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When driving, I enjoy drinking. Not alcoholic beverages — and thus I do not run afoul of the don't drink and drive campaigns
which are all about beers and wines and spirits and the like — but not water, either. I prefer flavored drinks.
I gave up on sugary drinks a long time ago. Even fruit juices are too strong for me, in terms of sugars. But there's only so much pop (soda
) I can drink, and carbonated beverages in general tend to increase acid reflux. So I lean towards tea. Iced teas, or at least cold, refrigerated teas.
SoBe products have been my favorite teas for some time, especially SoBe Green Tea, but the presence of high fructose corn syrup in the product led me to give it up. Not a month after I decided these teas were too rich (I liked the Oolong tea, too), SoBe came out with the Lean series of teas. These are much better for you, have fewer calories, and the Lean Green Tea tastes great. So I found a new favorite.
But the product isn't everywhere. This morning I went searching for a cool one at Safeway, and found none. But I did find an odd series of teas in the cooler: Honest T teas. I bought the rather expensive Peach Oo-la-long, with the image of Opus on the logo, and drove away.
It's not as sweet tasting as the SoBe products, thus preserving some of the basic tea flavor. I enjoyed it. I recommend it. Give it a try.
Besides, the branding of Honest Tea is rather amusing; great marketing. I like all the T logos in the tea series, but especially the appropriation of Berke Breathed's Opus. Buy a bottle and read how the company came to have this particular penguin featured in the drink's logo. (Hear that, Linus Torvalds?)
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 11, 2005 | Netizen permalink
The Grail of Equality,Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion, p. 19.
The two most recent films I've seen — Dark Water and Mysterious Skin — both suffered from what I think of as the Ick Factor.
Dark Water features an atractive, mature actress playing a mentally disturbed mother, and an attractive child actress playing her remarkably undisturbed — but haunted — daughter. It also features ugly cityscapes in the rain, ugly apartments and corridors and elevators and laundry rooms, and gallons and gallons of dark, ugly water. And dripping ceilings. Ick.
Had there been moments of happiness or joy apart from contact with ghosts (the daughter takes being haunted pretty well, until the murderous finale), the movie would have pleased me better. But the truth is, I got bogged down in the depressing locations, behaviors, suspicions, and angst. Though effectively scary in part, the unrelenting tone of ickiness didn't help matter much, for me.
Mysterious Skin was a little less depressing, if only because some of the characters seemed to be enjoying themselves. The fact that these moments of joy were largely the result of guy-on-guy sexual activity was something of a bummer (and yes, we do see explicit if-genital-free scenes of anal intercourse), but at least people enjoyed themselves for understandable reasons. Neverthelesss, pretty much everyone is fucked up in this movie, and that does get in the way of an enjoyable cinematic experience.
And both movies suffer from telegraphed plot points. There was little or no mystery to these films. Mysterious Skin had a greater chance of surprising us, had the filmmaker included less sexual activity — and perhaps more Michelle Trachtenberg — concentrating more on the alien abduction storyline. As it is, the attempt at epiphanic ending was less than fully satisfying, since the viewer had much earlier guessed the reality of the central mystery.
Both movies had fine moments. I enjoyed the encounter with the AIDS sufferer in Mysterious Skin, and the odd performances by Tim Roth and the ubiquitous John C. Reilly in Dark Water. The unrelenting downbeatness of the lovely if always somber Jennifer Connelly, darkens the picture, dooms it, even. And yes, I was amused that Ms. Trachtenberg has moved from friend to witches in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to fag hag in Mysterious Skin. The relentless plodding through john after john of the central protagonist, a male prostitute, overshadows this film, too, darkens it up needlessly. That everyone calls the prostitute beautiful
and refers to his alleged godlike qualities doesn't make up for the fact that he's a twisted pervert with no apparent sociable qualities.
Both movies, in other words, though quite good, otherwise, suffer from an excess of ick.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 11, 2005 | Netizen permalink
Babies are new people. The best people to take care of healthy new people are parents. I'm not one. But a friend now is a father:
I really enjoy the company of children. I've never coveted any, never wanted any of my own. But I'm fond of little ones. That makes me a free rider on the parenting of others.
I'm glad when friends and family add to the population. I may often be a bit saddened when poor people and fools have children — but smart people, hard workers, wise folk? It's great when they have kids. And, in this case, I can't help but be happy for Jesse and Rona.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 23, 2005 | Netizen permalink
The President of Finland is a woman. Why this should shock anyone seems a bit strange to me, but I live in America, and recognize that Americans are a weird lot; they've yet to elect their own woman president for reasons. It may very well be that the only way we'll get a woman president is by coup. (Something not at all impossible, the way politics is devolving these days.)
Further insult to American mores is President Halonen's marriage to her long-time common-law (living-in-sin
) sexual partner, Dr. Penti Arajärvi after she was elected president. The Finns apparently do not care one whit, but blocs of American voters would be aghast at such . . . common informality.
Now, as a Finnish-American, I can say with some reservoir of experience that Ms. Halonen certainly looks Finnish. That she is often compared to the Moominmama of Finn Family Moomintroll fame is, I guess, heartwarming.
Which cartoon/comic-book character would Americans identify with their president? B.C. from Johnny Hart's B.C.? Zippy the Pinhead? There has to be some character more apt. Someone out of Pogo? (I can't stand Pogo, but I hear it's always politically relevant to American politics.)
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 22, 2005 | Netizen permalink
libertarianism economics See: Molinari Institute
Years ago, the lack of texts available in English by Gustave de Molinari, the Belgian economist, vexed me. I was so annoyed at this lack that I even thought of learning French, to translate the texts. But I had other things to do.
Now, Roderick Long and the Molinari Institute are finally doing what for me proved a mere velleity: translating and publishing, on the Web, the works of this fascinating economist.
One recent installment, The Utopia of Liberty, is a good example of Molinari's work. It is an attempt to convince socialists that they should adopt the preferred methods of the French harmony school of economics to achieve the similar goals of both camps: abundance and justice.
Is it convincing? I'm not a socialist, nor ever was one, so perhaps my answer is poisoned. But I have my doubts. Here is the lynchpin of Molinari's argument:
[I]f we prove to you with sufficient clarity that all the evils which you attribute to liberty — or, to make use of an absolutely equivalent expression, to free competition — have their origin not in liberty but in the absence of liberty, in monopoly, in servitude; if we further prove to you that a society of perfect freedom, a society disencumbered of every restriction, of every fetter, such as has never been seen in history, would be exempted from the greatest part of the miseries of the present régime; if we prove to you that the organisation of such a society would be the best, the most just, the most favourable to advancement in the production and equality in the distribution of wealth; if we should prove all this, I ask, what would be your response?
In actual fact, most (or at least many) socialists seem to prefer giving an answer contrary to what Molinari is hoping for. The socialists I've known have not given up their commitment to extensive political coercion. They've merely kept the means to achieve their ultimate goal, and switched goals.
They prefer a society that is corralled. For the protection of . . . not the poor, any longer, but nature itself. Socialists have changed color, from pinkish red to green. It's for non-human nature that human government must exist, for the long-term protection of the planet.
A modern person of the left
* doesn't give two figs for freedom. Molinari's framing of the argument is noble and well-cast, but was clearly too optimistic about some socialists, perhaps most socialists, if not all. You maintain that society suffers from liberty; we maintain that it suffers from servitude.
The modern leftist doesn't care much for the suffering of society as such. Leftists fear, now, that if society were to be freed of its servitudes, it would overrun the planet and die of want after (admittedly) a period of unparalleled surfeit.
Does this make sense? I'll leave that to another time. For now I'll bask in the simpler issues as defined by Gustave de Molinari.
Oh, and thank Roderick Long for placing online the writings of Gustave de Molinari and other individualist liberals of a forgotten era.
* This characterization is based on people I once knew, not on anyone I currently keep in contact. I may revise this judgment, as I learn more about some of my current neighbors.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 21, 2005 | Netizen permalink
Economic History as Theory,p. 235
aphorisms grammar See: Fly Me to the Moon
One of the most famous sayings of modern times, one of the most quoted apophthegms of our age, is that of Astronaut Neil Armstrong, said as he set foot upon the surface of the moon: One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
The reason it is so often quoted is that it makes precious little sense. It gains a portentous quality through inexplicability, like the lyrics of your average Yes song. In the sentence as it reads, Man and Mankind are identical — no other meaning is possible to man,
given the construction — and so saying something different about the two abstractions seems momentous. Because paradoxical — or, as those of us familiar with logic like to put it, contradictory.
From what I have been able to gather, Armstrong was scripted to say One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
But he botched it. Probably because he was really thinking I'm stepping on the fucking Moon!
Couldn't say that. And so he couldn't say the other.
Without the article a
his scripted statement became cryptic. And more memorable than the entirely reasonable (and merely almost profound) One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
Two days ago marked the 36th anniversary of the event. And the saying. I'm sure there were editors around in 1969 stil shaking their heads about Armstrong's mis-quip two day after the saying.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 18, 2005 | Netizen permalink
Mysticism is for the spirit what sex is for the flesh. By this I do not mean that mysticism and personal religious experience are sublimated sexuality. That's too easy (though in some cases obviously true). The mystical and the sexual are analogous. Both tend to become obsessions, and both usually are experienced intensely only in brief moments. Then, between the moments, the mystic and the sexual participant tend to romanticize and dogmatize about those moments of intense, seemingly profound experience.
There's so much evidence for this I hardly see a need to list any now. But the analogies are striking. Even in Protestant religiosity (by reputation not very mystical) the sexual parallels can be found. Take late-nineteenth century American Protestant hymns (and the many pop-song influenced songs to follow). I've been playing on the piano an old favorite, Come Fill Me Now,
the words of which I find far too easy to sexualize. (I'm playing it because the harmonization offers double suspended chords, something quite uncommon for that type of music; oh, and because the tune is rather nice, a lilting 6/8 love song.) But hundreds of others show the basic Protestant Christian conceit of having a personal relationship with Jesus
turn into maudlin love song moanings about this Jesus. It is very funny to hear men who otherwise profess adamant anti-homosexuality to sing love songs to a man, very much in parallel to the love songs of popular music. Sentimental tripe, of course, nearly every one of them. But the latent sexuality in all this isn't exactly an accident.
The flesh has sex organs with which to achieve moments of bliss — and, if used in the manner selected for, leads to the propagation of the species. Mysticism does not have any specialized organs for its working. It tends to rely, then, on misused language and analogies from the fleshly world. Mystical experience can be induced by chemical means, of course, as well as by means of sensual deprivation and focused obsession. Many mystics (though certainly not all) imagine Great Beings to which they either aspire to become, or at least communicate with.
Of course, true-blue mystics reject the flesh, and sex. As so, ugh, material. They tell themselves and others that their experiences are so much higher.
A more standard religious person, on the other hand, hopes to engage in sexual activity as well as communicate (or at least flirt) with a higher plane of existence,
where he or she can be filled not with seminal fluid but The Spirit
or the Peace that passeth understanding.
This provides many difficulties all around, of course. First difficulty: the obsessed-about deities and spirits that the dogmas of the various religions go on about do not exist. So it takes quite a bit of trickery, hymnody, ritual, and indoctrination to get the person to believe they are, in fact, getting in touch with something real. Second difficulty: the old-time religions do not necessarily make it easy on modern people living in comparatively free societies. The morals belong to earlier status societies; the taboos belong to earlier economies, where agriculture dominates life and productivity is a requirement in the face of nature's many onslaughts; the ideals are pretty humdrum compared to what our artists dream up on a regular basis.
Consider just one taboo. The major religions of the Near East, still dominant in those parts and in the West, all condemn homosexual activity. And yet it seems that a non-negligible percentage of any human population is drawn largely to homosexual expression and activity. What are they to do?
One thing they can do is engage in clever work-arounds to the traditional taboos. Justin R. Cannon, founder of TruthSetFree.net, argues that Christian teaching does not condemn homosexuality as such. His arguments are interesting if (to me) utterly unpersuasive. But like most religious people, he does engage in the kind of rhetoric that people more careful with words can't help but find funny: My study presents the Truth that set me free . . . not free to do whatever I want, but free to step out of the shadows of lies and self-hate to a place where I can truly embrace myself . . .
It's not the embracing of oneself that's really under contention, now, is it?
Though, in the days when fear of masturbation insanity
was all the rage, it, too, was a live topic, a live taboo.
For a Christian or anyone to come down hard (ha!) on masturbation, today, would be a sure way to limit the scope of one's message.
The truth about the old taboos and commandments is that they were directed towards pre-capitalist society, when survival of the society depended upon sexual productivity beyond what seems natural to us in a far wealthier society. In the world of 2000 years ago, disease took away so many before reproductive age that the burdens of parenthood required quite a bit of bolstering to gain compliance. Other sexual outlets that reduced sexual productivity — such as homosexual activity, oral-genital stimulation, and coitus interruptus (thank you, Onan
) — had to be taboo. Elementary group selection theory can explain why those peoples who practiced such taboos survived, and with them their taboos, into the present period.
Today, of course, over-production of offspring isn't necessary to continue the human race. We are rich enough that now our investments are not in quantity of children (as economists like to put it) but in quality of children. It's a whole new ballgame.
And yet many people find themselves stuck with old, outdated taboo systems and mores. And rather than reject them outright, they try to twist them to fit the modern situation. Even fundamentalists do this. Few dare recognize the relativity of their mores' functionality. That would undermine the universality and absolutism of their religion — whichever religion it is.
And for reasons I find somewhat difficult to understand, now — having been so long unchurched and apostate — many still cling to the old time religions with a mystic's disregard for actual fact.
But at least mystics seem more interested in the direct, unmediated experience — however ultimately meaningless such experience proves to be.
Oh, well. Before I lapse into a paean to sex (or bring out my artillery of wordplay such as agapasm spam as spiritual orgasm
) I'd better cut this short.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 19, 2005 | Netizen permalink
war Tancredo See: If They Nuke Us, Bomb Mecca
From that ominous day, 9/11/01, I dreaded (and spoke of, then wrote of) the Big Move that the U.S. would eventually contemplate to win the war with Islamic radicalism, should it escalate with another attack on American soil: bomb Mecca.
It's an horrendous idea, and it would commit the U.S. to several decades of suppression of remaining Islamic radicalism, almost surely. But such a move might eventually curb many . . . it might indeed eventually sink in that Allah does not exist. Yes, Islamic fundamentalism might be destroyable. Mecca, above all other Islamic holy sites, amounts to a sort of power center, like the One Ring. Mecca could use a Mount Doom. And if the mountain won't go to, er, Mecca, let the Doom fall from the sky. Nuking it, preferably with a very dirty bomb (to kill generations of later would-be worshipers) would go a long way to attack the soul of Islamic revolt.
Of course, it would work better as a threat than as a surprise. If you want a way to get Islamic governments to crack down on Islamic radicals, you tell them ahead of time what your reaction is going to be. Your radicals nuke us, we nuke Mecca.
Now, I've no qualm about destroying the religious beliefs of billions of people. But I do have qualms about killing actual people — and a surprise attack on Mecca would be that. Anyone with a sense of what it means to engage in religious warfare knows how horrible this move would be, and how horrible its consequences. It would mean a multi-generation hegemony and warfare over a deeply wounded people. Why? Because the likelihood that Muslim radicals would immediately give up is not high. At least a sizable chunk of them would become much more radical. There would be uprisings — and they may not be small. Not at all, not at all. The bombing of Mecca would amount to the first move in a long-term suppression.
I suppose the suppression might indeed work. Some suppressions do (the U.S. suppression of the Branch Davidian cult worked out just fine, if you don't mind the bloodshed, dishonesty, and illegality of it all). But it would be the end to the great American experiment, for freedom and a rule of law would be dead long before the end of it.
But to anyone familiar with the literature of eschatalogical cults (such as When Prophecy Fails), the idea that some Islamic radicals sort of want the U.S. to drop bombs on Mecca should at least cross one's mind. And at least make one hesitant (to say the least) to thus play into the murderous hands of that same eschatalogical cult.
All of which (and more) is why, for me, the idea of bombing Mecca — though a seemingly rational total-war response to fighting an enemy without borders — has been a cautionary notion, something I dredge up in conversation or writing to show what the stakes of an all-out war really can be.
Further, the very enormity of it — maybe even the sacrilege of it — should give people a bit of pause.
It's taken quite a while for a statesman, of sorts, to bring this option up in public. But now, finally, one has: Representative Tom Tancredo. I'll leave to others whether this sort of speculation is wise in a statesman, or evidence of a deep folly. Still, I note that he's a well-known foreigner-hater of the anti-illegal-immigrant variety, so this form of brinksmanship doesn't seem out of character.
I also note that Michelle Malkin defends Tancredo, in part, by proclaiming a few leftish notions more irresponsible:
None of these are remotely as irresponsible as suggesting that the U.S. attack the complete innocent, simply to crush the hopes and ideas of one's opponents. Michelle Malkin once again proves herself a partisan political hack of the lowest respectable order.
It is natural to contemplate the destruction of Islam after being attacked by Islamic radicals. And the nuking of Mecca makes a certain total-war sense (which is why it has finally come into the conversation). But neither of these statements justifies the idea.
From the very beginning, on 9/11/01, Americans should have taken a step back and rethought their long history in the Mid-East. Then they should have gone to war with Afghanistan, destroyed Al-Qaida, found Osama, and gotten out. And withdrawn further from the region. Completely out . . . including out of Saudi Arabia. Including, even, withdrawing diplomatic relations with the Sauds, who, after all, are tyrants who had encouraged, by policy, Islamic radicalism for years.
Of course, to suggest such things would raise the ire of Michelle Malkin and her cronies. That's OK. I don't expect post-republican imperialist warmongers to agree with decent limited-government people at all.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 20, 2005 | Netizen permalink
abortion law See: Why I vetoed contraception bill
At least one part of the so-called family values
agenda is pure rear-guard totalitarianism. In the abortion wars, the family-values pushers want parents to control their daughters' medical lives — without reference to payment, insurance, or demonstrated preferences for independence.
Say a young woman engages in sexual activities, and such sport leads to pregnancy. Parents who still support the young woman financially have every reason to be concerned. But do they have a reason to control the daughters' actions, and have that control be enforced by law?
The young woman likely didn't ask for parental permission to engage in sexually intimate acts. Likewise, if the woman wishes to terminate the pregnancy, since she's already made one adult decision, why not make another?
Of course, if her parents pay for the abortion, that's another thing. But if the young woman's lover paid for it, or she paid for it herself from her own earnings, it would seem to be none of her parents' business. To make law that requires parental consent, and have that law make no reference to payment, well, that's just totalitarianism.
Well, not just. It's also a political maneuver to make abortion less easy. It's another example where using the legal system to get what you want makes people less free.
Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts, just vetoed a bill that would have allowed Massachusetts citizens to take a contraceptive/abortion pill and not require parental consent even for young teenagers.
Romney, in his Boston Globe op-ed, explained that the bill he vetoed disregards not only the seriousness of abortion but the importance of parental involvement and so would weaken a protection I am committed to uphold.
Well, the time for parental involvement is before a daughter or son engages in sexual intercourse. That's an adult action, I'll admit. And by so doing, a child
expresses, by performance, independence. To put the law onto the self-emancipated being is to scuttle the process begun.
If the allegedly wayward child confesses to the parent, and asks for help, then that's one thing. A family values thing, in fact. But if the law hunts down the young woman and ropes her parents into the discussion of the pregnancy, in what way is that a family values thing? It's no more family values
than a shotgun is a family-values instrument, and the shotgun marriage a blessed institution of civilization.
In that context, abortion looks better and better. And certainly a morning after
pill of the sort Romney's veto keeps away from his electorate is a fine alternative to the totalitarianism his family-values approach prescribes.
NOTE: A parent may nullify a contract made by a minor — I believe that's the law in most states, and is probably a principle in common law, too. But one can't nullify some things. A young woman engages in penile-vaginal intercourse, conceives, and — voilá — there's a fetus in the picture. One could call abortion a form of nullification, but only metaphorically. In this case, the parents who seek legal sovereignty over their progeny (apparently up until 17, 18, or even 21 years of age) do not wish to nullify contracts, but burden themselves with the results of said contracts. For it is the grandparents who often bear the most financial burdens when a teenage woman bears a child. All this strikes me as very strange.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 27, 2005 | Netizen permalink
iTunes music See: Online file sharers 'buy more music'
I have yet to purchase an iPod. And yet I'm a big iTunes fan.
I've recently purchased two CDs on iTunes, as well as several individual songs
: Ingram Marshall's Entrada, Aulis Sallinen's string orchestra version of Some Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik's Funeral Music and a pop song I heard on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in that great episode from season three, Doppelgangland.
Yes, iTunes is amazingly convenient. And iTunes burns CDs directly, without me having to bother with the software that came with my CD-burner (frankly, it sucks compared to iTunes).
The CDs were of Philip Glass symphonies (numbers 2 and 3) and a Henry Cowell retrospective. Great music. I'm still surprised at how much I like Glass, later Glass, post-minimalist Glass. The music's so simple. And yet it carries me along, quite nicely. Cowell's less of an acquired taste for me, more of my main focus: non-standard scales and modes, strange timbres, dissonant chords, and an ear turned east; the Homage to Iran is excellent, as is the whole album.
I would not have purchased an Ingram Marshall CD. But I was happy to buy one piece by him. I'd heard his excellent Fog Tropes many a time, on another CD I bought years ago. And this piece courtesy of iTunes is nearly as good. Quite evocative. On the basis of this iTunes purchase, I'm more likely to buy an Ingram Marshall CD in the future.
I've engaged in very little illegal file sharing of music, unlike many of my friends, and a nephew or two. I welcomed iTunes as a legal alternative. But it's amusing to note what I've long suspected: Online file sharers 'buy more music' than others do. When on those few occasions I've passed along favorite MP3s, it was indeed to hook others to my kind of music. One friend bought Ralph Vaughan Williams' complete symphonies on the basis of one MP3 I once sent him.
Of course, as the above linked article relates, music companies idiotically complain, turn on their best customers. Greed is a strange thing.
I've this theory about illegal ownership of software, too. I know quite a few graphic artists who illegally use, on their home computers, say, Photoshop. But they insist, when they are hired by a company, on using Photoshop and not some idiotic Microsoft attempt to compete with that august product. So these illegal artists amount to one of Adobe's best sales forces. Adobe should in no sense crack down on these people. If forced to pay for the exorbitantly priced Photoshop on their home computers, many would have to balk, and the commitment amongst artists to Photoshop would erode.
Theft, then, becomes part of a big business marketing strategy. Or should!
As for me, more and more of my software is becoming legal, as I migrate my computer usage into OS X. Yes, I'm even paying money these days for the software I use! As well as the music I listen to. I guess that means I'm singin' a different tune these days.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 28, 2005 | Netizen permalink
The abortion of fetal humans is, well, icky. Disgusting. Morally unsettling. But so is the slaughter and butchering of deer and cattle. I still eat venison, and the burger is one of my favorite foods. I'm not giving them up. Conclusion? Emotional reasoning about abortion is not necessarily the best reasoning.
A human zygote and a human fetus are human. To pretend that human life begins anywhere but at conception is silly. But biologically human is a different critter than psychologically human or legally human. Pretending that they should be the same requires a whole heap of argument.
Some people believe that human beings have
souls, and that this is what makes us different from cattle or deer or 'possum, and which is why we don't mourn over road kill. So, for these people, when a human being develops a soul, or is ensouled,
becomes the central question of the abortion controversy. According to ancient myth and religion, souls are shadowy substances somehow united to the body, and at death they go free. I no more believe this than I believe that Amen-Ra was responsible for the political successes of Egypt's 18th Dynasty Pharaohs. Human beings do not so much have souls as are souls (which I believe even St. Thomas pointed out). The soul is a system of nervous and symbolic events that ride on (or: are a function of) the human brain, and it is these somewhat still-mysterious systemic features of the human organism that makes us persons, and make us matter to ourselves and each other. Though the features that make us individuals are in great part determined by our genetic make-up, which is right there at conception, very little of this is evident until months and even years after birth. Human beings develop. There is no clear point at which a person is ensouled.
Like evolution of life in general, the development of personhood goes through stages, marginal events, and occasional leaps. And this development process is different enough between individuals that pointing to one event that seems clear in one person's development may find no analogue in another individual's life.
Rights are claims to obligations, and are a legal and moral manner of allocating responsibility amongst people, and allowing coercion to influence human interaction. Where there's a right, there's an obligation, too; and where there's an obligation, there is a permissible power to coerce. Over the development of Western civilization, the use of rights to both expand and limit coercive powers have gained ground. Because rights have consequences for other rights, the extension of basic rights to more and more people have had many consequences for society in general, in a ripple effect. Extending the right to liberty to a common farmer placed extensive obligations on others not to exploit or limit his farming activities. Extending a right to liberty to one person, suggests that others, too, should have it. The arguments for extension of rights to a person, or class of persons, usually work just as well for other persons, other classes. So rights talk becomes universalist. In the ancient world it was almost unheard of to treat children as anything but the property of their parents. But over time, in the West, children, also, were extended rights. And beyond children, prenatal human beings, in the form of fetuses and zygotes, also became the recipient of rights.
It is always tempting to say that all human beings have the same rights,
and many people believe that this is indeed the case. That's why many modern libertarians believe children have no other rights other than the right to liberty (which leads to disastrous consequences), and why most non-libertarians believe that human beings have rights more robust than the right to liberty (which leads to the disastrous consequence of the modern welfare state). A more nuanced position, developed in a common-sense fashion and an evolutionary context by Herbert Spencer, explains that adults, in general, have a basic right to liberty (obligating everyone not to initiate coercive acts against them), and that children, in general, have a basic right to life, that is, sustenance and education and the like (obligating parents and guardians to provide life-sustaining food, shelter, clothing, and nurturing to enable them to grow into peaceful, productive adults). This distinction between the rights of children and adults might have consequences for extending rights to prenatal humans.
We speak of rights, and work to extend rights, within the context of the social world. The social world is the realm where human beings interact, and decisions can be made to alter the structure and nature of social systems. Extending rights to a new class of people implies a border. A caste division, at least, when the class of people who lacked the right were distinguished from another class of people in the same society. But other borders are more obvious, borders of territory. One reason that some groups of people do not have rights, in actual fact (rather than posited merely in theory), is that the political structure that governs their status in society is centered on groups of people that are not us. The jurisdiction is different. Mexicans have different rights than Americans because they have a different government. Citizens of Wahkiakum county, where I live, have more rights than citizens of Pacific county, next door, because the government of Pacific county has taken away quite a few more property rights than the government of Wahkiakum county has. (Try moving into Pacific county with your double-wide; see what happens.) A society of people governing themselves, has a limited ability to extend their mode of government beyond their own society. The further out from their power center (so to speak) the less power they have. The rights that they would wish to extend to others become less and less effectively articulated the further alleged rights-bearers are from the rights-bestowers' political system. This is a question of jurisdiction. Ethiopians lack many rights Americans enjoy. But Americans may talk all they want of the Ethiopians' rights, but will get almost nowhere until they find a means of extending into Ethiopia a rights-defensive structure of government as well as rights-defenders and -articulators within Ethiopia. Now I come to the point: not all elements of jurisdiction are limited to political borderlines. When liberty between adults is considered a basic element of society, the borderline of jurisdiction for many matters stops at the individual's property line. That's what liberty means. And a woman harboring and nurturing another human within her body seems to naturally define a clear jurisdiction line. We may have reason to wish that she treats her fetus in a different way than she does, but it is, in a sense, under her jurisdiction. To deny this is to deny her liberty. That simple.
Since liberty, at least for adults, is the most prized right, other rights that might abridge that right are to be suspiciously guarded. I've little trouble to abridge the liberty rights of the parents with the sustenance rights of their children. It is analogous to how a liberty right, though an agreement, entails a sustenance right (two free contractors agree that should one of them become disabled, the other should help take care of them; in consideration they've established a mutual savings account for said purpose — this kind of insurance contract is a basic feature of modern society, and flows nicely from a conception of the basic right to freedom). The parents engaged in an action that led to the entrance into our social world of a child. If they then kill the child, we nab the parents for murder. If they stuff the kid in a closet and give it only a little bread and water, we nab the parents for a set of horrible crimes. And if they simply don't feed their kid enough, we nab the parents abidging their duty to their child. (Of course, sometimes it will make more sense to instruct the parents and watch over, carefully; nabbing
and imprisonment are hardly the most effective means of countering crime in all cases. But that's another matter.) Going the extra step, though, out of our social world and into the womb of the mother, is a rather large step.
Guardianship of children can be taken away from parents when it is proven that they've criminally mistreated their children. No problem in theory, though often tricky in fact. Children, after all, are a part of the social world. They literally can be extracted from their homes and placed elsewhere. Fetuses cannot. This is a difference, a difference of alienability, in a sense. And it should make a difference in law, regarding abortion.
Towards the end of a pregnancy, fetuses are largely able to live outside the womb, though pre-term births often require extensive medical help. This brings up a question of alienability. There seems to be some ground for prohibiting abortions in late-term cases. Not only are late-term fetuses alienable from the mother's body, they have all or most of the features we see in neonates. And if the grinding up and slaughter of neonates is legally prohibitable, then doesn't it follow that the grinding up and slaughter of prenates should be prohibited? For one thing, we should worry about the doctors or technicians who would be engaging in the slaughter of late-term fetuses. Do we really want to encourage an industry where people slaughter and grind up beings almost indistinguishable from other beings we protect with the full force of law?
The question of jurisidiction in abortion law also comes down to a more normal political question: in America, the question of federalism and decentralism. Traditionally, criminal matter were decided in the several states. Before Roe v. Wade, some states permitted abortion, other states prohibited it. With varying regulations and legal rationales. There may be something to be said for this. The current controversy over abortion is partly a regional one. Red state citizens seem more willing to trump the liberty of women for the sake of fetuses. Blue state citizens less likely. Though I wish that everyone thought about abortion very similarly to how I think about abortion — with great latitude given towards pregnant women, and their contracted (or not) partners — I'm not bothered by different states having different rules on this matter. Reasonable people can disagree. And these disagreements on this matter should be expressed in the different constitutions of the several states.
Talk of rights is often confusing because many of the standard locutions are idiomatic, but commonly interpreted as metaphysical. One is said to have
a right. But if the right is only articulated by some, and never defended in actual practice, with social behavior in no way changing, to what extent may it be said that one actually has this right? (Thus the having of rights is a metaphysical thing with many philosohpers, the having being non-natural, non-obvious, nonsensical.) I usually prefer to use more positivistic language, avoiding some standard locutions. If I speak of a right I am positing, or advancing, then I say that such-and-such a person should have that right. I believe, for instance, that children should have sustenance rights, obliging parents first, and then guardians. I do not believe that children should have sustenance rights at the expense of the whole of society. (I support individual rights over group rights.) Society (meaning all of us
individuals who interact in this or that location) has an interest in defending children's rights. But that doesn't make the focus of those rights all of us
— and if you can't see the logic here, we shouldn't be talking about abortion, we should be talking something more basic indeed. If I was not consistent in this locution in the post, above, it's the result of haste. Sorry. The should have
construction makes clearer the distinction of posited law (moral argument) and actual law (actual rights and obligations dominant in society). I'm pretty sure I did not use this locution, above, in talking about Herbert Spencer's position — but since Spencer didn't follow this locution, perhaps that's just as well.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 29, 2005 | Netizen permalink
I'm no pusher of family values,
as my friends and enemies and readers know. But I do think families matter, and that there is a time and place for all sorts of things, and that contexts matter. Some things simply don't belong within view of a child, at least without personal supervision by a responsible guardian.
Further, I think the place for art is mostly in private hands. Public art, which is mainly architecture, fountain work, sculpture, and the like, should, on public property, not plumb the depths of human experience, nor demand the width of culture to understand. And should most of the time, even on public property, be paid for with private funds. (After all, the greatest work of public art in America, the Statue of Liberty, was not paid for, originally, with any taxpayer funds at all.)
But, if public funds must be expended to purchase public art, it should keep within some pretty obvious, easy-to-fathom boundaries. It shouldn't include dildos, for instance.
They're meant to be sex toys,
artist Tsehai Johnson said of her recent exhibit, Twelve Dildos on Hooks, but sex toys that are talking about a lot of issues.
Of course, these sex toys stand, er, dangle, mute. They say nothing.
They look like porcelain instruments of a somewhat obscure nature, implements from a byegone era. These are sex toys that could pass for something else, to an innocent anyway; obscure hand tools for pasta shaping, perhaps? Confectioners tools?
So is it art if we ask, these are sex toys?
The price tag for this work, paid by the state of Colorado, was $5,000. Was it worth it?
But . . . to whom could it possibly be worth $5,000 — a jaded fetishist? a bemused boho nicknack collector? a man who also bought the gynecological instruments for mutant women
from David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers?
Can this in any way be considered public art
? The "l" seems misplaced, in any case.
The whole production seems a jape. Appropriate for private ownership, yes. (I'd pay a few hundred, maybe.) But what state functionary in his or her right mind would pay a dime for it?
This shows just how imprudent government buyers can be.
And so becomes the new paradigm case for government non-involvement in art.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | July 30, 2005 | Netizen permalink
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