tyranny at any level; the Antis- countered with a vision of an nation full of citizens who loved liberty, and also loved their neighbors.
Ultimately, the Anti-Federalists had the weaker argument, and so lost the debate. They placed more confidence in men, individually and collectively, than prudence merited. However, the true legacy of American political life lies in the tension between these two arguments. In the 85 years following the Constitution's ratification, America showed a distinct love for complex legislative solutions to its great national challenge: slavery. The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise Tariff Act, the Compromise of 1850 were nothing more than elaborate chains to restrain the beast that raged within America. For eight decades, legislators devoted all their energy to the minutest details of the law, never bothering to question whether two groups divided by such a yawning moral chasm could agree to disagree indefinitely.
Perhaps men must always learn important lessons through painful experience: it took a Civil War to awaken America to the reality that the moral content of its citizens played a crucial role in the application of its laws. The War was never fundamentally about states' rights, or even about the Constitutional allowance of slavery: 500,000 men bled and died to decide whether America would become a nation of slaveowners, or a nation of free men.
While the Civil War showcased the need for attention to citizen-virtue, the war itself ended in still more legislative compromise. That was why the 14th Amendment, victory though it was, did not truly mark a period of equality and prosperity for blacks. Indeed, the nadir of racism and oppression really came during the 1920's--blacks only began to make true strides within society once the Civil Rights movement shook the racist culture of America to its core. The effects of Constitutional change can only come with significant cultural change: the character of the citizenry upholds the Constitution.
The history of racism and civil strife sheds light on the moral dilemmas racking the country today. In many areas, we have never abandoned the notion that politics is a purely technical matter, operating independently of the culture in which it resides.
Can anti-poverty legislation help a population increasingly bound to an ethic of entitlement and sloth? Will any amount of pro-life legislation end the murder of babies in a society increasingly indifferent to human life? Will any amount of Social Security ensure the welfare of the elderly in a society that increasingly scorns family solidarity? Will any amount of military spending secure American liberty, if Americans themselves are callous towards liberty (cf. either the Patriot Act, or Abu-Ghraib)?
More than ever, we need to listen to the losers from our history: if nothing else, perhaps we could take away some measure of humility.
Monday, October 1, 2007
FROM GILDED TO GLOBALIZED
A time of whirlwind economic growth, of unparalleled technological innovation, of social upheaval, of great prosperity overshadowed by an explosion of wealth in the upper echelons of society: such a description could fit America of 2007, or 1871. As the Union recovered from the Civil War, a confluence of technological genius, entrepreneurial vision, widespread immigration, and lenient fiscal policy set a Second Industrial Revolution in motion, rocketing America to be the richest nation on Earth, yet also breeding a system of corruption and exploitation. In 1873, Mark Twain compared America to Shakespeare’s “gilded lily,” rich, yet luxurious beyond reason. Today, Americans can learn valuable lessons in confronting income equality from the Gilded Age, with its strange relationship between income inequality, corruption, and governmental intervention.
Historians often view the last quarter of the 1900’s in stark terms, either lauding the achievements of industry in creating wealth, or castigating the viciousness of “robber barons” and their cronies in oppressing the masses. The reality requires meshing both pictures. In 1901, the median American income was $227 per capita (factory workers earned $484), compared with $181 in Britain. During those thirty years, a wave of 11 million immigrants swept across the Atlantic and Pacific, each finding hoping to benefit from the astonishing economic growth driven by some 500,000 American patents registered during that time. Edison founded GE, Rockefeller brought kerosene to the homes of every American, Carnegie brought the Bessemer process to America, Morgan let his capital congeal into transcontinental railways, and new drills allowed coal mining to expand twenty-five-fold in ten years.
However much innovation led to prosperity, inequality and corruption also defined America during this period. The Union Pacific Railroad sold Congressmen stock in exchange land rights, as their workers (Chinese and Irish immigrants, paid $2 per day) died by the hundreds from heat and cold exposure. The immigrant laborers often starved; the factory workers grew fat with their wealth; but, Andrew Carnegie, with his yearly income of $40 million, and J.P. Morgan, sitting on the boards of 48 separate corporations, defied the imagination. Thomas Edison offered New Jersey representatives $1000 each for beneficial legislation; President Cleveland used federal troops to rout a national railroad workers’ strike; and Congress soon passed anti-trust bills to break the monopolies that their subsidies and favoritism had created.
Today, America faces a similar situation. Global broadband networks, a superabundance of information (e.g. the Internet), new software, and breakthroughs in high technology have created a world in which anyone—whether Albanian, Brazilian, or Chinese—with access to a laptop and an Ethernet can compete with the whole world for any job. This innovation and global supply of cheap labor have combined to bless the technologically proficient, and to curse those whose low-skill service and manufacturing professions have fled for cheaper markets overseas. Over the past thirty years, this trend of increasing rewards to education (along with the social splintering caused by divorce) has led to greater income disparity: while the real wages for the bottom 5% of households have largely remained unchanged since 1967, the wages of the top 5% have grown by 20% every eight years. Even as America has experienced this general trend of growth, with some residual stagnation, a stratosphere of super-rich has emerged, populated by billionaire CEO’s such as Bill Gates, corporate scandals in the spirit of Enron, and the growing pains of a fledgling global economy (i.e. the recalls of hazardous, Chinese-made toys).
The Gilded Age emphatically does not instruct us that big business and corporate innovation are somehow evil, and require firm government restraint for men to survive them. On the contrary, the most egregious sins of the epoch were carried out through government collusion, often with the government’s money, land, and troops. On the contrary, the legacy of the Gilded Age is that, when the government enforces the few simple rules of the free market (NO GUNS, NO LYING, NO STEALING), and allows men of ability to trade value for value (e.g. labor for innovation), America has shown a startling ability to remake its economic life in very little time. Globalization represents an entirely new vision of how men produce and exchange, and many Americans now find themselves in a state of flux, with no firm ground to stand on, finding it necessary to run harder and harder to stay in one place.
These factory workers, service professionals, and programmers do not need protectionist barriers to crush the business that, having once fed them, now feeds ambitious Indians. They do not need the government to subsidize their anemic professions, or to steal (redistribute?) the wages of competitive, talented entrepreneurs. The government will most benefit these workers when it empowers them, through primary, secondary, and continuing education, to acquire the skills that will make them competitive in a global marketplace. It will ensure that the benefits of growth spread themselves evenly when it stops trying to hold business’ hand, and creates a global environment where men must trade value for value in order to survive: this will require international collaboration on a scale heretofore unanticipated. When the government seeks to legislate equality, it can only succeed in creating a society uniform in its dysfunction and poverty. When it allows men a plot in which to work and produce freely, it will find that prosperity, and a great deal of equality, flower in the space it created.
Historians often view the last quarter of the 1900’s in stark terms, either lauding the achievements of industry in creating wealth, or castigating the viciousness of “robber barons” and their cronies in oppressing the masses. The reality requires meshing both pictures. In 1901, the median American income was $227 per capita (factory workers earned $484), compared with $181 in Britain. During those thirty years, a wave of 11 million immigrants swept across the Atlantic and Pacific, each finding hoping to benefit from the astonishing economic growth driven by some 500,000 American patents registered during that time. Edison founded GE, Rockefeller brought kerosene to the homes of every American, Carnegie brought the Bessemer process to America, Morgan let his capital congeal into transcontinental railways, and new drills allowed coal mining to expand twenty-five-fold in ten years.
However much innovation led to prosperity, inequality and corruption also defined America during this period. The Union Pacific Railroad sold Congressmen stock in exchange land rights, as their workers (Chinese and Irish immigrants, paid $2 per day) died by the hundreds from heat and cold exposure. The immigrant laborers often starved; the factory workers grew fat with their wealth; but, Andrew Carnegie, with his yearly income of $40 million, and J.P. Morgan, sitting on the boards of 48 separate corporations, defied the imagination. Thomas Edison offered New Jersey representatives $1000 each for beneficial legislation; President Cleveland used federal troops to rout a national railroad workers’ strike; and Congress soon passed anti-trust bills to break the monopolies that their subsidies and favoritism had created.
Today, America faces a similar situation. Global broadband networks, a superabundance of information (e.g. the Internet), new software, and breakthroughs in high technology have created a world in which anyone—whether Albanian, Brazilian, or Chinese—with access to a laptop and an Ethernet can compete with the whole world for any job. This innovation and global supply of cheap labor have combined to bless the technologically proficient, and to curse those whose low-skill service and manufacturing professions have fled for cheaper markets overseas. Over the past thirty years, this trend of increasing rewards to education (along with the social splintering caused by divorce) has led to greater income disparity: while the real wages for the bottom 5% of households have largely remained unchanged since 1967, the wages of the top 5% have grown by 20% every eight years. Even as America has experienced this general trend of growth, with some residual stagnation, a stratosphere of super-rich has emerged, populated by billionaire CEO’s such as Bill Gates, corporate scandals in the spirit of Enron, and the growing pains of a fledgling global economy (i.e. the recalls of hazardous, Chinese-made toys).
The Gilded Age emphatically does not instruct us that big business and corporate innovation are somehow evil, and require firm government restraint for men to survive them. On the contrary, the most egregious sins of the epoch were carried out through government collusion, often with the government’s money, land, and troops. On the contrary, the legacy of the Gilded Age is that, when the government enforces the few simple rules of the free market (NO GUNS, NO LYING, NO STEALING), and allows men of ability to trade value for value (e.g. labor for innovation), America has shown a startling ability to remake its economic life in very little time. Globalization represents an entirely new vision of how men produce and exchange, and many Americans now find themselves in a state of flux, with no firm ground to stand on, finding it necessary to run harder and harder to stay in one place.
These factory workers, service professionals, and programmers do not need protectionist barriers to crush the business that, having once fed them, now feeds ambitious Indians. They do not need the government to subsidize their anemic professions, or to steal (redistribute?) the wages of competitive, talented entrepreneurs. The government will most benefit these workers when it empowers them, through primary, secondary, and continuing education, to acquire the skills that will make them competitive in a global marketplace. It will ensure that the benefits of growth spread themselves evenly when it stops trying to hold business’ hand, and creates a global environment where men must trade value for value in order to survive: this will require international collaboration on a scale heretofore unanticipated. When the government seeks to legislate equality, it can only succeed in creating a society uniform in its dysfunction and poverty. When it allows men a plot in which to work and produce freely, it will find that prosperity, and a great deal of equality, flower in the space it created.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Disconnect
Darren sprawled on the couch in a senseless stupor, vaguely aware of the infomercial cascading from the TV in front of him. His limbs splayed uncomfortably, his chin resting painfully on his chest, he looked like a rag doll, gathering dust in a forgotten corner. I should move, he thought numbly. I should change the channel. I should get up and write, he thought, his cloth limbs mocking him with their limpness. You’re a disgrace, he chided his muscles. Get up, you pansy, he goaded his body, but it was unflappable.
Darren felt like a stranger in his life; or rather as though life had abandoned him, leaving him stranded in a foreign place, stealing his will to move. Life had been a little girl tripping along with her doll, but she had cast it aside, left it powerless, defenseless.
Darren’s every thought of action, of direction, was like trying to flex a muscle he didn’t even have. God, help me, he cried, despising his thoughts even as they left him.
The phone’s ringing fell on him like a blow; he jerked upright, his masochistic thoughts fading away momentarily. He leaped up and crossed the room in a hurry, glad to be moving. Reaching for the portable, his gaze fell on a stack off bills sitting on the table, and he felt a momentary disgust: abandoned by life, he now had only to wait to be captured by these monsters, to be sucked into a lifetime of fifty weeks of misery a year, like his dad, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and likely a hundred generations of broken men before him, trudging across infinite muddy fields.
These thoughts translated into a vague, directionless anger as he answered the phone: “Hello?”
“Darren?”
“Hey, Dad. Where are you?”
“I’m in La Guardia. The airport.” Distant clattering and muted voices, occasionally spiking in anger or exclamation, put Daren in mind of some vast bazaar.
“That’s great…”
“Is your mom there?”
“No, she went to the store.”
“Oh, well, listen: if Tom from work calls, tell him to tell Mr. Rosen to wait on closing that account until Tuesday. I’m just about to board, so I won’t be available for a few hours.”
“Alright.” First a rag doll, Darren had now advanced to an automated messaging service.
Next came the painful tension, the awkward silence that heralded the end of each of their conversations. “Well…good talking to you,” his father mumbled, the effort he made to make his voice sincere painfully obvious.
“Sure, Dad. See you tonight?”
“Sure. Well, bye, then.”
Darren hung up the phone and felt that vague anger harden into a point of searing heat, a needle that dug into his soul. He wanted to take that needle and stab every corporate executive, shred every corporate newsletter, destroy every 757 crammed to the ceiling like a cattle car. He felt his hands clench into fists with the desire to hurt his father, to hurt him so that no more week-long business trips would be possible.
The phone once again shook him from his black humor; he looked down at the table in surprise, hoping suddenly that his dad had forgotten something. He shook his head to clear away the clinging anger, and pressed TALK. “Hello?”
A thin, reedy voice whispered back. “Ummm, hello. This is Ernest Schultz, at the Internal Revenue Service. Is this John Giraldi?”
“No, it’s his son.”
“Well, I’m sure you can help me just as well. In line 16 of Section A16-b24 of your father’s taxes, there is a blank for your home address that was left, well, blank.” He chuckled quietly, as though this was terribly witty. “Could you please confirm your home address for our records?”
The address was poised on Darren’s tongue; he was ready to be done with Mr. Schultz. Yet, at the last second, something within him leaped forward and caught those fateful words. He paused, as that needle of anger turned maliciously against poor Ernest. He wanted to act, to strike a blow, however meaningless, against this ridiculous world that turned men into machines and sent them scurrying to copy the addresses of men they would never meet for reasons that would never quite be disclosed. He wanted to rail and scream, to break things and face down tanks; but he couldn’t muster much on such short notice.
Ernest’s quavery voice brought Darren back to reality. “Are you there?”
Darren let his own voice quail slightly: “I’m sorry, it’s just that…my dad died six months ago.”
Ernest’s reply sounded like a tree being shaken in a hurricane. “W-w-what?”
“He died six months ago. A heart attack.” Darren, an experienced liar, knew how to silence a pushover like Ernest. Be direct, be confident.
“W-well, we s-should have been notified. The h-hospital or funeral home is sup-p-posed to send a certificate of death. Are you sure?”
“Mr. Schultz, this has been a very difficult six months. I’m sure my dad’s address can’t be very important to you if he’s dead, right?
“Well, no, not really. If you’re sure. You’re sure?” he pleaded.
“Quite sure.”
“W-well…I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll work to correct this error as soon as possible.”
As Darren hung up the phone, he felt a bubbling exuberance that was marred by only the slightest twinge of doubt. He felt light, like a boy that has just gotten away with kicking a crabby uncle. Nevertheless, Ernest’s parting words gave him some pause. How exactly did one “correct” this type of “error?”
* * *
A thousand miles away, Ernest slumped in his office chair, his cubicle suddenly seeming to close in on him. This was impossible. His first day in his new position, and disaster struck. He waited five years for a promotion, and found upon rising that the universe had only been planning an elaborate joke. On a sudden impulse, he lunged forward and began scrabbling at his computer like a rat clawing at its cage, pulling up every available piece of information on John Giraldi. The panic welling within him overflowed into beads of sweat as he realized that this alleged dead man had somehow sustained an entire identity for these six months: bank account open, credit cards showing regular use, social security still being drawn from a salary that had been paid regularly every two weeks.
That little bastard, he thought to himself. Either the boy was lying, or this man’s life had somehow been left exposed, and probably violated, by society for all these months. Ernest felt nauseous; he felt like a necrophiliac. How dare he put me in this position? Ernest had a history of panic attacks and asthma; he had once spent an entire night hiding underneath the school bleachers after he tripped and fell down twelve of the hard aluminum seats at the Homecoming Game.
What can I do? There were legends at the IRS of men, usually the janitors of multi-national corporations, who died without making a ripple, leaving their salaries to quietly trickle into bank accounts for years, even decades. However, Ernest had never heard of anything like this. If it were an error on the part of the IRS, it was the most egregious mistake he had ever encountered; it was probably big enough to make the news, maybe even at the national level. And it was Ernest’s fault. Well, not technically, but Ernest felt deeply in his soul that he would be blamed, and he was likely right. Ernest was a born scapegoat, a nervous, twitchy man who invited bullying but hadn’t the spine even to be a tattletale.
So he sat there, an unwilling god, holding the fate of an unknown man in his sweaty palms. If he called his boss for help on his first day, he would seem weak. If he asked his co-workers for advice, he would only invite further abuse. As minutes passed, he felt a dull sort of anger welling within him: anger at the injustice of his life, anger at his own cowardice, anger at his ridiculous career choice, anger at those rickety bleachers and a hundred petty bullies who had slowly murdered his self-esteem. His panic began to harden, becoming a knot within him, a burning fist that gripped his throat and left him breathless. He was trapped, was he? The universe had it out for him? Ernest felt tired of hunching furtively before life, cringing and whining plaintively for a few stale crumbs. He felt the need to act, to do something. He had been given a choice, and he suddenly no longer cared if he chose correctly.
Damn this screwed up system, and damn this hollow life, he thought as he began to type briskly, sending out memos and notices like a crazed archangel upending the Bowls of Tribulation onto an unsuspecting earth, his face lit with a deranged smile.
* * *
John Giraldi stepped into the brisk air of the terminal with the almost mindless determination that is the hallmark of any good executive. He had honed his walk over the years: it was fast enough that friends not adapted to the corporate life had trouble keeping up, but not so fast that it tired him to maintain its pace for long stretches. While as unflagging as a marathon runner’s steady plod, it never seemed to be a physical act: John’s body seemed to be just another machine at his disposal, always ready for use, and forgotten immediately afterward.
He set off from the gate with his economical carry-on suitcase bouncing off his hip, and instinctively took out his cell phone, thoughts of the Rosen account crowding out any budding desires for home. To his consternation, there were no new messages, an unthinkable occurrence in John’s non-stop correspondence. I bet Darren didn’t pass the message on, that lazy kid. He’s going to end up on the street, on welfare, five kids, four mothers…As he mechanically punched in the number of his remote voicemail, John fought against the cycle of worry and resentment that swallowed him like some mythic vortex whenever he thought of his distant son. With great effort, he wrenched his thoughts from that destructive whirl and focused them on the tiny screen before him, where a cute little bubble informed him that the impossible had occurred.
Service to this phone has been terminated.
He shook his head numbly; there was some mistake. As he tried again, and again, he felt frustration welling within him. He squeezed his phone tightly, wishing it were a person so he could hear a tiny voice cry out in pain.
John channeled that violence into his walk, driving his feet into the floor with stinging force, a forty-two year-old’s temper tantrum. His breathing came heavily through the sudden tightness in his chest, his thinking turning in mindless circles like ants on a wheel: a five hour flight with no leg room for his knee, Darren in a homeless shelter, his phone gone, a terrorist attack leaving his neighborhood a smoking crater, and himself tied to a chair with his eyelids taped open so he missed none of it. A distant corner of his brain mused if these bouts of frantic worry he experienced so often were true panic, or just a successful man’s eccentricity.
Rising suddenly from the scuffed linoleum and burnished floor-to-ceiling brass wall plates, the Rocky Mountain Sports Bar and Grill beckoned to him like an oasis. He paused guiltily, fearful of trouble at home, but desperate to stop. A glance at the phone in his hand, now just an elaborate paperweight, tipped the balance. I need a drink, he thought wearily.
For an hour he nursed a pair of Coronas at a small table, alternately mourning his useless phone and his relationship with his sullen teenager. The phone, he reasoned, had surely passed at a crucial time in his career, causing him to miss a conversation whose outcome would determine his financial well being for the rest of his life. Then his thoughts turned to Darren, and while for a moment he would be furious with his son and curse him under his breath, after the next swig he would feel morose and hang his head like a beaten dog.
John hated to confront his relationship with Darren; he preferred to reside in his familiar world of offices, commerce, phones, and memos. There, he had control. Usually. His uncooperative phone had cracked the retaining wall that sealed one from the other; he could not stop his sickly home from seeping in, as out of place as a bum in his neatly vacuumed waiting room.
When his emotions had exhausted themselves, he handed the waiter his debit card thoughtlessly and took a mental inventory, finally feeling certain that he was sober enough to drive. John prided himself on his ability to hold alcohol.
He had almost begun smiling fondly, recalling long-gone near-drunk driving experiences, when the waiter returned, his expression nervous. “There was a problem with the card, sir.”
John rose from the table imperiously, wrapping his boardroom aura about him like a robe. Looking down on the skinny, timid boy, barely older than Darren, he leaned in slightly and let the tiniest hint of disdain creep into his voice. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but the account appears to be frozen.”
“That’s not possible,’ John answered, already certain that it was absolutely true. He fiercely maintained his composure, in spite of the sudden spike of fear that coursed through him. What was happening?
“I’m sorry, sir. The computer is indicating that all accounts under your name, including credit, are frozen. There’s nothing we can do.”
He stood there uncertainly for a moment, hoping for some way to save face, but none presented itself. Finally, he nodded and gave the boy a twenty. His change an indistinguishable mass in his pocket, he rushed from the restaurant, vaguely panicked. He felt hunted, as though some deranged sniper was methodically blasting apart his life.
He reached the desk marked Secure Parking Check-In looking flushed and sweaty, his stomach roiling nervously. The attendant looked distantly concerned, his expression the same that John wore when viewing footage of some Third World atrocity from the security of his bed. “May I help you, sir?”
“I’d like to get my car,” John practically gasped.
“Certainly. I’ll just need your driver’s license.” John had to support his weight on the desk as his knees buckled; he wanted to shout prayers of thanks to a God he didn’t believe in that he had paid for the entire stay before leaving. He handed over his driver’s license, feeling that some measure of justice had returned to the universe.
The attendant swiped the license under a scanner and typed a few words. When his eyes went wide and flashed to John like a boy passing a grisly car accident, John almost laughed. He had been so close. He nearly collapsed again, a hollow feeling carving a hole in his belly.
He seemed to hear the attendant from a great distance. “Sir, there’s a problem.”
John looked up in resignation, the life draining from his face. “Yes?”
“Sir, I don’t know how to say this…there’s obviously been a terrible mistake…I can’t say who’s responsible—“
“—Well?”
“Your license has been canceled, sir. Not suspended, but canceled. The computer lists you as dead.”
John cocked his head to one side, as though studying some curiosity. He heard a strange voice mumble, “Jesus…” and didn’t realize for a moment that it had been his own.
“The immediate problem, sir, is that the computer won’t release a car to anyone without a valid license. I’m sorry. Do you have anyone you can call?”
John turned away from him without even answering, leaving his worthless license, dropping his worthless phone into a trash can as he exited the building, stepping out into the frigid night air.
He stopped where cement met grass, and looked up into the clear mountain sky. A billion stars stretched overhead, their twinkling seeming to mock him. He remembered how he used to hold a hand in front of his face when he looked at the stars, telling himself that he could blank out the heavens. You arrogant bastard, he thought. You never blanked out the sky; you only blinded yourself. He sank slowly to the ground, grinding his expensive pants into the dirt, wrapping his arms around himself. He was dead. He really might as well be, he reflected. No bank account, no phone, no car. How else could anyone tell that he was alive? His hands, his feet, his voice had all become machines; he felt crippled without them. Life had tossed him by the wayside, he was a paralytic on the side of the road, calling soundlessly for help.
A distant voice counseled that this problem could be sorted out, that there was an answer. Yes, he acknowledged, his life could almost certainly be salvaged. The many layers of his public existence could be restored. But, who will save me from them? he wondered bleakly. Is there even a me to save? Tears welled in his eyes, and he began to rock back and forth quietly.
Darren felt like a stranger in his life; or rather as though life had abandoned him, leaving him stranded in a foreign place, stealing his will to move. Life had been a little girl tripping along with her doll, but she had cast it aside, left it powerless, defenseless.
Darren’s every thought of action, of direction, was like trying to flex a muscle he didn’t even have. God, help me, he cried, despising his thoughts even as they left him.
The phone’s ringing fell on him like a blow; he jerked upright, his masochistic thoughts fading away momentarily. He leaped up and crossed the room in a hurry, glad to be moving. Reaching for the portable, his gaze fell on a stack off bills sitting on the table, and he felt a momentary disgust: abandoned by life, he now had only to wait to be captured by these monsters, to be sucked into a lifetime of fifty weeks of misery a year, like his dad, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and likely a hundred generations of broken men before him, trudging across infinite muddy fields.
These thoughts translated into a vague, directionless anger as he answered the phone: “Hello?”
“Darren?”
“Hey, Dad. Where are you?”
“I’m in La Guardia. The airport.” Distant clattering and muted voices, occasionally spiking in anger or exclamation, put Daren in mind of some vast bazaar.
“That’s great…”
“Is your mom there?”
“No, she went to the store.”
“Oh, well, listen: if Tom from work calls, tell him to tell Mr. Rosen to wait on closing that account until Tuesday. I’m just about to board, so I won’t be available for a few hours.”
“Alright.” First a rag doll, Darren had now advanced to an automated messaging service.
Next came the painful tension, the awkward silence that heralded the end of each of their conversations. “Well…good talking to you,” his father mumbled, the effort he made to make his voice sincere painfully obvious.
“Sure, Dad. See you tonight?”
“Sure. Well, bye, then.”
Darren hung up the phone and felt that vague anger harden into a point of searing heat, a needle that dug into his soul. He wanted to take that needle and stab every corporate executive, shred every corporate newsletter, destroy every 757 crammed to the ceiling like a cattle car. He felt his hands clench into fists with the desire to hurt his father, to hurt him so that no more week-long business trips would be possible.
The phone once again shook him from his black humor; he looked down at the table in surprise, hoping suddenly that his dad had forgotten something. He shook his head to clear away the clinging anger, and pressed TALK. “Hello?”
A thin, reedy voice whispered back. “Ummm, hello. This is Ernest Schultz, at the Internal Revenue Service. Is this John Giraldi?”
“No, it’s his son.”
“Well, I’m sure you can help me just as well. In line 16 of Section A16-b24 of your father’s taxes, there is a blank for your home address that was left, well, blank.” He chuckled quietly, as though this was terribly witty. “Could you please confirm your home address for our records?”
The address was poised on Darren’s tongue; he was ready to be done with Mr. Schultz. Yet, at the last second, something within him leaped forward and caught those fateful words. He paused, as that needle of anger turned maliciously against poor Ernest. He wanted to act, to strike a blow, however meaningless, against this ridiculous world that turned men into machines and sent them scurrying to copy the addresses of men they would never meet for reasons that would never quite be disclosed. He wanted to rail and scream, to break things and face down tanks; but he couldn’t muster much on such short notice.
Ernest’s quavery voice brought Darren back to reality. “Are you there?”
Darren let his own voice quail slightly: “I’m sorry, it’s just that…my dad died six months ago.”
Ernest’s reply sounded like a tree being shaken in a hurricane. “W-w-what?”
“He died six months ago. A heart attack.” Darren, an experienced liar, knew how to silence a pushover like Ernest. Be direct, be confident.
“W-well, we s-should have been notified. The h-hospital or funeral home is sup-p-posed to send a certificate of death. Are you sure?”
“Mr. Schultz, this has been a very difficult six months. I’m sure my dad’s address can’t be very important to you if he’s dead, right?
“Well, no, not really. If you’re sure. You’re sure?” he pleaded.
“Quite sure.”
“W-well…I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll work to correct this error as soon as possible.”
As Darren hung up the phone, he felt a bubbling exuberance that was marred by only the slightest twinge of doubt. He felt light, like a boy that has just gotten away with kicking a crabby uncle. Nevertheless, Ernest’s parting words gave him some pause. How exactly did one “correct” this type of “error?”
* * *
A thousand miles away, Ernest slumped in his office chair, his cubicle suddenly seeming to close in on him. This was impossible. His first day in his new position, and disaster struck. He waited five years for a promotion, and found upon rising that the universe had only been planning an elaborate joke. On a sudden impulse, he lunged forward and began scrabbling at his computer like a rat clawing at its cage, pulling up every available piece of information on John Giraldi. The panic welling within him overflowed into beads of sweat as he realized that this alleged dead man had somehow sustained an entire identity for these six months: bank account open, credit cards showing regular use, social security still being drawn from a salary that had been paid regularly every two weeks.
That little bastard, he thought to himself. Either the boy was lying, or this man’s life had somehow been left exposed, and probably violated, by society for all these months. Ernest felt nauseous; he felt like a necrophiliac. How dare he put me in this position? Ernest had a history of panic attacks and asthma; he had once spent an entire night hiding underneath the school bleachers after he tripped and fell down twelve of the hard aluminum seats at the Homecoming Game.
What can I do? There were legends at the IRS of men, usually the janitors of multi-national corporations, who died without making a ripple, leaving their salaries to quietly trickle into bank accounts for years, even decades. However, Ernest had never heard of anything like this. If it were an error on the part of the IRS, it was the most egregious mistake he had ever encountered; it was probably big enough to make the news, maybe even at the national level. And it was Ernest’s fault. Well, not technically, but Ernest felt deeply in his soul that he would be blamed, and he was likely right. Ernest was a born scapegoat, a nervous, twitchy man who invited bullying but hadn’t the spine even to be a tattletale.
So he sat there, an unwilling god, holding the fate of an unknown man in his sweaty palms. If he called his boss for help on his first day, he would seem weak. If he asked his co-workers for advice, he would only invite further abuse. As minutes passed, he felt a dull sort of anger welling within him: anger at the injustice of his life, anger at his own cowardice, anger at his ridiculous career choice, anger at those rickety bleachers and a hundred petty bullies who had slowly murdered his self-esteem. His panic began to harden, becoming a knot within him, a burning fist that gripped his throat and left him breathless. He was trapped, was he? The universe had it out for him? Ernest felt tired of hunching furtively before life, cringing and whining plaintively for a few stale crumbs. He felt the need to act, to do something. He had been given a choice, and he suddenly no longer cared if he chose correctly.
Damn this screwed up system, and damn this hollow life, he thought as he began to type briskly, sending out memos and notices like a crazed archangel upending the Bowls of Tribulation onto an unsuspecting earth, his face lit with a deranged smile.
* * *
John Giraldi stepped into the brisk air of the terminal with the almost mindless determination that is the hallmark of any good executive. He had honed his walk over the years: it was fast enough that friends not adapted to the corporate life had trouble keeping up, but not so fast that it tired him to maintain its pace for long stretches. While as unflagging as a marathon runner’s steady plod, it never seemed to be a physical act: John’s body seemed to be just another machine at his disposal, always ready for use, and forgotten immediately afterward.
He set off from the gate with his economical carry-on suitcase bouncing off his hip, and instinctively took out his cell phone, thoughts of the Rosen account crowding out any budding desires for home. To his consternation, there were no new messages, an unthinkable occurrence in John’s non-stop correspondence. I bet Darren didn’t pass the message on, that lazy kid. He’s going to end up on the street, on welfare, five kids, four mothers…As he mechanically punched in the number of his remote voicemail, John fought against the cycle of worry and resentment that swallowed him like some mythic vortex whenever he thought of his distant son. With great effort, he wrenched his thoughts from that destructive whirl and focused them on the tiny screen before him, where a cute little bubble informed him that the impossible had occurred.
Service to this phone has been terminated.
He shook his head numbly; there was some mistake. As he tried again, and again, he felt frustration welling within him. He squeezed his phone tightly, wishing it were a person so he could hear a tiny voice cry out in pain.
John channeled that violence into his walk, driving his feet into the floor with stinging force, a forty-two year-old’s temper tantrum. His breathing came heavily through the sudden tightness in his chest, his thinking turning in mindless circles like ants on a wheel: a five hour flight with no leg room for his knee, Darren in a homeless shelter, his phone gone, a terrorist attack leaving his neighborhood a smoking crater, and himself tied to a chair with his eyelids taped open so he missed none of it. A distant corner of his brain mused if these bouts of frantic worry he experienced so often were true panic, or just a successful man’s eccentricity.
Rising suddenly from the scuffed linoleum and burnished floor-to-ceiling brass wall plates, the Rocky Mountain Sports Bar and Grill beckoned to him like an oasis. He paused guiltily, fearful of trouble at home, but desperate to stop. A glance at the phone in his hand, now just an elaborate paperweight, tipped the balance. I need a drink, he thought wearily.
For an hour he nursed a pair of Coronas at a small table, alternately mourning his useless phone and his relationship with his sullen teenager. The phone, he reasoned, had surely passed at a crucial time in his career, causing him to miss a conversation whose outcome would determine his financial well being for the rest of his life. Then his thoughts turned to Darren, and while for a moment he would be furious with his son and curse him under his breath, after the next swig he would feel morose and hang his head like a beaten dog.
John hated to confront his relationship with Darren; he preferred to reside in his familiar world of offices, commerce, phones, and memos. There, he had control. Usually. His uncooperative phone had cracked the retaining wall that sealed one from the other; he could not stop his sickly home from seeping in, as out of place as a bum in his neatly vacuumed waiting room.
When his emotions had exhausted themselves, he handed the waiter his debit card thoughtlessly and took a mental inventory, finally feeling certain that he was sober enough to drive. John prided himself on his ability to hold alcohol.
He had almost begun smiling fondly, recalling long-gone near-drunk driving experiences, when the waiter returned, his expression nervous. “There was a problem with the card, sir.”
John rose from the table imperiously, wrapping his boardroom aura about him like a robe. Looking down on the skinny, timid boy, barely older than Darren, he leaned in slightly and let the tiniest hint of disdain creep into his voice. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but the account appears to be frozen.”
“That’s not possible,’ John answered, already certain that it was absolutely true. He fiercely maintained his composure, in spite of the sudden spike of fear that coursed through him. What was happening?
“I’m sorry, sir. The computer is indicating that all accounts under your name, including credit, are frozen. There’s nothing we can do.”
He stood there uncertainly for a moment, hoping for some way to save face, but none presented itself. Finally, he nodded and gave the boy a twenty. His change an indistinguishable mass in his pocket, he rushed from the restaurant, vaguely panicked. He felt hunted, as though some deranged sniper was methodically blasting apart his life.
He reached the desk marked Secure Parking Check-In looking flushed and sweaty, his stomach roiling nervously. The attendant looked distantly concerned, his expression the same that John wore when viewing footage of some Third World atrocity from the security of his bed. “May I help you, sir?”
“I’d like to get my car,” John practically gasped.
“Certainly. I’ll just need your driver’s license.” John had to support his weight on the desk as his knees buckled; he wanted to shout prayers of thanks to a God he didn’t believe in that he had paid for the entire stay before leaving. He handed over his driver’s license, feeling that some measure of justice had returned to the universe.
The attendant swiped the license under a scanner and typed a few words. When his eyes went wide and flashed to John like a boy passing a grisly car accident, John almost laughed. He had been so close. He nearly collapsed again, a hollow feeling carving a hole in his belly.
He seemed to hear the attendant from a great distance. “Sir, there’s a problem.”
John looked up in resignation, the life draining from his face. “Yes?”
“Sir, I don’t know how to say this…there’s obviously been a terrible mistake…I can’t say who’s responsible—“
“—Well?”
“Your license has been canceled, sir. Not suspended, but canceled. The computer lists you as dead.”
John cocked his head to one side, as though studying some curiosity. He heard a strange voice mumble, “Jesus…” and didn’t realize for a moment that it had been his own.
“The immediate problem, sir, is that the computer won’t release a car to anyone without a valid license. I’m sorry. Do you have anyone you can call?”
John turned away from him without even answering, leaving his worthless license, dropping his worthless phone into a trash can as he exited the building, stepping out into the frigid night air.
He stopped where cement met grass, and looked up into the clear mountain sky. A billion stars stretched overhead, their twinkling seeming to mock him. He remembered how he used to hold a hand in front of his face when he looked at the stars, telling himself that he could blank out the heavens. You arrogant bastard, he thought. You never blanked out the sky; you only blinded yourself. He sank slowly to the ground, grinding his expensive pants into the dirt, wrapping his arms around himself. He was dead. He really might as well be, he reflected. No bank account, no phone, no car. How else could anyone tell that he was alive? His hands, his feet, his voice had all become machines; he felt crippled without them. Life had tossed him by the wayside, he was a paralytic on the side of the road, calling soundlessly for help.
A distant voice counseled that this problem could be sorted out, that there was an answer. Yes, he acknowledged, his life could almost certainly be salvaged. The many layers of his public existence could be restored. But, who will save me from them? he wondered bleakly. Is there even a me to save? Tears welled in his eyes, and he began to rock back and forth quietly.
"The Workout Plan"
My American Civ. professor broached his views of healthcare reform last night during class, and I almost fell out of my chair from laughing. I think the Democratic Big Three ought to consider reshaping their proposals for universal healthcare around Professor Corbin's ideas.
Aside from some superficial differences in structure and timing, the thrust of the Democratic move for healthcare reform is to increase taxes on everyone making over $250,000 (or, in one case, $200,000) a year, and use the money to fund health insurance for the poor, combined with new legislation to force employers to provide healthcare on a more uniform basis. Now, these plans seem backwards to me on several levels, but my principal frustration is this: rather addressing the root of the problem, these plans subsidize the symptoms of poor life-choices.
What is the number one, undisputed killer in America? Cholesterol. If you die in America, chances are it was from a heart attack caused by clogged arteries. Now, how (generally) does one attain high cholesterol? By eating McDonald's four times a week, pizza the other three nights, and exercising once a year.
I want to see Barack Obama take the stage, and, in his assuring baritone, say, "My healthcare plan is simple: all Americans should eat less fat and sugar, exercise more, and drink lots of water. Then, we won't need to go to the hospital so often, so we might actually be able to afford to pay some of our own bills. After that happens, we'll talk about the government picking up the tab."
(I love a good over-generalization, don't you?)
Of course, the problems run deeper than just lifestyle choices (though, I think the solutions also require more thought than a knee-jerk grasping for redistribution of income). However, the problem surely begins with lifestyle choices. If nothing else, Hillary's new plan should include some measure for enforcing mandatory diet and exercise regimens for its recipients. "But, that would be tyranny!" detractors will exclaim. "The government doesn't get to tell us what to eat, and when to sweat!"
Of course they don't, silly--they just get to tell us how much of our money we can keep, and how much health insurance we have to pay for.
Aside from some superficial differences in structure and timing, the thrust of the Democratic move for healthcare reform is to increase taxes on everyone making over $250,000 (or, in one case, $200,000) a year, and use the money to fund health insurance for the poor, combined with new legislation to force employers to provide healthcare on a more uniform basis. Now, these plans seem backwards to me on several levels, but my principal frustration is this: rather addressing the root of the problem, these plans subsidize the symptoms of poor life-choices.
What is the number one, undisputed killer in America? Cholesterol. If you die in America, chances are it was from a heart attack caused by clogged arteries. Now, how (generally) does one attain high cholesterol? By eating McDonald's four times a week, pizza the other three nights, and exercising once a year.
I want to see Barack Obama take the stage, and, in his assuring baritone, say, "My healthcare plan is simple: all Americans should eat less fat and sugar, exercise more, and drink lots of water. Then, we won't need to go to the hospital so often, so we might actually be able to afford to pay some of our own bills. After that happens, we'll talk about the government picking up the tab."
(I love a good over-generalization, don't you?)
Of course, the problems run deeper than just lifestyle choices (though, I think the solutions also require more thought than a knee-jerk grasping for redistribution of income). However, the problem surely begins with lifestyle choices. If nothing else, Hillary's new plan should include some measure for enforcing mandatory diet and exercise regimens for its recipients. "But, that would be tyranny!" detractors will exclaim. "The government doesn't get to tell us what to eat, and when to sweat!"
Of course they don't, silly--they just get to tell us how much of our money we can keep, and how much health insurance we have to pay for.
A Platform for Hate
Part of why I love New York is its penchant for attracting epochal controversies, such as the indescribable foolishness of Columbia's Lee Bolinger inviting President Ahmadinejad of (The Islamic Republic of) Iran to speak to the student body yesterday.
President Bolinger defended his action, saying, "If Hitler were in the United States, and...he were willing to engage in a debate...we would invite him" (quoted in WSJ, 9/25). The Times (predictably) defended the invitation as well: "We can imagine no better way of laying bare the bankruptcy of Mr. Ahmadinejad's views than to have him speak...at a university forum."
Much of the debate surrounding the visit has centered on the idea of free speech. Many have argued that for Columbia to deny President Ahmadinejad a platform to speak would be equivalent to a suppression of ideas. "Let him come," they say, "and we will prove to the world just how ridiculous his views really are." In this light, the derisive laughter, and biting criticism that haunted the bearded Iranian throughout his visit represent a victory for America.
Unfortunately, Lee Bolinger and the Times editorial staff have badly misjudged the nature of Ahmadinejad's ideology, and thus grossly misapplied the free speech protected by the Constitution. The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to say anything at all--I cannot run down Sixth Avenue shrieking profanity, or tell my friend that I'm going to kill him. The First Amendment rests on the principle that speech is principally a mode of rational discourse, not a cloak to veil tyranny, oppression, and extremism.
President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied that the Holocaust took place, and has called for the immediate dissolution of Israel. He represents an oppressive, theocratic state, perhaps the single largest government sponsor of terrorism worldwide, a state founded by a man who popularized the notion of America as the "Great Satan." At his direction, millions of dollars have flowed into the bank accounts of Hezbollah and their allies. His government produces a stream of propaganda (I generally try to steer clear of polemics, but the word has a place, and it's here) that advocates a distorted view of history, morality, gender relations, and religious devotion. In short, President Ahmadinejad is not interested in rational discourse.
In his editorial piece in the WSJ today, Bret Stephens draws out the Hitler comparison made by Bolinger. Say Hitler of 1939 (not yet a genocidal maniac, but a maniac nonetheless) had come to Columbia, and ranted and raved about Aryan supremacy, to the derision and bold refutation of the American academic elite. He notes wryly that, while a few in the audience would quietly reflect that he ought to be arrested on the spot, most would disparagingly muse how to make the fool "see reason." Many of those same scoffers would have found themselves bleeding and dying on the battlefields of Europe a few years later, realizing too late that the appropriate response to a man who has abandoned reason is not an argument, but a well-aimed gun, and a jail cell. I use forceful language only to drive home the point: if you find yourself locked in a room with a rabid dog, you do not reason with it.
Now, Ahmadinejad is neither Hitler, nor a rabid dog. I doubt very much that he wants either to kill all Americans, or ignite World War III. However, he consistently engages in irrational, violent, inflammatory discourse with the world, a discourse he maintains in glaring opposition to an understanding of reality that is blatantly obvious to most Westerners. In inviting him to Columbia, Bolinger gave his ideas a status they do not deserve: he has created a platform for hate to address the world. For the rest of his petty, megalomaniacal life, Ahmadinejad can now glowingly boast how he spoke at an Ivy League University, how American elites are really open to hearing his view of life, how his warped picture of reality was given equal status with the American vision on a world stage.
There is wisdom in America engaging our admitted adversaries with diplomacy. There would be wisdom in America exchanging embassies with Iran, with American diplomats discussing Mid-East politics, and nuclear proliferation, with Iranian ministers. However, there is real difference between the realpolitik mindset that cautions nations to keep their enemies closer than their friends, and the naievete of an intellectual trying to engage a polemical dictator in a reasoned debate.
Serious biblical scholars do not invite mystics claiming that Jesus was an alien to seminars on historical criticism of the Gospels; World War II historians do not invite conspiracy theorists claiming that the Illuminati orchestrated the Holocaust to seminars on Hitler's Germany; Ivy League institutions should not extend invitations to debate to men who oppose us as enemies with an irrational, extremist vision of life. It is not a matter of free speech; it is a matter of prudence.
President Bolinger defended his action, saying, "If Hitler were in the United States, and...he were willing to engage in a debate...we would invite him" (quoted in WSJ, 9/25). The Times (predictably) defended the invitation as well: "We can imagine no better way of laying bare the bankruptcy of Mr. Ahmadinejad's views than to have him speak...at a university forum."
Much of the debate surrounding the visit has centered on the idea of free speech. Many have argued that for Columbia to deny President Ahmadinejad a platform to speak would be equivalent to a suppression of ideas. "Let him come," they say, "and we will prove to the world just how ridiculous his views really are." In this light, the derisive laughter, and biting criticism that haunted the bearded Iranian throughout his visit represent a victory for America.
Unfortunately, Lee Bolinger and the Times editorial staff have badly misjudged the nature of Ahmadinejad's ideology, and thus grossly misapplied the free speech protected by the Constitution. The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to say anything at all--I cannot run down Sixth Avenue shrieking profanity, or tell my friend that I'm going to kill him. The First Amendment rests on the principle that speech is principally a mode of rational discourse, not a cloak to veil tyranny, oppression, and extremism.
President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied that the Holocaust took place, and has called for the immediate dissolution of Israel. He represents an oppressive, theocratic state, perhaps the single largest government sponsor of terrorism worldwide, a state founded by a man who popularized the notion of America as the "Great Satan." At his direction, millions of dollars have flowed into the bank accounts of Hezbollah and their allies. His government produces a stream of propaganda (I generally try to steer clear of polemics, but the word has a place, and it's here) that advocates a distorted view of history, morality, gender relations, and religious devotion. In short, President Ahmadinejad is not interested in rational discourse.
In his editorial piece in the WSJ today, Bret Stephens draws out the Hitler comparison made by Bolinger. Say Hitler of 1939 (not yet a genocidal maniac, but a maniac nonetheless) had come to Columbia, and ranted and raved about Aryan supremacy, to the derision and bold refutation of the American academic elite. He notes wryly that, while a few in the audience would quietly reflect that he ought to be arrested on the spot, most would disparagingly muse how to make the fool "see reason." Many of those same scoffers would have found themselves bleeding and dying on the battlefields of Europe a few years later, realizing too late that the appropriate response to a man who has abandoned reason is not an argument, but a well-aimed gun, and a jail cell. I use forceful language only to drive home the point: if you find yourself locked in a room with a rabid dog, you do not reason with it.
Now, Ahmadinejad is neither Hitler, nor a rabid dog. I doubt very much that he wants either to kill all Americans, or ignite World War III. However, he consistently engages in irrational, violent, inflammatory discourse with the world, a discourse he maintains in glaring opposition to an understanding of reality that is blatantly obvious to most Westerners. In inviting him to Columbia, Bolinger gave his ideas a status they do not deserve: he has created a platform for hate to address the world. For the rest of his petty, megalomaniacal life, Ahmadinejad can now glowingly boast how he spoke at an Ivy League University, how American elites are really open to hearing his view of life, how his warped picture of reality was given equal status with the American vision on a world stage.
There is wisdom in America engaging our admitted adversaries with diplomacy. There would be wisdom in America exchanging embassies with Iran, with American diplomats discussing Mid-East politics, and nuclear proliferation, with Iranian ministers. However, there is real difference between the realpolitik mindset that cautions nations to keep their enemies closer than their friends, and the naievete of an intellectual trying to engage a polemical dictator in a reasoned debate.
Serious biblical scholars do not invite mystics claiming that Jesus was an alien to seminars on historical criticism of the Gospels; World War II historians do not invite conspiracy theorists claiming that the Illuminati orchestrated the Holocaust to seminars on Hitler's Germany; Ivy League institutions should not extend invitations to debate to men who oppose us as enemies with an irrational, extremist vision of life. It is not a matter of free speech; it is a matter of prudence.
Friday, September 21, 2007
The Tragedy of Retail
(I wrote this on 9/11 this year, after a trip to Ground Zero.)
If I could, I would legislate a grey drizzle for every September 11, which is exactly why I will never run for President. I felt as though the city itself wept to remember its loss, a slow, pitiful trickle of tears, the kind that seep from your eyes without a sob.
I didn’t cry today, however. I never can cry on sad occasions. I cry when I get angry; I’ve known myself to cry when embarrassed, but pathos has little effect on my eyeballs. Sadness makes me uncomfortable: I would rather look away.
In fact, one of the first occasions that evinced my stunted emotions was September 11, 2001. I remember receiving the news of the attacks with some measure of disbelief, perhaps shock, but I also remember a decided sense of bemusement. Now, even my thirteen year-old sensibilities found nothing amusing about the rising death toll; rather, I found the situation as a whole ridiculous: the enormous buildings, the histrionics of the planes-turned-bombs, the idea of a holy war against democracy and capitalism. It struck me as a drama whose plot was at best contrived.
I remember arriving at my mom’s office later that afternoon, and finding her huddled on the floor of her waiting room, weeping those same, silent tears as images of the falling towers flashed across a grainy television. That picture flattened me; the brokenness exuding from my mom captured the tragedy in a way that the numbers, video, and newscasts couldn’t.
True to my apathetic roots, I decided to visit Ground Zero today, less to remember the tragedy, than to shop. Yes, I will be the guy at the wake reading a book in the back row. I wish I were the uncontrollable sobber: in our enlightened age, guys can score points for emotional breakdowns, while the stony-face has finally proven itself as a sure sign of a brittle psyche. Now, I didn’t go shopping just to spite the world. No, I really needed clothes, and I mean needed: prior to today, I had exactly two dress shirts in my closet. No further explanation necessary. So, I needed some new clothes, and the world’s largest outlet store happens to reside across the street from the hallowed ground. Given my state of desperation, I likely would have climbed into a manhole had I seen a sign for 50% off menswear.
When I stepped off the W-train on Broadway, the skyline continuing its emotional meltdown, I felt an immediate sense of crushing guilt. Everywhere I looked, camera crews captured footage of solemn processions and sign-waving protesters, while swarms of police stared stonily into the crowds from behind metal barricades. An oppressive air clung to the streets more thickly than the shifting fog, such that everyone seemed to tip-toe, and speak in whispers; even the conspiracy theorists confined themselves to an extended pamphlet, followed by a muttered, “Bush did it,” and an ominous look.
I moved among the crowds like a thief, my gaze downcast, the somber monotone of the voice reading victims’ names reverberating in my ears. I turned down Fulton, Century 21 rising out of the mist on my left, the enormous crater of debris and detritus directly before me. Keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the spectacle that loomed ahead, I waited until the last possible moment to whip my body into an abrupt turn, and slip through the revolving doors, through the blast of fresh-scrubbed air that kept the misery outside at bay. Involuntarily, I glanced back over my shoulder: I think some part of my brain could not shake the feeling that I must have been tailed.
Of course, I hate department stores, so the shopping offered no real relief. I kept thinking back to the aftermath of that terrible day, remembering Bush’s ridiculous decree that all Americans should go shopping to prevent a recession. I pictured myself paying for a $600 sweater, and mouthing, “Take that, Osama!”
Retail stores always seem caught up in that kind of idiocy. The entire industry hangs on average Americans remaining convinced that unlimited, frivolous consumption holds the key to fulfillment and joy. I wonder if it ever occurs to these stock brokers’ wives and trust fund babies (or whoever else would join me to shop in the middle of the day on 9/11) to stop and ask, “What is any of this adding to my life?”
Yet, how can I judge them, as I seem to have joined them?
My shame grew with every moment I remained in the store: the names of the victims broke through the very walls, pursuing me like harpies from floor to floor. The tension became unbearable when the reader called for a moment of silence (of course, having shopped alone, I wasn't talking to begin with)--every customer froze timidly, as looks of shock leapt from face to face, like a crowd of somnambulists awakening to find themselves undressed on a busy street.
At that point, I had had enough--bundling the clothes I had picked out, I rushed to the register, and thence to the street, my breathing slowing only once I had entered the anonymity of the W once more.
If I could, I would legislate a grey drizzle for every September 11, which is exactly why I will never run for President. I felt as though the city itself wept to remember its loss, a slow, pitiful trickle of tears, the kind that seep from your eyes without a sob.
I didn’t cry today, however. I never can cry on sad occasions. I cry when I get angry; I’ve known myself to cry when embarrassed, but pathos has little effect on my eyeballs. Sadness makes me uncomfortable: I would rather look away.
In fact, one of the first occasions that evinced my stunted emotions was September 11, 2001. I remember receiving the news of the attacks with some measure of disbelief, perhaps shock, but I also remember a decided sense of bemusement. Now, even my thirteen year-old sensibilities found nothing amusing about the rising death toll; rather, I found the situation as a whole ridiculous: the enormous buildings, the histrionics of the planes-turned-bombs, the idea of a holy war against democracy and capitalism. It struck me as a drama whose plot was at best contrived.
I remember arriving at my mom’s office later that afternoon, and finding her huddled on the floor of her waiting room, weeping those same, silent tears as images of the falling towers flashed across a grainy television. That picture flattened me; the brokenness exuding from my mom captured the tragedy in a way that the numbers, video, and newscasts couldn’t.
True to my apathetic roots, I decided to visit Ground Zero today, less to remember the tragedy, than to shop. Yes, I will be the guy at the wake reading a book in the back row. I wish I were the uncontrollable sobber: in our enlightened age, guys can score points for emotional breakdowns, while the stony-face has finally proven itself as a sure sign of a brittle psyche. Now, I didn’t go shopping just to spite the world. No, I really needed clothes, and I mean needed: prior to today, I had exactly two dress shirts in my closet. No further explanation necessary. So, I needed some new clothes, and the world’s largest outlet store happens to reside across the street from the hallowed ground. Given my state of desperation, I likely would have climbed into a manhole had I seen a sign for 50% off menswear.
When I stepped off the W-train on Broadway, the skyline continuing its emotional meltdown, I felt an immediate sense of crushing guilt. Everywhere I looked, camera crews captured footage of solemn processions and sign-waving protesters, while swarms of police stared stonily into the crowds from behind metal barricades. An oppressive air clung to the streets more thickly than the shifting fog, such that everyone seemed to tip-toe, and speak in whispers; even the conspiracy theorists confined themselves to an extended pamphlet, followed by a muttered, “Bush did it,” and an ominous look.
I moved among the crowds like a thief, my gaze downcast, the somber monotone of the voice reading victims’ names reverberating in my ears. I turned down Fulton, Century 21 rising out of the mist on my left, the enormous crater of debris and detritus directly before me. Keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the spectacle that loomed ahead, I waited until the last possible moment to whip my body into an abrupt turn, and slip through the revolving doors, through the blast of fresh-scrubbed air that kept the misery outside at bay. Involuntarily, I glanced back over my shoulder: I think some part of my brain could not shake the feeling that I must have been tailed.
Of course, I hate department stores, so the shopping offered no real relief. I kept thinking back to the aftermath of that terrible day, remembering Bush’s ridiculous decree that all Americans should go shopping to prevent a recession. I pictured myself paying for a $600 sweater, and mouthing, “Take that, Osama!”
Retail stores always seem caught up in that kind of idiocy. The entire industry hangs on average Americans remaining convinced that unlimited, frivolous consumption holds the key to fulfillment and joy. I wonder if it ever occurs to these stock brokers’ wives and trust fund babies (or whoever else would join me to shop in the middle of the day on 9/11) to stop and ask, “What is any of this adding to my life?”
Yet, how can I judge them, as I seem to have joined them?
My shame grew with every moment I remained in the store: the names of the victims broke through the very walls, pursuing me like harpies from floor to floor. The tension became unbearable when the reader called for a moment of silence (of course, having shopped alone, I wasn't talking to begin with)--every customer froze timidly, as looks of shock leapt from face to face, like a crowd of somnambulists awakening to find themselves undressed on a busy street.
At that point, I had had enough--bundling the clothes I had picked out, I rushed to the register, and thence to the street, my breathing slowing only once I had entered the anonymity of the W once more.
Monday, September 17, 2007
ON CROSSING 42nd STREET, or, REFLECTIONS ON ADVERTISING
Walking through Times Square today, I was nearly run over by a hearse. Of course, some of the blame rests with my distraction. I stood there on Broadway, waiting to cross 42nd, my neck craned to fix a bewildered gaze on the spectacle above me. My eyes brushed across the Pollock-canvas draped over the Westin, the five-story can of Diet Coke, Madame Tussaud’s outstretched arm, a billboard showing a cougar stretched across a reclining woman (“Advertising jeans, or cat food?” I mused faintly), with the rumblings of ten thousand taxis, and the tittering of ten thousand tourists buzzing in my ears: like a man with his head under an open fire hydrant, my brain could do little but choke and splutter beneath the torrent of color and sound. The signs flashed, the billboards swirled; Times Square spun above me like a mobile over a cradle, and I stared up with obedient wonder.
I chanced to see the traffic light turn red, and took three, unthinking steps into the street, where the squeal of tires, and the shriek of a car horn jarred me back to life. Tensed for impact, I glanced right to see the hearse skid just feet before me, rumbling and bucking in rebellion. I suppose the driver thought to beat the light, perhaps racing towards the 9A to head upstate for the weekend; clearly, he forgot that death takes no holidays.
Frozen with shock, I could not stop a few of the unprintable words rolling inside my head from trickling out of my slack jaw, while the driver responded with some encouragement of his own, punctuating every syllable with emphatic jabs of an upraised finger. I shook life back into my limbs, and quickly plunged forward into the river of suits that swept around me.
I made it perhaps a block before my body mutinied against me: my stomach ran laps around my abdomen, my heart sought to crack my ribs with its beating, and sweat cascaded through the crevices of my hands. “I almost died”—I began with a whisper that rose quickly into a terrified giggle as the inanity of death-by-hearse-while-contemplating-ambiguous-advertisements gripped my larynx, and sent chills down my spine.
Suddenly, the Square took on a sinister character: the billboards’ glared with the light of a hundred fires consuming the heart of New York, and the clamor of traffic and tourism had the panicked quality of civilians fleeing a catastrophe. Everywhere I looked, glass doors swung wide like the gaping maws of beasts, emitting blasts of hot breath into the faces of the shoppers they swallowed in droves.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, blotting out the oppressive thoughts, and continued forward, resolving to keep my mind at the street-level for the rest of my walk.
Barely a block later, an incongruous sight arrested my progress once more. A lone homeless man stood on an island of solitude amid the flood of humanity, an outstretched hand pleading soundlessly for help, as the multitude swept by, giving him a wide berth: Moses could not have divided that sea any more thoroughly. An enormous image of Jay-Z, advertising his clothing brand, loomed directly above the man; many of the passerby studiously focused their gaze on the brooding rapper, rather than face the gritty reality that confronted them on the sidewalk.
“How can we live like this?” I wondered. “We see so much, but we know nothing. We’re children looking at pretty pictures, wandering through a world full of speeding hearses.”
I saw person after person choose passive indifference, and I felt a strange sort of courage. Gingerly, I stepped into the void surrounding the bedraggled figure. His eyes narrowed, he asked, “How you today, boy?”
“Grateful,” I replied. “Can I buy you some lunch?”
I chanced to see the traffic light turn red, and took three, unthinking steps into the street, where the squeal of tires, and the shriek of a car horn jarred me back to life. Tensed for impact, I glanced right to see the hearse skid just feet before me, rumbling and bucking in rebellion. I suppose the driver thought to beat the light, perhaps racing towards the 9A to head upstate for the weekend; clearly, he forgot that death takes no holidays.
Frozen with shock, I could not stop a few of the unprintable words rolling inside my head from trickling out of my slack jaw, while the driver responded with some encouragement of his own, punctuating every syllable with emphatic jabs of an upraised finger. I shook life back into my limbs, and quickly plunged forward into the river of suits that swept around me.
I made it perhaps a block before my body mutinied against me: my stomach ran laps around my abdomen, my heart sought to crack my ribs with its beating, and sweat cascaded through the crevices of my hands. “I almost died”—I began with a whisper that rose quickly into a terrified giggle as the inanity of death-by-hearse-while-contemplating-ambiguous-advertisements gripped my larynx, and sent chills down my spine.
Suddenly, the Square took on a sinister character: the billboards’ glared with the light of a hundred fires consuming the heart of New York, and the clamor of traffic and tourism had the panicked quality of civilians fleeing a catastrophe. Everywhere I looked, glass doors swung wide like the gaping maws of beasts, emitting blasts of hot breath into the faces of the shoppers they swallowed in droves.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, blotting out the oppressive thoughts, and continued forward, resolving to keep my mind at the street-level for the rest of my walk.
Barely a block later, an incongruous sight arrested my progress once more. A lone homeless man stood on an island of solitude amid the flood of humanity, an outstretched hand pleading soundlessly for help, as the multitude swept by, giving him a wide berth: Moses could not have divided that sea any more thoroughly. An enormous image of Jay-Z, advertising his clothing brand, loomed directly above the man; many of the passerby studiously focused their gaze on the brooding rapper, rather than face the gritty reality that confronted them on the sidewalk.
“How can we live like this?” I wondered. “We see so much, but we know nothing. We’re children looking at pretty pictures, wandering through a world full of speeding hearses.”
I saw person after person choose passive indifference, and I felt a strange sort of courage. Gingerly, I stepped into the void surrounding the bedraggled figure. His eyes narrowed, he asked, “How you today, boy?”
“Grateful,” I replied. “Can I buy you some lunch?”
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Coincidence and Plagiarism
I have an ushakeable fear that one day Murphy's Law will overcome the Law of Averages, and leave me thoroughly, albeit accidentally, screwed. I'm referring to plagiarism--I have this recurring nightmare that one day I will pen a brilliant paper on communication theory, only to discover later that I've somehow exactly duplicated five random pages out of Neil Postman. Unlikely? Extremely. But, possible? Of course, and therein lies my fear.
The strange thing about coincidence is really that we find it coincidental. If I had a computer generate a random string of numbers, I would see no revelation in the sequence 34 78 93 40 13 97. However, if 01 02 03 04 05 06 appeared on the screen "at random," how could I fail to interpret it as a miracle of the divine? Yet, if we're picking randomly, "01" is no more improbable than "34" as a first choice, and so on, and so forth. Our interpretation of the data imposes a sense of order where none may exist.
I guess this isn't an exact parallel to the accidental ruination of my fledgling writing career, but it still makes me nervous. If enough people keep writing long enough, surely there is a chance that we will begin to repeat each other in some ways, as a wife passes her idiosyncrasies on to her husband through time and proximity.
The strange thing about coincidence is really that we find it coincidental. If I had a computer generate a random string of numbers, I would see no revelation in the sequence 34 78 93 40 13 97. However, if 01 02 03 04 05 06 appeared on the screen "at random," how could I fail to interpret it as a miracle of the divine? Yet, if we're picking randomly, "01" is no more improbable than "34" as a first choice, and so on, and so forth. Our interpretation of the data imposes a sense of order where none may exist.
I guess this isn't an exact parallel to the accidental ruination of my fledgling writing career, but it still makes me nervous. If enough people keep writing long enough, surely there is a chance that we will begin to repeat each other in some ways, as a wife passes her idiosyncrasies on to her husband through time and proximity.
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