Author Archives: Dave Mathwin

8th Grade Literature: Inevitable v. “Evitable”

by Dave Mathwin

This week we finished our look at Asimov’s I Robot with it’s final story, “The Evitable Conflict.” Our first story involved a companion robot that could move but not speak. The last story moves decades into the future to a world where AI/robots essentially run the world though extensive and precise economic planning and coordination. War is a thing of the past, as is unemployment. Unquestionably humanity fares better in this new world, but accompanied with trade-offs

The final story has a somewhat banal premise. The seamless economy, the “perfect” robots, have performed wonders, but a few of their calculations have been slightly off. These errors have not caused any serious problems. Workers displaced from one industry, for example, quickly find work in another. But could these small errors presage the collapse of machine driven learning and governance? If so, would the people’s of earth (nations do not really exist anymore) descend into chaos?

The speed of AI advances has brought the subject of technology and human autonomy to the forefront of our minds, but the question is an old one. Many myths deal with this question, as does the Bible.

For example, both Hesiod and Ovid in their mythologies write about technology that comes soon after a golden age, a nod to the idea of Edenic paradise. Hesiod writes,

First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.

He goes on to write,

But when earth had covered this generation also — they are called blessed spirits of the underworld by men, and, though they are of second order, yet honour attends them also — Zeus the Father made a third generation of mortal men, a brazen race, sprung from ash-trees; and it was in no way equal to the silver age, but was terrible and strong. They loved the lamentable works of Ares and deeds of violence; they ate no bread, but were hard of heart like adamant, fearful men. Great was their strength and unconquerable the arms which grew from their shoulders on their strong limbs. Their armour was of bronze, and their houses of bronze, and of bronze were their implements: there was no black iron. These were destroyed by their own hands and passed to the dank house of chill Hades, and left no name: terrible though they were, black Death seized them, and they left the bright light of the sun.

We see in Genesis this same pattern linking the devlopment of technology with violence. In Genesis 4 the line of Cain first developed the implements of civilization, including cities, tools, and the arts. After killing his brother, Cain was condemned to be a wanderer. Adam and Eve had been covered with “garments of skin” after the Fall, for they could no longer be naked (we should read this in literal, but also metaphorical terms). We could no longer have a direct relationship with creation or God Himself. Cain’s punishment was meant to return him to “nakedness,” to help reconnect with God and the enormity of his terrible deed. Cain rejected that and immediately began to make “coverings” for himself in the form of a city and other implements of civilization.

We see that cities/”civilization” have a bad rap in the first section of Genesis. This obviously starts with Cain, but continues with the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Egypt. There are hints of another possible path, however, with Melchizadek in Genesis 14. The same tools that are used to isolate Cain’s line from God can also be used to build the tabernacle and other sacred vessels, which brought the Israelites potentially closer to God. We get a hint of the redemption of cities when King David takes Jerusalem and makes it his capital. Finally, in Revelation 21 we see that redemption means something more than a mere return to the Garden. Instead we have a garden enclosed with a city, which indicates that though technology involves “coverings” that come from the Fall, that too becomes part of the redemptive story.

Our relationship with technology should reflect this tension and this hope. Technology enhances human power and potential, which is not always a bad thing. But at the same time, those same advances make us reliant on the tool itself. For example, the Israelites were not forbidden from using chariots (a significant ancient military technology) but they had to limit their use of them and other means of obtaining power (Dt. 17:16, Is. 31:1, etc.). For centuries technology developed, but at a measurable pace. Over the last 150 years, and perhaps especially in the last 60-75 years, the speed of development and its immediate integration into society has made it difficult to know where the line between help and hindrance might be. Many of us might choose to limit our interactions with phones, for example, but nearly all of us have to interact with computers, cars, and a host of other technologies all the time to function at a baseline in the modern world.

In “The Evitable Conflict” Asimov shows himself as essentially an optimist about technology. We can coexist and thrive even with highly advanced and “intelligent” machines guiding us. Many fear that AI will stifle human activity and imagination. Asimov envisions a world where AI instead unlocks and spurs human innovation, and in this Asimov anticipated our modern debates by some 75 years.

In Asimov’s world we design all artificial intelligence to obey the three laws of robotics, and the first law means that robots are not allowed to harm humans. They have to obey humans, and preserve their own existence as well. In the story the characters grapple with the following options as to what happened:

  • The machines have made wrong conclusions. If true, this means that the premise that we should follow the advice of the machines may be faulty as well.
  • The machines have been fed false information deliberately by an unknown source. If true, this would mean that the machines were being delibearately led to false conclusions, which also would mean that the advice of the machines should always be viewed with suspicion.

By definition the machines cannot be wrong. But even if they were, they have developed too far too quickly for humanity to have any idea how to find the error and repair them. In an ironic twist, the advancement of machines means that only advanced machines can fix the machines.*

The protagonist of the stories, robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin, suggests that the robots may be giving slightly inaccurate information on purpose, in a sense, to protect themselves and to preserve human flourishing. At the end of the series of stories in I, Robot, the robots have learned to understand human emotions as well as the fluctuations of human behavior. It is perhaps possible that the AI can make things “perfect” in certain ways but it also “knows” that humanity won’t really accept that. So–the machines adjust, much like in the movie The Matrix.

The Head Coordinator suspects that some other regional heads are actually part of the Society for Humanity, which attempts to push back against our reliance on the machines. He then suggests that such people should be arrested and the organization banned.

Dr. Calvin advises against this. For one, such an action might make them martyrs and inspire more resistance. But her main objection is that the machines have taken such factors into account already. The small “errors” of the machines are in fact there on purpose to allow for humanity to have enough sense of autonomy that they do not rebel against the machines.

Asimov seems to be in favor of this state of affairs, but admittedly, I find it hard to be sure what he thinks.

Last week I showed the movie Primer to the class, for a variety of reasons. I wanted to expose them to sci-fi in another format, and I wanted to show them that great stories (the movie won many awards, and is a favorite of mine, so I am biased) do not need fancy effects or locales to achieve their purpose. But my main purpose in doing so was so that we could discuss the movie alongside of “The Evitable Conflict.”

The movie’s two main characters have two different perspectives on our relationship to time and causality. Without too many spollers, the story has two friends Aaron and Abe inadvertantly invent a means to go back in time for a day or two. They both realize the possibilities inherent with this for good or bad. They decide to use the machine a few times to get rich. But soon a rift develops bewteen them.

  • Aaron wants to unlock the metaphysical possibilities of the device. He doesn’t mind getting rich, but it’s not what really motivates him. Above all, he hates sameness and routine. His job, his middle class life, family, etc.—he chafes against it all. Could things have been different? Now, the machine allows one to try and see.
  • Abe believes that the order of things must be preserved at all cost. He is willing, through a very careful process, alter their lives (and no one else’s). But messing with order itself introduces the possibility of endless permutations that could destroy reality as we know it.

Most major technology that gets mainstreamed into society seems to have a paradoxical effect on us.

  • On the one hand, the new technology seems to offer nearly limitless possibility
  • On the other hand, it seems to create more uniformity of our human experience, not more diversity.

For example, Netflix offers thousands of different things to see. But most of the time, most of us,

  • Browse around for 10 minutes, then
  • End up watching one of the top shows advertised by Netflix

One might think that we would constantly be running into people telling us about the great show they unearthed on a streaming platform that you had not heard of before. But for most people, this rarely happens.

Another example . . . when the internet first became mainstream most believed that consumers would now have almost unlimited options about where to shop. We would no longer be confined to whatever stores we located nearby. And yet, most of us most of the time go to Amazon and buy what we need there. Amazon is so effecient and convenient, we feel no need to “shop around” like we might have 30-40 years ago.

Whether consciously or otherwise, Asimov tapped into this paradox with the last story in I, Robot. On one hand, following the advice of the machines leads to, by most means of measuring, greater human flourishing. But this state of affairs seems so homogenous, so routine, that it seems to be something “less” than human. Is Asimov then suggesting that machines are overall “better” than humans? Perhaps not, but I do think he believes that both have something to teach the other. That in itself is quite the controversial claim.

DM

*My dad has told me often that “back in the day” more or less everyone could repair their car with a small amount of knowledge and a few tools. Now, fixing cars requires specialized knowledge and tools. In many cases, fixing cars first means hooking your car up to a computer for it to diagnose the problem.

8th Grade Civics: An Experiment in Freedom

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings Everyone,

Having spent much of the year with 20th century history, Aristotle, and Machiavelli, we now shift our focus (without leaving either of them entirely behind) to our own Constitution and how it functions. The ‘tent pole’ related to this will be an extensive activity related to how our system of government works, and how our founders conceived of how democracy should best function.

Living 250 years after the fact, we take certain things about America for granted. Having lived with the same Constitution and the same general ideas for so long, we can imagine that such things are simply part of the structure of the universe at some level. In fact, many key concepts about the Constitution were radical for its time, and the founders saw it that way. America would be, and perhaps still is, an experiment whose final results may be undecided.

In the late 18th century, the main prevailing idea about democracy and republican government involved two key assumptions:

  • Democracies can work, but only within communities that are essentially homogenous, where people know each other and trust is high. Too much diversity within a community would create the need for a strong centralized state to hold people together, which was antithetical to democracy.
  • Plato thought the ideal size of the city should be 5000. Aristotle avoided choosing one fixed number, but thought that a large city of, for example, 100,000 people would be ungovernable. Other subsequent political thinkers thought likewise. All agreed that large republics would lead to the breakdown of democracy. The example of Rome proved this. The collapse of the Republic between 133-31 BC had many factors, but their overseas expansion into Africa and other parts of the Mediterranean certainly contributed.

Many often dismiss Plato as an impractical idealist, and some of his thought may deserve this. However, in his section of The Laws where he argues for the right size of the city, he makes the salient points that

  • We cannot rightly choose leaders if we have no way of actually knowing them
  • Communities are built first on trust, not law, and we cannot trust each other without having the possibility of knowing one another.
  • A community must have a “center,” which binds both in a spiritual/cultural manner and in a physical manner. This geographic center (usually a religious site) needs to be easily accessible to all for the community to function.
  • The larger the community, the more opportunity for variation exists. In a small community, differences between the wealth of each citizen would likely be moderate. But in a bigger community, with greater variation introduced, those differences would grow. In Beverly Hills, some houses are bigger than others, but everyone has a nice house. In a poorer area, houses are not as nice but everyone’s house is equally not as nice. If you combined Beverly Hills with poorer areas together, then you would have a problem.*

A more contemporary political writer admired by the founders was the French judge Charles Secondat Montesquieu,wrote in his Spirit of the Laws that

It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too considerable to be placed in any single subject; he has interests of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy and glorious, by oppressing his fellow-citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country.

In an extensive republic the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is more obvious, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have less extent, and, of course, are less protected.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the different states had to decide how they would exist together. Combining would create a huge country, and every prominent thinker in every state knew political theory. Creating a government with greater central unity would have advantages, but could democracy survive the size and diversity of the country? Many had grave doubts.*

After the creation of the Constitution in 1787, each state hotly debated its merits. Many prominent revolutionaries (such as Virginia’s Patrick Henry) opposed its ratification. This led to James Madison and Alexander Hamilton (with an occasional assist from John Jay) to write a series of essays now known as the Federalist Papers, which made the case for the Constitution to the public at large.

James Madison wrote two of the more famous essays (#10, #51) that tackle the problem of large republics. In these essays, Madison ingeniously (though controversially) turns the problem of large republics on its head and attempts to flip the script. Madison begins by identifying faction as the key enemy of democracy. A “faction” comprises a group of people within the state who combine to act adversely to the public interest. An example might be a group that wants to pass a law imposing an extra tax on everyone with red hair. Such a law would obviously unfairly benefit the general population at the expense of a few.

Madison admits that given the fact that

  • Democracies allow for people to be different and believe different things, and
  • People are naturally selfish and unreasonable,

factions will inevitably exist. What to about them? We could either eliminate them or control their effects, i.e., limit the damage they cause. To eliminate them would mean refusing the population liberty and creatings stifling centralized governement. The cure would be worse than the disease.

The other option involves controlling their effects, and here Madison ingeniously and controversially flips the script. He argues that, in fact, a large republic can better control factions. In a small population, if the “tax the red haired people” faction comprised a majority in a small city, the faction would prevail. But that same faction would represent only a small part of a larger population and would pose no real threat to governance.

Of course, other factions would exist, some of them just as pernicious or worse. But the multiplicity of factions spread out over a significant area would end up canceling each other out. The large geography and the large population would act like water, which moderates the extremes of temperature.

One has to admire Madison’s audacity and ingenuity. The question remains–was he correct? One can reasonably answer the question in the following ways:

  • Madison was correct because we are still here 250 years later. We still have our Constitution and regular federal and state elections. We have had issues, bumps, and bruises but those are inevitable in any case.
  • Yes, Madison was right for his time but given our situation, his idea fails to land. Madison could not have foreseen the advent of mass media, which changes the equation. Mass media allows for the formation of a national consciousness and hence, nation-sized factions. We have seen factions take over and destroy both Germany and Japan in the 20th century, with the Nazi Party and a military dictatorship, respectively. One could argue that a faction ruled Russia/Soviet Union for nearly 75 years.
  • No, Madison was wrong. He had a brilliantly inventive idea, but one that simply was not correct. We have had continual problems with trying to live out a national life with a large republic. We barely survived the election of 1800. We had the Trail of Tears, the Nullification Crisis, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, COVID controversies, etc. Aristotle and Plato were correct–a large republic creates too many problems, regardless of the presence of mass media or not. We would be better off with thousands of different smaller communities scattered throughout the continent.

Whatever one might think of Madison’s ideas, we should realize that our founders conceived of America as an experiment that might not work, and that each succeeding generation has to maintain the delicate balance required to keep a republic.

Dave

*Plato thinks faction is a problem, but believes that distraction is the biggest problem a state can face, and he relates this to the disparity of wealth that can exist between citizens. He writes,

The form of law which I should propose as the natural sequel would be as follows:-In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues-not faction, but rather distraction;-here should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty, nor, again, excess of wealth, for both are productive of both these evils. Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or wealth. Let the limit of poverty be the value of the lot; this ought to be preserved, and no ruler, nor any one else who aspires after a reputation for virtue, will allow the lot to be impaired in any case. This the legislator gives as a measure, and he will permit a man to acquire double or triple, or as much as four times the amount of this. But if a person have yet greater riches, whether he has found them, or they have been given to him, or he has made them in business, or has acquired by any stroke of fortune that which is in excess of the measure, if he give back the surplus to the state, and to the Gods who are the patrons of the state, he shall suffer no penalty or loss of reputation; but if he disobeys this our law any one who likes may inform against him and receive half the value of the excess, and the delinquent shall pay a sum equal to the excess out of his own property, and the other half of the excess shall belong to the Gods. And let every possession of every man, with the exception of the lot, be publicly registered before the magistrates whom the law appoints, so that all suits about money may be easy and quite simple.

8th Grade Literature: Robots on the Brain

by Dave Mathwin

This week we began our reading of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, a famous and influential collection of short stories oriented around the theme of human interaction with robots in the near future. Asimov wrote these stories in the 1940’s and 50’s, but he was remarkably prescient about some of the issues and concerns those in the future (us) would have about the advances in this kind of technology. The stories begin with robots that interact with humans but cannot talk, to robots that make active predictions, invent religions, and learn to lie which pose a host of problems for their human inventors. I don’t see Asimov as warning his readers so much as informing them that the advance of robots, whether ultimately for good or ill, is inevitable.

Asimov has robots developed with three laws:

  • A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm
  • A robot must obey the orders of a human being, unless that order conflicts with the first law
  • A robot must protect its own existence so long as doing so does not conflict with the other two laws.

The laws are hierarchically structured, so that Law 1 takes precedence over Law 2, and so forth.

The three laws look solid. Their simplicity is their strength. But stories deal with the implications of these three laws, as the technology develops. One of the strenghts of Asimov’s work is that what looks simple on its face becomes complex as we interact with the new technology.

Some time ago a friend who worked as a computer programmer said something to the effect of, “Computers will do exactly what you tell them to do. When we have a problem with a computer, we likely either a) Do not understand what we told the computer to do, or b) We told the computer something different than what we thought we told them.” This holds true in the stories we have read so far.

The first story involves a robot that a family buys to serve as a companion for a young child. Obviously, they want the robot to be safe, and to look out for the safety of the child. The robot would have to be accommodating to get along with the child. But this in turn means that the robot would then enjoy what the child enjoys as a robot would, which means . . . all the time. What child wouldn’t want a companion that essentially plays with you and accommodates you whenever you want.

The child, naturally, would bond to the robot and forget about other children. The mother in the story sounds exactly like parents today. The concern is the same, only the particulars have changed. Every mother who worries about their child’s attachment to their phones, computers, or video games (why can’t they play with children instead of machines?), sounds just like the mother in the opening story, “Robbie.”

But . . . if the child is happy and if the robot protects her from disaster (which he does), and if robots are the way of the future and are simply part of how kids grow up these days, then the presence of robots becomes inevitable eventually. In this way, the mother in the story comes across slightly as the “bad guy” and such is the subversive nature of Asimov’s first story. Asimov wants us, I think, to be precise about the nature of our objection to robots.

  • Is it that we dislike change? But change in any society is inevitable.
  • Is it that we dislike the speed of change? The change may be uncomfortably fast, but if others are doing it, won’t we have to adapt to keep up? Civilizations that fall behind often get absorbed by other civilizations.
  • Is it that we dislike this particular form of technology? Ok, but how would a robot differ qualitatively from other technology that we already use? For example, a dishwasher is a robot that does not move or talk, though it does communicate with us. Our phones cannot move but can talk back to us on some level.

My impression is that with these stories, Asimov wants to force us to come to a clear understanding of what our views of life, technology, and “progress” actually are. We can’t dislike something just because it is new, or just because it is shocking or unnerving. For example, when cars were an extremely disruptive technology when first introduced, but are now just part of society. But I am also guessing that Asimov would not simply agree that any new thing must therefore be adopted. The hard question remains—where to draw the line, and why?

In the first story, “Robbie” (the robot) becomes more human like the longer he interacts with the child. For example, he learns to have favorite stories. But for humans to interact with robots, they have to learn to think according to the 3 Laws, which means, thinking like robots think. In time, some kind of overlap between robot and human “psychology” and behavior become inevitable, another unintended consequence of technology.

In all the stories, Asimov sets up the narrative so that the robot cannot really be blamed. They follow instructions. The problem is that we cannot anticipate all the ways in which they might follow those instructions, and how that will change society and humanity all at once.

In one story this means that robots learn to lie in ways similar to humans. As robot technology advances they interact more socially with humans. When we interact with those we know, we do not always tell each other the unvarnished truth. We might tell a friend that an outfit looks good even if we don’t think so, as just one example. After all, we don’t want to “harm” our friend by telling them what we really think. As the stories progess and our interaction with robots gets more complex, the robots’ ability to follow Law 1 (no harm to humans) increases. This, in turn, means that robots start to tell people what they think they want to hear, which leads to great confusion.

The Jazz Age

by Dave Mathwin

Some no doubt find themselves enormously annoyed at the rise of flat earth ideas. I find flat earth theories fascinating, though in no way do I profess belief in a scientifically measurable flat earth. The Earth is round. But, I confess, I would find it hilariously fun if indeed the Earth was physically flat, probably because I am not a scientist.

I find the recent appearance of these ideas intriguing not because I find them convincing, but because of what it says about our cultural moment. In other words, the “physical” part of what flat-earthers say might amount to nothing. The fact that they say it, and that many seem to agree, surely evidences a general weakening of the center in our culture–a signal amidst the noise. We no longer trust even the most basic of assumed narratives.

Traditional authorities and traditional ways of creating meaning in our culture no longer work. Many loaded criticism onto the CDC for how they handled COVID. I have no great love for the CDC, but one could view them not as the main character in a tragedy, but almost as a minor player in a much larger narrative. This breakdown of trust in the central narrative has happened in other areas as well, in elections, in the media in general, and so on.

But, while I have a large amount of trust that we live on a round earth, we all know that experientially we live on a flat earth most of the time. We do not experience the rotation of the earth–we see the sun move. Our senses are not lying to us. Here the bare facts of the Earth’s rotation matters much less than our experienced reality. Our experience shapes reality more so than the other way round.

On his Marginal Revolution blog Tyler Cowen posted an amusing link to every problem laid at the feet of jazz in the 1920’s and 30’s. If one takes the time to peruse, we see jazz blamed for

  • Warts
  • Small family sizes
  • Indigestion
  • Difficulties in college athletics

and so on. The natural reaction for us moderns typically involves a bemused smile at the obtuseness of panicky fools in the past. Perhaps we imagine that we ourselves would never react in such a way. The key here for historians at least, involves seeing if any signals exist amidst this mishmash of chatter.*

Most every western culture experienced profound shifts after W.W. I. One can argue that such changes had their roots in developments decades earlier, in the Industrial Revolution, or centuries earlier with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. One can go back further if you want. Making connections like this has its place, but we also need to separate, to delineate, as well as join together. Acknowledging the myriad of forces that drive change, we should ask if Jazz in the 20’s and 30’s stands out in any particular way.

Many have remarked how W.W. I destroyed the last vestiges of aristocracy in Europe, both physically and culturally/spiritually. This brought about more democracy politically, but perhaps more importantly, also culturally. Now the “bottom,” or “low” culture would have more prominence. I do not use these terms in a derogatory way. High and Low culture both have their place–the question involves what place, exactly. Perhaps one could argue that

  • Beethoven (maybe Mozart?) helped start this downward movement by using emotional themes and motifs heavily starting in the middle of his career. This has significance because of the place of emotions in the structure of the body, which reflects in certain respects the structure of the cosmos. Appealing to the emotions meant appealing to our bellies, what lays “lower” in our being.
  • With Franz Liszt, we see a mixture of high and low culture (‘high’ skill with ‘low’ folk motifs) with a ‘low’ reaction to him (ladies swoon and scream–he’s a rock star).
  • At the turn of the century Mahler (whose music I neither like nor understand, so take this with salt) completes the destruction of the classical forms, paving the way for something else. Maybe Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring worked in a similar way upon the world.

The visual arts mirror this trend in music, starting with Turner as early impressionism, down to Monet, Van Gogh, and then finally Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase

Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, London 1775–1851 London) The Lake of Zug, 1843 British, Watercolor over graphite; 11 3/4 x 18
Nude Descending a Staircase

This progression towards less fixed form and more loose, popular expression up until W.W I certainly took place, but the dam had not burst, so to speak, however many cracks any perceptive observer might have noted at the time.

But with the breakout of jazz and swing. suddenly popular, “low” culture became the dominant culture, flipping things from a top-down/old-to-young to the reverse. Now the young grabbed the throne, and culture obligingly followed. The manic way people took to this new form should indicate that something was not quite right. Clearly, something happened in how we viewed the world, something throttled us, in a sense, and made us into something new.

Marshal McLuhan has the fascinating idea that the switch to electricity primarily drove this change, which began in earnest just before W.W. I. His complex argument can get boiled down to his belief that

  • The culture of ‘printing press’ man would lend itself to a filtered experience of the world. We gained the ability to separate our experiences in a detached way. For example, any selection from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier has emotional content, but that comes later in the listening experience and not right away.
  • The electric age would thrust western man back in time, to a more tribal mode of culture, where sensory experience integrates and brings everything “all at once.”
  • Whichever culture we prefer, this sort of culture will not facilitate the “cool” detachment needed in a linear print culture. We would now run “hot,” experiencing culture When listening to, for example, James Brown, the impact is immediate, and does not lend itself to analysis as does Bach.

Again, whether one regards this shift as good, bad, or indifferent, it represents a massive psychic shift in perception, which would lead to a new way of life.

I do not suggest that we should adopt McCluhan’s thoughts whole hog. Exploring religious factors would also yield interesting results. But culture stands right next to religion, and I find his lens a good one. The music of jazz, appearing right at the advent of radio and electricity, fits into this shift. The experience of early swing music at least has an immediacy, and totality of effect.

The linked post from Marginal Revolution about the impacts of jazz show lack of thought, some stabs in the dark, and some panic. But those early worry-warts had an intuitive insight–they knew that something big was afoot that would alter everything.

In its modern incarnation, democracy arose from the pinnacle of the print age in the late 18th century. Our political practice, and our rights, such as freedom of speech, require a certain amount of practiced detachment. This posture now runs in short supply in certain aspects of our culture, and we may soon experience a seismic shift akin to what took place in the 20’s and 30’s. So, when we poke fun at the past and assume our own superiority, we should pause. Our modern world might resemble chickens without their heads soon enough. If the bare facts don’t tell that story, our experience might. Historians should look in both places.

Dave

*None of what follows should be seen as disparaging to jazz. It is one of my favorite musical genres. I regard Count Basie (more than Louie Armstrong or Miles Davis, though obviously they are all magnificent), as one of the great emblems of American culture of the 20th century. No one managed such a distinctive, punchy, groove for longer. Miles Davis had more intellectual inventiveness, and John Coltrane played with more rich emotion. Neither of them have nearly as much fun as Count Basie. Likewise, Basie could never be considered the best piano player, and maybe not even a “great” piano player (though I would say so, but admittedly in a certain sense of the term). But he was always the most fun, as this little moment at the 4:05 mark attests.

8th Grade Civics: Democracy Moderated

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings Everyone,

This week we nearly wrapped up our look at Machiavelli’s The Prince and also, in light of the conflict in Iran, revisited sections of Machiavelli related to “occupying territory.” The conflict in Iran also relates tangentially to the section we examined this week on the ruler and his relationship to flattery.

Machiavelli writes,

I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with difficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they run the danger of falling into contempt. Because there is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you; but when every one may tell you the truth, respect for you abates.

Therefore a wise prince ought to hold a third course by choosing the wise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking the truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires, and of none others; but he ought to question them upon everything, and listen to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions. With these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to carry himself in such a way that each of them should know that, the more freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred; outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls into contempt.

Machiavelli continues with an example that was “modern” to his own time:

I wish on this subject to adduce a modern example. Fra Luca, the man of affairs to Maximilian, the present emperor, speaking of his majesty, said: He consulted with no one, yet never got his own way in anything. This arose because of his following a practice the opposite to the above; for the emperor is a secretive man–he does not communicate his designs to any one, nor does he receive opinions on them. But as in carrying them into effect they become revealed and known, they are at once obstructed by those men whom he has around him, and he, being pliant, is diverted from them. Hence it follows that those things he does one day he undoes the next, and no one ever understands what he wishes or intends to do, and no one can rely on his resolutions.

Some might say that Machiavelli’s observations do not really apply to our situation, seeing as how we do not have “Princes” and “Courts”where they can be flattered. I believe, however, that

  • With the significant growth of executive power since WW II, and perhaps especially in the post 9/11 era, we may be moving into something more similar to Machiavelli’s scenario than we may realize.
  • The dynamics of power and human nature are likely to be quite similar regardless of the particular political system involved.
  • Machiavelli’s thoughts about flattery are related to the idea of democracy in general, specifically–if we take democracy as a good thing, is it possible to have too much of a good thing? How “responsive” to the people do we want our political leaders to be?

If we see this metaphorically, we might envision the man bereft of good counsel and surrounded by flatterers akin to a man on a deserted island. Though he may be surrounded by people, he is in fact alone, for all he sees and hears will only be a reflection of himself. The leader who allows everyone to speak his mind anytime is surrounded by everything all at once, akin to a man bobbing along after being washed away by a flood, with no proper means to distinguish good advice from bad.

I recall reading about a famous marketing study done at a store offering samples of their distinctive jams and jellies. They wanted to boost sales, and had a table offering around 15 different products for shoppers to choose from. This ploy did not boost sales. Customers might try a sample but rarely then went and bought it from the shelves. The store brought in a consultant, who told them to limit their samples to two or three at most. This move boosted sales immediately. Their first strategy overwhelmed their customers, who might have enjoyed the sample they had, but would then wonder if perhaps one of the other 13-14 options might be better.

Machiavelly suggests that what is needed is not so much a certain number of opinions, but a certain type of person who has a proper procedure for how to hear and process different opinions.

A prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel, but only when he wishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to discourage every one from offering advice unless he asks it; but, however, he ought to be a constant inquirer, and afterwards a patient listener concerning the things of which he inquired; also, on learning that no one, on any consideration, has not told him the truth, he should let his anger be felt.

We explored these thoughts in class and it led to us trying to connect them to the situation in Iran.

First, Machiavelli’s insights inform us that democracy may be a good thing, but it is a relative, and not an absolute good. Leaders who constantly shift their ideas and policies based on polling will not lead. They will lose respect and essentially abicate their position. But for democracy to work, our leaders have to listen and stay connected to the people to some degree. Again, democracy needs proper channels to give us effective governance.

Machiavelli was not considering democracy when he wrote this chapter, but his thoughts can readily be applied to our situation. The students considered whether or not an elected official or one who inherits his position would potentially be more subject to flattery. As the students observed, on the one hand

  • Those who inherit power might come from a society where those with less status regularly and by custom offer those of higher birth praise and privilege. Flatterry would come naturally in such a situation.

But on the other . . .

  • Those who inherit power in theory have no need to support their right to rule with adulation. They do not need the acclaim of the people to rule. They have no need of the people to rule, so they should be immune from flattery
  • Democratically elected leaders have to constantly have an eye on the polls, and they make seek an admiring entourage to insulate them from the criticism that comes with any democratic country.

With the growth of presidential power over the last few generations, combined with having a large professional standing army, the need to consult Congress or public opinion before military action has decreased significantly. The growth of technology has significantly compressed time and space, so that the speed at which things can happen has increased dramatically. If everyone can be faster, you have to be faster still. In this environment, public consultation and debate can be seen as a luxury even a democracy cannot afford. The advantages of surprise, while not decisive, have also likely increased as the ability to pinpoint targets and destroy them has also increased. For example, most everyone would argue that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a success. And yet, in that very successful (for it’s time at least) attack, the Japanese missed many crucial potential targets, including fuel depots, power stations, factories for ship-building, and the like. Had the Japanese hit these targets, any effective US response in the Pacific could have been delayed by several months. Today, the addition of 7-8 more missiles with precision guidance could take care of that problem.

All of this could in theory be cited in support of a massive attack without Congressional support or any public conversation in the preceding weeks leading up to the attack. However, such actions would signal new democratic norms moving forward. If these new norms harden into consistent practice, this even more weight put on our already fraught presidential elections, for it would further concentrate executive power.

However, as Machiavelli hints, democracy requires some public discourse, and some “counsel” from other avenues of democractic power. Here Aristotle, our other main reading partner this year, would likely agree with Machiavelli. The best things in life come in the form of the golden mean between extremes.

Dave

Just War as Christian Discipleship

by Dave Mathwin

Methodical.  Inexorable.  Annoying, sometimes provoking, and yet, ultimately convincing and convicting.  All these words sum up my 1441206817reaction Daniel Bell’s important book on the Christian just war tradition.

First the bad:

Bell could have used a better editor, and bears the hallmarks of a first book from the author.  He slides all too often into a repetitive and heavy didactic style, and uses paragraphs chock full of rhetorical questions that pile onto one another.  Not as bad as Mr. Chadband from Bleak House, but I might parody this habit of Bell’s thusly:

“And what are we to make of the Gadsden flag motto (used by Marines) “Don’t Tread on Me?”  Does it express a sentiment in line with the sacrificial love of Christ?  Does it encourage a transformative view of suffering?  Would such an attitude lead to just warriors?  What kind of motto’s should our soldiers use?  Is the church ready to inform the military about such things?”

So this was wearisome.

Bell also never applies his ideas to any particular conflict, which seems too easy for me.  Bell espouses some controversial ideas, but I wish he stuck his neck out a bit more and applied his thinking to some actual wars.  Granted, the reader can do this for himself, but Bell should have guided the reader a bit more in the interpretation of his ideas.

Despite these weaknesses, the book reminds us that the Church, nations, and militaries have almost completely lost touch with Christian concepts of “Just War” theory and practice.   Bell’s book does not condemn war outright.  Rather, he seeks to completely reframe the way we examine the issue, which may explain why both pacifist theologians and military chaplains have endorsed his work.

Speaking from a “Just War” tradition within the Church has its limitations.  Rarely did any accomplished theologian comment on the issue at length.  The Church’s most powerful voices on the topic, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, dealt with just war theory only in an in ad-hoc fashion.  Bell points out, however, that while the Church had few official individual voices on the topic, an agreed upon understanding more or less existed from the early days right up until the modern era around the 17th century.  Thus, Christians have access not just to Scripture, but also to an authoritative history of understanding of just war, what I will refer to as “The Tradition” in the rest of this post.

Bell’s main argument centers around his assertion that waging “Just War” has much more do with sanctification than a checklist of criteria that then give us justification to act as we please.  To fight justly means fighting as a Christian, with love for one’s neighbor and one’s enemy.  Fighting justly means not seeking to maximize personal well-being, or national safety, but working for the good of others.  Bell rejects pacifism.  There are times when acting faithfully might mean using force to achieve just ends.  But Bell argues well that if we cannot apply the central truths of the gospel message in how and when we fight, we have no business fighting at all.

This has many implications for us.

Self Defense

Modern understandings of just war often primarily focus on personal self-defense, or defending property, or maintaining a “way of life.”  But this approach puts ourselves, or our nation, before others.  Thus, “self-defense” can thinly disguise selfishness. As Augustine stated, “Christians should rather be killed than kill, rather suffer harm than harm others.”  Charity must prevail even under dire circumstances.

But as happens so often in this book, when you think Bell resolves the issue it deepens.  Christians can fight to defend others, particularly those who cannot defend themselves.  Christians can put others first by risking their own well-being to serve others.

If we wonder how we tell the difference between defense of self and others, Bell sympathizes.  The Tradition gives us no formula, no checklist, and this flows directly from the gospel itself.  For example, no checklist can tell you when you love your wife.  A husband cannot say, “I bought her flowers and watched the movie she wanted to see.  Therefore, I love her, and she should know I love her as long as I continue to do those things.”

What really guides the practice of Just War is not a list but just warriors themselves, who apply the gospel ethic to their situation.  This lack of black and white guidance may frustrate us at times, but Bell fears that the checklist mentality will give us carte blanche to do as we please once “the enemy” meets certain conditions.  I remember an anecdote about an ex-boxer bothered by a drunk. The drunk hit the boxer a few times, and the boxer responded, “The Lord told me to turn one cheek, and then the other.  He said nothing about a third time,” and proceeded to whale away on the unfortunate man.

The Purpose of War

From General Sherman we get the modern view that, “War is all hell.”  Those that follow Sherman believe that war remains essentially irredeemable, and making war as short as possible forms much of our strategy as to how we fight.

The Tradition offers another perspective.  In one sense we must treat fighting a war like any other activity.  We fight wars that we might grow in holiness, that we would grow closer to God.  For Christians war should develop the fruits of the Spirit.  If it can’t we have no business in it.

This may mean exercising patience.  It may mean that we fight in such a way where we give up physical advantages because of the moral problems that may result from our use of these advantages.  If we maximize the pain and suffering of our enemy in such a way that minimizes our own, we cannot claim to be just warriors following the call of Christ.

When We Fight

Following Christ means exercising charity towards one’s enemy, and charity requires us to give every reasonable chance to settle differences without violence through diplomatic pursuits.  We can use violence only when we know we have given other measures a fair try.  This raises questions about the impact of a large, professional, full-time standing army.  German theologian Karl Barth (no pacifist) argued that standing armies make it much easier for states to go to war than it should be.  Having an army always ready strongly tempts nations to use it much quicker than they ought.

We might reasonably ask whether or not one can exercise love and charity and kill another human being.  The Tradition says yes.  Justice can never rise to the dignity of the word if it stands separate from love.  “The Lord disciplines those He loves.”  Using force against another could be an act of charity.  You may be preventing them doing evil. Your “discipline” might move them to repentance.  Of course, once a person dies they cannot repent.  So the Tradition states that while we may at times use force, we must try not to kill our adversaries if we can avoid it.  Again Bell urges us to abandon the checklist in favor of Christ-like character.  Sometimes a just warrior may kill, but this killing must serve the gospel for the world and, crucially ourselves.  We cannot sacrifice our own souls or our own humanity in war.  One thinks, for example, of Joan of Arc, weeping over the English dead and praying over their wounded after a battle.

This might reduce the effectiveness of the military.  But it would be grossly uncharitable for us to urge that the military de-humanize itself and stand outside the Tradition so that we may be safer.  And–a dehumanized military would not serve us well in the long run anyway, and perhaps might even pose a threat to us.

Bell’s calls us all to own the call of “Just War.”  The military draws its direction from society, so the public must practice just policies if we want our military to do the same.  Again, the “just war” lifestyle is nothing less a Christian lifestyle, and we are all called to this.

In light of the witness of the Tradition, we have much to consider from not only our history (Sherman’s march through the South, carpet bombing in W.W. II, etc.) but also our current practice.  We already have extensive moral failures in how we use drones.  We waterboard but use the “checklist” mentality and avoid calling it torture.   The Guardian reports that we get doctors to harm prisoners by a perverse use of semantics.  The full articles is here, but the pertinent quote from it might be,

“Medical professionals were in effect told that their ethical mantra “first do no harm” did not apply, because they were not treating people who were ill.”

This does not mean that soldiers sin more than the rest of us.  Rather, soldiers sin in the same spiteful and selfish ways as all of us.  And this is part of the point Bell tries to make.  Fighting involves the application of our Christian faith just as much as teaching Sunday school.  Whatever, our problems as nation, whatever issues we have in the military,  all of us own them.

Bell touches on other topics, but at its core, the Tradition calls us back to our primary allegiance to Christ, not victory, the “mission,” expediency, country or tribe.  If our main concern is the salvation of our soul and the spread of His Kingdom, we will view war very differently than we do currently.  We may need to reevaluate why, when, and how we fight.  We may need to adopt the practice of  stepping outside our national context and ask if our side even represents justice in the first place.  This is what makes Bell’s book so necessary for us, and so difficult to accept.  As the Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain wrote,

We have no illusions about the misery of human nature.  But we have no illusions, either, about the pseudo-realists who cultivate and exalt evil in order to fight against evil, and who consider the gospel a decorative myth that we could not take seriously without throwing the machinery of the world out of order.

8th Grade Literature: Giving and Taking Away

by Dave Mathwin

For our next unit, we will examine short stories and literature that deal with the question of technology and its impact on humanity. In thinking about “impact,” we will think about how technology changes society, but more importantly, about how technology changes how we conceive of the meaning of our humanity. I know that this will be a challenging unit, but I hope that the students will enjoy it.

We are used to thinking of technology as neutral. Something is invented, such as a hammer, and the hammer is neither good nor bad. Rather, we can do a good thing with the hammer (build a house) or a bad thing (hit someone on the head with it). But we, the human being, remain independent from the hammer. We give meaning, form, and function to the hammer. The communication, or interaction, is, in this view, all a one-way street.

There are elements of truth to this idea, but it is an incomplete view of our interaction with the tools we create, whether those tools be a hammer, a dishwasher, or a computer. As we interact with the hammer, there is a sense in which the hammer is interacting with us and changing us thereby.

This happens even with our most simple tools, such as a hammer or shovel. We can forget the psychological impact and just focus on the phyical changes that we undergo when weilding these tools. Someone who spent their days hammering and shoveling would experience a change in their body, as certain muscles would grow where before they were possibly weak. The hammer and shovel would change our body, and this is obvious. The fact that we have the slogan, “If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” indicates that we perceive that something psychological happens between us and the hammer in our interactions, even if we do not directly perceive it.

There is a Chinese anecdote which runs as follows:

As Tzu-Gung traveled through the region he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden.  He had dug an irrigation ditch.  The man would descend into his well, fetch a vessel of water in his hands and pour it out into the ditch.  Then he would repeat the process as much as necessary.  While his efforts were significant the results seemed meager in comparison.

Tzu-Gung said, “There is a way whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day with little effort.  Would you like to hear it?”  [He then proceeded to explain the pulley-system with a larger bucket and grooves running out to the ditches].

Then anger rose up in the man’s face. “I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses a machine does all his work like a machine.  He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine loses his simplicity.  He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul–and so we lose all honest sense.  It is not that I do not know of such things: I am ashamed to use them. 

Very few of us would be willing to go in all the way with the Old Man in this story. But it is important we understand the trade-offs involved in our use of technology. What technology gives is usually quite obvious and useful. What it takes away is just as much a part of the story, though it is less obvious.

I would summarize the relationship of technology to humanity thusly:

Every increase in power creates an increase in vulnerability.

For example, a match creates fire much more quickly than sparks from two pieces of flint, or rubbing two sticks together. A match gives us power over the element of fire. However, having matches means we have lost the skill of creating fire in the traditional way. If our box of matches gets wet, we would be incapable of making fire. We now must devote extra energy to keeping the matches dry, men from previous eras had no such concerns.

Or imagine a person who wants to travel from New York to Los Angeles.

  • Walking would take the longest amount of time, but the physical act of walking risks only a twisted ankle
  • Running would take less time, but increase the possible injury risk to a broken ankle or leg
  • Riding a bike would take even less time, but a crash on a bike could badly injure parts of our whole body
  • Riding a car would reduce the trip from weeks to days, but if we make a mistake driving, or something big goes wrong with the car, we could be badly injured or killed.
  • A plan would make the trip in hours instead of days, but even a mild mechanical problem with the plane would mean death as the almost certain result.

We can also think of how much power comes from our invention of electricity. Among other things, electricity allows us to be vastly more productive than civilizations of earlier eras. We can make many more things much more quickly. But, if the electrcial grid went dark, what we could produce would drop to near zero. We have become completely dependant on electricity for most things that sustain our civilization. Our electrical grid is perhaps our greatest vulnerability.

The ancients were well aware of this trade off. Plato includes an anecodote in his “Phaedrus” dialogue that may have been from Egypt involving the invention of writing.

 At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, “This,” said Theuth, “will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. “

Thamus replied: “O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

Some may argue that there is nothing inevitable in this trade off. Hypothetically, we did not have to abandon riding horses to drive cars, or abandon working with flint as we used matches. Hypothetically, we could have maintained modes of production that did not need electricity in tandem with the development of the power grid. Possibly, this is true, but I cannot recall an instance where this actually happened in history. In general, it seems we have to accept the trade-off, all or nothing, for good or ill. Technology seems to “require” this of us. Often the tail wags the dog with technology (think of how much of our society has been oriented around the car), and this seems to be the rule and not the exception, at least since the Industrial Revolution.

The costs of technological advances are usually hidden, which clouds our discernment about adopting such ideas or not. We see what it gives, and not what it takes away. This is the main theme of our introductory story, The Monkey’s Paw.

8th Grade Literarture: A Tale Told by an Idiot

by Dave Mathwin

In the Socratic dialogue “Cratylus” Socrates and his friend Hermogenes attempt to discover if language has any real meaning. We know that words can take on or lose meaning depending on context and time. But can the word “door” actually mean something absolute. Can language convey more than our momentary cultural attribution of particular sounds.

Socrates wants to find the origin of names and words, and believes that words, if they are to have any meaning at all, must have a connection to ultimate reality. He comments,

So just as a shuttle is a tool for dividing warp and woof, a name is a tool for giving instruction, that is to say, for dividing being.

“Giving Instruction” can be interpreted as giving us wisdom. Words must be a clue to reality, and how we use words must convey something about how we perceive meaning in the world. Language then, cannot belong onlyto an individual, but neither is it a purely democratic medium. We don’t get to vote on the meaning of words. Rather, language is a cultural possession, a trust, and a storehouse of meaning.

So Cratylus is right in saying that things have natural names, and that not everyone is a craftsman of names, but only someone who looks the natural name of a thing and is able to put its form into letters and symbols.

But Socrates also understands that language has a fluid aspect to it, and no one time, place, or word, can fully grasp ultimate wisdom and pure being.

Perhaps you didn’t that [the names] are given on the assumption that the they name are moving, flowing, and coming into being. . . . Wisdom (phronesis) is the understanding of motion (phoras noesis) and flow. Or it might be interpreted as taking delight in motion. . . . Wisdom signifies the grasping of this motion.

In other words,language and meaning can bend, but not break. Understanding this difference is one of the keys to any healthy life and culture.

I open this post with this blurb about language because as Macbeth transpires, the title character and Lady Macbeth lost their hold on the nature of reality. Both of them can no longer trust their perception. Is a dagger really in front of Macbeth or not? Has the ghost of Banquo really appeared to him or not? Does Lady Macbeth actually have blood on her hands or not? Both of them lose their ability to perceive the world around them, and this only adds to the confusion of their internal moral compass. For them, the meaning of words, the meaning of sight, and the meaning of life itself, all disappear.

One of Macbeth’s most famous soliloquies in the play reads,

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Some see this as evidence of Shakespeare’s pessimism or even nihilism, but we must remember that this speech is given by the villain of the play at the very end of his moral decline. At this point in the story, Macbeth has completely abandoned the moral and social ties that bind him to his fellow man and to creation. As a result, he can make no sense of his experience of the world. Other characters around him affirm the possibility of creating a sensible state once again, but not Macbeth. He does not wish to die but confirms that he has no particular reason to live. He is trapped in a world without meaning of his own making.

One common theme in Shakespeare’s work is the confusion and decay that happens when the normal structure of society gets upended. Shakespeare belonged to a world where the basic order of society was regarded as divinely given, or at least partly divinely ordained. Modern democracies do not share this belief, seeing the social hiearchy as continually fluid, Some believe that all hiearchy should be continually dismantled and the social oder continually refreshed. But even if we do not share the convictions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we can observe the effects of a social order that lacks clear delineation.

Our lives are governed mostly by routine. Some find this stifling. I believe (along with Edmund Burke and others) that routine actually liberates. When we need to think and rethink all of our actions and decisions, it brings paralysis, not freedom. Shared routines allow us to easily perceive meaning in the actions of others. Routines also free us up to think and ponder, for example, the meaning of a Shakespeare play. We would not have this freedom if we had to overly scrutinize the meaning of our wardrobe, to give just one example. We would be stuck wondering if a polo shirt or t-shirt would be more appropriate to do the day’s tasks.

Without routine and established order, we would exist in a world where we could not perceive meaning. All standard social cues would be abandoned. Communication with those outside your social and ideological circle would be impossible. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both confuse the meaning of words during their descent into madness and death, especially around the meaning of the words “man” and “woman.”

The “good news” in this situation is that nature itself cannot abide this situation for very long. Meaningful order and hiearchy must reassert itself. This is what Macbeth briefly experiences before his death, when “Birnham Wood” comes to fight with him.

Macbeth’s simple plot hides an important message for us, not just about morality, but about the structure of society as a whole, and what role language plays in the construction of society.

Dave

8th Grade Civics: A Friend in Need . . .

by Dave Mathwin

This week in Civics class we looked at our support of the Afghan insurgency during the 1980’s. Next week the students will be involved in a big project where they have to decide why, when, and how to support the Afghan soldiers against the Soviet invasion, but we started by looking at Machiavelli’s thoughts on auxiliary and mercenary troops.

Machiavelli has harsh words for rulers who rely on mercenaries, but to the suprise of many, he had even more reservations about the use of auxiliary troops.

He begins chapter 13 of The Prince writing,

Auxiliary armies – that is, when you ask a powerful ruler to send military help to defend your town – are likewise useless.

Auxiliaries may be efficient and useful when it comes to achieving their own ends, but they are almost always counterproductive for those who invite them in, because if they lose, you lose too, and if they win, you are at their mercy.

To fight his neighbours, the emperor of Constantinople brought 10,000 Turks into Greece and when the war was over they wouldn’t leave, which was how the infidels began to get control of Greece.

So anyone looking for a no-win situation should turn to auxiliaries, because they are far more dangerous even than mercenaries. With auxiliaries your ruin is guaranteed: they are a tightly knit force and every one of them obedient to someone else; when mercenaries win they need time and a convenient opportunity before they can attack you, if only because they’re not a solid united force, you chose them, you’re paying them, and hence it will take the man you put in command a while to build up sufficient authority to turn against you. To summarize, the big danger with mercenaries is their indecision, with auxiliaries their determination.

Mercenary troops are only in it for the money. They are expensive, and cannot be relied upon. They have no investment in the cause and hence cannot be relied upon to fight with any real spirit. But still, because

  • You pay them, and
  • You created them

they lack organization and direction apart from you. They won’t help you much, but neither will they hurt you either, aside from your checkbook.

Auxiliaries are a different category.

  • They exist independently of you, directly accountable to others, not yourself
  • They have their own ideas, agendas, etc.
  • They have cohesion and can fight well

You won’t have to pay auxiliaries, at least not directly. They have much greater fighting capability than mercenaries. But, you are playing with fire. You may travel together for a time, but in supporting them, you may be nurturing a monster that could later turn on you.

Machiavelli mentions another possibility with the use of auxiliaries later in the chapter, writing,

When, with luck and good leadership, Charles VII, Louis XI’s father, had pushed the English out of France, he saw that a ruler needs his own troops and so set up a standing army of both cavalry and infantry. Later, his son Louis disbanded the infantry and began to hire Swiss mercenaries. It’s now plain that this mistake, together with others that followed, is what lies behind France’s present troubles. By giving this important role to the Swiss, Louis had weakened his whole army, since, with no infantry of their own, his cavalry were now relying on others, and once they’d got used to fighting alongside the Swiss they started to think they couldn’t win without them. As a result the French are unable to take on the Swiss in battle and won’t fight anyone else without their help. So French forces are now mixed, part mercenary and part their own men. Such composite forces are much better than just auxiliaries or just mercen- aries, but much worse than having all your own men. France’s situation proves the point, because if the standing army Charles recruited had been reinforced or just maintained, the French would be unbeatable. But men are so thoughtless they’ll opt for a diet that tastes good without realizing there’s a hidden poison in it.

In this case, the use of auxiliaries weakens yourself. You grow too soft, figuring that others can handle the hard things.

There are a variety of examples of both principles. Here I will just cite two:

  • As to the first principle, in WW II we used and nurtured the Soviet army. It was quite weak even in 1941. But they initiated internal reforms and got a lot of aid and supplies from England and the United States. By 1943, the Soviets turned things around decisively. By 1945, they were an exceedingly formidable army that crushed the Germans. No question–England and the United States were aided tremendously by the Soviets in the fight against Germany. One can definitely claim that the Soviets had more to do with the defeat of Germany than England or the U.S. Even before the war ended, the Soviets began occupying territory and opposing us. It took the better part of the next four decades to defeat them.
  • As to the second, in the post World War II world, much of Europe has in fact used the United States military as “auxiliaries.” Countries such as Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, etc. have armies of their own, but they are essentially ornamental. Rightly or wrongly, much of Europe opposes aspects of our foreign policy but they have no means of opposing it effectively, as they have no means of acting independently in a military manner.

Machiavelli makes his point about self-reliance referencing a famous biblical story:

I’d also like to bring in a parable from the Old Testament. When David offered to go and fight the Philistine trouble- maker, Goliath, on Saul’s behalf, Saul gave him his own weapons to bolster the boy’s courage. But no sooner had David put them on than he refused the gift, saying he wouldn’t feel confident with them, he would rather face the enemy with his own sling and knife. In the end, other people’s arms are either too loose, too heavy or too tight.

This brings us to our decision in the mid-80’s to support the Afghan insurgents against the Soviet invasion of their country.

On its face, this seemed like a simple decision for a few reasons:

  • While Soviet control of Afghanistan in itself would not have given the USSR much of a strategic gain, Afghanistan does border other countries of crucial strategic value like India and Pakistan. It was reasonable for the US to conclude that we should prevent the Soviets from winning in Afghanistan.
  • However, we did not want to fight in Afghanistan ourselves, because of a lack of political will to send our own troops, and our understandable reluctance to directly engage the Soviets with the prospect of nuclear weapons lingering over the Cold War.
  • Given the terrain of the country, and the fighting spirit of the people, guerrilla tactics in mountainous regions seemed like an ideal strategy.
  • However, with the use of attack helicopters, the Soviets effectively could counter this high ground advantage, as the insurgents had no effective weapon against them.

A variety of intelligence analysts concluced that with a compartively small expenditure, we could decisively turn the war against the Soviets by provided the Afghan fighters with missile launchers and high powered sniper rifles. We were correct. Our cash, weapons, and training helped deal the USSR a decisive blow in Afghanistan. Many believe that their failure in Afghanistan helped lead to the collapse of the communist regime and the end of the Cold War.

However . . .

Our support of the Afghan insurgents unfortunately matches up with all the reasons why Machiavelli cautions against using auxiliary armies to help achieve your own ends. To recap, auxiliaries

  • Have their own agenda which may differ radically from yours
  • You have little to no control over their actions, and they have the internal strength and will to pursue their own goals
  • Your aid to them makes them stronger

Many of those we aided in the 1980’s used the weapons and training to take over the country themselves after the Soviets left. The strongest of these forces proved to be the Taliban, who then gave aid to terrorist groups such as Al-Queada, who attacked us on 9-11. Machiavelli’s pattern and prediction came true.

We later went back to Afghanistan ourselves in a mirror image of the Soviet invasion in the 1980’s. Like the Soviets, while we had a great deal of tactical success over many years, we could not achieve a strategic victory in the final analysis.

In the end, Machiavelli’s insistence that one do things themselves, or not at all, has much to commend it.

The Red Pants of France

by Dave Mathwin

Barbara Tuchmann’s The Guns of August discusses the controversies, dilemmas, and human drama in the days leading up to World War I. She puts a special focus on the war plans developed by France and Germany in the years leading up to the war. The two plans reflect much about the two nations. Germany’s Schliefflin Plan

  • Relied heavily on rail transport with precision timetables
  • Relied heavily on heavy artillery and all of the other goodies of industrialization
  • Involved violating Belgian neutrality, but no matter–the winner would determine the post-war narrative, and they had to go through Belgium to make their plan work.

France’s Plan 17 relied

  • Heavily on initiative in the field for individual commanders, with the emphasis on attack
  • Much more than Germany on the human element, “men win wars, not machines,” and so on–what the French called “elan.”
  • They eschewed heavy artillery, feeling that it would slow their men down and give them a dependent mindset.

Both sides had perfect awareness of the other’s plans, and both thought the strategic situation favored their own side. The French, with their army in red pants, hearkened back to an older time. Some called for the uniforms to be replaced with a more drab color less visible on the spectrum. The French general staff refused absolutely. The red pants embodied the spirit and will of the army, a refusal to bend to the industrial spirit of the age.

Alas, German organization, artillery, and precision destroyed the French army in first weeks of the war, inflicting at least 250,000 casualties. France had to adjust, and while they managed to stave off disaster at the Battle of the Marne, the dash and the human initiative would fade away just like the red pants. They too brought out heavy guns and “succumbed” to the Germany way.

As events unfolded, both sides ended up digging into the ground for what became known as Trench Warfare, which characterized the fighting in the western front right through 1918. Historians usually offer a variety of explanations for this unusual development–neither previous or future wars would ever use trenches so completely.

  • Some focus on the significant imbalance between defense and offense that existed between the western powers. Heavy weaponry for the most part had little mobility at this time, which limited offensive capability and gave an enormous advantage to the defensive.
  • Some focus on the narrow geography between the German and French borders, which meant an extreme concentration of men and machines. More space on the Eastern Front, for example, meant some more mobility and much less trench digging.

These explanations have merit but I think miss the larger picture.

The triumph of the metric system presaged military developments in World War I. The old systems of measurements had its roots in human experience and proportion, i.e., the “foot.” or the “stone” (about 14 pounds), which would be local and based on the weight of an actual stone in a particular town or region. The new system greatly maximized standardization, minimizing locality, and made it easier to count, measure, multiply, and so on. In other words, the new system granted one more power.* The Industrial Revolution continued this standardization, which naturally granted increased power to produce goods on a mass scale

But all of this power came from literally digging into the earth to obtain the necessary raw materials for the engines of industry and war. As industrialization reached its peak manifestation, the soldiers too dug into the earth. Perhaps the eastern theater of war saw less trench warfare because it had less industrialization. It seems a curious symmetry exists between the birth of the modern war machine and trench warfare, and we should endeavor to explain it. In other words, the creation of industrialization (digging into the earth), and its apotheosis (trench warfare) mirror each other (in the picture of the soldiers above, change the uniforms and the men could look exactly like miners). For Europe, World War I ended the belief in the inevitable progress of mankind, represented by science/industrialization and democracy. One can easily argue that science and democracy (in the form of mass media, mass mobilization, and mass production) made the war much more deadly than any previous conflict.

We can begin by noting the symmetry between birth and death. Interestingly, many ancient cultures buried people in the fetal position, linking birth and death in a circle, which I discussed here.

Perhaps this should not surprise us, as birth and death have something of a symbiosis.

We see a similar symmetry in rock music. I grew up partially in the Grunge Era. I took great delight in the transition from 80’s pop to Nirvana and Soundgarden. But anyone who reflects for a moment should see something odd going on with music in the 1990’s. In his excellent book on that decade, Chuck Klosterman made two keen observations:

  • The grunge attitude and aesthetic brought about the end of rock and roll. The whole foundation of rock music involved stardom, mass appeal, etc. Grunge artists had massive success while deriding, mocking, and hating that success, a kind of matter-anti-matter collision. In this sense, Kurt Cobain’s tragic suicide** can be seen as a harbinger, a death-knell for the genre as a whole. In many ways, the power that comes with stardom brings not life, but a kind of death, just as the power granted by industrialization ushered in an era of millions of deaths in war.
  • What was with the litany of songs with large portions of lyrics devoted either to nonsense, mere sounds, or garbled unintelligibility?

We’ll get to that list momentarily. We saw something similar at the birth of rock and roll in the late 50’s-early 60’s, in the form of a variety of songs with nonsense/unintelligible lyrics that made their way into the American psyche.

All of these songs share the exuberance that characterizes the birth of an era. The nonsense, the invented sounds, reminds one of little kids discovering their mouths for the first time.

In the 90’s you have Klosterman’s list of songs with nonsensical and unintelligible lyrics. But this time, the tenor, and atmosphere of the songs embrace not the excitement of new life but chaos, meaninglessness, and death.

  • Of course, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” with Weird Al parodying the song’s unintelligibility.
  • Blur’s “Beetlebum,” and “Song 2.” “Song 2” has a something of exuberance in it, but the video clearly shows it is the excitement of destruction, not creation. No coincidence then, that Paul Veerhoven used this song to promote his movie Starship Troopers, which parodied the meaninglessness of fascistic violence.
  • Trio’s “Da Da Da.” Volkswagen used the song expertly to hint at the banality of life for young men. Leave it to the Germans, I suppose.
  • Basement Jaxx’s “Bingo Bango.” Yes, the song has an upbeat mood to it, but the video hints at disorienting chaos.
  • “Mmmmm Mmmmmm Mmmmmm” by the Crash Test Dummies. The song has beauty, but it is the beauty of an elegy. The group’s other hit, “Coffee Spoons and Afternoons” talks about receding hairlines, hospitals, drinking coffee in the afternoon wearing pajamas–not exactly the stuff of birth.
  • At first glance, Hanson’s “Mmmmbop” may seem to have the stuff of “life” embedded within, but after listening for about 90 seconds, thoughts of anger, hatred, and despair flood one’s being. The song is hypnotically annoying/infuriating.

The end of rock music mirrored its beginning, but the mirror has cracks.

Historians date the birth of the modern state at different points. One can trace the beginnings in the later Renaissance, and things look more clear at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. But to see the state as we know it, with its bureaucracy, centralization, uniformity of law, and military organization, we have to look at Napoleon. We have a fascination with Napoleon for good reason–undoubtedly he embodied something romantic, something of promise, in his early years.

But 100 years later, that civilization, while having much more power at its disposal, actually approaches its death–a variety of historians (Niall Ferguson, Oswald Spengler) see World War I as the end of the west. Certainly at least, Europe–the core of western civilization– has never recovered from that conflict. Western civilization’s power and identity had its start with going into the earth in hope that its raw materials would give us power to establish Kant’s dream of perpetual peace. It ended differently.

Dave

*A variety of people have pointed out this connection between counting, numbering, and power. This may be why King David suffered such a strong rebuke when he took a census in Israel. He tried to count “excessively,” i.e., he tried to consolidate power inappropriately at the end of his reign.

**In an interview with Vulture magazine, Klosterman commented,

What is so profound about Nirvana is that the relationship ended up becoming real. The song “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.” The idea that a person who writes that song also does commit suicide — that is so on the nose. People would say things like, “If that guy hates fame so much, why doesn’t he just stop?” We did not fully believe that Kurt Cobain was actually unhappy. And then when he killed himself, it made that music suddenly weirdly true.

He was presenting ideas in a culture where irony was the central understanding of all messages, and he seems to have had no ironic distance at all. It actually was incredibly sad and depressing to him that people he didn’t like loved his music. It legitimately bothered him that, say, homophobes liked his music. It bothered him in a way that for other artists, it would’ve been seen almost as branding.

8th Grade Civics: The Paradox of the 1990’s

by Dave Mathwin

This week in Civics we explored the 1990’s, not so much in the specific events, but the cultural trends that shaped that decade.

Having lived through the 90’s as a young man, I remember them as good times. I enjoyed much of what the culture offered, such as grunge music and the chance to wear untucked flannel shirts. And yet, the 90’s pose a curious problem. Having definitively won the Cold War, we should have been happy and celebratory as a nation. And yet, the 80’s, a time of uncertainty and the fear of nuclear war, appear as the decade of optimism. In the 1990’s, we appear wracked by self-doubt, angst, and a loss of confidence. The popular image of the time is that of the disaffected slacker.

Logic dictates this should not have been the case. After all, throughout most of the 90’s we had

  • Economic Growth
  • Former Enemies in Europe becoming fast friends (i.e., Poland, Romania, etc.)
  • New, exciting technologies such as the internet (the legacy of the internet is debatable, at the time everyone thought it would be great).
  • A more peaceful world
  • The expansion of trade and the modern advent of globalization (today the legacy of this is hotly debated, at the time it seemed a slam-dunk to most).

And yet, it was during this time that our culture began to fragment in weird and unexpected ways. I have some theories as to why this might have happened, but first, let us note the sharp difference between the late 80’s and the early 90’s.

In terms of fashion, the 80’s were defined by bright colors, and bold choices. Things were bright and big.

Whatever one might think of such choices, they certainly come from a place of confidence (perhaps too much of it :).

In the early 90’s things shift dramatically to a look now known as “heroin chic.”

We are used to the issue of confusion between male and female and the blurring of lines between them. This has it roots in the 90’s as well, as these fashion shoots indicate:

A theme in 90’s fashion is the empahsis is not on the accentuation of the human form, but its dimunition (perhaps especially for women). Now that it is the 90’s, we are not supposed to have colors, or happiness. We are supposed to feel bad about things. But exactly what we are to feel bad about . . . we’re not sure.

Any perusal through the popular music of the 1980’s reveals an era loaded with upbeat songs with big, bright production values. Even the “bad boys” generally were not angry or sad, but celebrating partying, doing bad things, etc.–think Van Halen and AC/DC. These bands were agressive in their sound, but optimistic in their tone, i.e., it was time to have a good time.

Coincidentally or no, almost exactly as the Soviet Union completed its collapse, Nirvana released its album Nevermind (which already hints at Gen X disengagement) and its most popular song, “Smells like Teen Spirit.” Some of it’s lyrics read

Load up on guns, bring your friends

It’s fun to lose and to pretend

She’s over-bored, and self-assured

Oh no, I know a dirty word

Hello, hello, hello, how low?

Hello, hello, hello, how low?

Hello, hello, hello, how low?

Hello, hello, hello

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous

Here we are now, entertain us

I feel stupid and contagious

Here we are now, entertain us.

This song, and others by Nirvana, ask us to engage with apathy, disillusionment, chaos, without really pinpointing the problem, exactly. Other famous grunge bands such as Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden would follow suit. They sang about emptiness, apocalypse, and other such topics (think of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun” or Stone Temple Pilot’s “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”). Like the fashion of the early 90’s there seemed to be a desire to destroy what was generically considered “human,” at least in the 1980’s. We no longer believed in what we were, or who we were.

True, by the mid-late 90’s, these cultural trends would shift again somewhat. Grunge and the fashion style of “heroin chic” would fall out of fashion. But the stage was set for significant transition in other modes of life. The old norms that guided society were starting to fade away. Thirty years later, we are still looking for new norms to hold us together.

We are getting used to political polarization, and many of us reading this have essentially grown up with it. I did not. The 1980’s still experienced a reasonable amount of cooperation and consensus building. That changed with the election of 1992, when the winning candidate, Bill Clinton, failed to get a majority of the popular vote in a three person race. In his candidacy, Clinton broke with typical norms governing how politicians should act, appearing on the Arsenio Hall show and playing saxophone along with the house band. Republicans followed suit, and were early in the political talk-radio space, which had more aggressive and angry messaging. The center was losing its grip, but we did not see this at the time.

Again, all of this should be strike us a curious. Most cultures experience something of a golden age in the aftermath of significant military victory, such as Athens after the Persian Wars, or England after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, or the Dutch after their own defeat of Spain. This did not happen with us. We should have been confident and exuberant. But this pattern did not materialize for us as it had in the past.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the advent of the 1990’s saw the publishing of what would become a very influential book in China, Wang Huning’s America against America. Huning had visited America for several months in the late 1980’s and wrote about his observations. Huning went on to serve as a top advisor to three Chinese premiers and still holds a top position in the government today. Many see Huning’s book as having a strong impact on the development of China and their view on the United States.

Huning saw culture, tradition, and shared values all eroding in America. This is a fairly common critique of democracies in general, and so nothing particularly new. Huning had good things to say about America that many other foreign observers might share. There are a few observations he made, however, that seem prescient and influential over the next three decades.

  • The title of the book is taken from the Chinese term yíhuò [疑惑] meaning “puzzle” or “doubt.” America had effectively turned itself into a yíhuò [疑惑] which has made Americans equally puzzled by their own system. For Huning, America was trapped in a puzzle. It was in a battle  against itself.
  • As one online commentator notes, “One of his observations in particular would be very influential for China’s new path forward: the power of technology. The use of electronic payments like the credit card shocked him, as did the emergence of computers. But he also understood that this technological process would eventually remake the very people it was supposed to serve. Sometimes it is not the people who master technology, but the technology that masters the people. If you want to overwhelm the Americans, you must do one thing: surpass them in science and technology.”
  • Huning saw most Americans as fundamentally disconnected from each other, and wrote that, “Lonliness is a major burden on the political system.” If true, perhaps grunge music was not such an anomaly at all, but a logical consequence of this unconscious feeling.

One can certainly argue that Huning took some of his observations too far. His fear of social fracturing, combined with his adoration of technology, has led to institutions like China’s dystopian social credit system. But his observations in themselves may have merit.

The legacy of the 1990’s is complicated, but it is where the seeds were planted for many of our modern problems.

Dave

8th Grade Literature: Hide from Yourself

by Dave Mathwin

This week we continued with Act II of Macbeth and saw the development of the themes introduced in Act I.

In our last post we saw how the witches introduced this theme of confusion into the play, both in where they resided, and how they spoke. Now we see their evil spread to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Different versions of Mabeth productions show the witches in different ways. My favorite is the recent Coen brothers film of Macbeth. They only have one witch, and in the play there were three. But the way this witch speaks to herself is like speaking to others. Are the other witches there that we cannot see, or is she driven to schizophrenia by her evil?* I am guessing the latter. The way she unnaturally unfolds her body mirrors this division within her soul (the flapping of her arms also introduces the idea of the witch as a crow or raven, an important element in the play we will touch on next week).

Towards the end of Act I, Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth to murder Duncan. To do this she calls his manhood into question, a curious tactic considering that we know Macbeth to be the major hero in the battle. One might guess that this tactic would not work, but Macbeth has already let the witches’ prophesies into his heart and mind. He is already confused, and his confusion will grow over time.

To get Macbeth to betray Duncan, Lady Macbeth also calls the nature of manhood into question. The traditional view is that one key factor that separates man from beast is the fact that man can think, reason, and deny himself. A hungry dog would not pass up a meal, but it is possible, for example, for a man to fast for a higher purpose. Lady Macbeth flips this on its head, telling Macbeth that he is wrong for letting “I dare not,” wait upon, “I would.” For Lady Macbeth, what makes a man is that he never denies himself what he wants. When Macbeth expresses second thoughts, Lady Macbeth calls him a “beast,” yet it is a man that can second guess himself, and not a beast.

Can one exist in such an upside down world?

Even before Macbeth actually kills Duncan, he begins to have a hard time with reality. We see this start with his vision of bloody dagger. He is not sure if it is a “dagger of the mind” or real.

After he murders Duncan, Macbeth utters the famous line that he has “murdered sleep.” For the rest of the play, sleep will elude Macbeth, and we can see this is as a physical manifestation of his evil deed. Sleep is restorative, taking our tattered body and mind and making it whole again. Macbeth has torn the kingdom asunder so it is right that he is denied wholeness. In a broader sense, Macbeth’s murder has severed him from nature, as he murdered his “natural lord.” The idea of a “natural lord,” may seem odd to us, but it was a common idea in medieval Europe. For those in Shakespeare’s time, one is born into a particular condition, and one generally stayed in that condition. This was no hardship but a comfort (at least in theory for most). One knew one’s place in the cosmos. King’s had their position not because they were great but “by the grace of God.” The order of things just simply “was.” The eldest son ruled, not because he was the best son, but because that was the nature of things. No one earned their place. Your place was a gift.

Honoring King Duncan and obeying him was the right thing to do, of course. But it was also the “natural” thing to do, just as it is natural for the sun to rise in the morning and set at night. One should strive to conform oneself to the order of nature.

Macbeth’s murder of Duncan (a guest in his own home) unravels the kingdom and also the fabric of creation itself. He has robbed himself of his own place in the world, and now neither God, his fellow man, or even creation itself will give him comfort. He has nothing left, and now he cannot even comfort or reason with himself. Macbeth states that, “To know my deed ’twere best not know myself.”

Macbeth’s schizophrenia aptly matches that of the witches he encountered in Act I. His descent will continue.

Dave

*One reason why I like this artistic choice is that the witch (maybe) talking to herself, seeing things, etc. mirrors what happens to Macbeth. He thinks he sees a dagger and a ghost, and maybe he does, and maybe not. The mirroring of the witches and Macbeth is certainly hinted at in the text of the play, and I think it quite clever to show this visually.

8th Grade Literature: Fair is Foul

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings Everyone,

This week we started our next book in our curriculum, Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth‘s plot is fairly straightforward, and this gives us a clear opportunity to see how Shakespeare’s literary genius shapes the meaning of the story through his use of language and setting. Shakespeare was also an expert psychologist, and again in this instance, the simple structure of the plot allows us to explore more fully what happens to a human being when they make the wrong choices.

Shakespeare inhabited a world where the concept of the “Great Chain of Being,” where each thing, and each being, in the created order has its proper place. When the world is properly ordered, the world becomes intelligible and we can know how to act meaningfully within the world. This concept stems from the Genesis creation account, which begins with chaos, and then over time God makes distinctions between sea and dry land, plants and animals, men and women, and so on.

Understanding this will help us put Macbeth’s terrible moral choices in the proper context, and the play explores, among other things, the questions of “what is a man?” and “what is a woman?”

We this theme introduced in Act I, Scene 1, where we meet the the “weird sisters,” the three witches. Their famously end this scene with the words,

Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

First, we note that Shakespeare wrote all of his plays in Iambic Pentameter. Iambic meters have a slightly lilting quality, with an alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables. The original tune for “Amazing Grace” is iambic, for example. But Shakespeare opens this play with the witches speaking in Trochaic Tetrameter. Trochaic meters have the opposite structure of iambs. Their first syllable is stressed, the second unstressed, and so on. Trochaic speech then, is often harsh and uneven, the opposite of melodic.

Here is a quick primer on Iambic Pentameter:

And here is a brief intro to trochaic tetrameter:

It makes sense that the witches would use this kind of speech, The rhythms contrast sharply to the speech of the other characters, which sets them apart phonetically but also spiritually. Fundamentally, the witches are not really women, and not really human. Of course, they possess the requisite DNA for a human being, but we would not want to define a human being strictly by DNA alone. Their evil actions deeply mar their humanity through by deeply eroding the image of God within them. More specifically, they are not just human beings generally but women in particular. For Shakespeare and others, women primarly have a nuturing role in the created order, and have the unique gift of bringing life into the world. Here in scene one, the witches (who have beards, another clue to the confusion of their being and their sex) talk of nothing other than murdering others through their manipulation of the elements.

Shakespeare has them meet on a heath, a particular kind of Scottish landscape. Heath’s are uncultivated, wild places, usually damp and misty, with scrub brush here and there. The disorder of the heath presage the disorder of the play. In such places, it is easy to get lost physically, and this mirrors the spiritual wilderness Macbeth will put himself in with his choices later in the play.

So while the plot of Macbeth is straightforward and satisfying in certain respects, the context in which the events unfold will challenge the views of modern readers. Many of us see our moral choices, whether good or bad, happening on something akin to a blank canvas. What matters for many today is not our surroundings or our bodies but merely our will. For Shakespeare and others of his time, an important ingredient in our moral choices was our place in the created order and those around us. In Shakespeare’s worldview, we invite ruin upon ourselves when we assume that our context, our place in the created order, can simply be overwritten by our mere choice. Such actions will inevitably confuse us and distort our view of reality, as happens to Macbeth. In addition, our confusion spreads to others and chaos reigns. Among many other truths, this play shows us that no man is an island.

Dave

8th Grade Civics: Aristotle and Terminal Lucidity

by Dave Mathwin

Many who have worked with the elderly, such as doctors and nurses, have noted a pattern of a curious and often confusing phenomena, called “terminal lucidity.” A patient may be ill and lingering for some time. Then, they experience a burst of mental clarity and physical energy that seems to come from out of nowhere, which can last for hours or even days. The families and friends of the patient often misinterpret these events. They believe that the patient has recovered and will get better. In reality, such an event usually means that death is near. In some mysterious way for some mysterious reason, this can often be how a person prepares to die.

One can witness a similar phenomena with civilizations in general. A few years ago I wrote another post that explored this same pheonomena related to industrialization and World War I, and related that era to the 1990’s. In some ways, the experience of terminal lucidity resembles that of a newborn, with periods of intense activity coupled with lots of sleep. The end and the beginning resemble each other.

That same post looked at the 1990’s. That era, curiously enough, resembled the beginning of post-WW II America in a few odd ways. But in retrospect, what we experienced in the 1990’s was not a rebirth of a new America, but the terminal lucidity of post-WW II America.

Some may question this. Did not America experience all of the following in the 1990’s?

  • Significant Economic Growth
  • Invention of transformational technologies (internet, cell phones)
  • An era of global peace in many ways sponsored by America
  • In cultural matters, record sales of albums and newspaper circulation reaching its peak most likely around 1989.

This last item is noteworthy, and an example of the terminal lucidity experienced in both industries. The internet, designed to maximize the flow of information, might initially seem a logical extension of both the music and print mediums, but in fact, ended up destroying them.

In his Politics, after defining the key features of different forms of government, Aristotle then goes on to show how each of these respective orders can break down. They usually break down, he notes, when certain trends within a society, sometimes beneficial at first, get extended beyond their normal bounds, and then begin to work against the poltical order rather than for it.

The portion of text we worked with from Book V of the Politics is lenghty, so I will summarize it here:

Problem 1: Insolence and Greed

By this Aristotle means rulers (we can think of judges, senators, etc.) that use their power to enrich themselves. If just one or two people in power did this, and if they took just a little, it might not be noticed. Even if it was noticed, the problem could be dealt with.

The issue would be if other judges/senators caught on and joined in. Quickly those stealing would realize that the pot of gold was finite. They would then compete to see who could take how much by forming alliances with other senators and judges. Then, we would have the equivalent of different gangs competing for turf in the same city, and the state would cease to function.

Problem 2: Superiority

The state functions normally, but then something arises that causes a portion of the state (such as the presidency) to grow disproportionately in power. Perhaps this was necessary given the circumstances, but if balance is not restored, the constitution as people know it would collapse.

Problem 3: Fear

Imagine a general who committed war crimes who does not want prosecuted. The way out of this could be for him to take everyone that was loyal to him and usurp the ruling power. If he was in charge, there would be no prosecution.

This may sound far-fetched, but you could argue this is exactly what happened to the Roman Republic under Julius Caesar.

Problem 4: Loss of Balance and Proportion

This is similar to #2, but can arise more slowly, and for good motives. Think of someone who wants to get stronger. They go the gym, but only work out their arms and their calves. After several months they are stronger in some ways but their body would look weird and cause problems for the person.

In the same way, it may be natural and good for the state to grow. Imagine a port city that suddenly experiences a boom in trade. Certain people would benefit directly, such as dock workers and harbor masters. But if these benefits did not spread to the city at large, it would be disproportionate growth. Or perhaps a country experiences dramatic growth in one industry but decline in others. This would shift the equilibrium of the state.

Problem 5: Change

Change is in some ways inevitable and can be good. But Aristotle cautions against change that comes too quickly, or change that alters the identity of a state. As people we may change, but if we become in some ways a different person, that will cause problems with our relationships. The same is true in culture at large.

Problem 6: Immigration

Aristotle is not averse to the growth of a state, provided that it grows slowly and “naturally.” Aristotle is in favor of the state sometimes admitting strangers. But if a state brings too many people in with a different culture and religion, then this will cause tension and alter the way group dynamics function.

It is interesting to think about this as it applies to America. Aristotle’s context was the Greek city-state, which were always much smaller than modern countries, ranging from a few thousand to perhaps ten thousand in most instances. In this context, taking in even just several hundred new people would alter things significantly. Aristotle is primarily concerned here not with whether the impact of the new population would be good or bad necessarily. He primarily focuses on the change and destabilization the new population would bring to the body politic.

Whatever position we might take on the current disagreement about immigration in America, we can see that the issue has caused a great deal of controversy and sharply divides our population. If our immigration policy could remain steady for decades, rather than shifting sharply back and forth, our politics would be much better off.

Problem 7: Improper Construction of the State

This is not a problem that develops, but one that lies latent at the inception of the state. With this issue, we can imagine that at a city’s founding, the design of the constitution was flawed in some way. Maybe the founders did not think clearly enough. Maybe some saw the problem, but wanted to rush things through in the belief that things would work themselves out. But over time the latent misalignment would reveal itself, creating an impossible situation of faithfulness to a faulty constitution or revolution.

Those who have watched enough war movies are familiar with this dilemma. A regiment receives orders, but everyone knows that the orders make no sense and would lead to mass casualties. Many want to disregard the orders. But others counter that following orders is what makes an army an army. It’s what holds troops together on the same page. Without orders, who are we and what have we left? The divisions the troops would experience mirror the divisions a society would have with a faulty constitution.

Not all of the issues Aristotle raises mirror the analogy of terminal lucidity that happens to presage shifts in the life of a civilization, but some do. Possibly, for example a slight increase in presidential power could benefit a society at certain times under certain conditions. The society then thinks more is always better, and leans into presidential solutions for their problems. The executive branch might then think that they are experiencing a golden age of presidential power, while in fact, a hard reset might be just around the corner. Or imagine corrupt officials starting small, but then organizing their graft on a large scale. It might appear to them that they have never been “better off” but having involved so many in the corruption, things are bound to unravel soon enough.

Aristotle always comes back to the idea of balance and proportion, and we see this in his ideas about the problems states face.

Dave

Oligarchies, Expansion, and a “Time of Troubles”

by Dave Mathwin

I posted this originally back in 2012.  While I could have added some new thoughts to the post I wrote directly on Eric Voegelin’s Science Politics, and Gnosticism (found here), I thought it better to include in this post as a sub-set on the idea of territorial expansion.

It may very well be that to read Eric Voegelin is to be confused.  I have had my struggles with his book Order and History: The Ecumenic Age.  But, remembering that he made a special study of gnostic ideas and philosophy, I found his thoughts on the origins of Gnosticism and its relation to territorial expansion very intriguing.

Gnosticism has many permutations, but at its core it propounds an opposition of matter and spirit, the soul and the body, and so on.  Some biblical scholars believe that the Apostle John may be attempting to counter Gnosticism in his epistles. Those who have read St. Augustine’s Confessions know that he involved himself in the gnostic ideas of Manicheism before converting to Christianity.  But gnosticism as a general philosophy pre-dates the coming of Christ by many centuries. Voegelin writes on its origins,

The genetic context to which I refer is the interaction between expansion of empire and differentiation of consciousness.  In pragmatic history, Gnosticism arises from six centuries of imperial expansion and civilizational destruction (p. 21).

Thus, we may assume that gnostic ideas had their roots in the first great ecumenic empire of the Persians, and this fits with the Zoroastrianism and its adoption by Darius I as the semi-official religion of his court.

As to the “why” behind the link between expansion and Gnosticism, I am less able to penetrate Voegelin’s thoughts.  But I believe that we can surmise the following:

  • Significant expansion destroys our sense of proportion.  If the empire is everywhere, it is nowhere.
  • Lacking perspective, we lack attachment to place.  Without attachment to place, we lose our attachment to creation itself.  As an old Irish proverb states (I’m not quoting exactly), “Those who travel much lose their faith.”
  • The power that comes with empire inflates one’s sense of self and distances us from others.  As Chesterton stated, one should pray in valleys, not mountaintops.

Related to the original post below, the disconnect from creation might form the spiritual basis of the problems faced by expansion.

Having recently glanced over The Goebbels Diaries I wondered —  did Hitler’s refusal to allow Rommel to withdraw at El Alamein, and his “fight to the last bullet” order to Von Paulus at Stalingrad arise not from hope of victory but desire for the extinguishing of matter?  As Germany’s territory increased, Hitler seemed more focused on a “refining” cataclysm for creation than in actual victory.  Once separated from creation, we come to hate it, with death as the (perceived) only escape.

And now, the original post . . .

Reading Explorers of the Nile spurred on a thought experiment.

While I have not been overly compelled by the story, there have been several interesting tidbits.  Regardless of one’s feelings toward the Victorian age in general, or the Brits in particular, one can’t help but admire the sheer will and energy of the second great wave of western exploration (the first being in the 15th-early 16th centuries via the Atlantic).  Many hundreds of men risked everything for the sheer thrill of discovery, and yes, for the glory of it as well.  In the early phases from ca. 1840-1860’s, most of this exploration seemed to me to have a generally innocent tinge to it.  The more acquisitive imperialism came later.

This energy and striving for glory reminded me of late Republic Rome, and the quote from Sallust in The Jurgurthine War, which reads,

I have often heard that Quintus Maximus Publius Scipio, and other distinguished men of our country were accustomed to declare that, whenever they looked on the masks of their ancestors, their hearts were set aflame in the pursuit of virtue [i.e. worthy deeds].  Of course they did not mean that the wax or the effigy had any power over them, but it is the memory of great achievements that kindles a flame in the breasts of eminent men that cannot be extinguished until their own excellence has come to rival the reputation and glory of their forefathers.

It struck me that it was during the later phase of the Republic that Rome grew the most in size.  If we look at a map of the Mediterranean at the beginning of the first Punic War in 264 B.C. . . .

Mediterranean, 264 BC

we see that Rome, though decent in size, does not dominate.  They have their sphere, along with Carthage, Egypt, Macedon, etc.

If we fast-forward 100 years we get a different picture, and as the map below indicates, Rome continues to grow almost geometrically down to the death of Caesar in 44 B.C.

Roman Growth Timeline

While Rome had a Republic at this time, I agree with Toynbee that while the government had democratic elements, it was for all intents and purposes an oligarchy.  The aristocratic senate dominated policy, however much voting by the masses took place.

Is there a connection then, between oligarchic democracies and expansion?  As time marched on from Charles I, England did by fits and starts become more democratic.  But 19th century England surely was not democracy in our sense of the word, and instead like the Republic showed strong oligarchic tinges.  As a monarchy, England’s overseas holdings were modest compared with the rest of the world, ca. 1800. . .

Colonisation, 1800

But a century later, after more democracy (while still having an oligarchy) and we see a different scene:

British Empire, 1920

As in late Republic in Rome, we have a near doubling in size.  Of course, something similar could be said of the other major European powers during the same time, many of them become more democratic after 1848, though again, like England, not fully so until after W.W. I.

Two examples do not really suffice to prove the connection.  But three will!

America gets accused of being an imperial power, but I think the charge false in our current, strongly democratic time.  It might have had more merit in the more oligarchic 19th century, however.

America, 1800:

America, 1800

America, 1900:

When America became more democratic in the 20th century, our expansion rapidly slowed.  Now, to be fair, we acquired Louisiana “fairly” from France by buying it, and Alaska fair and square from Russia.  But the same cannot be said for the Philippines, or the vast territory taken from Indians, including territory in Louisiana.  Both Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant thought that our war with Mexico in 1846 to be manifestly unjust.

If we believe Thucydides, and call Athenian democracy in its golden age really a Pericles-led oligarchy of the best (a claim, to be fair, disputed by the great classicist Donald Kagan), we again see this principle of growth.  In 490 B.C. Athens stood as one city-state among many.  Not so 50 years later. . .

Map, Athenian Empire 431 B.C.

As to why oligarchic democracies have such expansionistic tendencies, I cannot say.  Perhaps it can be the subject of another post filled with wild theories.  But it does seem clear that this period of expansion leads to a “Time of Troubles,” for all parties involved.

For England and the rest of Europe, expansion gave way to the two World Wars.  America had its Civil War, caused largely by the exacerbation of the slavery issue.  The inflaming of the slavery question in its turn had its roots in the Mexican-American war in 1846.  Athens and the Greek world faced the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.).  Though the proximate causes and results of these conflicts differ, they each have an age of expansion to precede it.

Any thoughts from anyone else, with more examples, or a connection between oligarchic democracies and expansion, are heartily welcome.

Blessings,

Dave