Blahg

Okay, this blog has become such a mess that I don't think it's worth salvaging. So I've set up a new place here, for reasons best explained by Mark Shea: "So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again!

Enlightenment

From Doug Saunders in today's Globe:

Europe once faced a genuine fundamentalist threat, in the face of a declining population. From 1345 to 1750, the continent's population barely grew, and the church, a murderous, terrorist, woman-hating force, seized considerable power. It was not Christian culture, but rather the opposition to this Christian threat, that made Europe great: The Enlightenment not only destroyed the church as a power, but also created the fertility boom.

Oh dear. Apparently Mr. Saunders has never heard of the bubonic plague. It's also a matter of some ambiguity to speak in menacing tones of "the church" during the Reformation period. One further wonders in what respect it "seized considerable power" between 1345 and 1750, since during that time the power of the Catholic Church declined considerably from its peak in the High Middle Ages, due especially to the increasing importance of the European nation-states. But I suppose those considerations add rather too much nuance for the broadsheets.

Palinated

We’re now in the final two months of this cruelly long presidential campaign, and I’ll certainly be happy when it’s over, if only because then it will force bloggers and the punditocracy to find something else, anything else, to write about. The campaign is so damned protracted that even the most interesting political commentary seem redundant. It’s still not too late for me to add to the chorus of redundancy, though, so a few thoughts.

First, the Sarah factor. I admit I was initially enthusiastic about the Palin pick, largely due to the fact that the conservative-leaning bloggers I read and respect (Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Noah Millman) were pretty enthusiastic about it. But since then she has done very little to confirm that it was a wise choice. I found her speech at the RNC to be disappointingly partisan and substance-free. Her interview with Charlie Gibson was painful to watch: there was scarcely a moment of frankness, and way too much repetition of talking points. She is clearly not ready for the national stage, let alone the vice presidency.

Andy is delighting in the media’s hyperventilating response to Palin, and there have certainly been vicious and unwarranted attacks against her and her family. But those have only tended to obscure what ought to be more pressing concerns. David Brooks sums up the case against Palin rather well:

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

Whatever else can be said about the McCain-Palin ticket, it is massively under-qualified. McCain’s lack of interest in policy specifics, particularly on economic matters, would be worrying at the best of times. And these are not the best of times. His brashness and militaristic approach to foreign policy is even more disturbing. Palin does nothing to shore up McCain’s weaknesses, except where it comes to public image. It seems possible that this year, victory for the Republicans might ultimately be worse for the party than defeat.

Blogger not found to be idiot-proof

Suddenly, the font on this blog is going wacky. I have no idea why. Perhaps it would help if I knew a little html. This is why confirmed technophobes should not be allowed to have blogs.

New Adventures

So I’ve started a new program at a new school in the States, and it’s a little more work than I’m used to, and that partly explains the lack of activity on this blog. Not that I was ever very serious about blogging. And that’s probably a good thing. Anyway, to the readers of this blog, I promise you both that I will put some posts up in the next week or so. Maybe even tonight.

Battlestar Galactica

I’m not much of a TV watcher. I don’t even get any channels; my television is devoted solely to the viewing of obscure movies on DVD. So it took a long time for my friends to convince me to start watching Battlestar Galactica, which I assumed would be an uninteresting show appealing mostly to sci-fi geeks. I was seriously wrong.

I'm still on season 2, but here are my thoughts thus far (many spoilers ahead). I should note that I'm at this point somewhat less enthusiastic than I had been. The second half of season 2 is less engrossing than either season 1 or the first half of season 2. The episodes are becoming more, well, episodic: each is more or less self-contained, and wraps up the particular "issue" of that episode in a way that was avoided by the deliciously unpredictable first season. I suppose this is more or less inevitable for a show intent on continuing for four years.

The more damning problem with the latter part of season 2 is that the primary focus has become the sexual tensions between various main characters, and their liaisons and endless emotional trauma. Of course, the relationships are portrayed extremely well, and there is still enough going on that the show avoids becoming a mere "spaceship soap", but it often seems like whatever the episode is ostensibly about is a mere backdrop for the more interesting question of who is interested in whom.

That said, I'm still wildly impressed with Battlestar. The original miniseries features a speech by Commander Adama, who intimates that those who create life must take responsibility for their actions. Very soon afterwards, the humans in the 12 colonies (in a galaxy presumably far, far away) are attacked by the cylons, machines they had created to serve them.

The question of the relationship of humans to cylons brings up a host of interesting ethical problems. In particular, the moral status of the cylons is continually present. They are referred to as machines; yet it seems that they are also organisms, and the fact that they are capable of reproducing with humans indicates that they are genetically quite similar. Perhaps that issue will be more fully dealt with as the show progresses. In any case, whereas at first it seems obvious that nothing is "owed" to the cylons, and that the proper way of dealing with them is President Roslin's: put them out the air-lock.

Yet this is quickly and smartly thrown into doubt, and the show deftly introduces manifold complexities into the relationship between humans and cylons - most notably in the character of Sharon Valeri. The Sharon whom Helo falls in love with (it turns out there are more than one) on Caprica is a potential threat to the fleet, and is treated as such; yet she also cares deeply for Helo and for their child (not yet born). In a way, she seems to want to be on both sides, though not in the purely schizophrenic manner of the first Sharon. This makes her the most interesting character of the series, and Grace Park does a superb job in capturing her psychological intricacies while remaining genuinely sympathetic.

The spiritual dimension is also quite fascinating. The religious beliefs of both cylons and humans, and their seeming intersection in at least some passages of scripture, are woven fairly seamlessly into the series. Though the parallels with a kind of quasi-Christian monotheism on the one hand, and Greco-Roman polytheism on the other, are a little too close for my liking, the show's writers have a much greater and more compelling religious imagination than, say, George Lucas ever had. The mixture of ordinary devotions, priests, scriptures, prophecies and prophets, skeptics and mystics, contributes to a world which is identifiably human. The old testament imagery - the twelve colonies (tribes) in search of a new homeland, a leader destined to die before they arrive, an admiral named "Cain" who has decided that she is emphatically not her brother's keeper - is noticeable and thought-provoking without being overbearing.

There are supernatural hallucinations/visions in just about every episode. In a weird way, the mix of art-film realism with ethereal supernaturalism works. And with respect to the former, the fact that their guns shoot bullets and that they drop nuclear bombs helps make Battlestar a sci-fi series which speaks more directly to us than shows in which characters pack the usual, more cartoonish, phasers. More to the point, there is a dramatic mixture of heroism and villainy, virtue and vice, confusion and clarity which brings the show down to earth (if you'll excuse the pun). To my surprise, the series has turned out to be a very compelling human drama, the sort that draws you in like a good novel.

Lumping Together

A correspondent of Andrew Sullivan’s on us religious folk:

People seem to need figures like bin Laden, Koresh, Hubbard, etc., so they can point fingers and proclaim them to be religious fanatics or "wackos". It makes the average moderate Christian/Muslim/Jew/Hindu feel better about their faith. As if the suspension of scientific thought that they exercise has absolutely nothing to do the extremism that is built on the same principle.

Well, possibly. But it seems like atheist polemicists need bin Laden et al even more, so they can make grand gestures linking all people of faith to violent extremists. He continues:

I am not trying to lump everyone into the same group here, I'm just attempting to explain how a scientist views this general line of thinking as major threat to society [sic]. The slippery-est of slopes.

This sort of comment is a dime a dozen these days: look, I’m not saying that all religious people are violent nutcases. It’s just that there’s this principle, you know, the “suspension of scientific thought”, that leads both to Mother Teresa and to Osama bin Laden, and that’s why we have to be so vehement in opposing the superstitious hordes.

One thing I’d like to see stop is the identification of a kind of strict philosophical naturalism, of the sort that rules out the possibility of all “spooky” entities – gods, angels, and the like – with “science”, or “scientific thought”, or whatever. At the very least, the fact of there being very good scientists who profess religious beliefs ought to rule out that sort move.

It becomes especially irritating in the case of Sullivan’s correspondent, where there is an appeal to authority involved: look, I’m a scientist, and this is “how a scientist views this general line of thinking.” No. You’re a scientist committed to both the impossibility of the supernatural, and to the inherent dangerousness of religious belief. Neither of those commitments can be derived from “science”. Indeed, I would argue that the former is a logical error, while the latter is a result of a superficial reflection upon evil and how evil actions can be justified from within widely varying traditions and communities of belief – including explicitly atheistic ones.

Loving New York

Today was a beautiful day. Driving south through upstate New York, through Syracuse and into the Finger Lakes region, I was taken aback by the charm and even the grandeur of the state. Various shades of lush green paint an inviting landscape. The majestic tree-covered hills and valleys, the lakes and rivers, and the picturesque little towns and farmhouses create an unforgettable impression. It reminded me of the drive north from Quebec City to Lac Saint Jean. Post-industrial Syracuse seems somewhat frozen in time, a city from another era.

I should also mention that the gorges of Ithaca are quite gorgeous. There is a path going down the side of one gorge where Wittgenstein used to go for walks on his visits. I suppose that will only be of interest to my Wittgenstinian friends. This was my second time driving through northern New York State; the first time, I came via the Niagara border crossing, and the long jog on the I-90 reminded me of rural Ontario. Onondaga, Courtland, and Tompkins counties are something quite different. I'm still drinking it all in.

Thoughts about Optimism

I’ve been reading R-A Gauthier’s book Magnanimité. It’s incredibly wide-ranging, but one interesting passage contrasts the serenity and the anguish of the Greek with the serenity and anguish of the Christian. The anguish of the Christian is the anguish of sin; the Christian is a pessimist when he looks inward. Insofar as he knows himself, he realizes that he does not do what he wants to do; that with his own resources he is incapable of avoiding the evil he hates.

The Christian finds peace outside of himself, when he considers God, or the world which God has created. Serenity comes with knowing that God always works for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28). And recognizing with St. Augustine that everything that exists, because it is God’s creation, is good, the Christian is able to affirm his own goodness.

The Greek, on the other hand, is optimistic when he considers himself. The Aristotelian ideal of the magnanimous man, or the Epicurean ideal of autarkeia (self-sufficiency, independence), assume that man on his own can attain to virtue and happiness. It is only when looking outside of himself - to the gods, the world, fate – that his optimism is tempered. Gauthier quotes Sophocles:

Terrible deaths, innumerable sufferings;

Each of them the work of Zeus.

Thus the Stoics advocate a complete resignation to the world, with the cultivation of an attitude of supreme indifference toward suffering.

All this got me thinking about the optimism of the modern period. If the optimism of the Ancients reached its limit when confronted with the caprice of chance, modern Baconian and Cartesian optimism lies precisely in its mastery over nature. We can dominate it, and use it for our own benefit. This anthropocentric self-confidence ought to be supreme.

And yet our confidence is remarkably fragile. It is often remarked that the two world wars of the twentieth century served to negate the naïve Victorian optimism of the nineteenth. Only then did we fully realize the amoral nature of technology, and the intractability of human nature.

On a deeper level, I would suggest that our optimism about man suffers because we are unable to provide an account of our own goodness. There is no longer anything divine in us. Here the self-esteem movement has proved indispensable by providing therapeutic compensation. Children learn from a young age how special they are. If the child does something well, praise him; if he does something poorly, praise him. Never interfere with the supreme right of the individual to feel good about himself.

Still, there have to be some limits to the capacity of this sort of thing to provide for our needs. At least the more perceptive young people realize that the self-esteem movement is based on a lie. Where then do we turn to fuel our optimism? To Obama-inspired appeals to hope? (Someone should really write a book and call it The Opacity of Hope). To exotic spiritualities? Our culture is conflicted: it combines strong self-affirmation with deep insecurity about our own worth.

Forgetting Virtue

There has been a lot of talk surrounding the release of the latest Judd Apatow film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Apatow’s characters are lovable for their clueless but well-intentioned attitude toward life. Even in their obsessions with sexual fulfillment, they are still somewhat childlike. In this, however, they are worlds away from the movie-goers who revel in them. They retain an innocence and an ignorance to which we cannot aspire. We know too much. The Apatow hero ends up being merely charming.

On the other hand, the makers of the raunchy Harold and Kumar movies seem to have captured a much more recognizable character-type. The brainy stoner, the overachieving slacker, is now quite familiar on college campuses. This image of the intelligent math geek or arts major massively overindulging in the pleasures of the senses calls to mind Walker Percy’s critique of the Cartesian mind-body split which he found so prevalent in modern man. In Love in the Ruins, Percy presents deliciously ironic characters whose abstract intellectualism, divorced from their present bodily situation, eventually gives way to a complete loss of restraint of their sexual desires.

Desires, left unregulated, eventually compel the mind to follow them. Today, the justification given by our sexual hedonists for avoiding deviant sexuality (orgies, even bestiality) is mainly aesthetic. Tastes are subject to change, however, and in our increasingly remissive culture (to use Philip Rieff’s term), it is certainly conceivable that these deviancies will eventually undergo widespread legitimation. In the shorter term, however, one wonders: to what extent can young people, having finished with their extended college revelry, settle down and adapt to a relatively normal life?

Moving Beyond

I don’t think that Dalton McGuinty’s suggestion that the daily recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in the Ontario legislature is necessarily a bad idea. From a secular or non-Christian perspective, this ritual privileges a single faith over the other faith traditions that exist in Canada. From a Christian viewpoint, how much do we want the Our Father to be associated with the decisions made by that legislature, anyway? Moreover, we should be wary of allowing the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer to become an empty and vestigial formalism divorced from a living faith.

That said, some of the news reports about this issue are very odd. Take this Canwest article:

McGuinty said it was time to "move beyond" the Lord's Prayer to a more inclusive custom that better reflects Ontario's multiculturalism.

In a letter to opposition leaders, the premier called for an all-party legislative committee that would seek input from citizens and religious groups before making recommendations to the legislature.

At this point, you would expect the journalist to throw in some of the usual commentary about how multicultural and multi-religious Canada has become. Instead, we get the following:

According to the 2006 census, one-third of Ontario's population was born outside Canada.

In the Toronto region, more than half the population was born in another country.

Um, is this relevant because only people born outside of Canada would feel comfortable with the Lord’s Prayer being said in the legislature? Apparently the location of one’s birth is the determining factor here.

I also found this somewhat amusing:

And they still say the Lord’s Prayer before proceedings at the Prince Edward Island legislature, but they do it behind closed doors before the chamber is open to the public.

It’s okay if you pray – just don’t let anybody hear you. Quintessentially Canadian, you might say.

Facere Figuram

If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should check out Kyle’s wife’s art blog. I may not know art, but this is really good stuff.

The West's Response to Muslim Extremism

This Alan Jacobs post sums it up rather nicely.

The U.S. Primaries and Iraq

With Super Tuesday over and neither nomination decided, it’s interesting to note how far off the radar the war in Iraq has gone as an election issue. Michael Gerson has an opinion piece in today’s WaPo arguing that McCain’s success in the primaries is due to his support for the surge. McCain’s campaign was tanking last summer when no one thought the surge could work. Now that the surge is “working”, McCain has been vindicated and that has translated into votes.

I find that rather unlikely. The drop in American casualties means that the war gets less time on the nightly news and less space in the broadsheets. At the same time, the economy is tanking, Republicans are anxious over immigration, and the Democrats want universal health care. McCain no doubt benefits from his “tough on terror” image, which I find rather alarming (he seems more likely than any other candidate to start a new war in the Middle East). But his support for the surge probably is not even an issue for primary voters.

After 2006, many people thought that in 2008 the Republicans would be severely chastised over the war in Iraq. Given the current political situation, that scenario is looking a lot less likely.

Banning the Politically Incorrect

It’s been a while since I’ve cared about student politics, but this article is instructive. The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) of Ontario, the umbrella group for university student federations here, has approved a motion to support student unions that wish to ban pro-life groups from their campuses. This comes after a year of decisions by student unions at universities across the country banning or severely restricting pro-life groups.

Now you can be forgiven if you thought that university campuses were a place for free inquiry and rigorous debate about the more contentious moral and political issues of our day. An explanation comes courtesy of Sandy Hudson, CFS-Ontario’s “woman commissioner”:

When asked whether Ryerson students should be exposed to both sides of the abortion issue, Hudson said allowing an anti-choice group would be like allowing a white supremacist group on campus.

Then there’s the always cheerful Joyce Arthur, president of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, who pushes the ante even higher:

Arthur believes pro-life groups should not receive support from student unions because they seek to repress human rights. She said these groups are comparable to Neo-Nazi movements.

Right… Hasn’t anybody told Arthur that calling your opponent a Nazi in lieu of argument is so cliché? Anyway, I really have to wonder what’s behind all this demonization and ostracism. The pro-life movement is frankly a negligible force in Canadian politics. Pro-life groups on university campuses tend to be small and relatively inoffensive, populated by mild-mannered and socially awkward undergraduates. Why do abortion choice advocates feel so threatened?

As a side note, the most recent polling (from 2006) indicates that Canadians are pretty divided over the abortion issue. About a third think that legal protection for human life should begin at conception; another third think that it should begin sometime during pregnancy; and the remaining 30% say that it should begin at birth. Of those who think that protection should begin at some point during pregnancy, about 70% say it should be at the beginning of the second trimester, while 30% think it should be at the beginning of the third trimester.

So two-thirds of Canadians think there should be some legal protection for the unborn. Currently there is none. Is this an issue that, maybe, we should be having some sort of debate about?