My Encounter with General Semantics

The following is a narrative about my encounter with General Semantics.  If you are like me, you’ve probably never heard of GS, and my initial introduction to the subject via the Internet put me on the defensive.  If I was to summarize GS in a neutral and objective manner, it would be to call it praxiological - that is, its concerned with practice.  It is a specific knowledge (logos) of acting and conducting oneself.  In this vein it is ethical, not in the a highly moralistic way (as the word might connote) but rather in the sense that it is concerned with “right” or “correct” acting, in the same vein that Stoicism or Zen Buddhism are considered ethical.

Returning to my introduction to GS via the Internet (Wikipedia etc), I learned the fact that Scientology, the mysterious “religion” invented by L. Ron Hubbard, was inspired in part by aspects of GS.  However, at the same time, a number of respected colleagues of mine from graduate school were to varying degrees interested in GS and I felt it deserved at least a fair shake.  And to be honest, who doesn’t love the chance to root for the underdog - or potentially expose the rotten core of Scientology that GS may represent.

I decided my more formal introduction to GS would be via a book.  Having briefly attempted to gain knowledge by stirring the pot on the Official GS Facebook group, I concluded that a book would be the best option.  My attempts to “learn” via FB, like most efforts that involve FB, was largely wasted and probably misguided to begin with.  Expecting strangers to openly want to educate someone who hasn’t taken the effort to educate himself - especially when those strangers are probably wary of the scepticism aimed at GS - makes failure somewhat inevitable.  My FB encounters did, however, indirectly introduce me to Bruce Kodish whose book, co-written with his wife Susan, Drive Yourself Sane was positively reviewed on Amazon and reasonably priced.  I decided this would be my introduction to GS.

While the title of the book (once again, its Drive Yourself Sane) was both embarrasing - I attempted to hide the cover when reading in public - and irksome - I felt the claim to be a tad bit hubristic - I read it cover to cover.  To my surprise (given my initial prejudices), I found much of the description of GS to be laudatory and complementary to many of my own research findings.  I’ll briefly enumerate them before continuing to some basic issues I also found with GS.

1. GS recognizes and affirms modern metaphysics.  Much of my research prior to my interest in GS dwelt on the subject of the debate or quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.  This actual war of words historically took place in what we call early modernity when leading intellectuals took sides on the topic of whether to affirm the values of the ancient world (as exemplified by Greece and Rome) or the modern world that developed in recent centuries.  While this quarrel sometimes became vulgarized as one between reason (attributed to the Greeks) and faith (attributed to moderns), others argued, incisively, that the ancients possessed one version of reason (and a corresponding structure of belief) and moderns another.  
2. GS opposes Aristotelian metaphysics to those of modern science.  Aristotle is singled out as a representative of ancient reason, but what is primarily the target seems to me to be a science that is one-sidedly objective, linear (teleological), and static.  GS, with frequent reference to modern theorists, especially those in 19th and 20th century fields, stakes its claim on relativity, reciprocity, and multi-causality - all positions that would be unthinkable for Aristotle and his peers.
3. GS emphasizes operational over abstract knowledge.  A great schism between modern and pre-modern thinking came via nominalism.  This name is given to those moderns who criticized a thinking that granted reality to abstract entities that, in their minds, were merely “names.”  Aristotle is relevant here because he believe that universal categories were more real than their particular instances.  For example, the category “horse” was more real than any particular horse one might find on a field.  The nominalists rejected this view, believing the category to be merely a name and descriptor which served to abstractly unify disparate objects but which had no reality in and of itself.  GS rejects the emphasis and reliance on these abstract terms in exchange for a switch of focus onto effective truth.  To quote Forrest Gump, stupid is as stupid does.  It is the latter which defines the former.

Inasmuch as I agree with much of GS, I couldn’t help but be irritated by a number of aspects of GS culture I experienced which may (or may not) have to do with tenets of GS theory itself.  I’ll explain the behavior in reference to the claims of GS I believe might drive them.

1. The Silent Level.  I mentioned earlier that my initial foray into things GS was a failure.  This, I admit, was partially my fault.  However, I couldn't shake the feeling that GS was a closed community and that this closure was not fully the result of unfair hostility directed at GS.  Indeed, my honest attempts to inform myself through others were often rebuffed or greeted with redirections.  I was told that part of this stems from the fact that the truth GS provides cannot simply be learned but must be discovered.  Meditation and comparisons to Zen were made and may be warranted.  I remain, however, troubled by this claim.  For one, while the gospel of GS does include as a firm tenet the claim that truth is found through self-searching and meditation, the very existence of GS literature seems to indicate a desire for communication - even if the latter serves only a secondary capacity.  For this reason, I felt that redirects to meditation were unsatisfactory.  Much of GS appeals to me precisely because it is defensible by reason and yet, for some, GS belongs to that vulgarism (mentioned earlier) between reason and faith, where the truth can only be found in the latter to the exclusion of the former.  The hesitation to engage in reason (which is not itself necessarily abstract or Aristotelian, as GS itself illustrates) made me confused and wary.
2. The Silent Level, II.  While my first complaint (or criticism) may perhaps be simply subjective - based on my personal experience with GS - this second one will be broader and hence more abstract.  I lead with this in order to anticipate a challenge to the criticism, namely that by speaking abstractly I am missing the truth that comes from the experience itself.  So be it.  My second issue relates to the recourse to the silent level itself.  Recourse to a non-verbal “reality” is nothing new and GS is aware of this, as allusions to Zen and other meditative programs indicate.  This groups GS then with a number of praxiological regimes that posit that truth exists non-verbally “beneath” the surface.  Most all metaphysics would agree with such a position.  Indeed, the idea that the essence of cat lies somehow on the surface of the letters c,a,t is preposterous.  Moreover, while meaning can be deferred to a description, this process is necessarily infinite such that, to paraphrase Derrida, meaning is always and eternally deferred.  As such, meaning cannot be found at the level of mere words alone.  If one wished to speak Biblically one could think of the famous comparisons between the letter and the spirit as another useful analogy.  Indeed, that latter example provides us again with a certain history of meditation (the convent, the monastery) as places where the ineffable was to be contemplated.  The first such monastery, however, is truly the Platonic academy (and the Aristotelian lysium) which places us back into the knowledge/practice relationship of the ancients.  Given GS’s aversion to the static abstract in favour of the active and operational truth, I am surprised that it doesn’t seek to adopt the stance of the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music that pushes Maria into the real world (in much the same fashion as Father Zosima did Alyosha in Dostoevsky’s Brother Karamazov).  The decline of the monastery/convent initiated in modernity (following its upsurgence in late antiquity through to the middle ages) accompanies a shift in the locus of truth from the silent-real to the historical.  Truth is as much in the here-and-now - as Machiavelli shows us - as it is beneath or beyond it.  Moreover, the contemplative stance breaks with what GS supposedly holds dear: relativity, reciprocity, complexity.  These latter concepts name ways of relating to the world and others - and yet truth, GS tells us, is to be found alone, in silent isolation.  This presents itself to me as a contradiction and a violation of the key metaphysical “turn” represented by modernity over antiquity.
3. Opposites attract.  Part of the grievances I expressed above relate to how GS appears in some ways to be identifying with that which it categorically opposes: Aristotelianism.  My dissertation focused on how contrary positions often align or reverse themselves into that which they oppose.  I see this partially in GS, as I believe the previous point illustrates.  GS, for example, situates itself against Aristotelianism (and the Eleatic origin of ancient philosophy in general) by affirming becoming over being and dynamism over stasis - Heraclitus over the Eleatics, as the Kodishes allude (61).  A couple of times in my interactions with GSers I was reminded that “being” is “becoming” a fact to be validated by my own meditative experiences.  At this point, I am unable to confirm or deny this truth of GS from the depths of the silent level, but I am aware enough of the contradictions attending the notion of “being” and equally those that accompany its antagonist, “becoming.”  I have generally subscribed to the view of Nietzsche who, after long opposing the two concepts, came to the idea that becoming must be stamped by being - that the two must be thought together - indeed, that the tension of these two opposites held close would generate fruit rather than the barren limbs of negated contradictions.  And yet despite that epiphany, I have found GS generally to locate itself categorically in a single camp, that of becoming.  Superficially, this opposition seems to belong to the one I named earlier (between modern and ancient) and yet, as Nietzsche and others like him knew, it was rather a return of ancient metaphysics once again.  I give you Kierkegaard: “...when speculative thought mediates between the doctrine of the Eleatics and that of Heraclitus, this can be altogether proper, because the doctrine of the Eleatics is not related as an opposite of speculation but is itself speculative, and likewise the doctrine of Heraclitus.” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 376).  Kierkegaard’s point is simple, and taken in the larger context of the book, illustrative.  “Existence and existing are the very opposite of speculation” (380), they are, in fact, the modern operational concepts GS wishes to elaborate, yet the doctrines of both being and becoming are speculative.  Kierkegaard, who as a representative of the “modern” camp, distinguishes an existential (factual is the term preferred by GS) approach from an abstract intellectual one, and thereby eludes the false opposition between being and becoming.  Moreover, in identifying the trap of abstraction (what he calls speculation), Kierkegaard does not resort to the mystification of the “silent level” even if he holds to its existence.  Indeed, one only has to examine the size and scope of his prodigious work to know that Kierkegaard valued the search for truth through communication not meditation.
4. Particularism.  Another opposition I am wary of I also mentioned earlier.  While I agree with the criticism of Aristotelian universalism (the granting of reality to abstract categories), I am cautious about the opposite position.  GS’s embrace of the particular at the expense of the universal was anticipated by Hegel who described this choice in terms of a contradictory reversal.  Hegel saw that while universal’s clearly do not exist, neither do particulars.  Try, for example, to indicate in any manner the particular uniqueness of a given object.  If you do, you’ll probably notice you used words that can be applied to many other objects.  If I try to point out “this blue pen” I could be talking about a million blue pens.  I could describe imperfections or exceptions but even then I would be using language - whether verbal or gestural - that inevitably relies upon universal categories (“this,” “blue,” “pen” and others I might add like “broken,” “oversized,” etc).  There is no sign or symbol for only one thing.  As such, we’re stuck with universals and while we are wise not to over-emphasize their importance (as did Aristotle) we cannot simply reverse that position without defeating all attempts at communication (unless, of course, that’s the point).  Indeed, such a reversal would mean that we could only “know” an object through non-communicative means (enter the silent level), which makes it open season for non-rational “revelations.”  In this way, GS suddenly seems to veer far off-course from modern science with its emphasis on verifiability and the community of researchers into the solipsism of individual experience.  

The belief in the virtue and validity of the individual, meditative, non-cognitive, experience has a long history.  I’ve already mentioned Zen and Stoicism as possible forerunners of the GS model.  One could also list European Romanticism which followed the Enlightenment’s exaggeration of the power of logos.  The driving force of Romanticism was to protect faith from reason (part of the vulgar opposition of the two I mentioned earlier).  This opposition caricatured both sides - the one affirming the truth of the heart against the cold logical grasping of reason.  It worries me that this contradictory “dialectic of enlightenment” may be at play in GS.  This doesn't mean I will be dismissing it out of hand going forward.  I plan to continue dabbling in this field which has provided me useful exercises in clarifying and articulating my thoughts on my own research.

Abstraction & The Divine Exception

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”¹

And so the argument goes, round and round, where it stops, nobody knows, the centuries old battle between public and private, between socialism and capitalism, seems without end, as if the disputants, intoxicated by rarefaction of the abstract heights, have ignored the process of history itself which has largely made irrelevant these very musings. Yet, humanity has never felt it beneath itself to starve, struggle, maim and kill another on behalf of an idea, and so the battle must be settled in the ideal sphere itself, in the realm of ideas.

Michel Foucault once called the cold war face-off between capitalism and socialism a mere “tempest in a teapot,” snubbing in four words a conflict that had immersed millions and brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. Can such an outrageous remark be attributed to that run-of-the-mill academic pretension that so haughtily places itself above everything concrete and meaningful? Or, rather, was Foucault on to something profound that not only permits but encourages an aristocratic flick of the hand that dismisses the whole scene as something utterly sub-standard and not worthy of an enlightened process of digestion.

While there are many points of entry to begin our critical discussion, our purposes are best served to begin with Ayn Rand, whose ideas are still clung to, by some, with a religious ferocity, and who set herself up as a major critic of socialism and uber-proponent of capitalist individualism. According to Rand, government is to play a small set of rudimentary roles. “These basic functions are: the police, the law courts, the military. (These represent the only moral justification for the existence of a government: the protection of individual rights, i.e., the protection of individual citizens from the initiators of physical force.)”²

What is interesting about Rand, in this case, is not that she enumerates a number of exceptions to the ideal of a pure laissez-faire model of capitalism, as the “proper” sphere of government but that she does so without being arbitrary, never pretending as if their number and existence were guaranteed by virtue of their presence on the page or as if they had tumbled from the very mouth of God. Rand is far too smart for such dogmatic utterances and thus she describes the test that produced that list, the test of “the protection of individual rights” -- not, it is to be noted, a test of efficiency which is a measure that plays solely to capitalism's strengths and goals. Rand's “test,” however, far from marks her as a thinker on the fringe of mainstream discourse. Instead, it places her snugly within the bosom of liberal thought dating back hundreds of years. It is this test, in fact, that has linked together serious and thoughtful individuals that today are claimed by a variety of ideologies but that overall fall within the expansive European tradition of liberalism that links Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and J.S. Mill with Adam Smith, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx. Hobbes, whose famous four words will be remember long after Foucault's memory has completely dissipated, describes an existence of pure individualism as “nasty, brutish and short.” Starting from lofty and idyllic beginnings of humans living solely for their own needs, he quickly stumbles across the contradiction of death via an all out war. In the place of pure individualism then, he argues, there must exist a social contract binding one with another that serves not the bogeyman of “collectivism” but that very individualism he previously demonstrated to be contradictory in its very being. Hobbes realized that an ideology of pure individualism led to a “war of all against all” where each sought to dominate the other for fear of being likewise dominated. Yet, rather than simply reject individualism, Hobbes aimed to guarantee it through its opposite – the collective. Thus Hobbes's most valuable contribution to political and philosophical thought is twofold: the individual alone (and the ideology of pure individualism) is contradictory; and, that this contradiction is resolved through its opposite, the social realm.

Hobbes leads us by the hand from abstract individualism (“I exist for myself”) to concrete individualism (“I exist because and through the existence of others whose existence I, too, work to guarantee”). The difference or the “middle term” between these two modes of individualism is the social realm, sometimes identified with the government. This simple journey lies at the core of the liberal thought that embraces the scholars above and many more. Rand, herself, finds a home within this skeletal system when she makes government a necessary element to provide for the existence of the individual – for she knows, as does Hobbes, that the individual left to itself is a contradiction. The individual exists only within the social.

As I alluded to above, Rand's list of three functions of government is the product of a test and not the results of a divine exception that arbitrarily secludes those aspects of a social order from the rest. While chronologically they appear before the test in Rand's phrase, they are the logical results of that test. It is the test of the “the protection of individual rights” that spawns, in her eyes, three products: the police, the law courts, the military. However, because it is the test that counts and not the products, these three items are always susceptible to a re-test to determine if they continue to meet the standard. Moreover, because these three are not arbitrarily chosen a priori, as if plucked from the mind of God, but are products, they are not bound by any logical determination to be the only three. The test, in all its formulaic glory, is not limited by any earthly consideration, neither number nor ideology. Its goal is simply to test each potential candidate against the aforementioned measure and decree a result. As such, the difference between the chosen three and any number of items, say health care, postal services, road maintenance, coffee production, dentistry, etc., is eliminated. All items, like individuals, are equal before the law, and the law decides in each case according to the merits of each. Some items, it decrees, assist the task of translating individuals from abstract to concrete reality, others hinder it.

What becomes apparent at this point, is that Ayn Rand's test is no different from that of Hobbes, Smith or Marx's. The test for all is the same, what is different, is the outcome tallied by each individual thinker. Hobbes tallies the least, listing only government, Smith tallies more, including a role for social welfare within his model, and Marx tallies the most, enumerating a lengthy number of roles that must be brought within the realm of social supervision in order to protect the rights of individuals (such as the length of the working day, public education, etc.). Each of these thoughtful individuals are thus in communication with each other, disputing not between dissimilar systems but nuances within the very same system. Moreover, this argument across time has none of the bipolar features of Internet discussions that bounce between abstract individualism and abstract socialism. Each thinker above accepts and makes the individual and his or her concrete existence the goal of their system, and thereby weighs the institutions of society accordingly. Each thinker implicitly or explicitly accepts that the individual and the social exist together, reinforcing each other, in dialogue. For them, there is no world of pure individualism or pure collectivism.

Thus, from what appeared to be a world war without possibility of mediation, we find instead an internal war, a civil struggle – which as history teaches us can be of the most uncivil variety – between foes with a similar purpose and a common heritage. In this understanding, the divine exception that seemed to miraculously cleave Rand's three roles from charges of “socialization” is eliminated. The functioning of a liberal, individualist, society is seen anew as one that exists on a continuum of socialization. Thereafter, the charges of “socialism” lose their heretical potency to be replaced instead with thoughtful contemplation and practical experimentation, based in the empirical realities of everyday existence, that seek to determine to what degree more or less socialization preserves the rights of individuals. The divine exception removed, citizens are free to wonder why, if the police exist necessarily to protect individual rights should there not also exist a social health care system to protect the property (the body included, according to Locke) of citizenry? With the divine exception removed everything becomes fair game for the test whose results are never predictable beforehand and must always be interpreted using empirical data by the democratic multitude for which it exists. For again, there is no simple abstract pre-existing law enumerating a set number of social services.

Henceforth, abstraction, deemed a calumniator for its earnest attempts to foment eternal contradiction, is considered persona non grata and banned from the social realm for good. Hurray!

---

1 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Dutton, 1992): 199.
2 Ayn Rand, The Ayn Rand Reader, ed. Gary Hull and Leonard Peikoff (New York: Plume, 1999): 105.

Truth & Artifice: A Return to Form

Having started this blog in the 'tween of my undergraduate and graduate careers, where the mundane repetition of the real world seemed to open a void that called out to be filled by thoughts and the good cheer of diversions (in my case, mainly music), my return to the academy spelt its eventual demise (as can be witnessed in the gradual drop in posts beginning September 2006).  I am not yet sure if my loss of voice ought be attributed to the discovery of my own ignorance, as if my encounter with the university was akin to that of the citizen of Athens with the great Socrates, or if, rather, it was the product of an increasing sickness of the Word itself brought about by the loquacity of mealy-mouthed academics whose strutting and fretting upon the stage convinced me of the nothingness of signifying and the significance of nothingness.

It is the irony of the academy that I have seen many with much to say say nothing and those with nothing to say take centre stage.  The survivors of the academic process that demands "publish or perish" convert their every passing thought into scholarly currency, spinning straw into gold these Rumpelstiltskins covet and secure the professorships of the nation all the while devaluing the stock of knowledge everywhere.

The sickness of the Word is the presence of this very knowledge and yet to recognize it and face it elicits no courage nor calm.  The cure lies in the very disease itself, in the Word, in putting pen to paper and making thought actuality whilst not losing oneself in the (im)materialism of academic honourship.  A conviction to return to the pen, to out ideas as charlatans if they alone thrive in the recesses of the mind, and to prepare the way to contribute something, if only one thing, to the intellectual activity of the world.  This is my task.

My response to Margaret Wente in the G&M

First, read Wente's piece here (I've also pasted it below as quote): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081024.wcowent25/BNStory/specialComment/home
My response follows.

What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true
MARGARET WENTE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

October 24, 2008 at 8:03 PM EDT

Was Canada once a land of savages? And is saying so tantamount to racism? Many people would answer no, and yes. That's why Dick Pound, the high-profile Olympics figure, is in a heap of trouble for describing the Canada of four centuries ago as " un pays de sauvages." He was talking to a reporter from La Presse about the Beijing Olympics and the issue of human rights. "We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European descent, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization," he said.

Not surprisingly, native groups are up in arms. "Mr. Pound must apologize to first peoples and educate himself about the history of first peoples in this country," insisted Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. Some want Mr. Pound to resign from Vancouver's Olympics organizing committee, and some want him to quit his post as chancellor of McGill University. He says he wasn't referring to today's native peoples, and he didn't mean to give offence. But critics aren't mollified. B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell calls his remarks "disgraceful."

"Stupid" is another word that comes to mind. The B.C. government and VANOC have been working furiously – and sparing no expense – to get aboriginal groups on side for the 2010 Winter Games. The last thing they want is for native protests to steal the spotlight. Comments about "savages," in whatever language, are not helpful.

Mr. Pound's choice of words was inflammatory, to say the least. But what about the underlying thought? Is it fair to say that the Canada of 1600 was not as "civilized" as China?

Yes, says Frances Widdowson, who, along with Albert Howard, is the author of an impressive new book on aboriginal policy and culture. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry (to be published next month) knocks the stuffing out of the prevailing mythology that surrounds the history of first peoples. That mythology holds that aboriginal culture was equal or superior to European culture. At the time of contact, North America was occupied by a race of gentle pastoralists with their own science, their own medicine and their own oral history that was every bit as rich as Europe's.

The truth is different. North American native peoples had a neolithic culture based on subsistence living and small kinship groups. They had not developed broader laws or institutions, a written language, evidence-based science, mathematics or advanced technologies. The kinship groups in which they lived were very small, simply organized and not very productive. Other kinship groups were regarded as enemies, and the homicide rate was probably rather high. Until about 30 years ago, the anthropological term for this developmental stage was "savagery."

"Never in history has the cultural gap between two peoples coming into contact with each other been wider," Ms. Widdowson says.

Today, however, it is simply not permissible to say that aboriginal culture was less evolved than European culture or Chinese culture – even though it's true. Ms. Widdowson argues that the most important explanation for aboriginal problems today is not Western colonialism but the vast gulf between a relatively simple neolithic kinship-based culture and a vastly complex late-industrial capitalist culture. "It doesn't mean that they are stupid or inferior," says Ms. Widdowson. "We all passed through the stage of neolithic culture."

The fact that North American cultures never evolved further can be explained, as American evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond showed, by geography, climate and a host of other material factors. But today, it's not acceptable to argue that some cultures are more highly developed than others, or that cultural development is a force for good. Instead, our policies are based on the belief that aboriginal culture is equal but separate, and that the answer to aboriginal social problems is to revive and preserve indigenous culture on a "separate but equal" parallel track.

This belief has produced a sizable industry of academics, consultants, lawyers, social workers and bureaucrats, to say nothing of lucrative sinecures for many aboriginals themselves. Ms. Widdowson once belonged to this industry, as a government policy analyst in the North. She soon became disillusioned and switched to an academic career, where she has been a lonely voice in a world where native spirituality and "traditional knowledge" are held to be just as valid as Western science.

Today, "traditional knowledge," which generally resides among the elders, is sought after by governments, studied in universities around the world, and recognized in environmental assessment processes. But Ms. Widdowson says most of it is useless – a heap of vague beliefs and opinions that can't be verified or tested. Why have the muskoxen drifted west? Because, according to the elders, the animals were "following the people because they missed them and wanted their company."

We have romanticized indigenous culture so much that it is often described (especially in native studies courses) as morally superior. Historically, aboriginal people were more spiritual, more egalitarian, more peaceable, less greedy and more ecologically minded than the rest of us. (To which Ms. Widdowson responds, "It's hard to damage the environment with a stone axe.") People are reluctant to challenge these assumptions. And they're not inclined to challenge indigenous spiritual beliefs, no matter how absurd. For example, anyone who questions the widespread belief that aboriginals originated in North America (rather than Africa, like the rest of us) is bound to be accused of disrespect and cultural insensitivity.

Claims about aboriginal contributions to civilization are also vastly overstated. Did the Iroquois Confederacy really influence the Declaration of Independence? Sorry, no. Do native medicinal herbs play an important role in modern drugs? No. Yet, some leading intellectuals try to argue otherwise. The thesis of John Ralston Saul's new bestseller is that we are at root a Métis civilization, even though he has no evidence to prove it. What is a Métis civilization? That's not too clear, either. But it's a good thing.

Much of our romanticism, of course, is fuelled by guilt. We robbed and mistreated aboriginal people for a very long time, and most of us feel terrible about it. Yet, Ms. Widdowson believes this denial of reality is extremely damaging. It dooms hundreds of thousands of native Canadians and their descendants to lives that remain isolated from the modern world, without the skills and aptitudes they need to make their way in an increasingly complex society. The message they get is that they need not, and should not, change.

But a neolithic culture cannot possibly give them a future. And it's time for us to face that. "The existing policy direction is so harmful," she says. "Aboriginal people are people like everyone else. They deserve to interact with the modern world like everyone else."

Needless to say, Ms. Widdowson, who currently teaches at Calgary's Mount Royal College, has been accused of hating aboriginals, and much else. "It doesn't mean that you're a racist or a colonialist if you recognize that there's a culture gap," she says. "But to say that aboriginal people were just as sophisticated as the Europeans – that's just nonsense."

The definition of savage, according to the Random House dictionary, reads: "1) fierce, ferocious, or cruel; untamed: savage beasts. 2) uncivilized; barbarous: savage tribes." Margaret Wente defends Dick Pound and his labelling of the original inhabitants of North America because it is "not permissible to say that aboriginal culture was less evolved than European culture or Chinese culture - even though it's true." This argument utilizes what we ivory-tower types call conceptual slippage. How did Ms. Wente go from an argument that such-and-such a group are "savage" to "less evolved"? Furthermore, how does Ms. Wente measure evolution and why does she continue to slip between "cultural" factors and "technical" ones? Jared Diamond, who Wente cites as an authority for her argument, writes that geographical factors determine technical development - not cultural development. Diamond makes this argument in the book titled "Guns, Germs and Steel" which serves to encapsulate his argument and to demonstrate that the difference between the "savage" and the "civilized" lies not in the production of culture or "sophistication" but in the proliferation of weaponry, both biological and technical. The same weapons that were turned on North America in 1492 would continue to be used in Europe itself in what could only be called a "fierce, ferocious or cruel," i.e. savage, way. Thus, Europeans may win the award for technical "evolution," but I am quite certain that is not the argument that Mr. Pound or Ms. Wente are making. By slipping between the argument that we are more technologically-advanced to one of culture, Ms. Wente justifies her claims to superiority and that is what is racist about her argument. Further, by defending Pound's position on the "savage" nature of the indigenous, Wente has gone far beyond identifying a "cultural gap" (if such a thing exists, and if it does how do we measure it, by how well another culture imitates our own?). Instead she strips the original inhabitants of culture altogether, for "savages," the "uncivilized" and "barbarous," are terms antithetical to culture. If a comment can be both dumb and true, it should be cause for self-reflection. In this case, I believe the comment is dumb (read wrong), and the truth is that it resonates with Margaret Wente's worldview.

Jason Harman
Toronto, Ontario

Nietzsche Family Circus

Friend and fellow Smartist Shayne Robinson (check out his print-worthy travel blog www.shayneandjo.com) has pointed me to this lovely site that pairs random Family Circus cartoons with random quotes by everybody's favourite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

All sciences are now under the obligation
to prepare the ground for the future task
of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem
of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

---

If you gaze long into an abyss,
the abyss will gaze back into you.

Check it out for a laugh:
http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/

Reflections on the Meaning of Justice

Fragements of an Ethos Under Construction

By now, the case of Kim Walker, his daughter Jadah Walker and her deceased boyfriend James Hayward has become the topic of popular discussion across Canada. The comments section on the Globe & Mail website which posted the news of a second-degree murder verdict in the trial of Mr. Walker has quickly reached 260 posts. The comments vary dramatically, ranging from outright support of Mr. Walker's actions to condemnations of his murder of the twenty-four year old boyfriend of his daughter. Those supporting Mr. Walker speak of a sense of justice for which 'the law' at best approximates and perhaps more often misses by a wide margin. Their opponents speak of equivalence - Hayward may have been a drug-dealer (and user) who had led Jadah Walker into a hollow shell of her former life but can that be worth an arbitrary death sentence dealt by five bullets from a 9mm handgun. Others illuminate another important dimension to this case: Kim Walker did not hide from his crime, in taking responsibility for it he not only guaranteed a guilty verdict for himself but saved the courts the burden of prosecution. A move which in the days of year-long multimillion dollar trials for known criminals provides stark contrast. A man, with whose actions can be at the minimum sympathized, and who takes full responsibility for his actions, is penalized (perhaps) harsher and more efficiently than those whose actions are entirely despicable and whose very existence upon this planet can hardly be tolerated.

What is Justice?

The responses to the Walker case bring about a central question. Justice for whom? Which naturally begs the question, what is justice? In terms of the Old Testament we know it as equivalence, as pure bodily exchange: eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth. The growth of modern society has seen certain judicial 'advances' which have largely upended such understandings of justice. The state has assumed the position of victim, the crime, one against civil society as a whole (this is why, unlike in civil cases, the victim or his kin do not participate as the prosecution). Philosophers such as Hegel have argued that this is the result of the realization of the relation between individuals and society as an organic totality. Michel Foucault makes a similar argument, noting that criminal actions disrupt the carefully balanced machine of exploitation and as such effect the whole as much as the individual.

An important result of the shift from individual exchange as justice to state justice can be witnessed in the sentencing of convicts. Whereas equivalence governed the biblical model, the state's assumption of the role of victim allowed an enlarged ability for magnanimity. A state, as the culmination of the whole of civil society, is not brought to its knees by a single criminal action against an individual. As such, it is able to punish without the requirement of equivalence. An eye for a tooth perhaps, or a fine. In fact, the slow abolition of the death penalty through the world has been made possible through such magnanimity.

In the Walker case, such magnanimity can be clearly acknowledged. The state, through the jury and court system, dealt the defendant a sentence of second-degree murder which carries with it a minimum ten-year sentence. A life for ten-years. Certainly no equivalence there, and yet, exchange still prevails. Like a commodity, a life has been cashed in for a sentence, for punishment. This is the still the overarching meaning of justice which, while it has changed quantitatively, as we have just witnessed, it has not changed qualitatively. Exchange still predominates:

Criminal Act = Punishment

Furthermore, justice maintains its association with punishment. Forms of punishment have varied widely over the millenia, from the bodily exchange of eye for an eye or a pound of flesh to more 'humane' models of incarceration, but the motif of punishment has been resolutely maintained. To maintain equilibrium, punishment must be the currency of justice and every criminal act is just another "dollar amount" of punishment. After all, a criminal must "pay for his crime."

A second aspect brought to light by the Walker case is the issue of justice in a more cosmological sense. Kim Walker's actions can be seen in the light of a reaction, a response, to an original wrong (the drugging of his daughter by the older and experienced user/pusher Hayward). Justice, as exchange, is a two-piece operation. Here we have three pieces, the original wrong-doing, the 'injustice', the illegal 'justice' of Walker and then the sanctioned 'justice' of the state. Under the principle of exchange, a cosmological equilibrium is sought, a balance that supersedes the individuals involved. The lack of this balance can be witnessed by the strong reactions toward the conviction of Walker. Some have propounded his innocence based on the logic that the original wrong was 'done justice' by Walker's murder. Others, citing the imbalance of drugs/murder/incarceration troika are focused more upon the lack of what could be termed a 'proper exchange of justice' by Walker and thus agree in principle with his conviction, although they may quibble as to the quantity (as above) of punishment deserved.

Thus these two, related aspects, reveal notions of justice as exchange and equilibrium.

Justice for whom?

We began earlier with the question "justice for whom?" and then proceeded to interrogate what justice itself means in our society. Returning to our original question, we must recall the fact that the state has assumed the role of victim in the process of exchange and equilibrium known as justice. As we saw in Hegel, this is related to the fact that an individual considers him or herself part of a larger whole, a social network, a family and any action within a part of a family affects every member. In Foucault, we caught sight of a more sinister but similar approach. From both of these philosophers we should take away that justice is clearly primarily for the state, whether we choose to see the state as kindly or exploitative. The good of the 'family' comes before the good of the individual (in our case the victim or victim's family). Thus, individual justice, justice for individuals, is not a possibility unless said individual adjusts his notion of justice to correspond with that of the state's.

The Walker case raises the question, had the community sided wholeheartedly with Walker's actions, would justice be done? If, so to speak, the sale was ratified by the public rather than by the law? The courts say no, naturally. Without law there is no justice. Thus, justice is removed from the domain of people. There are very good reasons why this is so, mob rule (democracy), could mean that might makes right, that justice serves only the powerful. Whereas within law, justice serves all. It makes justice objective, neutral, and thus just. But, at the same time, we know that justice serves the state. This is not meant to be a cynical interpretation because the state is meant to represent the good of all. Thus justice is hardly unbiased. It has an directive which supersedes those involved in the particular crime. It is a justice that supersedes justice itself for its aim is maintenance of the state. Like the justice of parents separating two warring children and sentencing each to their rooms irregardless of "who started it", the state is not acting on the behalf of its "children" except to prevent continual disturbance. Thus, the goal of state justice is the avoidance, the minimalization, of disturbance to the continuity and being of the state.

Vigilante Justice

Vigilantes have long attracted support, if rarely so in reality then with adulation in fantasy. Robin Hood, Zorro, Bat/Super/Spider-man to name a few of the crusaders for justice in an unjust world. The more modern heroes, the 'men' are also more complex. Modern society will not readily accept a one-man judge, jury and executioner and as such, the comics give us the reserved vigilante. The daring hero who catches criminals in order to bring them to justice, state justice. The vigilante is not permitted to mete out punishment but only capture and deliver the criminal to the 'authorities'. Thus, the moral authority still lies within the state system and as such justice still serves the state and not the individual.

The case of Walker stands against this tradition. Kim Walker served his form of vigilante justice, five bullets to the body of a twenty-four year old man. In the days before the murder, Walker had realized that justice, as he conceived it, would not serve him. The traditional instruments of state justice, the police, would/could not act and so he formulated his own plan. A plan that four years later has his daughter, the original victim, calling him a "hero" as he is led from the courthouse to serve, in the name of justice, for his actions.

Perhaps Kim Walker's realization, fatally, was that justice as equilibrium does not serve the interests of the individual, just as market exchange does not serve the interests of the individual. Primarily, it is designed to maintain the system, which, unless we are naive, serves some rather than others. Thus, Kim Walker moved outside of exchange. He committed and act of justice (which I do not claim to be just). In that act he not only took the life of a young man, James Hayward, but also challenged the state. The state accepted only to discover that Walker confessed and took full responsibility for his actions.

What is perhaps most disturbing is that Kim Walker confessed to the crime and took responsibility for his actions. The trial itself was a formal proceedings that was designed to determine quantity (it chose a medium amount in comparison to first-degree or manslaughter charges that were sought). The details were not in dispute. Hegel saw that in his state-system, the criminal desired punishment to negate his responsibility for his actions. Thus the criminal for Hegel takes responsibility for his crime and calls on punishment to absolve it. Clearly, this is not how the courts work and yet in this case it is. Walker is almost portrayed as a martyr for doing so.

Ethics of Vigilantism

The danger of the Walker case is that it reveals the lack of 'justice' within the system. There are certainly other cases that also amply serve this point, however, few with the shock value. The danger I speak of is the realization that the justice does not serve the individual or even the collective of individuals in many cases. This could mean an increase in vigilante forms of justice out of the realization that justice-as-equilibrium is no longer a popular model. The increase in individual ethos that have come in part through neoliberal economic reforms also place a new emphasis on individual action and responsibility that could play a part.

Further, while the state may be legally just it is difficult to argue they hold the moral authority over even individual acts of justice which are done within an arena of public support. Thus, the moral ambiguity arising from the state's perceived inefficacy will open a gray area that will prevent an easy resolution and re-establishing of the state's monopoly on justice.

Justice as Exchange

While justice has be monopolized by the state, its ownership can only belong with the people. Thus I cannot critique the actions of individuals for attempting to re-assert justice against a morally-deficient state. Some philosophies and ideologies posit an ultimate authority in the state without an organic tie to the public. This endows the state with a being which is independent of that which composes it. Others state that the state is no more than the collection of its people but then justice cannot be separated from public whim. More likely, the state is a collection of both public consent and institutions which function to add rigid elements to its constitution. These rigid elements, such as laws, are designed to counter the influence of the people; however, when these laws or institutions (such as that of justice) fail in themselves it is the responsibility of the people to reform them. Justice is a fluid concept and as such requires constant reworking. In spite of these rigid elements, justice cannot reside within them, they can only exist as an extension. In the last analysis only individuals exist and thus only individuals can be the ultimate bearers of justice. Thus, Walker's decision to take justice in his own hand was an assertion of his ontological role in bearing and establishing justice.

Whereas it is difficult to strip an individual of the realization of his or her carrying the ultimate arbitration of justice, I can critique the notion of justice so employed. The common notion of justice is as exchange, as punishment, as we discerned above. Justice as punishment is justice as revenge, and yet revenge is posited as the exact opposite of justice. Superheroes and vigilantes moral inability to punish villains is precisely because their actions could be perceived as vengeance. The state is supposed to remove this aspect and yet it instills it within the system of exchange. Moving beyond reaction, revenge or ressentiment (Nietzsche's word) is moving to justice as justice. It is only in this analysis that Walker can be critiqued. Justice is in all of our hands unless we abdicate our responsibility and defer it to mechanized state. But the justice that is in our hands is one of responsibility and overcoming-of-vengeance rather than the simpler displacement of inner rage on the outside world.

Should Treatment be Mandated for the Mentally Ill?

Do you think people diagnosed with mental illness should be legally required to accept treatment?

A question with frightening consequences, however, Canadian's came through with their core progressive values on this one.

Yes | 10437 votes (55%) 10437 votes No | 8666 votes (45%) 8666 votes

Total votes: 19103 <Globe & Mail Weekly Poll>

I don't really have the energy to rant about this. For one, I am so far on one side of the fence with an issue like this that I can barely relate to the other opinion. I'll leave it for comments from anyone who'd like to chime in his or her opinion (without fear of a raving tirade in response from me!).

Addendum from Marx's Capital

Here's a minor addendum from Uncle Karl's Capital Vol. 1 (in relation to the previous post "Machiavellian Morality"):

"...it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist..." (Marx Capital 98).

This passage is interesting because the capitalist is defined not as one who simply engages in making money but one who does so as an end-in-itself and also, inevitably, ad infinitum. In this, I think Marx is uncovering the pathology of our time: the tendency toward absolutism; toward excess. Whereas Marx reveals that commodity exchange has its end goal in the usage of the commodity sought after (a finite exchange) the capitalist has no 'end' in sight. The accumulation of money is not therefore strategic in the Machiavellian sense espoused below. Rather, money for the sake of money, power for the sake of power, torture for the sake of torture is the rationale behind Marx's "rational miser" (98). Here lies the 'law' of excess which permeates the banality of existence.

Furthermore, this process sees the dissolution of the end and the prioritizing of the means. Marx points out that money was designed as a means to facilitate exchange of commodities. The 'ham' in the commodity sandwich (commodity-money-commodity). In the case of the capitalist, the sandwich is reversed to money-commodity-money. Money, the previous means, become the ends which is itself nothing but another means for another end, etc. In Worthington, instead of torture being cautiously advocated (and hopefully investigated) as a means to an end, it takes on a whole new form, as the final solution. Torture will reveal a potential truth (more often a pain-induced lie or hallucination) but more torture for more potential truths. In the "war on terror", itself a vaguely described struggle whose enemies can morph into anyone, Worthington's blank cheque encourages losing ourselves within an abyss of excesses.

The solution must be the reconstitution of these "means" as means. In the sense of capitalism, money can only take the back seat when the person or society begins to posit concrete values for which to strive. Similarly, torture - if it is indeed even strategically worthwhile - can only find a place within a war that is defined realistically (a slightly meaningless word but meant to conjure the tenets of the Machiavellian method outlined below and reappropriate the term from Realism), not vaguely as a war on terror. Unfortunately, if the war is read simply as an outcropping of capitalism, which it very much appears to be, then it will not be able to be defined realistically. It will not be able to curb its tendency toward excess because its very essence is excess. It is simply an embodiment of the money-commodity-money pursuit, in which torture, murder, rape and general strife (all excesses that will beget their own excesses) are the 'ham' in the sandwich of dollars. In this way, originary excess spreads its seed wherever it goes and finds its most worthy accomplices in those 'students of realism' who advocate for curing our present quagmires with more of the same.

Machiavellian Morality

This new essay - hot on the heals of the controversial post regarding the Politics of Discrimination is admittedly also, in part, a reaction to my favourite source of (mis)information, the Sun Media Corp. As a daily reader of the Canoe.ca website I am constantly astounded by the sheer ignorance and audacity that make the news world spin. Generally its the editorials that are the worst, and I suppose they are designed this way. If they don't create some kind of backlash or fervor of voices - either for or against - then they don't serve to sell papers, or advertisements, or whatever makes profits these days. In fact, editorials of these kind generally aim at that fringes. Their guise is the everyman but realistically it is only the few that take offense or applaud the often low-brow attempts to antagonize: the partisans. Most intellectuals of merit don't read such pieces, call that elitism or 'discriminating taste'. The rest of society are too busy living whatever they deem life is and some just have an ounce of that ol'fashioned good sense not to be interested when the latest pundit starts pounding his podium.So where does that leave me? I certainly "react" to these posts, am I any different? This is certainly up for debate and my opinion on the subject is definitely not authoritative - however, I would submit that my responses, at least on here, are not simply a "reaction", that knee-jerk sort of response that fills most political forums and legislatures. Rather, in the interval between, my desire is to reshape this original energy into an action in its own right, adding a positive force to an essentially negative (hence the 're-' in reaction) movement. Thus, while I berate myself for adding nothing new in the previous posts, I have been trying to espouse surreptitiously a path between the action and reaction approaches of partisan politics, as well as a new methodology of truth (rather than new truth in itself).

Today's stimulus will give me the occasion to reveal more clearly this methodology, as it finds itself rooted, in part, in similar observations, but ends with radically different conclusions than our friend from Sun Media Corp. Thus, without further ado, an column by the Toronto Sun's Peter Worthington entitled: Winning the War on Terrorism (I originally came across this article after reading an editorial on it by Salim Mansur, who earns his pay by regurgiating the work of columnists writing for the very same paper: Gitmo Captives Not POWs, Just Prisoners). I have cut the article to a few key paragraphs which I believe summarizes Worthington's view succinctly (although without the gory details of torture methods he seems fond of recounting):

Here at Guantanamo, where 432 Taliban and al-Qaida core leaders are still confined, American custodial staff -- military police gxuards, trained interrogators, FBI, psychologists and assorted experts seeking information -- are severely hampered by humane restrictions that detainees exploit.

The Americans at Guantanamo are on the front line against terrorism, just as soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are. Both are hobbled by limitations and public relations concerns that make success difficult.

After all, al-Qaida doesn't provide Bibles to American (and other) prisoners before cutting off their heads as video cameras whirr.

History has innumerable examples of terror movements quelled only by greater violence -- and few examples of fanatics or terrorists being persuaded to amend their extremism by discussions or gentle persuasion.

If America were to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions, as these are not needed to assure humane treatment, the Supreme Court would be powerless to rule otherwise. And America would be freer to use whatever means it takes to win this war (my emphasis). It would also give pause to her enemies, and reassurance to friends.

And at Guantanamo, the Americans would be able to find better ways to persuade hardcore detainees to talk than by taking away their pillows, or bribing them with ice cream.

This common sort of argument reveal the tendencies of one of the modes of our thinking. Namely there are two types which I will place into the old categories of "idealist" and "realist". Oddly enough, those who claim to be one or the other are generally both at once, and the consequences are generally sinister. For instance, the most rabid advocates for the war in Iraq, which has seen somewhere close to half-a-million dead (the majority of that number being civilians) come from the conservative heartland of the United States and Canada. These are the "moralists" of the crowd who believe in the absolute commandments of "thou shalt not". Such a system of absolutes quickly results in paradox, how can we believe in "thou shalt not kill" for example and yet bear the blood of thousands of dead Iraqis? In comes 'realism', a belief that in its essence is fundamentally amoral and anti-progressive. Coming from the realpolitik tradition, realism is the strategy of the superpowers to keep the status quo by any means necessary. This sort of nihilistic logic, often wrongly attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli, is at the heart of Worthington's pro-torture piece. We can win if we break, batter, and beat prisoners - that is the moral of his article, and the one behind realism in general.

Thus moral absolutism quickly leads to a sort of pragmatism or realism, although rarely ever in a coherent manner (such as a logical removal of most if not all absolute principles). In fact, today's moral leaders are blessed at having all the benefits of a stiff and inscrutable moral code while having the flexibility of a mobster in dealing with a local proprietor behind on his debts.

The Moral-Realist hybrids write columns like Worthington's. Fresh out of church on a Sunday afternoon, they hunker down in front of the keyboard to extol the virtues of Colonel Kurtz's "exterminate the brutes" mentality. For them there is no contradiction. 2+2=5 and that's that. It's obvious and you should start seeing it there way next time they ask you: how many lights do you see?

This 'logic' is the most insidious strategy, whether conscious or unconscious, of modernity. I use modernity - such a loose and ambiguous term itself - simply because there is no one group that I can attribute to orchestrating such a massive assault on cognition and thought. Nor can I simply say this is a right-wing strategy. The left loves to mix itself into this regime of mixed-up moral realism, stumbling over its own tongue as it tries to figure out what it stands for and how to engage it.

Every few years one or both sides acknowledges this 'moral corruption' and advocates for a consolidation of the ranks within each of their idealist camps, where they go through ideological retraining to purify themselves of realist taint. A reaction to the situation that most certainly comes no closer to rectifying it and only widens the gap between the poles of left and right and makes the future 'realism' more mendacious than the last.

A Machiavellian Morality

Antonio Gramsci can be credited with bringing to my attention Machiavelli's 'project'. He was not writing a treatise simply on maintaining power but a revolutionary text on creating a new power, a new state: an Italian nation-state that would rival those European superpowers of France, Spain and Britain. Machiavelli's dream would not be realized in his lifetime nor for a number of centuries afterward, Italy being a latecomer to the unified nations club, arriving in the 19th century. In Machiavelli's work, we can see that his goal was not simply to "win" although that is always good, but to achieve a material goal. Thus, Machiavelli's project is not bound by the realpolitik that grew out of the 19th century conservatives which was used to secure and maintain power; it is not a cyclical perspective that accepts no movement, but rather a radically progressive methodology that requires both values and strategy in order to power itself.

"Nietzsche asserts that having one virtue is better than having many, for 'it is more of a knot for fate to hold on to.'" (Wikipedia on Virtue).

If multiple absolute principles results quickly in paradox - ultimately requiring their being broken as we most unfortunately witness on a daily basis from those most-upstanding members of society - then the simple solution is not a dissolution of all principles, a becoming Kurtz, as Worthington and others are so willing to do from the comfort of their world so far removed from an actualized 'state of nature' (see Iraq) that their mind-numbing formulations suffer no penance. Rather it requires a strict examination as to what morals / virtues can possibly be willed indefinitely, against all odds. Who among us looking with that kind of scrutiny into our virtues could possibly say that Nietzsche's claim of even a single virtue is not a boast!

Honesty is the best policy. If we did not lie to ourselves to begin with, extolling our virtues as the West is wont to do, then we would not be accused of our moral hypocrisy nor bear the toll it takes on our individual psyches as we become more and more accustomed to the Big Lie ("The Goebbels technique, also known as argumentum ad nauseam, is the name given to a policy of repeating a falsehood until it is taken to be the truth" (see Wikipedia's Big Lie)).

It is in the vacuum left behind by the removal of surfeit morals that we may examine realism in view of Machiavelli's progressive capacity. Worthington argues that there is no reason to hold back on the Gitmo prisoners, that the Geneva conventions don't apply anyway and if they do we should just remove ourselves from the convention. Finally, he asserts that not torturing is related to not-winning. If we tortured more we'd win. The argument has no moral compass whatsoever. In fact, the only lifeline thrown to the prisoners by Worthington is that the torturer and his society will provide the only necessary check on torture - much like arguing the police should check the police, the legislature the legislature, etc. A complete reversal of checks and balances theory itself.

The problem with the Worthington style argument is not its incorrectness or untruth. In fact, I might even contend that Worthington is completely within the realm of truth, Geneva may not in fact apply, and there certainly is no god I believe in that will stop us from torturing these prisoners to a messy pulp (weather Worthington's god is in agreement who knows these days, it seems the Christian god has stopped carrying about Muslims just like he did for Blacks during slavery and Jews during WWII - our god is a selective god). However, Worthington in all his eagerness to kick-some-turban-to-the-curb fails to provide a single point of merit on how torture will result in victory or change of any kind. In fact, Worthington is very short on details when it comes to what the end goals of torture are at all. Certainly torture could yield information to stop an attack but where is the evidence? What is the limitation? As it is, torture is advocated unlimitedly, for its own purposes. There is no measure, no goal to be achieved, because one can never stop winning, one can never be sure that another attack is around the corner. This is Worthington's blank cheque, which he very aggressively endorses with his consent.

A Machiavellian position would proceed differently. Firstly, it would posit a realizable goal. Torture for torture's sake or for a generalized notion of better security would not suffice. Rather, it would be properly laid out by an understanding of the here and now with an aim toward the there of future. This could be as simple as we must prevent a second terrorist strike against the United States.

Secondly, rather than starting with the assertion that more torture = more results all tactics would be examined. Does torture yield results and what kind of results? Factors such as increased coercion leads to faulty information, loss of legitimacy, excesses (ie. murder) by soldiers, and generalized indictments regarding the moral compass of the armed forces and government are to be considered (after all, you can't win a war when you're being booted out of office). Does Worthington consider these? Not at all. Torture for him does not need explanation, despite being one of the most coercive and violent activities one can commit on another. It passes from his lips/pen/keyboard as easily as if he was ordering a pizza.

A strategic reading of the situation would debate whether torture could possibly yield positive results and if so, in what cases. It would require specific license and not a generalized one. Torture writ large, by Worthington and others, is a license to backfire - as it did for the United States (which makes it doubly confusing why, despite the real critiques and complications that the Bush government's torture police has engendered, any one would advocate for it). Which itself brings us full circle. The realists are nothing more than the idealists they had descended from. Their proposals, which seem realistic simply because they are harsh and brutal, advocating excess pain and suffering for all, are nothing more than simple-minded ideals coded in the same absolutist manner. They are negative idealists but idealists nonetheless and their very form of thought is a violence which is most insidious to those of us that breathe it in. Worthington means nothing to those imprisoned at the US base in Cuba. They will never hear of him, never read his words. But Canadians will, they will absorb his doublespeak, they will praise his blunt 'realism' and will to win, and they will become the same, speaking in paradoxes that seem themselves evident and non-contradictory.

In contrast, a Machiavellian morality is neither idealist nor realist. It attempts to overcome idealism through the removal of absolutes and to enhance realism by becoming more realistic - looking at inputs, outputs, degrees of change. A Machiavellian morality embraces uncertainty rather than trying to eliminate it absolutely. At most, a Machiavellian morality is an old-fashioned ethic of moderation, designed for navigating the rocks shores of an unknown coastline rather than barreling straight through. A Machiavellian morality always knows where it is going and where it has come from and where it is, even when the journey goes off track. It is always open to re-evaluation, for the means are very much part and parcel with the ends. A means of unlimited torture yields as its end a society that has unleashed a devastation onto itself and its others - there can be no pretensions otherwise.

In sum, this is my rough sketch of a Machiavellian morality as contained in yet another critique of the Sun Media Corp. I hope to be able to further expand on this outline which in its vagueness is open to as many critiques as it supposedly resolves. In the meantime I will let it stand for some feedback.

Thanks.

A tribute... on friendship in times of sorrow.

When it comes to death I have a certain inability to act appropriately. It seems a situation which defies convention. Condolences always seem artificial and cheap, maybe because in myself I realize that there is no way I could really sympathize or approximate the pain and anguish experienced by another. It's at times like these where the distances between individuals - even the best of friends - can seem staggering. Its never a comfortable moment, yet at the same time the bereaved in question is almost always extremely accommodating and thankful - more awkwardness but in the incongruity lies a sense of understanding, on some level. It seems as if these moments bring into relief the whole history of like-moments, the breakups, the defeats, deaths, injuries, sicknesses which have translated into sorrow, pain and anguish in which the two have each played the role of victim and sympathizer, and that this shared memory of simply being-there, being-part, and the vicissitudes of time it exposes: that everything is in flux, that this moment was lived previously in another sorrow and will be survived by the necessity of a future being-there-for-the-other. An eternal recurrence of the same which grounds true friendship amidst changes of place and date. Perhaps the only method of experiencing in common that which is in essence completely individuated - pain, grief and sorrow, through the bonds of history that make a friendship.

And now to express in song what fails me in words, Amy Millan's Baby I.

Codifying Childhood: Conservative's Legislative Agenda

"This is common sense legislation. This protects Canadian children, and I believe that even Liberals would agree with that."

Canadian Justice Minister Vic Toews

Strategem

Defn: "Common sense": the most sinister phrase in the English language, a strategic siege of cognitive space. The consolidation of a certain arrangement of power and knowledge as hegemonic, in that the knowledge has become to be deemed truth and the power relations implied consented to...

Strategy: "even Liberals would agree with that": Constructs standard playing field "us" v "them". Defines Conservatives on the side of Canadian children and "common sense" which "even Liberals" could be a part of - but important to note, are likely not to be.

Effect: Silences discussion by deflecting criticism against the ironclad shield of "common sense". The usage of Canadian children, highly idealized and strategically victimized in this legislation, will act to polarize the situation. Critics will be linked to pedophilia or child-hating...

Creation of 'Childhood'

New arrangements of power/knowledge depicted as "common sense" fundamentally rely upon an ahistorical viewpoint and strategic and usually consensual "forgetting". Unlike philosophical argument, logical reasoning is never cited, rather an a priori knowledge is implied - that humans the age of 14 and 15 in this case specifically are in need of a special protection (in lieu of certain freedoms) because they are intrinsically vulnerable and unable to make moral choices in regards to their choice of sex partner (as this legislation does not criminalize sexuality at this age but consensual sex with partners 4 + years older). This piece of legislation finds itself within a moral code that speaks confidently about what sex is, and thus importantly helps to prefigure the subjectivities of a youthful sexuality along a relatively new (in terms of size and importance [morally and academically]) axis: childhood.

By saying that childhood is a relatively new concept is not to say there was never a division between children and adults but that such a division has become problematized in the modern era, resulting in profuse legislative and moral codes designed to control and examine the behavior of "children." Examples abound from the Catholic / Christian crusade against "self-pollution" that was consuming the idle hands of its ewes. One can also reference the proliferation of new laws both 'aiding' and 'restricting' the activities of young people, including the introduction of 'child' labour laws, mandatory public schooling and a bevy of age-limited prohibitions on sex, alcohol, drugs, firearms and perhaps the most dangerous - voting.

Seen within this matrix of an evolving domain of moralities, the age of consent can be plotted with the extension of childhood into the teen years. In the recent Globe & Mail article where Justice Minister Vic Toews was quoted, the original age of consent was stated as 12, which was raised to 14 in 1890. Future predictions would recommend a further hike to 18 in approximately a century.

"Grow up!"

The obvious irony after all these years of being the juvenile generation, shirk responsibilities, refusing McJobs to sleep-in, is that the very people that want us to "grow up" have subsequently been delaying and elongating the length of childhood. A situation that has been increasingly paradoxical by the fact that exposure to the 'negative' aspects of adulthood: low-paid (slave) labour, rape, violence and poverty has steadily infiltrated youth cultural through parental and governmental neglect while rights, responsibilities and privileges have been denied or sabotaged (an easy target since the target demographic cannot vote),

Simultaneously, we have witnessed a similar shirking of "adult responsibilities by those already in adulthood. The Jackass generation - no longer children but not adults either - has become a new biological middle-class. Having grown-up through the longest childhood in history there is no longer an incentive to cross-over.

Even trends seemingly indicating the opposite - increasing numbers of young people entering the work force, for example - cannot be read as a reversal of the infantization of our population. Driven to work by eroding standards of living which are grossly ill-proportioned due to materialist obsessions, young people have abandoned the Generation X attitude of "F#$ it" for Nike's ubiquitous three-word mantra only to be received by attempts to sabotage and profit from their labour by discriminating either explicitly or implicitly by age (see the lowering of minimum wage introduced by the BC Liberals after the 2001 election). Furthermore, whereas the past linked jobs with responsibility, the necessary foundation for settling down, acquiring separate accommodation and starting a family, new jobs provide 0 benefits and low wages: they satisfy immediate material needs (sometimes) and feed addictive consumptive behaviors. This is not a transitory stage - instead this new biological middle-class has fallen into minimum-wage hell where life is saving up nickels for 5c candies at corner store.

Sexuality

Context, the background of the Canadian Conservative party is as well-known as its roots. It is, sometimes unabashedly and other times secretly a protestant evangelical socially conservative organization. In this respect it is difficult to dismiss charges of interest in seemingly "common sensical" legislation. One can easily finger patriarchy (a miniaturization of women into children and thus female children into ???), an overconfidence in law and order to establish moral reform and a predilection for neo-conservative capitalism and its (often times contradictory) patterns of social development with a end-goal in returning to a fairy tale collection of vaunted simulacra that includes the idealized child, the feminine mother and the masculine father.

This imagery is founded on a manufactured history that ignores the sexual proclivities of young people as well as the sanction of those acts by both society and, the case of Western history, the church. Indeed, the actions that are today considered criminal and morally repugnant were previously both common place and respectable. Adulthood gauged by one's (men's) ability to take certain actions that were deemed a civil (responsible) - finding employment, a partner - rather than mandatorily by age. As such, many new families sprouted up with at least one parent (usually the female) a scant decade or so older than their first child. Today, these same women are 'undeniably' children themselves, morally / legally banned from taking part in the 'corrupting' processes of sex.

Pedophilia and Moral Panic

Much has been made that the primary purpose of this legislation is to combat pedophilia. In this case that would mean relationships where the partners span 4-5 years or more. The Conservatives have made known that they do not intend to attempt to crimininalize youth under the age of 19 from engaging in consensual sex. Thus, whereas one can legitimately consent to sex with an 18 year old at 14 years of age, the addition of a couple months would, essentially alter the relationship into one of pedophile and victim.

Moral Panic: The Fabrication of a Crisis. I've already made much of this subject so I'll not pay it too much attention, suffice it to say the grounds for this new legislation rests on the belief in an increase or pervasiveness of pedophilia. This has not been the case and even advocates of the instances of pedophilia and rather will force teenage sexuality underground. Politically, however, the moral momentum (translated into electoral support) gained by the collective moral-backslapping of supporters will last beyond the introduction of this bill into law and will likely help the Conservatives into the future. Strategically then, as an attempt to reform Canadian moral values this "common sensical" piece is significant in recruiting support and laying the groundwork of the moral dilemmas that are certainly to be cited in future bills (such as a revisitation of the same sex marriage issue).

Female Sexuality

Regardless of the wording of the bill, it is clear that it is targeting young female sexuality and not that of their male peers or even the actions of adult pedophiles. The legislation does not read as a prohibition of older men of having engagements with young people but rather focuses particularly on when a person - a woman - of 14 or 15 can be considered to be a consenting entity. By collectively disagreeing that 14 and 15 year-olds can be considered individuals capable of making informed consent we strip them of rights over their bodies by belittling their minds. Females are said to mature quicker than men, often entering and exiting puberty years earlier. Thus 14 and 15 year-old females are older, in terms of maturity, perhaps 16 or 17 in terms of sexuality. Thus again, this legislation targets a precocious female sexuality from engaging with partners equaling (or approximating) their maturity.

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Note: Timely article just popped up re: Adults Becoming More Immature.

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Excerpt from: "5-Year 'sex gap' should be lower"

"What kind of 19-year-old thinks it's OK to have sex with a 14-year-old? While a five-year age gap may seem irrelevant for people in their 30s or 40s, it may as well be a lifetime when we're talking about the teen years.

A 14-year-old is just starting high school. A 19-year-old is generally finished high school and has moved on to college, university or the working world. A 19-year-old can drink, drive (though not at the same time, of course), vote, smoke, and die for his or her country.

A 14-year-old can't do any of those things.

A 14-year-old is still a child.

Rather than allowing a five-year age gap, three years should be more than enough.

Some may argue that a five-year age gap can be perfectly acceptable (probably because Grandma Betty was 15 when she met and fell in love with Grandpa George, who was five years her senior, and they'll be celebrating their Golden Anniversary next month).

Sorry, folks. Times have changed.

Should Romeo and Juliet be four or more years apart, the star-crossed lovers can bide their time holding hands, kissing and text-messaging until the younger lover becomes of age.

The proposed legislation is a step in the right direction, but falls short.

So Harper's Conservatives get one thumb up and one thumb down. That's a lot better than the two fingers I gave the Liberals when they were in office.
"

Lydia Lovric of the Winnipeg Sun

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What I'd like to discuss from this article is the author's definition of adult and child. She defines the worlds of the former is radically different than that of the latter's due to the fact that "a 19-year-old can drink, drive (though not at the same time, of course), vote, smoke, and die for his or her country." Each of these symbols of maturity or adulthood is a legal entitlement conferred automatically, regardless of intelligence, ability, experience or merit. Maturity is then inferred from these un-earned privileges. According to the author a "14-year-old is still a child" simply because "a 14-year-old can't do any of those things." Not to mention that her statement that "a 14-year-old can't do any of those things" is misleading. A 14-year-old cannot do those things because they are forbidden by law from doing those things - history has shown that the capacity to engage in any of those activities, except perhaps voting, is there regardless of age. One can note how ridiculous the argument is if one looks to other countries which confer such privileges at earlier or later dates - obviously the distinction between "adult" and "child" is tenuous at best, at least in terms of defining it by age or legal statutes. Further, what is revealing is that how a circular logic - in thise case one of legal statute, age and maturity - is reinforced by organic intellectuals such as Lydia Lovric in order to strengthen "common sense". To the casual viewer, this article subconciously becomes another building block in a new rational moral order whose self-referential logic will become less glaring as the rationale becomes increasingly 'common' and thus a priori factual.