Rational Philosophy

Paul Krugman writes today that Barak Obama is naive for believing that he can bring industry leaders and big insurance companies to the table to help reform health care. Krugman’s reasoning is both pragmatic and cynical. Obama isn’t realistic about the battle ahead, Krugman says, and isn’t listening to the populist outcry for reform. He therefore won’t win the same kind of majority as an Edwards or Clinton, who understand that people are hungry for a knock down drag out fight over health care reform and that such reform will only happen over the dead or doubled-up bodies of the industry lobbyists.

And Bush today spoke of a sound economy in much the same way that the Cuban news media these days speaks of Castro’s health. “The underpinning is good,” Bush said to a quiet crowd. And followed this up with the old chestnut — “I’ll veto any tax increase,” which drew a notable lack of applause. To whom was Bush speaking? Members of the Rotary Club of Stafford, the Fredericksburg Rotary Club, the Rappahannock Rotary Club and the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce. Where was he speaking? Yak-A-Doo’s restaurant in a Holiday Inn. Could Bush’s populist agenda have run afoul of circumstance and reality?

And in a related story, researchers in a remote Indonesian jungle have discovered a rat “five times the size of a typical city rat.” The rat apparently betrayed no fear of the human intruders. (In this much at least, he resembles the rats of New York City.) ”It’s comforting to know that there is a place on Earth so isolated that it remains the absolute realm of wild nature,” said expedition leader Bruce Beehler. ”We were pleased to see that this little piece of Eden remains as pristine and enchanting as it was when we first visited.”

But, reference to Eden notwithstanding, how does the third story related to the first two? Well, I found myself bridling at Krugman’s dismissal of Obama’s ingenuous call for a new approach to politics. Sure, populism gets the vote. Sure, that’s what’s worked. Sure, industry won’t roll over and beg. But doing things because they’ve been done, limiting ourselves by history, doesn’t that doom us to repeat history?

In his first campaign, Bush touted his ability to bring both sides to the table, but we now know that for Bush the function of speaking and the function of communication haven’t yet been brought under the administration of a central mental bureau. Nor do we hold our breath for that miraculous event.

There’s an oft-repeated myth that George Washington invited Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson into his first cabinet in order to bring both sides to the table. It’s a myth because there was no formal or informal opposition at the time. Washington wanted the best minds and hearts in the country at his table. Hamilton and Jefferson developed partisan divisions over the course of their tenure in Washington’s cabinet. Washington over time veered toward Hamilton’s Federalism, but truly wanted and valued Jefferson’s more democratic counsel.

Obama’s ideas about the path to health reform may be naive and impractical, but so what? At least they’re new. At least there’s a chance that they won’t leave us in four years time with a tired and tiresome repeat of the current roll call for populist opinion.

Obama then could well be the big rat appearing at the edge of the camp, strange and fearless and larger than life. You bring big business to the table and you tell them you’ll be happy to listen to their opinions so long as they’ll be happy for you to bite them in the ass if they don’t play along. Government should prevail, whether you start at a big table or a small table. The idea is surely to bring them to the big table so that you lay the cards out all the more clearly.

Of course, the Indonesian researchers also discovered a tiny possum, one of the smallest marsupials in the world. Krugman would doubtless liken Obama to that diminutive possum before he’d liken him to the massive rat. But couldn’t a possum win the hearts of big business, just as his brother rat would nip at their ankles?

I didn’t post yesterday as I have pneumonia. I’ll try a quick post today because I’m feeling a little better, and because Mitt Romney’s speech on faith has me alarmed.

I highly recommend The NY Times editorial, Crisis of Faith, bravo. Of several pieces I’ve read it is the only one I’ve found that focuses on the distressing fact that Romney chose to make the speech in the first place. The rest seem to take it for granted that this kind of focus on religion is par for the course in a political race in America in 2007.

David Brooks, for instance, laments that Romney succeeded only in blurring the distinctions between faiths until one’s choice of religion may as well be a matter of picking “the one with the prettiest buildings?” I may be wrong, but Brooks seems almost offended that Romney didn’t rank religions by their degree of goodness.

As reported by CNN, Bill Bennett and Roland Martin debated the effectiveness of Romney’s speech; did it succeed in its political objectives. I can see how such inquiry can be of a certain amount of interest or even fascination, but if this is the primary level on which we judge such an event, surely there is a bigger problem.

As the Times editorial points out, Article VI of the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” And yet this is exactly what is happening in politics today. Romney succumbed to pressure to take such a test. Other candidates are doing the same thing. The general media implicitly or explictly supports or condones such tests in all manner of ways ranging from allowing an explicitly religious test to be posed as a question in a debate, to focusing political commentary on the content or success of a candidate’s religious posturing rather than questioning why the candidate is posturing.

If you have the stomach for it, you can listen to Romney’s speech or read a transcript via NPR.

Everything that’s wrong about Romney’s speech is contained within it. He equates freedom with religion, for instance, and states that freedom is given by God, the Creator. He refers sarcastically to ‘enlightenment’ in Europe as if it is intrinsically a bad thing. He tries to concretize a definition of America as a religious nation.

The phenomenon of religious sway in America and the stranglehold it has on so many matters of national importance can be tied, I think, to a culture of isolationism and fear. America has yet to accomplish freedom from religion because too many of those with influence, in society and in government, fear the ramifications of such freedom and believe that America is right in clinging to the notion that God somehow looks down with favor on it.

Then is this freedom? Hasn’t religion now become a constraint?

Religion is humankind’s way of trying to conceive of where we came from. Religious faith is humankind’s way of holding on to an idea of where we came from in the face of obstacles to that idea.

Religion began as a natural and imaginative way for people to explain certain things that seemed inexplicable. The earliest religions focused on things such as the heavenly bodies (one could say that worshipping the sun comes closer to revering the source of life than any other religion!) or the spirits of the earth. As our scientific understanding of the world improved the basis for religious understanding receded ever further from the realm of everyday life, into something quite nebulous and remote.

This is the philosophical aspect to the piece: Religion cannot be supported logically or rationally. There are those who would rebutt that neither can atheism or agnosticism. I would beg that there is a difference. If we take as a ground for our awareness of our existence the input of our senses, we can build up a picture of the world as we perceive it from entirely logical and rational principles without ever calling upon the need for a god or creator. I cannot prove that there is no god, but I can demonstrate, logically and rationally, to my own satisfaction that my place in the world and the way the world works (even the way religions function) can be understood without calling upon some divine creator.

I’m alarmed by Romney’s speech because this culture of religion and its clamor will hold America back, and will continue to cause harm in the world in the name of good. As long as America defines itself as a religious nation, it will continue to spawn and support crusades, both here at home and abroad. It will further isolate America from the rest of the world. And it will perpetuate the religious moralizing that prevents politicians from making perfectly sound decisions because they’re afraid to stand up to the zealots in the community.

(24 little hours…)

Kevin Rudd, just sworn in as Australia’s new prime minister, wasted no time in further isolating the United States position on global warming and the Kyoto agreement, reversing in the space of one day twelve years of steadfast opposition to Kyoto by his conservative predecessor John Howard.

Yesterday a National Intelligence Estimate (who coined that marvellous name?) tentatively declared that Iran’s nuclear weapons program (if it had one) was brought to a halt in 2003, immediately creating a new set of political parameters for the election year.  The looming hawk of military action against Iran seemed to have been suddenly caught in a downdraft.

Apart from being good news for the world in general, I’m not yet sure who this favors politically. The Democrats seem to be the winners initially, by being able to point to the administration’s overzealousness. But in the longer run, it may favor the Repulblican candidates since they won’t get drawn in to making unpopular commitments to counter the threat in Iran with force as we did in Iraq.

And the vote that upset Hugo Chavez’s plans for a socialist Venezuela led by himself for an indefinite period of time (the Castro-model) surely shifted Venezuela’s political and social course in ways almost too dramatic to imagine. The referendum was, officially at least, quite close — 49% for, 51% against. If the numbers had come out just a little more in favor, the course toward a socialist dictatorship would have been set.

With such large scale political shifts the world itself becomes a different place from one day to the next. But if we think about our own lives, we too can experience dramatic shifts from one day to the next.

My wife commented recently that the concept that everyone else has a life and experience as rich as one’s own, as important to them as our own life is to us, is a continuously amazing thought. (We were on our way for a sonogram, a check up on the progress of our baby (21 weeks). What more fitting example of a life-changing event? One day you’re not pregnant, the next day you are, and your life will never be the same again.)

Our perception of the world around us, if we choose to think of it like this, creates that world. So, as a thought or impulse becomes action, we change the world. Some actions produce unremarkable results, others have a profound and lasting impact.

There is a connection here between the personal and the public, what matters to us and what matters globally. If Rudd as a person didn’t act to sign on to the Kyoto agreement, the Australia would remain a non-signatory. If Chavez’s opposers in Venezuela didn’t personally go to the polling booths to vote, his referendum wouldn’t have been defeated.

And if the Iranian leadership had acted differently, or if the members of the 16 U.S. intelligence organizations that reviewed the intelligence had assessed it differently, the NIE issued yesterday may have been less optimistic about the past and future impact of international pressure and sanctions on Iran’s nuclear capability. The current administration and a possible future Republican administration may have been headed toward another invasion like the invasion of Iraq, an invasion orchestrated by individuals with the leverage of another NIE, and with the cummulative support of fearful and fight-happy citizens across the country.

The importance of hindsight, of course, is to use it to avoid making the same mistake again. But first one has to acknowledge that one made a mistake. And we all know who that one is…

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News of Hugo Chavez’s narrow referendum defeat brought a decidedly unexpected relief. His proposals, in line with his former policies and stated goals, would have moved the Chavez administration toward a Castro-style dictatorship. But whereas Castro possesses an enduring charm, even if warped and spoiled by time and power, Chavez has all of the charm of a pit bull. At the conclusion of CNN’s story on the referendum result, the reporter offers a fascinating financial footnote: Venezuela’s oil-fueled prosperity, which has helped enrich Chavez’s popularity and solidify his power (the country’s wealth allows him to fund his social programs) accounts for as much as 90% of the country’s export economy. Two guesses as to who buys most of venezuela’s oil… Us. Apparently, the United States is one of the few countries that can refine Venezuela’s low-grade crude and we pick up about a million barrels per day. So, America then, Chavez’s nemesis, has been funding his regime.

A so-called National Intelligence Estimate issued today — a consensus view of “all 16 American spy agencies” (but who’s counting?) — concludes that Iran quite probably stopped its weapons program (if it had one) back in 2003, and that as of the middle of this year had probably not resumed that program (if it ever existed). Although couched in all kinds of provisos and qualifications, perhaps the most striking conclusion of the NIE is the estimate that sanctions and international pressure probably caused Iran to halt its program (if it did and if it had one). Of course, the White House has been quick to point out that this makes the President right again in seeking to maintain and increase pressure on Iran, rather than being wrong to pressage military action, since military action would have been not his error but someone else’s error for issuing a National Intelligence Estimate like the one that got us into the Iraq war. (Not that that was a mistake, but if it had been a mistake it would have been someone else’s mistake, too.) In any case, money seems to have been a key factor in making bringing to a halt the Iranian weapons grade fuel enrichment centrifuges (if they weren’t just nuclear energy centrifuges).

In Malawi two seasons of good crops have helped prevent famine. After the country’s most recent miserable crop failure in 2005, the president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, decided to ignore the financial strings attached to foreign subsidies and to subsidize himself the use of fertilizer and good seed. The U.S., Britain, and the World Bank have disfavored fertilizer and seed subsidies in countries such as Malawi because… wait for it… “foreign-aid fashions in Washington [and elsewhere] featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.” Let me get this straight, while the U.S. government subsidizes fertilizer purchases for our own farmers it’s been preaching and practising free-market ‘no subsidy’ religious policies overseas that have effectively been starving millions of people in Africa and elsewhere. The shamefulness of such self-righteous arrogance seems reprehenisble.

(There’s also a good op-ed piece about Goldman Sachs along similar lines, but I don’t have space to write about that.)

Money, money, money… But what about principles, what about good sense, what about logic and reason, why does money seem to lurk behind everything like a pesky accountant with an irrevocable pen poised to fall?

Allow me a quick detour into energy and matter. When Einstein equated mass with energy he unlocked a mysterious secret about the universe. The question: What is this stuff that things are made of? Einstein’s answer: Call it what you will, but you may as well call it energy.

A similar, humbler equation exists of course between money and power. Money and power are two ways of thinking about the same thing. You can convert one into the other and vice versa.

(My wife and I, for another instance, were discussing the presidential race and my wife pointed out to me the reason Mike Bloomberg could still run for president having skipped the abrasion of the primaries: He doesn’t need the money.)

Rather than just throw up my hands at this point, I’m struck by the question of what we as observers of the machinations of money and power can we do to make a difference? It seems to me that armed with the awareness that money churns away like a sump pump in the basement of every important political edifice, we’ll always be better able to judge things for what they are if we pop our head down the stairs and take a sniff. “Follow the money,” as Deep Throat apparently said, and we’ll be richer for it.

And if we doubt that paying attention to this will be enough to make a difference, we can be heartened by another discovery of science, famously encapsulated by the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s cat, that observation by itself is enough to change the outcome of a process.

Barrack Obama has been criticized for being too honest in talking about his past drug use. Unlike Bill Clinton and George Bush, Obama spoke openly about drinking and using drugs as a young person. His critics feel that too much information can be harmful to young people. Others feel that in speaking openly he did the right thing. But how can we know?

An Oprah.com article today discusses the benefits of developing an optimistic rather than pessimistic perspective on our lives. Good advice perhaps if for those who tend to be neurotic and hard on themselves. Not such good advice for those who blame everyone except themselves for their problems.

The formal field of psychology has exploded in the past half century, but as an informal area of investigation and observation it has been practised for thousands of years. For as long as we’ve been able to frame ideas and concepts, we’ve been able to wonder why we behave as we do. Psychology is insight into human motivation. Why do we do what we do. Why do we think what we think. Unfortunately, psychology too often puts an appealing layer of frosting on reality, gooey and sweet and distracting, but not very nutritious.

Without understanding the underlying principles that shape our motivations, we can’t hope to map out a solid and reliable foundation for our psychological insights. The psychological studies that get press and attention tend to focus on narrow and specific aspects of human behavior. But what is the big picture? If we want to understand motivation from first priciples, where do we begin?

We must begin, I believe, with the principles of existence. After all, psychology comes about from the application of abstract principles to human behavior. And human behavior comes about from the principles that shape evolution. And evolution comes about through the operation of the universal principle of persistence (see the meaning of life) in living things over time.

Once we accept that all human behavior derives in some way shape or form from the instinct or impulse to further the persistence of life, we have a skeletal framework upon which we can begin to build a self-consistent science of psychology.

For example, if we want to figure out whether Obama is right or wrong for being honest about his drug use, we need to understand the pros and cons of honesty as it relates to the strength of society, and we need to understand the pros and cons of admitted drug use. Honesty would seem integral to a strong society because it promotes trust and trust promotes collaboration and empathy. Admissions of drug use in and of themselves would seem to diminish taboos about drug use by our elders or those in authority, but this in turn would seem to remove one of the strongest impulses for the young person deciding whether to try drugs — the desire to rebel and be different from those in authority.

We could further flesh out this trivial inspection to include other perspectives and layers of insight, digging down into the subordinate impulses to relate them to the persistence of life. The deeper we go, the more nuanced will be our insight. And if we use the principle of persistence as our guide, we will run less risk of going astray.

Until we have a solid foundation for arriving at conclusions about people’s motivations, the science of psychology will remain messy and maleable, and pretty much useless as a vehicle for helping society move forward. But if we adopt a rational, reality-based foundation, guided by the principles of existence, we can take our understanding on a new, productive and fascinating path.

(If you want to read more, LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive further explains the origin, elaboration and application of the principle of persistence.)

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Humility, ironically, arises out of an enforced awareness that one isn’t all one’s cracked up to be. Young children have a supreme sense of power and entitlement. My son needs constantly to be reminded to append the word ‘please’ to his commands. For a three year old he’s not unusual in this regard. He hasn’t yet learned that supreme power is never as supreme as it seems.

(As a parent, on the other hand, I am assured a constant supply of humility as I grapple with the need to balance my needs and desires with those of my children. Suffering a “Maisy” DVD, for instance, not to keep my son quiet (or not primarily so) but because that’s what he wants to watch and who am I to tell him that it isn’t compelling viewing?)

Pervez Musharraf has announced that he will step down from his position as head of Pakistan’s military on Thursday. He’s promised this before and reneged, but this time the circumstances would lead me to think that he will follow through. Musharraf has been served a dose of humility by Saudi Arabia. He’d gone there to ask King Abdullah to keep ex-leader Nawaz Sharif in exile until after the elections. The king demurred, saying he didn’t want to get in the middle of Pakistan’s politics. Musharraf’s hold on power apparently wasn’t as clear to the king as it once had been. As Sharif returns to Pakistan with a flourish, it’s likely that Musharraf will forgo his military position in the hopes of holding onto his political position.

It’s unclear whether President Bush has been experiencing humility or not. Having lost control of Congress and hoping to stay relevant, Bush has turned or has been turned toward political strategies that his administration had derided. He has been signing executive orders to outlaw the fishing of endangered species in Federal waters (a practice that’s already banned), clearing airspace for holiday flight schedules, and setting up a bilateral middle east peace summit (something he had poo-pooed in the past). Across the globe in Australia, the ousting of Prime Minister Howard removes another Bush crony from world politics. The new Labor PM, a speaker of Mandarin, will likely remove Australian combat troops from Iraq and may stop the sale of Uranium to India, since India hasn’t signed the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Although Bush undoubtedly can find it in himself to confess his love for Mandarinians, his loss off a staunch ally in Howard surely should make him feel even more isolated. But although the signs would indicate that Bush should be feeling humbled, it’s not a certainty that he does; one of Bush’s defining traits seems to be self-confidence in the face of his own incompetence.

And the GOP, faced with a shortfall in donations for campaign financing, has been targeting wealthy potential candidates in the hopes that they will fund their own campaigns. This is a turnaround. Usually it’s the Democrats who find themselves strapped for cash. Does the GOP feel humbled? Well, for now perhaps, but in the long run I doubt it.

Unfortunately, humility often doesn’t stick.

Sharif has been away long enough that people seem to have forgotten his own frightening ideas and tactics. (Sharif wanted to throw out the Pakistani legal system in favor of a system of law based strictly on the Koran.) Musharraf wasn’t the only one to denounce him as a fascist. Sharif’s own leadership was rocky to say the least. Kicked out of office and exiled for many years one would think that he has had time to reflect and reconsider his egotistical ambitions. Now he returns promising to save the country. Oh, dear.

In politics, while personal humility is rare one feels that it can happen, whereas humility of a party or group seems elusive at best and probably impossible.

Humility, I think, comes in two flavors — expedient humility and true humility. I induce expedient humility in my son when I tell him to say please and thank you if he wishes to continue to get the things he’s asking for. He complies because he understands the risk of non-compliance. So, too, the politician who finds himself in a position of compromised power knows that he must adapt or sink. For a while he swallows his pride and does things that he doesn’t really want to do.

True humility comes about when one acknowledges that one’s own desires and ambitions must be measured and tested against those of others, and that, if we want to avoid oppressing others, we must err on the side of favoring their desires of others over our own. For a political party, or an inveterate politician, true humility is an anathema.

One can only hope that whoever attains power after the shakeout in Pakistan feels enough pressure to induce expedient humility. The same can be said for next year’s election here in the US. For our children, on the other hand, we can hope that repeated reminders of the benefits of humilty will induce the self-reflection and awareness required to inculcate true humility. This way lies the better future of the human race.

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I just put out a music video for My Darkest Hour, a song from my album ‘nylon.’ The song and the video aim to express in artistic terms what it’s like to grapple with compulsion — in my case a compulsion to drink. Addictions, as they’re sometimes called, can be very easy to acquire and very hard to drop. Compulsion plays a very broad role in life, appearing in many guises and to many degrees. But what is it, why do we have it?

A NY times story today reports on Korean efforts to address an issue that has hit hard in a country where almost all homes have high speed Internet connections — web addiction. Alarmingly, some young people have apparently died from exhaustion after days without a break playing on-line games, and millions more young people may be at some risk of addiction.

Also in the Times, Amy Harmon writes about the obsessiveness of having access to one’s DNA data. She found herself spending hours every day sifting through the many genetic markers (SNPs) that would tell her about her predispoition, or lack of it, for everything from a dislike to brussel sprouts to alzheimer’s.

Such introspective compulsions affect the people who have them and the people in their lives, but I was also reminded that the effects of one person’s compulsion can go much further. Take Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, for instance, who has announced deep consitutional changes and sweeping reforms that will cement his vision for a revamped Venezuela and consolidate his position long term as the overseer of that vision. His biographer, Alberto Barrera Tyszka, had this to say about the current situation: “This is not a dictatorship but something more complex: the tyranny of popularity.”

We could say that genetics and circumstance result in compulsion and leave it at that. But there must be some reason for a tendency to compulsion and perhaps some insight that can help us thwart it through understanding it better.

I remember news stories about the polar bear in Central Park zoo obsessively swimming endless little laps because he was so bored. We human beings have become hypersensitized to boredom. Living in New York City you see the highly intensified impact of this. People everywhere walking and talking on their cell phones. People wearing earphones even in the elevator on the way up into the office. People exercising on treadmills while watching TV or reading. People watching portable movie players on the subway. We cram our lives full of activity to squeeze out the threat of inactivity. But, unlike our ancestors, much modern activity is artificial and unnecessary.

There’s an intersect then between the level of compulsive activity and the degree of ease with which we can ensure our basic survival needs. (The Korean boot camps for Internet addicts get the addicts away from their computers and involved in physical activities outdoors — whether this works or not, it seems conceptually well-directed.) But what about the origin of compulsion? What is compulsion and why do we succumb to it at all?

Compulsion comes about when we return frequently and strongly to a perceived or actual need or desire. It’s a pattern of response that comes about either genetically or circumstancially. It’s also helpful to regard compulsion as existing on a spectrum, and as a response that can be harmful or helpful.

My theory is this: Compulsion is a necessary trait. Without some degree of compulsion organisms wouldn’t have a mechanism to draw them to do the things that are good for them or good for the species. Bees wouldn’t build hives, cats wouldn’t lick themselves to clean their fur, people wouldn’t have sex. But compulsion becomes problematic either when circumstance puts us into a situation we’re not genetically prepared for (drinking alcohol, shooting heroin) or when we have an imbalance between free time and purposeful time, leading to boredom.

Chavez has found himself in a circumstance with which he is unprepared to cope effectively. The compulsion to keep feeding himself a steady diet of power and control, to guarantee that he will be able to keep experiencing that power, has overcome his ability to balance his own desires with the responsibility he has assumed for his people. Unfortunately, when it gets to this point, the prognosis is not good.

On a happier note, the Central Park zookeepers devised mechanisms to relieve Gus, the depressed polar bear, from boredom. He is now a much happier bear by all accounts. What would it take to wean Chavez from his addiction to power? One thinks that it may take him going cold turkey.

The NY Times today published “Candidates in a Box,” a subjective categorical appraisal of the various presidential candidates. This marvellous mechanism for political commentary permits us to compare and contrast the distilled opinions of op ed columnists David Brooks and Ben Schott with our own. The beauty of the grid is its laser-like focus on the defining traits of Clinton, McCain, Obama, Giuliani and the rest. This focus drives us toward some categorical conlusions. When we see Giuliani’s character described as “strong but disturbing,” for instance, we may either agree (yes, that’s him) or disagree (I would have said, bullyish and disturbing), but we cannot leave the box without arriving at the conclusion that Giuliani’s character can be summed up and must affect our thinking about his viability as a leader of the nation.

As I mentioned last week, much political commentary distracts rather than focuses our attention. The categorical grid reminds us that candidates are people, not video clips, and that people tend not to change (and certainly not for the better when they get more power). What we see in the candidates now is what we will get if we elect them. Here are some of the grid entries that made me stop and think (or chuckle):

Mike Huckabee - Judgment - ‘Pre-Darwinian’
Barak Obama - Character - ‘Afraid of conflict’
Fred Thomson - Logic - ‘Unused’
Hillary Clinton - Character - ‘Hidden’

In his metaphysical deduction, Emanuel (or Immanuel) Kant aimed to show that twelve pure concepts or categories provide the framework for all possible experience. He divides these twelve, three each, between the four Aristotlian classifications of judgment - quantity, quality, relation, or modality. At once, the desire for such symmetry (why three in each bucket?) raises a red flag, something that Schopenhauer pointed out in his World As Will And Representation. The beauty of his thesis beguiled Kant, and after 11 years and 800 pages, this seduction of the categories steered him wrong. Categories become dangerous when we invest them with too much meaning. Rest a whole foundation of knowledge on neatly symmetric categories and you’ll almost certainly come unstuck.

Likewise, we should avoid relying solely on categories for something as important as decisions about who to elect as president.

We like categories because they can help us understand and remember things more clearly. I would go further and say that categorization is a function of consciousness. The conscious mind must distinguish between objects, actions, and impressions, in order to arrive at analyses and decisions. Consciousness permits us the ability to assess a situation and to choose to act in a particular way. If we’re not able to categorize the circumstances of the situation we’re not able to choose how to act.

This brings us back to voting.

Let’s imagine two voters. The first watches the debates, reads about the candidates, listens to the commentators, but does so without drawing distinctions, without reaching conscious conclusions. When he goes to vote, he votes from his ‘gut.’ This impulse from the gut is guided by subconscious impressions, but the voter hasn’t used his consciousness to influence his choice. A second concerned citizen watches the debates, reads about the candidates, listens to the commentators, and forms a reasoned analysis about the candidates, she consciously draws distinctions and when she goes to vote she uses these distinctions to try to elect the most eligible candidate.

If we think about the candidates themselves, the importance of a predisposition toward reasoned analysis becomes even more important. Should we elect (again) a president who ‘knows’ what is right and chooses based on his unconscious convictions? Or should we look to elect a national leader who reasons and reflects, using balanced judgment to further his or her thinking on a matter.

Disturbingly, in the analysis presented by the NY Times, of the sixteen candidates only Joe Biden and Chris Dodd receive good reviews for their judgment and logic. A sobering thought.

Last week I wrote about the long term risk posed by the Bush administration’s tame response to President Musharraf’s abrupt dismantling of Pakistan’s democratic apparatus. I framed the administration’s reluctance to come down hard on Musharraf in terms of political expediency. But as I read the NY Times recent interview with Musharraf, it occurred to me that Musharraf and Bush perhaps have a lot in common, and that maybe subconsciously (or consciously) Bush doesn’t want to take strong steps against Musharraf because he identifies with him. Not that we should take everything Bush says literally, but he has been quoted as referring to Musharraf as “my buddy and my friend.”

“The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner,” Musharraf says, which reminds me of Bush’s defense of domestic surveillance as necessary to maintain security.

“I know what [the Pakistan people] feel about the emergency when all these suicide bombings were taking place,” Musharraf commented on the increase in suicide bombings, “Their view is, Why have I done it so late.” Which recalls Bush’s insistence that the American people elected him and support his policy of invading Iraq.

The Times also reports that Musharraf defended his dismantling of the Supreme Court because the court had questioned the validity of his re-election. Similarly Bush has attempted, and in some cases
succeeded, in redefining standards for torture, or ignoring international conventions or protocols, because he doesn’t like the restrictions they place on him.

When we identify with someone, psychologically speaking, we connect characteristics they posses with similar characteristics that we attribute favorably to ourselves. Identification has served us well as a species. Identification induces empathy which helps us reach outside ourselves to help others. But identification also presents a particular danger that we need to guard against: With an excess of ego, we can wrongly perceive a characteristic that we possess as good, and, by extension identify and sympathize with that characteristic in others.

Bush seems to believe that his arrogance is justified. He knows better than the courts, he thinks, about what he should do and what is acceptable. He convinces himself that he is right to work outside or to twist the rule of law. If Bush were to condemn Musharraf for similar actions he would create dissonance in his view of himself.

Bush likes to perceive himself as popular and in tune with the people. Musharraf, the same. Outwardly, the trait they believe they possess is a feeling for the people; they like to view themselves as regular guys, men of the people. The true identification seems to be murkier. Perhaps they each recognize a similar weakness in the other, a desire to be liked and understood. It seems that they each feel defensive and inferior, feelings that bring with them a certain bravado (which brings us back to their arrogance).

Referring to the jailed the head of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, Asma Jahangir, Musharraf calls her “quite an unbalanced character.”

Interestingly, this comment reminds me of Rudy Giuliani and his now famous rant against the “crazy” owners of ferrets (going back to when he was Mayor of NY City).

Rudy Giuliani has said that he would not urge the Bush administration to cut off financial aid to the Musharraf government. “I would not second-guess any president on that because I think they’re in the middle of a very difficult situation right now,” Giuliani said to The Associated Press.

Perhaps Giuliani’s identifies with Musharraf, too. Something we should keep in mind as we move toward next year’s elections.

(Beware: This news is already a day old. Sniff before ingesting.)

It took me several Google searches to find the Hilary Clinton “fact hub” entry that rebuts the charge that Hilary Clinton’s entourage didn’t tip its waitress after a meal at an Iowa Maid-Rite. (No-one seems to want to know what Clinton was doing eating at a Maid-Rite in the first place; didn’t she just have a million dollar birthday party?) Hillary’s campaign team has established the “Fact Hub” as a method of rapidly disseminating such critical details as the amount the meal actually cost and the amount of tip that was actually left. After the first couple of failed searches, I would not have continued to look for Hillary’s Fact Hub website unless I’d needed the website’s address to put in this entry, so I remain unconvinced about whether it serves its ostensible purpose. But that’s not why I write.

I write because in an interview with the Times, the Maid-Rite waitress, in lamenting the media’s focus on the matter when other seemingly far more important things are going on in the world, commented “You people really are nuts.”

Maybe not nuts, but certainly priorities are awry. Where have we come to when political process hones in on such inane details?

Ironically, perhaps the first democratic processes appeared in Mesopotamia, a region now known as Iraq.  Admittedly, Iraq has strayed far from the democratic path since then, but exporting American democracy kind of feels like hawking a used car when you know the undercarriage is rusted out. (Something that happened to me recently, but that’s another story.)

Can democracy really withstand the weight of the fluff that’s piled atop it?

One presumes that the system of checks and balances between congress, senate and the judiciary gives the country some protection against a severly broken democratic process. We should worry about such things as the current administration’s flouting of international processes and conventions, and we should worry about its redefinition of what’s legal. These kinds of things deserve a vigorous response, perhaps more vigorous than the response has been. But I’m thinking more about the fundamental process of democracy.

If I have it right, democracy aims to permit society to decide how it should be governed, what the economic policies should be, the law of the land, the policies for education and investment in infrastructure and healthcare, etc., etc. If it’s to work, democracy requires two things:

1. A fair system by which to select qualified leaders.

2. A fair system by which to influence those leaders toward choices that reflect the educated will of the people.

In America today, I would argue that neither of these requirements can be met with any degree of confidence. Here’s why.

We scrutinze the qualifications of those who govern through a lense of such intense focus that we see the pimples on the chin but not the axe in the hand. (Does it really matter whether Hillary left a tip at Maid-Rite? Do we really care? Would she really do such a thing through meanness or pettiness when she knows that the eyes of the world are watching?) We allow political candidates to be run off the podium for changing their mind or expressing doubt or being flawed. Aren’t all humans flawed? Do we really want to be governed only by those who are squeaky clean and offend no-one or are so good at hiding their flaws that we don’t see them for who they are?

And politicians seem to be influenced by many things, but not by the desire to reflect the educated will of the people. Rather than educating us, they want to sway us or dupe us, sometimes because they have ulterior motives, sometimes because they think we need to be swayed or duped. Rather than reflecting the will of the people (which is a long term thing), they seek to reflect the mood of the people (which fluctuates like anything else).

I realize that these arguments are one-sided. But when there is momentum in the wrong direction only by steering against that momentum can we hope to correct our course.

On a more heartening note, another story today tells the tale of a Kansas high school football team undefeated in 51 games. Roger Barta, the Smith Center Redmen’s coach isn’t proud of last month’s record-breaking game against Plainville, in which the Redmen took a 72-0 lead in the first quarter. As the NY Times reports Barta swapped in his freshmen lineup after the third touchdown, but his team kept scoring. He even went so far as to tell his players to run out of bounds or fall if they broke free. “Sure, we like our football around here,” Barta said. “But we truly believe it takes a whole town to raise a child, and that’s worth a whole lot more.”

Now isn’t that the kind of person you’d want running the country? …But wait, I think I see a pimple on his chin. Can I get a fact check on that?

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