Enchiridion II

 II

Remember that desire demands the attainment of that of which you are desirous; and aversion demands the avoidance of that to which you are averse; that he who fails of the object of his desires is disappointed; and he who incurs the object of his aversion is wretched. If, then, you shun only those undesirable things which you can control, you will never incur anything which you shun; but if you shun sickness, or death, or poverty, you will run the risk of wretchedness. Remove [the habit of] aversion, then, from all things that are not within our power, and apply it to things undesirable which are within our power. But for the present, altogether restrain desire; for if you desire any of the things not within our own power, you must necessarily be disappointed; and you are not yet secure of those which are within our power, and so are legitimate objects of desire. Where it is practically necessary for you to pursue or avoid anything, do even this with discretion and gentleness and moderation.

What are the undesirable things that you can control? They are things like your attitudes towards events or people. Things occur that are outside your control, but you do get to decide how you react to them. Ray Wylie Hubbard put this in the end of his talking blues song "Mother Blues" as 'keeping his gratitude higher than his expectations.' The same things are happening to you externally, but the internal thing that you can control changes what the experience is like for you in crucial ways. You can shun the bad reactions, and pursue the good ones.

I saw someone remark the other day that if you choose not to find the joy in snowy days then your life will have less joy, but the same amount of snow. That is roughly the insight here.

The virus was still there, but we did not die of it any more

 

Enchiridion I

 THE ENCHIRIDION

I

There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.

Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent and take what belongs to others for your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own only that which is your own and view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you; you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm.

Aiming, therefore, at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself any inclination, however slight, toward the attainment of the others; but that you must entirely quit some of them, and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would have these, and possess power and wealth likewise, you may miss the latter in seeking the former; and you will certainly fail of that by which alone happiness and freedom are procured.

Seek at once, therefore, to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance, “You are but a semblance and by no means the real thing.” And then examine it by those rules which [you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power or those which are not; and if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

In defining everything outside our own mind as a 'semblance,' Epictetus predicts the move that Immanuel Kant will make during the Modern era. For Kant, everything we know about the outside world has to go through a process of simplification he calls 'transcendental apperception.' For example, our mind takes the evidence of our five different senses about some outside event and unifies it into a single event. Thus, in an important way Epictetus is correct: our evidence about what is going on outside of our mind is a kind of semblance, something different from what the things out there really are. His claim that we can dismiss these things as 'merely' a semblance is more difficult, but even Kant will affirm that we can only know the semblances -- the phenomena -- and not the true world outside (the noumena). 

In the first section we get the core charge, which is stunning in its difficulty. Who among us could really not care if we suffered in our body, for example? I ride motorcycles fully aware that I run the hazard of being crippled every time I do, but that does not imply that I have no concern about the matter. The same with horses; one might break one's back doing that, but the fact that one rides anyway does not imply that one does not care if one broke one's back. Nor, ordinarily, would we regard a failure to be concerned about dangers like this as if it were praiseworthy. Aristotle would call it a kind of rashness, not a true form of courage but its excess. 

Once Lancelot conveyed his willingness to face injury or death in battle to a lady, though, saying, "All shall be welcome that God sends." Arguably this is the fault of Job, who endured losses such as are described here without complaint until the losses touched his own body (as Satan thought would be the case). By the end of the book he confesses that God's judgment, and not his own, is the righteous one; and Jesus, asking that 'this cup' might pass him, nevertheless adds that it should be according to the will of the Father and not his own. There is good warrant in myth and faith that Epictetus is on to something here. 

In any case this is the heart of the thing: to divide the world into that which we can master, and that over which we ultimately have no control, and then to concern ourselves with the area of our own mastery. That is what principally concerns us, and the thing we have the power -- and perhaps the honor -- to perfect. 

The Enchiridion

Last year we got through several works of Plato's here, and I think that was time well spent. This year I want to start with something a little different: a work of Stoicism. Stoicism is an approach to philosophy deeply informed by both Plato and Aristotle, but different in character and in expression. Like Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics are concerned with virtue. For the earlier thinkers, though, virtue was about action that was meant to shape the world. For Plato, virtue might enable the construction of a good society in which the heights of the human condition might be attained. For Aristotle, courage was the virtue that won wars, and magnanimity the virtue that shone the path to the highest and noblest accomplishments. By nature, wars and honorable accomplishments are public matters, and entail striving in the public sphere and sometimes against others who are in competition. 

The Stoics are going to propose an inward looking approach to virtue, one that sets aside the outer world as being imperfectly (at best) within our sphere of influence. Thus, they will suggest, we should focus on that which we really do control: our attitudes, our reactions, our thoughts, ourselves. In this way we relinquish concern with that whose gain or loss we cannot really control, and become intimately concerned with what we can perfectly shape. Courage is not about winning wars, although you might win a war along the way. It is about learning to face danger and potential loss -- even of the body, as one might in war -- without being concerned about it. 

The Stoics did sometimes nevertheless win public honors; Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor, in fact, and accounted one of the good ones. We are going to begin with a work by Epictetus, who was born a slave. He attained his freedom sometime after the death of Nero, in Rome, and began to teach; later, Rome banned philosophers and he had to retreat to another corner of the empire. 

The Enchiridion reads to me much more like Zen philosophy than the Greek philosophy from which it properly draws. There are fifty-one sections; some of them are only one sentence long. Nevertheless, like the Zen aphorisms they merit reflection and consideration. They are unlike the extended narratives of Plato, or the extended arguments of Aristotle. I do not think that I will need to comment nearly as extensively on them to make them accessible, but I will as I think appropriate. Mostly I will put them in front of you, and we can discuss them. I'll try to do one a day, which will take us through the two coldest months of the year with good thoughts as our company. 

More good news

During Kyle Rittenhouse's trial, the prosecutor brought what I thought were vindictive charges against Rittenhouse's friend Dominic Black immediately after Rittenhouse testified to how Black supplied him with a rifle on the day of the shootings.  The prosecutor appears to have thrown in the towel on those charges, or almost.

I can't find the original link, which may have been from PJ Media, but this NY Post article is similar.

Supply line blues

Our grocery store continues to have a slightly iffy inventory, but not too bad. What was surprising today was to find that Sherwin Williams may need a month or even two to supply us with the paint we want for a long-delayed project. The oil-based products, in particular, are arriving at stores in the Texas Coastal Bend only every few or weeks or even months. I briefly considered trying out one of the new latex trim paints, but can't quite make myself do it. Latex trim paint was a horrible product in my youth, but my youth is now several decades away. Supposedly the new ones dry to a very hard, durable finish, have better adherence to an undercoat of oil-based trim paint, and have much better flow. Nevertheless, if I'm going to give the newfangled latex product a try, it won't be in the most public room of my house.

So the painting project, which took me over six months to find a painter ready to work on it, will now be delayed for another month or two. On the plus side, we survived hosting our first political shindig last night and don't have to dive directly into boxing up hundreds of books today so as to get the bookcases ready to paint.

We conducted an indoor clean sweep fore and aft in preparation for the party, in case the weather chased us and our guests inside (which it didn't), so I've put away my craft oil-painting station at last. Because I'm starting an oil-painting class that will meet for 3 hours every Thursday morning for the next seven weeks, it's probably best to assume that will satisfy my painting urges for now. That left no choice, naturally, but to take up another crochet project. Whether or not my idle hands are the Devil's workshop, the fact remains that I pretty need to be doing something with my hands at all times.

Steps

Project Gutenberg's series of Biblical exegeses continue to engross me. Most recently I've been working on the Gospel of Matthew, learning lots of Greek and enjoying the technical challenges--but I'm always brought up short by the verses when Christ says, "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to Me." "I was hungry, and you fed Me. I was thirsty, and you gave Me to drink." I thought of this message again while watching a clip of an interview with recently deceased Sidney Poitier, in which he recounts how a patron of the restaurant where he bussed tables taught him to read after hours. The man saw a need and addressed it personally with great simplicity. Six or seven decades later, Poitier could scarecely recount the story without choking up.

Businessmen

Here's a nice bit of news about my little town. Our county airport is one of the sanest spots in local government. The director attracts businessmen who have their heads screwed on straight, including this couple who moved here after the 2017 hurricane and started innovating. FAA rules make it quite difficult to run an airport-based B&B, but they managed to work it out.

Go, Mighty Bulldogs

Georgia has not won a National championship since 1980, when soon-to-be Senator Herschel Walker was carrying the ball. Georgia has been in a national championship game recently, versus Alabama which beat her in the second half after a massive Georgia lead in the first. Alabama also spoiled an undefeated Georgia year this year in an upset win over a UGA team that was considered a ready favorite. 

So tonight the championship game comes down to these two again. Can Georgia defeat the Crimson Tide, given the huge psychological advantage Alabama has? We shall see. 

UPDATE: Indeed they could. Congratulations to the National Champions, the mighty Georgia Bulldogs.

CDC Director Walensky on Comorbidity in COVID Deaths

NOTE: See the update at the bottom of this post for essential context.

According to Walensky, over 75% of COVID deaths occurred in people with 4 or more comorbidities.

4 plus is actually a surprise for me; I would have guessed 1 or more. I wonder what the percentage is for people with no comorbidities.

To compare with the flu, according to the CDC, anywhere from 12,000 to 52,000 people died in the US from the flu each year from 2010 to 2020. According to the WHO, the number is 290,000 to 650,000 worldwide. Presumably, most people who die from the flu also have comorbidities. According to the CDC, the US has had about 835,000 deaths from COVID since Jan. 21, 2020, or an average of roughly 417,500 annually.

UPDATE: Elise has very helpfully pointed out that the context for Walensky's remark was a discussion of COVID deaths among the vaccinated. Contrary to what I first thought, she was NOT saying that 75% of all deaths from COVID had 4+ comorbidities. Instead, among the tiny number of vaccinated people who have died from COVID, 75% had 4+ comorbidities. That's a big difference.

Return of Omerta

The new mayor of New York City appointed his brother to a high-paying NYPD leadership position. Asked if he understood that this provoked concerns about nepotism among taxpayers and voters, he responded:

I don’t understand that. Protection is personal. With the increase in anarchists in this city, we have a serious problem with white supremacy.

I admit that I was under the impression that 'white supremacists' were supposed to be fascists rather than anarchists in the current narrative, but whatever. The point is that this makes perfect sense. If you cannot trust anyone except blood kin with your safety, then of course it makes sense to appoint blood kin to manage your security arrangements. 

It makes sense the way it makes sense for the mafia, anyway. Even in Dune, House Atreides trusted a non-family member -- Thurfir Hawat, Master of Assassins -- with the security of their core leadership. 

How it makes sense in New York City is harder to say. Indeed, it seems to make nonsense of the whole idea of a community like New York City, which is predicated on the idea that people from all over can come together and form a community of mutual respect and common faith. If that is no longer true -- if 'white supremacy' means not only that white people cannot be trusted as ranking police, nor that people of your own race could suffice, but that no one but your own blood kin can be -- then the whole structure that made New York City possible has vanished. No city of the sort New York aspired to be could survive such a truth, if indeed it is true. 

"Little" Evidence

The important caveat here is that there is "little scientific evidence" that biological males have advantages in sport. That merely means that relatively few studies have dared to consider the question, unsurprising in an environment in which studying it would quickly end your career. 

There is, however, plenty of anecdotal evidence -- for example, the fact that they keep cleaning up in sports competitions. The case they open with is a great one. There's little scientific evidence that this person has advantages over biological females; however, 'she' just set two Ivy League records, thus out-competing every woman in that league who has ever competed in this sport. 

"No Evidence" Again

I had never heard the phrase "mass formation psychosis" before it was apparently used on a popular podcast (which I did not hear, as I never listen to podcasts -- if you can't write it down for me so that I can read it quickly rather than dawdle over it for an hour or two, it can't be that important). I do notice that there is a rush to discredit the idea among the very people who would be responsible for it, however.

Reuters' approach is particularly amusing. 

“Mass formation psychosis” is not an academic term recognized in the field of psychology, nor is there evidence of any such phenomenon occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple experts in crowd psychology have told Reuters.

"Term X doesn't mean anything" is actually incompatible with the claim that "there is no evidence that X is occurring." In order to measure whether or not X is occurring, we would have to know what X is well enough to study the question. Maybe it doesn't mean anything, but that only means that whatever is happening can't be described that way; it doesn't mean that nothing is happening. 

There is definitely evidence that people have departed from reality on the question: Justice Sotomayor's claim that 100,000 children are on ventilators with Omicron is rooted in something, but it isn't reality. Yet I heard a very similar claim from my mother in our last conversation, which predated the SCOTUS hearing (the latter of which she won't have listened to anyway: she gets her news exclusively from morning TV shows on the major networks of her youth). She is prepared to come out of retirement to teach her granddaughter kindergarten so that the child will not be forced to return to school for another year, lest she be exposed to a disease that poses almost no risk at all to a five year old in good health. This, in spite of the clear and obvious benefits the child is experiencing from going to kindergarten -- hers has chickens they are raising, and many friends she's come to love after more than a year in isolation. 

I don't know what "mass formation psychosis" is supposed to mean, or if it's a real term in use by psychologists in academia. But I do know that I worry about the level of paranoia I see from people about all this. I'm not talking about those who have legitimate concerns that are well-grounded in numbers. I'm talking about the Sotomayors and, well, my-mothers out there. They're clearly not grounded in reality, and they are causing harm while presumably meaning to help. Somehow mass culture is supporting them in this, because these people have no other obvious point of connection besides exposure to the mainstream press. 

Fake News Today

 

The dam breaks

 We seem to be entering what you might call a preference cascade.  Many unspeakable truths suddenly are being spoken all over the place.

In the Covid era, the Biden administration and its state-level allies have made a hard pivot away from the nudge approach towards an embrace of mandates. The presumed justification for this shift is that the severity of the Covid crisis required more drastic measures. But something else differentiates Covid technocracy from its predecessors: a remarkable incuriosity about whether the strictures it imposes actually work. This incuriosity has become all the more glaring in recent weeks, as Omicron has brought cases to unprecedented levels in cities like New York, where both vaccine passports and mask mandates are in effect.

The nudge approach, on the other hand, is at least ostensibly outcome-oriented: it assesses interventions on the basis of their measurable impact. So one of the problems with mandates, from the nudgers’ perspective, is that they risk conflating intention and outcome. Mandates are often difficult to enforce and generate backlashes, and thus may prove counterproductive. But they may remain in force, despite failing to achieve their objectives, because they demonstrate a moral commitment to a desired aim.

And as Zients’s holiday announcement demonstrated, when mandates fail to achieve the desired results, it is the fault of those who don’t follow the rules, not those who imposed them. A more empirical approach would treat the reality of noncompliance as part of what needs to be measured in order to assess the efficacy of a proposed policy. But such a strategy would imply that the technocrats themselves, rather than the anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers, should be held accountable for policy failures. Small wonder it has fallen out of favour.

Before last year it might have seemed obvious that the guiding ethos of technocracy was cold utilitarian calculus, but in the past two years it has become something like the opposite: moral fervour. Various factors brought about this shift, but the reaction of the technocrats and their constituency to Trump, with his “war on the administrative state” and love of the “poorly educated”, was arguably the crucial one. Tinkering behind the scenes, as was favoured in the Obama era, was no longer a viable approach for a class that felt its interests threatened.

Early on in the pandemic, the writer Alex Hochuli described the pandemic as “technocracy’s end-of-life rally”. At least temporarily, it had put the experts maligned over the previous half-decade back in the drivers’ seat. But the populist fervour that had driven the Trump movement re-energised itself in reaction to lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates. Initially, this seemed to place the technocrats in an unassailable position, since they could impugn their allies as aiders and abettors of disease and death.

A boost

I'm agnostic about how dangerous the vaccines are; the signal is awfully noisy.  Boy, oh, boy, though, I'm having a hard time seeing any doubt about their efficacy against serious illness.  That's not a noisy signal.

I'm still completely uninterested in forcing anyone to get vaccinated or boosted, but I'm glad we did.  We're exactly at the age when it makes sense.

When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talkin' about Dylan Thomas

 

Something must be done, this is something

It's discouraging when the Supreme Court of the United States has members who are demonstrably incapable of thinking through the legal sources of government power. No one on that court should ever be caught saying something like this:

Justice Elena Kagan said federal agencies have expertise in disease management and suggested OSHA has the authority to make the mandate because “this is a pandemic in which nearly a million people have died.”

The government has a power the Constitution doesn't grant because a lot of people have died? It's a style of thinking called "A policy I favor" because "facts on the ground I hate." That's not even a good explanation for why she likes the policy, let alone a stab at an explanation for why the federal executive branch has the power to implement the policy. Was it an illusion that our society ever possessed the ability to consider two critical questions--(1) whether the policy will actually have the desired effect and (2) whether the proposed agent has the legal authority to implement the policy, even assuming it would have the desired effect?

I'm really losing patience with the argument that I have to agree to some policy of uncertain cost and benefit because otherwise I must not care about the bad things that are happening. Yes, it's a bad disease. Yes, I bitterly regret that it's hurting and even killing people. No, it doesn't follow that every harebrained scheme will make things better. Nor does it follow that everyone who objects to a harebrained scheme either denies that it's a bad disease or doesn't care about sick people. It's because it's a serious problem that's actually hurting and killing people that I insist that we find things to do about it, if we can, that don't make things worse. As in the case of global hot/cold/wet/dry mania, I advocate sticking to policies that are neither pointless, more harmful than beneficial, nor an illegal use of state power that will come back to bite us later--very possibly without even having helped in the crisis we argued was great enough to justify jettisoning both the Constitution and considerable material prosperity.

 

Infamy in the academy

"Let's not go there. It's a silly place."

Return to Normalcy

 The High Feast of Christmas is over. Now back to our regular programming.