Autonomy?

According to this New York Times article, more adults, especially women, are becoming more attached to their mothers in adulthood.

Some of the things described in that article is somewhat unsettling to me, like calling your mom more than four times a day, for more than 8 hours total, or buying a house two blocks away from your mother, and talking about sex with parents.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I find these things reflect some kind of neediness. Whatever happened to autonomy? I mean I’m grateful for my family’s support, but most of the time I resolve things on my own, and I turned out fine.

Oh wait, no I didn’t. I turned out to be a hyper-conscious, skeptical pseudo-intellectual who’s ambivalent about everything because he is epistemologically confused.

The Lowest Common Denominator

This Washington Post story about Bill Richardson’s talk at the Center for National Policy yesterday speaks volumes about the way America conducts its politics today. The story focused, almost next to nothing, on the actual substance of of Richardson’s proposal for how to deal with Iran in the future. Instead, it’s almost strictly a story about how Richardson’s campaign is boring compared to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Indeed, the writer claims that this same “boring” quality is what will make Richardson a good VP-candidate.

The sad reality is: reasonable arguments just don’t sell. Why? Because they are not exciting, not flashy enough. Because we all just need one more self-aggrandizing platitude about hope. Give me a break. It’s sad to me that experience counts for very little, if at all, in any political campaign. But then again, not everyone’s a college graduate.

But back to Richardson’s speech, and unlike the Washington Post story, I’m actually going to talk about what he actually said yesterday. Overall I felt it was a well-argued, reasonable speech that actually says something. Working within a neo-realist IR framework, Richardson is essentially proposing a carrot-and-stick approach to Iran.

However, he failed to address what I thought was two important points, which, if addressed, would’ve made his argument that much stronger. First, he failed to mention, at all, whether or not the military option is off the table. Maybe he doesn’t know and is trying to evade the question, but he should’ve just acknowledged it. Second, he failed to mention whether or not economic sanctions will create greater anti-American sentiments in Iran and cause an increase in fundamentalist/extremist tendencies inside the country.

All in all, not a bad speech, although I would’ve preferred pot roast to cold sandwiches in a plastic box.

The Cheney Vice Presidency

For this week, the Washington Post is running an exclusive, unprecedented look at the Cheney vice presidency.

In my opinion, this is the only work of journalism that is a must-read this year. It breaks down the entire Cheney vice presidency, chronicling it in extensive detail and precision, how it would probably go down in history as the most powerful vice-presidency of all time.

If you care at all about this country, which I know you don’t, you must read this.

Does The World Need Another Paul McCartney Solo Album? (The Answer is No)

In answering whether the world needs yet another Paul McCartney solo album, one must first answer an even more pressing question: can one ever have too much money?

And the answer, like the answer to the original question, is no.

First, let me just say that I have nothing against Paul McCartney, at least not against his Beatles-era work. Those were great: Yesterday, Hey Jude, and all the other classics. Although I do slightly begrudge him for writing “When I’m 64″, which I felt totally out of place on Sergeant Peppers, but that is a debate for another time and place.

Hell, I even find his earliest solo work fine.

But by God, what is a man doing when the pinnacle of his music was fucking FORTY years ago? What does he have to prove? Paul McCartney does not need to put out shitty solo albums in his 60s to prove that he’s still relevant. I mean, for Christ’s sakes, the man wrote some timeless songs that my grandchildren’s generation will still be listening. So instead of playing those three goddamn fucking chords over and over again on his ukulele on “Dance Tonight”, that utterly lame, insipid lead-off single for his new album, Paul McCartney should just shut the fuck up and enjoy his millions and millions of money in peace.

Which brings us back to the first question: can one ever have too much money? How much of a corporate whore does McCartney have to be when he releases an album on a record label owned by Starbucks? Star-fucking-bucks!! It’s not like the guy is panhandling outside of Abbey Road for crack.

All in all, another Paul McCartney solo album just doesn’t make any sense. And if I hear “Dance Tonight” one more time in the Starbucks that I go to every morning for coffee, I’m going to have to burn down the motherfucker.

Martys of Ideology

I was reading an op-ed in the NYT on Saturday, and this particular piece argues that a Michael Bloomberg run would have the Nader-effect, namely, steal votes away from the Dems and install another Republican in the White House. The argument goes like this, and I’m quoting here:

“If you closed your eyes and you were told that someone was pro-public education, pro-choice, pro-immigration rights, pro-gun control, pro-civil rights, pro-gay rights and pro-women’s rights — you would be pretty happy if you were a Democrat.”

The logic goes that because Bloomberg sides with the Democrats on traditionally Democratic platforms, some Democrats, moderate Republicans, and Independents will vote for Bloomberg, thus robbing whatever candidate the Dems eventually end up nominating.

What struck me was not this particular argument, since it’s been well re-hashed time and again. Rather, it’s the way that the statement quoted bunches together a various host of issues under the “Democratic” banner. But let’s ask ourselves: what exactly about those issues, and one’s position on them, that makes a voter “Democratic”? Is there any coherent, underlying foundation?

The answer is no, because there’s no compelling reason why one must take the same position on all of these issues. Is there a compelling reason, or underlying coherent philosophy, that says that one must be pro-civil rights AND pro-choice? What if someone’s Catholic and believes that civil rights should be protected, but who, because of his religion, does not believe in pro-choice?

My point is this: these so-called traditional party platforms do not, in any way, constitute a coherent political philosophy. They are marriages of convenience, created and designed to appeal to the broadest demographic possible. In other words, they are cobbled together. As such, they are only instrumental in nature, whose only purpose is to create an electoral coalition. But because they lack any inherent coherence and consistency, such a coalition is not designed to last. This is why every twenty years or so, we have a major electoral shake-up. The Democratic coalition, built upon northern industrialists, pro-civil rights African Americans, and agrarian Southerners during FDR’s administrations in the Great Depression, collapsed under its own contradiction in the 1970s. After all, what unites these very disparate groups with very different and often opposing political agendas? Nothing.

But because the system is set up this way, all politicians seeking viability must inevitably play by its rules. And those who do not pay the price, like John McCain is paying now. McCain has managed to piss off two of the largest demographics in the current Republican coalition: big business and the South. He pissed off big business by pushing for much stricter campaign-finance laws, and he pissed off the South by pushing for immigration reform that would legalize immigrants currently living in the US. McCain was for banning torture way before it became popular, and he still supports the troop surge even as America wants troops pulled out of Iraq.

Is this a man of contradictions? It would be if you assume that the Republican platform is coherent to BEGIN WITH. Since I argue that it is not, I see no problem with McCain being pro-war on one hand but pro-immigration reform on the other. In fact, I might venture to say that this is how politics OUGHT to be conducted: examining each issue carefully and taking a position that is consistent with one’s own political philosophy, instead of blind obedience to the party platform, which is not a political philosophy to begin with.

But he pays the price, because his ratings have fell among the Republicans. Is John McCain a martyr to ideology? I would say yes.

Resistance Is Futile: You Will Be Assimilated

I have always known that commercialism has the capability to assimilate anything into its folds, but today a particular instance of this assimilation really points out the degree of absurdity of the whole thing.

Behold, the Kurt Cobain lunchbox.

Now, there are only two relevant questions that one can ask in the face of such a monumental cluster-fuck. One, who’s the douchebag that thought it would be a good idea to put a man who is known for his intense anti-commercialist tendencies on a lunchbox? And two, who’s the Nirvana “fan” that would get this item?

Commercialism is truly egalitarian and democratic: after all, everyone can happily consume products that totally fail to realize the irony of the product themselves.

A Case For The Absurdity of Faith

I am not a theist, but over the years, I’ve developed a distaste for the often strident shrieks of atheist arguments. Often times I find that both sides completely miss the point; both of them try to subjugate the other into a set of assumptions that are completely incompatible with each other.

First, as an ontological and metaphysical tool, religion simply cannot have anything to say against the scientific method. Why? Because religion by its nature is not falsifiable, since it does not submit itself to repeated testing of its claims about the natural world, i.e., that God created the world, that everyone descended from Adam and Eve, that a flood destroyed the world, etc. So simply as a descriptive tool, religion fails completely to adequately explain the natural world.

But here is where my first disagreement with most atheists come in. The atheists are right in claiming that science is much better equipped to give an ontological account of the world. However, the same atheists would then go on to attack the religious foundations of morality. The two sets of claims are not inter-related: science can tell you what the world is, but since its central feature is falsibility, it is not very helpful in speaking about ethics. It may be possible that science, with time and research, accurately describe motivations for moral behavior either genetically or through natural selection; but none of this ontological account can provide an adequate guidance for how to behave morally.

Conversely, the theists make the mistake of conflating the moral claims of their religion with its ontological claims, when in fact these two sets of claims do not have much in common. So both sides make the mistake of putting morality and ontology together when they should and are logically apart from each other.

But one might say that if the ontological claims of religion, then what else is left? If one no longer believes that an omnipotent, perfectly-good God created the world in seven days, then can one really call himself a Christian? Further, if ethical claims no longer relied on a religious ontological foundation, then can those claims be called religious claims? The answer is no. But that is only if one chooses to define religion as it is manifested today.

If you strip everything away, eventually you end up with a subjective account of personal ethics, which is inherently not falsifiable in the scientific sense, because everyone is using terms differently, and it’s not likely a consensus will emerge. Then what drives moral motivation? Certainly not reason, because reason, by definition, is transcendental and beyond any single individual. But if not reason, then what? We have no real word to describe the alternative, but the next best thing, you guessed it, is faith.

Which will of course drive the atheists crazy, since faith cannot be falsified through empirical testing. This is where I see atheists as missing the point. Yes, you can show, through empirical observation, that faith in a religiously-oriented ontological account of the world is ludicrous and absurd, but the same cannot be said about faith about personal/subjective moral system.

So this kind of faith is inherently absurd, since it’s not possible, even in theory, to provide justifications that can be proved or disproved empirically. But this in it of itself cannot deter an individual from having faith in his own moral code, one that is divorced from any ontological account. THis is the point that both theists and atheists make.

A Case For The Impossible

There are two claims that people usually conflate when they make the statement that one should not pursue the impossible. First, there is a positive claim about the impossible, namely, that it cannot be achieved. Second, there is a normative claim that derives from the positive claim, i.e., that because the impossible cannot be done, it ought not to be pursued.

To me, there is no compelling reason why the normative claim must necessarily follow from the positive claim. I have no qualms with the positive statement, since something that is impossible is by definition unattainable. But to be able to make a normative claim about it is to assume that one ought only to act on things that he has a chance of achieving.

That assumption, which connects the positive to the normative, is not logically necessary. When asked, most people would respond by saying that because the impossible cannot be done, one ought not to waste time/resources/effort on it, and should instead use those resources to do something else.

But why is this utilitarian/practical argument logically necessary? There is no compelling necessity that requires one to adhere to this absolutely. In fact, the ultimate, foundational justification for this utilitarian view is utility itself. Hence, this entire claim–that people should not pursue the impossible–is based on many claims and assumptions that are not by themselves self-evident or inherently true.

All I’m suggesting is that questions regarding what is considered “impossible” are by no means settled questions. There are important questions that the individual must wrestle with. It’s not so easy or so obvious as to require no thought period.

Further Thoughts on Original Sin

This seems so obvious now, but last night I failed to include it in my riff on original sin in a modern trapping. And it is this: original sin comes after knowledge of morality, not before it. In other words, morality is violated only after it is known.

But one can plausibly argue that this does not have to be, since the violation of morality came first when Adam and Eve disobeyed a direct order by God to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I am inclined to agree, if I actually believed that divine command theory is a tenable ethical theory. But if you take it away, then where does that leave Adam and Eve? So to me, the first violation of morality is in acquiring knowledge of good and evil, of morality itself.

It is by knowing what is good and evil that people first bring about moral disobedience. Without this knowledge, hardly anything can be called “moral” or “immoral”. In other words, it is not the action alone that brings about a moral violation, but an action coupled with knowledge of what constitutes “moral” in a particular context that makes a moral violation conscious to the violator.

Hence, original sin cannot exist without Adam and Eve’s gaining knowledge of what sin is. Otherwise they are like children in that while they may commit immoral acts, they are in some sense not guilty because of their innocence and ignorance of morality. If I choose to view things this way, then it is definitely NOT the act of disobeying God’s order that is the source of original sin; rather, it is the knowledge of good and evil that is the source of original sin.

To me, such a conception is probably the only way to account for original sin in a secular manner, one that does not rely on the existence of any deity. Hence, all people still possess “original sin”, since in my last entry, I cast original sin as the complicity of all man in contributing to evils in the world that they find morally objectionable on a personal level. And this “original sin” is brought about precisely because people become aware of their complicity.

Self-consciousness, and consciousness of morality in general, is the real source of original sin. And it’s original precisely because human beings cannot become completely unconscious of morality. Thus, the myth of the garden of eden is not a myth that laments the loss of happiness embodied in the material and temporal existence of man in the garden, i.e., immortality, limitless food/drinks, etc. Rather, the myth of the garden of eden is really a lament about a pre-conscious, pre-moral mode of existence.

But unlike the Christian telling of the story, there is not even the possibility of redemption in this secular re-telling, since human existence will always be conscious moral beings who are aware of themselves as beings that are tied up to the world, and thus, also tied up to its evils.

A Contemporary Conception of Original Sin

So I was reading Brothers Karamazov for the third time the other day, and once again I was caught up by the Grand Inquisitor chapter. To this day I still think The Brothers Karamazov is the most all-encompassing work of fiction of all time. To me, it explores pretty much all of the fundamental existential questions.

Anyways, it occurred to me on this reading that the parable of the Grand Inquisitor can be interpreted as a re-conception of original sin. The whole point that Ivan tries to make in that particular story is that by virtue of existing, man is already complicit in evil. Unless, of course, one removes himself from the world through suicide, which Ivan seriously contemplates.

But to me, Dostoevsky’s own argument goes against Ivan’s, because the author himself argues that one cannot simply “escape” from the world and be morally clear. Rather, existence in the world is something that cannot be denied or wished away, and thus the moral complicity of participating and contributing to a world of evil can only be redeemed through belief in Christ. But all of this is cast in a distinctly non-miraculous, secular symbols and characters.

This just sounds like original sin to me, since by virtue of being human, one has already sinned. This complicity with evil is something inherent to existence, and thus to redeem oneself from original sin, in this particular conception, is to still embrace a Christ-figure, albeit one that is not explicitly cast as a Christ figure, i.e., Alyosha.

Which got me thinking about my own complicity with things that I would find morally objectionable otherwise. Personally, I agree with Dostoevsky in that one, just by the virtue of his own existence, has contributed to things which he would reject in principle. I have a moral objection against the killing of innocents, and yet every tax dollar I pay to the US government will be used, in one way or another, to finance a war that will inevitably kill innocent civilians. Or every time I buy clothes from China, I’m inevitably supporting a regime that denies human rights to its own citizens.

I’ve heard all the counter-arguments too. And yes, it is true that I might be too self-conscious for my own good, and that it might be true that I’m simply bothered by liberal guilt, and it’s even possible that even if I do not do these things, someone else will. But even knowing all of this, it does not help me rid of this feeling that I somehow contributed, no matter how minutely, to things which I find morally objectionable. Thus, I have become complicit in evil.

But then what is to be done? The choices are stark? After all, how can one completely remove oneself from the world, especially in the 21st-century when everything and anything are connected globally. As Thomas Friedman is wont to say: the world is flat. Thus, even from a practical point of view, removing oneself from the world to such an extent as to make oneself non-complicit with evil is impossible. But then what is left, if one does not buy into the notion of religious salvation?

Are we then only left with a hyper-consciousness, guilt, and anguish at the realization that all of us have contributed and will probably continue to contribute to things we find to be evil? To me, this pervasive, all-encompassing moral complicity is the analog to the Christian idea of original sin. After all, no one is innocent, and we are burdened with original sin simply by virtue of being human, since to be human is to interact with the world. Here I agree with Aristotle when he says that those who do not live within the polis must either be a god or beast, but not human.

Thus, original sin, in its modern trapping, is, to put it reductively, globalization.

That’s enough bullshit for the day, or two.