Surviving, Thriving, and Neoclassicism

Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex tries to figure out the different worldviews underlying conservative and liberal attitudes. He calls his result the Survive-Thrive spectrum. In his view, right-wingers tend to imagine that civilization is hanging by a thread: therefore, right-wingers want lots of police to prevent the loss of order through crime, and lots of soldiers to prevent it coming from outside. Citizens (or, anyway, the right citizens) should have lots of guns, just in case the threat is too big even for the police. Egghead intellectuals are of no real use: you need practical on-the-ground knowledge. They’re suspicious of outsiders, who not only take the stuff you need but might also destabilize the existing order. As Alexander writes, right-wingers look for “hierarchy and conformity.” If you want to imagine how a conservative thinks, you need to imagine you’re in a zombie apocalypse. Their goal is to Survive. (I suggest you read the whole post; he ties a lot of seemingly disparate conservative concerns into this point of view.)

Liberals, meanwhile, imagine society as headed towards utopia. Since crime is on the decline, police are more likely to cause trouble trying to assert their authority than they are to protect people. Because we have more than we need, it is more important that jobs are safe and fulfilling than productive. And because we have everything we need, we can focus our energy on more distant and longer-term concerns: the environment, eradicating inequality, etc. Liberals are oriented not towards Surviving but Thriving.

With the caveat that this is of course a spectrum rather than a dichotomy and that many people are inconsistent, acting sometimes in one way and sometimes in another, I think Alexander does a good job of describing some conservatives and some liberals, but his thought experiment has some problems as well. One of the biggest is that he omits a particular kind of conservative from his framework, the kind I’d call the neoclassicist.

Some conservatives, thinking that civilized society is hanging by thread, do not react by acting as though civilization is already crumbling and becoming either a military state or acting like roving bands of zombie-hunters, but by acting as civilized as they possibly can. Think of C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, where the protagonists insist on acting honourable despite the approaching apocalypse, or G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, where the protagonists fight anarchists by not being anarchists. In order to keep civilization from crumbling, these conservatives double-down on tradition, on etiquette, on the arts, on philosophy and science and other intellectual pursuits. In Battlestar Galactica, Commander Adama suggests that the fleet must do more than survive; they must also act such that they deserve to survive. So Survival is important to these conservatives, but they can only Survive by Thriving. Anything else isn’t Survival.

But they still wind up being very conservative. Because civilization depends on being super-civilized, they won’t tolerate many breaches of etiquette. Moreover, they can be very hostile towards different value systems. Civilization, after all, relies on everyone being civilized, so you cannot tolerate your neighbour’s polyamorous relationship or your daughter’s anarchist politics. Conformity is as necessary in this view as in Alexander’s conservative view, but Alexander’s Survivalists will allow certain standards to slip in order to react to the apocalypse which the neo-classicists won’t tolerate, since those slippages would result in the apocalypse. And changes or experiments in culture are potentially dangerous things, since they might turn out to destabilize the whole foundation of that culture; it’s not only art that is held to fairly conservative standards, but also social forms. If you allow same-sex marriage, the very idea of marriage would change, letting polygamy, incest, bestiality, and pedophilia in the door. Examples of neo-classicists include C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton (as I implied above), Edmund Burke, the contemporary conservatives who tend to quote those people (see many of the writers for First Things and the American Conservative), and of course Alexander Pope and the other 17^th-century neoclassicists I’m naming the whole group after.

(17^th-century neoclassicists, roughly speaking, adhered to the following six principles: 1) Reason and judgement are the most admirable human faculties. 2) Decorum is paramount. 3) The best way to learn the rules is to study the classical authors. 4) Communities have an obligation to establish and preserve social order, balance, and correctness. 5) Invention is good in moderation. 6) Satire is a useful corrective for unreasonable action, poor judgement, and breaches of decorum.)

The neoclassicists are much more logical, I think, than the survivalists: if both groups note that civilization is hanging by a thread, the neoclassicists try to prevent the civilization from collapsing while the survivalists act as though it already has. The neoclassicist could point out the survivalists’ ironic mistake: by acting as though civilization has already collapsed, when it hasn’t yet, the survivalist may actually make the collapse more likely.

And, by the same token, I think Alexander describes certain liberals quite well, but I wouldn’t consider my own position well-described by his spectrum. Even if society is headed toward utopia, we clearly aren’t there right now. Acting as though we live in a utopia is a fantastic way to prevent a utopia from happening. So I would notice that some liberals might act like we’ve already arrived at utopia, but a more considered liberalism works towards making that utopia happen. The first sort of liberal is, ironically, less inclined to change than the second, because if you think you’ve achieved utopia, why bother changing anything? However, if utopia is possible but not yet attained, you have to work hard to get there: it’s from this more considered liberalism that we get anti-racist activists and ardent environmentalists and so forth.

Indeed, at a certain point and in some respects, leftists look a lot like neoclassicists. I would include myself among these. Some leftists reject the whole “headed toward utopia” vision; we would note with relief that we’ve made great strides in knowledge and medicine, but utopia is far off and we’ve maybe made some things far worse. Income inequality is in a terrible state, and economic mobility does not seem any better today than in 1600. 1600, however, did not have the threats of nuclear war, environmental collapse, or corporate ownership of your genetic material. Indeed, some leftists (including me) would see the world as drifting towards dystopia, not utopia. Civilization is hanging by a thread. But the solution (in our view) isn’t to double-down on tradition and so on, because the existing social order is part of the problem; the existing social order is what produced those nuclear warheads and this environmental precarity and that economic inequality. And the conservative avoidance of change and refusal to accommodate different perspectives is what creates a dystopian government. So my leftist response to thinking that civilization is hanging by a thread is not to double-down on tradition any more than it is to act like there’s a zombie apocalypse going on: my leftist response is to try and tear out all those bad traditions and replace them with something better. We want to try new things and welcome alien perspectives, because our own traditions do not contain the answer, or at least not the whole answer. Perhaps Alexander is right in not counting this as liberal; it may be better called radical. It’s the politics of socialists and anarcho-pacifists. The neoclassicists do not fit so well on Alexander’s Survive-Thrive spectrum, but we radicals fit even less well.

A final word on the Survive-Thrive spectrum: I am not sure how well the zombie apocalypse thought experiment works. It’s easy and tempting to think of a zombie apocalypse as ending civilization, but I don’t think that’s right. I suspect that neoclassicists and survivalists would respond to a zombie apocalypse differently: survivalists would become bands of disciplined survivors, while the neoclassicists would insist that the only way to really prevent the zombies from winning would be to still act honourably despite the apparent absurdity of that honour. In other words, perhaps it isn’t so telling to imagine that survivalists act like they are living in a zombie apocalypse because the culture people come out of would impact how they acted when that culture appeared to collapse. Rapture-ready folks would not act the same as transhumanists and singularity-mongers.

Possible glossary, bearing in mind that this does not describe all of the political landscape by any stretch:

Survivalist: a kind of conservative who, believing that civilization is hanging by a thread, acts as though the apocalypse has happened or has started. Think right-wing US gun nuts or al-Qaeda.
Neoclassicist: a kind of conservative who, believing that civilization is hanging by a thread, acts as civilized as possible. Think Edmund Burke, C. S. Lewis, or Eve Tushnet.
Thriver: a kind of liberal who, believing that society is headed towards utopia, acts as though society is already a utopia and therefore sees little point in challenging the status quo. Think… Hollywood celebrities, mostly?

Activist: a kind of liberal who, believing that society is headed towards utopia, acts to usher that utopia in. Think David Deutsch, Barack Obama, or Gene Robinson.
Radical: a kind of leftist who, believing that society is headed towards dystopia, acts to prevent dystopia by tearing out the parts of civilization pushing it that way. Think Marxists, Christian anarchists, or David Suzuki.

Caveat 1: This is all just a reaction to Slate Star Codex’s framing. I’m not sure how useful it will wind up being, and I don’t expect to think of people or movements primarily in terms of the glossary I’ve offered. This is no more than an offering, no more than one way of colour-coding the thoughtscape.
Caveat 2: I have not read enough of Slate Star Codex to know whether Scott Alexander has already addressed the conservatives I’m calling the neoclassicists. From my skimming, he does an excellent job showing some things that are terribly wrong with what I’m calling the survivalist viewpoint, but I don’t see much about the differences between neoclassicism and survivalism.

(Thanks to Leah Libresco for linking to Scott Alexander's post in one of her own and thus drawing it to my attention.)

Purity Disgusts Me

or, Are My Results the Right Ones?

A Moral Foundations Theory post

After I took the Moral Foundations Theory test and got my results, I was tempted to feel pretty smug about those results. Of course I scored the way I did; the Moral Foundations I prefer are the better ones. (Confession: I succumbed to that temptation for a while.) As much as I talk about listening to conservative viewpoints openly, I admit that I have a very hard time practicing what I preach. Most conservatism strikes me as misguided (say, conservative economic policy) and some of it strikes me as horrible (anti-homosexuality rhetoric and policy). It takes a lot of effort to think about conservatism more charitably, but I can do it: I remind myself that I was once more conservative than I am, and I look to conservative thinkers who I respect (Eve Tushnet, for instance, whose opinions on homosexuality I would find pretty repellent were she not homosexual herself). Opposing same-sex marriage isn't always evil, I can convince myself to recognize; it's just misguided and uncharitable. Given my emotional investment in being leftist, seeing that my results were a slight exaggeration of the typical liberal results was something of a triumph for me; I had been worried that my conservative roots might show.

Eventually I remembered to try to think about the Moral Foundations from a conservative point of view. (In general, trying to think from another point of view is a skill/virture I want to develop.) And what struck me is this: conservative-me would argue that liberals were in the wrong here because all of the Moral Foundations are important. Morality is best understood as the maximization of all of the Foundations (or virtues, we'd be well off to call them). Unless you develop, follow, cherish all six of them, you have a stunted morality. Conservative-me doesn't hold purity higher than freedom or care, after all; conservative-me holds purity alongside freedom and care. Moreover, I talked in the last post of this series about how the different Foundations might shape each other or influence how we interpret the other Foundations. So conservative-me would say that conservative-me understands freedom, and understands care, and understands fairness, better than a liberal/socialist-me, because conservative-me interprets those concepts in light of purity, loyalty, and respect. Freedom can only be truly achieved if purity is achieved as well, and vice-versa.

Now, I think Beck's posts at Experimental Theology about disgust show how concerns about purity warp the other concerns rather than inform them: when we are working with disgust (and disgust is the engine that drives purity), we can't think straight about the rest of it. We infrahumanize those we associate with disgust, and once we do that, we stop applying all of those other virtues to them. Disgust is something we need to fight against in ourselves, and we cannot wage that particular battle if we value purity. However, listening to conservative-me's little soapbox sermon did give me pause: am I missing out on something? Should I value loyalty more? Should I value respect/authority more? Is it possible that there's something to this purity thing which deserves my attention?

The trouble is that my response to purity (as a Moral Foundation) is disgust. I sometimes catching myself curl my lip when I read anti-homosexuality rhetoric; racism is awful anyway, but when it's tinged with concerns about purity, I start to feel revulsion towards that racism. (Lovecraft's fiction is a good example of racism that is preoccupied with purity. cf "The Shadow Over Innsmouth.") So it's really hard for me to think straight about this topic. However, Beck's research seems pretty spot-on from what I can tell, so I'm not too worried that my dismissal of purity as a Moral Foundation is unfounded (heh heh). That said, I cannot dismiss loyalty or respect/authority so easily. I wonder how you might resolve this problem: I'm back at meta-ethics again.

Index

Why Taxpayers and Not Citizens?

I was watching the news yesterday and I noticed that Stephen Harper, my country's Prime Minister, said that his cabinet members would continue "working for Canadian taxpayers," despite recent scandals. It's not the scandals I want to talk about--largely because I think that the current scandals are unsurprising and really not that important compared to the other really disconcerting stuff Harper has been up to (censorship of environmental scientists and national archivists and librarians, for instance)--but about the language of the excerpt. Specifically, I'm wondering why the cabinet members are working for tax payers rather than citizens.

My understanding of government is that it is supposed to represent all of its citizens, not just those who pay taxes. I'm not naive enough to have missed how people de-humanize the unemployed, let alone disenfranchise them, but at least in theory the government represents every Canadian citizen, regardless of their annual income. If you were going to limit who the goverment works for to a group more select than citizens, I would expect it to be the electorate: if I'm voting for you to represent me, you should be representing me regardless of how much I pay each April, right? While I think the switch from all citizens to the electorate is still a mistake, it's one I think I understand. So why the switch to taxpayer?

Does it have to do with the verb "work"? Normally you work for the people paying you. Taxpayers pay for the government, so then bureaucrats and politicians are our employees? I feel like this is probably why taxpayer was chosen over citizen or voter, but I think it makes a poor arguement: again, we don't get votes according to how much we pay in taxes, so the relationship between the electorate/citizenry and the government is not analogous, really, to the relationship between an employer and employee. (Nor has it ever been.)

Why am I worried about this? Well, 1. it suggests that political and bureaucratic authority, representation, etc. resides in money and economic status, not constitutional structure or the electoral system or something (anything) less crass than capital, and 2. this sort of language isn't just Harper's, or the Conservative Party's, but every politician's, and no one seems to have noticed what's wrong with it. I didn't notice until yesterday and I care about this sort of thing.

So, politicians of Canada, here's my ten cents (oh my goodness, the idea that my voice has a financial value has colonized my language more thoroughly than I'd thought): please stop talking like the citizens you represent are only the ones who pay taxes. You are accountable to all of us, even those who don't make enough each year to owe the government any money. (Unless, of course, you decide you aren't accountable to any of us, which would be reprehensible and unsurprising.)

To Exist is to Differ, Part Two

To Exist is to Differ

Difference as a Place of Study

Part Two


"I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences."
Isabel Allende

A cursory look over my more politically- or socially-minded posts in the last few years indicates how obsessed I am with a proper attitude toward difference, even if I was not aware that this was a theme in my writing. In what is easily my most popular post of all time, "Sexy Bodies, Disabled Bodies," I introduce my interest in atypical anatomy, though at this time I was not aware of that term (which is Alice Dreger's). However, it is with my ill-fated (because unfinished) series on The Boundaries of Self that I insist that any definition of "body" or "self" must fully account for atypical anatomies without simply designating them "exceptions." The way I run with McCloud's Four Campfires, which is really a kind of structuralism, is to make it about difference rather than sameness. My most recent concern with ethics has been about meta-ethics, the ethics of addressing differences in ethical beliefs. When I talk about political axes (here and here), I get anxious about categories (left v. right) that ignore other ways organizing political belief and activity. I defend the existence of many denominations insofar as they address differences in congregants' needs. I consider myself a heretic in most communities (heretic: a person who has beliefs unorthodox to the community of which zhe insists zhe is a part). Also, if you were to pay much attention to what I say in the comment sections of those blogs in which I participate--Unequally Yoked, Experimental Theology, Elizabeth Esther--you'd probably notice that many of my contributions, and most of my arguments, involve me saying that someone or another is over-generalizing. What may have started out as simple contrarianism during my years as a teenager--when my Grade 9 English teacher said that a first-person past-tense narrator must always survive the story, I immediately wrote and submitted a short story in which the first-person past-tense narrator dies--has become for me a political and social commitment to the appreciation of difference.

I think my academic career has played a role in this, which I outlined in my previous post, as has my extra-curricular reading of post-modernists and continental philosophers. You could also attribute this, maybe (but only maybe), to my habit of hopping between Protestant churches, or my taste for speculative fiction, or my interest in psychology, or my habit of imagining what it would be like to be a non-human animal. (For instance, did you know that the Common Octopus has semi-autonomous limbs? The octopus's central nervous system instructs a limb to complete a particular task, but the limb works out how to achieve the task using its own local nerve cluster. While humans have something like this going on with our ganglia, octopedes' limbs actually do some of their own problem-solving, which is far more extensive than what our ganglia do. It would be fascinating to experience semi-autonomy of one's limbs.)

OK. So what do I mean by "a proper attitude toward difference"?

1. Epistemology. I don't fully know. I have only recently figured out, after all, that this has been a general issue in my thinking. I am also phobic of completion, or certainty, in my personal philosophy, so even if I had been thinking about this for years I doubt that I'd have come to any kind of conclusion.

2. Axiology. What I don't mean is some form of total ethical relativism. I don't think that different ways of doing things are all equally valid. I would say that there are multiple ways of doing things that are just as good, but that doesn't mean that all things are equal. Some ways of doing things are very bad. It's just that there isn't a single best way of doing things. (You might think of this as a few local optima, but none of those local optima are a global optima.) So while I'm not an ethical relativist, nor a metaphysical relativist, I could maybe called a weak cultural relativist.

3. Axiology. Of course there are certain kinds of difference which I would condemn. For instance, certain kinds of criminal behaviour are unacceptable deviations from typical behaviour. I wouldn't celebrate difference without qualification. But my condemnation is based on ethical violations; whether or not the behaviour is different--or, in a more loaded term, deviant--from other people's behaviour is irrelevant to my condemnation. By the same token, I am willing to criticize normative behaviour (for instance, capitalist materialism).

4. Metaphysics, Axiology. What I am willing to say is that a lot of differences aren't comprehensible in terms of good/bad, or good/better/best. Bodies, for instances, are never wrong; no body is better at being a body than another. Some bodies are in more pain than others, of course, and that might well be a result of differences in those bodies. Social conditions make certain bodies more comfortable than others. But there is no Platonic form of "body" from which any given body deviates. No body is more typical of body-ness than another body. Any claim you make about bodies ought to apply equally to all bodies; if it does not, your claim is false (or at least applies only to particular bodies, but that distinction ought to be clear and appropriate). A failure to account for atypical bodies, in fact, is easily the biggest reason why a lot of atypical bodies are uncomfortable to have; the body itself is often not uncomfortable (cf. Dreger's One of Us).

5. Axiology. I would also be willing to say that the failure to account for atypical bodies, or atypical psychology (or even typical but non-normative psychology, like introversion), is endemic to Western philosophy, politics, art...really just Western culture generally. It is also probably a problem in lots of non-Western cultures, too, but I can only speak about Western culture with any reliability. I opened this post with the Isabel Allende quote because it is an example of a common attitude that seems to be in support of inclusion but must result in a failure to understand, and thus to include, people who are different from me. Focusing on similarity at the expense of difference is not a moral good, but so many people seem to think it is a moral good.

6. Epistemology. In the end, I would say that, as with texts, to exist is to differ. Humans have a lot of similarities, yes, but we are also idiosyncratic. Whether those idiosyncrasies are for good or ill I cannot say, but any theory or program or attitude that fails to account for those differences cannot really explain human behaviour, human need, or human dignity. Such an epistemological failure cannot help but produce metaphysical and axiological failures as well. This, for me, is the bedrock of a proper attitude toward difference. (So, with apologies to Eve Tushnet, I actually am a special snowflake, and so are you.)

It's important to note that I have other commitments than just this respect for differences, and some of these commitments might trump the commitment to difference, but ultimately I don't think I can explain and understand my own ideas without at least addressing the above.

(tl;dr: Just as the differences between texts must be addressed in any explanation of those texts, so too must the differences between people be addressed by any account of human behaviour; failure to do so results in other failures, usually ethical or political ones; these failures are really common in our culture; there are a lot of different kinds of difference and it turns out that I talk about them a lot.)

Does Communism Need a Better Aesthetics?

In talking with a friend of mine who identifies as Marxist, I realized that my position on communism is fairly muddled. While I generally consider myself a socialist rather than a communist, I realized that I had no particular reason to choose socialism over communism besides complacency. Part of my preference for socialism is probably quite unlike most people's criticisms of communism: I grudgingly endorse strong state control as a means of enforcing environmental and anti-discrimination initiatives (largely because I'm cynical about the efficacy of grassroots activism to make any difference), and socialism requires a centralized state in ways that communism does not (or, at least, I tend to associate socialism with a centralized state and communism with communes and collectives). However, I do not think that that really explains why I dislike communism.

The real reason I dislike communism is that I find it ugly.

For me, the communist aesthetic is founded entirely in the realm of labour. Of course this makes sense, since communist thought has historically been a critique of capitalism and the particular labour relations within capitalist economics. It is perfectly logical that communism would return repeatedly to labour, and given Marx's historical position, that labour tends to be imagined as industrial. The images of communism are of factory-work and by extension of automation. At times, the images might be agricultural, but they are not particularly pastoral. Thanks perhaps to Soviet Russian propaganda but almost certainly to the reality of farm work as well, agricultural work in communist aesthetics appears mechanized and labour-intensive. Not only is none of this pretty, it is also undesirable. In truth, I dislike both the idea of difficult manual labour and the idea of work in a factory setting. (As Northrop Frye explicitly puts it, the world of labour is not the worst of all worlds, but it is closer to the world we reject than the world we desire. I don't think I need to lean on Frye for such a claim, though. Among other things, I am only making claims about my imagining of these economic systems; I am not making claims about a universal imagination.)

Of course it is the case that unpleasant working conditions are even more characteristic of capitalism than of communism; uncovering that fact is one of communism's chief critiques. But because communism makes the reality of hard work, industrialization, and mechanization apparent, it is communism that I associate with those realities. Capitalism, meanwhile, promotes an appealing fiction as its aesthetic, one of hygienic consumption, choice, and leisure. Of course, all of these are fictions: we work more, destroy more, have fewer meaningful options under capitalism. However, capitalism appears pleasant, especially to those of us in the middle class.

Let's look at that word “pleasant,” because it's also important. The primary emotions promoted by capitalism (or, I should say, capitalist advertising, because I'm reifying capitalism and I shouldn't do that) is pleasure, satisfaction, and admiration. The emotions that I associate with communism are much different. In fact, I don't associate many emotions at all with communism, since I think of it as largely dehumanized and mechanized. But when I think of communism I also think of revolution, and I associate revolution with anger or some similar passion. And I also think of union meetings, and I associate union meetings with frustration and discomfort.

Of course I know that advertising is a lie and I am at times able to return to capitalism the aesthetics of labour, alienation, struggle, anger, and destruction, but it is ordinarily free-market capitalism that I think of in those senses. Socialism, or the kind of socialism practised in Canada, at any rate, is really capitalism with sort-of-communist aspirations, and it ought to be subject to many of the same critiques as free-market capitalism. However, since socialism is certainly less subject to some of those critiques, I associate socialism with other, more attractive aesthetics: trees and clean water (ie. environmentalism), the redemption of criminals (ie. rehabilitative programs), the rescue of the downtrodden (ie. welfare, public health care), the inculcation of culture (ie. public education), the connections that connect and thereby produce a nation (ie. postal system, roads). Socialism obviously looks better than capitalism (as it should!), but somehow it manages to dodge the trap that caught communism by not directly critiquing capitalism itself, instead appearing as an improved form of capitalism.

A political position's aesthetics is a very silly basis on which to judge it, but I think I'm right in attributing my preference to aesthetics, and I suspect I'm not the only one to do so. The problem isn't just understanding that advertisers, and others invested in a capitalist economy, have produced an aesthetic of capitalism that is fictitious. The problem is with the aesthetics I associate with communism: perhaps communism needs a better PR job, but perhaps it is also true that I need to re-think my own conception of communism's aesthetics.

I am not stating that I now am a communist; rather, I am noting that in order to think through economic systems I need to first address how concerns about aesthetics are impeding the clarity of my thought. It also occurs to me that in other countries, or even other parts of this country, or even other demographics in this part of Canada, such aesthetics might differ.

Disguising Subversion with Love Stories

Romantic Subplot in The Hunger Games

Note: This is not part of my meta-ethics series. I just decided that I did not want to postpone publishing it until that series is done.

As I indicated before, I have recently seen The Hunger Games (movie, not book). One of the things that I found very surprising about this movie was just how subversive it is. Most supposedly subversive movies are either not very subversive at all (Avatar) or do a terrible, muddled job of subversion (V for Vendetta, oh my goodness). At least on the first viewing, The Hunger Games is much smarter than most of Hollywood's supposedly subversive movies, and it even takes a few potshots at conventional Hollywood storytelling--after all, it is about the use of media to suppress underprivileged populations. One of the most impressive instances was the movie's deliberate indication that the romantic subplot distracts from more important political questions.

(Here be spoilers.)

Combatants in the Hunger Games desperately need sponsors to help outfit them as the event proceeds, so the characters must be very deliberate about their public appearances. During the interviews before the Games themselves, Peeta says that he has a crush on Katniss. Katniss is angry that he would use her to further his own publicity, but their trainer Abernathy tells her that it has helped her publicity as well: it has made her desirable. Besides being a shout-out to Girard, this episode indicates that romantic feelings, whether or not they are genuine, are part of the proceedings. Instead of somehow transcending time and place, like we have pretended since Petrarch, love is subject to the society, culture, and ideology the lovers inhabit. Peeta's admission of love, even if it's true, is also an attempt at survival that is endorsed by the media spectacle and becomes part of the narrative that Flickerman, the interviewer and master of ceremonies, helps create. (Of course, he is probably working from a script, too.)

Abernathy latches onto this narrative device. What I find interesting is that another narrative device--Katniss' voluntary substitution of herself for her younger sister--is eclipsed by the romance narrative, at least as far as the publicity is concerned. I say publicity rather than public for a reason: Katniss' adoption of Rue as a surrogate sister certainly get the attention of Rue's district. What Abernathy knows--and likely what the Capital's propogandists rely on--is the fact that the romance narrative will provide explanations for potentially subversive behaviour, explanations that mitigate the subversiveness of it. So when Katniss and Peeta defy the authorities by attempting double-suicide rather than monomachy (and thereby trying to answer Peeta's question about dying in a way that shows the authorities that they do not own him), Abernathy is quick to use the romantic subplot to explain away this behaviour. He says that the pair "showed them up" and that there would be consequences: "This is serious. And not just for you. They don't take these things lightly." So Katniss and Peeta must act as though their behaviour was not about the power or authority, was not in fact directed at the Capital or about anything that might also concern the people of the poor Districts. In order to prevent the Capital from reinforcing that power with violence, they must act (cynically) like their actions are born of the sort of love that transcends time and place. Frankly, I was not sure whether to be impressed by this realization, or disappointed that Katniss decided to play along with the love narrative which disguised her more subversive motives. How much complicity should characters accept in order to survive long enough to fight that power?

One of the interesting things about seeing this as a movie but not reading the book is that I had no way of gauging the not-especially-expressive Katniss's emotions. I could not tell whether she actually reciprocated Peeta's attraction or romantic feelings. (I understand that in the book it is clear she does reciprocate somewhat, but that's second-hand). In this state of ignorance, the romantic subplot seemed even more surreal, even more a ploy to survive the Capital. Certainly her sacrifices for Peeta were not much different from her sacrifices for Rue, for whom she would feel no romantic love. How the other movies treat her relationship with Peeta is now of almost no consequence: the idea that romantic subplot distract from real political subversion in the Hunger Games, and also The Hunger Games, and also, by extension, if you're willing to think it, most popular culture, is already in place. I cannot be sure how strong this effect would be in first person narration.

I want to clarify a few things: I don't think that genuine, non-cynical romantic subplots (or main plots) are necessarily bad. But I would, for a lot of reasons, like to see much more fiction that treat such relationships with more sophistication and more awareness of the problems they can produce, and I would like to see more fiction that does not treat romantic subplots as particularly important. I think The Hunger Games does a good job of showing some of those problems.

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?

A Thought on Justice

The other day I was thinking about justice, which in the Christian theological tradition has historically been contrasted with mercy. On the one hand there is justice, which requires that all people receive what they deserve due to the content of their actions. On the other hand, there is mercy, which requires kindness to those who are suffering. To fully embody these two qualities is our goal, but it is impossible for humans and for human institutions. Only God can do so and God can only do so on, or through, the cross.

What if we have justice wrong? What if it doesn't mean that all people receive what they deserve? (For one thing, I have difficulty explaining this mechanism of "deserving.")

I tried to think of what I mean or imagine when I think of justice. I discounted the first few things I thought of, because those were phrases with the word in them--Justice Department, Justice League--or metonyms--scales, swords, paladins. The best and closest articulation, one which encompasses the realm of justice departments but also social justice issues, was this: justice is the action towards creating and maintaining a fairly ordered world. (This is not "fairly" in the sense of "rather" or "reasonably", but more like "equitably".) This is of course not a perfect definition because we then fall back to what "fair" means--it might evoke deserving again--but I'm going to use it to make a distinction.

This history of ideas is located firmly in the armchair-philosophy position, but in lieu of extensive research I'm going to offer it regardless. I wonder if we have fooled ourselves about justice from quite a long time ago, around the time people developed law. In the pursuit of a fairly ordered society, communities resorted to punishment models of enforcement. That is, in order to deter crime and therefore promote a fairly ordered system, those who committed crime were given predictable punishments so that they would not want crime. Punishing crimes then became an instrument of justice, and the activity of that punishment became an organ of justice. But societies did not have (perhaps, initially, did not need or could not produce) other forms of justice, such as universal health care or financial accountability or anti-heterosexism initiatives. As a result, the law enforcement system became the entirety of the justice system, and humans developed the idea that justice was identical to the punishment of crimes (and perhaps the inverse, the reward of good deeds).

Let's look at the famous introduction to Law and Order: "In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories." (Dun dun.) Even noting that this refers specifically to criminal justice, what I notice is that there is no sense whatsoever of reparation to the victim. There is no consolation. No healing. And there is no healing for the offenders, either; there is no concern for rehabilitation. There is also no concern for the prevention of crime. There is only retribution. This is only a small part of the movement towards a fairly ordered society. There is law, yes, and a certain kind of order, but that order seems to only be a legal one.

So I'm wondering if retribution is even a necessary component of justice at all. It has been a part of justice, necessarily, in the past. But is it one necessarily, in the philosophical sense? I don't think so; it seems only to be a component of justice insofar as it is a move towards a more fairly ordered system. If my suspicion is correct, then it seems to me that we need to rethink a lot of our political, legal, moral, and theological formulations.

"Those to Whom it Matters Most"

One more article before I get to work.

In "Gay rights and religion are not opposed to one another," Petra Davis begins by talking about the false binary that much of the same-sex marriage debate has formed:

Lesbian, gay, bi and trans people are as diverse, culturally, as any other group, with many from faith communities among the throng. Gay columnists are quick to deploy generalisations about religious abuse, with little regard for those with complex cultural, sexual and gender identities. If the debate were led by those to whom it matters most - LGBT people of faith - it might well look significantly different.

She moves quickly from this topic to the other issues around which LGBT people might want to organize: say, mental illness or homelessness in the LGBT community. These seem to be more pressing issues that equal marriage rights. Why are they not being addressed? By the end of the article she becomes a bit alarmist--I'm not sure I would want to use the phrase "a new queer fascism"--but barring the final paragraph, it's a good read.

A few disconnected thoughts: the LGBT people of faith may not be leading the conversation because, by now, their voices are thoroughly overwhelmed. I do not imagine that they can speak easily in their religious communities (though that's changing); I don't know enough about LGBT circles, but I imagine there might be silencing there, as well. So asking why the conversation is not being led by them strikes me as a little naive: they have good reason of fearing being outed (as queer or as religious) to either community. But we should also try to avoid the "silent victims" trope, which can re-enforce their victimhood and cast us (whoever we are) as necessary saviours for them. (Avatar, Dances with Wolves, The Blind Side, The Help, etc. etc.)

And perhaps the focus is on marriage rights because those are easier to fix than homelessness, mentall illness, and so forth. It has clear victory conditions. Focusing on the Marriage Front allows one to identify enemies (those who oppose legislation) and easily select tools (lobbying, legal-drafting, etc.) to win that campaign. The other arenas are more serious, but finding out who is blocking you and selecting the best means to acheive your goals are a lot harder when you're combatting increased incidents of mental illness in LGBT people. That daunting (and less clearly adversarial) campaign makes it difficult to draw media attention, financial backers, and public support. It also involves other categories of oppression (ie. mental illness, neurotypicality), which makes delineating your "sides" a lot harder.

Disallowed Opinions

In my third year of my undergraduate degree, I was asked (as a member of the Department Students Council) to attend a job talk by a prospective lecturer. During this talk, the faculty began to ask the lecturer questions, and one of the junior faculty interrupted her own question to say, "I don't mean to sound conservative--I'm not conservative--but... ." I was a bit concerned by this insertion, ticked that the lecturer would feel such distaste for the conservative position that she would need to distance herself from it. When I got home and related this to my housemates, one of them said, "You would be offended by that, wouldn't you?," as though I was somehow emblematic of conservatism. (Which is kind of weird, since I'm socialist, environmentalist, and strongly concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice.)

Now that I look back on this, I realize that that faculty member could not have done otherwise. If you want to be taken seriously in academia, if you want anyone to listen to you, then you need to remove yourself constantly from the suggestion of being conservative. Conservatism is not an allowable position in academia, or at least not humanities departments in Canada. And so even those people who are not conservative--not even remotely conservative--must always be on guard to disavow conservativism in case any particular opinion seems to appear conservative or look like a particular conservative opinion.

There are a few problems with this, and I'm not sure how they rank in terms of destructiveness. One problem is that people who have conservative opinions are effectively barred from conversation (not necessarily because they cannot speak but rather because no one will listen). And while some might not lament the loss of their conservative opinions (more on this in a moment), we should certainly lament the loss of their other opinions, those that are either not conservative or that are not trackable on a conservative-liberal-socialist continuum. These lost opinions may be very good ones, ones we are in need of, but if we are too busy distancing ourselves from conservatism, we won't be able to take them seriously.

The second problem is that a conservative idea could, of course, be correct. I'm having a difficult time imagining a conservative idea which I could support, but then again I don't think much of that left-right continuum, so ideas I might think of as non-conservative could appear conservative to others. At any rate, I am at least willing to admit that there could be opinions which appear conservative that turn out to be rather valuable without turning out to be non-conservative. In fact, that certain positions which I am very certain are correct can be closely if not perfectly formulated in conservative terms (ie. conservationism and conservative are cognate for a reason) suggests that there are conservative ideas which, if slightly reformulated, could fit admirably within a non-conservative framework. All of this indicates that barring conservative ideas from the discourse is counter-productive. And yet, by making conservatism something we must necessarily distance ourselves from if we want to be heard, we have ensured that those ideas do not get aired. And that is bad news indeed.

Protection from Temporal Power

or, The Separation of Church and State

I am certainly not the only one who has voiced deep suspicions regarding the idea of secular spaces and parts of life, but I have voiced them, here. On re-reading those posts, however, I realize that there may be cause for confusion, and so I wish to make a clarification: while I do not believe that I can divide my life into the religious and the non-religious, I will defend secularism as a political institution. That is, I will argue for the institutional separation of church and state.

I can understand, though, how a devoted Christian (or other believer) could desire a conflation of a religious group and the ruling party. If you do truly believe that your religion offers the best understanding of the universe and the best moral framework, then it may seem to follow that your religion should guide (dictate?) your society's political decisions. The best way of ensuring that, unless your electorate is homogenous, is to have your religion unambiguously in charge. (I think of C S Lewis' allegory of the fleet in Mere Christianity.)

There are some obvious problems to this: for instance, even if Christianity were in charge, I don't think it's clear whose Christianity is in charge. Pope Benedict's? Pope John Paul II's? (I'd say these are different.) Fred Phelp's? Gene Robinson's? Pat Robertson's? Alexis Seniantha's? And how would such religious-political power be enforced? This also holds true for any kind of ideological power, really: can you maintain it and enforce it without violating the principles of that ideology? The sort of Christianity I believe in can't be enforced without contradiction, and this is, I think, an important point. Again I would like to turn to Huston Smith on Hinduism (not that I get everything I know about religion from The World's Religions, but I find it's succinct and usually make explicit what I want to refer to).

In the following passage Smith explains the role of the brahmin in the Hindu caste system:

Members of this class must possess enough willpower to counter the egoism and seductions that distort perception. They command respect because others recognize both their own incapacity for such restraint and the truth of what the seer tells them. [...] But such vision is fragile; it yields sound discernments only when carefully protected. Needing leisure for unhurried reflection, the seer must be protected from overinvolvement in the day-to-day exigencies that clutter and cloud the mind [...]. Above all, this final caste must be protected from temporal power. India considered Plato's dream of the philosopher king unrealistic, and it is true that when brahmins assumed social power, they became corrupt. For temporal power subjects its wielder to pressures and temptations that to some extent refract judgment and distort it. The role of the seer is not to crack down but to counsel, not to drive but to guide. [emphasis mine]

We see here that it is not only political, institutional power that corrupts the brahmin, but also social power. It is likely an oversimplification to say that the worst excesses of Christian churches--whether Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Pentacostal--are a result of power, but I am certain that power was involved, and I think a cursory glance through your own understanding of history will support that.

For instance, much of my sense of the specifics of doctrinal history come from my Lutheran confirmation class some years ago. To my understanding, many of the problems that Luther sought to reform in the Catholic Church, leading to his excommunication and, eventually, the formation of one of the earliest Protestant churches, were fairly obviously instances in which the political power of the Church resulted in a corruption of its doctrine. In particular, the sale of indulgences could only exist in a setting where the church dealt in wealth and power. (Or so you'd think, but Scientology and the celebrity version of Kaballah do sometimes exchange spiritual status for money, and I'm not going to say that televangelists are above similar tricks. But these are somewhat different phenomena.) More than this, Luther was forced into exile because of his heterodoxy. When political power and religious groups are closely tied, heresy is necessarily political. (In better news, it wasn't much later that the Catholic Church conceded he was right on the indulgence count.) If you prefer other examples, I can think of the abuses performed both on Aboriginal bodies and on theology in Anglican missions in Canada, or the current theological "work" being done to support the subjugation of female and homosexual individuals, and to support aggression against Islam (in the past it would have been communism), in certain Protestant churches today.

And so I support the separation of church and state not just to protect the state, but to protect the church. The role of any religious institution is to guide and teach, to offer aid and sanctuary. The effect power has on these roles is largely negative. I had a professor once who said that Christianity might improve for its loss of cultural influence, by forcing it to remember its origin as an outcast belief and thereby forcing it to remember its duty and allegiance to the marginalized, an allegiance all but forgotten these days.

A word of caution, though: I imagine some of the ugliest forms of Christianity that exist today get their ugliness from their loss of power. That's not to say that the loss of power won't, in time, be cleansing for most, but for those invested too much in the idea that America is a Christian nation, or the equivalent of that in other countries (like my own), this loss of power will result in some atrocities. I want to note, though, that this is still a result of power's corruption; you just don't always see the rot until you kick the log over.

And another word of caution: The role of the brahmin is to give direction to society, including and perhaps especially the prince. Isolating the brahmin from power doesn't mean he or she has no role in it. The trick seems to be that the brahmin's resulting power must be invisible to him or her, the (hopefully healthy) inverse of an Ender's Game scenario.

And a final word of caution: It is not only religion that is corrupted by power. Economic or scientific beliefs, even when in themselves good, can be too. While Marx may have been on to something, Stalin wasn't; while genetics is true, when combined with power you might get eugenics.

7 Quick Takes (73)

1. I should not be doing this. I should be reading and editing a fragment of a novella for a friend so we can discuss it tomorrow. I should also be writing something new for tomorrow, problably a sonnet about silverfish. I should ALSO be reading Marlowe's Tamburlaine (both parts). Getting a start on Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 might also be a good idea. As would preparing for my Reported Speech class. Also, there is an e-mail to an aunt that I ought to write soon. Not to mention letters to reply to. And, yet, all I want to do is write this blog post and then watch the events unfolding in Egypt.

2. If you are unaware of what's happening in Egypt, you should become aware of what's happening in Egypt. I've been watching Al Jazeera, and from what I understand, that is the only competitive source right now. None of the North American channels are worthwhile at the time I'm writing this. You can stream Al Jazeera live here. For those of you in the dark about what's going on, there's possibly a popular revolution right now in Egypt, and similar protests are going on in Jordan. (I say "possibly" only because it won't be a revolution if it doesn't succeed.)

3. I wrote a lot of letters this week. I'm still not caught up.

Last week I visited the Rare Books Collection at UBC with a class and read some authors' correspondences (Douglas Coupland, Dante Gabriel Rossetti). Suddenly letter-writing looks different. What if one of my recipients becomes famous and some embarassingly juvenile comment I wrote becomes part of a public collection?

4. As you might have read in my previous post, I got One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal out from the library. I have started to think that perhaps this is an area I should pursue. Anatomic and neurological atypicality are in many ways invisible minorities. Disability activism has some momentum, but disability is somewhat different from anatomic atypicality.

5. On Sunday I was recruited at church to help move a TV. I was recruited on the strength of being the youngest adult parishioner. It was another one of those unusual incidents in which I clearly was the strongest, most able-bodied person present. That is so entirely unlike my usual self-image that I don't know how to respond. (I helped, of course; I mean that I don't know how to respond mentally to people telling me I look strong, because I don't.)

It wasn't a bad move, though.

6. On the Saturday preceding I spent three hours helping organize the church library. We "released" a number of books "into the wild" because they were written at a time when a lot of churches saw things differently, especially concerning child-rearing, gender roles, and disability. There was a sort of catharsis to purging the shelves and boxes of that material. Most of the time we spent getting the books out of boxes and onto the shelves in numerical order. It was dusty work, but I was happy to help.

7. Wallace Stevens. We read Wallace Stevens in the class for which I am a TA. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is beautiful; if you have time, I encourage you to indulge in the luxurious language of "The Comedian as the Letter C." It's as rich as chocolate truffle. We also read some Marianne Moore. Are you familiar with her work? I like "The Fish." (Hint: the title is also the first line.)

Also, I am slowly, grumpily unfolding as far as T S Eliot is concerned. I may be approaching a position from which I could actual appreciate "The Wasteland." Maybe.

This blog carnival is kindly, excitingly, adjectivally hosted by Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary. Please pay a visit to her and the other participants in this carnival.

Bonus!

Grooveshark Playlist:

"Africa," Toto

"Dani California," Red Hot Chilli Peppers

"Welcome to the Jungle," Guns & Roses

"House of the Rising Sun," The Doors

"Stairway to Heaven," Led Zeppelin

"Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya," Dropkick Murphies

"I'm Shipping Up to Boston," Dropkick Murphies

"Amazing Grace," Dropkick Murphies

"Nothing Else Matters," Apocalyptica

"Kyrie Elison," Gregorian Chant

"O come Emmanual," Gregorian Chant

"Cossack Dance," Tchaikovsky

"Marche Slave," Tchaikovsky

"Concerto for Two Violins," Bach

"Ich Ruf Zu Din, Herr Jesu Christ," Bach

"We Three Kings," The Irish Tenors

"Fairytale of New York," The Irish Tenors

"Mordred's Lullaby," Heather Dale

"Tarnished Silver," Heather Dale

"Only Time," Enya

"My! My! Time Flies!" Enya

"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," Enya

2010 in 10 Books

Subtitle: Because I'm a Huge Nerd Like That

[Once I posted the first bit I realized that this post will be enormous when it's done. This is going to rival some of Jon's stuff.]

I don't usually get too worked up about New Year's Eve; the arbitrariness of it prevents my taking it seriously. That being said, many people treat it as a point of reflection on the last secular calendar year and since I love collective actions--especially on the Interwebs--I shall indulge in a bit of the same. Thus I shall do a review of the year in books. (I couldn't really think of any other topic and, anyway, I'm a huge nerd.) I will note that I recommend all of these books to everyone, provided you are a critical reader and not a mindlessly absorptive one. (I'm pretty sure you're the former.)


1. Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

This was likely the first book I read in 2010. Leacock gives us an episodic account of life in a small Ontario town shortly after Confederation. The genre is emphatically a comedy. I loved it. It reminded me of my own country-boy roots and with my increasingly urban living conditions this is something I like. Perhaps the removal from the rural space was necessary for me to fully appreciate this book. The epilogue after all makes it quite clear that it is written for an audience that is removed from the small town but nonetheless remembers that life. I don't know how well this registers with people who have lived their whole lives in urban culture (though Cait likes it, maybe she can tell us why); for me, the sharp and almost accusatory nostalgia of the book's final pages forced me to become aware of my own urban position.

I can no longer orient myself as being in the country, in the small town. Fort McMurray--where I lived reading the book, where I am writing this--is not a small town. It's not a metropolis like Toronto or Vancouver and I know lots of people from metropolises (metropoles?) see anything smaller than Edmonton as a small town, but compared to most communities Fort McMurray is large. It's just isolated and lacks certain amenities. Kingston, the city in which I had most recently built a full life when I was reading this book, is no small town, either. Recognizing that I am more urbanite than hick was an odd thing for me and is something with which I am still coming to terms. I prefered thinking of myself as a hick than as an urbanite largely because I like thinking of myself as having an outsider's perspective.

The second lesson I got from this book is that one can mix idyll and irony. The narrator treats the characters--and perhaps himself--with a gentle mockery which makes you like them more, not less. This is important: we can still care for the characters in spite of, maybe because of, their faults. This book is built on this blend more than anything else. Humanity is flawed right through, but we're nonetheless likeable. What's important is that the narrator could have presented the characters as flawed and unlikeable, but instead chose to gently, caringly point out these flaws. That specific chosen perspective is an important one.

2. Wade Davis' The Wayfinders

The emotion of the posts that this book spawned should indicate its importance to my 2010. The import of this book comes on two levels.

First, the premise of this book is eye-opening and perhaps liberating: Davis thinks of non-Western civilizations as ones that have the same creative intellectual resources that we have but invested those resources not into the Enlightenment project but into other endeavours entirely. Most of his book explores different endangered cultures which exemplify his premise. I think this is a very important idea, not only in countering the ideas of liberal progress that run rampant through our culture, but also in giving us ways of re-imagining what our society could be like if we started doing things differently. In this respect Davis' book is one of hope, that hope that things can be different.

Unfortunately, opening one's eyes can be a painful experience. The reason Davis' book is hopeful, not complacent, is that there are a lot of things wrong with the world today. As a result, this book sent me into a week-long bout of hopelessness, nigh on despair, with the state of the world. The aftershocks are on-going. This book then marked the beginning of my rocky relationship with the entire idea of hope. I am still working on what kinds of hope are productive and what kinds of hope are deadly.

3. Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light

If The Wayfinders sent me into despair, A Ring of Endless Light helped me get back out of it. This is a young adult novel about a girl named Vicky dealing with death: the recent death of a family friend, the impending death of her grandfather, the deaths of animals (birds, dolphins), the death-seeking of a potential lover. The book is therefore also about love, the full spectrum of friendly, familial, and romantic. Vicky has three potential lovers, and so it triggered one of my theoretical interests (polyamory), but this was not the most fulfilling part of the book. The novel's treatment of love and death coalesce into an exploration into the role hope plays in a dark world.

It is this interest in hope that made the book important to me. I read it following The Wayfinders and this book was part of what pulled me out of that slump. Others will tell you that it's a beautiful book but to me in particular, at that moment, it was necessary. It has also been part of the context in which I have worked through ideas of hope. This is an on-going project, one I can date as beginning in 2010 but cannot date as ending there, as it has not yet ended.

The primary downside to this book is that, like most of L'Engle's books, it made me self-conscious about my own lack of life experiences. Having hit fewer 'maturity markers' than a teenage protagonist is a bit depressing. I hope that my earstwhile readers will not have similar experiences reading it.

4. Walter Truett Anderson's The Truth About the Truth

I picked this up used in a Goodwill; I realized that I didn't really know what postmodernism was and thought remedying that would be a good idea. As it turned out I had been trained in postmodernism for four years at university and just hadn't encountered it as a coherent, labeled theoretical framework. That story is here, here, and here. I am not a postmodernist--I believe in truth, for instance--but I recognize that many of the insights that postmodernism has produced are relevant and important. Postmodernism has significantly changed how I view human identity and has been important upon returning to an English Department. This book not only helped me understand in retrospect exactly what it was I did in much of my undergrad, but it helped me understand the culture in which I will be studying and working for the next few years (at least).

I am not done with postmodernism yet; while I do not agree with the whole package, it has importantly impacted by ongoing thinking. Expect future posts clarifying this.

5. John Milton's Paradise Lost

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. (I'm classifying it as a book, even though that designation doesn't quite work.) I was supposed to have finished reading it a long time ago and decided that it was time. Theologically it's iffy but poetically it works fairly well. I am still confused about the number of pro-Satan readings I hear people produce; having read it straight through now I agree that Satan is a charismatic and understandable villain, but he is nonetheless a villain. What is fascinating is Milton's ability to remain ambiguous about the Ptolemaic versus Copernican universes while elaborately describing the world. Beyond which it's beautiful poetry.

I include PL not only because I finished and enjoyed it, but because I recognize it as one of the touchstones of our current culture. Its vision of the Christian universe has had a lasting impact on societal and cultural understanding of religion (which is ironic, considering it's theological iffiness), and its images have been revisited and revised in subsequent literature. If anything, it has reminded me that drawing on the ideas and images of predecessors is an honourable, perhaps necessary, literary enterprise. Whether or not it has all been said before, it can still be said again, differently. There is still room for poetry.

6. Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

If you ever thought reading fiction is unimportant, you may want to read this book. It is non-fiction about how reading fiction is important, especially when the going gets tough. In these memoirs, Azar Nafisi recounts her time as a professor of English in post-revolutionary Iran teaching students, including and particularly a group of young women, how to read the classics: how to read them critically, yes, but also how to learn from them. Thus the novel is divided into four sections called "Lolita," "Gatsby," "James," and "Austen." She deals with the intersections of the attempt to control others' dreams and censorship, the intersections between the refusal to accept uncertainty in fiction and the refusal to accept uncertainty in personal beliefs, and the intersections between the failure to understand characters and the failure to empathize with real people. Nafisi's life, the other characters' lives, and her observations on Iran are captivating enough to make an interesting book, but the moral strength of the book earns it a place on this list.

If you have read some of my past posts about fantasy or the suspension of disbelief, you will recognize some similar themes. This book has impacted my thinking and has rekindled my faith in the power of and study of literature. In case you were unaware, it is all but a professional requirement that students of literature agonize over their own relevance. Reading Lolita in Tehran has convinced me all over again that reading fiction matters.

7. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics

When you move from a high style or theme to a low style or theme, it is called bathos. That is what's happening with Book #7. Where Nafisi's book was inspirational, McCloud's book is fun, interesting, at best instructive.

McCloud's Understanding Comics explores sequential art, the technical term McCloud gives for comics and graphic novels. His interest is not in superheroes, though; his interest is in the form itself. What happens in the gutter (the space between panels)? Is there a difference between realistically-rendered characters and cartoon ones? How does sequential art relate to other forms of art?

McCloud's Reinventing Comics digs into much more technical elements of drawing, panelling, inking, etc., but even in this he is often very theoretical and many of his concerns apply to all artistic production. Thus if Understanding Comics is more interesting to people who are interested in comics (or the rare duck like me who is interested in genres generally (haha! PUN!)), Reinventing Comics has something to offer anyone involved in the production of narrative art. It is in this book that he also unveils an idea about artistic motivations, which he calls campfire. I began exploring that idea and, to those interested in that exploration, I do intend to finish it sometime. Maybe.

8. The Book of Alternative Services

I borrowed this from St. Thomas' in Fort McMurray. I may have taken it with me to Vancouver. If I did not intend to return it this might bear some resemblance to theft. Which would be ironic, right? (There's a scene in M*A*S*H where Father Mulcahy discovers Klinger has been selling him stolen Bibles. I tried to find it on YouTube but no luck. Sorry, folks.)

To those not in the know, The Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada is the standard book for Canadian Anglican services. It contains the responsive readings that characterize any Anglican service; the BAS is important in churches that do not use projector screens because this is how the congregation knows how to respond during certain parts of the liturgy. This is especially true of seasonal events and prayers, as congregation members could not possibly be expected to memorize responses they use once a year. You can get a PDF of the full text here.

My first encounter with the BAS was in St. Pauls' Lutheran Church, the swamp church I attended during my elementary school and high school years. After Confirmation (grade 8), however, I stopped attending services upstairs and stayed downstairs to teach Sunday school. In university I went to a non-liturgical church, so it wasn't until I attended St. Thomas' that I encountered liturgical services again. While a child I respected but did not understand or appreciate liturgy. I was afraid of getting things wrong; it seemed like it was all rules for their own sakes. I found that I missed liturgy in university, especially as the sort of church I went to had unspoken expectations (which are even worse, in my opinion, than written ones). It was therefore with great relief that I discovered St. Thomas had responsive readings, albs, acolytes, and coloured vestments. It was like coming home.

At the end of 2009 I began training to be a server, but I did not borrow the BAS until 2010. I borrowed it so that I could better learn my role as a server and I also thought about using my literary analytical skills on it, but instead I have mainly used it like a book of poetry. For some reason I love reading the Penitential Rite (page 46 of the PDF I linked to); I can say it from memory but I still read it from the page, savouring its rhythm. (OK, I'm weird.) Perhaps part of my appreciation of it is that I know it is all true when I saw it; it is a performative truth.

This is not why I include this book in the list, though. I include it because I am finding myself more and more in love with liturgy. It is a complicated love, for sure; I do not know absolutely that it is enough, or that I understand how to use it to approach God as fully as I would like. But it offers a lot. I find narrative, symbol, and structure powerful tools and liturgy uses them well; I find liturgical language is beautiful and can reveal the beauty of God; I find the communitarian elements of corporate speech and act also useful during Communion. (I am using "Communion" over the more typically Anglican "Eucharist" to make a etymological point.) The BAS is the crux of my liturgical experiences both in St. Thomas, Fort McMurray and St. Faith's, Vancouver, and this is why it makes this list.

9. Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan

This play, about the revolution, trial, and death of Joan d'Arc, was assigned to the class for which I was a TA last term. I had never read Shaw's plays before, though I had seen Caesar and Cleopatra at the Festival. I found Saint Joan to be a quick and enjoyable read; it is also substantial enough for an English major like me to have fun with. Given that I was teaching the text to the class, after the professor for the class gave it a lecture, I decided that that's what I would do in discussion: we would have fun with it.

I went in early and arranged the room so that in the midst of the tables was a set, with chairs and tables set up according to the stage directions. When the students came in, I cast them in roles and we played out Joan's trial. It was one of the best classes I had; I had many volunteers to read the parts and there was no problem getting the non-actors to comment on the action. Every so often I would stop the play and we would comment on what just happened, focusing on specific characters and asking them to describe how the stage itself impacts their character's emotional state and so forth.

Saint Joan is a fun, quick, and easy read, but it's substantial enough to hold one's interest (or at least my own). In it Shaw is not interested in the truth of religious claims, but in how religion and politics intersect on the social stage. That in and of itself is an interesting literary choice. Like Shaw, I consistently had to separate the truth of religious claims for how religion operates with texts. This wasn't a challenge insofar as I never want to proselytize but it was a challenge insofar as I was wary of students misreading atheist propaganda into the assigned readings (many students of many backgrounds did this; it seems that to lots of students, whether Christian, atheist, or agnostic, there are unrecognized athiests hiding in the canon). But it's not why I include it on the list. I include it on the list as one success as a TA. It changed the dynamics of the class and it got us on our feet. It was fun and critically detailed. You can't ask for much more than that.

10. Linda Medley's Castle Waiting Vol. 1

With the exception of the largely unplacable Book of Alternative Services, this list has been chronological--until now. If I were to insert Castle Waiting Vol. 1 properly, it would have to precede Paradise Lost, the reading of which I interrupted to read this graphic novel. However, this book may have been the most important and therefore deserving of the capping #10 spot, and its direct influence continues into 2011, which also justifies its placement at the end of the list.

Castle Waiting is about the eponymous castle, in which a number of adventures happen. At first it follows the story of Sleeping Beauty in an extended prologue, but following this the story changes signficantly: Castle Putney is all but abandoned and becomes Castle Waiting, a sanctuary for assorted runaways and misfits. The story travels with Lady Jain, pregnant and battered, as she flees her husband and her reputation to the legendary refuge. Upon her arrival, the story shifts again, becoming a catalogue of the daily adventures and exchanges of the Castle's residents (Rackham the anthropomorphic stork, Simon the large and simple boy, the heartbroken Iron Henry, Sister Peace of the Order Solicitine, the reclusive and perpetually masked Dr. Fell, numerous Poltersprites...), as well as the long biographical tales Sister Peace tells involving bearded women, a travelling circus with gypsies and giantesses and conjoined twins, a woman martyr and her developing hagiography, and a greedy mill owner. It deserves the description on the back of the book: "A set of linked nouveaux fairy tales, this graphic novel extends the story of Sleeping Beauty into a modern, feminist Chaucer."

I was visiting my brother while he worked on his group film when his girlfriend and co-animator lent me her copy of the book to read between scanning for them and going on sushi-and-juice runs. I loved it immediately and the book stayed in my mind thereafter. When I got to Vancouver I decided I wanted to own it and promptly took the opportunity of numerous Chapters to make that happen. I re-read it.

The first reason that this book is significant is that it told me in no uncertain terms that you can have a successful fantasy (in this case more fairy-tale-esque, but the line between the two is indistinct if extant) book without making it an adventure story with wars and monsters. That's not to say that the book is without suspense or risk, but rather its emphases are friendship, community, redemption, sanctuary, and storytelling. This book is a powerful reminder that fantasy can be a lot more than it usually is. Which is to say, Castle Waiting has changed my idea of what sorts of things I would like to write.

The second reason that this book is significant is that I lent it to Melissa. She loved it as much as I did and we spoke about it for some time, speculating what would happen next, what fairytales all of the characters came from, and so forth. I also recommended it to Cait and to Julia, a friend from back home. If I recall correctly, Cait also liked it. (Did I get that right?) And then, just before I returned home for Christmas, I lent it to The Rev'd Paula +, the priest at St. Faith's. (I found out today, Jan 9, that she loved it--as did Owen, who I presume is a child.) I bought my brother's girlfriend Vol. 2, which my brother bought me for Christmas. (Melissa is currently reading my copy of it and has lent me a book she got for Christmas. So it goes into 2011...) This book has become, though repeated recommendations, lendings, and givings, a social nexus connecting me to a large number of people spread over significant geographical distances. The people it has connected me to are also very important to me and it has helped strengthen those bonds. I think, given the themes and mood of the book, that Linda Medley would be pleased.

Honourable Mentions: Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion; Heather O'Neill's lullabies for little criminals; somebody or another's Saturday; Michael Ingham's The Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World; Coetzee's The Life & Times of Michael K; Gruen's Water for Elephants; Kostova's The Historian

Some Thoughts on the Decision to Review 2010 by Means of Books

With a few exceptions, reviewing my year through books makes me look like a shut-in who has no friends. I would like to say this is untrue, but I think the specific books chosen makes clear that it was true and stopped being so. I only have three books that relate to my time in Vancouver, and two of those are more related to my time in Fort McMurray. (I have also lent The Wayfinders out, but it has played a far less important social role than Castle Waiting has.) This is directly related to the sorts of books I read in Vancouver: I read assigned material. The syllabus is often interesting and mentally enriching but it does not impact my life in the same way these ten books have. (In fact, the only one that made the Honourable Mentions is Coetzee's.) More importantly, however, books in general have not impacted me as much because people impact me more, and you can see this in the final three books. The first (or eighth) is liturgical and concerns my place within churches; the second (or ninth) was assigned and concerns my role as a TA; the third (or tenth) became a social artifact and concerned my relationship with friends. We thus see a shift from introverted significances to extraverted significances in the books I have chosen, and I think that is reflective of 2010 itself.

Next year, perhaps, I will be able to offer you 2011 in 11 somethings other than books.

Or maybe I'm too much of a bookworm for that to ever be likely.

7 Quick Takes (66)

1. After writing my 7 Quick Takes last week, I heard a knock on my door. I opened it to my housemate who wanted to go slack-lining. So out we went to the park, where he taught us (a friend of his and I) how to sword-fight and where we did some slack-lining. It was a deal of fun, and his friend apparently comes from near Fort McMurray. She grew up in Edmonton, but had family in Lac La Biche. It was a good night, but my feet ended up being pretty cold after the slack-lining. I am also better at sword-fighting after even one session. To the right is a photograph of me falling from the line that night. I did land on my feet, which tend to get pretty filthy when slack-lining.
It started snowing that night.


2. Snow and photography. An unseasonable amount for British Columbia. There is good news: winter photography is as excellent as spring, summer, and autumn photography. It can be especially interesting in British Columbia, with snow on lush ferns and palm trees. I am glad that I got some decent shots of totem poles with snow on them. As a result, I started worrying (again) of cultural appropriation and my own commission of it. This to an extent made it impossible for me to uncritically enjoy putting up photos of the totem poles. But I am still going to put some on here, I think. You can decide whether there is anything problematic with the practice of taking and distributing images of cultural artifacts in museum spaces. (It's also easy to read this as some sort of attempt at using these artifacts as Canadian national symbols, especially when snow-clad. I won't pretend that I don't think of snow in patriotic terms.)

3. On Saturday, after spending some time working, I went to a dance recital/ competition in which a friend was participating. Some other friends were going to accompany me, but one backed out for reasons I can't recall and the other, at the last minute, messaged that she was too sick. I went alone, therefore, to cheer for three. Given my general lack of physical coordination and my general ignorance of dance, it was a bit awkward. Most of the audience was composed of dancers. Nonetheless I enjoyed watching; skill is always fascinating to see.

3. On Wednesday I attended the last seminar of my Asian Canadian Studies course. In it we were to read a chapter of Judith Butler, this one on mourning and politics. Butler asks who we are able/allowed to mourn, and what it means to theorize mourning. It's really a good article. She problematizes the word "we" in her own ways (as well as problematizing "I"), but that got me thinking (and talking in class) about the inherent ambiguity of that pronoun. In speech, "we" can mean [I + you], [I + they], or [I + you + they]; regardless, a person who uses "we" in speech necessarily claims to be speaking on behalf (or at least to be speaking about the condition of) not just themselves but also another person. In writing there are other possiblities, including [I + I]. You'll see the [I + I] formulation when two or more co-author a text without indicating who wrote which portion. Then one imagines the voice of the text being their shared voice or something even more ambiguous. (If you watch the documentary on them, you'll learn that the Hensel twins use pronouns and third-person nouns in interesting ways when Instant Messaging.)
It seemed appropriate that in the last seminar of this course, in which we are often compelled to destabalize things we had previously been taking for granted, we ended the day with the destabalization of basic pronouns. We've broken so much down that we can't even describe "our" own action.

4. For the class for which I am a TA, we read Coetzee's The Life & Times of Michael K. I rather enjoyed that book, but I find it hard to access. Like lots of good books, it seems easy at first, perhaps because of the clean, clear prose. One of the most fascinating things about this book is that it is set in South Africa, and yet Coetzee never makes clear a) when it takes place (Apartheid? post-Apartheid? near future?) or b) what the protagonist's race is.

5. In the context of my research for my Asian-Canadian paper, I encountered the interesting idea of the American civil religion. Wikipedia has a brief and insufficeint description of it. The Wikipedia article (and perhaps the original coiner of the term) seems to imply that American civil religion is somehow an outgrowth of or intrisically related to Christianity, especially Protestantism. This is not always true. The article in which I discovered this idea (Jane Naomi Iwamura, "Critical Faith: Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion." Immigration and Religion in America. Ed. Richard Alba, Albert J. Raboteau, and Josh Dewind. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.) has a good description:

"Civil religion," according to Bellah (1975: 3) is "that religious dimension found . . . in the life of every people, through which it interprets its historical experience in the light of transcendet reality." For many in United States, this "transcedent reality" is shaped by both the Christian tradition and Roman republicanism, which, in turn, lends meaning and justification to the principles of "democracy," "freedom," and "equality" before the law. Americans affirm their faith in these principles and to the nation through a shared set of "beliefs, symbols, and rituals" (e.g., the Bill of
Rights, the Lincoln Memorial, the inauguration of the president). Civil religious institutions are historical creations, yet they need no justification. For instance, the Constitution "does not call upon any source of sacredness higher than itself and its makers." Ultimately, civil religion has an integrative function and binds the individual citizen psychically and spiritually to her fellow Americans and to the nation-state (Albanese, 1992; Wuthnow, 1998b).

For some time I have struggled to understand the peculiar sort of patriotism and nationalism that certain American citizens hold; the idea of civil religion helped me come to some sort of terms with it. I have no problem with patriotism, but I do have a problem with American exceptionalism. The unquestioning appeal by many Americans to Constitutional documents, the founding fathers' intentions, and whether something is "American" or "unAmerican" (as if either is a remotely useful or definable adjective) has also baffled me for some time. Now I think I have a better grasp on the sort of sociological forces that undergird these phenomenon, but I still don't feel like I have a real grasp on the way this tendency is left unquestioned. Are there any American readers willing to explain the invocation of these ideas (Constitution, founding fathers, "American" v. "unAmerican") to me?
(Please note that I am aware that some Canadians are equally guilty of using strange adjectives, like "unCanadian," without a decent explanation of what they mean. It just seems more prevalent, and it seems to hold more rhetorical weight, in the United States than it does here.)

6. Among other wastes of my time, I have been laughing a lot this week over at Reasoning With Vampires. (Anyone else think blog titles should be italicized?) I don't always agree with her comma vendetta, as in fictional prose the use of commas is justified if you are creating rhythm. One needn't always be as minimalist as a newspaper in fiction. In general, though, I think what this woman is doing is fascinating. She takes fierce grammatical, stylistic, and content editing and turns it into visual art. Paradoxically, I now want to read at least one of the Twilight books. It's sort of a detective-work thing. If the books are as bad as people say they are, and if they are as bad as Reasoing With Vampires repeatedly demonstrates that they are, then what I wonder is why they have the popularity that they do. They must supply some need or desire that their readers are not getting elsewhere (as distinguished from "cannot get elsewhere"). What is that need or desire?
And how can I harness it?

7. Below is the Grooveshark playlist I listened to while writing this post and trawling Facebook. It is akin to what I've been listening to all week and is not akin to what I would normally listen to (with the exception of Bear McCreary).

"Jacob's Ladder," Rush
"The Trees," Rush
"The Spirit of Radio," Rush
"You Really Got Me," Van Halen
"Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," Van Halen
"The Call," Regina Spektor
"Love Affair," same
"On the Radio," same
"Lady," same
"Oedipus," same (really like this one)
"Us," same
"Eet," same (stuck in my head)
"Samson," same
"Fidelity," same
"Evelyn Evelyn," Evelyn Evelyn (stuck in my head)
"You Only Want Me 'Cause You Want My Sister," Evelyn Evelyn
"Love Will Tear Us Apart," Evelyn Evelyn
"Hurt," Johnny Cash
"I Hung My Head," Johnny Cash
"O Verona," Craig Armstrong
"Gaeta's Lament," Bear McCreary
"The Shape of Things to Come," Bear McCreary
"All Along the Watchtower," Bear McCreary
"Kara Remembers," same
"A Good Lighter," same
"Kara's Coordinates," same
"Admiral and Commander," same
"Baltar Panics" same