Isn't this kind of a both/and situation? Calling an ethical question is "interesting" is a slap in the face of the idea that some things are actually wrong (or right). On the other hand, calling a slice-of-life newspaper article right or wrong is kind of a slap in the face to the idea that things are sometimes just interesting in their own right.
I hate to be grumpy, but the play sounds far from interesting. The excerpt reads as heavy-handed and dull, to tell the truth.
Frederick Jameson says (and doesn't that settle the question?) that we should pay more attention to the things that are labelled "boring".
But, er, politically speaking I'd say that a hard-headed pursuit of "good" and attack on "evil" is probably worse than a tarrying with the interesting.
Actually, the excerpt reads like an excerpt from the (extremely sententious in a teenage gothy way) comic The Sandman. But it might be better on stage; a lot of plays look a bit funny on paper. (I was just writing something with dialogue the other night and it's amazing how much--okay, this isn't a new thought--you need to work dialogue to change it from how you hear it spoken in your head to how it will seem spoken to the reader)
Frederick Jameson says (and doesn't that settle the question?) that we should pay more attention to the things that are labelled "boring".
I think some threads on Unfogged are quite dedicated to the boring.
The problem with the quoted part doesn't seem to be about the ills of "interesting," so much as some sort of unwillingness to make a decision about anything important. That seems sort of true of US culture--I kind of think you see it in the way we tend to blow up trivial stuff about celebs, etc. into news stories printed in real newspapers--but it's an outgrowth, and possibly the normal outgrowth, of living in a country where most people are safe, sheltered, fed and relatively free from abuse. In which case it's much, much better than the alternative.
So far, this thread is doing an admirable job of displaying other aspects of the "interesting"-syndrome -- "it's a both/and," "the real problem is being too confident that we're doing good...."
OMG! If we fought too one-sidedly against the Iraq War or in favor of universal health care, pretty soon we'd have a totalitarian party-state! Interesting!
This is a bit like the Matter of Grumps: what exactly do we mean by "boring" and "interesting"?
Curious that you didn't say one way or the other: do you love the play, Becks?
9: Forgive me, but I don't think that "we should have universal health care because it is Good and not have the Iraq war because it is Bad" are the types of public discourse liable to lead anywhere, er, good.
Let's not make the amazingly interesting the enemy of the moderately interesting.
Okay, then -- let's take torture. I say that torture is evil. I can give reasons why I think that, but is a "nuanced" position on torture more desirable, in your mind?
So far, this thread is doing an admirable job of displaying other aspects of the "interesting"-syndrome
You're wrong, Adam.
What does "evil" mean to you, Kotsko?
What if you tortured someone in a sensory-deprivation tank? You could bore someone as a mechanism for evil.
What if you tortured someone in a sensory-deprivation tank?
I think the Mayer article in the New Yorker suggests this is in fact the best, most effective way to torture someone. My sense from the article was that this forms the backbone of our current regime.
I say that torture is evil.
This is why I stopped reading Volokh. Just once I wanted to see the bloggers say definitively: This is appalling, and wrong. Period.
(I will read nuanced explanations of all of the ways in which it is terrible, and hilzoy and Katherine for two have been tremendous at that, but at the end of the day it's not an "interesting" debate to me -- it's morally reprehensible that it is even a matter for debate.)
The problem I have with "interesting" (which I use a lot myself--uh, maybe the play is onto something) is that it so often stands in for something well thought out. We get "X is interesting" without any explanation of why, and because we can all sorta kinda guess, we go "Oh yeah, that is interesting" and move on to the next thing. Well, what the hell was interesting about it, and why should we care? Nobody says. And to be honest, when people do try to explain, I often find it tedious. Perhaps a sign of my own mental incapacities...
If you can't say more than that "it's interesting," it isn't interesting.
Did anyone see the episode of 24 where they tortured the SecDef's son using a Boredom Machine?
16: You know, stuff like torture.
We get "X is interesting" without any explanation of why, and because we can all sorta kinda guess, we go "Oh yeah, that is interesting" and move on to the next thing.
What's wrong with that? If we can guess what's interesting, and there's not much more to it, why not move on?
14: A more nuanced set of policies about torture? No, of course not. A more nuanced understanding of torture? Sort of.
The thing is, I don't think it's helpful to frame public discourse as "X Is Bad; We Are Teh Good People, So We Don't Do X". Agamben, states of exception, blah blah. Witchhunts, stupid trials, stupid sentencing.
I think that empathy and an understanding of systems are better, seriously.
"Interesting" in philosophy is usually shorthand for "this is a delicate question which deserves further exploration" or, more honestly, "I think there's a paper here."
I think there's a place for valuing the clearheadedness to say "Torture is always wrong" and also a place for being able to explain why.
The thing is, I don't trust how I respond to fancy push-button rhetoric. When somebody starts going off about how This Is Evil and We Must Be Compassionate and The Working Class Are The Historically Revolutionary Class (substitute whatever pushes your own ideological buttons) I really do tear up and get all moved. And usually I go off and do or say something stupid; usually other people do too, and dumb policies are generated.
Plus, I still don't understand what people mean when they say "evil". The absense of good? Define, please.
The Problem These Days is not with a focus on the "interesting" at the expense of dualism. It's the extent to which dualism, bolstered by propaganda and vapid excuses for argument, has been used to infantilize political discourse and mount apologetics for plainly criminal enterprises. (That criminality itself marks the triumph of greed, not just "the interesting," over ethical considerations.) This is true of both the authoritarian right and the useful idiots"Decent Left," cf. the recent navel-gazing flap about Johann Hari's review of Nick Cohen's What's Left?
Short version: if the playwright is after the distinction between "vapid hairsplitting" and "ethical argument" (which really is the distinction Kotsko is talking about), then drawing that line between the "interesting" vs. the dualist makes no sense.
The problem I have with "interesting" (which I use a lot myself--uh, maybe the play is onto something) is that it so often stands in for something well thought out.
That does seem, from the excerpt, to be one of the play's themes. It's totally unfair to judge the play solely on the basis of this post, of course, but to the extent she's got a point, it's hard to see how simple-minded moralistic or qualitative judgments of "good" and "bad" are more valuable that "interesting." Both are pretty inane.
I still don't understand what people mean when they say "evil"
"Evil" means it runs contrary to what you were taught when you were a very small child.
23: I'm not talking about people or parties as being inherently good or evil. I'm not even sure how much I disagree with you in substance. But wasn't Jim Crow an evil system? Isn't the series of "black sites" the CIA has set up an evil system? Wasn't the Holocaust evil? And I mean, seriously, isn't the system of private health insurance in this country at least a little bit evil?
Am I on my way to starting a witch hunt by saying this? Are there some crowds of peasants waiting with pitchforks who will use my blog comment rhetoric as a pretext for violence? What exactly is the problem?
it's hard to see how simple-minded moralistic or qualitative judgments of "good" and "bad" are more valuable that "interesting."
But that's not what the excerpt is about; it's about the rightness or wrongness of arguments. It seems like "interesting" marks a kind of thoughtlessness.
29: What do you mean by "evil", Kotsko? Can we start with that, pretty please? I really don't understand. I mean, I get that it means "things that hurt people" or "things that increase inequality" but I don't understand why we have to say "evil", what special quality "evil" has that these other things don't.
11 - I thought the play was great. I cried. A lot.
6 - Funny that you bring up Sandman -- I can't help but compare all retellings of the Orpheus story to Gaiman's verison.
What exactly is the problem?
That most people have at least a rudimentary understanding of good and evil, and that if some policy is still being followed despite the fact that it looks evil to you, it's a pretty good bet that a lot of people disagree with your characterization. So it's not clear what labeling something as evil is supposed to accomplish short of motivating a small group of people to violence.
Unfortunately the analytic tortoise never reaches its goal. First it divides the big question into two parts, and then it divides each of the two parts into two parts, and when you get to the last square of the chessboard you have a pile of questions bigger than the known universe.
Blankly saying "X is wrong" or "X is right" is not in itself very productive, but self-described realists will go to amazing lengths to avoid ever being accused of having used a moral argument of any kind.
I remember that almost all the opposition to the Iraq War was couched in prudential, realist terms. The idea that blowing a country up is usually a bad idea was seldom mentioned. (Very few argued that there probably were no WMDs either, even though that turned out to be the case and there were good reasons to believe that it would turn out to be the case.)
In fact, I suspect "evil" of being sort of a "black box" (if you will...thanks, everyone, I'll be here all week.) We talk about something, and we agree that it's evil. I think that it's evil because it increases inequality; you think that it's evil because it decreases monogamy (or whatever; I'm making this up)--but we're both on the same page because it's evil! Huzzah!
I personally felt that invading Iraq would just be so. freaking. boring.
Heebie still believes as she did as a small child, even though she's 12 already. She has the innocence of a much younger person.
Kotsko, on the other hand, is a much darker figure.
And Frowner is doing that critical theory shit on us. Damn.
eurydice reminded me a lot of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, which also retold the Orpheus myth and used water as an integral part of the staging.
35: In fact, "evil" is really about foreclosing debate. You and I don't have to get into monogamy and inequality because we've decided that "evil" will be the final argument, even though "evil" doesn't have any more foundation than anything else.
There are all kinds of reasons not to torture people, too.
Of course, there's no iron-clad, absolutely irrefutable reason, but that's where coercion comes in. Hegemony is about both ideology and the gun, people.
And, speaking of this production of eurydice, this is a pretty photostream.
35: Maybe there's not something intrinsically wrong with that, though. Supposing Leftist A opposed the Iraq War on the grounds of its manifesting racist colonialist aggression, and Rightwinger B (let's call him "Pat Buchanan") opposed it on the grounds of its being potentially corrupting and disastrous for the national interest. Is it boring that they will both designate the exercise "evil" for very different reasons, or is it interesting? I think it's terribly interesting. (Obviously, come the next time the NAACP is mentioned in the news they'll be back on opposite sides of the table, but so what?)
You really have to have a way to end debate. A lot of contemporary scholarship in various fields seems to aim at endless discourse. Someone who wants conclusions is regarded as a peasant.
Kotsko was just baiting you with the "evil" word, Frowner. Don't fall into his trap.
In fact, "evil" is really about foreclosing debate.
The word "evil" is legitimate short-hand when both parties agree on the expanded definition. It's the same as any term; it can be abused rhetorically.
41: But that's a matter of tactics. I don't mind--from a stop the war now! standpoint--if various factions agree that the war is "evil" and work to end it. But I simply can't bring myself to advocate a concept I view as naive, misguided and problematic merely for tactical advantage. That would be...evil.
I don't think that the use of the word 'evil' serves any proper role in debate, in the sense that invoking the word doesn't bring anything new to the table. It's not a cognitive concept and doesn't play any truth-functional role.
But it's use as a polemical or rhetorical tool, as a way of expressing a certain kind of felt revulsion at the actions of others, seems entirely natural.
Personally, re: evil, most of the instances I can think of that invoke a certain kind of visceral reaction in me involve an element of wilfulness, a knowing disregard for others, a willingness to treat other people as means rather than ends.*
* I'm not a Kantian but there is something intuitively appealing about that sort of Kantian doctrine.
Kotsko was just baiting you with the "evil" word, Frowner. Don't fall into his trap.
Sigh. I am alarmingly easy to bait. Probably because I'm such a grump.
Kotsko was just baiting you with the "evil" word, Frowner. Don't fall into his trap.
I don't think it's Kotsko doing the baiting, Emerson.
33: Wow, moral relativism. MLK should've checked public opinion polls before going too far down the "civil rights" road!
I'd really prefer the language of justice/injustice over good/evil, honestly. But Frowner and I seem to have similar standards of what we would call "good" and "evil," and I'm well aware that other people would map those things out differently -- though how differently, within a given culture, is really exaggerated in my view. The power of something like Sicko, for example, is that it taps into basic moral principles that people already have -- they might have ignored the problem before, but when confronted with it, they can say, "Man, this just isn't right!" If we add "evil," though, apparently there's a consensus that pretty soon everyone's going to be lynching insurance executives and raping their daughters.
But that's not what the excerpt is about; it's about the rightness or wrongness of arguments.
I think it's about both; Eurydice retreats to "interesting" both to describe the arguments, refusing to say if they're right or wrong (and since these "arguments" are the stuff of people's lives, we're clearly talking about some sort of moral or ethical rightness), as well as to give a description of the book instead of rendering a judgment on it.
But its use as a polemical or rhetorical tool, as a way of expressing a certain kind of felt revulsion at the actions of others, seems entirely natural.
Right. For me it's also a signal. If someone won't come down on one side of the fence and grant that (e.g.) torture is wrong, and instead they seem fascinated by carve-outs of the exact definition of torture (it's bad to use pain to get a person who has not been convicted of a crime to give information which may or may not be accurate), then I start to suspect that they're actually probing to see the circumstances under which torture is OK.
Tim is a sower of confusions and discord and should be ignored.
"Evil" is a strongly-flavored word with an archaic feeling, but modernists, liberals, Marxists, etc., have this realist taboo against making arguments with any normative terms at all. I think that's delusional. Pop realism is quite prevalent, and I describe it as disgusting.
But the thing is, "Man, that's just not right" is precisely the type of argument that collapses in the face of, say, liberatarian nonsense or Republican "why shouldn't you get better care if you've achieved enough to make lots of money to pay for it" havering. When people's understanding of things relies on "that's just not right", they're either going to have to force themselves to ignore any complexifying detail or else their beliefs will fall apart as soon as anything pushes on them. The thing is "But it's Evil/Just Not Right" takes the place in discourse that needs to be filled by, you know, actual reasons. Or even a more detailed appeal to empathy, which is the soft option to which I incline: "You wouldn't like it if you died of a brain tumor because your insurance wouldn't pay up."
everyone's going to be lynching insurance executives
Can we? Can we please?
In fact, "evil" is really about foreclosing debate.
Only with a really pliable opponent, though, right? You yourself have demonstrated that it's possible to say, "But why do you think that's evil? What do you mean by that?"
Worrying about the consequences of calling something evil seems like it ought to be secondary to worrying about the evil thing, itself.
re: 52
I'm all for reasons. Seriously. But there is a place for emotion here.
"That's just not right" is not a sentiment to be scorned.
There's no way to argue with those libertarians or Republicans, just because their ethical priors are so bad. In practice, you use prudential arguments with them, but really, you're just try to elbow them out of the way.
There's a pretty fundamental difference between people who think the law of the jungle is a good thing and that the market assigns rewards fairly, and those who don't. It's not a technical question. Market-worshippers believe that the poor deserve to be poor, and that medical care should be on the market and people should only get what they can pay for. That's a moral argument too -- "They have it coming to them. They didn't earn the right to medical care."
Worrying about the consequences of calling something evil seems like it ought to be secondary to worrying about the evil thing, itself.
Yes, but we must maintain dry wonkish purity.
re: 50
And the Volokh chaps (mostly) made it pretty clear that they had a nice wee hard-on for a bit of torture. The 'concern for nuance' was a load of cant.
Putnam and Sen have recently written about the possibility of rational use of moral concepts. It's pretty good stuff, though all they're really doing is lifting a taboo.
BTW, the prohibition of moral arguments also serves as a way of closing off argument: "You can't just say 'That's wrong'. That's not a verifiable statement".
It's all about luck, persuasiveness, tactics and strategic use of force, people, and not questioning your central premises too much. That's how you win, and that's how your movement decays and corrupts later. That's precisely what I can't bear and try not to think about.
44: But I simply can't bring myself to advocate a concept I view as naive, misguided and problematic merely for tactical advantage.
It's only "naive, misguided and problematic" to the extent that one hasn't thought through its underpinnings or its practical limits. I'd say that it's profoundly misguided and problematic to think that sort of objection applies equally to, say, the movements in favour of designating universal health care as "good" and those in favour of designating abortion as "evil."
I'm not going to actually agree with Frowner, but it's worth keeping in mind that the argument from evil is most often used by agents of repression and reaction; when you don't have a good reason for grinding your heel into someone's face, you say that they're "evil."
But I wouldn't mind getting a little of that mojo for ourselves.
That's precisely what I can't bear and try not to think about.
And that's why you'll lose. Seriously, it ends up being a form of selfishness [not directed specifically at you, Frowner, but just at that sort of prissiness in general].
Or win and turn into New Labor, I suppose. Or the goddamn Democratic Party.
Of course, I refrain from all actual political engagement, as my comments here show.
I was going to say that the play sounded like warmed-over Kierkegaard, but then I read the excerpt and now I think it just sounds didactic.
We talk about something, and we agree that it's evil. I think that it's evil because it increases inequality; you think that it's evil because it decreases monogamy (or whatever; I'm making this up)--but we're both on the same page because it's evil!
Welcome to the world of thin evaluative concepts.
62: Exactly -- why artificially tie our hands? There's this weird kind of asceticism among liberals, as expressed in the cliche that a liberal won't take his own side in an argument. Obviously I'm not saying that you stick with the "That's not right" thing -- you have to follow it up with reasons, figure out ways to inoculate people against the other side's counter-arguments, etc. The right is awesome at this, especially the inoculation part. But sometimes an emotional appeal is the only way to reach someone who is not already inclined to agree with you -- you cut past their apologetics. And you also need people to have passion, to be willing to put in some serious effort in favor of a cause.
Apparently, though, every time the right uses an organizational technique, that makes it dirty and off-limits for reasonable liberals. (Thankfully, that means that liberals are at least still allowed to follow the US constitution.)
You're going to have to bottom out in "... and that's wrong" eventually anyway, or engage in some really sophisticated metaethics, I guess. If you explain why torture is wrong/evil in general (there are plenty of reasons in a particular case why it's not the right option, but those are more relatable to particular goal structures in the absence of which those reasons would lack force) without just saying "well look, it's wrong", you're going to have to also explain why those considerations you advance mean that it's wrong.
You're going to have to bottom out in "... and that's wrong"
Actually, don't you only have to bottom out at "... and surely you agree that's wrong?"?
not jumping into the evil debate I have a couple thoughts on "interesting":
Interesting can be used to merely describe that you found something enjoyable to read or listen to, that is the sense that it is used in the play quote. In the context of a debate or argument I would use interesting to describe something to which there are no easy answers, something that reasonable people (a category that notably does not include many conservatives) could disagree: something like what is the best way to stop global warming. This can be abused to avoid drawing a conclusion about something where there is a clear answer, and I think this is what the play is trying to criticize.
Of course there are also lots of boring things to which reasonable people could disagree: something like which is better, the beatles or the stones?
At the Mineshaft, everybody bottoms out and in.
[Sings] Oh, why can't the left be more like the right?
I could go off into rhyming "You liberals are feeble and don't want to fight", but I won't.
I don't think that ruling out "Oh, that's EVIL!" is the same as ruling out all appeals to emotion; it's just ruling out the stupider, er, more problematic ones.
Seriously, when exactly has "And that's evil!" been used to mobilize people for, er, good? And how exactly has it worked?
JM, did you satisfactorily dispatch your evil roommate?
72: And I would like to add that "But...but what about the Nazis!" still loses.
73.---No. I don't want to talk about it.
I know why I overuse "interesting". It may be an empty category of intellectual experience, but it's also a shorthand for "I'm thinking about this and I'd like to have a discussion with you about it - whatya think? Would you be willing to play with this idea?" It's my cowardly way of avoiding the grumpy person cutting me off and asking "why are you even talking about this stupid x?" It's an opening move. If no enthusiastic response, I pretend I never said anything.
when exactly has "And that's evil!" been used to mobilize people for, er, good?
Rhetoric about good and evil has been historically a pretty substantial part of labour, anti-segregation and anti-slavery movements in the States, for starters.
It's salutary to point out that the appeal to evil is complex and potentially problematic, but silly IMO to attempt to "rule it out."
when exactly has "And that's evil!" been used to mobilize people for, er, good?
The ending of the British slave trade is one hard to argue with example.
Yes, saying "what about the Nazis?" is naive -- despite the post-war retconning, the US did not intervene in WWII for the purpose of stopping the Holocaust. Nor was the Civil War simply "about" stopping slavery.
But it seems to me that there's always an implicit reference to the Nazis or to "totalitarianism" from the other direction -- "Your idealism is admirable, but don't you realize that if you try to implement your ideas, it will lead straight to the gulag?" People don't seem to understand that in the first half of the 20th Century, the Western world was actively destroying itself -- capitalism was attempting suicide. It was an extreme time, and it led to some extreme results. Those underlying circumstances, more than a formalistic structure like "being too convinced of one's own rightness," seems like it led to "totalitarianism."
Things don't seem to be as bad right now. One holds out the hope that it will never again be so bad, at least in our lifetimes.
er, good?
I'm guessing you see the problem here.
This debate is kind of head-scratching to me. Moral rhetoric is one weapon in the arsenal, and the right uses it constantly; liberal squeamishness on labeling things right and wrong is just unilateral disarmament. What's more, it's unilateral disarmament in the face of an enemy that otherwise is at a considerable disadvantage: on most of the subjects we're fighting over, the public has generally liberal-leaning instincts, and is far more open to hearing that, say, private insurance companies' denial of care is evil than to hearing that it's "wrong" to regulate business.
Yes, "evil" is a means of closing off debate, but as liberals there are plenty of things we want to close off debate to. The world is a significantly worse place now that torture has lost much of its stigma in the public sphere, and now that we've reached the point where pundits and politicians can politely debate the merits of waterboarding prisoners as part of "extreme interrogation techniques," it's hard to imagine what could restore that stigma, short of the sight of Bush and Cheney tried as war criminals in the Hague. When Tom Tancredo talked about bombing Mecca last week, I was pretty relieved that the general response wasn't a series of exhaustive rebuttals of his proposed de-Meccazization policy, but a simple flat-out assertion that he was bugfuck crazy. Some ideas are reprehensible, and need to be treated as such, or they gradually acquire respectability.
78: See, every time I actually read a book about how precisely civil rights organizing worked, or how (and this is the one I've been looking at most recently) AIDS activism worked, I feel like I find much, much more complexity and variety involved--people getting involved with things because they cared personally for those involved, because they were afraid for themselves, because they were lonely, because they saw themselves as part of a community at risk, etc. That's not to say that there's never room for "and it's so evil" in media relations, I guess, but what mobilizes people and keeps them mobilized isn't abstraction, except in very rare cases.
In fact, my Charismatic Professional Activist Friend has a whole little talk she gives to various bodies about why altruism is a bad thing to rely on, and why you can't organize on it.
But, Frowner, now you're making a much weaker (but true) point, that calling something "evil" isn't sufficient. Earlier you seemed to be arguing that it should be forgone altogether.
82: No, he's not. Or if he is, he's trivially right: Apparently, though, every time the right uses an organizational technique, that makes it dirty and off-limits for reasonable liberals. So apparently the claim is that not everyone uses the ee-vil rhetoric, but some do. Okay. And?
80: One wants to believe what you're saying, but the small totalitarian-fearing voice says, "But wouldn't precisely this be the first step?"
84: ??? So you're assuming that in any case where the word "evil" is deployed, it's being claimed as the central organizing principle and the only thing people should be doing or thinking about, and nothing complex should be assumed to be going on? If someone has claimed this, it wasn't me.
And you know, just how much effect does "intellectual respectibility" have, anyway? Look, globally a whole bunch of intellectually respectable people protested--for the most part politely, even if with puppets--against the war. An incredible number of people, in fact. Did it do a goddamn bit of good? It did not. Where is the US antiwar movement today? Oh, we all agree that the war is heartwringingly evil, and we're all pretty much sitting at home eating locally-sourced produce or whatever.
Marxism and the gun, or a collective project that is equivalent and the gun.
Calling something "evil" kind of does shut down debate, but that doesn't mean it's rhetorically useless. It is a means of marking a principle as axiomatic. I call torture evil, and someone else might not. They might convince me that it is a necessary or mitigated evil, but at the end of the day I'm still going to call it "evil."
Re: "Why can't the Left be more like the Right?": Didn't Trilling have something to say about this a while back?
85: In a weak way, I would rather that it be foregone. That is, if I could completely reset the left-liberal discourse in the US so that we would not talk about evil but would talk about a lot of other stuff...but if we're going to go on with the existing mystifying demogogic wankery, we might as well talk about evil as not.
More on 72: Do you think that the most important difference between liberals and reactionaries is the political techniques they use? I would've thought it was the substantive policy principles. It's bizarre to me that the former party of machine politics and mob ties is now the party of The Moral Highground.
If instead of doing politics, we played football to decide which laws were passed, etc., would you object to Team Democrat's decision to start emulating some of the better strategies that Team Republican is using?
There is a place for irritable mental gestures.
Marxism and the gun, or a collective project that is equivalent and the gun.
Oh yeah, that sounds promising.
Frowner's ethics: argumentation all the way down.
"Why can't the Left be more like the Right?"
This is a vast oversimplification of the question. The question is, why can't the Left use moral rhetoric and moral arguments, since the Right uses them anyway?
There's no particular reason one approach has to preclude the other. Moore can make his movie and call insurance companies evil and Ezra can still work through the arguments on how best to get universal health coverage for everyone.
re: 86
Tim, I don't even know what you mean in that comment.
Kotsko is right about a certain kind of liberal prissiness. Strangasmelo is right in 83 too. We've talked about this before.
This kind of prissiness just makes people look like fucking wimps. A certain rhetorical robustness has value, even if it's just posturing. Posturing sometimes has value.
This conversation reminds of Wallace Shawn's The Fever, a play that is in part about how many of the ethical judgements are based on an acceptence of, "this is just how it's done" and how, if one tries to reject that consensus moral reality how hard it is to find grounding.
From that perspective it seems like one of the dangers of interesting is to flag something as, "this makes it seem like the way we normally respond to this situation is flawed, but I can't think of anything better, so I'll just treat it as an anomaly."
89: Look, globally a whole bunch of intellectually respectable people protested--for the most part politely, even if with puppets--against the war. An incredible number of people, in fact. Did it do a goddamn bit of good? It did not.
Not so. The anti-war movement was in all probability the major reason that Bush was prevented from dragging the UN and any number of allied countries into the war with him. I think people who believed the protest movement would stop the war from happening entirely were naive.
It would be good to see some mobilization against the war again in the US; I think a good solid antiwar movement would go a long way toward ending the war sooner. (The Dems plainly aren't going to do it without some prodding.) The rest of us globally can start marching and organizing against broader "GWOT"-related bullshit (like say, that notion that Canadian troops ought to be in Afghanistan attempting to clean up a mess that their American counterparts are still in the process of exacerbating).
92: ( I'm not a Democrat. I loathe the Democrats. The Democrats have disillusioned me about politics forever, and my interest in their moral purity is marginal. I vote for them when I have to, I admit.)
The thing is, if my enemy uses a tactic, I'm going to think twice about using it. Not because everything my enemy does is bad, but because my enemy is my enemy because he has bad ideas and therefore his tactics may also be bad ideas. I happen to think that the Right is full of bad ideas, ideas that have led to the breakdown of our creaky jalopy of a nation; one of those bad ideas is using "evil" and people's visceral enthusiasm at hating the other as organizing principles.
87: Totalitarianism was an outcome of how shitty things got, not the immediate cause. World War I, it seems to me, was not fought for "totalitarian" reasons. The global depression in the 1930s was not caused by "totalitarianism." The utterly horrible conditions made people susceptible to the lure of totalitarianism. It was only the fact that Europe was reduced to rubble that made Nazism and Stalinism seem like viable options -- there just wasn't a liberal-capitalist way out of the problem, as the semi-"totalitarian" FDR recognized.
97: Exactly. Like I said, moral arguments are just one kind of argument; getting all squeamish about them just because some liberals want to talk about right and wrong - or make direct appeals to emotion - is absurd. We can still make all the detailed wonkish arguments in the world and also point out that our arguments are right and good.
Is it boring that they will both designate the exercise "evil" for very different reasons, or is it interesting? I think it's terribly interesting.
It is also interesting that Wolfowitz explicitly recognized this in arguing for the war. Remember, per Wolfowitz, WMD was the argument that everyone rallied around, not the argument that everyone found most compelling.
Although I freely concede that this discussion may be a case where "interesting" is in the saddle and shouldn't be, since (as we've said before) there's enough common ground about tactics that certain kinds of havering aren't useful. Of course, how useful is Unfogged?
101: The thing is, if my enemy uses a tactic, I'm going to think twice about using it.
And if your enemy perverts a tactic that has historically been used to good effect by your allies, you're going to avoid it? Doesn't make sense. The Right doesn't get to own "evil" simply because they've used to in stupid ways.
75: re: evil roomate, JM, I'm very sorry to hear that.
one of those bad ideas is using "evil" and people's visceral enthusiasm at hating the other as organizing principles
Conflating two different things. In this thread thus far, we've used torture as an example of something that ought to be called "evil," and I don't think anyone's suggested that some kind of hate-filled anti-other rhetoric ought to be part of the left's tactics.
In fact, gosh, I'd go so far as to say that ginning up visceral enthusiasm at hating the other is ... evil!
I'm still at a loss to understand why you think saying "... and that's wrong" is somehow dangerous.
The thing is, if my enemy uses a tactic, I'm going to think twice about using it.
By all means, think twice! But don't refuse to consider such a tactic.
106: Er, "think twice"...."carefully review my reasons for using". I think twice about all kinds of things and later go on to do some of them. Being cautious isn't the same as ruling out; ruling something out for good reasons isn't the same as ruling it out "because it has Republican germs" or whatever.
108: Because "that's evil" tends to squeeze out more nunaced rhetoric. Because "...and that's wrong" mobilizes people briefly and stupidly. (Remember all that aid to Ethiopia that actually made things worse in a lot of places? Remember all those charity clothes that get shipped to the Third World, where they've totally destroyed the local market?) The kinds of policies that clearly, obviously "combat evil" are usually the kinds of policies that create suffering. I'm not talking about death camps and jackbooted fascist octopi stepping forever on a human face; I'm talking about markets and economics and tiny boring shit.
Is that a problem of the rhetoric, or a problem of the implementation? Like, presumably there's some sort of aid to Ethiopia that would have been genuinely helpful, and I'm not sure that the reason that the aid given was the wrong sort was closely related to the arguments used to support it.
In fact, my Charismatic Professional Activist Friend has a whole little talk she gives to various bodies about why altruism is a bad thing to rely on, and why you can't organize on it.
This thread is moving quickly. I find myself sympathizing with Frowner but I also recognize that proverbially, even Timothy Burke is questioning his commitment to procedural liberalism. A couple of questions though.
1) If we're talking about calling things "evil" or "bad" strictly as a rhetorical tactic, the question is whether they work (hence the quoted bit above). If we're talking about calling things evil because the soul protests their presence, and on cannot call them anything other than "evil" that's different from talking about rhetorical tactics.
2) For myself I find myself overapplying D^2 dictum that, "good ideas don't need lies told about them." I feel like if I believe in the policies I am advocating I should want my rhetoric to clarify rather than obscure the gains and losses of the policy. I realize this is not actually an effective way to convince other people.
102: I know. All I'm saying is that, after totalitarianism, strong beliefs are always suspect. One can never be sure that our current conditions are sufficiently dissimilar from the ones that caused totalitarianism in the first place; moreover, totalitarianism was so bad that it is difficult to ignore even minor doubt. I don't see how this could be overcome without historical amnesia.
re: 110
As has been repeatedly said: using moral rhetoric doesn't preclude nuanced analysis.
"...and that's wrong" mobilizes people briefly and stupidly....
Christ on a bike. How can you ever hope to have ANY kind of argument with anyone about anything if you're taking something as basic as saying 'that is wrong' off the table. That doesn't, to repeat, preclude providing a detailed analysis of why it's wrong, or what wrong means for you.
Well, obviously, I think it's a problem of rhetoric--if you want to fix up a situation, you need a complex, nuanced, historically situated understanding of it, and a lot of the time there aren't "deserving people" to help and villains to punish, but those are the kinds of categories and explanations that seem to follow from "it's evil!"
As a micro-example, consider all the stupid radical organizing out there. (Hey, if you want to very font of all "it's evil" rhetoric, I can give you a list of meetings to attend.)
I'm not sure that the reason that the aid given was the wrong sort was closely related to the arguments used to support it.
Why not? This seems like the argument against "telescopic philanthropy." That things done to help people "over there" are rarely efficient or helpful.
even Timothy Burke is questioning his commitment to procedural liberalism
It's funny...I always think of liberals as people who yowl about evil in order to implement bad policies, especially internationally--the criminally mishandled interventions of the Clinton years, Haiti, the Balkans, etc.
Christ on a bike. How can you ever hope to have ANY kind of argument with anyone about anything if you're taking something as basic as saying 'that is wrong' off the table. That doesn't, to repeat, preclude providing a detailed analysis of why it's wrong, or what wrong means for you.
If that's what we're arguing about I think procedural liberalism has already won. I assumed that the people arguing in favor of the rhetoric of moral imperitive were arguing against statements like, "It is wrong that, in the richest country on earth, 40 million people lack health insurance right now. That is why I have a plan that will provide health coverage to 10 million of them within the first 2 years, and 25 of those 40 million within fifteen years."
117: Perhaps that was a little harsher than I meant. I think of interventionist liberals as the type of people most likely to go on about evil in order to implement bad policies.
Right, but 'that's just wrong' is a judgment on the bad situation that needs to be addressed, not a technical analysis of how to fix it. If the situation is misdescribed by ignorant people, nothing good will happen. If the technical work on how to help is poorly done, nothing good will happen. But saying that the situation is just wrong doesn't substitute for either of those steps -- it's a motivation for taking some sort of action.
After all, if the situation isn't wrong, then why do anything at all about it?
109: I think twice about all kinds of things and later go on to do some of them.
Good on you. You'll be happy to know you're not alone.
The kinds of policies that clearly, obviously "combat evil" are usually the kinds of policies that create suffering.
I'm puzzled as to how aid packages to the Third World are supposed to be clearly and obviously "combatting evil." You're right about their ambivalent results but I wasn't aware of that as a context where Manichaean rhetoric is that routine; that's more a case of using pity as a motivator.
I can think of many cases where "combatting evil" has been claimed and the results have been disastrous -- most obviously the Iraq War -- but that was a case of people clearly and obviously refusing to weigh the potential evils of their proposed course of action with any honesty.
It also seems to me that there are many cases of "clearly and obviously" combatting evil that have not increased suffering. This doesn't mean the outcomes were utopian, but would you seriously argue that the transition from slavery to Jim Crow was an increase in suffering? It seems to me that to call out as "evil" the stance that rape victims are asking for it is pretty defensible (and not uncommon), and that policies aimed at curtailing and undermining that worldview and its various iterations in the social and legal spheres have mostly decreased suffering rather than increasing it.
So, I kind of don't see where you're getting "usually" from, there.
120 to 115. To 118, I'm entirely confused. That's exactly the sentence I'd like to use the word 'wrong', or even 'evil' (oh, I guess 'evil' would sound overblown in that context) in.
It's funny...I always think of liberals as people who yowl about evil in order to implement bad policies, especially internationally--the criminally mishandled interventions of the Clinton years, Haiti, the Balkans, etc.
Hmmm, you live up to your name.
That is funny because, as I alluded to, I think what you're arguing for is a sort of procedural liberalism -- the means as well as the ends should be constantly questioned, the proper way to act poilitically is to participate rather than to collect and wield power . . .
Reading the quoted paragraph I'm torn between, "that isn't liberal" and "if it weren't for bad policies we wouldn't have any policies at all" -- e.g., the idea that the political and practical compromises inherent in implementing any idea on a large scale will inevitably make the implementation worse than it could have been.
After all, if the situation isn't wrong, then why do anything at all about it?
That's kind of the problem with the rhetoric of wrong. Is it or is it not wrong that a child with a disability gets pulled out of class for most of the day? Is or is it not wrong to send food aid? Serious policy questions don't reduce neatly to right and wrong, and I'm tired of having debates in this country that are essentially conducted on the lines of "Coke is right and Pepsi is wrong!" "No, Pepsi is right and Coke is wrong!"
That's exactly the sentence I'd like to use the word 'wrong', or even 'evil' (oh, I guess 'evil' would sound overblown in that context) in.
Comity.
I was just assuming that this wasn't what Adam Kostko, for example, was arguing for. If the sentence in 118 is all people want to hear than people are saying things like that all the time. That isn't a change from the status quo.
Hmmm, you live up to your name.
People always think I'm kidding about being a grump, you know, because my occasional bursts of charm and good sense confuse them.
Of course, "liberal" has such different meanings in different settings...one could even say that in radical circles the liberal is always someone else, no matter what any kind of evidence may suggest.
But that too--liberals are as various as anyone else, not easy to lump under "that's wrong", as much as that's a radical convention.
124: But you start by saying "It's wrong that people should starve" or "it's wrong that children should not be educated to the best of their capacity", and then you start thinking about policies to change whatever the problem is. Without that basic moral analysis to start with, why worry about reducing the amount of starvation as opposed to increasing the relative percentage of fir trees in Northeastern forests? Policies have to have some kind of goal, and the goals should be picked for moral reasons.
124: Serious policy questions don't reduce neatly to right and wrong
Most don't, some do. Wars of aggression? Wrong, for so many reasons that they do indeed "reduce [fairly] neatly" to being wrong. Torture? Disappearing people? Secret gulag networks? The government declaring itself above the law? All reduce pretty neatly to "wrong" from any number of perspectives. The problem in American politics is that saying so is nigh-impossible for actual political figures, for reasons mostly of craven short-term political calculus.
124: Yeah, because everyone but you is advocating applying Manichean logic to every single question. So far the examples I've given have tended to be things like torture, the Holocaust, slavery.... Obviously there are many issues that aren't like that. And obviously deciding that a problem must be solved doesn't translate directly into a good policy.
125: I am not a grocery store!!!
1) The Stones
2) Okay, after staring at the screen for 15 minutes, I have nothing I want to say about morality.
Make that 30 minutes.
Frowner, what do you want to replace it with?
Seriously?
That's kind of the problem with the rhetoric of wrong. Is it or is it not wrong that a child with a disability gets pulled out of class for most of the day? Is or is it not wrong to send food aid?
That's literally incomprehensible to me. Those are precisely the sorts of questions that OUGHT to be asked. Sure, answering them will involve paying close attention to what we mean by wrong, but that isn't a problem with employing moral rhetoric at all. What's your alternative?
"Don't do that. That's an aggregative decrease in desire satisfaction."
Also, on preview, what LB says in 127.
125: I am not a grocery store!!!
<shame>
Kotsko is right about a certain kind of liberal prissiness. Strangasmelo is right in 83 too. We've talked about this before.
"Certain kind" is the relevant issue. Kotsko is, as far as I can see, arguing that the subset of lefty/Dem people who are uncomfortable with evilness arguments--and who, to a great extent, have probably been trained to be uncomfortable with such arguments--should make such arguments. That makes no sense at all to me.
129: It's not the statement itself, but the way that the statement tends to work politically, the space it takes up, etc. I don't actually think everyone here is advocating Manichean logic; I think that prefacing statements with "this is evil" leads to bad political discourse. (Of course, I also think that "this is evil" is almost always an inadequate and misleading statement, but that's a separate issue.)
Isn't it wonderful that there are so many political problems to solve that we can all try our various methods and find out what happens? It's like the whole country is one big lab! See you one the streets!
S/b "See you on the streets!"
One, or 1!111, or whatever the kids say now.
re: 135
That makes no sense at all to me.
That makes no sense to me.
What is Kotsko or myself or anyone else doing, other than saying,
'in my view, this way of thinking and behaving isn't the best way of thinking and behaving in these circumstances',
138: I'm not 100% sure that I understand your point. But I think you and I just disagree about the "best way of thinking and behaving" rhetorically for people in Group X.
136: I think that prefacing statements with "this is evil" leads to bad political discourse
I think an attempt to turn such statements into a category in themselves, regardless of their relationship to underlying realities, leads to bad political discourse.
I'm with DS. It's not that hardline-no-shades-of-gray-moral-dualism is always necessary in political rhetoric, but some sort of moral principle has to underlie what you're arguing for, or there's no reason to do anything. And if your underlying reasons are moral ones: "We don't start wars because setting people on fire unnecessarily is evil," "We don't torture because it's wrong" or whatever, then shying away from stating them forthrightly when it's appropriate distorts the political discourse in a way that I don't think is helpful.
135: Okay, the "point" of what I'm saying isn't to advocate for the use of "good" and "evil" -- I'm saying it's a strategy that should be available, and I therefore have no principled reason why it should be used other than if it seems like it would be effective in a given context. Calling Bush "evil," for instance, would probably end up just alienating people -- but then, I've said all along that I don't think "good" and "evil" should be attached directly to people anyway!
My principled objection is that there is something wrong with a political stance that doesn't want to make any moral claims whatsoever. I'm saying that the liberals who aren't comfortable with making moral claims do in fact have moral convictions, by and large. Opposition to homophobia is a moral view just as much as opposition to homosexuality -- and in my opinion, a vastly preferable moral view. I'm not saying that people should adopt moral language as some "outside" thing -- I'm saying that liberals already directly have a morality, but they're afraid of expressing it in those terms. Morality doesn't automatically mean "reactionary bullshit," unless of course liberals abdicate that field completely.
And what Kotsko said, whether or not he really is a supermarket as he claims to be.
Going back to Wallace Shaw (whom I like), let me try to explain the point at which I always get stuck. Contrast this from The Fever
And toward the end of dinner our friend finally told us that his father had died. He described the hospital, the doctors, the machines. It was as if he felt no one had ever died before, as if he felt it was quite unfair that his father should have died. Yet no expense had been spared to extend his father's life for as long as possible, to make sure that his death was as comfortable as possible. Hardworking experts surrounded his bed doing all they could to see that he would die without feeling pain. I couldn't help mentioning those others who died every day on the torture table, screaming, carved up with knives, surrounded on their bed of death by other experts who were doing all they could to be sure that the ones they surrounded would die in howling agony--unimaginable agony.
My remarks were out of place. Where was the sympathy I owed my friend? His loss was real. He looked at me, appalled.
With one of my favorite exchanges from My Dinner With Andre
Andre: It's like what happened just before my mother died. You know, we had gone to the hospital to see my mother, and I'd been in to see her, and I saw this woman that looked as bad as any survivor of Aushwitz or Dachau, and I was out in the hall sort of comforting my father, adn this doctor who was a specialist in a problem that she had with her arm went into her room and came out beaming and said to us, "Boy, don't we have a lot of reason to feel great? Isn't that wonderful how she's coming along?" Well, all he saw was the arm. That's all he saw. And I mean, here's another person who's existing in a dream. Who on top of that is a kind of butcher who's committing a kind of familial murder, because he comes out of that room, and he psychically kills us by taking us into a dream world, you see, where we become confused and frightened, because the moment before, we saw someone who looked already dead, and now here comes the specialist who tells us that everything is great.
Torture is evil. Torture happening in front of us, or in our name is evil. But to be writing about the evil of torture on unfogged right now is an abstraction. How do we balance our obligation to the world, to political causes, to abstractions, with our obligation to the events and people directly in front of us who are very rarely "evil" or "good" or "bad."?
My problem, ultimately, with the rhetoric of "evil" is that, almost all of the time, it does obscure rather than clarify. I have no problem at all with Ttam's Those are precisely the sorts of questions that OUGHT to be asked. Sure, answering them will involve paying close attention to what we mean by wrong, but that isn't a problem with employing moral rhetoric at all. What's your alternative? because that starts with, "what is happening" and goes to "what is the moral course of action?"
I come back to the idea that torture is evil, but there's also something disturbing in the scene described in the fever. Is it just that I am too conlfict-averse? Am I confusing the problem of bad manners (in that scene) with torture?
My principled objection is that there is something wrong with a political stance that doesn't want to make any moral claims whatsoever.
Frowner's only one person. You and others have spent a a lot of effort to get just her to buy in.
Opposition to homophobia is a moral view just as much as opposition to homosexuality -- and in my opinion, a vastly preferable moral view. I'm not saying that people should adopt moral language as some "outside" thing -- I'm saying that liberals already directly have a morality, but they're afraid of expressing it in those terms.
This seems completely correct. Have we just been talking past each other? I have no objection to that.
It's interesting (as it were) to see the unusual lineups on the two sides of this argument.
Kostko is not just a grocery store. He carries a wide line of "brand name products, from computers and clothing to gardening and gourmet food" at prices YOU can afford!
Frowner's only one person. You and others have spent a a lot of effort to get just her to buy in.
Yeah, weird. It's almost as though we were talking in a forum in which people often argue forcefully for their point of view.
148: It's important to get the grumps to buy in. Once we have them, we have the insecure and needy people too.
re: 148
Oh come on, Tim, now you're being disingenuous. She's not the only one who has expressed a view of that type, now, or in the past. It's hardly a totally sui generis position. *You've* expressed views that share something with that -- or at least a discomfort at the use of certain types of language in political debate -- at times in the past.
I won't buy in. I won't, I won't, I won't. I will, however, do almost all the "call your Senator/write to the paper/donate money" left-liberal stuff that is proposed around here. This doesn't mean that I buy in, however, since I have cleverly avoided acceding to your problematic rhetorical demands.
We all presumably understand the sources of Frowner's discomfort with the "evil" language. Why a disavowal of it should extend to the use of "it's wrong" is a bit mystifying: as several people have said, reference to what's wrong and right adverts to core principles, and the development of policy to address wrongs is where rhetoric is left behind in short order.
Frowner, you're just digging yourself a hole if you decline to acknowledge this. I can't even tell in all of this whether you have acknowledged it. Please do.
And you-all should come to Minneapolis to protest the Republicans next year. Then you can see the signs I'll be carrying at the demos: "Republican rhetoric is deeply problematic for the following reasons: [trails off into tiny writing]" and "Support nuanced solutions for all national problems, comrades!"
158: Or what? You'll kick me out of the club? I have to profess that I am not now and never have been a communist, er, moral relativist?
Hmmph, apparently I have been so measured in my arguments that nobody thinks of me as someone who needs convincing one way or the other (unless 149 settled the point).
158 is funny.
It's interesting (as it were) to see the unusual lineups on the two sides of this argument.
True, Frowner and LB on opposite sides. Perhaps this is just a charade to bolster the claim that they are two separate people.
158: Or what? You'll kick me out of the club? I have to profess that I am not now and never have been a communist, er, moral relativist?
I assume 158 s/b 157?
If so, what club? What are you talking about?
The thing is, whenever I think about it I am puzzled about where right and wrong can come from--gut feelings? Empathy? Self interest? Fiat?
Empathy is the most meaningful to me. I don't want us to bomb Iraq because I am horrified to think about living in, say, a bombed out Baghdad without food or water or medical supplies. (But I don't entirely trust empathy; I find it hard to imagine, say, being happy as a fundamentalist Christian, yet some are.)
Just plain saying so? Like I would just plain say that killing other people is wrong? I can do that, either for practical reasons (social contract, Hobbes, brutalist/short, etc) or on gut feelings. Practical reasons don't seem to be about morality, and I am pretty cautious about my gut feelings since they're often wrong. It seems weird to me to say "This is wrong because I feel it's wrong.
This is all personal reasoning and doesn't really apply to what I do politically (which is "behave like a good left-liberal most of the time", I suppose). But you asked. If you're sqeamish, to quote Miss Manners quoting Sappho, don't poke the rubble on the beach.
*You've* expressed views that share something with that -- or at least a discomfort at the use of certain types of language in political debate -- at times in the past.
Bullshit. Discomfort with some sorts of styles of arguments is not the same as saying that--as Frowner seems to be doing--arguments that make moral claims are themselves immoral. I find Frowner's position basically incomprehensible. But I think that--my inability to make sense of what she's saying--is a pretty good reason not to look to her to make the sorts of arguments that I find compelling.
163: The Illuminati are always like "deny, deny, deny."
True, Frowner and LB on opposite sides. Perhaps this is just a charade to bolster the claim that they are two separate people
LB did say that she was an Eeyore in the other thread, and I'm about as Eeyore as they come. Perhaps it's her metropolitan sophistication that creates the apparent divide here.
Although I would emphasize that LB and I would probably actually do almost the same thing in a particular political situation. (Except she'd use her lawyer powers.)
I was thinking that it was my charming naivete. Seriously, while I share your edginess about making moral claims based only on my gut (or 'what I think is right'), I don't think I have any other sensible option -- policy positions can be grounded in pure selfishness/hedonism/personal benefit, or in some set of moral beliefs (or a combination of the two). I can't think of any other reason to do anything.
Not wanting to publicly rely on your gut-level moral beliefs as justification for your policy positions because you, yourself, don't trust your gut-level moral beliefs, seems to me to be an invitaion to have your policy positions ignored.
163: The Illuminati are always like "deny, deny, deny."
What?
Did my 157 sound like I was advocating something incompatible with moral relativism? I don't want to get into a discussion of the latter.
Core principles: basic liberal principles. That's political liberalism, not liberalism as currently beaten about the head and neck in this country. God help me, see Rawls, justice as fairness, the original position.
Frowner mentioned empathy. Sure. The original position: pretend you're a featureless human somebody. What do you want and need?
It's seemed to me that Frowner wants to deny the value in using the terms "wrong" and "right" in connection with fundamental beliefs about our goals in running our societies. I'm completely baffled.
Yes, but then you're always already in the "don't think of a blue monkey" position, where you know that the reason you're trumpeting that something is wrong is because you feel it in your gut, just as your opponent feels in his gut that you are wrong, and if you think about that little fact...well, if I think about that little fact, then I feel like everything sort of spirals in on itself. And I don't particularly like not thinking about why I think I'm right, especially when I know that if I think about why I think I'm right I'll start to doubt myself.
Empathy is the most meaningful to me. I don't want us to bomb Iraq because I am horrified to think about living in, say, a bombed out Baghdad without food or water or medical supplies.
That doesn't establish empathy as the most important. It implies that there's some deeper value in relation to which empathy is supposed to be good--in this case, the elimination of suffering. Suffering being, apparently, bad. Maybe evil.
102:"Totalitarianism was an outcome of how shitty things got, not the immediate cause. " ...AK
Totalitarianism(s) was a technology used or misused deliberately, not an irrational descent into madness. Sorel was an engineer, and saw Christianity, Marxism, and his own "Myth of the General Strike" as a class of technocratic tools. Mussolini used that tool, as did the Nazi's with "Aryanism" and maybe FDR with, whatever, "Two Chickens in Every Pot" or "The Second Bill of Rights"
BDL liked, forced me to read the concluding chapter of the "General Theory" and it is clear that Keynes knew he is developing a myth about the political economy. Keynesianism must be believed in order to work, it is about expectations and uncertainty.
The problem with classical liberalism, and its stepchild Marxism, is its claim to truth, reason, and scientific legitimacy. It requires, by its own definition, an empirical validation:We watch the Senate and the White House, see some inefficiencies, and the liberals demand technocratic tweaks. But the model does not fit, it needs rational actors and can't create them on its own.
It is the myth that refutes itself. Private property and free markets, representative government, free speech and assembly, tolerance & privacy are not values but tools. Abstractions & artifacts.
Morality and moral discourse have only an instrumental value. We should condemn the torture not because torture is bad but for some other purpose, like electing Democrats. The discourse on torture should be instrumental.
That may be the difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Repubs use everything. For them, the War is Iraq need not be justified in itself, it was useful, a tool with many possible applications.
Sorel was out of Marx & Nietzsche. The "General Strike" or the "Revolution" will never actually happen, but everything done, I mean everything, should have its primary purpose in bringing the General Strike or Revolution.
What is Left's organizing myth? If you don't like the above, I suggest "The Fate of the Earth", an move from national sovereignty to world democracy. Liberal Institutionalism, MY's foreign policy, should be a means, not an end.
Morality should serve impossible dreams.
Suffering being, apparently, bad. Maybe evil.
I know this is sophomoric, but why? Why shouldn't people suffer? I know that I don't want to suffer; I infer that others don't either, but why shouldn't we suffer? What's good about good?
The thing is, I can declare that I care about things beyond my own self-interest just because, but I can't rest the whole weight of my politics on that statement.
172: So, in order to bring about something that we want for inexpressible reasons, we have to both pretend to ourselves and not pretend to ourselves. (And I don't mean that sarkily) I can believe that it works, but I have trouble doing it.
So why stop the War in Iraq? That is the question, and we don't need arguments as to why the War is BAD, we need to find goals for which stopping the war can be useful.
169: Aha! I notice you cleverly continue to change the subject from Frowner's disclosure of this secret "club" of which you are a part. Don't think I'm fooled! Not for a minute! I know all about your secret handshakes, your robed conferences, your connections to the Bilderbergers... all will be exposed*!
It's seemed to me that Frowner wants to deny the value in using the terms "wrong" and "right" in connection with fundamental beliefs about our goals in running our societies. I'm completely baffled.
Me, too.
Actually, the whole business about "the gut" confuses me, too. I'd thought it was pretty much a commonplace that ethical convictions arise from various mixtures of gut feeling, evidence and (if we're lucky) rational argument.
(* translation: "I was just goofing around.")
Who will think of me in all this?
174: Yes. Faith isn't knowledge. But that usually has been ok.
Shouldn't have hit post just then. The General Strike will never happen; we know that but we act as if we believe that it will in order to gin ourselves up to work for it. We know that if we work sincerely for the General Strike we'll bring about other things that we want.
There was a man at a party and he said "I can turn these rocks into gold if only you'll avoid thinking of a blue monkey". But the rocks didn't turn to gold. "We couldn't think of anything but a blue monkey," said the guests.
re: 165
You're right. You both share a discomfort with a certain type of language, but Frowner's opposition to it does come from a different, and much less comprehensible, place.
Parsimon, I just thought it was funny when you asked me to affirm my beliefs, because it sounded like one of those weird right-wing blog word games along the lines of "But you haven't affirmed that it was a tragedy that blah blah blah...and so your politics are an empty shell! I have you now!"
I wasn't being serious, not even a little bit.
What else is there? It's not that I don't see the problem, it's that the only alternatives I see are (a) relying on my moral fiat ("It's wrong because I say it is." Oh, there are arguments from authority "It's wrong because good people say it is," but they still come down to my sense of who I should morally rely on) or (b) giving up politics entirely and guiding all my actions by straight hedonism.
I think my opposition is very comprehensible, thank you. It's your surety that baffles me.
182: guiding all my actions by straight hedonism
Hmmm... you might be on to something there...
182: I tend to fear that everything is really hedonism underneath anyway. That also gives me pause.
Perhaps I should just stop doing whatever passes for "thinking" in the dust-filled echo-chamber of my head.
Oh, hey, Blue Monkey! It's the funniest thing, I was just thinking of you and that party!
As long as we're refusing to affirm any good at all, hedonism is off the table as well.
179: There was a story I read once where the rocks did turn to gold. While the guests had been thinking of a blue monkey, it turned out that the man had lied, and the spell required them not to think of a white camel.
(If I were cleverer, this would speak in some illuminating way to the discussion of evil. As it is, it doesn't; I'm just reminiscing about fairy tales I've read.)
176:
(* translation: "I was just goofing around.")
I knew that, but this "club" business was annoying.
189: There's a variant on this in the Silver John stories by Manly Wade Wellman--they're awfully good, or so I thought when I read them about six years ago.
Parsimon, I toyed with saying "Party", "house", "lunchroom" and "debating society" instead of club, if that makes you feel any better. Perhaps we could retroactively substitute "lunchroom" as the most neutral.
191: That's the story I was thinking of. If I'm ever in Minneapolis, can I poke through your bookshelves and borrow stuff?
179:The man at the party was obviously lying, we all know his real purpose was not gold but a crowd thinking about a blue monkey. And that was not even the real purpose, he was entertaining the crowd. For the sake of his ego. Etc.
And a lot of people thinking about a GS or Revolution or One-World (or Green World) is doable.
181:
it sounded like one of those weird right-wing blog word games along the lines of "But you haven't affirmed that it was a tragedy that blah blah blah...and so your politics are an empty shell! I have you now!"
Regardless of what it sounded like -- and I have no idea what these right-wing blog games are -- I meant what I said in, what was it? 157.
Carry on.
192: You may borrow anything you like should you happen to visit Minneapolis, but I'm afraid I've lost my copy of the Silver John Stories. Although now I want to reread them, so I suppose I could always get another.
164 is all I've got, Parsimon. That may make me an empty shell or a broken reed or something. Although I prefer to think of it as an internal contradiction, since I do vote, petition, donate money, protest, wheatpaste and all that just as if I had moral convictions. I am an automaton.
Morality should serve impossible dreams.
This seems like the definition of totalitarianism.
181:Ahh, on my better days it is simply definitional:
"Evil" and "Ethics" are defined by transcendance and universality.
So "Bad" & "Morality" are more useful concepts. As in Beyond Good and Evil.
Empathy and benevolence are useful to the degree they are not abstracted. You don't have empathy for all the people in Darfur you have never met, or wish good things for all citizens of Iraq. There are no affects without objects.
196: You needn't be defensive about your 164. Why is there something rather than nothing, after all. You're not as much of a freak as you apparently think you are.
I find Frowner's position basically incomprehensible.
This is because of your reluctance to cast debates in moral terms. The enlightened among us understand that Frowner is evil.
In fact, while we're trotting out all the fancy theory and stuff, I will point to Franco Moretti's excellent essay on The Red and the Black, where he talks about consciousness of bad faith being the only remaining way for the hero to display fidelity to/relate to/remember/enact the impossible ideals of the French Revolution. Bad faith! That's what I have!
We must none of us think of the general strike. For though it would be tantalizing--who can deny this, that the general strike tantalizes--it is our task to think about the tax code. Because if the tax code is fixed, we might pay fewer taxes, while others pay more taxes. If we can stop from thinking about the general strike--but what would that be like, the general strike?--then surely the tax code can be repaired.
This is because of your reluctance to cast debates in moral terms. The enlightened among us understand that Frowner is evil.
I am not evil. Evil doesn't exist as such. I am grumpy. Grumpiness, as anyone who's ever met me can testify, exists only too completely. Grumpiness is empirically verifiable, or at least mine is.
Or rather, I may be evil, but you people are a time-suck of amazing proportions. Off to work.
. Evil doesn't exist as such.
If we get her to say it two more times, I think we'll have demonstrated that Frowner is the rock on which the church of evil is built.
Why shouldn't people suffer? I know that I don't want to suffer; I infer that others don't either, but why shouldn't we suffer? What's good about good?
I think this question is really difficult for a certain kind of person who wants everything to be rational, clear, logical, explainable. (I must admit that I often find these people very offputting, but I don't find Frowner so, so maybe I'm wrong here.) What we mean by "good" is obviously "good for us"--and that's fine. We don't have to talk about good and bad in ultimately hypercosmic ways--"will the universe care if human beings become extinct"--and doing so is insufferably offensive, like the pose of "objectivity" that asshole guys often use when dismissing feminism. We're living things, we want to live; that wanting--and thus wanting, period--is built into us. Emotion is part of who we are *and* emotion is an important part of how we think precisely *because* if you reject all emotion you can end up endorsing horrible things like torture or genocide. Empathy matters. Even lack of empathy matters--people often react selfishly to things (i.e., they vote Republican) out of fear, and addressing that fear is both useful tactically *and* right, morally. The problem with Republican rhetoric these days is that it deliberately stokes and encourages irrational fear, and the problem with the left is that we mock or dismiss that fear rather than addressing it and reassuring people.
All that said. I use "interesting" a lot to mean something like "bothersome, but worth investigating." It isn't about suspending judgment; it's about postponing preemptive closure on things that require further investigation about motives and emotions as a way of trying to address those while hopefully isolating the bothersome (and wrong) conclusion they're mistakenly leading to.
This book points to studies that say that effective activists and ethical role models don't do much soul searching.
google book excerpt here.
the problem with the left is that we mock or dismiss that fear rather than addressing it and reassuring people.
This is apt, but how is it done? There's a fine line between adressing an irrational fear and giving credence to it. Who cares to walk that line, or even has the ability? Obama, maybe.
I think this question is really difficult for a certain kind of person who wants everything to be rational, clear, logical, explainable. (I must admit that I often find these people very offputting, but I don't find Frowner so, so maybe I'm wrong here.)
The reason I'm only frustrating and not (I hope) too offputting on this topic is that I am hoping someone will persuade me that I am wrong. That's more likely to be a chipping away than a conversion experience, I admit.
Although really, when I was twenty determinism used to worry me a lot (I had a friend who was this absolutely farcically rigid determinist, even though he was actually very smart and reading Hegel in German.) and now it doesn't. Maybe I'll just ossify into having moral principles naturally.
207: That's why a surprisingly large percentage of effective activists are, not to put too fine a point on it, assholes. Which is also depressing. I think I'm just going to go feral and start living in the sewers or something.
Give my regards to the albino alligators.
208: Well, I often get bitched at for not being nice enough, you know. But I think that the dichotomy between addressing and giving credence is a false one; the fear may be irrational, but it is real. So the trick is to figure out what it's about; why (e.g.) are men afraid of feminism, why are working class Americans afraid of terrorism, and then to *offer* people something. Some guys need to know that you're not mad at them *personally*, or that you don't *blame* them for The Patriarchy; middle class Americans are worried (say) about losing a sense of material security and status and need to know (imho) that the left believes *more* than the right in American values and material security (which I happen to think is true).
211: The albino alligators are friends with the Blue Monkey.
Frowner, you just need to let go of the desire for the perfect.
Anyhoo. Shall we schedule a little mini Minneapolis meetup? We need to get Mr. Emerson's ass up here; every time I'm around, I try to get together with him, and it never works out. I think he's avoiding me because he expects me to be a perky blonde.
I think that's right. But although I'm sure it's effective to say "I understand that you are afraid, that the fear is real," this needs to be followed with, "but that fear is misplaced." Otherwise what are you doing except reflecting audience biases?
So Frowner wants to avoid moral language because she doesn't think moral beliefs can be grounded. That seems to be dealing with the political/practical problem at the wrong level of abstraction. I think McG and parsimon have it right; we're basically a Kantian/Rawlsian society, and when we talk politically about right/wrong, good/evil, we're doing so in that framework, which most people, even those with relatively large political differences, will profess to believe in.
215: It depends on what you're doing. In the classroom, you address the fears and then work to create empathy between the afraid and the (justifiably) angry and impatient. In politics, you probably have to play to the "prejudices" by simply using them in the service of a different object--patriotic talk about American freedoms and not wanting to have the government listening in on your phone conversations, or the American entitlement to a living wage if you work hard, rather than trying to address anti-Muslim paranoia or welfare directly.
which most people, even those with relatively large political differences, will profess to believe in
Most people are entirely too sanguine, in several senses, for the general good.
Minneapolis meet-up! Emerson, where are you? There is a little couch space at the Frowner menage for peripatetic Unfoggers, if needed.
I dunno what works in a classroom, and I can only say with certainty what resonates with myself in speeches, but I think people can smell a bait-and-switch pretty easily nowadays. Why concede to the existence of the bogeyman? I don't trust it.
I'm glad to see that my position has ended up carrying the day. Frowner is one of those unredeemable postmodernists, so I leave her to her own devices.
I'm glad to see that my position has ended up carrying the day. You're still wrong. And I am, though unredeemable, only postmodernist compared to certain Unfoggers. Which isn't saying much. Real postmodernists would spit on me if they could rouse themselves from ennui long enough to do so.
In most situations, the "postmodernist," like the liberal, is usually someone else.
In most situations, the "postmodernist," like the liberal, is usually someone else.
We are all postmodernists now!
re: 223
Not me. I intend to crank up The Rite of Spring* really loud, dammit.
* Modernists have all the good tunes.
222: What a relativistic, postmodern thing to say.
Frowner, you know what the club or lunchroom is? It's the dialogue. Unfogged is a dialogic community. Why you're wanting to position yourself outside it even while purporting to take part in it escapes me.
But, as before, carry on. Done.
Why you're wanting to position yourself outside it even while purporting to take part in it escapes me.
It's just her thing that she does. Pay it no mind.
225: I'd say there's both a presence and an absence of postmodernism in that remark.
I am up for a Mpls meetup. I can get there but would hope for couch space.
229: Perfect. So it's up to Frowner-with-the-couch to say when, I think. I'm good anytime this week or next.
Auugghh! Can't make a decision this momentous. I'll let you know tonight or tomorrow morning.
Y'all want a meetup thread? Or you have it covered?
227: Positioning myself outside it? What are you talking about? I've been assimilated, I tell you!
Although I would say that in this thread I'm bizarrely far outside the consensus, regardless of whatever thing I do.
We probably want a meetup thread. Otherwise, my email is emersonj at gmail dot com.
No offense to Becks, (in fact, I'm drinking some of your delicious namesake right now!), but I would have titled this post "Hello, Nasty!"
Why not retell the Orpheus myth from the perspective of the Beastie Boys, anyhow? That would be interesting!
Frowner, is your Charismatic Professional Activist Friend and IAFer? Sounds like one.
236: Indian Air Force? Industrial Areas Foundation? International Association of Facilitators?
Maybe. But I'm not sure.
I am way too late to this thread, but I still want to put my two cents in. I'm also departing a bit from the question of whether using the rhetoric of good and evil is useful for political purposes. In other words, my comment could have been the first one.
I think that the problem with "interesting" as a category is that it can easily become academic in the bad sense. I don't think that this applies so much to the hard sciences where an area of study is interesting for any variety of reasons, but mainly, because it's interesting. Whether that research will do anything other than tell us something new about the world is unimportant. (Most people probably don't agree with me. Practical usefulness is highly valued. It's a lot easier to get funding for biomedical research than for astronomy.)
I have a sense that in the field of professional philosophy, an interesting ethical argument is a novel one that can be published and will get its author tenure.
Asking whether something is good or bad, right or wrong is important, because the answers should inform how we lead our lives. If something is simply interesting, then it doesn't change us. The professor who gets tenure can go on living his middle-class life and may never think deeply about his own life. As Kotsko said in a slightly different context, he (substituting the professor for liberals) has a set of moral values and practical habits, but they're never addressed specifically.
Interesting arguments can too easily become overly abstract and distant. The professor and the ironic hipster are the same. Asking whether something is write means that you care about the answer. If something is merely interesting, no passion* is required, and it can be lifeless.
(*Insert the usual caveat that passion untempered by reason can be extremely dangerous, and in any case hot-headedness is not teh sort of passion to which I'm referring.)