Try to believe that a monkey is a pumpkin

THIS ONE'S ABOUT RISK—TINY RISKS OF HUGE CATASTROPHES. THAT'S US ALL OVER HERE IN CALIFORNIA, WHAT WITH EARTHQUAKES, FIRES, AND TSUNAMIS. HOW ABOUT DISBELIEVING IN GOD?
I visited my parents today. It turns out my mother experienced a minor emergency last night. She had been feeling poorly for weeks but then, late yesterday, she experienced palpitations. My dad drove her to Kaiser. The two of them remained in the emergency room for several hours.

My mom told me that her palpitations were caused by “drug interactions.” I asked her which drugs had interacted. She said, “it was my antibiotics.” I said, well, OK, that’s one drug, but what about the other one or ones?

Eventually (you have no idea), I gleaned from my parents (aka the Costanzas) that mom has been on thyroid medication for decades, and when she started on a course of antibiotics for a dental problem about a month ago, she immediately became ill. Two weeks later, she started another course of antibiotics—for another ailment—and, again, she felt ill, until Friday, when she broke out in a rash. Then came the palpitations last night.

“How do you know it isn’t just the antibiotics?” I asked. My parents stared at me. My parents (aka the Bickersons) then argued for a while about I-know-not-what, but, in the end, they seemed to say that both of these drugs were in mom’s system when she had the palpitations. So there you are.

Naturally, I explained that, no, in fact, there are several possibilities that could explain the palpitations. First, it could indeed be the interaction between the thyroid medicine and the antibiotics. Second, it could be the antibiotics alone. Third, it could be neither the above-mentioned interaction nor the antibiotics; possibly, coincidentally, something else might have caused the palpitations.

“Well,” said dad, “that’s unlikely.” I agreed, but I said that that didn’t mean that the possibility should be ignored. After all, I said, for all we know, there could be something wrong with mom's heart. Even a 1% chance of that is something you need to consider, I said.

(You might wonder why I didn’t just ask them what the emergency room doctor told them. But you’ve got to know my parents to know how unlikely it is that one will find out what the doctor told them by asking them what the doctor told them. Tea leaves or gopher entrails are much better indicators.)

* * * * *

This reminds me of something I wrote a while back about the danger of a tsunami wreaking havoc on the coast of Orange County (So Cal tsunamis?). I had come across a study that had been done, I believe, for the state (Evaluation of Tsunami Risk to Southern California Coastal Cities (pdf)). According to the study, there is a small but significant chance of a tsunami hitting the OC, not only because of earthquakes, but also because of undersea landslides on the Catalina side of the channel, which is very deep. According to the report, there is evidence of historical tsunamis of serious significance along the OC coast. These, said the report's author, are “infrequent.” Nevertheless, “the hazard posed by locally generated tsunami attack [!] is very serious and should be appropriately mitigated.”

The general point here is that a risk might still be worrisome even when it is very unlikely. It is significant if what could occur would be catastrophic.


This seems to be the core idea of “Pascal’s Wager,” one of the most famous arguments “for believing in God.” Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) argued, not that God exists, but that it is rational to believe in God. There’s a difference.

Suppose that I have been falsely accused of blasphemy, and I am now in the clutches of Inquisitors. Suppose, further that the Inquisitors will torture me until both I confess to blasphemy and, further, I believe my confession (let us assume that I know that they will kill me in any event). Clearly, under the circumstances, it is rational for me not only to confess but also to believe in my confession, if I can manage that, for it is better to not be tortured than it is to be tortured. That is, even though the belief that I blasphemed is false, it is nevertheless rational for me to adopt that belief (if, again, I can manage that).

A similar situation is said to arise re belief in God. According to Pascal, I will either believe in God or not.

I BELIEVE IN GOD. We’ll start with my believing in God. In that case, there are two possibilities, for either God exists or He doesn’t. If God does exist, that’s good, for (reportedly) God, who is omnipotent, is pleased by those who believe in Him. But what if God does not exist? In that case, nothing good or bad happens. One simply has a false belief. One already has lots of those. No big deal.

The upshot: one takes no chances, really, in believing in God. There’s no downside of any significance.

I DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. Now consider what happens when one doesn't believe in God. It’s totally different. Again, either God exists or He doesn’t. If He doesn’t, then, if I don't believe in Him, then I have a true belief. So what? I've already got lots of those. I don’t get a prize or anything.

But now suppose that God does exist. Surely there is some possibility that that is the case. Who could deny it? But if God does exist and I do not believe that He exists, then things go very badly for me. The word is that, in that case, I'm in for eternal torment.

The upshot: in not believing in God, one takes one hell of a risk. True, given the poverty of the arguments for God’s existence and the tension in the notion that a perfectly good creator has created an evil-drenched world such as ours, God’s existence may well be judged unlikely. But even a 1% chance of eternal torment is a chance that, as a rational being, one must not take. Meanwhile, there really is no downside to believing in God. So, naturally, the only rational thing to do is to believe in God! (I have taken some liberties here. Pascal emphasized the good of eternal reward, not the bad of eternal punishment.)

Once again, the key motivator here isn’t the likelihood of the negative outcome. One might well argue that that outcome (eternal torment) is very unlikely. The key motivator is the magnitude of the catastrophe involved in the negative outcome.

This makes a lot of sense—until you consider:

Isn’t God liable to get ticked off if you show up believing in Him, not because He reveals Himself in His fine and wondrous workmanship and love, but because, well, you believe in insurance? Imagine finally meeting Him and saying, "Oh, great! It was a real leap believing in you, dude—I mean, c'mon!—but like I always say, you gotta consider all contingencies! Ha ha ha!"

Second, if this reasoning works for the Christian God, isn’t it likely to work for other religions’ gods too? If so, does reason then compel us to believe in all of the gods? But do the religions allow you to employ a “cover your bets” strategy? I think not. For one thing, gods tend to be “jealous”—at least that’s the word on the street.

Finally, are beliefs really things you can choose? Go ahead, choose to believe that a monkey is a pumpkin, I dare you!

Can’t do it, eh?

Well, I guess if you had enough time to really mess yourself up, you could probably just manage it.

I do wish theists would be clearer about just what they expect from people with regard to belief. Some theists seem to think that nonbelievers are ipso facto sinners. Occasionally, I call them on this. I say, "OK, just what am I doing wrong? It's not like I don't want to believe in God. I do. (I want justice as much as anyone, and, well, there doesn't seem to be justice in this realm.) But, dude, I've got to have a reason, and it's got to be a decent one. It can't be a leap of faith, 'cause I am a rational being, and I am not going to make some totally daffy move that places me in exactly the same category, rationally speaking, as Shirley MacLaine or Kathryn Kuhlman."

Unfortunately, at this point, I usually start getting the pseudoscience shuffle. That's when I'm told that "if my heart is truly open," if I will just set aside my pride, then God will somehow enter me and do the do. Yeah, so, later, when it doesn't happen, they've got that one covered. I'm a sinner; I'm not worthy.

Reminds me of the physicist who was pretty sure that psychic power is real. He found some kids who were reputed to have psychic ability, so he tested them. But no abilities were revealed.

So naturally, he backed off, started changing his tune. Right?

Wrong. He did the shuffle. He had a "Eureka!" moment. He had discovered, he said, that psychic ability is shy. That is, when you test it, it goes away!

So, again, I want to believe in God, but I am aware of no good reason to believe in Him. What am I supposed to do here? Tell me that! And don't be giving me the shuffle!
'

The supposed war between reason and the emotions

So much of our thinking seems to be defined by simplistic and misleading slogans or caricatures. Consider the way we talk about "Reason versus Emotions." The thinking seems to be that

• These "things" are distinct (two entities)
• One excludes or corrodes the other (they are enemies; they are opposites)
• Reason is superior to emotion (In the healthy mind/soul, the reason rules the emotions—Plato, Kant)

Sometimes, we encounter a kind of rebel position:

• "The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing." —Pascal

We run with some of these ideas, but should we?

OVERWHELMING EMOTION

The term “emotionalism” is sometimes used to refer to a state in which emotions—anger, fear, joy, etc.—are so strong that reason is impaired. Obviously, this sort of thing does happen. But just what may we conclude from this phenomenon? Certainly none of the ideas above.

Observe that, in recognizing the phenomenon thus understood, we seem to be thinking that emotions are not intrinsically corrosive of reason, for otherwise we would not specify cases in which emotions are “so strong.”

This matches the common sense observation that people often feel emotions while reasoning perfectly well. If I feel joy when I reunite with my long-absent cat, there is no reason to suppose that my reason is impaired. Heck, it could be optimal.

I sometimes watch those military aircraft shows on TV. Actually, I love 'em. There, I encounter depictions of fighter pilots in highly stressful circumstances—dogfights and “furballs.” These pilots’ survival depends on their employing rational faculties well. Do we think that these pilots are necessarily rationally impaired because of their stress and fear?

Or is it that, somehow, they block out or thwart their emotions in order to function well and thus survive? But they give every indication of not doing that, and, typically, they acknowledge their fear.

In what sense then can emotions be thought of as “opposed to” reason?

UNDERSTANDING EVENTS

Sometimes, our reason—or, more broadly, our understanding—requires, or essentially includes, emotions. If college kid Ivy works on a research paper about the Holocaust, learning for the first time that millions of people, including women and children, were rounded up, horribly abused, and then killed, we expect her to be horrified.

Being horrified, even if it is the sort of “horror” that we might experience as we hover quietly above a book in a library, is an emotional state.

Imagine that Ivy is in no sense horrified. She is reading about and thinking about these events, but she feels no differently than she might feel while thinking about, say, lint. Here, we would, I think, be inclined to say that, since she has no feelings about these events, she obviously does not understand them.

Among the states of incapacitation that we talk about are states of numbness and the absence of emotions. Here, as in so many cases, “being rational” involves, among other things, the presence of feelings and emotions, not their absence. Emotions aren’t opposed to reason; emotions are a part of being rational.


THE LOGICAL MR. SPOCK

Imagine an episode of Star Trek in which Captain James T. Kirk has been captured by the Romulans and it is now up to Mr. Spock, the supposedly “unemotional” half-Vulcan second-in-command, to save Jim from a fate worse than death. Suppose that Spock does his very best to command the ship and its crew and, in the end, he saves Kirk. Later, Spock explains to Dr. McCoy that his efforts on behalf of Kirk were “logical.”

But it is difficult, I think, to picture Spock’s diligence in saving Kirk without attributing to Spock some element of feeling or emotion, at least in a dispositional sense. I mean, if Spock doesn't give a damn about Kirk—and doesn't give a damn about the “Prime Directive” and the Federation either—then in what sense is it “logical” for him to strive and strain to save Captain Kirk? In that case, it appears to be illogical.

YOU'RE JUST BEING EMOTIONAL

Often, foes of abortion or animal exploitation are accused of being “emotional” rather than logical. Most of the time, I think, the charge is confused. Surely the accusers cannot be thinking that the anti-abortionists fail to be logical because they feel emotions, for emotions—e.g., concern for the welfare of poor pregnant women and unwanted children—are as essential to the pro-choice position as they are to the pro-life position. In general, having strong concerns is intrinsically a matter of emotions and feelings, and we certainly do not want to say that having concerns is incompatible with being rational or using reason.

It is easy to anthropomorphize—that is, to erroneously project the capacities and aspects of our own mental life onto beings who are not thus capable. We do that with animals when we suppose that they are indignant or treacherous. We sometimes do it with infants and with fetuses. Now, if Auntie A supposes that an 8-week old fetus is mentally very much like an infant, and, on that assumption, she is utterly horrified by film of an abortion of an 8-week old fetus, then she is making a mistake. But her mistake has nothing to do with her emotions. For if she felt the same emotions while observing similar violence done to an infant, we would regard her feelings as appropriate and healthy. The problem here is not that her emotions impair reason; rather, the problem is that she misconstrues the facts, for an 8-week old fetus does not have a mental life and thus is not at all like an infant. Misconstruing the facts is not about emotions.

SURPRISING EMPIRICAL TESTIMONY

Have you read Antonio R. Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error? Damasio is not a philosopher, but rather a neurologist at the U of Iowa. He researches brain functions. In Descartes’ Error, working largely from his research, he argues that emotions play a central role in human reasoning. According to Damasio, people who, congenitally or owing to injury or disease, cannot feel emotions also cannot make good decisions.


WORDS WITH, OR WITHOUT, EMOTIONAL MEANING

People are sometimes accused of using “emotional” language as though that were illogical or fallacious. Here's a concrete case.

Suppose that Auntie A insists on describing an 8-week fetus as a “baby.” Now she’d never get away with that among a group of pro-choicers, for pro-choicers would immediately ask her to justify her tacit assumption that 8-week old fetuses are similar to or equivalent to infants. It would quickly become clear that Auntie A is, as we say in logic, “begging the question,” i.e., she is assuming the truth of the very proposition that she needs to establish—namely, that a fetus is the sort of being who ought to be regarded in the same way that we regard a baby. She cannot simply assume the proposition. She must argue for it.

Just who would be led astray by the “tactic” (if that is what it is) of calling a fetus a “baby”? I find it hard to picture this process. But I guess that I can just barely imagine someone, Mr. B, listening to Auntie A and being persuaded of her pro-life position in part because he fails to notice the question-begging in Auntie A’s rhetoric. Mr. B's mistake doesn’t strike me as about his emotions. Someone who falls into Auntie A's trap strikes me as rationally untrained and unsophisticated, but they don't strike me as having defective emotions or as applying emotions "incorrectly."

Just what would it be to have a “wrong” or “illogical” emotion anyway? Laughing at a rock or a bean, I guess. Feeling joy at the sight of a wall crack.

Fallacy!

And, again, simply having emotions is not in itself a fallacy. Far from it.

Sometimes, people use rhetoric that obscures the appropriateness of strong emotions. If Jack Ripper teaches his recruits about the My Lai “incident,” he might manage to leave the impression that it was not a violent event in which many women, children, old people, and animals were slaughtered. It is much more “logical,” it seems to me—it is more accurate and honest—to refer to the event as a massacre, something that by its very nature is violent and dreadful.

Sometimes, being logical is a matter of bringing emotions into play.

ERRONEOUS WAR

I often find students who are hostile to reason, or hostile to the advocates of reason, exactly because they suppose, as we are endlessly encouraged to do, that reason and emotions are like oil and water or are distinct and opposite. Because these students rightly sense that there is nothing wrong with emotions, that, indeed, there is something very important about emotions, and given that reason and emotions are "opposite," they naturally become the enemy of reason.

But their assumption that reason and emotions are separate things and that they are opposed to each other is unwarranted, and it is a mistake. And so, therefore, is the war they seem to feel they must wage against reason.
'

To the undergraduate ear (tiny philosophical adventures)

1. Philosophy is often a matter of stepping back from something and asking fundamental and general questions about it: “What do we mean by ‘a person’?” “What is a ‘law’?” “What is an ‘object’?” I tell my students that such questions are inevitable, unavoidable. I mean, you're not going to make much headway understanding, say, the nature of scientific knowledge unless you delve into the meaning of "law," or "law-hood," as we might say.

There’s no use scoffing at such questions, even though they are highly abstract, seemingly ridiculously so.

One of my old professors used to tell this story. He was taking a philosophy course at a certain Ivy League University—this would have been in the early 50s—and the lecturer was discussing the general idea of a “property.” You know, a quality, a characteristic. (See Properties.)

Philosophers (at least in the Anglo-American tradition) routinely use or borrow from formal logic, and, in logic, when one chooses a letter to represent a property, one chooses among A, B, and C—or P, Q, and R. Don’t know why. That’s just the way it is.

A, B, C...
P, Q, R...

That reminds me. A couple of days ago, my best friend asked me, “How come you called your new blog ‘Contra PalaVerities’?”

“I dunno. I just called it that. It sounds good, I guess.”

“But what does ‘Contra PalaVerities’ mean?”

“Mean? It doesn’t mean anything, dude. It’s just a name.”

Philosophers are the only people guaranteed to understand that answer. (See Rigid designators.)

Anyway, this philosophy professor decided to refer to “some property” using the phrase “A-ness.” The thinking, here, was that “-ness” is a suffix for properties—e.g., redness, tallness, knuckleheadedness, etc.

So he commenced referring to A-ness, writing it on the blackboard. "A-ness, A-ness, A-ness," he said. Unfortunately, to the undergraduate ear, there is no difference at all between the sound of the word “A-ness” and the sound of the word “anus.” So students commenced tittering and murmuring and whispering like they do.

After a while, the prof swung around and asked what all the commotion was about.

“Well, you said ‘anus,’ explained some brave soul, pointing at his rear end.

The prof was mightily embarrassed. But he soon recovered. Naturally, he erased all the A-nesses from the board, replacing each one with a “P-ness.”


2. I’m a bit deaf, owing to an incident that occurred maybe twenty-five years ago. I went out to the desert with my crazy little brother Ray, and when we got there, Ray pulled out a Saturday Night Special. He said, "Let's shoot at somethin'." Well, I was always looking for opportunities to do things with my black sheep bro, so, despite my utter lack of interest in guns (I support lots and lots of gun control), I joined him in shootin' up a cactus or something. (In those days, we didn’t know any better.)

He gave me the little pistol and I squeezed the trigger a few times. Boy did my ears hurt. And they rang. I said, "Is it supposed to be so loud?" Ray laughed.

Well, that was over twenty years ago, and my ears have never stopped ringing.

Excuse me, I've gotta get the phone. —Well, no. That's just the ringing in my ears. Huh? Did you say something? D’oh!

Which reminds me. In grad school, I had a colleague named Fong or Fang. I like to think it was Fang, but I suppose it was Fong. He was Chinese, and, as it turns out, his English was terrible.

Then there's my deafness.

So, we were kind of friends, but I never understood a thing he said. You see, judging by his body language and facial expressions, he was a great guy. I was raised by wolves (i.e, German immigrants), and so body language is important to me. (I sometimes find myself not listening to what a person is saying at all. And yet, in some sense, I am listening intently.)

Well, one day, I asked him what his dissertation was about. We were both in the philosophy doctoral program over there at UCI. And, again, philosophers tend to focus on seriously abstract issues. I think my brother (my non-crazy brother, Ron), who got a doctorate in philosophy from UCLA, did his dissertation on the idea of a "property." Or was it on "somethingness"? Not sure.

So I asked Fong what his thesis was about. Without hesitation, he asserted: "WHAT DUH FUK!"

Huh? What was that again?

"WHAT DUH FUK!"

Ok, Ok. That sounds pretty good I guess.

Well, judging by his expression, he still seemed like a nice guy, so I figured I just didn't understand how that particular phrase could be associated with a dissertation in philosophy. Whadoo I know? Could be, I guess.

A few months later, I found a copy of a draft of Fong's dissertation on somebody's desk. I picked it up. Its title:

WHAT'S A FACT?

I laughed pretty hard about that one, boy.

Somebody get the goddam phone!

(Part 2 adapted from my Help the hearing challenged.)
'

"Tell me more, Herr Bauer"

Yesterday, I gave a little party for my old friend Ken, who, these days, is a professor of philosophy in the California State University system. He was a student in my very first philosophy class when I started at Irvine Valley College twenty-two years ago. Back then, Ken was kind of wild, a "headbanger," he said. But he seemed to love what I was doing in class—"I couldn't get rid of him," I reminded him—and he was as smart as a whip.

I recall bringing young Ken to hear the communitarian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre at nearby CSU Fullerton. On another occasion, I took him to a colloquium at the University of Redlands. He and I somehow ended up going to dinner with the honored guest along with the usual departmental suspects. I think Ken got a bit drunk and started throwing bagels around or something. Good grief.

He's still a bit of a wild man, I guess, but he's a damned good philosopher and a great teacher too. I'm proud of 'im.

Yesterday, he arrived with his fiancé, who is a wonderful person, and young Mortimer, who is also a wonderful person, albeit of the canine variety. I was feeling good about all of this wonderfulness. It was a warm summer night, and we enjoyed the quiet and our view of the Santa Ana Mountains.

I've been corresponding with a student from last semester—another big talent, it seems to me, as a writer. He's been in the Army (more than once in Iraq), and now he's going to school and loving it. He has a great little family, and lots of dreams.

He was there, too.

He brought his wife, another survivor of Army life, who teaches and who hopes to continue her education. We're all very pleased that that new "GI Bill of Rights" passed. That will be a great help to so many deserving young people.

I recall being an undergraduate, back in the 70s, hanging out with a group of students that played volleyball on Friday afternoons. One of the regulars was a very well-known philosopher of religion, who loved to be around young people. Often, a gang of us would end up at his funky little place in Laguna Beach. We'd drink and eat and sing and talk about philosophy—and everything else. Very incorrect, I suppose. He had an old Gibson guitar on which he'd sing his "talkin' blues," if we insisted.

I also recall when the famous German philosopher, Carl Hempel, visited the university for a few months—a guest, I recall, of the philosophy club, which managed to snag some kind of grant. He seemed to me at the time to be a very old and very wise man. (I now realize that he was only 73. That ain't so old!)

I recall telling him about Bob Dylan, on a balcony high above Laguna Beach, on a warm summer night. "Tell me more, Herr Bauer," he would say. He seemed genuinely interested.

I do hope that I have been as encouraging to my students as some of my old professors were to me.

'

I am surely a dolt—or no?

There is the fact that I am here, seated by the fire, attired in a dressing gown, having this paper in my hands…. And how could I deny that these hands and this body are mine, were it not perhaps that I compare myself to certain persons, devoid of sense, whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that they constantly assure us that they think they are kings when they are really quite poor, or that they are clothed in purple when they are really without covering, or who imagine that they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass! —Descartes’ Meditations

I’ve been thinking about this “last lecture” idea that’s going around. What would I say in such a lecture?

I would talk about the absurdity of our beliefs. What else?

I might talk about “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” You’ll recall that, in the tale,

An emperor …[unknowingly] hires two swindlers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor cannot see the (non-existent) cloth, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they dress him in mime. The Emperor then goes on a procession through the capital [to] show off his new "clothes." During the course of the procession, a small child cries out, "But he has nothing on!" (Wikipedia)

For me, the tale is best if we emphasize, not the Emperor’s semi-belief that he is naked, but, rather, his less semi worry that his perception that he is naked is somehow mistaken, thus exposing him, in his mind, to being revealed as a fool (for supposing he is naked when he is in fact clothed).

The story loses fascination, too, if we suppose that everyone else is pretending to see clothes that are not there out of fear of contradicting the Emperor. Fear of offending the Emperor is not interesting. Our capacity to believe things that defy what our eyes plainly see—now that’s interesting. In my mind, the peasants don’t miss a beat. Right away, they see the clothing. They cheer happily.

And the child—he (or she or it) hasn’t learned how to deny and complicate his own perceptions in the way that the adults have. (Not sure about the ministers, those sycophantic rat bastards.)

So, for me, it’s a story about epistemological innocence or purity. The adult peasants aren’t just going along with a charade; they are corrupted thinkers. The process of seeing what is not there happens so quickly, so naturally, that they are no longer aware of it.

In a way, it is a strange world that we are describing. What a bizarre story! And yet, in a way, it is not strange at all. Obviously, people are complex, are capable of learning all sorts of subtle and peculiar games with perverse twists and turns. Why not the weird epistemological game?

OK. I’m saying that this is our world and we play this game. My message? —Resist being another corrupted thinker. Duh.

Some will say, perhaps, that I have simply stated the obvious. Yes, they will say, that is the way it is. We knew that. Haven’t you read Orwell? People's beliefs are messed up. So what?

If you will say this to me, then I am surely a dolt, for I swear to you that the people I encounter all day long really, truly seem to me to believe, and not just to semi-believe, that “our nation is just and good,” that “the people are wise,” that “the jury system is the best system,” and that “the Administration would not lie to the people about so grave a matter as war.”

Really, I feel a great embarrassment at the thought that, despite how people clearly seem to me, I have utterly underestimated them, for (you will now insist), in truth (Roy, you knucklehead you), people actually do understand that our nation is often callous and arrogant and stupid, that most voters are clueless, that election campaigns struggle for the hearts and minds of the irrationally impressionable, that it would certainly be better to train jurors about fallacies and sophistry, and that the President and his people are certainly capable of lies and deceptions.

Good Lord! It isn't just the likes of me? Everybody recognizes this crazy hell game world?

Wait a minute. Nope, I ain’t going there. Nice try!

I know what I see.

.

In defense of name-calling

You'll notice that I don't have a problem calling somebody a "creep." Now, lots of people will immediately accuse me of name-calling or "ad hominems." They'll say I'm not objective or fair.

Well, that's just confused. My background is in Philosophy and Ethics. I believe in truth and I believe in moral clarity. And so, to my way of thinking, it's important to call a spade a spade. You're not being more accurate or objective when you call the My Lai massacre an "incident." You're not committing a fallacy when you call Stalin a tyrant or a murderer. To refuse to call a massacre a massacre or Stalin a tyrant is to engage in some kind of spin. It's to be Bill O'Reilly.

I think we can all agree that some people are creeps, i.e., detestable persons. We might disagree about some attributions (Donald Trump?) but there are many about which we'll find agreement (Lee Atwater, et al.). Some people are detestable, and, generally, we do best resisting the temptation to just say they have "a bit of an edge."

Naturally, it won't do to just call somebody a creep (aka a detestable person) when it isn't clear what the basis is for their creepitude, their detestulosity. Logically speaking, that's getting ahead of yourself. Now, on my other blog (with Rebel Girl), I often call people detestable. But regular readers of that blog (unless they're knuckleheads, which is possible) are very familiar with the basis for the attribution. The facts have been identified, over and over, man. I mean, it's like listening to Britney Spears and pronouncing her goofy. You don't have to explain it to anybody except cave dwellers.

People like to throw the term "ad hominem" around. In logic, it has a narrow meaning. One commits the "ad hominem" (i.e., "to the person") fallacy when one makes a particular mistake of relevance. It is the mistake of saying that a person's view should be rejected (or embraced) owing to some fact about that person—for instance, that they're hypocritical or, say, metrosexual.

Now if I start talking about "the dictator Adolf Hitler," I'm not committing the ad hominem fallacy. I'm not really reasoning; I'm making an assertion, and the assertion is, as we say in the philosophy world, "true." It's also negative, but attributing something negative to a person is not ipso facto a fallacy.

We're often told that we should not engage in "personal attacks." If what is meant by this is only that one errs if one supposes that an opponent's view is undermined by a criticism of him, then fine. Accordingly, personal attack=ad hominem.

But, clearly, sometimes people use "personal attack" to mean: criticism of a person. I have at times been "charged" with personal attacks when I've noted that the Chancellor of my college district is dishonest or conniving. (The grounds for such charges are overwhelming. Calling Raghu Mathur a schemer is like calling fish wet.)

But criticizing a person, if the criticism is fair, is not only defensible, it can bring moral clarity to a discussion that desperately needs it. For instance, lots of people insist on respecting George W. Bush, and part of that is an unwillingness to view him as deceitful. Too bad that, five or six years ago, more people didn't point at the guy and state the obvious truth: "Given what we already know about this man and his crew, we'd be fools to accept his assurances!"

In a certain sense, the world needs more disrespect.

George W. Bush is a liar and a lout. I hereby place my moralist hat upon my head and declare: get with the f***ing program.

Where are the conservatives?

[What follows is something I wrote the other day on Dissent the Blog. But it is exactly the kind of thing I want to put on Contra PalaVerities. I edited it a bit.]



I recall one night maybe a year ago in a parking lot. Seemed like nobody was around. Maybe there was one guy about forty yards away, where it was dark. But somebody was madly talking to somebody. It was creepy. How could this be?



It be all right. It was the solitary guy, walking across the parking lot, unapologetically yammering at full volume on his goddam cell phone. I hated that guy. I hated how he weirded me out and he never even knew or cared.



This happens to me all the time: you’ll be talking to somebody and then, wham, something starts buzzing on the table; or maybe some goofy calliope music plays; or maybe there’s the sound of nuts cracking coming from somebody’s pants. Your companion suddenly looks at a spot on the wall and then reaches for his goddam cell phone. He looks away from you. You’re forgotten.

So you shuffle away like Puff the freakin’ Magic Dragon—only to run into somebody else walkin’ and yackin’ on the phone. You step out of their way. You’ve always gotta step out of their way, ‘cause, when they’re talking, they’re morons, and they think they own the freakin’ universe.



Hate ‘em. Cell phones I mean.


Why do people—especially kids, but adults too—unthinkingly embrace popular new gadgets? It’s the kind of thing little kids should do, not adults. New modes of life—IMing, going through your day listening to music and utterly ignoring everything and everybody around you, suddenly startin’ up a phone conversation while you're in the bathroom, leasing a Mercedes—you’ve gotta take a beat, man. Don’t just jump in there! How do you know this isn’t just ridiculous?


It’s this endless enthusiasm for jumping right in there and feeling really good about being part of the mindless horde who doesn’t think about anything but just does stuff—that’s what pisses me off. If that’s the way people are, then there’s no hope. None at all.



I swear, soon somebody will find a way for two people to drink the same Coke—serially, I mean—probably with weird-assed straws shaped like Ronald McDonald and comin' out of your neck—or maybe they'll figure out a way to surgically exchange ears, and everybody will be all over it with their "new" ears and punctured necks. They’ll smile and laugh (through their neck hole) and think you’re obviously an asshole if you’re not into it too.



See, this has to do with how conservatism does not exist in this country. If you’re conservative in any meaningful sense, then you’ve got this idea that things barely work as it is. And that means, mostly, you don’t wanna just shuffle the deck just for the sake of shuffling. Things could get worse. We could lose what we've got.



But, in this country, everybody’s into shuffling. Everybody's moving around and doing new things, no matter how insane or ridiculous. And it’s all about commerce and somebody with something new to sell. The money people: they’ll change everything around without a thought, except the thought of how to make money and more money. And everybody goes along with it, ‘cause they’re zombies, and they don’t think about how the most valuable things might just be imbedded in away of life.

So you don't want to mess with things too much. You gotta be careful. Take things slow, if you can.



But who thinks like that, like a conservative?

My world and welcome to it*

Allow me to introduce myself

Sunny Girl (my nutty-but-sweet old cat) died maybe a month ago, and with her went all of my summertime resolve. Death hits me hard. It hits everybody hard, I know. I actually had a panic attack that day! Been better ever since though.

Sunny Girl goes to the vet:


The OC and the "board from hell"

My college district is still controlled, as it has been for many years, by local hegemonic forces, Neanderthal division. They've saddled us with an odious and incompetent Chancellor who, with the help of his trustee patrons, has brought our colleges to the brink of non-accreditation. It's stunning.

If ever you wanted to witness the spectacle of a stupefied electorate that has not a clue how things are done or what goes on, well, Orange County is the place you oughta be. It's kinda like a family in which the kids are stuck on an Infinite plastic carnival ride while mom 'n' pop, oblivious, are meditating in the bedroom or visiting Pastor Tom, who, between pontifications, is making love to farm animals.

Well, I guess I'm puttin' too much lipstick on this pig. I do that.

I don't mean to be negative. I love Orange County. I don't wanna leave. Honestly.

Despite what the rest of the country imagines (I guess), "the OC" is really two places: the older, vibrant, crumbling, chaotic north (Anaheim, etc., up towards LA) and the newer, tidier, orderly and rich south (Irvine, Mission Viejo, etc., down towards still undeveloped land). Newport Beach over to the west is sorta part of the south. It's older, and we keep some of our worst creeps there. I think that asshole Dennis Rodman is there. John Wayne, too, though he's dead and, so, not exactly a creep.

I live mostly in the south, in the mountains, a stone's throw from the Real Housewives. In fact, I routinely throw stones at 'em. (The locals know what bullshit that show is.)

As I was saying, this is one clueless populous, man. I guess that's true everywhere. But I only know here. I'll be talkin' about here.

Ten years ago, the president of my college district's board was a Holocaust-denying "eccentric":


*Note: "My World and Welcome To It" was the name of a short-lived TV program based on the sensibility of James Thurber. I remember it as being terrific, but I was just 13 when I last saw it.

In 1969, things were different: