Please note: This post has found a new home. You’ll find “Persönliches Mikro-Update / Personal Micro Update” now at the plush bunnyisms category over at between drafts. Please, come over and join in the discussion! You’re welcome to!
//
Status Update (slightly NSFW)
Doesn’t mean I can write prescriptions now. Bummer.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Yes, Virginia, There Is a Reality Out There!
Please note: This post has found a new home. You’ll find “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Reality Out There!” now at the creed of reason category over at between drafts. Please, come over and join in the discussion! You’re welcome to!
//
But the closest we can come to this reality is to tell about it our best & brightest stories. Don’t get me wrong: we know a freaking awesome lot about what’s “out there,” thanks to science and the scientific method. And reality most certainly would object to being cast as a cultural construct. Actually, it does object! Left and right and every day. Just read the newspapers. No—to say that we can only tell stories about reality isn’t the same as to say that reality is a story. It most certainly is not.
Let me explain.
There is a scientific theory which is called “Radical Constructivism,” a concept within the field of constructivist epistemology. It was primarily developed in Germany, as „Radikaler Konstruktivismus,“ based on mathematical models and cybernetic architectures, especially on research done by Humberto Maturana & Franciso Varela and Heinz von Foerster, respectively. Since I’m too lazy to translate stuff from my library, here’s a quotation from Wikipedia:
Thus, effectively, there is a reality out there, and there is a construct in our minds which corresponds in certain ways to what’s out there, but there is no direct access path from one to the other. In other words, we’re fumbling around in the dark. Or, to follow a metaphor which I think Glasersfeld came up with: we’re steering through the world like a ship in impenetrable fog, building a construct of what’s out there from what we have encountered so far. If all goes well: that doesn’t tell us anything about the world. Only when something does not happen the way we think it should, often in catastrophic ways, do we receive information and know it’s time to go back to our construct for revisions.
So would scientists be among the most powerful storytellers the world has ever seen? Yes, something in that direction. But what if the objections against radical constructivism, of which there are a few, are valid? Would I still call it “stories” if we had a more direct access to reality? I’d say yes.
Let me explain, again.
Science does not seek “Teh Truth.” Or to “Explain Teh World.” What science does, basically, is building models and test them against what’s out there—namely, reality. If the model holds, we may know a little bit more about how reality works. But it’s still inferred knowledge. The model, of course, is a kind of story. Only, these stories are usually told in languages few people can understand, even if for excellent reasons.
This kind of storytelling, with some differences I’ll come to in a minute, is what all human primates do. It’s not only scientists who build models to learn something about reality: we all build models in our heads about how the world works, too, and we do it all the time. And these models, or stories, we commence to tell each other, and usually in languages that are, alas, much more fuzzy and full of ambiguity and bursting at the seams with metaphors, but are understood by vastly more people than just modelbuilding scientists plus a lucky few.
Now why has it happened, especially in our modern, postmodern, and post-postmodern age, successively, that these stories ever more violently collided?
Most of the blame goes to both factions’ fringe positions. On one side, there’s the Grand Quackdom of New Age Woo Meisters who rip scientific models out of their environment and translate them into all kinds of bizarre nonsense. On the other side, there’s the Grand Rabid Inquisition of the Purifex Maximus of Science whose members are as unable to explain their research to the laypeople as they are outraged at every unsanctioned use of scientific models in what might be called the world of you and me.
Good riddance to both.
Then come all the gray zones. And then the reasonable center. Which, on the one hand, would be those scientists who try to translate their models aka stories about the world into common knowledge, and, on the other, all-we-people who take these bits and pieces and translate them into our own models aka stories about the world. Historically, “science” in the sense of exploring what’s out there by employing the scientific method hasn’t been around for too long, but since recorded time the stories of those who tried to find out what the world is and the stories of those who lived in it have, well, strongly correlated. In recent times: think about Newton, Laplace, and the mechanistic worldview. Think about Einstein and Relativism. Think about Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Bohr, and Quantum fuzziness. Science always has provided master narratives for our zeitgeist narratives, and our zeitgeist narratives have informed our personal stories about the world, ourselves, and “I.”
And what’s wrong with that! We all are story tellers and model builders, after all. We can’t be anything else.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone can write, which is a different story altogether.
//
But the closest we can come to this reality is to tell about it our best & brightest stories. Don’t get me wrong: we know a freaking awesome lot about what’s “out there,” thanks to science and the scientific method. And reality most certainly would object to being cast as a cultural construct. Actually, it does object! Left and right and every day. Just read the newspapers. No—to say that we can only tell stories about reality isn’t the same as to say that reality is a story. It most certainly is not.
Let me explain.
There is a scientific theory which is called “Radical Constructivism,” a concept within the field of constructivist epistemology. It was primarily developed in Germany, as „Radikaler Konstruktivismus,“ based on mathematical models and cybernetic architectures, especially on research done by Humberto Maturana & Franciso Varela and Heinz von Foerster, respectively. Since I’m too lazy to translate stuff from my library, here’s a quotation from Wikipedia:
Ernst von Glasersfeld is a prominent proponent of radical constructivism, which claims that knowledge is the self-organized cognitive process of the human brain. That is, the process of constructing knowledge regulates itself, and since knowledge is a construct rather than a compilation of empirical data, it is impossible to know the extent to which knowledge reflects an ontological reality.I think from this quotation alone it is evident that radical constructivism is not your routine New Age nonsense about how reality is what we make of it. (Also, it has nothing to do with Deconstruction, which I have always tried, together with dangling prepositions, to be a responsible proponent of.) One of the underlying key concepts is Maturana and Varela’s autopoesis, which would take a bit too long to explain here, and von Foerster’s “Undifferentiated Encoding”:
The response of a nerve cell does not encode the physical nature of the agents that caused its response. Encoded is only “how much” at this point on my body, but not “what.” (von Foerster 1984)All sensory input is encoded in exactly the same way; the input differs in its intensity, and how it winds up in different locations of the brain where the encoded input is not “decoded,” but from which that what we perceive as “sensations” is “constructed.” From scratch. By applying a system of rules we have acquired through evolution.
Thus, effectively, there is a reality out there, and there is a construct in our minds which corresponds in certain ways to what’s out there, but there is no direct access path from one to the other. In other words, we’re fumbling around in the dark. Or, to follow a metaphor which I think Glasersfeld came up with: we’re steering through the world like a ship in impenetrable fog, building a construct of what’s out there from what we have encountered so far. If all goes well: that doesn’t tell us anything about the world. Only when something does not happen the way we think it should, often in catastrophic ways, do we receive information and know it’s time to go back to our construct for revisions.
So would scientists be among the most powerful storytellers the world has ever seen? Yes, something in that direction. But what if the objections against radical constructivism, of which there are a few, are valid? Would I still call it “stories” if we had a more direct access to reality? I’d say yes.
Let me explain, again.
Science does not seek “Teh Truth.” Or to “Explain Teh World.” What science does, basically, is building models and test them against what’s out there—namely, reality. If the model holds, we may know a little bit more about how reality works. But it’s still inferred knowledge. The model, of course, is a kind of story. Only, these stories are usually told in languages few people can understand, even if for excellent reasons.
This kind of storytelling, with some differences I’ll come to in a minute, is what all human primates do. It’s not only scientists who build models to learn something about reality: we all build models in our heads about how the world works, too, and we do it all the time. And these models, or stories, we commence to tell each other, and usually in languages that are, alas, much more fuzzy and full of ambiguity and bursting at the seams with metaphors, but are understood by vastly more people than just modelbuilding scientists plus a lucky few.
Now why has it happened, especially in our modern, postmodern, and post-postmodern age, successively, that these stories ever more violently collided?
Most of the blame goes to both factions’ fringe positions. On one side, there’s the Grand Quackdom of New Age Woo Meisters who rip scientific models out of their environment and translate them into all kinds of bizarre nonsense. On the other side, there’s the Grand Rabid Inquisition of the Purifex Maximus of Science whose members are as unable to explain their research to the laypeople as they are outraged at every unsanctioned use of scientific models in what might be called the world of you and me.
Good riddance to both.
Then come all the gray zones. And then the reasonable center. Which, on the one hand, would be those scientists who try to translate their models aka stories about the world into common knowledge, and, on the other, all-we-people who take these bits and pieces and translate them into our own models aka stories about the world. Historically, “science” in the sense of exploring what’s out there by employing the scientific method hasn’t been around for too long, but since recorded time the stories of those who tried to find out what the world is and the stories of those who lived in it have, well, strongly correlated. In recent times: think about Newton, Laplace, and the mechanistic worldview. Think about Einstein and Relativism. Think about Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Bohr, and Quantum fuzziness. Science always has provided master narratives for our zeitgeist narratives, and our zeitgeist narratives have informed our personal stories about the world, ourselves, and “I.”
And what’s wrong with that! We all are story tellers and model builders, after all. We can’t be anything else.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone can write, which is a different story altogether.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
On Pork
Please note: This post has found a new home. You’ll find “On Pork” now at the creed of reason category over at between drafts. Please, come over and join in the discussion! You’re welcome to!
//
Since time immemorial, some friends and many acquaintances have felt terrorized by my refusal to eat pork. Not only at BBQs, mind—politely declining invitations to have some sweets or cake that happen or might happen to contain gelatin often proved potently annoying in this regard.
The funny thing is, if I refrained from eating pork for religious reasons, that would be fine. Or, if I didn't eat pork because I was a vegetarian, that would be fine, too. Now the problem with that is that I’m widely known as a raving saber-wielding atheist, and would you hand me the mutton, please. Or, wait, is that sushi I see before me?
I don’t eat pork for two reasons. The first is, I love to stick to traditions that don’t harm anyone or arrest anyone’s development on the one hand, but carry a sense of history and a sense of belonging on the other. Many ideas developed by Reconstructionism I’m rather fond of, albeit not the overly metaphysical tidbits, but around where I live, this brand is non-existent, regrettably. (So I have to make do with Deconstructionism, which is also okay.)
Now, the miscellaneous stories of religious observance, and the miscellaneous stories of vegetarian observance, are to a great extent accepted in terms of reasons to not eat pork. Bathed in the reassuringly familiar light of these stories, people are mostly glad to provide you some extra treat or dish at a party.
I say stories because these are, of course, stories that we tell ourselves. Good stories and bad stories. An example for a good story would be the refusal to eat animals because of the conditions in which they are raised, handled, hauled, and slaughtered. An example for a bad story would be the refusal to eat certain animals because the world’s been divided into that which is clean and that which is unclean by an invisible friend, and all the odious consequences this division engenders.
So what’s my story then, besides tradition? Well, I have to admit I positively discriminate on the side of intelligence and self-awareness. That’s philosophically and ethically assailable, of course. I don’t eat pork for exactly the same reasons why I would refrain from eating parrots, dogs, cats, chimps, dolphins, or elephants, to name a few. Also, I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with eating octopus, squid, or cuttlefish—not because of those socially toxic clean/unclean differentiations they’ve also fallen prey to, but because we’re beginning to develop an idea about how smart and communicative cephalopods actually are.
Of course, that’s a story too, and a story with a personal experience behind it. Regular visits to a petting zoo where, in one barn, there were sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs together, one largish family of each, had proved to be the turning point after which not eating pork made so much more sense. The difference in behavior between sheep, goats, and cattle on the one hand and pigs on the other was outright stunning. Not only were the pigs not dirty. They had a social life, they were responsive, sensitive, playful, and playfully annoyed. And, shockingly, they recognized you when you had spent sufficient time with them and returned the following week! To make a long story short: pigs are known to be the most intelligent domesticated animals. And, alas, they’re also the most sensitive too. That’s why they can become psychotic in the first place. All these stories of lunatic, filthy pigs that eat their own young have, to my knowledge, exclusively been observed among pigs held captive, no other word comes to mind, under the most horrible conditions. Otherwise, pigs use mud indeed, but for air-conditioning (pigs can’t sweat), as a sunscreen, and as a defense against insects. Otherwise, they’re not “dirtier” than your average five-year-old.
But, amazingly, this is not a story that suffices to prevent party-throwing people from being annoyed by your antiporkarian eating habits. The failure to provide something to eat for guests who tell themselves and others religious stories or vegetarian stories, more often than not makes the hosts angry at themselves for such an embarrassing neglect. The failure to provide something to eat for someone with a different story is more likely to make them angry at you.
Thomas Pynchon, one of the writers who figure large in my doctoral thesis, seems fond of pigs too, in a way. In the “hog trail” sequence in Gravity’s Rainbow—which alludes, among other motifs, to the age-old paradox of theodicy—pigs appear as a stand-in for the human condition. The settler William, “one of the first Europeans in,” got a “pig operation going,” driving hogs “back over the long pike to Boston [...] just like sheep or cows.” William enjoys their good company and comes “to love their nobility and personal freedom, their gift for finding comfort in the mud on a hot day”:
Well—I, for one, welcome our new pig overlords! But seriously, I think it is about time we at least re-read, and possibly revised, some of the stories that we tell each other about why we eat, or why we do not eat, pork.
Extracts:
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow, London: Picador, 1975 (orig. published 1973).
//
Since time immemorial, some friends and many acquaintances have felt terrorized by my refusal to eat pork. Not only at BBQs, mind—politely declining invitations to have some sweets or cake that happen or might happen to contain gelatin often proved potently annoying in this regard.
The funny thing is, if I refrained from eating pork for religious reasons, that would be fine. Or, if I didn't eat pork because I was a vegetarian, that would be fine, too. Now the problem with that is that I’m widely known as a raving saber-wielding atheist, and would you hand me the mutton, please. Or, wait, is that sushi I see before me?
I don’t eat pork for two reasons. The first is, I love to stick to traditions that don’t harm anyone or arrest anyone’s development on the one hand, but carry a sense of history and a sense of belonging on the other. Many ideas developed by Reconstructionism I’m rather fond of, albeit not the overly metaphysical tidbits, but around where I live, this brand is non-existent, regrettably. (So I have to make do with Deconstructionism, which is also okay.)
Now, the miscellaneous stories of religious observance, and the miscellaneous stories of vegetarian observance, are to a great extent accepted in terms of reasons to not eat pork. Bathed in the reassuringly familiar light of these stories, people are mostly glad to provide you some extra treat or dish at a party.
I say stories because these are, of course, stories that we tell ourselves. Good stories and bad stories. An example for a good story would be the refusal to eat animals because of the conditions in which they are raised, handled, hauled, and slaughtered. An example for a bad story would be the refusal to eat certain animals because the world’s been divided into that which is clean and that which is unclean by an invisible friend, and all the odious consequences this division engenders.
So what’s my story then, besides tradition? Well, I have to admit I positively discriminate on the side of intelligence and self-awareness. That’s philosophically and ethically assailable, of course. I don’t eat pork for exactly the same reasons why I would refrain from eating parrots, dogs, cats, chimps, dolphins, or elephants, to name a few. Also, I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with eating octopus, squid, or cuttlefish—not because of those socially toxic clean/unclean differentiations they’ve also fallen prey to, but because we’re beginning to develop an idea about how smart and communicative cephalopods actually are.
Of course, that’s a story too, and a story with a personal experience behind it. Regular visits to a petting zoo where, in one barn, there were sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs together, one largish family of each, had proved to be the turning point after which not eating pork made so much more sense. The difference in behavior between sheep, goats, and cattle on the one hand and pigs on the other was outright stunning. Not only were the pigs not dirty. They had a social life, they were responsive, sensitive, playful, and playfully annoyed. And, shockingly, they recognized you when you had spent sufficient time with them and returned the following week! To make a long story short: pigs are known to be the most intelligent domesticated animals. And, alas, they’re also the most sensitive too. That’s why they can become psychotic in the first place. All these stories of lunatic, filthy pigs that eat their own young have, to my knowledge, exclusively been observed among pigs held captive, no other word comes to mind, under the most horrible conditions. Otherwise, pigs use mud indeed, but for air-conditioning (pigs can’t sweat), as a sunscreen, and as a defense against insects. Otherwise, they’re not “dirtier” than your average five-year-old.
But, amazingly, this is not a story that suffices to prevent party-throwing people from being annoyed by your antiporkarian eating habits. The failure to provide something to eat for guests who tell themselves and others religious stories or vegetarian stories, more often than not makes the hosts angry at themselves for such an embarrassing neglect. The failure to provide something to eat for someone with a different story is more likely to make them angry at you.
Thomas Pynchon, one of the writers who figure large in my doctoral thesis, seems fond of pigs too, in a way. In the “hog trail” sequence in Gravity’s Rainbow—which alludes, among other motifs, to the age-old paradox of theodicy—pigs appear as a stand-in for the human condition. The settler William, “one of the first Europeans in,” got a “pig operation going,” driving hogs “back over the long pike to Boston [...] just like sheep or cows.” William enjoys their good company and comes “to love their nobility and personal freedom, their gift for finding comfort in the mud on a hot day”:
[A]nd you can imagine what the end of the journey, the weighing, slaughter and dreary pigless return back up into the hills must’ve been like for William. Of course he took it as a parable—knew that the squealing bloody horror at the end of the pike was in exact balance to all their happy sounds, their untroubled pink eyelashes and kind eyes, their smiles, their grace in crosscountry movement. It was a little early for Isaac Newton, but feelings about action and reaction were in the air. William must’ve been waiting for the one pig that wouldn’t die, that would validate all the ones who’d had to, all his Gadarene swine who’d rushed into extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men, which the men kept betraying . . . possessed by innocence they couldn’t lose . . . by faith in William as another variety of pig, at home with the Earth, sharing the same gift of life. . . . (555)Another remarkable “pig” in Gravity’s Rainbow is Lieutenant Slothrop’s impersonation of the Schweinheld “Plechazunga.” This fantastic superhero’s mythical origins are established by way of an outrageous story according to which the thundergod Thor, or Donar, sent down a giant pig to battle invading Vikings and drive them back into the sea. The German town rescued by these means each year celebrates its deliverance, and Slothrop—thanks to the adequacy of his corpulence as well as to the fact that the regular impersonator still has to return from the war (Nazi Germany had capitulated less than a year earlier)—winds up in a giant pig costume for the ceremony:
At which point Fritz strikes his match, and all hell breaks loose, rockets, Roman candles, pinwheels and—PLECCCHHAZUNNGGA! an enormous charge of black powder blasts him out in the open, singeing his ass, taking the curl right out of his tail. “Oh, yes, that’s right, uh . . .” Wobbling, grinning hugely, Slothrop hollers his line: “I am the wrath of Donar—and this day you shall be my anvil!” (569)Right after “saving the town for another year” and still wearing his costume—“pink, blue, yellow, bright sour colors, a German Expressionist pig” (568)—Slothrop is caught in a black market raid conducted by German police reinforced by Russian troops, and manages to get others and himself to safety precisely because he wears his enormous Schweinheld costume, proving impenetrable for the riot weapons involved.
Well—I, for one, welcome our new pig overlords! But seriously, I think it is about time we at least re-read, and possibly revised, some of the stories that we tell each other about why we eat, or why we do not eat, pork.
Extracts:
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow, London: Picador, 1975 (orig. published 1973).
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day. What a Day!
Please note: This post has found a new home. You’ll find “Inauguration Day. What a Day!” now at the creed of reason category over at between drafts. Please, come over and join in the discussion! You’re welcome to!
//
At last, we got our country back! I suppose it’s pretty close to how people must feel when, after what’s been like an eternity, an occupation comes to an end and the foreign armies finally leave the country. Also, when the helicopter was trailing off in the distance with George W. and Laura Bush on board, it reminded me of the ending of Independence Day. As the Wikipedia entry has it, “The film ends as the main characters watch debris from the mothership enter the atmosphere like shooting stars.”
When I was a kid, America was something like an older brother who was kind of grown-up already, and totally awesome. Fighting slavery, fighting the Nazis, fighting Stalinism. Okay, Cambodia, Vietnam, and so on didn't look so good on the CV. But then again, there was certainly nothing joyful about what happened in these countries after American forces left, and in the face of subsequent destruction, boundless suffering, and mass murder on vertiginous scales, it ceased to be a question of right or wrong anyhow.
Of course, the story got a bit more complicated, even difficult, over time, and there were some periods where we had shouting matches at family reunions, so to speak. But it was always family, no doubt.
Then came 2000, then came 9/11, then came Iraq. My older brother suddenly became mad with power, whipping himself into that self-feeding frenzy only organized superstition, envy, and nationalism running amok can incite. Fighting the maniac in your own house, you can only go so far. Provided you don’t want to run the risk of breaking everything apart. So then came the cronyism, the corruption, the wiretappings. Then came the cessation of decency, efficiency, science. Of independent and impartial justice. Of honesty, transparency, accountability. Of prisoners' rights. Of global leverage. Finally, the cessation of skill, wholesale. Education became suspect, knowledge unpatriotic, human rights a nuisance, nuances hogwash. From there it rose and stood in its full glory: the age of arrogance, scantily clad in the humble righteousness of the faithful.
Meanwhile, people died. Iraqis died. Our soldiers died.
But what can you do.
No wait! We’re a democracy, for goodness’ sake!
So of course there was something that could have been done. But, truth be told, all our democratic institutions had a bad hair day at the time. Just getting into half-decent shape and becoming barely presentable ate up most of the time, and effort, already.
I often identify strongly with characters in books. When I know that the upcoming chapter will be outright depressing, I have a habit of taking a break, for a day or two, and not go on reading before I identify with the characters a little less. It might look like I’m bracing for the impact, but it’s rather a subtle form of denial. In the real world, this had happened to me only once—when Israel, that close cousin of mine, so to speak, went on skid row in 1996. It was the time when Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister and launched his “three nos” to forestall the peace process forever. For months, I just refused to speak to my cousin—i.e., I refused to watch news about Israel or read Jewish newspapers. And then, with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the same thing happened again: this time, I refused to speak to my brother. I didn't watch cnn, I consistently skipped from the news everything Iraq, everything abstinence only, everything stem cells, everything Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rove, you name it. I just shut it all out, like I’m used to shutting out animated banners on Web sites. No trouble at all.
But of course you can’t stay in your room forever. So I did what I should have done much earlier, and what many others had already done, namely, become angry. I had a hand in convincing people to vote for Kerry in 2004 who hadn’t ever voted for a Democrat in their lives, and neither had their parents or grandparents, for that matter. But we failed. Somehow, we screwed this up.
But as of yesterday, things have changed. America’s come to their senses. My brother’s back. Not only has he changed, he’s better and stronger than ever before. But of course, he’s in trouble. We all are in trouble. So this is going to be a rough ride, and I hope we can ride this out together.
In his inauguration speech, Obama said:
//
At last, we got our country back! I suppose it’s pretty close to how people must feel when, after what’s been like an eternity, an occupation comes to an end and the foreign armies finally leave the country. Also, when the helicopter was trailing off in the distance with George W. and Laura Bush on board, it reminded me of the ending of Independence Day. As the Wikipedia entry has it, “The film ends as the main characters watch debris from the mothership enter the atmosphere like shooting stars.”
When I was a kid, America was something like an older brother who was kind of grown-up already, and totally awesome. Fighting slavery, fighting the Nazis, fighting Stalinism. Okay, Cambodia, Vietnam, and so on didn't look so good on the CV. But then again, there was certainly nothing joyful about what happened in these countries after American forces left, and in the face of subsequent destruction, boundless suffering, and mass murder on vertiginous scales, it ceased to be a question of right or wrong anyhow.
Of course, the story got a bit more complicated, even difficult, over time, and there were some periods where we had shouting matches at family reunions, so to speak. But it was always family, no doubt.
Then came 2000, then came 9/11, then came Iraq. My older brother suddenly became mad with power, whipping himself into that self-feeding frenzy only organized superstition, envy, and nationalism running amok can incite. Fighting the maniac in your own house, you can only go so far. Provided you don’t want to run the risk of breaking everything apart. So then came the cronyism, the corruption, the wiretappings. Then came the cessation of decency, efficiency, science. Of independent and impartial justice. Of honesty, transparency, accountability. Of prisoners' rights. Of global leverage. Finally, the cessation of skill, wholesale. Education became suspect, knowledge unpatriotic, human rights a nuisance, nuances hogwash. From there it rose and stood in its full glory: the age of arrogance, scantily clad in the humble righteousness of the faithful.
Meanwhile, people died. Iraqis died. Our soldiers died.
But what can you do.
No wait! We’re a democracy, for goodness’ sake!
So of course there was something that could have been done. But, truth be told, all our democratic institutions had a bad hair day at the time. Just getting into half-decent shape and becoming barely presentable ate up most of the time, and effort, already.
I often identify strongly with characters in books. When I know that the upcoming chapter will be outright depressing, I have a habit of taking a break, for a day or two, and not go on reading before I identify with the characters a little less. It might look like I’m bracing for the impact, but it’s rather a subtle form of denial. In the real world, this had happened to me only once—when Israel, that close cousin of mine, so to speak, went on skid row in 1996. It was the time when Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister and launched his “three nos” to forestall the peace process forever. For months, I just refused to speak to my cousin—i.e., I refused to watch news about Israel or read Jewish newspapers. And then, with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the same thing happened again: this time, I refused to speak to my brother. I didn't watch cnn, I consistently skipped from the news everything Iraq, everything abstinence only, everything stem cells, everything Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rove, you name it. I just shut it all out, like I’m used to shutting out animated banners on Web sites. No trouble at all.
But of course you can’t stay in your room forever. So I did what I should have done much earlier, and what many others had already done, namely, become angry. I had a hand in convincing people to vote for Kerry in 2004 who hadn’t ever voted for a Democrat in their lives, and neither had their parents or grandparents, for that matter. But we failed. Somehow, we screwed this up.
But as of yesterday, things have changed. America’s come to their senses. My brother’s back. Not only has he changed, he’s better and stronger than ever before. But of course, he’s in trouble. We all are in trouble. So this is going to be a rough ride, and I hope we can ride this out together.
In his inauguration speech, Obama said:
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends—hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism—these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.A return to these truths. No judgment I can think of could have been more devastating. And there will be strong, residual forces that will refuse to return to these truths. But hey, nobody ever said it’s going to be easy, no? Whatever. We’re going to be a family again.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Why Maggie Can Do What Cole Cannot
Please note: This post has found a new home. You’ll find “Why Maggie Can Do What Cole Cannot” now at the creed of reason category over at between drafts. Please, come over and join in the discussion! You’re welcome to!
//
During my studies and for my dissertation on postmodern American literature, I focused not so much on what a text might say, but how it says what it might say. Not on the grand arguments, but on rhetoric, figurative language, structure, and hidden agendas or ideologies. But it doesn’t need a university degree to feel either drawn toward, or appalled by, closely related arguments, depending on their respective rhetorical modes.
I’m usually trying to see situations from all possible angles. Of course, I can’t say I’m not biased, and I would never claim to not be biased here. If you’ve seen rocket damage at a children’s playground less than 100 yards from the balcony of a friend’s apartment, and you keep hearing, unhappily ever after, about more and more rockets raining down (for Sderot, we’re talking about 7,500 rockets in the course of the last eight years), you urgently wish that someone please just go and make it stop. But that certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t see the horror and the suffering this “please go and make it stop” entails. On Twitter, I linked to this article by Ari Shavit in Haaretz, which comes very close to what I think should be done—should have been done from the get-go, not just now.
I also linked to this statement from Mordechai Eliyahu as reported by the Jerusalem Post, which I sincerely think is the most despicable statement from whichever side so far. Is that what the Tanakh has to offer in terms of ethics? I’m appalled doesn’t even begin to describe it. Every non-combatant Palestinian should be helped and protected, and not only because that would help eliminate Hamas in the long run, but because it is what we should do. And browsing a bronze age text and cherry-pick atrocities from the past to justify atrocities from the present doesn't become less horrible just because the other faction does it too.
Now every time I listen to the stories Juan Cole tells me on Informed Comment and to the stories Maggie Kortchmar tells me on maggiekortchmar.com or her youtube channel, I certainly find a lot to disagree. But Maggie’s stories make me stop and think, while Cole’s stories piss me off. While Cole’s stories make my trigger finger twitch to eliminate Informed Comment from my feed reader, Maggie’s stories leave me less sure than I was and willing to discuss these topics.
But wait—Maggie’s outspokenly influenced by Cole and is fond of quoting his articles in her Twitter stream! Now how can this be.
Let’s have a look at storytelling. Stories are compelling and might even make readers change their minds and/or make them act differently than before if they are a) plausible, b) authentic, and c) start out from at least one premise the reader can identify with, is familiar with, is comfortable or consentingly uncomfortable with. There are others, of course, but these three points are important, and they are very important here.
Now let’s have a look at two examples. First, read carefully this entry by Cole on possible ceasefires. To quote:
And, to add insult to injury, it’s the same article in which Cole parades China, of all countries, as an arbiter for peaceful coexistence. An arbiter for peaceful coexistence like in Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Taiwan, I suppose, to name a few. 1967 comes to mind, when the Russian envoy, calling for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from all occupied territories, voiced Russia’s staunch disapproval of territorial gains through military action. Yeah, right.
This is not what makes me think. This is not what makes me change my mind. And I’m a far cry from being a conservative. I’ve read Informed Comment for quite a while now, and although I appreciate many of his sentiments, I’m sorry to say that Cole has an agenda. A political agenda, a cultural agenda, and also a religious agenda. If you focus not so much on the what but on the how, you’ll see that his comments are indeed “informed,” in the sense of being informed by a certain ideology. Now, we all have our agendas and our ideologies. But I can expect from an academic of Juan Cole’s caliber that he would at least make an effort to look at the particulars of a situation before hammering it into the shape that fits his grand arguments in extenso. Another example would be his constant insidious insinuations, bordering on concern-trolling, that Israel endangers American security and American lives because Israeli actions "are equated with American actions" and U.S. soldiers and U.S. citizens will die because of it. I wouldn’t know where to begin to call bullshit on this one. Cole has a disturbing tendency to flatten out complex situations into ideologically flavored pancakes.
Now, in contrast, watch this video by Maggie Kortchmar. I certainly disagree with her on many topics here. But that’s not the point. The point is that I feel I could be made to change my mind with regard to certain aspects if we delved into further discussion from there, and—equally importantly—I feel that I could make Maggie change her mind with regard to certain aspects if we delved into further discussion from there, too. I followed Maggie’s posts also for quite a while now, and so far I have failed to see an agenda or an ideology in the how behind the what. One of the strongest indicators is that Maggie changes her mind. That she doesn’t know what to think, or to do, often enough. That she scrambles for information, for viewpoints that make sense. That she doesn’t stop thinking, for goodness’ sake! That’s why Maggie’s stories strike me as plausible, as authentic, and indeed as starting out from premises I can identify with, I’m familiar with, I’m comfortable or consentingly uncomfortable with.
To put it more bluntly, while Cole instrumentalizes the Gaza crisis, Maggie feels that people suffer. That’s what’s important here. It’s a very complex situation with many possible viewpoints, and when people suffer, the question of being right or being wrong should precisely not be prioritized every step of the way.
In such situations, talking about right or wrong, black or white, isn’t helpful in the least. I think we should see beauty in gray more often. Leaving the strongest impressions on people not pre-indoctrinated into authoritarian mindsets are usually those stories that make us think, not those that tell us what to think. Those that leave room for thoughts, not those that clutter our heads with ideological furniture. Those that leave it to us to make decisions that make sense, not those that condemn every decision save one in advance. Those that make us weep, not those that piss us off.
//
During my studies and for my dissertation on postmodern American literature, I focused not so much on what a text might say, but how it says what it might say. Not on the grand arguments, but on rhetoric, figurative language, structure, and hidden agendas or ideologies. But it doesn’t need a university degree to feel either drawn toward, or appalled by, closely related arguments, depending on their respective rhetorical modes.
I’m usually trying to see situations from all possible angles. Of course, I can’t say I’m not biased, and I would never claim to not be biased here. If you’ve seen rocket damage at a children’s playground less than 100 yards from the balcony of a friend’s apartment, and you keep hearing, unhappily ever after, about more and more rockets raining down (for Sderot, we’re talking about 7,500 rockets in the course of the last eight years), you urgently wish that someone please just go and make it stop. But that certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t see the horror and the suffering this “please go and make it stop” entails. On Twitter, I linked to this article by Ari Shavit in Haaretz, which comes very close to what I think should be done—should have been done from the get-go, not just now.
I also linked to this statement from Mordechai Eliyahu as reported by the Jerusalem Post, which I sincerely think is the most despicable statement from whichever side so far. Is that what the Tanakh has to offer in terms of ethics? I’m appalled doesn’t even begin to describe it. Every non-combatant Palestinian should be helped and protected, and not only because that would help eliminate Hamas in the long run, but because it is what we should do. And browsing a bronze age text and cherry-pick atrocities from the past to justify atrocities from the present doesn't become less horrible just because the other faction does it too.
Now every time I listen to the stories Juan Cole tells me on Informed Comment and to the stories Maggie Kortchmar tells me on maggiekortchmar.com or her youtube channel, I certainly find a lot to disagree. But Maggie’s stories make me stop and think, while Cole’s stories piss me off. While Cole’s stories make my trigger finger twitch to eliminate Informed Comment from my feed reader, Maggie’s stories leave me less sure than I was and willing to discuss these topics.
But wait—Maggie’s outspokenly influenced by Cole and is fond of quoting his articles in her Twitter stream! Now how can this be.
Let’s have a look at storytelling. Stories are compelling and might even make readers change their minds and/or make them act differently than before if they are a) plausible, b) authentic, and c) start out from at least one premise the reader can identify with, is familiar with, is comfortable or consentingly uncomfortable with. There are others, of course, but these three points are important, and they are very important here.
Now let’s have a look at two examples. First, read carefully this entry by Cole on possible ceasefires. To quote:
If a Palestinian cleric convinced tens of thousands of civilians to stream into Gaza City and they were in the way of the Israeli war aims, they would likely just be mown down. ... [vs.] ... Note that I am not alleging, and neither is the letter writer, that Israeli troops are deliberately killing civilians.
When threatened by an indigenous population trying to expel it, settler colonialism is vicious. It is after all facing an existential threat. [T]he French killed at least half a million, and maybe as much as 800,000 Algerians, out of a population of 11 million. That is between nearly 5 percent and nearly 10 percent! ... [vs.] ... The Israelis have not killed on the French scale, but I would argue that they kill, and disregard civilian life, for much the same reasons as the French did in Algeria.I wouldn’t exactly call it difficult to see the heave-ho rhetoric employed in both examples. That’s neocon caliber rhetoric. Spew forth the most outrageous accusations, then backpedal just enough to not invite a lawsuit, and hope that it’s the original accusation that will stick.
And, to add insult to injury, it’s the same article in which Cole parades China, of all countries, as an arbiter for peaceful coexistence. An arbiter for peaceful coexistence like in Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Taiwan, I suppose, to name a few. 1967 comes to mind, when the Russian envoy, calling for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from all occupied territories, voiced Russia’s staunch disapproval of territorial gains through military action. Yeah, right.
This is not what makes me think. This is not what makes me change my mind. And I’m a far cry from being a conservative. I’ve read Informed Comment for quite a while now, and although I appreciate many of his sentiments, I’m sorry to say that Cole has an agenda. A political agenda, a cultural agenda, and also a religious agenda. If you focus not so much on the what but on the how, you’ll see that his comments are indeed “informed,” in the sense of being informed by a certain ideology. Now, we all have our agendas and our ideologies. But I can expect from an academic of Juan Cole’s caliber that he would at least make an effort to look at the particulars of a situation before hammering it into the shape that fits his grand arguments in extenso. Another example would be his constant insidious insinuations, bordering on concern-trolling, that Israel endangers American security and American lives because Israeli actions "are equated with American actions" and U.S. soldiers and U.S. citizens will die because of it. I wouldn’t know where to begin to call bullshit on this one. Cole has a disturbing tendency to flatten out complex situations into ideologically flavored pancakes.
Now, in contrast, watch this video by Maggie Kortchmar. I certainly disagree with her on many topics here. But that’s not the point. The point is that I feel I could be made to change my mind with regard to certain aspects if we delved into further discussion from there, and—equally importantly—I feel that I could make Maggie change her mind with regard to certain aspects if we delved into further discussion from there, too. I followed Maggie’s posts also for quite a while now, and so far I have failed to see an agenda or an ideology in the how behind the what. One of the strongest indicators is that Maggie changes her mind. That she doesn’t know what to think, or to do, often enough. That she scrambles for information, for viewpoints that make sense. That she doesn’t stop thinking, for goodness’ sake! That’s why Maggie’s stories strike me as plausible, as authentic, and indeed as starting out from premises I can identify with, I’m familiar with, I’m comfortable or consentingly uncomfortable with.
To put it more bluntly, while Cole instrumentalizes the Gaza crisis, Maggie feels that people suffer. That’s what’s important here. It’s a very complex situation with many possible viewpoints, and when people suffer, the question of being right or being wrong should precisely not be prioritized every step of the way.
In such situations, talking about right or wrong, black or white, isn’t helpful in the least. I think we should see beauty in gray more often. Leaving the strongest impressions on people not pre-indoctrinated into authoritarian mindsets are usually those stories that make us think, not those that tell us what to think. Those that leave room for thoughts, not those that clutter our heads with ideological furniture. Those that leave it to us to make decisions that make sense, not those that condemn every decision save one in advance. Those that make us weep, not those that piss us off.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Nanonovels
Please note: This blog has found a new home. You’ll find all collateral tales posts now at the collateral tales and creed of reason categories over at between drafts. Please, come over and join in the discussion! You’re welcome to!
//
After the #Mumbai #Nariman Twitter Crowd four weeks ago and the first ever “citizens ‘press’ conference” #AskIsrael on Twitter yesterday, held by David Saranga from the @israeliconsulate, and after I just published my first #nanonovel on Twitter a few hours ago, it’s about time I wrote an entry about Twitter, Politics, & Storytelling.
Which, indeed, is in the making, but I’m not done yet. In the meantime, check out my first nanonovel. As I said—it’s completely crazy, but it’s also fun. More on nanonovels on my corresponding blog. Enjoy!
//
After the #Mumbai #Nariman Twitter Crowd four weeks ago and the first ever “citizens ‘press’ conference” #AskIsrael on Twitter yesterday, held by David Saranga from the @israeliconsulate, and after I just published my first #nanonovel on Twitter a few hours ago, it’s about time I wrote an entry about Twitter, Politics, & Storytelling.
Which, indeed, is in the making, but I’m not done yet. In the meantime, check out my first nanonovel. As I said—it’s completely crazy, but it’s also fun. More on nanonovels on my corresponding blog. Enjoy!
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Airstrip One
Please note: This post has found a new home. You’ll find “Airstrip One” now at the creed of reason category over at between drafts. Please, come over and join in the discussion! You’re welcome to!
//
Some time from now, what kind of stories will people tell each other about the times you and I are living in? What will their master narrative be for us, and what their master metaphor? But we have one master narrative already, and we can only hope it will not be our legacy. This master narrative, of course, is Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, of which I wrote before.
Naturally, after the Eastern—or rather Soviet—Bloc and its multitude of iron curtains fell, we thought that European-style totalitarianism had run its course. “Uniquely a twentieth-century phenomenon,” curricula claim, and so it is taught. But where did totalitarianism emerge? Ah yes—it developed out of revolutionary, anti-authoritarian movements, and out of a “promising new era of democracy.” Especially the latter might sound acutely familiar by now. How come our oldest and dearest democracies seem, in the face of terrorism, to become the first to fail, from Great Britain with its vast public surveillance systems and its DNA database to Australia with its efforts so censor the Internet even more scrupulously than China? But we all know, of course, that all this, more often than not, has less to do with terror here and security there but with organized superstitions, a legion of mouthpieces masquerading as values, conservative, traditional, and moral, which unceasingly spew forth in the name of the most totalitarian ideology of all: the supreme, loving, jealous, fearsome, vengeful, fatherly being whose all-seeing eye watches every blink of our existence and penetrates the darkest corners and crevices of our mind for every living, breathing second of our life, in order to reward or punish our compliance or our failures “forever,” as in “for all eternity.” Compared to which Big Brother and his role models were never more than acolytes.
But what about the red, white, and blue? Are we going to take this turn in earnest and together, will there rise a road ahead of us again that features a horizon? A road to achievement, progress, pride instead of bronze-age myths, despair, decline, grief, pain, and shame? A road that leads, to sum it up, to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people? Or will later generations look back at the years that lie before us as a tiny spike in the overall statistics, a fragile vehicle’s short and bumpy ride before its inevitable ambush and utter destruction by the concerted efforts of homegrown and foreign IEDs, its day of demise translating into a yearly celebration day for all who are forever of the male, white, and righteous kind of mind?
Sometimes a tiny, prosaic piece of text tells a much bigger story, and the outgoing administration’s letter to those unlawfully imprisoned and eventually released from Guantánamo does qualify as such:
We can only hope that this is but a chapter in our story. We can only hope that this is not our story.
//
Some time from now, what kind of stories will people tell each other about the times you and I are living in? What will their master narrative be for us, and what their master metaphor? But we have one master narrative already, and we can only hope it will not be our legacy. This master narrative, of course, is Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, of which I wrote before.
Naturally, after the Eastern—or rather Soviet—Bloc and its multitude of iron curtains fell, we thought that European-style totalitarianism had run its course. “Uniquely a twentieth-century phenomenon,” curricula claim, and so it is taught. But where did totalitarianism emerge? Ah yes—it developed out of revolutionary, anti-authoritarian movements, and out of a “promising new era of democracy.” Especially the latter might sound acutely familiar by now. How come our oldest and dearest democracies seem, in the face of terrorism, to become the first to fail, from Great Britain with its vast public surveillance systems and its DNA database to Australia with its efforts so censor the Internet even more scrupulously than China? But we all know, of course, that all this, more often than not, has less to do with terror here and security there but with organized superstitions, a legion of mouthpieces masquerading as values, conservative, traditional, and moral, which unceasingly spew forth in the name of the most totalitarian ideology of all: the supreme, loving, jealous, fearsome, vengeful, fatherly being whose all-seeing eye watches every blink of our existence and penetrates the darkest corners and crevices of our mind for every living, breathing second of our life, in order to reward or punish our compliance or our failures “forever,” as in “for all eternity.” Compared to which Big Brother and his role models were never more than acolytes.
But what about the red, white, and blue? Are we going to take this turn in earnest and together, will there rise a road ahead of us again that features a horizon? A road to achievement, progress, pride instead of bronze-age myths, despair, decline, grief, pain, and shame? A road that leads, to sum it up, to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people? Or will later generations look back at the years that lie before us as a tiny spike in the overall statistics, a fragile vehicle’s short and bumpy ride before its inevitable ambush and utter destruction by the concerted efforts of homegrown and foreign IEDs, its day of demise translating into a yearly celebration day for all who are forever of the male, white, and righteous kind of mind?
Sometimes a tiny, prosaic piece of text tells a much bigger story, and the outgoing administration’s letter to those unlawfully imprisoned and eventually released from Guantánamo does qualify as such:
An Administrative Review Board has reviewed the information about you that was talked about at the meeting on 02 December 2005 and the deciding official in the United States has made a decision about what will happen to you. You will be sent to the country of Afghanistan. Your departure will occur as soon as possible.To which Roger Cohen wrote in the New York Times:
That’s it, the one and only record on paper of protracted U.S. incarceration: three sentences for four years of a young Afghan’s life, written in language Orwell would have recognized.This letter’s voice has been America's voice for eight long years, and there are many who wish it to be our voice forever, the voice of One Nation Under God, of an America the world would recognize as the proud and rightful heir to Airstrip One. “Nothing has been more damaging to the United States,” Cohen writes, “than the violation of the legal principles at the heart of the American idea.”
We have “the deciding official,” not an officer, general or judge. We have “the information about you,” not allegations, or accusations, let alone charges. We have “a decision about what will happen to you,” not a judgment, ruling or verdict. This is the lexicon of totalitarianism. It is acutely embarrassing to the United States.
We can only hope that this is but a chapter in our story. We can only hope that this is not our story.
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