Genesis 1

Every seeded plant for food. Allocation. Dominion as distinct from free possession. But mainly, placement.

held

You are not forsaken.

Ein deutsches Requiem versus Zeppelin Feld

We are so constituted that we take direct delight in the emergence of order from chaos, whatever may be its end. With Job's morning stars and angels, we burst out singing and shout for joy.

Oh, that the just may come to know it as the wicked do!

Ein deutsches Requiem

Hold your hands in front of you. Let palm face palm, a few inches apart. A box is perceived between the two hands. That box is the moral universe, and your hands, our sense of good and evil.

no problem

When religious, I never went far into the 'problem of evil' issue, partly because it never struck me as dire. It seemed to assume a relatively high weight to the resulting attendant human (and other) suffering. But that weighting, in the mind of God (or a God), isn't knowable except by the assertion (or revelation) that it is weighty. And that isn't useful: what we'd need to know is the relative weight of human suffering compared to the weightiness of producing an interesting human world (for which one needs both good and evil), or of having an exposition (for which things need to play out), and so on.

In other words, the 'problem' of evil is largely the 'problem' of suffering, but there are things worth suffering for in our conception (achievement, freedom, etc.), and the same things, when necessary, are worth permitting others to suffer for - again, in our conception. So it would be no surprise if God had things that were, in his conception, worth making us suffer for.

The problem of evil becomes a productive subject, however, when we step back and consider it in relation to how people accommodate themselves to religion. This is why the problem of evil becomes is more pronounced for a liberal than a conservative theologian.

In fact, this latter point can be backed into a point that isn't specifically religious. One crude account of the conservative impulse (contrasted with libertarian or progressive impulses) is that it flows from, and in proportion to, the considered view that human evil is widespread, salient, and persistent - in which case virtue had better set its jaw, gird up the loins of its mind, and set out into the world armed to the teeth.

My own view, admittedly a heuristic in the absence of solid evidence, is that any human individual, institution, or community is, by default, unless shown otherwise, to be taken as exactly half evil, half good, with the halves admixed: neither offering a division of each in two nor resolving into a third state neither good nor evil. This balance does strange things to conservative, libertarian, or progressive assumptions, and stranger things still to the implicit formulae that result from those assumptions. Those strange things are, I tell you, my convictions. They are why I must be an exile from politics, from religion, and from the other thoughtful societies - my thoughts are sports, neither hybrid nor purebred.

Epstein

Yes, each act of compassion should weighed against the cumulative negative consequences. But since this lesson sticks with the stingy and eludes the generous, it is not well to teach it. That is, whether to teach the weighing habits of law-and-economics be determined in part by questioning whether the teaching act would pass the test that is taught. And that is the path from law-and-economics to Strauss.

perfect answer

Mr. Mayor, a reporter demanded, do you regret the response to the snowstorm?

Mr. Bloomberg, deadpanning: “You know, I regret everything in this world.”

mystery

If there are eternal questions, it is happenstance if mankind knows any of them. Our persistent questions result from, rather than whisper beneath, our social, specific lives.

robe

Uniforms show the beauty, in its place, of impersonality.

displacement

I do not know whether it is because most important questions cannot be absolutely decided, but I do know that the natural state of man involves a great deal of conflict - one might even say that war is man's natural state. But 'conflict' is the more accurate term, because it sets up the true social choice: not between war and peace, but between two kinds of conflict: between violent conflict and verbal, legal and other nonviolent conflict. That we live in a society filled with the latter more than the former is a great blessing, and indicates the true social value of the seemingly craven corporate banker, lawyer -- Wall Streeter. These are, even in their worse days, engaging in a kind of nonviolent conflict and pillage that crowds out a great deal of what would otherwise be bloodshed. It is a case of a lesser evil that is the best seal against a greater evil. Of course there is a great deal of directly virtuous work to be done to keep this state of affairs manageable and tolerable.

felt

One great threat to integrity is that it feels something like success to say "I will succeed"; and something like spiritual integrity to say "I have decided to follow Jesus". That the thought feels something like the doing - or at least it does to those who have never felt the done deed - reduces the incentives to do.

from John Donne

She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou knowest this,
Thou knowest how poor a trifling thing man is,
And learn'st thus much by our anatomy,
The heart being perish'd, no part can be free,
And that except thou feed (not banquet) on
The supernatural food, religion,
Thy better growth grows withered, and scant;
Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.
Then, as mankind, so is the world's whole frame
Quite out of joint, almost created lame,
For, before God had made up all the rest,
Corruption ent'red, and deprav'd the best;
It seiz'd the angels, and then first of all
The world did in her cradle take a fall,
And turn'd her brains, and took a general maim,
Wronging each joint of th'universal frame.
The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then
Both beasts and plants, curs'd in the curse of man.
So did the world from the first hour decay,
That evening was beginning of the day,
And now the springs and summers which we see,
Like sons of women after fifty be.
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out,
The sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.

another political one

Yes, a democracy results in poor policy outcomes, and routinely so. It's simply that, on balance, those poor choices kill and injure fewer people, and do less other damage, than would result from not having a democracy.

The project of constitutional government is to configure the democracy so as to perpetuate and extend its blessings while mitigating its harms.

a political one

I'm for an immigration system with four key characteristics:

1. A person who tries long enough, hard enough, scrupulously enough, and lacks demerits, should eventually be able to immigrate and, later, naturalize. The process for such a person may and should be lengthy and tedious, but should not be costly.
2. There should be a material bias in favor of family reunification.
3. There should be a means for rapid and effective humanitarian movement.
4. There should be a very substantial bias in favor of academic and professional merit -- academically and professionally meritorious persons should have every incentive to live here.
5. There should be a high, but absolute, limit on immigrant volume, keyed to the national population.

the old kind

Consider the ant, yes, and the blackberry.

also true

Just another pretty face.

true

I don't want to teach you a lesson, quite. I want to change your mind.

on the subway platform

Regarding some theatrical stunt gone wrong:

Man to woman: "Oh my God, he fell how far?"
Woman: "At least 20 feet. They took him to the hospital. People were screaming"
Man: "I hope he's ok, but I wish I had been there to see that. Is that wrong?"

Yes, it's wrong. In fact, it's straightforwardly evil, the sort of evil common to us all. Rubbernecking is (slightly) more defensible, because there is a slight avoidance motive.

we

Man really is a social animal. Add people, serious interactions, to my day, and I get better, I elevate - even if I don't enjoy it.

grip

The need for some certainty is a great cause of self-deception, but truly a need all the same. Not everyone will be satisfied with acknowledged heuristics and mental habits. Most will want to lean on something felt to be so.

now

One of the benefits of reading history is to realize that, all in all, we (the large, global we) live in the best time yet. (At least that we know of since widespread civilization, I mean.)

Senate at 3pm.

Happiness. Thankful.

struck

It is probably unanswerable, and almost certainly inarticulable, but: What is happening when we are sexually attracted to strangers by sight? There is little knowledge of their personality (but some, from their carriage, attire and expression), no direct knowledge of their fecundity, and so on. Why are some people attracted to tall women, or red haired men, or high cheekbones, or powerful legs, or deep set eyes? One senses deeper waters, simultaneously more animal, more calculating, and more instant - indeed this is the topic that leads most easily into an intuition of the unconscious mind and self.

common

Nearly all politicized dispute and debate about science actually treats the boundary between common knowledge and esoteric knowledge. It isn't about what is or isn't so. In a democracy it is about the knowledge base of the voter, especially.

Take creationism versus evolution and aligned old-earth theories. If there were any factual plausibility -- even a small one -- to the creation and flood account, the mineral and oil industry would use it to price fields and predict valuable deposit locations. Nobody - not even a oil or mineral executive with a deep personal religious commitment to biblical inerrancy - will put real money on the flood account being true, or even on it being plausible. Contrast that with biblical references to ancient civilizations, towns, kings, battles and so forth. These are occasionally perfect in their accuracy, often partly true, sometimes invented. That's more than enough plausibility to motivate archaeologists to inform their digs partly using biblical material. If the creation and flood story were in the same "sometimes true, often plausible" category as the stories of ancient Israel, they too would be used for predictive purposes. But they are not.

So the debate over evolution in schools isn't about whether evolution is so. It is about keeping evolution out of the body of common knowledge. The motivation for this isn't necessarily bad. Although I do think evolution should be forthrightly taught in schools, I also recognize that some truths carry dangerous implications, and that bad moral implications can be and have been improperly but easily derived from natural selection. So I have patience for a debate over whether evolution should be taught, even though I have little patience for a non-scientific debate over whether evolution is so.

Now take an intermediate case: climate change. Here again, the serious money (the insurance and real estate industries) speaks clearly: there is a real risk here, although nothing like a certainty as to severity of effects. Will there be dire climate change? We do not know. Is there a serious risk of dire climate change? Yes.

The debate over climate change thus falls into two categories: the first treats likely outcomes, mitigating policies and efforts and the general probabilities. That's the genuine policy arena. Then there's the question of whether climate change is bogus - this is really a question about the boundary between common knowledge and esoteric knowledge, motivated by voting effects.

Most knowledge can't and shouldn't be part of common knowledge - there's only so much that will be known right across the range of normal adults in a society. But what gets in, is important for just that reason. Celebrity versus salience.

hen

The most useful and beautiful falsehood I know - the myth I'd most want to be true - is that there is a benevolent omniscience above who stores away every secret or hidden or quiet human virtue, remembers these forever, and delights in them.

regulation

The trouble with paternalistic regulations - even necessary ones - is that rational motivations are often obscure and various. Far better to have somewhat arbitrary regulations that people can work around, if need be, whenever such will still serve the purpose.

autonomic

My instincts about people and situations wax and wane according to a sense of their needfulness that is not subject to my will.

silky

The differences among the the attractive, the erotic and the pornographic are as interlocking, and yet as sharp - and indeed the same as - the distinctions among the social, the individually human, and the animal. They are as the web, the spider, and the fly.

kidding

Nobody thinks that. Nobody.

boilerplate

Why do I tolerate dreary things? Because they are the moat around the real.

post

Why is advertising so often of high quality? It isn't that we're a consumer culture. It's that we're a culture with few competing public images. Few altarpieces, few totems.

oh

I acknowledge a silent, background sadness that the world, and that I, disappoint. To let this sadness remain, quiet and undriving, true but never central, seems the best way.

over lunch

A conversation with a friend is a sure joy.

solvent

Love need not be mutual to be love. But it must be mutual and intelligent if it is not to be too cruel and degrading. Love, real but mishandled, can make a man into a pet, then dog, then worm: finally a zero, or, more precisely, a pure, notional object.

don't read this - it's dense and unclear

Most of my view of the world is conventional. Now, I don't usually put it so plainly, but the part of my world view that is unusual is the conviction that important systems, ideas and cultures never really work - at best, they muddle through and achieve mitigated successes at a tolerable cost (significant but bearable waste, cruelty, etc.). And, therefore, that the ways and means of muddling through are more valuable than the ways and means of vaulting success. Also, therefore, that a knowledge of where, when and how things fail, and a focus on building systems that can fail non-catastrophically, are of very high value. And finally, therefore, that significant acknowledged shortcomings are not a sufficient reason to accept a proposal to do or refrain.

This is an intrinsically moderate position, in this sense:

• a conservative view is that we live in an order that exists underneath all our corrupting troublemaking, and that order would work well if only people would comply with and live out that order;
• a liberal view is that we live in a broken order that warps our fundamentally decent selves, and our decency would shine through if only the order were reformed to allow people to flourish.
  

My position is that what is made bent can never be straight, and that our human world is made of somewhat - but not very - bent stuff: ourselves.

It's also a position with its own peculiar weaknesses. Here's just one: nothing works suggests an idea of high function, and I ambivalently borrow those ideas from conservatives and liberals (I don't mean to polarize thought along political dimensions, but the axis orients this particular explanation nicely). The conservative system that works is a natural order, at bottom. The liberal system that works nourishes expression, at bottom. (Order and fertility are the poles of human effort, but that's another subject.) No human system reliably and sustainably results in either. But these ideals are exterior to my own conception. Muddling through - if you were tendentious and out to show me up - could very well be said to work, as muddling through.

My reply would be that my view of the world is moderate, but my ideals and dreams are liberal and conservative. Nothing works, said by an optimist, is a view that has to borrow it's ideals to function. And that's a weakness.

basic

Democracy's value is in social stabilization through legitimization without appeal to an external standard. Democracy's value does not lie in its effect on good governance.

James Franco

If narcissism's so bad, then why am I so beautiful?

bureau, yet again

Generally speaking, the functions best carried out in our society are those performed by institutions whose professionals are adequately compensated in money and security, but well compensated in interest, salience and recognition of work.

my hope

Craig Ferguson said it well: "The triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism."

loosening

Earthworms creep, aerate the soil,
Enrich and break apart what they
Ingest along the way.

For this we value them.

Hope aerates the fields that lie before us,
Puts heart into us to till and turn, saying
Our plows will not be broken,
Our seeds will not smother,
Harvest will come, in season.

Hope, as an attitude merely,
Obscures rational expectation,
And is blinders to the horses among us
Who must trod, and trod:
Hope is mercy to them.

But hope, as a loosening of expectancy,
Is no mere attitude, but an ever-creeping
Function, deep in the fertile mind.
And there, may it be a healthy multitude;
Make more workable what reason sets upon;
Increase reason's scope, broadcasting seeds:
That rise to shoot, then ear, then full grain within the ear.

buddy

There is more to money, but less to consuming it for yourself, than you think.

sure

We want adventure, outward if possible, but if not - within.

of A

Practically nothing of importance works, nor could it be otherwise. An important system that suffices is a success.

Gorgon

Is there a sight that would kill? Not a gorgon nor the almighty, but an actual, available sight?

probably wrong

This is probably wrong, but I can't think of a counterexample and anyhow it is trivial:

Anything that is cute may, by a slight change, be made scary. But most of what is scary cannot easily be made cute.