Rational Philosophy

The tricky balance between anxiety and indifference.

This morning I was walking uptown when police blocked off 54th Street in preparation for the passage of the president’s motorcade (he was on his way to acknowledge to the Economic Club of New York that the economy is going through a rough patch.) At first I was miffed to be held up at the barrier (not the one pictured to the left, which is from another day and another part of town). Inwardly I fretted about the delay, and bridled at the imposition (even though I understood, rationally, that the barricades made for an appropriate precaution). Around me, the mood of my fellow detainees ranged from bemused tolerance to indignant outrage. More than one pedestrian tried to argue their perspective with the cops who stood guard at the barriers. After I’d accepted that for a while I’d be stuck at the steel barricade, I was able to get over my short term anxiety and watch with curiosity as the police did their work and as the motorcade passed through.

Up to now, Bush has responded to the current round of economic crises with a detached kind of downhome objectivity. We’re familiar with his slow-draw approach to crises. It’s part of what’s made him so incredibly unpopular with so many. (Examples being his glacial response on September 11th, and his lack of action during and after hurricance Katrina.) His stance has been that the economy is generally sound and that this is a bumpy section of road — an analogy he used today.

On global warming, the Bush administration has taken many years to come around to accepting the science at face value, and is now entering a period of accepting the science of warming, while rejecting the facts of an effective solution. Bush would have us switch to switchgrass fuels before we think about restricting emissions. BBC News reports today that:

“One recent study investigated the impact of fertiliser on biofuel production. Using sugar cane, according to the research, does offer greenhouse gas savings of between 10% and 50%.

“But using rapeseed and corn for biofuel manufacture can actually produce between 50% and 70% more greenhouse gases than using fossil fuels.”

When Bush takes the long view one senses that it’s because he shrinks from the prospect of near term realities. But if we’re prone to short term anxiety, the long view can help us gain a more rational perspective on life by putting our short term fears into perspective.

It can be particularly hard to take the long term view. We are wired to care deeply about how we feel right now and what we anticipate will happen to us in the immediate future. Eliot Spitzer took the short term view when he acted on his desire for sexual gratification, and one can imagine that the long term view was, if not the furthest thing from his mind, then at least stuffed into a far corner, as he did.

When it comes to government, some European countries seem to be particularly good at planning for the long term. The Netherlands has for some time been planning grand but pragmatic schemes to ensure the safety of its land from the threat of flooding from rising water levels. Mentioned in the same BBC article, Sweden already has 1,000 biofuel filling stations. Ireland has effectively eradicated the use of plastic grocery bags.

For everyday life, we can use the long term perspective to help us take a more pragmatic view about things like the development of our children (worrying about how long, relatively speaking, it takes our child to walk or talk), investment woes (if we make a long term investment, the stock price only matters when buy and when we sell), relationship problems (what was that we fought about last week?), and many other things.

(Of course, if we never fret about the short term, we may be very calm but everyone around us will loath us and think us arrogant and indifferent. Not that we’ll care…)

In the long, long term (scientists have calculated about 7.59 billion years) the earth will get swallowed up by the dying sun. This puts practically everything into perspective. Even then, there’ll be hope for the human race if we’ve put the Dutch and the Swedes in charge of planning our exit strategy… Whereas, if it’s down to George Bush’s intellectual descendents, we’d better buy some margarita mix and settle back for the final descent.

 

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On asking the wrong question — science, religion, and politics.

The John Templeton Foundation has given the $1.6 million Templeton Award, encouraging scientific discovery on the “big questions” in science and philosophy, to Michael Heller (pictured left) a Polish Roman Catholic priest, cosmologist, and philosopher. Heller describes his view on the interplay between science and religion as follows: “Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”

Rarely do we find someone working to integrate an open and inquisitive understanding of the scientific workings of the universe with a religious perspective on the meaning of existence. We tend either to find people leaning more in one direction or the other. And I’m struck by Heller’s impulse that both science and religion are prerequisites of a decent existence.

President Bush has today called for swift action on a trade pact with Columbia. Bush claims that Venezuela under Hugo Chavez has “squandered its own oil wealth in an effort to promote its hostile anti-American vision.” Bush, it seems, seeks to solidify an ally in Latin America (Columbia) at a time when Venezuela holds sway in a trend toward anti-American, left leaning sentiment in the region. But what is the truth about the use of oil wealth in Venezuela, and what does America stand to gain or lose if we follow Bush’s call for swift action unfettered by “politics”?

I take it that by saying both science and religion are required for a decent existence Heller means a fulfilling or complete sense of existence. And Heller must be referring to our experience of existence, since the judgment of decency implies awareness (existence without experience could be neither decent nor lacking decency).

Schopenhauer perceived that we have only an indirect experience of existence. We infer existence through our senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing, and through our direct awareness of our body and the impressions upon it. So, everything we know of existence is inferred through our senses. It would be quite feasible to imagine a decent life lived without any indirect knowledge of science or religion. For thousands of years human beings lived without formal, structured and conscious scientific or religious knowledge. Many people today live decent lives with only scant awareness of science or religion.

While Heller strikes me as an earnest and brilliant man courageously pursuing fascinating thoughts and ideas, I take issue with his statement about what makes a decent existence as a fundamental question. But I suspect that Heller was referring to the debate between advocates of science and religion, insisting that neither has a stronghold on the decency of existence.

In this though I think that Heller betrays a lack of objectivity. Since Heller, being both a religious and a scientific man, begins with the premise that a decent understanding of existence requires both science and religion, he will inevitably end where he began.

A more testing question would be to ask whether science in and of itself is sufficient for a decent understanding of existence, one that supports a satisfying and complete depth of feeling about life’s meaning. Or, to ask the opposite question, whether religion in and of itself is sufficient for a decent understanding of existence supporting a complete sense of the mechanics of the universe.

Back to Bush: The truth about Venezuela’s oil money seems to be that Hugo Chavez has somewhat recklessly grabbed a hold of and diverted oil profits toward social programs for two ends — to buy favor in his political war against America (and Bush), and to help lift his people out of poverty. While one can argue that his methods for raising the standard of living of poor Venezuelans are crude and short-sighted, it is difficult to argue that he has no real intent to help them. And, I would argue that if one looks at the degree of investment in each goal, his primary goal seems to be to help the Venezuelan people.

So, Bush is using emotional and misleading rhetoric to sway the US people and congress in support of a free trade pact with Columbia. His goal, as he states, is to ensure America’s national security and economic interest. But does it serve America’s national security interests to try to out-rhetoric Chavez? Bush is playing into Chavez’s hands by helping shape policy choices through defining them ideologically.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

More on the philosophy of thought.

I wrote yesterday about how we don’t think as much as we think we think. I opined that perhaps that’s OK most of the time, but pointed out that lack of thought on some things can be dangerous. I’ve since landed on a few examples.

The faculty and administration at the University of Kentucky have been struggling since last April to dispel a baseless rumor that the school had dropped its Holocaust course for fear that it would offend muslim students. (The rumor began when a school in Birmingham, UK, stopped teaching a Holocaust class.) Thousands of people have gone to the lengths of sending e-mail to the university faculty and administration complaining of the cancelation… which never happened.

In another piece, the Times reports on a report from a new education advocacy group called Common Core. The piece tells us that many teenagers are woefully ignorant of basic aspects of history and literature. It then connects this ignorance to the focus of No Child Left Behind on reading and math tests, that have, apparently, reduced schools’ focus on liberal arts.

But the piece didn’t compare the ignorance of teenagers now to the level of ignorance prior to No Child Left Behind. Which left me curious. I dug out the Common Core report and found that it claimed that its methodology made such a direct comparison impossible. I then dug around and found an education advocacy website that had dug out Federal testing data that does show comparative numbers. Apparently, teenagers may actually know a little more now about history and literature than they did a few years ago.

(I’d love to take an opportunity to slam No Child Left Behind, but Common Core’s data can’t help me there!!)

Which brings us to the master of thoughtlessness, our current president, George Bush. Bush criticizes higher taxes for gas companies saying it will only make gas prices higher. And that we should be investing in oil refineries close to home to increase widespread use of renewable energy.

In each case, a little bit more thought would go a long way.

Before sending an e-mail criticizing an institution for some action or inaction, it would seem wise to verify that the source of our information is legitimate. A chain e-mail, for instance, shouldn’t be deemed sufficient.

As for the NY Times, it shouldn’t require its readers to go and fact check a story’s rhetoric. One would expect the reporter to have thought about the impact of the story and done the appropriate homework to verify its claims and hype.

And Bush should be enrolled in a class for remedial thinking. His over-simplistic and emotional reaction to energy policy ignores the basic problem. Burning hydrocarbons has a much higher price tag than the cost of extracting and refining those hydrocarbons. Reducing or reversing global warming, if it’s possible, will result in huge costs. We need to begin acknowledging those costs and collecting them now through a gas company surcharge or at the pump.

But how do we know when we should give things more thought? Ironically, I’ve noticed that I tend to prefix my own ill-conceived rhetoric with words like “I think” or “I believe.” When I can catch myself speaking from the hip, I can sometimes acknowledge that I haven’t really thought something through as fully as I need to if I’m going to express an opinion on it.

On a brighter note I came across a wonderful new venture — the creation of an on-line encyclopedia of species — The Encyclopedia of Life! A worthy effort to spread knowledge.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On the origin and philosophy of power: Fidel Castro’s resignation, Bush’s comments on African genocide, and Jefferson’s internal torment:

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” - Thomas Jefferson

In 1959, Fidel Castro seized power from the dictator Fulgencio Batista so that Cubans could live more freely. Forty-nine years later, having been in power ever since, Castro has finally resigned. “I will not aspire to neither will I accept — I repeat I will not aspire to neither will I accept — the position of President of the Council of State and Commander in chief,” he said in his letter of resignation. The repetition, one thinks, might have been an unnecessary emphasis for anyone but himself. After he’d kicked out Batista, Castro discovered that for a person who likes to lead, and believes himself possessed with the capacity to make good decisions, it’s easier to assume control than to let it go.

Self-awareness provides the only anti-dote to despotism, and it needs to be administered in doses proportional to the power being assumed.

President Bush has been an avid critic of Castro’s and yet Bush himself has assumed ever-more dubious, overreaching powers, relishing his self-portrayal as “the decider.” In Rwanda today, Bush leveled a general criticism at the United Nations for its glacial responsiveness to humanitarian crises. But this was simply a convenient way to set into greater relief his boast of being a fast-acting and independent problem-solver. If Bush had a fraction of Castro’s sense of conviction and vigor, he would have been an even more dangerous and destructive force in the world than he has been. And that’s a sobering thought.

As president, Thomas Jefferson, an ardent critic of the abuse of power by central government, nevertheless found himself making autocratic decisions (the Louisiana purchase, for instance). Jefferson recognized his hypocrisy, understood the ramifications of his actions, but still did what he thought was wisest in the long term, even if it went against his principles of good government in the short term.

Evolution has developed in social species the desire for power and the desire to maintain power. On a biological level, power equates to the survival of one’s genetic code. If we cede power, our genes will soon lose out to more competitive genes. Evolution, therefore, rewards competitiveness.  Ghengis Kahn, for instance, while not a pleasant man, weilded considerable power and through brutal means assured that his genes would be passed on to future generations.

But this kind of social power, on a biological level, relates directly only to influence for the purposes of procreating. But in human beings the desire for power transfers itself to all kinds of conscious and subconscious activity. Unless we consciously moderate our desire for power through self-awareness, we will attempt to exert power indiscriminately.

This leads us to be blind to our own flaws and to overestimate our own capabilities.

Castro wasn’t the worst leader Cuba could have had for the past half-century, but he wasn’t the best one either. The persistence and self-belief necessary to make a successful freedom fighter may well have been his achilles heel when it came to leading his country. And, as for Bush, he proves that even a very small aptitude and desire to lead can become hypertrophied given enough power.

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

P.S.: A couple of months ago, I wrote a song inspired by the transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother, Raul - You can listen to “This Is Our Country” at www.myspace.com/martingwalker and purchase a download copy for just 99 cents from the SnoCap store on this page.

Here are the lyrics…

Raul, brother dear, don’t let me down
Take our country now and lead it to your fullest
Remember, Raul, how we turned out Batista

Oh, the green dawns, oh the midnight raids
We have borne the weight of the revolution
Remember, Raul, these are your people

In Biran, where the cane stands tall and strong
Along the river righting every wrong
This is our country, this is our time

Raul, my brother, do not mourn me
Mourn your Espin, but do not cry for me
Remember, Raul, I am immortal

They could not kill me then and not now either
We have borne the weight of the revolution
This is our country, this is our time

More Valentine’s day ice-water; on the philosophy of charm and its opposite: Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin and British men.

In recent history, Bill Clinton, as president, stood out for many as man of great personal charm. Bill Clinton in his supporting role as Hillary’s pit-bull has been less widely admired for his charm. Vladimir Putin charmed George Bush early in Bush’s presidency, and he seems to have charmed a Russian populace eager to swoon again for strong, dynamic leadership. But, as an outsider, Putin’s charm seems about as thin as the ice on the Dead Sea.

I wonder what role charm plays in life, how it works, and when it breaks down?

Charm is a form of deception in which the deceived is complicit. The charmer uses strategems to make the charmee feel special. The strategems work to falsify or exaggerate the degree to which the charmer really believes in the charmee being special. The charmee on some level recognizes that he or she is being charmed but appreciates the effort being exerted. The apparent exchange then: “I like you; thank you for liking me,” masks a more subtle exchange “I am willing to exert myself for your benefit; thank you for exerting yourself for my benefit.”

Looked at this way, we can see that charm doesn’t really work unless the person being charmed feels on some level or in some way inferior to the person doing the charming. That’s why Vladimir Putin can charm the Russian people who have felt somewhat rudderless in the post-cold war era, or George Bush who doesn’t hold a candle to Putin in terms of ruthlessness and political savvy, but not the average westerner who reads the news and sees right through Putin’s waxy smile.

The person doing the charming also has to have something to gain from exerting the effort. This can sometimes be directly related to the process of charming — getting something out of the charmee. But it can also be indirectly related. Bill Clinton, I hazzard to propose, charmed people as president in order to develop and sustain a cult of charm. He positively glowed with charm and understood that this glow would extend to far greater reaches than the person toward whom he was directing his attention at any moment in time.

Bill Clinton the dutiful husband has nothing personally to gain from being charming. He’s not running for president. One can’t imagine that he’d be happy back in the White House playing, at best, second fiddle to Hillary. Consciously, I’m sure he believes he’s supporting Hillary, but subconsciously he’s undermining her through his charmless tactics.

The British men surveyed by a manufacturer of large screen TVs probably did so anonymously. And yet, there’s still something charmless about the statistic that 50% of them would trade in six months of sex for a 50 inch screen. (I imagine you can hear the French men laughing all the way from Dover as they purchase their ferry tickets for a quick trip to woo the not-so-merry maids of England.)

Charm or lack of charm can be a characteristic of nations as well as individuals. I can say this because I’m British, but the British (with the exception of the shrinking upper class) are charmless because they feel inferior to everyone. The charmer has to feel superior to someone. The French feel superior to everyone, which makes them the people most capable of charm, but their arrogance is their achilles heel — most of the time they can’t be bothered to be charming because they feel they have nothing to gain from it.

And since I’m generalizing offensively, I’ll say that men tend to be less charming than women unless they’re trying to seduce a woman… or get her to buy them a large screen TV. 

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On causality, with specific reference to the hatred of Hillary Clinton, and muscle fatigue.

When I first read Stanley Fish’s pieces about those who love or live to despise Hillary Clinton — All You Need Is Hate, and A Calumny A Day To Keep Hillary Away — I resisted the temptation to respond to Fish’s comments. After all, wasn’t he standing up for rationalism and logic? Wasn’t he speaking out against the rude jibes of the senseless masses? And didn’t Hillary deserve his defense?

But in the end I came to realize that I should respond. Again, I found in Fish’s purportedly rational column an absence of thoughtful inquiry. Couched in the language of rationalism, his analysis bashed the Hillary bashers without offering up a viable explanation for the phenomenon. Perhaps by understanding the reason for the hatred we can better counter it. “Perhaps nothing accounts for it,” Fish says, and again I feel myself confronting the same kind of lazy thinking that brought Fish to claim that the humanities as a field of study serves no purpose.

Does rootless ill-will toward Hillary engender the bashing, engendering more bashing? Or does the ill-will result from some other cause, with a side-effect being the bashing?

Research toward the causes of enlarged hearts has yielded interesting information about the way in which muscles fatigue. Scientists have found that when we use our muscles to the point of fatigue, they leak calcium. The calcium leaks cause weakness and stimulate an enzyme that eats away at the muscle fiber. When given a substance that blocks the calcium leaks, mice can swim and run further without experiencing muscle fatigue.

In considering whether there could be value in blocking calcium leaks to enhance athletic performance, Dr. Ligget, a heart-failure researcher says, “We have to ask whether it would be prudent to be circumventing this mechanism.”

Hear, hear. If we give evolution any credit we would have to think that creatures with muscles, ourselves included, experience muscle fatigue for good reason. The cause of muscle fatigue is not calcium leaks, it is the valuable feedback mechanism that has evolved to prevent us from pushing ourselves beyond exhaustion. (Being a person whose muscles tend to fatigue quickly, on the other hand, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some of those mice pills…)

Back to Hillary Clinton. Why didn’t Fish want to explore the possibility that the Hillary bashing is an end result of some other phenomenon? Clearly, this would bring him onto thin ice. He would need to confront the idea that perhaps there was a cause for it, whether it was rational or not, defensible or not. Effects must have a cause, after all.

Fear and anger cause hatred. With Hillary Clinton, I think the likely cause is fear, whereas with George Bush (Fish’s counter-foil) the cause is anger.

Why would we fear Hillary Clinton? Here are three reasons.
1. She has demonstrated ruthlessness.

2. She doesn’t hide her sense of superiority well.

3. She strives but fails to demonstrate that she is not ideologically rigid.

We find it difficult to express these fears rationally, in part because each of them has a perfectly acceptable and reasonable corollary — commitment, brilliance, and consistency. But we do fear the ruthless, those who hold themselves up as superior, and those who are rigid.
For good measure, here is why we would be angry with Bush.

1. He’s lazy when he has work to do.

2. He makes life and death decisions based on an arbitrary will to exert his power.

3. He’s ignorant but touts his sway over us.

What’s not to be angry at?

Sure, Hillary Clinton is committed, brilliant, and consistent. And Bush is a life loving, god fearing everyman. But, when we’re talking about the country’s highest office, we have good reason to fear the former and be angry with the latter.

Every effect begins with a cause. Just as our muscles fatigue to prevent us from overtaxing our bodies, so, too, we lash out with seemingly irrational hatred and bias when we fear or resent a greater ill. And, just as it would be good to spare our bodies the fatigue and wasting that comes from calcium leaks, so, too, it would be good to spare society the vitriol of hateful criticism by recognizing the onset of symptoms and directing our feelings of fear and anger toward a more constructive end.

On the notions of free will and government influence in society.

In Ireland, back in 2002, the government imposed a hefty tax (33 cents) on plastic shopping bags. Supermarkets and stores resisted the change at first, anticipating that it would be unpopular with customers. But as the NY Times reports, avoiding the use of plastic bags has become not just an accepted fact of life but a mark of personal commitment to environmental change. “When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me,” said one Dubliner.

Dominique Browning writes in an op-ed piece that she saw plenty of plastic bags and other refuse on her visit Patagonian glaciers. Dominique laments the self-absorption of many of her fellow eco-tourists. If we can’t check ourselves when faced with of the decline of such monumental beauty close up, Dominique’s piece asks, how can we check ourselves when global warming and environmental protection are simply abstract concepts?

In unveiling his proposed $3.1 trillion budget package, President Bush speaks of “the hard work of the American people and spending discipline in Washington.” His formula for achieving a balanced budget? “Simple: Create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low, and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all.” Meanwhile, as White House budget documents reveal, the accumulated total of all federal borrowing will grow from $3.3 trillion in 2001, when President Bush took office, to $5.4 trillion this year and $5.9 trillion in 2009. Even if we’re giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, it’s clear that his economic policies haven’t met with great success.

Like many people, I tend to dislike any overt external influence on what I do. This applies just as well to my wife’s influence as it does to the government’s. When my wife told me I should be taking a canvas bag to the grocery store to cart our groceries, I bridled and ignored her. If the government told me I should be taking a canvas bag to pick up my groceries I would probably ignore it, too. I don’t like irrational parking regulations, or jay-walking laws, or prohibitions against buying alcohol on Sunday. But I was struck by the report of the sea-change against the use of plastic bags in Ireland that began with a very pointed and determined government initiative to raise people’s awareness.

The success of Ireland’s plastic bag tax shows us is that if a government attaches a societal cost to something, publicizes that cost, and acts on it (levies a charge to offset or avoid the cost,) the result can be an improved awareness of the right thing to do. As a result, the Irish don’t resent the tax, they resent those who don’t respect the underlying impetus for the tax.

It strikes me that this translates into something akin to a free will for society or societal free will. Armed with an awareness and a perspective on its behavior, society can choose to do things that don’t necessarily come naturally or easily.

Raising society’s awareness of global warming has been a major challenge in the United States since we’ve had a government that refused to acknowledge that global warming was really a problem related to society’s actions. When other forces began to raise US society’s awareness, though, even a recalcitrant government couldn’t prevent a change in society’s will to change.

But what does any of this have to do with Bush’s budget package? Implicit in Bush’s budget package and explicit in his statements is an argument for the free market, and for hands off government. But since inaction is another form of action, hands-off government isn’t really hands-off. What we don’t do can have just as much impact as what we do do. And when we think about the role that government can play in raising awareness of the populace and championing policies that foster and catalyze people to act in ways that help improve society and the world we live in we realize just what a flawed governing philosophy the free-market, hands-off mantra makes.

On the FDAs approval of cloned animal products, Bush’s approval of Mubarak, and the NY Times’ disapproval of electronic voting.

A few days ago I wrote about the danger of messing with nature. Nature has taken millions upon millions of years to produce the world we live in, and its only guiding principle has been to constantly winnow out loose ends and poor choices. Evolution ensures that nature’s mistakes either become successes or are self-healing. When humans get involved in rejiggering nature we risk unforseen consequences.

It’s hard to blame the FDA for approving the sale of food products from the progeny of cloned livestock. The FDA’s job is not to play moral judge, nor to philosophize over the rightness of second-guessing nature. Instead it had to judge whether the food seemed safe. Whether the food industry leaps to sell the products and whether consumers want to buy them will play a part in how quickly and pervasively products derived from cloned animals make it to our tables, but it can only be a matter of time. One thing seems clear: We can’t rely on the FDA, nor farmers, nor food suppliers to prevent the inevitable. Which leaves us with consumers and, nature forbid, regulators.

While evidence of the administration’s destruction of evidence piles up at home, the inscrutable George Bush has been making an unprecedented (for him) tour of the middle east. We’re so worn down after suffering seven years of his bewildering ability to ignore the obvious that even his gravest acts of ethical side-stepping don’t surprise us any more. In Egypt Bush had this to say to the ruthless Mubarak: “I appreciate the example that your nation is setting.” Now, if he meant that with Egypt’s terrible record on free elections and human rights Mubarak has been making even the Bush Administration look good, that would be one thing, but I don’t think that’s what Bush had in mind. What he did have in mind, I believe, was Egypt’s support in the Bush administration’s war on terror; a dubiously relative merit if ever there was one.

The NY Times today called for an upgrade to electronic voting systems across the land… by entering a plea for jurisdictions to maintain parallel paper ballots. Quite rightly, the editorial focuses on what needs to be done to improve the chances that we’ll have a fair and reliable election result this year. What it doesn’t focus on is how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place. When in doubt, blame Bush. In large part fault does lie with Bush. The administration’s zeal for free markets and state independence has led to the current electronic voting fiasco. Surely when we’re dealing with the election of a president of the nation the federal government should shape and vet the introduction of a consistent and reliable electronic voting system. The demand for quality far outweighs the demand for the process to rest on free market forces. And surely since the election of a president demands consistency in process and accuracy from state to state, the matter of voting mechanisms shouldn’t be left to state control.

As in so many areas, these three examples demonstrate in very different ways that our process of government is very far from rational. To leave to the FDA the task of stemming the tide of animal cloning for food makes no rational sense. To twice elect a president of such passive incompetence and active contempt for what’s right and good makes even less rational sense. As does the reliance on decentralized muddle in devising a good scheme for capturing votes.

 

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On the philosophy of accountability in our schools, government, banks, and life in general…

I love this quote from George Bush, speaking yesterday at an elementary school in Chicago. “Look, I recognize some people don’t like accountability, [...] accountability says if you’re failing, we’re going to expose that and expect you to change. Accountability also says that when you’re succeeding you’ll get plenty of praise.” Ah, and they said he’d never learn.

Bush was talking about the grandly ill-conceived free-market assault on education — the “No Child Left Behind” act. Again in Bush’s words: “The philosophy behind No Child Left Behind was in return for money there ought to be results.”

Bush seems to have a very personal feeling for this philosophy. It speaks to him. After all, he came to power under the same diktat from big business and wealthy donors. ‘We’ll fund your campaign and support you in your bid for the presidency, but we expect results.’ And he delivered by cutting taxes, protecting and facilitating industry and big business interests, and handing down spectacularly rewarding contracts in the defense and reconstruction industries.

Unfortunately, the presidency shouldn’t be founded on that kind of accountability. Bush should have felt accountable to the people of the country before big business, because they invested their trust in him, not because they invested money in him. When we conceive of Bush’s presidency in this way it is no surprise that he has seemed to feel no real accountability for his most grievous failures as president — taking us into a war under false pretenses, endorsing illegal and cruel detention and torture, carrying out secret surveillance programs, reacting with lamentable indifference to the flooding after Katrina, and denying, deriding and tampering with the scientific evidence for global warming.

Likewise, the most important thing we invest in our schools is our trust in them to educate our children as well as they can and as well as we wish. When they fail, we should hold them accountable by finding ways to improve their performance. In some schools this will demand smaller classrooms, in others, new teachers, or a different school leader, in others perhaps a different teaching method or catchment approach. But when does it ever make sense to hold them accountable by removing funds? How does that help the children?

Which brings me to think that accountability and trust may be inextricably related from a philosophical perspective. We might test this theory with an example from the world of finance. Bear Stearns CEO, James Cayne stepped down today, the latest in a string of departures from the top spots of financial institutions embattled by the sub-prime loan crisis. My question is this: Have these corporate leaders felt compelled to step down because they squandered investors’ money or because they betrayed their trust?

The answer seems to be that whether Cayne and others felt a sense of personal and direct responsibility for the losses (some didn’t), they all felt a responsibility for the lost trust as evidenced by that financial mismanagement.

Similarly, we want our teaching establishments to feel responsible for educating our children, not for investing education funds. And we want our government to feel responsible for serving our common interests, not repaying campaign contributions.

On Stanley Fish’s views on the humanties, and congress’s obsession with baseball.

Stanely Fish has this to say about whether studying the humanties can change us for the better: “Do the humanities ennoble? And for that matter, is it the business of the humanities, or of any other area of academic study, to save us? The answer in both cases, I think, is no.” Fish argues that the humanities serve no purpose whatsoever, but that this is OK, since “an activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good.”

To which feel moved to give a short rebuttal (”bullshit”) but feel a sense of duty to respond with something longer and more thoughtful. Back to that in a minute.

The other matter that has me scratching my head again today is all the fuss in congress over baseball drug use. Perhaps this is one of those cultural or political gaps that comes from being born and raised elsewhere, but why on earth does the government feel it should spend taxpayers’ money investigating drug use in baseball? Roger Clemens has been desperately defending himself against the allegations in the recent report. And he should be held accountable if he’s sullied the name of baseball, but by the government?

How does this relate to Stanley Fish and his misapprehension of the value of the humanities? Well, you can find echoes of Kafka and Beckett and Heller in the congress’s pursuit of the baseball players abuses, just as you can find echoes of Kafka and Vonnegut and, yes, Heller again in the Bush administration’s press to invade Iraq and chronic abuse of human rights.

Over the weekend I saw “Charlie Wilson’s War.” Granted not a film of any great artistic merit, although effectively done, but it helps illustrate the point. I came out of the theater with a renewed sense of urgency about the value and hidden dangers of the political process, with a new sense of outrage at the current administration’s deliberate mishandling of the current war and manhandling of our rights. Could I have reached the same sense of outrage without the movie? Sure, but that’s not the point.

The humanities, along with news media, word of mouth, personal observation, government and independent reports, etc., give us a picture of the world we live in. In some cases, the humanities give us a picture that we couldn’t get in any other way (because it’s purely imaginitive or impressionistic or surreal). I would pose the reverse question to Fish. If humanities don’t serve a purpose, why do they exist?

We strive to create art because we want to represent something — an emotion, an impression, an urge, a feeling – that seems important to us. Art is the tangible manifestation of our humanity. Without art we have no tangible manifestation of our humanity. Some can live in such a world, perhaps, but most of us cannot.

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