“Darker, Dearie. Much Darker”: Why I Don’t Like “Nice” Heroes

Nathaniel has a thoughtful post on the morality of entertainment and art, focusing specifically on Game of Thrones and even Captain America. One particular point struck me:

I was also struck by an article(again, from Vulture) called Why Captain America Is Only Interesting If He’s a Prick. The article just elaborates on the headline: Captain America is devoid of artistic merit when he’s a good guy.

In 2014, of what artistic good is a flawlessly nice soldier? Can’t we get at least a little rough and dirty with this 75-year-old warhorse?

On one level, this (and the popularity of anti-heroes in general) is just a furtherance of “a silly idea” C. S. Lewis had already noted in his lifetime:

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

So I just don’t buy this argument that only if we have characters who revel in immoral behavior can we have a meaningful conversation about morality.

This is an excellent insight with a portion of Mere Christianity I had long forgotten. And I think there is much to the argument for a moral hero. “Moral art does not have to be saccharine, optimistic, or “nice,”” writes Nathaniel, “any more than the actual creation made by God Himself is saccharine, optimistic, or “nice.”” However, we shouldn’t confuse (and I’m not claiming Nathaniel does) an aversion toward seemingly stale heroes for a “nihilistic” lack of moral clarity rooted in our “reptilian brains.” Since I don’t watch Game of Thrones, I’ll use examples from a show I’m currently watching.

When Once Upon a Time first came out, I wasn’t much of a fan. For one, I missed the first couple episodes (which are actually quite good). The early episodes I did see struck me as cheesy and forgettable. It wasn’t until I began watching Doctor Who and reading The Dresden Files that the idea of fairy tales as different realms became appealing once more. But I think my original disinterest in the show was largely due to the first episodes I saw being centered on Snow White and Prince Charming. As I’ve ventured into the 3rd season, I’ve understood more clearly why this was the case: they are boring characters. They shouldn’t be, but they are. If I take my cue from the The Vulture article referenced by Nathaniel, they are the Captain Americas of Once Upon a Time: annoyingly optimistic, always worried about doing the “right thing” even though their decisions tend to get more people killed,become bedridden from guilt after a single use of dark magic while protecting people from a murderous, power-hungry witch, etc. Charming is especially irritating as he self-righteously condemns anyone who disagrees with him or doesn’t fit into his mold of “goodness.” Perhaps this isn’t an entirely fair assessment, but it generally captures my feelings as a viewer.

Who are my favorite characters then? They are—surprise, surprise—Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin (“The Dark One”) and Regina (“The Evil Queen”). Why are the self-described villains my favorites? First, I should expose my biases. Mr. Gold is portrayed by Robert Carlyle, who rocked it in the hilarious British comedy The Full Monty. But even more important (for me, anyway), he was the pain-immune terrorist Renard in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. If an actor/actress was in a Bond film, no matter how terrible (and TWINE was not one of the best), they receive an honorary status in my book. Recognizing him in Once Upon a Time played a role in me rewatching the series.

Robert Carlyle as Renard in 'The World Is Not Enough'
Robert Carlyle as Renard in ‘The World Is Not Enough’

As for Regina, Lana Parrilla is hot. When it comes to “the fairest one of all,” the Evil Queen blows Snow White out of the water. And that’s all I have to say about that (and I can because my wife thinks Hook is hot, so there).

But what is it about their characters? True, there is a certain sense of badassery that they embody. Gold walks with a cane in a dark suit, condescendingly calls people “dearie” (especially those who try to threaten him), is always one step ahead of virtually everyone, makes people offers they can’t refuse, rips hearts out (including his cheating wife’s), etc. Regina also rips out hearts (lots of them…her mother was the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland…), cuts through whining and diplomacy with magical fire, and cursed the Enchanted Forest by transferring its inhabitants to an entirely different realm with brand new memories for 20+ years. There is a morbid kind of glee when I see a cool, snarky character exerting their power over others. It gratifies probably some of the baser parts of my nature. However, these traits aren’t what make them interesting. The reason I connect with them the most is because they are in need of and are seeking redemption.

once upon a time mr. gold darker dearie much darkerRumpelstiltskin’s transformation into the Dark One–the most powerful and feared entity in the Enchanted Forest–grew out of a desire to protect his only son, first from the Ogre Wars and then personal enemies. His wife had abandoned them both to sail with the pirate Killian Jones (Captain Hook). Furthermore, Rumpelstiltskin’s own father (who had a reputation as a coward and scoundrel) had abandoned him as a child in order to remain in Neverland and become Peter Pan. Rumpelstiltskin had even injured himself to avoid war because a magical Seer had prophesied that his actions on the battlefield would leave his newborn son fatherless. The entire reason he creates the Dark Curse (the plot of the first season) for the Evil Queen is so that he can be reunited with his son Baelfire, who was transported to this realm alone after a panicked Rumpelstiltskin refused to follow him into a portal between worlds. Many deaths, betrayals, and battles later, not only is Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold reunited with his son, but he has even found love in the form of Belle (he was her “Beast”) and discovered he has a grandson. Rumpelstiltskin struggled with his “nasty habit” of self-preservation and his darker ways all the way up to the end. This is what made his sacrifice to save his friends and family so moving. Everything, good and bad, had been for his son.

Regina has a similar tale. Her dark path didn’t begin until after her emotionally abusive and manipulative mother Cora arranged (through a series of events) Regina’s engagement to Snow White’s father. Being in love with a stable boy, Regina planned to run away with him, while trusting the young Snow White with the information. After coaxing the information out of Snow, Cora murdered Regina’s love. Feeling betrayed by Snow, Regina’s anger boiled over the years. She began taking magic lessons from the Dark One, ridding herself of her mother and eventually plotting against Snow White. Devoured by grief and anger, trapped in a loveless marriage, and hated by the commoners, Regina’s heart grew colder. She consistently sought love and affection throughout the chaos she caused to no avail. Even after succeeding in the Dark Curse, she realized how alone she truly was. She adopted a baby (who ends up being the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming) with hopes of filling the hole in her heart. She later struggled to win the affection of her mother once she returned to the picture. Her constant search for love leads to much destruction, but she is slowly turned by her love for her adopted son. Ultimately, she ends up being willing to sacrifice herself for her son on numerous occasions.

My point is not that these characters should have made their bad choices. My complaint isn’t even that the story of Snow White and Prince Charming are bland compared to that of Gold and Regina. Far from it. But I can connect with those who have fallen. I can root for them to repent, to be reconciled with friends and family, and to be forgiven. I personally connect with those who need redemption more than those who don’t seem to need it at all. I prefer these characters because, in some small way, I see a little of myself in them. And I need redemption as much as anyone else.

There’s nothing nihilistic about that.

Care About Income Inequality At All? Read This Now.

2014-04-23 CapitalOne of the most useful things I learned about economics when getting my master’s was simply who to pay attention to. When I read an article and it references someone whose research was brought up not just once, but again and again in my classes, I know I’m reading about a serious economist. Well, this article is written by Bob Solow about a book by Thomas Piketty based on research he conducted with Emmanuel Saez and Anthony B. Atkinson. That’s the most big-name economists I’ve ever seen in a contemporary piece, so even though I had a busy day today I took the time out to read this article.

I was not disappointed. This is a really important article if you want to understand income inequality. Unfortunately, it’s also rather technical (although it tries not to be). So I’m going to attempt to give the plain English version of the simplified review of a French book on income inequality. Believe it or not, I think some really important core concepts will translate all the way through. So here are the take-aways:

  1. The question of rising income inequality cannot be fully explained by nation-specific laws or circumstances. It’s a broad-based problem, so we ought to be looking for a broad, comprehensive, long-range explanation. That’s what Piketty provides.
  2. The explanation is based on an unusual measurement of wealth that compares a country’s total wealth (at a point in time) with it’s total productive capacity (at a time) in what is called the capital-income ratio or the wealth-income ratio. So, for example, if the wealth-income ratio is 5 (in this case, for the UK in 2010) that means that it would take 5 years of accumulating all the income in a country to equal the amount of capital that nation has on hand. In very, very simplified terms: how many years of income would it take to buy all the factories and land in a country? When wealth-income is high, that means that there is a lot of wealth/capital (relative to the country’s income). When wealth-income is low, that means there is relatively little wealth/capital. The historical range is from more than 2 to less than 7, and we’re currently around 4.5-6 (depending on what country you live in). If you can’t remember the details, just remember this: high capital-income means lots of capital.
  3. Countries have a natural resting point of capital-income that depends on two things: s (the amount that everyone in the country saves by buying more capital every year) and g (the rate of economic growth for the country). This is important, because if s and g are relatively stable, you know how much capital the country is going to move towards. Piketty has estimates for s and g, and based on that he believes that modern, developed countries are trending towards 6.5. In other words: we have lots of capital now, and we’re going to get more.
  4. Once you know how much capital a country has and you also know what the return on capital is (that’s a number that is fairly stable over the long run), you can determine how much of a country’s income comes from capital as opposed to labor. And, since return on capital is relatively stable, the more capital a country has, the more profitable it is to have capital.
  5. Here’s the final point: wealthy people always own proportionally more capital.

You should be able to put points 3, 4, and 5 together to reach this simple conclusion: all developed nations are on track to have more capital, which will make owning capital more lucrative, which will disproportionately favor the rich, which will continue to drive income inequality.

Thomas Piketty, the author of "Capital."
Thomas Piketty, the author of “Capital.”

This is pretty important. It’s important because it tells us that income inequality is going to continue to increase towards levels not seen since the late 1800’s. It’s also important because it explains why this is happening, and it does so in terms of cross-cultural, international, non-partisan (mostly) terms. It’s not as simple as the Democrats or the Republicans selling you out to corporate America (although that probably doesn’t hurt). It’s driven by fundamentals.

Lastly, it’s important because it suggests a policy solution. Unfortunately, the policy solution is politically impossible. I mean, if you think that consumption tax would be a neat idea but you don’t think it’s realistic, that’s trivial compared to what would be required to combat this trend. Basically: you need to make capital less profitable. And that means you need to tax it. But, in order to be effective, this tax has to be international. Otherwise, if the UK taxed their capital, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot because all their rich folk would invest in French and American capital and legally avoid paying taxes. So not only would the EU, US, Japan (and others) all have to agree to an incredibly unpopular tax, they’d also have to figure out how much to tax, how to enforce it, and what to do with the revenue. As Solow (the one doing the review says): Not. Going. To. Happen.

In simple terms, this means y’all should buckle in because we’re in for a bumpy ride. Income inequality foments radicalization and discontent, and so things could very well could ugly and even revolutionary.

Now, some caveats.

First, and obviously, if the forecasted numbers don’t pan out, neither do the results. Significantly change how much a country chooses to invest, or the rate of economic growth, of the long-run return on capital and the model veers off in one direction or another. Second, there is a contention that many wealthy Americans are already “the working rich” who get their compensation in labor rather than wealth. This would appear to contradict a key point (#5), but Piketty addresses that, Solow is convinced by it and so am I. (Although up until reading this article that was actually something I took seriously in my qualms with income inequality arguments.)

I have two unknowns of my own, however, which don’t come up in the model. First, I’d like to know more about the impact of international economic growth. We’re focusing on income inequality among people in the developed world. That’s what we tend to focus on because of what liberals would ordinarily call ethnocentrism. While income inequality in that sense of the word is rising, income inequality globally is actually falling, and has been for decades. This is because the poorest countries are getting richer (in aggregate) faster than the richest among the developed world are getting richer than the poor among the developed world. And this advance of the poor countries is not just the mega-rich within those countries. As China has shown (again), you don’t get sustained economic growth without creating a middle class. The rise of the rest (as Fareed Zakaria dubs it) has important economic, ethical, and policy implications.

But my biggest concern with this whole article is the focus on income taxation. In simple terms, you have to tax capital-based income so that it looks like labor-based income to mitigate the effects of rising income inequality. Not only is this politically infeasible, but it would also very negatively impact economic growth. But do we really care so much about income? Or should we care more about consumption? Is it morally problematic that Bill Gates possess billions of dollars, or is it what he gets from those billions (yachts, influence, and safety) that causes the problem of income inequality? It seems, although this is just a first-glance at the issue, that a strong safety net and consumption based taxation goes a long way towards mitigating the problem of income inequality by looking at the problem in a new way.

 

No Honorary Degree for Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2014-04-23 Ayaan Hirsi AliEarlier this month, Time posted a letter written by Ayaan Hiris Ali, which she had written in response to Brandeis University’s decision not to give her an honorary degree after all. If a university decides not to give someone an award, you can pretty safely bet it’s because someone might be offended. But it’s always interesting to me when the person who might be offended (in this case the primary victim appears to be CAIR) and the alleged victimizer (Ali) are both members of politically correct identity groups. After all, Ali is not only a woman, but also black. She is also a woman’s rights activist. But she’s an atheist and a harsh critic of Islam. So who do you side with, the WoC or Islam?

I’m partially interested in this out of morbid fascination, like watching a car crash. But it’s also a kind blend of fatalism and professional interest. Given my aspirations (to be a fiction writer) and my politics (anything other than party-line left) it’s more or less a question of how much I’m going to pay for my beliefs, professionally speaking, not whether or not I will. So, which are the most taboo taboos? What matters more?

Turns out, though, we can’t really tell from this story. Ali is a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Suddenly: everything is clear. Doesn’t really matter what the rest of her liberal bona fides may be; she is tainted by association with the right. She’s even married to Niall Ferguson (who is practically a colonial apologist) so there’s really no hope for her at all.

I guess Brandeis didn’t really have a hard call to make after all.

Theology: You’re Doing It Wrong

Eastern Orthodox theologian David B. Hart
Eastern Orthodox theologian David B. Hart

Journalism is the art of translating abysmal ignorance into execrable prose. At least, that is its purest and most minimal essence. There are, of course, practitioners of the trade who possess talents of a higher order—the rare ability, say, to produce complex sentences and coherent paragraphs—and they tend to occupy the more elevated caste of “intellectual journalists.” These, however, are rather like “whores with hearts of gold”: more misty figments of tender fantasy than concrete objects of empirical experience. Most journalism of ideas is little more than a form of empty garrulousness, incessant gossip about half-heard rumors and half-formed opinions, an intense specialization in diffuse generalizations. It is something we all do at social gatherings—creating ephemeral connections with strangers by chattering vacuously about things of which we know nothing—miraculously transformed into a vocation.

So begins philosopher David Bentley Hart’s ripping of journalist Adam Gopnik’s musings on theism. He makes it clear that his comments are “no particular reflection on Gopnik’s intelligence—he is bright enough, surely—but only on that atmosphere of complacent ignorance that seems to be the native element of so many of today’s cultured unbelievers…Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do…[T]here is now—where questions of the divine, the supernatural, or the religious are concerned—only a kind of habitual intellectual listlessness. ” Because to this, critics like Gopnik never grasp the metaphysics of “pure “classical theism,” as found in the Cappadocians, Augustine, Denys, Thomas Aquinas, Ibn Sina, Mulla Sadra, Ibn Arabi, Shankara, Ramanuja, Philo, Moses Maimonides . . . well, basically, just about every significant theistic philosopher in human history. (Not to get too recherché here, but one can find most of it in the Roman Catholic catechism.)” Instead, they claim a certain kind of materialism as having “exclusive ownership of scientific knowledge” and “assert rights here denied to Galileo, Kepler, and Newton[.] Or to Arthur Eddington, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac, Anthony Zee, John Barrow, Freeman Dyson, Owen Gingerich, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, Stephen Barr, Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris, and (yes) Albert Einstein[.]”

Hart’s concluding words have much to teach not only unbelievers, but believers as well:

The current vogue in atheism is probably reducible to three rather sordidly ordinary realities: the mechanistic metaphysics inherited from the seventeenth century, the banal voluntarism that is the inevitable concomitant of late capitalist consumerism, and the quiet fascism of Western cultural supremacism (that is, the assumption that all cultures that do not consent to the late modern Western vision of reality are merely retrograde, unenlightened, and in need of intellectual correction and many more Blu-ray players)…Principled unbelief was once a philosophical passion and moral adventure, with which it was worthwhile to contend. Now, perhaps, it is only so much bad intellectual journalism, which is to say, gossip, fashion, theatrics, trifling prejudice. Perhaps this really is the way the argument ends—not with a bang but a whimper.

Unfortunately, I think this captures the culture of believers and non-believers alike. This is why Terryl and Fiona Givens find that “militant atheism” and “fervent theism” are “both just as likely to serve as a dogmatic point of departure, as they are to be a thoughtful and considered end point in one’s journey toward understanding…[N]either the new believer nor the new doubter has necessarily progressed or reached enlightenment.” Both theists and atheists should reengage in this “philosophical passion and moral adventure” for the bettering of each other.

Game of Thrones, The Matrix, and Constructed Realities

I want to write a post about that controversial rape scene from last week’s episode of Game of Thrones, about why I don’t watch Game of Thrones, and about the ethics of creating and consuming entertainment and art, but first I need to explain the structure of reality.

Naïve Realism

Realism is the idea that the external world is objectively there, whether we observe it or not. There are lots of different kinds of realism, but the default view (especially among folks who don’t go out of their way to study this) is naïve realism. That’s the idea that the world is out there and that we perceive it directly (and more or less reliably) through our senses. According to this view, objective reality exists, and we all live in it.

Subjectivism

The alternative to realism is idealism. These days, and throughout much of history, idealism has been a minority view but an important one. Descartes kicked off modern Western philosophy with his Meditations, the most famous line of which is cogito ergo sum, or “I think, therefore I am.” That’s a fundamentally idealist perspective, because it starts with the mind first, independent of any observation about the external, physical world.

The best way to think about the relationship between idealism and realism is this. According to realism we can all be sure of the fact that we have brains, but the question of whether or not we have minds is an open one. According to idealism, we can all be sure of the fact that we have minds, but the question of whether or not we have brains is an open one.

Subjectivism is a particularly extreme form of idealism that, as far as I can tell, is the most popular alternative to naïve realism among non-philosophers. Subjectivism is the idea that all truth depends on our perception. In that view, there is no objective reality. We all live in our own little subjective realities where things are true for us that might not be true for anyone else.

Problems with Naïve Realism and Subjectivism

The simplest argument for realism is stubbing your toe. No matter how much you didn’t perceive that the doorframe was going to hit your foot right there, it did. And then it hurts. Clearly objective, physical reality doesn’t really wait around for you to perceive it before it imposes consequences on your perception.

So there is strong argument for objectivity, but naïve realism is more than just objectivity. It also asserts that we directly perceive the world around us through our senses.

The counterexample to that is the existence of optical illusions. It’s not the simple fact that our senses can be mistaken that causes the problem for naïve realism, however, it’s the way that optical illusions hijack the unconscious processes that we use to construct an internal reality from raw sense data. This proves that there isn’t a simple, direct correspondence between what’s out there, what we perceive as sense data, and what we then perceive as being out there.

Grey Square Illusion
Believe it or not, the squares labeled A and B are the exact same shade of gray.

The situation is worse when it comes to subjectivism because the concept is obviously incoherent. For a full treatment, I recommend Thomas Nagel’s The Last Word, but here’s one quick example of why subjectivism makes no sense. Subjectivism says that no claims about reality can be objectively true or false, but subjectivism itself is an objective claim about reality. That doesn’t prove it’s false. It just proves that it’s incoherent. No sane person can rationally believe subjectivism.

So why is it popular? Well some things (like taste) really are subjective. More importantly, however, subjectivism is what some people run to because it seems like the only alternative that captures the idea that perspective really matters. You and I may look at the same situation and come to different conclusions, and we might both be right. This doesn’t actually require subjectivism (you can have different viewpoints and conditional / provisional truth claims within an objective framework), but it’s close enough to confuse lots of folks.

Enactivism

Every now and then I come up with some theory or other, and I tinker with it more and more over the months and years and when I know that it’s a really good, solid theory that’s when I can be confident that it already exists on Wikipedia. Enactivism is one of those concepts. From the entry:

Enactivism argues that cognition depends on a dynamic interaction between the cognitive agent and its environment: “Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems…participate in the generation of meaning …engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world.”

In this sense, enactivism is a fusion of naïve realism and subjectivism. It starts with the idea that objective reality is really out there. But we don’t perceive it directly. Instead, we take the sense data that is there as raw material, and we use that raw material to build our own private, internal models of the world. Because we’re all starting with the same objective reality, our individual constructed realities have lots of points of contact. This is one reason why communication is possible: because we’re often talking about the same basic reality.

Reality Comparisons

Welcome to Your Matrix

Part of our constructed reality is a model of objective reality. Here, I’m thinking about everything relating to physics. We use our senses to identify objects, how far away they are, how big they are, what direction they’re moving in, etc. Part of our constructed reality appears to consist of patterns of organization that just are. Like math. 2+2 =4 for everyone, even though the number two is not a physical thing. In this sense our constructed realities are less than objective reality, which is the real thing. We only see some of what is out there, we sometimes misidentify what we do see, and we imperfectly apply rules of logic and math.

But part of our constructed reality is more than objective reality. The most essential concept here is narrative. Objective reality is just stuff that happens. There isn’t, outside of the rules of physics, a why. There isn’t meaning or purpose. That stuff exists in our constructed reality. Now, maybe it also exists in objective reality (because God says so, or for some other reason), but we can’t really be sure of that.

Shared Reality

There’s one last twist that I’ll put on enactivism before I get back to Game of Thrones (no, I hadn’t forgotten). That’s the idea of shared constructed realities.

Reality Comparisons - Individual vs Social

Because we’re constantly interacting with each other, our individual realities are permeable. We have our own narratives, in which we are always the hero of our own story, but we share these narratives with other folks who agree or disagree with them. In addition, when we create things we are always cooperating in the creation of a shared, constructed reality. This is true even for individuals who do their creative work alone. Think about J. K. Rowling, writing her stories before anybody else had read them. At that point, they were strictly within her own reality. But once the world read them, then we became participants with J. K. Rowling in creating this shared reality.

Did the deaths of Sirius, or of Dumbledore, or of Dobby affect you? They affected me. Dobby’s, in particular, brought me to tears. That doesn’t mean that I was confused and thought that Dobby was out there in objective reality or that magic was real, but it does mean that there was as a sense in which at a deep, subconscious level, J. K. Rowling’s creation had become real to me.

For me it’s an open question if some narratives are objectively true. It may be possible that the shared, constructed reality is just our attempt to recreate objective reality, and that we can be right or wrong about narratives in the same way that we can be right or wrong about guessing size or distance or speed. But, practically speaking, there is a difference between objective reality (which can be quantified and objectively evaluated) and our shared, constructed realities (which cannot).

The Ethics of Sub-Creation

According to what I’ve read about J. R. R. Tolkien, he referred to world-building as “sub-creation.”

‘Sub-creation’ was also used by J.R.R. Tolkien to refer the to process of world-building and creating myths. In this context, a human author is a ‘little maker’ creating his own world as a sub-set within God’s primary creation. Like the beings of Middle-earth, Tolkien saw his works as mere emulation of the true creation performed by God.(Tolkien Gateway)

This is an extremely powerful for me, because I’ve always believed in a kind of grand universal theory of everything (only for metaphysics, rather than physics) that would somehow unify the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. On a more practical level, it provides a window into the ethics of sub-creation, which is the ethics of artistic creativity.

I know I’m going to lose a ton of people who bridle at the idea of imposing laws or commands on artistic expression (on the one hand) and who are horrified by the history of attempts to subvert artistic expression to propaganda for someone’s idea of right and wrong (on the other). These are serious concerns, but I do not think they apply to what I have in mind.

First, when it comes to rules and laws, I think we can all appreciate that a greater understanding of physical laws allows us to be more creative rather than less. This applies not only to what our engineers can build, but also to what our scientists and philosophers can imagine. I am not by any means suggesting that I could come up with the “right” rules for how to do art, or some objective metric for deciding what piece of art has more merit than another. It is not only foolish but vulgar to attempt to rank the Beauty of Mozart’s Requiem vs. that of Allegri’s Miserere, in my mind. But it isn’t vulgar or futile to wonder if there aren’t common principles—like symmetry and transcendence and struggle—which might animate both and help make each great.

Second, the grand unifying theory of everything is outside our grasp so, if we are appropriately humble, the danger of propagandizing is low. Propaganda is for people who already know what they want others to think, but someone who is searching for truth out there has no such agenda to sate and no pretext of certainty with which to sate it.

What I have in mind, by contrast, is a kind of unification of three activities that people might not ordinarily see as connected: faith, artistic creation, and artistic consumption.

Let me start out by illustrating that, because we have a wide range of freedom in constructing our realities, there is room for this to be a meaningfully moral activity. We cannot choose facts, obviously, but we still have great freedom. We can choose to look for light or to wallow in darkness. We can choose to find meaning or we can choose to see none.  We can choose to be motivated towards a thing by love, or repelled away from something else by fear. What we desire is reflected in the world we create to live in, not in the banal sense of wish-fulfillment, but in a deep reflection of our truest desires.

Now let me make one simple comment: if our constructed reality determines our course of action, then it is in the truest and most accurate sense of the world what we believe. After all, beliefs are not about what we think is true, or even what we think we think is true (it’s possible to get that wrong), but rather about the things that must be true based on our actions. Therefore, another expression for constructing our reality is simply “having faith”. This need not be faith in a religious sense, secular humanists have ideals in which they have faith as firm and unwavering as any of the devout followers of religion, but it is absolutely faith.

Let me go farther and say that creating art is essentially the same thing as creating our own reality. There is a kind of symmetry between sub-creation as the creation of art and sub-creation as the creation of meaning in our day-to-day lives. I don’t think there is such a vast difference between Tolkien’s work creating Elven dialects vs. a parent’s work in feeding their child. To me: creation of meaning is creation of meaning. Faith, therefore, is not only about the construction of our beliefs, but also about the construction of art.

Lastly, let me bring back the concept of shared, constructed reality like the world of Harry Potter. When we read a book, watch a movie, listen to a poem, or hear a song we are not passively receiving information (like the failed theory of naïve realism), but are actively participating with the creator in constructing a shared reality. The audience, the performers, and the authors are all playing different parts, but in the very same activity.

In the end: The rules for what we should believe are related to the rules for what art we should create which are related to the rules for what art we should choose to participate in as the audience. And they amount, I think, to simply this: always strive for something truer, better, and more beautiful.

Living in a Nightmare

Which brings me back to Game of Thrones. The first pebble that started the avalanche that has become this article was a post from The Vulture called Seitz on Game of Thrones Season 4: TV’s Most Exhilarating Nightmare. The piece begins:

Game of Thrones is not the deepest, most subtle, or most innovative drama on TV. It is an example of what used to be called “meat-and-potatoes” storytelling: an R-rated yet classically styled epic. It’s mainly concerned with riveting the viewer from moment to moment, often through sex, violence, or intrigue, while keeping a vast fictional world, a complex plot, and a preposterously overpopulated cast straight in the viewer’s mind.

Does this sound like the kind of constructed reality in which you would like to exist? Not me. It’s not even the sex or violence per se that are the problem, but the fact that they are used as short-term goads to keep us interested. To the extent that these goads are linked directly into our “reptilian brains” (see next quote) they are essentially nihilistic. The next paragraph goes on:

Along with Hannibal, this is the most joyous, at times exhilarating nightmare on TV. Considering how unrelentingly bleak this world is — a State of Nature in which most characters are ruled by their reptilian brains, and those who show kindness or mercy tend to suffer for it — there’s no reason why it should be anything but off-putting.

But of course, there is a reason why it’s not off-putting: spectacle. Which brings me to a more recent piece on Game of Thrones called Rape of Thrones. The article ponders why it is that the HBO show has felt the need to deviate from the text of the books in the particular way that it does. Obviously it has to make changes (for length if nothing else), but why has the show chosen not once but twice to render a consensual sexual encounter (in the books) into rape (in the show)?

It seems more likely that Game Of Thrones is falling into the same trap that so much television does—exploitation for shock value. And, in particular, the exploitation of women’s bodies. This is a show that inspired the term “sexposition,” and a show that may have created a character who is a prostitute so as to set as many scenes as possible in brothels.

So you have to ask yourself, what kind of a person voluntarily inhabits a world where women are being degraded purely to sate his animal interest? Who willingly goes along with that? Who wants to help create that world?

That’s not the only problem, however, and Game of Thrones is not my only target. I was also struck by an article(again, from Vulture) called Why Captain America Is Only Interesting If He’s a Prick. The article just elaborates on the headline: Captain America is devoid of artistic merit when he’s a good guy.

In 2014, of what artistic good is a flawlessly nice soldier? Can’t we get at least a little rough and dirty with this 75-year-old warhorse?

On one level, this (and the popularity of anti-heroes in general) is just a furtherance of “a silly idea” C. S. Lewis had already noted in his lifetime:

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

So I just don’t buy this argument that only if we have characters who revel in immoral behavior can we have a meaningful conversation about morality.

This topic is more than I can handle conclusively in a single post, but here’s where I’d like to wrap things up for now.

Moral art does not have to be saccharine, optimistic, or “nice” any more than the actual creation made by God Himself is saccharine, optimistic, or “nice”. The two greatest arguments against God, in my mind, are the Problem of Evil and the hidden god. Why, if God is so good, is there so much suffering? And why, if God wants us to know Him, does he not make Himself obviously present? If the greatest creation of all can cause such incredible pain and confusion, then obviously we have absolutely no reason to suspect that our sub-creations ought to be relentlessly, oppressively cheerful.

Bearing that in mind, however, art is creation, and it is therefore morally significant in ways that are complex and open to interpretation and exploration. My point is not so much “no one should watch Game of Thrones“ as it is that we should all realize that what we watch literally contributes to the creation of the world we inhabit. That’s a big deal. It’s something to think about seriously.

I don’t think that the answer is to try and wall ourselves off from anything that challenges us or makes us sad, but I do think that we ought to avoid deliberate exploitation of sex and violence to hook viewers (because it is nihilistic) and also that we ought to seek out art that reaffirms the validity of moral striving. This will mean different things to different people. I’m not suggesting any kind of top-down censorship. I’m talking about bottom-up self-control in what we choose to participate in.

I don’t know all the answers. I just think, based on my theories of constructed reality, that the problem is more important than most folks realize. I believe there is deep significance to what we choose to consume as mere entertainment, and that it is worth thinking about.

NRA Aggregates Civilian Gun Use Stories

I used to post these pretty frequently when I came across them: stories of law-abiding citizens using firearms to defend themselves or others. I’m not saying I don’t or won’t share these kinds of stories in the future again, but I just haven’t been doing it much recently. I did come across this aggregator, created by the NRA, that I thought was interesting. Based on a quick skim, it looks like they’re finding about one story per day, or at least multiple stories per week.

2014-04-21 Defensive Gun Use

One thing you’ll note is that a lot of them don’t involve fatalities. Some of them don’t even involve firing a gun at all. In Gun carrying woman halts violent mob, The Detroit News, Detroit, Mich. 04/08/14, WJBK, Detroit, Mich. 04/08/14, WXYZ, Detroit, Mich. 04/07/14 a woman stops a mob from beating a man who had accidentally hit 10-year old with his car (the kid seems to have been OK). She had a pistol in her pocket, but she never had to draw it. Does that count as a gun-use? I think it does. She stated, “I had a gun in my pocket, I was ready to do some damage if I had to.” That’s pretty typical: sometimes a gun isn’t directly needed, but it changes the options that you have available. Another one was Woman scares off fugitive, Access North Georgia, Ga. 04/02/14. In that case a woman did fire the gun, but apparently didn’t hit anyone. It’s not really clear if it was a warning shot or she was trying to hit the guy (“a fugitive on the run”), but it’s another example of defensive gun use without any body count.

Keep that in mind when folks tell you that a gun is more likely to be used to commit suicide than to defend your home, or similar stats. Although the safety concerns of gun ownership as it relates to suicide are legitimate, these numbers are frequently based on only counting justifiable homicide, which ignores the vast majority of real-world defensive gun use.

The Inequality Culprit

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal tackles the relation between family breakdown and inequality. The authors write,

The two-parent family has declined rapidly in recent decades. In 1960, more than 76% of African-Americans and nearly 97% of whites were born to married couples. Today the percentage is 30% for blacks and 70% for whites. The out-of-wedlock birthrate for Hispanics surpassed 50% in 2006. This trend, coupled with high divorce rates, means that roughly 25% of American children now live in single-parent homes, twice the percentage in Europe (12%). Roughly a third of American children live apart from their fathers.

The authors continue by pointing out that even “children in high-income households who experienced family breakups don’t fare as well emotionally, psychologically, educationally or, in the end, economically as their two-parent-family peers. Abuse, behavioral problems and psychological issues of all kinds, such as developmental behavior problems or concentration issues, are less common for children of married couples than for cohabiting or single parents, according to a 2003 Centers for Disease Control study of children’s health. The causal pathways are about as clear as those from smoking to cancer.”

The authors (both researchers in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas) continue to list studies linking family structure to economic outcomes. Yet, academic conferences tend to denounce “free markets, the decline of unions, and “neoliberalism” generally as exacerbating economic inequality” with little attention being given to family structure. The authors suggest that ideology, the risk of the accusation of racism (“family breakup has hit minority communities the hardest”), and the lack of a “quick fix” deter academics from pursuing this line of thought.

The authors conclude, “The change must come from long-term societal transformation on this subject, led by political, educational and entertainment elites, similar to the decades-long movements against racism, sexism—and smoking. But the first step is to acknowledge the problem.”

Nobel Laureate’s Graduation Speech

Nobel economist Thomas Sargent gave a 2007 graduation speech using 12 economic concepts:

1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible.

2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs.

3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do.

4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended.

5. There are tradeoffs between equality and efficiency.

6. In an equilibrium of a game or an economy, people are satisfied with their choices. That is why it is difficult for well-meaning outsiders to change things for better or worse.

7. In the future, you too will respond to incentives. That is why there are some promises that you’d like to make but can’t. No one will believe those promises because they know that later it will not be in your interest to deliver. The lesson here is this: before you make a promise, think about whether you will want to keep it if and when your circumstances change. This is how you earn a reputation.

8. Governments and voters respond to incentives too. That is why governments sometimes default on loans and other promises that they have made.

9. It is feasible for one generation to shift costs to subsequent ones. That is what national government debts and the U.S. social security system do (but not the social security system of Singapore).

10. When a government spends, its citizens eventually pay, either today or tomorrow, either through explicit taxes or implicit ones like inflation.

11. Most people want other people to pay for public goods and government transfers (especially transfers to themselves).

12. Because market prices aggregate traders’ information, it is difficult to forecast stock prices and interest rates and exchange rates.

This explains exactly why I find economics so valuable.

The Moynihan Report Revisited

moynihan

The Atlantic has an interesting historical piece on the Moynihan Report by Peter-Christian Aigner, who is writing a biography on Moynihan. The piece looks at Moynihan’s actual politics and motivations behind his now (in)famous report and reveals some surprises for both the Right and the Left:

If [the Right] knew what policies Moynihan hoped to spur with his report, they might view him as a Marxist radical to be forgotten, not a visionary martyr to remember. Moynihan stated these goals more than a few times, but new documents from his rich archive give a much fuller, clearer, and bolder illustration of his thinking and hopes.

“With a background in the labor movement and New York state government,” Moynihan “became convinced that poverty amid prosperity was not a “paradox,” as most said in the 1960s, but an inevitable result of the market’s “creative destruction.”” The author describes Moynihan as being influenced by “Catholic social doctrine and European policy thinkers,” causing him to worry “that America’s deep-seated individualism created a “values” framework that inclined the nation too easily to social Darwinism.” For Moynihan, “jobs ought to be a “right,” not a scarcity.” Moynihan was “particularly impressed by Sweden’s cradle-to-grave welfare state” as well as “the “family allowance” (cash transfers used to bolster low wages).”

But JFK and LBJ were not interested in committing large government resources to such policies, and Moynihan lost his biggest fight, to get these ideas into the War on Poverty. That’s when he decided to write “The Negro Family.” Originally, he included the two policy recommendations. But fearing Johnson would reject the memo outright, he chose in the final report to just emphasize poverty’s cultural devastation alone, using apocalyptic and occasionally controversial language. The central message of the 78-page document was that more than 200 years of the “worst” form of slavery in history, and nearly a century of Jim Crow and Great Depression levels of unemployment and poverty had nearly destroyed the black community. So great was the damage that now even the basic unit of society, the family, was coming apart.

The author notes that “years of research have confirmed his suspicion: break-up can indeed be a trigger for poverty, although it is most often a correlate, not a cause. More typically, as he suggested, the relationship is the other way around: Money problems exacerbate the difficulties of marriage and child rearing.” In conclusion, “Moynihan was genuinely concerned about family break-up and its results, but his understanding of the problem and solutions were radically different from that of the right today.”

While I think the author grossly and demonstably misinterprets the research over the past several decades on family structure and poverty, the historical context and background of the Moynihan Report is important. Check out the full article.

“Welcome to Good Burger, Home of the Good Burger…”

all that

I totally watched All That growing up. This was back in elementary school days when I was really too young to be out very late on Saturday nights (plus, I had Mormon parents). And, of course, I couldn’t drive. SNICK @ Nite was the kid equivalent of shows like SNL. Every 90s kid has characters like Pierre Escargot, Repairman (Man, Man, Man…), Ed from “Good Burger,” and Ashley from the “Ask Ashley” segment etched in their memories. Hence, my joy and nostalgia over an article at The Atlantic titled “The Quiet Radicalism of All That,” which looks at just how different All That was compared to other kid shows (especially the teen nonsense on The WB).

A fun read. Check it out.