The really scary thing about the current environmental crisis

Environment buzzwords have been on everyone’s lips recently. Global warming, carbon footprints, eco-friendly, sustainability – you can’t open a newspaper or magazine without seeing them. More people are thinking about the environment than ever before. We are walking to work, buying reusable shopping bags, eating organic, replacing incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescents and countless other small measures we hope will add up and save the environment. The United States government is promising the EPA will step up to the plate and save us from ourselves, while the president – in the name of Homeland Security – sets aside more than 30 environmental regulations [Richard Marosi and Nicole Gaouette, “Environmental rules waived for Mexican border fence,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2008, News section, Online edition.] to finish the precious Mexican border fence before the Mexican economy collapses when we’ve burned through all their oil. Television advertisements show how you can be green while wearing cotton – that oh-so-environmentally-friendly fabric – and offset the carbon emissions from your totally unnecessary SUV by purchasing recycled paper. It’s chic to be environmentally conscious.

But I’m actually not here to talk about the efficacy of small steps taken by consumers, or how both the government and the corporations talk out of both sides of their mouths on this issue. I’m not even here to try to convince you of the reality – and gravity – of global warming. My question is even more serious, I feel. What if the government imposed – and took more steps to enforce – stricter environmental regulations. Would large corporations comply? Does the government, in this age of outsourcing and endless litigation, have the power to make the business world stand at attention anymore?

There are several factors I think it important to discuss while I explore answers to this question. First, I will explore a brief description of globalization, then an outline of views on what the government’s role in environmental protection should be, followed by a description of the goals of corporations and how these relate to concerns for the state of the environment. I will use Martin Wolf’s opinions, expressed in Why Globalization Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004], to contrast my own on the given topics.

Wolf defines globalization as the “free movement of goods, services, labour and capital, thereby creating a single market in inputs and outputs; and full national treatment for foreign investors so that, economically speaking, there are no foreigners.” [pp. 14] For the purposes of my discussion, it is appropriate to point out that this includes the ability of corporations to outsource their labour.

There are as many views on how involved the government should be in people’s lives as there are people, it seems. They range from a government limited to only protecting from force, fraud and theft and enforcing contracts to a government that controls everything from business to religion. I am going to assume, for the sake of space and time, that we can agree environmental regulations, at least to some degree, are beneficial to us all, and therefore compliance with them and enforcement of them is desirable.

At this time it becomes relevant to describe the two broad economic categories into which the world falls: the centre and the periphery. The centre has also been referred to as the First World or the developed world, and includes mostly democratic industrialized countries such as the US, the EU and Japan. The periphery has been known as the Third World or the developing world, and includes sub-Saharan Africa, some Asian and Latin American countries, such as Nigeria, Indonesia and Guatemala.

A common concern with increasing globalization is that corporations will move their unskilled manufacturing away from centre countries that have higher environmental regulation standards to periphery countries that have lower standards. Besides just having lower standards in general, several factors, including lack of infrastructure and, in some cases, abundant corruption, cause periphery countries to have a harder time enforcing their laws, including those regarding taxes and environmental regulations. [pp. 274]

So what do the corporations want to do? I think it is quite clear that, no matter what the PR department says, no matter what shows up in the ‘mission statement,’ corporations are here to make money. That is what capitalism is all about, after all. So, when trying to imagine what a corporation will do in a given situation, just remember that bottom line. In fact, let’s imagine a typical American corporation (we’ll call it TAC). For each scenario I describe, we can use the corporate prime directive to figure out what the course of action for TAC would be.

The government imposes new, costly environmental regulations. TAC can choose to stay in the US and abide by the new regulations – either through new technologies or new procedures; stay in the US, disobey them and tie the government up in litigation; or move the offending processes to a country that either doesn’t have strict regulations and/or can’t enforce them. While Wolf thinks TAC will usually decide to go with the former [pp. 266], I don’t see this being cheaper a vast majority of the time, because if they choose to move labour costs are less and they wouldn’t have to follow any of those expensive regulations. If they choose to litigate and stay, they’re probably not changing their practices. Wolf suggests that leaving may tarnish their public image [pp. 272], but as we tend to be as financially motivated as TAC, I don’t see it being a problem as long as the product stays cheap and they throw us a feel-good advertising bone or two (such as the ‘green’ cotton ad).

TAC has decided to stay in the US, but not follow the regulations. Eventually, the government catches on – probably only after it affects some third party in a major way. TAC could pay up ASAP or litigate ad infinitum; meanwhile, are they going to stay and shape up or leave?

Although I think these few examples have shown quite nicely that it’s money, not upholding the law, that concerns TAC, there are a few other objections to my position I wish to address.

What am I complaining about? Wolf would ask; after all, “[e]nvironmental laws are generally much tougher than they were twenty years ago.” [pp. 254] Shouldn’t I be glad about that and stop wishing for the stars? I don’t think it is unreasonable to reach for the stars in this case. Yes, laws are tougher than they used to be – but we also know so much more about the effect we have on the environment than we used to. The pace of our law-tightening is not keeping up with our research advances. The point is not to get away with as much pollution as we possibly can, the point is to do as much as we can to eliminate negative externalities in the future, and make up for all past ones.

But what about factors dependent upon location? I am not saying that every corporation will move everything to the periphery. What I am saying is that those factors that are cheaper to do overseas, will be done overseas. And when factors are moved to the periphery, they will be executed in a way that is less environmentally conscious than it would be in the centre. This doesn’t affect every corporation, every field, every sector, but it affects enough of them to be concerned. And I would like to remind everyone that communication is only going to become faster and more streamlined. It will become easier and easier to do in the periphery what you once needed to do around a hotbed of research and development.

I want to make it clear that it is not outsourcing itself that is of chief concern here – while that might also be unethical, it is a debate for another time. I am just as outraged at the corporation that stays and ignores regulations as I am at the corporations that outsource so they don’t have to bother with piddledy regulations. The environment is a collective, global entity. Raping Mother Earth in China is just as bad as raping her in the US, even if we Americans don’t feel the effects right away.

All that is gold does not glitter

I'm going to level with you, and hope that gets me somewhere I haven't gotten yet.

I've been feeling guilty for not posting to my blog more often. After a brief spurt months and months ago of metaphysical exploration in the manner of Descartes (which, by the way, was very important to me at the time), the extent of my posts has basically been course essays with a few poems thrown in.

And this is not what I want.

I'm not especially busy, as the amount of time I spend on Facebook attests, so why haven't I been doing what I say I want to do with my life - talk to people through the written word and motivate change - instead of playing Scrabulous? I seem to have gotten caught up in the mechanism of my life and displaced my goals. Ugh!

This is not to say I haven't been progressing at all. I was recently informed that I am to be published in my university's literary journal. I am keeping up in my classes (for the most part) and am excited about writing an essay due next week. I have been participating in high-stress social situations and partially enjoying them (or at least going back for more). I have a new job, at which I am "kicking ass" (my boss' words, not mine). I have been keeping up with the blogs I read. So, my life is going pretty well on several fronts. Not that you want to hear about that. How people's lives are going well is not nearly so interesting as when catastrophe strikes.

But. Goal displacement. Right.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't understand why I can't seem to motivate myself to do this thing I know I want to do. Hypotheses, anyone?

I want to think of myself as flouting the goals and means of mainstream American society, but here I am, sitting on my ass getting high, scarfing pizza, and watching cyst videos on YouTube (which, if you have a strong stomach, can eat up hours) in between days of going to my public university and sitting through classes which really don't have any bearing on real life, when what I want to be doing is preparing organic, local, sustainably-raised quiche while talking about metaphysics with my beloved before sitting down to write poetry between the love-making and bed. After a day of saving the world.

Damn socialization to instant gratification.

So I guess my conclusion is...that I'm going to try to post more often, but give myself some slack as to the content/subject matter.

Women in Roman love poetry: mistress, poet, and letter writer

As a woman of the 21^st century who has always felt like she perhaps once belonged to another time period, the study of the lives of women of multiple cultures and eras has always held a special place in my scholastic interests. When trying to figure out how Roman women of the Augustan era actually lived, a vital resource is the literature featuring or at least mentioning them. Although much can of course be discerned through other archaeological media, literature remains a primary means for study.

Roman love elegy holds a wealth of information particularly about the relationships between these women and their extramarital lovers. Selected works of the poets Catullus, Propertius, Sulpicia, and Ovid are what I will focus on for the purpose of this essay. Each of these poets has a lover to whom they address poems or about whom they write poems: Catullus’ Lesbia, Propertius’ Cynthia, Sulpicia’s Cerinthus, and Ovid’s Corinna. Each of these subjects may or may not have corresponded closely to a historical figure. I am not particularly interested in whether or not scholars can point to a particular person and say ‘Aha! This is the real Lesbia!’ I am concerned with how closely these poetical works corresponded to reality in general. There is quite a bit of difference in saying that my lover visited Germany and while she was there I wrote her love poetry telling her how her cat was faring while she was away and saying that often lovers have to be separated and correspondence is able to pass between them assuring them of conditions back at home, even if a more common theme in Latin elegy is complaints of a separation as can be seen in Sulpicia’s tale of her ‘hateful birthday’ which is to be celebrated in the country without Cerinthus[1] and Propertius’ numerous grumblings that Cynthia is purposely spending time away from him with little care for his feelings.[2]

Still, attention must be taken to realise that a male poet’s portrayal may have considerable discrepancy between how they perceived and described these women’s lives and what their lives were actually like. Unless you have experienced a situation yourself, a certain amount of imagination must be utilized. This is part of what makes writing interesting and enjoyable to do, but can be a bit tricky to carry out accurately as well as believably. Even with female poets, there is the difference between reality and fiction that characterises all poetry. The audience of these authors must also be considered. Writing works for their poet friends to read would be different than writing things to be spread at large in the forum and different from writing things directly to their lovers – even as they realise that these epistles may well have had audiences that they did not intend or expect. Sulpicia herself acknowledges this particular dilemma, voicing a wish for the courage to blatantly send ‘unsealed tablets’ to her lover.[3]

Then again, if the literature bore absolutely no resemblance to reality, would it have had the audience that it must have had to have survived this long? The best fiction is often said to come from experience, so it holds that fiction bearing little or no resemblance to real experience would be of lesser quality and thus less likely to be preserved these two millennia. The strategy then, perhaps, to take is one of acceptance that nonetheless holds a healthy scepticism in the wings: observing everything carefully while noting the context. There are a few specific aspects of Roman women which I wish to explore in this way: how they behaved as mistresses and what sort of cultured skills they had especially as poets and letter writers as represented in Latin love elegy. Because I am considering the work of both men and women I will be able to discuss these aspects from the male viewpoint and from the perspective of a woman herself.

Unsurprisingly, the main of the poetry describes the qualities these women displayed as mistresses. A closely related string of themes is that the lovers are being kept physically apart in some way, whether by distance, chaperones, or infidelity.

The very way in which some of the poems are written suggests correspondence between the lovers in written form, telling us that women wrote to their lovers at least sometimes. These were educated women. Ovid demands a ‘long letter’ from Corinna via her hairdresser Napë, only to change his mind a few lines later, not wanting to ‘tire her fingers pushing a stylus,’ letting us know that it would have indeed been Corinna herself writing to him, not a learned slave transcribing her words.[4] As mentioned above, several of Propertius’ poems lament that Cynthia is off gallivanting in faraway places without him, which we can presume would necessitate letter writing.

Ovid beseeches a stoic ‘poor wretch’ of a porter who will not let him in to see his beloved.[5] Surely if she had wished to see him she would have instructed the porter to allow him in? Propertius speaks in the voice of his mistress’ doorway, which complains about all it has to endure, including the ‘long vigils of a tragic supplicant’ who cannot gain entrance.[6]

The lover often has to abide interference from the husband, to which he reacts jealously, conveniently forgetting that he is the “other man.” My favourite example of this is Ovid’s dinner party poem in which he instructs Corinna on how to behave while dining with her boorish husband: signal her thoughts to Ovid with ‘the language of eyebrows and fingers,’ and ‘refuse all food he has tasted first,’ but ‘above all don’t kiss him!’[7] And besides these horrid husbands, the women will insist on taking lovers other than the poets. Lesbia, with ‘her adulterers, three hundred together’ provokes Catullus to retort (semi-) publicly, sending her a message through his two friends.[8] In adorning herself in a way that suggests she is ‘preparing to go to a new man,’ Cynthia causes Propertius ‘so much pain.’[9] Infidelity is not limited to the women, however, as Cerinthus goes ‘chasing after hookers and spinning-girls and whores’ in a most vulgar fashion, neglecting his high-born mistress.[10]

One matter that Propertius and Ovid in particular like to write on is their mistress’ anger. Cynthia’s tongue is cutting and witty (also a fantastic quality in a poet, by the way), most notably when she catches Propertius sneaking in after a night of debauchery her enjoyed without her.[11] She actually speaks in the first person in this poem, giving yet another dimension to the “he said she said” nature of these men reporting on women’s personalities, qualities and activities. Ovid relates Corinna’s jealous anger over supposedly the most innocent of things – glances, compliments – although he himself is carrying on with her maid.[12] In another poem he talks about an old crone, Dipsas, giving Corinna lessons on how to balance her life, keeping her suitors and husband in their proper places.[13] You can imagine how her anger over one of Ovid’s misbehaviours could drive her to this measure.

A perhaps more pleasant theme shows happy times spent together. Ovid recounts a sultry summer afternoon spent on a couch with Corinna, who is – for him – the embodiment of perfection, with ‘faultless beauty.’[14] Catullus highly values Lesbia’s kisses, completely devoting two poems to them, both relating to desire for uncountable numbers of her sweet kisses.[15]

Still one more recurring subject is the mistress’ illness, which lends an opportunity for the dutiful lover to dote upon her. A fevered Sulpicia sends for Cerinthus, needing to know if he’s worried about her, for if he isn’t, it’s not worth getting better.[16] Propertius prays to Jupiter to save his ‘afflicted girl,’ citing Jove’s interest in beautiful girls as motivation enough to turn the tides of illness.[17] Ovid asks Isis for intervention as Corinna’s self-inflicted abortion has gone horribly awry, even as, in the next poem, he chastises Corinna for being so vain and rash.[18]

Propertius works the hardest to remind his readers of the cultivated talents of Roman women, as Cynthia is an accomplished poet and avid correspondent. He makes numerous references to her talent with the lyre[19] and refers to her as ‘sophisticated’ more than once.[20] Sulpicia is an extremely talented poet, as we have remnants of her work even though she was a woman, and most of her poems are in epistle form.[21]

Clearly, close inspection of Latin love elegy reveals women multidimensional and complex. Unfortunately, we learn almost exclusively of high class women through this genre but the various themes of elegy demonstrate their personalities and talents to us quite thoroughly. Whether or not the women described in the poems correspond precisely to historical figures, Augustan women would have possessed similar characteristics.

Sources for English Translation of the Text

(for easy reference on the part of the author)

Corelis, Jon. Roman Erotic Elegy. Salzburg, Austria: University of Salzburg Press, 1995. http://www.geocities.com/romanelegy (accessed December 27, 2007).

Katz, Vincent. The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius. Woodstock, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Lee, Guy. Ovid’s Amores. New York: Viking Press, 1968.

---. The Poems of Catullus. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.

---

[1] Sulpicia 2, ln 1

[2] Propertius 1.8, 1.11 and 1.12

[3] Sulpicia 1, ln 7-8

[4] Ovid 1.11, ln 19, 23

[5] Ovid 1.6, ln 1

[6] Propertius 1.16, ln 14

[7] Ovid 1.4, ln 19, 33, 38

[8] Catullus 11, ln 17-18

[9] Propertius 1.15, ln 8, 3

[10] Sulpicia 4, ln 3-4

[11] Propertius 1.3, especially ln 35-46

[12] Ovid 2.7-8

[13] Ovid 1.8

[14] Ovid 1.5, ln 17-18

[15] Catullus 5, 7

[16] Sulpicia 5

[17] Propertius 2.28

[18] Ovid 2.13-14

[19] Propertius 1.2 ln 28, 1.3 ln 42

[20] Propertius 1.2 ln 26, 1.7 ln 13

[21] Sulpicia 3, 4, 5, 6

71119

it’s morning

I’m sitting here feeling the weight

of my maiden’s breasts in my hands

trying

to imagine what they would feel like

pendulous and heavy with milk

how it would feel to nourish a baby

with these

because I’ve fed children

but never from my own body

everyone talks about the great connection it forges,

breast-feeding a baby

when does that tie grow weak?

fray

sever?

and who feels it more

the child or the mother?

I let down my hair, cascading, around my shoulders

covering me

I wish it could hide me

an invisibility cloak

sheltering me so that blows

physical and emotional

may miss their mark

instead of lodging,

an aching arrow,

between my breasts

I want to rip it out, this arrow,

tear it from my flesh

break the shaft over my knee

and hurl the point far away from me

so I never have to feel it again

but I am afraid

that in removing it

I may destroy my own heart

or worse, that I might see,

reflected on the razor-sharp point,

myself

and what is yet to be

so what do I do with this

this bond

forged in the womb and stretched across the years

it used to be strong

stronger than reason

now all I can see are the holes, the innumerable patches,

tattered and hoary with age

culminating finally with this arrow

this wretched arrow

in my heart

The Ecology of World Hunger

Salutations, dear reader. I don’t know your name, your gender, the color of your hair, your ethnicity, or your political ideology, but I do know one thing about you (with 99.9999% certainty, through sheer probability alone, but we’ll get to that later): you and I are of the same culture. Now, don’t get offended. Yes, I am your average 5^th-generation American mongrel, and you may be pure Japanese going back for as long as there has been a Japan, but that’s not what I’m talking about. While our ethnicities may be very different, what we share is a common cultural world view, a world view that has been around for the last 10,000 years, give or take. This world view that has spread throughout the East and West alike, leaving only tiny pockets of other cultures untouched, numbering somewhat less than 100,000 people total, making this vast culture the culture of 99.9999% of the globe. I first became aware of the commonality of global culture while reading different works by author Daniel Quinn. Where relevant, I will refer to specific examples and terms Quinn has used, but as much as possible I will try to explain the situation in my own way, as it relates to the specific issue with which I am presently concerned, that is, world hunger.

Ah, finally, I’m getting to the point. This is what I’m really talking about, world hunger, just another of the problems we’ve been trying to fix, like global warming or the destruction of the rainforests. Surely I don’t need to draw this global culture idea into the fray, do I? Sit back, my friend, and listen.

Before I begin to explain how we came to have this massive hunger problem, I must explain a concept or two. When I say that a certain group will not do Z because Z is not evolutionarily stable, this does not mean that no one has ever done Z. It means that those who have done Z are no longer around because doing Z results in elimination from the gene pool. Therefore, if a certain group is around, they have not been doing Z. Please remember that we are speaking on an evolutionary scale, where it may take hundreds of thousands of years to weed a trait completely out of the gene pool.

The first modern humans appeared about 100,000 years ago somewhere in Africa. They spread out over the globe, developing their own ways of living each suited to their particular locales. There were as many ways to live as there were peoples. Some peoples hunted for all of their food, some hunted a little and gathered a little, some gathered a lot and planted a little, some planted a lot and gathered a little and hunted a little. Diversity is, after all, the key to an evolutionarily stable ecology. This life was fine for them, for 90,000 years. I am not saying that it was a paradise, that humans during this period were free from any negative emotions, that they were free of problems inside the tribe caused by jealousy or anger, such as murder or infidelity.

What I am saying is that there was tolerance between tribes - indeed, between species. That is to say that humans, like lions and deer and trout, respected the law of limited competition. Quinn has phrased the law as follows: “You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food.”[1] Tribe A might give a show of force to Tribe B to protect their territory and their resources, but they won’t massacre Tribe B or take over their territory, because such a course of action is not evolutionarily stable.

I am speaking here of the law of limited competition with regard to humans, but it applies to all of nature. Humanity is not exempt from the effects of disobeying the law of limited competition, any more than they are exempt from the effects of disobeying the law of thermodynamics. This is what makes something a law of nature: its universality. Natural law theory as a formal philosophical theory was expressed first by the Greeks, saying that “the world is a rational order with values and purposes built into its very nature.”[2] Natural law theory is not merely a metaphysical theory however: it is often applied to ethics. What is natural is equated with what is right, what is unnatural is equated with what is wrong. The Christians took well to natural law theory, with one addition: their God, God being the one who built this purpose and value into nature. And because God had created this order, God was the one who had decided what was right and wrong.

Natural law theory has not had many adherents in recent years, due at least in part, albeit perhaps unconsciously, to David Hume’s criticism. He thought it the height of foolishness to equate what is natural with what is right; that move was, in his opinion, completely unphilosophical.[3] Other critics of natural law theory have also regarded negatively the move of drawing morality into natural laws. Nature is what it is, there is no sense, indeed no compelling reason or rationale for placing ethical labels on natural states. I do think there is some merit to this view, but for different reasons than the holders of the view themselves might have. However, we need to return to the story of humanity.

This was how the stage was set 10,000 years ago. In different places all over the globe, within a few hundreds or thousands of years of each other, a few cultures decided to pursue a different kind of agriculture, called totalitarian agriculture by Quinn. It has a new set of precepts, which are contrary to the law of limited competition. They are: 1) food dedicated to human use may be denied to all other species, 2) any species that would compete for human food may be destroyed at will, and 3) food needed by other species may be destroyed at will to make room for the production of human food.[4] This culture change is generally called the First Agricultural Revolution, or the Neolithic Revolution.

The reasons for this sudden shift in food management are not always examined by the average person. You know that this revolution happened of course, but perhaps you have not found it necessary to think too carefully about why it did or what the immediate effects were. One thing is definite: our cultural ancestors did not embrace totalitarian agriculture because it was easier. Two or three hours of labor per day is enough to sustain the average hunter-gatherer, while we zip about with our eight or nine hours workdays – not forgetting, of course, that our farmer forebears often worked 10, 12, or even 16 hour days, and that in some areas of the world people still work those kinds of hours just to make ends meet. The immediate effect of totalitarian agriculture is a population explosion, necessarily followed by a rapid geographical expansion. Now remember that at this time there were thousands of cultures living in relative peace alongside one another. A culture who embraced totalitarian agriculture would soon outgrow its boundaries and need to spread out, obliterating surrounding (and incompatible) cultures. And so the revolution continued, and continues to this day, swelling and swallowing every other culture in its path. This is what I meant when I said we are of the same culture. The food we eat, the way we gain our sustenance, is based on the principles of totalitarian agriculture.

Examining totalitarian agriculture from an evolutionarily stable standard is almost horrifying, and certainly cause for alarm. Not only does it flaunt the law of limited competition at every point, it decreases biodiversity exponentially, leaving the involved ecosystem vulnerable to complete obliteration. It is not surprising to hear that each day more than 200 species are lost to the juggernaut of totalitarian agriculture. The population explosion continues to this day, and we continue to outstrip our resources. We are producing enough food to feed all the people on earth, only for some reason not all the people who need it are getting it: it’s not being distributed equally. So we produce more food. Except you and I know what more food production yields: population growth. Every time. We look at the world around us and we see that people are starving and rather than allow our population numbers to fall so that our current food supply is accurate, we respond with public outcry and take steps to increase our food production. The problem is increased food supply equals still greater population growth. So once again our numbers rise, outstrip our food sources, and people starve.

In producing more food, we are not alleviating the problem of unequal distribution, we are just fuelling population expansion, which will amplify the effects of the unequal distribution problem and continue to have devastating consequences for the sustainability of the global ecosystem. Because charity is constantly a part of our world, so too is population explosion, disparity of wealth, and starvation.

Common explanations of natural law theory justify this egotistical cultural movement by saying that that humans are the natural apex of the world, or that God made the world for man to use. I find this world view to be part of totalitarian agriculture. In taking the whole of worthy food production into our own hands, we are in effect saying that it is our right to do so, that it is right to do so. I am here to offer a breath of life for natural law theory, and a ray of hope for the world as a whole. What is natural is not right merely because it is natural; it is right because it is what works, it is what has worked, by definition. Sometimes we don’t remember that what is natural is the result of billions of years of refining – why would you want to mess with that? The world is in the state that it is because our culture has forgotten or ignored this. The way to reduce world hunger in the future is not to produce more food, it is to allow the population of the world to come back into balance with the resources sustainably available to it.

Sources:

Quinn, Daniel. (1992). Ishmael. New York: Bantam.

--- (1996). The Story of B. New York: Bantam.

Rachels, James. (2003). The Elements of Moral Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill.

---

[1] Quinn, Ishmael, p. 129

[2] Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 53

[3] Ibid, p. 56

[4]Quinn, The Story of B, p. 260

Recipe Special

Taking a departure from my normal conscientious-ish postings...I discovered this delicious soup this afternoon. Not quite sure what to call it, sorry. Suggestions?

1 C mixed dried beans
2 cubes vegetable bullion
1 jar Uncle Ben's Szcheuan Chilli sauce (500g, about 2 C, ish)
8 C H2O

Bring to boiling and let simmer for several hours...I think I let it for about 6...until most of the liquid has boiled off.

Result: a lusciously spicy vegetable soup. Almost a little too spicy for me, but the beans balance it off. So spectacular I just had to share!

Updated Cunt

Ooo! I was asked for an update on my previous post. So here's a list of how well I kept up with those:

1. Okay, haven't been so good about tracking the cycles. BUT I am paying a lot of attention to the phases of the moon and the tides.
2. Um, yeah...I have a hard enough time finding anything over here, much less trying to find alternatives. But I'm going to look into non-massive-corportation stuff when I get back home.
3. Only the medicines mandated by my psychiatrist, no caffeine (!), and little alcohol.
4. No published stuff yet, but I am writing again. Hadn't written anything in a long, long time. Feels good to be back on the horse.
5. Hehe. Of course this is the one that I've fulfilled. Yep, might be uncomfortable to converse with me sometimes.
6. I buy from small stores as much as possible.
7. The downloading is going well! I recommend Limewire.
8. Am definitely more mindful. I feel like some spy or something, constantly aware of my circumstances. Also looking out for other women. Girls gotta stick together.
9. Yeah, don't watch TV anymore.
10. Yay, I'm doing this one too! Google Reader feeds save my life.
11. So far, haven't gone to one...
12. No chess playing, sorry.
13. Haven't had a telemarketer call to do this to. Jehovah's Witness', here I come! Okay, maybe not. Maybe just the Pentecostal that keeps accosting me in the park.

So, that's fair to middling. Not great, but progress.

Music: the greatest cultural denominator

Music is the lowest common denominator among people. Every culture has music in some way, shape or form. There are so many cultural barriers: religion, language, climate, food, political and economic systems, just to name a few. Music is an expression of primal emotion, first and foremost, and as such can be recognized and empathized with just as emotion is. I feel it is as critical as eating, an opinion shared by ethnomusicologist Thérèse Smith: ‘It is exhilarating to discover that music has as many meanings and contexts as there are cultures and subcultures, and, moreover, that it is a fundamental and essential human activity – not something frivolous or “extra” as it is often considered in the West.’[1]

People have been making music for as long as they have been calling themselves people, presumably. The “dawn of civilization” is usually set somewhere around 10,000 BCE, but I’m not talking about civilization. I am talking about people. About humans. The “agricultural revolution” might have done great things for the population size of humanity, but in the long run, I believe it has doomed its partakers to extinction. That, however, is a subject for another day. Music surely had its start long before people began organizing themselves into villages and growing all their own food, just as speaking and dancing did.

At that time, scores of thousands of years ago, music would have been passed on aurally and orally, a practice which in some cultures is maintained to the present day. Although some form of musical notation has been available in some cultures for thousands of years, many cultures remain non-literate to the present day, or they find aural/oral transmission advantageous for any of a number of reasons. For example, the Celtic druids required that their music be passed on in this way, so that no written record might get out to those not ready for it, and as stone-singing (a method of dressing and moving stone through the use of complex harmonic choirs: one explanation for the construction of Stonehenge) is part of the mythic legacy surrounding the druids, this practice may well have been pragmatic.

Personally, I find aural/oral transmission to take more skill than following notes on a page. It also lends itself better to improvisation and dynamic growth of the art. After being actually exposed to what people trained aurally/orally can do, I feel that this type of training is certainly not inferior to classical training, as some people are wont to think, but instead may even surpass it and they certainly can supplement each other with astounding results.

But when you learn something in that way, so the memory of it is inside you, not printed externally, it becomes part of your very being in a way that is somehow more vital. Thus ingrained, the music becomes more integral to the culture as well, that is, it becomes part of a sense of cultural identity and tied to other aspects of the culture. This is perhaps why music is often so much a part of religion, because religion is inexorably linked to cultural identity as well.

Culture itself can be defined as a transmission of a way of being sustained over time. Musical culture would then involve transmission of musics to the next generation and beyond. Because there wasn’t a neutral and reliable source of “how things were” a generation or more ago before the advent of recordings, the sense of “the tradition” that is present in many modern musical cultures was probably not the same issue it sometimes is today. If preserving the tradition was an issue in times past it would have a different cast, as one would have to rely on people’s memories of memories – who would you believe, and how would you solve conflicting reports? Recordings themselves present particular problems, as the cultural situation entire cannot possibly be reproduced, and they lose much along the way, a concern expressed by Smith: ‘If through transference a piece of music survives only as sound, devoid of meaning, its interest is severely reduced.’[2]

Irish traditional music is noted (or notorious) for attempting to strictly hold to tradition, for having respect for old music, sometimes treating as ancient what is certainly less than two hundred years old. Each part of the tradition seems to have this attitude to one degree or another, but sean nós singing, with its very name meaning “old style” takes the concept of upholding the tradition to another level.

However, producing a meaningful and universally accepted definition of sean nós seems to cause its own problems. Somhairle MacGill-Eain has described it in this way: ‘that ineffable fusion of music and poetry, in which the melodies seem to grow out of the words and be a simultaneous creation.’[3] I find this to be a rather observant and apt description for several reasons which should become clear as I describe the sean nós singing tradition.

Because sean nós is a style of singing, the songs contained within range from slow airs to love songs to humorous and bawdy tunes. The songs are in Irish, and the melodies display the rhythm and metre of the Irish poetry to wonderful effect. There are often nonsense syllables, especially in the chorus. Many of the songs date from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, although that is certainly not a requirement, and often the poet and/or composer are not known. This era in turn probably owes a great deal to the bardic tradition of the centuries before.

Usually, the song would be sung before an audience who already knows the words and the story behind the song, however the singer still often relates the údar an amhraín (source of a song) before performing.[4] Sean nós would have been a welcome and appropriate addition to any community gathering, from weddings to funerals to house parties. Although the singer usually affects a more or less detached air while singing, the lyrics themselves and the subtleties of performance create a strong bond between singer and audience.

Instead of using “dramatics” or emotional singing, the singer uses spontaneous and improvised variation to convey expression. Such variation might include ornamenting the main melody, changing the rhythm to suit mood and audience, and phrase management.[5] The consonants l, m, n, and r are often sustained to show phrasing, and are sometimes even slipped in extraneously to signal the end of the phrase. Although the improvisation is entirely up to the singer, there are certain general regional trends which can be recognized by the observant listener, the more distinctive ones being those from counties Galway, Donegal, and Waterford. Finally, the singing is unaccompanied.

Like the rest of Irish traditional music, sean nós was in danger of dying out as the gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas of Ireland dwindled. Upon the founding of the Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League) in 1893, preservation and cultivation of interest in the Irish language started to get promoted through the arts. There are now many sean nós competitions, one of the most prominent being Oireachtas na Gaeilge.

It is often difficult for the “outside” listener to appreciate sean nós because it differs in many key ways from the classical style. No dynamics or vibrato, and the use of a bare (and sometimes nasal) voice are common complaints. These qualities make sean nós all the more appealing and engaging for me. Because it is so different from what I am used to, I want to immerse myself in it until it feels like a second skin. I feel fortunate to be able to take a course in sean nós this term, as witnessing a performance in its natural situation and participation are two of the best ways to come to know a music. I sometimes fear that in these days of globalization, less mainstream aspects of cultures may fall by the wayside. Exposing myself to novel and distinct things is my way of coping. I can only hope that many others of my generation and generations to come will feel the same so that precious things like sean nós singing remain a part of the global culture quilt.

---

[1] Thérèse Smith, p. 25.

[2] Thérèse Smith, p. 23.

[3] in Companion, p. 336.

[4] Fintan Vallely

[5] Ibid.

Resources

Smith, Thérèse, ‘The Study of Oral Traditions of Music,’ 2001, in Éigse Cheol Tíre Irish Folk Music Studies, ed. Hugh Shields, Nicholas Carolan, and Thérèse Smith (Dublin: Mahons) vol. 5-6, 17-28.

Vallely, Fintan, 1999, Companion to Irish Traditional Music (Cork: Cork University Press) 336-344.

Cunt will change my life. I hope.

Borrowed the book Cunt by Inga Muscio from a friend Tuesday night and finished it yesterday. It gave me so very much to think about. There are now so many lifestyle changes I want to make. This is similar to the way I felt after I finished all of Daniel Quinn's books. And so, to make sure I don't forget how I feel right now, I'm going to go through the book and summarize what I want to do, what changes I want to make.

1. Get a lunar calendar and start figuring out how my cycles relate to the cycles of the moon.
2. Check out the possibility of using sea sponges, the Keeper, or at least tampons not produced by huge corporations.
3. Stop depending on medications so much. For headaches, for abdominal pain, for...everything.
4. Publish a zine...if I figure out that I have anything to say.
5. Stop being embarrassed about talking about menstruating, masturbating, sex, etc.
6. Go to independent grocers, bookstores, etc. or at least buy products from independent producers.
7. Rent/download music, movies, books by men. Buy the ones by women.
8. Start being more aware of the situation I am in. Be more mindful. Look out for other women. Take a self defense course or two?
9. Stop watching TV.
10. Start taking the responsibility to find out what's going on through independent news sources.
11. Stop going to movies with rape scenes in them. If I do accidentally, demand my money back and tell them why.
12. Start playing chess.
13. Tell telemarketers I don't speak English.


Books/Websites to read:
Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving, by Betty Dodson
A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen
guerillagirls.com
guerillanews.com
buzzflash.com
commondreams.org
americaheldhostile.com
moxiemag.com
bamboogirl.com
alicemagazine.com
zmag.org
aviva.org
grrrlzines.net
dgarts.com
bookhousecafe.com
eveseye.com
bloodsisters.org
thekeeper.com
adiosbarbie.com
thelunapress.com
coopamerica.org
responsibleshopper.org
diysearch.com
worldwidewamm.org


Books to Buy:
Cunt. Obviously.
A New View of a Woman's Body: A Fully Illustrated Guide, by the FFWHC

Esse est Percepi

In this paper I first intend to give Philonous/Berkeley’s perceptual relativity argument with regard to the mind-dependence of matter, and then present Hylas’ argument involving the veil of perception, that is, the concept that mind-independent objects cause mind-dependent ideas and these ideas resemble the objects in some way. Next I will put forward Philonous’ response to this, in particular the principle ‘nothing is like an idea except an idea.’ Finally, after describing how Locke would respond to this series of arguments and counter-arguments, including a summary of his representative theory of perception, I will explain which view I find the most appealing and which I find the easiest to defend.

Philonous presents the definitions of sensible things and sensible qualities nearly in the same breath. Sensible qualities, he says, are those qualities which are immediately perceived by the senses and sensible things are either just sensible qualities or a combination thereof.[1] At first, Hylas wants to say that immediately perceived qualities are sensible things but it was soon pointed out to him that no regular object is a sensible quality by this definition. For example, when looking at a ball on the table, we would not think that it was a spherical object sitting on a plane without intervening interpretation. We would instead see just a sea of color of various shades and tints, with no way to evaluate the patterns in the colors. The word immediately here is used in contrast to mediately. Something is immediately perceived if it is directly perceived - if no intervening reason or evaluation gets in the way. Philonous uses the example of letters in a book; the shapes of the letters are immediately perceived, but their meaning is mediately perceived.[2]

Philonous uses an argument from perceptual relativity to support the mind-dependence of matter. Mind-independent objects can exist without having to be perceived but mind-dependent objects must be perceived to exist. Berkeley describes a situation in which a person has one hand colder than the other and a water bath with a temperature between those of the hands. ^[3] The person sticks each of their hands into the water, and to the colder hand the water seems hot, but to the hotter hand the water seems cold. The water has not changed, however; and because the water seems different to each of the hands, but has not changed, the water must be mind-dependent. The principle he is attempting to prove with this argument is that sensible things exist in our minds and only in our minds. You could argue that it is only the perceived qualities of the water that have changed, but since all experience of objects is mediated through perception, starting along this line of argument will not get you anywhere significant if you are going to play by the rules of an empiricist.

Here Philonous stands with the conclusion that matter is mind-dependent, but Hylas counters that only the ideas of matter are in our minds, and that these mind-dependent ideas are caused by mind-independent matter. For example, in the situation presented by Philonous above, the water itself would have temperature, but the mind would have the ideas of hot and cold. (This specific use of the word ‘temperature’ is perhaps a bit stronger than Hylas would have it, but I don’t think it is necessarily a stretch in the wrong direction.) Our perceptions are relative and vary because they are mind-dependent, but the objects that cause them are not – although the perception of the temperature of the water may shift, you would agree there is still water because the perceptions resemble the object closely enough.

Philonous thinks this resemblance business is a little on the liberal side. Even by Hylas’ admittance, ideas are malleable and impermanent, while objects are autonomous and permanent.[4] How can these two fundamentally different sets of attributes apply to things that are supposed to resemble each other? As mentioned above as a mere aside, perception mediates all experience, so even if the two opposing types of things managed somehow to resemble each other, we would never be able to know about it because we can only get to know the objects through the ideas.

As if this were not enough, Philonous goes on to present Berkeley’s principle that nothing is (or can be) like an idea except an idea.[5] Because nothing can be perceived without invoking ideas, it would seem that whatever invokes the ideas is not an idea, and furthermore, is nothing like an idea. Although there may be more to his argument than this, I couldn’t find it and I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with what I feel to be a rather bold statement about the nature of ideas.

Locke uses the terms ‘quality’ and ‘idea’ slightly differently than Berkeley does. For Locke, qualities are in objects and ideas are in minds. There are two kinds of qualities: primary and secondary. Primary qualities are inherent to objects; they cannot be separated; one example is extension. Secondary qualities are powers of the primary qualities to provoke various sensations in the perceiver; examples are color, smell, and taste.[6]

Locke has a representative theory of perception wherein all (simple) ideas are caused by qualities and some of these ideas resemble the qualities, namely the ideas we have of primary qualities.[7] The earlier relation of temperature versus hot/cold as applied to the perceptual relativity example is an accurate summation of Locke’s views as well. This theory is similar to Hylas’ objection to Philonous’ perceptual relativity argument. Locke’s just goes a little further and specifies the circumstances in which ideas resemble and do not resemble objects.

I don’t think Locke would accept Philonous’ statement that nothing is like an idea but an idea. Locke holds that we cannot invent simple ideas ourselves, the only place to get those is through perception and those simple ideas are a fair representation of the actual objects. Locke also believes in the veil of perception, but I think the key here that makes his argument a stronger reply to Philonous than Hylas’ is in his attribution of ‘powers’ to the objects. Instead of saying that some - since no rhyme or reason is given here the overall effect is that they are random – ideas resemble the object and some do not, Locke gives a system by which to analyze our perceptions: primary versus secondary qualities.

Even though Locke’s response would be better than Hylas’ was, I don’t think Berkeley would accept this reply as satisfactory. Locke does provide a better account of why some ideas would resemble the object and some wouldn’t, but Berkeley still wouldn’t think that ideas and objects were closely enough related that they could resemble each other at all. This strikes me as being another presentation of the mind/body problem. Ideas and objects are fundamentally different, so how can they interact? Berkeley solves the problem by saying that objects/bodies don’t exist.

Despite their disagreements I think you could combine Locke’s and Berkeley’s views without being disloyal to either of them through the addition of God – and actually the combination ends up being rather similar to Malebranche’s view of occasionalism. Everything is a mind or is in a mind (an idea), but the ‘objects’ exist in God’s mind, with the veil of perception then being not between objects and minds but between God’s mind and the minds of everyone else. However, even if you liked Locke and Berkeley so much that you wanted to combine their views on perception, Occam’s razor should get in the way.

I feel, like I think many people today do, that Hylas’ substance dualism (the existence of two essentially different types of things, minds and matter) is far more acceptable to me instinctively. It may not be the most reasonable way to feel, but there is still a little bit of a stigma for me with the effect of ideas seeming sometimes (at least somewhat) to be imaginary and that if everything was to be a mind or an idea, then it would be imaginary.

On the other hand, I can talk myself into accepting Berkeley’s view, at least intellectually. Being a solid supporter of finding (and hopefully accepting) the simplest explanation, the fact that Berkeley can do away with the mind/body problem is very satisfying. One objection I had been turning over in my mind was that what if, sometime in the future, we were to encounter sentient beings who had experiences (and scientifically persuasive proof) of the existence of extra things - phenomena, dimensions, whatever – of which we had no experience. These things would have existed before we were aware of them; how then could they exist although we had no experience of them? Obviously you would have to expand your definition of a ‘mind’ as time went on and as experience warranted to make your views as accurate as possible. Because I find Berkeley’s view to be the most logically appealing, that makes it the most defensible position for me as well.

---

[1] Dialogues p 416

[2] ibid. p 416b

[3] PHK p 475b

[4] ibid. p 432b

[5] ibid. p 432b-433a

[6] ECHU p 286b

[7] ibid. p 287

Time lies, a dead mayfly on the windowsill

It should be very possible to get all philosophical about spring break, especially when one is at work and extremely bored. In essence, I'm getting paid to go off and write this philosophical treatise (Hey, it's St Patrick's Day, my illusions can party a little). Would that this made me a professional philosopher. And so I look around, searching for inspiration. Various parents with reluctant students in tow mill around aimlessly, except for the determined few that walk forcefully down the center aisle. At least somebody knows where they're going. Am I just jealous? Or am I simply angry that this is looking more like a journal entry than a blog post? Fresh start.

I feel as if I am in a state of constant self-betrayal. I loathe boredom, and yet I subject myself to it week after week for a few measly dollars. I soothe myself with promises that it isn't forever and I do need the money. The grey matter oozing out my ears pays no heed to the murmurings, though. What can I do, oh what can I do, oh what can I do, oh what can I do ... chantingchantingchanting, never stopping, never caring, slowly dying, without knowing. But I know everyone feels this, and for the uneducated young there are not many options more attractive than this. The pay is decent for what the work requires, and not stressful. Lovely. This has been an excellent fresh start. But who am I to question the leadings of the Muses?

The post runs short as the whine flows freely.

I will leave this as a testament to the petty trials of the not-yet-full-time philosopher.

Beyond Civilization

This book is more of a how-to than any of Quinn’s books I’ve read thus far, but even so, it’s more of a show-and-tell than a how-to. He builds on the foundation laid in the reader by the Ishmael trilogy (although the trilogy is certainly no necessary to understand this book) by pointing out extant tribal situation in the midst of Taker culture. Circuses, gypsies, etc. Giving an example from his own life, Quinn describes a newspaper in the production of which he was involved and which was tribal in organization.

I’m not sure if I am up to the task of defining a tribe without referring constantly to Quinn quotes. I’m going to describe what I have recognized as different sorts of tribal organizations. Without expending too much creativity, I’m going to call them working tribes, living tribes, and living+working tribes. One can imagine a Venn diagram of tribal organization.

Working tribes work together (predictably). The impetus for their initial organization can be a common interest, for instance information conveyance in Quinn’s newspaper. A possible problem that I could think of for this is the unfair division of proceeds in relation to input of effort.

Living tribes live together (whee). Their impetus is perhaps a desire to live in the same fashion, or familial relation. There is a sharing of resources (property, income, and the like) for overall livelihood of the group. Communal living (not, necessarily, an isolated ‘commune’) is one term for this. A problem I can see with a living tribe is unfair contribution leading either the hierarchy or unrest.

These two descriptions bring forth a question in my mind…can one be separate from Taker culture by being a member of only one of these two organizational types? I can imagine being in a working tribe and using that as your sole source of income…but here I am stuck. If you are getting all your sustenance from a tribe, are you outside Taker culture? And is it even possible?

I am reminded of a tale of a Mexican fisherman. This fisherman was just coming in from a morning in his boat when an American corporate businessman on vacation approached him.

“Sir,” he said, “I can see that your boat is not yet full. What are you going to do for the rest of the day?”

The fisherman looked up at him and grinned. “I will go home now, have lunch and siesta with my wife, and then later I will play with my children, and in the evening I will play my guitar and talk with my friends.”

“Well, that does sound nice, but why aren’t you going to go catch some more fish? At the rate you seem to be going, you could have a profitable business in no time.”

The fisherman stood and began to tie up his boat. “Why should I catch more fish, when I and my family can live on what I have just caught?”

The businessman smiled affectedly, relishing this chance to teach the fisherman a thing or two about making a living. “If you spent more of your time catching fish, soon you could buy a second boat. With the profits from that, you could buy more and more boats. Why, in 10 or 20 years I imagine you could sell that business to someone for quite a pretty penny!”

“What would I do then?” asked the fisherman.

“Well, in the morning you could go out and fish a little, if you would like, and then go home to spend time with your wife and your friends. Perhaps play a little guitar in the evenings”

If this wise fisherman can do it, why can’t I?

Obviously, living where I do, I can no more make my living fishing than I can go scuba diving. But say I were to do things that made money just enough so I could do the things I like?

But on the other hand, if the food I eat is locked up, am I really free of Taker culture?

I digress. On to the third tribal type: the living+working tribe. As a combination of the two mentioned before, in this type the same people you work with are the people in your community (meaning this in the communal sense of the word, of course). The most obvious example of this is the ethnic tribe. When puzzling over this type of tribe, I was reminded of the community in Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing (another fantastic book). It has been a while since I read this, and I may not be getting the specifics right, but here are some general characteristics of this community:

They are responsible about their use and reuse of their resources. This includes trying to heal the damage already inflicted on the environment.

No one must work to survive. A bare sustenance is provided for everyone in the community.

The work that must be done (from childcare to medical care to music to…) is done by the people interested in doing it, and all contributions to the community are rewarded (though I hesitate to use that word). For example, a mother can stay at home to care for her children, but she is granted just as much credit as her partner who works outside the home.

There is no wealth hierarchy.

There is no ownership of the 4 sacred things (earth, air, fire, water).

There is coexistence of different lifestyles, races, cultures, religions, etc.

They employ hunting, foraging, and agriculture.

I realize that this community is not perfect, nor is it invulnerable. But I find it awfully attractive.