What have I been doing?

So, what the fuck have I been up to the past, er, two or three weeks or however long it has been since I have blogged?

Quite a lot actually. I’ve started attending AGASA meetings on campus where a bunch of nonbelievers get to engage in lively debate about all sorts of yummy nonbelieving topics. I’ve also been attending a lot of talks hosted by the Department et al.,which have given me some hope for improving the public discourse in this country, although not too terribly much.

But any sign of improvement is encouraging considering that I’ve pretty much decided to go into the business of doing just that. Although not just when it comes to the public discourse surronding history, but the public discourse surrounding politics, culture, and oh yes, even religion. This has something to do with the possiblity that I might switch my dissertation topic to the twentith century, since that would be much more relevant to you know, now. But as I’m having trouble seeing what I would want to do in this very depressing century devoid of white, virtuous old men in wigs I’m not too confident about that yet.

But in order to make sure I can at least make something ultimately relevant out of my dissertation to someone beyond Gordon Wood and…well yes just Gordon Wood, I’m taking a seminar on non-academic job searches for that time in the future where I’m going to try to make my living off of being clever, making arguments, and writing well.

So what I have been up to? A hell of a lot, as I’ve basically decided to seriously start embarking on my life goal to basically change the world. Yeah. Wish me luck. On that.

But oh, the excitement and the beauty of it all. Really, it can just astound me sometimes.

Global warming is real (DUH).

Here is the majority of an e-mail I sent to my father many months ago in the midst of the election, on why his statement that there is still disagreement within the scientific community on global warming was fundamentally mistaken:

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The confusion about whether scientists agree or not comes about thus; of course, in any large, free community there will always be at least a few dissenters on the consensus, no matter what. This is the consequence of the incalculable effects of personality and unknown intent; always someone will say, “I don’t quite agree,” usually for the thrill of being the contrarian. In political issues today, a lot of the scientists that go against the grain of what the *vast* majority of the scientific community considers solid fact — such as global warming and evolution — are often either 1) scientists paid for or in the service of other interests, or 2) crusaders with another goal, such as Christian scientists who find one or two “gaps” in evolutionary theory and thus conclude it must all be a lie.

Now, no one in the scientific community finds bad science convincing. These scientists become ostracized in the world of empirical data and fact and the damage goes no further there. However, in the political world the dissenting scientists are picked up on, and put on radio talk shows and the “issue book” of the month and those who want to believe in a vast liberal conspiracy within the scientific community go “Look!, see!, they don’t all agree cause this guy says the human eye is irreducibly complex!, or that the earth is actually getting *colder*, not warmer!” But what the radio listeners and book readers don’t know is that nobody in the scientific community takes that scientist’s opinions seriously – and not because it goes against their agenda, after all there are plenty of conservative, especially fiscally conservative if not socially, scientists — but because they are not sufficiently (or at all) supported by empirical data.

Yes, liberals do the same things with results they find more pleasing to their agenda and plaster them up all over; but on the whole, which side the scientific community as a *whole* comes down on is the most important barometer of what is really happening (or has happened, in the case of evolution) because the scientific community has absolutely no reason to guide a complex public relations hoax with bad science. Again, this would be akin to historians writing collective fiction or a pilot not bothering to keep care of his plane.

The beauty about science is that facts don’t lie, they don’t have agendas, and they don’t pontificate. When it comes to these issues those that say “this is all up in the air” or “the facts are not fully in” are really just saying, “well, most of the facts go against us but, we don’t like those conclusions so, we’re gunna go find random dude number 1 and even more random dude number 2 who disagrees and say that therefore, ‘the jury is still out’”. But there will always be people who decide to interpret the data differently, even when they are a quite a minority, as they are — because it always feels good to go against the grain and depict yourself as a persecuted crusader for truth, even if your truth it based more on politics and/or religious belief than facts. Therefore, looking at the majority scientific opinion is really the place to go for your best bet. And if the scientists end up being wrong, the great thing is that they will change their theories when they realize the data has been misconstrued; because as a whole, the scientific community is interested in doing good science, and nothing else.

Like Michael Shermer has said (who by the way is another fiscally consverative, socially liberal skeptic, like a lot of scientists), the question should not be “do you believe in evolution?” but “do you accept evolution?” because it is in fact so established as empirical reality that that is like asking, “do you believe in gravity?”

Academics (not) in society.

I attended a lecture from guest speaker David Merli today entitled “How do we know what to do?” From the title, and from the advertizing for the event, I thought I was going to attend a discussion of how to engage in debate with those who have different value systems than yourself, but are nonetheless worthy and intelligent opponents.

This ended up being a misunderstanding, and fortunately I was not the only one who made the mistake. While Merli’s talk had some interesting points which I found intriguing to think about, he did not really address the issue I imagine most of us were in the room for – how this conundrum applies to contemporary politics, and what to do about the social conflicts it produces, such as the debate over abortion, gay marriage, secularization, etc.

This was revealed when he answered a question concerning the beliefs of a Taliban member. The structural background assumptions that lead a radical Islamist to believe in specific things like say, the subordination of women, is something we can dismantle on rational grounds, said Meril. Well absolutely. But his talk had been dealing with situations where the fundamentally different assumptions people bring to an argument cannot be put in competition with each other on shared rational grounds or, that is how I understood him. The rest of the talk was therefore focused on what to do next, which to be honest I am not entirely clear about. But it seemed these situations, with two opposing value systems which cannot be proved, revolved mostly around elaborate philosophical quandaries and systems which pretty much only professional philosophers have any idea about. So quite frankly, very little to none of the talk was applicable to the real world as we encounter these issues in our day to day life.

That is no fault of Merli’s; again, I think the advertizing created some false expectations. He did what he intended to do well. But it made me think about the power of academia to remove those who administer to it from present day concerns and actual problems that are presented to us. Even something that seems as immediately relevant as, what to do with value systems opposed to ours, ended up focusing on ideas and circumstances that the average or even thoughtful person is rarely presented with in the public sphere. How difficult would it be, I wonder, to get someone to come to give one of these lectures and actually talk about gay marriage, actually talk about the problem of the religious right and the anti-science attitude of much of this country?

Part of the avoidance is built into the culture of academia itself; there is always this subtle suggestion that “contemporizing” historical processes or, in this case, philosophical concepts, is a project for the short-attention span of the masses, whose interests stop once the discussion moves beyond material appropriate for cable news. For example, Merli said that in any lecture concerning the question of clashing value systems, one is always expected to talk about abortion and Hitler, and by mentioning this, he joked, he had disposed of this obligation with one sentence. And to a large degree this is a totally valid bias, and something I complain about quite frequently myself.

But it goes too far when it keeps us from discussing how our thoughts and discoveries are relevant to our contemporary situation – because after all, if we want anybody to be throwing their two cents into these debates, shouldn’t it be the trained, intelligent and thoughtful people who might really know what they are talking about? The fact of the matter is that most people are quite interested in abortion and Hitler, and for good reason. To shrug these issues off as tainted with the shallow discourse of the masses is to give up the chance of making it even better, and therefore I don’t quite understand the hesitancy of so many academics to dive deeply into contemporary issues.

Of course, I should have been alerted to the fact that this was not going to be something applicable to the current situation when it was clear that the talk would be concerned with debating those of equal intelligence and thoughtfulness. While there are, obviously, intelligent and thoughtful Christians, those are not really responsible for the mess our public discourse is in.* The people we are dealing with are fundamentally irrational, unreasonable, and thus even if they are intelligent in terms of their mental capacity, are not really putting their brain power to any intelligent use.

I am comforted by Meril’s assertion that the crazy religious beliefs of Jihadists – and, I assumed, other religious beliefs including those of Christianity – do not even require us to take both value systems as equal in weight, since religious belief is so easily dismantled by reason. However now we still have this question, the question I came in with and then realized wasn’t going to be touched upon, let alone answered: what the fuck do we do about these people? Seriously? We need to start thinking about it and doing more about it more often, even if the wall of irrationality seems impossibly unresponsive. It would irresponsible, as enlightened individuals, not to at least try.

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* Sure, the “moderate Christians” who just like to have something to believe in bug me too, just for the fact that they choose to subordinate reason to something else when the reasons not to do so are so compelling, but those aren’t the folks who get out there with Yes on Prop 8 signs, but rather the ones that stay out of the debate entirely, perhaps aware that their faith is too fragile to take a beating, and they prefer to keep it as one likes to hold on to an old sentimental sweater.

Hope and despair in the midst of The Fear.

I’ve been reading Habermas this week, a German historian and political theorist who originated the elaborated concept of the “public sphere.” The public sphere has origins in the seventeenth century and really took off in the eighteenth. Fundamentally bourgeois, the public sphere was a space (figuratively speaking) of rational debate where the private citizens of a state met to publicly debate relevant issues and, hopefully, subject existing authority to the dictates of reason.

Sounds nice, yes? Sounds wonderful to me. And for a little while, it seemed, the reality came pretty close to the ideal. But all of this fell apart pretty quickly; the public sphere soon became as much an instrument of control as emancipation, especially through the use of culture to advertise rather than criticize existing (especially class) structures; consequently you end up with a mass public culture, constantly shifting and technically open to anyone, but merely geared towards supporting a consumerist society which has nearly lost the ability to think really critically about received wisdom and structures.

Thinking about all this brings me back into the twenty-first century. How everytime I turn on the TV, I get crap. About how standing in line for groceries, I read crap across every magazine cover I see. About how even I, notoriously confident among women, look at myself in dressing room mirrors and feel fat. And when I think about all of this at once, I feel almost despairing. The state of our society has gotten so truly sick, so far removed from that which is truly nourishing and joyful, that I wonder if I am in the end days of reason and happiness. It frightens me, and makes me feel ever so alienated by this place, this space that I must move within.

However today I came across two things which gave me some cause for hope. The first is a song by Lily Allen which I first heard in Moscow on TV, liked it right away, and heard again last night in the pet store, reminding me to download it today. I think the lyrics will speak for themselves bellow:

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever, I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuck loads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them.

And I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cause everyone knows that’s how you get famous.
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m onto a winner.

Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore.
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.

Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic.

And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah we’re onto a winner.

Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner.

Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.

This assures me that, at the least, we have not reached the point where critical voices are absent and it is not clear to a lot of people that there is a very serious problem here. Of course, recognizing the problem is different from acting to fix it, and recognizing that it is much, much more pervasive than we realize, and is in fact working its evil magic in places we deem to be free from excessive consumerism, shallowness, or oppression. But we’ll save that discussion of our society’s split personality for the post I’ve been planning forever on Oprah. The point here is that it could be worse. We could be in a situation where a song like this might not hit a chord; however, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people appreciate the blunt social criticism going on here.

The second thing that I came by was the much talked about performance of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. This is one of those times where it would be shallow of me to even attempt to avoid being cliche — this video moved me, more than I can say. I recognized my own young, childhood dreaming in this entire moment, but I saw it through a woman who, unlike me, has probably felt knocked down several times for having the dreams she does and appreciating the woman she is. And while you see the sickness, and indeed The Fear in the initial reactions of the audience, again at least, at least we can still recognize beauty when it strikes us starkly, sharply, and with complete assurance in its being.

What is wrong with American media and political culture: an example brought to you by Good Morning America.

A few weeks ago, while indirectly watching Good Morning America* over a bowl of cereal, they ran a preview segment for a 20/20 John Stossel segment on universal preschool, which has apparently been proposed by the Obama administration. Now, I cannot say that I watched the full 20/20 program; but apparently from reviews from those who did, what I saw from the “preview” pretty much covered the content of the whole program. Stossel lined up a bunch of angry, tax paying mothers and had them sound off on the waste of money universal preschool would be. After all, they argued, there are already subsidy programs for those who cannot afford preschool. All this will be is a big waste of money.

There was, not surprisenly, no interviews — at least in this preview, but for how long it was it could have at least included balance if it existed in the longer format — of Obama officials who are responsible for advocating the idea of universal preschool, or interviews of federal employees who administer such benefits as already exist and might be able to explain why the current system is inadequate. Rather we just had livid mothers, complaining about how silly and stupid Obama and such politicians must be; it’s plain common sense to anyone that such a system is a pointless waste of hard earned tax payer’s money.

Now this alone justifies the title of this post. But what made this really golden was the segment that followed immediately after it, a fluff piece with Diane Sawyer in Finland. ** Mostly Sawyer just talked about how much those Fins love saunas and, how cute their traditional dances are; but there was also a lengthy segment on their health care system. Apparently, I learned, all major towns in Finland have a health clinic which, for $50 a year, they can have full access to. And apparently, the Fins have gotten a lot healthier in the past decade or so, due to many public initiatives and awareness campaigns. Impressive, the report seemed to say. And yet, no mention of how this is made possible. Sounds nice, why don’t we do that here? Oh gee, do you think it might have something to do with the fact that, according to this source at least, as of 1999 private sources accounted for only 24% of Finland’s health care system? Hmmmm. Maybe? That might? Have something? To do with it?

Or honestly, maybe not. To be honest, I’m not sure how Finland’s statistics square up with comparable countries, or ours, on how exactly they cover their health care costs.*** And perhaps they will end up revamping it to make it more private.**** But the larger point is that, when covering one of those suspect European countries that are branded negatively in the minds of most Americans as “socialist,” no one even thinks to ask where these charming qualities come from. What, do they just figure the simple and endearing Fins are more thrifty with their primitive medical supplies than Americans? That ought to be the first question on any serious reporter’s list — how do they pay for this, and why can’t we do this here? — but instead, the glaring question is not even asked.

Coming after a typical John Stossel piece, where the government is portrayed by ranting taxpayers as inherently incapable of understanding any simple issue in the simple manner that simple common sense obviously dictates, this very simple (read, thoughtless) piece on Finland came across as even more starkly disturbing. Often the idelogical threat of socialism in Europe is dealt with by demonization; but perhaps ignoring the fact that such altnerative options even exist, or subtely insinuating that they only work in supposedly simple and bucollic countries, is a more effective way to prevent the American pubic from even questioning their by-your-own-boostraps ideology.

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• I am never sure if I am supposed to italicize TV shows, but then decide to in any case because really, doesn’t it just look weird if I don’t? And I dislike quotes as a substitute.
• * And if you’re looking for the health care coverage on the website link, tell me if you find it; cause I couldn’t. Apparently it wasn’t quite newsworthy enough to make the cut, and they replaced it with Sawyer’s chilly dip instead.
• ** And quite honestly, I am too lazy and too busy to embark on that kind of research at the moment, especially considering that 1) no one reads this and 2) it’s not the main point of my argument in any case.
• *** I say this because, judging from my brief Google search, Finland might be revamping its health care system some time soon.

Direct democracy blows: part I.

Consider the following quotation from a textbook on early modern Europe:

“Drawing on the traditions of Plato and Calvin, he [Rousseau] defined freedom as obedience to the law. In his case, the law to be obeyed was that created by the general will. In a society with virtuous customs and morals in which citizens have adequate information on important issues, the concept of the general will is normally equivalent to the will of a majority of voting citizens. Democratic participation in decision making would bind the individual citizen to the community. Rousseau believed the general will, thus understood, must always be right and that to obey the general will is to be free. This argument led him to the notorious conclusion that under certain circumstances some people must be forced to be free. Rousseau’s politics thus constituted a justification for radical direct democracy and for collective action against individual citizens.”*

A couple of things here: firstly, Rousseau was crazy. Really, I don’t think that is an exaggeration. But brilliant as well. So much of what he said went up against the accepted assumptions of his time that he is one of those rare birds that manages to break out of the supposedly all-encompassing thought structure of any given period.

That being said, a lot of that was for the worse, refuting some of the best lessons of the Enlightenment. As soon as we get going with the above quote, we run into trouble. Anyone who bases any of their political thought on Calvin immediately gives causes for suspicion. Calvinism, one of the most morally stringent forms of Protestantism and also the one that gives the least in return, in terms of psychological and theological comfort, does not sound like a practical place to start when figuring out a political system that needs to deal with dirty, human interest. ** Needless to say, our modern democracy here in California hardly qualifies as having “virtuous customs” in the way Rousseau imagined them (which would include, by the by, a total separation of the spheres between men and women). Thus, direct democracy as we practice it today would look like a farce to Rousseau, since he would probably take issue with everything, from the inequalities built into the voting system to the fact that we like to vote ourselves tax cuts. (Individual profit as motive is no good here, you see; nor is large amounts of private property.)

That being said, I can’t help wondering what those conservatives who think that something like Prop 8 is constitutionally and/or philosophically sound would think when confronted with the implications of this quote. Because really, what Prop 8 did was exactly what Rousseau intended the “general will” to be empowered to do: enable “collective action against individual citizens.” When you argue that the will of the people has passed Prop 8, and therefore Prop 8 is right, it would be well to inform yourself not only of all the times the “will of the people” has voted to do things much more horrific than stripping citizens of legal equality but, what the philosophical implications are in such a statement.

Personally, I’d rather have activist judges any day over Rousseau’s inescapable, omniscient “general will,” closed to reconsideration, reason, or exception.

[Perhaps more on this latter: the “tyranny of the majority” problem can also be well addressed by a look at Madison.]

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* The Western Heritage, Donald Kagan, 569.

** Not for all people, obviously, otherwise there would be no attraction to him; but personally, reveling in the thought of my total inability to comprehend any moral order because the order of God is so beyond my comprehension and thus, giving up on the only tool I have, reason, as a mode of finding answers to the most basic questions of human existence? Not my cup of tea, and, I would argue, while perhaps theologically attractive to some, not a very useful place to start when coming up with political constitutions.

Of course, a lot of people would point to groups like the Puritans and place the origins of much modern democracy in covenant theology of Calvinist origin; fair enough. But that’s not what Rousseau is taking out of Calvin, is it? At least certainly not a select, covenanted communion with a Christian God that has religious tests for membership, considering he was a Deist. And furthermore, I would argue that while the covenant theology/origins of democracy obviously has some validity, especially in America, that it had just as much and probably more to do with British political culture operating in the backwaters of America where representative assemblies and local modes of government needed to be created somehow, in any case, and in New England this was often facilitated by religious organization.

Talking about economics with someone who knows very little (next to nothing) about economics.

That is, me. Yesterday I attended the “Stimulus Smackdown” debate, which pitted this guy (Bradford DeLong) and this guy (Michele Boldrin) against each other. I was interested in attending because I know very little about the actual contours of this debate (when held amongst intelligent people, that is; I know plenty about the argument, ‘why should we be bailing out welfare queens and people who bought houses they couldn’t afford’ genre) and I wanted to hear two very informed people try to convince me of more or less opposite arguments. So, I will try to summarize both the main points and questions I came away with.

- Firstly, it seemed that Boldrin didn’t really think the stimulus package was going to do irreparable harm; again there wasn’t a lot of ideological nonsense going on here; but that according to how he reads available evidence, if you put in say, 1% into the economy from government stimulus, you’re only going to get 1% back, or break even, more or less. Furthermore, the problem is with the financial system itself, and that is not going to be fixed, as Boldrin somewhat dismissively mocked, by building hospitals in rural Wisconsin or what have you. The stimulus package “propaganda” redirects public attention away from the real problem, offering a quick fix and thus extending the time we’ve already wasted on not addressing the real fundamental issues.

- DeLong argues that new research shows that the return on government stimulus is more like 3 to 1, and furthermore argues that neither he nor the Obama administration is billing the stimulus package as a fix to the broken financial system itself, but as a way to “stop the bleeding” before the unemployment caused by the financial system breakdown gets out of control and a downward spiral continues. It is stabilizing the patient, in other words, in order to give time for a diagnosis and treatment. (I couldn’t help imagining during these metaphors, of course, what Dr. House would do about this metaphorical patient.) This makes a whole lot of sense to me, but it leads to another disagreement between the two:

- DeLong makes this argument on the assumption that the stimulus package will create jobs. Boldrin, I think, is not convinced because he argues that the areas hardest hit, say for example the construction business, are not going to be directly provided jobs by this stimulus package, and so the unemployment will not really be significantly reduced – or, as he put it, if a patient has an injury on his arm you don’t put a band aid on his butt, or, you can’t make a nurse out of a construction worker. But DeLong thinks the work force is more flexible than Boldrin realizes.

There were a lot more topics discussed and, subtleties addressed which I don’t have the expertise to really follow. One of the more interesting qualities of the debate, however, was this running joke about the awfulness of macroeconomics, which both DeLong and Bouldrin agreed is self-referential and based on theoretical models instead of dealing with real economic phenomena as is. It got to the point where almost every expert which got up to ask a question made a joke about whether he was or wasn’t a macro economist.

This tension is compelling to me; I love the “models vs. pure empiricism” argument that takes place not only in economics, apparently, but also social science and definitely history. I can see the points on both sides, and I liked how cheerfully the attending macro economists embraced their much maligned professions, seemingly interested, nonetheless, in improving the field and yet still having faith in the tools they had learned. How does such a split within a profession develop, and what are the advantages of either approach? I recall MarxistBob complaining about the lack of social science in our history department; does he have a point? Are historians too unwilling to use models and theories because they fetishize their ability to answer small questions but find some misplaced virtue in insisting on the impossibility of answering the larger ones?

So where did I find myself leaning at the end of the debate? Well, in terms of evidence presented, I felt like both sides broke pretty even. I’ve read too much of Eric’s stuff lately not to be compelled by his counterfactual – that if a huge amount of government money spent on wartime can pull a nation out of a deep depression, why do you necessarily need the war?, why can’t you stimulate any industry in this manner? This argues, I would think, that you do not see more than 1 to 1 returns on government stimulus most of the time, because there is a high tipping point here, and it takes a lot of spending, more than the political culture of even more conservative European countries let alone America could countenance.

That being said, DeLong did not hit Boldrin with a huge amount of graphs or numbers to fundamentally disprove what he was saying, that, given the situation and the type of spending we are looking at, there is not much reason to suspect that it will substantially jump start the economy. However, that being said, I am also convinced by DeLong’s argument that something must be done; even if the stimulus package doesn’t get a great return on the investment, any bleeding stopped is better than a deluge of jobs and confidence. Even if this were to get us to just break even, hold steady at where we are now, I would think it is worth it. Because it seems to me, looking at both this situation and with the Depression in mind, that nothing is more damaging than getting into a downward spiral of fear and lack of confidence; indeed, as all we have to fear is fear itself, all the hope we can get is useful, insofar as if it might not create a job for every dollar spent, maybe it will create one more dollar spent by the already employed that otherwise would have been saved.

Finally, let me conclude by posing my fundamental question both going in and going out: how can they disagree about this stuff? I understand that economies are complex systems with a million different variables, but aren’t you still dealing with sheer data and empirical questions? It’s not philosophy, it seems there should be way to prove or disprove certain assumptions; so how can two very learned economists come to considerably different conclusions about the value and/or effect of fiscal policy? I didn’t ask this, of course; there was not much time for audience questions and I wasn’t going to muddy the very technical questions that were being asked with this vague, almost philosophical question, but I still wonder. I suppose economics is just more muddy and less straight forward than I realize, but that seems a depressing thought – I understand that we still can’t grasp the infinity of the universe or the source of our consciousness, but I would like to think we could at least figure out how our own financial systems operate. I suppose I can take comfort in that fact that at least I have done a little, in the midst of a very unpleasant cold, in making myself a little less ignorant about the contours of the debate that insists on existing.

Philip Glass.

I went to see Philip Glass a few weeks ago at the Mondavi Center. This was quite exciting for me as he is one of my favorite composers.

The experience was definitely a net positive, although there were mixed moments. The performance opened with Glass performing two of his piano pieces, the latter of which I knew very well. This was a thrilling experience – Glass’s piano pieces are my favorite of his work, I realized sitting there listening to the beautiful notes trip and spill over into each other. In the distance there was a small, nearly frail looking man merely sitting on a bench while this mesmerizing music filled the auditorium. I found my glance resting on the huge strokes of light playing on the large walls of the theatre rather than, like a previous attendance for a sympathy performance of Beethoven, at the performers on stage. These were pieces based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and I found it delightfully challenging to see how the fast paced cascade of notes could make one think of waking up one morning as a giant insect.

The second performance, however, consisted of a rather lengthy cello performance. I am sure the musician (not Glass) was the best there is to be had and, another more musically educated individual understands what to look for and why it is beautiful. But I was bored by the second minute mark; long, drawn out cello notes following one upon the other with no apparent direction or melody failed to grasp my senses, and I was thinking about banalities by the end of it.

Luckily the rest of the performance made up for this. Perhaps my favorite were songs from a French play about the French occupation of Algeria; Glass had written a score for a performance of the play a decade or two ago. One of the songs must have been to a scene where someone was strolling along an Algerian street, because the percussionist had all sorts of fun toys to play with, from rolling sticks to stroking wind chimes, which suggested the noises one must hear in a busy market place, in my imagination lit up by moonlight.

Being able to listen to Glass speak was lovely as well; he was much older than I imagined, although considering he was born in the 1930s I don’t know why I didn’t realize how old he is by now; and his demeanor differed as well. For some reason I’ve always imagined him as self-assured and somewhat standoffish; instead he seemed gentle, kind, and even shy. He cracked a joke at one point, and the audience liked it, and so did I.

There was, of course, an encore, and a song called “Closing,” was played. I suppose I was tired by this point because I rested my head against my hand and closed my eyes. The song was beautiful and sounded of longing, and as part of me drifted off to sleep another was busy collecting memories and images, mostly from San Diego I think; sitting in front of my computer with one eye on my blog, another on my wine and my mind’s eye on the Van Gogh painting behind me; driving down southern freeways with luke warm air outside and trying to steer through my loneliness; and then the last thing I can clearly remember is recalling an imagined scenario that used to haunt me while I was there. I would listen to one of my favorite Glass pieces from The Fog of War soundtrack, and see myself lying on the bottom of a silently swirling spa. My eyes would glance up while the water shifted this way and that, seeming to represent all the philosophers I longed to connect to and all my unsettled thoughts. The small pool would swell and swell, until the water was pouring out onto the edges in all directions, searching for some other crack or space to fill itself into, but finding instead merely a vast, unresponsive desert of concrete.

And it must have been at this point that I started crying, and thus waking up a little. My eyelids were fluttering as each tear went streaming down, and with each I woke up a little more, finally fully coming to when the piece was finished and realizing my face was soaked. By the time I made it to the bathroom I realized I didn’t entirely remember what had just happened, and how. Somehow I had started out resting my eyes to a piece of music and had woken up half dreaming, somehow remembering something painful enough to still well up when I’m not looking directly at it. It was as though the water from that lonely pool had welled up within me and out through my eyes, when a moment before all I had been thinking about was going home.

The crucible of argument.

I have a theory about arguments. Political or intellectual arguments, that is. If any argument could be carried on to its smallest unit — if all the evidence, sub-arguments and assumptions entailed in each could be worked through by two opponents — inevitably the combatants would whittle the argument down into a very few, or even a singular, unproveable assumptions on which each has a different position. All the other details of disagreement rely on and can be traced back, ultimately, to this central philosophical difference.

I call this a theory for good reason, since it would work in an ideal world but, probably not too often in this one. People misrepresent facts, sometimes with only one conscious eye on the fact and, sometimes deliberately. They also ignore facts that they kind unconvincing or unimportant simply because they butt up against their opinion. Even a simple matter of data can run up against a whole slew of objections — whether this data set is the most accurate or that one is, whether this data set or that one is relevant to the question at hand, etc. And thus, if we can’t even decide on facts, it is harder for us to work our way down to the central disagreements that are not so factual. Additionally, some people are just plain disingenuous; they don’t really have any intellectual interest in the question, but merely get whatever kicks they need from being dogmatic warriors.

I do not mean to argue here that because truth is illusive, it does not exist and therefore, let’s all be moderate and listen to each other’s opinions with equal respect, even when some opinions are patently absurd. That would suggest I am content with what my theory implies. I’m not. Increasingly I am disturbed by how those, when confronted with convincing evidence that opposes their opinion, manage to weasel their way out of consciously admitting fault or reshaping their assessment. There is nothing anyone can say, for example, to libertarians convinced the New Deal made America worse off. There is nothing anyone can say, for another example, to someone who really believes the moon landing was faked. And there is nothing anyone can say to a religiously minded conservative that really believes that civilization is headed for the toilet once gay people can get married. These are mindsets immune to historical or factual reasoning. But, this is not to imply that all opinions are so ideological or resilient to reasoned debate.

However, it does imply that as humans, we have done a pretty bad job at teaching ourselves to truly reason. It does mean that currently, there are other things – religious sentiment, ideology, dogmatism — that while our society does not always openly place above reason, a whole slew of subtle and not-so-subtle influences in our society actually do encourage the dismissal of evidence and reason. Additionally, many people rely on such overarching mindsets as the means of supplying meaning, understanding and purpose in life — with so much at stake, they cling to them like desperate little birds about to fall out of trees. They will take any pathway out of having to question them, including falling under the spell of less-than-reasonable modes of thought.

It is unfortunate that so few are willing to concede that at heart, many of their cherished opinions are based on improvable assumptions. I too of course, have values that shape my thought that cannot possibly be validated by empirical evidence or pure reason. But I feel encouraged by the conclusions they lead me to because I see evidence of their efficaciousness and positive effect in the real world, in the realm of the actual and the factual. Regardless of whether humans are really created “equal” — obviously this is man-made idea, insofar as being empirically unproveable in the way it is meant to be read — it is certainly true that multiculturalism, pluralism and the division of church and state allow for more freedom of expression, which leads to more varied cultural products, which leads to more human creativity in general. I am with Chomsky in assuming man is happiest this way. But I fail to think of many examples where open minds, intellectual diversity and curiosity have resulted in a more miserable or less functional populace. Perhaps things are less conflicted in largely homogenous communities, but that is not because diversity is a bad thing in and of itself; it is because people have a negative response to diversity, which creates all sort of negative things. Ignorance, in other words, is the problem, not diversity. And diversity is perhaps one of the most stubborn characteristics of human nature and modern society.

If all people were aware of their starting assumptions, we could then have a fruitful discussion about how much our assumptions match real-world phenomena, or how well they work in a real-world context, to put it in a better way. But few consider their fundamental beliefs as “assumptions” — rather, they are truths, and truths do not respond to mere facts.

Furthermore, even if we were able to throw arguments into this crucible of debate, it would be difficult, in our current society, to find a medium in which to realistically do it, particularly due to the disagreement over facts. We would have to throw the two central representatives of a contested issue in a room (or force them into continuous written dialogue with one another), with access to every reference or experimental procedure and then force them to explain and defend each and every one of their points. In the age of infotainment, when even the analysis of important issues in the most prestigious newspaper makes an undergraduate paper look thoughtful, it is unlikely that anyone would be willing to pay attention long enough to absorb the lesson.

Yet so often I fantasize about being able to get to the heart of fundamental issues in this manner. It makes watching our sorry excuse for public discourse even that more painful.

Oldie but goodie.

While listening to a lecture on the Reformation for the class I TA for today, I suddenly remembered a little song I wrote back in my undergraduate days, when I first learned in detail the theology of Luther. Much to my luck, it made the transistion from my desk to laptop computer. It’s pretty corny, yes, but hey, something about the Protestant Reformation just makes me want to break out into folk song.

Luther’s Ode

Oh once upon a time, a time so long ago

The Catholic Church was kickass, mighty power did it show.

You just needed to belong, and up to Heaven you would go –

It even made those sucker kings wait out in the snow.

It could even sell salvation, or at least a little bit

Membership and good works were your salvation kit.

And whilst the system here was not the biggest hit,

The Church would simply burn your ass so you better live with it.

But then one fateful day on October 31

The church got some of its own shit from one of its own sons

Martin Luther, strong and brash, nailed onto the door –

“Hey you stupid church, we’re not listenin’ no more.”

He said:

“Fuck you, the Catholic Church.

You’ve been damn corrupt nearly since your birth,

You’re lying and you’re cheating from upon your perch,

So fuck you, the Catholic Church.”

Martin preached faith and love as the way to pray –

Being good won’t save your ass even if you’re good all day –

And the Catholic Church, well you’re all a bunch of frauds –

Because we know the Bible says, you can’t suck up to God.

No!, you can’t suck up to God.

So,

Fuck you, the Catholic Church.

You’ve been damn corrupt nearly since your birth,

You’re lying and you’re cheating from upon your perch,

So fuck you, the Catholic Church.

So, he said don’t worry, about the priests’ gowns –

All that pomp and circumstance without faith will send you down.

But Jesus he can reach you and himself will hold your hand –

Love your neighbor, and for your faith, you can take a stand.

So you can say,

Fuck you, the Catholic Church.

You’ve been damn corrupt nearly since your birth,

You’re lying and you’re cheating from upon your perch,

So fuck you, the Catholic Church.

One more time!

Fuck you, the Catholic Church.

You’ve been damn corrupt nearly since your birth,

You’re lying and you’re cheating from upon your perch,

So fuck you, the Catholic Church.