A New Virtue: Expansiveness

This is an old, widely-accepted virtue: knowing what you believe and standing up for it, even if it is unpopular to do so.

Yeah, I guess it's a virtue. I mean, if you really know what you believe, you might as well stand up for it, rather than just shrugging your shoulders and pretending you don't care.

My commitment to that virtue, though, is fairly dubious, mostly because there's another, sometimes-conflicting virtue that I like better. I call it Expansiveness, and I define it as "having exposed oneself to, and really considered, a wide range of perspectives, happenings, ideologies, subjects, and ways of being human." (I borrowed the phrase "ways of being human" from Richard Rorty.) I like it because it's infinite; you can always become more expansive. Isn't that exciting?! Expansive people are fun to talk to, because they are genuinely interested in what you have to say, they don't condescend, and they are not so caught up in their own web of beliefs to consider something new. You can tell when you talk to them that their minds are works-in-progress, that they are actively thinking and not just chewing on the same old dogma. Then, when they tell you what they believe, you can trust that they have done their research, thought it through, and considered a good number of opposing viewpoints.

Best of all, in talking with them, you yourself become more expansive, because you are taking advantage of the thinking they have already done.

The New Sins

http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/new_sins/index.php

The Scriptives

Things that are better descriptive than prescriptive:

the dictionary
religion
free market theory
evolutionary theory
poetry

Futarchy

http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.html

Minnesota Senate Recount

http://senaterecount.startribune.com/ballots/

The challenged ballots are hilarious.

"Barney's final White House video"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7784197.stm

The Next Challenge for the Democrats

It would seem like the Democratic Party is doing really well and the Republican Party is really struggling, given the results of the last elections, but really what I think is happening is the playing out of a simple narrative: Republicans are more popular during good times, and Democrats are more popular during bad.

When the economy is strong, Republican rhetoric about small government and de-regulation makes more sense to people, because they don't need the government to step in and create jobs or stop financiers from creating weird, unregulated securities, because those things usually take care of themselves in the end. Folks can just keep on working 40 hours a week without fear of losing their jobs, enjoy their employer-provided health coverage, take out huge loans to send their kids to college, watch their investments steadily increase, and let the good times roll. When people aren't shooting each other but are using their guns to go hunting instead, it makes sense that people should be allowed to keep their guns and not have the government trying to take them away. When the globe isn't warming, it makes sense that oil and coal companies should be able to explore and extract to their hearts' content.

However, when things go wrong, that's when the Democrats step in. The financial industry gets a little out of hand, so the Democrats have to come in and clean things up. When unemployment is low, the Democrats swoop in with their promises to create jobs through public works. When the globe is warming, the Democrats have to put the "extraction industries" in their place. When minority rights are being trampled on or certain demographics are put at a systemic disadvantage, the Democrats are at least willing to consider helping them out.

Conservatives get indignant about the fact that the Democrats are always trying to make life a bit easier for convicted criminals, illegal immigrants, sexual deviants, people who are too lazy to get a job, people who are too irresponsible to pay the mortgage, people who shouldn't have accepted the mortgage in the first place, flag-burners, drunks, atheists, terrorists, scoundrels, rascals, vagabonds, and pirates, but do little to encourage good, honest, hard-working, tax-paying, church-going, God-fearing, home-owning families who are the perfect model of what everyone should be like. In short, the Republicans seem to say, "the Democrats are always complaining. But what is it that they want?"

That's a question that the Democrats need to get better at answering. (Not that I condone any of that nonsense about the God-fearing, home-owning families, but still, it's worth considering, for political purposes if nothing else.) Democrats are not great, but better than the Republicans, at answering the question, "How do we get us out of this mess?" But the Republicans are better at answering the question, "What does a well-functioning society look like?" What the Democrats need to do is demonstrate that America can be a thriving, stable, fun place during a period of predominantly Democratic leadership. They can't just go on being the party of the bad times.

Pizza Capitalism

"So why is the [Pizza] Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it - talking trade balances here - once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here - once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel - once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity - y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else

music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery

[...]

Pizza delivery [is] a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence, from Abkhazia, Rwanda, Guanajuato, South Jersey, and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. And they had studied this problem. Graphed the frequency of doorway delivery-time disputes. Wired the early Deliverators to record, then analyze, the debating tactics, the voice-stress histograms, the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie, or delude themselves, about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no, they deserved a free pizza along with their life, liberty, and pursuit of whatever, it was fucking inalienable. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses, gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview, hooked them to polygraphs, studied their brain waves as they showed them choppy, inexplicable movies of porn queens and late-night car crashes and Sammy Davis, Jr., put them in sweet-smelling, mauve-walled rooms and asked them questions about Ethics so perplexing that even a Jesuit couldn't respond without committing a venial sin. The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it, and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix: smart boxes."

--from Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson

Year in Ideas

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/14/magazine/2008_IDEAS.html

Greenmaroons

What if Bethel College started marketing itself as a "green" school? They already have a decent start. The prairie reconstruction project across the street is a great idea. They have a car-sharing program, they have stickers next to light switches reminding people to turn off lights when they leave the room, and they offer interterm trips with the biology department to Central America.

To expand on those features, the opportunities are endless, and they vary greatly in cost and complexity. They could turn a small section of land into a campus garden, and make it a student-run project by subsidizing a club to tend to it or by offering scholarships, wages, or course credits to do so. Those students could then sell the fruits and vegetables in the local community to raise money for additional green projects around campus. The college could also offer financial incentives for students to leave their vehicles at home rather than bringing them to campus. They could buy fresh produce for the cafeteria from the local farmers' market. They could offer a major in environmental or agricultural studies (agricultural would be more unique), and hire a professor with a background in both economics and agriculture. They could give gift certificates to local businesses that promote fair trade, commit to using minimal packaging, or sell only pesticide- and chemical-free products at various campus events. They could build a power-generating windmill or solar panels on campus. They could encourage composting. They could make sure every building they build meets the highest standards in energy efficiency. They could offer a competitive financial award in the business department for green entrepreneurship. They could start a year-long or semester-long competition, with a kickass reward, to see which dorm or which residence hall can use the least amount of water per capita. They could encourage students to do their senior seminars on topics relevant to the Great Plains region. Biology students could research alternative farming techniques with the help of Bethel alumni in the farms around Goessel, Hillsboro, and Moundridge. Physics students could study wind and solar energy. English students could study literature of the Plains, working to discern the relationships between the land and the cultures that inhabit it.

No doubt most of these suggestions cost more money than I think and are easier said than done, but that is not my concern right now. I'm just brainstorming.

When my grandparents went to Bethel College, most of their classmates grew up on farms. Several of my parents' classmates did as well. Very few of mine did. That pattern, of course, mirrors national trends; nowadays less than 2 percent of Americans live on farms. But there is another national trend that Bethel would do well to take maximum advantage of: a growing craze for organic products, sustainable living methods, and local economies.

When I was a student at Bethel (not so terribly long ago), farming was seen by many as a brainless, conservative, blue-collar activity that no smart, liberal, upwardly-mobile college graduate would aspire to. My friends in the sciences leaned toward medical research and practice, my friends in the humanities leaned toward the education system, and my friends in the in-between disciplines (psychology, history, social work, etc.) leaned toward social and human services. I didn't have many close friends in the business department, and those I did have leaned toward whatever would make them money. Generally, few of my friends wanted to live in Kansas, unless they could stay within the protective Bethel bubble.

I think, though, that if Bethel played its cards right, it could turn its location (rural, agricultural, quiet central Kansas) from a weakness into a strength. It could market itself as the greenest Kansas college (using The Green as a central metaphor), with the most expertise about sustainable agriculture and the 21st-century food and energy economies. In doing so, they might convince some local farm kids to come to Bethel to learn about agriculture rather than going to K-State. They might also strengthen their ties with the legions of Bethel alumni in the area with farming roots. If President-Elect Obama's vision for a "new energy economy" pans out, it will include a new "green-collar" job sector based heavily in America's rural areas. It would be nice to place some Bethel graduates in prominent positions in the new green-collar industry. If Kansas is the future home of wind farms, vast fields of solar panels, and revolutionary agricultural experiments, wouldn't it be great if Bethel could be on the leading end of the revolution?

Internal and External Conversations

Every community, no matter how big or small, needs a proper balance between internal conversations and external conversations.

By internal conversations, I mean conversations about issues pertaining only to that community. Housemates must sometimes discuss procedures for washing dishes; the government must sometimes discuss the importance of maintaining transparency and limiting the influence of lobbyists; friends and lovers must sometimes discuss the role conversational styles play in creating or solving conflicts.

By external conversations, I mean conversations that could be had with both members and non-members of that community. Housemates should be able to discuss politics, movies, dreams; the government have to be able to talk about poverty, scientific research, the environment; and friends and lovers should be able to make jokes, participate in hobbies together, and talk about things that annoy them about other people.

The same is true for individuals: People should spend time reflecting on their actions (internal), and they should also act (external).

Ideal Academic Community

My four principles of an ideal academic community:

1. No scholar has the final word.
2. No narrative is all-encompassing.
3. Every argument is judged solely on the basis of its explanatory power.
4. Nobody who wants to participate is excluded.

Electricity-from-Manure Project

"At the electricity-from-manure project her in Sterksel, [the Netherlands,] the refuse from thousands of pigs is combined with local waste materials (outdated carrot juice and crumbs from a cookie factory), and pumped into warmed tanks called digesters. There, resident bacteria release the natural gas within, which is burned to generate heat and electricity.

"The farm uses 25 percent of the electricity, and the rest is sold to a local power provider. The leftover mineral slurry is an ideal fertilizer that reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, whose production release a heavy dose of carbon dioxide.

"For this farm the scheme has provided a substantial payback: By reducing its emissions, it has been able to sell carbon credits on European markets. It makes money by selling electricity. It gets free fertilizer."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science/earth/04meat.html?em

Redescription We Can Believe In

Obama framed his campaign using the mantra "Change we can believe in." That mantra was successful, in part, because of its vagueness; the expression is broad enough to encompass lots of different definitions of "change." Post-election, it is natural that some people who voted for Obama will be satisfied with his decisions, and others will be disappointed; this difference largely hinges upon one's interpretation of "change." Depending on which interpretation(s) are yours, Obama's Cabinet selections of the past week might either please you, disgust you, or not affect you one way or the other. Here are a few I've heard:

--A change from cronyism to competency.
--A change from Republican to Democrat.
--A change from old faces to new faces.
--A change from a government that listens to lobbyists to a government that listens to the people.
--A change from corruption to reform.
--A change from a system controlled by the rich to a system controlled by the middle-class.
--A change from de-regulation of the financial system to regulation.
--A change from capitalism to socialism.
--A change from war in Iraq to war in Afghanistan.
--A change from Washington insiders to Washington outsiders.
--A change from an arrogant, ethnocentric, bellicose, nationalistic worldview to an inclusive, multicultural, peace-promoting, global worldview.

Richard Rorty, the philosopher I find most interesting, wrote in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) that change occurs not by way of grand discovery about how the world really works, but by way of redescription. Important thinkers like Hegel, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Nabokov, Derrida, and Orwell, he said, did not assume their importance because of groundbreaking discoveries they made, but because their redescriptions of the world and of their predecessors' works spoke to the contingencies of their particular times and places. Derrida redescribed Heidegger, who redescribed Nietzsche, who redescribed Marx, who redescribed Hegel. Rorty redescribed all of them. This all leads me to ask, how might Rorty, were he alive, have viewed the Obama transition process? I'm going to add one more interpretation of "change" to the list, on behalf of Richard Rorty:

--A change from one way of talking about the world to another. (Or as Rorty would have said it, "Replacing one final vocabulary with another.")

Of course, to Rorty this would not be as insignificant as it sounds; how we talk about the world has a great deal to do with how we act within it. I read the other day some article suggesting that the Obama administration may or may not continue to define the "war on terrorism" as a "war." I also recall Obama's terrific Independence Day speech from earlier this year in which he tried to redefine "patriotism" in terms he found more acceptable. Both of those, I think, are clear examples of a shifting vocabulary. Should be interesting to monitor this shift over the next few years, as the vocabulary of the Obama administration replaces that of the Bush.

Homemade Toothpaste

6 teaspoons baking soda
1/3 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons vegetable glycerin
15 drops peppermint or wintergreen extract

Mix thoroughly.

Personal Responsibility

You know the political myth I hate more than any other? The one that says conservatives believe in personal responsibility more than liberals do. That is just bullshit.