Long Sunday

Altruism and Selfishness

In response to Adam's question regarding the significance of the religious right, I thought of a brilliant article in the latest addition of Harper's.  David Graeber, an anarchist anthropologist, provides an insightful analysis of the relationship between economics and "values."  He succinctly argues that the right has been successful at appealing to populist sentiments because they effectively accuse liberals "of cutting ordinary Americans off from the right to do good in the world."

Guilt History

Sparked or perhaps - since I haven't been following it, I can't be sure - egged on by Newt Gingrich's recent campaign to institute a patriotic teaching of US history from a Christian perspective, parts of the blogsphere have erupted in a stoush over religion.  But, while I haven't really been following the discussion, given some of it has turned around the question of the relation between Christianity, capitalism and the stain, though little as far as I can tell about history (or temporality in this), I thought that I might reprise this piece from Werner Hamacher, "Guilt History - Benjamin's Sketch 'Capitalism as Religion'".

 

lessons from the Iraq War

One of the primary lessons of the Iraq war is the correctness of political correctness. A cornerstone of Bush's whole effort was the assumption or belief that a key contention of the 'political correctness' movement -- that we need to understand and accomodate world views that clash, partly or wholly, with our own -- should be rejected. This is one reason the whole chorus of right-wing propagandists was so enthusiastic about the war: it provided room for the reassertion of American cultural, moral, and political superiority -- and not just in foreign affairs, where it's been much less successful anyway. The Bush administration worked itself up into the belief (they could not have reasoned their way to this idea) that American democratic ideals are the only ones that make any sense. The working out of those ideals into specific institutions should occur naturally once any artificial restraints are removed. Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was one such distorting influence on the people who happened to live in Iraq. Remove him, make it possible for a democratic culture to emerge -- which shouldn't be hard because it's so natural to humans -- and America will have lots of new friends in the region. (An article I read recently made an argument along these lines about Bush's adventure in Iraq. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw it so I can't link to it.)

The depth of this belief about human nature and the political institutions natural to it helps explain some of the most puzzling features of this invasion. For instance, the assumption that it really wasn't necessary for anyone involved in the invasion to know Arabic. You don't need to actually talk to people about how to think and act in a democratic way. All of that is already written on their hearts, so don't worry. Nor is it necessary to know much about the country itself. Sunnis, Shias, Kurds -- these are so many commas on the way to 'one nation under God with freedom and justice for all.'

But it turns out that they were wrong and those who promote the need to understand difference, in both its philosophic and cultural versions, were right. The willful and arrogant refusal to learn this lesson from (what is called) political correctness is the source of much of the disaster around us.

Prize Essay Announcement

Writers are invited to submit an essay on the following theme: Why it might be wrong to sell plants and animals.

Essays may be posted as comments to this message or signaled by a link or a searchable phrase in a comment posted to this message. Essays must be posted/signaled by the Winter Solstice, 7:22 PM EST, Thursday, December 21. Fort Kant will award a prize to the writer of the essay judged to be best.

Tragedy in the key of PPT

There is something unmistakably tragic about the case of Capt. Travis Patriquin, an American soldier serving in the rather violent Al Anbar province in Iraq.  Or rather, who served in Al Anbar; he was killed on the 13th by an improvised explosive device.  He was the author of a very simple Power Point presentation called "How to Win in Al Anbar," which has been making the rounds among troops (though apparently not the higher-ups) via email, and which was recently featured ABC's World News with Charles Gibson.

Part of the sense of tragedy, of pathos, comes from the reading of the Power Point document, with its simplicity and sincerity, but a big part comes from reading it while knowing that the possibility for a realistic solution to the Civil War in Iraq has come and gone, that the solution should have been a prevention, and that it should have been such three years ago.  A simple soldier knew it, and died for it.  And his death is just one among over a hundred thousand.

George Bush, with his spotty claim to military service and his inability to acknowledge the facts on the ground, by contrast, is pushing policy once more in adverse directions, preparing to increase the number of U.S. troops and hold multiparty talks that explicitly exclude Iran and Syria, despite the recommendations of the recent Iraq Study Group.

Timeline of the Theory of Writing

I thought that as a collective thought experiment, it might be interesting to develop a timeline of important moments in the theorizing of writing.  So whatever instances you can think of, add to comments and I'll insert into the post.

360 BCE: Plato sits down and pens a little dialog about sexual innuendo, rhetoric, and the problems with writing.  Unlike the give and take of oral communication, writing is but dead letters on dead leaves, and worthy only of practicing if it follows upon the heels of already valuable oral communication and touches on non-serious issues.  He and the shining one , by contrast, engage in a bit of non-seriousness.

353 BCE: Plato takes up writing again, this time to explain why he cannot be held responsible for the death of Dion, and that, in fact, his involvement in the politics of Sicily was what we might today call "all good."  While doing so, he takes the time to point out that those malfeasants who claim to be philosophers cannot be so, because they write about serious matters, which this letter, umm, most certainly does not.

1882: In the same year that he publishes The Gay Science and declares the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche’s failing eyesight leads him to purchase an early prototype of the typewriter.  Able to learn the letter placement through feel and routine, Nietzsche becomes the first philosopher to experience ecriture automatique, print inscription without the attention-demanding slowness of the handwritten word.

1942: During the long winter of 1942/43, with the Battle of Stalingrad deciding the future of the Third Reich’s eastern front, Martin Heidegger delivers a lecture course on the fragments of Parmenides at the University of Frieburg, in which he surprises his audience by bursting into a random discussion of how the typewriter is eclipsing the experience of Being.  Dust off those quills and bust out the inkwells, because handwriting is the real deal when it comes to living in the house of Being.  Or so he says.

1968: A student revolution in France fails the same year in which Roland Barthes publicly declares the death of the author and the advent of the scriptor, a figure who no longer believes in the innate, corporeal connection of hand and voice and who celebrates the accelerated speed of modern writing.

1969: One year later, another Frenchman by the name of Michel Foucault explores the strange, spectral status of the author, recognizing that God and the author pretty much died coterminous deaths.  Foucault, the last and perhaps greatest philosophical archivist, links the emergence of the modern author function to particular historical contingencies, even if, like most of his work, he touches only lightly on his own scribal machinations.

Ok, those will get us started.  Anyone got some more?

David Corn is Wrong: Impeachment is Necessary

Link: TomPaine.com - Impeachment At Our Peril.

Let's stipulate three propositions. First, George W. Bush led the nation into an elective war with false information and false assurances. Second, Bush acted with reckless abandon and immense neglect by inadequately planning for what would come after the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq. Third, Bush botched key decisions regarding the war, while refusing to acknowledge the hellish reality his invasion created. As a consequence, thousands of Americans are dead, as are hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Impeachment would be a suitable punishment for such actions. Still, congressional Democrats ought to resist the calls to engage in constitutional patricide.

To my mind, what follows from the 3 points Corn make is precisely the opposite--Bush must be impeached.

A tad more serious than Thomas Friedman

Charles Maier at OpenDemocracy:

There are conversions … and conversions.  Saul was thrown from the saddle, blinded, dressed down by God and had to refashion his whole life.  Vision returned only when he was prepared to take a new name and to champion the accessible message of love against the stern exclusivist covenant he had hitherto defended with prosecutorial zeal. Still, no pain no gain.  No scary loss of sight, no realisation he had earlier been morally blind.  Francis Fukuyama's conversion in America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy is a more conditional one.  He has had to wipe the desert dust from his Ray-bans; he hasn't had to lose his sight [....]

History itself remains intoxicating; and that, I fear, undermines Fukuyama's vision.  We may also aspire to reach a plateau, but a significant number of us live for the transcendent moments of self-dissolution into a larger cause.  Calling the impulse romantic, "acting out", or juvenile psychodrama will not remove the longing.   No one can say that Fukuyama is wrong.  But history goes on for a long time. It still seems a bit early to say he's right.

(Yes, "history" certainly does go back aways.  Whether it continues may be another question.  In the interest of debate, is there no one still reading Fukayama who also seriously questions whether (neo)liberalism may have a future, and for very long?   Speaking of ontological security-blankets, and so on.   A symposium via the decline.)

la rochefoucauld favorites

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Philosophy triumphs easily over past, and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.

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Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily