The Problem of Disgust

Some time ago we talked about Dr. Martha Nussbaum's thoughts on disgust.  We shouldn't allow disgust to be a standard for making laws, she says, because it is an irrational standard, and it leaves us likely to pass unfair laws discriminating against people whom we (irrationally) find disgusting.

What she's really arguing is that feelings of the type broadly called disgust are often purely irrational, and not therefore good reasons for rules. Why not? A minimum standard for 'a good reason' is that it should be based on reason, which by definition isn't purely irrational. Indeed, most modern thinkers would say it should be purely rational -- but I don't think that's right, for as we've discussed, the ancient notion of reason was able to embrace both the true and the beautiful.... 

The feeling of disgust does occur in children learning about sex, and also in India when some castes ponder the untouchables, and also in a wide variety of other cases. Some of this may be purely irrational; other things (like the reaction when seeing a person with a serious deformity) has an underlying reason we can grasp (a revulsion of that type might have helped our ancestors avoid a serious disease), but it is one that is irrelevant or useless in modern life. Furthermore, in acting out of disgust of this type, we are failing to treat those people who are 'untouchable' or afflicted with a deformity with the respect due to human beings. 

That far, at least, her argument is surely a reasonable one: indeed, it's an argument which is wholly compatible with what the Judeo-Christian ethos that the reviewer is defending. This very principle is what took saints in to live among lepers. 

The problem with following her approach is that disgust -- pure or otherwise -- is a powerful motivator.  It's a thing like pain in that it creates an aversion in the person experiencing it.  To license it is to put a powerful weapon in the hands of the kind of bullies that occupy too much of our public space.

Today's example comes from Hustler magazine, which took a photograph of a young conservative journalist named S. E. Cupp and modified it in a way clearly designed to disgust her -- most people would be disgusted by being portrayed this way in public, in any case.  The text accompanying the photo clearly label it as not a real photograph of her, so there's probably no legal way to act against the magazine; the text also makes clear that they are doing this to punish her for her political opinions.

It is not only women who are treated this way (although as Hot Air points out, Playboy did much the same thing in 2009).  We remember the case of 'Rick Santorum's Google problem,' in which a gay rights activist (and bully) decided to disgust the Santorums by linking their name to a filthy substance associated with homosexual acts.  This was also a use of disgust to punish political opinions.

The old saying that 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me' isn't entirely false, but it isn't entirely true either.  Many people of good will are also of sensitive natures, who see the disgusting things being done and would never want it to be done to them.  So, they will stay quiet and keep their heads down -- which is just what the bullies want.  S. E. Cupp is surely brave enough to face it down, as Rick Santorum was, but the example of what was done to them will quiet others.  Those others have every right to be in the public space as well.

Dr. Nussbaum intended for her idea to have a humane effect on the law and the public space.  I cannot agree that the effect will be anything of the sort.  If anything, we are already too far in that direction.  There ought to be a mechanism for replying to bullies of this sort.  We need a strong enough medicine that it convinces them to do what decency would compel, had not they been born without it.

Dawsonville Pool Room Update

FOX News came out to Dawsonville last week to report on the outrageous seizure of the Dawsonville Pool Room.  [UPDATE:  News video now below the fold to speed page loading times.--Grim]

There are several things that make this a travesty.

1)  That the crime has been fully prosecuted, so that the identity of the actual guilty party is known, and restitution ought to be his responsibility accordingly;

2)  That the owner of the Dawsonville Pool Room is fully compliant in helping the law enforcement agencies;

3)  That he has even been trying to "pay" the "debt," although the fact is that Georgia had licensed the accountant that defrauded the owner (and robbed Georgia of its tax revenues), which means that Georgia bears at least as much responsibility for the "debt" as he does;

4)  And thus that therefore Georgia is punishing a man who is, properly speaking, a crime victim.  The state ought to protect its citizens when they are victimized by criminals, not exploit them;

and furthermore,

5)  That destroying a functional business in the middle of a recession, shuttering its doors under arms and seizing every dime of cash with gun in hand, was a thing better fit for bandits than anyone who would claim to be a man of the law.

Where are the waitresses going to find work now?  How is the government going to get its money by killing the goose that lays the golden egg?

UPDATE:  This post has been substantially revised from its first version, because I was angry when I wrote the first version.  I think substantial anger is justified by this case, but I wish to ensure that I don't lash out at those -- like FOX News -- who are merely bringing attention to the injustice.

Medieval Spain

This is a remarkable and pleasant documentary, which I encountered while doing some research on the Spanish crusades.  I suppose it should be said that it ends on a bad note, but aside from the last five minutes or so, it's a truly enjoyable film.  [UPDATE:  The movie has been moved below the fold.--Grim]

Part of it quotes the Rule of St. Benedict, which requires monks to sleep with robes and cord-belts about them, so that they are "always ready" to rise and do God's work.  Sir Robert Baden-Powell invented a fictional "Knight's Code" for the Boy Scouts, which encoded the principle of semper paratus:

Be always ready with your armor on, except when you are taking your rest at night.
Defend the poor, and help them that cannot defend themselves.
Do nothing to hurt or offend anyone alse.
Be prepared to fight in the defense of your country.
At whatever you are working, try to win honor and a name for honesty.
Never break your promise.
Maintain the honor of your country with your life.
Rather die honest than live shamelessly.
Chivalry requires that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace; and to do good unto others.

It turns out that the principle is as well rooted in the monastic tradition as in the knightly one.

Recessional

Niall Ferguson wonders after the majesty of a jubilee:

A hundred years ago, the seemingly immortal Emperor Franz Josef was approaching his 82nd birthday. This year Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, meaning that she has reigned since 1952. A sprightly 86, she has acquired precisely the same air of immortality as the old Habsburg Emperor (to whom she is no doubt distantly related). 

Last week I watched an astonishing number of bandsmen in bearskin hats and bright red tunics rehearsing for the jubilee celebrations, which culminate next month. Stuck in the resulting traffic, I had time to ponder why, at a time of deep cuts in defense spending, Britain can still afford the world’s finest military bands. 

“Austerity” has become the watchword of David Cameron’s premiership as he grapples with the huge deficits run up by his Labour predecessors. Yet there is nothing austere about the Diamond Jubilee. On June 3, according to the official website, “Up to a thousand boats will muster on the river as the Queen prepares to lead one of the largest flotillas ever seen on the River Thames.”

Don't hold it against him that he doesn't cite Kipling.  It's a proof of the thing he is worried about that he doesn't know to cite it.

God of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle line—
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! 

The tumult and the shouting dies—
The Captains and the Kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! 

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! 

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Amen. 

Talking Blues, Scottish Style, in Australia

The important line is this poem:  "Whar Stands Scotland Now?  Stands it Whar it Used To?  Whar Stands Scotland Now?  Stands it Whar it Could Do?"

As to which, I honestly don't know how Scotland came to this.  If there was ever a people who seemed to have a hearty national sense for vengeance -- Nemo Me Impune Lacessit!  -- surely it was the Scots.  If that can be lost, all can be lost.

"The First 9/11"

This is really impressive stuff, WaPo.

On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call “the first 9/11.”  Many of the locals grew up hearing denunciations of Mormonism from the pulpit on Sundays, and tales of the massacre from older relatives who considered Mormons “evil.”

Wow, those evil Mormons.  I guess they were the first terrorists, huh?  Well, it turns out -- deep in the article, buried on the second page -- that there's a little backstory that didn't make the first dozen paragraphs.

The massacre was an anomaly for the church, because it was Mormons who were more likely to be targeted in the early days of their religion, which was founded in the 1830s and 1840s.

UPDATE:

Hot Air notices the story.  One of their comments asks:  

"What about the Dorn/Ayers militia from 30 yrs ago?"

That's just crazy talk.

A Precedent for that California Problem

Apparently this massive-debt-default situation has come around before... oddly enough, also in Greece.  Medievalists.net has the article (h/t Medieval News).  An heir to the disputed throne of Byzantium asked the army assembled for the Fourth Crusade to assist him in claiming that throne.  In return, he promised a lavish payment as well as substantial military support during the Crusade.

Soon after becoming Alexos IV, however, it proved that the newly-made emperor could not pay up.  So...

The crusaders’ only concern was to extract every penny of the money due to them. When, after mid-November 1203, Alexios IV began to cool in his attitude towards the crusaders and made only token payments to them, the crusading leaders, according to Villehardouin, ‘often sent to him [Alexios IV] and asked him for the payment of the moneys due, as he had covenanted’. Similarly, Robert of Clari records that the crusading leaders twice ‘asked the emperor for their payment’. In early December, after the flow of funds had ceased altogether, the barons finally decided to send envoys to Alexios to ask him to honour their contract, otherwise the crusaders ‘would seek their due by any means they could’. One of the emissaries sent to the imperial palace was Villehardouin. According to his first-hand account, upon admission to the audience chamber, the crusader envoys demanded that the emperor fulfil his commitments to the crusaders. If he failed to do so, the crusaders would ‘strive to obtain their due by all the means they could’. The rank- and-file crusaders were not ignorant of this ultimatum. Robert of Clari records that ‘all the counts and leaders of the army gathered and went to the emperor’s palace and demanded their money at once … [I]f he did not pay them, they would seize so much of his property that they would be paid’.

He did not pay, and a little capitalist "creative destruction" followed.

Unfortunately, though the debt was recouped, the destruction of Constantinople severely weakened what had been a fortification against Islamic expansion from the East.  The Greeks continued to hold sway for another two hundred and fifty years, but never so strongly as they had before.  Eventually, the rising Turkish power swept them away.

The fiscal catastrophe that dwarfs Greece

What happens when you share a currency with a political unit in a fiscal shambles?  No, I don't mean Greece:

So JPMorgan makes a $2 billion mistake -- less than 7 percent of their 2011 earnings -- with their own money, and senators are calling for hearings. The California's governor's office raised its 2012 budget deficit projections -- namely their overspending of public money -- almost 50 percent, from $9.2 billion to $16 billion, an error of almost eight percent of the state's total budget, in four months, yet those same members of Congress remain as silent as a Trappist monk.

H/t Maggie's Farm

The Dictionary of Old English

Acquired Savants

It's an interesting fact that severe brain injuries rarely, but sometimes, reveal remarkable talents in people that they never had before.  The Atlantic has an interesting article thinking about the problems that fact raises.

Let me just note, though, that these problems disappear if you adopt the view of consciousness that I have sometimes advocated here.  If consciousness is received by the brain rather than produced by it, an adjustment to the brain will receive a different part of the signal.  Think of an old television set, when we used to broadcast TV through the air.  The whole of television was in the signal, invisible, impossible to notice without a system that was structured in just the right way.

With such a system, though, you would find yourself watching a baseball game.  But that wasn't the whole of the signal:  retune the receiver, and you'd be watching a Western or a soap opera.  All of it was there:  it was how you tuned the receiver that determined what you got.

By the same token, if you gave the TV a good whack, sometimes you'd find that the signal became rather fuzzy.  But sometimes it would improve!  Sometimes it was just that whack that would bring the picture into extraordinary focus.

Of course, whack it hard enough and you might end up trying to show two programs at once; or, in fact, you might break the mechanism that was capable of receiving the signal.  In that case you'd end up with a piece of junk that was once a television, a physical object now insensitive to the invisible signal in the air.

If that's the way consciousness works -- that is, if there is a unitary consciousness that our individual minds express individually because we are uniquely tuned to it -- then this phenomenon is no surprise at all.  Make a significant adjustment to the manner in which the brain is tuned, and you will receive a different part of the signal.

A proper wedding

I may have posted this before; if so, I apologize.  It occurred to me again because my neighbor's son is marrying a Jewish woman and will have a (moderately) Jewish ceremony.  I'm going to crochet a chuppah covering for them because, as we all know, no chuppah, no shtuppah.  The father of the groom, a fine carpenter, will build the chuppah structure.

This is the ideal wedding dance.  It always gives me goosebumps.



Speaking of rituals, I finally realized that what I needed to do was have a proper Episcopalian church funeral for my aunt right here in my hometown, just for me and my friends and neighbors.  That way I can attend the family thing that's going to happen in San Antonio next month without any tension.  I've engaged a bagpiper, chosen the Old and New Testament readings and hymns, and set everything up for next Friday.  A friend is going to be kind enough to drive down from Houston.

I'll Have Another Does It Again

Another squeaker.  I'm enjoying these:

Come On, Guys

If this is the plan, it's time to rethink the plan.

If the law is upheld, Republicans will take to the floor to tear out its most controversial pieces, such as the individual mandate and requirements that employers provide insurance or face fines

If the law is partially or fully overturned they’ll draw up bills to keep the popular, consumer-friendly portions in place — like allowing adult children to remain on parents’ health care plans until age 26, and forcing insurance companies to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Ripping these provisions from law is too politically risky, Republicans say.

Apparently it's not politically risky to require insurance companies to go out of business, though, which is what this plan will in fact require.  What you're going to get out of this plan is insurance companies that must provide coverage to anyone who asks, even if they wait until they get sick to ask; but without the funding that the individual mandate (however unconstitutionally) ensured.

Employers will drop their plans, and insurance companies will go out of business.  Now what?

Courage is the most important political virtue, as Machiavelli reminds us.  If you're going to fight for principled constitutionalism, have the courage to make an argument.  It's not too hard to explain that the government ought not to demand that businesses are run in ways that make them go bankrupt.  It's not too hard to explain that people are better off being able to obtain insurance than not.

If you haven't the guts to make that argument to the People, it's time to start drawing up single payer plans.  That's where this plan gets us.  If you want them at the state level, get going on it now.  Otherwise, we'll have to amend the Constitution to permit it at the Federal level -- or just do what our left-leaning brothers and sisters do, and learn to ignore the Constitutional limits entirely.

Answering One of the Old Questions

The general disruption of philosophy in the contemporary era is demonstrated by questions like this.  But that's OK; questions are a good thing to have.

We all believe that death is bad. But why is death bad? 

In thinking about this question, I am simply going to assume that the death of my body is the end of my existence as a person. (If you don't believe me, read the first nine chapters of my book.) But if death is my end, how can it be bad for me to die? After all, once I'm dead, I don't exist. If I don't exist, how can being dead be bad for me? 

People sometimes respond that death isn't bad for the person who is dead. Death is bad for the survivors. But I don't think that can be central to what's bad about death. Compare two stories.
Story 1. Your friend is about to go on the spaceship that is leaving for 100 Earth years to explore a distant solar system. By the time the spaceship comes back, you will be long dead. Worse still, 20 minutes after the ship takes off, all radio contact between the Earth and the ship will be lost until its return. You're losing all contact with your closest friend. 

Story 2. The spaceship takes off, and then 25 minutes into the flight, it explodes and everybody on board is killed instantly. 

Story 2 is worse. But why? It can't be the separation, because we had that in Story 1. What's worse is that your friend has died. Admittedly, that is worse for you, too, since you care about your friend. But that upsets you because it is bad for her to have died. But how can it be true that death is bad for the person who dies?

This is one of those questions that we once understood to have a clear answer.  We've discussed a mild version of Avicenna's proof for a Necessary Existent:

1)  Everything we know that comes to exist gets its existence from something else.
2)  An actual infinite series cannot exist,
∴
3) At least one thing exists of its own nature, rather than getting existence from something else.

Exactly what that thing is has been subject to much debate -- Allah, for Avicenna; God for Aquinas; perhaps some meta-laws that give parameters to the expression of quantum fields for contemporary physics (but where and how do these laws exist?).  The point is that the first existent exists by nature; everything that follows from it exists contingently.

Thus to exist is to be like the first thing -- like God, like Allah, like the ultimate source of reality and therefore of all goods.  Indeed, for Avicenna and Aquinas, existence and 'the good' were the same thing.  To die, insofar as that means 'to cease to exist,' is to lose a likeness and a connection to that thing.  To die is only a good if you die to actualize some perfect and lasting virtue, some beauty or some good so strong that it even more perfectly ties you to that everlasting source of good.  So says the Havamal:  'Cattle die, kinsmen die, and you also will die:  but the one thing I know never dies is the fame of the heroic dead.'

Once that was the easy knowledge of pagan and heathen, Christian and Muslim alike.  Now a professor of philosophy from Yale seems not to be aware that the argument ever existed at all.

"I'm sorry, your race card is no longer accepted at this establishment"

James O'Keefe is at it again, this time with video showing that voters are on the registration rolls even though they've been excused from jury duty as non-citizens.  That was a clever trick, cross-checking the voting rolls against the jury records.  There's something unusually offensive about using one's lack of citizenship as an excuse to avoid jury duty, then trying to vote anyway.

I swiped the title from one of the article's commenters.  My astonishment that voter I.D. has become a race issue knows no bounds, as does my astonishment at people who think that there's no voter fraud.

The Texas primary is right around the corner.  Early voting, in fact, already has begun.  As I'll be traveling to a wedding on election day, I'm going to early-vote any day now, as soon as I figure out what to do about some of the less-publicized races.  Any comments from people knowledgeable about races such as the Texas Supreme Court justices or the Railroad Commission (our oil & gas body) are encouraged to hold forth in the comments section.  This will be the first election in ages in which we've have some realistic choices for a U.S. Representative other than Ron Paul, not only because he's not running again but because the district lines have been redrawn.  Our new (to us) incumbent, Blake Farenthold, is a bit of a Tea Party type but not a Pauline.

Road Hammers

Since we were just talking about long-haul truckers, I was delighted to find a new band devoted to them.



They know something about their roots -- nobody ought to sing about truckers who doesn't know Georgia's own Jerry Reed.



But maybe some of you don't know Jerry Reed.



Everybody's ridden that Monteagle grade, right?  It's something to see, coming down toward Chattanooga.

Drawing Lines

This is a challenging expression:

When I was young, a pastor said, whenever you draw a line between us and them, bear in mind that Jesus is on the other side of that line.

There may be something useful there; but I must say I doubt that it's true.  Jesus himself was quite fond of drawing lines:  he came, as he said, to send not peace but a sundering sword.

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Are we to take it that there is no right side of that line?

Low Bridge

Via the Borderline Boys, a little film:



My grandfather was a welder who ran a service station for long-haul truckers.  One of them made a similar mistake.  In those days long-distance communication was often by telegraph, which charged by the word and therefore rewarded brevity.  He sent his letter of resignation in the form of a quatrain:

Saw low bridge,
Couldn't stop.
Now you have
An open-top.

"I do not think you can have the duck."

Do grocery stores in your area carry fresh or frozen ducks in the meat department?  None of them in my little town does any more.  I'm even striking out in the grocery stores in other towns nearby.  My store offered to special-order them for us, but when we came back to check they said only that the shipper claimed they were seasonal.  "It's seasonal" is becoming an all-purpose explanation for whatever the local stores don't feel like stocking.  Wal-Mart wouldn't reliably carry Mason jars for canning, for instance.  Seasonal in South Texas!  What a laugh.

I finally found a mail-order place that will ship the same brand of whole ducks frozen, at a price that rivals what the store used to charge even counting the freight.  Unfortunately, we still don't have our ducks.  What arrived, by mistake, was a couple of large packages of frozen duck sausage.  I'm starting to feel like Steve Martin (sorry, they won't let me embed!):  "He can have the chicken."

Reacting Emotionally to the Non-Plasticity of Mankind

Grim writes an interesting post with quotes from Marx and Heinlein. I want to add something about that, related also to my last post. If there is indeed such a thing as "general intelligence" or cognitive ability (and there is), and it is largely inherited (as it is), so that every man's possible mental accomplishments are limited on the day of his birth - well, how does it make you feel?

I used to hold "blank slate" ideas - and I can tell you that when they're applied to politics, be they leftist or no, they are extremely agitating. Marx (and, I believe, Charles Fourier before him) believed strongly in a huge well of untapped potential in the human race. Get the social arrangements right, and what we call "genius" will become "average." One Marxist thinker, who didn't emerge on a quick google, claimed that the average New Communist Man would have the mental abilities of a Darwin, a Freud, or a Marx - though he admitted there would be deviations from the average, with unimaginable geniuses waiting to emerge and transform the world. The frustrating sense that this incredible world is potentially avaialable right now, with the humans we have, and it's only being held back by social arrangements...well, how to describe it? It can't be good for the blood pressure.

Closely akin to this is the idea that John Derbyshire calls "educational romanticism" - the idea that, since anyone can do almost anything, all that's standing between your children (or your community) and Nobel Prizes in physics, seven-figure salaries, etc. is insufficient education plus discrimination -- surely that idea would fill anyone with bile. I grew up believing "blank slate" ideas and tasted some of that bile, and still get the aftertaste when I reflect on what the Greens have done to our industrial capacity...but that is a different tale.

I do not find it depressing or dismal to see this isn't so with intelligence, that blank slate ideas are nonsense, that in fact the U.S. probably does as well as any country ever in getting its best brains into higher education (this book and that book document it well) -- and that the creation of genius by an act of will must wait, not for a messianic statist, but for technology we may get within the next century. It's a comfort to know we haven't been wasting as much genius as I used to think.

What do you think and how do you feel about it?