Kyle Cupp

2012-01-30T21:53:00.001-06:00

Kyle Cupp is freelance writer, editor, and blogger who has worked with professional business leaders on the production of over half a dozen books, plus numerous articles, capital campaign brochures, and publicity documents. Whether you're looking for advanced copy editing, original writing, or just proofreading, Kyle Cupp can assist you in the production of clear, effective, professional publications that express your ideas in your voice. For more information, please see his profile on LinkedIn. He can be emailed at kyle@kylecupp.com.

Kyle's writing appears in several places around the Internet. At his personal blog, Journeys in Alterity, he writes about culture, philosophy, politics, and religion. He also contributes to the group blog Vox Nova. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Journeys in Alterity Has Moved!

2012-01-24T06:53:00.001-06:00

Good morning, faithful readers. Starting immediately, I’ll be publishing this blog over at The League of Ordinary Gentleman as one of the excellent site’s sub-blogs. You can subscribe to the feed here. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you over at the new location.

In the near future, I’ll be converting this site into a professional website for my freelance writing and editing work. The blog archives will still be available here. I will also be continuing to write at Vox Nova, although I will no longer be cross-posting what I write there at JiA. Yes, I’ve split myself in two, but no, I’m not making a horcrux.

Cheers!

About Those Conscience Protections

2012-01-23T07:06:00.001-06:00

Michael Sean Winters is understandably miffed at the HHS ruling that will require many Catholic institutions to cover contraceptives in their insurance policies. Indeed, the president has lost his vote. President Obama never had my vote, but I could add his refusal to expand conscience exemptions to my reasons why.

I understand why he went ahead with the ruling as is. He thought it was the right thing to do. Contra the statements of celibate religious authorities, most people value the widespread availability of contraceptives as a much-needed social good. Obama met opposition from a vocal minority that, let's face it, doesn't represent the majority of Catholics, who use contraceptives without a second thought. My guess is that Obama, if he considered the reaction from Catholics at all, figured only a tiny minority would be bothered by the mandate. If the majority of Catholics don't follow their faith’s teachings to the letter, why should Obama be expected to take those teachings seriously?

When making decisions about social policy, especially policies that will have major ramifications for voters, any skilled politician will make a cost-benefit analysis. In this case, Obama had very little to lose and much to gain by making contraceptives more readily available. The official teachings of the church wouldn't interest him so much as the actual opinions of voting Catholics, who for the most part either don't care or probably think expanded access to contraceptives is a good thing.

Nevertheless, President Obama should have expanded the conscious exemptions. First, while the state shares responsibility for the healthcare of the people within it, the state has the primary responsibility of protecting the rights and freedoms of its people. Helping people bear the burden of healthcare costs, noble as it is, is no excuse to violate religious freedoms. Second, by not expanding the exemptions, Obama betrayed his promises to Catholic supporters of his policies, notably the Affordable Care Act. Obama earned their support in part by promising to uphold conscience protections. They took the move as a slap in the face. Third, the ruling may prove counter-productive. Catholic institutions—some of them anyway— participate in healthcare on the condition that they are free to follow Catholic ethical norms. Forcing these institutions to materially cooperate with what they deem contrary to their faith incentivizes them to cease such participation.

Catholics have every right to fight this ruling tooth and nail. (VN)

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The U.S. Is a Mortal Threat to Iran

2012-01-21T11:27:00.000-06:00

Sharp wordsmith Mark Helprin is among my favorite novelists, but his occasional meanderings into strategic analysis and wonkery leave much to be desired. Case in point: his latest in The Wall Street Journal, an assumptions-ridden piece peppered with inconsistencies and misrepresentations arguing for a U.S. attack on the "Iranian nuclear weapons complex." While not calling for an invasion, Helprin suggests "massive ordnance penetrators; lesser but precision-guided penetrators 'drilling' one after another; fuel-air detonations with almost the force of nuclear weapons; high-power microwave attack; the destruction of laboratories, unhardened targets, and the Iranian electrical grid; and other means." He shows no shred of doubt about the consequences of his proposed strike, dismissing any long-term terror retaliation or a military response from either Russia or China. Nor does Helprin express any calculation of the human cost Iran would suffer by the attacks he so desperately champions, a cost which should figure into any consideration of lethal force.

Let me get this out of the way: I don't for a minute think that the U.S. is a terrorist state, run by a regime enthused by malicious and hateful intent. I wouldn't equate it morally with worst abusers of human rights around the globe. Having said this, however, it pains me to say that the U.S. and those supportive of its aggressions are gravely negligent and careless about the real human costs of those aggressions. As a result of negligence and carelessness--and, for the record, murders--the U.S. has spilt a lot of blood and piled up a lot of bodies. The truth is this: the U.S. is at least as great a mortal threat as most dictatorial and terrorist regimes are.

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They’re Strangers to Me; Kill Away!

2012-01-17T12:40:00.002-06:00

The other day, while at a birthday party for a friend of my son, I initiated a discussion with a couple of the parents about the presidential candidates. The subject of the assassinated Iranian scientists came up because I, instigator that I am, brought it up. The two people with whom I was engaged expressed their being okay with possible U.S. involvement in these killings. One of them openly shared her reason for not caring: “I don’t know them. Nobody I know knows them.” Stopping Iran from producing a nuke seemed to be all that mattered. Don’t want to get wacked? Don’t be an Iranian scientist.

Last night, while listening to the latest debate, I heard the audience boo the suggestion that we ought to apply the Golden Rule to our dealings and relations with foreign powers and people. Ares forbid we treat strangers the way we want to be treated. Woe to those who put themselves in another’s place and consider the world from his or her perspective.

Enter Robert Wright: “I've long thought that the biggest single problem in the world is the failure of "moral imagination"--the inability or unwillingness of people to see things from the perspective of people in circumstances different from their own. Especially incendiary is the failure to extend moral imagination across national, religious, or ethnic borders.” When I reflect upon the gravest of social ills, I realize he’s correct: a failure of moral imagination underlies all of them. And what’s scary is that, while I cannot picture myself committing horrid deeds along the lines of terrorism, genocide, or butchery, I’m guilty of the disposition that gives these evils birth. For all my talk of hospitality and alterity and all that jazz, I’m a selfish, self-centered lout who all too often cares little to nothing for my fellow strangers, their walks of life, and their perspectives on the world.

How do we nurture a moral imagination? Freddie DeBoer gives us a clue. When he was thirteen, he took a trip with his father to Indonesia:

One night, he woke me gently and led me outside, where one of his Balinese friends waited for him. We were in the village, inland, where few tourists ventured, at least at that time. We got in a bemo and drove for awhile, and when we got out, my father led me by hand in the moonlight to a mass grave.

We met an old man there. If you know the right people and know how to ask, you can still find them, I'm sure, older Indonesians who will tell you the stories. He walked us over to the roadside-- I have no idea where we were, geographically-- and showed us a shaded ditch. It was dark, and anyway, there was nothing to see. Just dirt, just earth. You would never have known that bodies were piled underneath, just a few feet down. The older man started speaking and my father spoke to him. (He spoke such wonderful Indonesian, and serviceable Balinese, I envy it even now.) He translated for me, briefly. I bent over and put my hand on the dirt. I tried to imagine my own family, what was left of it then, crammed down underground, with dozens of others. I tried to do whatever I could to make it real. The dirt made it corporeal. It was something I could touch, lay my hand on. I have never been the same, never.

We have to find ways to make the lives and deaths of others real to us, because, if we don’t, then not only will we not care when bodies are piled in graves, being inclined instead to cheer the killing, but also we may be the very ones getting our hands bloody. (VN)

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Chief Executive Murder

2012-01-12T21:56:00.001-06:00

About ten days ago I wrote ironically that a President of the United States cannot be a murderer because, for the most part, the general public doesn't consider the deliberate killings of innocent people in which he is complicit to have been acts of murder. Well, guess who's been helping to perpetuate this myth? That's right: "pro-life" presidential long-shot Rick Santorum. Now that Santorum is under public scrutiny, some comments he made back in October about offed Iranian scientists are making the rounds. The wannabe Jaqen H'ghar had this to say:

On occasion scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly. I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from Russia, North Korea, or from Iran and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bomb for Iran, you are not safe.

Santorum expressed his hope that the United States has been involved in these deaths, and justified the past and future assassinations on the basis that the U.S. has already assassinated an American citizen, so why not? None of these killings qualify as murder or terrorism, of course, because the United States by definition doesn't do those sorts of things. Sure, it may appear to do so, but substantially the actions must be different because of who's doing them.

This, folks, is the myth of the United States. It's one thing that won't change in 2012. No hope.

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Does It Matter What We Believe?

2012-01-09T17:16:00.001-06:00

In a word, yes, but I understand why some readers took me to be implying the opposite in my previous post, the one about a friend ceasing to consider himself a Christian. Michael Brendan Dougherty, for example, felt I was giving another’s loss of faith no more than a shrug, when an appropriate response would have been to throw a life preserver or rope to the man overboard. Instead, I had wished my friend well in his faith journey and explained why his apostasy, so to speak, was for me no cause for fear. I expressed my respect for his faith journey, even though it differs in direction and manner from my own.

I stand by everything I wrote in that post, but some qualification may help. It is not my position that everyone’s beliefs and ideas are equal. People who pursue the truth do so to varying degrees. Some get closer than others. Some people don’t give two pellets of newt poop for the truth; they’re devoted to something else. Rest assured I harbor no respect for journeys in selfish self-gratification. I may be a pluralist, but I’m no relativist.

Now to qualify my qualification: it matters what we believe and what think, but it matters more that we’re habitually disposed to the truth and its pursuit. I’m a parent of children whom I am raising in my faith. However well or poorly they are catechized, they may in life stray from my beliefs. That possibility worries me, a little, but I’m more concerned that they maintain an interest in the truth. I’d rather they be passionate about true knowledge and unflinchingly seek it out than they have no care for what’s real while going through the motions of their religion. The former allows for movement toward God; the latter is really only the illusion of the soul’s ascent.

I dare say that faith doesn’t always look like faith. It isn’t only manifested in recited creeds, liturgical celebrations, and having one’s doctrinal propositions in order. If faith is a response to God, then it’s a response to the truth, in which case those who strive after true knowledge by definition have faith. And that gives me hope. (VN)

A Christian No More

2012-01-05T06:43:00.000-06:00

Friend in the ‘sphere Andrew Hackman declares he’s no longer a Christian: “I really don't consider myself a Christian anymore. Somewhere along the way (to be explained in more detail in a future blog post), I realized that the claims of my religious beliefs had no more inherent validity than anyone else's. Once the light bulb goes on that your group sounds to every other group the way every other group sounds to yours... and that REALLY sinks in... well, it's all up hill from there.” This journey uphill Andrew describes as being a hopeful agnostic.

I sympathize. The convergence of postmodern pluralism and instant global communication technology has revealed a world of countless creeds, doctrines, myths, and rituals. The notion of there being one God or one reality to which only one faith gives true testimony seems especially ludicrous today, and not merely on the surface. Each faith points back to an origin that can no more be demonstrated empirically than proven theologically.

Considering faith from the perspective of others leads one to the realization that, functionally, the world’s confessional faiths are all doing basically the same thing. They all claim to give voice to a deeper truth—sometimes called God, sometimes called something else; sometimes through sacred texts, sometimes through ritual action. How can an outsider decide between them?

Choices are made, of course. People commit themselves to a religion or faith-based way of life. People convert. They fall away and forsake one faith for another or for no faith at all. People have their reasons for choosing one faith over another, but none of these reasons is a direct line to God. We tend to go with what makes the most sense to us given our situation, circumstances, and life experiences. Christianity no longer makes sense to Andrew, and so he no longer considers himself a Christian. Catholicism makes more sense than the alternatives to me, and so here I am.

Admittedly, the appeal the Catholic faith has for me more to do with the ways in which its myths and sacramental rituals enthuse my imagination than with the impression its teachings have upon my reason. I remain committed to living according to its teachings, even the ones secular society deems silly, but I find myself more inspired to live according to its stories. I may be one of those types who would remain Catholic even if it could be shown that there was no literal truth to its account of the universe. If Catholicism is just a fiction, well then to heaven with it!

Anyhow, I wish Andrew the best in his faith journey, a journey that for everyone means a passage through the cloud of unknowing, an unknowing that ends only in death. Sorry folks: even the best of creeds and dogmas cannot capture God: the best they can do is point us to what is wholly other. Andrew tells us that Christians he knows fear he’ll burn in hell for his abandonment of the name “Christian.” I do not share their presumptuous and despairing concern. It makes no sense to me given the image of the Crucified Christ: God goes to all that trouble only to deny those whose honest and hopeful search for the truth leads them to places that make pastors nervous? Get real.

Yes, truth matters. It matters a lot, which is why I have to respect the journey towards it, even when the journey differs in direction and manner from my own. If my saying this makes you nervous, all I can say in response is, “Be not afraid. God goes before us always.” (VN)

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The President Cannot Be a Murderer

2012-01-03T17:07:00.000-06:00

United States foreign policy being what it is, the Commander-in-Chief cannot but be complicit in the deaths of innocent people, some of which resulted not from accidents, but from “the cost of doing business.” Despite this fact, the populace generally doesn’t think of the president as a murder, as someone who has unjustly and intentionally killed (or had killed) innocent people.

One reason for this stands out: the state has a monopoly on the use of violence. It can legitimately kill—even kill innocent people—where you and I cannot. When state violence results in what for you or me would constitute mass murder, the deaths are called mistakes but not crimes, unfortunate but not negligent, collateral damage but not murder. Case in point: the president has at his disposal weapons of mass destruction, but not weapons of mass murder.

While the state’s monopoly on the use of violence pretty well explains why we don’t consider the Commander-in-Chief a murderer, there may be another reason: we hold officials of the state to a different moral standard, at least when they’re conducting official state business like killing people. After all, having a monopoly on the use of violence doesn’t mean all one’s violence is legitimate and justified. No, some other mode of thought is at work here. (VN)

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The Advent Child

2011-12-29T12:29:00.000-06:00

The Nativity story presents me with an image of eluded expectations. Where I would expect to find the alpha and omega of power, might, and strength, if in cuddly miniature form, I encounter instead ordinary anxiety-inspiring dependency, delicacy, and weakness. I discover not a budding messianic warrior in a palace, but an artisan’s frail child in a stable.

The narrative serves as a reminder that what I call God will always be ahead of my expectations, notions, and conceptions. The liturgy of Christmas brings the birth of Jesus Christ to life, ushering in an end to the Season of Advent, and yet does so while maintaining Advent’s central meaning: God is always to come. God eludes my pathetic attempts to make “him” present. My words fail. All of them. Even my most lofty and seemingly precise words, like “Trinity” and “omnipotence,” focus my mind by way of analogies that could easily become idols.

The Nativity is an apophatic myth: in saying something about the divine, it shows us that we can eventually say nothing. We do not know what we are saying when we speak of the sacred. All of our creeds and theologies, our doctrines and dogmas, in attempting to give the infinite finite expression, say what cannot be said. They are infinitely distant from that to which they refer. Even words I simply adore, like “alterity” and “otherwise,” prove inadequate when used to approximate the meaning of what I call God.

Christmas is a season for celebration, yes; but it is also a call to silence. (VN)

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Christmas at the Cupps

2011-12-28T12:48:00.002-06:00

Been busy with the holy days and the joys of family life.

Regular blogging will resume shortly.

Announcement

2011-12-23T18:32:00.001-06:00

The substandard to the muck around the bottom of the pale blog posts that have appeared on this website...

Yeah...um...I don't know who wrote those.

A Principled Candidate?

2011-12-22T08:23:00.004-06:00

Alex Knapp challenges the popular narrative that Ron Paul, whatever else you want to say about him, is a man of principle:

Ron Paul never does the hard, right thing. He always does the easy, opportunistic thing. In the 80s and 90s, that meant publishing paranoid, racist tracts to make money. In the 00s and 10s, that’s been grandiose pontificating, pandering to a liberal crowd desperate for an anti-Bush Republican and grabbing all the pork he can – all the while posing as a statesman that the “system” can’t handle.

Principled politicians, in Knapp's view, would "do the hard work of enacting their favored principles into law," recognize that democratic politics involves the long, hard work of process, and deal with the "small steps and the occasional setback in order to play the long game," none of which, according to Knapp, Paul does.

Contra Knapp, I wouldn't say that a politician's failure or refusal to play the game means that the politician isn't principled. A politician who limits himself to grandstanding, oppositional votes, and rigid adherence to ideology could still be principled, though he would undoubtedly make an ineffective champion of the principles he espouses.

Is Paul principled? I don't know. I agree with a few of his pontifications, but disagree with most of them. His newsletters are a mark against his character; that's for sure. He's not what I'd call a model politician, not even a good one, really. Perhaps he'd do better as a talk radio host. (VN)

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The Hobbit Trailer

2011-12-20T21:35:00.000-06:00

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films never made their way into my heart - too morally incomplete was Jackson's vision - but I hold out hope that The Hobbit will prove a more cinematically satisfying long expected journey. Tolkien's earlier and simpler book may better translate to the screen under Jackson's remarkable but limited talent. The trailer, released today, looks promising. I'm now doubly sure Martin Freeman won't disappoint as Bilbo. And I'm pleased to see Jackson and company are bringing in characters from the The Lord of the Rings. That's a "change" to the story I would make myself.

Singing dwarves!

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All Assent Is Suspect

2011-12-20T07:41:00.000-06:00

Several readers, noting my chosen state of permanent uncertainty, suggested I take a look at John Henry Newman's A Grammar of Assent. I've taken a stroll through the first few chapters, and I can say that the recommendation was well given. The book poses a fundamental challenge to my way of thinking. It would seem that, if Newman is correct and one cannot at the same moment doubt and assent, then my previous defenses of uncertain assent hold no more water than a bottomless Dixie cup. I propose, however, that while logically I cannot both doubt and assent to the same proposition at the same time and in the same way, I can rationally maintain an air of uncertainty or suspicion about my assents.

Newman begins his essay by distinguishing between three forms of propositions (interrogative, conditional, and categorical) and between the corresponding three ways of holding propositions (doubt, inference, and assent). For example, take the proposition of which I am as certain as I can be: "I love my wife and children." I can shape this proposition as a question ("Do I love my wife and children?"), as a conclusion ("I therefore love my wife and children"), or, in the way I introduced it, as an assertion. While I can at the same moment both assent to and infer from premises that I love my family, I cannot at the same moment both assent to and doubt the love I have for my family. If I doubt it, then I am by definition not assenting to it, and my wife and children have cause for concern. Fortunately for them and for me, I do not doubt my love (nor, for the record, their love for me). So where is there room for a passive uncertainty or active suspicion of the proposition, "I love my wife and children"?

While an assent is in itself the absolute acceptance of a proposition without any condition, the act of assent is never made in a vacuum. It presupposes, if not full understanding of the proposition, at a minimum some degree of apprehension of the proposition's meaning. I have to know, to some degree, what it is to which I assent in order to give assent. Without this knowledge, I can only assert the proposition, but I cannot assent to it. It is here at the level of apprehension that I remain forever uncertain and open to being suspicious.

Why? Because any apprehension of meaning may have gone awry due to false consciousness or to the distancing and concealing aspects of language. In one sense, I know what I mean when I assert "I love my wife and children." I say it every day and there's no confusion on my part or on theirs. Sure, love is a mystery that no philosopher or poet can completely fathom or explain, but it's still intelligible. I'm pretty sure even my baby daughter knows what I mean. However, in another sense, I don't really know what I mean when I profess my love because I am not certain about the true meaning of the pronoun "I" and the verb "love." I use the latter term in a spiritual and sacramental sense, a sense I believe accurately reflects the reality of my love, and yet I must concede that my beliefs here could conceivably be mistaken (or I may be deluded about my beliefs). My love may have merely material causes. The "I" that I associate with an essential selfhood may be only a fiction, a notional construct of the brain.

My assent, then, is suspect because the apprehension of meaning that my assent presupposes is suspect: I may be wrong about the meaning I think I apprehend. The meaning and/or the truth may be otherwise than what apprehension shows me. Given this possibility, I may fall back on reasons why it's clear that I love my wife and children (I desire the good for them, etc.) , but in so doing I'm no longer assenting to the proposition, but inferring it.

I maintain that assent is possible: I may, after all, be right about what I mean by the proposition, "I love my wife and children." I hope that I am. I don't doubt that I love my wife and children, but nor can I say with certainty that I adequately know what I mean when I say this. I choose to assent to this proposition because, speaking epistemologically, I may sufficiently apprehend its meaning, but I am uncertain about my assent because I am uncertain (though hopeful) that I've apprehended accurately.

I trust I make myself obscure. All this is rather heady, abstract stuff that, rest assured, never explicitly enters into may day-to-day family life. I raise this example not to question my love, but to explain why the reality of assent doesn't demolish my epistemology of suspicion. Having said this, I admit that I deserved the light slap in the face my wife gave me when I told her about this post. As she says, "Some people think too much." Yes. Yes we do. (VN)

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Debating a Nuclear Iran

2011-12-16T09:29:00.000-06:00

My favorite moment in last night's debate was Ron Paul's argument with Michelle Bachmann about the threat posed by Iran and how the U.S. should respond to it. Paul, alone among the contenders and in opposition to the moderators, made the case once again that a war with Iran would be an absurdly dangerous undertaking and an overreaction to the apparent threat Iran poses. Bachmann, echoing the views of the political establishment, called Paul's ideas dangerous and tantamount to ignoring the purpose and plans of the enemy, prospects about which she claims absolute certainty.

However well or poorly Ron Paul understands the big picture and minute details concerning the Iranian regime--I'll leave it to others to make this assessment--Paul's critics fail to understand the basics of his position. He doesn't deny that Iran is a danger; he denies that the jump to war is the right response. His critics fail to grasp the elementary distinction between problem and solution. They seem to think that Paul, simply by standing against a rush to war and explaining what such an endeavor would mean in terms of blood, economic stability, and civil liberties, is foolishly and dangerously ignoring the problem.

Not so. As E.D. Kain says, "Iran may indeed be a threat, but there are other ways to approach this threat than war, including working to bring Iran into the global economy, giving them a stake in the peace and prosperity of the world economy. The far greater threat, as Paul warned, is a costly and destructive overreaction." Paul even keeps war on the table, but thinks, quite reasonably, that war shouldn't be waged carelessly, perpetually, without a formal declaration, and without an appreciation for the blowback that would result. (VN)

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How Not To Be Against Abortion

2011-12-14T22:48:00.000-06:00

Sharp-witted nemesis of pro-lifers Amanda Marcotte directed my attention to this article about Jennie McCormack who, according to the story, received some despicable treatment from people after her self-induced abortion gained unexpected public notoriety. Idaho, where McCormack lives, has a 1972 law, apparently never before enforced, that makes a self-induced abortion a crime punishable by five years in prison. She was arrested after news of her taking RU-486 reached police. A section in the story reads:

After her picture appeared in the paper, McCormack got a part-time job at a dry cleaner, using another name, but people figured out who she was and stopped letting her bag up their clothes, so she quit. On a recent trip to a local state office to apply for aid, she was ignored for hours. “They made it clear what was happening,” she says. “For a while I just sat there, sort of amazed that they were just letting me sit there.” Eventually, she picked up her son and went home.

Marcotte seems to view this treatment as typical behavior for those opposed to abortion, and, I’m presuming in response to this story, tweeted, “I'm genuinely surprised some times that anti-choicers aren't trying to require scarlet As sewn onto your clothes if you have an abortion.” If Marcotte means this in reference to us “anti-choicers” generally, and that’s how I took her statement, then she’s missing the mark. Yes, you can with a little time and effort find cruel, misogynistic anti-abortion crusaders more keen on punishing and controlling women than protecting the unborn, and Marcotte knows how to find and expose them. However, I’ve yet knowingly to meet one, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time among pro-lifers. Most pro-lifers really do think nascent human life is worth defending. That, I dare say, is what motivates me.

Having said this, however, I can see where Marcotte gets the impression that we “anti-choicers” are sinisterly motivated. The alleged reactions of people to McCormack’s abortion may not unveil the modus operandi of the typical pro-lifer, but, if true, they do suggest a disposition that extends to more than a couple heartless souls. And laws that punish women in Jennie McCormack’s situation with jail time give the impression that “anti-choicers” are also anti-women. We “anti-choicers” have a responsibility to consider how our objectives, if and when realized, will affect women like Jennie McCormack. Saying we’re pro-women isn’t sufficient. Saying we’re pro-women isn’t sufficient. And we sure as hell should be kind, welcoming, and respectful to any woman who has, for whatever reason, chosen abortion. (VN)

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What is Social Responsibility?

2011-12-13T06:55:00.000-06:00

Before I mention the idea of social responsibility in another post, it may be beneficial, for me if no one else, to explain precisely what I mean. Up till now I’ve refrained from writing much on the campaigns for the 2012 election, but you can now expect me to dive into the fray head first. Or maybe gut first; we’ll see. Anyhow, Mitt Romney can safely wager $10,000 that social responsibility will be a reoccurring theme in my coverage and commentary, so now’s as a good a time as any to define my terms.

I speak of social responsibility in two ways: first, as the responsibility of the individual for the good of society, i.e., the common good; and second, as the responsibility of society itself, as a singularity, for this good. For example, I as an individual have responsibility for my own health, the health of my family, the health of my neighborhood and nation, and the health of humanity. On the other hand, my family, as a social body, has its own responsibilities that are not reducible to the individual responsibilities of its members. I can’t procreate on my own. Not the spawning type. My city, state, and country each have their respective responsibilities for the common good. So does the global community as a whole.

Underlying each of these definitions is a distinct abstract concept of humanity: first, humanity as the sum total of many autonomous individuals; second, humanity as one, singular body. Contemporary Western thought, at least here in the States, often tends to emphasize the former over the latter, even in reference to social bodies like the family and the country, but the latter concept of humanity lingers in our discourse.

Scientific investigation stresses the singularity of humanity when, for example, considering human beings as a species. Religious discourse does likewise, arguably with even stronger emphasis on the oneness of humanity. In the Adamic myth, for example, all of humanity suffers from the singular fall from grace, sharing in the consequences of one man’s sin. According to Catholic theology, the atonement (at-one-ment) of humanity can take place only within the holy community, the singularity, the one mystical body. (Some Protestant theologies, on the other hand, by stressing the relationship of the sinner alone before God, emphasize the individual when conceiving humanity).

In looking at history, we see the negative and sometimes disastrous social consequences of conceiving humanity only in terms of the many or the one. Extreme individualism has led to the enthronement of selfishness and greed and to the deterioration of society. Collectivism, both authoritarian and totalitarian, has been responsible for the suppression of the individual, the stifling of virtue, and, ironically, mass murder.

As a true understanding of humanity sees it terms of both the one and the many, true social responsibility, I submit, is found in balancing the responsibility of individuals to the good of society and the responsibility of society itself, as a singular body, to the common good. In some situations, the individual should be stressed; in others, the collective. Determining the appropriate balance involves applying the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity.

Individuals promote the common good through the exercise of liberty and virtue, but of course society itself cannot follow suit. Society as a singularity cannot practice charity or any other virtue. Instead, it has to respond to the demands of the common good through the political. Social responsibility for the common good, then, must involve both the logic of virtue and the logic of politics. It is irresponsible to ignore or dismiss the necessity of either. (VN)

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Jedi Rapunzel Says...

2011-12-12T22:00:00.000-06:00

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On Seeking the Standard Bearer for Social Conservatism

2011-12-09T16:39:00.001-06:00

Ross Douthat has a smart post warning religious and social conservatives against anointing Newt Gingrich as the standard bearer for their worldview, which is what Gingrich would be upon winning the GOP nomination for the presidency:

Conservative Christianity in America, both evangelical and Catholic, faces a looming demographic challenge: A rising generation that is more unchurched than any before it, more liberal on issues like gay marriage, and allergic to the apocalyptic rhetoric of the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell era. To many younger Americans, religious conservatism as they know it often seems to stand for a kind of institutionalized hypocrisy — a right-wing Tartufferie that’s incensed by the idea of gay wedlock but tolerant of straight divorce, forgiving of Republican sins but judgmental about Democratic indiscretions, and eager to apply moral litmus tests only on issues that benefit the political right.

Rallying around Newt Gingrich, effectively making him the face of Christian conservatism in this Republican primary season, would ratify all of these impressions. It isn’t just that he’s a master of selective moral outrage whose newfound piety has been turned to consistently partisan ends. It’s that his personal history — not only the two divorces, but also the repeated affairs and the way he behaved during the dissolution of his marriages — makes him the most compromised champion imaginable for a movement that’s laboring to keep lifelong heterosexual monogamy on a legal and cultural pedestal.

But hasn’t Gingrich shown contrition for his past sins? That’s debatable, but it’s also irrelevant. Gingrich would play the king of the culture warriors, whether he intended to play this role or not, and both he and those championing him would be seen as hypocrites, their cause unserious or sinister. As Douthat says, “his candidacy isn’t a test of religious conservatives’ willingness to be good, forgiving Christians. It’s a test of their ability to see their cause through outsiders’ eyes, and to recognize what anointing a thrice-married adulterer as the champion of ‘family values’ would say to the skeptical, the unconverted and above all to the young.” There’s no getting around the fact that selecting a presidential candidate is, for religious conservatives, an evangelical act. It sends a message about their religious beliefs and values.

Granted, there will always be the Amanda Marcottes among the socially progressive who will depict even the most morally upright conservative individual as a cleverly disguised, insidiously-patriarchal monster, but they’re not “the skeptical, the unconverted, and the young” that religious conservatives have more than a snowball’s chance in hell of persuading. Morally upright individuals tend not to run for President of the United States, but there are better options for religious conservatives than Newt Gingrich. Any of the other candidates may be preferable. Well, maybe not Perry. Huntsman, although more of a moderate on gay rights, might be the best choice for social conservatives to reach, or at least not alienate, the persuadable of the republic. Michael Brendan Dougherty thinks so. (VN)

Friday Film Reflection: Definitely, Maybe

2011-12-09T10:14:00.001-06:00

Disappointed by the recent political drama The Ides of March, Alyssa Rosenberg recommends instead the 2008 movie Definitely, Maybe, which she describes as a “romantic comedy that’s secretly the best political movie in quite some time.” I took her advice and was well rewarded.

At first Definitely, Maybe seems like one step above a gimmick movie: Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds), when picking up his 10 year old daughter Maya from school, encounters the pandemonium of befuddled children and tongue-tied parents reacting to the school day’s world-altering lesson about the birds and the bees. “We need to talk,” Maya says.

Maya wants to know all about how her parents met and fell in love. The matter is urgent for her, first because of what she learned at school, and second because her parents are getting a divorce. She pesters her father until he gives in, partially, by agreeing to tell of series of romantic stories and leaving it to Maya to guess which one is about her mother.

This sets up what turns out to be an insightful and observant story about American politics. Hayes, you see, began his career working for the Clinton campaign, and because the women he’s loved and lost have, in one way or another, entered his life as a political operative, his stories to Maya bring to light the nitty-gritty of political campaigns. We see Will stock toilet paper, lash out against a troublesome stapler, fail miserably at convincing prospective donors that Clinton is an okay guy, succeed at selling tables at a major fundraising event, and learn to deal gracefully with complications and pending disasters. We also watch and feel for him as he struggles to balance his personal life with his professional obligations: for example, with how he has to respond when his current girlfriend, a political journalist, tells him that she’s publishing a negative story about his boss.

Definitely, Maybe is a fun and funny movie about the excitement, hope, and disappointment of politics. I particularly liked Will’s knee-jerk reactions to Clinton’s infidelities and lies. It’s not dark and satirical like Alexander Payne’s brilliant Election, another well-disguised political movie, but it takes such care with bringing to life the day-to-day conflicts of political campaigns that it equals any politics-themed movie I can remember seeing. (VN)

The Moral Universe of Individualists

2011-12-06T22:04:00.001-06:00

Where others might simply wonder what universe Rick Santorum lives in, Steven L. Taylor has an answer: “[Santorum] frequently makes moral claims that paint the picture of a universe in which all outcomes are justly generated by the actions of individuals. In this universe, people are successful because they work hard and make good choices and people fail because they do not work hard enough and/or because of bad choices.” Sound unfair or inaccurate? After reportedly denying that people in America die because of lack of health insurance, Santorum said the following:

“People die in America because people die in America. And people make poor decisions with respect to their health and their healthcare. And they don’t go to the emergency room or they don’t go to the doctor when they need to,” he said. “And it’s not the fault of the government for not providing some sort of universal benefit.”

In saying this, Santorum envisions a universe in which the only real responsibility is individual responsibility. Social responsibility doesn’t figure into his vision, at least here in the realm of healthcare. There’s no need for it because the fulfillment of individual responsibility can alone ameliorate people’s healthcare difficulties. No one, it seems, would die in these cases if people would just pick themselves up with their own IV tubes and didn’t make poor decisions with respect to their health and their healthcare. If people die, it’s their own fault for making poor decisions; it’s never because the government—i.e., people acting collectively as a social body by way of elected officials—neglected or failed to follow through on its social responsibility. Never that.

Santorum’s a professed Catholic, but his worldview is essentially Calvinist and individualistic. It’s also demonstrably wrong. People really have died because medical goods and services were beyond their financial reach. Furthermore, given Santorum’s devotion to the unborn, it should interest him to know that not a few women require expensive hormone supplements or injections to maintain pregnancy. How many miscarriages result because such treatments are financially beyond the mother? I know of one pregnancy that would have failed had there not been a little program called Medicaid. Anyhow, along with Taylor, I think that “one of the major issues facing our politics at the moment is sorting out this question of the balance between personal and social responsibility,” but that question can’t be properly addressed when people like Santorum are blind to one of these responsibilities. (VN)

Suspending All Belief

2011-12-03T07:54:00.001-06:00

Is it psychologically possible? Eric Schwitzgebel of The Splintered Mind considers the question:

Arguments that it's impossible to suspend all belief tend to be, at root, arguments that it's impossible to refrain from action and that action requires belief. Perhaps it is impossible to refrain from all action. No skeptic advises sitting all day in bed (as though that weren't itself an action). Sextus advises acting from habit; Zhuangzi seems to endorse well-trained spontaneity. (Of course, they can't insist dogmatically on this, and Zhuangzi actively undermines himself.) If the runaway carriage is speeding toward the skeptic, the skeptic will leap aside. On my account of belief, such a disposition is partly constitutive of believing that the carriage is heading your way. So the skeptic will have at least part of the dispositional profile constitutive of that belief. This much I accept.

But it's not clear that the skeptic needs to match the entire dispositional profile constitutive of believing the carriage is coming. In particular, it's not clear that the skeptic needs to consciously judge that the carriage is coming. Maybe most of us would in fact reach such a judgment, but spontaneous skillful action without conscious judgment is sometimes thought to be characteristic of "flow" states of peak performance; and Heidegger seems to have valued them and regarded them as prevalent; and perhaps certain types of meditative practice aim at them. Suspension of judgment seems consistent with action, perhaps even highly skilled action. Though suspension of judgment isn't suspension of the entirety of the dispositional profile characteristic of belief, it's suspension of an important part of the profile -- perhaps enough so that the skeptic achieves what I call a state of in-between believing, in which there's enough deviation from the relevant dispositional profile that it's neither quite right to say he believes nor quite right to say he fails to believe.

Friday Film Reflection: A Failure to Adjust

2011-12-02T09:45:00.001-06:00

The Adjustment Bureau begins as a promising political drama about a young ambitious, but scandal-prone congressman publicly owning up to his own inauthenticity. David Norris (Matt Damon) looks poised to become a U.S. Senator, but when pictures of him mooning people at a party surface, he drops in the polls quicker than Herman Cain. A seemingly chance encounter with Elise (Emily Blunt), an incredibly talented ballerina, redirects his attention and even his lifelong ambition. He loses her number and obsesses for years about finding her again.

Enter the Adjustment Bureau, a group of hat-wearing professionals who turn out to be more or less angels. They’re intent on keeping David and Elise apart because their being together goes against “the plan.” When one of the angelic adjusters fails to make an “adjustment” on time—using his mind to spill David’s coffee at a precise moment—David walks in on them while they’re in the process of adjusting his colleague’s manner of reasoning. Everyone in the office where David works has frozen in time. Hat-wearing dudes seem to be conducting non-invasive brain surgery on David’s best friend.

The adjustment bureaucrats come clean with David, but warn him to keep what he’s seen and learned a secret. They also forbid him from seeing Elise, telling him that if the two of them get together, neither of them will fulfill their grand rolls in the plan. David’s world is turned upside down. Except it isn’t, and that’s the main problem with The Adjustment Bureau.

David’s new knowledge adds something new to his world, but it doesn’t fundamentally change it. He reenters politics and continues, despite the dangers, to pursue Elise. He has to contend with the otherworldly hat-wearers, but that’s about the only adjustment the story has him make. The realization of the Adjustment Bureau and the official divine plan should result in an entire reinterpretation of reality because it changes the meaning of everything, but nothing of the sort happens. At the most, we get the film dialogue version of lip service to questions of free will, when instead we should get a “new world,” a fundamental reinterpretation of the human condition like we saw in The Matrix and Dark City.

Because The Adjustment Bureau treats the adjusters as an “add-on” to reality, the film feels like two separate movies: first, the story of David and Elise having to decide whether their love is worth the consequences it may have for their professional dreams and goals, and second, the fantastical thriller of David running, wearing a hat, holding on to Elise, and inspiring God. Both stories are interesting on their own, but they never come together. A little adjusting by the filmmakers could have solved this. (VN)

Faith and False Consciousness

2011-11-30T16:34:00.001-06:00

Agellius says I’m splitting hairs when I raise the possibility that a person’s faith, while showing signs of authenticity, may in fact not be faith at all. If we make decisions in accordance with our faith and know we’ve made these decisions, then there’s no need, according to Agellius, to question whether we have faith. At this point, it doesn’t matter if, say, fear rather than faith is at a person’s psychological core. Faith is as faith does.

I differ to beg. False consciousness about one’s faith still matters even if the observable outcomes are much the same as those of authentic faith. Here’s why. As persons, we’re capable of free, conscious decisions. We act most as persons, as who we are, when we act freely and consciously, when we’re not enslaved to our appetites, passions, prejudices, and desires. Knowingly making free, conscious decisions requires rigorous, critical, honest self-reflection. Faith, I submit, is an act proper to us as persons. It’s an act that ought to be done with as much freedom and consciousness as possible. Therefore, it’s worth exploring one’s psychological core for signs of false consciousness.

I also submit that people deluded into believing they have faith are more likely to embrace and espouse perversions of faith such as fundamentalism or superstition. Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche—whom Paul Ricoeur called “the Masters of Suspicion”—were wrong to reduce all faith to some form of false consciousness, but they were not wrong to understand that what people think of as their faith can be and perhaps often is the fruit of false consciousness. I unhesitatingly subject my faith to their analysis because each of their critiques, in its own way, puts me in a better position to separate the wheat from the chaff. By doing this, do I put my faith at risk? Absolutely. But you know what they say: be not afraid. (VN)