Rational Philosophy

On the Supreme Court’s upholding of ID needs for voters, Barack Obama’s tussle with Wright’s preaching, and a couple of proposed field trips.

Upholding the Indiana state requirement for voters to show a picture ID, the Supreme Court majority concluded that this requirement wasn’t unduly burdensome on any class of voters. Indiana provides picture IDs at no cost for the poor and allows someone to vote without an ID if they subsequently show one within 10 days. (Souter, in his dissent, said the requirement could pose a non-trivial burden on many.)

After reading today that Obama attended Jeremiah Wright’s church for twenty years, I felt prompted to give some more thought to the controversy stirred up by Wright’s divisive and outspoken views. His critics would have Obama explain why he cannot be associated with Wright’s views when he sat through his sermons for twenty years.

Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration have criticized President Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas and the Syrian leadership. Carter writes an elegant response to these criticisms in an op-ed today. What he says, effectively, is that avoiding discourse works far less well than engaging in discourse.

I don’t know whether Obama ever engaged Wright directly on his views. But just sitting through those sermons must have forced Obama into having to engage with the ideas being expressed, not to agree with them necessarily, but to acknowledge their presence in the world. If he’d got up and walked out and never come back he might have made a statement, but he would have missed out on years of study of Wright’s perspective — and Wright’s perspective is not unique. If the country’s leaders don’t engage with it, we won’t made progress against racism.

But while the furore continues the burden remains with Obama to define his identity. Much better for him to do this by being what he is (as he did in his eloquent speech on racism) rather than defend what he’s not.

(Ironically, sitting through endless speeches one disagrees with figures prominently in the job description for a law maker. Obama seems to have that qualification in spades.)

How does a Supreme Court judge begin to determine whether the acquisition of a picture ID constitutes a reasonable burden for a poor would-be voter in Indiana?

The ID may be free, but where are the administrative offices from where the IDs would be attained? How far from where people live? How convenient for public transportation? How long is the wait once they get there? What fears may large numbers of poor people have about applying for a picture ID?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they seem to be the kinds of questions one would need to answer before deciding whether the burden would be reasonable.

I suggest a field trip: Take the Supreme Court justices to Indiana. Let them go along with a couple of poor people to get their IDs, then decide.

I’d suggest the same for Obama’s critics. Have them attend a sermon at his church. Then ask them when they come out whether they’ve been swayed by Wright’s opinions.

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.

On the recession, real or imagined, chronic problems that beset the nation, and the celebration of taste and art in a great cup of coffee.

With all that’s been written about the current economic crisis, be it mountain or molehill, it’s been surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) difficult to get to the bottom of the situation. I can’t escape the impression that the economy moves according to forces too complex for anyone to fully or reliably understand. The wisdom of hindsight abounds, but those still willing to predict what comes next sound more like doom-mongers or soothsayers than thoughtful, commanding economic theorists and commentators.

The Times has a piece that hints at some concrete economic indicators: According to David Rosenberg, a Merrill Lynch economist, the stock market is overvalued by 10 percent relative to corporate earnings and interest rates. And, judging by historic norms (by comparison to salaries and rents,) house prices are overvalued by 30 percent across much of Florida, California and the Southwest and about 20 percent in the Northeast. More about the rationality of these indicators later.

Bob Herbert points to a more urgent matter than the economy, if we judge urgency by the degree of current and long term impact. Bob’s gloomy picture of the shameful state of schools in South Carolina stands as a sad example of the disparity between the haves and the have nots, and, because the poor conditions in South Carolina seem to relate to entrenched and systematic racism, the vast distance between the kind of country we want to believe we live in, and the kind of country we do live in. Talking about a school he happened upon, former South Carolina commerce secretary, Charles Way, says he couldn’t really believe his eyes. “It was the most deplorable building condition that I’ve ever seen in my life. How the hell somebody could teach in an environment like that is really just beyond me.” (Ben Tillman to the right, infamous racist, prominently honored at the SC statehouse.)

A school text book had a volume with the title: “One day man will land on the moon.”

Another dispiriting story reveals that the United States ranks at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among 149 countries for its environmental performance. The United States contributes a quarter of the new releases of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

And how do I reconcile the current economic woes, the chronic, unaddressed problems facing the nation’s poor and its minorities, and the environmental disaster underway with my glee at reading about a $20,000 coffee maker?

I love coffee. I buy premium roasted beans from small companies. I grind them right before I brew. And I take great care to try to get the brew just right. So, the story about the lengths to which coffee houses will go to brew a great cup of coffee drew me in. It made me want to go downtown to Cafe Grumpy’s so that I can try a cup of coffee from an $11,000 coffee maker…

Back to the economic indicators of stock value relative to corporate earnings and interest rates, and house values relative to salaries and rents. Even if we take the calculation on trust, can we agree that these constitue reliable, rational economic indicators? I think not. As the world changes so economic norms change.

Judging stock valuation by earnings and interest rates perhaps works reasonably well over a short time period, but can it be applied consistently, without modification, over a long time period? Here’s one example of why I’m dubious. Technological innovation and the surge in importance of the Internet gives more reason to expect future innovation and technological growth now than ten or fifteen years ago. Isn’t it then appropriate to value companies, in general, somewhat higher than we would have valued them ten to fifteen years ago, because we expect future earnings to be higher?

And the model for judging house values by comparison to salaries and rents must surely change over time, too. As more people squeeze into urban and suburban areas, the relative value of land and space may increase more rapidly than salaries (that are affected by things other than land and space). Also, raw materials for building houses have changed in relative cost, building regulations have changed the way houses are built and what they cost to build, and the skill-sets of the laborers have changed… How can the model work without modification from one period of time to the next?

I’m still ruminating on how I can be so thrilled about a great cup of coffee when the state of South Carolina, for one, discriminates against minorities by so woefully neglecting their education. From a philosophical perspective I understand that I’m not the master of my desires, and that when living in society we need to grapple with our own desires and needs as well of those of others. Ideally I know I should balance my own interests with those of people around me. Which doesn’t necessarily mean disavowing my love of coffee.

If we’re to try to get the balance right, we need more exposure to the problems in our society. The increased public attention given to global warming has finally begun to have an impact on the way we live and the choices we make. We need more exposure to the lingering problems of racism, too. I agree with Bob Herbert that our politicians should be addressing matters of racisim rather than dancing around them.

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On sexism, racism and any other ism: Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Gloria Steinem; the importance of drawing distinctions, and the unfortunate side-effect of bigotry.

Gloria Steinem’s Op-Ed yesterday — “Women Are Never Front-Runners” — shows that even a fervent anti-ismist can get tangled up in her own knitting. Ms. Steinem laments that Hillary Clinton faces an uphill struggle convincing voters that she’s a viable leader just because she’s a woman. Steinem contrasts Clinton’s task with Obama’s, arguing that Clinton has it harder. Although Steinem presents no evidence, I wouldn’t try to argue that she’s wrong. Unfortunately though, her thesis swells with the rhetoric of bias, ending with what’s supposed to be a rallying cry against isms ‘We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”’ And this would demonstrate lack of bias how?

Human beings have developed an extraordinary ability to draw distinctions and categorize the world around them. Consciousness requires that we do so. The first glimmer of consciousness rests on the awareness that there is a self and a non-self. From this primary and fundamental distinction we begin to separate the world into up and down, in and out, hot and cold, blue and pink, soft and hard… This ability has been honed to a fine point because it has provided an evolutionary benefit. The better able we were to draw distinctions, the more skilled we became at identifying safe foods to eat, suitable materials for clothes and tools and shelter, etc.

In another story today, brewers pursuit of ever hoppier beers and consumers pursuit of ever more gratifying flavor, gives an example of just how far we’re prepared to go along the road of differentiation and distinction. The whole enterprise of humankind rests to a large degree on the striving for new distinctions.

But the faculty to draw distinctions, while it can be trained or enhanced, is fundamentally indifferent to the nature of those distinctions. In other words, although some of us can’t distingush Bach from Hayden we can all distinguish a jackhammer from a songbird, a pen from a pencil, and our own cell-phone ring tone from everyone else’s. We draw distinctions so naturally that they become easy pegs for our murkier judgments.

This is where isms come in. When we derive arbitrary judgments from a characteristic, no matter how well distinguished that characteristic may be, we fall into the trap of the ism.

By all accounts, Hillary Clinton is a woman. Identifiying her as a woman is not an ism. Saying she’ll make a better or worse leader because she’s a woman is an ism. There’s no rational basis for making such a connection. (We can easily find many examples of both men and women leaders who are wonderful and many who are awful.)

To get to an ism from a distinction we have to apply flawed logic and reasoning, or blind ourselves to logic and reason. Racism in all its forms, for example, requires the racist to suspend his or her faculty of reason. But why do we do that?

Isms are born of ignorance or fear. Either we are too ignorant to understand that our judgments are flawed, or we are afraid of some group that’s different from us, or of losing our power over them, or of being forced to recognize their equality.

The antidote to isms is reason and logic, persistenly, patiently, blindly, and tirelessly applied.

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.

PS. Of the IPAs I’ve tasted, my personal favorite is Smuttynose IPA. Highly recommended.