Howdy

I haven't gotten anything quite to the point where I'd be happy to post the stuff I'm thinking about - which is somewhat surprising, given the amount of time I'm in the car - but I wanted to say hi in any case.

Hi!

Q. Should we allow Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero?

I'm back in the classroom this semester, after taking this past year off (which is its own long story, not relevant today). So, as part of the introduction to the course, I asked the students to write their names, their hometowns, and their majors on an index card, along with any question they might want me to answer. One of the students posed the question in the title, but I didn't get around to answering it during class.

A. Yes. I think there are two main reasons for this. The first is that religious freedom is basic to this country. While only two of the original colonies had religious tolerance as part of their founding principles, even those colonies with an established religion set that aside with the founding of the republic. I'm most familiar with Virginia's history here, but I think it's particularly relevant: Patrick Henry, an Episcopalian, wanted to have Christianity as the established religion in the state of Virginia; the people who opposed the establishment of a non-denominational "Christianity" were not atheists or members of some non-Christian religion, but Baptists and Presbyterians (and members of other, smaller denominations). They were committed Christians, but they worried that the dominant denomination - the Episcopalians - would control the narrative of what it means to be truly "Christian." Thus, they thought it best to leave it as a private matter, rather than a public one.

My second reason is related to the first: who gets to control the narrative of Islam? That is, just as the Baptists and Presbyterians had different ideas about what it means to be Christian than the Episcopalians (and each other), so there is diversity within the Muslim world.

Following 9/11, people criticized the leaders of the Muslim community in the US for not condemning the attacks. The sad thing about that is that those leaders did condemn the attacks, but no one was listening. The vast majority of Muslims in the US and around the world condemn terrorism, but the radical anti-Western minority seems to control the narrative of what Islam is in this country. I believe having a community center, on par with a YMCA, near Ground Zero, would help correct that.

Ignorance of History

Earlier this week, Julie and I were eating dinner at a family restaurant in Central Square, and overheard a conversation from the guys in the booth behind us regarding the Founders of the United States. They remembered that the Declaration of Independence states that we have been "endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights." They also assumed that the Constitution says something about God (it doesn't), and the the Founders were all Christian - "One Nation, Under God." (And just to be absolutely explicit about that last reference, the Pledge of Allegiance was written at the end of the 19th century -without "under God," which was added in the 1950s).

The particularly irritating thing for me is people's appropriation (or misappropriation) of Thomas Jefferson; he gets edited out of textbooks in Texas, but "patriots" wear t-shirts with his quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." (You know, "patriots" such as the fellow who committed the worst terrorist attack on US soil prior to 9/11.) Many other quotes are also falsely attributed to him. But to cite him as an instance of a Christian is particularly grating.

Among his many other pursuits, Thomas Jefferson edited the Gospels into what has come to be known as the "Jefferson Bible." He's not the first to try to harmonize the competing and sometimes conflicting stories told in the Gospels; but he may be the first to edit out all the miracles. I won't go into all of the particular edits (and we could have a fruitful conversation regarding whether the various miracles attributed to Jesus are necessary to believe in order to be a Christian, but not today); but one stands out, and is significant.

"There laid they Jesus,

And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed."

Why is that so significant? Because it's the last line of the Jefferson Bible. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried; the end. It almost makes me want to carry the Jefferson Bible around with me, just to take out when I overhear conversations where Jefferson is mentioned as a Good Christian Founding Father.

Pre-rant musings

I've relocated several hundred miles north, and I'm not really settled.

However, I've been thinking about my ethics classes and how I approach certain subjects. [Caveat: this is a blog post, not an ethics class, so the presentation here has been modified.]

Are you conservative or liberal? Two issues: crime and welfare.

For the purposes of this post, we have to make some background assumptions. With regard to crime, we assume that some people are innocent and some people are guilty (i.e., you can neither start with the premise that all people are guilty, nor with the premise that one's circumstances exonerate one's responsibility). With regard to welfare, we assume that some people are deserving and some people aren't (i.e., some people are poor for reasons beyond their control and therefore deserve some help from the state, where private charity is insufficient; and being lazy is not a "reason beyond their control"). Further, for both, we have to assume that the system (for prosecution and for distribution, respectively) is always flawed; the best system will still find some innocent people guilty, some guilty people innocent, some deserving poor will be excluded, and some undeserving people will receive assistance. If you don't think these are acceptable premises, then we cannot move forward here.

With regard to crime: is it more important to maximize the number of guilty people punished (knowing that some innocent people will be unjustly punished) or to minimize the number of unjustly punished innocents (knowing that some guilty people will escape their due punishment)? That is, given a flawed system in which perfect justice is elusive, do you emphasize the guilty or the innocent? (When I was growing up, there was a popular phrase, "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" which seems to embody the conservative ethos here.)

The situation with welfare is a mirror image: is it more important to maximize the number of deserving poor receiving welfare (knowing that some undeserving people will exploit the system), or to minimize the number of people fraudulently receiving assistance from the state (knowing that some deserving poor - i.e., children in poverty - will get left out)? Again, given a necessarily flawed system, do you emphasize the deserving poor or the welfare cheats?

There are other issues that don't really fit into this schema, and there are additional complexities that this papers over, but I like this as a quick-and-dirty classification, and captures two very distinct ways of looking at the world.

Final in the Alphabet series: Fin.

I've still been thinking about hard-line economic positions, but I've also been drawing cartoons about them. Which is to say, there will not be a rant about libertarians to accompany this picture, but there may be an illustrated rant at some point in the future.

Just to keep you up to date, I've primarily been thinking about moving - from Roanoke, up to New York. For those of you who haven't been following along, that's Central New York, not The City. Very different. I still don't have a firm date for departure, but it will within the next two weeks. Unfortunately, my next job doesn't start until September 7th.

I now plan on returning to my usual mix of cartoons and paintings. Since my plans often don't work out as expected, who knows what's next. Perhaps sculpture!

Y indeed: the penultimate post (in this series)

When I'm painting houses I think a lot. That's not really a hazard of the profession, but it is a hazard for the philosopher stuck painting houses. Lately I've been thinking about the problem with hard-line economic positions.

Let me start with Marxism. I sometimes identify as a Marxist - sometimes to irritate others, but I really do find Marx's critique of capitalism right on target. He peers into the machinery which makes it all tick, and finds it wanting. He could not have been expected to imagine, for instance, the reduction of the university to yet another capitalist machine in which underpaid, overspecialized and imminently replaceable drones (the adjuncts who teach the majority - yes, majority - of introductory level classes in the US) who asked to work harder for less money (e.g., online teaching), and churn out a sub-par product that people keep consuming anyway (because we've been raised to think that a college diploma is the ticket to a better job and therefore lifestyle than our parents, even if that's not true anymore - the actually goal of education lost amid short-sighted economic interest). And yet, look how well his analysis works for the current state of higher education. It's not just for textile mills anymore!

But Marx was naïve about human nature. The workers may grumble about their state of affairs, but are happy enough with a 40 hour work week, some sort of a pension plan, maybe health insurance... hm, we may be due for another revolution. In any case, the workers have not risen up to overthrow Rich Uncle Pennybags, establishing a state which eventually whithers away. The so-called communist states have merely re-established the same sort of societal structures that they were suppose to replace: (I really hate to quote the Who here, but), "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." But that's not because Marx failed to properly critique capitalism, it's because he had an overly optimistic view of human nature. (Kant demonstrates that you can have a view of human nature as containing the seeds of "radical evil" without resorting to theology, i.e., original sin, but that's a topic for another post.)

So, let me be clear in conclusion: I reject a hard-line Marxism which says that a workers paradise is just around the world-historical corner. But I do think he has something important to say about the failures of our current economic system, and, let's face it, the benefits of thinking collectively at least some of the time, as opposed to being relentlessly individualistic.

Twenty fourth in a series, soon to be complete

It has occurred to me that, not only have I slowed down on this series, but I'm thinking more about a larger project lately. And I'm also thinking about moving. So, I need to wrap this up.

I feel as though I ought to add some edifying thought, but I'm not really thinking of anything right at the moment. Perhaps later.

Twenty third in a series

John Lennon sang, "the Walrus was Paul," but that may only have been because when he wrote, "I am the Walrus," he was thinking of Lewis Carroll's poem, "The Walrus and the Carpenter." Except he hadn't read the poem in a while, and forgot that the Walrus is a pretty bad fellow.

I remember reading somewhere that the poem is an allegory about Kantian and Utilitarian ethics - perhaps here - but it seems unlikely that was what John was thinking about.

Twenty second in a series

Reminded of a Simpsons quote:

"Marge, I've got to get out of this rut and back into the groove!"

Twenty first in a series

Sorry for the delay - it's been a busy month, with a surprising amount of travel.

I keep wanting these to be cartoons, and I try to resist the urge; in this one, for instance, I was thinking I might add the Tyrannosaurus Wrench in the background, yelling, "THAT'S LATIN FOR 'BEAR'!"

But I didn't.

Unscheduled interuption

In addition to the various other things I've been trying out lately - when I find the time between work and applying for jobs in Central New York - I've also been working on collages.

These aren't part of a larger series, at least not yet, although both of them suggest a story that I haven't been told.

Yet.

Twentieth

Hm, this started out as an exercise to get me to draw/paint every day... and that seems to be failing.

The reasons for it failing are good, though: I'm back to painting (houses) more or less full time, is more lucrative than my art (for the time being, at least) - and I've gotten a firm job offer up in Rochester (which is not Syracuse, but is a lot closer than Roanoke). Which is to say, I've been busy doing things that are productive, although not as restorative as doodling.

Hey Nineteen

I've had the idea for this addition to the series since March 24th (yes, it was dated) and just haven't gotten around to drawing it.

What's new with you?

10010 or, Inappropriate reading materials?

Car repair: I took Hauerwas' A Cross-Shattered Church. Intended to be hopeful, the final bill was several hundred dollars.

DMV: Kafka's The Castle. Supposed to be ironic, but they sent me away because my papers weren't in order.

Bah.

XVII

Update: B'Yo! pointed out that "Q" could also be for Quaker, or for quacker (quack quack quack).

Or I could have had Q stand for "Quelle," and left the picture blank (or perhaps just muddy). I'm still self-amused by my singing "tryin' hard to recreate what had yet to be created" in class in response to this book.

Who knew that "Q" would be such a popular letter? Well, not in Denmark: according to Wikipedia, they "abolished the letter in 1872, although it's still part of the alphabet." If it's still part of the alphabet, then it sounds as if they didn't really abolish it - unless you're talking about some sort of Hegelian Aufhebung, which would surprise me since it happened after Kierkegaard.

What were we talking about again?

Sixteenth in a series

Sorry for the delay: 15

My owl looks a little worse for wear, but part of executing this series has been deliberately working quickly - if I fussed over every picture, I'd never get going.

14

Thirteenth in a series

Twelfth in a series

Part of the idea with the series is just to make sure I do something every day, but sometimes I just go too fast and things get wonky.