The Flawless Symphony

Recently I received an email from a friend explaining how the IPCC made a mistake in their report, “Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”. Apparently, New Scientist had interviewed an Indian glaciologist who'd speculated about the fate of the glaciers. An Indian report had cited the interview. WWF Nepal then cited the Indian report, which was then cited by a writer contributing to the IPCC Assessment Report #4.

You see it was a problem with footnotes. The writer working on the IPCC report didn't follow the three levels of citations back to their original and only source.

This mistake has been leapt upon by so-called Climate Deniers, just like a single office at a single university in England that issued inconsistent reports. In both cases, the Climate Deniers accurately identify that an error has been committed.

Yet, as I thought about it tonight I realized the Climate Deniers are being a bit unrealistic in their expectations of the humans writing these reports, especially in the case of the IPCC report. 

Expecting perfection from countless contributors each citing thousands of independent pieces of research (each with their own citations) to aggregate a whole and accurate picture of the earth's current climate is like expecting a symphony to play each of Mozart's 41 symphonies on sequential nights, 41 nights in a row, without making a mistake.

But whether such a feat is possible doesn't interest me nearly as much as the realization that at each symphony, some number of the ninety or so musicians will make a mistake. 

And, unless they all flub at the same moment, it won't matter a bit.

The symphony will still astound.

My Rights are Your Rights

I've just finished reading a New Yorker article about the furor regarding Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in United States criminal courts.

The timbre of the article leaves me with an image of the writer, Jane Mayer, with one hand on her hip and the other pointing particularly at a phrase in the Declaration of Independence.

She hopes you'll recall that many of the men who sculpted the constitution also signed, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," with emphasis on "all men" and "Creator-endowed unalienable Rights."

I'll briefly summarize and provide context. Eric Holder's first argument for holding the cases in federal criminal courts, rather than by military commission, reduces to the fact that his prosecutors have a better case than the military does. They have produced evidence without resorting to torture. Evidence via torture is just about all the military prosecutors have, and they hardly have that.

As Amy Jeffress, Holder's national-security adviser, is quoted in the article, "There was no file for each detainee. The information was scattered all over the government. You'd look at what the Department of Defense had, and it was something, but, as a prosecutor, it wasn’t what you’d like to see as evidence. . . . It was pretty thin stuff."

Holder's second argument is simply sound public relations: much of the world considers the military commission system established by George Bush to be illegitimate, and certainly the Islamic world is concerned about convictions based on evidence obtained via torture.

As Holder is quoted, "Values matter in this fight. We need to give those who might follow these mad men a good sense of what America is, and what America can be. We are militarily strong, but we are morally stronger."

The legal argument against holding the cases by military commission rather than in criminal courts, where the defendants will be afforded all rights under the constitution, is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al, are enemy combatants and therefore needn't be afforded said rights.

The article quotes Andrew McCarthy, the former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney who led the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center attacks, declaring that Holder didn’t "understand what rule of law has always been in wartime." He said, "It’s military commissions. It’s not to wrap our enemies in our Bill of Rights."

Or as Scott Brown's campaign asserted, "Some people believe our Constitution exists to grant rights to terrorists who want to harm us. I disagree."

Some common people agree with McCarthy and Brown. Ms. Mayer quotes a protestor, Carolyn Walton, "How can someone who is not an American have any right to our rights? Holder wants to help the terrorists."

America is Universal Rights

But our American identity depends on the idea that our country upholds Rights we profess are universal ("all men") and absolute ("inalienable", "endowed by their Creator"). We believe we were given these Rights not because we are American, but because we are Human.

We love our country because it is one of the few that exists precisely to protect those Rights. America is not merely a space of land: it's a set of ideas that hold all people as created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights. That set of ideas, and not our territory or economic might, has justified our intervention in the affairs of the world.

The United States crossed oceans twice to defend the inalienable Rights of humanity against dictators who sought absolute power. The United States stood against the spread of Stalinism, because Stalin spit on Russians' Creator-endowed Rights. The United States intervened in Kuwait when a dictator extended his reach.

The United States assisted Afghanis twice: once to defend civilians against Soviet aggression, and once to free citizens from the grip of totalitarians who stripped them of their Rights. The United States supported Iranians last summer as their government violated their Creator-endowed Rights to speak freely, to gather and to govern themselves.

We act contrary to our American identity when we avert our eyes to abuse of inalienable Rights or when we support dictators who impinge the very Rights we uphold (Pinochet, Noriega, Maximilio Hernadez). We disgrace ourselves when we treat prisoners in a way that implies, "We will summarily rob you of your Creator-endowed Rights to assure ours."

We disgrace ourselves if we say, "All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, if by 'all men' you mean US Citizens."

If we are Americans, then we must not deny those Rights to any person. Not even if we believe they're a terrorist. Not even if we believe they're a war criminal. Not even if we believe they're our enemy.

Only if we prove them guilty -- by a fair trial, by a jury of their peers, with evidence not extracted by violating their Creator-endowed inalienable Rights -- may we call them felons and punish them appropriately.

If we can act justly at Nuremberg when trying some of the most depraved humans in recent history, then surely we can act justly when trying Pakistani villagers.

Answering the Skeptic

A good skeptic will ask, What if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is found innocent? An argument for the military commissions is the relative certainty that they will convict.

But truly, if the best prosecutors in the United States cannot convince twelve Americans that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is guilty, then maybe he is actually innocent. Few events could damage the United States' efforts to protect the Rights of humanity than if we execute an innocent foreigner.

If a military commission executes a man who is later exonerated, then for the next century, each time the United States attempts to defend the rights of humans in Cambodia or China, we will be firmly reminded of our own violations.

If the United States wishes to preserve its moral capital, it must remain above reproach.

The upside to this whole debate is that Holder's prosecutors claim they have sound evidence. If we allow the Justice Department to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in US criminal court and he is found guilty, he will be punished with death, just as if he were convicted by a military tribunal.

But by trying him in US criminal court, we uphold our American identity as the defender of the inalienable Rights of all humanity.


PS. To be fair, there's a very practical argument against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in criminal court: the case will cost too much, with estimates ranging from a few hundred million dollars to a billion. Clearly those costs must be controlled, and decreased. Even at the low-end, 300 million dollars for a trial is absurd. On the other hand, we've spent around a billion dollars improving and servicing the detainment facilities at Guantanamo since the first prisoners arrived there eight years ago. I address money only to predict anyone who deflects the moral argument in favor of arguing finances. The financial cost will be high either way, but the longer we delay, the more the prisoners cost us.

Every statement should end with a question mark?

My friend Ryan Georgioff recently wrote,

Naturally, I can't help but feel this is one big cosmic joke.

Have you felt it? That hesitant panic that maybe you've been duped, been done over by Zeus and his Creons?

I'm not the first to feel it, I know, but when the curtain falls and Jesus is standing there with uncorked champagne toasting the end of life-as-we-know-it... well, that would just be fucking bizarre.

But no moreso than, say, the way life-as-we-know-it operates.

You really shouldn't read something like Ishmael if you're looking for inner peace, and you sure as hell shouldn't be reading anarchist literature. Yet this is how I've spent my recent days, pondering the perilous paths of precedents in full knowledge of the futile nature of my quest... yet questing nonetheless.

Oh, where my journey has taken me!

In my mind I have smashed the bank teller window and spray-painted vulgar graffiti on the McDonald's arch. I have marched hand-in-hand with flower children and acid-tripping hippies from the Nineteen-Sixties. When the riot police machines come I always throw their tear gas back to them, though they've forgotten how to cry. These glorious and grandiose dreams are then beset by the realities of my life.

No job, no money, and no real desire to have either. Like I said, don't look to Ishmael for a reason to keep at your mindless job or for motivation to stick it out and finish that lingering degree.

My mind is all-over-the-fucking-place.

I am posting this because I can, despite the fact that it's all shit. And to think I want to write for a living.

Ryan approaches his search for personal and spiritual enlightenment with passionate honesty. I admire his courage: I can vouch from personal experience it's terrifying to set off into the wilderness. Imagine climbing the face of Half Dome in Yosemite. Half way up you meet an obstacle, only passable by unclipping yourself from your safety ropes. You face a sickening choice: unclip and keep climbing, or stick with the safety net and lower yourself back to the banal you climbed to escape.

Ryan and I both left our ropes behind. We're at various stages in that climb up Half Dome now. While he's championing his choice, "Oh, where my journey has taken me!", I'm second-guessing myself, clinging wearily to the perilous cliff, wondering if the ropes were really so constraining, if the institutions I abandoned were really so corrupt, really so evil, and imagining how happy my life could have been within them.

Certainly a grassy meadow, however illusory, appeals to a ropeless climber a kilometer above.

While Ryan reveled in the glory of the climb in his post above, I questioned our sanity, in my comment below:

What if this isn't all one cosmic joke. What if it's all true. What if in our efforts to tear down artifice, we pile the rubble in the doorways, walling ourselves in for a cloistered death. Starving ourselves of options by writing off entire movements, entire economies, entire ideas.

What if unfettered embracing, rejoicing, ego, and amorality, really is evil -- what if we evolved into orderly species because those who were disposed towards order procreated most successfully.

What if anarchy is what we fear in mobs. Just it's been tempered so far by the police. What if The Man is like Jesus said: established by Divine Right. And the police are God's fingertips, loving us toughly, for our own good.

What if McDonald's and Dow Chemical and British Petroleum really are symbols of the holiest system of social-darwinism ever devised by the divinely-inspired minds of righteously misogynistic white men. What if WE are genetically defective, unevolved. Is that why we despise dinero. Rejecting the nutrients that sustain us, like a baby refusing a breast.

What if we reach utopia. What if we hate that we've achieved equality and found no superior being to blame. What if we're not optimists. What if we're whiners. What if what Buddha was trying to say was stop suffering for your ideals, detach yourself from your humanitarian lust for justice, put on a suit, smile, and swallow the cum.

The Divine Chain Letter

I'm reading Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ". I'm in the first chapter, and already the book has inspired new questions about Christianity.

As I read, I'd like to raise these questions for discussion, in case anyone has insights or answers.

On page 30, the theologian Dr. Craig Blomberg is quoted, 

"Jesus says, 'Whoever acknowledges me, I will acknowledge before my father in heaven.' Final judgment is based on one's reaction to -- whom? This mere human being? No, that would be a very arrogant claim. Final judgment is based on one's reaction to Jesus as God."

Besides the irony of Blomberg's views on arrogance, he's making a gigantic assertion there. He seems to be saying final judgment is based on one's acknowledgement of Jesus as God.

Yet, supporting evidence for his claim is readily available: Jesus said in his commission at the end of Mark's gospel, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Jesus seems to say, Believe and then publicly demonstrate that belief. Or, according to Paul in his letter to the Romans, "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." In this case you have to say the belief out loud, and then you're saved. 

Salvation according to Blomberg and Paul appears to come down to demonstrating you believe Jesus is God by telling someone else. You have to publicly step up and say, "Yes, I heard the gospel and I believe what I heard." Then you're saved.

I can't accept this interpretation. The message of Jesus could not possibly be so inane. This interpretation reduces the message of Jesus to a chain letter.

Exhibit A: "If you forward this message to ten of your friends, you'll have great sex for three years. If you don't, you'll be crushed by a flying camel."

Every time someone forwards a chain letter, they imply they are concerned about flying camels. They imply they believe the threat or hope for the promise. Those who believe follow the instructions and we who don't believe get junk mail. 

Exhibit B: If you publicly admit you believe the Gospel you'll live eternally on streets paved with gold. If you don't, you'll boil in the lake of fire.

The Christian church has glossed over the transformative message Jesus brought in favor of the chain letter version, to their detriment. "Tell someone you believe or you'll go to hell" may be a brilliant distribution strategy, but what use is it to spread a message that says merely, "Spread this message"?

Imagine if twelve people received an email tomorrow that said only, "Forward this." What would be the effect if they forwarded it to everyone they knew, who forwarded it again, until everyone on earth had received it? Well, we'd all have read and forwarded an email. Nice! 

Then what?

The message of Jesus should not be reduced to a chain letter. Regardless of opinions on his divinity, he preached vital advice on living well and peacefully with each other. Ascribing divinity to him only emphasizes the rightness of his message and should convince the church to implement it with all haste. 

Advice to Apostles and Theologians

What should Blomberg have said? What should Paul have said? They could be right. Maybe acknowledging belief ensures salvation. But what if they had said, "Implement the message of Jesus on earth. Then you shall be saved"? Would it have harmed their message?

You could argue that not everyone who believes Jesus' divinity will also be willing to implement Jesus' message on earth. But if they believe he's God, what delusion prevents them from obeying him? Clearly they do not actually believe.

The class of people who implements Jesus' message will always include every person who believes in Jesus. If you don't implement Jesus' message, you do not believe. 

(Yes, that class of people will also include a number who don't believe, or are undecided about, Jesus' divinity. If God is so legalistic, I wonder if he weeps that his caveat separates him from these samaritans.)

So it would have been safe for Blomberg and Paul to argue for sustainable action. Out with the chain letter, in with world transformation.

But what about Jesus? He also claimed those who believed and acknowledged (via baptism) would be saved. Was he advocating the chain letter approach to salvation? Well, then, he got what he asked for: the most popular chain letter ever. 

But, I don't think he wanted something so simple. I think he expected further action, and if he did, then the church needs to get back to implementing Jesus' message of living well with each other. If they do that, they're going to improve a lot of lives. If they don't, humans will suffer twice -- on earth first, and then in hell.

Maybe I'm complicating this. Maybe the church has it right. Perhaps Jesus too ascribed to the chain letter idea. Maybe he just wanted to get the message out, so that everyone would clearly hear the gospel: "Forward this or go to hell."

PS Let me stress my concern here is not with Jesus or scripture. It's with Christianity's portrayal of the aforementioned. For example, at university I learned in biblical studies that the word "saved" is "sozo" in the original Greek. "Sozo" doesn't mean salvation like Christianity traditionally teaches, a boolean switch between "unsaved" to "saved". Instead it means "restore", as in, if you publicly acknowledge your belief in Jesus, you'll be restored -- most likely a promise of gradual restoration to a whole peace and right relationship with earth, others, yourself, and God. It's called "shalom" in Hebrew.

PPS This may be off-topic, but look at the rest of that last chapter of Mark:

Jesus says, "And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well. After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it."

Those who believe will drive out demons, speak multiple languages, pal around with deadly animals, escape assassination and heal by touch. And according to Mark the signs actually occurred. Whenever a Christian preaches to me, I'm going to demand they prove they speak in Jesus' name. There's enough sick people around to last a lifetime. Either we'll eliminate the need for universal health care, or God isn't real, or the Christian doesn't believe.

Day 106: Notes on a Country

One of my childhood friends moved when we were teens from Seattle to Muscatine, Iowa. His affection for the home of our youth grew through the years. The longer he was away, the more he found his identity in what he'd left. These days he lives in L.A., but even now he seems to have more zeal for my region than I do.

For perhaps the first time since my friend moved, I can commiserate with him. I'm finding my identity is founded more in what I left behind, than in the reasons why I left. Like the philosopher Hegel said, I'm examining my surroundings to find out which of it is not me. That which I don't reject, that which I affirm, I hold onto as the vague outline of my identity. In Korea I reject a lot. Not much of the culture here resounds with me. Instead, after my years of criticizing my home, I'm surprised to find that the silhouette remaining, my core identity, resembles the US.

I realize now that there's a lot of United Statesian inextricably woven into me. It seems, for all my syncretism, I can't get the American out of me.

Having been out of the US for 9 of the past 11 months, I've very gradually become fond of the hobbling, optimistic people and complex, chaotic, confusing land I left behind. Part of that fondness is fed by the stark contrast Korea presents. Part of it grows from brief moments of hope inspired by small people doing grand things.

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. It's the very core of the United States that encourages my criticisms, both in opening a podium for discourse via the first amendment and by enamouring me so I'll come critically to its defense when that podium is threatened.

I love that everyone in the US -- immigrant, CEO, religious, Daughter of the Revolution, bourgeois, ex-con, or student -- is, at least theoretically, allowed a soapbox and equal access to the air that will gladly carry their cries.

Perhaps I'm a bit self-righteous when it comes to our constitution and our incorrigible, polyphonic disagreeability. The same brutish, self-unconscious rudeness I despise in some United Statesians when it occurs in a quiet pub or museum, I love when it heralds fierce patriots parading some cronyist injustice or US-government condoned oppression to the chagrin of the supposedly patriotic.

The US is a noble culture and a fetid culture, but there's room for both. There are plenty of governments-by-the-people-for-the-people doing parts of it better. How I'd love Poland's universal free education all the way through university. How I'd love Canada's extensive support for the arts. How I'd love to see individual states defy the central government more, in the spirit of Ireland, Sweden and Connecticut. I'd love to see more legal equality and social acceptance for minorities.

I love that the US constitution protects both the rights of the majority to dislike the minority and the minority to challenge the majority. At the end of all the name calling, bickering and outright conflict, the constitution prescribes civility and allows enemies to dialogue til they become friends or go to dinner as enemies. It allows universities to explore risque subjects. It's the constitution itself that makes allowances via the court system for resistance, defiance and outright disobedience when such freedoms are threatened.

There's little open discourse in Korea. Friends of mine who teach adults English via topic based conversations complain that in consecutive classes, the same basic opinions are rehashed repetitively. Nor is discourse encouraged. Technically the founding contract of Korea protects freedom of speech, but the government doesn't go in for the whole constitutional law thing much: they're a majority party and they've stacked every piece of government machinery with cronies. Just yesterday a blogger was arrested for speculating Korea's currency, the Won, might collapse.

Beneath the government level, the culture itself discourages dissent. At my school, often horrible ideas proceed without questioning, refinement or improvement. For example, a 4th grader was hit by a car when walking across the street. The next day the school banned 3rd graders and younger from riding bikes to school. I was the only one who pointed out the non-sequitur nature of the mandate. Other teachers said, "It's ok, it's ok!" and "Don't you think this makes sense?" giving me a chance to come to their side. No one is expected to embarrass a leader by questioning their wisdom.

Young people are constantly coerced to do as their elders deign, even when decisions are completely non-sensical. For example, in Korea, boys are circumcised when they're in the 5th and 6th grade. Leading doctors here acknowledge the surgery is pointless at that age, as sanitation is no longer an issue for a 12 or 13 year old.

However, according to a friend who's been advocating against circumcision in Korea for the past 4 years, the majority of doctors know little about the procedure beyond how to actually sever the foreskin. Fathers are too busy at work to take their sons' side, and too harried to be approached. Mothers aren't informed on the details of the operation and so mandate their children undertake it. The boys of course understand the ramifications: weeks bedridden, the embarrassment of bloody pants and the effects of heavy painkillers taken for up to a month. Ignorance and corrupted doctrines of Confucianism perpetuate genital mutilation, which is certainly child abuse.

It's the freedom to dissent and the equality of all humans that I identify most with the in US. Children and adults, principals and teachers are equally defended under the law. There's an ingrained, fierce defence of humanity with all its forms, creeds, lifestyles and ideas. It's this aspect more than others that differentiates the US from Korea. Korea often seems juvenile and uniform. It feels like middle school, whereas the US feels like a university full of disagreement and discourse. That aspect alone makes the US rare and worthy of preservation.

Maybe I only feel this idealism at a distance. I have a feeling one day back in the US would dampen my affections. Yet, many of my cricitisms rose in reaction to Bush administration gaffs and big corporate handouts due to traditional politics. Perhaps later this month, that will begin to change. Maybe, maybe not: new ways and old ways have equal opportunity in the US.

I'll end with a summary statement that concisely conveys my current perspective. It rose from the mind of a British man during a similarly convoluted time in US history: the Vietnam War era. Aptly enough, I discovered the statement through another foreigner, a fellow blogger and traveler from Singapore and Malaysia, when she summed up her study abroad experience in the US. She wrote:

After only 4 months [in the US], I am ill-equipped to form a conclusion on America and I suspect that it'll be a nation that will perpetually baffle me.

One man can, though. And that man is Alistair Cooke, a BBC correspondent who had a weekly radio show about America, Letter from America. Never before have I heard such an articulate and moving description of the country, and a timeless one at that- for it holds true almost 40 years later:

In a self-governing Republic - good government in some places, dubious in others...with two hundred million people drawn from scores of nations, what is remarkable is not the conflict between them but the truce. Enough is happening in America at any one time - enough that is exciting, frightening, funny, brutal, brave, intolerable, bizarre, dull, slavish, eccentric, inspiring and disastrous - that almost anything you care to say about the United States is true.

- From Cooke's broadcast, 19 October 1969 -

America, I have learned, is what you make of it. The freedom to do so is the most beautiful sort of freedom that I have ever encountered.
--------------

Yes. What is remarkable is not the conflict, but the truce. And yes, almost anything you care to say about the United States is true. One country of many nations, with liberty, opportunity, and at least half a chance at justice for all.

Love and peace to you all, and if you're experiencing extreme weather, stock up, hunker down, bundle up and don't forget to enjoy the novelty of the storm.

Galen

PS. Especially to those who disagree with or don't like the next President of the US: As Mr. Obama becomes President, keep in mind his understanding of the country. He sees space for your dissent, whatever your creed, beliefs or lifestyle. I hope this statement lifts your spirits and invites you into discourse: "During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that's how it should be, because that's what America is about. That's part of the magic of this country is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated." - President-Elect Obama

Fortune Telling Goes Mainstream

Sometime in the past few years, the news-media picked a new favorite word: "tomorrow". Headlines read, "President to veto Children's Health Care tomorrow," or "Company expected to announce bid for contract tomorrow." The news-media practices a dual art: journalism and divination.

They're not the only entity eagerly foretelling the future. Bush favors the word "pre-emptive"; business analysts use "forecast"; weeklies like Newsweek and Time extrapolate "trends" decades into the future.

We, their audience, encourage them. We check the weather forecast as if a human or computer could actually predict a sunny day. They might guess correctly, but we can't call them accurate until we feel the deep warmth of the afternoon sun on our necks.

We increasingly trust these modern day diviners, repeating the news as if the anchor surely knows what will happen tomorrow. We accept their guesses like the ill wishing for a cure.

We are, like Dave Bazan sang in his "Priests and Paramedics", the hemmoraging wounded on the stretcher screaming to the paramedic, "Am I going to die?" We're happy to hear, "Buddy just calm down, you'll be alright."

Not that they, or anyone else, knows for sure.

I can only hypothesize why we're willing to trust people who clearly know as little about the future as we. Perhaps we've accelerated the availability of information so much that we now demand the news before it happens. Perhaps we want to know what will happen to us so intensely that we'll trust anyone who appears confident. Regardless of our reasons, we trust too much.

We live too dependently on our diviners. When some soothsayer predicts a housing bubble, we act as if they know certainly, thus fermenting a self-fulfilling prophesy. When our Presidents promise us we'll suffer if we don't invade weaker nations we acknowledge we can't know the future and thus can't prove them wrong; so we trust their vision for the future more than ours.

We abort potential works of art because they might not succeed. We scrap potential children because they might mature into criminals.

We have empirical data to support our predictions. Of course, our data occurred in the past and Hume among many others have shown that no past empirical data proves future causality. Every time you toss a ball into the air a miniscule probability increases that the ball will not descend. Just because an action caused an effect once, or a million times, does not mean it will the next time.

Further, I'm increasingly certain nothing is certain. So, if we have no certainty about the past or present, which we have seen and now see, how do we justify making certainty claims about the future? I don't think we can justify our modern divination. We make the future, but "we" contains 6.5 billion people each exerting their own influence, besides the influence of non-human forces. So many inputs make forecasting 99.99999% impossible. Of course, one may predict accurately, especially in controlled situations with far fewer inputs.

Yet, the risk of pre-emption -- of anticipating and then changing the future -- far outweighs the risk of letting que sera, sera.

Or does it? Does potential predicate a right or obligation to opportunity? Must a mother birth the fetus in their womb if they expect the potential child to suffer? Or may the artist discard that incomplete artwork because it may potentially fail? If no mind exists with a precise knowledge of what will happen, than does modifying the future pre-emptively make any difference -- if no one has a plan, then how can you wreck the plan?

It seems there is a general, universal plan infered from universal human rights. The plan entails in every case humans continuing to live. So we do wreck the plan when we trust the soothsaying media, analysts, presidents and economists so much that we will invade and murder other humans in reaction to the "experts'" predictions.

Can we call pre-emptive action "just"? If in hindsight we see certainly a diviner predicted accurately, can we justify our belief and our actions based on those predictions, especially if those actions harmed another in order to protect ourselves?

(I hereby predict someone will bring up Minority Report :P).

Mini-Jesuses thrive, even with their discredited name

Reading on Revolution in Jesus Land and Thom Stark's Semper Reformanda I find hope that Christians do not take lightly the hijacking of their name. Even when poison calls itself dessert, the dessert makes itself unmistakable.

Though some congregations shoot those who assail them, others choose Jesus' way. I'm specifically considering the Amish who last October suffered five deaths in their community. I'm sure they considered their response with excruciating care -- the public relations and news-media megaphone crouched over their shoulders, poised to trumpet the actions of the Amish to perhaps a large portion of the world. What a crucible in which that community chose.

The leadership at New Life Church in Colorado Springs certainly faced a similar gravity in their deliberations. Yet the two congregations chose divergent paths.

New Life Church shored up their defenses and then shot the single assailant who fired on them.

The Amish -- they stepped onto the world stage and forgave. Pardoned. Jesused. "Forgive them father," Jesus said of his assailants, "for they don't know what they do."

Wolves in Jesus' clothing

I'm a ballerina. No, I've never taken dance lessons, but I'm a ballerina. True, I've never danced in the Nutcracker or Swan Lake or any other ballet, but I'm a ballerina.

In English, as in many languages, entities are defined by what they do or what practical purpose they perform. Would you call a phonebook a knife? Of course not! If you did, you'd ask your friend for a knife and she'd hand you a phonebook (if she patronized your silly semantics). You'd have trouble making your sandwich.

We want our language as precise as possible for efficiency. Philosophers have spent the past century striving for a language refined enough to convey both the simple and the sublime. One, Wittgenstein, devised a method for ensuring each word in a language had only one meaning. He failed miserably, but we accuse ourselves if we fault him for trying.

It's clear, if I don't do ballet, I'm not a ballerina. In the same way, I'm not a Muslim, because I don't practice Islam. Nor am I a Christian, since I don't do what Christians do.

Now to my point: it is constantly apparent a number of people call themselves Christians who do not perform the actions of Christians (and a similar argument could be made for Muslims and Conservatives -- i.e. Bush). Perhaps I should rephrase that: maybe these "Christians" act just like "Christians" but they don't act like Jesus. Christian, I learned in my class on Shalom this fall, means in Greek, "little Christ". So it seems we may agree on a standard: that those who call themselves by the word "Christian" should fulfill the same role Jesus did. Maybe I'm asking too much.

Yet, the recent actions of "Christians" do not even closely approach in likeness to Jesus' admonitions, much less his acts. "Christians" ignore guidelines like 'Turn the other cheek' and 'Lay down his life for his friends' and 'Care for the sojourner in your land'. Instead, "Christians" shoot assailants in their churches. They obfuscate Jesus' clear teachings into complex, borderline gnostic doctrines, Melissa Scott-esque non-sequiturs, and prosperity "gospels" -- for profit! -- and they whip earnest humans into harnessed oxen by which they power political ideologies.

I feel sick to write of it. Oftentimes the conspiracy theories about the Masons and Knights Templar seem so credible -- they hover like locusts demonstrating irrefutably the devised nature of this monotheism -- and so tangible -- I know I can touch their modern day counterparts by dialing ten numbers on my phone -- that such obvious hogwash appears more plausible than a virgin birth and a resurrection.

I'm not in a place to make any predictions about these "Christians" and their relation to any God they claim to serve. Jesus said he himself did not come to judge. Wiser learners than I have argued to me any imperative extrapolated from Jesus' assertion applies only to eternal judgment. Their advice allows me the freedom to say I do not approve of those "Christians" who do the opposite of what Jesus did. I feel they discredit those who strive so intensely to live up to all the
responsibility associated with Jesus' name, just as I discredit all ballerinas when I claim a likeness to their grace.

Stranger to Oneself

I finished reading Camus' The Stranger a couple of days ago. He makes this eeriest point clear: whether you die at 30 or 70, you die. Which leaves a thoughtful person (such as myself) utterly confused. If death is the end, then there's little point in prolonging life. Nor do we feel compelled to act, whether murderously or altruistically. Yet, we do act altruistically and murderously. It seems clear why humans developed murder -- to defeat a threat to their lives. But why altruism? A recent article in the Atlantic argued altruism developed through typical adaptive cycles where communal, selfless species survived, thus reproducing philanthropic genes. Which seems to say, scientifically at least (and most religions would argue the same), we act kindly because we prioritize existence over non-existence.

So, if we murder and assist both in accordance to our belief that we prefer to exist, what do we do when life becomes entirely absurd, meaningless and death seems no different than life (for life and death mean the same)? Do we go on living? And if we live, in what manner do we live if we may die in another moment? As Pascal wrote: "Between us, and Hell or Heaven, there is only life between the two, which is the most fragile thing in the world."

Sartre posited an answer to the questioning of Camus' era (and ours): there's no compulsion to do anything, yet we're not dead, so we must choose. Even suicide is a choice. Even standing still, inactive, is choosing. There is no imperative to choose one way of life, say serial-killer, over any other, say philanthropist.

However, Sartre notes that when we choose, we choose for all people -- we demonstrate our preferred course of action and others may choose to follow it if it produces the sort of life they desire. So, Sartre essentially appeals to Kant's categorical imperative: Act as if all humans will be forced to act as you do. Another philosopher said similarly, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I give away my disposition by setting murder and altruism in opposition. Clearly I pose a dichotomy that prefers generosity and service to totem-murder, incest and patricide -- Freud's three universal taboos.

As long as I recall, I have been biased towards altruism. Only recently have I learned words to describe my reasoning. John Rawls, another philosopher, proposed a thought experiment to help us decide how to act. He suggested when faced with a decision, we imagine a veil separates us from the situation, so we do not know what party we will play in the situation. We may be the king; we may be the pauper (there is equal chance). Since we may be the pauper, naturally we will ensure that should we be the pauper, we will be well respected, protected and happy. We want the most benefit for ourselves in the case we should be the least of the society. Rawls called his principle MiniMax: the maximum benefit for the minimum person.

My selfishness masquerades as altruism. I only act to provide an example I hope others will choose to follow. I want the least to be cared for in case I one day am the least. It's why I pick up hitchhikers: to build up my hitchhikers' Karma so I'll get picked up next time I'm thumbing.

I've laid out a couple of viable ways to a satisfying, altruistic life. However, I do not know if I live them, though I try.

Countless questions bother me. Here are two: first, if life is absurd and we evolved, why do we create? There seems no point in striving to make sculpture, music, epic photo montages, poetry and novels. Friendship and altruism are explained by the Atlantic article, but creativity has yet to receive much treatment in philosophy (please, if I overstate, direct me to a place to read).

Second, why does music affect some people so much? Past a philosophy of aesthetics (proportion is related to health and health to survival, so it seems explainable by Darwin's theories), music seems to have little evolutionary value. From my reading in philosophy of music so far today, it seems that music in recent years (enlightenment on) was intentionally developed to express emotions which words and other visual symbols could not, due to a veil of language and bias which separates us from what Kant called "das Ding an sich" and Wallace Stevens called the The -- reality.

But music precedes these theories, and even after these theories, practitioners adapted music to match the human ear, rather than modifying humans to appreciate the music. There are exceptions: it seems it took the human ear time to understand the meaning of compositions like Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- people didn't understand innately. In the normal cases, when music was orchestrated to excite pre-existing biases in humans towards certain meanings for certain timbres of sound, where did those interpretations in humans develop?

I wish I could word this more simply but it's very complicated in my head and, of course, language is an ill-fitted tool to expressing deep pathos.

Oh. No.

I think I may be failing two classes. If I do fail them -- the two most detested classes I've taken at Whitworth -- I'll likely go to Poland and not return to graduate.

My friend Daniel noted tonight, Colleges are accreditation systems. I'm tired of vying for accreditation.

Increasingly I feel I've learned little academically here, though I have learned much socially and euecoicly. That's partly my fault, as I've not pursued my studies as rigorously as I could. But I was busy elsewhere, learning.

The ineffable inner cheer

John Nemo Galt posted a response to my post which decried our correlation of economics and happiness.

If you read Galt's response you probably noted he sought very precise, objective answers to questions about measuring success. Is success making friends? What kind of friends? Is it not cutting in line? Is it children sharing? Is it the depth of conversations?

All of his questions were in response to assertions I made in my post. I listed alternative methods for measuring happiness. Galt's questions forced me to reconsider. I admit, he caught me saying something I didn't mean.

In attempting to fend of economic measurements I missed the core issue: it's not how we measure, it's measurement itself.

Success is subjective. To Maslow it was scaling a heirarchy to attain self-actualization. To Freud it was acknowledging the subconscious. For Nietzsche it was discovering one's will-to-power and chasing it down. To Aristotle it was achieving an end one was designed for -- the entelechy. Mill saw success as the most happy people possible, which depended on means of measurement. To Frankl success was the demand society or individuals placed on a person -- not fulfilling the demand, but merely a person realizing they are necessary. To Marx it was reconnecting the laborer to his product. To Gandhi it was living in harmony with people and environment. To the Hebrews and to Jesus it was a similar harmony with all beings and circumstances. To Carson McCullers, Albert Camus, John Steinbeck, etc, success was in the struggle.

Some of these subjective concepts of success can be measured objectively, especially Maslow's, Mill's and Marx's. However, many others are immeasurable.

In consideration for the various ideas of success, perhaps all measurement should be eliminated. The heralding of economic growth as success does not appear as success to me, nor perhaps to many others.

I would be saddened to see someone who held harmony as their success be disregarded because their success was not profitable. The trend is changing, as more often, successful harmony with our environment is lauded. The end results of the Green movement are measurable -- the temperature or the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere -- but the human element of collaboration and innovation is not.

I find myself identifying with Frankl, Nietzche and Gandhi (ironic, no?). I think the Western world identifies itself with Mill and thus we measure the economy to measure success as it provides the most good for the most people (theoretically, capitalistically, at least).