Truth and Enlightenment

What the Enlightenment and Modernity have wrought, and who has problems with it.

As our values of truth and honesty are slipping, it seems worthwhile to review how we got here. People generally have a tenuous relation to reality. What we see through our eyes is only its surface. We can see plants all our lives and yet have no understanding of how they work and how they came to be. Such knowledge has to come through painstaking inference into a mental model, based on clues, experiments, mutations, exceptions, and the like. Humans are champions of inference, as attested by conspiracy theories and religion- ways that our need to for theories of reality outstrips our actual knowledge, sometimes flagrantly.

Historically, there have been occasional periods when intellectuals had the prosperous and calm conditions to make progress on this front, out of the mire of preconceptions, superstitions, and traditions, and into a more measured and rational view of reality. Not that there is ever a perfectly rational view, but there are clearly more and less rational views possible. The ancient Greeks experienced one such period, founding schools of philosophy that lasted hundreds of years, and fostering the greatest scientist, teacher, and thinker of the ancient world, Aristotle. But the greatest such period was the Renaissance and subsequent Enlightenment of Western Europe, when the learning of the ancient world combined with mounting prosperity and technological development to dispell the fog of Christian theology, and made of scholarship an independent, rigorous, and institutional pursuit that continues today.

Painting is an example of this movement. The Renaissance painters learned perspective, and reveled in new powers of realistic portrayal. Realistic painting may now be old-hat, even déclassé, but after the rude iconography of the Middle Ages, it was revolutionary, reminiscent of the incredibly naturalistic statuary of Greece and Rome at their heights. Similar movements in all areas of intellectual life, including science, philology, history, politics, and social thought generally, and philosophy, brought us to modernity, where our relationship to nature is fundamentally transformed, from that of a mystified and dependent spectator, to that of a deeply understanding (if not always respectful) steward. While morals and ethics are not themselves a matter of truth and natural observation, (though they have a lot to do with integrity and honesty), the same truth-finding ethic trained on social institutions brought down, step by step, the superstitious hold of the religio-monarchical system, to the constitutional / social contract systems of today.

Francesco di Giorgio, ~1490, an idealized architectural view.

But some are not happy with this change in perspective. There were obviously losers in this process of cultural and intellectual maturation. Principally religion, which tried mightily to understand the nature of reality, while mediating our relation to it, but couldn't help putting the cart of dogma and power ahead of the horse of intellectual integrity. For honesty and truth begin in the method of getting there. True humility, not the false and preening humility of putting one's god before all other gods and considerations, is the first step to being able to even see the subtle stirrings of nature, and then to follow them out. Charles Darwin was orginally intended for the parsonage, but as he unfurled the relentless mechanism of biology, and experienced its stabs in his own life, he ended up an evident atheist, woken up to a more sober, mature, and we might say enlightened, view of our nature and situation.

Reality isn't always pretty. Facing it takes fortitude and work. Thus the astonishingly durable, if slipping, hold of religion into this, the twenty-first century. Thus also the attraction of fake news and con artists, not to mention religion. Far easier to have comfort and hope in false and familiar beliefs than to accept uncertainty and ignorance, and do the work required to resolve them, even partially. Who would have thought that, at the so-called end of history, when the US won the cold war, and spread its blend of capitalism, relative freedom, and intellectual ambition across the world, that such moral rot would set in here at home, with our plutocrats, (with the connivance of Russia, of all things!), standing at the head of an army of resentful religious traditionalists, straining every nerve to spread distrust, small-mindedness, and lies over the land?

• Intellectuals- the first targets of authoritarians and fascists.
• And State is the department of intellectuals, at least till now.
• Which country takes the cake for lying?
• But our Republicans are in contention as well.
• What's the matter with Kansas.. will soon be the matter with the rest of us.
• ... Until the revolution.

Father Dearest

Toxicities, perversions and archetypes around the father role. Based on Raised Right by Jeffrey Dudas, and Toxic Parents, by Susan Forward.

The father archetype looms large over our personal and collective lives. Fathers are inescapable, for better or worse, in their shaping of our identity, meaning, and purpose. Most cultures, including all those of Indo-European descent, are patriarchial. Father figures are central to our political lives and mythology. God is a father.

Our current political divide is steeped in the father archetype. Democrats are the mommy party, Republicans the daddy party. Never has that been clearer than with the current occupant of the White House, who seems to think that his orange patriarchial aura should suffice to get the entire country to fall in line behind every tweeted emission. But it is nothing to make light of- the psychology of these polar tendencies is fundamental to humanity and probably many other beings. Perpetual contrasts exist between competition and cooperation, risk and security, discipline and forgiveness, war and love, yang and yin.

A recent book about icons of the right argues that father mythology pervades the personal and political conceptions of the right. Fathers only have authority in the family if the state moderates its nanny-ish tendencies. CEOs only have proper authority if the state does not meddle in their companies. And the country is properly run only when a father figure lays down the law on standards of morality and behavior, however much that conflicts with the first two aims. Many prominent figures on the right have frought, to say the least, relations with their own fathers. Newt Gingrich comes to mind, but the author Jeffrey Dudas profiles William Buckley (absent, though overbearing, father), Ronald Reagan (drunk, weak father), and Clarence Thomas (deserted father, replaced by totalitarian grandfather). Each found a personal and political mythology in constructing a new image of the father figure, mostly drawn on the founding fathers.

It is the usual authoritarian / patriarchal story- what ails the world (read- the self, or the early self) is lack of discipline, and masculine modeling, which is supplied by the authoritarian leader who will restore order, law, and the scope for other elements of the patriarchy down the line (corporate, police-state, and family) to do likewise, will heal the society. This resolves the chaos resulting from lack of boundaries and discipline, and lack of social hierarchy. All this is claimed in the name of freedom- the true freedom of the orderly citizen, not that of the malcontent and rabble-rouser. Reagan provided an especially clear vision of this condition of the state, set in contrast to the hippie protesters on whom he cut his teeth as governor of California. And he justified it in terms of the American dream of freedom and equal opportunity for all- all virtuous and deserving citizens, that is.

All is well with this nuclear family, enjoying its driverless car in 1957.  Each person's role is well-defined and secure.

The problem is that, while the patriarchial virtues certainly have merit, they are hardly the only virtues. Worse, they tend to paper over a great deal of presumption about the fairness of the current starting conditions, and the ability of its stated virtues to afford the promised success, not to mention the sterling virtues and talents of those currently at the top of the heap. That is why Horatio Alger stories are such a staple of the right. If Clarence Thomas can make it, or Steve Jobs, or Jack Kemp, or .. fill in the blank... then anyone can, with enough gumption.

That is, however, a sucker's game, as likely to raise up the masses as is the local Indian Casino. Not only should success or even a decent life not depend on such extraordinary efforts and talents, but it clearly does not for the well-to-do, who bequeath countless social, material, and political advantages on their offspring, resulting in the remarkable lack of social and wealth mobility that we see in the US today. The starting blocks are starkly different for different people, and it is absurd to preach individual morality tales when material and other forms of inequality are so tragically and obviously responsible for the lack of freedom and prosperity for most citizens. Where are the reparations for slavery, for example? Also missing is any model or justification for communal, public goods. Life becomes a competition of atomized individuals, with family structure and discipline separating the wheat from the chaff, but without a rationale for wider social cooperation and institutions, such as public schools or anti-corruption mechanisms in government, or business regulation, that render the level playing field which the patriarchial myth assumes and depends on, but refuses to address.

Which is not to say that personal virtues, just saying no, stick-to-it-ive-ness, discipline, and the like, are not good things. The wise and benevolent father figure is also a very good thing. Yet, as Susan Forward points out, toxic, abusive, and even incestuous, parents are all too common. One in ten families, by her estimation, experience incest. It is shocking and horrifying, yet preaching from on high is not going to help, particularly as the perpetrators are often the very ones, through the magically empowering nature of the archetype, doing the hypocritical preaching.

Indeed, it is the damaged children who seem to end up on the right, latching on to the one certainty they have learned, that their own efforts avail them something in the rough-and-tumble of life. Desperate for good parenting, they seek father figures and a father mythology that will heal. And one is naturally ready to hand, in the patriarchy, the founding fathers, orginalism. Virtually every religion furnishes the same tale- a father who is both loving and strict, giving commandments and boundaries with one hand, while providing hope of temporal and supernatural power with the other. Most people don't take it too seriously, but if the need is intense enough, if the child within is damaged enough, this patriarchal solution seems to become a template for everything- how to live one's own life, and how the nation should be run as well.

As Dudas writes:

"Not exclusive to modern American conservatism, this longing for stability, for an end to what Willam Connolly calls the 'homesickness' of the human condition, is a hallmark of modern living. Modern times, Connolly argues, are defined by the widespread loss of belief in transcendent purpose (in 'myth') and, accordingly, by an eruption of nihilism. But this nihilism, and the felt loss of meaning that accompanies it, (of Kristeva's 'melancholia'), is so upsetting that it has been the subject of an astonishing range of ameliorative attempts. Hence the feverish devotion to those human projects that attempt to establish the sorts of 'antimyths' that Fitzpatrick locates at the heart of modernity: projects of science, reason, and the state, for example, with which human life might be organized and infused with the noncontingent foundations that existed before (to paraphrase Nietzsche) humans killed off God.
...
But as with all other modern attempts to forestall nihilism, it turns out that the melancholic's desire is 'impossible'. ... The desire for the stable object is impossible and magical because the object (Father) is oversaturated with meaning; it is itself a floating signifier that is purposed and repurposed according to the endless demands of desire rather than to the rigors of logic or intellectual coherence."

Our current president is a damaged child, from a totalitarian father, who reproduces the same parenting style with his own children, and now towards the rest of us as well. Add in desperate narcissim, and the result appears to be pathological lying and manipulativeness, as well as complete blindness to the perspectives of those not on his favorite cable news channels. We have all become victims of bad parenting, and need to redouble our efforts to break the cycle.

• Back when the government ran finance, not Wall Street.
• Too many old savers leads to persistent low interest rates and inflation.
• The market is quite high.
• North Korea has very effective deterrence.
• The rich are still getting richer.
• Getting a PhD is not so great for your job prospects.
• Annals of feudalism, cont... workers are about to be stripped of legal recourse for abuse.
• Economic graph of the week. Robbing the poor to give to the rich, under the proposed tax "plan".

Who pays what under the new plan?

Worried About Truth? Try Programming

Programming as a continual lesson in reality and humility.

The reality principle has been taking a beating recently, with an aged child in the White House throwing tantrums and drama in all directions. Truth itself is under direct assault, as lies big and small emerge shamelessly from the highest levels of our institutions and media. What to do? Reality is still out there, and will surely have its revenge, though that may well drop in another time and place, missing the perpetrators of these outrages while ensnaring the rest of us in its consequences.

For now, you may need a psychological and spiritual cleanse, and what better way than to redouble one's engagement with reality than to drop into a totally artificial world- that of programming? Well, many ways, surely. But nothing teaches discipline in service of the reality principle quite like dealing with a perfectly, relentlessly logical device. Truth is not an aspiration in this world, it is a bread and butter reality, established routinely in a few lines of code. In larger projects, it is a remorseless taskmaster, failing on any misplaced character or weakly developed logic. You get out precisely what you put in, whether that was well thought through or not.

No, it doesn't usually look like this.

One lesson is that every bug has a cause. I may not want to hear about it, but if I want that code to work, I don't have any choice but to address it. I may not be able to find the cause easily, but it is in there, somewhere. Even if the bug is due to some deeper bug, perhaps in the programming language itself or the operating system, and is hard to find and impossible to fix, it is in there, somewhere. Coding is in this way one of many paths to maturity- to dealing honestly with the world. While the profession may have an image of child-men uneasy with social reality, it has its own extreme discipline in the service of realities both formal, in the internal structures they are grappling with, and social, in the needs the code ultimately addresses, or fails to address.

Science is of course another way of dealing with reality in a rigorous way. But, compared to programming, it exists at a significantly larger remove from its subject. It can take years to do an experiment. There may be numerous conscious and unconscious ways to influence results. The superstructures of theory, training, and pre-supposition required to obtain even the smallest step into the unknown are enormous, and create great risks of chasing down fruitless, if fashionable, avenues, such as, say, string theory, or multiverses (not to mention ESP!). The conventional literatures, expecially in drug studies and social science, are notoriously full of false and misleading results. Nor is much of this as accessible to the layperson as programming is, which makes engagement with code an accessible as well as effective tonic to our current national vertigo.

• What happened in 2016? Mainly, lots of lying.
• Trump is hardly alone in not caring about the public good.
• What kind of a democracy is this?

Thinking in Symbols, Speaking in Tongues

Theology, schmeology. Jimmy Swaggart's musical, tribal, shamanistic approach to religion.

What is church without music? Probably not much fun. Even Islam has smuggled in a musical tradition in the form of the call to prayer, which is often a virtuoso vocal performance. The important role music has in most religions is a sign that their gatherings are social bonding events, not scientific conferences. One of the clearest instances is the televangelism of Jimmy Swaggart, still going strong after 45 years. At its core are his amazing piano and vocal abilities, combined with a very tight band and other featured singers. A cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, his talent was recognized early on, but instead of joining the recording industry, he built his own evangelical empire, whose broadcasts are heavy on the music, and light on the theology. The music is an extremely comforting, a sort of bluesy, (this is from Louisiana, after all), cross between Lawrence Welk and African American Church gospel. The focus is on praise and succor from god ("Take my hand, precious lord", "Jesus, use me", "I'll never be lonely again", "Sheltered in the arms of God", "What a friend we have in Jesus").

It is a little reminiscent of the gatherings of DeadHeads, finding a comforting sacrament of friendship and love in an endless bluesy/country jam, heavy on the sentiment. Yes, the Pentecostal / Swaggart version is a lot more conservative, and its love doesn't come from a puff of smoke, but the equally vaporous triumvarate of holy spirit, Jesus, and god. What theology there is is virtually stripped of any sense, however, consisting of archetypal references to give the whole jam more emotional power. It is, essentially, the power of shamanism.

For example, the creed of the ministry is:

“Dear Lord Jesus, I now realize that I am a sinner. I accept the fact that You died for me on the rugged Cross of Calvary. I now open my heart’s door and receive You as Saviour and Lord of my life. Please take full control of me and help me to be the kind of Christian You want me to be. Amen.”

Why "rugged"? How can Jesus take control when he no longer exists, and we do not know where he is or what he wants? OK, call me skeptical! Anyhow, the answer is always prayer, and the Swaggarts claim "Without a daily communication with our heavenly Father, we will only go so far in this Christian life, which won’t be very far, spiritually speaking." Prayer is the cell phone call to god, keeping Him up to date with what we want, and telling us what He wants. What does this really mean? It means one's conscience is going to do the talking, (at best), and its quality is going to be the tenor of our supposed talk with god. This might expain the problems that Swaggart himself has had in the sin department. It also means that anyone who can infiltrate our conscience and purport to tell us what god wants may end up with a great deal of control over our actions. For example, the ministry offers a wide range of "The truth about..." videos, telling the flock why Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, even Seventh-Day Adventists, are wrong and bad. The "full control of me" formulation could be taken as a little sinister, not just to keep the tribal boundaries clear, but to milk the flock for money, and drive a highly conservative political message that is in many respects rather uncharitable.

And control is surely what is going on here. The bonding is very strong and social, starting with the music and the TV shows, but extending to more intense "Camp Meetings" and other events around the country. Advertisements for youth events gush about how attendees feel the presence of the lord during the event. Theoretically, god is supposed to be everywhere, not anywhwere in particular, so these charismatic settings and climaxes are a clear sign of shamanism, not of any coherent theology, let alone philosophy.

The magazine, aside from advertisements for a rich assortment of ministry products, is full of word-salad theology, with submission urged to the will of Christ, or other spirits, so that the "Blood of the Lamb" can wash over the sinners in the pews, cleansing them of their sins. Sermons and blessings are "anointed", messages are "Spirit-baptized", and the "Powers of Darkness" are fought. This church is the "Bride of Christ", and good believers have "eyes of the spirit" to see "the things that lurk in darkness". The whole thing is a work of art, really- a poetry of metaphor which is highly meaningful without actually meaning anything concrete or real in this world. But when it comes to the prices, things are naturally far more explicit "Your price just $10 each".

Televangelism remains a remarkable phenomenon, drawing on the implicit cultural assumptions in favor of Christianity, on blues and gospel music, and on the power of personal magnetism and group bonding to comfort the lonely and lost. If the message were stripped down to the hymns alone, it would be a positive social force.

"If God Is Dead Who's This Living In My Soul?"

• Our government, regular people not invited.
• Even the National Review wonders about inequality. And then concludes that it should be made worse.
• GOP busy making things worse.. Things which clearly could be better.
• Making Afghanistan great again.

Truth is the First Casualty of Fascism

Is he a clown, or a fascist? Depends on who believes him, and who follows him.

We are in new territory, in American politics. Never before has such a vile know-nothing bully been elected as president. George Washington is surely spinning in his grave. But other countries have been here before- Italy perhaps foremost, with its experiences of Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi. Each was thought to be a clown, at least originally. The dark side of political clown-ishness, however, is fascism.

The signs are everywhere, from the campaign, to the inaugural address, to the flurry of hate unleashed in the first weeks in office. The pillars of fascism are an authoritarian mind-set, use of hate as the most powerful political emotion, scapegoats to focus hate on, lying, systematic hatred and denigration of the press, dedication to business interests, militarism, and use of extra-legal means and general destruction of institutions and due process in favor of direct use of, and displays of, power. And then more lying.

The President's inaugural address and festivities exemplified all these trends. There was national renewal and rebuilding the country, as though it was not already built. There was "American carnage". Really? Crime hardly our biggest problem. It was a play for power, to justify extreme measures and authoritarian approaches. God was invoked constantly, not only by the blessers and benedicters, but by the President himself, as though he had a theological leg to stand on. "We will be protected by God", "... the same almighty creator". There was the cheap nationalism. "America first, America first!", and "a total allegiance to the United States of America".

There were fawning claims of putting power back in the hands of the people in several places in the speech. Which makes the ensuing flurry of executive orders seem rather odd, since they exemplify the power of one, not of the many. Even in representative terms, he represents a minority of those who voted. But no matter. The narcissistic identification of the leader with the whole is another facet of authoritarianism. And of narcissism.

The order banning Muslim and refugee immigration was further evidence, among many other orders and tantrums. The claim was that this would make us safer, evidently in light of the carnage that such immigrants were causing on US streets. Scapegoating and the lying are, as usual, inextricably linked. The authoritarian has to have enemies and can not have enough of them in reality, at least ones who are easy to hate. Thus Hitler and the Jews, or Mussolini and the pacifists and communists. We will have to watch the ratchet of hate and scapegoating very carefully. Now it is Muslims and Mexicans. Next is the press, whom the President calls garbage, and the worst people on earth- when he isn't sucking up to them, that is. Who will be next? The civil servants? The Democratic states unwilling to join immigrant roundups? The lawyers of the ACLU? The scientists? The logic of bullying is that anyone who is not clearly cowed is a threat and must be hounded into submission, or else the bully does not feel secure.

Bulldozing through institutions was another part of the immigration order, now being so thoroughly picked apart in the courts. Fascism is impatient with process and legal forms. The scapegoats must be eliminated immediately, and the leader must show his virile power to crush all opposition, with scathing tweets, if not with his armed followers or suborned organs of the law. It is ironic, though not surprising, that he has landed in the wrong end of federal court mere days after pledging so faithlessly to protect and defend the constitution.

But truth is the most serious casualty of this process, and ingredient in the many facets of fascism. All politics involves lying and coloring the facts to some degree. But most politics takes place in a zone of acceptable shadings of the truth, through a normal discourse of free media filtration and critique. This President has been notoriously immune to fact-checking through his campaign, and keeps tweeting lies. His enablers and advisors seem to be selected for their pusillanimity in accepting such alternative facts. The internet has brought us an unmediated liar as president, whose voters loved that he was not a normal politician. Little did they realize that this means he lies more rather than less!

The danger of Muslims in the US- lies. The carnage in the "inner city"- much less than a decade ago. The bad deals with Mexico, China, Iran- lies. The crowd size at the inauguration- lies. Voter fraud, and the idea that the actual popular vote favored the President- lies. Each lie is engineered to set up an false enemy or normalize an appalling view or policy. Each lie is engineered to augment the President's power, needing immediate executive action to fix. Who buys it? Well, the poll numbers have been dropping by the day, so this round of lying does not seem very effective.

The destruction of truth in our political discourse owes relatively little to the President and his appalling acolytes, however, but much more to the larger ecosystem of the right, particularly FOX news. They have been building startingly false and destructive narratives for decades, which curiously support the corporations and the rich while denigrating the government- the one entity that can stand in the way of the rich gathering the rest of our economy into its greedy fingers.

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Thankfully, the President does not have the full toolchest of fascism at his command. And this goes beyond brains! He does not have enough popular support to alter the basic rules of the system. The Women's march was a very important warning shot in that respect. He does not have his own armed forces. He has only a modest grip on his own Republican party. That party is more dedicated to neutering the state than to building it up, at least in most respects. A crisis may change all these equations, but at the moment, a descent into fascism seems unlikely, despite his best efforts.

Starting with brains, it has become painfully apparent that the President's ravings are not the calculated distraction of a clever fox. Rather, they are his utmost effort at clarity and strength. There is no there there. He does not seem to have enough of a grasp of reality to manage it. Nor is the power behind the throne much more fearsome. Steven Bannon has a long history of right-wing agitation, and I studied one of his more recent films to gather an impression of his thought process: Occupy unmasked. It is an incoherent salad of clips and snark. But little sustained argument to be worried about. His actual speeches are more insidious, but they are very standard Republican pablum- the deficit is too big, the country is drowning in debt, the government needs to be cut. Nothing very novel there, just a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, an anti-worker agenda, and perhaps a note of warning to those Republicans who want to blow up the debt for tax cuts.

And the milita- the blackshirts or brownshirts, beholden to the fasicst leader- where is it? Thankfully, we have not stooped to that depth quite yet. But the way the customs and immigration service jumped to do the President's bidding, almost before the ink was dry, was highly disturbing. The order was half-baked at best, something that should have met with a bureaucratic friction and pushback for clarification, if not resistance. Likewise, the support the President has gotten from the border patrol union, to the point of incapacitating their leader, is also troubling. No one seems to be minding the values of common decency in those departments. Otherwise, the President and his acolytes are militaristic, but the military for its part sees how fake their values and rhetoric are, and will doubtless keep the crazy at arm's length. They may have disliked Obama, but that doesn't mean they want to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

How does the media environment look? Not that great, surely, but compared to something like Putin's Russia and Berlusconi's Italy, it is quite free. No amount of vitriol from the President is going to alter that, and the other institutions of government, principally the Congress, are unlikely to alter that, other than perhaps cutting public funding for the public media. Indeed the humor that has been unleashed is most cathartic and positive. The danger is mostly indirect, from a further unleashing of corporations on the public sphere, which will further pollute and damage our very notion of free speech and truth.

There have been many authoritarians, but few fascists. We can take comfort in the incompetence, small-mindedness, and stupidity of the current President to save us. But mostly, in our fellow Americans, who must draw a line. How the President was voted into office remains a conundrum, but his followership looks unlikely to grow. Quite the opposite- the poll numbers are going down; support is dwindling. The incompetence and meanness on display is offending everyone near and far. Other than base Republicans, of course. What will they do who are closer to power? Will the President's aides and advisors draw a line anywhere for decency and our long-term interests? Will the bureaucracy offer some resistance? That will only happen in concert with, and as an expression of, a general revulsion in the political system.

• The signs are clear.
• The establishment is appalled and uneasy.
• Fake olds: re-writing history. Religions have been doing it forever, of course.
• Lies as an excuse for oppression.
• Who will follow? Who will not? Especially when the crisis comes.
• Workers? Savers? Who cares?
• Cringely on H1B and L1B visas.
• Science and truth- another humdrum Democratic constituency.
• Enemies are accumulating on all sides.
• 60,000 to 100,000 visas flushed down the drain- it is shameful and culpable.
• First Things- high-end religion for Trump. And yes, racism is the left's fault.
• Trump crumples like a wet bathrobe on Taiwan.
• Afghanistan, still a quagmire.
• This what resistance looks like.

Make America Decline Again

Where is Trump going, and where are our institutions going?

My recent reading of Medieval history was particularly interesting in its analysis of the growth of institutions in Western / Northern Europe. It was a very slow, painful process, as the vacuum of Rome was replaced first by German kings with very primitive notions of the state and society, co-existing, with monks in their cloisters. Then came nascent states that used more bureaucratic structure (increasingly integrated with services from the church) to provide state services to larger territories and more people. Charlemagne built a great state, but it did not yet have the institutional staying power to last much beyond his sons. But over time, bigger and more effectively run states (Norman England, Capetian France) won the struggle for power in Europe, and generated not only bigger armies and bloodier wars, but also more peaceful and prosperous conditions at home.

Many of these institutions by which we live in peace with each other are written down, in constitutions and laws. But many are not. For example, the fact that a majority of votes in the Senate or House passes a bill is understood and obvious, but not actually written down in the constitution. It appears only by default when a 2/3 majority is required for such things as a passing a constitutional amendment or overriding a veto, and would be implicit in the ability of each chamber to make its own rules for administration. More topically, nothing prevents a president from having all sorts of business interests and foreign entaglements that might corrupt his or her administration. It is merely up to the voters to decide, and later the Congress to take up the matter if they have a mind to impeach.

Institutions live not only in our officials and constitutions, but in everyone's implicit expectations of how their society should run. The town meeting is a hallowed institution, by those who take part in it, as the only reasonable way to run a small political entity. They would not dream to call in a dictator from the outside, as was common practice in Medieval Italy.

Corruption is what happens when unwritten as well as written institutions weaken and go by the wayside, allowing the immediate motivations of greed and ego to replace the carefully honed traditions- if those traditions be worthy- and even common decency. An example is gerrymandering. It is obvious that the original intent, and the intent of any fair-minded person, would be that legislative districts should be evenly and regularly allocated to group together people who live close together. But well-gerrymandered state can scientifically allocate voters such that the party responsible gains far more seats that they deserve, which are then impregnable till the next census and the next exercise in drawing districts.

North Carolina's 12th district.

Corruption is not only an offense against fair play and moral decency, but typically against truth as well. No one is proud of being corrupt and abusing written and unwritten institutions. The trick is to claim one's fidelity while subverting in reality. And the cost of our large political system is that people are so out of touch with each other that they can no longer judge closely, or care to judge, or may not be educationally equipped to judge, the candidates for office, who each make the same claims to fidelity, truth and good character.

Which all makes our recent election so difficult to digest. The Democrats surely had their issues with fidelity to public institutions, with Hillary Clinton eagerly feeding at the golden trough of Goldman Sachs, and her husband raking in (charitably, of course) millions from foreign and other politically interested donors, a haul that one assumes is likely to dry up quite dramatically in the coming year.

However, all this pales in comparison to the orchestrated war on our basic institutions and our very understanding of truth that the Republicans have led for decades. Donald Trump campaigned openly on a platform of lies and execrable character. His business history is one of repeated bankruptcy, betrayal, cheating, and bullying. His knowledge of our institutions, and indeed of reality itself, is marginal. His abilty to articulate rational public policy was and remains nil, suited only to emotional outbursts via the 140-character medium of twitter. His emotional makeup was clearly unstable, and evidently psychopathic. And people voted for him.

Why? The battlefield had been softened up by decades of smear operations mounted by the Republican party through FOX news and other organs of the right. It turns out that hate sells, and thus leads to a sustainable business model of purveying emotionally tinged lies, leading to mis-directed hate, leading to more listener engagement, and more advertising dollars. It is reminiscent of the interwar period in Germany, when scapegoats were sought for: who lost World War I. They came up with the Jews, and a general lack of teutonic authoritanianism, in a self-feeding cycle of hate which polarized society to great, deadly extremes.

For decades, the Republicans have been seeking scapegoats for: who lost the culture war? Why are Americans becoming increasingly compassionate towards blacks, towards gays, towards atheists? What is going on, and could the clock be turned back- to make America great again? The backbone of this movement was naturally the right-wing religious believers, who, being temperamentally authoritarian, and having already swallowed one pack of lies, had little problem with a few more, like the whole wishlist from the business community, that wealthy people are the job creators, that government regulation is the main thing standing between rural people and good jobs, and that unions are evil. And that Donald Trump means anything he says or has an ounce of morals. And that the Clintons are unspeakably vile- far more so than those fine business organizations who sold so many fraudulent loans and other toxic waste that we are barely coming out of the recession they caused. And that global warming is a hoax, and that Bengazi was Hillary's fault, and ... well, the appalling list goes on, ad infinitum. They have a great deal of airtime to fill, after all.

The Republican war on our institutions has had a self-reinforcing quality. Given that they want to debilitate governmental institutions, whenever they get their hands on one, like the House of Representatives or the Senate, they make it non-functional, and in a self-fulfiling prophecy, the government indeed doesn't work, and the base can be riled up all over again to attack their chosen targets of hate. The base doesn't seem to make the connection between cause and effect, except when that connection is glaring, such as the government shutdowns that ultimately damaged Newt Gingrich- perhaps the earliest and most vociferous destroyer of American instutions in our generation.

The vacancy on the Supreme court stands as the absolute lowest point of Republican subversion. A shameless plot against norms and practices in place since the founding, in a doomed quest to reverse the course of social development. For however conservative and extreme the court gets, America at large is never going back to the image that conservatives have of it. Similarly, Donald Trump is busily appointing to each department a head who seeks to debilitate it and subvert its purposes and norms, so that corruption by the business elite can flourish. Education will see corporations in charge of charter schools, the EPA, corporations in charge of climate change policy, and the Labor department will see union busters in charge. The tax system as a whole will doubtless see giveaways to corporations and the wealthy that will make the Reagan administration look like a Trotskyite regime.

Is this what his voters wanted? I would hope and assume not. But they knew they were electing a con man, right? How could a ruthless billionaire with no previously recorded ounce of compassion for anyone outside his family do other than he has, hiring those he likes and trusts to run our country, which already is one of the most unequal in the developed world?

While all of politics is a matter of lies and half-truths; banal rhetoric with maximal tone and minimal content, the degree to which Trump could play this game with complete shamelessness and emptiness is not a matter of his talent alone, but of the decades-long evisceration of our public discourse and institutions, and particularly the Ministry-of-Truth programming that his base has been fed so effectively from the right-wing media. They do it not only in the service of their conservative ideals, but also for their true power base- the wealthy and corporations, who could never carry an election with their own votes, but if they destroy enough of our democratic and cultural institutions, and brain cells, can win anyhow, free and fair.

• Is compassion dead?
• Yes.
• Honestly, do we really need a middle class?
• How about some happy thoughts?
• "Liberalizing policies are justified in theory only by the assumption that political decisions will redistribute some of the gains from winners to losers in socially acceptable ways. But what happens if politicians do the opposite in practice?"
• Christmas is pagan.

Concentrated Evil

The Litvinenko case, the polonium trail, and Putin's Russia.

A decade ago, a grisly case right out of the cold war erupted in Britain, when former KGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned and killed. On the day of his death, almost a month after the poisoning, it was finally established that he was poisoned with polonium, one of the more obscure radionuclides known to man, and one only manufactured by man, indeed manufactured only in Russia.

Within a matter of months, Martin Sixsmith produced the definitive account of this case (at least until the Russian government files are opened) in his book, The Litvinenko File. An interesting aspect of the case is the question whether the killers knew the nature of their poison. One has to conclude that they didn't, as they left trails all over the place. Polonium had been used before, in Russia, and, Sixsmith surmises, on Litvinenko in London a few weeks previously, though at an insufficient dose.

In some respects it is the perfect poison, killing slowly and remorselessly, with no antidote or treatment. It is colorless, odorless, and generally undetectable, even by airport security equipment tesing for radiation, which responds to beta and gamma rays. Polonium only produces alpha particles, which have the distinction of being immensely powerful, but also very heavy. They rip up a person's cells, but do not travel far, either in liquid or in air. Yet once Scotland Yard knew what to look for, it was child's play to trace the killer's trail in all its complexity and carelessness, through numerous hotels, restaurants, airplanes, and offices.

Primer on forms of radioactivity. The alpha particle is large, very energetic, and bumps into things readily, so it can't go very far but does a lot of damage.

The killers were former KGB/FSB agents, on very friendly terms with Litvinenko. Indeed, he never suspected them and the ruse to meet with him revolved around various business dealings they had together to gather business intelligence on Russian firms, seemingly the leading industry of Russian ex-agents.

But people do not leave so easily from the FSB. Its hold is both operational (terror-ational, one might say) and sentimental. Like the Marines, or any other high-intensity and high-stakes brotherhood, it forms very strong psychological, tribal bonds. Even when, as the FSB, it is infected by business interests, gangsterism, and rampant corruption. Litvinenko had truly burned his bridges, however. He found himself in London a hunted exile and turncoat, tarred far and wide by the Kremlin and his old associates as a traitor, his image used as target practice on the FSB shooting range. Nothing rankles quite like hearing someone tell you the truth about yourself.

His fall happened in two steps. First, Litvinenko had been asked by his FSB boss to knock off the leading oligarch of the day, Boris Berezovsky, the power behind the throne of Boris Yeltsin. The rationale for this may have been competing business interests, and/or disagreement with Beresovsky's dovish stance on the Chechen insurgency, or something else. In any case, it was an unwritten, verbal order. Litvinenko was shocked, and did a couple months of his own due diligence (so to speak) to see where this order came from and how the cards would fall if he carried it out. He decided to refuse, and not only that, went to Berezovsky to tell him about it. Not only that, but the two then hatched a press conference to tell the world about it, with the ostensible aim of pressuring Vladamir Putin, whom Berezovsky had just installed as head of the FSB, to root out these presumably rogue elements. As Berezovsky owned the leading national TV channel, the coverage was generous, to say the least.

But were they rogue elements? Here we get to the ever more concentrated precincts of evil. While Berezovsky was no shrinking violet, had mob connections of this own, and had knocked off his share of rivals in his climb to wealth & power, he was a progressive force in the Kremlin, tamping down the Chechen disaster, fighting corruption, and trying to bring the government into the modern era, at least in the telling of this book, which relies heavily on Berezovsky's own testimony. He thought Putin was sympatico, but it quickly became apparent that the press conference did not have its intended effect. Instead it made Putin and everyone under him livid with rage. Where Putin has taken Russia since that time, one can see for oneself. It is a despotic system with extensive media and political censorship. Dissidents, such as Anna Politkovskaya, get shot in uninvestigated, not to mention unsolved, murders. Putin has taken his bullying to global dimensions now with Ukraine and Syria, attempting to export his vision of despotic state terror- the "strong leadership" that seems to be such a turn-on to our own Donald Trump and other elements of the Republican right.

To make a long story short, Berezovsky continues to look on the bright side, recommends Putin to be Yeltsin's successor, and is promply destroyed by Putin, eventually finding a very comfortable exile and political asylum in London (if occasionally punctuated by assassination plots). Litvinenko is jailed several times by the FSB and put through various courts, one of which is less kangaroo-like than the others, and eventually flees the country with great difficulty. The FSB has turned the handful of colleagues who had joined him at the press conference, but can't quite turn Litvinenko himself- whether due to his romantic heroism and integrity, or his estimation that he would be sacrificed anyway, is not quite clear. Litvinenko continues to be Berezovky's flunky in London, and both continue a campaign of vilification and propaganda against Vladimir Putin. More in a long line of Russian dissidents and agitators operating in Western Europe, starting with Lenin himself. One particularly irritating truth Litvinenko turned up was that the FSB was responsible for the Moscow apartment bombings which killed 307 civilians and which they quickly pinned on the Chechens, leading directly to Putin's election and the renewed and vicious Chechen war.

There are many more twists to the plot, but that is the essence. Britain refused to render Berezovsky or Litvinenko extradited to Russia for their supposed crimes, and in return, after the murder and investigation, Russia refused to render the two killers to Britain either. Sixsmith does not surmise that Putin was directly responsible for ordering the killing, or even the official FSB, but rather that an atmosphere of permissiveness and impunity, combined with livid hatred and an implicit desire to do something sure to please the bosses, including Putin, resulted in this dangerous and cruel plot. The murderers were not current FSB officers, but very much part of the larger FSB family.

What is particularly appalling about all this is the lying and attitude towards decency and truth that is endemic to this story, to Russian culture generally, and to the KGB/FSB most centrally of all. When the case blew up, the Russians put out fanciful theory after extravagant lie. A private business deal blew up. Killed by Berezovsky. Killed by British intelligence. Litvinenko killed himself. The idea that anyone might be interested in the truth seems, to them, a joke. ["Russia Today's editors wrote that Epstein said there was "no substantial evidence against Lugovoy"] Putin tried various ploys to blame others and made nacissistic jokes about it being done on purpose by some Western element or agency to embarrass him at a high-profile summit. Putin and his cronies- at home, in the Ukraine, in Syria, and elsewhere- continue to wage information warfare, treating their people as sheep to be bludgeoned by propaganda, in a macho demonstration of who can screw with whom. But what can you expect from someone whose first toast when elected to the presidency was to ... Comrade Stalin?

---

Extra note. The chemistry of polonium 210 is interesting, as gleaned from a paper cited on the Wiki site. US scientists at the Hanford complex (now the most toxic superfund site in the US) published its method of production. Bismuth 209 metal is placed into a reactor, bombarding it with neutrons. This produces polonium atoms, which are removed by melting the bismuth and extracting (mixing) it with immiscible sodium hydroxide at 500 degrees C. Virtually all of the new polonium goes into the hydroxide liquid phase, after which the bismuth can be re-solidified and put right back into the reactor. On the one hand, it is a very elegant procedure, chemically. But obviously it is also susceptible to extremely dangerous accidents.

• Russia is still lawless.
• Which is apparently no deterrent for the Orthodox church to get in bed with the state again.
• Marilynne Robinson on religion, fear, more fear. And why bad religion wins.
• Why is any religion still about?
• Religion is being peddled to unsuspecting children. As usual.
• Fact, schmact. How postmodern Christianity saves us from polarization, distinctions, facts, reason, etc.
• The changing and growing shape of hatred in the Middle East.
• Can joyful tidying go too far? "To discard the stuff we’ve acquired is to murder the version of ourselves we envision using it."
• China's cruel status quo policy on North Korea- keep them barefoot, so they don't turn in to South Korea.
• Yanis Varoufakis on the European situation.
• Real guns are OK. Fake guns, not so much.
• What it is like to own a gun in Australia.

Odysseus Among the Stars

Star Trek as an Odyssey retold.

Star Trek is one of the great narratives of our time, burrowing into the cultural unconscious with its optimism, classic storylines, inexhaustable fund of aliens, and dash of humor. What other story is equally classic, with a hero who commands his ship through a long series of adventures, who meets aliens of many descriptions, and gets out of one bizarre scrape after another? Why Odysseus, of course!

Realizing this clarified to me the staying power and deep resonance of this new myth. Odysseus wasn't big on preaching the benefits of a peaceful Federation, (though that may have been an implicit lesson to its original listeners, binding together a Greek world constantly at war), but on the other hand, he had heard of most of the monsters and gods he meets, getting more of a head start than Kirk has. Like Odysseus, Kirk is a winner, happy to seduce a woman if that will save his ship, using deception and every wile to get what he wants. Or to go in with guns blazing if that is needed. While Odysseus had a home to go back to, Star Trek dispenses with that bit of plot, concentrating on the voyage exclusively, the far more engaging part of the story.

One big difference is the role of Spock. Odysseus has no significantly characterized companions from what I recall, none whom one would call a number two. While a soldier and coming back from war, the military organization of his ships is hardly mentioned and seems rather lax. Odysseus keeps his own counsel and gets little help from his sailors, who die right and left in various misadventures. Nor are aliens brought along on his voyage. Time after time, he flees as fast as he can from each monster in turn.

A medical officer with a shamanic touch, like McCoy, might not have been unknown to the Greek world, but Spock is another matter. He exemplifies the classical philosophical position of Stoicism, but this hardly had much place in the original tale, outside of mundane forbearance of disasters which rain down constantly. Odysseus doesn't involve himself in much philosophical discussion, or introspection, which becomes such an important part of Greek culture only later. The Odyssey is a tale of action, not thought. Spock introduces both an element of diversity and philosophical perspective, (especially an occasional check on senseless violence), which is sorely needed in what is also, among its other themes, a pean to what was at the time a growing US federation of democratic and peaceful planets, er nations.

Modern, contemporary, retro, or classic?

• We are on the ISIS side, in Yemen, along with Saudi Arabia.. why? Why take sides in the Sunni-Shia showdown?
• Narratives and theories of anorexia.
• New US jobs are heavily low-wage.
• Hope, belief, and con games large and small.
• Why are bitter, fundamentalist losers messing everything up?
• Bill Mitchell on basic income.
• Is quietist Dawa fundamentalism better than militant Wahabi and Salafi fundamentalism?
• Trump is blowing up the code. FOX/GOP can not wash its hands of what it has wrought.

Christians Have All The Morals

Review of "Terrorism and Civilization", by Shadia Drury

Some weeks ago, I discussed, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, how atheists have no morals. This time we turn the other cheek to consider Christian morals in some detail. Shadia Drury published a response to the 9/11 attacks in the form of a frontal assault on religious morality and Christian morality in particular, a book that should have risen to the top of the Atheist cannon, but didn't, perhaps due to her obscurity, her gender, and the book's high price.

Her case is relentless as it is remorseful, about the opportunities lost in the West due to the twisted, irrational and inhumane doctrines that originate from the New Testament. At least the Old Testament god was understandable, if a little hot-tempered. The New one is positively terroristic. Nor does Jesus (assuming for the monent that he was a real person and that the scriptures about him are at least partly true) get off in this thorough indictment, for he brings us this new system which features carelessness about this world and its people, thought crime, eschetological selfishness, orignal sin, and eternal damnation.

Hell is, of course, one focus. Jews didn't have hell, really. That was Jesus's invention, though obviously stolen from the Zoroastrians. His doctrine is that mere belief in him is the main thing.. everything else is secondary, in any practical, moral, and eschatological sense. However, many are called and few are chosen, which is to say that even if you fulfill his need for faith, you could still end up in hell, which is painted in the most fiery colors, as endless suffering and eternal. This is pure psychological terror, obviously, and was stunningly effective against the other religions of the day, which were all more reasonable.

Jesus also introduced thought crime, since belief in him was the main criterion of salvation. He also deemed immoral thoughts as bad as immoral actions. Adultury in one's mind as bad as in the flesh, etc. So where was one to go for relief from such a regime? There is nowhere to hide. Many serious believers have been agonized by this, for example John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress, a despairing work full of terrors and sin.

The reason for the horrors of Bunyan's epic travellogue are that humans, in Jesus's system, are fallen and evil. They are sinners who have no right to salvation, who are saved (if at all) by grace granted in return for slavish faith. Drury makes the acute observation that Freud, that ostensible iconoclast and atheist, follows the Christian system in virtually every psychological particular, from the innate sinfulnes of man (the id), and the need for terror (repression) to keep the inner beast under control, to the therapeutic salve of confession (the couch, in place of the booth).

Nietzsche too comes in for a drubbing, in an even more profound way. The Christian morality is one of blind obedience, of faith in the unbelievable, and terrorism inner and outer. All for our own good, naturally. If one fails to reframe the basic parameters of this model of humanity, then revolt against this edifice of lies might take an ugly turn, to immorality and perverse delight in reversing every dictum of the reigning moral order, so as to return to one's "true" nature, which though sinful, is at least honest and alive. Thus the bathos about Dionysus and the amoral Übermensch.

This accepts a frame that is far from true, however. Humans are many bad things, but they are not fundamentally bad beings. We are basically good beings with complex and often conflicting needs and ideals. We are pro-social. We love and seek love in return. We are fiercely moral. Drury points out that it is our civilization and our highest ideals that are what is in some ways most dangerous about us- our ability to organize huge groups, spout ideological rhetoric about utopian ideals, not to mention creating modern technology, for warfare and totalitarianism on unimaginable scales. It is the beast within that required nurturing, and our better natures that required the most advanced instruments of repression, when one thinks of the rankest horrors of the twentieth century.

So it is time to relax. The work of civilizing ourselves remains great, and constant cultivation is certainly desirable. But it does not require terrors of religion, nor theories about how damnable we are. Nor should we leap to the other Rousseau-ian end of spectrum, where everything natural, native, and naive is all that is good. As the religiously and ideologically burned-out countries of Europe are showing, there is peace, prosperity, happiness, and not least, highly sensistive morality, in a post-Christian, moderate, and humane culture.

• Kansas is just fine ... steal from the poor, give to the rich is a winning, sustainable strategy, especially considering how damnable we are.
• The Devil and Mr. Scalia. At least one justice is a fossilized relic, and has either lost his marbles, or enjoys trolling interviewers.
• Over 100 jihadist training camps, thousands of trainees ... this is not a fringe phenomenon.
• California's sclerotic housing mess. Incumbent owners always win when new housing / zoning is killed. Especially with prop 13.
• Grexit is coming.
• Whom we feel for... white police edition.
• Another 1%. Or is it the same one?
• Enriching the 1% makes everyone poorer.

Comparing Pontificating Paradigms

When vastly different theological paradigms are in play, simplicity and other reasoned criteria typically do not decide between them.

Arguments about theism are classics of Kuhnian paradigms. Each side has a completely different view of the world (taking atheism vs progressive theism as the pattern). The views are so different that people are reduced to vague formulations like "it makes everything else make sense" and the like. In the words of C. S. Lewis, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." Theism, at any rate, is not a logical deduction from observed phenomena, (as it used to be in Anselm's day), but a speculation about the unknown- unknown souls, unknown life after death, and the unknown god. All strongly felt, but not known. God is forever in the gaps of knowledge, not in what the atheist would call secure knowledge- that which has been nailed down about reality in empirical and / or logical terms.

Non-theists stick to what is known, but in their own way also assume a great deal- that the brain-mind connection is not what is called "supernatural", and that whatever that connections is can be understood, someday, through the normal course of scientific endeavor. And that any god worth the name would make itself far more manifest than has been the case in the past, and certainly is now. And lastly, that the whole theological edifice is far more efficiently explained by our rich psychological archetypes, weaknesses, and hopes than it is by its mystical discernment of an entirely alternate reality. These assumptions do not credit theists and theology with any special knowledge or modes of knowing, but rather assume that everyone has largely the same perceptions and immediate reality, though they may make of them quite different inferred realities.

Which model is more in accord with the real reality? Which is more humble- that is another intruiguing one. Is there an actual reality out there separate from what we make of it ... that is yet another one, in a more postmodern / Platonic vein.

As vastly different models of reality, they can also be called paradigms. Kuhn told us that communication between strongly contrasting paradigms can be extremely difficult, since the concepts, and even the language used, have meanings that depend on the edifices of their own respective paradigms and communities. They are non-commensurate. This is especially true for beliefs that are acknowledged to come by non-scientific means; by faith, by mystical deliverance, by community engagement, by one's "gut".

Occam's razor tells us to go with the simplest explanation, all else being equal. And that certainly would be theism. God is the answer for everything that we do not know, and much that we do. Why does lightning strike? That used to be (a) god's job, but is now generally regarded as not supernatural at all. Why does evolution happen? Even those who agree with natural selection and Darwinian evolution in general often, if they are theists to start with, see a hand of god in the mix, perhaps pushing sub-atomic particles around just so, weighing the scales in some way we can't see and certainly couldn't reconstruct historically, to make that all-important creature, us.

It is a very winning simplicity, sweeping all our questions, especially the most important ones, under a totemic rug, while reluctantly recognizing the mechanisms that scientific thought has constructed for whatever has been rigorously explained. That is, if you are a progressive religious person, rather than a fundmantalist home-schooler barring the doors & windows against a much wider gamut of profane knowledge. But how far does progressive theology go? To remain theology, it can never go "too far". It can not empty god out of the world completely. While the whole point of evolution is that it is a mechanistic process, blind and brainless, and therefore explanatory of biological change, that is anathema to theology, however tepid. So at least we humans must have been granted some kind of grace ... some special relationship with god that sponsors our moral nature, even if it did not meddle with our physical evolution. Or something like that.

Then there is psychology. Are we beset by various biases and defects that impair our reasoning and tend to lend more credence to supernatural theories than they are due? Do we have an intense need for social hierarchy and father figures that we map onto an imaginary cosmos? Or are we blessed with a sort of sixth sense, by which god approaches us, perhaps in dreams, or in quiet moments of meditation, or in the rousing community of worship? Religious people make a great deal of "discernment", which usually means a very non-scientific feeling of a god existing, inherent in the world, and also relating somehow to us personally. This helps to construct non-believers as *blind, and also construct religious group leaders as somehow gifted with special abilities or relations with the divine. As Tanya Luhrman demonstrates so well, (as William James before her), this discernment is most clearly a sign of imagination, or considerable mental self-management, but not necessarily something that a skeptic is obliged to credit as discernment of something real.

The very immensity of speculation required in religious belief constitutes another psychological factor, as it can be a method that draws forth commitment and social bonding. The greater the unbelievability of a doctrine, the more isolated its believers, the more they depend on each other, and the greater the psychological barrier to entry and to exit. Atheists are notoriously unable to form communities, perhaps because their beliefs, at least in the religious sphere, are rather modest and skeptical. Believing in a lack of life after death, in a lack of priestly charisma, a lack of divine sanction for their endeavors, etc. is not calculated to create great devotion. Truly it is curious how real riches, such as wealth and health, have so much less purchase on our psychology of personal meaning than do the highly speculative riches of the hereafter and the invisible.

But broaching the subject of psychological explanation for religion is highly offensive to those in the paradigm. "Are you calling us nuts? Or stupid? Is this the first step to locking us up?" and so forth. And are atheists immune from psychological biases? To judge from the internet comment traffic, that is not the case, though the biases at work do seem different. Richard Dawkins has not yet been canonized or described as divine.

Obviously, simplicity is not the entire standard of paradigm comparison. Simplicity purchased at the cost of deep explanation, indeed of the very motivation to approach the mysteries of reality in analytical fashion, may not be (philosophically) superior to complexity, or even to ignorance. In any case, the test is not internal to the paradigm, but in its correspondence to reality, in some empirical sense. If all those correspondences are, in the face of a god who resolutely remains hidden from clear view, fobbed off to mystical senses or speculations about what must have ultimately caused the universe and ourselves to appear, then all the clarity and simplicity can't make up for explanatory weakness.

It goes without saying that what one wants out of a paradigm does not serve to make it more or less true. Whether theism makes us more moral, or whether contrariwise it makes us kill each other, doesn't speak to its truth or falsity. Indeed, the personal attractiveness and psychological tenacity of religion can be taken as an argument against its truthfulness. Except, of course, if one resides within a theistic paradigm, in which case god made us religiously inclined and mystically receptive, in a wonderful, if somewhat fuzzy, circle of logical causation.

Nor does arrogance or humility really decide the question. Each paradigm thinks itself nobly humble and its adversary perversely arrogant. Believers bow before god and seek to obey (or at least understand) "His" teachings and dictates, while viewing atheists as believing themselves to be god, and having no god-given, objective morals into the bargain- a lost and dangerous tribe. Conversely, atheists suspect theists of making it all up anyhow, thus conjuring around the back door the laws and deities that they so conspicuously bow to in front of the temple, all demonstrated by the appalling failures of the theist's own social institutions. Which are, under this view, incredibly arrogant, fraudulently leading their people to believe they are communing with the creator of the universe, who cares whether they win the next bingo game. Or the next war.

The consideration of these radically different, yet each widely believed, paradigms is the first step of theology. Before one can make suppositions about what this god wants, or what our meaning is as humans, or what moral consequences we think derive from it all, we need to situate ourselves in a model of reality, either supernatural or not. As an atheist, I think the choice is clear, that inferring so much as a premise, and in such imaginative fashion, however attractive and justified on traditional, moral, or hopeful grounds, is no way to begin one's philosophy. It is to fall into psychological traps from the very start and to build on sand.

But how to communicate all this to anyone outside the paradigmatic echo chamber? Our ability to close our minds to foreign and inconvenient thoughts is monumental. In this case, each paradigm is not just incommensurate, but is built on active, explicit opposition to the other. The most basic tool we have is philosophical / intellectual integrity, that each party has the courage to understand opposing ideas and to be wrong, if evidence dictates that conclusion. Also, perhaps a dab of introspective psychological insight, but that is extremely treacherous territory. Of course, what counts as evidence is as contentious as anything else across these paradigms. And the length to which evidence can be discounted, and even "truth" redefined, is quite impressive.

At any rate, it takes a strong stomach to even listen to the opposing side, since not only is its paradigm contrary to one's own, but it will tend to be dismissive and scoffing (especially coming from the atheist side) if not outright insulting to what it regards as false, ill-informed, possibly immoral views. But that is the price of dialog. Making small talk over tea and crumpets may smooth the waters psychologically, but it will not address paradigmatic or philosophical issues. And dialog is unlikely to change anything anyhow. It is a private process where each person has to search within themselves for their intepretation of reality, and their place in it. Such searching is most intense in adolescence, and that is where hope lies- when childhood indoctrination meets reality.

• Let's say nice things about religion, by Karen Armstrong.
• Let's say mean things about religion, by John Loftus.
• Mythos vs Logos.
• What happened to the Muslim world?
• What is the best safety net? Unemployment insurance, or basic income? How about real jobs?
• The stimulus program, such as it was, was very successful.
• Morality and the sciences ... women get a better shake.
• The Ferguson library steps up. More notes on Ferguson.
• Somebody is taking action against neonicotinoids, but not us.
• A total failure of incentives and appropriate punishment.
• Now for some corporate thanksgiving.
• U.S. General on Iraq: "Washington hails Saudi Arabia as a key “moderate” Arab ally despite the fact that the kingdom exports an extreme, puritanical, sectarian interpretation of Islam that established the theological parameters taken to extremes by groups like ISIS." On the other hand, the Saudis are being very helpful against Iran and Russia.
• Does everybody hate us?
• Why did the Supreme Court throw out rights to equality before the law and due process?

Being and B.S.

Review of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time.

Martin Heidegger was a philosopher of the interwar and post-world war 2 period, and one of the founders of the continental school of modern philosophy which has headed into deconstruction and postmodernism. He coined the term existentialism, and is thought by many a leading or even the leading philosopher of the 20th century. His personal fixation was the question of being, to which he devoted what is deemed his greatest work, or even "towering achievement": "Being and Time".

In the development of modern philosophy, Heidegger stands against positivism and the whole analytical school, so I thought it worthwhile to read up on his ouvre. Surely something is lost in translation, but one does what one can. I can do no better than provide a few quotes, from a translation by Joan Stambaugh, 1977.

At the outset, he tries to forestall doubters:

"It is said that 'Being' is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus undefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it constantly and also already understands what he means by it. Thus what made ancient philosophizing uneasy and kept it so by virtue of its obscurity has become obvious, clear as day; and this to the point that whoever pursues it is accused of an error of method."

And in the same vein...

" 'Being' is the self-evident concept. 'Being' is used in all knowing and predicating, in every relation to being and every relation to one's self, and the expression is understandable 'without further ado'. Everybody understands 'The sky is blue,' 'I am happy,' and similar statements. But this average comprehensibility only demonstrates incomprehensibility. It shows that an enigma lies a priori in every relation and being toward beings as beings. The fact that we live already in an understanding of Being and that the meaning of Being is at the same time shrouded in darkness proves the fundamental necessity of recapitulating the question of the meaning of 'Being.'"

He then discusses the origins of a scientific field from a vague intution to a metaphysical speculation, till finally it becomes a well-defined discipline, with methods, laws, theories, etc. Or at least I imagine that is what he is driving at.

"Being is always the Being of a being. The totality of beings can, with respect to its various domains, become the field where definite areas of knowledge- for example, history, nature, space, life, human being, and so on- can in their turn become thematic objects of scientific investigations. Scientific research demarcates and first establishes these areas of knowledge in rough and ready fashion. The elaboration of the area in its fundamental structures is in a way already accomplished by prescientific experience and interpretation of the domain of Being to which the area of knowledge is itself confined. The resulting 'fundamental concepts' comprise the guidelines for the first disclosure of the area. Whether or not the importance of the research always lies in such establishment of concepts, it true progress comes about not so much in collecting results and storing them in 'handbooks' as in being forced to ask questions about the basic constitution of each area, those questions being chiefly a reaction to increasing knowledge in each area."

Now we get into some heavy weather...

"The ontic priority of the question of Being. 

Science in general can be defined as the totality of fundamentally coherent true propositions. This definition is not complete, nor does it get at the meaning of science. As ways in which man behaves, sciences have this beings (man's) kind of Being. We are defining this being terminologically as Dasein. Scientific research is neither the sole nor the primary kind of Being of this being that is possible. Moreover, Dasein itself is distinctly different from other beings. We must make this distinct difference visible in a preliminary way. Here the discussion must anticipate the subsequent analyses which only later will become really demonstrative. 

Dasein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings. Rather, it is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its Being this being is concerned about its very being. Thus it is constitutive of the Being of Dasein to have, in its very Being, a relation of Being to this Being. And this in turn means that Dasein understands itself in its Being in some way and with explicitness. It is proper to this being that it be disclosed to itself with and through its Being. Understanding of Being is itself a determination of Being of Dasein. The ontic distinction of Dasein lies in the fact that it is ontological."

He seems to be trying to establish a conscious and self-reflective being as a special case of the general case of "being". In German, "dasein" means being (sein) there (da), which does not seem to add very much ... it is "existence" in any case, here or there.

Anyhow, one can imagine pages and pages of this, leading nowhere, and get a thorough sense of this text. It shares with its descendent postmodernism (not to mention its cousin theology) a sort of linguistic propulsiveness (with plenty of italics) and conviction of purpose without actually saying anything. Whether one agrees that, as Heidegger says, "The concept of 'Being' is rather the most obscure of all", he makes whatever it is less clear rather than more. It is a flood of sophism and pomposity that has led generations of all-too-serious students to strain their eyes and waste their talents, while setting itself up as some kind of tribunal of the highest, metaphysical kind over other fields.

• Free markets for thee, but not for me.
• Financial criminals reward each other with pay raises. And sycophantic press. And the uniquely powerful incentives to loot your own bank.
• Workers of the world will not unite.
• Yet unemployment is the worst fate of all.
• NASA is a happy-talk disaster zone.
• Eric Snowden's background.. how he reacted to army atmosphere: "Few of his new army colleagues, he maintained, shared his sense of noble purpose, or his desire to help oppressed citizens throw off their chains. Instead, his superiors merely wanted to shoot people. Preferably Muslims. ‘Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone,’ he says."
• PIMCO guru pushes MMT: deficits create money and credit, which we need to support growth. Don't pay attention to all the mistakes I made last year, though, and the year before that, and ...
• This week in the Wall $treet Journal: "But the lesson from Europe is that the environmentalists who have been relentlessly hawking renewables are the real deniers." This piece makes a valid point, despite its hypocritical evasion of the appalling conservative denial of climate heating generally ... which is that transitioning to renewable energy is costly and difficult. Which is why we need a big carbon tax sooner, not later.