On pacifism

Question: if a man was coming toward my son to try and harm him, would I fight him to protect my son?

Answer: if I was incapable of running away, yes, I would fight to protect my son.

Question: if a man was coming toward my son to try and harm him, and he was running through a crowd of innocent people, would I throw explosives into the crowd to prevent the man from hurting my son?

Answer: No: while I would justly defend and protect my innocent son, I should not commit a violent act that harms other innocent people in the process.

And this is a part of my pacifism. It is not that I believe limited violence for self-defense is wrong. It is that war is a larger-scale level of violence that always leads to innocent people being killed and harmed. If you are willing to support a war, you are de facto supporting innocent people being hurt: that is simply the nature of modern warfare.

Great human suffering is an inherent aspect of war. War must always be an absolutely necessary last resort; it should never be entered in choice.

Christian hypocricy

Let’s talk about the Strib’s Katherine Kersten’s latest column “The future of downtown is threatened by beggars.”

Columnists have relative freedom on the subjects they wish to comment on. Sometimes they express their views not so much in explicitly stated opinions, but in the stories they focus on or the people they interview.

It’s quite obvious from the tone and subject matter in this column that Kersten is sympathetic to the view of people who want to remove beggars from downtown Minneapolis. You can tell because she talks to specific people with this view (Sam Grabarski, Paul Ostrow, and George Kelling) and presents their statements. She doesn’t talk to people with a different view: she merely calls them “opponents.” You can also tell the writer's view with word choice: in Kersten's column, beggars "accost" people, try to "extort money;" other people are "harassed" by beggars, and "feel captive to importuning beggars." Homeless beggars are the threat in such word choice, and non-homeless people--the people Kersten is obviously sympathetic to in this column--are the victims.

We can assume that the ideas she’s presenting, then, are hers, even if somebody else is actually providing the ideas. She’s the one talking to these people and writing a column about what they say: she’s making the choice to present this viewpoint.

Now, one can expect a conservative columnist to condemn beggars and homeless people, and to put the interests of the use of downtown by the affluent and middle class above those of a poor beggar. In Kersten's column, panhandlers are a "nuisance" and threaten "the quality of life" of downtown (quality of life for people who aren't homeless beggars, obviously--I'm not sure Kersten cares about their quality of life at all). But Kersten is also a writer that frequently champions the cause of religion in social issues and human life (at least, she seems to here, here, here, here, and here. Well, at least Christianity--she's not quite so pleased with Muslim practice in public life, as you can see here or here).

As a columnist so interested in the interests of Christianity in society, I wonder if she’s familiar with Jesus’s statements on poor people?

In the gospels, Jesus repeated tells listeners to give to the poor, to help the needy, to not turn away from those that ask of you. Again and again, he tells us that the godly help the poor. Somebody asks you for something? Give it to him or her. Would Jesus tell us that the beggars should be removed from a downtown area for any reason? Would Jesus recommend stricter laws to remove beggars from public areas? How would Jesus respond to this?:

“In Minneapolis, a recent survey confirmed that panhandlers often use donations to buy drugs and alcohol, says Ostrow. Giving to them might seem compassionate, he says, but it frequently just encourages self-destructive behavior.”

I don’t recall Jesus saying “If a beggar asks for money, don’t give it to him because he might use it for drugs or alcohol.” Jesus didn’t put qualifiers on anything: he said that if poor people ask anything of you, you should give. He told many parables about helping the needy among us. He never qualified. He commanded we help the poor. He never talked about being "accosted" or "harassed" by beggars; he never suggested beggars "extort" from you or make you feel unjustly "captive."

Katherine Kersten, do you agree with what Jesus said, that we should give to beggars? Or do you agree with laws to remove this “nuisance”? Do you think Jesus was telling us the truth when he told us the poor are blessed or criticized those who ignore the needs of the poor? Or do you agree with “the proposed rules [that] would ban panhandling at night, along with verbal solicitation of money within 10 feet of a crosswalk, where people feel captive to importuning beggars”?

In "John Donne the Divine and Mundane," Yoshiko Fujito says of John Donne, a brilliant poet and also an Anglican preacher, "Donne's violent dislike of beggars and vagabonds is well known [...] His eyes were always directed toward the upper stratum of society, nobility, and Court. Conversely he violently disliked beggars and vagabonds [...] This attitude may appear to clash with Christian teachings, but shows his absorption in himself..."

Is it over?

"Box Office for Horror Movies Is Weak, Verging on Horrible" by Michael Cieply.

I'm not sure anybody enjoyed the resurgence of the horror genre in the past 5-10 years more than me.

And I'm not sure anybody got sicker of it than me. It was great...so great, that everything else had to be exactly the same. It all got derivative, unoriginal, and dull. And it also shifted from plot/fear/suspense to gore.

If it's over, good. Let it die and come back to life when somebody comes along ready to do something fresh.

Commentary on the final episode of The Sopranos, which I have not seen.

SADIE: DON'T READ THIS. ANYBODY ELSE THAT DOESN'T WANT TO KNOW HOW THE SOPRANOS ENDS: DON'T READ THIS. THERE MAY BE SPOILERS.

I don't get HBO. I have not seen the finale of The Sopranos. I watched the first six and a half seasons of the show on DVD, and haven't seen any of the episodes in part two of season six.

I can only comment on what I have read happened, and on the commentary I have read about what has happened.

But there's a joke in this blog's title, a joke that nobody has ever cared enough to get: when George Costanza was in a book club, he didn't read the book.

So I'm commenting.

I've read about the final scene at Wikipedia. At various blogs through Google Blog Search, I've read two general commentaries, and I would like to comment on both versions.

1. Positive and negative reaction to an ambiguous, open-ended, non-resolute ending.

I don't see what is wrong with the human desire for resolution and finality; what's wrong with wanting a clear-cut ending? As Jerry Seinfeld says, "If I wanted a long boring story with no point to it, I've got my life." We don't usually get clear answers or resolutions in our lives; it's one reason we turn to art and entertainment. There's nothing wrong with wanting finality, conclusion, answer. There's a justifiable disappointment when our desire for a simple resolution is thwarted--and there's no reason we should be judged negatively for that.

2. Even though they didn't show it, Tony Soprano was killed; the signs are there that he is dead.

At the end of John Fowles' The Magus, you don't really know if Nicholas and Allison get back together. It's ambiguous. However, the novel closes with a Latin phrase speaking positively about love. It may be (as I believe Fowles himself has suggested) that the meaning of that Latin phrase itself gives away the real ending.

And that may be. You may think you see something without a clear final ending, but if you look closely at the signs, you actually get a pretty clear answer about the ending.

And I hope Tony Soprano is dead; that's the ending I want.

Why you should hate me

I don't get HBO.

(no, that's not the reason you should hate me).

But I watched the first six and a half seasons of The Sopranos over a 2-3 month period this winter. Since I don't get HBO, I haven't been able to watch these final episodes of the series.

So I've been following what happens on Wikipedia.

(that's the reason you should hate me).

I could have waited until the DVDs to come out to learn how the series ends, but I didn't. First of all, it would be futile: just from living my life normally, somebody would spoil events for me. I've learned about some of the things that have happened by reading sports blogs, listening to the radio, and flipping channels on TV. So there's really no point in trying not to know anything for months, because it would fail.

But even if it would succeed, I wouldn't do it.

Because I want to know what happens. Knowing the story is more important to me than actually watching the story unfold. Even if I just read episode summaries at Wikipedia, I am hearing the story--which was the real pleasure of watching for me, anyway. I don't need to watch it as it unfolds to appreciate it. I just want to know what happens. I want to know how the story ends. And I don't care how I learn: what matters in this case is not how I experience the story, but that I get to know the story.

Poetry about Art

I've been reading a lot of poetry the last few days, looking for more poems to add to my "Types of Literature" syllabus. In particular, I'm looking for poems that are themselves about art and literature. Here's what I've got so far just from The Riverside Anthology of Literature:

Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Shelley's "Ozymandias"
Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo"
Raine's "Statues"
Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar"
Moore's "Poetry"
Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts"
Kumin's "At a Private Showing in 1982"

Any other recommendations?

Generalizations

Poetry is the spirit of literature, a mystical connection.

Drama is the life of literature, always living and breathing and a part of us.

And Prose fiction is the clunky purposeful reflections based on the mud and clay of this earth.

Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man"

I mostly read tragedy or comic tragedy, so it is delightful to read a play that is genuinely funny, in which everybody ends up married off where they should be, but that is able to get across the big themes, too.

I haven't fully designed my fall syllabus for my lit class, but if I teach a play that examines war and gender roles, "Arms and the Man" will likely replace "Lysistrata."

I was struck, when reading it, by that common theme of Western literary history: the folly of a romantic worldview in the face of reality. It's in Don Quixote, it's in Madame Bovary, it's in a host of other canonical classics, and it's in Shaw.

Ambivalence: Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty"

"Ode to Duty" by William Wordsworth

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou, who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free;
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth:
Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do thy work, and know it not:
Oh! if through confidence misplaced
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.

Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,
Live in the spirit of this creed;
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried:
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust:
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray;
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy control;
But in the quietness of thought:
Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself command
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh! let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And, in the light of truth, thy Bondman let me live!

My first thought comes at the title: why is Wordworth oding anything to "Duty"? If you read Wordsworth in a survey course, or for fun, you're reading the passionate and reflective poems of his younger days. It's easy to forget that Wordworth grew into a stately (and socially conservative) Victorian poet laureate. Still, knowing the poet of nature and the imagination, I read the poem skeptically.

And so in the first stanza I think, are you we supposed to appreciate this image of Duty? A "stern daughter," "a rod to check the erring," "victory and law"? Because I don't--and I'm not entirely sure a young Wordworth does either.

And then we come to the next stanza:

There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth:
Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;

According to Wordsworth, those who don't think about Duty at all are happier, are acting "in love and truth." Sure he adds that they do Duty's work without thinking about it. But think of the nature of "Duty": the very concept involves a sense of requirement. Wordsworth lauds those who act without the sense of requirement--so is that really Duty at all?

The next stanza may again end with a conventional nod to Duty, but throughout the rest of the stanza Wordsworth talks about how happy we'll be when we know longer need Duty to guide us, a time when "When love is an unerring light." Duty may protect us, but hopefully we'll evolve past the point of needing Duty--at that point, we'll be happier. In a religious sense, it is better to behave morally because you sincerely wish to behave morally than to behave morally because there are rules requiring you to do so.

In the next two stanzas Wordsworth talks of his previous days, when he followed his own heart and ignored Duty. I ask you: doesn't that sound more appealing? And doesn't that match the rest of Wordworth's ouevre? But now, he says, he's asking Duty to guide him.

And then Wordsworth presents a different vision of Duty:

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

Here Duty is a physical imperative, akin to the Laws of Nature. The entire cosmos acts as it does according to the Laws of Nature. Can we call that "Duty"? The physical laws of the universe require the stars to behave in a certain way. In such a sense, we all have certain natural, biological requirements: we could call this "Duty," but would we attach a moral value to that?

In the last stanza Wordsworth calls for Duty to come and guide him. However, I cannot read this poem as a legitimate "ode to Duty." There is too much ambivalence, too much ambiguity. Wordsworth's consistent suggestion that we'd be happier acting sincerely without a sense of Duty calls into doubt the entire message of the poem.

Norma Marsh's "'Night, Mother"

In twentieth century literature, the concept of waiting becomes a focal point. We see it in Fowles' The Magus, in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, and to a smaller extent in Sartre's The Age of Reason and Camus' The Plague.

We see a little of it in Marsh's "'Night, Mother":

"Mama: ...You wait.
Jessie: You do something else. You don't just wait.
Mama: Whatever else you find to do, you're just still mainly waiting. The waiting's the worst part of it."

You might recall this conversation later when Mama, frantic to stop Jessie's suicide, says:

"But something might happen. Something that could change everything. Who knows what it might be, but it might be worth waiting for!"

This reminds me explicitly of the last chapter of The Magus, where Fowles talks about the existential waiting for something to happen to you. And Jessie's response later reminds me of The Age of Reason, when Jessie refers to her lost self:

"Somebody I waited for and never came. And never will....I'm what was worth waiting for and I didn't make it."

But that's all I really have to say about this rather mediocre play. I have had an interest in the meaning of suicide in literature, but I'm not sure there was a great deal added to discussion of suicide in this play.

A larger vision

From Tom Regan's "The Case for Animals Rights":

"the animal rights movement is a part of, not antagonistic to, the human rights movement. The theory that rationally grounds the rights of animals also grounds the rights of humans. Thus those involved in the animal rights movement are partners in the struggle to secure respect for human rights - the rights of women, for example, or minorities, or workers. The animal rights movement is cut from the same moral cloth as these."

It is important to note that those of us who strive for better treatment of animals do not place animals above humans. For me, I don't see treatment of animals and treatment of humans as wholly unrelated. I fit my own attitudes toward animals into a larger progressive mission (which includes striving against homelessness, poverty, war, genocide, racism, sexism, and all sorts of other evils and cruelties and injustices). It is not, for me, a matter of priorities--it is, as Dustin Hoffman's blanket in I Heart Huckabees, all connected, all the same.

Decision

As many of you know, I have often (especially in the last year, but stretching further than that) wrestled with the question of the proper moral treatment of animals. Since early October, I've been vegetarian--then I was a vegan from Dec. 27 until May 17--and now I'm a vegetarian again.

But now I have the internet at home, and many of the fundamental writings on animal rights--including some of the works of Peter Singer and Tom Regan--are out there. So I'm--mostly--going to refrain from comment or argument on these issues for now. I will instead devote my time to reading some of these foundational philosophical works. This, I feel, is a better use of my time: it's a chance to read, to grow, to develop, to think, to learn. It's a positive use of my online time--better, anyway, than discussing animal rights issues in forums like sports blogs and sites (where lately I've too often found myself in these discussions, but always for topical subjects, at least).

It's a good decision, I hope.