Mike Cernovich (credit: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons) 

Where the Delusional Get Their Delusions

Our values are getting a lot of hard scrutiny these days. We’re in the middle of both a global pandemic and an American election campaign, one that even four years ago seemed unimaginable to the big majority of people all over the world. The leading democracy of the world for at least 75 years is immersed in a desperate struggle between courage and cowardice, wisdom and ignorance, tolerance and intolerance, and love and hate. The lines of demarcation between these ideals get blurred in real life -- for years sometimes. But 4 or even 10 years are manageable parts of an individual’s life and are even more manageable parts in the life of a nation. Large enough to leave room for a policy or program to have real effect, small enough to be comprehended and tackled by real politicians dealing in real time. And over the past 4 years, the goals of the Right and their ways of getting to their goals have become clear.

The people of the U.S. are now facing a choice between a man on one side who, by his actions, has shown he values profit over compassion, ignorance over understanding, and hate over love. On the other side is a man who is pretty much the opposite. He understands a good deal about the world and he cares about real people. He also has the sense to consult experts about Covid 19 or the Middle East or any other subject when he knows he is over his head. Not try to bluff his way through every situation, even when secretly, he is woefully ignorant about it. New York real estate isn’t the world.  

“The Art of the Deal” is the key to all, Trump boasts. But …how does one get a “good deal” with, a virus? Intimidation? Ass-kissing? Bluff?

How did it come to this? The world’s leading nation in almost every field turned into a stumbling, punchy version of its former champion self in under 4 years.

The heart of the matter is postmodernism. Yes, it’s a big word and most people don’t know much about it or understand it. But it’s not that complex.

All observing and thinking is heavily shaped by what the individual observer or thinker took in during her/his childhood and youth. You tend to grow up thinking in the ways that the people around you think. But outside your country, people’s ways can be radically different from the ways of people in your culture. People in different lands notice different details in the events around them and react to those details sometimes in very different ways. A Mohawk man walking in the bush, before any Europeans had contacted his culture, saw cougar tracks, if he passed them, as automatically as he breathed. A Polynesian man of 600 years ago knew what different colors in the evening sky meant about tomorrow’s weather. 

Europeans who became farmers when they first came to North America, learned quickly what the different kinds of winds meant, and they could “feel rain in the air”. By contrast, people today too often keep glancing at the latest figures from the markets or even the latest comments on Twitter.  

And, postmodernists tell us, no one can say with evidence to back him up that one culture is obviously superior to the others. In the various parts of the world and various eras in recorded history, so many different cultures have had their spell as top dogs that making generalizations about what an ideal human culture should believe in, and act like, is impossible. Many had their versions of “law”, “science”, and “economics” in their times. They all rose – and fell – nonetheless.

So? We conclude that there is no such thing as “right” or “good”. At least, that’s what the postmodernists say. We’re all stuck in our little pigeon holes, kidding ourselves that we see the world for what it is and are the best at handling it.

We are all equally deluded. There is no way any one person or culture can get a long-term, reliable grip on what works in life and what doesn’t. Get over it. Get over yourself.

These are the things postmodernism tells us.

How then are we supposed to function as a whole society today if many different kinds of people from different cultures and sub-cultures keep bumping against one another, getting angrier by the day? Postmodernism basically says it has no answers to such questions. You figure it out. One event, one day, at a time. And good luck with that. In short, they offer no guidelines for living life decently at all. They only tell you why all – repeat all – of your ideas about every subject are deluded. Then, they sneak away.

Now, how does postmodernism connect to the current U.S. election?

Thousands of Trump’s supporters are not interested in what the facts say. About Covid 19, the continuing struggle of the Palestinians, the manipulations of American social media by Russia, the worsening inequities of the wealth in the West, the continuing strife between too many white people and the rest, or anything else. “Tell me the alternative facts, the ones that allow me to go on believing what I want to believe. Without one moment of discomfort about any of it. There are no ‘facts’ anyway. Tell me what I like to hear or leave me alone.”

In short, the most maddening beliefs, attitudes, and techniques of argument used by Republicans in the U.S. and the devotees of the political right all over the world are beliefs, attitudes, and techniques of argument that they learned from the Democrats, and more generally, from the elite intellectuals of the Left. Sartre. Derrida. Foucault. 

One example of a particularly offensive misogynist who has an education and is no dummy is Mike Cernovich. A few minutes researching his name online will lead you to all kinds of interesting stuff. He’s only one man, but he can serve, for now, as a paradigm of his kind.

In an article by Alan Levinovitz (“It’s Not All Relative”, The Journal of Higher Education, Mar. 5, 2017), Cernovich is quoted espousing the following:

"Look, I read postmodernist theory in college. If everything is a narrative,  then we need alternatives to the dominant narrative. I don’t seem like a guy who reads Lacan, do I?"

Just one example, but a clear and revealing one, I think. And remember, this man studied Philosophy and Law at the graduate level. These maddening monks of Murdochland learned their best moves -- in the endless shouting that passes for debate in modern American political life -- from the Left.

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a good day, folks.          

That’s Not Cricket!

   

                                          (credit: Peter Woodward, via Wikimedia Commons) 

The French Existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus, said that everything he knew about morality, he learned from soccer. From sports, in other words.

Now, for those cerebral people who simply don’t “get” sports, or find the very thought of sweat distasteful, this quote may be an excuse for them to write off Camus and his whole philosophy. Which would be overly hasty in any case. The fact that a person likes beer and not wine, for a parallel example, should have nothing to do with our estimation of that person as a thinker and writer.

                     

                                            (credit: UPI, via Wikimedia Commons) 

On the other hand, I like Camus. I have since I first went to university, which is a long time ago. Over 50 years. I became familiar with a few of his books even back then because friends were raving about him. I think he's onto something here . 

So what about his view of sports and what they teach us? Can that view be defended adequately? I think it can.

The big thing that has come to me in the last few weeks about sport is that the bottom line, most of the time, in most sports, is very simple: you must act under the rules that you promised to act under, while the game is on and you’re playing. In short, live up to your promises.

In soccer, you do not pick up an opposing player bodily and slam him onto the turf. But in rugby, that’s exactly what you do. That is part of the game, a main part, and everyone who plays the game knows it.

   

                          (credit: Rugby Ontario 1959, via Wikimedia Commons) 

A very American saying, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, is that figures don’t lie, but liars can sure figure. What the saying means is that manipulators of the truth can be very skillful in deceiving others, especially others who are in positions of authority, even when those manipulators don’t technically tell a lie. And this is not right in any universe. It is judged to be wrong in sport.

Sport also has immoral situations that are generally recognized as immoral. In most forms of Martial Arts, which are especially violent sports, where all kinds of blows and grappling techniques are intended to injure an opponent or render him/her unconscious, it is illegal to strike to the groin area, eye gouge, or bite. But in rare forms of this sport, like Lethwei, head-butting is allowed. The key feature that keeps at least the idea of the sport moral is that everyone who competes in it knows this. And Lethwei competitors also know that if they choose to cross over to the MMA circuit, then the rules will not allow them to use head butts.

                         

                                           (Lethweimaster; credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

Bottom line: you read the rules and promise to obey them before you get into a competition. Then, you do your best to compete within those rules.

And even then, it can get complicated. Humans are subtle. For example, nearly all soccer fans dislike players who fake injury with the intention of getting an opposing player penalized. And so we come to the heart of the matter.

In the real action of a real contest, what officials are most tested by are those situations in which they must decide whether a player did an action willfully. Intention becomes crucial (as it is for Kant, by the way).

How does one judge, if one is refereeing a boxing match, whether a head to head contact was intentional on one fighter’s part or accidental? How does an umpire decide whether a runner sliding into second base intended to aim his cleats to injure the second baseman? When is hand to ball contact in soccer acceptable and when is it not? Is bodyline bowling in cricket easy to judge and call?

The element of intentionality is the key. And the player in question is unreliable as a source of information on this matter. He or she is at least as likely to say that the foul was an accident as to say it was done on purpose. Still, sometimes, the ref has to make the call.  

It really helps a referee or umpire to have played the game him or herself. Former players of the game know the kinds of moves a human body naturally makes in the game, those made by intention and those not. Which brings us to the bottom line for moral play in sports: play by the rules you agreed to play by, and among those rules is the one that says you will accept the decisions of officials of the game without confrontation or complaint.

   

                                          (credit: Basil d Soufi, via Creative Commons) 

What does this post have to do with real life? I’ll leave it to the reader to make the connections in between, but I will say this: The United Nations is imperfect, as all things made by humans are. But it’s all we have to bring fairness to relations between nations. Like democracy, it can only be as effective as the people who live under it make it. My secret prayer is that it will one day, before 100 nations are putting nuclear weapons into space, become generally accepted as the final authority – the authority – in our world. That will not happen until we get past Postmodernism. But that is another post.

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, have a fine, sporting-spirited day, folks.

Another Covid 19 Thought

   

                                        Malcolm MacDowell in "A Clockwork Orange" 
                                                   (credit: the Guardian) 

   

   

                                                          Julie Christie in "Fahrenheit 451" 

                                                            (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

One of the ideas that the Covid 19 pandemic has given us to consider, especially in the developed nations, is the lesson that we also get in many of our dystopian novels and movies. In several of those futuristic works, many people in society have little or no work to do.

As technology advances and more and more goods and services are produced by fewer and fewer workers, in every sector of the economy, more and more people are going to end up unemployed. The problem for society then becomes how to distribute the wealth downward. We’ll still be making the goods, but with what funds will consumers buy them? The wealth isn’t going to “trickle down” if there is no trickle.

In many dystopian writers’ visions, the government just gives people money. The giving is done under many different programs, but most folk get their money and spend it, and the wealth circulates in a viable way.

Where all this government money is ultimately coming from is unclear in many novels, but I think the implication is that the corporations are willing to pay higher taxes as long as they can stay in business. And the business leaders have come to see that paying those taxes is their only way to stay in business at all. Otherwise, the masses of poor folk for whom there is no work will get fed up and revolt, and chaos will take over. In such a vision, society takes the only way out that looks like it should work.

But there are still problems. Most of the people in these novels for whom work is not available do not take up one of the arts or a sport or some other avocation from which they can get a sense of meaning. They deteriorate into society’s typical bad habits and are in constant need of therapy of one kind or another. Men, in particular, who have been conditioned by society to be breadwinners, are often pictured as floundering. They wonder what they are supposed to do. Masses of people turn to alcohol, drugs, gambling, and violence, etc..

The really perplexing element in such a view of society is the children of the government housing projects. They really have no work to prepare for. They see school as a joke. A glaring hypocrisy. So they do drugs and chase thrills. For example, the narrator of “A Clockwork Orange” gets his best thrills raping and beating innocent people for the sheer fun of it. "A bi' uv the old uhltra violence." 

In our present pandemic, we have been shown that the basics needs of life could be produced by far fewer workers than we were trying to keep employed just a few short months ago. For me, anyway, that is the biggest lesson of the last six months. We could fully robotize most of the mines, farms, and factories. The technology needed has been available for decades. Then, governments could pay millions of citizens a guaranteed annual income. Let folks buy whatever they like. Stay in business.

However …however. One is driven to wonder what will become of the masses who really don’t need to work anymore. Ever. Will they handle it?

Long after we have found a vaccine for Covid 19, will people even want to go back to work? Will we be able to stand the consequences of our own success?

   

                                                           Chameleon (credit: Wikipedia) 

A Covid 19 Lesson

There are a number of interesting lessons from these corona virus pandemic times that occur to me every day. But it is always the largest principles that I can spot in the reams of experiences occurring day after day that fascinate me the most. Big general principles are the ones that enable us to do more than react. Big principles enable us to be pro-active, to design policy, general guidelines for living now and in the future. These lead to less pain in the long haul.

Today, I want to talk about one of those larger lessons.

Reality is what it is. Observations of reality by us imperfect observers should always aim to report facts. What really happened. At least as far as I or you – as observers – can tell at the time. A chameleon really can be orange one minute, then purple the next, then blue a further minute later. But the person who reports that s/he saw the same individual lizard change its colors isn’t lying to me. S/he is just reporting what was really seen. If I am a Renaissance skeptic, then I might go to a place where there are chameleons and try to verify the story and satisfy my curiosity. Or I might not. But at least the storyteller should be telling me what she really saw. I like and appreciate that. Hers is a report that I may use at some time in the future. Who knows? I might be in a plane crash, survive on a jungle island in the Pacific, and have to hunt chameleons to stay alive. Then, having a true reporting of an observation by a trusted friend in my memory might make a crucial difference in my life.

   

                                     (credit: rickjpelleg, via Wikimedia Commons) 

The larger point, larger than any point about chameleons, is that we keep trying, in spite of our limits as observers, to see reality as it is and to use that knowledge to handle our encounters with the more hazardous things in reality.

I’ve never seen an individual Covid virus. I never will. They barely show up in electron microscopy images. But I’ve seen the virus images that experts in the field of immunology have certified as being reasonably accurate. And I have seen plenty of testimonials in the media by people who have been sick with the illness that this particular version – Covid 19 – causes in humans. And I trust those experts and those reports more than any alternatives I’ve seen so far.  

Why? Because I have no access to an electron microscope and I would not know much about what I was looking at anyway, if I did get access to one.

I don’t trust …I …don’t …trust …people who have no record of expertise in the specialized fields related to full understanding of the Covid 19 pandemic, no evidence to support their views, and clear cut records of defying what science has to tell us about almost everything. Global warming. Systemic racism. Inner city poverty. Homophobia. Statistics. I could go on and on.

I’ve been shown evidence that the scientists’ positions on all of the issues above and many more are biased. But that’s not what my own experience is telling me, and not what the overwhelming weight of evidence from sources that do have real credentials and work records in the related fields are saying to me.

So I’ll end now and keep this essay short.

Why am I largely ignoring the cries of protest of people who aim to discredit the scientific consensus that is nigh on to 100% on the pandemic under which we are currently suffering?

I go with my best horses. The ones that have won the most races for me in the past. I was a kid when polio was running rampant in my home province. I recall the desperate joy we felt when a polio vaccine became available. I have read, and I believe, accounts of the suffering humanity has experienced from microbes like smallpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and so on. We have vaccines for them all now. Immeasurable suffering has been prevented. 

I gamble with my life in reality every day. I have to. Reality will not sit still to soothe my fears and reality is full of hazards that I must navigate.  

I’m going with my best horses.

I am not going with opinions from people who are not experts, are ill-informed, have no scientific consensus to back up their claims – or a few anecdotal cases which, if one knows statistics, are simply not reliable – or who (worst of all) repeatedly reach conclusions that support some political stance they favor. Reality has no political stance. 

I’ll go with my best horses. I want to go home from the racetrack today, and to start tomorrow, at least breaking even. Not getting sick or injured. Not running out of food or shelter.

I’ll go with my best horses.