Rational Philosophy

Economic and social aspiration in the United States of America: Spam, Gatsby, and ignorance.

I just moderated five new blog comments. All were spam. It’s easy to dislike spammers; they fill our mailboxes with junk, cause us to peruse and delete multiple messages per day, or resort to services and tactics to defend ourselves against their relentless barrage of solicitations. But spammers represent a realization of the American dream. They seize upon their chance to sieve gold-dust from dirt. Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States does it say that citizens must apologize for doing what they do in pursuit of prosperity and freedom. Far from it, the constitution trumpets not only that others should expect no apology, but that there is no need for an apology.

The NY Times, in one of its pseudo-news, liberal fluff pieces (when I read these I understand why conservatives boil at the Times’ political bias,) attempts to find meaning in various opinions on why Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby speaks to people, particularly immigrants. The story misses The Great Gatsby’s introspection — it is what it is, a particularly engaging, somewhat over-dramatic picture of an America full tilt in industrial and economic momentum. Does Gunter Grass speak to German immigrants with The Tin Drum? Does Thomas Bernhardt speak to Austrian immigrants with Old Masters? Does Camus speak to French immigrants with The Stranger? Borges, Calvino, Fuentes, Amis, Faulkner… They write what niggles them, what gets under their skin.

Fitzgerald was niggled by aspects of the American Dream. He was niggled by its shallowness, its ultimate lack of fulfillment. And he saw its allure, its lure.

It’s President’s Day. An op-ed piece on George Washington speaks of his miserable last year in office. Washington felt overwhelmed by the burdens of office, disappointment at the squaring off of Hamilton and Jefferson. And perhaps disappointment at the path that the new nation had settled upon — freed from its ties with England, established as a power in its own right. One can imagine that Washington began to recognize that defining ones-self in opposition to something does not necessarily define ones-self for the better. Before Washington’s presidency, the nation’s conceit represented boundless hope. By the end of his presidency, this conceit was locked into a battle between options and opinions — between the vision of Jefferson, the creative, wide-reading intellectual, and Hamilton, the man of vigorous industry and capital.

Susan Jacoby writes about what the Times calls a generalized hostility to knowledge in America today. She complains that Americans compare poorly to those in other countries on matters of fundamental global knowledge and general awareness. While this is undoubtedly true, it seems reasonable to assume that this is a matter of emphasis rather than aptitude. Since America defines itself as the land of opportunity (meaning economic opportunity) and indifference (meaning, if we’re #1, why do we need to know what anyone else is doing?) we should not be surprised that these traits reveal themselves. For all their lack of global know-how, Americans reign supreme in getting it done. The 100 meter sprinter does not fool himself into thinking that he can win against the marathon runner over 26 miles.

But implicit in Susan Jacoby’s frustrations, implicit in the Times’ expansive, optimistic commentary on Fitzgerald’s legacy for American immigrants is the question of whether America’s choice of focus is a good choice, a better choice than others. Just because an American idol contestant doesn’t know the capital of Hungary, or that Hungary is a country, does this mean that America is on the wrong path, has made a poor choice of focus?

It strikes me that this question shouldn’t be put to the nation. The nation has long since made the choice. The nation is far down that road. Any turning back, any deviation, would have to come through a collective decision to deviate. Plenty of people in America know that Hungary is a country. Plenty of people know the capital of Hungary. Plenty of people would ascribe to Jefferson’s view of the world as an endless wonder, worthy of our most intense attention. Only if and when the thirst for knowledge and truth outweighs the thirst for economic and material satisfaction will the American Dream begin to change. I say ‘when’ because all things change.

The American Dream that has survived these couple of hundred years has survived because its promise has never quite exhausted itself. But whether it happens in ten years or a hundred years or longer, the demographic of hope will shift. Just as Egypt, the land of Pharaohs and pyramids is today a crumbling wreck, so, too will one day the recollection of America’s youthful grasp for prosperity and power cause heads to shake in wonder.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On postulates and their place in shaping our lives.

“Wishful thinking,” so says Roger Cohen, “often masquerades as analysis.” He’s referring to those who warn that the days of U.S. world leadership are numbered. And yet Cohen could have been speaking of himself. He refers to the United States as “the most vital, open, self-renewing and democratic society on earth.” And says that to imagine that Europe or China “can become powers of influence equal to the United States within the next half-century is implausible.” (Did he forget about the rapid decline and fall of empires far grander and more imposing than that of the present day United States?)

As the hook for his thesis Cohen uses the fascination of the rest of the world with the current presidential election. They come with their cameras and microphones, Cohen surmises, because they recognize the importance of America and America’s choice of leader. But throughout the terms of Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton (twice), the rest of the world viewed American politics as uninteresting, its leaders more or less interchangable. Surely, the reporters come from far afield because American politics is suddenly interesting. They come for the spectacle of an African american man competing with a woman for the democratic candidacy, and to goggle at the spectacle of ever-more-wacky conservatives pandering to the religious right at a time when the rest of the civilized world has long since disentangled its politics from overt religious influence.

While Cohen alludes to the horror the world feels at the Bush presidency and legacy, he doesn’t dwell on it. Why? Well, I suppose because that would destroy the foundation of his argument.

What kind of leadership does Cohen think that America has been providing to the world on human rights, civil rights, education, environmental protection, and economic development? I’m sure the world can do without the kind of leadership we’ve been providing on interventionism, dissembling, torture, cronyism, intermingling of church and state, and corporate corruption.

Last week I expressed simultaneous excitement and disquiet at the news that a team of scientists had synthesized life in the form of a bacterium. This week, the Science Times ran a fluff piece about a secret message (the name of the Venter Institute and the names of those on the team) encoded into the genome of the bacterium by arranging the letters of the constituent amino acids in a particular sequence. On reading about this, the ratio of my excitement to my disquiet dropped considerably. Move over natural selection, here comes Will Shortz.

Another team of scientists, this time anthropologists, have been looking back 650 years to the time of the Black Death to try to learn something about the plague that killed millions across Europe. They have deduced that the plague, which was previously thought to have killed indiscriminately, taking the young, the old, the healthy, and the sick, in fact tended to kill those who were weakened by previous illness, age or malnourishment.

These three examples of conjecture give us insight into the philosophy of the concept.

In the first instance, we have Roger Cohen speculating from a position of fear. He conjectures that the doomsayers about American supremacy are wrong because he wants them to be wrong.

In the second instance, we have a team of scientists playing with nature, conjecturing about the boundaries of scientific achievement; the insertion of a secret message into the genome reveals a lack of gravity about their work and the seriousness of its consequences.

And in the third instance, anthropologists take conjecture and submit it to careful testing in order to help society better understand the pathology of epidemics, perhaps helping ultimately to save millions of lives.

Without conjecture we would have no progress. Conjecture lets us ask what will happen if? as well as did this happen because?

The basis for our conjecture and the intent of the conjecture determine whether the questions being asked have value and yield positive results. Or, not all conjectures are made equal. It takes little speculation to state that American world leadership will, one day, come to an end, that we will need to grapple with the troubling issues raised by the creation of synthetic life, and that the world will face the risk of new epidemics. What takes courage and foresight is to face these speculations with the integrity and seriousness they deserve.

And with that said I’m off to bet on the Giants to win the superbowl…