War no more!

*Pictures below.*

If it fits on a bumper sticker, it's probably too simplistic to really believe. Or that's what some people say. But I put my joking aside today and did my best to take part in an anti-war rally in Syracuse that drew some 2,500 to 3,000 people. If precision and justice cannot co-exist, then I will sacrifice precision. Sometimes, enough can be said on a bumper sticker.

Rallies can be the death of nuance. I think of Ian McEwan’s book Saturday, where Henry Perowne is at once both detached and engaged as London erupts with anti-war protests. The year is 2003. Perowne is neither a supporter nor an opponent of the proposed war. Saddam is a cruel dictator. An invasion, however, could be bloody. Perowne assesses the scene: “Everyone is thrilled to be together in the streets – people are hugging themselves, it seems, as well as each other. If they think – and they could be right – that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide are preferable to an invasion, they should be sombre in their view” (69). Later as he traverses the city, Perowne thinks to himself: “Across Europe, and all around the world, people are gathering to express their preference for peace and torture” (126).

In Syracuse today, I saw some of that self-congratulation and joyousness, though the scene was considerably more somber than the rallies of 2003. Even peace activists can recognize that Iraq will remain bloody for years to come, whatever the politicians decide. We face a choice between many evils. We do know, however, that keeping American troops in combat is utter folly.

We chanted the usual refrains as we marched:

“US off Iraqi soil! No blood for oil!”

“When human rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back!”

“No racist war, no more, no more! Defend our civil rights!”

“Cut the funding, stop the war! What the hell is Congress for?”

“Hey hey, ho ho, Bush and Cheney have got to go!”

Only once did I truly relinquish myself to the crowd, in this chant:

“Show me what democracy looks like! THIS is what democracy looks like!”

In the other cries, a small group of people would lead the ‘call’ and the rest of us would respond. But here, each person had an opportunity to call out, “Show me what democracy looks like!” The mass answered: “THIS is what democracy looks like!” It seemed every person knew exactly when to pick up the mantle. It never dropped. At times, there was just a lone voice – sometimes my own – reverberating over the throngs of people in a fitting echo of our statement.

Below are some photos I took, except the first which is from the Syracuse Post-Standard.

Climate change finally explained

Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo is really impressive. Who else would have thought to link climate change to illegal immigration? Yes, that's right. Don't target coal-burning factories; target illegal 'aliens.' I mean, seriously, can't they cross the border on bicycles?

Here's the Colorado congressman himself:

I have no doubt that global warming exists. I just question the cause and what we can do to ameliorate it. But I wonder why the Sierra Club isn't going crazy about the environmental aspects of massive immigration into the U.S. The fact is, Americans consume more energy than anyone else, so if a person moves here from another country, they automatically become bigger polluters. -- Time, May 31, 2007

What strange logic.

(via NYT composite of presidential candidates on climate change)

The GOP of Lincoln

Jay Leno aptly sums up the interplay between race, class, and influence in American politics:

I was a little disappointed to hear this. Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and John McCain all said they cannot attend the minority debate this week at Morgan State University, because they have scheduling conflicts. They're scheduled to meet with rich white people.

The invitation to the historically black college in Maryland was sent out last February. Newt Gingrich criticized the campaigns for declining the invite, as did (obviously) a NYT editorial.

Roadkill

I can't remember ever having been so close to dying.

I was biking down Euclid, as I often do. It was a warm day but not too hot, and I was eager for the cool evening. Tonight I'll sleep with the windows open. I was mulling over a lecture that had concluded a half hour earlier. There was something I wish I had said, or hadn't said. It sounded great before the microphone landed under my chin. Then it sounded dumb.

And a small white car was coming at me. Was it really coming at me? It couldn't be; I had the right of way. Holy shit. It was coming at me. I decided not to panic. I decided to swerve. It didn't. Both my hands squeezed the brakes tight. Respond! I'm braking, don't you know?! My back wheel swung out; my torso careened over the handle bars. I didn't fall; it didn't hit me. With my hands still squeezing the brakes, squeezing relentlessly, it was over. Everything had happened in the intersection, in the space of ten feet, in the time of two seconds. A car making a left turn.

In my year of cycling, a near miss here or there isn't exceptional. I give 'em a "hey, watch out" or a "share the road" and continue. But here, I could say nothing. I thought about shaking my fist but that seemed stupid. I just stared as the car got smaller and smaller. Then, finally, I panicked. Did that really just happen? My heart rate exploded; my head pounded; the sweat rolled off my chin. I was rocked with dizziness. I felt a surge of rage, an eruption of fury. AHHHGHGH!1 Is my life worth nothing?! And terror. Was death so close? Blood against the windshield? And the driver? What was that? Does she know she could get ten years in prison for manslaughter? Does she know that I just saved her life, as well as my own? Breathe, Eli, breathe. As the terror subsided, I felt a reluctant wave of pride take its place beside the would-be horror. I could be so quick? No dithering?

I stayed another few minutes. With my heart still thumping (audibly?), it didn't need to be said, but I forced it anyway, aloud: "Eli, you are alive." And then, oh my god oh my god oh my god.

PETA strikes again

An animal is not just a piece of meat. A woman on the other hand... So suggests (though not directly) PETA's new ad featuring Alicia Silverstone (below). It sends a very different message than their previous, more humorous "State of Union" ad available here (warning: nudity!).



Sex sells, of course. Everything is sold through sex. So maybe it's ludicrous to expect more from PETA. In the various vegetarian circles I've traveled in (including in my pre-vegetarian days), friends often debated the impact of PETA's ads on the public's perception of the vegetarian movement. Some think PETA is more of an asset than a liability, others vice-versa. But nearly no one thinks it doesn't constitute, on some level, a liability. I find PETA's tactics disappointing because they pit feminists against vegetarians when the two should complement each other. Some who study the "sexual politics of meat" even suggest they should cooperate. I also dislike PETA for making me and my vegetarian-ness radical. But everyone has beef with PETA, and their message doesn't derail mine. Most veggies have come to consider the group a fact of life. So we move on, pick up, and find better reasons to go veg. PETA's latest ad presents a fairly simplistic reason, more-or-less amounting to: "Since I went veg, I feel great." We can do better.

Republican for gay marriage

I'm simply regurgitating the news here, but it's worth it. Get a tissue. In this emotional statement, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders announces his support for a gay marriage resolution:



The statement was an about-face for Sanders, who had previously threatened to veto the city council's resolution. In the statement, he says: "I've decided to lead with my heart. . . to take a stand on behalf of equality and social justice. ... I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of our community they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage than anyone else, simply because of their sexual orientation."

Less courageous was the sub-headline of the LA Times article:

"Jerry Sanders, a Republican and former police chief, has a daughter who is gay."

"Oh," I'm supposed to think, "that explains it." Not.

28 years in prison

28 years. That's how long Phillip E. Hill, who defrauded homeowners and others of $41 million dollars, will spend in prison, according to today's ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports: "Hill oversaw the conspiracy, loan fraud, wire and mail fraud, and money laundering activity related to mortgages obtained in the sale of more than 50 homes and more than 250 condominiums in eight Atlanta-area condominium complexes."

I often grumble about imbalances in sentencing. Poor men who jump through windows to steal jewelry get fifteen years behind bars, while white-collar, highly educated businessmen who swindle thousands of people of millions of dollars get a handslap. But with news of this long sentence (and others), perhaps I should find a new way to criticize the justice system. Here's an idea: Long prison sentences don't serve the interests of anyone - not the taxpayers (at some $30,000/year per prisoner), nor the prisoners themselves, who receive little in terms of rehabilitation.

U.S. Attorney David E. Nahmias said: "This sentence, as substantial as it is, cannot compensate the many persons hurt by Hill's fraudulent actions." I have to wonder: Was it intended to? Does any sentence really compensate the victims? He continued: "What we hope is that this sentence demonstrates to anyone tempted to participate in mortgage fraud... that such criminal conduct will be prosecuted aggressively and punished severely." The claim of deterrence. Does it work or does every American expect to beat the odds? It doesn't seem to work for violent offenders. But maybe for white-collar crimes? Even if it does, I doubt deterrence can justify a prison sentence as long as 28 years. We could think of some pretty cruel things to do to people - so cruel that it would deter others from crime. But successful deference wouldn't make them right. Nor should it be the responsibility of the individual prisoner to deter others. Mortgage defrauder Phillip Hill should be sentenced for his crimes alone. Long sentences offer the imprisoned no chance of meaningful reintegration in society. It renders them hopeless. It's cruel, though sadly, not unusual.

Too much of a good thing

One of my duties as a bioethics research assistant is to monitor the news on a whole range of topics in health policy, clinical medicine, and global health. Well, here's what I found today:

Mom sues after IVF brings 2 babies instead of 1 (Sept 18, 2007)
Australian woman seeks $332,000 to cover cost of raising extra child

Wacky. The requested $332,000 would pay for private school fees and would allot $12,427 to compensate for time off work. But as my mother always says, "If one child takes 100% of your time, two children can't take any more." (She's a mathematician.) I handed the article to the professor here who specializes in health law and reproductive medicine, who said, "Good god! They should take both kids away!" He hopes the children will grow up to be fertility specialists.

Also not to be missed, check out the New York Post's article, "A 'Baby Bjorn' Sperm Crisis: Shortage hits wannabe parents." I actually saw the article in print, which had the additional headline, "Sperm Blank: City Shortage Causing Panic." Panic?! As the article reports, NYC sperm banks are running out of seed 'donated' (for $75 a pop) by tall, blond, blue-eyed people. Why? Because "the Food and Drug Administration banned sperm samples from 30 countries to prevent the spread of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare, fatal disorder caused by eating beef contaminated with mad-cow disease." Pictured at right is a profile of one of those handsome Nordic sperm donors, named "Oluf," who quite sadly may have no more American progeny.

Cool kids wear pink

News flash to warm up your day:

Central Kings students wear pink to send bullies a message
The Chronicle Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 9-13-2007

[A] Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who ... called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up. The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.

They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday. (emphasis mine)

Maybe they could have involved female students? Then pink would be a color that everyone wears, just like all the other colors unrestricted by gender. But regardless, kudos for their courage!

How society exploits men (too)

A few weeks ago, the blog Feministing, in its usual exemplary spirit, asked readers to share what double-standards drive them crazy. It was an incredible list. Readers uncovered the subtle yet pervasive ways that we (as a society) expect more (or less) from women.

Some examples:

"Slut/Stud."

"[E]ngagement rings? Two people decide to get married, but only one of them is marked as 'taken'?"

"[The] father 'giving the bride away' at her wedding. No one gives the husband away."

"If women want to get married, they're clingy. If men want to get married, they're respectable and responsible. If women DON'T want to get married, they're weird. If men DON'T want to get married, they're normal."

"Men get wiser, more 'distinguished' looking. Women get old."

"If a man were raped, nobody would ask what he was wearing, or whether or not he'd had sex before, or how many sexual partners he'd had, or if he was walking in a bad part of town, or if he was drunk, or..."

"Boy Scouts vs. Girl Scouts. Camping vs. crafts."

"Women belong in the kitchen, unless it's attached to a restaurant."

"Lots of different methods of birth control for women, but not men."

True. To ask another question, which in no way detracts from the first: How are men victims of double-standards? In what ways does society expect more (or less) from them?

A list:

Male-on-female rape is horrible. Male-on-male rape, especially in prison, is funny.

Being proud of one's maleness is seen (in some circles) as being proud of patriarchy.

If a woman cries, she's normal. If a man cries, he's a 'pussy.'

"If a woman is selective about who she sleeps with, she's responsible; if a man is selective about who he sleeps with, he's a loser." (Offered by a Feministing reader.)

Some double-standards speak negatively of both women and men. For example: Men don't get custody because they're violent. Women do get custody - because they're natural mothers.

Finally, men as a group take the blame. War? Blame it on men. Sexism? Blame it on men. Not on some men. But all men. An example wasn't hard to find. Kira Cochrane in the Guardian considers why high-powered celebrities like Nicole Kidman continue to sell their bodies to magazines. "[N]o matter how successful they are," she concludes, "the need to be pleasing to men, to say, 'However powerful and clever I might seem, I'm just a playful, bra-baring bunny underneath,' trumps everything." Indeed, blame it on men. As a group, we are homogenized and vilified. Charlotte Perkins Gilman played with the idea in her insidious book, Herland. The result: Rather than cultivate a positive sense of maleness, young men flee from everything associated with it. Their own own bodies disgust them. If that's what it means to be a man - so the thinking goes - then I want nothing to do with it. The result: Alienation from oneself. Embarrassment of who you are. But double-standards are noxious, even when they afflict the relatively privileged.

Enough of these myths of masculinity. Men should be proud to be men.

The futility of philosophy

Is philosophy worthwhile? Or is it a waste of time? Is it helpful, or just an utterly hedonistic affair? I don't think philosophers serve the public interest as well as other professions. One could even argue that the trash collector makes a more important contribution to society than university professors of philosophy. Philosophers defend themselves by arguing that their courses teach students critical thinking skills. Right, because I could never learn to think critically through literature or math or even sociology. It seems incredibly arrogant to suggest that philosophers are the only people who think critically about ideas, as if they hold a monopoly in the academy on reason itself.

Strangely enough, philosophers themselves seem aware of just how useless they are. The worthiness of choosing philosophy as a vocation has been hotly debated in the philosophy blogosphere, including at Pea Soup, Philosophy, etc., and In Socrates' Wake. On his own blog, my friend Seb helpfully distinguishes between the two meanings of "why study philosophy?" namely: for what reason, and for what purpose. Philosopher Peter Unger discusses the 'why bother with philosophy?' question in a book appropriately titled Living High and Letting Die. Unger even suggests that aspiring philosophers quit grad school and become high salaried lawyers so they can donate their money to serve the poor. It seems to me that philosophy is best left a hobby, not a profession. Of course the 'why philosophy' question is not only a contemporary one. The noted philosopher R.M. Hare notes on the last page of his 1963 work Freedom and Reason (which I was lucky to find while browsing the library bookshelves, as I sometimes do):

Can the philosopher, in particular, do anything about it [injustice]? When South African believers in white supremacy read this book, will they at once hasten to repeal the pass laws and make the blacks their political equals? This is highly unlikely; and in any case, they will not read the book. To get people to think morally it is not sufficient to tell them how to do it; it is necessary also to induce in them the wish to do it. And this is not the province of the philosopher. It is more likely that enlightened politicians, journalists, radio commentators, preachers, novelists, and all those who have an influence on public opinion will gradually effect a change for the better - given that events do not overtake them. Perhaps people in areas of racial conflict can be, in the end, brought to think of the resemblance between themselves and members of other races as morally relevant, and of the differences as morally irrelevant. Perhaps, even, they may learn to cultivate their imaginations. But this much can be claimed for philosophy, that it is sometimes easier to bring something about if we understand clearly what it is we are trying to do. (p. 224, emphasis added)

Agreed. So the question, then, is: Can philosophers help us understand the world more clearly? Yes, I'd have to say, in some respects, e.g., questions about disclosing genetic information to children or distributing limited quantities of vaccines. But that's not what most philosophers do. Instead they write (more) books on Sophocles and Hegel and sit around discussing whether we exist. Has the obscurity of the profession's central questions condemned it to oblivion? You don't need a philosopher to tell you that environmental exploitation is unsustainable, that genocide is wrong, or that kids should get health care. In any case, you won't find many philosophers standing up for such causes. Far from helping us think clearly, far from buttressing our activism, the academic study of philosophy obscures our moral imperative. Philosophers are too cautious for activism - problematizing instead of deciding. They defend weak positions with dozens of caveats and narrowly defined terms until their arguments are inapplicable to anything but a vacuum.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh on philosophers. Certainly many other professions are just as extraneous. Fine. Maybe I'll write about them too. Philosophy in particular rouses my ire because it once drew me in, just as it draws in others who care deeply about equality, liberty, and justice. But if we are going to do anything for these grand ideas, something beyond theorizing, then studying philosophy is mostly an distraction. Or at least it is today, unlike, perhaps, in the days of Socrates or Locke. But one might say I'm misguided in criticizing philosophy for lacking a social justice purview. After all, a profession cannot "fail" at something it never set out to do. From my standpoint, though, its mission is precisely the problem. There will, of course, be time to reassess. For better or worse, the institution of philosophy isn't dissolving anytime soon.

Race, power, and bananas

I took a walk at lunch today and stopped by the local "Quickway" that sells fresh bananas in addition to the usual combo of cigarettes, beer, lottery tickets, and greasy rotating hotdogs.

My six bananas came to $1.74. I handed the cashier, a middle-age black woman, a dollar, three quarters, and four pennies, for a total of $1.79. I was desperate to get rid of those pennies (oh, how I hate pennies!), and trading them in for a nickel seemed like a good idea.

I had already handed her a dollar and three quarters - enough to cover the bill. So before adding the hassle of the pennies, I asked, "Can I hand you four pennies for a nickel back?"

It's was a rhetorical question, a matter of courtesy, I thought. But she must have thought I was questioning her ability to subtract, because she said sharply, without looking me in the face:

"Boy, you ain't the only one who'd been to schoo."

Now, I'm a relatively well-dressed (I tuck in my shirt) white male. Around my neck, I was wearing the official badge of the local academic medical center. She's an older black woman who stands in front of rows of cigarettes for a living (which of course is harder than one might think). The latent resentment in this power differential probably would have canceled out anything I would have said. I didn't know whether to apologize for the apparent insult of my words, or to get on her case for assuming that I was doubting her intelligence and for calling me, diminutively, "boy."

I decided to let it drop. Then, slightly antagonistically, she said: "I been there, too, ya know."

I walked away.

Take no gaff

I arrived early to a reading by poet and memoirist Mary Karr and saw a gathering line of eager admirers all with books in their hands, each waiting for an autograph. What the heck, I thought. I had brought a tattered copy of her childhood memoir, The Liars' Club, so I got on line.

"And who should I make this out to?" she asked once she'd finished struggling with my pen, which I had stupidly forgotten to uncap.

"To me, Eli."

"Eli," she looked up, "should you be at, what is it, Rosh Hashanah?"

"Ya know," I said, "I never really thought of Eli as a Jewish name." Damnit!, is what I was really thinking. How could I be having this conversation for the second time in one day?! "Well my parents are Jewish," I said to sum up the point. "I, well, I'm a bad person."

"My boyfriend over there" - she pointed to a nearby chair - "he's also a bad Jew."

"Aren't they all bad Jews?" I asked. And almost added, "or is that Catholics?"

She laughed, one hand reaching out to my elbow, and signed, "For Eli - Take no gaff." [Updated: See comments.]

I had to look it up later. Gaff: noun, harsh treatment or criticism.

Stepping away, I realized I had neglected to mention the name of my own writing professor, the one in whose class I had "read" (i.e., skimmed in one sitting from 1 to 3 a.m.) Karr's memoir The Liar's Club. Poet and professor Catherine Imbriglio was a brilliant teacher whose charm lay somewhere between her insanity - "Write!" she'd yell, "WRITE!" - and her ability to recall any piece of writing from any of the hundreds of students she had taught over the years. When I took a second course with her two years after my first, I was amazed to see she could recall details from a piece I wrote about my brief high school wrestling career. Damn. Shoulda mentioned Imbriglio.

So I squeezed my way back front after the poetry reading, and I did.

That led to another conversation, and I managed to solicit a poem for the literary journal my department - with one foot in bioethics and the other in 'medical humanities' - publishes.

7:38 a.m. on a Sunday

It was drizzling when I woke. I slept with the window open, seeking reprieve from the heat. It worked. I stay beneath the covers for a while, soaking in the coolness. I love waking up early on a Sunday. In the afternoon, I breathe in the day. There’s much to do: unfolded laundry on the bed, a friend’s essay to proofread, a book to review (for the blog, of course, where else?). It’ll get done. I’m not worried. I’m not dead yet – or dying – so there’s time for fiction. Contrast: SENSE OF URGENCY! NEED CAREER NOW! Revert: I crack open Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam and lean back, a conscious attempt to be taken by it all. Sometimes it works. The covered porch shields me from the drizzle and yet preserves the breeze. But ya know, I want to get wet. I leave this porch - my perch - and stretch out on the lawn that my housemate graciously mowed last week.

Up above is Syracuse’s characteristically grey canopy. I am fond of it.

I thought it was time for an update. Snippets:

I played an incredible game of ultimate frisbee last week. Maybe it’s the nature of the game or maybe just the people I play with, but we never succeeded in keeping score, even when we tried.

I spent a weekend with my grandparents in Pittsburgh last month. They talk about the future, the future without them, but both are doing wonderfully. Grandpa’s still kicking even with two fake hips. At 84, he says: “I don’t care what the doctors call it. I’m gonna die of old age, damnit.”

On the way home, I arrived at the airport to find that my 6:30 AM flight to Syracuse via NYC was delayed “at least an hour.” So much for getting home by 11 AM. But all was not lost. I was re-routed through Cincinnati and arrived back in Syracuse at 10:30 AM, half-an-hour earlier than I would have on the original flight. Only with the airline industry can you be early when your plane is late.

At the Syracuse airport, it took half-an-hour of shamelessly making announcements before I found someone willing to split a cab. With Syracuse’s public transportation system, I had little choice but to take a cab. The driver, a scruffy-looking guy in his thirties, of course had a story. For seven years now, he’s worked the 3 AM-to-noon shift for a total of fifty hours a week – on minimum wage. No benefits – no paid vacation, no health insurance. He says he’s looked into private plans but can’t afford them. I ask why he keeps this job. Answer: Flexible vacations. Well, I assure him, we’ll have figured out universal health care by the time you really need it. I sure hope so.

What else? I tutor a 39-year-old recovering alcoholic who is learning to read. We usually meet on Saturdays at the public library, but it was closed last week for the Labor Day weekend (nevermind that Labor Day is Monday! lame!). We met at the front door and meandered over to a park bench before deciding to walk around downtown to find signs and posters to read.

On the walk, we discuss why cigarette smoking remains legal despite its proven dangers. I blabber about the influence of industry lobbyists. Plus, I add, “we didn’t know how terrible cigarettes were for ya back then – so to some extent, we have inertia to thank for our lax tobacco laws.”

“Inertia,” he says excitedly, “I hearda that, in a movie once, I think. Whatzit mean? Oh right. When you’re in a relationship and you get bored but you can’t get the freak out.”

He says “freak” because he’s gentle like that.

Back at home, I indulgently smother an apple in peanut butter and devour it standing up.

It’s a good life.

New Orleans two years later

I'm a bit late on this, but what the heck. On August 29, to mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush visited the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology in New Orleans. He spoke of working toward “a more blessed day” and added: “And there’s no better place to do so than in a place of hope, and that’s a school."

My brother Hannan, who's traveled to the Gulf several times to aid in relief, wrote me [posted with permission]:

Today Bush spoke in the lower 9th ward, promising to rebuild and all that jazz. The speech was held at the MLK school in the lower 9th. On my first visit to NOLA, we illegally gutted that school to protest the city's intentional negligence of the area (the city officials were still unsure whether it was worth rebuilding, or whether plans for a casino should be made). it was illegal because we were trespassing, since the land technically became 'govt owned' after the storm; volunteers were kicked out by police on the second day of gutting. it just seems too ironic.

Excerpted from a dream

The festival turns out to be a religious ceremony. Stepping lightly, I try to inconspicuously distance myself, but inadvertently draw attention when I get tangled in the cords. On the ground near my feet, beside an ultra-Orthodox man in traditional attire, lies a watch. He picks it up, holds it above his head, and begins to navigate the scene, bellowing, “Anyone lose a watch?”

I interrupt him: “You know exactly to whom that watch belongs.”

It’s enough to turn him around. I know. He knows I know.

“But you see,” he replies, “there are light years between us.” And he continues his work.

Pious enough to return lost property. Pious enough to make a show of it first.

Tax-exempting the rich

Lots of organizations present their tax-exempt status as if that were proof of a good cause. But what does it really mean? It means donors get a tax break. When I give money to charity and report doing so to the IRS, I thereby don't give my money to the government. Sometimes this rule makes sense, such as when I want to give money to an organization that doesn't receive government funding. But most of the time it doesn't make sense. My alma mater, for example constantly solicits for donations. But in taking a tax-exemption on gifts to Brown, donors are in effect taking money that would have gone to the government. And the government needs the money far more than Brown does, especially because social programs are the first to get cut in a crunch. Let me say it outright: Donations to universities, cultural institutions for the rich (say, Carnegie Hall), and religious institutions (say, the Catholic Church) should not be tax-exempt.

How much money does the government lose? I don't have those numbers right now. The NYT (which doesn't cite the numbers either, though it should) presents data from the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University: "For every three dollars they [rich philanthropists] give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes." So we're talking billions of dollars.

First caveat: Some people worry that the government would squander the money (Iraq War, cough cough) instead of say, using it to expand health insurance coverage (which is what John Edwards would do with heavier taxes on the rich). So in that case, it may be better to let rich people themselves decide where to direct their money. But we have to question whether the decisions of the rich are any better than the government's. Rich people tend to give their money to art museums and concert halls, not to the local soup kitchen. NYT: "[L]ess than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick." Not only that, but the "wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else."

Second caveat: Is citizen action as good as I make it sound? Take the example of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Last year, its philanthropic donations were directed primarily to public health projects in developing countries. "Valuable as that may be," opined the NYT reporter, "it also meant that the American public effectively underwrote several billion dollars worth of foreign aid by private individuals, even though poll after poll shows Americans are at best ambivalent about using tax dollars in such assistance." Yikes! Better leave the money in Bill Gates' hands!

Or at least that was my first reaction. Then I realized that it's just a reporter's (shameful) attempt to stir controversy. "Valuable as that may be," she writes. How cynical! "Poll after poll," she continues. I doubt that, and she doesn't back it up. Americans give just .16% of our GDP to international aid, and as far as I've seen, most people think that's too little. (Norway gives .87%.) And since when are the government's spending priorities decided by opinion polls? But let's suppose that they are. Pretend that the majority of Americans really don't want that money going to global health causes or to places where the life expectancy is less than 35 years old. Where would they send that money instead? If recent polls are correct, then at least 64% of Americans would use it to insure the 47 million uninsured people in this country (2.2 million more than there were in 2005). Covering America's uninsured is still better than covering the university's golf team.

In short, tax exemptions come at a cost. And the poor are paying it.

Coetzee's grace

I couldn’t figure out what to title this entry. It’s a review of J.M. Coetzee’s book, Disgrace. The book itself won the Booker Prize in 1999 and the author won the Nobel Prize in 2003. It’s also a commentary on animal welfare, sex, and race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa. I'd give it 5 stars (out of 5).

Warning: Spoilers follow.

Middle-aged David Lurie is a professor of romantic languages at the University of Cape Town until his university cancels his department. Though he stays on as an adjunct professor of communications, he never regains his stature. Then, the middle-age professor feels himself seduced by a student named Melanie Isaacs, who reluctantly accepts his advances. But Melanie’s unhappy boyfriend alerts the press, and Lurie, though unrepentant, is forced to resign. Disgraced, he goes to live with his daughter Lucy in the rural Eastern Cape.

As one might expect, a professor of English poetry doesn’t take well to farm work, but he volunteers anyhow to help Lucy’s friend Bev at an understaffed animal clinic. Bev’s chief duty is to kill unwanted dogs. David Lurie has no great aversion to animals, but no fondness for them either. Still, he can sense their suffering, though not at first. He tells Lucy at one point: “It’s admirable, what you do, what she [Bev] does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat” (73). Later, though, David Lurie himself gently places the dogs’ corpses into the incinerator because he can’t bear the thought that the workmen would beat the hardened bodies with the back of shovels to make them more pliable (146).

The story unfolds in post-apartheid South Africa, where a white man like David Lurie has not only fallen from grace but also from power. He is powerless to stop an attack on his daughter’s farm by three black men who rape her and light him on fire. This event and its meaning lie at the heart of the novel. Coetzee doesn’t need to embellish the event, as amateur writers often do well beyond necessity. Everything unfolds in simple language. I should add, though, that I was frustrated with how late Coetzee introduces the scene – halfway through the book – seeing how this book-turning “afternoon of violence that shakes all his beliefs” was ominously promised on the book-flap.

I’ve never read a writer quite like Coetzee. His writing is distinctive not only in its style and simplicity, but in the way he manages to include meaningful digresses. After the attack, for example, Bev’s husband Bill Shaw sees David Lurie to the hospital. Lurie thanks him.

“‘Nonsense!’ says Bill Shaw. ‘What else are friends for? You would have done the same.’

Spoken without irony, the words stay with him and will not go away. Bill Shaw believes that if he, Bill Shaw, had been hit over the head and set on fire, then he, David Lurie, would have driven to the hospital and sat waiting, without so much as a newspaper to read, to fetch him home. Bill Shaw believes that, because he and David Lurie once had a cup of tea together, David Lurie is his friend, and the two of them have obligations towards each other. Is Bill Shaw wrong or right? Has Bill Shaw, who was born in Hankey, not two hundred kilometers away, and works in a hardware shop, seen so little of the world that he does not know there are men who do not readily make friends, whose attitude towards friendships between men is corroded with scepticism?” (102).

Coetzee also speaks of the process of healing:

“He has recovered the sight of his eye completely. His scalp is healing over; he needs no longer use the oily dressing. Only the ear still needs daily attention. So time does indeed heal all. Presumably Lucy is healing too, or if not healing then forgetting, growing scar tissue around the memory of that day, sheathing it, sealing it off. So that one day she may be able to say, ‘The day we were robbed,’ and think of it merely as the when they were robbed” (141).

And of course, from the first paragraph of the book to the end, Coetzee speaks of sex, such as when David Lurie meets with his ex-wife Rosalind: “His best memories are still of their first months together: steamy summer nights in Durban, sheets damp with perspiration, Rosalind’s long, pale body thrashing this way and that in the throes of a pleasure that was hard to tell from pain. Two sensualists: that was what held them together, while it lasted” (187).

Sex is ubiquitous in this book, though not in a distasteful way. It is remarkable how Coetzee can write so much on sex, in a way that makes it routine, and yet reserve a special place for rape. Rape is not sex. And though Lucy and her father rarely speak of it, her rape changes everything. To some extent, it is a commentary on David Lurie’s own behavior with his less-than-consenting student. But this rape of a white woman by three black men is also, and more terrifyingly, a commentary on race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa. This exchange floored me:

“‘It was so personal,’ she says. ‘It was done with such personal hatred. That was what stunned me more than anything. The rest was … expected. But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.’

‘It was history speaking through them,’ he offers at last. ‘A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t. It came down through the ancestors.’

‘That doesn’t make it easier. The shock simply doesn’t go away. The shock of being hated, I mean. In the act’” (156).

And later:

“What if… what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that it how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves” (158).

I offered a similar interpretation in the case of a robber who was placated by a glass of wine. Those who have been historically disempowered feel it is their prerogative to take vengeance, or at least to take what they consider theirs, what ought to belong to them.

Animals' capacity for suffering

My friend Nathan recently wrote about the scientific evidence on animal intelligence. Many animals, he says, “have demonstrated clear, laboratory evidence of representational thinking, computation, visual memory, and rudimentary language. Not to mention, for instance, other formerly solo homo abilities like empathy, ritual, culture, murder, and peacemaking.”

His comments connect well to a debate among animal welfare activists on whether an animal’s moral standing derives from its rational ability – say, to understand itself in the world – or from its capacity to experience suffering. Nathan cleverly operates outside this dichotomy, perhaps scoffing a bit at this largely academic debate, with the sense that good reasons never convinced anybody – or at least not the way that technological progress does. When meat substitutes become tasty and fashionable, he says, “then the ethical explications of our decision will follow.” More so than ethical argument, advances in the mode of production will change the way we eat.

In any case, I’m still thinking about why animals might have moral standing, besides of course, as Nathan says, “the intuitive sense that needless, wasteful mass slaughter is pretty ridiculous.” In the wake of my inconclusive post, “Vegetarianism without animal rights,” I’ve been exploring reasons to go vegetarian that are totally unconnected to animal welfare, such as how animal agriculture drives climate change. So in some way, this debate over rational ability versus capacity for suffering is really a distraction. But I think J.M. Coetzee has a wonderful commentary on the subject in his excellent book Disgrace, where David Lurie, a former English professor, helps Bev Shaw in the sour work of putting down unloved dogs at her animal clinic:

“His whole being is gripped by what happens in the theatre. He is convinced the dogs know their time has come. Despite the silence and the painlessness of the procedure, despite the good thoughts that Bev Shaw thinks and that he tries to think, despite the airtight bags in which they tie the new-made corpses, dogs in the yard smell what is going on inside. They flatten their ears, they droop their tails, as if they too feel the disgrace of dying; locking their legs, they have to be pulled or pushed or carried over the threshold. On the table some snap wildly left and right, some whine plaintively; none will look straight at the needle in Bev's hand, which they somehow know is going to harm them terribly” (143).

Coetzee's point, I think, is that ‘rational capacity’ and ‘suffering capacity’ are needlessly polarized.

Love in the time of cholera

If you’re looking to re-experience the enchantment of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (GGM), then read that book again. You won’t find it in Love in the Time of Cholera, a novel about two lovers in a love triangle in an unnamed Columbian port city. In brief soap opera form, Florentino Ariza falls for Fermina Daza, who marries another man.

Warning: Spoilers follow.

Still, the book has other redeeming qualities, including GGM’s ability to relate wrenching tragedy and cruelty with dispassionate steadiness (79):

“He [Florentino Ariza] had awakened at dawn that morning, as a condemned man awakens at dawn on the day of execution, and that entire day he had done nothing but imagine, minute by minute, each of the events at Fermina Daza’s wedding. Later when he returned home he realized that he had made a mistake in the time and that everything had been different than from what he had imagined, and he even had the good sense to laugh at his fantasy” (146).

Tragedy and cruelty aside, this book is an extended meditation on love. Actually, don’t put tragedy and cruelty aside; in this book they might as well be synonymous with love. The highlights:

1. Can lovers detect fellow lovers? “Her cousin Hildebranda Sanchez, two years older than she and with the same imperial haughtiness, was the only who understood her condition as soon as she saw her, because she, too, was being consumed in the fiery coals of reckless love” (85).

2. GGM writes that Fermina Daza “had not realized that every step she took from her house to school, every spot in the city, every moment of her recent past, did not seem to exist except by the grace of Florentino Ariza” (133). In a way, Florentino Ariza feels it also. Years later, at the sight of Fermina Daza and her husband, he “did not feel either jealousy or rage – only great contempt for himself. He felt poor, ugly, inferior, and unworthy not only of her but of any other women on the face of the planet” (153).

I’ve rarely felt so consumed by love. But lovers do report seeing each other everywhere or evaluating every decision in terms of how the other might feel. Indeed, once when my two roommates started dating, I saw it more up-close than I wanted. But that is not, I imagine (yes, I can only imagine), how many others experience love. I see it expressed in tribulations and heartache. (Also be aware that an all-consuming love can at times make for a boring book.)

3. People change. I know, not so profound, but GGM’s writing can still make me gasp:

“She turned her head and saw, a hand’s breadth from her eyes, those other glacial eyes, that livid face, those lips petrified with fear, just as she had seen them in the crowd at Midnight Mass the first time he was so close to her, but now, instead of the commotion of love, she felt the abyss of disenchantment. In an instant the magnitude of her mistake was revealed to her, and she asked herself, appalled, how she could have nurtured such a chimera in her heart for so long and with so much ferocity. … ‘No please,’ she said to him. ‘Forget it’” (102).

4. Casual sex between passing “lovers” isn’t love, but it’s not insignificant either. In fact, it might be better than love. Florentino Ariza’s many affairs were “always without pretensions of loving or being loved, although always in the hope of finding something that resembled love, but without the problems of love” (151). Best of all, GGM suggests that it's supposed to be fun:

“He persuaded her to let themselves be observed while they made love, to replace the conventional missionary position with the bicycle on the sea, or the chicken on the grill, or the drawn-and-quartered angel, and they almost broke their necks when the cords snapped as they were trying to devise something new in a hammock. … He had taught her that nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps to perpetuate love” (151).

5. The pain of being denied. Even the smooth debauchee Florentino Ariza would court women “with caution, for he felt that nothing was more embarrassing or more demeaning than a refusal” (152). Why do I feel similarly? Is it a scar of having been rejected oneself? Is it really an embarrassment to admit liking someone who doesn’t reciprocate? In another episode on a similar theme, Florentino Ariza seems to feel as I do: “Ever since his rejection by Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza had learned always to keep the final decision for himself” (201).

6. I like that GGM speaks not only of love but also of compatibility, especially between Fermina Daza and her husband Dr. Juvenal Urbino: “He was aware that he did not love her. He had married her because he liked her haughtiness, her seriousness, her strength, and also because of some vanity on his part… They did not speak of it that first night, when they spoke of everything until dawn, nor would they ever speak of it. But in the long run, neither of them had made a mistake” (159). Yet Fermina Daza doesn’t forget the “poor man” Florentino she left behind, and so “she was always pleased by the good news she heard about him, because that helped to alleviate her guilt” (223). For the (few) women I have left behind, I feel similarly.

A final comment: Despite these insights, I did not especially enjoy this book. Why? Florentino Ariza waits “fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights” (348) for love. GGM glorifies such struggle, such suffering, as if this masochistic pursuit were a noble enterprise. But I see the suffering of love just for what it is: Miserable. And that’s all I have to say about this book. In fact, if I use the word ‘love’ one more time today, I think I’m going to throw up.