Arundhati Roy's words concerning the power of the common people and the fact that a better life is possible:
"Remember this. We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Incredible report today: "Pressure is clearly building on poor countries to back down from strong climate targets here in Copenhagen. At a powerful press conference this morning, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu accused Australia of setting up a private meeting with a number of small island states and trying to bribe them into accepting the 2 degrees C target that would mean extinction for their islands."
Gwynne Dyer:
"When British foreign secretary David Miliband revealed the latest numbers from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre (the U.K.’s national weather service) last October, predicting that a world in which emissions go unchecked may see a 4-degree-Celsius rise in average global temperature by 2060, he simply said: “We cannot cope with a 4-degree world.”
Actually, Britain probably could cope. As an island, cooled by the surrounding ocean, it would be only 3 degrees warmer, which means that it would probably still be able to grow enough food to feed itself. That is vital in a 4-degrees-warmer world, because almost nobody will be exporting food anymore.
Oceans cover two-thirds of the planet’s surface and are cooler than the land, so the average temperature over most land areas is higher than the “average global temperature”. The Hadley Centre predicts that a global average of plus-4 degrees means average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees higher in China, India, Southeast Asia, and most of Africa, and up to 8 degrees higher in the Amazon (which would burn, of course).
The result would be a 40-percent fall in world wheat and corn production and a 30-percent fall in rice by 2060—in a world that would, by then, have to feed 2 billion more people. So there would be mass starvation, and waves of desperate refugees trying to move to some country where they can still feed their kids."
"When British foreign secretary David Miliband revealed the latest numbers from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre (the U.K.’s national weather service) last October, predicting that a world in which emissions go unchecked may see a 4-degree-Celsius rise in average global temperature by 2060, he simply said: “We cannot cope with a 4-degree world.”
Actually, Britain probably could cope. As an island, cooled by the surrounding ocean, it would be only 3 degrees warmer, which means that it would probably still be able to grow enough food to feed itself. That is vital in a 4-degrees-warmer world, because almost nobody will be exporting food anymore.
Oceans cover two-thirds of the planet’s surface and are cooler than the land, so the average temperature over most land areas is higher than the “average global temperature”. The Hadley Centre predicts that a global average of plus-4 degrees means average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees higher in China, India, Southeast Asia, and most of Africa, and up to 8 degrees higher in the Amazon (which would burn, of course).
The result would be a 40-percent fall in world wheat and corn production and a 30-percent fall in rice by 2060—in a world that would, by then, have to feed 2 billion more people. So there would be mass starvation, and waves of desperate refugees trying to move to some country where they can still feed their kids."
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Cap and Trade
Here's a very helpful primer on the inadequacy of the market-based cap and trade system. It's disheartening that this is being touted as the primary approach to emissions reductions.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Message to the Grass Roots
The global south needs to organize itself and form a push-back against those who intend, and continue to, exploit it - in light, especially, of what's going on in Copenhagen. The speech, Message to the Grass Roots, delivered by Malcolm X, comes to my mind.
His words on the importance of real action from the grass roots: "I'm telling you, you don't know what a revolution is. 'Cause when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley; you'll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution -- what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed."
At the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Naomi Klein made a similar point while discussing the call for reparations. She was talking about the reparations First Nations peoples deserved from the occupiers of their land and moved on to the topic of "climate debt" - what developed nations owe the developing world for all the environmental damage it's caused. Her words, again, on the importance of real action from the grass roots:
"And when we make these arguments, frankly, no one even bothers arguing with us, because it’s so obvious. The science is there. The legal treaties are there. But really what they’re saying is, “You and what army? How are you going to get this money out of us? You are not powerful enough to get the money out of us.” And this is where social movements come in, because, you know, we can talk as much as we want about debt, and we can talk as much as we want about reparations, but they’re going to laugh at us, until there is some movement muscle behind those concerns, behind those demands. And that’s our task."
His words on the importance of real action from the grass roots: "I'm telling you, you don't know what a revolution is. 'Cause when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley; you'll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution -- what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed."
At the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Naomi Klein made a similar point while discussing the call for reparations. She was talking about the reparations First Nations peoples deserved from the occupiers of their land and moved on to the topic of "climate debt" - what developed nations owe the developing world for all the environmental damage it's caused. Her words, again, on the importance of real action from the grass roots:
"And when we make these arguments, frankly, no one even bothers arguing with us, because it’s so obvious. The science is there. The legal treaties are there. But really what they’re saying is, “You and what army? How are you going to get this money out of us? You are not powerful enough to get the money out of us.” And this is where social movements come in, because, you know, we can talk as much as we want about debt, and we can talk as much as we want about reparations, but they’re going to laugh at us, until there is some movement muscle behind those concerns, behind those demands. And that’s our task."
Monday, December 14, 2009
"We stand with Africa - Kyoto targets now"
Representing states of the global south, as well as China, the G77-China negotiating bloc at the Copenhagen summit has just withdrawn its support of the conference. The chief negotiator, Lumumba D-Aping on why:
"It has become clear that the Danish presidency - in the most undemocratic fashion - is advancing the interests of the developed countries at the expense of the balance of obligations between developed and developing countries," he said.
They're looking for stricter commitments to emissions reductions and a continued commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.
"It has become clear that the Danish presidency - in the most undemocratic fashion - is advancing the interests of the developed countries at the expense of the balance of obligations between developed and developing countries," he said.
They're looking for stricter commitments to emissions reductions and a continued commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
I'm not religious, but I've always reserved a great deal of respect for politically and socially engaged religious leaders. I get the impression their understanding of spiritual matters are more robust, more substantial, and more empathetic for being informed by an understanding of how the world works. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as well as Desmond Tutu and others, are great examples.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Pachamama
The Nation Magazine interviews the Bolivian Climate Change ambassador, Pablo Erick Solón Romero Oroza. Here's the last part of the exchange:
"President Morales has called for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Why do you think there's a need for such a document?
Why, because this problem is about balance – balance between mankind and nature. What we are seeing with climate change is that this balance has been broken. Why, because humans act as if they are the only ones who have rights and treat our Mother Earth like, in the past century, slaves were treated – as persons that don't have rights, as objects, instruments for exploitation. So if you want to have a balanced relation, humans must recognize that we are not the only one's that have rights, but also our Mother Earth. We and nature are part of one system and what happens in one part of the system effects the other part.
This way of thinking has been strengthened because of the capitalist system. For the capitalist system everything, nature – even other humans – is considered an object that you can use to obtain a profit. With this system everything can be made into merchandise. So what we are seeing is the consequence of this vision that you can change everything into merchandise, even nature, even your mother – Mother Earth."
"President Morales has called for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Why do you think there's a need for such a document?
Why, because this problem is about balance – balance between mankind and nature. What we are seeing with climate change is that this balance has been broken. Why, because humans act as if they are the only ones who have rights and treat our Mother Earth like, in the past century, slaves were treated – as persons that don't have rights, as objects, instruments for exploitation. So if you want to have a balanced relation, humans must recognize that we are not the only one's that have rights, but also our Mother Earth. We and nature are part of one system and what happens in one part of the system effects the other part.
This way of thinking has been strengthened because of the capitalist system. For the capitalist system everything, nature – even other humans – is considered an object that you can use to obtain a profit. With this system everything can be made into merchandise. So what we are seeing is the consequence of this vision that you can change everything into merchandise, even nature, even your mother – Mother Earth."
Monday, December 7, 2009
Evo Morales was re-elected for another term as Bolivia's president. I admire Morales a great deal and I hope this world produces more leaders like him.
Great article on the upside to having genes that normally dispose one to such negative traits as depression, anxiety, and aggression.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Chomsky
In an interview with the magazine Guernica, Noam Chomsky offers his thoughts on a wide range of topics. I especially appreciated his words on the hypocrisy of the global north (ie. the developed world) telling the south (the developing) they should not practice some degree of economic protectionism.
"Adam Smith had advice for the American colonies in the seventeen seventies. He advised the colonies to follow classical economic principles—they’re not very different from neoliberalism. In fact, it’s pretty much what economists today recommend to the third world. He said, Keep to your comparative advantages—the term “comparative advantage” hadn’t been invented yet—produce what you’re good at, which is catching fish, hunting fur, and growing food, and export it to us in England. And import superior British manufactures. But the U.S. gained its independence, so it didn’t have to follow that advice, and didn’t. It immediately set up under Alexander Hamilton high protective barriers to try to bar superior British textiles, in later years British steel. And it built up its own manufacturing base under protective barriers and by an enormous amount of state intervention. Take, say, cotton, the fuel of American industrialization. Well, how did America produce cotton? First of all, by exterminating the indigenous population. Secondly, by slavery. Those are pretty severe market interventions."
"Adam Smith had advice for the American colonies in the seventeen seventies. He advised the colonies to follow classical economic principles—they’re not very different from neoliberalism. In fact, it’s pretty much what economists today recommend to the third world. He said, Keep to your comparative advantages—the term “comparative advantage” hadn’t been invented yet—produce what you’re good at, which is catching fish, hunting fur, and growing food, and export it to us in England. And import superior British manufactures. But the U.S. gained its independence, so it didn’t have to follow that advice, and didn’t. It immediately set up under Alexander Hamilton high protective barriers to try to bar superior British textiles, in later years British steel. And it built up its own manufacturing base under protective barriers and by an enormous amount of state intervention. Take, say, cotton, the fuel of American industrialization. Well, how did America produce cotton? First of all, by exterminating the indigenous population. Secondly, by slavery. Those are pretty severe market interventions."
Monday, November 30, 2009
Global Day of Action on Climate Crisis
Next week the world's leaders will gather at Copenhagen to discuss climate change. Today, in light of the fact that "the people hit hardest by the climate change crisis -- the global poor -- will continue to be systematically excluded from formal discussions of how to address problems like water shortages and crop failures stemming from global warming" activists have organized the Global Day of Action on Climate Crisis.
I would like to see this continue. Such a concerted effort to maintain such a grassroots, bottom-up, approach to climate change is admirable.
Update: George Monbiot criticizes Canada's record on climate protection.
Read here as well.
I would like to see this continue. Such a concerted effort to maintain such a grassroots, bottom-up, approach to climate change is admirable.
Update: George Monbiot criticizes Canada's record on climate protection.
Read here as well.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
George Orwell on the fact that emotions determine our beliefs and our actions more than rationality can ever hope to:
"The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action."
"The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action."
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Very interesting discussion on the differing thinking styles of the globe's western and eastern people and how this may determine their respective adaptability to future problems.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Global food production
Currently something like a billion people live in extreme poverty and, with climate change and population growth, that number will rise unless we find innovative approaches to food production. The subject is something I know very little about, but I intend to look into it. People need to eat; that much is obvious. Read here for now.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Book Review
Here's my review of Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion by Melanye T. Price.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Jamaica Kincaid on colonialism, from her book "A Small Place":
"I cannot tell you how angry it makes me to hear people from North America tell me how much they love England, how beautiful England is, with its traditions. All they see is some frumpy, wrinkled-up person passing by in a carriage waving at a crowd. But what I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue. For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime? And what can that really mean? For the language of the criminal can contain only the goodness of the criminal’s deed. The language of the criminal can explain and express the deed only from the criminal's point of view. It cannot contain the horror of the deed, the injustice of the deed, the agony, the humiliation inflicted on me.”
"I cannot tell you how angry it makes me to hear people from North America tell me how much they love England, how beautiful England is, with its traditions. All they see is some frumpy, wrinkled-up person passing by in a carriage waving at a crowd. But what I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue. For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime? And what can that really mean? For the language of the criminal can contain only the goodness of the criminal’s deed. The language of the criminal can explain and express the deed only from the criminal's point of view. It cannot contain the horror of the deed, the injustice of the deed, the agony, the humiliation inflicted on me.”
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A character study of Abraham Lincoln:
"It is significant that he was not precocious. The touching picture, preserved in several memories — the lonely, illiterate boy with a passion for reading, indulging the passion at night by a cabin fire — this picture has nothing of early cleverness. Of the qualities that appear after his advent, it is the moral not the mental ones that were clearly foreshadowed in his youth. The simplicity, the kindliness, the courage, the moderation of the matured man have their evident beginnings in the boy. His purely mental characteristics appeared so gradually, so unostentatiously, that his neighbours did not note their coming. Today, seen in the perspective of his career, their approach is more discernible. To one who goes carefully through the twelve volumes of the chronological edition of Lincoln’s writings, though the transition from characterlessness to individuality is nowhere sudden, the consciousness of a steady progress in mental power, of a subtle evolution of the literary sense, is unmistakable. The revelation gains in celerity as one proceeds. But there is no sunburst, no sudden change of direction. And yet, for all the equivocality of the early years, one ends by wondering why the process has seemed vague. It is like that type of play whose secret is not disclosed until just before the curtain but which, once disclosed, brings all preceding it into harmony."
"It is significant that he was not precocious. The touching picture, preserved in several memories — the lonely, illiterate boy with a passion for reading, indulging the passion at night by a cabin fire — this picture has nothing of early cleverness. Of the qualities that appear after his advent, it is the moral not the mental ones that were clearly foreshadowed in his youth. The simplicity, the kindliness, the courage, the moderation of the matured man have their evident beginnings in the boy. His purely mental characteristics appeared so gradually, so unostentatiously, that his neighbours did not note their coming. Today, seen in the perspective of his career, their approach is more discernible. To one who goes carefully through the twelve volumes of the chronological edition of Lincoln’s writings, though the transition from characterlessness to individuality is nowhere sudden, the consciousness of a steady progress in mental power, of a subtle evolution of the literary sense, is unmistakable. The revelation gains in celerity as one proceeds. But there is no sunburst, no sudden change of direction. And yet, for all the equivocality of the early years, one ends by wondering why the process has seemed vague. It is like that type of play whose secret is not disclosed until just before the curtain but which, once disclosed, brings all preceding it into harmony."
Monday, October 19, 2009
William Butler Yeats:
"I had three interests; interest in a form of literature, in a form of philosophy, and a belief in nationality. None of these seemed to have anything to do with the other, but gradually my love of literature and my belief in nationality came together. Then for years I said to myself that these two had nothing to do with my form of philosophy....Now all three are, I think, one, or rather all three are a discrete expression of a single conviction."
"I had three interests; interest in a form of literature, in a form of philosophy, and a belief in nationality. None of these seemed to have anything to do with the other, but gradually my love of literature and my belief in nationality came together. Then for years I said to myself that these two had nothing to do with my form of philosophy....Now all three are, I think, one, or rather all three are a discrete expression of a single conviction."
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
David Foster Wallace:
"If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."
"If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Terry Eagleton:
"It is also because one cannot accept that this - the world we see groaning in agony around us - is the only way things could be, though empirically speaking this might certainly prove to be the case; because one gazes with wondering bemusement on those hard-headed types from whom all this, given a reformist tweak or two, is as good as it gets; because to back down from this vision would be to betray what one feels are the most precious powers and capacities of human beings; because however hard one tries, one simply cannot shake off the primitive conviction that this is not how it is supposed to be."
"It is also because one cannot accept that this - the world we see groaning in agony around us - is the only way things could be, though empirically speaking this might certainly prove to be the case; because one gazes with wondering bemusement on those hard-headed types from whom all this, given a reformist tweak or two, is as good as it gets; because to back down from this vision would be to betray what one feels are the most precious powers and capacities of human beings; because however hard one tries, one simply cannot shake off the primitive conviction that this is not how it is supposed to be."
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Karl Jaspers on the concept of metaphysical guilt:
"There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am an accomplice in them. If I have not risked my life in order to prevent the murder of other men, if I have stood silent, I feel guilty in a sense that cannot in any adequate fashion be understood juridically, or politically, or morally...That I am still alive after such things have been done weighs on me as a guilt that cannot be expiated.
Somewhere in the heart of human relations an absolute command imposes itself: In case of criminal attack or of living conditions that threaten physical being, accept life only for all together, otherwise not at all."
"There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am an accomplice in them. If I have not risked my life in order to prevent the murder of other men, if I have stood silent, I feel guilty in a sense that cannot in any adequate fashion be understood juridically, or politically, or morally...That I am still alive after such things have been done weighs on me as a guilt that cannot be expiated.
Somewhere in the heart of human relations an absolute command imposes itself: In case of criminal attack or of living conditions that threaten physical being, accept life only for all together, otherwise not at all."
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Book Review
Here's my review of Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 by James T. Campbell.
Monday, August 10, 2009
The Varieties of Religious Experience - William James
Here are my thoughts on William James's book on religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
James’s method assumes that “a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep”. The book, in turn, is full of examples of religious experience from a variety of sources. His discussion of religion does not centre on the dogmas of established religions, but on “the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct.” He is concerned primarily with the visionaries whose passionate and novel experiences were the seeds of their religion’s growth; as well as the personal and subjective experiences of other religiously devout people, without spending much time on the various religious institutions and their creeds. In light of this special emphasis on the individual and his subjective experiences, religion is something subtly different for James than it is in normal conversation. It consists of “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”
In the opening chapter, Religion and Neurology, James addresses what he called “medical materialism”. This is the supposition that mental states are caused by biological phenomena. Often this relationship will be raised to dismiss the truth of religious experiences. “Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic,” writes James. There’s definitely something to this argument. If it can be shown that a religious experience, or any kind of mental state, owes its cause to some physical occurrence it would be reasonable to doubt the truth of the subjective experience. James’s response is inspired. If something like medical materialism (the dependence of mental states on some physical correlate) is true, then why stop at mental states of a spiritual nature? “Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see ‘the liver’ determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul.” Every single one of our thoughts is conditioned by some physical, or biological, occurrence, so we’re left with one of two options: we can discard all our beliefs and consider every mental state untrue, or we can free ourselves from this test of truth. A certain state of mind is true, James argues, because there is “an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life.” I’ll get back to this counter-intuitive point a little later.
We should address a particularly refreshing point in the book. When James writes of the “divine” which forms the basis of the religious experience he is not limiting the term to systems of thought that assume the existence of either a supernatural realm or a God. Buddhism, for one, does not presuppose the existence of God and, yet, for James its members count as the religiously devout, connected, as they are, to something they consider divine. In James’s framework, one can worship nothing but abstract moral laws and still find themselves in the grips of something reminiscent of religious feeling. “We must therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these godless or quasi-godless creeds ‘religions’; and accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak of the individual’s relation to ‘what he considers the divine,’ we must interpret the term ‘divine’ very broadly, as denoting any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or not.” And also: “In Christian saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life”.
In the chapter The Reality of the Unseen, James argues that both abstract ideas – like the conceptual nouns of ‘goodness’, ‘beauty’, ‘strength’, ‘justice’, etc. - and concrete facts are as inextricably tied to one another as are rules of grammar and discrete words. Without the one, the others would be fundamentally senseless. This, James believes, proves that the “unseen” exists. Though intangible and experientially unverifiable, they are as present as any concrete object. I’ll quote James at length here: “The whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims…in a wider and higher universe of abstract ideas, that lend it its significance…Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its ‘nature,’ as we call it, to every special thing. Everything we know is ‘what’ it is by sharing in the nature of one of these abstractions. We can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification and conception.”
James’s real project is to figure out whether an individual’s sense of connection to this unseen and divine abstract realm has any practical worth to the individual. Setting aside the unfortunately common practice of petitional prayer (the act of asking God to either give you something or to help see you through troubled times), James asks how prayer of a wider sense may ennoble man. In short, real prayer, or the practice of putting oneself into an active relationship with something larger than the particulars of life – to abstract principles, for instance – improves a person in some distinct ways. The typical desires, inhibitions, and pettiness fall out of consideration when one’s mind is on something as large as either religious or abstract ideals. “The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our high indignations are elicited,” James writes. In yet another beautiful turn of phrase, such checks are “Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun”. As one’s sense of scope and sense of what’s importance broadens, so does his asceticism. He becomes less concerned with his own comfort and welfare - if it distracts from an ideal held. And he becomes inclined towards tenderness for humanity. Whether one considers more conventional objects, like God, or something like a set of moral ideals as warranting their devotion, the effects are the same. “Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, and tenderness to rule,” James writes. Of course, the practical implication of genuine tenderness for humanity is a preparedness to fight (both metaphorically and literally) those who choose to win victories, however fleeting, at the expense of others. So let’s not confuse tenderness and compassion with weakness of will.
Around this point of the book, I still felt that James had not dealt adequately enough with the question of whether or not the beliefs of such religiously and ethically inclined individuals are actually true! His argument is as follows. The attempt to put religious belief on the foundation of logical argument is a waste of time. It will do nothing but confirm the beliefs of the faithful and prove empty, disingenuous, and cold to those who are not so inclined. It gets wrong a basic fact about the human condition: “the logical reason of man operates in this field of divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism, or in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life, in which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand.”
Ultimately, the existence, or truth, of religion and other abstract ideas lies in its practical use. If he is changed for the better by his new beliefs, as far as we know those beliefs correspond to some facts of the world – or the universe. Let me explain a little further. James is what philosophers call a pragmatist. For them, a belief is like a plan of action. A person has a belief insofar as that thought informs the way he behaves in the world. Consequently we can tease out the meaning of a belief by looking at how one would behave if the belief were held. If belief is so disconnected from our lives, from action, completely disembodied and wingless, then it is, functionally at least, meaningless. James’s argument, from what I can tell, is as follows: it’s as if religion were true because, from our experiences of people who are genuinely involved in it, their belief in it seems to cause some identifiable effects in them. And because the effects are real, the belief must be meaningful and, hence, true. This pragmatic argument for the existence of the divine realm may seem a little unconvincing. I’m not entirely sure I’m convinced myself. I will say that the book is worth the time and effort and, hopefully with some maturation, I’ll be able to tackle it again more effectively. Perhaps by then I will have changed from what I am - an irreligious person without a connection to, or even a coherent belief in, the divine - to something very different. As James puts it in one of his many beautiful sentences: "Even late in life some thaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back in the barrenest breast, and the man's hard heart may soften and break into religious feeling."
James’s method assumes that “a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep”. The book, in turn, is full of examples of religious experience from a variety of sources. His discussion of religion does not centre on the dogmas of established religions, but on “the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct.” He is concerned primarily with the visionaries whose passionate and novel experiences were the seeds of their religion’s growth; as well as the personal and subjective experiences of other religiously devout people, without spending much time on the various religious institutions and their creeds. In light of this special emphasis on the individual and his subjective experiences, religion is something subtly different for James than it is in normal conversation. It consists of “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”
In the opening chapter, Religion and Neurology, James addresses what he called “medical materialism”. This is the supposition that mental states are caused by biological phenomena. Often this relationship will be raised to dismiss the truth of religious experiences. “Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic,” writes James. There’s definitely something to this argument. If it can be shown that a religious experience, or any kind of mental state, owes its cause to some physical occurrence it would be reasonable to doubt the truth of the subjective experience. James’s response is inspired. If something like medical materialism (the dependence of mental states on some physical correlate) is true, then why stop at mental states of a spiritual nature? “Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see ‘the liver’ determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul.” Every single one of our thoughts is conditioned by some physical, or biological, occurrence, so we’re left with one of two options: we can discard all our beliefs and consider every mental state untrue, or we can free ourselves from this test of truth. A certain state of mind is true, James argues, because there is “an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life.” I’ll get back to this counter-intuitive point a little later.
We should address a particularly refreshing point in the book. When James writes of the “divine” which forms the basis of the religious experience he is not limiting the term to systems of thought that assume the existence of either a supernatural realm or a God. Buddhism, for one, does not presuppose the existence of God and, yet, for James its members count as the religiously devout, connected, as they are, to something they consider divine. In James’s framework, one can worship nothing but abstract moral laws and still find themselves in the grips of something reminiscent of religious feeling. “We must therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these godless or quasi-godless creeds ‘religions’; and accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak of the individual’s relation to ‘what he considers the divine,’ we must interpret the term ‘divine’ very broadly, as denoting any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or not.” And also: “In Christian saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life”.
In the chapter The Reality of the Unseen, James argues that both abstract ideas – like the conceptual nouns of ‘goodness’, ‘beauty’, ‘strength’, ‘justice’, etc. - and concrete facts are as inextricably tied to one another as are rules of grammar and discrete words. Without the one, the others would be fundamentally senseless. This, James believes, proves that the “unseen” exists. Though intangible and experientially unverifiable, they are as present as any concrete object. I’ll quote James at length here: “The whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims…in a wider and higher universe of abstract ideas, that lend it its significance…Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its ‘nature,’ as we call it, to every special thing. Everything we know is ‘what’ it is by sharing in the nature of one of these abstractions. We can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification and conception.”
James’s real project is to figure out whether an individual’s sense of connection to this unseen and divine abstract realm has any practical worth to the individual. Setting aside the unfortunately common practice of petitional prayer (the act of asking God to either give you something or to help see you through troubled times), James asks how prayer of a wider sense may ennoble man. In short, real prayer, or the practice of putting oneself into an active relationship with something larger than the particulars of life – to abstract principles, for instance – improves a person in some distinct ways. The typical desires, inhibitions, and pettiness fall out of consideration when one’s mind is on something as large as either religious or abstract ideals. “The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our high indignations are elicited,” James writes. In yet another beautiful turn of phrase, such checks are “Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun”. As one’s sense of scope and sense of what’s importance broadens, so does his asceticism. He becomes less concerned with his own comfort and welfare - if it distracts from an ideal held. And he becomes inclined towards tenderness for humanity. Whether one considers more conventional objects, like God, or something like a set of moral ideals as warranting their devotion, the effects are the same. “Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, and tenderness to rule,” James writes. Of course, the practical implication of genuine tenderness for humanity is a preparedness to fight (both metaphorically and literally) those who choose to win victories, however fleeting, at the expense of others. So let’s not confuse tenderness and compassion with weakness of will.
Around this point of the book, I still felt that James had not dealt adequately enough with the question of whether or not the beliefs of such religiously and ethically inclined individuals are actually true! His argument is as follows. The attempt to put religious belief on the foundation of logical argument is a waste of time. It will do nothing but confirm the beliefs of the faithful and prove empty, disingenuous, and cold to those who are not so inclined. It gets wrong a basic fact about the human condition: “the logical reason of man operates in this field of divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism, or in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life, in which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand.”
Ultimately, the existence, or truth, of religion and other abstract ideas lies in its practical use. If he is changed for the better by his new beliefs, as far as we know those beliefs correspond to some facts of the world – or the universe. Let me explain a little further. James is what philosophers call a pragmatist. For them, a belief is like a plan of action. A person has a belief insofar as that thought informs the way he behaves in the world. Consequently we can tease out the meaning of a belief by looking at how one would behave if the belief were held. If belief is so disconnected from our lives, from action, completely disembodied and wingless, then it is, functionally at least, meaningless. James’s argument, from what I can tell, is as follows: it’s as if religion were true because, from our experiences of people who are genuinely involved in it, their belief in it seems to cause some identifiable effects in them. And because the effects are real, the belief must be meaningful and, hence, true. This pragmatic argument for the existence of the divine realm may seem a little unconvincing. I’m not entirely sure I’m convinced myself. I will say that the book is worth the time and effort and, hopefully with some maturation, I’ll be able to tackle it again more effectively. Perhaps by then I will have changed from what I am - an irreligious person without a connection to, or even a coherent belief in, the divine - to something very different. As James puts it in one of his many beautiful sentences: "Even late in life some thaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back in the barrenest breast, and the man's hard heart may soften and break into religious feeling."
Monday, June 8, 2009
Round-up
Interesting argument in favour of scraping summer vacation for students. It’s good for international competition; the summer vacation itself is the product of outdated needs; and ridding ourselves of the lengthy break may be an act of egalitarianism. It would, that is, level the playing field between the rich and the poor students: “…wealthy parents can afford to give their children all sorts of edifying summer experiences that downscale parents cannot. And this, as researchers at Johns Hopkins have found, leads to backsliding: Educational advancement across classes tends to be fairly even during the school year. But downscale students actually decline in educational achievement over the course of the summer, while upscale students remain relatively stable.” This reminds me of Nicholas D. Kristof’s op-ed for the New York Times yesterday. He restated the common point that success is the product of education and opportunity – and not of innate talent. We should keep this in mind and consider seriously whatever policies might make the education of the poor and the rich more alike.
Here’s an account of the conditions in which Pakistanis displaced by the fighting between government forces and militants are living. There are approximately 2 million of them in just over a month of fighting.
Warfare among early humans may have helped midwife the development of altruism.
Here’s an account of the conditions in which Pakistanis displaced by the fighting between government forces and militants are living. There are approximately 2 million of them in just over a month of fighting.
Warfare among early humans may have helped midwife the development of altruism.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Round-up
Interview with Ricardo Coler. He spent some time among the Mosuo in southern China, where the women dominate. About matriarchy, Coler says: “Women have a different way of dominating. When women rule, it's part of their work. They like it when everything functions and the family is doing well. Amassing wealth or earning lots of money doesn't cross their minds. Capital accumulation seems to be a male thing.”
Here’s an article on how the purchase of eco-friendly products amounts to “competitive altruism”: gaining status by forgoing luxuries, as long as it’s done in public.
Laughing monkeys.
“A group of doctors who worked in Sri Lanka's rebel-held war zone are being held on suspicion of collaborating with Tamil rebels, the government says.” Terrible. After all the noble work they did, this is what they get in return.
Article on the close relationship of musical ability and social bonding. “When the researchers scanned the volunteers' genes, they found that two variants of the gene AVPR1A correlated strongly with musical ability. AVPR1A codes for a receptor for the hormone arginine vasopressin and has been linked with bonding, love and altruism in people.”
Here’s an article on how the purchase of eco-friendly products amounts to “competitive altruism”: gaining status by forgoing luxuries, as long as it’s done in public.
Laughing monkeys.
“A group of doctors who worked in Sri Lanka's rebel-held war zone are being held on suspicion of collaborating with Tamil rebels, the government says.” Terrible. After all the noble work they did, this is what they get in return.
Article on the close relationship of musical ability and social bonding. “When the researchers scanned the volunteers' genes, they found that two variants of the gene AVPR1A correlated strongly with musical ability. AVPR1A codes for a receptor for the hormone arginine vasopressin and has been linked with bonding, love and altruism in people.”
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Round-up
Op-Ed commemorating the 20th anniversary of the pro-democracy Tiananmen square protests and lamenting just how far China’s regressed since those days of heady progressivism.
There’s a coin shortage in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “For the average Bonaerense, everyday transactions now entail a complicated calculation of where coins can be acquired and when they will be needed.” The article makes some interesting points about the role confidence in the market (or, rather, the lack of it) had in creating this crisis.
Amir Taheri criticizes Obama’s approach to the Islamic world, deeming it anti-reformist and, surprisingly, not close enough to George W. Bush’s.
After escaping the horrors of the slow genocide in West Sudan for the relatively safe refugee camps of Chad, Darfuri women are confronted still by the threat of rape.
There’s a coin shortage in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “For the average Bonaerense, everyday transactions now entail a complicated calculation of where coins can be acquired and when they will be needed.” The article makes some interesting points about the role confidence in the market (or, rather, the lack of it) had in creating this crisis.
Amir Taheri criticizes Obama’s approach to the Islamic world, deeming it anti-reformist and, surprisingly, not close enough to George W. Bush’s.
After escaping the horrors of the slow genocide in West Sudan for the relatively safe refugee camps of Chad, Darfuri women are confronted still by the threat of rape.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Round-up
Farai Chideya and John McWhorter discuss racial integration of schools during a teleconference. I agree with McWhorter on this one.
Andrew Sullivan and Bob Wright discuss Buddhism, mysticism, and being at peace with the universe.
The Globe and Mail’s foreign correspondent in Africa, Geoffrey York, writes a feature story about Canada’s African foreign aid reductions. Key quote: “The real reason for the shift, of course, is a new calculation of Canada's business and geopolitical interests. Instead of Malawi and the seven other African countries, where most people are so desperately poor that they earn less than $2 a day, a bigger share of Canada's foreign-aid money will flow to middle-income places such as Peru, Colombia, Ukraine and the Caribbean, where Canada's commercial interests are more attractive. Canada's foreign aid seems to have become an instrument of its trade policy.”
Fantastic piece on George Orwell’s work from the 1940s. It points out his contradictions, commends Orwell’s singular voice, and, like so many others have done, asserts its relevance to our current world.
New York Times Magazine covers Bill Clinton’s post-presidency. It’s an overview of his foundation’s work in, primarily, developing world issues, but it’s also a bit of a character study. For instance: “Two sides of Clinton’s persona have long warred with each other, sunny optimism versus angry grievance. Clinton succeeded in politics largely because he projected the former; his worst moments usually came when he gave in to the latter. Both sides are genuine reflections of who he is.” We’re painted a picture of a man with a long memory for slights who is simultaneously very capable of reconciliation.
Andrew Sullivan and Bob Wright discuss Buddhism, mysticism, and being at peace with the universe.
The Globe and Mail’s foreign correspondent in Africa, Geoffrey York, writes a feature story about Canada’s African foreign aid reductions. Key quote: “The real reason for the shift, of course, is a new calculation of Canada's business and geopolitical interests. Instead of Malawi and the seven other African countries, where most people are so desperately poor that they earn less than $2 a day, a bigger share of Canada's foreign-aid money will flow to middle-income places such as Peru, Colombia, Ukraine and the Caribbean, where Canada's commercial interests are more attractive. Canada's foreign aid seems to have become an instrument of its trade policy.”
Fantastic piece on George Orwell’s work from the 1940s. It points out his contradictions, commends Orwell’s singular voice, and, like so many others have done, asserts its relevance to our current world.
New York Times Magazine covers Bill Clinton’s post-presidency. It’s an overview of his foundation’s work in, primarily, developing world issues, but it’s also a bit of a character study. For instance: “Two sides of Clinton’s persona have long warred with each other, sunny optimism versus angry grievance. Clinton succeeded in politics largely because he projected the former; his worst moments usually came when he gave in to the latter. Both sides are genuine reflections of who he is.” We’re painted a picture of a man with a long memory for slights who is simultaneously very capable of reconciliation.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Round-up
- A teacher living in Somalia, amid the fighting and chaos, corresponds with an American journalist via email, conveying what he sees.
- Experts say there could be 200 million climate refugees (people displaced by changes in their environment caused by global warming) by 2050. The UN’s General Assembly is expected to draw up a resolution connecting this to peace and security.
- Interesting story of two men: one who was quite successful at publishing in the New York Times’ letters section; the other not so much.
- “Climate change is disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities in the United States”
- What the way you hold your glass says about you. I'm apparantly "The Jack the Lad".
- Experts say there could be 200 million climate refugees (people displaced by changes in their environment caused by global warming) by 2050. The UN’s General Assembly is expected to draw up a resolution connecting this to peace and security.
- Interesting story of two men: one who was quite successful at publishing in the New York Times’ letters section; the other not so much.
- “Climate change is disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities in the United States”
- What the way you hold your glass says about you. I'm apparantly "The Jack the Lad".
Friday, May 29, 2009
Round-up
- The UK director of Amnesty International penned a primer on how the global economic downturn is undermining the human rights of the world’s poor. 150 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty (income of $2 a day) during 2008, because of increased food and fuel prices. Poverty and food shortages have led many to protest, which in turn has prompted their governments to respond with violent suppression. And governments have neglected human rights, focusing instead on the recession, financial negotiations, and bailouts.
- Two writers from the progressive periodical, The Nation, argue that Obama and his administration must strike now – while the Democrats have control over the House; Obama has his mandate; and the general spirit of the American public longs for reform. The writers call on Obama to be less inclined to compromise with Republicans who would like to dilute proposed reforms, and instead push hard for progressive changes to education, energy, and health care.
- Nicholas Kristof discusses the differences between Liberals and Conservatives – temperamentally speaking. Liberals are more likely to slap their fathers, assuming he’s given them permission. And Conservatives are more likely to feel disgusted to find they had inadvertently sipped from a friend’s cup. Kristof then calls for greater understanding and harmonization between the two mutually antagonistic types.
- Some video games are actually good for us. They promote social qualities like cooperation and empathy for others.
- 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed during the last months of the Sri Lankan civil war. This number is about 3 times higher than the official record claims. Reports also show they were killed primarily by the Sri Lankan army – not the Tamil Tigers.
- Two writers from the progressive periodical, The Nation, argue that Obama and his administration must strike now – while the Democrats have control over the House; Obama has his mandate; and the general spirit of the American public longs for reform. The writers call on Obama to be less inclined to compromise with Republicans who would like to dilute proposed reforms, and instead push hard for progressive changes to education, energy, and health care.
- Nicholas Kristof discusses the differences between Liberals and Conservatives – temperamentally speaking. Liberals are more likely to slap their fathers, assuming he’s given them permission. And Conservatives are more likely to feel disgusted to find they had inadvertently sipped from a friend’s cup. Kristof then calls for greater understanding and harmonization between the two mutually antagonistic types.
- Some video games are actually good for us. They promote social qualities like cooperation and empathy for others.
- 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed during the last months of the Sri Lankan civil war. This number is about 3 times higher than the official record claims. Reports also show they were killed primarily by the Sri Lankan army – not the Tamil Tigers.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Round-up
- A tropical storm has displaced millions in India and Bangladesh. For those that will return home, they’ll most likely find their crops ruined, their homes destroyed, and their farm animals killed.
- Woody Allen, Larry David, the dying of Jewish humor. Fun feature story.
- “Steven Chu, the US Secretary of Energy and a Nobel prize-winning scientist, said yesterday that making roofs and pavements white or light-coloured would help to reduce global warming by both conserving energy and reflecting sunlight back into space. It would, he said, be the equivalent of taking all the cars in the world off the road for 11 years.”
- Many of the minerals (tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold) in your cell phone and in your laptop, among other electronics, were extracted from the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The war in that central African nation has now left armed militias free to take control of the trade in these “conflict minerals”, making us indirectly complicit in a host of abuses.
- The African Union has recommended the United Nations Security Council impose sanctions on Eritrea for supporting Somali insurgents.
- Woody Allen, Larry David, the dying of Jewish humor. Fun feature story.
- “Steven Chu, the US Secretary of Energy and a Nobel prize-winning scientist, said yesterday that making roofs and pavements white or light-coloured would help to reduce global warming by both conserving energy and reflecting sunlight back into space. It would, he said, be the equivalent of taking all the cars in the world off the road for 11 years.”
- Many of the minerals (tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold) in your cell phone and in your laptop, among other electronics, were extracted from the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The war in that central African nation has now left armed militias free to take control of the trade in these “conflict minerals”, making us indirectly complicit in a host of abuses.
- The African Union has recommended the United Nations Security Council impose sanctions on Eritrea for supporting Somali insurgents.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Review of Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
The lives of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin loom in our public imagination. We know their records of achievement and we understand the fundamentals of their respective projects: Emancipation and Evolution. For the most part, however, we have missed something big and important by looking at them separately, and this is what The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik hopes to address with his new book Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life.
Sharing more than a common birthdate of February 12, 1809, Gopnik sees Lincoln and Darwin as midwifes to the modern world. Previously, life had been organized on a conceptual hierarchy: undemocratic systems were favored, while a vertical system of species, with man at the top and the tiniest critters at the bottom, was considered natural and self-evident. Lincoln’s defense of armed republicanism – the conviction that democracy is functional and must be fought for, if under threat – and Darwin’s elaboration of evolution by natural selection did a great deal to topple this old intellectual edifice.
And to such disparate ends, their approaches were strikingly similar. Gopnik spends a considerable amount of time detailing – celebrating, really – the way in which the two men wrote. Both Lincoln and Darwin lent their voices to the public sphere. Lincoln made speeches the nation would come to know, while Darwin wrote books that were meant to be read and digested by the general population. They wrote simply and effectively. They also wrote their finest, most moving lines, only after having laid the groundwork of substantial argument and example. Lincoln’s background as a lawyer infused his speeches with the kind of legal reasoning that could come off as esoteric and needlessly complicated, while Darwin’s work as a naturalist filled his books with endless examples of various species and their behaviour (one of his books, to illustrate, is titled The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms). Yet, this depth of thought and this understanding of the importance of a good set-up before the punch line, is what made their writing so good. They were able to effectively persuade the public because of their tendency towards the tedious and dull build-up of complex argumentation. As Gopnik puts it: “Good writing is mostly good seeing and good thinking, too. It involves a whole view of life, and making that view sound so plausible that the reader adheres to it as obvious before he knows that it’s radical.”
Gopnik’s book does an equally admirable job of studying the two men’s characters, especially Lincoln’s. Lincoln, the man Americans regard as something of a secular saint, was also a war-commander who had countless young men sent to battles they would surely die fighting and “boy-deserters hanged after sitting on their coffins in the sun”. He was sage-like but he was also uncompromising. He was a depressive that was “shrewder than he looks and more eloquent than he pretends”. Such contradictions made him inexplicably charismatic and his success at somehow harmonizing them made him great.
After reading this fine book, my admiration for all three men - Lincoln, Darwin, and Gopnik - expanded immeasurably.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Green Jobs
Ontario’s Green Energy Act has not been passed yet, but I hope it will be. It would go a long way in protecting the environment while reducing unemployment. The legislation says it will create around 50,000 jobs, primarily in the fields of engineering, construction, architecture, and related areas, with the Act’s expansion of public transportation and its plan to retrofit a great number of buildings to increase energy efficiency. This comfortable relationship between the goals of job creation and environment protection wasn’t always so; for quite a while, it was taken as self-evident that they were mutually exclusive and that the promotion of one inevitably brought the other’s weakening.
A very recent issue of The Nation (the ultra-progressive American weekly) published a piece by Robert Pollin, a professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts and co-author of Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy. He defends something like the American version of Ontario’s Green Energy Act. His Green Investment Agenda – the attempt to improve energy efficiency; increase access to renewable energy resources; and limit the use of dirty fuels – should also raise the prospects of the unemployed since, he argues, a $1-million investment in Green-jobs, such as building retrofitting, the creation of “smart grids” (a system that should make it easier and more efficient to harness renewable sources of power), will create about seventeen jobs; while the same investment in the coal and oil industry would create only about 5.5 jobs. If we can one day manage to trade in our current system, fueled by oil and coal, for a cleaner and more sustainable one, we will find ourselves with not just a more pleasant environment but with a greater number of jobs, in more diverse fields. As Pollin puts it
“If we allow that every $1 million in new green investments will be matched by an equal fall in spending within the fossil fuel industry, we will still net about 11.5 jobs each time $1 million transfers from fossil fuels to clean energy (i.e., seventeen jobs for green investments minus 5.5 lost in oil, natural gas and coal).”
Our public officials need to act now before we find ourselves past the tipping point. It’ll be a lot of work, but we have no other option at this point.
Let’s hope the Green Energy Act passes undiluted. It’s a start.
A very recent issue of The Nation (the ultra-progressive American weekly) published a piece by Robert Pollin, a professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts and co-author of Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy. He defends something like the American version of Ontario’s Green Energy Act. His Green Investment Agenda – the attempt to improve energy efficiency; increase access to renewable energy resources; and limit the use of dirty fuels – should also raise the prospects of the unemployed since, he argues, a $1-million investment in Green-jobs, such as building retrofitting, the creation of “smart grids” (a system that should make it easier and more efficient to harness renewable sources of power), will create about seventeen jobs; while the same investment in the coal and oil industry would create only about 5.5 jobs. If we can one day manage to trade in our current system, fueled by oil and coal, for a cleaner and more sustainable one, we will find ourselves with not just a more pleasant environment but with a greater number of jobs, in more diverse fields. As Pollin puts it
“If we allow that every $1 million in new green investments will be matched by an equal fall in spending within the fossil fuel industry, we will still net about 11.5 jobs each time $1 million transfers from fossil fuels to clean energy (i.e., seventeen jobs for green investments minus 5.5 lost in oil, natural gas and coal).”
Our public officials need to act now before we find ourselves past the tipping point. It’ll be a lot of work, but we have no other option at this point.
Let’s hope the Green Energy Act passes undiluted. It’s a start.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Blog THIS: January 18
January 18, 2009
Book Review: Elvin T. Lim's
The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush
Posted by Daniel Tseghay at 09:54 PM ET
In just a few days, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. He'll be following George W. Bush, of course: a man that made a distinct impression in a number of ways. Bush's administration extended the powers of the executive branch to a level unseen in the modern era; his administration broke international law with an almost studied negligence; and Bush, the man himself, was an extraordinarily bad speaker. Now, we all know about his tendency to trip over his own words. Yet, his failure to follow basic grammatical rules distracts us from an important aspect of his rhetoric: its anti-intellectualism.
In The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush, Elvin T. Lim takes note of the growing anti-intellectualism in the rhetoric of presidents. Where once, they engaged their audience with complex arguments for and explanations of their policies, the rhetoric of the modern presidency is now characterized by its use of slogans, appeals to emotion, applause lines, and its unimaginative simplicity.
Lim, quite understandably, sees this as a serious problem and, even, a threat to democracy. If the president cannot, or will not, speak to the citizenry with any kind of complexity or depth, how can we expect an informed public? And if the president's rhetoric is detracting from, rather than contributing constructively to, public deliberation, on which basis are the people making their decisions?
There are some things to be hopeful about. Not only is Obama an articulate, eloquent, and elevating speaker, he's shown us he has the ability to speak about complex issues without "dumbing" them down. His speech in March of 2008 on race in America, titled "A More Perfect Union", is a good example of his willingness to engage the citizenry intellectually. Lim, though, criticizes Obama for the vagueness and imprecision that often creeps into his speech. "Barack Obama waxed poetic about his theme of 'change,' while leaving details of his inspirational rhetoric unspecified. Tellingly, he drew support from both ultra liberals (such as supporters of MoveOn.org) and moderate Republicans with this strategy."
Let's hope that with the end of Obama's campaign for the presidency, he'll feel less pressured to appeal to everyone and will speak to the people with directness, honesty, and a demonstrable respect for their intelligence.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Blog THIS: January 15
January 15, 2009
Canada's unconditional support
Posted by Daniel Tseghay at 11:31 PM ET
Last week, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff had this to say about the Gaza offensive: "Canada has to support the right of a democratic country to defend itself". The minister of state for Foreign Affairs, Peter Kent lent similar backing to Israel, saying: "The position of the government of Canada is that Hamas bears the burden of responsibility for the deepening humanitarian tragedy". And just this Monday, Canada became the only member of the UN Human Rights Council, out of 47, to vote against a motion condemning the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza strip.
I agree with Michael Byers that, even when a state has the right to defend itself, it may potentially break international law with disproportionate tactics. The international community seems to be saying as much, and yet Canada remains unreflectively supportive.
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