I’ve been too busy lately to write any new blog posts, but not so busy that I haven’t been able to spend some of the little free time at my disposal reflecting on that overridingly important issue du jour, robot sex. Stephen Hicks’s discussion is one of the more enlightening ones I’ve read so far–exemplary for getting past the “ew factor” (in which I was mired before I read it) and clarifying the relevant issues.
The next step would be to come up with a way of distinguishing between those for whom robot sex was an all-things-considered best option considering the circumstances, and those for whom robot sex was a problematic form of acquiescence in the less-than-best, i.e., the moral equivalent of “settling” or satisficing. For whatever it’s worth, my own view is that robot sex can be a “best option considering the circumstances” in the first five of the bulleted cases Hicks mentions, but is an acquiescence in the less-than-the-best in the latter two.
Unfortunately, I can’t elaborate on that right now, because I’m soon due at a talk on…Gaza. There’s something surreal and disorienting about a world in which one spends part of the day doing real work, part of it reflecting on robot sex, and part of it attending a lecture on Gaza–something problematically reminiscent of Marx’s explication/defense in The German Ideology of the dilettantism of communist society:
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
I realize that I’m digressing here, but mutatis mutandis, doesn’t Marx’s aspiration describe middle- to upper-middle class capitalist society?
I think it does, but I don’t have time to elaborate on that, either. Off to Gaza-in-Clifton, then. With luck I’ll manage to summarize the water symposium and Gaza talk later in the week.
I’m in the throes of preparations for tomorrow’s Fall Symposium on water–and then midterm grades are due and I start a new online class Monday–so I may be a little slow on comments and approvals until sometime next week. I’ll try to summarize the water symposium as well as the Gaza talk si c’est possible, but pas de promesses.
By coincidence, last month I spent a weekend “conferencing” with Izzeldine Abouelaish, founder of Daughters for Life and author of I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey. Izzeldine, whose daughters and niece were killed in 2009 by Israeli rocket fire in Gaza, is one of those supposedly mythical Palestinians committed to peace despite having endured trauma at Israeli hands. More on Izzeldine’s book once I finish it; for now, I just couldn’t resist mentioning the coincidence of “two-doctors-from-Gaza-with-messages-of-hope-amidst-trauma.”
Mention Gaza to the average American news junkie, and the immediate association is “Hamas” and “Islamist fanaticism.” Not that those things don’t exist, but there are more things in Palestine than are dreamt up by such stereotypes, and I’d like to think that events like the PACC talk and like Izzeldine’s book and foundation will eventually break the reflexive associations of “Palestinian” with “wild-eyed religious psychopath” and replace them with something more respectful of reality. The audacity of hope, to borrow a phrase.
If you doubt that, try to watch the videos embedded in this link, if you can. You can’t, because the heckling drowns out the speaker. The police, we’re told, refused to escort the hecklers out on “free speech” grounds, but the ultimate result was that Levy was unable to give his speech. It’s an understatement to call that “problematic.”
The preceding set of videos happens to involve a pro-Palestinian speaker and pro-Israeli hecklers, but the principle applies all ways around. Here’s Israeli ambassador Michael Oren being heckled during a speech he gave (or tried to give) at UC Irvine in 2010. I admire Levy and despise Oren, but I have the same view in both cases: the anti-Oren hecklers, like the anti-Levy ones, should have been removed from the hall–by force, if necessary.
Heckling may well take the form of speech, but it violates free speech by interfering with the free speech rights–disturbing and interrupting the speech–of the person who has prior claim to the floor. It can sometimes be unclear who has prior claim to the floor–which is why we have rules of order–but it usually isn’t. When it is clear, it’s equally clear what should be done with hecklers: either shut up or be thrown out and locked out. This sort of reaction is graceful and intelligent, but it still sort of misses the point and misses the mark (I’m referring to the effort at persuasion before the removal). So should senators be thrown out of the State of the Union address? Yes, senators too. For a one-word outburst? For a one-word outburst. Even if Obama was lying? Even if Obama was lying.
Feel free to demonstrate outside the hall, or to ask brutal questions during the Q&A–but speeches, like concerts, should compel absolute silence from the audience. If you’re sufficiently offended, leave. But if you decide to stay, the principle of free speech demands that you hold your peace–whoever you are, whoever the speaker is, and whatever the speaker is saying.
Postscript, October 28, 2015: This story (and video) doesn’t induce me to re-think my view on heckling, but it does induce me to offer a few caveats or qualifications. I linked to the preceding version of that story because it has the best video quality of any that I’ve seen, but (like the Huffington Post version of the story) it conveniently omits the fact that the protesters interrupted Trump’s speech by chanting at him. (The Huff Post video mentions the interruption.) I have no love for Trump, but I don’t think anyone has the right to interrupt his speech (or anyone’s speech) in this way.
As a first resort, in cases like this, the protesters should be told to stop interrupting. If they don’t agree to stop, or don’t stop, they should be removed from the premises of the talk. Ideally, they should be removed by parties designated to handle security (assuming that someone is designated). If a security detail is there, no one should be allowed to remove the hecklers but them. Obviously, if the talk is being guarded by a police detail, the task of removing hecklers is their job, not that of the audience.
If the hecklers/protesters don’t agree to leave, I still think they should be forced out. But the force used to remove them should be proportionate to the force by which they resist leaving: the less they resist, the less force is needed. Disproportionate uses of force should in this context be treated as new initiations of force–in other words, as battery. The video makes clear that the force used to remove these protesters was grossly disproportionate to what was needed to remove them. The guy in the pink shirt should absolutely have been (or be) arrested for battery.
It’s amazing that a person could be recorded on video as battering someone, and not just get away with it, but have essentially been incited into the act by a candidate for the U.S. presidency. But maybe it isn’t so amazing. Maybe it’s only as amazing as the fact that Donald Trump is the GOP front-runner for the presidency in the first place. And at this point, maybe that’s not so amazing, either.
Postscript, November 6, 2015: More of the same at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,this time aimed at the Israeli ethicist Moshe Halbertal. The excerpt in the link (from The Tablet) of the University’s Student Conduct Code seems to me to take the right approach to such matters.
I have to confess that I was tempted to heckle at this presentation I attended last night, at the Alanson White Institute in New York. The temptation is (nearly) overwhelming when a presenter consciously and strategically decides to bullshit the audience for 90 minutes, evading all substantive issues and abusing his critics more or less with impunity. But I decided to take my own advice–holding my tongue, leaving about twenty minutes early, and letting loose with a torrent of profanity once I was a safe distance from the hall. I’ll have to discuss the brazen dishonesty of Jeffrey Lieberman’s presentation–and the dismal intellectual standard of the entire evening–in a post of its own.
Postscript, November 9, 2015: Here’s a good summary of the Lieberman talk, minus a few things here and there in the three-way exchanges and the Q&A. I have a query out to the White Institute asking whether they’ll be making a video of the event public. I hope they will: I’m pretty sure the event was videotaped, and a wider public would benefit from watching the presentation and subjecting it to rational criticism. [Elizabeth Rodman, of the White Institute, in an email to me: “No, there is no video available for public viewing.”]
If Dr. Lieberman and his colleagues really mean what they say about rejecting the tribalism of psychiatry’s past (and that of psychoanalysis), now would be the time for a bit of transparency. Transparency, by the way, is the other side of the audience’s obligation to refrain from heckling a speaker: no one has the right the heckle, but the speaker has the obligation to come clean with his audience and allow for criticism rather than try his best to shut it down (a la Lieberman). It’s sad to have to explain all this to supposed professionals in mental health, but I guess we all profit from having to re-learn our ABCs sometime.
Postscript, November 16, 2015: Another discursive train wreck, this time at UT Austin, care of the Palestine Solidarity Committee. Don’t really see how this sort of thing promotes Palestinian rights. So if a bunch of pro-Israel protesters comes in to disrupt a defense of Palestinian rights, we’re obliged to let them disrupt the talk? Or is it that pro-Israel protesters wouldn’t have the same rights as defenders of Palestinian rights? Kind of stupid, no matter how you parse it.
Postscript, January 3, 2016: Here’s an interesting one, from a meeting in Orange County, New York involving a land-annexation dispute between the Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel and its non-Hasidic neighbors. Brooklyn assemblyman Dov Hikind shows up, and as an opening gambit insinuates (without explicitly coming out and saying so) that opposition to Kiryas Joel’s annexation bid is anti-Semitic. The crowd responds, understandably (but not in my view justifiably) with boos, jeers, and hisses. One guy in the second row stands up in protest at Hikind’s remarks and turns his back to him (Hikind himself had turned around to address the audience he was accusing). The presiding officer of the meeting asks security (in the form of uniformed officers) to usher the disruptive audience member out of the room. He refuses to leave, but promises to stay in his seat; eventually, security backs down.
Though I agree with the town council’s handling of the hecklers, Hikind’s behavior here is disgraceful. “The issue,” he thunders, “is not the annexation!” Actually, that’s exactly what the issue is, and a person who doesn’t want to discuss it has no business attending a meeting about it. Hikind doesn’t manage to say a single word about the merits of the annexation issue. He just engages in a bit of cheap demagoguery, then sits down. If Hikind has evidence of anti-Semitism, he should produce it. If not, he’s simply poisoning the well.
It’s actually unclear to me why a Brooklyn assemblyman would be asked or permitted to address an audience in Orange County (a good 90 minutes northwest of Brooklyn) on the subject of a disputed annexation there. In any case, the meeting’s presiding officer ought to have commented on the inappropriateness of Hikind’s comments. It’s not clear from this video how the officer reacted, or if he did. Contrary to the impression one gets, the jeering of the audience, though a problem, was far from the only problem in this episode. (Postscript, January 4, 2015: This critique of Hikind from a website run by Orange County locals is entirely on target.)
Soundtrack by Led Zeppelin (sort of)….
*I’ve renamed this post to better reflect the postscripts.
To procrastinate from grading ethics quizzes, I decided to waste time and take this online personality test. They supposedly guess your identity in twenty questions. Here is mine:
Female, Mid 50’s
Here is our best guess at who you are:
1. You are female.
2. You are currently in your mid fifties.
3. You have a wonderful big family and a deep loving connection with your lifelong partner.
4. You have Short hair, light colored eyes and stylish glasses.
5. You have long ago decided to live every minute to the fullest. Your life experiences taught you that no moment should be wasted on something or someone you don’t love.
Moderator: Irfan Khawaja, Director, Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs.
Welcome: Edward Ogle, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Felician College
If you’re in the area, please stop by. The event is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served (yes, fresh water, too). For GPS purposes, the street address is: 227 Montross Ave., Rutherford, New Jersey, 07070. Please park in Lot D on Montross Avenue. The Ed Commons is the new, mostly steel- and glass-constructed, modern-looking building directly on Montross.
Here are some interesting water-oriented links worth reading to whet your appetite for the event and offer a sense of the range and ubiquity of the issues involved (not necessarily indicative of the content of any given speaker’s presentation):
Here’s a link to F.A. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, which discusses the famous “oasis in the desert” example in property theory (p. 136) also discussed in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 179n (but erroneously credited by Nozick to Hastings Rashdall). The distant ancestor of the Hayek-Nozick discussion is of course Locke’s Second Treatise, Book V, paragraphs 30-33.
Ali: This is my well. Lawrence: You obviously have not been keeping up with the literature on water rights, Ali. Have you not read Mattias Risse in JPP? That was last year. Are you not registered for the Felician Institute event on water? It’s in ten days. Ali: Did I happen to mention that this is my well? And that I’m the one with a gun?
Policy-based and journalistic discussions from a global perspective
Can you explain why there is no information to be found anywhere on three of the four candidates up for election in the 28th district? Darnel Henry, David Pinckney, and Antonio Pires are on the ballot, but it’s impossible to tell who they are or what they stand for. Adam Kraemer has a website, but apparently doesn’t know how to spell the word “intimidate.” Election Day is about two weeks away. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here with my mail-in ballot, wondering what to do with it. I get a mail-in ballot each year so that I can spend some time thinking about who to vote for. Year after year I face the conundrum that there’s nothing to think about. The Democrats field candidates. The Republicans field nothing.
Incidentally, here we are in the year 2015, and the Essex County Republican organization can’t manage to create a website for itself or for its candidates. (To be fair, neither can the Democrats, apparently.) When one of you manages to create a website, it turns out he can’t spell. But somehow you expect us to believe that you can run a government. No wonder that when the governor creates a scandal, his first line of defense is to plead ignorance and incompetence. What else does the Republican Party stand for?
I’ve taken for too long to do this, but I’m changing my party affiliation at first opportunity, and throwing my mail-in ballot in the garbage right now. If only I could throw the GOP in with it.
“Thank you for your comment. Someone from the New Jersey Republican Party will be getting in touch with you shortly.”
Believe it or not, I gave them my phone number and email address–the price of leaving a message. I await the robo-calls. I hope they like The Who.
Postscript. Just changed my party affiliation to Democrat. Was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. Wish I’d done it earlier.
Postscript, November 3, 2015: It’s Election Day, two weeks later. No one ever contacted me. If they can’t keep a promise to get “in touch with you shortly,” how many of their campaign promises do you think they’d have kept?
Unfortunately, the formatting dropped out, but the original says:
Presented to: Irfan Khawaja
for the successful completion of: Drug Free Workplace Program
course completed on: October 15, 2015
The original document can be inspected at the Bureau internationale des poids et mesures, Sevres, France.
For my next project, I’ll be pursuing yet another certification, Preventing Discrimination and Sexual Violence: [Compliance with] Title IX, VAWA and the Clery Act. And then it’s back to the old grind–perusing Jobs for Preventers of Discrimination and Sexual Violence, sending the old portfolios out there, attending the APDSVA smoker, etc. etc.
Moderator: Irfan Khawaja, Director, Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs.
If you’re in the area, please stop by. The event is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served (yes, fresh water, too). For GPS purposes, the street address is: 223 Montross Ave., Rutherford, New Jersey, 07070. Please park in Lot D on Montross Avenue. The Ed Commons is the new, mostly steel- and glass-constructed, modern-looking building directly on Montross.
Here are some interesting water-oriented links worth reading to whet your appetite for the event and offer a sense of the range and ubiquity of the issues involved (not necessarily indicative of the content of any given speaker’s presentation):
Here’s a link to F.A. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, which discusses the famous “oasis in the desert” example in property theory (p. 136) also discussed in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 179n (but erroneously credited by Nozick to Hastings Rashdall). The distant ancestor of the Hayek-Nozick discussion is of course Locke’s Second Treatise, Book V, paragraphs 30-33.
Ali: This is my well. Lawrence: You obviously have not been keeping up with the literature on water rights, Ali. Have you not read Mattias Risse in JPP? That was last year. Are you not registered for the Felician Institute event on water? It’s in ten days. Ali: Did I happen to mention that this is my well? And that I’m the one with a gun?
Policy-based and journalistic discussions from a global perspective
In “honor” of Columbus Day, I thought I’d excerpt two interesting items I recently came across.
The first one is from the Introduction to Leo Strauss’s Thoughts on Machiavelli(1958). Its relevance to Columbus Day will probably not be apparent until the end.
There are good reasons for dealing with Machiavelli in a series of Walgreen lectures. The United States of America may be said to be the only country in the world which was founded in explicit opposition to Machiavellian principles. According to Machiavelli, the founder of the most renowned commonwealth of the world was a fratricide: the foundation of political greatness is necessarily laid in crime. If we can believe Thomas Paine, all governments of the Old World have an origin of this description; their origin was conquest and tyranny. But “the Independence of America [was] accompanied by a Revolution in the principles and practice of Governments”: the foundation of the United States was laid in freedom and justice. “Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west to east by a stronger impulse than the Government of the sword revolved from east to west.”* This judgment is far from being obsolete. While freedom is no longer a preserve of the United States, the United States is now the bulwark of freedom. And contemporary tyranny has its roots in Machiavelli’s thought, in the Machiavellian principle that the good end justifies every means. At least to the extent that the American reality is inseparable from the American aspiration, one cannot understand Americanism without understanding Machiavellianism which is its opposite.
But we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that the problem is more complex than it appears in the presentation by Paine and his followers. Machiavelli would argue that America owes her greatness not only to her habitual adherence to the principles of freedom and justice, but also to her occasional deviation from them. He would not hesitate to suggest a mischievous interpretation of the Louisiana Purchase and of the fate of the Red Indians.** He would conclude that facts like these are an additional proof for his contention that there cannot be a great and glorious society without the equivalent of the murder of Remus by his brother Romulus. This complication makes it all the more necessary that we should try to reach an adequate understanding of the fundamental issue raised by Machiavelli. (pp. 13-14)
I won’t comment on this except to say that it’s kind of funny that we don’t celebrate Machiavelli Day and get a day off for it (May 3). I mean, he’s just as Italian as Christopher Columbus.
Although the envious nature of men, so prompt to blame and so slow to praise, makes the discovery and introduction of any new principles and systems as dangerous almost as the exploration of unknown seas and continents, yet animated by that desire which impels me to do what may prove for the common benefit of all, I have resolved to open a new route, which has not yet been followed by any one, and may prove difficult and troublesome, but may also bring me some reward in the approbation of those who will kindly appreciate my efforts.
Machiavelli wrote that decades after Columbus’s voyage and for that matter Columbus’s death. In suggesting that his “new route” would redound to “the benefit of all,” he exploits the reader’s presumptive belief that Columbus’s voyage had had the same, or an analogous benefit. The new route he proposes simultaneously valorizes Columbus’s efforts while dehumanizing Columbus’s victims and excluding them from membership in the moral community or the common good. For that reason, I think we can safely read Machiavelli as providing the theoretical basis for Columbus’s depredations, something worth bearing in mind when one reads Columbus’s modern-day apologists (like this, this, this, and this.) Like Machiavelli, they claim to be opening new routes and new vistas for thought. As with Machiavelli, a remarkable number of the routes they open seem to lead to or rationalize mass death.
As Strauss points out, Machiavelli famously taught us that a prince ought to exterminate the families of rulers whose territory he securely wishes to possess (Strauss, p. 9, commenting on The Prince, chapter 7). Columbus seems to have put that precept into action well before Machiavelli managed to rationalize it in print:
The combined effects of Columbus’ forced labor regime, war, and slaughter resulted in the near-total eradication of 98% of the native Taino of Hispaniola.[107] De las Casas records that when he first came to Hispaniola in 1508, “there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it….”[107]
Columbus on the lookout for more people to kill and enslave, Main Street, Lodi, New Jersey
De Las Casas’s doxastic troubles bring me to my second Columbus Day item, Robert Frost’s “America Is Hard to See” (1951) a poem I just recently discovered while making my way through his collected poems.
Columbus may have worked the wind
A new and better way to Ind
And also proved the world a ball,
But how about the wherewithal?
Not just for scientific news
Had the Queen backed him for a cruise
Remember he had made the test
Finding the East by sailing West.
But had he found it? Here he was
Without one trinket from Ormuz To save the Queen from family censure
For her investment in his future.
There had been something strangely wrong With every coast he tried along.
He could imagine nothing barrener.
The trouble was with him the mariner.
He wasn’t off a mere degree;
His reckoning was off a sea.
And to intensify the drama
Another mariner Da Gama
Came just then sailing into port
From the same general resort,
And with the gold in hand to show for
His claim it was another Ophir.
Had but Columbus known enough
He might have boldly made the bluff
That better than Da Gama’s gold
He had been given to behold
The race’s future trial place,
A fresh start for the human race.
He might have fooled them in Madrid.
I was deceived by what he did.
If I had had my way when young
I should have had Columbus sung
As a god who had given us
A more than Moses’ exodus.
But all he did was spread the room
Of our enacting out the doom
Of being in each other’s way,
And so put off the weary day
When we would have to put our mind
On how to crowd and still be kind.
For these none too apparent gains
He got no more than dungeon chains
And such posthumous renown (A country named for him, a town,
A holiday) as where he is,
He may not recognize for his.
They say his flagship’s unlaid ghost
Still probes and dents our rocky coast
With animus approaching hate,
And for not turning out a strait
He has cursed every river mouth
From fifty north to fifty south.
Someday our navy I predict
Will take in tow this derelict
And lock him through Culebra Cut,
His eyes as good (or bad) as shut
To all the modern works of man
And all we call American
America is hard to see.
Less partial witnesses than he
In book on book have testified
They could not see it from outside—
Or inside either for that matter.
We know the literary chatter.
Columbus, as I say, will miss
All he owes to the artifice
Of tractor-plow and motor-drill.
To naught but his own force of will,
Or at most some Andean quake,
Will he ascribe this lucky break.
High purpose makes the hero rude:
He will not stop for gratitude.
But let him show his haughty stern
To what was never his concern
Except as it denied him way
To fortune-hunting in Cathay.
He will be starting pretty late.
He’ll find that Asiatic state
Is about tired of being looted
While having its beliefs disputed.
His can be no such easy raid
As Cortez on the Aztecs made.
When I read that, I knew what I had to do. I had to read that poem, in its entirety, on Columbus Day, at the foot of the statue of Christopher Columbus that sits in front of Borough Hall on Main Street in Lodi, New Jersey.
So I’ll be there noon this Monday for as long as it takes to get through the poem. Stop by if you’re in the area. I’ll be handing out free copies of the Frost poem to anyone who wants one. I’d hand out free copies of The Prince as well, if I could afford it. Maybe next year, when I’m rich and famous, after conquering discovering a new world or something.
Postscript: This still has meaning, decades later:
Postscript, October 11, 2015: This Reuters piece, “U.S. Reassesses Columbus Day,” is worth reading. Predictably, the piece serves to underscore the fact that there are, apparently, no limits to ethnic-pride butthurt in this country:
New York City, with the country’s largest Italian American population at 1.9 million, attracts nearly 35,000 marchers and nearly 1 million spectators to its annual Columbus Day parade.
The Columbus Citizens Foundation, a non-profit that organizes the parade, says on its website the event “celebrates the spirit of exploration and courage that inspired Christopher Columbus’s 1492 expedition and the important contributions Italian-Americans have made to the United States.”
John Viola, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Italian American Foundation, said renaming Columbus Day dishonors the country’s 25 million Italian Americans and their ancestors. He said Italian Americans feel slighted by cities that are dropping Columbus Day.
“By default, we’re like the collateral damage of this trend,” he said.
In other words, it’s wrong to condemn imperialism, enslavement, and mass death because cannoli.
If they want to celebrate Italian pride, why not find an Italian worth celebrating, like Albertus Magnus, Galileo, or Verdi? If it has to be an Italian-American, why not Fermi, Cavalli-Sforza, or Anthony Fauci? If those guys aren’t sexy enough, how about Bon Jovi, Demi Lovato, or Joe Pesci? If they don’t do it for you, why not pick the sexiest Italian-American of all time, and dedicate the day to Chris Sciabarra? Even Verrazano would be preferable to Columbus: unlike Columbus, at least he made it to the landmass that would later become the United States. But the real question is why Italian-Americans feel the need to close the country down for a day in the name of the dubious ethical achievement of being Italian-American.
And if they get a day, why not every other ethnicity? In that case, as a South Asian-American, I hereby nominate November 2 as a new federal holiday in honor of Mahmud of Ghazni. Because if Mahmud hadn’t liberated Lahore from the Jats in 1023 AD, my family wouldn’t have had a place to go during the partition of India in 1947–and I wouldn’t even be here. And boy, would counterfactual non-existence (have) hurt my feelings. I leave the rest of the argument as an exercise.
Policy of Truth 