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).
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