To the Stars!

Reviews of "Making it So", by Patrick Stewart, and "The Silent Star" from DEFA films.

When I think about religion, I usually think about how wrong it all is. But at the same time, it has provided a narrative structure for much of humanity and much of human history, for better or worse. It could be regarded as the original science fiction, with its miracles, and reports of supernatural beings and powers. Both testaments of the Bible read like wonder tales of strange happenings and hopeful portents. While theology might take the heavenly beings and weird powers seriously, it is obvious these were mere philosophical gropings after the true gears of the world, while the core of the stories are the human narratives of conflict, adversity, and morality.

In our epoch features a welter of storytelling, typically more commercially desperate than culturally binding. But one story has risen above the rest- the world of Star Trek. From its cold war beginnings, it has blossomed into a rich world of morality tales combined with hopeful adventure and mild drama. The delightful recent autobiography by Patrick Stewart brought this all back in a new way. Looking at the franchise from the inside out, from the perspective of a professional actor who was certainly dedicated to his craft, but hardly a fan of the franchise- someone for whom this was just another role, if one that made him an international, nay galactic, star- was deeply interesting. Even engaging(!)

As a Shakespearean actor, Stewart was used to dealing with beloved, culturally pivotal stories. And this one has become a touchstone in Western culture, supplying some of the models and glue that have gone missing with the increasing irrelevance of religion. It is fascinating how heavily people depend on stories for a sense of what it should, can, and does mean to be human, for models of leadership and community. Star Trek, at least for a certain segment of the population, has provided a hopeful, interesting vision of the future, with well-reasoned moral dramas and judgments. Stewart embodied the kind of leadership style that was influential far beyond the confines of Starfleet. And his deeply engaged acting helped carry the show, as that of Leonard Nimoy had taken the original series beyond its action/adventure roots.

Where the narrative of Christianity is obscurantist, blusteringly uncertain how seriously to take its own story, and focused on the occasional miracles of long-ago, Star Trek values the future, problem solving and science, while it makes little pretense of realism. On the other hand, it is fundamentally a workplace drama, eliding many important facets of humanity, like family and scarcity. Though in the Star Trek world money is worthless and abundance is the rule, posts on starships remain in short supply. There always will be shortages of something, given human greed and narcissism, so there is always going to be something subject to competition, economics, possibly warfare. Christianity hinges on preaching and conversion, based on rather mysterious, if supposedly self-serving, personal convictions. Its vision of the future is, frankly, quite frightening. Star Trek, on the other hand, shows openness to other cultures, diplomacy, and sharing in its eschatological version of the American empire, the Federation. (Even if they get into an inordinate number of fights with un-enlightened cultures.)

The Star Trek story is so strong that it keeps motivating people to make spaceships. Just look at Elon Musk, who, despite the glaringly defective logic of sending humans to Mars, persists in that dream, as does NASA itself. It is a classic case of archetypal yearnings overwhelming common sense, not to mention clear science. But that is a small price to pay for the many other benefits of the Star Trek-style world view- one where different cultures and races get along, where solving problems and seeking knowledge are the highest pursuits, where leadership is judicious and respectful, and humans know what they stand for.

In a similar vein, the Soviets, who led humanity into space, had their own fixations and narratives of space and the future. I recently watched the fascinating movie from the East German DEFA studios, The Silent Star, (1960), which portrays a voyage to Venus. It strikingly prefigures the entire Star Trek oeuvre. There are the scientists on board, the handsome captain, the black communications officer, the international crew from all corners of the earth, the shuttle craft, the talking computer, the communications that keep breaking up, and the space ship that rattles through asteroid fields, jostling the crew. While there are several pointed comments on the American bombing of Hiroshima to set the geopolitical contrast, there is, overall, the absolute optimism that all problems can be solved, and that adventuring to seek the truth is unquestionably the most exciting way to live. One gets the distinct sense that Star Trek was not so original after all.

It was time when technology had pried open the heavens for direct investigation, and what humanity found there was stunningly unlike what had been foretold in the scriptures. It was a vast and empty wasteland, dotted with dead planets and lacking any hint of deities. We had to create an alternative narrative, with warp drive and M-class planets, where humans could recover a sense of agency and engagement with a future that remains tantalizing, even if sober heads know it is as wishful as it is fictional. It is the story, however, that is significant, in its power to give us the fortitude to go forth, not out among the stars, but into a better, more decent community here on earth.

• The long Soviet fixation on Venus.
• The Star Trek that could have been.
• Some atheist cinema is, however, not so great.
• Biden's economic policies have been very good.
• Wrong. Vaccines did the work.
• We could have really stood with Ukraine.

Jews Demand Signs and Greeks Look for Wisdom, but We Preach Christ Crucified

Review of God of the Mind, by Rob Haskell

This blog had its start in a religious discussion, pitting a Christian perspective against an atheist one. That discussion never ended because these viewpoints inevitably talk past each other, based as they are on fundamentally different epistemologies and axioms. Is truth facts, or is it a person? Does it have a capital "T", or a little "t"? Does reality come first, or does faith? With this election, this conflict, usually politely ignorable at the cultural sidelines, has come front and center, as half the country has transferred a Christian style of reasoning to politics, with catastrophic consequences.

I very much wish I had had this book by Rob Haskell back in the day. It lays out in a concise and thorough way all (well, let's say many of) the philosophical and psychological deficiencies of god-belief. It is hands-down the best discussion I have ever read on the subject- well-written, with humor and incisive insight. For example, he provides the bible quote that I have used to title this post, in a discussion of Christianity's approach to reason and intellect. While reams of theology support Christianity with reasons, at the end of the day, any honest theologian and Christian thinker will say that reason doesn't get you there. Faith needs to come first. Only then does all else follow. And this "all" is laced with superstition, suspension of normal rules of evidence, submission to authority, and a need to convert the whole world to the same system of belief. It is, implicitly, a preference for unity and power over truth. No wonder they were marks for the charismatic authority of Donald Trump.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the whole debate is the moralism that creeps into what is ostensibly a reasoned discussion of viewpoints and philosophy. If one does not accept god, Christians have been taught to believe that there is a reason. Not a logical reason, but a moral reason. Depravity is a word that comes up. Lack of belief betrays a moral failure, because god is the foundation of all moral law (those twelve commandments!). Those outside the fold merely want their false freedom to enjoy debauchery and crime, without the nagging conscience, which is apparently implanted not by god at birth, (let alone by evolution, or by moral reasoning), but by regular sermons, loudly professed faith, and bible reading. A bible, we might note, that is full of militarism, sexual abuse, deceit, and political authoritarianism. The whole proposition is absurd, from the ground up, unless, of course, you are of the religious tribe, in which case it has an irresistible logic and allure.

No wonder Christians feel good, right, and justified. And feel a birthright to rule over all, to claim that the US is (or should be) a Christian nation. One where resistance to its moral imperatives would, at last, be futile.

But here we are, getting off track! Rob Haskell is a former protestant missionary and minister, graduate of Regent College, and came to his new positions through deep personal engagement and turmoil. He knows intimately of which he speaks. An interesting aspect of his book is that he is almost more focused on psychology than on philosophy. For it is psychology that drives religious conversion, drives people to prostrate themselves before the void, and drives a faith that calls itself truth. Without the indoctrination by families, for example, no religion would amount to much- certainly not Christianity. And indoctrination of the young is obviously a highly irrational process, combining the most powerful psychological forces known- peer pressure, parental pressure, authority, tradition, community, repetition, fancy costumes. Who could resist? And yet Christians have no problem claiming that the result of all this is belief in truth, with a capital T. 

Haskell recounts an educational experience he had inviting Mormon missionaries to an extended discussion of why he should take up Mormonism. They tout the book of Mormon, which Haskell knows very well is a absurd fabric of early nineteenth century prejudices and speculations. They tout the archeological work a few believers have undertaken to prove their scripture, which is highly dubious, to say the least. But at last, when reason fails and argument slackens, Haskell is urged to pray. Pray hard enough, and the light is sure to shine. And for Mormons, brought up with all the pressures and templates ready-made for their belief, such prayer is very likely to work, activating the archetypes and feelings conducive to agreement with their culture. Will the story or the prayer work for others? Rarely, but occasionally it does strike a nerve, especially in the psychologically vulnerable. Haskell recognizes, uncomfortably, that while the stories are different, the psychological methods used by the Mormons and by him as a missionary are eerily similar.

"This points back to what I've already described, namely that in evangelical thinking, and possibly in all religious thinking, the acceptance of certain crucial and non-negotiable ideas comes first. Then, after that acceptance comes the search for evidence that supports it. But that evidence always gets the short end of the stick. Evidence is great when it affirms the things that are accepted by faith. But here isn't a lot of interest in evangelical circles in evidence itself, or in thinking clearly about evidence. And when the evidence falls short, the believer goes back to where it all started: not evidence but faith. So, it's really a matter of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. There's a built-in permission to be sloppy. 'We like evidence!' says the evangelical, 'so long as it proves our point. but when the evidence brings up difficult questions, we reserve the right to toss it out and appeal to faith.' ... How can you have a serious conversation with someone who thinks like this? It's like talking with your teenager."

Rationalization and confirmation bias are fundamental aspects of human psychology. Science has developed an organized and reasonably effective way to address it, but other institutions have not, notably the echo chambers of current news and social media. We do it all the time, (I am certainly doing it here), and it is no wonder that Christians do it too. The problem is the lack of humility, where Christians revel in their fantastical story, impugn anyone so dense (if not evil) as to not get it, and twist the very vocabulary of epistemology in order to declare that "Truth" comes, not out of reality, but precisely out of unreality- a faith that is required to believe in things unseen and tales thrice-told.

• And he writes a blog, too.
• Example of typical religious condescension, by J D Vance's mentor, James Orr.
• The Discovery Institute will try anything...
• Then there is the no true Scotsman defense.
• The Supreme Court lowers itself still further.
• What makes a human brain?
• We continue speeding ever faster to disaster.
• Poisonous propaganda + AI = our future.

Jimmy Carter, on Work

Jimmy Carter's "An Hour Before Daylight".

One marked contrast between the recent political conventions was the presence of former presidents. The Republicans had none, (excepting the candidate), not even the very-much alive George W. Bush, or past candidates such as Mitt Romney. The Democrats had two, plus Hillary Clinton, not to mention the current president, Joe Biden. There was additionally a representative of a fourth, Jimmy Carter, to say that he will be happily voting for Kamala Harris in the fall. It speaks to the extremist journey the Republican party has been on, compared to much more conventional (sorry!) path of the Democrats, with recognizably consistent values and respect for character and institutions, both their own and those of the country at large.

None of these Democratic leaders grew up rich. Each was formed in modest circumstances, before joining the meritocracy and working their way up. The Democratic party is now generally viewed as the party of educated people, government workers, and minorities, against the Republican coalition of the very rich and the very poor. One might summarize it as strivers through the educational system, as opposed to strivers through the capitalist system. For one group, being kind, smart, and hard-working are the annointing signs of god, while for the other, it is being rich. Some (usually Republicans) may think these are equivalent, but the current candidates demonstrate the opposite.

This theme is exemplified by the career of Jimmy Carter, who worked his way through Annapolis and a naval career partly spent in the naval nuclear program under Hyman Rickover, then worked his way to the Georgia governorship, the Presidency, and then kept on working through retirement, churning out books and doing good works. The finest of his books, (which are, frankly, a mixed bag), is apparently his memoir of his early life and environment, "An Hour Before Daylight". The theme, for me, was work- hard work. Carter grew up on a large farm, and worked constantly. The book's title comes, naturally, from when the farm day starts. There are pigs to feed, eggs to collect, cows to milk. There are fields to plow, trees to chop down, fences to mend, products to sell, and supplies to buy. The work was evidently endless, as it is on any family farm, and while Carter tells of many swimming, hunting, amorous, and other expeditions, it is the cycle of chores and worries around the farm that was clearly formative.

Jimmy with family, in his Sunday best.

But he was not the hardest worker. His family owned a lot of land, and in this segregated time during the depression, had numerous sharecropping tenants and employees, all black. Carter comments gingerly about this system, balancing his worship of his father with clear descriptions of the hopelessness of the tenant's position. They worked without dreams of attending Annapolis, or inheriting a large estate. Rather, debt was the typical condition, as the Carters ran the supply store as well as owning the land. Carter looked up to many of these employees and tenants, and recounts very close and formative relations throughout his childhood, with both black children and adults. At least until he was drawn, as the system had designed it, into the segregated churches and schools.

Jimmy at his most intense, a naval graduate.

It is hard to grasp, in our heavily urbanized and regulated existence, where work is a 9-5 job and we dream of weekends, family leave, remote work, and retirement, how much work went into a normal existance like this on a farm. Success depended not only on unstinting work, but on an even temper, shrewd foresight, family support, good community relations (including church attendance), and a lot of luck. The wealth and power of the US was built on this kind of scrabbling for economic survival and advancement. The capitalist system continually applied the screws, lowering prices for cotton when too much was being produced, a particular crisis during the depression. Carter tells of the continual inventiveness that his family devoted to new ventures, like selling flavored milks, roasted pecans, sugar cane syrup, boiled peanuts, and tomato catsup, all from their own crops. Not everything was successful, but there was a continual need, even in this out-pf-the-way rural area, to meet the market and keep coming up with new ideas for making money.

Most of all, Carter speaks with pride of his and his family's work. It provided their sustenance, and their relationships, and was thus intrinsically and automatically meaningful. Headed by a benevolent regime, at least as he understood it under his parents, it was an ideal world- busy, endlessly challenging, stimulating, and productive. This is what we need to think about in these end times of the loneliness epidemic and the plague of homelessness and meaninglessness. Religion was a strong presence, but hearing Carter tell it, it weighed relatively lightly on him and his family, (other than sister Ruth, perhaps, who became a renowned evangelist), being more a solace to the poor than a spur to the well-to-do. Their meaning came more from their community and their many and varied occupations. So when people speak of basic income programs, one has to ask whether that really addresses the problem. Much better might be a guaranteed job program, where everyone is offered basic work if they can not find it in the private sector. Productive work that benefits the community, along the lines of the WPA projects of the depression. Work is critical to meaning and mental health, as well as to our communities and nation.

• Zoning and housing.
• Religious nutters lose their minds.
• Another great use of crypto- pig butchering.
• Unbutchering one candidate's garble.
• It smells like the mob.

Welcome to Lubyanka!

Another case of penal systems illuminating their culture.

Most of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle is a desultory slog, at least if you have already read the Gulag Archipelago. But there are a few glorious set-pieces. One is the mock trial of Prince Igor of Kiev that the prisoners stage in their free time, a bitter satire of the Soviet judicial system. The second is a meticulous description of how prisoners are brought into and introduced to the Lubyanka prison- the central prison of the KGB/FSB/Cheka/GPU/OGPU/NKVD/NKGB, etc.. the frequently renamed, but never-changing organ of the Russian government.

The character is Innokenty Volodin, a Soviet diplomat who has recently had second thoughts about the rightness of the Soviet system, and has placed a call (around which the book's plot, such as it is, mostly revolves) to the Americans to prevent Russia from obtaining certain critical atomic secrets. Solzhenitsyn carefully prepares the way by portraying Volodin's rarified position and luxurious life. As was customary, Volodin is lured into his arrest under false pretenses, and finds himself driven to the prison almost before he knows what has happened. Then, with almost loving detail, Solzhenitsyn describes the not just systematic, but virtuosic process of degradation, step by step, shred by shred, of Volodin's humanity, as he is inducted into Lubyanka.

One cardinal rule is that prisoners must have no contact with other prisoners. Even to see others is forbidden. As they are conducted from one cell to the next, they are shoved into mini phone-booth cells if another prisoner is being conducted in the opposite direction. Their possessions are gradually taken away, down to buttons, belts, and steel shoe shanks. They are shorn. They are sleep deprived. They are relentlessly illuminated by glaring bulbs. They are spied on constantly. They are moved relentlessly from place to place and disoriented. In the middle of the night, the building is abuzz with activity, as though this were the very nerve center of the Soviet empire. 

While the rest of Russian society is mired, or cowed, in mediocrity, this is a shining point of competence. The purest expression of its obsessive leader, and the product of decades of careful study and accumulated wisdom. It is also a deeper expression of the nature of Russian society- its reflexive despotism and its strange infatuation with suffering. The closest thing we have is mafia culture, with its honor codes, brutality, and constant battle for dominance. Chess, the emblematic game of Russia, expresses this view of life as a pitiless contest to crush one's opponent. There may be a lot of historical reasons for this nature, such as the long centuries of Mongol rule, the many invasions, both ancient and modern, and the perceived success of leaders such as Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, but it is a deep and disturbing aspect of the Russian psyche. 

Should we have expected anything else, in the long road of declining relations after the cold war? Should the Russian people give thanks to the ruthlessness of their national leadership and psyche for the current position of relative power they wield in the world, far out of proportion to their population or economic strength? Other countries with larger populations peacefully mind their own business, avoid outside entanglements, and eschew invading their neighbors. It is the bullies, the intransigent, and the cruel, who appear to account for most of the drama in the world. Should we understand them, or fight against them?

• Another way to crush spirits.
• It is good to be outside.
• AI is not helping job seekers.
• On paying the devil his due.
• Why have kids anymore?

The Lucky Country

The story of California, the story of the US, and optimism about free frontiers.

I am reading "California, the great exception". This classic from 1949 by Cary McWilliams is stoutly jingoistic and pro-California. But it also provides a deeper analysis of the many things that made California such an optimistic and happy place. Mainly, it boils down to free land and rapid settlement by ambitious working people. The Native Californians were so weak, and so ruthlessly extirpated, that they did not present the irritating conflict that happened elsewhere in the US. California's gold was so widely and thinly distributed (as placer in streams) that mining was a matter of small partnerships, not huge businesses, as it became elsewhere in the West, in the deep hard rock silver and later copper mines of Nevada (Carson city and the Comstock lode) and Montana (Butte). The immigrants were of working age and enthusiastic to work, dismissing slavery and corporatism in favor of a rapacious entrepreneurialism. 

California never had a paternal territorial government, but transitioned directly from self-rule to statehood, its riches speaking volumes to the national government in Washington. And the national government was anxious lest secessionist sentiment spread to the still far-distant west, so it funded the building of a transcontinental railway, during the civil war when money must have been extremely tight. That feared secession was not to join the South, but rather to found a new and prosperous nation on the West Coast. San Francisco went on to serve as the financial capital of the West, particularly of western mining, creating almost overnight a collusus to rival the centers of the East. In due time, gushers of oil also appeared on the California landscape. It is no wonder that Californians became fundamentally optimistic, ready to take on huge challenges such as water management, building a great education system, and the entertainment of the world.

California was also blessed by weak neighbors on all sides. There were no foreign policy predicaments or military threats. It could nurse its riches in peace. It was, in concentrated form, the story of America- of a new continent limited more by its ability to attract and grow its population than by its land and the riches that land held. An isolated continent that wrote its society almost on a blank slate- a new government and a melting pot of people from many places. 

Bound for California, around 1850.

How stark is the contrast to a country like Ukraine, neighbor of imperialist Russia and before that host to the Scythians, Goths, and Huns. A flat land exposed on all sides, that has been overrun countless times. A fertile land, but always contested. The idea that history would stop, that Ukraine could join the West, and enjoy its riches in peace and security- that turns out to have been a dream that bullies in the neighborhood have a different view on. Better to beat up on the little "brother" than to build up both nations and economies through beneficial exchange and prosperity. Better for both to go down in flames than that the little "brother" escapes the bully's clutches into a more humane world.

But the happy place of the US and Calfornia has hit some rough patches too. It turns out that our resource riches are not endless after all. The foundation of material wealth- the agricultural land, the mines, the lumber- underwrote social and technological innovation. No wonder the US was first in flight, and led the way in electricity, automobiles, the internet, the cell phone. Now we have an innovation economy, and get much of our materials and lower-grade goods from far-off places. The people we have attracted and continue to attract are the new wealth, but therein lies a conflict. Places like California have huge homeless populations because we have ceased to grow, ceased to embody the hope and optimism of our lucky past. Conflict has raised its head. There is no more free land, or gold in the streams. Now, with the land all parcelled up and the forests mowed down, everyone wants to hold on to what they have, and damn those who come after. Prop 13 was the perfect expression of this sour and conservative mood- let the newcomers pay for public services, not us.

California is transitioning from a visionary frontier into a cramped, normal, and not especially lucky place. The fabulous climate is suffering under fire and drought. The population is growing significantly older, while next generation is educated less well then their parents. The app innovation economy has fostered a nightmare of surveillance and social dysfunction. The pull of a new frontier is so strong, however, that some of our richest people now imagine it on other planets. The irony of sending rockets, fueled by vast amounts of fossil carbon and compressed oxygen, to other worlds where there isn't even air to breathe, let alone plants to cut down, begs belief. It is the final gasp of a dream that somewhere, out there, is another lucky country.

• We are a front in the authoritarian war for the world.
• Truth will out, eventually.
• Aging is in the crosshairs.
• The sad fate of Russia's Silicon Valley.
• Do we vote for merely corrupt, or fully bought and paid for politicians?
• New advances in low power, low cost, low fright MRI.

The Impossibility of Morality

We have dark sides and do bad things. How come we all think we are good people?

Part of our political, and temperamental, divide revolves around how seriously to take morality. How idealistic to be about goodness, how hard to try, or whether to be more realistic to be about our dark side. For all the platitudes and commandments, the sad fact is that morality is impossible, so the question is perhaps more how intensively we blind ourselves to darkness rather than how dark we will actually be.

Weird, right? But the closer you look, the more impossible it is to follow any system of morality. There are Jains who will not hurt a fly, let alone eat meat. But plants have feelings too. And our guts contain astronomical numbers of organisms in a roiling dance of macabre death. What about them? Existence as a human is unavoidably destructive. Simpler moral systems preach kindness to others. But again, existence requires feeding one's own fire, and that must come at cost to something, or someone. Every trade is unequal, even if voluntary. Employees are notoriously exploited to give more than their fair share. The Earth is relentlessly exploited. There is no end to our appetites, as long as we are alive.

Psychologically, we build up defenses to say that we are no worse than others, that we are good people. Even if we are bad people, we say that we have been driven to crime, and it is no worse than the rich people who thoughtlessly abuse others. Or if we are a presidential candidate, we say that we are saving the world, and making America great, and the subject of cruel witchhunts. Self-defense is one more essential part of living, even if it comes at the expense of seeing the world clearly. Unflattering visions of our way of life are rejected and repressed, the more so if they come as criticism from others.

Defensive blindness is integral to "modern" life. The agriculture and food processing industry keeps the slaughterhouses hidden, the feedlots and inhumane poultry coops under wraps. The less we know, the better we feel. Money is the ultimate screen against the squeems and qualms of existence, shielding us from the rapacious mining that our electronics drive in tropical forests, the slave labor that makes our clothes, and countless other immoral and destructive processes we are ultimately responsible for. Clear consciousness of all this would make the whole system collapse.

Protesters carrying the pine tree flag of Christian nationalism. While doing good things for the country.

Religions offer their own forms of defense. Confession in the Catholic church is a classic way to touch the darkness, but then to be absolved and feel good again. Exorcisms are offered as well. Protestant approaches tend to focus more on works, like community service, or in fringier precincts, on sermons of self-glorification. Everyone who is reborn in Christ is part of the club, and though a sinner, is also good, glorious, and heaven-bound. Possibly, even, in the Mormon system, himself a god. How they engage with moral darkness varies tremendously by religion, but the common need is to control it, in ourselves and others, sufficiently that our self-image of goodness and light can be preserved.

The extensive repression of moral darkness leads to the countervailing temptation to take another peek at it, under controlled conditions. It is the inspiration for much art- the detective thiller, the horror movie, the general apparatus of drama. Without darkness, there is no interest or light. And people differ markedly in their approach to such material. The more liberal and optimistic tend to focus on the light side, not the dark side, and do so politically as well. They have more moral idealism and hope, which means they have more repression of darker tendencies. Kumbaya is sung. Conversely, the more "realistic", conservative attitude scoffs at the do-gooder idealism of the left, and sees darkness around every corner- in foreigners, in sexual transgression and expression, in fluid social systems, in change itself. They recognize that moral aspiration is futile- such as the woke trend of recent times .. the bending over backwards to every minority group, micro-aggression, every insect and animal, and the climate.. is putting up an impossible and futile bar. That sticking to basics and tradition is going to get us further than such refusal to recognize the dark reality of human existence. 

These valences are apparent in the Palestinian dilemma. As the Palestinians were expelled from Israel during its establishment, the Jews proclaimed a right for Jews all over the world to come to Israel. Meanwhile, the UN created a right of return for Palestinians, to the very same land that formed Israel. It was the ultimate expression of bleeding heart unrealism, and has led (in part) to the existentially stuck misery of Palestinians for all these decades, as the UN took it upon itself to nurture an absurd dream of return and set up a now-permanent refugee apparatus of feeding, schools, and health care, all of which fuels the seething anger and terrorist dreams of ever-growing generations of Palestinians.

Another example is the US war in Vietnam- a curious and tragic mix of blindness, idealism, and realism. We wanted to help the (South) Vietnamese defend themselves from communism. In light of what happened in North Korea in the ensuing decades, this was not a bad goal. North Korea is moral darkness incarnate- a cruel and criminal dictatorship. But once the enormity of the task became clear, the moral realists took charge, with the aim of bombing Vietnam and its neighboring countries into submission. But even such extreme measures failed, leaving us with the ashes of horrible means used in the service of a futile goal. The US media was increasingly unwilling to hide the horrors, bringing into American consciousness all this darkness, which turned out to be unbearable.

So, is it better to blind ourselves to the darkness, and risk destruction and error, or better to be realistic, explore it, even celebrate it, as the Homeric epics do, and gird ourselves to deal with it, and deal it out to others? As in most things, societies are probably best off with a mix of perspectives. This mix is perennially expressed in our political spectrum, though of late the right seems to have gotten caught up in a peculiar reaction against the pieties of the left. As the left has gained the cultural and governmental high ground, as shown by the triumph of gay rights, ever-increasing concern for racial minorities, and a rising tide of official movement on environmental concerns, the right has turned apoplectic. They seem to be saying ... "We love our trucks, we won the continent fair and square, and we won the racial contest as well.."- leave us to our spoils, and don't be so concerned about "fairness" .. life isn't fair or moral, but goes to the darkest, baddest winner. (One can hear echos of the Confederate South in all this clearly enough.) Those on the left who are besotted with woke-ness and fairness will be singing a different tune when they are not at the top of the heap anymore, in their well-gentrified, rich and safe neighborhoods.

Perhaps this portrayal is extreme, but extreme concern for the moral fairness within a society can blind us to other issues, such as the competitive underpinnings of life, both within and verus other societies, and the ultimate impossibility of being totally fair, or moral, as historical actors. A balance of moral idealism and realism about unavoidable dark aspects is needed, but not in a conflict that tears the society apart. That depends on communication between the two sides, and less totalizing certainty from each side's respective mechanisms that repress doubt and screen (or valorize, in extreme cases) various different aspects of darker morality. Religion is notorious for reshaping its adherent's realities and protecting them psychologically from their own evil actions. But left wing certainty functions similarly, with its echo chambers and pieties. So, as usual, deeper insight is needed, mostly of our own blind spots and what they are hiding, but also of how such mechanisms work across the spectrum.

• Eating animals and loving them.
• Ready to be gouged more efficiently?
• Is your car really worth it?
• Corals are dying.

Are we all the Same, or all Different?

Refining diversity.

There has been some confusion and convenient logic around diversity. Are we all the same? Conventional wisdom makes us legally the same, and the same in terms of rights, in an ever-expanding program of level playing fields- race, gender, gender preference, neurodiversity, etc. At the same time, conventional wisdom treasures diversity, inclusion, and difference. Educational conventional wisdom assumes all children are the same, and deserve the same investments and education, until some magic point when diversity flowers, and children pursue their individual dreams, applying to higher educational institutions, or not. But here again, selectiveness and merit are highly contested- should all ethnic groups be equally represented at universities, or are we diverse on that plane as well?

It is quite confusing, on the new political correctness program, to tell who is supposed to be the same and who different, and in what ways, and for what ends. Some acute social radar is called for to navigate this woke world and one can sympathize, though not too much, with those who are sick of it and want to go back to simpler times of shameless competition; black and white. 

The fundamental tension is that a society needs some degree of solidarity and cohesion to satisfy our social natures and to get anything complex done. At the same time, Darwinian and economic imperatives have us competing with each other at all levels- among nations, ethnicities, states, genders, families, work groups, individuals. We are wonderfully sensitive to infinitesimal differences, which form the soul of Darwinian selection. Woke efforts clearly try to separate differences that are essential and involuntary, (which should in principle be excluded from competition), from those that are not fixed, such as personal virtue and work ethic, thus forming the proper field of education and competition.

But that is awfully abstract. Reducing that vague principle to practice is highly fraught. Race, insofar as it can be defined at all, is clearly an essential trait. So race should not be a criterion for any competitive aspect of the society- job hunting, education, customer service. But what about "diversity" and what about affirmative action? Should the competition be weighted a little to make up for past wrongs? How about intelligence? Intelligence is heritable, but we can't call it essential, lest virtually every form of competition in our society be brought to a halt. Higher education and business, and the general business of life, is extremely competitive on the field of intelligence- who can con whom, who can come up with great ideas, write books, do the work, and manage others.

These impulses towards solidarity and competition define our fundamental political divides, with Republicans glorying in the unfairness of life, and the success of the rich. Democrats want everyone to get along, with care for unfortunate and oppressed. Our social schizophrenia over identity and empathy is expressed in the crazy politics of today. And Republicans reflect contemporary identity politics as well, just in their twisted, white-centric way. We are coming apart socially, and losing key cooperative capacity that puts our national project in jeopardy. We can grant that the narratives and archetypes that have glued the civic culture have been fantasies- that everyone is equal, or that the founding fathers were geniuses that selflessly wrought the perfect union. But at the same time, the new mantras of diversity have dangerous aspects as well.

Each side, in archetypal terms, is right and each is an essential element in making society work. Neither side's utopia is either practical or desirable. The Democratic dream is for everyone to get plenty of public services and equal treatment at every possible nexus of life, with morally-informed regulation of every social and economic harm, and unions helping to run every workplace. In the end, there would be little room for economic activity at all- for the competition that undergirds innovation and productivity, and we would find ourselves poverty-stricken, which was what led other socialist/communist states to drastic solutions that were not socially progressive at all.

On the other hand is a capitalist utopia where the winners take not just hundreds of billions of dollars, but everything else, such as the freedom of workers to organize or resist, and political power as well. The US would turn into a moneyed class system, just like the old "nobility" of Europe, with serfs. It is the Nietzschian, Randian ideal of total competition, enabling winners to oppress everyone else in perpetuity, and, into the bargain, write themselves into the history books as gods.

These are not (and were not, historically) appetizing prospects, and we need the tension of mature and civil political debate between them to find a middle ground that is both fertile and humane. Nature is, as in so many other things, an excellent guide. Cooperation is a big theme in evolution, from the assembly of the eukaryotic cell from prokaryotic precusors, to its wonderous elaboration into multicellular bodies and later into societies such as our own and those of the insects. Cooperation is the way to great accomplishments. Yet competition is the baseline that is equally essential. Diversity, yes, but it is competition and selection among that diversity and cooperative enterprise that turns the downward trajectory of entropy and decay (as dictated by physics and time) into flourishing progress.

• Identity, essentialism, and postmodernism.
• Family structure, ... or diversity?
• Earth in the far future.
• Electric or not, cars are still bad.
• Our non-political and totally not corrupt supreme court.
• The nightmare of building in California.

On the Spectrum

Autism, broader autism phenotype, temperament, and families. It turns out that everyone is on the spectrum.

The advent of genomic sequencing and the hunt for disease-causing mutations has been notably unhelpful for most mental diseases. Possible or proven disease-causing mutations pile up, but they do little to illuminate the biology of what is going on, and even less towards treatment. Autism is a prime example, with hundreds of genes now identified as carrying occasional variants with causal roles. The strongest of these variants affect synapse formation among neurons, and a second class affects long-term regulation of transcription, such as turning genes durably on or off during developmental transitions. Very well- that all makes a great deal of sense, but what have we gained?

Clinically, we have gained very little. What is affected are neural developmental processes that can't be undone, or switched off in later life with a drug. So while some degree of understanding slowly emerges from these studies, translating that to treatment remains a distant dream. One aspect of the genetics of autism, however, is highly informative, which is the sheer number of low-effect and common mutations. Autism can be thought of as coming in two types, genetically- those due to a high effect, typically spontaneous or rare mutation, and those due to a confluence of common variants. The former tends to be severe and singular- an affected child in a family that is otherwise unaffected. The latter might be thought of as familial, where traits that have appeared (mildly) elsewhere in the family have been concentrated in one child, to a degree that it is now diagnosable.

This pattern has given rise to the very interesting concept of the "Broader Autism Phenotype", or BAP. This stems from the observation that families of autistic children have higher rates where ... "the parents, grandparents, and collaterals are persons strongly preoccupied with abstractions of a scientific, literary, or artistic nature, and limited in genuine interest in people." Thus there is not just a wide spectrum of autism proper, based on the particular confluence of genetic and other factors that lead to a diagnosis and its severity, but there is also, outside of the medical spectrum, quite another spectrum of traits or temperaments which tend toward autism and comprise various eccentricities, but have not, at least to date, been medicalized.

The common nature of these variants leads to another question- why are they persistent in the population? It is hard to believe that such a variety and number of variations are exclusively deleterious, especially when the BAP seems to have, well, rather positive aspects. No, I would suggest that an alternative way to describe BAP is "an enhanced ability to focus", and develop interests in salient topics. Ever meet people who are technically useless, but warm-hearted? They are way off on the non-autistic part of the spectrum, while the more technically inclined, the fixers of the world and scholars of obscure topics, are more towards the "ability to focus" part of the spectrum. Only when such variants are unusually concentrated by the genetic lottery do children appear with frank autistic characteristics, totally unable to deal with social interactions, and given to obsessive focus and intense sensitivities.

Thus autism looks like a more general lens on human temperament and evolution, being the tip of a very interesting iceberg. As societies, we need the politicians, backslappers, networkers, and con men, but we also need, indeed increasingly as our societies and technologies developed over the centuries, people with the ability and desire to deal with reality- with technical and obscure issues- without social inflection, but with highly focused attention. Militaries are a prime example, fusing critical needs of managing and motivating people, with a modern technical base of vast scope, reliant on an army of specialists devoted to making all the machinery work. Why does there have to be this tradeoff? Why can't everyone be James Bond, both technically adept and socially debonaire? That isn't really clear, at least to me, but one might speculate that in the first place, dealing with people takes a great deal of specialized intelligence, and there may not be room for everything in one brain. Secondly, the enhanced ability to focus on technical or artistic topics may actively require, as is implicit in doing science and as was exemplified by Mr. Spock, an intentional disregard of social niceties and motivations, if one is to fully explore the logic of some other, non-human, world.

• Autistic comedy?
• What happened to the war on poverty?
• How to think about cancer treatments.
• 95 year old judges, really? 

The Politics of Resentment

Ann Applebaum has seen where all this Trumpism is going ... in Eastern Europe.

Liberals in America are baffled. How could anyone vote for Republican candidates at this point? How could anyone, let alone half the electorate, vote for Trump? We are befuddled and anxious for the future of America, which, far from becoming great again, is turning into a banana republic before our eyes, if, hopefully, not worse. We in California are particularly dissociated, as Democrats run the whole state, and Republican voter registration continues to decline year after year and is now under one quarter of the electorate. What does the rest of the country see that we do not? Or vice versa?

Ann Applebaum has written a trenchant book on the matter, "Twilight of Democracy". She lives in Poland, so has had a front-row seat to the illiberalization of a political system, both in Poland and in nearby Hungary, which seems farther advanced. Eastern Europe has more reason than most, perhaps to be disillusioned with the capitalist orthodoxy, after their rather rough transition from Communism. But this is a world-wide phenomenon, sweeping fringe rightists into power from Brazil to Sweden. What is going on? Applebaum posits that the whole structure of meritocratic representative democracy, with its open competition for (good) public policy, and use of educated expertise over vast areas of state interests from foreign affairs to monetary regulation and education policy, have come under fundamental critique. And this critique comes partly from those who have been shut out of that system: the not-well-educated, not-bicoastal, not-rich, not-acronymed-minority, not-hopeful about the American future. It is, in short, a politics of resentment.

How have the elites done over the post-world war 2 period? They won the cold war, but lost virtually every battle in it, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. They let the lower classes of the US sink into relative poverty and powerlessness vs business and the well-educated classes, in a rather brutal system of collegiate competition, de-unionization, off-shoring and worker suppression. They have let the economy fester through several crushing recessions, particularly the malaise of the 70's and the real estate meltdown of 2008. While the US has done pretty well overall, the lower middle and poor classes have not done well, and live increasingly precarious lives that stare homelessness in the face daily. In the heartland, parents at best saw their children fly off to coastal schools and cultures, becoming different people who would not dream of coming home again to live.

America is heavily red, geographically.

And the elite-run state has become increasingly sclerotic, continually self-criticizing and regulating its way to inaction. A thousand well-meaning regulations have paved the way to a bloated government that can not build a high-speed rail line in California, or solve the homelessness crisis. Everyone is a critic, including yours truly- it is always easier to raise objections, cover one's ass, and not get anything done. So one can sympathize with evident, if inchoate, desires for strength- for someone to break the barriers, bring the system to heel, and build that wall. Or get Brexit done. Or whatever the baying right wing media want at the moment.

The elite party in this sense is the Democratic party - capturing the coastal and well-educated, plus public employee unions. The Republican party, the party of money and the rich, (not the elite at all!), has conversely become the party of the downtrodden, feeding them anti-immigrant, anti-elite, anti-state red meat. It was a remarkably easy transformation, that required only shamelessness and lying to make hay out of the vast reserves of resentment seething in middle America. 

But Applebaum's point is not that the elites have messed things up and it may be time to do things differently. No, she suggests that the new protofascists have reframed the situation fundamentally. The elites in power have, through the hard work of meritocratic institutions, set up pipelines and cultures that reproduce their position in power almost as hermetically as the ancien régime of France and its nobility. That anyone can (theoretically) enter this elite and that it is at least somewhat vetted for competence and rationality is disregarded, or actively spat upon as "old" thinking- definitely not team thinking. The path to power now is to stoke resentment, overturn the old patterns of respect for competence and empathy, discard this meritocratic system in favor of one based on loyalty and fealty, and so bring about a new authoritarianism that brooks no "softness", exercises no self-criticism, has no respect for the enemy or for compromise, and has no room for intellectuals. 

But Hungary is way ahead of us, in the one-party rule department.

A second angle on all this is that conservatives feel resentful for another good reason- that they have lost the culture war. Despite all their formal power, winning the presidency easily half the time, and regularly running legislative branches and judicial branches in the US, their larger cultural project to keep progress at bay, fight moral "decadence" and all the other hobby horses, have gone nowhere. The US is increasingly woke, diverse, and cosmopolitan, and the "blood and soil" types (including especially conservative Catholics and Evangelicals), are despondent about it. Or apoplectic, or rabid, etc., depending on temperament. Their triumph in overturning Roe may allow some backwater states to turn back the clock, but on the whole, it looks like a rearguard action.

This is what feeds disgust with the system, and with democracy itself. Republicans who used to sing the praises of the US government, the flag, and democracy now seem to feel the opposite, that the US is a degenerate wasteland, no better than other countries, not exceptional, not dedicated to serious ideals that others should also aspire to. Democracy has failed, for them. And Applebaum points out how this feeling licenses the loss of civility, the lying, the anything-goes demagoguery which characterizes our new right-wing politics. Naturally the internet and its extremism-feeding algorithms have a lot to do with it as well. Applebaum is conservative herself. She spent a career working in the Tory media in Britain, but is outraged at what Tory-ism, and conservatism internationally, has become. She sees a dramatic split in conservatism, between those that still buy into the democratic, liberal system, and those who have become its opponents, in their revolutionary, Trumpy fervor. In the US, the fever may possibly have broken, after a very close brush with losing our institutions during the last administration, as election after election has made losers of the far right.

Over the long haul, Applebaum sees this as a cyclical process, with ample precedent from ancient Egyptian times through today, with a particularly interesting stop in the viciously polarized Drefussard period in France. But I see one extra element, which is our planetary and population crisis. We had very good times over the last few centuries building the human population and its comforts on the back of colonization, fossil fuels, and new technologies. The US of the mid to late-20th century exemplified the good times of such growth. Now the ecological bells are ringing, and the party is coming to an end. Denial has obviously been the first resort of the change-averse, and conservatives have distinguished themselves in their capabilities in that department. But as reality gradually sets in, something more sinister and competitive may be in the offing, as exemplified by the slogan "America First". Not first as in a leader of international institutions, liberal democracies and enlightenment values, but first as in looking out for number one, and devil take the rest. 

Combined with a rejuvinated blood and soil nationalism, which we see flourishing in so many places, these attitudes threaten to send us back into a world resembling that before world war 1 or 2, (and, frankly, all the rest of history), when nationalism was the coin of international relations, and national competition knew no boundaries- mercantile or military. We are getting a small foretaste of this in Russia's war on Ukraine, which is a product of precisely this Russia-first, make Russia great again mind-set. Thankfully, it is accompanied by large helpings of stupidity and mismanagement, which may save us yet. 

• It can be done.
• Another view of the fascism process.
• Corporate values and power are at all time highs.
• The penguins are in peril.
• "Intelligent" design is still about.
• Go Fetterman, and others with disabilities.

For the Love of Money

The social magic of wealth ... and Trump's travel down the wealth / status escalator.

I have been reading the archly sarcastic "The Theory of the Leisure Class", by Thorstein Veblen. It introduced the concept of "conspicuous consumption" by way of arguing that social class is marked by work, specifically by the total lack of work that occupies the upper, or leisure class, and more and more mundane forms of work as one sinks down the social scale. This is a natural consequence of what he calls our predatory lifestyle, which, at least in times of yore, reserved to men, especially those of the upper class, the heroic roles of hunter and warrior, contrasted with the roles of women, who were assigned all non-heroic forms of work, i.e. drudgery. This developed over time into a pervasive horror of menial work and a scramble to evince whatever evidence one can of being above it, such as wearing clean, uncomfortable and fashionable clothes, doing useless things like charity drives, golf, and bridge. And having one's wife do the same, to show how financially successful one is.

Veblen changed our culture even as he satarized and skewered it, launching a million disgruntled teenage rebellions, cynical movies, songs, and other analyses. But his rules can not be broken. Hollywood still showcases the rich, and silicon valley, for all its putative nerdiness, is just another venue for social signaling by way of useless toys, displays of leisure (at work, no less, with the omnipresent foosball and other games), and ever more subtle fashion statements.

Conversely, the poor are disparaged, if not hated. We step over homeless people, holding our noses. The Dalit of India are perhaps the clearest expression of this instinct. But our whole economic system is structured in this way, paying the hardest and most menial jobs the worst, while paying some of the most social destructive professions, like corporate law, the best, and placing them by attire, titles, and other means, high on the social hierarchy.

As Reagan said, nothing succeeds like success. We are fascinated, indeed mesmerized, by wealth. It seems perfectly reasonable to give wealthy areas of town better public services. It seems perfectly reasonable to have wealthy people own all our sports teams, run all our companies, and run for most political offices. We are after all Darwinian through and through. But what if a person's wealth comes from their parents? Does the status still rub off? Should it? Or what if it came from criminal activities? Russia is run by a cabal of oligarchs, more or less- is their status high or low?

All this used to make more sense, in small groups where reputations were built over a lifetime of toil in support of the family, group, and tribe. Worth was assessed by personal interaction, not by the proxy of money. And this status was difficult to bequeath to others. The fairy tale generally has the prince proving himself through arduous tasks, to validate the genetic and social inheritance that the rest of the world may or may not be aware of. 

But with the advent of money, and even more so with the advent of inherited nobility and kingship, status became transferable, inheritable, and generally untethered from the values it supposedly exemplifies. Indeed, in our society it is well-known that wealth correlates with a decline in ethical and social values. Who exemplifies this most clearly? Obviously our former president, whose entire public persona is based on wealth. It was evidently inherited, and he parlayed it into publicity, notariety, scandal, and then the presidency. He was adulated, first by tabloids and TV, which loved brashness (and wealth), then by Republican voters, who appear to love cruelty, mean-ness, low taste and intellect, ... and wealth. 

But now the tide is slowly turning, as Trump's many perfidies and illegal practices catch up with him. It is leaking out, despite every effort of half the media, that he may not be as wealthy as he fraudulently portrayed. And with that, the artificial status conferred by being "a successful businessman" is deflating, and his national profile is withering. One might say that he is taking an downward ride on the escalator of social status that is in our society conferred largely by wealth.

All that is shiny ... mines coal.

Being aware of this social instinct is naturally the first step to addressing it. A century ago and more, the communists and socialists provided a thoroughgoing critique of the plutocratic class as being not worthy of social adulation, as the Carnegies and Horatio Algers of the world would have it. But once in power, the ensuing communist governments covered themselves in the ignominy of personality cults that facilitated (and still do in some cases) even worse political tyrannies and economic disasters. 

The succeeding model of "managed capitalism" is not quite as catastrophic and has rehabilitated the rich in their societies, but one wouldn't want to live there either. So we have to make do with the liberal state and its frustratingly modest regulatory powers, aiming to make the wealthy do virtuous things instead of destructive things. Bitcoin is but one example of a waste of societal (and ecological) resources, which engenders social adulation of the riches to be mined, but should instead be regulated out of existence. Taking back the media is a critical step. We need to reel back the legal equation of money with speech and political power that has spread corruption, and tirelessly tooted its own ideology of status and celebrity through wealth.

• California police could use some supervision too.
• Marin- a cruel gerontocracy?

Why Did we Have a Civil War?

It is still a hard one to figure out.

One of the dividends of winning the Cold War was internal division. With no outside enemies or competing ideologies, we were left to become irritated with each other, Newt Gingrich leading the way. It is a general feature of humanity that we are competitive and find points of irritation with each other if there are no supervening projects or conflicts to bind us together. One would think large projects like climate change might be such an overwhelming common challenge and project, but no, it doesn't seem have the immediacy and social drama we need. Thinking and caring deeply about the biosphere is a specialized affair. 

No, our divisive dramas are much more trivial. But in the US there is a pattern, and that is the role of the South as a political / cultural block. It is reminiscent of the process leading up to our first Civil War, where a morally progressive North irritated and alienated a traditional and depraved South. Not that both sections of the country were not fully complicit in slavery, dispossession of the native peoples, and other forms of oppression. It was a matter of degree. But at some point of cultural and moral advancement, it becomes untenable to express our greed and competitiveness in terms of slavery. Slavery requires, as Harriet Beecher Stowe illustrated, a comprehensive deadening of moral sensibility, even while one's senses of honor, greed, religion, not to mention social propriety, may remain fastidious. Dedication to social competition rather than social justice is the order of the region. 

I have been listening to a lengthy podcast narrating the events of the Civil War, which is particularly strong on the introductory phase, explaining various proximate and deep causes of the conflict. What strikes me again and again is the contingency of the whole thing. And its nobility, in a way. The North could easily have washed its hands of the whole conflict, and let the South secede and go its own way. That is what the South was counting on, and many foreign countries, and many (Democrats) in the North as well. As the Union was battered in battle after battle, the mood in the North came perilously close to letting go. 

It took two converging arguments to hold the Northern coalition together- union and abolition. Each one was somewhat abstract and each one alone would probably not have been sufficient to force a war. Abolition was a minority position all the way through the war, and evidently afterwards as the South slid back into de facto slavery. Yet it fired a key segment of the Northern population with great fervor, to take an active interest in what the South was doing, and force an end to slavery rather than let it continue in an independent breakaway nation. There were religious arguments, and arguments of simple humanity, but why young men from Maine should kill those in Virginia about it was not entirely obvious.

The case for union was even more abstract. The union of the states was ostensibly a voluntary affair, and while no mechanism was offered to secede, no formal bar to secession was enshrined in the constitution either. The logic of union was that a nation made up of voluntary associations that could crumble at will was no sound nation at all, and not the kind of country that the prosperous, growing, Manifest Destiny United States was supposed to become. Lincoln labored long and hard to articulate this argument, in his debates and other speeches, including eventually the Gettysburg Address. 

But I think it remains difficult to grasp, even in retrospect. The Southern states felt understandably snookered into a constitutional deal that did not explicitly say it was a one-way trap, but turned out to be one, depending on the (military) willingness of the North to keep them in chains, as it were. The Northern states had many commercial, cultural, and other reasons to regard the South as an indissoluble part of the nation, (most Founders were Southern, for one thing), but fighting a war over it? That was a lot to ask, especially when the result would be at best the forced subservience of half the states and population- what kind of union is that? On the other side, the South didn't fully realize that once you start a war, positions harden and emotions heighten, such that the North felt increasingly bound to see it through to the bitter end. A bit like Ukraine today.

Which feeling was stronger, that of Southerners for preservation of their independence, prerogatives, and economic basis, that of Northerners in their revulsion over the retrograde moral environment of slavery? Or that of Northerners over the preservation of the unique constitutional / democratic experiment as a precious, indissoluble inheritance? The motivations of the South were clear enough, however base. But the motivations of the North, while understandable, seem insufficient to fully justify an extremely bloody war (not that they imagined that extremity at the outset). Thus I see the Northern policy as in some degree idealistic and noble, going far beyond the minimum needed to keep its business going and people happy. 

The North could never have kept the union together and abolished slavery without a war. Some in the North were more abolitionist than pro-Union, and some more pro-Union. Despite the manifest breakdown in North-South relations and the various ante-bellum compromises that kept the union together, keeping those factions aligned was very difficult, before the war, during the war, and through the endless aftermath of reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement, and now Southern Republicanism (of all things!) and Trumpism. 

Was the outcome beneficial, in any historical sense? It is very difficult to know how the counterfactual would have turned out. The South might have become a vast banana republic, incorporating Cuba and other territories to its own south. The North would doubtless have continued its ascent to be an industrial collusus and leader of the next century. They might well have remained at peace, despite many points of competition and contention, and traded so that the North would have retained effective access key raw materials from the South. Slavery would have continued, and it is very hard to tell for how long and in what form.

This is where the diplomatically inclined would jump in to say.. it would have been better to negotiate a deal and avoid war. There is always a deal out there that is better than war, which is an ultimate failure and disaster. Compromise after compromise had been made before the war, and shattered by increasingly divergent views on states rights, voting rights, and human rights. If every party had clairvoyance about the future course of events, they might have seen a better way. But we are not clairvoyant, and war is a way to change the conditions of the future rather than to split differences. Wars are certainly the last resort, but remain the final way to decide fundamental existential and power issues, and to change the basis of the future. That is the simple fact of the matter, in a world that is fundamentally competitive. In the words of Vegetius, "Let him who desires peace prepare for war".

Do we today have the capacity to conceive of and adhere to such esoteric and high principles as actuated the North in the last civil war? Our recent president tried to stage a coup, and we can hardly bestir ourselves to care about it. The Supreme Court is impersonating the Taney court, finding that our constitution does not, in fact, protect elementary human rights, such as privacy. We are facing climatic catastrophe that is leading to mass migration, war, and challenges to our fundamental basis of existence, (farming, and addiction to fossil fuels), not to mention imperiling the biosphere at large. And we can hardly bestir ourselves to care about it. Again, half the country, centered in the South, feels morally condescended to and responds with spite and revanchism. Again, the rich fight with every tool to keep things the same and shut our eyes to the dangers ahead. 

While the political dramas of today will likely pass away without taking to arms, despite the militant recklessness of the Southern end of the political spectrum, it is hard to be as optimistic about our other challenges. When the US looks ahead today, it sees change, constraint, and decline. It is a hard future to face, and many quail from doing so, (whatever their vacuous and delusory slogans). But face it we must, lest it turn from a challenge into a rout.

• The polycrisis of capitalism.
• Krugman on pessimism and division.
• Such a deal!
• Either a carbon tax or a crypto tax.
• We have not even hit peak oil yet.
• The war we really don't need. Not that I generally agree with Chris Hedges.

Love Beauty Truth

Book review of "Finding your Feet after Fundamentalism", By Darrell Lackey. With apologies to the other book.

An old friend has published a book. We had an epistolary relationship, fretting about creationism, intelligent design, and related topics back when those were livelier issues than today (and it directly inspired the birth of this blog). He was on his way out of Christian fundamentalism, and into something more liberal, even post-modern. His new book is a somewhat autobiographical account of the problems of fundamentalism, and of leaving fundamentalism as one's tradition. Naturally, evangelism dies hard, and takes this new form of broadcasting the good news of a more moderate and decent Christianity.

The book hits hardest on the issue of Donald Trump. No scandal has so thoroughly demonstrated the ultimate hypocrisy of fundamentalism than its allegiance to Trump. The transaction has given religious conservatives control of the Supreme Court, (though perhaps that owed more to Mitch McConnell), but in return, they showed their support for the most morally vile and incompetent person ever to hold the job. Lackey relates how he was fully in the FOX news orbit in the 90's, happily imbibing its bile. But then something snapped, and by the time of the Trump election, he had fully left fundamentalism and its communities behind. Living in California might have something to do with it, since liberalism, at least of a lip-service sort, is the dominant way of life here. Something that Republicans have learned the hard way. 

Yet the interesting part is how strenuously Lackey hews to Christianity, proclaiming that liberal versions are not gateway drugs to atheism. Quite the contrary- close attention to the actual New Testament provides ample justification for things like supporting marginalized communities, helping the poor, afflicting the rich, and viewing one's enemies as possibly reasonable human beings, if not friends in the making. He mentions how false it is for evangelicals to be so eager to spread the good word, but at the same time so deaf to the words of others that actual relationship is impossible- an evangelism of a closed-off community. 

For what are the fundamental values? Lackey cites love and beauty. Love is clear enough, (and damning enough regarding the FOX- driven culture of conservative Christianity), but the role of beauty needs a little more explaining. Religious thinkers have spared no effort in extolling the beauty of the world, but in the current world, serious artists are rarely Christian, let alone make Christian art. Why is that? Perhaps it is just intellectual fashion, but perhaps there is a deeper problem, that art, at least in our epoch, is adventurous and probing, seeking to interrogate narratives and power structures rather than celebrate them. Perhaps it is a problem of overpopulation, or of democracy, or of living in late imperial times, or of modernism. But whatever the framework, contemporary Christian communities have become the opposite of all this- anti-intellectual, tone-deaf, and art-hostile (not to mention power-mad). It must be exasperating to someone with even the least appreciation for finer things and for art that is "interesting".

Jean-Michel Basquiat- too messy for insensitive temperaments.

Beauty has deep Christian connotations. The world is god-made, good, and thus beautiful, as indeed we all feel it to be. But life is also messy, competitive, and dark. Death and suffering are part of it as well. If we refuse to own those aspects of the world, and of ourselves, we become blinded to the true nature of things, and expose ourselves to unintended and invisible expressions of the dark side, as we see in the deep hypocrisy on the subject of Trump, on sexual morals, and countless other areas within fundamentalism / evangelicalism. Lackey ticks off a lengthy list of subjects where conservative Christians have become blind to the obvious teachings of Jesus while fixated on relatively minor cultural flashpoints and red meat- symptoms of a general moral blindness borne of, arguably, flaccid aesthetic and intellectual habits.

So I would like to offer another value, which is truth. As a scientist, it is a natural place for me to start, but I think it is both illuminating of, and interrelated with, the other virtues above. What modern artists seek is to express truths about the human condition, not just ring out positive affirmations and hallelujas. Truths about suffering as well as truths about beauty. What scientists seek to do is to find how this world we find ourselves in works, from the cosmos down to the gluon. And they do so because they find it beautiful, and, like addicts, would like to unlock more of that beauty. Beauty inspires love, and love ... can only survive on truth, not lies. So I think these values live in a reinforcing cycle.

All that implies that there is another step to take for someone who has left fundamentalism. That is, to re-evaluate Christianity as a whole. While the achievement of decency (and better taste) by the renunciation of FOX and its religious satellite communities is an enormous step, indeed a momentous one for the preservation of our country's sanity, grappling seriously with the value of truth would suggest an extra leg to the trip. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christianity as a whole is a questionable proposition, philosophically. As a narrative and moral system, it clearly has positive as well as negative potentials. But as a "truth"- with its miracles, resurrections, triune deity, and salvation at the end of the line, (whether for the elect, the saved, the good, or for all)- well, it is impossible to take seriously without heavy doses of tradition and indoctrination.

For his part, Lackey has headed in another direction, into the Eastern Orthodox church, finding a place that richly satisfies the fundamentalist urge to return to one of the most traditional and historically continuous churches in existence, and also one that does not tie itself into intellectual knots about literal truth, living biblically, and the like. Orthodoxy accepts mystery, and cherishes its ancient rites and structures as sufficient theology. It is not modernist, or goaded by the enlightenment to make a rational system of something that so obviously resists reason. 

For there is a fine line between lies, illusions, and truths. As anyone who is married will understand (or a citizen of a country, or part of a corporation, or part of any social structure), truth is not the only or necessarily best virtue. A bit of illusion and constructive understanding can make a world of difference. Narrative, ideology, framing, etc. are essential social glues, and even glues of internal psychology. So, given that illusions are integral, the work to identity them, bring them into consciousness, and make positive choices about them is what matters, especially when it comes to social leadership. Do we choose narratives that are reasonably honest, and look forward with hope and love, or ones that go down the easy road of demonization and projection? And what role should the most traditional narratives in existence- those of the ancient religions- have in guiding us?

• Beautiful? You be the judge.
• Kasparov on freedom and evil.
• Kids should be able to navigate neighborhoods.
• Lies and disinformation are a public health crisis.
• More variants are always coming along.
• We are not doing enough against climate heating.