180611 Readings & Comments

George Orwell

When you have Masha Gessen quoting and discussing George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, you can be sure of receiving some keen and sobering insights. And so it is in this article in which Gessen examines Orwell's conjectures about literature in totalitarian regimes. In the U.S., we don't have a totalitarian regime, but the attack on facts, on truth, is increasing and it begins with the current occupant of the White House. Read this and be forewarned. 

Orwell was right. The totalitarian regime rests on lies because they are lies. The subject of the totalitarian regime must accept them not as truth—must not, in fact, believe them—but accept them both as lies and as the only available reality. She must believe nothing. Just as Orwell predicted, over time the totalitarian regime destroys the very concept, the very possibility of truth. Hannah Arendt identified this as one of the effects of totalitarian propaganda: it makes everything conceivable because “nothing is true.”

Paul Scofield as Thomas More

And here is an excellent complementary article by Michael Shermer writing in Quillette about free speech (which is not exactly the same as our rights under the First Amendment, but that's for another occasion).  The article is a defense of free speech. Note that free speech isn't "free" in the sense of without cost--not at all! Allowing free expression of beliefs and opinions and statements of supposed facts means that error--the un-truth--whether intentional or the result of mere fallibility, will abound. We pay the price for free speech, and the only justification is that the suppression of free speech costs more than its allowance. Shermer argues the point well. And to close, this quote that Shermer includes from Robert Bolt's play about (St.) Thomas More, "A Man for All Seasons." It's a piece that I first encountered as an undergraduate assignment. This particular quote struck me even before I became a lawyer. It's something every lawyer ought to have at hand when someone complains about someone getting off because of "legal technicalities," the Ropers of our current age. Shermer writes:

In the play, a dialogue unfolds over the changing of the law between More and his future son-in-law Roper, who urges him to arrest a man whose testimony could condemn More to death, even though no laws were broken. “And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!” More entices.

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast…and if you cut them down…do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

A great insight. 

Reading the Sunday Papers

Some thoughts from reading the local paper (IC Press-Citizen & the Des Moines Register) as well as the NYT:

1. DMR article about U.S. ambassador to India, Nancy Powell, native Iowan, UNI grad, and former teacher. This will give Iowa Guru something to chat with the boss about if she gets to meet her!

2. DMR notes that Idina Menzel of Wicked & Glee fame is coming to DM this Friday. Should I tell Iowa Guru? Only if I want to go! (Maybe she should follow this blog. Yeah, that's right.)

3. Maureen Dowd normally skewers with wit and satire, but her piece in the NYT today is deeply troubling. Not because of what she writes, but the fact of the real, troubling truth of what she writes about. One can't treat these issues with any lightness. I'm talking about predatory sexual abuse stories and the many persons who did not intervene or tried to cover-up these terribly evil acts. We've all talked about "good Nazis" or "good Germans" with some disdain, but at least some of those persons who remained silent could be excused for fear of their lives. And in the Kitty Genovese case of fame from the mid-60's, we can understand a perverse social circumstance that might help us understand the the lack of response (and the accounts vary so as to question the moral culpability of bystanders.)  Dowd suggests it's our institutions that are flawed, but these behaviors that she describes in contemporary America really do go to character and moral standards. It's really shocking and troubling. (BTW, she quotes from Robert Bolt's wonderful play/screenplay about Sir Thomas More, "A Man for All Seasons", which I believe that I read for a political philosophy course and a quote from which I consider a great one about the importance of the law & legal procedure, even for "the devil", so I knew MD was on to something right away.)

4. On a more pleasant note, and going to the quotidian (but vital) search for serenity and balance, this NYT article by James Atlas about Buddhism in America (which he cutely dubs "Newddism") is a consideration of a growing appreciation, if not outright adoption, of Buddhism in the U.S. I certainly count myself among those greatly influenced by and receptive to Buddhist perspectives. (Thanks to Iowa Guru's graduate student friend Hedecki, who stayed with us before he returned to Japan and got me interested in Buddhism. He also provided wonderful entertainment for the infant 1HP with his "Indian elephant, African elephant" routine.)

5. An interesting companion piece to the Atlas article is this NYT article by Robert Zaretsky & John T. Scott, which is a consideration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the great French Enlightenment (or Counter-Englightenment or Romantic) thinker (whose 300th birthday approaches). Now, compare the take of this article with that Atlas's on Buddhism. Am I alone in seeing some very interesting parallels? A comparison of Rousseau and contemporaries of his like Hume & Smith (don't forget The Theory of the Moral Sentiments!) might really provide some food for thought. I haven't found much exploration of these two traditions (Western Enlightenment, non-French variety, and Buddhism), but I think that it could prove fruitful. Pankaj Mishra touched on the topic in interesting way in his fine book, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, but he didn't go deeply into the subject (not his intention in that book, which is a fine read.). A book by David T. McMahan might provide some answers, and an interesting book-length comparison of Gandhi and the Stoics will be coming out later this year from Richard Sorabji, and it could prove very insightful (although we're not talking Buddhism with Gandhi, but still I think, somewhat birds of a feather.). Well, read it and weep--or laugh--or smile--or try to enjoy happiness in the moment!

P.S. I enjoy theater & J-J, whom I've read mostly as a political philosopher, could be a bit of a drudge. He reacted too strongly, in my opinion, the the excesses of Ancien Regime culture. No Shakespeare, no O'Neil--no thank you. Jettison Moliere if you must.