Torture

Using "the end justifies the means" logic leads to an obvious problem. If you believe nefarious means can be justified by a desired end, then you would be willing to use nearly any means to achieve ends you deem very important, and you will use absolutely any means to achieve ends you deem absolutely necessary. But if you do so, the only thing that separates you (whom you consider good) from your enemy (whom you consider evil) is the desirability, nobility, morality, goodness of the ends. Horrible atrocities have been perpetrated by those that believed so strongly their ends were just/right/desirable that they were willing to kill to achieve those ends.

In history there have been those (such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi) who believed their moral superiority to their enemies must exist in the means, not just the ends. John Howard Yoder's understanding of Christ in The Politics of Jesus also suggests a leader (with social/political ends) who insisted on using a moral means.

Religion does not provide a clear direction. Too often religious motivations have led humans to murderous means to achieve the ends they view their religion demands. And sometimes it is religion that leads humans to recognize a moral demand, a "higher law," which extends beyond the desirability of the end that humans have in view. So religion can lead humans to treat other humans as "means" to be used for transcendent purposes, but religion can also insist on transcendent purposes which forbid certain evil means to achieve human ends.

There is little doubt that torture denies the dignity of the one being tortured. Torture insists that the tortured person is simply a means, a means to be used to achieve the torturer's end. The tortured person does not have inherent value; the value of the tortured person is only his/her value to the torturer. Humans distort, limit, and deny each others' inherent dignity all the time, but violence is perhaps the most intentional, outright, egregious denial.

Torrential Downpour: scattered thoughts on pacifism and vegetarianism.

Unpredictability of War

David Samuels' "Why Israel Will Bomb Iran: The rational argument for an attack" in Slate illustrates one of the problems of war. Samuels makes a lot of predictions about what would happen if Israel bombed Iran. Most of these results appear as positives. But almost any act of war can seem sensible when justifying it by predicted results (especially if the war proponent is the one predicting such results). But nearly every act of war brings about unforeseen, unpredictable results. It is the unpredicted results that are often longterm negative results of acts of war.

Orwell against Tolstoy
In James Wood's "A Fine Rage: George Orwell's revolutions" in The New Yorker (abstract), Wood recounts Orwell's opposition to Tolstoy. The matter seems to be about "soft power:"

"The distinction that really matters is not between violence and non-violence, but between having and not having the appetite for power." The example he appends is an interesting one: when a father threatens his son with "You'll get a thick ear if you do that again," coercion is palpable. But, Orwell writes, what of the mother who lovingly murmurs, "Now, darling, is it kind to Mummy to do that?" The mother wants to contaminate her son's brain. Tolstoy did not propose that "King Lear" be banned or censored, Orwell says; instead, when he wrote his polemic against Shakespeare, he tried to contaminate our pleasure in the play. For Orwell, "Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind."

Surely the problem of Orwell's argument is obvious. In a free society, if Tolstoy tries to badger me into hating King Lear, I'm free to resist. In fact, I have two forms of "soft" resistance at my disposal: I can either argue against Tolstoy, or I can ignore him. But if Tolstoy starts punching and kicking me because I enjoy King Lear, that is another thing altogether. The key distinction is, in fact, between violence and non-violence.

Sanctity of Life
Today at the church I attended for Easter service, there was a prayer that included a desire to embrace a "culture of life," followed by some specifics, including concern for the unborn. And I wondered: if everybody in America that opposed abortion on the grounds of the sanctity of human life, also opposed war on the very same grounds, we might not have any more aggressive foreign wars. The same thought could probably extend to the death penalty.

That's the problem of this "culture of life" business--which life, in fact, is of concern? Opponents of abortion usually don't share the same political (or cultural?) affiliations with opponents of capital punishment or opponents of militarism/warfare (and I'll limit to a parenthetical the observation that in most contexts, when people argue over "life," the concern is limited, of course, to human life).

Paradigms of Thought: Animal Rights

When I read articles about animal rights, I consistently come across the word "suffering." It is apparent that for many animal rights advocates, "suffering" is the paradigm which grounds their beliefs. Many of the arguments against humans using animals for our benefit are framed around the animals' suffering (arguments for the animals' capacity to suffer, or arguments on the conditions which lead animals to suffer). It is certainly not the only paradigm (the question "do humans have a right to use animals?" is not dependent on animal suffering), but it is a significant one.

I must admit that the suffering paradigm does not ground my vegetarianism; for me the paradigm is personal moral integrity. It is not the suffering of animals that motivates me precisely. I attempt to avoid moral complicity in the deaths of animals. I've suggested in the past that it is the religious thrust of my mind that made me a vegetarian: it is a religious desire to live a compassionate life and a religious desire to preserve personal moral integrity (it is not with mock humility that I note my constant failure in both these areas).

I make these observations on paradigms of belief without intended judgment. These are some of the thoughts that arise when I ask myself why I am vegetarian and not vegan. It is possible that either paradigm will, at some point, push me toward a strict veganism. At the moment, however, they have not.

Moral Arguments on Meat

I have been thinking of developing a post with the sentence "I've never heard a good moral argument for eating meat." But I think I could take out the "good," and simply say "I've never heard a moral argument for eating meat." Certainly I've heard many "defenses" or "justifications" for animal consumption. But nobody can really raise the argument that consuming meat is a morally superior choice to abstaining from consuming meat. I come back to a rational claim: if you eat meat, you are choosing your own pleasure over the life of the animal. It is difficult to make this choice and still claim it as a moral choice.

The logic of militarism

I'm pulling this quote from Andrew Sullivan out of context, but I think it is worth it:

"It's also important to note that war crimes happen in every war - and that the way to judge a society is how it handles such things."

Follow the logic here: since war crimes are an inevitable part of war, the way to judge a society is on how it treats war crimes when it chooses to go to war.

I think to reach this conclusion over the inevitability of war crimes is insane (or, if you prefer, highlights intrinsic acceptance of militarism). To me, the inevitability of war crimes in war calls into question the effectiveness and morality of warfare, and suggests the way to judge a society might be how much of its resources it devotes to warfare, the efforts it takes to avoid war, and how and why it chooses to go to war. To a pacifist, Sullivan's statement is a bit like saying that if you let your kids throw rocks at passing cars, they'll inevitably hit a few pedestrians, but what matters is that you tell them to avoid hitting pedestrians, and punish them if they do.

But if you accept (or support) warfare, and you accept that warfare inevitably leads to war crimes, you're left with the conclusion that what matters is how the society treats the inevitable war crimes. When you've accepted a culture of militarism, you don't reach the conclusion that war itself is the problem.

Rejecting Militarism

Peter King writes about Larry Fitzgerald's USO tour to Iraq:

"In every stop on the four-player tour [...] of U.S. military bases in Iraq, the playoff hero told the crowd some version of this: 'Thank you. If it wasn't for you doing what you do, I wouldn't be able to do what I do. I just want you to know how much I appreciate all the sacrifices you're making -- and I'm not alone.''"

I know many people believe this: that the U.S. military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are necessary for Larry Fitzgerald to make millions of dollars catching passes. But I see it as a non sequitur that perpetuates a militaristic culture that glorifies war. This is why I can't share in Nathan Schneider's hope that

"There must be a way to honor such sacrifices as war brings out in people while abhorring the pointless insanity that occasioned it, abhorring it so completely that it can never possibly happen again."

I think this sort of mythology (that soldiers occupying a foreign nation make our necessary lifestyles possible--a belief many hold as a secure article of faith, one that is difficult to refute, yet also difficult to prove) contributes to a culture that sees warfare as necessary and honorable. The conventional wisdom that we are able to live our lives as we do because of soldiers grants a necessity to warfare that I do not accept. I want to reject militarism at all levels.

Going to the zone. The Twilight Zone.

I really enjoy the hour long episodes of The Twilight Zone. Certainly they are slow: they lack the punch of the better half hour episodes. But the longer format allows for deeper exploration of theme.

"He's Alive" features Dennis Hopper playing a would-be fascist with convincing emotional vulnerability. It ends with a haunting and eloquent image: a moving shadow of Adolf Hitler, as Rod Serling talks about the spirit of Hitler being kept alive wherever there is prejudice, hatred and bigotry. He is alive, Serling tells us, because we keep him alive.

"Valley of the Shadow" is really interesting. A reporter stumbles upon a ubiquitous creepy small town to find they have the power to manipulate matter, a power that could end disease and hunger. They must keep it a secret, however, until the world is ready to live in peace. Great scientific discoveries, the mayor tells the reporter, have been used for violence and destruction--this scientific knowledge too could destroy the world. The reporter and the mayor are able to have intriguing conversations about ends and means. If the townspeople would justify killing the reporter as an evil means to a good end, are they any better than the warmongering world outside Peaceful Valley? The town withholds the scientific knowledge that could be used for evil, but withholding the science also means letting people in the world suffer and die--are the townspeople, too, weighing means and ends? The episode features explicit and implicit exploration of peace and of freedom.

Many of the half-hour episodes feature rather ham-fisted theme; the longer format allows for deeper reflection, and even for something The Twilight Zone isn't known for: subtlety.

Nonviolence: humans and animals

Gary Francione, a vegan arguing against violence:

"throughout history, we have engaged and continue to engage in violent actions that we have sought to justify as an undesirable means to a desirable end. Anyone who has ever used violence claims to regret having to resort to it, but argues that some desirable goal supposedly justified its use."

[...]
"Violence treats others as means to ends rather than as ends in themselves. When we engage in violence against others—whether they are human or nonhuman—we ignore their inherent value. We treat them only as things that have no value except that which we decide to give them."

[...]
"Animal exploitation is pervasive in our society. This is the case because we think that the ends (the supposed benefits we derive from animal use) justifies the means (imposing suffering and death on billions of nonhumans every year), and because we treat animals exclusively as commodities and ignore their inherent value."

I hear echoes of John Howard Yoder.  Though the arguments come from a different place (Francione as an animal rights advocate, Yoder as a Christian theologian), Yoder also rejects logic which justifies horrible means to achieve imagined ends.  Yoder, too, insists upon the individual's inherent dignity, and criticizes war advocates that view human beings as means to be used (or destroyed).  And I think Francione rightly extends the logic of pacifism to treatment of animals (and applies the logic of veganism to other human behavior):

"in my view, the animal rights position is the ultimate rejection of violence. It is the ultimate affirmation of peace. I see the animal rights movement as the logical progression of the peace movement..."

Nonviolence and Peaceful Disposition

"but all these Vs: against!  against!  against!

  --Tony Harrison, "v."

When striving for a nonviolent treatment of people and animals, it is too easy to argue with anger and hostility.  Discussion of violence against humans often takes place in political argument, which splits into a contentious side-against-side debate without movement.  This is doubly true regarding animals: if you are arguing for nonviolence against animals, not only are you are in conflict with the vast majority of the culture, but you are fighting with people over very real, personal, day-to-day values and behavior.

I find myself wanting to avoid this contentiousness.  I want to strive for nonviolence, but I also want to strive for internal peacefulness and a peaceful relationship with other people.  To argue against warfare and against killing of animals, it is rather too easy to be angry and contentious, rather difficult to find that internal peacefulness and a peaceful way to communicate with fellow people.

I argue about other topics.  I argue about sports, but try to do so in an analytical manner, addressing the available data.  And I argue about literature (though that, too, can get too close to contentious argument over deeply held values).  

The hostility in discussion over nonviolence (against humans and animals) sometimes makes me want withdraw, to immerse myself into poetry, or into religion.  But does a peaceful disposition require one to leave the real striving to others?  Is quietude an abandonment of the effort against violence?

I hope not.  It is impossible to be entirely non-confrontational on these subjects--to say it is wrong to kill animals is a confrontation.  But I find myself wishing to have discussions based on reason, using rational argument to avoid contentiousness, avoiding insult or inflammatory language.  I hope to strive for nonviolent treatment of people and animals, but to treat opponents with dignity and to still seek an inner peacefulness.

The Merchant of Venice

A Reader-response tour through Shakespeare's plays continues.

In acts four and five, I found myself more riveted to the text than I can ever recall being while reading Shakespeare.

If the world is a stage, what matter is the role we choose to play. 

Antonio: I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,

A stage, where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

Gratiano: Let me play the fool, (I.i. 80-83)

Though the world as stage is a common expression in Shakespeare, this particular passage uniquely hits me.  The emphasis is on the characters acting their roles--and if the world is a stage, we the players must consider our roles upon it.

I have a recurring dream in which I am an actor, but while on stage I struggle to remember my lines, my blocking, the scene I'm in, even the play I'm in.  I sometimes think this dream is where I play out my tension in life, where I may feel like I am acting a part, and I fear that soon an audience will discover that I really don't know what I'm doing.  And I'm also a recovering existentialist, so I do find this focus on the roles we choose to play interesting.   So there are reasons a passage like this draws me.

But it also makes me think about the importance of character in drama.  In fiction or poetry, there are many elements of the work that can be ascendant.  But in performed drama, character must be ascendant--it is the actors upon the stage which must command our attention.  If 20th century dramatists like Beckett, Pinter, or Stoppard worked toward abolishing the traditional conventions of drama, perhaps their greatest challenge was smashing consistent characters.

Shylock

Is any racism in the play offset by the playwright's giving to Shylock this, as poignant a passage as any in Shakespeare?

"I am a Jew.  Hath not a Jew eyes?  Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?" (III.i)

I have trouble believing it was an anti-Semite that wrote these lines.  Furthermore, when Shylock is accused of cruelty, he counters the accusation by referencing the cruelty of the Christian world.  In Act 3, scene 1:

"And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?  If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.  If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?  Revenge.  If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?  Why, revenge.  The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

And in Act 4, scene 1, lines 90-100:

"Duke: How shalt thou hope for mercy, rend'ring none?

Shylock: What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?

You have among you many a purchased slave,

Which, like your asses and your dogs and your mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them.  Shall I say to you,

'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs!

Why sweat they under burdens?  Let their beds

Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates

Be seasoned with such viands'?  You will answer,

'The slaves are ours.'"

Appearances and Disguise

In Act 3, scene 2, Bassanio has a lengthy speech on distrusting appearances, and later in the play Portia and Nerissa disguise themselves as men.  I've noted before that the disconnect between appearance and reality is a common theme in literature and in my lit course.  It goes further: in the composition class I teach this semester, our first unit is on Fairy Tales with an emphasis on Cinderella.  A common theme we find in Fairy Tales is deceit, disguise, and the importance of distrusting appearances.  This is theme is runs deep--it is old and ubiquitous, appearing in stories from many ages and told for many audiences.

Antonio's Nonresistance

I often read books on religious pacifism (notably works by Yoder and Tolstoy) which emphasize the Christian command not to return evil with evil, to respond to threat of violence with internal and external peace.  Antonio's words as he prepares to face his own violent death strike me as an expression in the Christian pacifist vein:

                               "I do oppose

My patience to his fury, and am armed

To suffer with a quietness of spirit

The very tyranny and rage of his." (IV.i.11-14)

Mercy and Justice

I might also here reference one of the firmest lessons I took from the religion of my youth--because you are forgiven your sins, you must forgive others their sins against you.  Says a disguised Portia:

"Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation.  We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy." (IV.i.203-207)

Jesus tells a parable about a servant being forgiven a large debt, then demanding immediate payment from another servant for a small debt; when the master who forgave the large debt hears about that, he gets angry and punishes the servant.  This theme is shown in the treatment (or is it cheating?) of Shylock--he cruelly withheld mercy, and is thus treated with no mercy.   Yet I see a contradiction.  Isn't it a form of "justice" to withhold mercy from Shylock because he withheld mercy?  And didn't Portia just tout mercy over justice?  To follow the standard Portia asked of Shylock, they should now mercifully forgive Shylock, letting him go on his way without punishing him.  Though the Duke and Antonio grant him some leniency, they still do punish Shylock (pretty severely, I would think).  Shylock gets his "just" reward because he demanded justice instead of mercy--and the very people who asked him to show mercy are not now willing to show him terribly much mercy at all.

The theme of mercy gets a more light-hearted treatment in Act 5, when Portia and Nerissa forgive their husbands for giving away their rings.

Sprigs on a Barrel Organ

Dostoevsky's underground man insists on irrational motivations driving human behavior, and that furthermore, these irrational drives are directly tied to free will.  Here's what Shylock has to say:

"Some men there are love not a gaping pig,

Some that are mad if they behold a cat,

And others, when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose,

Cannot contain their urine; for affection,

Master of passion, sways it to the mood

Of what it likes or loathes.  Now for your answer:

As there is no firm reason to be rend'red

Why he cannot abide a gaping pig,

Why he a harmless necessary cat,

Why he a woolen bagpipe, but of force

Must yield to such inevitable shame

As to offend, himself being offended,

So can I give no reason, nor I will not." (IV.i.48-60)

This passage perhaps makes us sprigs on a barrel organ: though we don't know the psychological reasons we loathe certain things, nonetheless we do, and are compelled beyond our will to respond in certain ways to those things we loathe.  It is not a free unreason--there are many schools of psychology that could try take us beyond "there is no firm reason."

Ideology and Crisis

A contrapuntal essay

In John Howard Yoder's What Would You Do?, several pacifist thinkers provide answers to the "What would you do if a violent person were attacking your family" question.  Most of the responses focus on Christian pacifism, including Dale Aukerman's.  Aukerman suggests that if one accepts Christ as Lord, then one accepts Christ as Lord in crisis situations too: faith in Christ and devotion to Christ's commands should not be abandoned in a crisis moment when one isn't sure they will work:

"Perhaps a Christian says, 'If my wife or child were about to be killed, I'd certainly try to kill the guy to prevent that.'  The person is really saying, 'I couldn't have Jesus as Lord of my life in that situation; I couldn't allow myself to be limited in such a way."  That would-be disciple is deciding beforehand to go opposite from the way of Christ and, in that manner of thinking, has already turned from Christ." (79-80)

I recall this passage while reading Matthew Rothschild's "Bush Sells Free Market as Cure-All, Despite Crash." Rothschild quotes George W. Bush saying 

"I'm a market-oriented guy, but not when I'm faced with the prospect of a global meltdown."

According to Rothschild, Bush noted the market interventions the government had taken to address the financial crisis, then went on to praise the wonders and glories of the free market system.  John McCain did something similar during the election campaign: 

"In an interview with Tom Brokaw last month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was asked to reconcile his criticism of 'socialism' with his advocacy f a $700 billion bailout package [...] 'I'm a fundamentally strong conservative,' Mccain claimed.  'But when we're in a crisis of this nature, that's when government has to help.'" (Matthew Casner)

Bush praises the wonders of the free market, and McCain demonizes the specter of socialism.  In a moment of crisis, they are willing to abandon in practice the free market and apply government intervention.  But then they still want to praise the free market and demonize socialism.  Though their faith in the free market is challenged by the crisis, and they are unwilling to practice their faith to deal with the crisis, they still wish to uphold their faith.

I suppose we could take this in a couple of directions.  One direction would be an "anti-ideology" direction: in practice we should be pragmatic and do what seems to work best, not cling to an ideology.  Another direction would be "perfect ideology": if we claim an ideology, we should find an ideology that we are willing to stand by in good times and in bad times.

There is relevance in sports here too.  I play football video games. If I get down within five yards of the goal line, my playcalling is dependent on the situation.  If I'm in control of the game, I'll likely call some passes inside the five: it's more fun, it's a little more creative, and it can boost the stats of my quarterback and pass catchers.  But if I'm in a close game, in an important situation, I don't fool around with that: I'm calling a bunch of runs up the middle and making sure I get that touchdown.  

And in real world sports, coaches that stick to their system no matter what, that aren't willing or able to adapt their system for the abilities of the players on the team, for the schemes of the opponent, etc., get criticized.  In football the goal is to win the game.  If you believe that the best way to play football is run more than you throw, and the defense puts eight, nine, ten guys in the box to stop the run, it's stupid to just keep trying to run the ball up the middle again and again and again if you are capable of throwing it.

But that's football, with a clear goal and clear options, and significantly, no ethical consideration.  But there is a moral element to a nation's economy.  Sure the goal (prosperity) allows for multiple means of achievement, and various amoral ideas on how to achieve it.  But how far will that prosperity be spread out?  How will the poor in the nation be provided for?  What standards of equality, of fairness, of protection for people will there be?  As Rothschild points out,

"you can't have social justice and human dignity with mass unemployment, rampant foreclosures, high rates of poverty and food insecurity, and a health care system that leaves almost 50 million people uninsured."

Now back to the "What would you do?" question.  There are many ways to address it, and I don't have to do that here: I'll simply recommend Yoder's book if you're interested in some Christian pacifist approaches to the question (though not all arguments against violence in the book are religious).  But as we're on politics, let me make a very important point about the "What would you do?" question: the situation does not parallel or justify war.  The question that parallels war might be "would you throw a grenade into a crowd of people to stop the one violent person in the crowd?"  War is different: it doesn't resist just the "evildoers," but hurts many innocent people as well.  See Tom Englehardt:

"In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party.  This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Afghanistan and Iraq since December 2001."

Or see Howard Zinn:

"Would we approve a police chief, who, knowing there was a vicious criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordered that the neighborhood be bombed?  There was soon a civilian death toll in Afghanistan of over 3,000--exceeding the number of deaths on 9/11.  Afghans were driven from their homes, turned into wandering refugees."

However we respond to the "What would you do?" question, we cannot assume that the answer implies a justification for mass warfare.  I think if you are going to argue in favor of a war, you must do so in this language: 

"Will the civilian deaths, violent atrocities, and humanitarian disasters that are bound to result from this war be justified by the ends of this war (which we assume will be achieved, even if we do not know that they will)?"

  And if you still answer yes, you may find yourself sounding a bit like Pyle in The Quiet American:

"They were only war casualties. [...] It was a pity, but you can't always hit your target.  Anyway they died in the right cause. [...] In a way you could say they died for democracy."

What I'm reading

Fall semester always feels like rushed chaos (things I'm devoting my time to: fatherhood, the work that comes with an academic term, football, an election), and in between the madness, I find my pleasurable reading leaning toward drama and non-fiction.  Lately I've been reading religious perspectives on pacifism (What Would You Do? by John Howard Yoder and others) and animal rights (Animal Sacrifices: Religious Perspectives on the Use of Animals in Science, edited by Tom Regan).  The way I often respond to the world, including political events, is with thoughts of pacifism and animal rights.  As such, I want to ground these thoughts in the existing thought on the subjects.  And it is pleasure: these are the things I want to spend my time thinking about.

Imaginary Characters, and the Imagination

A contrapuntal essay

A character in a work of fiction is not real. That character is words on a page, existing only in the imagination of the author and the imagination of the reader.

Of course! And more importantly: so what? Does being imaginary make the character any less "real," and if so, why does that matter?

I'm not entirely sure in my mind there's a major distinction between real characters and imagined characters. When I was in college, there was a history teacher I (and many of my fellow students) adored. We discussed everything he said, speculated about his life away from college, tried to understand him and make meaning of him. He was a real human being, but for us, he was largely imagined. He did and said things for us to make sense of (but then so does a fictional character). But it's not just a mythic hero professor I imagine. My wife and I know each other deeply, but I also recognize that what we know is the character we've each imagined and invented in each other. The distinction between real and imaginary, within an individual's mind, is pretty hazy: even our politics are partly fueled by imaginary people. I oppose war in part because of the human suffering caused by war. While war does lead to real suffering for real human beings, for me these human beings are largely imagined. I don't know their names or details. But I can imagine them, and I wish to oppose what leads to their suffering. But this would move us away from a discussion of imaginary characters to a discussion of imaginary abstractions...so let's not stray too far.

And then there's drama. An actor's job is to look at those words on a page and "create" a character from those words, to perform a character, to bring a character to life aesthetically. And that means actors interpret characters, make choices about characters, try to understand what a character is feeling, how a character is motivated. The character is still imaginary, of course, but for the actor the character can't just be "words on a page." The actor sees the character as something else. Not quite fixed, for when the actor performs he or she is inventing a character just as the author invents a character. Well, not "just as." But Jack Nicholson created a Randle Patrick McMurphy--it wasn't just Ken Kesey. But developing a character for the stage requires some recognition that the imagined character is...something anyway. If not real, a complex, developed entity.

And why would we want to trash imagination anyway? Perhaps I'm too formed by the Romantic poets I've encountered: imagination as conceived by Wordsworth, by Shelley, by Keats, by Goethe, this is not imagination to be dismissed. Imagination has power; at the level of the imagined, great things happen. There is learning and growth. There is spiritual renewal. There is hard-earned truth.

History again challenges a clear distinction between the real and imagined. I've read three different biographies of Martin Luther, by Bainton, Erikson, and Oberman. Martin Luther was a historical individual, who did actual things, said actual things, believed actual things. But Bainton, Erikson, and Oberman each "invented" a Martin Luther. They interpreted Luther's words, Luther's actions, and other historians' writings on Luther, and they imagined their own Luther, then did their best to convey that imagined Luther (or, if you prefer, did their best to show their imagined Luther was the historical Luther). My conception of Luther, the character of Luther looming about in my mind, may not be fundamentally different in nature than my conception of fictional characters like Prince Myshkin, Ivan Karamozov, Sarah Woodruff, Nicholas Urfe. These are characters I try to understand with the available evidence before me. That evidence may be history, or it may be fictional "text," but there it is and my mind creates the character. Napoleon. Thomas Jefferson. OK... Don Quixote. The Wife of Bath. Hamlet. These characters belong to each of us in our imaginations. Whether real or fictional, these characters are "imaginary," and mean something, stand for something.

The fact that we sometimes compare fictional characters to real life characters shows there is something tenuous in the distinction. Today I thought about how at the end of Hamlet, Fortinbras can only talk in the language of war, can only conceive of honor and merit in war, and I thought, "That's like John McCain." And King Lear is like my grandfather. And on and on.

Why do we read as children? What happens to us as we read when we're children? And do our imagined worlds of childhood really abandon us? When we're little children we read and hear stories. Stories. Our imaginations are set afire, and we fall in love with stories, for the characters, for the events, for the plots. At some point, we become adults, and we start to call our stories fiction, and we might forget that they are stories. But what of the pleasure we got from stories? Can't we keep that pleasure? Do we need to abandon that?

And for that matter, what were earlier humans doing when they listened to The Iliad, The Odyssey? When they heard those stories, were they examining art? Or did they allow their imaginations to envision Odysseus, Achilles, Athena? I don't think those early listeners of perhaps the greatest literature of Western Civilization dismissed those characters as constructs, as aesthetic choices. I think they considered those characters characters. Maybe real, maybe not. But I picture enraptured Greeks sitting around a fire hearing the exploits of Odysseus, loving the poetry, loving the story, but really picturing a character they knew named Odysseus.

Do you envision characters? I do. In my reading experience, they are more than words I decipher. My imagination turns them into beings with form. The physical form isn't always distinct, but they still have form. Perhaps even simply moral form.

I've come a long way here, asking more questions than I've answered. And I can only speak for myself as a reader, what my mind does while reading. I do encounter these made up characters. They don't exist, yet an author and I work together to construct them. They become "real" in my mind. I know they are not, but that doesn't matter to me. For some of those characters stay in my imagination, lingering. Their presence makes me aware of myself. They judge me, they prod me, they inspire me. I go about my life, and they are there, always ready to remind me of something I ought not forget, always willing to teach me something. They are nothing, they have no existence--yet I cannot escape them. That's imagination.

Hamlet

I am reading all of Shakespeare's plays in the course of a year; this is the first.

Why Hamlet endures: death
Death is the universal reality, and Hamlet is consumed with it. Hamlet meditates on death as annihilation, on the mysteries of the afterlife, and on the physical aftermath of the body. Laertes shows concern for the ceremonial rites to commemorate death. There is discussion of the religious/moral impact of death, about whether characters are able to be absolved of sins before death. Death is the universal theme, and so Hamlet will always have universal appeal.

Why Hamlet endures: language
The plot is familiar, and the emotional impact may be lost, but the language endures and will endure. This is just spectacular poetry, indescribably great. The wordplay is genius, and the poetry awesome. Even trying to find words to express the beauty and brilliance of Hamlet's language seems cheap.

Why Hamlet endures: pretentiousness
Most people who read or watch Shakespeare these days are intelligent, and probably self-aware of intelligence. And so it would not surprise me if most readers of Shakespeare have at some point thought, consciously or unconsciously, something like the following:

"I'm very, very smart. It's my lot to be surrounded by small-minded fools: some of them have positions of authority over me, and many of them are out to get me. But I have more wit and insight than any of them: I'm smarter than them all."

Such readers find a character to relate to in Hamlet.

Reader-Response: Pacifism
If Shakespeare ever set out to write a play to say "Revenge is folly. Violence is folly. Vengeance is cyclical, and only brings about more bloodshed. All violence, whether evil or 'righteous,' can only bring horror," he would have succeeded in Hamlet. Of course I don't think Shakespeare set out to write Hamlet with such a precise goal, but the play still speaks to me as a pacifist.

Fortinbras
I used to see a conventional catharsis in the ending of Hamlet: the country was sick, there was a great purging, and now Fortinbras comes to restore order and health. Then I saw the '06 Hamlet at the Guthrie in Minneapolis: Fortinbras is portrayed as a preening, ambitious warmonger, and ascension to the throne is a continuation of corrupt and brutal power. Now when I return to the text, I don't see how I missed it. Throughout the play, Fortinbras is only referred to for his belligerent nature and behavior. And at the end, when examining the carnage at Elsinore, he can only speak in terms of warfare, and he can only honor the deaths with the trappings of warfare. Whatever sickness was purged in Denmark, Fortinbras can only be expected to bring carnage.

Christian Humanism: peace, equality, animal rights

"...with the Christian sense of human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body..."
--Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You

Peace and Equality
Pacifism is rooted in a sense of equality. To use violence against a person is to deny his/her inherent dignity, and to assert that one person's well-being is less valuable than your own (or another's). Religious people may understand this in a spiritual sense (we are all equal before God), though it has political meaning as well. Gwyn, Hunsinger, Roop, and Yoder state in "A Declaration on Peace" that

"The Dismantling of racist and patriarchal norms and structures subverts one of the traditional foundations of militarism in history."

And that

"The royal servant people is politically engaged and partisan, working with and for movements that embody more just and equitable economic relations, more peaceful resolutions to conflict, and the broader distribution of authority and decision-making in society."

It is thus that for me pacifism and equality are important elements of Christian Humanism. I despair of the history of racism, misogyny, and bigotry in our world, of the institutional and individual bigotry still existing, of the continuing anger and conflict over these issues, of the violence ensconced in it all. And I can come back to Tolstoy's words, that in this complex world, in which we are all complicit in (even if not individually responsible for) inequalities of society, I can still treat all people I encounter with "human dignity and equality." I must, and it may be all I can do.

Animal Rights
Since making the choice to become a vegetarian almost two years ago, animal rights has been a major part of my life (a personal note: since going mostly vegan less than five months ago, I've lost 46 pounds). Vegetarianism is a daily action for me, a repeated choice, and issues of animal rights often take up my thoughts.

My view on animal rights does not spring from Christian tradition; it comes from a separate area of knowledge. It may be occasionally informed by Christianity, but I do not use Christianity to center my vegetarianism in the same way Christianity can center my pacifism. I did not become a vegetarian because of my understanding of Christianity. And yet, I don't think I would be a vegetarian if I not for my own religious journey.

It is a background in Christianity that instilled in me the importance of integrity in action and in conscience. It is not so much that religion provided me with a sense of what is right (though I'm sure it did), but more that religion taught me I must seek what is right and act according to conscience. If it had not been for the religious formation of my mind, it might not matter to me that animals would die for my pleasure. Religion did not teach me that it is wrong to eat animals, but it did teach me that if I believe it is wrong to eat animals, then I must not eat animals.

And to some extent, compassion for humanity and compassion for animals are grounded together. My behavior toward humans and animals is grounded in the belief that my actions toward others should be peaceful, compassionate, and good. Christianity taught me that I must treat all people with dignity, even sacrificing myself for others, so in some way my view of animal rights is merely an extension of what Christianity taught me. I must treat humans with compassion, even sacrificing myself, and so I can also treat other living creatures with compassion, even sacrificing myself.

The reasons I'm a vegetarian are not religious (in fact they are based on science and reason). And yet it is a religious sense that permeates my actions, a religious sense that guides me to seek truth and act accordingly, a religious sense that teaches me to follow my conscience. And so I too consider animal rights a part of what I call Christian Humanism.

"The only way to end war is to cease to fight"

We have our greatest confirmation of Orwell yet. When an adamant supporter of a particular war, whose policy plan is to continue a particular war, ends a commercial with "Reform. Prosperity. Peace" (emphasis mine), there is no more intellectual honesty, and politicians can use words to mean whatever they wish them to mean.

This same politician says in another commercial, "I hate war" (I believe this is quoted on Franlin Roosevelt's monument, by the way). Of course we all should hate war: the debate isn't between people who love and hate war, but between people who disagree about whether war is moral, effective, or necessary.

But in an upcoming election, the politician who has adamently supported a current war, whose intention is to continue the war, is campaigning with the word "Peace" and saying "I hate war."

(The title of this post is a quote from "Peace Is the Will of God" by Historic Peace Churches and International Fellowship of Reconciliation Committee, 1953).

Life in Ideas: Seeking a Peace Church

I am a Christian Pacifist, but I'm also Lutheran, which has in its doctrines acceptance of Just War Theory. This does not mean that all Lutheran congregations support war in general or particular wars in particular, but simply that it can, and some do. The church I attend (because it is my wife's church) is rather pro-war, in my opinion.

But I've been loathe to leave Lutheranism because of my understanding of the sacraments: I share with Lutherans (though not Lutherans exclusively) similar belief of the meaning and understanding of Baptism and Communion. The historic peace churches have a different theological belief. And the sacraments are for me very important.

But I feel I may be reaching a point that Christ's message of peace transcends for me the meaning of the sacraments. I don't want to be a part of a church where it is open for debate whether one should support a war or not. I want to be a part of a church which proclaims a message of peace, and a part of a group that takes action for peace.

In my ideal, I'll become half-Lutheran, half-Quaker. My wife and child (and future children) would be members of a Lutheran congregation, and I could still attend with them part of the time to receive the sacrament. But I would attend Quaker meetings, and participate in Quaker actions. I'm not sure that's entirely possible.

I'm sharing this as a part of life in ideas. In "Human Morality and Animal Research: Confessions and Quandaries," Harold Herzog refers to animal rights activists as "people who change their lives because of an idea." I am one of those people: I have changed my life for an idea, becoming a vegetarian. Because of an idea, there are concrete changes in my daily meals, my social interactions, and my purchasing decisions. Ideas are for me not abstract concepts: they are guiding forces in concrete, real behavior (which might be why I am drawn to Dostoevsky, whose characters are so radically motivated by ideas).

And now an idea, an understanding of Christ's peace message, has been guiding another change in my life. For me, Christian pacifism needs to go beyond merely saying "I am a pacifist," for in day to day life in middle America, the pacifist and non-pacifist may not behave terribly differently (though I've tried to take pacifism deeper than opposition to violence, and into forgiveness of trespasses, respect for the dignity of all creatures in other ways, and avoidance of conflict). I want to join a peace church, and be a part of a peace community that proclaims peace to the world.

Reading McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"

The power of literature is largely in imagination. Reading allows me to escape myself, to experience the world for someone, somewhere, somewhen else. The stories we read are largely imagined by the authors, and re-imagined by the readers. Reading takes us away from our own narrow experiences and into another experience.

But when I read, I do not set myself aside. I am a vegetarian, and when I read descriptions of animals being hunted or eaten, I became conscious of myself. I am a pacifist, and when I read depictions of violence, I become hyper-aware: what is happening, why is it happening, how is it being represented, etc.

And that is the paradoxical power of literature. Even as it can take you away from your Self, it thrusts you deeper into your Self.

"Responsible Appeasement"

"The word appeasement has been almost unspeakable since 1938, when it became the specific label for the acceptance by Britain and France of Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia. Yet the root meaning of the term points to what all good government does most of the time, namely, accepting the sacrifice of what would be ideally desirable rather than fight a war about it. This approach is agreed by all to be right in every case where such a sacrifice works and it is possible to avoid hostilities."

--John Howard Yoder, in Nevertheless

Let's go further to point out that merely talking to your enemies can in very few instances constitute "appeasement."

A pacifist watches Dexter

In Dexter, Dexter Morgan is a serial killer that only murders other killers. At the end of season one, Dexter muses on how horrified those around him would be if they knew the truth. But then he reconsiders--they might actually approve of what he does. He uses violence to stop bad guys--he keeps other people safe. He fantasizes about people cheering for him, cheering for his violent deeds. They cheer him, tell him they love him. As he walks, they surround him as if for a parade, a hero's welcome. Surrounding it all is red, white, and blue confetti.

Reader-Response and Moral Reading

Reader-response Theory discusses reading in terms of "experience," "transaction," or "relationship." It also recognizes the role the reader brings to the text: as a work of literature barely exists outside the mind of the reader, it is worthwhile to examine the reader's participation. It is perhaps the most honest way to read: it doesn't pretend at the objective analysis that other critical approaches may. It requires me to understand that the way I read is but one mode of reading.

Reader-response Theory also recognizes the impact of reading. While it may focus on what the reader brings to the text, it also does not treat the text as an artifact, sealed in a vacuum. Reader-response Theory fully embraces the reality that the text brings something to the reader. We can be deeply, fundamentally changed by what we read.

We might also recognize the morality a reader brings to the reading experience. I am not an Aestheticist: my interest in literature is not to treat the work of literature as an aesthetic creation devoid of moral meaning. I read as a moral being, and I explore art for its moral meaning. That does not mean attaching the author's morality to the text, as Daniel Green recognizes one shouldn't, but exploring moral meaning in the text. Whatever personal failings a writer has does not detract from my reading of that writer's work (though as I'm writing here of the legitimacy of subjective modes of reading, who am I to say another reader must ignore the author's life?).

My most prominent ethical realities are in my embrace of pacifism and my advocacy for animal rights (I was initially going to call them ethical "stances," but they are not mere poses; they are very deep ways of living and thinking that infuse my everyday life). As a reader, I cannot put those ethics aside (that doesn't mean I can't develop an interpretation separate from those ethics--my point here is the reading experience). As I read Golding's Lord of the Flies, a story which explores human nature and violence, I certainly read it as a pacifist. It would be stupid to think I could set aside my opposition to violence while reading the story.

When we think about the things we say about War

There is one common argument used to continue the war in Iraq that, when we consider it, it is both obvious and absurd.

The argument goes that we must keep fighting in Iraq because military generals, soldiers, and veterans believe we should continue to fight in Iraq.

But think about it carefully. This argument suggests we should continue the war because:

People who have embraced military values wish to continue the war.

People who are trained to wage war wish to continue the war.

People who have put their belief in violent solutions into practice wish to continue the war.

People who wage war for a career wish to continue to the war.

When you think about it, isn't that a bit obvious? This argument is always self-justifying: it suggests a behavior should be continued because those who believe in and devote their lives to that behavior wish it to continue.

Should we continue a war because people who choose to serve in the military wish to continue a war?

Should we continue a war because those who accept violence as a means wish to continue a war?

If your best argument for waging war is that those who wage war for a living say we should, you may want to reconsider your logic.