It's hard to be piercingly heterodox when heterodoxy is the
culture's orthodoxy—heterodoxy of a certain sort, anyway.
Heterodoxy is not inherently instructive, accurate, or
interesting. It's pure reaction. If you tell a small child to
be quiet and he yammers more loudly, his rebellion is a form of
bondage. It's hopelessly tethered to what it rejects. It's wholly
predictable and adds no value. It's provocation whose point is to
provoke, but not for any particular reason other than provocation
itself. It's reverse-the-sign heterodoxy—change the plus sign
to minus, or vice versa. If conventional opinion condemns al-Qaeda
and you defend them because the imperialists attack them, you're a
useless idiot. Much of the worst thinking of the last century has
been of this form. Bill Maher has on occasion made trenchant
objections to orthodoxies of the moment, and last fall did herald
the ...
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The phrase has become a watchword in liberal thinking in the last
year, from President Obama's speeches to Todd Gitlin's entry
this week at Brainstorm. It stands as the colloquial
encapsulation of a capitalist survival-of-the-fittest system that
runs on greed and heartlessness. The opposite is, precisely,
state policies that help the unfortunate and disadvantaged. But
"you're on your own" isn't necessarily a statement of
cruelty. Given a little background in American classics, we
can open it to the opposite interpretation. In this version,
which comes out of classical liberalism (which is closer to today's
libertarian conservatism than to today's liberalism), to be on your
own is to be freed from social and biological ties of fate, as well
as state restrictions. It isn't an abandonment of people, but
rather an empowerment of them. People are not forever defined
by class or...
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There has long been a lot of hysteria among US elites about
children born "out of wedlock." Every since the 1965 Moynihan
Report's claim that black families were failing because of the
pathology of single motherhood, policy makers and pundits, not to
mention more than a few sociologists, have been running around
screaming the sky is falling. "Illegitimate" children are the
problem, not poverty, lack of access to anything like universal
education, health care, not to mention those crazy European things
like state-subsidized childcare.
All of this was a way of displacing the structural poverty of
many black Americans onto the "lax morals" of the black mother.
Which worked pretty well since nearly all of these pundits,
policy-makers, and sociologists were white and it was far easier to
explain black poverty as a them problem than actually
acknowledge just how much structural racism remains....
Last post, I described why female orgasm is considered an
evolutionary mystery. Here, we’ll look at some suggested solutions
to this mystery … none of which, unfortunately, seems very
promising. The redoubtable Desmond Morris, whose fertile
imagination gave us the “buttocks mimic” hypothesis for the
evolution of breasts, once unburdened himself of yet another
howler, proposing that orgasm is natural selection’s way of keeping
a woman horizontal after sex, which in turn supposedly makes
fertilization more likely. This “knock-down” hypothesis has
problems. For one, despite substantial efforts, it has never been
demonstrated that postcoital positions influence fertilization. And
if they did, there are lots of possible ways of inducing
individuals to remain prone, or supine, or on one’s side, etc.,
such as reducing blood pressure after sex, without any
particular...
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A dear college friend died
yesterday while serving as a correspondent in Syria, reporting on
the rebellion against the Syrian president. He was 43.
The world knows Anthony as a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for
International Reporting, whose stories painted a broader picture of
the beauty and terror in war-torn countries in the Middle
East. He reported on war and conflicts in lands that now hold
vital interest for the world. Through Anthony’s reporting, we
came to learn about the struggles of people—an on-the-ground view.
His work involved risk and danger. He was successful, because
he was a decent man; success in that line of work can only occur if
trust is built, especially among people increasingly wary about
journalists. It is reported that he died of an asthma attack—the
second he suffered that week. Anthony was one of my closest college
friends. We attended the ...
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Secular-baiting has become something of an
art form in high GOP circles ever since Newt Gingrich began his
pioneering explorations of the genre back in the 1990s. A
milestone in the evolution of this rhetoric occurred in 2007 when
Mitt Romney
likened Secularism to radical Jihadism in a memorable speech.
Those were impressive accomplishments, for sure. But let me say
that no one, but no one, can demonize, Talibanize, or Stalinize
Secularism like Rick Santorum. On occasion he has done so, I would
admit, with a fair degree of intellectual seriousness, as in
this
2010 speech. Though for the most part his pronouncements on the
subject amount to rank and preposterous name-calling. Back in
2003 he lamented:
“I want to remind people of the societies that have been secular in
nature. Starting with the French Revolution, moving onto the
fascists, and the Nazis and the communists and the...
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Hi there! I thought I'd introduce myself. You probably weren't
expecting me--so few do--and yet since I've been so often on your
tongue in "Brainstorm" these past few days, I thought I'd just pop
in. I’m not a mystery once you get to know me--and I certainly hope
you will. Why am I here? I like a good time. When I know people are
relaxing, having intimate conversations, really enjoying themselves
both cheerfully and intensely, you'll find that I'm drawn to the
moment. I don't need a big party, a lot of decorations, too much to
drink, or a whole lot of fuss; I don't need a red carpet, so to
speak, because I carry my own with me, all rolled up and tucked
into place. I don't need a big limo, either, or a Hummer. If I need
to, I can walk and get to where I'm going. Despite what you may
have heard from someone who's never known me personally, I'm not
all about making a scene. You might ...
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Like Laurie Fendrich, I have been obsessing a bit about the
Catholic bishops and their stand against birth control. Since I
have thought quite a bit about this stuff, I would like to chip in.
I should say that I look upon Laurie as the moral conscience of
Brainstorm, and what I have to say is intended as
complementary and not as contradictory. The bishops are arguing in
the context of the Catholic doctrine of natural law, something that
goes back to Aquinas who in turn, as always, was hugely indebted to
Aristotle. I see natural law theory as an attempt to answer the
Euthyphro Problem, something expressed in the Platonic dialogue of
that name. The question is asked “Why should we be good?” and the
answer is given “Because it is the Will of God.” To which, another
question is asked. “If doing the good is doing the Will of God,
does this mean that God could simply make up...
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The guilt is overwhelming. Here we have Laurie Essig getting all
depressed about Valentine’s Day. Laurie Fendrich is beating up the
Catholic bishops for their views on birth control, and expectedly
getting a host of critics who are probably bishops writing under
noms-de-plume. And dear old David Barash is working himself up into
a tizzy about the female orgasm. Face up to it David. You are never
going to have one, so you might as well get over it now. Why don’t
you offer your services to the bishops? They could use a bit of
biology that post-dates Thomas Aquinas. And me! I am sitting on my
behind in an apartment in Paris, eating breakfast – a chunk of
freshly baked bread, slathered in butter and with lots of jam.
(What is it about French fathers and husbands? They love to spend
those long August vacations wandering through the hills picking
wild berries, which they turn into...
directs the program in history and philosophy of science at
Florida State University. His forthcoming book is Science and
Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science.
A dear college friend died
yesterday while serving as a correspondent in Syria, reporting on
the rebellion against the Syrian president. He was 43.
The world knows Anthony as a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for
International Reporting, whose stories painted a broader picture of
the beauty and terror in war-torn countries in the Middle
East. He reported on war and conflicts in lands that now hold
vital interest for the world. Through Anthony’s reporting, we
came to learn about the struggles of people—an on-the-ground view.
His work involved risk and danger. He was successful, because
he was a decent man; success in that line of work can only occur if
trust is built, especially among people increasingly wary about
journalists. It is reported that he died of an asthma attack—the
second he suffered that week. Anthony was one of my closest college
friends. We attended the ...
Read More
Brainstorm, The Chronicle Review's blog on ideas, culture, and the arts, features some of the best minds in academic and policy circles.
