Pulling into Nazareth (On "Magic Moments")

And then it happened
It took me by surprise
I knew that you felt it too
By the look in your eyes*

     I call ‘em “magic moments” (MMs). That’s a trite phrase, I suppose, but when I talk about them, which is almost never, that’s the phrase I use.

     I just looked up the word “magic.” The adjective can refer to “a quality that makes something seem removed from everyday life, esp. in a way that gives delight.”** Well, that’s pretty much what I have in mind.

     I’ve always had MMs—though maybe not as often as I do nowadays. I love ‘em, of course, though I tend to keep them to myself. (For the purposes of this essay, I’ll leave aside the MMs of romance. They seem to require special treatment.)

My sister and me, Vancouver, B.C., c. 1959

     FLEETING MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. Some of my MMs seem to be randomly-occurring, tenuous memories of moments from childhood. When they occur, it is as if I have been transported back to, say, 1962, sitting in my mother’s car (the passenger seat, next to mom) as she drives my sister to summer school. The school building is in the country, away from the city, and it is old, large, and intriguing (and I never go inside). Something lovely plays on the radio in that old car—a 1950 Buick? I am transfixed, there, in 1962. I want this moment to last.

     Was the experience, fifty years ago, “magical”? Or is it magical only now, when experienced anew, by this elderly fellow? I suspect that the original moment was some kind of magical, though that magic is now largely lost. And the memory, now, I suspect, owes at least some if its “magic” to a yearning for that moment and world in 1962—something lost or nearly so.

     NOT A SCENE, BUT A WORLD. Some magic moments concern ignorance and imagination, things in great supply among children. As I recall, as a child, I would encounter a scene—something described in a book or story or portrayed on a movie or TV screen—and my mind would somehow fill in the vast undescribed and undetermined of the scene’s “world” with a kind of vague, largely unspecified wonderfulness. The result: a Wonderful World. And a place beyond reach, probably.

     When I was very young, scenes of the Old West could be like that—not always, but sometimes, when the right image or sound or even smell entered my consciousness.

     It’s 1959 and I’m living with my family on a quiet street in Vancouver, BC (see photo above). No doubt, it’s raining. My folks have bought a plastic model of a Conestoga wagon. It sits there in the corner of the living room, on an end table near a couch. I stare at it and imagine a vaguely wonderful world, where the sun always shines and all things are exotic and interesting. That world is somehow gone, and that is sad and beautiful.

     People who chronically experience such thrall are sometimes called “romantics.” Romantics, of course, are people with “romantic” ideas:

romantic, adj.:

• inclined toward or suggestive of the feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love
• of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality**

     I knew nothing about the excitement of love in 1959 (I was four years old). But, otherwise, “excitement” and “mystery” are on the money. Idealized? Well, yes. That Wonderful World was surely better than the one I was in. 

     ONE SUCH WORLD, IN A BOOK. I recall that, as a young school child, I was introduced, at some point, to a richly illustrated reader about a small group of boys and girls, living in the country, a fecund place with trails and forests and hills. Looking at those pages, my imagination was wildly actuated, and I was transported to the world (it seemed) of that book. I now remember virtually nothing about that reader, and the world, but I do remember being utterly transfixed by its illustrations. I know I wanted to be in that world, though I understood, too, that it was a fantasy.

     Once in a while, I’ll see an illustration—typically, in an old children’s book—that reminds me of the old images and world of that book. My senses, or quasi-senses, are piqued; it is as though I hear the faint plucking on the strings of some distant, harp. I cannot quite hear the sound, but I feel the plucking. I try to find it, to focus upon it, the sound, in my mind. But the best I can do is maintain that faint plucking of unheard sounds. It dies away. It's gone.

     A WORLD THOUGHT, NOT SENSED. When I was young, the “worlds” of such moments could be “big”—such as the “Old West.” More often, however, they were relatively circumscribed: the smallish world of the imagined adventures of Daniel Boone (the wilderness of Kentucky) or, say, the valley of the farm of Lucas McCain (of the “Rifleman” TV series). The magic world could be a small thing.
     How odd it is to feel a world that one cannot quite sense, even with sense memories. One has more an idea of it. —The idea of a sensory world, sans any image or sound or feeling, like a photograph that is blank yet that demands that one listen intently to it, or a sound that one cannot help but stare at with eyes wide open. Strange, complex phantom-experiences. Dream-like, I suppose. And yet, the imagined world is somehow just a world, that is, in time and space to be lived in as one does every day.

     THAT "NEIGHBORHOOD" FEELING. I want to say that I stopped thinking about such worlds a long time ago.

     On the other hand, I love old artifacts and buildings. Always have. I even bought one once—a small, two-story house built in 1903, in a neighborhood in Old Towne Orange. Living in that house, I would often experience a kind of thrill—a magic moment—of a special world, somehow in the past, but also in the present. I later grew conscious of a more definite recurring "moment" that would punctuate my days: a special neighborhood feeling—a special sense of the quiet little community of people there, quietly living beyond those walls, somehow tied to these old homes with their old bricks, and narrow slats, and plumbing, and outmoded designs. To live there, it seemed, was to participate in an older way of life, something largely lost. My neighborhood feeling was slightly Tom Sawyerish and a more than a little Henry Aldrichish. 

     I moved out of that house fifteen years ago, but I recently had occasion to walk past it. It was night; I walked down Orange street, past my house, down the block; I then turned the corner, and then another corner.
     A cat followed. I called to it—and then I had the moment, a faint thing. It was that old “neighborhood” feeling, carried, it seemed, by Mr. Cat, with his fine neighborhood ways, who somehow stopped following. I looked for him. I tried to hang on to the magic, but it grew more faint. No cat.

       THE UNDYING DEEP MAGIC OF "THE WEIGHT." Songs can bring magic. I recall seeing the film “Easy Rider” as a teenager. At one point, the biker duo—"Captain America" and Billy—ride across vast landscapes accompanied by “The Weight,” the song by Bob Dylan’s backing band (eventually named simply The Band). I’m not sure, but I do believe that that song was magical to me from that moment on.

     Once again, in the song, we're in rural America, if not the Wild West, in a town called “Nazareth.”*** The singer enters the town—perhaps by car (he "pulls in")—with a mission (we eventually learn), but he runs into difficulty:

I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin' about half past dead
I just need to find a place where I can lay my head
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, "No", was all he said

CHORUS: 

Take a load off Annie
Take a load for free
Take a load off Annie
And you put the load right on me 

I picked up my bag and I went lookin' for a place to hide
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side
And I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on, let’s go downtown"
And she said, "Well, I gotta go, but my friend can stick around" 

(Chorus) 

Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say
'Cause just ol' Luke and Luke's waitin' on the Judgment Day
"Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?"
He said, "Do me a favor, son, woncha stay an' keep Anna Lee company?" 

(Chorus) 

Crazy Chester followed me and he caught me in the fog
He said, "I will fix your rack[?], if you'll take Jack, my dog"
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man"
He said, "That's okay, boy, won't you feed him when you can?" 

(Chorus) 

Catch a Cannonball, now, to take me down the line
My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time
To get back to Miss Annie, you know she's the only one
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone 

(Chorus)****

     I’m not sure how much of the scene painted by these lyrics was clear to me when the song first did its magic more than forty years ago (in those days, I never bothered to work out lyrics, preferring to respond to the aural/lyrical gestalt). I think I understood only vaguely what was going on. But the setting—an older and rural America with people named “Anna Lee” and “Crazy Chester” and “Luke”—was clear enough. So was the mission revealed at the end.

     Through the years, listening to, and loving, this song, I’m not sure I ever wanted really to be in Nazareth. I suppose I placed the town in some vaguely rural/small-town America, which is in many ways attractive to me, but I always understood the bleakness of the song's scene and the sense of frustration of the singer.

     Still, I’m sure I’ve always felt the usual MM longing when this song’s magic would hit me. Carried into this song’s special world, I want something. But what? (Or I've got something, and I seek to keep it, knowing it will slip away.) The place—Nazareth—is intriguing, and yet there’s trouble here. The singer is less-than-well-to-do, it seems, and he’s not having much luck in this odd town. A young woman—Annie—has sent her friend, the singer, with her regards (only that?) to friends in Nazareth. Why did she send the singer and not go herself? The singer knows at least one person in town—Carmen, who saddles him with "the devil"—but he seems like a stranger anyway, alone and unsettled and perhaps puzzled. And why the suggestion of violence in his encounter with Chester?
     Why does this man's difficulty doing a friend a favor have such resonance? His endeavor is vaguely attractive, traveling to this town in the night, there to leave his regards for a friend. His reactions to his odd encounters with Carmen and Chester and Luke are our reactions, of course: we understand his frustration, if not the particulars of his mission. We are told almost nothing about the town of "Nazareth." The song's names and allusions suggest the Bible Belt: rural, small town America, like the areas The Band often played in before and during their association with Dylan.
     At the song's end, the singer, perhaps dejected, tells us it's time to leave, and he catches a train back—to Annie, who remains a mystery.
     What's it all mean? Not sure. But the bare story, with its hints at tasks and promises and frustrations and fidelity, is powerfully compelling nevertheless. Like so much magic, it seems to depend on the vast undefined space that, somehow, is readily filled with our vague and unlocated stuff of wonderfulness. This magic is like a song, faintly heard, that is beautiful for as long as we can't quite grasp its melody and harmonies though we sense their lovely presence, somehow, in our mind's imaginings.

     * "This Magic Moment," by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, 1960. See here and here and here.
     ** All definitions from my Mac's dictionary
     *** Nazareth (Pennsylvania) is, among other things, the home of Martin Guitars. The only American member of the Band is its singer, Levon Helm, who hailed from Arkansas.
     **** By Robbie Robertson of the Band, 1968. See here.

The Band: four Canadians and an older guy, from Arkansas

From Austen's "Other Minds," p. 160

What's all this talk about RUBRICS?

     Lately, I've been carping about the ubiquitous (in academia) word "rubric." It's cringeworthy.
     Here's a slightly more developed version of my carpage:

The OED:
     I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, which, of course, provides the history of words used in the English language.
     Evidently, in English, the word “rubric” was first used, circa 1400, to refer to a “direction in a liturgical book as to how a church service should be conducted…” (OED). Traditionally, these directions were written in red (the word seems to have derived from a French or Middle French word for ocher/ochre).
     That initial meaning quickly gave rise to a prominent new meaning of “rubric” as a “heading” of a section of any book—again, written in red. One hundred and fifty or so years later, the noun “rubric” referred to the heading of a statute in a legal code (the color dimension drops out). By the early 19th Century, the word was used to refer to a “descriptive heading; a designation, a category” (OED).
     Let’s call this the “heading/category” branch/saga of the word “rubric.”
     Also knocking around in recent centuries is/was a meaning of “rubric” such that it refers to an “established custom” or prescription—this strikes me as diverging significantly from the original textual meaning.
     Let’s call this the “rule/prescription” branch of the "rubric" saga.
     Also, “rubric” was used to refer to a “calendar of saints” or the names on such a calendar, written in red.
     Evidently, by the mid-20th Century, academics (only in England?) used the term as an “explanatory or prescriptive note introducing an examination paper” (OED). This appears to be a very specialized meaning. Interestingly, it seems to derive from “rubric’s” initial meaning as a “direction,” though the color and religious dimensions are absent.

Meanwhile, back in the colonies:
     My Mac’s dictionary* defines “rubric” as a “heading on a document,” but it also cites the original meaning (see above) and two more meanings: a “statement of purpose” and a “category.”
     Merriam-Webster's account of the word starts with the word’s initial meaning: “an authoritative rule; especially: a rule for conduct of a liturgical service….” But it also lists “the title of a statute,” a “category,” a “heading,” an “established rule,” and finally “a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests.” More on the latter meaning momentarily.

     My own history with the word seems to have brought me in contact with the “category” and “heading” meanings. (“Gosh, doesn’t that investigation belong under the ‘natural philosophy’ rubric?”) Until recently, I had no idea the word is associated with the color red or that it initially referred to directions (in texts, in red) concerning religious rituals. The above lexicographic info does seem to explain why one might have my particular understanding of the word.

     Nowadays, some academics insist on using the word “rubric” or “rubrics” to refer to assessment tools. They're pretty unapologetic about this peculiar conduct of theirs. No doubt, such use of the word makes them feel special, but it tends to confuse the rest of us, including many academics. It seems clear that this particular usage is new and technical (in some benighted academic circles: education?) and, insofar as it is imposed on a wider audience, it is classic “jargon” (in the most negative sense of the word). Perhaps the usage derives from the 20th Century usage referred to by the OED: an “explanatory or prescriptive note introducing an examination paper.” But I doubt it. It is a long way from that meaning to the current educationist jargony meaning.

     Wikipedia has an interesting article about “Rubric (academic)”:

     In education terminology, scoring rubric means "a standard of performance for a defined population". The traditional meanings of the word Rubric stem from "a heading on a document (often written in red—from Latin, rubrica), or a direction for conducting church services". …[T]he term has long been used as medical labels for diseases and procedures. The bridge from medicine to education occurred through the construction of "Standardized Developmental Ratings." These were first defined for writing assessment in the mid-1970s and used to train raters for New York State's Regents Exam in Writing by the late 1970s….
. . .
     ...Rubric refers to decorative text or instructions in medieval documents that were penned in red ink. In modern education circles, rubrics have recently (and misleadingly) come to refer to an assessment tool. The first usage of the term in this new sense is from the mid 1990s, but scholarly articles from that time do not explain why the term was co-opted….

     I briefly investigated the history of this entry. In one of its original iterations, the article stated:

     In education jargon, the venerable word rubric has been misappropriated to mean "an assessment tool for communicating expectations of quality." Rubric actually means "a heading written or printed in red" (see main entry for rubric). We may hope that some other term will soon replace the fad for this misuse of rubric.
     In educationese, rubrics are supposed to support student self-reflection and self-assessment as well as communication between an assessor and those being assessed. In this new sense, a rubric is a set of criteria and standards typically linked to learning objectives. It is used to assess or communicate about product, performance, or process tasks. [Good God, my eyes are glazing over.]....

     Well, whatever.
 
The "technical term as superior" fallacy:
     Over the years, I have often encountered a particular fallacy that is available to those who learn the technical terms of a particular field or discipline. The fallacy is committed when one supposes that one’s technical meaning of word X is somehow the true and correct meaning of that word; accordingly, one supposes that that meaning eclipses (or should eclipse) the word’s ordinary meaning (what philosophers call the meanings of “natural language”).
     Utter nonsense. In general, the meanings of words in our language do not require repair or adjustment or replacement. (Admittedly, they do require discerning and informed use.) Technical meanings arise relative to particular disciplines and their particular agendas and issues. Thus, for example, there is a very good reason for the technical term “valid” in logic, just as (no doubt) there is a very good reason for the technical term “mass”** in physics. (I'll stick to logic, which is my field.)
     Even so, it would be absurd for logicians to advocate (to the broader community) abandoning the ordinary meaning(s) of “valid” in favor of this technical meaning. The most that can be said in favor of the latter meaning is that our language (as English speakers) would be enriched by adding yet another meaning of “valid,” namely, the logician’s technical meaning. But if we seek to continue to speak (and write) well, we need to keep those non-technical meanings in our quiver.
     It seems to me that it is exactly those fields that are least secure in their standing (in academia, or among intellectuals) that tend to produce “experts” who insist on imposing their technical meanings on the rest of the population. (SLOs, anyone?)
     Education people (or whoever you are): in English, “rubric” means “heading” or “category.” It does not mean “an assessment tool for communicating expectations of quality.”
     If you feel that everyone should adopt this particular technical meaning (shoving aside more venerable meanings), you need to make a case for that.
     Good luck with that.

*New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition
**An argument is valid, in the logician’s technical sense, if, upon viewing the premises as true and the conclusion as false, a contradiction arises. Physics: "the quantity of matter that a body contains, as measured by its acceleration under a given force or by the force exerted on it by a gravitational field." --NOAD

Wisdom—ridiculous

Down the road from where I live

     I’m beginning to think that wisdom, more often than not, is a disinclination, born of experience, that arises at certain times to make inquiries or otherwise to go down paths of awareness or discovery.
     Ridiculous, I know.

* * * 

     I’m not the sort who thinks about wisdom. I mean, there is nothing attractive—indeed, there is something unattractive—about someone aiming to be wise—except when wisdom is understood as a quiet, personal thing, not a showy, public thing. Wisdom for yourself alone is an unqualified good.
     But one cannot teach young people for long without recognizing that they are, for lack of a better term, plainly unwise. And that recognition tends to bring with it a recognition of one’s own “wisdom.”
     “Gosh,” one thinks. “I know something they don’t, owing to my experience.”
     I’m thinking of a student of mine who is very bright, very hungry for ideas and intellectual stimulation, but who takes himself and his thoughts pretty seriously. I find myself telling him, “Well, don’t get too wrapped up in this Existentialism thing. You’ll find that enthusiasms for such philosophies tend to fade. Later, you’ll wonder what all the Sturm und Drang was about.”
      But it’s no use. These young people can’t understand such advice. No more than I could, thirty forty years ago.

* * * 

     But how can wisdom be a matter of not seeking to know that which can be known? Aren’t I asserting a paradox?
     I recall one of my first philosophy professors, a very bright guy, who once told the class a story about a conversation he allegedly overheard on a bus. One man said, “Gosh, my wife is leaving me, I hate my job, and even my dog doesn’t like me anymore.”
     “Yeah?” said the other guy. “Why don’t you do what I do when the world gets me down?”
     “OK. What’s that?”
     “Be philosophical.”
     “All right. But just what is it to be philosophical?”
     “You know. –Just don’t think about it.”
     --At that point in the telling, professor U would burst into laughter, jerking his upper body around as though he were attempting some dorky dance, not realizing that his youthful audience had no idea what was supposed to be funny about regarding the Life Philosophical as the “life unexamined.”
     As I recall, within a year of that episode, Professor U lost his battle for tenure. During his final year on the faculty, he managed to be accepted into some special, intense business training program for PhD’s. “Only the brightest,” I was told, were accepted into this prestigious program. “They all become millionaires, you know. Tycoons.”
     I recall crinkling my brow. I guessed, I said, that I was happy for him.
     A few years later, I asked about Prof U and I was told that he was making money like a sonofabitch.

* * * 

     TigerAnn doesn’t think too much. She’s a fine girl. Very sweet, gentle.
     She’s a cat. Today, she insisted on going outside, and I finally relented. We went out on the driveway where it was warm and we lay in the sun.
     A few days ago, my sister caught us doing that. She said, “You two look like a pride of lions in Africa, only the main lion is a bear.” That was a reference to me, the bear. I figure I’m about 30 or 40 times TigerAnn's mass. She weighs maybe six pounds.
     TigerAnn sometimes likes to go outside just to be out there. She loves hunting, but, today, she wasn’t doing that or anything else. She just lay there on the concrete driveway like a Sphinx. She looked straight ahead, expressionless, as per usual.
     It’s a beautiful day. I guess she “knows” enough to just take it in in silence.
     We live in a beautiful place up against a hill. Trees everywhere. Virtually no neighbors. A mountain fills up half the sky. The quiet is like a big pause in the world. Me ‘n’ TigerAnn, starin’, and there's a faint breeze.
     Then all these ideas rushed into my head. But I've forgotten most of 'em. Dang!

* * * 

     In some sense, philosophical reflection is supposed to go deep. I mean, if philosophy, understood as a narrow field (not like in the old days), has a role it surely is to ask the fundamental questions that are conceptual, not empirical. OK, you’re doing science, but just what is the point of that? Just exactly what do you think you’re doing when you’re doing science? And just what are you assuming about that thing you think you’re doing? And can you defend those assumptions?
     Philosophy is annoying, like the kid who keeps asking “why?” But it’s inevitable among those with minds. There's really no denying it. Dismissing philosophy is simply ridiculous.
     It sure does get you into trouble, though. I don’t mean trouble with others, although there’s that, too. I’m thinking of the trouble it makes in your inner life. When you philosophize earnestly, it’s easy to ask your way to a place where you are lost. I mean lost like the guy talking to the goldfinch (see Austin) and then the goldfinch talks back. Birdie says, “dude, do you realize that I’m a goldfinch, and I’m talking to you?”
     “Huh? Wha--?”
     Lost like you walk up to your cat, as usual, and then she looks you in the eye and says, “Just once could I go outside without you hanging over me the whole frickin’ time? Know what I mean?”
     Yeah, I know what you mean. –Well, no, I don’t know anything. Not right now. I can’t even make a move. My head contains the ocean. My body dangles hideously in the universe, I….
     I’m tempted to say, “I hate when that happens.” But I don’t hate it at all. I like it, sort of. But it’s not healthy. Not, at least, when it happens every day. Or so it seems to me now, looking back at the years, looking back at my earlier self and his enthusiasms and innocent, uncompromising ways.

* * * 

     The other day, I was telling a student friend that I’ve seen older people who do not fear death, who seem to understand it. It’s not what these elders say. Nope. It is how they look: they stand and smile, silently, knowingly. It’s as if they found out that the Looming Big Disaster isn’t really a disaster at all. Lord, no. Don't be silly.
     But how that’s so—it’s not for my ears or anyone else’s. Evidently, the thing known cannot easily be communicated. Or at all.
     I’m sure it’s possible to be like that, I told the student. I keep thinking about these people. I am aware of their lives. They are the faintly monitored in my days. I somehow feel that their odd wisdom is slowly coming over me with the passing years, I said. Don’t ask me how I can tell.
     I nearly said: Just be silent. Listen. Watch. I can feel that delicate smile emerging on my face. It’s barely started. It’s ever so subtle.
     Knowing such things as these elders know hides a something, I know not what. Something just below the surface, but something, well, unknowable. Or just unsayable.
     Knowing as such a state. Hmmm.

* * * 

     I’m sure that we cannot know what our existence is. Nothing that one could think and say could count as that kind of knowledge. Knowledge of the kind we can have and express in propositions always becomes dirt—nothing, in time. Wisdom, I suspect, is somewhere in the gaze of TigerAnn and in the delicate smile of the Old People who go about their days, unworried, despite all the reasons for worry and all the clanging, banging machinery of the world and its pointless yammering about nothing.

* * * 

     Don't ask me how I know that. Obviously, I don't.
     Sometimes, when I'm writing (or otherwise creating) I become still. I hold out my arms as though I were in water, aiming for inertia. I am applying brakes and time slows. All is silence, a pressure in the world felt in my ears. If I am looking for a word or thought, I seem to physically reach for it in space, ever so slowly. My arm goes out.... (Lovemaking can be like that.)
     I am somehow confident that my curious groping will succeed. And it does.
     What is that thing, just below the surface? What is the meaning of this ritual? Why can it succeed without revealing in the slightest its inner springs and gears?
     And how can I be confident of such a phantom?
     What and where is the machinery of these happy, assured accomplishments?

Sorry (determining the universe, all day long)

Good dog

     So I was at the gym last week and this bank of TVs was beaming crap into the din of music and clanking metal. I had my ear buds: had to settle for some Fox News show hosted by one “Judge Jeanine,” a former judge I guess. She’s pretty noisy like most of the folks on Fox.
     I was hardly paying attention, but then she interviewed some guy about a public appearance by that Zimmerman fella—the guy who shot and killed that black kid in Florida. I haven’t paid close attention to the case. Naturally, I’m aware of the stupid politics that overwhelmed it, took it over. Stupid on both sides. Same old, same old. –So, like I said, I’ve barely paid any attention to the case.
     But this Zimmerman guy had been in court that day and he actually testified for some reason. He said he was sorry about the death of that kid. He said he didn’t know the kid was just a kid, and so on. Z wore a nice suit. He looked earnest.
     After playing a clip of Zimmerman in court, the Fox reporter and this Judge Jeanine got all excited. Boy, she said, she used to be a prosecutor, and she woulda known how to handle Zimmerman on that stand. Sorry are you? Aha! What are you sorry about—unless you’re guilty of something! Gotcha!
     –Those weren’t her exact words, but that was the gist of what she said. It was all I could take. Watched something else.
     This is what’s wrong with Fox News. What an ugly and stupid thing to say. If some kid—not a dangerous and rotten kid, just a kid—is shot and killed, then that’s pretty sad and dark. And if you in some sense caused the kid’s death, then, naturally, you’re sorry, even if, somehow, you did the best you could in the situation, and, near as you can tell, you did nothing wrong.
     —Now, I’m not saying that Mr. Zimmerman is “innocent.” I’m not happy with the stupid laws they seem to have in the stupid redneck state of Florida. I’ve seen my share of stupid assholes with guns and unfortunate delusions of righteousness, and I have my doubts about Zimmerman and his crowd. So that pretty much tells you where I’m at about this thing, I guess.

Bad judge

      On the other hand, I’m sure as hell not jumping on the “Zimmerman is a racist” bandwagon. It’s easily imaginable that something short of that is going on here. I say let’s wait and see what the facts are.
     Meanwhile, we’ve got the likes of Judge Jeanine squawking. If Z is sorry, then he must be guilty! C’mon. If I were there, at the scene, and this thing went down fifty yards away from me, and this kid died—well, I’d say I was sorry too. Any halfway decent human being would be sorry. It’s a terrible thing, some kid dying, probably over nothing, or over nothing much. Some perfect storm of stupidities producing tragedy. The whole goddam country is sorry, and no wonder.

* * *

      What if you’re walking along and you inadvertently kick a pebble and the pebble manages to roll down the sidewalk where a dog is standing, and the pebble somehow freaks the dog, who jumps sideways, bumping into a woman, who is holding a baby and who happens just then to be handing the kid to somebody, and, amazingly, the kid falls straight down between them and is badly hurt. Good Lord! I’d feel pretty bad, I would. I probably wouldn’t be too anxious to spell out my contribution to the event. What would be the point? But I’d feel bad all right. The dog too, if he’s a good dog.

* * *

     According to Chaos Theory, there are dynamic systems that are sensitive to initial conditions. Now, I don’t know, but suppose that human beings are often initiators of such systems that are sensitive to initial conditions. Suppose, in particular, that every—or at least many—human actions, despite their seeming insignificance, contribute mightily to eventual large states of affairs, just as the flap of a butterfly wing (or not) can mean the difference between a typhoon occurring next week or not.
    Well, if such were the case, then, with each of my actions, I would be determining the nature of the universe. Here I sit. I am not in my kitchen, causing water to flow down the drain. If I were to cause that flow, owing to sensitivity to initial conditions, snow would fall in the Sierras next week. But, as a matter of fact, I am sitting here, running no water, and thus no snow falls. Something else happens. And whatever that something else is, it helps determine many more “something elses”—which in turn determine many more. I am determining the nature of the universe.
     But (let’s assume) it is absurd to attempt to predict these effects. We simply do not have the ability to do that (let’s say). And so we go along, all day, determining the universe in who-knows-how-many ways, and there is no hope of ever knowing how that is so. And, obviously, these effects will likely be morally significant. Surely the ultimate inventory of weal and woe will be affected—if our actions determine the universe! And, again, we cannot know what that impact is or will be!
     Sorry.

A preface to tortoise philosophy

For a time when I was young, I brooded on an issue within political philosophy discussed noisily at the time by radical philosopher Robert Paul Wolff. As I recall, it was the conflict he found in, on the one hand, recognizing an individual’s political obligation—perhaps it was an obligation to accede to the state’s demands (paying taxes, adherence to law, etc.)—and, on the other hand, the individual’s moral autonomy, which he conceived as, among other things, a disinclination, arising from competent moral agency, to hand authority (to act on one’s behalf ) over to others (e.g., the state).

I’ll have to get up to speed on that, but it was something like that.

I was intrigued by the issue, but I was never convinced that Wolff had fully made his case (he seemed to leap from the reality of this conflict to the necessity of embracing anarchism!). Years later, when I worked with the late Professor Greg Kavka (he was one among my advisors), he briefly mentioned to me his take on Wolff’s point: it was a simple reductio ad absurdum. I think it all happened within two or three steps as we walked. Typical Greg.

I think I understood Greg’s point—as I say, he only mentioned it to me—something to the effect that, if Wolff’s understanding of the moral implications of autonomy were correct, even promises would be verboten. Absurd.

Well, yes, I supposed. I suspected that something was wrong with Wolff’s account. Maybe Greg nailed it. But I was equally convinced that there was something there in Wolff's worries and that Greg’s reductio utterly missed it. I’m sure I didn’t try hard enough to articulate the “something”—to Greg or to anyone else.

I’m sure I couldn’t have, anyway. It was nearly thirty years ago, and I was what I was.

* * *

I’ve always been attracted to a loose doctrine or set of doctrines that one might call “communitarianism.” I am referring (I suppose) to those philosophies that give to “community” and membership in a community an important, perhaps central, place in thinking about individuals and society. Maybe it would help to note that, in communitarianism as I conceive it, individuals have a “sense of community” and routinely view the actions (etc.) of the community as their own. This way of thinking has always made sense to me (and, by that, I do not mean that it isn’t ultimately cracked through and through) and, it seems, led me to sense, albeit nebulously, big, fat issues at the heart of politics as it concerns the individual. Something—or some range of problems—concerning the communitarian individual and the state has stuck in my craw at least since I was a third-year student at U.C.I. (c. 1976-7). At this moment, I feel some pride in this fact, for, at that time, I had not been exposed to any systematic treatment of political philosophy or of “a” political philosophy. I was pretty much just thinking my own thoughts in my own way. That I took such thoughts seriously and kept brooding amazes me now. (I won’t even mention here even greater obstacles to my progress as a thinker originating in my peculiar membership in a strange and blinkered northern wolf clan.)

Naturally, this communitarian tendency in my thinking, which, as I say, extends back at least to my undergraduate years—and seems to have predated my college-era philosophical influences—is generally foreign or worse to liberal theory, especially liberal theory that tends to the right (libertarians). It is unfortunate, I suppose, that I generally learned of political philosophy in the Analytic Philosophy milieu, and, within that, a generally liberal/libertarian environment (of the kind exemplified by Wolff, more or less), one that never seemed to take community seriously. It was only later, in grad school, with the rise of Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and his political ideas, that I came across some communitarian thinking, though I believe that my professors were ultimately bewildered by that man. Not sure. (I was bewildered, too, but mostly because he was just difficult, like quantum physics, not because he was deeply foreign, like Scottish haggis; I heard the man speak once at a local college. I stared at him. It didn’t help.)

I can tell you now with some amusement that I have a mind like a popcorn machine. Or perhaps I have such a mind if you imagine a world of youthful popcorn machines that grow old and that eventually settle down to some staunch cooking (of corn, I suppose). So I’m this older corn-cooking gizmo looking back at some seriously youthful poppery. It is very nearly a useless mind that pops as mine did (and still does, mostly). I would have some flimsy (or sadly profound) grasp of something good and important, but it was utterly undone in the world as it is by all that crazy popping that went on around it in my head. Imagine a painter who is determined to paint something fine and great and who would do so were it not for his endless finger-brush spasms, peppering the canvass with riotous color and texture that really and truly amount to nothing but lurid disorder and wanton chemical wastage.

Imagine a nurseryman trying to sell his odd trees that, he says, are wonderful and beautiful, really they are, but that undergo a very lengthy development entailing ugly branches and leaves and even an offensive odor. But one must have faith, he says, that such trees will come through in the end, exploding into bushy and majestic and fragrant glory, but only after growing stolidly and hideously in the corner of one’s garden for twenty or thirty years, stinking up the place and scaring children.

I am such a tree, I think. Not that I have anything beautiful to offer. Perhaps I should adjust my metaphors a bit. (In truth, the old machine still pops, hideously, like those super-heated kernels in the daring extra seconds of the popcorn bag in the microwave.) It isn’t beauty or glory or genius that I offer. What I offer is, rather, simply that which I have to offer, and have had to offer all of these years, such as it is, but a thing only newly available, after a lifetime of inarticulate blatherings and unpleasant passionate scribblings and lunatic monologues.

I am quite serious about this. I am happy not because I have anything special or deep to say, but because, after all this time, I can foresee settling my mind long enough to finally say “it,” the “something”—that thing I have, in some sense, always needed to say. It may be rubbish, this “something,” though I doubt it. It is what it is. It is important to me. I give no thought whatsoever to whether it is important to you, dear reader. (Read on, you fool, if you must.)

This, of course, is only a preface (you may now burst out with laughter). I have no intention of revealing the “something” to you, for I cannot, since I only sense it, and I only sense that it is time to begin to work it out. I’ll say this: the feeling of the reality of this problem for the individual—in such times as ours—is, for me, strong still. It is the same feeling, and, times being what they are, it is a feeling worth working out and affixing to the expansive white wall, thus revealing all of its parts and the fine whole it creates across one’s living room and down one’s hallway and in one’s mind and throughout one’s life.

Now, more than ever, my society (my community, my state, my colleagues, my people) seems a monstrous thing, an idiot, a maker of disasters and pain (but not only that). Individuals generally, though not universally, seem utterly oblivious to this monstrous quality as I see it. And, no, I don’t claim to have special insight here. It is, rather, the odd acuity of a tortoise who persists in noting a puzzle in the sky or trees or grass, day after day, throughout his lengthy and unassuming tortoise life. And because only he has devoted such time and energy to this subtle mystery, it eventually dawns on him what sort of thing it is. It’s inevitable. His is the victory, not of genius, but of obsession, or perhaps, to be more charitable, of some mild intellectual virtue wedded to an absurd willingness to keep staring at those trees, those clouds, that grass, each day, decade after decade, generation after generation, absent any guarantee there is anything there at all, but only wind and mundanity and a tortoise life ill spent.

The tortoise will now lay out his idea. Slowly. In his own time, in his own way. We must find a way (says the tortoise) to think about what it is to live in this society, such as it is, populated now, more than ever, with lunatics and liars and thoughtless bleating lambs. Where are we? What ought we to do? What could anything we do mean?

I realize now that I have misdescribed my project, for it is only a subtle help that I hope to offer, no great answer. In fact, I feel now that it is not that I have come to some answer to an old problem; it is more that I see that I have refused to think about that problem, to really think about, despite its being so obvious a problem. And I’m getting older. And I am among young people, and that helps me to see my younger self and to like the silly, clueless but earnest guy. And I have these fleeting recognitions of the calmer, mirthful thinker inside; he’s the wise, old uncle who cannot help but love those wacky kids with all their folly and energy; and who, perhaps, can now at long last manipulate himself into some brief articulateness and clarity of thought.

Dr. Laura and the use/mention distinction

     [This originally appeared in Dissent the Blog, August, 2010. For some reason, I neglected to include it here, where it surely belongs. And so, belatedly...]

kraut [krout] noun informal sauerkraut. • (also Kraut) informal, offensive a German.*

     I suppose you’ve heard about Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s so-called “rant” in which she repeatedly “used” the “n-word.”
      No she didn’t. She only mentioned it.
      If I tell you that using the term “kraut” to refer to a German is offensive, I have not “used” the term “kraut.” Rather, I have done something else with it. In my field, we say that I have mentioned it.
      See the point?
      Let me cut to the chase. There’s a big difference between Jim’s remark and John’s remark:

Jim: “Get away from me, you Kraut!”

John: “Using the term ‘Kraut’ to refer to Germans is usually offensive.”

     What Jim said is offensive. What John said is anything but offensive.
     Philosophers (and, evidently, linguists) are taught this distinction because it is very important to maintain if one is to avoid confusion. It ain’t rocket science: it is one thing to use a word—that is, to use it in an ordinary sense of using. It is quite another to approach a word as a word (or a phrase as a phrase or a sentence as a sentence, etc.) and to discuss it as such. If I say that “nigger” (depending on the context) can be a highly offensive term, I am commenting on the term. I am saying that its use can be very offensive. I am in no sense expressing any attitude or judgment about African-Americans! (See also Can a White Person Ever Legitimately Use the N-Word?—a Penn State linguist making essentially the same point.)
      In fact, in saying that “nigger” is an offensive term, I am making an important (albeit an obvious) point.**
      I Googled the “use/mention distinction” and found many entries. Wikipedia seems to offer a decent account of the distinction (I skimmed it).
      Linguist Bill Poser has a good discussion of exactly this point—namely, political correctness running afoul of the important use/mention distinction—in this post. He discusses a case in which a professor was found guilty of racial harassment (by his university, Brandeis) for saying in class such things as:

“Mexican migrants in the United States are sometimes referred to pejoratively as 'wetbacks'.”

     According to Poser,

His offense is described as having used the word 'wetback'. This is false. He did not use the word 'wetback'; he mentioned it. That is, he did not choose the word 'wetback' for his own communicative purposes. Rather, he referred to its use by others. This is not a mere distinction of terminology: there is a vast difference between the two. When someone uses a word, he or she is responsible for what it conveys, but when one mentions a word, one assumes no such responsibility.

     Let’s get back to Dr. Laura. What was offensive—or, as I’d prefer to put it, what was ridiculous—was Schlessinger’s position and arguments. Schlessinger seemed to be arguing that, since some blacks freely use the term “nigger” [or "nigga"] in referring to themselves and others (arguably at times without offensive intent), it follows that anyone may use that term. But, obviously, context (including evident intent) is important. That’s so basic, I’m embarrassed to have to say it.
      Schlessinger’s point was that the caller, a black woman, who was offended by things her husband’s white friends did around her (asking her how black people like this or do that) was over-sensitive.
      If Schlessinger can’t see why those crackers and their questions would make a perfectly reasonable (i.e., non-oversensitive) person uncomfortable or worse, then she is an idiot. (OK, I'm having a little fun with you. They might not be crackers. Could be cookies.)
      Well, no. Not literally an idiot. You know what I mean.
      But do pull your head out of your ass, lady.


      *(From my Mac's dictionary.)
      **(Naturally, some terms are so toxic that one must take care even to mention them. For instance, it would be foolish to loudly discuss this matter at a cafeteria, freely mentioning the word “nigger” or, say, “fag.” Indeed, some terms are so toxic [to some ears] that even mentioning them produces cringing. Decent people generally seek to avoid causing cringing, though obviously there are exceptions. Healthy and reasonable people can usually make the necessary adjustments and their cringe response soon ceases. We sometimes discuss people as though they were all experiencing PTSD. And that’s just ridiculous. Let's encourage people to be strong and healthy, not neurotic. But let's be decent and sensitive, too.)

“Dick” is a four-letter word (On Vulgarity)

Vulgarity appreciated by the non-vulgar

MSNBC Suspends Halperin Over Obama Slur (New York Times)

vulgar |ˈvəlgər|adjective• dated characteristic of or belonging to the masses.

     OK, so now we hear that reporter Mark Halperin got suspended from his MSNBC job because, during an appearance on a generally jokey and informal morning political talk show, he said that the President, during a recent news conference, acted like “kind of a d*ck.”

     Now, I doubt that the President, a well-tempered gent, acted badly during that press conference. But let’s not get into that. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the President did act badly. Please understand that I want to talk about Halperin—or, rather, about Halperin’s statement—not about the President.

     How did he act badly? Well, let’s say (for argument’s sake) that he was a bit of a jerk. That is, he was “contemptibly obnoxious,” for that is what “jerk” means, according to my Mac dictionary.

     What if Halperin had opined instead that the President acted like “kind of a jerk” at the press conference? I think you’ll agree that, in that case, few would have objected. He might be criticized for (supposedly) opining about the President’s character—that's not his job, they'll say—but not by many and not for long.

     I submit that, in some sense, “jerk” and “d*ck” are synonyms. When I’m talking among friends, I sometimes convey the jerkitude of a person—in an anecdote or whatever—by saying that he’s a “d*ck.” In my mind, I would convey almost exactly the same assessment (or accusation) were I to use the word “jerk” instead.

     “D*ck,” when it isn’t someone’s name or a reference to a detective, is a four-letter word, and “jerk” is not. (You know what I mean.) “D*ck” is, or can be, a profanity.

     But what does that mean?

     Uh-oh, this is liable to be complicated.

* * *

     Obviously, this use of the word “d*ck” is vulgar. Let’s focus on that.

     To say that a word (or person, etc.) is vulgar is to say that it is “lacking sophistication or good taste”; it is “unrefined” (my Mac dictionary).

     Yes, yes. But I have known lots of people, and I’ve known the sophisticated and the unsophisticated. Roughly speaking, in my experience, sophisticates do not observe dictionaries’ “vulgarity” rules. Many of these people—well educated, mild-mannered, usually thoughtful—are happy to spout so-called vulgarities, though, in their mouths, such words do not drag them, or the moment, or the company to some mean or lowly state.

     Sophisticates love “The Sopranos.” That show was loaded with profanities and vulgarities. Bumpkins love stuff like “Walker: Texas Ranger.” Dang.

     My view is that many of us, an apparent minority, recognize the power of much “vulgar” language. And so we are attracted to these words. No one who loves words (as so many writers do) hates “vulgarities” and that is because vulgarities often say so much and sometimes say things better than their refined correlates. They tend to be loaded with lots of nifty “extras.”

     Naturally, some vulgarities say things, or are tied to attitudes, that are intrinsically ugly and wrong. Perhaps some vulgarities are beyond the pale. (Think of the “c” word used against women.) It is possible that there is no way to detoxify some vulgar words or phrases. If we “use” such language, we do so while manifestly adopting a persona. Decent people don’t just use them, unless they're at the end of a twenty-foot pole.

     But it’s one thing to call your girlfriend a “c***.” It’s quite another to describe some jerk as a “d*ck.” I’m here to defend d*ck, not c***.

* * *

     Most of us are multilingual in the sense that we speak differently to different audiences. For instance, the way that one speaks with one’s parents and the way that one speaks with one’s close friends are often very different.

     Such multilingualism is appropriate. I can tell my best friend that Mr. X is “kind of a d*ck,” but generally I can’t use that word to, say, dress down an obnoxious student in class. I can inform my brother that, owing to recent events, “I’m f*cked,” but I can’t make that point in the same way talking to my dean. It just wouldn't do.

     Notice that, despite my making these adjustments, I can manage to be myself and to be open with people. For instance, I might tell my dean that my new circumstances are decidedly unfortunate—communicating the same thing I told my bro, though without the assumption of closeness and deep mutual understanding that prevails when I’m with my bro. I might prefer to convey my point as I do with my brother—for that way conveys more and manages a more severe punctuation—but there’s liable to be trouble if I do that, since my relationship to my dean is (mostly) professional.

* * *

The vulgar prefer vulgarity eschewery

     So what are we to make of Mr. Halperin’s remark?

     Remember, we’re assuming (for the sake of discussion) that the President really did act like “kind of a d*ck.” And suppose that Halperin observed this and was asked by friends what he made of the President’s press conference performance.

     Well, says Halperin, he was “kind of a d*ck.”

     Well, OK. 

     It makes a difference that Halperin was (it seems) among friends. The particular program in which Halperin made his remark tends to bring friends and colleagues together for informal chats about politics. Its charm (I’ve seen it a few times) depends to some extent on chumminess and informality. It generally eschews dead seriousness. 

     So (asks Mr. Host): Halperin, friend-to-friend, what did you really make of the President’s performance yesterday?

     Well, to be honest, he was kind of a d*ck.

     Sure, whatever.

     But there’s more. The hosts of this program seemed to be egging Halperin on. “Go ahead! Tell us what you really think! We can bleep it out!” And so he said it.

     But, for some reason, they didn’t bleep it out. (Somebody should talk to the man with the button. He's a screwup.)

     Given the nature of this program and the nature of this particular conversation (between friends), Halperin’s remark strikes me as utterly unobjectionable.

     —Except that it was broadcast on TV. So, in a sense, the conversation included all those ears out there in the dark, hundreds of thousands of ‘em. Given that circumstance, it really won’t do for this journalist to call the President a “d*ck.” The journalistic community does best when it presents its members to the world as though whether or not the President acted like a jerk just isn’t important. It does best when it presents its members sans vulgarity.

     And here’s journalist Halperin saying that the Prez acted like a d*ck. Oh my.

     Journalistic professionalism is not fostered by presenting absurd fictions—e.g., that journalists do not notice jerkitude when it occurs or that they do not use vulgarities. It is, however, fostered by journalists’ suspension of these things when they present themselves before the world. Halperin, insofar as he was “before the world,” messed up.

     That judgment is understandable, even inevitable. It’s a little dishonest. It reeks of marketing and piety and similarly unseemly pursuits. And yet we understand it. Anybody with half a brain can see that journalists can “be professional” despite noting jerkitude and even calling the President a d*ck. But we don’t want to get into all that. It’s too complicated. Better to insist on certain standards to avoid all this complexity and distinction-making. Keep it simple. Act like this. Wear this mask. (The teaching profession is similar in this regard.)

     So Halperin messed up. Is that a big deal? I don’t see how. Still, everybody now needs to go through the motions of upholding the “standards of objective journalism.” Yes, yes. Halperin will be immediately suspended. MSNBC will issue an apology. Yadda yadda.

     But let’s hope that this Halperin guy is back in the harness after a few days.

     C’mon. 

For the sake of our gravest desiderata

     I occasionally write for the Mission Viejo Patch. One of my colleagues on the Patch (the admirable Mr. Shripathi Kamath) recently posted a brief discussion of the “ethics of torture” in which he seemed to argue for the moral necessity of torture under special circumstances. (See The Ethics of Torture, June 10, 2011)
     I joined in the discussion, which was a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly (mostly good though).
     Eventually, I posted the following:

     IF WE GRANT THAT

G: There are occasions in which opting for the use of torture (on, say, a captured terrorist) will increase the chances of acquiring information – specifically in cases in which such information possibly would prevent moral disaster (e.g., the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a city)

—then (and I take this to be Shri’s core insight) it is morally odd (and by no means incontrovertably wise) to adopt an absolute prohibition/condemnation against the use of torture, for such prohibition would seem to allow moral disasters—situations even more regrettable (from a moral perspective) than the instance of torture.
     Philosophers have long known that, in contemplating extreme circumstances—as actually arise in, say, the setting of national leadership—paradoxes (I use the term somewhat loosely) emerge. Thus, for instance, Gregory Kavka* once argued that, to bring about the morally best outcome, it may be necessary for some individuals within a society to become morally corrupt—in order to act under special circumstances in a manner in which no decent moral being would act (namely, by retaliating against a nation’s nuclear onslaught with a reciprocating [and pointless] nuclear onslaught, for the sake of effective deterrence).

     A utilitarian (of a classic variety) always acts to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But it would seem that, in doing so, he or she will be obliged on occasion to violate individuals’ rights (e.g., one will sacrifice a healthy hospital orderly in order to save three patients by employing his healthy organs). But if everyone were a utilitarian, and if that were known, then everyone would live in fear of becoming the next utilitarian sacrifice to “the greatest happiness”—and this would ipso facto lower the level of happiness in society considerably.
     Thus, paradoxically, a utilitarian would not seek that everyone be a utilitarian.
     Many years ago, some philosophers began considering morality and moral principles from two perspectives: from the individual’s perspective and the perspective of a moral being who has the opportunity to decide on the rules and practices that would be adopted by everyone in society. Arguably, one would be in a much better position to maximize happiness (or minimize violence, pain, etc.—or, indeed, to achieve any overarching goal) if one had the latter perspective and could somehow enforce it or cause individuals to act accordingly. (Example of such theorizing: John Rawls’ mid-50s essay, “Two Concepts of Rules.”**)
     It seems clear that no society can flourish in which free and informed members are permitted acts of violence (including torture) as means to their goals, however noble. On the other hand, arguably, a community can together reflect on that general perspective mentioned above and in this way see the wisdom or desirability of permitting torture for cases such as G above.
     In a sense, we already approach some matters in this fashion—or at least some of us individuals do. I would argue that no large society (perhaps there should be no large societies!) can survive (and thus flourish) without a military and a substantial army. Further, no large army could function if it allowed its soldiers to exercise moral autonomy. And in fact, actual armies (certainly ours) operate in a manner that discourages autonomy among individual soldiers. (Unsurprisingly, we are not very honest with ourselves about this.)
     I have generally refrained from applying my usual demand (of persons) that they exercise moral autonomy in the case of soldiers (and other classifications) exactly because of this recognition that, as a matter of practical fact, no military can function if it encourages precisely the sort of character that, normally, we hope to instill in our children.
     So my perspective (here) parallels Kavka’s.

     I am somewhat of a communitarian, and so I (in some sense) hope that my fellow-citizens will be moral and will encourage virtue in their children. I would be pleased by the prospect of a society in which the norm among individuals is moral seriousness and the attending of one’s moral character. In such a society, individuals would be encouraged (presumably by their parents, but perhaps also by “society itself”) to achieve moral autonomy—i.e., the ability and disposition to act with moral seriousness and own responsibility for themselves and their actions. (Please excuse my informal language.)
     But I don’t see how a large army could function (especially during time of war) were that autonomy to be permitted or encouraged for soldiers qua soldiers. And so one confronts a kind of dilemma.
     And, for me, the dilemma is mitigated or alleviated by that higher perspective that sees the necessity of soldier non-autonomy relative to our society’s gravest desiderata. That is, that perspective is in some sense compelling, from a moral perspective. It is as compelling, perhaps, as the need for the condemnation of torture.
     I offer the above with no slight tentativeness.

   *Some Paradoxes of Deterrence (Gregory Kavka, 1978)
   **Two Concepts of Rules (John Rawls, 1955)