Ὁι Λόγοι

Guiding Lights

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:09:00 +0000

When it comes to the question of American government, I have two guiding lights above all others: Publius, and Tocqueville. It is they who have given me the understanding that the Founders saw the Federal government as something to be as inactive as possible except in a handful of circumstances. One of the ways in which this end was sought, to my mind, would be the strong provincialism of popularly-elected representatives...Contrary to what Fr. Z seems to think. For my part, I don't want anyone speaking for me whose appointment I have not had at least some say in. I strongly dislike Carol Shea-Porter, but I have to admit that she has far more right to speak for me than does, say, Nancy Pelosi.

Yet again, a Twitter altercation has pushed this topic to the forefront of my mind, and I'm working harder on developing a post that had been set to simmer for some time. Hopefully it will be up soon. Ish.

Things That Make Me Sick

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:57:00 +0000

Amongst the blogs that I read regularly is one you may have heard of called What's Wrong with the World. It's typically very well-written and thought-provoking. This weekend, though, it was something a little...different. For your recapitulating pleasure:

Well, I've googled and hand-searched books and can't find it. So here, from memory, is an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Calvin makes some remarks to Hobbes as they ride their sled about not wanting to change. He's fine just the way he is. They hit the bottom of a gorge, hard, and Hobbes suggests that maybe this ride wasn't such a good idea. And Calvin gasps, "Careful, let's be sure not to learn anything from this, now."

Herewith, I give you the U.S. Army's highest officer, Gen.Casey:

General Casey told me on This Week that he’s worried that diversity could become another victim of Thursday’s mass killing at Ft. Hood. The incident was not the first case of fratricide by a Muslim and when I asked how the military plans to deal with this potential problem in its ranks, Casey said, “Speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers and what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.

An even greater tragedy if diversity becomes a casualty. If that isn't a slap in the face to the victims of this jihad attack and their families, I don't know what is.

Let's be sure not to learn anything from this, now.

My comment to this post was an apparently-subtle musing as to whether this was a sentiment expressed by abortionists when they heard pro-life leaders condemn the sparse wackos who feel justified in bombing abortion mills or shooting abortion doctors. Another commenter explicitly asked the author whether the thesis of the post was supposed to be that Muslims could and should never be trusted. At least one other commenter at the time of this writing actually made a claim to that precise effect.

This is all disgusting to me, for two reasons. The first is that the same people who bitch about being painted as extremists by their opponents due to the behavior of a few, are now dealing in the same rhetoric. You just can't do that in a credible way, unless you're an ideologue who can't be bothered with mental continuity.

The second thing is that it is just disgusting. It is massively uncharitable, and an unfortunate indicator of how the neoconservative blight has managed to grow in the hearts of some who call themselves Christian. Let's not forget that before 9/11, the most dastardly act of terrorism in our history was dealt at the hands of a rednecked white guy. The Muslim is not the embodiment of all evil, people.

Yeesh.

Keep Your Morality Off My Government

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:20:00 +0000

That's right, gay marriage supporters, I'm talking to you. I'm tired of having to deal with your endless attempts to foist your own brand of morality on the rest of society. And, quite frankly, I'm sick of your clamoring for special treatment.

Now that I have you scratching your head - and, hopefully, your attention - let me explain what I'm going on about.

I got into an exchange on Twitter on November 4th, the day after Maine rejected the state legislature's approval of gay marriage. I had been monitoring "Maine" as a trending topic, and ran across a particular individual's tweet asking what the outcome had been. I jumped in to respond, and to make a long story short, my interlocutor was on the opposite side of the issue from me; and in the exchange, I found myself challenged to explain why I cared about gay marriage and whether it passed or failed in a particular state. Unfortunately, I had to go to work...and Twitter is a useful tool, but not exactly the right forum for a complex discussion. We haven't talked since then, but hopefully this will address the question issued to me. If not, the combox is open.

First, I should point you in the direction of a post I wrote a while ago regarding a secularly-grounded argument for heterosexual-only marriage. I suggest you open it up in a second tab or window and read it first, since it will serve as a base for expansion in this post.

Just to recap here, the social contract argument I developed in favor of heterosexual-only marriage involved the presence of a unique social benefit provided by heterosexual unions: procreation. For another type of union to receive the sort of social advantages enjoyed by heterosexual marriage, it would - under the social contract argument - need to provide a comparable benefit. Otherwise, the union would receive an affirmative status in exchange for nothing of real value, which makes no sense in a social contract context.

Of course in a homosexual union, procreation is not a built-in feature, while for the heterosexual unions it works out of the box. What sort of benefit, then, could the homosexual flavor bring to the party? Well, to be comparable to procreation, any social benefit to emerge from a homosexual union that would merit special treatment would need to be: first, fundamental or significant; second, derivative from the relationship that is a candidate for preferential status; and third, the preferential status would have to encourage the candidate relationship becoming widespread or normative.

Now it's time to switch gears.

But wait...Why don't I continue on the present track and address how homosexual unions fulfill the three conditions that would make them eligible for preferential treatment under a social contract setting? Simply put, because I cannot think of any ways in which they do; nor have I run across anyone who has advanced such a proposition. The problem is that, as near as I can tell, the pro-gay-marriage crowd argues their position under a very different theory - ironically, a moral theory; which is problematic in a secular, pluralistic society where we're not supposed to be bound by one another's moral theories. One would assume that this would apply most of all to the government.

The argument for gay marriage advanced by advocates seems ostensibly to be rooted in an equal rights theory akin to the one advanced by the racially-based civil rights movement. The civil rights movement argued that discrimination against racial minorities was immoral, it is true; but fundamentally the civil rights movement worked on a social contract level because nature does not acknowledge a fundamental difference between "blacks" and "whites" - same DNA, same species, end of story. There was, quite simply, no good reason to socially penalize racial minorities. Taking it back to the world of social contract theory, remember that a society acts - positively or punitively - only when it is in the service of the greatest good of the greatest number. In examining the institutional racism of the post-Civil War period, we must determine whether such an interest was being served. Without venturing too far out on a limb, I think it is safe to say that there is no real social benefit to broad-based discrimination grounded in nothing but ethnic origins. I certainly cannot find anything - please correct me if I am wrong.

If, however, you attempt to substitute homosexuality into this equation causes the whole argument to collapse. This is mainly because the civil rights being sought by the racial equality movement were rights rooted in the individual's relationship to the state, not the individual's relationship to another individual. African-Americans were being denied the right to vote, not the right to marry. I may be sheltered, but I've never seen a "gay only" water fountain, so I'm assuming that battle has already been won. The big problem is that the absence of a right to gay marriage is actually not the same as the positive existence of discrimination. Nobody but married heterosexuals enjoyed the benefits of marriage, be they siblings, a parent and child, or a man and "man's best friend." I would never argue that any of these groups is discriminated against for any reason - they happen to not be in a position to fulfill the requirements of marriage, and therefore they do not derive any of the benefits. Any claim otherwise would be like claiming that there is discrimination in favor of the President of the United States because he has the Secret Service and Air Force One dedicated to his needs, while I get neither. The complaint is utterly absurd. If I performed services similar to those expected of the President, then maybe I'd have a beef.

So, you want marriage rights? Get up off your butts, stop whining, and show me how exactly your unions benefit society so much that society should be encouraging them. If you can bring me an example of that, then we can talk.

Never Does It Ever Get Old

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:31:00 +0000

Not ever:

Sad, but True

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:55:00 +0000

(h/t to CMR)

Of Course I Did

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Because I don't have enough trouble finding time to write posts for this blog, I have decided to add more to my plate and participate, again, in National Novel Writing Month. In case you are unfamiliar with the event, essentially you try to reach or pass 50,000 words writing a novel. Ya, I be tripping.

Also, unsurprisingly, I have not so far actually started the writing, and so am just about as blindingly behind on it as I am on post-writing. So annoying.

Anybody else doing this, or would you have had you known of it?

I'll try to keep the two projects separate and not torture you by recounting the tortures of the writing process. But no promises.

I Have to Confess...

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:17:00 +0000

I did not rightly anticipate where this was going:

(H/t to Donald McClarey over at The American Catholic.)

A Good Point

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:37:00 +0000

And yes, the wolf is back. Wedding was lovely, honeymoon was fantastic. Life is still crazy, but I was going out of my mind with all the ideas that have been racking up in my head during my lengthy hiatus from this domain. In short, I couldn't stay away any longer, and so...back!

Now, just to dive in - a post about a post about blogging. The Paragraph Farmer put up an interesting piece about a week ago about some of the negative aspects of blogging on human culture. Both the Farmer's article and the piece that spurred it are extremely thought-provoking, though I may need to respectfully qualify their combined judgment somewhat.

Allow me first to say that I'm not taking total issue with the idea that blogging exercises a mentally degrading effect on the human mind. I just don't think it really deserves pride of place as the modern literary bogeyman. After all, people have been suspicious of advances in communication since the days of Socrates (see Phaedrus 67-71 for Socrates' argument as to why writing spells the end of good mnemonic skills).

I do not believe that blogging is inherently detrimental to one's attention span or intellect, any more than I believe reading the newspaper is detrimental. It's not about the medium nearly as much as it's about what is communicated in the medium. There are plenty of blogs on the Internet that contribute but scant material to the heightening of intellectual discourse. I don't even need to ask you if you've turned on the TV and felt...elevated. That would just be silly.

However, how regularly do you open up your local paper - which we are so often admonished these days is the sole defender of true discourse and thought - or your favorite weekly news magazine and say to yourself, "Gosh, boy do I feel smarter" after the encounter? Or to pick an even more hilarious rhetorical question, when was the last time you looked forward to a presidential address or a political debate. ...Oh, hello there, crickets.

The degradation of a medium is not, it seems to me, a matter of fault assignable to a particular medium; rather, it lies with the users of that medium whether it will be employed to elevate or debase. The spoken word itself has a checkered past, at least as far as social advancement is concerned - unless I am very much mistaken and Alcibiades of Athens was a particularly genteel and benign fellow in the Assembly. Heck, I'm sure that back in the days when our ancestors lived mainly in caves there was wagging of heads over the sub-par cave painters who were dragging the social consciousness back to the days when we lived under the trees.

None of this is to deny some of the empirical observations the Farmer makes regarding a reduction in attention spans. I very much believe that the Internet - as fabulous a tool as it is for exchanging information - is testing the limits of the human consciousness for the absorption of raw data. While I can chew through article after article on Wikipedia - for what that's worth - I find it more challenging to stay focused on a particular task, to read a particular piece of work, or to sustain a particular train of thought over a long period of time. There is definitely evidence for an information overload that has the effect of reducing one's attention span and patience for processing new ideas. More times that I would like to admit to, I have had to wrap up a post because my brain has moved irrevocably beyond the present project and into new and uncharted terrain.

Even the challenge of the sagging collective intellect is not unique, however. Every age has had its own struggle with mental torpor; and whether it is induced by too many blog posts in my RSS stream, or too much bread and too many circuses, is somewhat beside the point. If you are Tocquevillean, join me in staving off the premature aging of our mores. If you are a Vichian, then let us merrily fight off the throes of refined barbarity.

As the old saying goes: beating your enemy with a stick is satisfying, but not nearly as satisfying as beating him with the stick that you just took from him.

From Behind the Pile of Crazy

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:08:00 +0000

I have been remiss in my publishing duties, I know. Hopefully at some point before the end of the year, the craziness will equalize and I will be able to carve out a niche in my day for the purposes of blogging. The good Lord knows, not being able to blog has actually not helped my composure, since it means my head is - for once - actually full to capacity with ideas that are dying from terminal overcrowding rather than from the usual loneliness.

In any event...a sort of dichotomy caught my eye a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to throw it out there and see what people thought of it. On the one hand, we have an example of what happens when a country looks at global social trends and flips the proverbial bird at them, instead heading in the direction it knows is right - oh, and the country doing the bid-flipping is the Dominican Republic. On the other hand, we have an example of the radical intolerance, bigotry, and violence that we're told is endemic in the pro-life movement - except that the victim is an elderly pro-lifer, and the aggressors are abortion supporters. Whoops...I guess reality has its way of being ironic at times.

What it brings up in my mind, though, is not specifically about irony. Instead, I'm wondering if these and similar events might not just constitute an actual proof of what guilt-mongers have been crying for some time - to whit, that the European world is drenched in iniquity, and that our moral rehabilitation must come from the developing world, from the "indigenous peoples," and so forth.

Now, I know what is typically meant by that sort of judgment, and I am not using that sense. Instead of wringing our hands over slavery (I don't know about you, but I've never claimed to own an African) or the forced eviction of indigenous populations from their lands (so far as language is concerned, I fulfill all the prerequisites of being called a native American, and I've never sent anybody packing and taken their home). I am thinking more of the lifestyle colonialism that we perpetrate against the developed world in the form of birth control and abortion; or the two-faced demand we make that others observe equal rights and free expression when we ourselves eviscerate those ideals at every possible opportunity. Let's not forget, in the above links, in which country human rights were honestly upheld, and in which country an old man was beaten up by two menopausal harpies for expressing a view with which they disagreed. I'm going to use their situation as precedent the next time I'm in Arizona and feel too lazy to actually argue my position and determine that a swift kick to the crotch would be more satisfying.

*Whew*...I've been holding that in for a while.

Before I wade back in to the insanity of the present time, let me just qualify one thing in the rant above...I am not passing judgment on the European and American worlds for actually curtailing equality and expression, but rather for their hypocrisy in doing so while holding them up as some sort of ideals. In reality, I have been mulling my own evisceration of the principle of equality in response to a pair of posts that popped up in my RSS reader some time back. I disagree with both, but one merits a robust and courteous treatment while the other merits a robust and violent deconstruction. I'd get your popcorn in advance...it should be fun.

Ciao for now, amici.

Just a Quick Gasp

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Of all the things...

I have things to say. Oh Lordy do I have things to say. Of course, the only thing that gets me riled enough to poke my head out of the wedding crazy is this.

Only ten days and a honeymoon left before I can try to return to a reasonably normal blogging schedule!

Come to Think of It...

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:57:00 +0000

...This is probably true.

Just a Warning

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:45:00 +0000

You may notice over the next three weeks that I post shorter reflections, and that they come more sporadically. This is a result of having only those three weeks to finish preparations for my wedding, now that my fiancee is actually in the same state.

Or...no, actually, you may not notice a thing.

I Might Be Willing to Compromise

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Remember the criteria I laid down a while back regarding my ideal e-reader? Well, I might be willing to compromise a little bit for this thing.

Should Have Thought of This Earlier

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:56:00 +0000

In the extended household from which I originate, there are some interesting tensions that show up around the dinner table. We're Catholic - most of us are even such in most of the ways you could use that adjective - but we also come from at least a couple of generations of Republican (read: capitalist) allegiance. Oh, and we're American, so we're rigorously utilitarian, though - as you might guess from the Republican/capitalist streak - not in the sense of Millsian philosophy. Allowing these competing ideological threads to coexist involves a very tiring series of mental exercises that makes doublethink sound like a pleasant float in the pool.

I'm not trying to use my Catholicity (or the imperfection thereof) to invalidate capitalism, or one or another principle of conservative Republicanism. What I am trying to do is elucidate a principle: that at some point in my existence, I have to choose a behavioral principle that dictates all my actions. For me, that has to be Catholicism. I'll go into why that is not just a relativistic statement, and why relativism cannot be a viable alternative, in later posts. For now, let's just take me as the microcosmic subject.

There are certain things that, as a child with nothing better as a basis than perfunctory trust, I simply accepted as given. It did not dawn on me at a young age that things could contradict each other if they were taught to you as true. I could not appreciate the fact that my mother, a convert, could not know all things nor analyze the impact of her adopted faith on the societal and political teachings that she had herself been inculcated with and espoused.

However, there are incompatibilities, and in that event, something has to give. Precisely what gives, and what becomes primary, is the big question. If it were economics, then I would compromise my Catholicity - and more, affirm the Darwinian, material determinism that underpins both capitalism and Marxism. The same problem comes up if I affirm Republicanism, but with an added dimension in that I am victim to the historical inevitability of principles that shift and roam over time.

These are just unfocused thoughts at the moment...I'm hoping to lay them into some organization in the next few substantive posts. Feel free to chime in if you want to offer something up. I'll be here, letting my thoughts gestate.

Oh Doctor, My Doctor

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:41:00 +0000

Guess "who" is back. And no, that's not intended as a question.

If you were lucky enough to have a childhood like mine, then you experienced Tom Baker as essentially the Doctor in the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who. Sure, there were always more actors, and the show had a rich history and evolution of which Baker was merely a part; but in the days before I was old enough to need back stories to fill in the blanks in a plot - or, for that matter, rigorous continuity - Tom Baker was there, molding and warping my childhood imagination.

I was probably the first kid in my preschool class who used the word "de-materialize" in conversation and knew what it meant.

A Good Reason to See a Movie

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:08:00 +0000

I always love going to a movie and observing a theater full of people missing the point. Hat-tip to Darwin:

In a moment which will stand out to pro-life viewers, at one point the MNU agents moving through the shanty-town serving eviction notices comes upon a shack full of prawn eggs and larvae. Wikus "unplugs" several eggs and radios for a "population control unit" which proves to be consist of a flamethrower. "Here," he says, tossing a piece to one of the MNU security men. "Souvenir of your first abortion." Wikus explains to the camera that the popping sound they hear from the burning shack is of eggs exploding. (We later learn that prawns are supposed to obtain a license to have children.) A few minutes later, as they're proceeding through the camp, Wikus points to prawn children running by and observes that they're breeding too fast, too many children. One of the security men points his rifle at the children, "Should I get rid of them?" he asks. "No, no, no," Wikus responds, putting his hand in front of the muzzle. "You can't kill them at this age. It's illegal."

My Theme Song

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:42:00 +0000

For a variety of reasons, "All Along the Watchtower" has become something of a favorite song of mine. As a matter of fact, if I could generate a real-life soundtrack for my many adventures, I think I would have to pick it as my personal theme song. I nearly picked a line from that as a subtitle for this blog.

The question for me always was which version of the song to use? Time was, it was a choice between the Hendrix version, or the version devised as one of the storytelling lynchpins for Battlestar Galactica. Thanks to the sporadically-brilliant Dave Matthews, however, I now have an additional option to consider - one that is especially useful for the trenchcoat-clad, preternatural kung-fu battle parts of my day. It's a tough choice I have to face, man.

Politicians Don't Die...They Get Brought Back as Zombies and Nobody Notices

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:15:00 +0000

Since Senator Kennedy died, I feel that I have been literally assaulted by a torrent of verbal effluvia from almost every conceivable corner. Everyone, including Sen. Kennedy himself, seems to have approached the fact of mortality as something with at least the potential for political capital. While that does not surprise me, it does interest me.

I don't know what it is that drives us as a society to wash away the sins of the famous upon their death. Michael Jackson is a good example of this: a man who by all available data could be accurately categorized as at least "severely messed up" - and who may very well have had pedophilic proclivities - has been remembered since his death for things as many and varied as breaking down racial barriers, bearing joy to people around the world, and defining a musical and cultural era. Now, I like Thriller as much as the next guy, but it seems to me like we might be at risk of pulling a societal muscle with the amount of straining we are undertaking to turn an entertainer into a saint.

Ted Kennedy's case is very similar. He came from a political dynasty rooted in the Irish mafia, noted for its womanizing proclivities. He himself was a politician - not in and of itself an achievement deserving of instant accolades - who managed to drown his girlfriend by drunkenly driving off a bridge and sinking his car in a river. Granted, he did find himself an advocate in common cause with Catholic social teachings; but at the same time he ended up on the emphatically wrong side of the human rights equation when it came to the unborn. In the end, like Michael Jackson, you wouldn't have to hunt for long to find a bone to pick with the man.

And yet, that is not what is happening. Not only that, but everyone with a pulse seems to be talking old Teddy up, regardless of where they stood in relation to him on the ideological spectrum. Now a naïve individual might say that this is a sign of the fundamental humanity of the commenters, and that even bitter political opponents can hold one another in mutual respect.

Let me just say that this concept is utterly foreign to me - and given that I stand with our more competent founders in viewing Man as a creature ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious, I don't see how respect can enter into the relationship of political rivals as long as one side wins and the other side loses. And yes, I am exactly that cynical about politics these days.

I'm a good sport, though. Prove me wrong. Or, alternatively, agree with me. Sound off, tell me what significance you see - if any - in Kennedy's death. Oh, and while you're at it, join me in praying for his soul.

Ding Dong

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:46:00 +0000

Ted Kennedy is dead. I will be attempting to weather the orgy of public sentimentalizing that must, necessarily, follow the death of a celebrity. Hopefully, somebody will say something really stupid that will help me get something written.

Whoa!

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:18:00 +0000

I don't know how I missed this before, but thanks to Orthometer for drawing my attention to it:

(Warning: Any allergies to geekery will be severely aggravated by this video!)

Why David Hume is Full of Crap...Empirically!

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Way back when St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about the faculties of the soul, the science of neurology basically did not exist. It made perfect sense at that time to say that thought processes, reason, and memory were all faculties of the soul, not of the body. However, as time advanced, so did our understanding of the role of the human brain in these classically spiritual processes.

It's been one of my mental diversions over the past few months to try to puzzle out this conundrum. Not being, as one might say, "brilliant," I can't say that I have come up with any coherent ideas. That said, the lack of any clear-cut solution has not shaken my belief that a soul must, in fact, exist. What properties it possesses within its unique domain, and even how proper it might be to speak about it in separation from the human body - these are the sort of questions that remain unresolved.

Note, again, that I'm not falling back on raw materialism here. I am not so much of a Platonist that I believe that all things correspond to transcendental Ideas; but I do think that there is something beyond mere sense data that allows us to gain understanding about the world around us and the things in it. Apparently, this is now an empirically verifiable proposition. The irony is not lost on me.

I first happened across this post (again from the inestimably informative Deeps of Time), which started the juices churning. When I went to read the source article, I was slightly disappointed - there seemed to be more concern with immediately creating hypotheses than with contemplating the underlying fact. The proposition that a human brain - even the brain of someone who has never before seen - processes data and concepts about living things in one place while dealing with inanimate objects elsewhere is, to me, astounding. Something in the human being, on a very basic level and quite independent of empirical data, recognizes a difference between things that are alive and things that are not.

One might argue that there are a number of properties that the brain's intelligence is significant enough to recognize the differences between living and non-living things. However, if we accept the empiricist's starting point of the mind as a tabula rasa, then there are all sorts of places where the brain might mistake an non-living thing for one that is alive. I look at my cat Octavian, and I know that he is alive, among many reasons, because he is motile. However a thing does not have to be alive to move - a boulder rolling downhill is certainly in motion; clouds roll from horizon to horizon; cars zip to and fro. If I understand the proposition at play in this scientific study, however, the human brain would not process those three things as alive. Moreover, even if a discreet human was a true tabula rasa, this study suggests that his brain would not categorize them as living.

Does this neurological quirk prove the existence of a soul? Hardly. What it does do is poke a hole in the fundamental empiricist proposition - and by "poke" I mean that it punches with the force of buckshot at point-blank range.

Hume has more problems to grapple with now that a few billiard balls, it would seem.

I Knew It

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:53:00 +0000

So it would appear (h/t to the ever-awesome Deeps of Time) that my deepest suspicions are true: you morning people are friggin' mutants.

Don't any of you get too close, now. I'm on to you.

A Nice Change of Pace

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:29:00 +0000

One of the things that annoys me about political debates is that they are, in fact, not debates. Since the days of Pericles, they have never been so. Debates happen between individuals who seek both the advancement of their own thought and an understanding of their opponents' thought, with the end goal being the truth. What goes on the the arena of politics is never that. It is only ever about power, and who has that power - everyone else is pushed to the periphery and given some ridiculous label: "fringe," "extreme," "out of touch." Whatever.

For my part, I oppose the Federal government getting involved in healthcare for the same reason I have a problem with the Federal government being involved in education or art, or more than half of the other activities its tentacles have twisted around. I don't believe that the healthcare system we have is any good, either. I am not an Austrian, or any other flavor of capitalist so religiously devoted to the free market that I believe that it is somehow immune to the fallenness that characterizes every endeavor of Man. Ambition acting against ambition, in and of itself, is not a principle that can hold back the entropy of sin. In a world made Darwinian by the denial of the spiritual, there will arise an ambition tempered to be stronger than the rest...it's simply inevitable.

So Publius was wrong. What do we do, then?

Well, restoring a sense of the spiritual would definitely help. Barring that, maybe something more...subsidiary. Something like this (h/t to DarwinCatholic) would certainly help. Why? Because it allows to a far greater degree for matters of personal health to be decided by the individuals closest to the situation and most responsible for the consequences of those choices: the individuals whose health is actually at stake. Compared to the bits of text I have been able to get digested from the House healthcare bill, subsidiarity is nowhere part of the equation. (Incidentally, go here if you want to see exactly what sort of soul-sapping mindlessness the social order has been reduced to...what would Solon say, I wonder?)

Subsidiarity never is a priority with the Federal government, though. Thanks to Lincoln, "the Union" is now a thing that transcends the sum of its parts. Originally, the Union was simply a community of States, who were themselves communities of smaller units all the way down to communities and families of individuals. Now? Those individuals and communities are treated like cells and organs of a body. A skin cell from my arm is meaningless on its own...it is its existence as a part of me that provides it meaning. The same goes for my spleen, or my kidneys. Apart from me, they have no actual life, no τέλος. The problem with this approach to community is that it is false, dehumanizing, and idolatrous all at once - quite an accomplishment, really.

My problem is that I don't have enough faith in the Vichian killswitch to not fight it. It makes life interesting.

Suddenly...

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:57:00 +0000

...I'm feeling compelled to go and see District 9 when it comes out. Forget about the fact that Peter Jackson lukewarmly raped The Lord of the Rings. The man does also count Frighteners in his CV, and from what I'm reading (h/t to Patrick Archbold) this is even better. I don't know if it will atone for LotR, but fortunately I never subjected myself to his King Kong so I might be willing to write down some of the debt.

If the thing is any good. Expect a report.

Well, Now

derwolfanwalt@gmail.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:01:00 +0000

This is what I would call productivity in the healthcare debate sphere. I'd like to see it independently verified, but all the same, it's very interesting...as just about everything that comes from SHS is.