by Mike O’Brien

I’m self-conscious about the style of my writing. Not that I fear my style is flat or derivative otherwise wanting; quite the opposite, in fact. This isn’t too presumptuous, because I have been told many times, by people whose tastes I esteem highly, that my writing is admirably well composed. Given that I have a strong natural tendency to doubt the merits of my own work, my acceptance of such compliments as accurate and warranted is a testament to how many times I have heard them. But a different doubt arises, having put to rest that first one; since I tend to compose pieces which argue for some position on questions of substance, do these succeed (assuming that they do succeed) because of the quality of their arguments and the correctness of their premises, or do they merely enchant by aesthetic and pathetic overtures? (I’ve heard that very attractive people can suffer such doubt about all their socially-mediated successes in life, and I can tell you it’s true.)

On the one hand, if I am arguing for a point about which I really do care and of which I am myself convinced, I don’t really care why people agree with me, so long as they conduct themselves in conformity with my position. Such points are rare, and are generally matters of ecological or existential survival. After so many years staring into assorted abysses of environmental and civilizational catastrophe, much of what animates public debate (especially of the ephemeral “Twitter war” variety) is of no more interest to me than the barking of dogs. Out-barking them would not serve my ego, no matter how impressed I might imagine the dogs to be.

On the other hand, there are strategic considerations at play in arguing about important matters in public. If one supposes one’s own position to be favoured, even singularly indicated, by facts and logic, then one may jeopardize their long-term success by devaluing factual evidence and logical rigour in pursuit of easy though tenuous agreement. A cheap trick is one easily stolen and turned against its employer, and even if not so reversed it still disgraces the user. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

My Name Is Hiba Nasir

I wasn’t pelting stones
Ten years ago
I didn’t even know what protesting meant
I was Kashmir’s youngest pellet gun victim

Only 20 months old then
I lived with my family
In Shopian
I was playing inside my house
when the army sprayed teargas

All around

Grey smoke entered our home
The air was unbreathable
I started to vomit
My five-year-old brother squirmed

My mother cradled me in her arm
She took my brother by his hand
We tried to flee
But were trapped in the chaos

My mom pulled my brother behind her
She covered my face with her hand
A soldier sprayed pellets at us

One pellet hit my mom’s hand
Two hit my eyes
I screamed, “Muma, tout” [burning]
Blood dripped from my eyes
I passed out

I had started learning to name things

***

By Rafiq Kathwari

by Robyn Repko Waller

The case for the illusion of conscious agency from neuroscience is far from a straightforward conclusion.

Last month I introduced a curious disconnect in public perception of neurotechnology. Whereas reports of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) inspire celebration of expanding agency, the public seem wary that neuroimaging exposes the illusion of conscious agency. The curiosity being that both use neurotechnology to decode motor intentions from the same brain regions of interest. If one threatens our conscious control as human agents, doesn’t the other? If one is a celebration of human agential control, isn’t the other?

That is, I suggested there that, to the contrary, these like research programs ought to be treated alike. Either both applications of neurotechnology deal in diminished agency or, alternatively, neither does. I ended that discussion with a promissory note to defend my insistence that such research doesn’t threaten our control as agents. Here I’ll briefly outline the case, as it’s made, for the illusion of conscious will from neuroscience. Then I’ll argue why we ought to strike a more optimistic note about our scientific understanding of humans as acting consciously and freely (elsewhere I’ve laid out more detailed discussions of science of free will).

I’ve elaborated frequently in this column about the sense of agency and free will that most of us believe we enjoy. I’ll rehearse those important notions again here. The narrative of human agency is not simply that we act in goal-directed ways, actively affecting change beyond the impinging of happenings to us. Humans (and perhaps other complex animals) don’t just forage about locating resources or evading predators, or so we contend. It seems we exercise a much more meaningful kind of agency. That is, free will is not just that I control my bodily movements, but that I exercise meaningful control over what I decide to do.  Read more »

Elderflower tree in bloom in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol, in June of 2021.

by Charlie Huenemann

Of course, it pays to be cautious when you read philosophers writing about what exists. They are slippery, weaving in and out between “in one sense” and “in another” like clever eels wearing togas. The fact that we can talk about what doesn’t exist has long been a problem for philosophers: for what are we talking about? Surely what doesn’t exist must exist in some sense!

So, of course, in one sense just about anything we can talk about exists: it exists even just as a concept, or a figment, or a thin abstraction, or some ghostly possible being. But, in another sense, when we really get down to it, and wrestle to the ground the protean stuff that really does exist — the stuff that even God would be forced to recognize as existing (that is, if God really did exist) — well, there’s not as much of it. We can talk about more than there is.

Good thing, too, as I think that most of the things we concern ourselves with — including ourselves — don’t really exist. Bruises, cancers, headaches, memes, bars of gold, economies, jobs, gods, angels, souls, friends, enemies, alliances, and wars: none of these things exist. Not really, not ultimately, not as God sees the world (assuming, again….). All of those things depend crucially on cognitive systems which construct models satisfying their experience, and which project those models onto the so-called “world”, which, whatever it is, does not contain the elements postulated by those models. And — you probably guessed it — cognitive systems don’t really exist either. Now comes the part where I try to explain myself. Read more »

by Martin Butler

Individualism has been blamed for the break up of communities, personal alienation and rampant western consumerism. At the same time, with its focus on liberty and human rights, it is lauded as the crowning glory of western culture. How do we come to terms with this paradox?

Individualism feels natural to the modern western mind. We balk at the idea of living according to the preconceptions of tradition, religion or authoritarian elites. Individualism is promoted in diverse lifestyles, chosen identities, family structures and types of relationships, in everything from artistic and popular taste to our belief systems and ways of making money. This trend has been turbo-charged by the Internet, as now we all have a mouthpiece through which to proclaim our choices and opinions. The philosopher Charles Taylor recognises that modern western culture is not uniform but identifies three ways in which it embraces individualism: “it prizes autonomy; it gives an important place to self-exploration, in particular of feelings; and its visions of the good life generally involve personal commitment.”[1] He also points out that the political expression of this individualism comes in the modern focus on rights.

On the other hand, individuals need society, but there is a sense in which individualism is anti-social and works against community. Historically, societies have placed limits on autonomy and rights, on personal commitments and even self-exploration. Liberalism was supposed to be the solution through building a society on the acknowledgment of the value of individualism, and so was designed to cope with conflict and difference – this, after all, is the essence of Mill’s harm principle. The modern thinker who has gone furthest in exploring the consequences of full-blown individualism, however, is Robert Nozick. Starting from the simple premise that individuals are autonomous beings with rights, Nozick struggles to form anything we would recognise as a fully functioning society, famously concluding that “Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labour”.[2] So he avoids the paradox simply by downplaying the social nature of human existence and embracing the individualistic.  His insistence on individual rights is so strong that the group can make next to no claims on anyone without their explicit consent. His minimal state does no more than protect these basic rights. Read more »

Lolla Rossa

in a field behind our house, Lolla Rossa,
transfigured in morning light
becomes

becomes
the instant a groundhog
just on haunches drops
and scuttles under the shed

becomes
the light that shaped her

becomes
particles, waves or both
which transcendentally
show themselves to us here
in this room, and there too
fifty feet down the slope

….. present themselves:

lettuce, whose ruby leaves,
tight, gathered, convoluted at mortal edges
echo the muscle songs of our closest star
as dawn trumpets blow to raise her
….. —Miles Davis from a corner
of this universal room
spinning past the iris of a laser
from the darkness of a CD tray
as coral clouds collect to praise her

Lolla Rossa un-transfigured now
as a nimbus glides from play to pause
and grays her

by Jim Culleny
10/20/12

by Brooks Riley

by Joseph Shieber

Yeats composed his poem, “Among School Children”, after visiting St. Otteran’s School in Waterford in February, 1926, when Yeats was in his early 60s. It is probably best known for the couplet that concludes it: “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,/ How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (Here is Helen Vendler leading a class on the poem at the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University, in 2007.)

Read in its entirety, one of the major themes of its eight stanzas is the divergence between image and reality, and how humans suffer from attempting to privilege ideas over reality. In a note he wrote for himself in March, 1926,  while composing the poem, Yeats describes the theme of the poem this way: “School children, and the thought that life will waste them, perhaps that no possible life can fulfill their own dreams or even their teacher’s hope.” 

Despite the suggestion of Yeats’s own note, the poem doesn’t really deal with the dashed hopes of the students themselves. Instead, Yeats’s focus in the poem is on the illusions of the childrens’ mothers — and of the nuns who are their teachers. Read more »

A solitary field scabious wildflower in an alpine meadow. Photo taken in early June in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

by Alexander C. Kafka

A shy high-school student asks a girl out. Desperate for some wheels, he buys a sorry ’65 Chrysler sedan and, with it, a heap of trouble. 

That’s not a bad premise for a noir action comedy, but the new release First Date squanders the concept from script through edit in a preposterous, humorless, bloody, and nihilistic mess of a movie.

For their feature debut, the writer-director duo Manual Crosby and Darren Knapp were clearly trying to concoct a spicy blend of Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and Guy Ritchie. But First Date has no originality, wit, or directorial flair, only derivative burnt scrapings of violence and meanness. Despite one half-hearted, swiftly corroded moment of civility, the screenplay is three-quarters F-bombs, one-quarter cynical shootings and beatings. 

The production has an undeniable energy and the unfertilized seeds of its crowded characterizations might have been more ambitiously nurtured. The dynamic between the passive hero Mike (Tyson Brown) and Kelsey (Shelby Duclos), the kickboxing dynamo he desires, is an intriguing gender inversion of the traditional. A misfit crew of baddies also discuss Steinbeck as a book group. And there’s a droll coffee-table meme. 

But such promising touches wither under the screenwriters’ sadistic hand, as does the unlikely introduction of an older couple with distinct memories of the junker car. Mike’s passivity, rather than a challenge to overcome, becomes worrisomely defining and dramatically flat. The criminal gang’s constant foul-mouthed blathering, within minutes, becomes merely grating. Michael’s parents are oblivious, Kelsey’s are crass and unfeeling, and a couple sports-car-obsessed neighborhood jocks are insipid teen-farce throwbacks with nothing to say. Only Nicole Berry, as a poker-faced sheriff’s deputy, has any real hint of quirky depth.

Direction is halting toward the beginning but finds its momentum by a tense standoff scene, and sedate Hawaiian-guitar riffs give the score an unexpected, somewhat demented vibe. But ultimately, First Date is just bleak. As social commentary, it’s numb, and as entertainment, it’s numbing. 

by Michael Liss

Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions. There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest…

–Alexander Hamilton, 1787.

March 4, 1800. John Adams, Second President of the United States (and first President to be defeated for reelection) was leaving Washington on the 4:00 a.m. stagecoach to Baltimore, the first stop on his way back home to his beloved home and his wife Abigail. He would not be in attendance when, later that day, his successor (and former Vice President), Thomas Jefferson, would take the Oath of Office and deliver his Inaugural Address.

It was considered by his contemporaries (and most of us would agree) a sour note to end a Presidency. As Washington had voluntarily given up the office when he could have been President-for-Life, a peaceful transition of power was a demonstration of continuity and the stability of a young nation’s experiment in democracy. Adams had lost, fairly so under the rules of the day, and many felt he needed to express public acceptance, particularly at a time when the verdict was not merely a change of person, but also of political philosophy.

There are many explanations for Adams’ behavior, one of which is that Jefferson might have made it known that Adams would not be welcome, but the one that fits best is that, in the absence of a real tradition, Adams was following his heart. He’d had enough of Philadelphia and the new swamp that was Washington, of politics and political infighting, of being judged too harshly for his failures and praised too little for his accomplishments. Like every President since who has lost, the sense of rejection was unavoidable. In Adams’ case, more so because Jefferson and he had once been close, and because some in Adams’ old party, the Federalists, had pointedly withheld support—Alexander Hamilton foremost amongst them, but even some of his old friends. It was time for him to leave. Read more »