Love In A Hopeless Place: Songs That Got Us Through 2011 (Part Two)

“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Mariann”: How Reading Shaped Me

Mr. Darcy Syndrome: Why We Go For Jerks

Around Christmas, I watched an interview with Peter Singer- the foremost animal rights philosopher- on his new book, The Life You Can Save. It inspired my New Year’s resolution, to make it a lifelong commitment to donate money to reputable charities.

It’s not an easy habit, especially if you’re in debt. The interviewer, a poor college student, wonders if it isn’t better to put off charity until he’s in a better financial situation. There’s also the emotional burden, the looming guilt that occurs when one buys a movie ticket instead of putting that money into saving someone’s life.

But every little bit counts. It’s better to feel that tension than to give up on the project completely. Although utilitarianism has been the whipping-boy of philosophy as of late, I think Singer is right to describe his pragmatic approach as being both utilitarian and mindful of the “way people are.” We may not be in the right mindset to give up most of our possessions, but we can make small commitments that will eventually grow into something larger.

When we make ethical decisions, we must take into account the long-term consequences of our actions, to the very best of our abilities. I’m highly skeptical of anti-consequentialist claims that such predictions aren’t useful or, worse, that people don’t even work that way. For individuals to make long-term commitments to charity is a straightforward, no-frills way of changing the world, instead of relying on strict personal virtue.

However, in the interview Singer seems to make an (unsurprising) concession to Aristotelian ethics, that practice does make virtue. (I really don’t think that utilitarianism, deontology or virtue ethics are entirely separate spheres of moral influence.) To give an amount of money that you’re comfortable with now will make charity a habit that, in time, will become easier and easier until it almost feels natural.

As more and more individuals feel comfortable with giving up large portions of their income, we may eventually become a society which values charity over greed or luxury. Not only that, we can help lift poor countries out of poverty completely. It’s super idealistic, even utopian, but its a hope worth believing in.

Singer doesn’t talk much about animal rights in the interview, but I think this approach is relevant for vegetarianism and veganism as well. When I was 12, I decided to stop eating meat- only to give into my cravings, feel guilty about it, and then give up on the diet completely. It took me over a decade to make vegetarianism a steady enough habit (steady enough to try veganism), and even now I allow myself to eat dairy in communal eating situations.

Taking it slowly and lowering your expectations can actually be more useful than going into a new lifestyle- whether its charity or vegetarianism- with full-force. Whenever I’ve encountered a meat-eater who is curious about it, but doesn’t think they can commit, I say that its about recognizing your own limitations, and simply cutting back on the demand. It will get easier.

There were a lot of things I loved about this interview. The idea that someday, humanity will look back at the apathy we’ve shown toward people starving in other countries, and feel shame in the same way we did with slavery. Or, that with the advent of technology in impoverished countries, we can feel a closer kinship to those we give to. Broadband can put a human face on the suffering that goes on in underdeveloped countries, and alleviation of it through charity.

Watch it for yourself!

I talked it over with a friend, and we came up with some plausible ethical motivations for Batman. Although he initially thought that the true test of Batman’s Nietzschean spirit would be whether his motivations are life-affirming, I thought that Nietzsche would disapprove of anyone risking life and limb for some high moral cause even if, on the face of it, they appear to be acting outside conventional understandings of good and evil. Vigilantism seems to have little place in a Nietzschean worldview.

In fact, I think that Alan Moore is one of the most Nietzschean literary figures today for his deconstruction of morality, whether acted out as a personal vendetta or on the international stage. (I understand this is a matter for debate. It’s plausible Moore’s reading of Nietzsche would lead him to critique the Ubermensch through such flawed characters as Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias. Maybe I’ll blog about this some other time.)

Moore himself is one of those libertarian-socialists who doesn’t fit neatly into mainstream political categories. It’s a surprisingly secure worldview which forces us to consider the political spectrum as circular rather than a linear model of “right” v. “left”- which is why, despite V For Vendetta’s libertarian flavor, some leftist Occupy Wall St. protesters proudly don Guy Fawkes masks.

In the end, my friend decided that Nietzsche’s philosophy is too vague and Batman’s character too flat for any significant relationship to be made. All very true. I, on the other hand, concluded that most superheroes are of a Lockean slant. For Locke, one has an ethical responsibility to take up arms against those who have broken the social contract, whether its a corrupt politician or a lowly thug.

Miller’s unfortunate neoconservativism and Moore’s more sophisticated brand of libertarianism validate this right to revolution. When one has become a victim of tyranny, it’s time to bring out the big gunz.

After I found out he died, I posted a comment on my friend’s Facebook:

As with all people I denounce, I had a real respect for his passion and his will… he helped keep the conversation going, even as he thwarted it… Hitch, you actually will be missed, RIP!!

Wait, what? I take all of that back.

Hitchens was a racist, misogynistic, ethnocentric defender of war and torture. An Islamophobe and an accomplice to neoconservativism. I didn’t respect his passion and will, but his ability to point out the failures of religious fundamentalism and Biblical literalism to the public. That’s really the only place that New Atheism has in American culture, but even that I’m starting to question. As Chris Hedges put it in a Salon.com interview a few years ago,

I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence don’t believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, it’s the irrational religious hordes. I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. Both Hitchens and Harris defend the use of torture. Of course, they’re great supporters of preemptive war, and I don’t think this is accidental that their political agendas coalesce completely with the Christian right.

Hitchens denounced the Bible for its views on ethnic cleansing, yet he consistently spoke of a desire to see Afghanistan and other Muslim countries “bombed out of the Stone Age.” He may have kept a conversation going, but it was a conversation with serious intellectual limits that I described in my last post. Hitchens always accused religious believers of being unexceptional, but his own thoughts on religion and politics were so commonplace that perhaps he needed polemics in order to compensate.

I think what I’ll really miss are the conversations I’ve had about him. Ones that made me go off on crazed rants about his moral recklessness and his lame, watered down version of atheism. I certainly won’t miss the sociopathic glee he had for cluster-bombing people.

Also, he’s not resting in peace. Neither will I, when I’m gone, since there will be no mind and body to rest at all. At least he and I could have agreed on that.

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Hitchens structures his essay around Nietzsche’s maxim as it relates to his own battle with cancer. “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

The question Hitchens poses is telling. “Does the rhyme suggest a reason?” he asks. Hitchens says no, and again he’s right. But again, for the entirely wrong reason.

The aphorism doesn’t have a “reason,” which is exactly the point. Nietzsche never intended any of his “words of wisdom” to be taken at face value. Good and evil, strength and weakness, body and soul, are all false dichotomies- and philosophies mired in these designations ought to be examined for falsehood. If anything, Nietzsche’s maxims are to be treated more like Zen koans than declarations of truth.

Hitchens fails at understanding Nietzsche this way, which leads to me to the most frustrating thing about New Atheists. For Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, and Dennett, there’s a lack of regard for the more radical, philosophical atheism from Nietzsche to Jean-Paul Sartre. (Even some contemporary theologians find the God of Christian fundamentalism to be absurd at best, and demonic at worst.) These “existential” atheists attacked not just the moral God (and they were hardly the first to do so), but all the other things that are justified by Christian onto-theology: reason, science, law.

Hitchens, like his fellow Horsemen, isn’t a Nietzschean, because he still subscribes to Western civilization’s pipe dream of progress achieved through Reason.

For a moment, I was excited to hear Hitchens speak on Nietzsche since I think more atheists should be exposed to his ideas. Who better to introduce them to Nietzsche, than one of mainstream atheism’s leaders?

Alas, it was not to be.

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Last week I watched Into the Abyss, Werner Herzog’s new documentary about the death penalty. The film wasn’t what I expected. I imagined a death-row inmate speaking intelligently and profoundly about his intimate knowledge of death. A knowledge that most of us can’t even grasp, because death is in the distant and unforeseen future. Even the death clock can’t really predict when the precise moment of our death will be. So what is it like knowing when you will die?

Herzog doesn’t actually explore that, which is a bit disappointing. However, he still treats the subject of capital punishment in a unique way in that neither inmate was particularly likeable.

It’s easy to tell the stories of death-row inmates who are innocent, or who have repented for their crimes. Yet this sends the message that only innocent or sympathetic “characters” ought to be spared, avoiding the truly difficult ethical questions altogether. But Herzog, early on in the film, makes it very clear that he’s opposed to this lukewarm opposition to the death penalty. A death row inmate may not be likeable, Herzog says. But he or she is still a human being, and should not be put to death under any circumstances.

(This is something I felt was lacking in the protests against Troy Davis’ execution. Davis may have been an innocent victim of racial profiling, but more than that- he was a human being.)

The ignorant, deluded tendencies of many of the film’s subjects- even one family member of the victim- was pitiful, repulsive  even. This is what makes the film so responsible and so moving.  Herzog is against capital punishment, but he’s clearly not opposed to truth- including shedding light on the many fictions we create, to survive the moments when death shows itself. Most recognizable is the belief in an afterlife, but we also avoid the reality of death by blacking out, or refusing intimacy. We also lie to cover up our guilt, and the guilt of others we find ourselves infatuated with.

As the film described the protocol of execution, I tried to imagine myself going through the motions- from eating my last meal to taking my last breath. It’s not a thought exercise you can sustain for very long. Merely thinking about knowing that I’m going to die felt “too real,” and my mind immediately recoiled.

There are some subjects who, in perfect grace, refuse to lie to themselves- yet their story doesn’t put a dent in the film’s gloomy outlook, despite the last segment titled “A Glimmer of Hope.” Those brave souls who don’t lie to themselves must carry the burden of guilt. Charles Richardson, who assisted in the execution of dozens of people, renounced capital punishment after having an inexplicable yet soul-shattering epiphany. One inmate’s father had a similar flash of insight, after being handcuffed next to his son in a prison van. These are men who have the courage and clarity to live with their guilt. It is the enormity of their guilt which absolves them.

Another important theme of the film is the well-known, but often undocumented cycle of generational violence and poverty. Although Herzog doesn’t explore this either, it’s this vicious cycle which I believe is a strong case against the death penalty. Mercy for mercy’s sake is unconvincing. But once we understand the ways in which violence begets violence, that we are a product of our environment, mercy can come more easily to us. The other inmate, Jason Burkett, is spared the death penalty for this very reason. His father, a former drug addict who was largely absent from his life, was overcome with remorse and convinced the jury that his son’s deviancy was his fault.

Such mercy is what we need to spare everyone the death penalty.

I’m one of the editors, and have written a few pieces already that I’d like to share. Tell your friends!

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Malachi Constant is a man whose good luck has graced him with “money, position, health, handsomeness, and talent.” More importantly though is that Constant , along with other characters, fancies himself a messenger of sorts. Yet as each person discovers, to be a messenger is to be a means to someone or something else’s end- be it science or religion, Martians or Tralfamadorians, Rumfoord or the human beings serving in the Martian military.

The only message that seems to harbor any real meaning is the one sent to Constant by himself. “Unk” (the name given to Constant after he’s been brainwashed by the army) writes a letter to himself, encouraging him to continue to ask the right questions even if it brings him an enormous amount of pain. At first, Unk feels humbled by the idea that someone would suffer so much for the sake of knowledge. Upon seeing his own signature at the end of the letter, Unk realizes that he was the one who values truth enough to withstand suffering.

In a deterministic universe, we do not know ourselves- but for that reason, we also don’t know our own possibilities either.

Vonnegut is straightforward in what this story will be about: Malachi Constant will “find out what it was like to exist in any other way,” but not in the way he imagines, or is able to comprehend at first. He becomes a means to Rumfoord’s end: a new World-changing religion, which will unite Earth.

This is a very Nietzschean critique of religion. The members of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent have replaced the moral God with another God of cause- scientific determinism. Followers of the Church rejoice in Unk’s remark that he is a “victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.” Yet the values of weakness and futility in the face of a powerful outside force are the same, so much that the Church’s followers purposefully and proudly handicap themselves.

Even Beatrice resigns herself to the “fact” that to allow herself to be used was probably for the best. “Could we have done any better if he’d left us in charge of our own lives?” she asks.  ”Would we have become any more- or any less?”

Yet neither Unk nor Beatrice are merely victims of a series of accidents, but victims of other people’s actions. Although he’s clearly being used, Unk innocently and mistakenly views the followers’ ecstatic celebration of his arrival to be one based on charity and compassion. Rumfoord, who is quite the mastermind, chooses to reveal Stony’s death to Constant because only a sense of guilt, worthlessness and shame will get him to comply with his plans. It works. Constant, who has failed to be born weak (or is at least judged so by the masses), leaves Earth.

This, I believe, is where the moral lies. Although we may be subject to a cold universe, we are still entities in that very universe. Whether or not we are machines,  just like Salo the Tralfamadorian, we are still capable of making choices based on values of love and friendship, which have no reference to the sinister commands of a higher power.

I think I could write more about this book, just like I could with all of Vonnegut’s novels. Instead, I’ll end with a Youtube video of a guy rattling on (in an entertaining way, of course) about why Kurt Vonnegut is an existentialist: