Who is a Moral Agent (in Gun Control Debates)?

One of the things that interests me about the debate surrounding gun control in the United States right now (recalling, of course, that this debate also appears in Canada whenever election time shows up) is that one of the most coherent oppositions to gun control is focused on the citizen's moral agency. Shouldn't the government focus on preventing actually destructive behaviour (murder) rather than preventing the conditions of that behaviour (gun control)? The role of the government is to produce an environment in which citizens are capable of virtuous action, not incapable of destructive action, though destructive action will be addressed, of course, in the criminal justice system.

I am immediately sympathetic to this kind of argument on two counts. The first is that I do really like moral agency; I get excited when people talk about taking responsibility for their actions. The second is that I like the idea of a state which is focused on helping citizens become virtuous agents rather than forcing them to be obedient agents. Lawful behaviour is much nicer when citizens are lawful for the right reasons rather than out of fear of reprisal. So the ways these particular opponents to gun control articulate their position is attractive to me.

However, I ultimately disagree because I subscribe to what I would call psychological realism. While I do intend to be a strong moral agent and to respect other people's agencies, I am at the same time skeptical that anyone's agency is non-compromised. In other words, I believe that people should take responsibility for their actions when they can but that people often will not and sometimes cannot act the way they should, even when they want to act the way they should. For example, I advise that you read this article entitled "Please Take Away My Right to a Gun" (trigger warning for discussion of suicide and the threat of home invasion), in which the author argues that she does not want to be able to get a gun because during periods of her recurring depression she would be tempted to use it on herself. Many commenters say that the author needs to take responsibility for her actions (and I've read some off-site comments saying that her argument is condescending toward the mentally ill), but I think she's just being realistic: she knows that sometimes she cannot trust her own decision-making processes and she knows that the current system will enable her suicide if she ever attempts it. She is compromised, she wants the state to protect her from herself, and I don't think she's wrong in believing this right trumps the rights of gun ownership.

But this debate has made me re-consider my own position on matters: is what I call "psychological realism" compatible with insisting that people's agencies be respected? One of the reasons I tend to shy away from anything resembling paternalism--particularly colonial paternalism--is that I believe it is intrinsically good to respect other folks' agencies (both to help them develop their characters and as an end-in-itself). But can I realistically continue in this outlook if I ultimately believe that we are all psychologically compromised? If the mentally ill are not full moral agents, how can I be one, either?

Cepaea nemoralis

or, The Grove Snail

You little nomads, keep your secrets banked
Inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
And hide within those rounds your patient lores,
Enclosed among your kind, disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom, slow-footed news.
At leafy caravanaries you trade
Among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
To them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl
Your body; prongs are, like the point, in air,
A question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me, one bred
In a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

I wrote this on Monday (the 15 of Feb), on the Winter Road between Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray. One of the things I miss about Ontario are the snails, especially the yellow ones, which from Wikipedia I gather are Cepaea nemoralis, or grove snails. I have written about the snail's wisdom before, but I decided to try the idea again. Actually, I like some of "Eulogy for the Garden," but not the whole thing. It needs a lot of work yet, and that's something I will some day give it. In the meantime, I'll expand the snail bit in a sonnet and not free verse. As the New Englander says in The Tommyknockers, "Real poims rhyme."

Re-written, so the line-breaks match the pauses:

You little nomads,
keep your secrets banked inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
and hide within those rounds your patient lores,
enclosed among your kind,
disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom,
slow-footed news;
At leafy caravanaries you trade among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
to them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl your body;
prongs are, like the point, in air, a question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me,
one bred in a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

An Advent

[To the folks from Elizabeth Esther's blogstravaganza: this current post, "An Advent," won out over a close competitor for the monthly carnival slot. That other post is featured here. It represents what is perhaps another facet of my blogger-personality, appearing as differences in topic and perhaps style. In this case, I am discussing the intersection between people with disabilities and cultural ideals of sexiness. I talk about Aimee Mullins, conjoined twins, where 'sexiness' comes from, and moral reactions to these things.]

Today is the first day of the liturgical year, beginning with the season of Advent. If you are interested in what Advent is, I will yet again encourage you to visit Conversion Diary, which is quite likely one of the Internet's best wikis on all such things, even though it's not officially a wiki. I won't be talking too much about Advent as a general topic, though. Rather, I want to talk about this Advent, which marks or is marked by a unique advent for me.

(In case you didn't visit Jennifer Fulwiler's blog, I should at the very least tell you that Advent is the first season of the liturgical year and one during which we prepare ourselves for the birth of Christ, celebrated on 25 December. The end of the liturgical year, a season known somewhat anticlimactically as Ordinary Time, is the time in the liturgy during which we recall Christ's reign on Earth. Thus in the turning over from this last Saturday to today, we move from Christ's reign to a pre-Christ's reign time, a sort of harkening to the Old Testament which is itself a preparation for Christ. That's not a pre-Christ's reign time in that during this season the sacrifice is somehow moot and we're all for the next few weeks damned. No. It's rather a symbolic sort of thing, a remembering sort of thing. Anyway, Advent is a time of New Year's resolutions--or positive personal change--as we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ, both as born in Bethleham and as returning again at the end of all things.)

This Sunday, you may recall, is the first Sunday that I became a server at Saint Thomas' Anglican Church. If I were asked to give my denomination, I would say either that I was baptised and confirmed Lutheran or that I am non-denominational. I recall three churches of which I would have called myself a regular member of the congregation: the Lutheran one (St. Paul's) previously described, the evangelical/non-denominational/student church (Bethel) at school, and St. Thomas' here in Fort McMurray. Bethel did not have an alb-clad worship team, but St. Paul's did and during the last two years of elementary school and to a lesser extent the first year of high school, I served there as an acolyte. (I was also Assistant Minister once, but I don't remember much about that.) Anyway, one thing I missed when going to Bethel was the ritual, the altar space, the formal roles, and, as a sort of crystallization of all of that, the alb itself. Here at St. Thomas' we have both the energy of Bethel and the ritual of St. Paul's, and when they called for servers (of which 'acolyte' is in the Anglican church a subtype), I volunteered.

I completed server training a few weeks ago, but in the first two Sunday's following that the other new servers served, and then last Sunday there was a baptism and so one of the girls from the more experienced lot served for that. This Sunday, then, was my first day as a server. It is my luck (solely a figure of speech, I'm sure) that my first day as a server was the first day of Advent, and thus the first day of the liturgical year. Truly a day of firsts.

As far as St. Thomas' itself goes, this is also a time of turn-over. It doesn't match up as neatly as my first, but it's still interesting. Rev. Fraser is going to be consecrated as a Bishop soon and presiding in Athabasca. Thus St. Thomas' will be out a priest. (Rev. Leslie Hand will still be 'our' priest, but she can't always make it Sundays due to commitments at another church.) Today was the second or third worship that I have attended which Rev. Fraser did not himself attend. Rather, the deacon and one of the lay-readers (David and Lori respectively) made up the worship team with myself. Fraser will be back for some more Sundays, but not many more. The sort of service we had today will be more and more common, and so while it's not an actual first, it is among the first and is a taste for what will follow in a few weeks.

However, this leads into a more human story. That is, because Fraser was absent, we did not have communion this Sunday. The sort of service I prepared for was a communion service, and the cues I was watching for were communion service cues. This means I got awful lost and confused when I realized that a central part of the ritual would simply not be there, and so I had no idea when to do things. For instance, in the three songs before communion, you prepare the table during the second song and receive the offering during the third song. So I know that when the priest starts getting ready for the sacrament, I should be getting out the bread box and then the flasks, and then on the song after that I will get the offering plate, receive the offering, and place it on the altar. But since we had no communion, the pre-offering liturgy would be different and my other cue (the priest preparing the sacrement) would be missing. So I was lost.

After some fumbling, though, and some kind guidance from David, I got everything done on time. The good news also was that Lori hadn't led service very many times before and she was nervous too, though she certainly didn't show it.

There were other fumbles than that, but not major ones. David and Lori were very nice (and presumably still are) and it all worked out, and likely no one in the congregation was the wiser.

In a way I was disappointed that there was no communion. I would have liked to have helped prepare the host. It seems magical to me, and I wanted to be part of that. Now, I dislike your common Christian sayings because I fear that through overuse they have lost their meaning. Notwithstanding this, it occured to me during service that this disappointment is another instance of God's plans superceding our own. I had wanted to be part of communion as a way of strengthening my own bond with Christ through that ritual. The whole process was something that I craved, and I craved it solely because I wanted it to make me feel more connected to Christ. This I did not get. Rather, I served during a service without a communion. My focus was on other things then, like singing loudly enough and praying loudly enough and getting my cues right. I was forced to trust that David and Lori, and through them God, would help me perform this role properly and help me help the congregation worship during a time of transition.

I am not saying that I was in the main disappointed, but it wasn't what I was expecting. And don't get me wrong: I have not walked away from this saying, "Now I can trust God and trust the worship team! I am now focused on helping the congregation and not myself, and I can now find Jesus in the service elsewhere than in the host!" It would be nice if these were true, but they aren't really. I don't trust well at all and I barely think of the congregation and on a bad day I have a hard time finding Jesus anywhere, even in the host.

I knew that my peformance as server would not transform me from someone feeling lost and distant from God into a zealous and whole 'little Christ' who is pumping the Spirit out to the congregation. While I am sure that the sow's ear can become a silk purse as much as water once became wine, the transformation from me into Super-me nonetheless seemed a little unlikely even in light of that. I was, however, hoping for some magical connection, some sudden and undeniable affirmation of my community in Christ. Rather, what I did learn, if it was learning, was a lesson that is integral to Advent: that I am not there yet; that I need preparation and that my change is a process, not an event; that I have a long way to go.

I read Narnia books and see how exciting it is that Aslan comes in at the end and turns them into heroes. What I conveniently forget is that Edmund had to wallow in the Witch's prison. That Eustace had to become a dragon (or become disabled and disfigured, which you get by reading what it's like for him to be dragon) and then undergo what amounted to torture at Aslan's claws. That Aravis and Shasta had to trek across the desert with lions hot on their heels (like Jonah, in a way). That Polly and Eustace had to fight a losing battle amidst sorrow at the ends of times. That they had to do all of these things before they became knights (or friends) of Narnia.

The question, of course, is what sort of change is needed? I don't know, but I suppose neither did Edmund, or Eustace, or Aravis, or Polly, or Abraham, or Hosea, or Peter, or Paul. What I do know is that I will start paying better attention to the liturgical year. I don't know what to do to observe that, but at least I will keep an eye on it. And I will stop expecting magical transformations at the appropriate time, not because they can't happen but because they likely won't if you're looking for them.

About Time

G'day.

I read this on Freakonomics--you can see it on my blogroll, at least until they add another post--and was happy. It's about time the media started lauding institutions. I know, in the words of one of those Penny Arcade guys, that you're supposed to stick it to the man, not stick up for him. However, I think it's getting a little ridiculous just how badly we feel we need to thrash our bureaucracies. There are problems with the systems as they stand, of course. But there are also incredible benefits to them, and there are also better ways of fixing the problems than being negative. Being positive is necessary to identifying how we want to implement change. In order to understand how we would prefer our system--our bureaucracy--to work, we need to be able to identify what we like about the existing systems. Trust me, we need bureaucracy. The massive scale of our interdependence requires it.

And don't listen to people who tell you that we need to cut back on interdependence, that we need to strike out on our own without relying on anyone. That is not the most useless statement I have ever heard; that is the most dangerous statement I have ever heard. I am serious. The extent to which people believe it is enough to make me weep in terror. Interdependence is a fact of life, and if we try to severe these ties of mutual requirement, we will all perish--and in misery, too. It's not a live in pain or die happy sort of choice, but live with whatever attitude you choose or die miserable choice, where the first is (inter)dependence and the last is independence. Until we learn to rely on others and to trust, we will all lose.

But anyway, back to the article I've linked to. I'm happy Freakonomics is doing this. We need to highlight the good. Indicating the bad is also necessary, but we do enough of that. The last paragraph I wrote, in fact, is more than enough. I'm very interested to read what people submit.

In church this morning, the pastor asked (rhetorically) what kind of church our city needs. He's fond of doing this. Someone from the congregation said aloud, "It doesn't need a church, it needs people." (I realize that the grammar is wrong, and that, since he spoke, I can't claim that he "wrote" a comma himself. However, it was a comma-length pause, not a semi-colon pause and a period pause with the end of sentence tone of voice, so I used a comma.) The pastor said that it needs people, yes, people who make up the church, and used 'people' and 'church' interchangeably for a bit before going back to using 'church,' to prevent alienation, I suppose, and because he liked the idea of people but needed to go back to the vocabulary of a church for the purposes of the sermon.

My thing, though, is that what the city needs is a CHURCH. People need structure. I am sorry, but we do. People are awesome; people can accomplish a lot. But people accomplish even more if they are organized, and, in the case of Christian activity, the particular units of organization are called churches. If you want to be really egalitarian, I suppose you can use 'congregation' instead of church. However, I think the word church is fairly apt. The image of a church is much more theologically useful than that of a mass of individuals making decisions in or not in concert. If it is theologically useful and has no real problem on a practice side of things (which it doesn't, contrary to popular belief), then it should be used. The city does need people. The city also needs a church. So, you have fancy--and popular, if the assorted no-church Christian movements are any indication--rhetoric, buddy, but the wrong idea.

Which is to say, Yay, institutions! Because, until Freakonomics, it seems no one else was willing to say it.

EDIT 10:00 the same evening: Upon re-reading this post, I think I'm a bit angry sounding. I may have fallen into the habit of producing vitriol and mistaking it for insight. I hope that I have not, but... my apologies if you thought so. If you are new to my blog, I hope that you don't judge me too harshly on this.

On Praying for Other People

Last night I did something which I ought to do more often, yet do not: I prayed for other people.

Usually, I approach prayer almost formulaically: I offer repentence and ask for forgivenness, with some thought towards a particular transgression I committed that day, understood as a token of my transgressions as a whole; I offer thanks for at least two things for which I am grateful that I experienced that day; I ask to be an agent of God in the world; I ask for particular things I feel I need the following day, most often patience, strength, dedication, courage, and other forms of self-control. Sometimes I also ask for direction, if I feel particularly lost. Last night, though, I didn't do even one of those things.

Last night I prayed instead for individuals and groups, as they came to my mind. Surely I could have thought of others to pray for, but I just let the thoughts come up and I prayed as they came. I prayed for a recently evicted man I meant that night, who had been kicked out of his apartment for allowing a homeless man to take shelter there. I prayed for a girl who said she was trying to resolve thoughts about God. I prayed for someone else who I felt was uneducated about other religious traditions, a problem that I feel is rampant among the Christian community. I prayed for the students of the school I volunteer at, of another school in the city with the Read and Run program, and of my mother's school--and also for the teachers at these schools, whose views of life must be impacted by the financial or emotional poverty of some of their pupils. I prayed for others, too, who gave no particular indication that they needed prayer over the course of yesterday, but that occured to me could use it, even if they didn't ask for it or would be upset if they found out that I had been praying for them. (I here nod to Inara from Firefly--either episode two or the second part of the pilot episode.)

At the end of this prayer I was struck by the serenity in which I rested. Sure, I managed to get antsy and uncomfortable later in the night, obstructing my attempts to sleep, but immediately afterwards the sheer rightness of the experience, the spiritual fulfilment, was overwhelming--and I use this word denotatively. It occured to me that this is what I ought to be doing all the time. I need to integrate this into my nightly prayers. Praying for other people--authentically praying for them--is a necessary part of a Christian lifestyle. It is an act of charity, and a profounder one than the ease of giving it may suggest.

This indicates to me that this is a skill that I need to cultivate. This includes both nightly private prayers and praying aloud for others in those opportunities I have for doing so--not too infrequent, given my weekly participation in a few Christian communities. This involves being publically available for prayer requests, cultivating an image as someone who can provide this service--though not in a bureaucratic or commercial way, despite my word choice. I have occasionally heard members of my Christian communities use the word 'prayer-warrior'; I have always through that there was something both apt and perverse in that phrase. Whether I like the terminology or not, I must become one.

Inversely, I must also make available the opportunities for others to pray for me. If I find others-directed prayer to be liberating, then it seems to make sense that those I encounter might also find others-directed prayer to be liberating. Instead of being vague about my prayer needs, perhaps I ought to be more specific, ought to give someone a real sense of how they can pray for me. Of course, telling someone your prayer needs makes you very vulnerable, and I fear vulnerability almost as much as I fear disappointing people. However, this vulnerability is a fair sacrifice to make, I believe, for giving someone the opportunity to provide this form of charity for you. I can think of bigger sacrifices that have been made in Christian history.

Whether I will maintain these new initiatives is yet to be seen; I am not a very good Christian, to be honest, and often fail to deliver on both Christian-community-expected behaviour and, much more importantly, peronally or Biblically expected behaviour (though I'm not bad at hiding these failures from public sight). This is not to say I do not believe this discovery is true or that I will not continue to believe it is true. It is instead to say that I am as flawed as anyone else, and my revelations do not always impact behaviour, regardless of what Freud may think. Despite what happens, I felt that this experience, this new understanding, is valuable, and worth sharing through this medium, even if only a few people come upon it. Perhaps you already knew this; perhaps prayer is foreign to you, and the effects of it are not something you can yet relate to; perhaps you are new to the game and are exhilerated by some new territory that you could explore. I know that, despite having prayed since I've known how to speak, I am new to the game of prayer. Every time I am asked to pray in public I can feel my amateur status. Whatever your position, whatever my limitations, I hope that this one-sided discussion has in some way illuminated some part of your social or spiritual life.

gygygygygygygygygygygygygygygy

In a radical framework shift, I want to encourage you to read my blog posts textually, literarily, formally, deconstructively, post-colonially, archetypically, new historically, anthropologically, marxistly, femininely, queer theoretically, heteroglossically. In many ways I have written my blogs with these criticisms in mind, choosing vocabulary specifically to allow you, as readers, to interpret, analyze, and even criticize in a scholarly fashion. This includes otherwise personal, even spiritual, passages such as this. Essentially, I am becoming familiar with the myriad of ways people tease meaning out of texts, and so I am attempting to frame and in some sense control the processes of that teasing, much as people make jokes at themselves to prevent others from teasing them. As a writer, I cannot predict how you will recover that meaning, but I can predict how might, and work with (against?) that.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I think too much about everything, including myself. I hope that, if nothing else, this makes for interesting reading.

Zombi Attack!

As promised, I will write a brief response to The Serpent and the Rainbow. At some point I'll update the little bit in my recommended books section, but for now I'll give it its own post.

The back of the book puts it like this: "Zombis...the Walking Dead...a mystery that has long baffled, horrified, and tantalized Western imagination. In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis traveled into the Haitian countryside to research strange reports of men drugged, buried alive, and ultimately resurrected from the grave. Drawn into a netherworld of bizarre rituals and wild celebrations, he came face to face with a sorcerer-priest who introduced him to the dark secrets of voodoo potions, powders, and poisons. What began as a scientific quest ended in a spiritual confrontation--a terrifying journey of discovery across the border between life and death, between good and evil."

In his book The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wade Davis explores the culture of voodoo in Haiti, attempting to track down the origins of zombis. Over the course of his investigation, he locates the pharmacological agents behind the zombi phenomenon, but also discovers that the true origins lie not in a chemical event but the spiritual worldviews that pervade the vodoun religion of the Haitian countryside. Davis also undertakes to de-sensationalize the vodoun religion, a sentiment not shared by the publishers who wrote the comments on the back of the book, or, it seems, the reviewers quoted: "Replete with bizarre details to titillate the curious...Zombis do come back from the dead, and Wade Davis knows how" (Washington Post Book World). That respectful treatment notwithstanding, the book reads much like a movie, filled with strange and melodramatic characters, visual details and well-described settings, and some anxious situations and mystical events. Davis also grounds his sometimes incredible tale with forays into history, seeking the roots of vodoun secret societies in Haitian history, and into science, examining the potency of assorted natural toxins and drugs. Together these create an elaborate and well-rounded novel that examines the phenomenon of the resurrected dead through a vantage point that is historical, scientific, anthropological, and spiritual, all in one.

Now, I must emphasize that these are not the zombies of modern fiction (or the post title), rotting corpses staggering the course of their undeath, seeking to feast on the flesh (or brains) of their more vibrant relatives. Instead, they are zombis of the traditional sense--corpses resurrected by a voodoo sorcerer to be a slave of the sorcerer. At least, this is what American scholars thought zombies were. Davis shows this as a lie and explains the true function of zombis in vodoun society--for zombis play an institutionalized role in that society.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a dry academic read that is more based on "the facts" and not on sell-value. I think this would make an excellent movie. And most of the comments on the back of the book are true, from a certain perspective at least. I just don't think that "netherworld," "bizarre," "dark secrets," or "confrontation" are the best words to describe what happens, and these leave out the roles friendship, charity, personal hardship, and trust played in the novel. The secondary characters are real and engaging (as they should be, since they were real) and help create a living portrait of Davis' venture.

So I recommend this book to anyone, and expect that you may get any of a number of things from it: a scientific adventure story into one of the most intriguing pharmaceutical phenomena ever; an anthropologist's navigation through the secret network of Haitian spirituality and undergroung politics; a story of companionship in face of cultural divides; an analysis of a cultural mindset different from our own and an examination of that mindset's advantages; a philosophical treatise on the nature of death, and our relationship to it; a mystery tale filled with nighttime rituals, deadly poisons, and powerful secret societies.

If you read this book, you will embark on Davis' journey, after a fashion, and so I leave you with this declaration, quoted from the novel and from Dr. Lehman, who addressed Davis as his backers made their proposition to him at the beginning of his tale:

"Let me relieve you of any further suspense, Mr. Davis. ...We propose to send you to the frontier of death. If what we are about to tell you is true, as we believe it is, it means that there are men and women dwelling in the continuous present, where the past is dead and the future consists of fear and impossible desires."

Update as of 2 September: James Davis of God Online tells me that there is a movie version, indeed.

On Knowing Someone

Considering I'm on a 'let's-link-to-other-blogs-and-talk-about-them' kick, I'll refer to the blog of a friend of mine from school. Given the set-up of the blog, I won't be able to focus on the particular post I want, but I can tell you it should be the bottom one of this page. It's about knowing someone.

This friend of mine--I'm not sure how he wants to keep his anonymity, so I'll refer to him as JW--has spoken to me on many occasions about trust. He describes himself as awful at small talk; instead, he tends to leap right into a sort of intellectual intimacy, in which he assumes that he's known you for some time. It's the same sort of deal for me, at times--I'll tell very personal things to complete strangers, but I'll only do that if I don't imagine I'll ever encounter that stranger again. For JW, it's different. He says we ought to trust first, and then let people earn our doubt.

This is a theme I want to get at later, broadening it to other things and applying it to a world-view that is more embracing and more open, but I'll stick to the topic for now. I just want to hammer in how hard this life philosophy is for me, and yet how better the world would be if everyone operated on this assumption.

Now, you can get into game theory for this. I'll bring up Tic-for-Tat because, if I don't, someone else will. It operates on that principle and is excellent in the competitions in which it is designed. Something tells me that variations on it are the solution to all problems that result in miscommunication and not conflict of interest. And this clearly and obviously follows loosely to the principle of "Trust first, doubt after evidence," with the additional rule of "Forgive immediately." And it does very well, as I said.

But more importantly, I figure that the best judge of a course of action is it's difficulty. The harder the course is (and that's harder to make yourself perform, not harder to understand), then the more likely it is that it's the right thing to do. Since this is very hard for me, yet I feel a deep yearning to follow it, I'd have to say it's likely the right one. And yet I've not really attempted to put it into practice.

Anyway, I have posted on JW's blog that he ought to write a book on the subject and, if we are truly lucky, he will.

Pressure's on.