Acceptable absurdity.

''Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities'' - Voltaire

Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

is NOT pleased.

Someone's not

Someone's not
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

there.

No.

No.
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

My friend Nate is 'not listening.'

Abuser.

Abuser.
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

My friend Nate is keeping Blumenberg 'in order.'

"Whosoever

wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason."
- Martin Luther

I'm sorry, was that not clear?

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."
- Martin Luther

Right then. Go to.

The Amazon Kindle: dog, dog, double-dog!

Re: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/amazon-pitches-a-wireless-ipod-for-books/

Another dog! Another device that does exactly what laptops and handhelds already do! Sorry, Jeff Bezos, but this is another step in the direction of a dead end. People want to carry FEWER use-specialized electronic devices -- not be encumbered with more. You should dump your efforts in this vein and invest them, instead, in getting every book on Amazon in electronic formats that are already widely available. Just about everyone's already walking around with a smartphone or Iphone or PocketPC or Blackberry. All these devices can display documents in whatever format you like: PDF, text, Word, proprietary. We don't need another freakin' device! We need content.

Also, Nancy Pelosi loves Hitler.

The em that spurred today's rant isn't worth reprinting. It's accessible
through the Snopes.com link below. Suffice it to say that it's ...

"False.

As in: false. As in: someone is, yet again, forwarding internet chain mail
without bothering to do even LESS reasearch (i.e. Googling "pelosi windfall
tax") than any high-school student is expected to do.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/pelosi.asp

Hey, did you hear that Bill Gates is paying $.01 for every e-mail that you
send? No? Maybe you heard about that poor child with cancer who's
collecting e-mail pen-pals?

We Americans are taken in and outraged by fakeries and, when presented with
points backed by evidence, are bored by or hostile to it. Evidentiary
reason is the only support of a democratic union.

Every day I teach the kids of the so-called Millenium Generation. They're
the first generation to be rasied without any notion of, much less respect
for, evidentiary reason. You don't want to live in the world they'll
govern. But no worries: you won't -- because they won't. Because
ultimately, power is truth and stupidos flip burgers. The torch of reason
(ergo power) has long passed beyond our borders. Either we reclaim it or
we're the next Former Empire, e.g. Iran.

Bye America! Bye "Great Experiment," and thanks for the rules by which to
govern every democracy on Earth save ours! Don't forget, America, to
mindlessly mouthe "Jesus" and, if you're really sophisticated, "values"
before you stick your head in that wood-chipper! Bye now!

Athens sodium-scape.

Athens sodium-scape.
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

Inner East Broad St., Athens, GA, near the Jittery Joe's roastery.

Bean, Meet Lion.

Bean, Meet Lion.
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

That pervy Boccaccio.

Celebrating tyranny.

In response to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/userletter/?id=637&letter_id=1411869811

What is this fucking nonsense? Un-American, unpatriotic, undemocratic, selectively quoted (academic dishonesty -- instant F) and illiterate. That's what.

A properly sourced report on the issue is at http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/australia.asp .

As a militant atheist, I'm the last to sympathize with theocracy. But to dispute someone's right to peacefully advocate, in a free society governed by the rule of law, theocracy -- or any other political notion or form of government -- is unconstitutional, un-American and ignorant of the values that our nation is founded on. It's to reject the values that distinguish our society from theocracies in the first place -- values that we say our soldiers fight for when they go to war.

History lesson. By 380 AD, the politically contentious and religiously tolerant Roman Republic/Empire (after which our Founding Fathers modeled American government) had prospered for about 800 years. In 380, to unify the empire, Christianity was made the official state religion. Within a century Rome was dead.

s90

s90
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

Celebrate groundhogs.

Stop the madness and celebrate groundhogs.

Video uploading frenzy.

Now that I have a proper internet connection, I've been uploading videos like mad. All videos I've made at one time or another. Check out parts 1 and 2 of "20 in 20" -- and much more on my sparkly new YouTube account.

And: NEW Cortona video.

Never before seen! Had to do something with these video clips while cleaning up my hard drive.

Cortona video

Finally! (As in: 3G finally came to Athens.) UGA in Cortona program, Spring 2007.

Everyone looks so happy and healthy! Well, this was early in the semester, you see. Before all the students' livers gave out.

Si nihil novum

Si nihil novum
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

Soapboxes for everyone. Me too. And while we're at it, fuck you.

The thing I notice most often these days -- the thing that makes me madder than anything else -- is how people don't converse.  They don't talk to communicate.  They don’t listen.  When you say something, they don't respond; they resume their monologue.  Everything they say back to you is a non-sequitur.  Noticed?

And they can't, can't, can't ever hold a conversation with more than one other person.  That above all.  Oh no -- they can't wait that long to resume talking.  If there are four of them, they'll break into two -- "conversations."  A conversation among four people?  Or five, or six, or (god forbid) ten?  Just think how inefficient that is -- that is, when your conversational MO is to maximize your own floor-time.

Who are "they"?  I'm not sure, but it's kids primarily that I have in mind.  The under-30 crowd.  I spent a semester in close quarters with them, teaching abroad, and that's when this phenomenon was really shoved in my face.  Now that I'm "back" I see it everywhere, all the time.  They do it like clockwork.  How, when you added people to them, conversations would with mechanical precision split into proliferating pairs, as regular as cellular division.  I even started experimenting with it, there in that semester with our cultural future.  I'd be in a four-way convo that'd pair off.  I'd keep an ear open to what the other pair was saying and, after a bit, respond, trying to reunite the four.  And every time, as soon as the one I'd addressed replied, the other two would realign and form their own pair.  If you bet on it you could make millions.

I'd seen how low the quality of communication was, even among grad-students and academics (who are supposed to be in the business of interlocution, but who instead repeatedly sacrifice communication and rational mutual critique to grandstanding).  But these undergraduates were different creatures altogether.  It's as if even the traditional social roles that made some kids talkers and some wallflowers -- as if even these roles had given way to the new dynamic.  That of narrowcasting -- of Warhol's "15 Minutes of Fame" meets the Internet, the medium that can simultaneously realize Warhol's promise and make it -- not absurd, because he intended it as an absurdity, but real, quotidian and pathetic -- just another tool of entertainment, of distraction, of control. 

Sit in a group of kids and watch.  See how often they do it.  The default interlocutor ceiling is 1.  As you add interlocutors, discomfort increases.  The grandstanders, the storytellers, the charismatic "life-of-the-party" good-time guys and gals -- these personality types still exist as much as ever, but they don't play the social role they once did.  Grandstanders can't hold the stage.  Narrowcasting -- niche markets -- My Computer, My Music, My Weather, My News, My Opinions, My Reality, My World.

It's so fucking ridiculous, all this MyCasting that the mature persuasion machine is cashing in on.  An example close to hand being the icon in the top left corner of your PC's "desktop" (itself a homey euphemism for the cold "screen").  Customization (of course) has always been a marketing edge, and it's NEVER been in the consumer's interest -- not to mention society's interest, which of course we can't even mention -- which is, to our own Neocon public "guardians" like former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, an utter fiction, a pipe dream of utopian college profs productive of nothing more than a savvy, dismissive laugh.  Customization isn't in the consumer's interest any more than the difference in the lifestyle-brand auras hazily surrounding two otherwise-identical pieces of useless, obsolescence-engineered crap.

Fucking crap.  A culture of crap.  Entertainment crap.  Even the Romans with their races and occasional bloodsport wouldn't settle for this crap.  Sugar-coated dogshit that passes for food.  Sugar-coated dogshit that passes for religion.  Sugar-coated dogshit that passes for political policy.  A pox on all our houses!

 

 

Jesus vs. Mohammed, Coke vs. Pepsi.

Protestantism was originally a marginal fanatic theological sect later co-opted by power (rising middle-class Parliamentarians) for its political utility.  JUST LIKE early Christianity was a fanatic marginal sect co-opted by the late Roman emperors to unify the empire.  JUST LIKE "Islam" served as a mere tag under which to unify disparate and disempowered Arab populations to grab land back from the domineering Christian empire in Europe.  "Religions" -- a misleadingly broad term -- are only actual philosophical/theological belief systems in their early gestation days; mainstream “religions” are political power-plays at work.  The Heaven's Gate cult, the Branch Dividians: these are "real" religions, if by "religion" one means a philosophical belief system and spiritual practice -- which is what people DO mean.  Surely no religious apologist would say that "religion" is simply a meaningless group-identification tag, and a misleading tag at that.

 

But natch.  An esoteric spiritual practice WOULDN’T become widespread on its own.  Average folks don't give a fuck about Spiritual Exercise or Life’s Great Questions.  They care about immediate well-being: food, shelter, power, social standing.  A “religion” only BECOMES mainstream when it allies with a widespread political power-shift that delivers those things.  Once mainstream, it can hang about as a useful fiction as long as it doesn’t obstruct well-being -- or get out-competed by a new political force uniting under a different religious brand logo.

 

Religious faith is brand loyalty.  Theology is advertising. 

 

Like mainstream religious "belief," brand loyalty is radically divorced from the utility or function of the product.  We eat billions of dollars of "fast" food because we're biologically programmed to hoard sugar and fat and because mega-corporations make gazillions by stimulating and exploiting this biological predisposition -- NOT because the food is "fast," or fresh or tasty or inexpensive or sustaining.  It's none of those things.  Physiologically, it's not even food: if you tried to live on it, you'd get sick and die.  (And we Americans do -- get sick and die.  #1 in obesity, diabetes, heart disease.)  We're #1 in debt per capita because (again) humans are naturally lazy and want something for nothing, and (again) because ultra-mega-corporations with armies of marketers and psychologists in their service spend billions to stimulate and exploit this natural predisposition. 

Over the Hillary.

If Hillary gets the nomination, I'd vote for Nader.  Noam Chomsky.  Bill Hicks.  I'd move to Canada.

 

PS: please send rain.

The role of religion in social conflicts; OR, the old Crusades-Vs.-Abolition squabble.

Perfectionism and religious upbringing often go hand in hand (i.e. latter causes former).  Mainstream religious worldviews tend to be oversimplifications of the world, full of notions about knowable ultimate good, knowable ultimate evil, knowable steps to perfect redemption or perfect damnation, knowable ultimate standards of conduct, absolute certainty of intuition, &c. -- in general, *the mainstream versions* of religious belief systems are laced with all sorts of notions about absolute certainty in respect to all sorts of things that are in or that impact the real world.  An untenable standard of judgment, natch, since no human knowledge is certain in any "strong" or absolute sense -- human knowledge (including every scientific "fact") is all evidentiary.  Expecting strong certainty creates an impossible standard of judgment.  And when judgment's blocked, one either freezes (takes no action) or flails (takes irrational action, e.g. Crusade, jihad, laying on of snakes, speaking in tongues).

The "out" which many religious Americans take -- these being modern, practical folks who want to retain evidentiary rationality (science and commerce and so forth) but also want to retain religious self-identification (often for social reasons) is simply not to take their religion seriously.  And we've seen this secularization of religion (and clerical criticism of same) since colonial times, and especially in the 19th century (cf T.J. Jackson Lears' history _No Place of Grace_). 

So the hypothesis would be that 1) the more "fundamentalist" or over-simplistic a religious belief system is, the more it will tend to be certaintistic and promote strong certaintism in its core logical tenets; 2) that certaintism will tend to produce irrational action in one of two forms, either a) paralysis or b) hysteria; and 3) that religious worldviews will tend to produce constructive/productive rational action only at their own expense, i.e. when they're held more lightly, relativistically, or in more ad-hoc ways. 

For (2b), easy: fundamentalist religious history is replete with examples of religious mania (crusades, visions, &c.)  The footprint of (2a) is harder to discern, it being a stance of inactivity, but for it see the many descriptions of religion as an "opiate"  (Marx et al), as a tool to inspire social passivity. 

(3) is very interesting because of the way it enters into endless debates about the pragmatic value of religion.  Critics of religion cite (2)-type phenomena; apologists reply with citations of religion's role in social goods: abolitionism, the 1960s American civil rights movement, the doctrine of the soul invoked in humanist democratic constitutions, &c.  Our thesis would suggest that these progressive applications of religiosity emanate from elite sub-groups of educated and enlightened persons within a religious tradition -- not from the more mythological/certaintistic mainstream.  And when you consider who the abolitionists and civil-rights activists WERE, (3) starts to come into focus.  Also recall how religion was invoked by both sides in both conflicts: slavers and white supremacists appealed to religious belief for backing as often (if not more so) than abolitionists and civil-rights activists did. 

This suggests that social conflicts fought with religious weaponry are battles of literary interpretation, entirely secondary to the rational and practical arguments underlying them.  Two points were at stake in the slavery issue, for example: 1) whether it was philosophically justifiable in a democratic society with a Constitution and DOI such as the US' and 2) whether we as a nation were prepared to sacrifice the percieved economic benefit of it.  Christianity had no obvious position in this debate; ergo it could be (and was) cited emphatically by both sides.  And it was appealed to so often -- i.e. the debate was couched so often in religious terms -- because the real terms of the debate were too 1) philosohpically demanding and 2) economically shameful for the average Joe to face them.  Abolitionists and slavers were fighting (as ususual) for the fence-sitters, the middle ground, the swing vote -- and they fought on the distantly removed literary ground of religion because those were the only terms upon which the middle ground would listen to the debate.  But it's totally secondary to the real terms of the question.  Americans gave up slavery when they could afford to: when an industrial economy was showing itself to be ultimately a source of greater profit than a slave-based ag economy could ever be.  People only make lasting human-rights sacrifices when they can afford to.  Bye-bye slavery, hello overseas sweatshop.

Theism and the "pragmatic appeal."

On about god this week! Sorry. From another letter in response to a curious interlocutor. I had mentioned ontology; he, a theist, looked it up and, in doing so, stumbled across Anselm's "ontological appeal," and asked about it. Reply:

"Ontology," in plain language, is the branch of philosophy (as opposed to aesthetics, politics, epistemology, ethics and so forth) that deals with questions about the fundamental nature of the universe and of being. And right again: there are many traditional arguments for the existence (variously defined) of God (also quite variously defined). The "appeal to scripture," for example, is just that: when a religious person cites as evidence the foundational writings in their religious tradition in which god is discussed: a Hindu the Upanishads, a Christian the Gospels, a Jew the Pentateuch, and so forth. (Obviously the appeal to scripture is a weak argument, since the veracity of the claims made in various traditions' scriptures is precisely what's in question.)

The "ontological argument" (for the existence of god) is another one of those arguments. (There's a nice roundup of them at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/arguments.html . ) The "ontological appeal" is a very shady bit of logical trickery that even most Christian theologians (e.g. Thomas Aquinas, essentially the founder of modern Christian theology) have rejected. It's widely considered to have been substantially demolished by the time of Kant -- mid-1700s. It's a very technical argument, as you'll see from a summation of its history at http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/ont-arg.htm -- very twisted and purely deductive reasoning, which is very typical of the Scholastic thinking of the medieval period which it comes from. (These are the same guys who argued about precisely "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.") To oversimplify, it boils down to the claim that we can prove that a supreme being exists simply because we can form a concept of one. Obviously, this is a remarkably ambitious claim; it would be the only one of its kind. Because we can imagine an infinite number of things (like horses with wings), but never does our being able to do so IMPLY that those things exist.

You've heard of "intelligent design." The whole squabble about evolution vs. creationism, the Scopes Monkey trial early this century, Dover recently, Kansas Board of Education -- here in Georgia too. "Intelligent design" -- aka "the argument from design" -- is the only argument for the real existence of God with any life in it. I'm not endorsing it; I'm just saying that it's not universally discredited. But most folks feel that David Hume's critique of it (1751) has yet to be overturned. But who today has read or even heard of David Hume, or Immanuel Kant, or Thomas Aquinas for that matter?

In my opinion, the best argument is the pragmatic one ("appeal to pragmatism," "appeal to utility"). It's not an argument for the existence of god, but for the acquiescence to belief in god as a social good. It was very popular in the 19^th century. In short, it says: yeah, we know God probably doesn't exist -- certainly not if what one means by "God" is some anthropomorphic father-figure / tribal-chief figure who dispenses grace and justice. But theistic myths are good: they're philosophy for folks who don't have time for philosophical nit-picking; they're an ethical code for folks who don't have time to be professional ethicists. 'God' is shorthand for truth and beauty and justice and awe and humility: don't knock it." That's the pragmatic appeal. Idealists hate it because it's condescending. Pragmatists like it because they think it works. But when some guys fly a plane into a skyscraper in the name of God -- when a country declares a holy war or "crusade" in order simply to pursue its economic interests -- when someone justifies slavery or fascism with the church's backing -- that that makes trouble for pragmatists.

It's a ripping tough question. I've been wrestling with it, and on the fence about it, for years. Bertrand Russell -- the benevolent-granddad philosopher of the 20^th century -- was very hostile to it. He thought it was cynical and condescending to maintain a double standard -- to say that "what I believe is wrong" is nevertheless "OK for you, because it's all you can handle." But Russell was an aristocrat; he was very naïve about the life of the average Joe. In the trenches, religion can convert fucked-up drunk wife-beaters into loving, productive members of society. I've seen it -- often. Still, one has to wonder: if we as a society put the same force behind a secular moral code -- say, a simple Secular Humanism -- would it have the same persuasive force that religion has, in those trenches? No question that preaching Kant or Mill or Habermas to a fucked-up drunk wife-beater has no effect. But simple cognitive therapy does. What if every church in America were a mild-mannered free therapy clinic, and there were no (insane) stigma attached to therapy? What if magical thinking were stigmatized and common sense was lionized, flattered, celebrated, was treated as sacred, was preached in every pulpit, on TV, was required to get elected President?

Atheism, theism, pantheism, panentheism, trepantheism ...

(Trepantheism is when you believe that god speaks to you via a hole drilled in your skull. Alternately, releasing mental demons via said hole.)

My gentle, caring interlocutor (see previous post) asked me what I meant when I called myself an "atheist" and, in that same communique, identified himself as a "monist or panentheist." To wit:

Atheism: in short, simply non-theist. Theist: in short, belief in an anthropomorphic (key term) supernatural deity. Anthropomorphic: having human qualities, e.g. thought, feeling, consciousness, sympathy, memory, opinion, judgment, &c. Not to mention more flagrantly obvious things like gender. And a robe and beard are RIGHT out. As is the willingness (or refusal) to help a bloke get his girlfriend back.

By that definition, "atheist" doesn't imply anything else, e.g. that the universe is ultimately knowable, that western science is the only method of procuring knowledge, or any of the other positions that are frequently but needlessly attributed to atheism. "Theism" is a well-understood term with a rich linguistic history: western history has no shortage of extremely well-known examples of belief systems built around anthropomorphic deities -- always creator-gods and usually personal-judge-gods. Atheism is simply the rejection of such beliefs. Is it a "certain" rejection? That's a red herring; don't eat it. No human knowledge or belief is certain. Thinking otherwise is simply naïve; notions of absolute certainty (rather than evidentiary reasoning) have been discredited since the Renaissance. Any questions of "certainty" in any strong or absolute sense shouldn't enter into ANYONE's beliefs, theist or atheist or scientific or intuitive or anything else. To say that one is "certain" in any absolute sense about any belief that one can form in the mind or express in language is merely epistemological naivete.

Sorry to harp on certainty, but that's the sticking point for many folks about the term "atheism." They (including many naïve atheists) mistakenly think that "atheism" implies some absolute certainty about the non-existence of anthropomorphic deities, and that thus it's somehow incompatible with agnosticism. False. Atheism is a stronger claim about "gods" than agnosticism is, but it's not an absolute or certaintistic claim. It merely means that there IS evidence -- a LOT, in fact -- against the claims that are frequently made about the existence of anthropomorphic deities. It doesn't mean that these claims CAN'T be true; it means that there's a tremendous amount of reliable, intersubjective, verifiable evidence that they're not. And if one believes that, then to self-identify as "agnostic" -- a more socially palatable term -- is kowtowing to social nicety for self-serving reasons. And while some socially graceful white lies MIGHT be OK, presumably lying about one's beliefs about god/s -- about the ultimate nature of all things -- is not an OK little white lie, since it shows disrespect to the thing demanding more respect than anything we could ever know.

Now, as for monism and panentheism ...

Well, monism is a general term: it simply characterizes the number of irreconcilable first principles that a belief system can be reduced to (or, consequently, the number of irreconcilable categories of Stuff that follow from said first principles). Hard-core scientific materialists are usually monists: everything is ultimately reducible (they might theorize) to one ultimate particle. Hard-core idealists (e.g. Berkeley) are usually monists: everything is an idea in the mind of God. Pythagoras (maybe) is a monist: everything ultimately numbers. Plato's one paradigmatic dualist: there's matter and spirit and the twain shall never meet.

But since "monism" merely characterizes the logical structure of a belief system, it can be applied to various belief systems, not just ontological beliefs (i.e. beliefs about the ultimate nature of being). One can be an ontological monist but an epistemological pluralist, &c. Supposedly. There's also the fascinating question of self-awareness: if one calls oneself monist but acts pluralist -- i.e. doesn't at least strive to apply the same standards of judgment across the board -- what is one? Most Americans (and perhaps most humans) obviously act like pluralists, applying different standards in different situations in a totally ad-hoc way -- and call themselves nothing at all. What are they? Monists? Pluralists? Higher-primate calorie machines?

As for panentheism, well. As an atheist, what's there for me to say about an academic theological argument? Panentheism is merely a version of theism. It might be a more sophisticated one than traditional anthropomorphic theism (i.e. Santa-Claus type foolishness, Jesus helped me win the lottery and so forth) -- but it needn't be. Panentheism (as opposed to pantheism) is a theological debate about whether "God" is immanent-in-but-transcends the universe (panen), or whether "God" is synonymous with the universe (pan). As an atheist (or non-theist or call-it-whatever), this question is at best secondary, since first I need to know what someone means by this "God" that's a crucial part of their belief system. If they mean an anthropomorphic deity (see first paragraph) then I'd say no, I don't believe in THAT, ergo the question of whether this "God" is transcendent or synonymous with the universe don't arise.

Some folks try to weasel out of all this justificatory difficulty by stripping their notion of "God" of any anthropomorphic qualities. A pantheist might (might) make this move. It was a popular move among science-friendly Enlightenment Deists (and others, e.g. many fundamentalist theists): God, they say, is absolutely beyond human experience, completely, and thus not in any way subject to evidentiary reasoning, either for or against. Freud said some very funny things about this stripping away of all attributes from "God" until "God" is nothing more than a wholly empty logical principle. In short, this move "protects" God by claiming nothing of God. Obviously, that won't wash. No theist would be satisfied by a notion of God that knew nothing, did nothing, felt nothing, judged nothing, never acted, never touched or affected any human life in any way. A Zero God is just that: not a "god" in any sense of the word. Not even in any technical sense -- and ABSOLUTELY not in any common sense, because when 99% of people say "god" they mean an anthropomorphic deity that does or did stuff touching human experience in some way. (And of course 98% of the time they mean a LOT more than that. The Christian god, of course, isn't a Zero God at all: for most Christians -- certainly contemporary American ones -- "God" is a notoriously "thick" notion; i.e. they make LOTS of ambitious, specific, testable claims about their god.)

But of course we should say Christian gods, because there's not much that's monotheistic about Christianity -- CERTAINLY not Roman Catholicism. But that's another matter.

Sweet vs. saccharine.

A sweet, gentle and caring interlocutor was recently touting to me the virtues of sweetness, gentleness and caring. "What do you think of that?" they asked. "Pretty cheesy, eh?"

No, actually, I don't think that's cheesy at all. You're (I said to them) very specific, for one thing -- sweetness and gentleness and caring are very specific qualities -- and "cheesiness" is almost always recognizable for its vagueness. Secondly, "cheesiness" means, supposedly, saccharine and sentimental -- in the pejorative sense -- and there's nothing saccharine about being sweet, gentle or caring.

But caring, I think, is the absolute Good among the three -- something everyone should want to aspire to be, if they're paying attention. Who would WANT to be careless? Of course that doesn't mean that a lot of people aren't perfectly willing to stick their heads in the sand and be extremely careless when it suits them ...

Sweetness and gentleness are more situational. There are situations in which it's appropriate to be gentle and sweet, and situations in which it's not appropriate. That doesn't mean that malice is ever called for, but roughness, stridency, bluntness, ferocity? You bet. I strive to be sweet and gentle when it's appropriate, and strive to be strident and forceful when that's what's called for. Teaching's a great model, since it requires you to reach so many -- and so very different -- people in order to do positive good, i.e. enlighten them, sensitize them, reach their hearts and minds. Hearts so often cold and minds closed. Sweetness in the classroom is crucial, no question, but also unquestionably insufficient on its own: sometimes you have to put holy terror into them to wake them from their apathetic stupor. Writing's the same way: to reach and move the reader requires carrots and sticks. But natch: life, thus truth, is such: a mixed bag, sweetness and sorrow. Imagine The Tempest with no Caliban; imagine a piano with no black keys. Life is light and dark in equal parts; ergo truth, life's reflection, must be so.

But Caring (or something like it) must be the constant; there has to be a higher purpose (e.g. enlightenment) behind both gentle and rough gestures. If there's not, we all know what that looks like: sweetness for its own sake is no different from bitterness for its own sake: groundless gestures made for purely aesthetic, self-satisfying reasons. The cheesy Hallmark card and the morbid Goth pose are flip sides of the same worthless counterfeit coin.

This could only be

IMG_5986
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

something that happens when one's working on one's dissertation. One suddenly realizes pressing concerns otherwise non-obvious: the pressing need to sweep the porch, the pressing need to fix the sink, the pressing need to set up one's childhood train set.

The boys

IMG_5955
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

fully in character.

KSzH BFPK

IMG_5914 - KSzH BFPK
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

That's right, flip off the cameraman. That's fine, he's an asshole. But you're still barefoot and preggers in the kitchen. Praise Jesus.

Staircases Not Homogenous.

IMG_4853
Originally uploaded by Patrick Denker

Also "slippery." So to speak.

Criticism is patriotism.

A thoughtful Republican friend of mine recently saw _The Fog of War_, Errol Morris' excellent documentary about Robert McNamara. He writes:

> I lived through that era and recall how passionately he and others
> espoused the domino theory. It’s why I am so skeptical now when
> Bush-Cheney et al tell us that all of the middle east will
> disintegrate if we leave.

Right -- and I'd underscore "we." Why isn't an increasingly radical sub-set of fundamentalist Islamists worldwide targeting Honduras? Or Taiwan? Because what sort of a history do those countries have of stationing troops in the middle east or meddling with middle-eastern political regimes?

I'll say this, though. I don't disagree that there's something like a global war on Something that we need to be engaged in, and that terrorism is included in that Something. The problem is in part that these Bushies simply aren't thoughtful -- but more, I think, that they don't have the courage to act on conclusions that pretty much any simpleton could reach.

To wit. What is "terrorism," anyway? Well, that's fairly easy: it's illegal warfare. It's using force against non-combatants to achieve political ends. It's eschewing the rule of law and international customs defining the parameters of humane warfare.

If that's the case, then, one doesn't fight terrorism by committing it: by killing Iraqi civilians by the tens-of-thousands (by even the most conservative estimate); by strongarming weak allies into our cause; or by promoting torture, by backing away from international legal institutions like the UN and the International Court, or by riding roughshod over some very longstanding civil rights here at home.

What else is "terrorism"? It might not be part of the formal definition, but we often associate it with religious extremism. We might call an IRA bomber a terrorist, but folks would just as often call him a "freedom-fighter" or "rebel" or "insurgent." But if a jihadist bombed the same pub in the name of Allah, it'd be hard for us to find a word for him OTHER than "terrorist."

So if "terrorism" implies some degree of religious extremism or irrationalism, then again our "war on terror" is something we ought to be fighting here at home, on ourselves, as much as -- not necessarily instead of -- overseas.

Take Iran. "Theocracy," we say. They've got a semi-secular but still fairly religious President who rules uneasily and is heavily dependent upon the radically religious mullahs who control the hearts and minds of a small but politically active radical religious minority. And is the situation here so different? Religious radicals are a solid and powerful minority in the country as well as in the Congress, and politicians in both parties compromise to placate this "religious right": both parties have to pay it lip service, and Republicans who flaunt it get axed. Giuliani will be a very interesting bellweather on this point -- but it's telling that it takes a 9/11 flag-wrapping to protect a Republican from the religious right (and this is assuming that G. acutally WINS the nomination). It says as much if not more about the party in general that every other Republican candidate is much closer to the RRight's stance on key issues.

This isn't to conclude prima facie that religion has no place in politics (it might), nor that both religion and politics in Iran are more radical than their American counterparts. But if the question is whether, for example, the religious-political landscape of the US is more like Iran or more like, say, England or Canada -- well, that's a different question, and I think one with a much less clear answer.

So a global war on terror? If we're even a LITTLE bit consistent about what that has to mean, I'm all for it.

Something else to mull over. We all tend to thoughtlessly categorize critics of US policy and culture as alienists or anti-Americans in some way -- as socialists, Euro-fags, godless commies, anti-capitalists, what have you. But hasn't it generally been the case that a country's greatest critics are its greatest patriots? Patrick Henry? Maybe, but I'm thinking about, for example, George Washington himself. An American patriot, no? -- but he WASN'T American. He wasn't born or raised American. He was a British citizen -- a critic of and rebel against British political culture. And every Brit recognizes now (as did many at the time) that Washington and the colonial rebels were fighting FOR true British rights: self-determination, representation, the rule of law, due process. And Lincoln? Only the greatest critic America has ever had: the only individual to lead the country into war on itself. How about FDR, who dragged this country kicking and screaming into WWII?

Flag-wavers on the one hand and critics on the other. Who turn out to be our heroes, in the long run? Was it the folks who got us into Vietnam or the folks who got us out? Nixon's whole political reputation -- perhaps the most damaged of any president -- was salvaged by the sole fact of his embracing China; the then-beloved McCarthy, however, who held US mainstream culture (and Hollywood) in his hand, is the villain now.

The public's turning against the Iraq war it demanded -- but it's still early, we're still engaged. Nevertheless, folks who opposed it from the start are now deriving political capital from that opposition. Obama, whose opposition was theoretical, is trading on it. Dems who voted for it are having to backpedal. Eventually, what will we say about the 23 Senators and 133 Reps who voted against Joint Resolution 144 in 2002?

The Catholic church as cultural repository.

Interesting experience at Amelia, an ancient walled town up in the mountains in northern Lazio. We parked outside the walls and hiked in -- a substantial hike, very steep. The town -- or at least what we saw of it -- was actually very dreary, even for a Sunday evening: narrow streets, black walls, no lights, deadly few citizens. But the arc-lit cattedrale kept shining magnificently at the top of the hill, so we pressed on. We heaved up more winding and utterly dark cobblestone streets and staircases until we finally crested the hill. The outside of the cathedral was bleached white and absolutely without ornament. We went in a small door that I assumed was the side door -- and lo, a Baroque masterpiece cracked open like a geode, fully lit and radiant in orange and gold and blue, opened up over our heads. We poked around for a bit. Pretty soon an old-ish man -- sort of a self-appointed docent -- came up and insisted that we see the dioramas in a side room Very impressive dioramas (of the life of Jesus), actually, with animated figures and running water. This was to be only the first stop, it turned out, on an hour-long tour of the cathedral. The old gentleman was very knowledgeable, and clearly very proud of Amelia and its grand (and mostly long-gone) history -- a history that was (and this is the key) largely encapsulated in and represented by the wealth of paintings, sculptures and objects of antiquity housed in the church: a Turkish flag from the (very) battle of Lepanto; a working 17th-century pipe organ; &c. The gentleman reminded me very much of the attorney/chorus character in Fellini's Amarcord: the old gentleman who represents the town's memory and its pride in its cultural treasures. What struck me was that this was the role that the church clearly played in the life of Amelia (not to mention that of this old fellow). There was nothing religious (from what I could make out) in his discourse His enthusiasm was that of a city booster, not that of a religious proselytizer. This you don't see in America. With the exception of a few historical-landmark churches (St. Patrick's, the Washington Cathedral), American churches don't play this role as cultural/historical repositories -- obviously, since 1) there's precious little culture or history to reposit, and since 2) they're Protestant, and thus generally suspicious of (if not overtly hostile to) the contamination of religion by art. It's a role of the overseas Catholic church that we don't clearly perceive in America; we tend to see it (if at all) as the institution that burned Bruno and jailed Galileo, if we're secular, or if we're Protestant then as a suspiciously idolatrous cult, with its saints and shrouds and icons. What we don't get is the ROLE that these icons and artworks play in the life of the parish: that they're not merely objects of befuddled worshipfulness for benighted old ladies, but that they're tangible objects of the community's identity.

Natural-language philosophy, 19th-century style

The informal definitions of popular language are the only medium through which theory really affects the mass of minds even among the nominally educated. - George Eliot