virtue
∞
The Twenty-Year Plan: Pick A Star To Steer By
Often, when my students ask me what they should write their term papers about, I ask them to take the long view. What have they been studying that they will want to remember twenty years from now? Write about that, I say, and write for the sake of yourself, twenty years older than you are now.
It's probably frustrating to hear me say that, because I haven't really answered the question. If you came to me looking for me to name a topic, you left disappointed. I've only converted your question into another question.
But I hope the new question is a more helpful one. What do I want to know twenty years from now? What kind of person do I want to be then? What would I like that person to remember?
This is a hard thing to do, to imagine yourself twenty years older than you are now. Twenty years ago my image of my life at mid-career was at best very vague.
But it does not take long to discover that for most of us life is full of very urgent pressures. Student loans come due. Our employers demand that we produce certain results that may be only indirectly related to accomplishing the goals we have set for ourselves. Paying my taxes doesn't directly contribute to my long-term plans except by keeping me out of jail. And if you marry or have children that, too, will quickly complicate your life.
I can't sort all of life's complications out for you, but I can offer you some advice: form a twenty-year plan. Take a little time, right now, to ask yourself: where do I want to be in twenty years?
And then do that again and again as often as you can for the rest of your life.
Here's the thing: don't worry about whether you'll actually get there. None of us can see the road ahead. At most, we see a few steps ahead and we guess at what lies beyond them. We are like travelers in a dark land, where the road is obscure and all we can see is the twinkling sky.
Well, then, pick a star to steer by.
It may be that you will cross one of life's horizons and that star will no longer be visible. Okay. But you can see it now, right? So follow it faithfully while it shines the brightest. Set a goal - I want to be out of debt, I want to be working with people I like, I want to earn enough to support my family and give charitably, etc - and then ask which direction you'll have to step in to move closer to it.
Because the alternative is that you will constantly be looking down at your feet, at the urgent matters of where to step next. And that is, after all, pretty important. You don't want to turn an ankle or step off a ledge. But if you're always looking down at the urgent things, your neck will bend and get used to that angle, and you'll have no idea where you're going or how you're getting there.
So look up, pick a star, and follow it. And then keep looking up.
A hypocrite is someone who tells you to do one thing while doing another. If you're wondering, yes, I have a twenty-year plan. And it undergoes constant revision. It's always changing, and yet, as I compare versions of it, I find that there are constant themes, like these:
* I want to be more in love with my wife, and to be making her glad to be in love with me twenty years from now;
* I want to continue to be learning new things;
* I want to live near my kids for at least part of every year;
* I want to earn what we need, and to be a generous giver to those who have a hard time doing so.
These aren't the specifics, but some of the general themes that keep emerging. One great thing about allowing yourself to revise your twenty-year plan is that you won't go crazy trying to do what turns out to be impossible. Another is that these patterns will emerge that will help you to know yourself and your deepest values a little better.
I am wishing you the best on your journey as I write this.
It's probably frustrating to hear me say that, because I haven't really answered the question. If you came to me looking for me to name a topic, you left disappointed. I've only converted your question into another question.
But I hope the new question is a more helpful one. What do I want to know twenty years from now? What kind of person do I want to be then? What would I like that person to remember?
This is a hard thing to do, to imagine yourself twenty years older than you are now. Twenty years ago my image of my life at mid-career was at best very vague.
But it does not take long to discover that for most of us life is full of very urgent pressures. Student loans come due. Our employers demand that we produce certain results that may be only indirectly related to accomplishing the goals we have set for ourselves. Paying my taxes doesn't directly contribute to my long-term plans except by keeping me out of jail. And if you marry or have children that, too, will quickly complicate your life.
I can't sort all of life's complications out for you, but I can offer you some advice: form a twenty-year plan. Take a little time, right now, to ask yourself: where do I want to be in twenty years?
And then do that again and again as often as you can for the rest of your life.
Here's the thing: don't worry about whether you'll actually get there. None of us can see the road ahead. At most, we see a few steps ahead and we guess at what lies beyond them. We are like travelers in a dark land, where the road is obscure and all we can see is the twinkling sky.
Well, then, pick a star to steer by.
It may be that you will cross one of life's horizons and that star will no longer be visible. Okay. But you can see it now, right? So follow it faithfully while it shines the brightest. Set a goal - I want to be out of debt, I want to be working with people I like, I want to earn enough to support my family and give charitably, etc - and then ask which direction you'll have to step in to move closer to it.
Because the alternative is that you will constantly be looking down at your feet, at the urgent matters of where to step next. And that is, after all, pretty important. You don't want to turn an ankle or step off a ledge. But if you're always looking down at the urgent things, your neck will bend and get used to that angle, and you'll have no idea where you're going or how you're getting there.
So look up, pick a star, and follow it. And then keep looking up.
*****
A hypocrite is someone who tells you to do one thing while doing another. If you're wondering, yes, I have a twenty-year plan. And it undergoes constant revision. It's always changing, and yet, as I compare versions of it, I find that there are constant themes, like these:
* I want to be more in love with my wife, and to be making her glad to be in love with me twenty years from now;
* I want to continue to be learning new things;
* I want to live near my kids for at least part of every year;
* I want to earn what we need, and to be a generous giver to those who have a hard time doing so.
These aren't the specifics, but some of the general themes that keep emerging. One great thing about allowing yourself to revise your twenty-year plan is that you won't go crazy trying to do what turns out to be impossible. Another is that these patterns will emerge that will help you to know yourself and your deepest values a little better.
I am wishing you the best on your journey as I write this.
∞
College Football and Moral Education
Lately I've been pondering the significance of college sports. In the United States, nearly every college or university devotes significant resources to athletic facilities, coaches, and teams. It's so prevalent, we don't think of how peculiar it is that we have so closely united academics and athletics. Plenty of theorists of education have suggested that there is a natural connection between playfully educating the body and educating the mind, but it is not always obvious that there's a natural link between having a basketball team and having a strong math department, for instance.
Whenever I read an article in the local paper about a local talented high school athlete who has signed with a college sports team, I wonder why we don't report that a local talented debater, chess expert, or math student just made it into Harvard or the University of Chicago on the basis of her talent. It makes me wonder: Do we not care about intellectual ability as much we care about physical prowess?
In 1908 Harvard Philosophy professor Josiah Royce published an essay entitled "Football and Ideals." The essay is over a century old, but the topic and the ideas sound like they could have been written yesterday. Royce writes, "Football is at present a great social force in our country. It has long been so. Apparently it is destined to remain so." So far, this is correct.
In Royce's time football was still largely a college sport. (The NFL was founded twelve years later.) Just as college sports in the United States do today, it drew big crowds. Just as in our time, football had its scandals: severe injuries among players; hooliganism among the crowds; and unethical behavior among players off the field and among fans and gamblers.
And just as in our time, supporters of the sport claimed that football did more social good than harm.
In his essay, Royce takes all of this seriously. Any social force this great deserves to be examined, Royce says, in order to determine what social goods it provides, and at what cost. Only a few play, but all of us are affected by the sport. He puts it like this:
We often hear this expressed in similar terms today when proponents of college sports say that participation in sports fosters virtues like teamwork, or school spirit.
I think participation in athletics actually can do even more than this. As an educator, I have noticed that college athletes are often some of my most disciplined students. In general, they wake up early, take care of their bodies, and get their work done. There are exceptions, of course, but this has been the case with most of my student-athletes, anyway. Perhaps this is because I teach philosophy, and the weak students shy away from it because it is a difficult subject with no obvious cash value for their lives. In any event, my student athletes generally keep up the "student" part of that title fairly well. Being an athlete can provide numerous benefits for a student.
But this is only a small part of the question, isn't it? Royce reminds us that the question we are asking is not "Does playing football help the student-athlete?" but "Does football on campuses make us and our communities better?" In other words, this is not a question about the athlete but about the spectators. It is really a question about us.
This question is not a soft, squishy, depends-on-what-you-mean question. Royce has something very specific in mind: does the example of others' athleticism make you more ready to "go and do likewise," or does it merely thrill you? Or does it even sap your desire and ability to demonstrate similar excellence and loyalty?
Royce says that "if a man has only taught you to cheer him, he has so far only amused you," and if football has only allowed you to "let off steam" without making you "more practically devoted to your own tasks," then it has not made you better but possibly it has even stripped you of your moral strength.
This requires honest self-assessment. When you watch football, or other athletic contests (like the World Cup) are you becoming a better person, one more able to devote yourself to the tasks that strike you as worthy of your energies? Are you developing a deeper loyalty to others, and deeper respect for the loyalties of others, or does fandom in fact make those goals more difficult to attain?
Note that this is not a critique of football as a game, nor even of college sports as an institution. It is a critique of the spectators, and of the effect sports have on us when we watch them. Are they making us more fit for life together, or are they in fact making us less so?
I will not try to answer that question for now. Royce's conclusion, in his time, was that the conditions of spectating made football unfavorable "to the best moral development of our youth." College sports may be great for the players, but not for those who do not play, he said.
It's not obvious to me that things are now as they were then, but it is obvious to me that football has become a greater social force than it was in Royce's time a century ago. If so, it merits our constant examination. And if we are honest, and good, we will not be content with vague observations about building teamwork in the players. After all, the players never play alone, but always with a crowd. It is not just two teams who play a football game, but those two teams play together with the combined energies of the crowd, and each influences the other.
This should be obvious to us from the simple fact of team selection. Coaches select players from the general body of students (or potential students) in order to win games for the school, not in order to help those select few become better people. At many high schools and colleges, coaches are considered teaching faculty. But there is this important difference between sports teams and academic classes: academic teachers are not permitted to choose which students they will educate, but coaches generally have free rein to eliminate from their tutelage any whom they choose. So while college sports may be similar to classes (inasmuch as they purport to teach) they differ significantly in this respect.
For myself, I am not opposed to college sports. If anything, I would like to expand them to include all students as players, not merely as spectators. After all, if there are moral benefits to playing sports, then why would any institution of higher education not want to urge all of its students to gain that benefit by playing?
Whenever I read an article in the local paper about a local talented high school athlete who has signed with a college sports team, I wonder why we don't report that a local talented debater, chess expert, or math student just made it into Harvard or the University of Chicago on the basis of her talent. It makes me wonder: Do we not care about intellectual ability as much we care about physical prowess?
*****
In 1908 Harvard Philosophy professor Josiah Royce published an essay entitled "Football and Ideals." The essay is over a century old, but the topic and the ideas sound like they could have been written yesterday. Royce writes, "Football is at present a great social force in our country. It has long been so. Apparently it is destined to remain so." So far, this is correct.
In Royce's time football was still largely a college sport. (The NFL was founded twelve years later.) Just as college sports in the United States do today, it drew big crowds. Just as in our time, football had its scandals: severe injuries among players; hooliganism among the crowds; and unethical behavior among players off the field and among fans and gamblers.
And just as in our time, supporters of the sport claimed that football did more social good than harm.
In his essay, Royce takes all of this seriously. Any social force this great deserves to be examined, Royce says, in order to determine what social goods it provides, and at what cost. Only a few play, but all of us are affected by the sport. He puts it like this:
"Football must be estimated as to its general relations to the welfare of society, just as Standard Oil, or just as the railway management which results in killing a larger proportion of railway passengers in our country than in other countries, must be estimated; it must be judged by non-experts, precisely in so far as it influences their great common social concerns."Royce was in one sense a non-expert inasmuch as he was a professor, not a college athlete; but in another sense he was an expert because he had devoted much of his research to this question of ethics and the common good. Royce held that the aim of our moral lives is the fostering of loyalty, and that we can see this in a range of social institutions. He wasn't arguing that we should aim for small and local loyalties, though, but for loyalties that, though they begin and are expressed locally, develop into a broad agape-like loyalty that includes all people.
We often hear this expressed in similar terms today when proponents of college sports say that participation in sports fosters virtues like teamwork, or school spirit.
I think participation in athletics actually can do even more than this. As an educator, I have noticed that college athletes are often some of my most disciplined students. In general, they wake up early, take care of their bodies, and get their work done. There are exceptions, of course, but this has been the case with most of my student-athletes, anyway. Perhaps this is because I teach philosophy, and the weak students shy away from it because it is a difficult subject with no obvious cash value for their lives. In any event, my student athletes generally keep up the "student" part of that title fairly well. Being an athlete can provide numerous benefits for a student.
But this is only a small part of the question, isn't it? Royce reminds us that the question we are asking is not "Does playing football help the student-athlete?" but "Does football on campuses make us and our communities better?" In other words, this is not a question about the athlete but about the spectators. It is really a question about us.
This question is not a soft, squishy, depends-on-what-you-mean question. Royce has something very specific in mind: does the example of others' athleticism make you more ready to "go and do likewise," or does it merely thrill you? Or does it even sap your desire and ability to demonstrate similar excellence and loyalty?
Royce says that "if a man has only taught you to cheer him, he has so far only amused you," and if football has only allowed you to "let off steam" without making you "more practically devoted to your own tasks," then it has not made you better but possibly it has even stripped you of your moral strength.
This requires honest self-assessment. When you watch football, or other athletic contests (like the World Cup) are you becoming a better person, one more able to devote yourself to the tasks that strike you as worthy of your energies? Are you developing a deeper loyalty to others, and deeper respect for the loyalties of others, or does fandom in fact make those goals more difficult to attain?
Note that this is not a critique of football as a game, nor even of college sports as an institution. It is a critique of the spectators, and of the effect sports have on us when we watch them. Are they making us more fit for life together, or are they in fact making us less so?
I will not try to answer that question for now. Royce's conclusion, in his time, was that the conditions of spectating made football unfavorable "to the best moral development of our youth." College sports may be great for the players, but not for those who do not play, he said.
It's not obvious to me that things are now as they were then, but it is obvious to me that football has become a greater social force than it was in Royce's time a century ago. If so, it merits our constant examination. And if we are honest, and good, we will not be content with vague observations about building teamwork in the players. After all, the players never play alone, but always with a crowd. It is not just two teams who play a football game, but those two teams play together with the combined energies of the crowd, and each influences the other.
This should be obvious to us from the simple fact of team selection. Coaches select players from the general body of students (or potential students) in order to win games for the school, not in order to help those select few become better people. At many high schools and colleges, coaches are considered teaching faculty. But there is this important difference between sports teams and academic classes: academic teachers are not permitted to choose which students they will educate, but coaches generally have free rein to eliminate from their tutelage any whom they choose. So while college sports may be similar to classes (inasmuch as they purport to teach) they differ significantly in this respect.
For myself, I am not opposed to college sports. If anything, I would like to expand them to include all students as players, not merely as spectators. After all, if there are moral benefits to playing sports, then why would any institution of higher education not want to urge all of its students to gain that benefit by playing?
∞
We can begin by directing more funding to universities. We need bright engineers who have the freedom and funds to investigate how to make more efficient solar and wind energy.
We also need bright students in the humanities who will help us form the best policies to make sure we use our technology well. After all, a democracy can live without engineers, but it cannot survive long without reporters, teachers, and lawyers.
We know that money spent on education pays a perpetual dividend to both the person educated and her whole community.
We can also encourage the creation of new and important prizes. Why should we not have more prizes like the Nobel Prizes? And why shouldn't such a proud and wealthy nation fund some of those prizes? You've got the ear of the world for a little while longer. Use that opportunity well, and urge us to put our private funds into prizes for people who advance the causes that matter most to humanity: growing good food, creating and preserving clean water, protecting the species God told us to care for, healing the sick, liberating captives, and making us better producers and consumers of energy.
I am grateful for people who willingly take on the burdens of public office. I don't imagine it is easy. You remain in my prayers.
David
Hope And The Future: An Open Letter To The President
Dear President Obama,
I know you've got a lot on your mind right now, and I don't envy you the burdens of your office. I pray for you often, asking God to give you the wisdom to make good decisions and the strength to carry them out.
I have two requests for you today. The first is, please don't give up on hope. In your first campaign you spoke about hope a lot, and I think you know that meant a lot to people everywhere. We all want hope, especially hope that we feel we can believe in. We will often settle for unreasonable hopes, but we prefer hopes that seem grounded in possibility rather than in wild fantasy. For a while there you sounded like you had both hope and reason for hope. When I think about the office you occupy, I imagine there's a lot that works to rein hope in, to tame hope and to break it. You start out with big ideals, and then everyone reminds you that limited resources will be made to seem even scarcer by partisan quarrels until there's nothing left to spend on dreams. But let me tell you this: we need you to make lots of small decisions, but we also need some big dreams, some reasonable hopes. We need someone who will climb the steps to the bully pulpit and preach a sermon that reminds us of "the better angels of our nature." Don't just make the little decisions; remind us of the great hopes that have lived in our nation.
The second request is related to the first: I'd like you to help us to nurture the reasonable hope that we can find new ways of making energy. There are powerful sermons being preached about building more oil and tar sand pipelines so that the old ways can be maintained. But those are sermons without hope, the sermons of a creed doomed to perish in fire and smoke of its own burning, the platitudes born of a faith in a limited and dwindling resource. They are the cynical homilies of those who pass the collection plate and who think the worst thing they can lose is our regular tithing to the god of petroleum.
We need a reformation in that way of thinking.
Because national security is not just about defending ourselves with bullets and bombs, and it's not just about making sure we have enough oil. In the long run, national security has to mean that we have taken good care of the land, so that it is still worth inhabiting. That, in turn, means we have nurtured our hearts and minds and cultivated our virtue. What, after all, does it profit a nation to gain the world and lose its soul? We are a nation of innovators, not just custodians of the status quo. We began as an experiment, and it is in experimentation and new thinking that our hope now lies.
I know you've got a lot on your mind right now, and I don't envy you the burdens of your office. I pray for you often, asking God to give you the wisdom to make good decisions and the strength to carry them out.
I have two requests for you today. The first is, please don't give up on hope. In your first campaign you spoke about hope a lot, and I think you know that meant a lot to people everywhere. We all want hope, especially hope that we feel we can believe in. We will often settle for unreasonable hopes, but we prefer hopes that seem grounded in possibility rather than in wild fantasy. For a while there you sounded like you had both hope and reason for hope. When I think about the office you occupy, I imagine there's a lot that works to rein hope in, to tame hope and to break it. You start out with big ideals, and then everyone reminds you that limited resources will be made to seem even scarcer by partisan quarrels until there's nothing left to spend on dreams. But let me tell you this: we need you to make lots of small decisions, but we also need some big dreams, some reasonable hopes. We need someone who will climb the steps to the bully pulpit and preach a sermon that reminds us of "the better angels of our nature." Don't just make the little decisions; remind us of the great hopes that have lived in our nation.The second request is related to the first: I'd like you to help us to nurture the reasonable hope that we can find new ways of making energy. There are powerful sermons being preached about building more oil and tar sand pipelines so that the old ways can be maintained. But those are sermons without hope, the sermons of a creed doomed to perish in fire and smoke of its own burning, the platitudes born of a faith in a limited and dwindling resource. They are the cynical homilies of those who pass the collection plate and who think the worst thing they can lose is our regular tithing to the god of petroleum.
We need a reformation in that way of thinking.
Because national security is not just about defending ourselves with bullets and bombs, and it's not just about making sure we have enough oil. In the long run, national security has to mean that we have taken good care of the land, so that it is still worth inhabiting. That, in turn, means we have nurtured our hearts and minds and cultivated our virtue. What, after all, does it profit a nation to gain the world and lose its soul? We are a nation of innovators, not just custodians of the status quo. We began as an experiment, and it is in experimentation and new thinking that our hope now lies.
We can begin by directing more funding to universities. We need bright engineers who have the freedom and funds to investigate how to make more efficient solar and wind energy.
We also need bright students in the humanities who will help us form the best policies to make sure we use our technology well. After all, a democracy can live without engineers, but it cannot survive long without reporters, teachers, and lawyers.
We know that money spent on education pays a perpetual dividend to both the person educated and her whole community.
We can also encourage the creation of new and important prizes. Why should we not have more prizes like the Nobel Prizes? And why shouldn't such a proud and wealthy nation fund some of those prizes? You've got the ear of the world for a little while longer. Use that opportunity well, and urge us to put our private funds into prizes for people who advance the causes that matter most to humanity: growing good food, creating and preserving clean water, protecting the species God told us to care for, healing the sick, liberating captives, and making us better producers and consumers of energy.
I am grateful for people who willingly take on the burdens of public office. I don't imagine it is easy. You remain in my prayers.
David
∞
The Best Watchmen Of Our Thoughts
"And, finally, I suppose they took the acropolis of the young man's soul, perceiving that it was empty of fair studies and practices and true speeches, and it's these that are the best
watchmen and guardians in the thought of men whom the gods love."
Plato, Republic 560b. Allan Bloom's translation. (Basic Books, 1991)
∞
Not The Weapons But What They Defend
My latest post at Sojourners' "God's Politics" blog:
"My grandfather was a career military officer, and I admired him deeply for it. As a child, I would try to imagine the battles he was in, and I thought of him as a hero. As I grew older, I became more aware of what he had given up for us, and what that might have cost him...."Read it all here.
∞
"What We Need Right Now"
From my latest contribution to the "God's Politics" blog at Sojourners:
"Any right-thinking stranger on our shores must read our daily news and think our nation has gone mad. We have cultivated the ability to end lives quickly; and yet we are continually surprised when our fellow citizens use the tools we have devised for exactly the purpose for which we invented them. Come to think of it, I think we’ve gone mad, too."You can read it all here.
∞
Guns and Aesthetics
A number of times in the last few months the issue of aesthetics and firearms has arisen, notably in connection with the recently proposed ban on what are called assault weapons. I say "what are called assault weapons" because it's difficult to decide which weapons should be included in that category. The assault weapons ban tries to categorize them by asking whether they meet at least three out of a short list of criteria.
Many guns are semiautomatic - that is, each pull of the trigger fires a round and then loads the next round - without being assault weapons. Most of the duck hunters I know use semiautomatic shotguns, for instance. Their guns only hold three rounds (as stipulated by the law that governs the hunting of migratory waterfowl) but those three rounds can be fired in rapid succession, and most of the guns can be quickly made to hold more than three rounds - usually up to five. Some small-game guns that fire .22 caliber rounds (one of the smallest and least powerful bullets commonly available) are also semiautomatic; and I'd guess most of the handguns sold today are semiautomatic as well. But few of these guns qualify as assault weapons.
Critics of the ban point out that for this reason (among others) the criteria for assault weapons are merely aesthetic. Banning guns on the basis of aesthetics will do little or nothing to solve the problem of gun violence, they say.
I haven't looked into the statistics, but I would guess that most gun deaths in the United States involve semiautomatic handguns and not assault weapons.
Which leads me to the question of whether the aesthetics of guns matters.
My answer is not about what laws we should enact, but about whether aesthetics matters anywhere. And the answer is that every one of us knows that aesthetics always matters. It affects the kind of car we drive, the clothes we wear, the way we wear our hair. Even those who profess that they don't care about these things almost certainly do care. Everyone who studies advertising and marketing knows; songwriters and filmmakers know; everywhere we turn we find a human environment in which we have made important choices on the basis of how the visual aspect of our belongings and edifices makes us feel.
The Best View In Warsaw
When the Nazis were retreating from Warsaw they dynamited the city, block by block, leveling nearly every building in the city. After the war, the proud Poles gathered photos and paintings and rebuilt the city, brick by brick, to look just as it had before the war. No doubt this was much harder than simply rebuilding, but they knew: aesthetics matters. It is the expression of people who will not be put down. Visual culture can be used to rally a nation, to embolden hearts, to renew hope.
Years ago, when I was working in Poland, one of my students offered to take me to the top of the Palace of Science and Culture in Warsaw. The building was a "gift" from Moscow, and the building rises from a huge footprint to a soaring tower that overlooks all of Warsaw. When we reached the top and gazed out on the city, Tomek said to me "This is the best view in all of Warsaw."
"Because the tower is so tall that you can see everything?" I asked.
"No," he quickly replied. "It's because this is the only place in Warsaw where you can't see this damned tower!" The building was a "gift" but it was also a visible reminder of Russian Soviet power. Everything from the wide footprint to the dizzying height to the architectural style was an aesthetic expression of domination. The Soviets knew: aesthetics matters. Visual culture can be used to intimidate and oppress.
You Are A Sign
Regardless of what you think of the proposed ban on certain kinds of guns, this should be obvious. Go to a gun shop or a gun show sometime and ask yourself whether aesthetics matters in guns. It might not matter enough to inform our laws, but the guns we make and buy for ourselves ought to tell us something about what is in our hearts. The thing we hold in our hand, like the car we drive and the clothes we wear, is something we project to others, a word we are silently and visibly speaking. As I have written before, the gun is not a neutral element in this speech. It is a word we speak, but it can be a word that speaks us, too. Let me tell you what every polyglot knows: some words in some languages open up new thoughts that you didn't think to think in your native tongue. The technologies we deploy may be the same; as may the visible aspect of those technologies. Nothing is ever neutral; as Peirce said, everything - everything - is a sign, and we ourselves become signs as well.
This doesn't answer the question of what kind of laws we should have. I think that question is secondary to this question: what kind of people should we be?
Many guns are semiautomatic - that is, each pull of the trigger fires a round and then loads the next round - without being assault weapons. Most of the duck hunters I know use semiautomatic shotguns, for instance. Their guns only hold three rounds (as stipulated by the law that governs the hunting of migratory waterfowl) but those three rounds can be fired in rapid succession, and most of the guns can be quickly made to hold more than three rounds - usually up to five. Some small-game guns that fire .22 caliber rounds (one of the smallest and least powerful bullets commonly available) are also semiautomatic; and I'd guess most of the handguns sold today are semiautomatic as well. But few of these guns qualify as assault weapons.
 |
| Which ones are the dangerous ones? |
I haven't looked into the statistics, but I would guess that most gun deaths in the United States involve semiautomatic handguns and not assault weapons.
Which leads me to the question of whether the aesthetics of guns matters.
My answer is not about what laws we should enact, but about whether aesthetics matters anywhere. And the answer is that every one of us knows that aesthetics always matters. It affects the kind of car we drive, the clothes we wear, the way we wear our hair. Even those who profess that they don't care about these things almost certainly do care. Everyone who studies advertising and marketing knows; songwriters and filmmakers know; everywhere we turn we find a human environment in which we have made important choices on the basis of how the visual aspect of our belongings and edifices makes us feel.
 |
| They aren't just vehicles for our bodies, but for all the other things we wish to convey as well. |
The Best View In Warsaw
When the Nazis were retreating from Warsaw they dynamited the city, block by block, leveling nearly every building in the city. After the war, the proud Poles gathered photos and paintings and rebuilt the city, brick by brick, to look just as it had before the war. No doubt this was much harder than simply rebuilding, but they knew: aesthetics matters. It is the expression of people who will not be put down. Visual culture can be used to rally a nation, to embolden hearts, to renew hope.
Years ago, when I was working in Poland, one of my students offered to take me to the top of the Palace of Science and Culture in Warsaw. The building was a "gift" from Moscow, and the building rises from a huge footprint to a soaring tower that overlooks all of Warsaw. When we reached the top and gazed out on the city, Tomek said to me "This is the best view in all of Warsaw."
"Because the tower is so tall that you can see everything?" I asked.
"No," he quickly replied. "It's because this is the only place in Warsaw where you can't see this damned tower!" The building was a "gift" but it was also a visible reminder of Russian Soviet power. Everything from the wide footprint to the dizzying height to the architectural style was an aesthetic expression of domination. The Soviets knew: aesthetics matters. Visual culture can be used to intimidate and oppress.
You Are A Sign
Regardless of what you think of the proposed ban on certain kinds of guns, this should be obvious. Go to a gun shop or a gun show sometime and ask yourself whether aesthetics matters in guns. It might not matter enough to inform our laws, but the guns we make and buy for ourselves ought to tell us something about what is in our hearts. The thing we hold in our hand, like the car we drive and the clothes we wear, is something we project to others, a word we are silently and visibly speaking. As I have written before, the gun is not a neutral element in this speech. It is a word we speak, but it can be a word that speaks us, too. Let me tell you what every polyglot knows: some words in some languages open up new thoughts that you didn't think to think in your native tongue. The technologies we deploy may be the same; as may the visible aspect of those technologies. Nothing is ever neutral; as Peirce said, everything - everything - is a sign, and we ourselves become signs as well.
This doesn't answer the question of what kind of laws we should have. I think that question is secondary to this question: what kind of people should we be?
∞
The Virtue of Virtue
Virtue ethics is problematic. It certainly is helpful at times, but it is not helpful when
it names virtues that others cannot relate to; or when we use it to describe
virtues that only certain classes of people can ever attain; or when virtues
entail a metaphysics to which others are unwilling to commit. The very word “virtue” raises a
red flag for some people because it is a gendered word, rooted in the Latin vir, meaning an adult male. I often wish we had a better
translation of the word Aristotle first used, arête, which means something like “excellence.”
At any rate, virtue ethics may have great value if we allow
Aristotle’s description of arête to
be a moving target, and if we appeal to it as an approach to governing our own
conduct rather than as a way to make rules for others. (Isn’t it the case that so often we
write rules for others rather than for ourselves? That should tell us something.)
Aristotle tells us that virtue is the mean between extremes,
as the man of practical wisdom would determine it. But which of us is the man of practical wisdom? No one of us has that down. So no one of us may be expected to
understand virtue exactly. This
would appear to be an argument for a collective decision, and to some degree it
is. Our public deliberations about
ethics, about methods of research, about law, about public conduct – all of
these are, in a way, attempts by groups of people to figure out what a truly
wise and prudent person would do.
So to some degree, communities and their traditions are
embodiments of decisions about virtue.
We must remember, however, that we’re always on the move, ever seeking,
never fully finding.
I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s citation of Lessing in
Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
We live lives of unknowing, ever striving for what we might know. "Now we see as in a glass, darkly; now we see in part." And that's not so bad, is it? Peirce might call the belief that we don't know fully a regulative ideal; or I suppose, in Rorty’s terms, we might call it a pragmatic hope. If we take ourselves not to have arrived at perfect justice yet, that belief will drive us to keep seeking to improve our justice.“If God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand the one and only ever-striving drive for truth, even with the corollary of erring forever and ever, and if he were to say to me:--Choose! I would humbly fall down to him at his left hand and say: Father, give! Pure truth is indeed only for you alone!”*
You’ve read this far, so you’re probably ready for me to
make my point. Here it is: as we
talk about policies and politics, rules and laws—in short, when we are deeply
concerned with governing others—let us not neglect governing ourselves, by reflecting on, and trying to enact, virtue in our decisions. Life is uncertain. We do not know what will come next,
what we will be given, what will be taken away. But no one can take away the small decisions we make, the
small decisions that, one by one, make us.
******
*Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, Vol I) 106. The quotation is a citation from Lessing by Kierkegaard.
******
*Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, Vol I) 106. The quotation is a citation from Lessing by Kierkegaard.
∞
Safe and Sound: Guns, Fear, and Virtue
What do guns do for us? Do guns make our lives better, or do they just make us feel
stronger and safer? I know those aren't the only two options, but I want to
distinguish between two notions of salvation: on the one hand, we may be
saved by what makes us more safe, while on the other hand, we may be
saved by what makes us more whole. I'm using a theological word, but
I'm thinking more etymologically than theologically, connecting
"salvation" with the Latin salvus, which can mean both "safe,"
and "well" or "sound." (I know word origins don't dictate meanings, but they do
help us understand how our ideas developed.)
So again, what do guns do for us? It's probably true that in many circumstances guns make us safer, or at least make us feel safer, and that's not unimportant. But I do wonder whether they make us better people. I don't think this question is easily answered. It's not hard to imagine someone developing great skill, self-control, and confidence through target-shooting, and I've known police officers who regarded their guns as tools that helped them to make their communities better places. But this passage from Kerouac offers another possibility. Kerouac's protagonist Sal Paradise (Kerouac's fictionalized autobiographical persona) describes what it was like to be alone in San Francisco, thousands of miles from home:
It's not the gun that makes him threaten strangers or that makes him want to steal; but the gun doesn't help, and it's not neutral. It's a catalyst for something else, and when Sal feels lonely the gun becomes a way of expressing his pain. It might make him safer, but it also affords an opportunity (which he seizes) to become less virtuous. His trust contracts as his pain dilates. My eyes keep pausing on the line "I had to show it to someone." Pointing it at strangers in the men's bathroom is at once a threat of violence and a plea to be known, a disclosure of a secret.
Hard times can make us wary. Another novel, Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men, comes to mind here, another novel about men drifting across America, searching for an elusive dream. When Steinbeck's iconic drifters Lennie and George show up at a farm to look for work, the man who hires them remarks on how unusual it is for men to care for one another as they do:
Maybe so. If you know the novel, you know the complicated ways guns, trust, love, and fear figure into it. If you don't, I won't spoil it for you.
We certainly need better laws; we always do. Just as importantly, we need to become better people. People who “travel around together” in difficult times, because it is better to do so than to spend our lives scared of the whole damn world.
*Jack Kerouac, On The Road. (New York: Penguin, 1991) 73.
** John Steinbeck, Of Mice And Men. (New York: Penguin, 1994) 37.
So again, what do guns do for us? It's probably true that in many circumstances guns make us safer, or at least make us feel safer, and that's not unimportant. But I do wonder whether they make us better people. I don't think this question is easily answered. It's not hard to imagine someone developing great skill, self-control, and confidence through target-shooting, and I've known police officers who regarded their guns as tools that helped them to make their communities better places. But this passage from Kerouac offers another possibility. Kerouac's protagonist Sal Paradise (Kerouac's fictionalized autobiographical persona) describes what it was like to be alone in San Francisco, thousands of miles from home:
“I tried everything in the books to make a girl. I even spent a whole night with a girl on a park bench, till dawn, without success. She was a blonde from Minnesota. There were plenty of queers. Several times I went to San Fran with my gun and when a queer approached me in a bar john I took out the gun and said “Eh? Eh” What’s that you say?” He bolted. I’ve never understood why I did that; I knew queers all over the country. It was just the loneliness of San Francisco and the fact that I had a gun. I had to show it to someone. I walked by a jewelry store and had the sudden impulse to shoot up the window, take out the finest rings and bracelets, and run to give them to Lee Ann. Then we could flee to Nevada together. The time was coming for me to leave Frisco or I’d go crazy.”*
 |
| "I had to show it to someone." |
Hard times can make us wary. Another novel, Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men, comes to mind here, another novel about men drifting across America, searching for an elusive dream. When Steinbeck's iconic drifters Lennie and George show up at a farm to look for work, the man who hires them remarks on how unusual it is for men to care for one another as they do:
"Slim looked through George and beyond him. 'Ain't many guys travel around together,' he mused. 'I don't know why. Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.'"**
Maybe so. If you know the novel, you know the complicated ways guns, trust, love, and fear figure into it. If you don't, I won't spoil it for you.
Nor will I try to sort out what our laws about guns should be. Not here, anyway, because something else is weighing on my mind even more right now. The question of laws, and of safety, is important. But so is the matter of being not just safe, but sound.
We certainly need better laws; we always do. Just as importantly, we need to become better people. People who “travel around together” in difficult times, because it is better to do so than to spend our lives scared of the whole damn world.
*****
*Jack Kerouac, On The Road. (New York: Penguin, 1991) 73.
** John Steinbeck, Of Mice And Men. (New York: Penguin, 1994) 37.
*****
I am looking for a better word than "virtue," but haven't found one yet, unless maybe "excellence" fits.
*****
A longer version of this post was published by the Chronicle of Higher Education in both print and online in the Chronicle Review under the title "Armed In Anxiety." A subscription (often available through your library) is required to see the online version.
∞
The Idolatry of Fear
Let me start with some rough definitions: by worship I mean ascribing worth to something, to the point of making it a guide for one's actions. By an idol I mean something that does not merit the worship it is given.
Now: when fear becomes the guide for our actions, we should ask whether that fear deserves to be at the center of our attention.
Because what resides at the center of our attention starts to shape us. I don't mean it remakes us completely. I mean that what we mentally caress and cherish will affect our ethical decisions. The inward life has outward consequences.
Some fear is prudent. It is prudent not to stand on mountain ridges or under trees during thunderstorms. But if we live in constant fear of lightning, something has gone wrong. Either we live in the wrong place, or lightning has taken too central a role in our minds. Lightning becomes a monster, a demigod, a perpetual danger that stunts our growth and keeps our heads down.
The same could be said when we fear our neighbors: either we live in the wrong place, or we give too much credence to potential dangers and crowd out from our consciousness the potential joys of human fellowship. So our neighbors become monsters and we become their victims, and we worship them as fearful gods whom we come to despise.
What is the antidote to the idolatry of fear? Someone once said "perfect love drives out all fear." If I can conceive of my neighbor not as a monster but as someone worth loving--even to a small degree--then I have begun to let love -- philia, agape* -- dwell at the center of my consciousness. And I can begin to lift my head, just a little.
****
* Philia can mean "love," or "friendship." The latter books of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics give a thoughtful treatment of philia. Among his insights there, Aristotle says that where there is philia, there is no need for laws. Like philia, the word agape can be translated as "love." Charles Peirce used this word to describe the kind of love that seeks the good of the beloved (you can see more here and also in the Gospel of John) and distinguishes this from eros, the love that seeks the good of the lover.
Now: when fear becomes the guide for our actions, we should ask whether that fear deserves to be at the center of our attention.
Because what resides at the center of our attention starts to shape us. I don't mean it remakes us completely. I mean that what we mentally caress and cherish will affect our ethical decisions. The inward life has outward consequences.
Some fear is prudent. It is prudent not to stand on mountain ridges or under trees during thunderstorms. But if we live in constant fear of lightning, something has gone wrong. Either we live in the wrong place, or lightning has taken too central a role in our minds. Lightning becomes a monster, a demigod, a perpetual danger that stunts our growth and keeps our heads down.
The same could be said when we fear our neighbors: either we live in the wrong place, or we give too much credence to potential dangers and crowd out from our consciousness the potential joys of human fellowship. So our neighbors become monsters and we become their victims, and we worship them as fearful gods whom we come to despise.
What is the antidote to the idolatry of fear? Someone once said "perfect love drives out all fear." If I can conceive of my neighbor not as a monster but as someone worth loving--even to a small degree--then I have begun to let love -- philia, agape* -- dwell at the center of my consciousness. And I can begin to lift my head, just a little.
****
* Philia can mean "love," or "friendship." The latter books of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics give a thoughtful treatment of philia. Among his insights there, Aristotle says that where there is philia, there is no need for laws. Like philia, the word agape can be translated as "love." Charles Peirce used this word to describe the kind of love that seeks the good of the beloved (you can see more here and also in the Gospel of John) and distinguishes this from eros, the love that seeks the good of the lover.
∞
The Ethics of Hunting
According to the myth, Actaeon the hunter was turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own dogs. Many versions add that this was because Actaeon offended Artemis. He viewed her as she bathed, or he attempted to violate her. His punishment was to be transformed from hunter to hunted. His own dogs did not recognize him as they devoured him, (though Apollodorus adds that they later grieved as they searched for their master.)
Just as there are many versions of the myth, so there are many interpretations, and many things that Actaeon and Artemis might symbolize. The divinity of Artemis suggests to some that hunters seek something much loftier than meat for their table. Her femininity and virginity suggest to others that hunting represents sexual violence in another guise.
Both of these may be correct, but let me offer a third possibility: perhaps this is a story about virtue. Actaeon acts without virtue, and he then becomes the victim of his own plans. He makes the mistake of thinking that a hunter is the rightful possessor of all he sees, and so he fails to act with humility and gratitude. As a result, he loses everything, including those relationships that were most dear to him.
The myth of Actaeon is a vivid picture of what good hunters know: the hunter is not lord of the forest nor master of nature. Most of us live our lives as far from predation as we can arrange. A certain type of hunter attempts to erase some of that distance. The best hunters may be those who, in doing so, discover their true place in nature and emerge from the forest and field remembering their place with humility and gratitude. Actaeon forgets who he is when he attempts to take Artemis as his own, and his forgetfulness is absolute.
Just as there are many versions of the myth, so there are many interpretations, and many things that Actaeon and Artemis might symbolize. The divinity of Artemis suggests to some that hunters seek something much loftier than meat for their table. Her femininity and virginity suggest to others that hunting represents sexual violence in another guise.
Both of these may be correct, but let me offer a third possibility: perhaps this is a story about virtue. Actaeon acts without virtue, and he then becomes the victim of his own plans. He makes the mistake of thinking that a hunter is the rightful possessor of all he sees, and so he fails to act with humility and gratitude. As a result, he loses everything, including those relationships that were most dear to him.
The myth of Actaeon is a vivid picture of what good hunters know: the hunter is not lord of the forest nor master of nature. Most of us live our lives as far from predation as we can arrange. A certain type of hunter attempts to erase some of that distance. The best hunters may be those who, in doing so, discover their true place in nature and emerge from the forest and field remembering their place with humility and gratitude. Actaeon forgets who he is when he attempts to take Artemis as his own, and his forgetfulness is absolute.