supporting the troops?

You all might want to read this article by the folks at The Nation.

They interiewed 50 Iraq and Afghanistan vets who were willing to state their names and tell stories about absolutely atrocious stuff that was done to Iraqi and Afghani civilians. Including shooting children, raiding completely innocent people's houses, and planting weapons (or shovels!) to make it look like something other than 'shoot first, ask questions later'.

Up till that article, I had been fairly universally supportive of the American soldiers. I do feel still that they are not entirely culpable for their actions, having been ordered to go, barricaded in isolation, poorly educated about the culture, and instilled with a sense of fear and hatred of the Iraqi people. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere, right? These soldiers certainly cannot take their attitudes back into the U.S. and act in any similar fashion without expecting some kind of punitive reaction by Americans. Why can they behave with such disregard for human life over there, and how well can they be expected to adjust when they come back over here?

parents just don't understand

Thank you, Paul Kurtz, for founding the Center for Inquiry. Thank you for restoring my confidence in science (and a little more confidence in scientists themselves). I feel like I can finally be comfortable saying that science is not itself a religion, a faith followed by educated 19th-century men. When scientists let science do the work it is supposed to do (namely, adhering to the scientific method without a care as to whether your hypotheses are correct or incorrect), it is a very good thing, a very rational thing.

I realize that much of my dislike of science has stemmed from a dislike of particular scientists.

First, the holier-than-thou group: because they study science and the 'real world', they think that they are better (i don't know how - morally? physically? mentally?) than us lowly scholars of literature and culture. They talk down to us, they lack interest in our own observations, they lose themselves in experiments, dreams of saving the world. The problem with these people is that they lack a certain respect for cultural awareness, social history, communication and persuasion of the masses. Societal change can only operate through a societal conversation. Without the knowledge of how people communicate, persuade, interact, and how they have done so over time, how can one expect to implement whatever precious discoveries one has made? In their wonder at the beauty of nature, moreover, they sometimes lose a sense of the beauty of humanity, the beauty of personalities and social bonds, the thunderstorm of the creative mind. Good poetry, an ancient piece of glassware, can be just as awe-inspiring as the proton pump that allows Venus flytraps to snap shut so quickly.

The second group of scientists that irk me are those who have something seriously invested in the results of their experiments. These people aren't really doing science, yet they feel free to design their experiments or skew their reporting of their results in such a way as to draw conclusions that are unrealistic for the scope of their experiment. Most of these people are social scientists, I suppose. For example, though, the still unsolved claim that abortion raises a woman's risk of getting breast cancer. (oh and check out this creepy as hell website)

The third group, particular to my field of study, is the group who (badly) tries to use scientific method in the humanities. Many of these people would fall into the second group (biased scientists), and think that they can "prove" things about literature, societies, cultures, by use of hypotheses and tests. Why do they irk me? Some don't know how to run an 'experiment' on literature, or history. I'm still not convinced that the scientific method can be used to study the psychological or cultural aspects of our world. (Here I think of the colometric studies of 19th-century German scholars that prove whether text manuscripts are accurate or not). The other reason why they irk me is that, due to the nature of the field itself, these scholars cannot act like other scientists - they cannot collaborate with their peers, they cannot expect to publish a study which culminates in negative or inconclusive results. Just once, I would like to read an article that proves to me that Plato's chronology can't be pinned down. Just once.

looking toward '08

So I've been following the Democratic presidential candidates this year a little more closely than in the past few elections. The main contenders present an interesting conundrum of issues: while Clinton, Obama, and Edwards all seem to be forward-thinkers and have decent platforms, I worry that Americans simply will not, when push comes to shove, elect a woman or a Black person.

Which makes me want to put my eggs in Edwards' basket. But for some reason, the media is giving him less coverage, he's doing worse in the polls, even though his 'poverty' campaign is one of the best platforms I've seen since Dennis Kucinich. And maybe that's why he has not been as successful. Anyway, Scholars and Rogues has a really good analysis of why the American public might not be willing to hear about poverty and privilege and wealth gaps. And it gets back to my earlier post about Rocky Balboa and the American sense of toilocracy.

I suppose the brain-popping-realization of classist practice in this country is much easier to take when you're 18 than when you're 50, lower-middle-class, working your ass off to make ends meet, and can't figure out why you haven't experienced the American dream.

So a sad farewell and good luck to Theresa Duncan, author of this blog, source of many genius thoughts and observations. It seems, from laobserved, that she has probably committed suicide in New York.

Another Scorpio, another outsider to this crazy lonely mess called L.A., another savant. So let's be sad briefly, and then be inspired to live our lives harder and more vividly.

read this.

So in case y'all are not boingboing readers, you should really read this guy's tale of a trip on a conservative cruise ship. It is alternately hilarious and deeply disturbing.

I was in England when the Glasgow airport thing happened, and when the London car bombs almost went off. One of the frequent topics of conversation after these events was: how could doctors, who had sworn the Hippocratic oath, feel ethically able to kill innocent people? While none of my rationalizations seemed to satisfy the family I was staying with, I think, reading Hari's post, that it is easy to see how someone could see themselves as ethical and humane people and still justify the murder of innocents.

Oh, and I saw SiCKO yesterday. Excellent movie. Depressing movie. Another instance of unethical treatment of people for monetary gain. Makes me more convinced that I do not want to spend my life in this country, for fear of falling through the supposed net of social welfare. My favorite moments of the film were where the doctors of other countries were interviewed, when they could say that they were happy to be able to treat people without worrying about how much their services would cost, or whether the person was insured. I would be intrigued to know why the AMA doesn't support universal health care. Surely the doctors could do better jobs if they weren't worried about the financial damage they were doing to their patients.

Relationshipping: a sidebar comment

Fact of human existence #1: Self-care is the hardest work you will ever do.

I've come to accept that to love another person, to be in a relationship with another person, is to walk a fine line between caring for that person and caring for yourself. Sometimes self-care can be found in caring for the other person, but sometimes it can't. If you are lucky, or devious, or deciduous, you can find a person to love who also gives you the space and encouragement for self-care. But maybe I've been going about it the wrong way.

I used to think that ideally, people are the best friends when they want to help you get to the person you want to be, when they see that future you as clearly as you do, and when they can insert a relatively-objective 'game-plan' by which they can help you get there. But what does this really mean? How does it flesh out in real practical life?

I think of myself as something like a heroin addict. Not a real heroin addict, but the kind of heroin addict you see in movies - good heart, can't break his habit, needs a tough-love kind of friend to do some work for them, lock them in a room, be there through the recovery, etc. I tend to care for myself with the tough-love strategy, and I guess I thought it best to have someone who would do the tough-love thing with me. But the heroin addict, at some point, antagonizes the caretaker. There is something about him that doesn't want to change his behavior. This antipathy might be temporary, during the recovery process, or it might last longer. Is it right to risk this kind of reaction with a loved one?

And this is why we hire therapists - someone with whom we are not afraid to have mixed feelings, who will help us be more genuine to our ideal self. Therapists help us avoid putting our partners, our families, in the caretaker position. But what did people do before there were professional therapists? Certainly there must have been some reliance on family and friends for support.

But I also begin to think that this reliance on others for caretaking is not universal, and perhaps a detrimental character flaw. Maybe I am refusing to 'man up' and do the work of self-care myself, for fear of seeming selfish or rude. Certainly, the best self-caring I've ever done was when I was living with a person with whom it was a joy for me to be completely selfish. So maybe I should be that selfish, not feel guilty about it, and, partner-wise, be looking to find someone who is happy with my (inevitably enhappying) improprieties.

Now there is a selfish post if I ever saw one :)

Since I'm holding forth on movie heroes (Rocky B.)

I also saw (before I left for England) the lastest Rocky Balboa movie. I got to thinking about the type of hero/person Rocky is meant to represent, and it made me think of an episode of "So You Think You Can Dance."

I think this episode was from season two. Anyway, the story is: this kid (bad dancer) is auditioning for the second year in a row to be on the show. His mother is in tow at the audition. He does his piece and gets reamed by one of the judges (stern British guy), who tells him point blank that he will never be a dancer. At this point, the mother gets up and yells at the judge that her son can be anything he wants to be - if he works hard enough, he will be a good dancer. She seems to believe this to be true - passionately, hysterically. Her son, perhaps, believes it as well.

Now, this example is laughable, but it brings up an interesting philosophy of American culture. Do we really think that we can do anything we want to do? My parents certainly told me that when I was young, even though we were not wealthy or well-connected. The idea seemed to be that through work and committment one could acheive anything.

Now, I don't believe in a truly Aristotelian argument - that people are born with certain talents and should pursue careers that fit them (he also famously said that certain people are born to be slaves). I do think that humans have the ability to learn things and change the way their minds and bodies work. I also believe, however, that some things require a lifetime of shaping, a lifetime of particular opportunities and particular practice (supposedly, we acquire the ability to be tone hearing -as opposed to tone deaf- within the first year of our life). The 'good' dancers on that show, for example, had lessons and teachers and recitals and diets and expensive lycra bodysuits. They probably had these things for most of their lives, and the access to these things is what has conditioned them to have an aptitude for dancing. As the show proved, one cannot (barring extreme talent for a thing) simply self-teach for a year or two and become good.

Yet somehow this guy and his mother firmly believed in the philosophy of hard work and gain. This brings me back to Rocky, another person who, I think, embodies this philosophy. Rocky is not a smart guy. He is a bit naive about a lot of things. I think of the scene where he begs the council to let him have a boxing license - the council is acting on behalf of his bodily health, but he insists that his body is his own to govern, even if he destroys it in pursuit of his goals. He firmly believes that, with enough training, he can turn himself into the fighting machine he used to be. Though Rocky barely survives the fight, the movie ultimately, unfortunately, perpetuates this philosophy, that hard work will get you whatever you want, that hard work can transform you into someone else.

This philosophy is a flaw in American thinking. It is connected to the myth of self-reliance (that you can boot-strap your own way from poverty to wealth, invisibility to fame, fat to skinny, ugly to beautiful, etc.), and it may be why some Americans are so unhappy and overworked. How many movies do we see in which the above transformation is successful? How often do we blame ourselves for laziness or lack of committment when in actuality we are working ourselves to death in search of the unattainable?

I am also not advocating that we stop working, or become lackadaisical with ourselves. I still believe in our ability to change and grow. But I do think that a movie like Rocky Balboa and its promotion of this American 'just work harder' philosophy obfuscates the reality of disparate wealth and access in our country. It is a fact that people who are born into wealth have more opportunities than people who are born into poverty. It follows as well that the wealthy, because of their access from birth to these opportunities, will seem more 'talented' at their chosen profession/hobby, on average, than their less well-off peers. We do not all start off on an equal playing field. And the equal playing field is what we should all be working towards, lest our younger generations face our same feeling of dismay, exhaustion, and confusion that can only be felt after an unsuccessful fight between one's forehead and a brick wall.