Why I Was Never Invited to Great Books Camp

I was chuffed to read Molly Worthen's article in the New York Times about how she wants to start a great books camp for liberals. I sympathize acutely, having watched most of my grad school colleagues journey off to retreats to discuss great books with fellow young conservative/straussian/hayekian intellectuals. (They came back with such great gossip!) And I too wondered, why don't the non-conservatives throw their own book party? (And invite me!) Then eventually it dawned on me: they can't.

All great books camps are conservative (no matter what Yuval Levin says) because they are funded by people who think old books are important, even more important than new ones. This is an essentially conservative argument--studying the great books is a way to conserve certain ideas because you think they are important and perennial. If you are a progressive, even a progressive who is studying the history of political thought, you must acknowledge that new ideas are just as important, if not more so, than old stodgy ones. If they aren't, then what's the point of progress??

Cue a whole chorus of undergrads yelling, "so WHY do we still have to read Plato?!," a question I got more times than I can count. While a progressive can agree we should read Plato, he would also argue we should read everything else important, from Confucius to Rawls to Sayyid Qutb to Ta-Nehesi Coates to....infinity. Worthen includes Obama and MLK on her reading list, but I'm certain those additions would not satisfy. (Remember the controversy over the Trump syllabus? Sigh.)

So while the reading list for progressives could easily grow into the thousands and still not keep everyone happy, conservatives agree that the canon is really just a relatively short list of stuff written by dead white men. No liberal is going to sponsor a reading camp for that, unless they want to be hounded into oblivion. And it's too bad, because dead white men have written a ton of amazing stuff. Including, you know, all the foundational texts of liberal western democracy.

So while I sympathize with Worthen and also dream of starting a great books camp, until either she or I earn enough to pay for it ourselves I think we're going to be disappointed.

Relatedly: what is a person who is neither conservative nor progressive? Is that just a confused person?

Sunday Afternoon

In one of the more bizarre episodes of my life, a guy with an assault rifle walked into my favorite local pizza joint yesterday. The pizza joint in question has been the focus of crazy online conspiracy theories linked to the election. The man with the assault rifle went in to "investigate" whether the conspiracy theories were true. He fired one round before the cops arrived, and, thankfully, no one was hurt.

Josh and I happened to be in the area at the time. We saw cop cars really booking it up Connecticut Ave for over an hour and actually guessed what had happened. We had just been to this pizza place the day before. We had pizza and salad and beers, and remarked on how much more crowded it was than usual, surmising that the neighborhood had come out to support the restaurant in light of the online insanity. And the next day, somebody walked in with an assault rifle and fired.

I can't quite wrap my mind around this. Regular street crime is not something I worry about, probably because I've lived relatively closely with it my whole life. I can't excuse it, but I do understand something about the logic of it and what it feels like. But this is an adult man who, by his own admission, drove up from North Carolina with multiple weapons in his car to investigate rumors of a child sex trafficking ring run by a presidential candidate and her advisors out of the back of a neighborhood pizza restaurant. He walked into a restaurant full of children with an assault rifle because he believed this lie was the truth. This is simply beyond my comprehension. My first instinct is to make a joke out of it, it's so ridiculous.

But it's not funny. Whatever this man's individual issues, this happened because of a depth of ignorance that is terrifying. I don't see how there can be any antidote to it. 

I quit facebook back in April 2012, and at the time I thought the break would be temporary. I was fairly certain that my need to keep up with lapsed friends, random acquaintances, and middle school crushes would, eventually, lure me back. It has not. I don't miss it at all. Turns out, falling out of touch with people is often a natural consequence of time and distance, and it's really ok to start forgetting the names of people you knew in high school.

At the time I quit facebook, you couldn't actually delete your account, you could only "suspend" it. This basically made you invisible; your profile would remain forever in hibernation somewhere in the ether of the internet. Last week I learned that this changed, and you can now delete your profile forever. So I can now confirm: my Face has been deleted from the Book.

Mostly everyone I know is on facebook, except for Josh and my parents. (Or it seems like everyone is on it; I have no way of checking.) What strikes me is that, whenever I mention I'm not on facebook, the response is always some version of "Oh, I wish I could quit!" I never suggest that people should quit, but they seem compelled to tell me they want to. Then they invariably explain why they can't: they use it to stay in touch with family/friends/former nemeses, they enjoying being voyeurs and don't post anything personal, the connections are more valuable than the timesuck, etc, etc. All fine reasons, I can't quibble with them.

The strong implication, however, is that I have done something noble and good by (mostly) exiting the social media landscape. (I say mostly because you can find me on instagram and linkedin, though to say I fly under the radar there would be an understatement. And of course I write this blog, which has 4 readers. (Hello, friends!)) I know that not being on social media is good for me personally, but it's hardly a noble sacrifice. If you're worried about facebook rotting your soul, here's a pro tip: it's optional. Just click "cancel." And similarly, I don't get all the hand-wringing over social media in the wake of the election—misinformation and uncivil discourse aren't exactly new. This is not to minimize our current societal problems, which I think are great; I'm just pretty sure that something as superficial as facebook is not the cause of them.

The best metaphor I have for social media is that it's like sitting at a cafe and overhearing the totally mundane conversation of the couple sitting next to you. Some people love to eavesdrop, and others will immediately put on their noise-canceling headphones. Some people love to be overheard, and others want privacy. I'm in the latter category on both counts. At my most basic level, I don't care that much about what the hive mind is thinking, and I certainly don't want the hive mind to be thinking about me. I also don't have much of an interest in what most people are up to in their daily lives. I don't care about my second-cousin's political opinions, or the new house the dude I sat next to in calculus just bought, or that pie my middle school acquaintance baked for Thanksgiving. I do care about my family and friends and coworkers, though, and I like to know what they're up to. I also enjoy receiving pictures of their babies/pies/pets/new houses.

And I care what you're up to, Dear Reader. Write me a letter! Give me a call! I'm pretty sure you all have my number.

From a New York Times article, referring to the 2016 presidential candidates:

"Perhaps the biggest drags on voter turnout in Milwaukee, as in the rest of the country, were the candidates themselves. To some, it was like having to choose between broccoli and liver."

This is testament to the fact that you can't write anything without irking someone: broccoli and liver are two of my very favorite foods. Choosing between them would only be hard because I like them both so much; not a problem for anyone this election. They are also both very high in iron, so if you are anemic I encourage you to write an impassioned letter to the editor about their lack of sensitivity to anemia issues. Every voice matters, right? 

the &*^%$ side of history

There are a lot of trite and meaningless phrases in the world, but "the right side of history" is by far my least favorite. I detest it. Probably because the whole point of my dissertation was that it's a lazy, useless idea. And probably more so because no one ever read my dissertation (not hyperbole) so no one understands why I care so much. Or why I get so frustrated when they try to argue with me about it and I inevitably descend into rant-mode.

(As an aside: I don't understand why some people ask me about a point of political theory, listen inattentively to my answer, and then immediately disagree with me. A general rule of thumb: if someone has a PhD in a particular esoteric subfield, please assume that they know a bit more about it than you do. And yes, this applies equally to quantum physics and political theory. Really.)

Why am I blabbering on about this now? Because the detestable phrase seems to be everywhere this week. I understand why; many people just got slapped in the face by the present and they are trying desperately to assure themselves that history (whatever that is!) is still gonna come out right (whatever that means!) in the end (whenever that is!). Sorry, folks, but there are no assurances that tomorrow is even going to happen, much less happen the way you think it should. You can run all the regression analyses that you want: the future (or providence or kismet or whatever you want to call it) does not issue advance warnings or moral directives. I mean, it's possible that you will find a burning bush tomorrow, but until that happens you're down here swimming in uncertainty with the rest of us. 

Here's what I do know: First, history does not have sides. Second, history itself is not a moral force. Third, I'm not certain about either of these premises, but because we are living in history we cannot, unless we transcend time itself, comprehend the entire narrative arc of human existence as being right or wrong. If history does have sides, not one of us mere humans is capable of comprehending them. And if you are outraged at these blanket assertions, I invite you to read my dissertation. It has citations and everything. 

Better yet, read Augustine. I totally stole the argument from him. 

When I was awake at 2am this morning, I was thinking about this passage from the opening of The Federalist:

"It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may, with propriety, be regarded as the period when that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

I have always thought this was a beautiful, uplifting passage about the capacity of men to determine their political destiny based on informed reason and reflection. But earlier this morning I was thinking about it in a...somewhat different light. It reads more like a warning than an affirmation. 

Also: one of the best parts of writing a blog is that you get to revisit what your past self was up to in, say, November 2008. Quite a different time, and yet I don't disagree with anything I wrote then. Here's to 2020, I guess?  

gchat, circa 2008.

Date: June 18, 2008

Players: Me and a friend, who shall here remain anonymous should she object to me printing this heretofore private conversation.
Context: This is a very small excerpt from a very long gchat conversation. My friend and I were both about a year into our first post-college jobs, and thinking about applying to graduate school. We were discussing our future plans. I was reading Camus and Nietzsche at the time. (I have no idea what my friend was reading.)
Disclaimer: I found this chat while searching for something else in my gmail, and it amused me. I fixed some typos so as to appear smarter than I actually was at the time.

me: …weren't you going to enlighten me about the void?

friend: ah yes…ok, so the void

me:  i am interested in the void

  considering i am living in it

friend: no

  you are employed

  and have a home

  the void is the uncertainty

 

me: no, no, i am in the void

  there is uncertainty

  it is not like school

  where the end is clear, and the parameters set

  i could quit my job and wander through asia

  no one would stop me

  void

friend: no, that's not the real void

me: as long as there are no rules, there is void

friend: that's some other void

me: no, void is when you have to make up the plan as you go along

   unlike the transition from high school to college

friend: that's like the void of generally having a lot of time before death

 me: yes! VOID