98. "Jewish Self-loathing"

 

I'll never get this one straight. Here are these Jews. They've got this nice religion with all that wonderful food and great jokes. You tell me they hate it. OK, I can believe that, though it's hard. They hate doing Hanukkah or something. But then this smart fellow tells me no, it's not the religion they're sitting there hating, it's themselves! And they all nod their heads as if they understand.

Well, I don't understand. If you're bothered by something hateful you do something about it. You go after it or you go away. If something you are doing or thinking or feeling bothers you you quit doing or thinking or feeling it. The best you can. You don't just sit there.

Comprehension is going to be so difficult here that I think I'd better start way back, with what I'm sure I understand. That's the statement, "I hate myself for X." If I don't know what the speaker is referring to I can ask him.

But the vague "I hate myself"?  I know that there are a lot of things in this area, like doubting ourselves, or accusing ourselves, or feeling sorry for ourselves that are vaguely expressed but which have references we can dig out, and justify the doubt or accusation or pity but hating ourselves? That's tough.

It would be easier if those smart fellows had found a word other than "hate." It's so strong. After I feel dissatisfaction with myself, or disapproval, or disappointment, what's left? I can't see anything to justify "hatred," much less "loathing," which some go on to. "He's filled with self-loathing," Is that a sustainable emotion?  How does he stay filled? That would be very hard. He's going against nature. Self-loving, the not-always-admirable thing you're sure to find in your neighbor, is the natural condition.

We get to the end of the line in talk between Jews about behavior in Israel. One says to another, "You sure picked a bad time — say during an American election — to beat up on Palestinians, or expand the settlements," or whatever, and what does the other answer? Not, "Why do you hate me?" That would be good Smothers Brothers theater, weird but understandable. No, after being told that his diplomatic shirttail is out he comes back with, "Why do you hate yourself? That's really weird.

97. Meet My Philosopher, the Smothers Brother.

J. L. Austin, the Oxford linguistic philosopher, said that we could call oversimplification the occupational disease of philosophers, "were it not their occupation." If that's fair then it's certainly fair for us followers of philosophers to oversimplify each other's positions as taken, say, at a party. The test is personal convenience. "Does the simplification," you ask, "prepare me sufficiently for the next, possibly more serious, encounter? Can I now move on to the next guest?"

I once found it convenient to classify all new academic acquaintances simply as either a Tom or a Dick, following this exchange in the old Smothers Brothers act:

Dick: Your shirttail's out.

Tom: Why do you hate me?

If I identify a Dick I bone up on British philosophy, if a Tom, French philosophy. In one case I'm ready for empiricists, logicians, and hard scientists; in the other I'm ready for phenomenologists, existentialists, and soft scientists, especially psychologists.

Who will I welcome alongside me? That depends on where I am. If I'm in a neighborhood where they break your knuckles if they catch you with your shirttail out I welcome Dick. If I'm at home unconsciously picking on a playmate I welcome Tom. In operating rooms and cockpits it's always Dick; in psychiatrist's offices and confessionals it's always Tom.

There are times when I will positively love Dick. When rumors are flying, when a mob is forming, when a lynching or a pogrom is imminent oh how great it is to have him appear and ask, "Did the provocative event really happen?" When it's a provocation to war — Tonkin Gulf, weapons of mass destruction — it's even greater. Facts. Caring about facts. At last somebody. I could hug him.

But Tom can be helpful too. When I'm listening to a politician, watching commercials, or reading a government-controlled newspaper, I love to hear his voice, "No, what he's really saying is 'Hate this, love that, trust these.'" Tom shows you what a fool you were to concentrate on the shirttail. Those guys were just using it. You've got to love somebody who can take apart propaganda the way Tom does.

The trouble is, Tom and Dick don't get along. Dick thinks he means what he says. He hates to hear "what you really mean." He delights in pointing out the number of places where Tom's philosophers will find themselves with broken knuckles. Tom delights in showing Dick how helpless his philosophers will be before a poem or a subtle philosophy.

I need Dick more than I need Tom simply because I spend more time making my way through the world than I do reading poetry or philosophy. I'd like to trust Tom but I need to trust Dick — as all the scientists, all the physicians I go to, needed to trust him. I can't live without him.

Tom's philosophers weaken my trust in Dick by showing me that he doesn't deserve to be so positive about the "real" world he thinks he's talking about. That world, they say, is just a humanly represented one, and even the representation Dick is surest of is subject to an "uncertainty principle," or an "incompleteness theorem," or its "relativity."

Dick's own philosophers weaken my trust in him by showing me how imperfect his theoretical foundation is. His empiricism proceeds from unexamined dogma and his given, the stuff he gets from his senses, is, they say, largely a myth.

Why should I let criticism from either side weaken my trust in Dick? I don't need a perfect epistemology. I can make my way through the world very well with the epistemology that stood for a long time before Derrida or Rorty or Kuhn revealed its imperfections, or Einstein, or Gödel, or Heisenberg were available to quote.

The old epistemology is not hard to learn, but it is hard to stick to. You don't always notice mistakes, even if you're willing to call them "mistakes." If you have a friend that notices, though, somebody to tell you when your shirttail is out, it's a lot easier. You just have to trust him, even when he doesn't sound like your friend.

96. Complimenting Middle Easterners: "Liberal"

"Liberal" is still a compliment-word when a Westerner is talking to a Middle Easterner about changes in his country. It's sort of a handclasp: welcome to democracy, to tolerance, to progress, to freedom, to equality, to human rights, to the rule of law — welcome to the Enlightenment.

I'd like to use the word, if the occasion ever arose, but I have some problems with it. It's clear that I can't apply it to authoritarian Islamist regimes imposing Sharia on their people, or to secular despots putting the clamps on everybody, but beyond that it gets difficult, especially when regimes are changing.

Consider Egypt now, where thousands demonstrated yesterday against the despotic military council. The Times tells us that "most liberals stayed home" (11-19-11). Why? Because they "looked to the military council to act as a hedge against a religious takeover." They feared that liberal democracy would bring an illiberal party to power. So who am I to compliment for their liberalism, those who support the generals for wanting to keep the illiberals out, or the demonstrators for wanting the democracy that lets them in?

I think that instinct, or long school training, moves most of us Americans to declare for the demonstrators simply because their opposition is, like that of King George III, despotic. And reflection commonly justifies this in Enlightenment terms — the "liberal" cluster.

If we here deny those terms to the Egyptian military council, though, what are we going to do with them when we come to the many despots in Western countries that our history books have for years called "enlightened"? How about Catherine the Great, and Joseph II of Austria, and Frederick II of Prussia? Prussia, for heaven's sake. Yet in that country we see industry promoted, schools established, religious freedom protected, prejudice discouraged. And then there's Napoleon, forcing French enlightenment on the countries he conquered — feudalism ended, peasants freed, church courts abolished, Inquisition ended, the great Code established, legal equality of all individuals assured. Everything but representative government. Unless you're an impossible Anglophile, grant Napoleon a piece of the word "liberal."

I think I'm left without options for a sincere handclasp over the Tahrir Square demonstrations. To those who stay home I'm saying, "Thanks for your help in preventing a retreat (with Shariah) into darkness. Congratulations on your progress. Welcome to our tradition of enlightened despotism." I'm complimenting them for murdering democracy. To those who demonstrate I'm saying, "Thanks for your help in advancing your country into the democratic light. Congratulations on your faithfulness. Welcome to our tradition of representative government." I'm complimenting them for democratically risking loss of every feature of the Enlightenment, including democracy. Either way, there's no escape from irony.

And what is my Egyptian, hearing it, going to say? "This man (or maybe the entire West) is as confused about the Enlightenment as we are." Of course. The word I used, "liberal," is just one of those words that calls up a confusing cluster. That's what I'm stuck with.

95. America's Decline, the West's Decline

It's hard for anyone with a Great Depression childhood to anguish wholeheartedly over the decline of the United States in wealth and power. It will be sad, yes, to come down from that 90's peak, as Fareed Zakaria (The Post-American World) tells us we are doing, but might it give us a chance to learn the joys of eating oatmeal? I mean around the table in the morning, the penny-a-bowl kind, with Dad fortifying himself for battle with the world and Mother getting ready to maintain the fortress. Austerity, for all its grind, did have its exhilarating moments.

Even if you're not captured by sentimental images, as mine might be, you have to admit that when Emerson and Thoreau spoke of the hazards of material success they had a point. Remember them, through the whole race from one technology to another, telling us (from our college anthologies) where neglect of spiritual and cultural values might leave us? "We are in great haste," said Thoreau, "to build a telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, perhaps, have nothing important to say to each other." He should have listened in on Twitter. Maybe austerity would bend our ears toward those authors. It would be exhilarating to see them make a comeback.

Then there's the exhilaration (for some) in the satirical lament. Spokesmen for the spiritual can make fun of those still attached to the material. "Oh how will my daughter live without twenty-cent-a-bowl Choco Puffs? How can my son tolerate a swollen cell phone that does only 250 other things? How can my husband lose his SUV?" Spokesmen for the meek can picture the proud adjusting to their loss of power, presidents from Texas learning a new walk, athletes at the Olympics learning to dip Old Glory as other nation's flags are dipped, in courtesy.

And finally, there's that exhilaration in the knowing lament. You can assure your wise fellows that you too can see the writing on the wall, and yes, it's so sad.

So, contemplating the decline of our nation we find many opportunities for exhilaration. Can we find the same opportunities in the grander decline, that of the West? There certainly is occasion enough, especially if we make America's success the West's success, as Niall Ferguson (Civilization: The West and the Rest) lets us do. We might be stirred watching our fellow Westerners forced to pay more attention to Eastern peace of mind. And satirical lament ("Nations pestering China for aid? World policemen coming from Asia?"), that will still be stimulating.

But, you know, sooner or later most of us are going to ask, about all these world-stage declines, "What the hell do I care?" Who ever changed a single item on his TO DO list, the daily worry sheet, in order to halt his nation's or his culture's decline? Or spur its rise? We know that none of those big expressions make any difference down where we are. Historians fight hugely over "the idea of Progress." All right, in each of my decisions I want to make progress. Over there is a fellow who in each of his decisions just wants to avoid regret. At the end of the day are we in different places? I doubt it.

We don't really care but we think we do. And maybe we think we care because we listen to ourselves when we think we are most serious, speaking in intellectual company. There we make the knowing lament. And there we need Samuel Johnson's rebuke. He called the lament "cant." You (like Boswell) might say, "These are sad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times," but you don't mean a bit of it. Do we need Boswell's honesty when we're caught? "I declare, Sir, upon my honor, I did imagine I was vexed, and took a pride in it; but it was, perhaps, cant; for I own I neither ate less, nor slept less."

I think we have a better chance of discovering what we care about by listening to what we say — and don't say — to our children. We don't say, "Work hard, keep America a superpower, don't let the West decline." We say, "Work hard, get ahead, stay out of trouble, be nice." If the aggregate effort brings compliments to our nation or culture, fine. If not, fine. The Swiss look happy, and they're not getting any big-time compliments. If there is such a thing as a "national peace of mind" maybe theirs is the way to it.

93. "Technocratic leader"

Greece and Italy now have premiers they are calling "technocratic leaders" (NYT, 11-11-11). The term distinguishes them from "democratic leaders." It's a distinction to die for these days in Europe, where the people of these two countries accept, in principle, the need for austerity measures to get themselves (and Europe) through the debt crisis, and punish the democratic leader who puts the principle into practice.

No distinction promises to play out better. In the capital one leader speaks for the principle, gets agreement, then leaves. Another comes on and does the practical part. In the streets there is pain, especially among all those losing jobs they got under the political patronage system. "Those dirty politicians!" says one sufferer. "No, no," says another, "this one's not a politician, he's just a technician, making sure the machinery works. You can't blame him." A "technocratic leader" is a leader who can't be blamed.

No premiers will ever be loved more by the premiers they replace. Technocratic premiers preside over an "interim government," which is also a "government of national unity." Those wonderful terms tell the nation that they're not a threat, they'll be gone, the politicians can come back, and, bless the technocrat, there'll be harmony when they do.

Nowadays we're likely to see a computer expert. He takes the program the nation needs, plugs it in, pushes the right buttons, and the machine cranks out the desiderata while everybody else is enjoying their coffee.

What we're looking at is essentially an ends-means machine, and everybody who dislikes dirty work (the old name for what the machine does) should have one. It leaves you free to go for good ends without getting stained by any of the bad means attached to them. This machine just makes the connections on its own.

I would think democratic leaders would want to provide every voter with one of these ends-means machines. Then every time voters demanded that he go for a good end the leader could say, "Call up the program. Follow it through. Decide whether you have the courage to go all the way with it. Then tell me you want it." What a teaching device! The voter's inattention or incapacity, the great plague of democratic leadership, would no longer plague him. He'd never be blamed for failing to produce the impossible.

Would we want this machine to be like the punitive one in Franz Kafka's famous story "In the Penal Colony"? That machine inscribed its lesson on the body. The technician fed it a diagram and needles traced out the crime until the subject, in pain, understood it. Surely our technology could produce its equal.

Our answer will no doubt depend on our view of our fellow human beings. Are they capable of paying sufficient attention? Of doing what's required of them? If we think they are then we'll be willing to punish them for not doing so. Inattention and cowardice become crimes. At the end of the line here is vindictive pleasure: "Neglect your homework, will you? Ruin the country with your ignorant demands? Shame your friends with your timid dodges? Well here's something that will teach you!"

On the other hand, if we think they're not capable we'll scorn the machine, as the humane Europeans in Kafka's story scorn theirs. We'll stick to patient instruction in the world's cause-effect sequences. What's at the end of the line here depends on how serious those sequences can be. If one of them ends in the disappearance of democracy (or, God help us, in the disappearance of the world) then the end for this view is in an appalling complaisance, people sitting around at the last trump wishing they'd been harder on inattention and cowardice.

92. "Concerted effort"

  

A piccolo player, no matter how hard he tries, cannot make a "concerted effort." Only the orchestra can do that. The result is a "concert." The picture of it settles the meaning: people doing something together.

So Mayor Bloomberg can't make "a concerted effort to rebut criticism that he was ignoring the boroughs" (NYT, 1-20-11) and tennis player Vera Zvonareva can't make "a concerted effort to knock Clijsters off stride" (1-20-11). They're piccolo players and the editors of the New York Times are having them and a host of others do only what groups can do. Twenty-three times in the last 90 days. Worse, they're having some of them "make a more concerted effort." Trying harder.

I know, it's a very small thing. A little spot. But these editors have already shown that they take exactness and efficiency — cleanliness — so far down the scale of word use that it's surprising that they have let this spot stay. Is it too small?

Posted by H. R. Swardson at 9:48 AM 2 comments

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91. What's the Difference between a Yippie and a Wall Street Occupier?

Street Movements and Moral Clarity (11)

In 1968 there were a lot of confused, outlandish people demonstrating in the streets and they were stupid; in 2011 there are a lot of confused, outlandish people demonstrating in the streets and they are not stupid. What's the difference?

The 1968 demonstrators did not see that voters who might press their representatives to end the Viet Nam War would be slower to do so if it meant associating themselves with a lot of outlandish people. Voters could change things. Change yourself, become more landish, and you could change those voters. Those who didn't see that were stupid. And history confirms that judgment. The silent landish vote swept Nixon into office and kept Democrats out for decades.

That taught a lot of us not to side with outlandish people lightly. Give them a boost and the backlash could discredit good causes for years to come. In Athens we saw evidence of that backlash just last week, in a Messenger cartoon. One well-dressed fellow, passing Zucotti Park, says to another, "I'm having a moral dilemma: Do I want to live in a country that caters to the ultra-rich … or do I want to agree with a hippie?!"

Well, 1968 hippies were stupid for alienating those who had the power to change. The 2011 Wall Street Occupiers see (I suppose) that voters no longer have the power to change. The OWS equivalent to "Peace in Viet Nam" is "Regulation on Wall Street." And how will voters bring that about? Not by making a Republican President. He's almost sure to be against regulation. By making a Democrat President? Well, we've got one who had one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate and who promised not to be influenced by lobbyists for special interests. Just the one to make the slam-bang speech against big money and lead the charge on the Hill. Just the one to get the country's biggest mistake in the pre-Great-Recession years corrected. Why isn't he doing that? Because to get re-elected he has to have big money, and to get that money he, through lobbyists called "bundlers" (NYT, 10-28-11), has to go to a lot of people who don't want regulation on Wall Street. We infer influence.

You don't have to give the Zucotti Park riff-raff credit for great powers of perception here. It's been obvious for months that Wall Street bankers, the very people responsible for the 2008 crisis, are successfully working on Senators and Congressmen, no doubt through that need to get re-elected, to hold up or weaken legislation on new rules.

So it looks like the difference is that in 1968 you were stupid if you didn't work through the system and in 2011 you were stupid if you did. The system wasn't working.

What's the smart play? It looks to me like a run at the campaign finance rules. Reduce the need for big money and you reduce the power of Wall Street. Is anybody smart enough to bring that off? Inside the presently jammed system? We won't find any such person in Zucotti Park. But that's not what we look to those occupiers for. It's enough that they keep before us, among all the goofy causes, this most important one.

90. Do We Need the Word "Soul"?

We're losing the word "soul." That is, we can no longer use it in a straightforward way before certain audiences. With the meaning "the disembodied spirit of a human being" the word is lost before an audience of scientists because they don't believe in supernatural things. With the meaning "the immaterial essence of an individual" the word is lost before an audience of existentialists because they depreciate essences. "Existence," they say, "precedes — both goes before and takes precedence over — essence." And no doubt the word is in the process of being lost before other modern audiences.

I may eventually be forced to join one of these audiences but I must say that if I lose "soul" I'm certainly going to be left with a lot of blanks in the pre-modern authors I read. What do I fill in for John Donne when he feels defiled? What is it that's defiled? What is it that De Quincey has abused? that suffers in Shelley? that Herbert must repair? And, the big challenge, what is it that Socrates wanted his students to take care of?

I see an answer, of sorts, to that last question in my preceding post (#89): Socrates wanted his students to take care of what those parents wanted their son away at college to take care of. What is that? To the son it was an ideal, held by his mother and just being established, shakily, in him. It appeared when she said things like, "That's not the Bobby I know." It was obviously an ideal, something to be lived up to.

Is there a word, acceptable in today's vocabulary, that will do for people what "soul" did for Bobby? As soon as he heard it from his preacher he knew he had a core, something around which all his virtues — and vices too, if he weren't careful — clustered. It could be damaged, and look ugly. He was responsible for its condition but, oddly, it made him responsible. It, the whole of him, not a part, is what took the blame, and made him blush.

Might "better self" be called in to do what "soul" did? Maybe, but we won't win back the existentialists or any of the many postmodernists influenced by them. The concept of a "unitary Self" is as vulnerable to deconstruction as any other essentialist concept.

Can philosophers working in this area give me another word? Kant, I find, is sympathetic, but he can't offer anything better than "soul," which he uses reluctantly. "You don't know that it exists but you've got to postulate it as a necessary foundation for morals." Then William James says, "No, no, it's not necessary. Morals and a sense of personal identity don't depend on it at all. 'Soul' (besides referring to an unverifiable entity) is a superfluous word." Many modern philosophers agree with James. I'm still at a loss.

All right, salvage what we can. Let's call this thing a "nexus of values." That word "nexus" makes you think of a place where nerves, or stock holdings, or telephone lines come together, right? Well, I'm glad to have you think that, because that's what I think values do, in a place some call "character." So we've got that much. What we've left out is the big thing with Bobby. His values didn't just sit there, nexus-like. They came out and scolded him. "Hey, you're not living up to us. Get out there and start showing the world we're yours." If we don't have a word that takes that in, one that identifies the Bobby his mother knows and he (though he gained the whole world) could lose, we're still short of "soul."