by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

The second edition of our Why We Argue (And How We Should) is set to be released this month. The new edition is an update of the previous 2014 edition, and in particular, it is occasioned by the argumentative events leading up to and subsequent to the 2016 US Presidential election. New forms of fallacy needed to be diagnosed, and different strategies for their correction had to be posed. But we also saw that another element of a book on critical thinking and politics was necessary, one that has been all-too-often left out: a program for argument-repair. We looked at strategies for finding out what arguers are trying to say, what motivates them, and how to address not just the things argued, but the things that drive us to argue. We think that very often, repairing an argument requires repairing the culture of argument.

One reason why arguments go so badly is because the disagreement and interplay between us, our interlocutors, and our onlooking audiences starts off as fraught. And so, further exchange often makes things worse instead of better. We call this phenomenon argument escalation. Again, we’ve all seen it happen — a difference of opinion about some small matter grows into an argument, an argument becomes a verbal fight, and the verbal fight becomes a fight involving more than merely words. And it’s worse when there are onlookers who will judge us and our performances. Half of the time, we want to stop it all and say, “We are all grownups here . . . can’t we just calm down?” But were one to say this, the interlocutor is liable to respond, “Are you calling me a child, then? And don’t tell me to calm down!” How can we repair arguments without further escalating them? Read more »

by Tim Sommers

Do You Own Yourself?

In 1646, the Leveller leader, Richard Overton became the first person in the English-speaking world to assert that we own ourselves. “To every Individuall in nature, is given an individuall property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any,” he wrote, “for every one as he is himselfe, so he has a selfe propriety, else he could not be himself.”

We might question the claim that without owning ourselves we couldn’t be ourselves. After all, we don’t need ownership, or property law, to explain why my beliefs are mine or why my actions are mine.

But it’s easy to appreciate the political strategy behind Overton’s use of self-ownership – once you hear it.

The Levellars, so-named originally by opponents for supposedly having leveled hedges during the enclosure riots, were the egalitarians of the English Civil War preaching that sovereignty was founded on consent and that the franchise and property ownership should be extended to all men. Overton was responding to the argument that only men of property should be allowed to vote, when he wrote that all men are men of property, because all men have property in themselves.

Do they, though? It sounds plausible. But do you own yourself?

Actually, that’s an easy one. Ownership is a legal notion. In no legal system in the world do you own yourself. (About as close as you can come to a legal precedent, in American law, that might be interpreted as supporting self-ownership has to do with copyright: celebrities do, at least to some extent, own the use of their image for commercial purposes.)

But even if you don’t own yourself, maybe, you should. Read more »

by Amanda Beth Peery

In the service area
where a handful of the families of New Jersey
have pulled off the highway,
the trees are surprising me
with their thickness—
the edge of a secret
or rather forgotten forest
running beside the turnpike.
A small animal occasionally waits,
then breaks
from the velvet shadowed elms.
They press the delicate imprints of leaves
against the broiling sky
as a storm tentatively begins
and one dark-eyed girl, bored with her parents
watches the rain start by the food machines
and swings her arms in loose arcs
like the trees that are now swaying
in the rain and in the wind.
She is just as foreign to me
as these particular trees.
I will never see any of them again.

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

The most stunning memory of Swat valley that remains with me since my first visit as a child is the euphoria of the headstrong Darya e Swat, the luxuriously frothy river, like fresh milk churning and churning joyfully. That, and the first time I heard the pristine and full silence of wilderness, meandering along languorous brooks and spotting the smallest wild flowers I had ever seen. Like any child, scale impressed me: the mountains were the highest, the river the fastest, the silence of the trails the deepest I had yet experienced. If there was anything subtle I may have observed, the awe of scale and novelty eclipsed it completely.

On my visit to Swat this year, I tried to recapture that spirit of childhood, trying to set the senses free as well as refining them with the subtlety that was beyond the capacity of my younger self, wrestling furiously against the disquiet and frustration Swat evokes due to recent political events. It struck me that subtlety still eludes the perception of Swat as far as the global psyche goes, dominated as it is by narratives of scale: the most unsafe place in the world, the worst place for women and education, home of the youngest person to receive the Nobel prize, etc. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Niall Chithelen

A number of scenes in Eugene Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We (1921) echo moments from Alexander Bogdanov’s utopian Red Star (1908). Bogdanov was a Bolshevik when he wrote Red Star (he was expelled from the party some years before the Russian Revolution), and his “red star” was a socialist, wonderfully technocratic Mars whose residents are preparing to export revolution back to Earth. Zamyatin, also once an Old Bolshevik, wrote in the disturbing aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and his We takes place on a future Earth, ruled over by the United State. It is possible to read We as a response to Red Star and its intellectual moment, with Zamyatin flipping Bogdanov’s Bolshevik idealism to reflect the fright of Bolshevik reality. Bogdanov sought a sort of Communist technocracy, and Zamyatin sensed its enormity, feared it. But, while the two books do offer different political conclusions, the authors seem to share an important belief in humanity and its imperfections, as they provide rather similar answers to a fundamental question of their genre: what kind of freedom do we really need? Read more »

by Nickolas Calabrese

The subject of digital art is unclear. Work that was new five years ago can look ancient now because of the constant changes in technologies. The term “digital art” itself is an umbrella term that applies to a variety of names for art that is produced with the aid of a computer including, but is not limited to, “new media art”, “net art”, and “post internet art” (for a fuller linear history of the various terms that denote art made with or assisted by computers, see Christine Paul’s terrific introduction to A Companion to Digital Art reader, which she edited). The decision to use “digital art” is twofold. First, some of the alternatives only denote a temporal category while not actually referring to the form (new media can only be “new” for a brief period; it makes little sense for a “post internet” when it hasn’t significantly evolved from “net art”; put more brusquely, in the words of critic Brian Droitcour in Art in America magazine “most people I know think “Post-Internet” is embarrassing to say out loud”); and second, because I regularly teach an undergraduate visual arts course at NYU named Digital Art (a title I did not choose).

The upshot of digital art’s classification is that it might not actually exist as a category. Read more »

by Adele A. Wilby

The link to Charles McGrath’s ‘No Longer Writing, Philip Roth Still Has Plenty to Say’ which appeared in the New York Times in January, only a few months prior to Roth’s death in May this year, was forwarded to me by a friend who thought I might find the article interesting. How indebted I am to my friend that he thought of me in those terms, for the sending of that article rekindled my acquaintance with Roth; life’s events and circumstances had left my reading of his work to the margins.

After reading that January interview, I was surprised and saddened to hear the announcement that Roth had died; despite his eighty-five years there was no suggestion of ill health on his part in the interview. However, the numerous critical and appreciatory obituaries propelled me into reflection on what I might have missed over the years by failing to read this major twentieth century literary figure that has now left us, and that it was time I returned to Roth to discover for myself what all the praise and criticism of his literature was all about. All that remained of my reading of Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and Human Stain forty years ago was the impression that they were good books. Fired up with a renewed enthusiasm to ‘return’ to the Roth I had left behind, unsure of what to select from his numerous writings, but armed with my own life story and political history, I chose his I Married a Communist to start reading him again.

I married a communist in the political heyday of the Cold War seventies and eighties, and we could be thought of as politically active in the decades that followed. Thus, with the value of hindsight, of having at least temporarily succumbed to a socialist ideology and politics, and the development of a healthy skepticism of all ideologies, I have to admit to a curiosity as to how Roth would present politically engaged persons, and the socialist politics of the era, albeit in the United States, and I was not disappointed.

My first reaction after reading the final sentence, closing the book and resting it on my lap was to heave a heavy sigh of great satisfaction. Roth, I felt, had written a great book. Read more »

by Joshua Wilbur 

I would never call myself a birdwatcher. I’m confident—arrogant even—about blue jays and cardinals, but everything else is a crapshoot. I identify finches as sparrows, sparrows as hawks, hawks as starlings. I’m more often wrong than right.

That said, I do like to watch birds. In college, I would go to the Boston Aquarium to see the African penguins. Peering over the central railing, I would pick out a single penguin from the group and follow its (his? her?) every move for as long as possible. Into the water, out of the water, into the water again…

These days I spend a lot of time in Central Park, where countless pigeons roam the paths.  When I’m not in a rush, I’ll find a bench and read for awhile, and, inevitably, the legion arrives. Again, I like to pick out one member of the group and see what it does.  Whether penguin or pigeon (or finch or sparrow or gull), what fascinates me about watching birds is how contingent—how utterly arbitrary— their actions can seem.

Why does the bird take three steps this way instead of that way?

Why does it fly to that tree in particular?

Why does it return to the ground at my feet, turn a few circles, and continue its march along the sidewalk?  

I understand, of course. It’s looking for food. But there’s a wide gulf between a pigeon’s world and mine. And I feel that divide most strongly when I look into a bird’s eyes. I’ll stare down at a pigeon, focus on the red and orange and black of its vigilant eye, and think about a very old question: “Is anyone in there?” Read more »

by Thomas O’Dwyer

The career of Kenneth Widmerpool defined an era of British social and cultural life spanning most of the 20th century. He is fictional – a character in Anthony Powell’s 12-volume sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time – but he is as memorable as any historical figure. In the first volume, he is a colourless Eton public schoolboy. Across the series, he tunnels his way under British upper-class and bohemian society. A powerful and sinister self-made monster, he even gains a life peerage. In the final volume, the aged Widmerpool joins a hippie cult and dies naked while chasing girls in the woods. Widmerpool lived and prospered in the solid certainties of his acquired culture. He died in the midst of its fragmentation.

Widmerpool was an original snowflake – one who believed that he was so unique that greatness and adulation were his destiny. His lowly father sold fertilisers. His mother raised him to be this snowflake with an inflated uniqueness that would override his mediocrity. The metaphor then was poetic – snowflakes are lovely, and no two are alike.

Today, we have a “snowflake generation,” defined by British author Claire Fox in her 2016 book I Find That Offensive!: “It is a derogatory term for one deemed too vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own, particularly in universities and other forums once known for robust debate.” With some irony, these delicate modern snowflakes are also called “new Victorians.”

The collapse of cultural certainties was most clear in Britain but rippled through all Western societies. The origin of certain culture-war debates, which erupt from time to time like temperamental volcanoes, is pinned on one Englishman, Lord Charles Percy Snow. A chemist and novelist, Snow in 1959 published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. He first delivered it as a lecture at Cambridge University. Snow observed that a group of educated people talking in a room would make allusions drawn from books and the arts. Not one of them would be expected to make, or understand, a reference to “the second law of thermodynamics.” Half of human culture – science – appeared to be non-existent for literary intellectuals.

Snow found this odd and alarming, and he considered it a problem whose solution was obvious. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Mary Hrovat

It’s a Saturday in May. I’m 17, and I’ve spent the morning washing and waxing my first car, a 1974 Gremlin. I’m so delighted that I drive around the block, windows down, Chuck Mangione playing on the radio. Feels so good, indeed. I’ve successfully negotiated a crucial passage on the road to adulthood, and I’m pleased with myself and my little car. Times change, though, and sometimes even people change. Forty years later, with, I hope, many miles ahead of me, I sold what I expect to be my last car.

When I bought the Gremlin, I lived in Phoenix. I had walked to grade school, and my siblings and I regularly walked to the grocery store and the public pool; all of these places were within about half a mile of our house. However, my full-time job was 10 miles away. I’d been commuting by bus or riding with a friend who worked at the same place. I also took evening classes a couple of days a week at a community college (about 8 miles away), again riding with my friend. The college was not as easily accessible by bus as my job was, and I anticipated being a full-time student that fall. Buying the car was one step toward my goal of getting a degree.

I assumed, along with just about everyone else, that a car was necessary equipment for adulthood, or at least a necessary price you pay for independence. Buying the car was a way of beginning to separate myself from my parents. I was proud of myself for arranging and paying for my driving lessons, finding a car to buy, and writing a check to pay for it. These things represented initiative and independence (although I couldn’t have saved the money if I hadn’t been living at home). Read more »

by Gabrielle C. Durham

I like playing Scrabble, and part of the reason is creating new words. That and the smack talk. I played a game with the swain of the day decades ago, and he challenged my word, which was not in and of itself surprising. As you may recall, if you lose a challenge, you lose a turn. With stakes so stupendously high, you mount a vigorous defense. I ended up losing the battle (and probably won the war) and thought no more of it. The ex-boyfriend brought it up a few years ago; I think he has put that on-the-spot coinage next to a picture of me in his mind. It is a shame that the word he will forever associate with me is “beardful.”

My linguistic brain coined this neologism by merging noun + common suffix “ful,” as in words such as “youthful,” “fearful,” and “handful,” to create an adjective. Easy and legit, right?

A neologism is a new word or a new way of using a word and is not yet commonly accepted; it may never be mass-accepted, and it may stay new for decades. To survive its infancy, it needs to identify a durable, meaningful concept. The word or usage has to be relevant.

One form of a neologism is a back formation, which is typically shortening an existing word and changing the part of speech. An example is the verb “burgle” from the noun “burglar.” “Burglar” has been with us for centuries as a noun, and someone – let’s blame Shakespeare – realized that a verb would make the world shimmer that much more brightly. Thus was “burgle” begat. Read more »

by Ashutosh Jogalekar

I met him at a Starbucks outside the Tower of London. It was pre-arranged. I had told him I was an independent blogger. He told me he preferred to talk to independent writers these days; the mainstream media was more trouble than what it was worth. It helped that I wrote for a site that he regularly read and admired.

The complexities of the London tube have thwarted me on more than one occasion, and this time was no different.  I was a full fifteen minutes late. He was sitting in a cafe, his signature fedora on his head, but still dressed inconspicuously enough so as to seem like one of the many people thronging the cafe.

“Mr. Naipaul”, I said, extending my hand. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”

“Oh yes, please, I was expecting you. Please, call me Vidia”

Taken a little aback by the very informal moniker I was supposed to address him by, I exclaimed, “Ok, thank you. And so sorry”, I said, “I have to admit that the tube, as wonderfully efficient as it is, challenges me every time I visit the city.”

“Indeed. It was difficult to get around the first time I visited too, more than fifty years ago. Often when I thought I had made it to my destination, I realized I was back where I started. Shall we?” Read more »

SCOFFLAW

There’s a lighthouse chasing us
just as I forewarned
when she jumped the queue
veered the red Renault
onto a prohibited bus lane
on New Kent Road.

We idle on the verge. A world tilts.
Bobby, rotund in blue,
knocks boldly on the pane.
She lowers the window.

“Well, then?” he asks,
“When I passed my driving test,
she says to the wheel,
“there were no bus lanes.”

“Young lady,” he says,
to her profile, “When
I passed my driving test,
there were no women drivers.”

“That’s sexist. Isn’t it?” she says.
“Getting cheeky, eh?” he says.
She giggles. He laughs, “Don’t
do it again, luv.” Nods.

I nod back. He plods
back to the lighthouse.
She shifts gears.
We give each other a high five.
In the rear view,
lighthouse appears closer than it is.

By Rafiq Kathwari / @brownpundit

by Liam Heneghan

No one warned me that after my children finally left home when I secured the doors at night I would, in effect, be locking them out.

People deal with the mild trauma of being an “empty nester” in different ways, I suppose. Some handle it with quiet grace, some move cocktail hour to the early afternoon, some repurpose the bedrooms into a karaoke lounge, a discotheque and so on. I took the quieter route and reread all their childhood books—from nursery rhymes to the Hunger Games series and other novels for young adults.

I was first struck by the prevalence of animals themes in these books. For example, in Eric Kincaid’s superb collection of Nursery Rhymes (1990)—a favourite of our two boys—over forty percent of rhymes concern animals. However, a word search of a book I subsequently wrote on the topic of nature in children’s books called Beasts at Bedtime (2018) showed that I might just as well have called it “Trees at Bedtime.” In addition to the innumerable references to “beasts”, there are almost 200 references to trees in the book.

Trees are represented in these stories in all their remarkable forms: magical trees in fairy tales to trees like JK Rowling’s compellingly violent Whomping Willow at Hogwarts.

It is clear that many writers of children’s stories—especially the so-called classic writers—did not accidentally stumble onto such themes. Beatrix Potter, JRR Tolkien, Ursula LeGuin and many others, had a keen eye for nature, and often had an acute awareness of its devastation. The destruction of trees was a point of moderate obsession for Tolkien who famously wrote, “I take the part of trees as against all their enemies.”

What, I wonder, should we make of this veritable forest of arboreal allusions in children’s stories? Read more »