Climate Site
I had to post this link:
http://climatedebatedaily.com/
A great little site bringing together the issues and debates surrounding climage change and related ethics.
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I, Ego. You, Critic
The blog. I like to speak in the abstract, because it creates a sense of personal absolution. Alfred Kinsey argued, “Everyone’s sin is no one’s sin. And everyone’s crime is no crime at all.” It’s a misleading bit of rhetoric, and patently poor logic, but with a little twist, you have the implicit formula for moralizers of all stripes, times, and ages.
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Hosea sees a cigarette
This is a mature content warning. If you click on the link below you will be faced with the ostensible beginnings of a manuscript that will probably never be completed. Don’t be sorry. It’s in good company.
The warning is no joke. The manuscript is written in a playful but slightly irreverant tone. It includes sexual content. It includes what may appear, to the undiscerning eye, to be blasphemy. It stinks of the awful stench of postmodernity – maybe even postpostmodernity.
But it was fun to write, and if I don’t post something soon Coal might die. The manuscript is like a noble hero rushing into the street to save a helpless child from a barrelling semi. Judge it charitably.
If you’re one of those who believes in strict moral boundaries in literature, you probably shouldn’t click the link. But can you resist your curiosity, cat?
Edit: I think the next instalment will surprise you.
Down the Beaten Spiral (1 of 2)
I was going to talk about William S. Burroughs, who said “I’m forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for [his wife] Joan’s death…”
Burroughs was a pot-growing opium-smoking swinger who had planned to be exactly that from a young age. He travelled the world and explored the criminal underground. He ran from the law, he partied, he impressed, he thought, he tried, and eventually, he wrote. He killed his own wife.
The story is that he was running from the law, which was after him for growing dope, among other infractions. He, his wife Joan Vollmer, and their child ended up in Mexico city. At a party one night he proposed to show off his sharpshooting skills with a William Tell act. Joan placed a glass on her head, Burroughs aimed, and shot her dead on the spot.
I was going to talk about Lucien Carr, who introduced Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady to each other. After a while he began to pull away from the beats and their mad antics, but not soon enough to escape disaster. Carr was apparently attractive – especially to other men, and there were plenty of swingers about at the time. Among them was a man named David Kammerer, with whom Carr wanted only friendship. One day when Kammerer’s advances were refused, he attacked Carr. Carr stabbed him to death with a pocketknight in self-defense, filled his pockets with rocks, and rolled him into the river (where the entire scene took place). A short while later he turned himself in to police and served a two year sentence.
I could go on in this vein. There is a dark side to the beat generation and their escapades that I sometimes forget about while reading literature from their glory days. But Ginsberg wasn’t joking around when he wrote Howl.
Nevertheless, Lucian Carr and William S. Burroughs aren’t what I want to talk about. What interests me is the beatific vision. What interests me are the broadest currents of beat culture, the art it produced, and the ecstatic depraved glory of holy fools, mad saints, and ‘angelheaded hipsters’.
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Journalists write 'torture', people lose minds
Edward Gomez has written an article entitled, Bush signs torture bill; Americans lose essential freedom.
If I were to write an article, it would be called, “Journalists write ‘torture’, people lose minds”.
To be clear from the start, the purpose of this post is not to defend or condemn the recently signed Military Commissions Bill. The purpose is to defend the Bush administration against claims that they are despots, tyrants, and idiots. It is a response to a post by a friend and the ensuing comments. It’s faddish to dislike the leaders of the Republican party with a passion. I think it’s an ugly fad.
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Draconian
A disabled Winnipeg boy named Brian McKay was recently attacked by several children aged 8 to 11. They shoved him into a shack, lit it on fire, and left him. He was saved and after a brief stay in the hospital due to smoke inhalation, released.
The question is: what to do with the perpetrators, who are currently untouchable by the Youth Criminal Justice Act?
My coworker suggests some time, unsupervised, in a burn ward. At the very least one would expect community service: a punishment that would do no emotional or psychological damage to the children. But no, any such measures would be ‘draconian’, says Liberal justice critic Sue Barnes.
I hate that word, as uttered. It’s modern usage represents the least subtle form of political rhetoric, which sadly is also one of the most common. The word itself is a reference to Draco, the first law scribe of Athens in the 7th century BCE. His prescribed punishments were indeed harsh, yet the people of Athens loved him so much they killed him. He walked into a packed auditorium one day, and they joyfully flung their coats and hats all over the stage. He was smothered and already dead by the time they dug him out.
‘Draconian’ is one of those adjectives which, when thrown about, tends to smother any real attempts at political conversation. For a complete list of similar conversation stoppers, just watch Thank You For Smoking. Or read your daily newspaper. They are usually representative of reaction, no thought, no imagination, plain and simple; though even these words can be used skillfully and appropriately on occasion.
In regard to the case at hand, ‘draconian’ would be throwing the perpetrators into the same shed and relighting the fire. I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that yet – not even those backwards-thinking Conservatives.
The main argument opposing state action on children under 12 is that modern psychology suggests that these children are unable to understand that their actions have consequences. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, children retain a basic sense of right and wrong. We all know this, because we were all children once. If you’ve forgotten, let Augustine jog your memory. The fact that they believe themselves capable of doing wrong without serious consequences only adds a reason to teach them otherwise. And we’re not talking about a ‘draconian’ death penalty or lifetime slavery; I suspect even Sue Barnes could come up with a suitable punishment for children under the age of 12 that would be beneficial to all, with a little imagination. Even a little thought would probably sufffice.
Rose and Andrew on Creation Care
John Rose has some good points regarding the metaphysics of Creation Care, but when it comes to pressing for “acknowledgement” at the expense of taking action on behalf of the natural world, I think it may be wiser to let go for a while. I’m sure that it’s not Rose’s intention to place one against the other; as I wrote before, discussion and action really aren’t exclusive, and there’s no reason to stop discussing metaphysics while taking steps to ensure the good health of the world we live in.
Andrew has also been thinking about these things, and returns from a conference to report:
When asking for support from churches, they [a Christian environmental organization called A Rocha] have received responses from pastors such as “We only have one life, so we ought to live it preaching the gospel.” They even have received responses indicating that since one day there will be a new earth, it really doesn’t matter what happens to this one. It is my response that this view is both ignorant and unbiblical.
Indeed, there are so many obvious flaws with those responses it’s amazing they make it past the speaker’s lips. It is an example of how a unconsidered metaphysic can provide a (in this case weak) veil justifying actions that are really completely unrelated to the metaphysic. Although I agree with Rose, I initially thought that given the prevalence of this kind of thinking, it may be wise to present the metaphysical questions only after making it clear that, indeed, the environment is worth taking care of. But then I realized that that leaves those very Christians Andrew is speaking about with a comfortable little house in which to hide, however flimsy its walls.
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Repentance of Professor K
Professor Kokkarinen, quoted in the previous post for humour’s sake, is quitting his blog, Sixteen Volts.
His reflective about-face is fascinating and heartening to me, and I highly recommend reading his last few posts if you’re the least bit interested. Character conversions, like all conversions, have always had full command of my attention, even when they are only in the stages of intentionality. At any rate, I think it’s only fair to give him his voice back now that I’ve finished laughing at his folly.
A question of phrasing
A Professor at Ryerson University is in some trouble for making sexist comments on his blog. I though you might like to read this:
Kokkarinen [the professor] admits he could have phrased his opinions a lot better in one of his posts, such as the one dated April 19.
He wrote: “I have never really understood how lesbian separatism could work even in principle, since few modern women would want to live in what is essentially a stone age society, which is pretty much what women could ever achieve on their own without men around.”
He goes on to say that the feminists would live off the “generous” welfare cheques provided by men, “assuming that they wanted to eat (and usually lesbians do eat a lot, as you can tell just by looking at them).”
I think he phrased his opinions quite clearly the first time around.
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Also: an interesting counter-factual regarding the foiled Heathrow bomb plot.
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Edit: To be fair to Kakkarinen, he is really quite repentant. Still, the fact that it would be hard to be less politically correct than these quotes are is pretty funny.
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If only I die just once in my life
So let’s see you smile,
‘cause I’m not impressed with your loneliness.
Not one bit.
~~
What compels people to speak? We spend so much of our time just talking. We talk and talk, do something, talk as we do it, talk about it after we’re done doing it. There are few places where talk is as prevalent as in the academy. As I noted a while ago, I’ve never really left the academy, so I’m quite used to lots of talk.
In the summer, I work as a landscaper. There is very little talk in the landscaping business. If there’s one weak point on my crew, it’s communication, but that’s because we’re expected to know what to do so we don’t waste time with a lot of talk. The amount of silent communication that goes on is really quite impressive, I think. We improvise. We get things done.
Last year we had a new man on the crew who never really understood that he had to think for himself. He asked too many questions, and didn’t get the kind of detailed answers he was hoping for. It didn’t take very long before he was off the job, partly because he was lazy, but his laziness was related to his complete lack of ability to take initiative without verbal imperative. Not that there’s never any friendly banter. There is. But compared to school, when at work I’m like “a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” You don’t have to tell me that this is a strange place for an Eliot quote. I know it.
I am particularly quiet at work, because I don’t relate very much to my co-workers. I have an excellent crew, but I’m an academic, they aren’t. Which isn’t to say they’re not intelligent, they simply have very different interests. By their standards, in fact, I’m probably the stupidest one on the crew.
I can’t say I mind that though. Work in the summer is both humbling and invigorating. I know that I’m a good worker, though by no means an exceptional one. When it comes to academics, I fear no one. I know that I can hold my own in a discussion. I know I can write an A-grade paper on just about any subject (in the humanities) for even the most demanding professors, with relative ease, whether I already hold knowledge in the field or not.
At work, however, failure is a real possibility. I might be trying my hardest, doing the best I know how, and still ‘fail’, so to speak. And when I do, I’m expected to fix it, and I do. There are no loose ends for me to abandon when the semester ends. Everything must be completed, and unlike at school, a place where I move freely and easily, by the end of the day, month, and summer, I can always point to concrete accomplishments. I have something to be proud of, something I’ve done – but not too proud of. I have no reason to feel superior in any way at my job. I become an important part of a whole, but I’m not a unique or irreplaceable part.
What is the point of these reflections? There is no real point. They’re just reflections. There’s nothing wrong with talking. By the end of last summer, I was desperate for the kind of stimulating communication I get when at school. I had hoped that this year a friend of mine in Sem would get a job on my crew. Unfortunately, I don’t think the position was available.
There is something right about shutting up once in a while and just doing, and silently taking responsibility for what’s done, and for what’s undone, and needs to be done again.
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