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MacIntyre on Money
John Cornwell introduces many central ideas of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (whose work I haven’t read), including on economics. Thought-provoking ideas for sure, though some of them will raise eyebrows:
MacIntyre’s key moral and political idea is that to be human is to be an Aristotelian goal-driven, social animal. Being good, according to Aristotle, consists in a creature (whether plant, animal, or human) acting according to its nature—its telos, or purpose. The telos for human beings is to generate a communal life with others; and the good society is composed of many independent, self-reliant groups…. In philosophy he attacks consequentialism, the view that what matters about an action is its consequences, which is usually coupled with utilitarianism’s “greatest happiness” principle. He also rejects Kantianism—the identification of universal ethical maxims based on reason and applied to circumstances top down. MacIntyre’s critique routinely cites the contradictory moral principles adopted by the allies in the second world war. Britain invoked a Kantian reason for declaring war on Germany: that Hitler could not be allowed to invade his neighbours. But the bombing of Dresden (which for a Kantian involved the treatment of people as a means to an end, something that should never be countenanced) was justified under consequentialist or utilitarian arguments: to bring the war to a swift end….
9 comments on MacIntyre on Money
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On Social Networking
Three essays worth reading on online social networking—how it is transforming us and what to make of it:
Small Change by Malcolm GladwellThe world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns.
Categories: Culture -
Ten Years of Nothingness
Observing anniversaries is often a way to mark the passage of time, celebrate small achievements, and reflect on the journey. It can also be an exercise in self-absorbed narcissism. ☺ Be that as it may, I’d like to observe a minor milestone in my creative and online life. Earlier this year, Shunya completed its 10th anniversary. I created this website in 2000 to share my travel photos from around the world—photos that were fading away in cardboard boxes—and to learn web publishing. It was to serve as my web address, and perhaps become a quiet record of a personal history. (“Shunya” means the number “zero” as well as “void” or “nothingness” in Buddhist philosophy.)The site has since evolved much and now includes prose by me and others, photo essays, and videos. A big expansion came when I took a two-year break (2004-06) to visit 100+ destinations in 20+ Indian states. As a result, nearly half of the ~15K photos on Shunya are from India, the rest from ~50 other countries. In the last two years I’ve added a host of essays to it, including ones I’ve written for 3 Quarks Daily as well as by others on this group blog. I’ve even made new friends through Shunya, found long lost ones, and received many notes of appreciation.
Encouraged by the inquiries I got out of the electronic blue, I also began licensing my photos based on the buyer’s means and ends. Over a hundred organizations, including 15 museums, 25 academies, and 35 publishers have since licensed photos from Shunya. I’ve given away quite a few for free, especially to progressive non-profits, students, and starving artists. They have inspired paintings (samples below) and adorned calendars, posters, music CD jackets, slideshows, brochures, ads, postcards, websites, and book and magazine covers.
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Endhiran: A Review
Or Why I’m Not a Fan of Popular Indian Cinema
I’ve often wondered why Indian popular cinema generally leaves me cold. Though I’ve offered up defensive explanations to Indian friends and family who feel slighted by my lack of regard for it, the question has continued to simmer for many years on a back burner in my mind.Take, for instance, this latest offering, Endhiran (The Robot), India’s biggest blockbuster foray into science fiction, starring Superstar Rajinikanth. Though told with humor, Endhiran is a familiar story about a gifted man whose hubris brings tragedy upon his people (in this case, however, not upon himself). The archetypes and themes familiar to most Americans from the story of Frankenstein, also echoed in the story of Icarus, or Rabbi Loew, are styled here for an Indian aesthetic and sensibility. (For a plot summary, see the review in Variety.)
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Ian Morris on Why the West Rules—For Now
In this short lecture, historian Ian Morris talks about the key themes of his ambitious new book, Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. Geography, he claims, is what explains the arc of world history. He hammers this home in the provocative title of his recent article: lattitudes not attitudes. The book, predictably enough, has been praised by Jared Diamond but also by some historians with very different vantage points, such as David Landes and Niall Ferguson (though it was dissed by philosopher John Gray).I haven’t read the book but going by this lecture and the article, Morris—echoing Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel—seems to me broadly right for prehistoric times. However I worry that, like Diamond, he may be overplaying his hand in explaining more recent history via geography alone. Even with the contextually shifting role of geography, is he not granting it too much explanatory power at the expense of (non-material) culture, especially in the age of powerful states, group politics, and big religions? Nor was I impressed by his take on the future, what with his sophomoric embrace of Kurzweil and Singularity. Guess I should rouse myself to read the tome before saying more.
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California High Life
Do you know California’s leading cash crop? Not grapes, not almonds. It’s pot. Though widely grown and consumed, it is wholly illegal to do so (except when approved for medical use, for which getting a prescription is, I’m told, laughably easy). Without taxes, it has fostered a black market, is expensive, and burdens the already overstuffed state penitentiaries. A ballot measure to legalize pot (growing and/or possessing small amounts) was defeated this week 54-46%, a tantalizingly close margin. The trend however is clear, and it seems only a matter of time before pot is legal in California. Meanwhile, here are two interesting articles on the culture of pot farming in northern CA:The Closing of the Marijuana Frontier by John Gravois
In its relatively brief 100-year career as an American intoxicant, marijuana has been cast in an alarming number of roles: first as a scourge that drives users to murder and insanity; then as a narcotic that reduces them to passivity and indolence; later as a benevolent herb that can comfort the sick; and now—in the canny propaganda advancing Proposition 19—as a harmless but popular substance whose taxation could save California from fiscal ruin. Who knows what fantasies future Americans will project onto this unsuspecting plant?
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Ithaca by Cavafy
Sean Connery’s marvelous reading of Ithaca, the gorgeous poem by CP Cavafy (translated from the Greek).
The poem inspired my friend Leanne Ogasawara to write a wonderful short essay, exploring “what these Ithakas mean”. She writes,
Categories: Fiction & Poetry -
James A. FitzPatrick’s India
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)
James A. FitzPatrick (1894-1980), American movie-maker, is best known for his 200+ short documentary films from around the world. They appeared in two series, Traveltalks and The Voice of the Globe, which he wrote, produced, and directed from 1929-55. Commissioned by MGM, the shorts played before its feature films and were no doubt a mind-expanding experience for many. Some of them are now online at the Travel Film Archive. Nearly eighty years later, what should we make of FitzPatrick and his travel films?FitzPatrick’s shorts on India—including Jaipur, Benares, Bombay, The Temple of Love (Delhi & Agra, no audio), and others not yet online—are a rare and unique window into Indian public life in the 1930s. We can see what many of these cities’ prominent streets and traffic looked like before motor vehicles and billboards, what familiar urbanscapes and skylines looked like, and how uncrowded these cities were before the big rural migrations, not to mention 70% fewer Indians. It is interesting to hear an American public figure from the 1930s pronounce on the castes of India, the religiosity of the Indians, and how they shared their public spaces with animals. They have the charm of quaint narrative conventions we find in period pieces. His films are valuable records of history also because they are a unique encounter of two very different cultures—illuminating the world behind the lens through the one in front.
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The Scale of the Universe
A wonderful, interactive, educational, hubris-deflating application.
Categories: Science -
Are Genes Left Wing?
“The right loves genetic explanations for poverty or mental illness,” claims Oliver James. The problem, he says, is that a decade of scientific research does not support their views, and that genes may never explain most psychiatric disorders and mental illnesses:
When the map of the human genome was presented to the world in 2001, psychiatrists had high hopes for it. Itemising all our genes would surely provide molecular evidence that the main cause of mental illness was genetic – something psychiatrists had long believed. Drug companies were wetting their lips at the prospect of massive profits from unique potions for every idiosyncrasy.But a decade later, unnoticed by the media, the human genome project has not delivered what the psychiatrists hoped: we now know that genes play little part in why one sibling, social class or ethnic group is more likely to suffer mental health problems than another. … Another theory was that genes create vulnerabilities. For example, it was thought that people with a particular gene variant were more likely to become depressed if they were maltreated as children. This also now looks unlikely.
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Morals Without God?
Excerpts from a fine essay by Frans de Waal (via 3QD):
We started out with moral sentiments and intuitions, which is also where we find the greatest continuity with other primates. Rather than having developed morality from scratch, we received a huge helping hand from our background as social animals. … At this point, religion comes in … While I do consider religious institutions and their representatives — popes, bishops, mega-preachers, ayatollahs, and rabbis — fair game for criticism, what good could come from insulting individuals who find value in religion? And more pertinently, what alternative does science have to offer? Science is not in the business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us how to live our lives. We, scientists, are good at finding out why things are the way they are, or how things work, and I do believe that biology can help us understand what kind of animals we are and why our morality looks the way it does. But to go from there to offering moral guidance seems a stretch.
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The Loire Valley, Aug 2010
I had meant to post some pictures of my Loire Valley vacation with Usha’s family in August, along with a few travel impressions. Given that I have made no progress with the latter, I’m decoupling the two and posting the pictures for y’all to browse. This vacation was different from my usual ones: it was not planned by me, relatively expensive, and in a group. But it was perfectly enjoyable, largely because Usha’s family is pretty cool (and I feel fortunate to be part of it), but also because the six-day, sixty-mile walk through the countryside was very pleasant; the chateaus were impressive; the local bread, wine, and cheese didn’t disappoint either. Yummy food shots from four restaurants included.
Today, dear reader, is also the fourth anniversay of Shunya’s Notes. Thanks for reading! -
On Language and Cognition
According to Lera Boroditsky, “the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are.” As one familiar with multiple languages, I am quite sympathetic to this viewpoint. This is largely why every vanishing language feels like a great loss to me. In an exchange with Joshua Knobe, Ms. Boroditsky sheds more light on the topic (via Cognition and Culture).
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Last Hippie Standing
Last Hippie Standing is a documentary on Goa, “the hippie paradise of the 60s”, with interesting footage from that period, including their wild parties and the Anjuna flea market. It tracks down and interviews some who never went back. It also looks at the more recent crop of ravers, hipsters, and vacation hippies who now visit Goa (45 mins; see video in larger format; via Leanne Ogasawara).
I also spotted a book by Arun Saldanha, Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race, whose description looks promising. That said, his related article, White Ravers in a Goan Village, starts out well but then descends into jargon and obscure invocations of theory—the kind of stuff that gives contemporary academic writing on culture a bad name among general readers.
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Aluna and the Future of the World
The Kogi are relics of a pre-Columbian civilization, one of very few peoples who have remained separate from the European influences that have shaped the history of South America. They continue to live in austere traditional homes and wear only their homespun cotton clothes, as they have done for unknown generations. They follow their ancient belief system, in which Aluna is the mystical world in which reality is conceived. Their homeland, a great massif in coastal Columbia called Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, is rugged and remote enough to have preserved their isolation for hundreds of years.This same geography is also responsible for providing the Kogi with a unique view of environmental degradation and climate change, since their mountains, which rise from the tropical waters of the Caribbean shoreline to over 18,000 feet (5,700 m), are home to nearly every type of ecological zone in the world. To the Kogi, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the heart of the world, and their spiritual leaders, Mamos, have been entrusted with its care. But over these recent decades they have witnessed so much change and destruction that they—who call themselves Elder Brothers to the Younger Brother of the West—feel they must step forth and engage with the West in order to impart a message, a warning, a lesson: our way of life is destroying the world, and we must learn to see the earth in a new way.
They have decided that the best way to communicate may be through the West’s medium of choice: film. And to this end, they have teamed with documentary filmmaker Alan Ereira to make a documentary in which the Kogi hope to show us the way they see the world. As it’s described on the film’s website:
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Against Homeownership
Excerpts from an article on the dark side of homeownership in America:In today’s economy, mortgages can be a millstone. That’s new. Time was, workers expected to stay with one company for decades and see a steady rise in annual income. But these days, being in the workforce is a game of constant reinvention. Workers expect to change companies, even professions, multiple times. Households are much more likely now than in the past to see income dip dramatically … For homeowners, quickly adapting to new financial realities is rarely an option. Homeownership may provide a sense of stability to families, but stability in today’s economy isn’t always a virtue. What families need in order to maintain income is the flexibility that homeownership works against….
In the U.S., homeownership typically goes with living in single-family detached dwellings. Eighty-nine percent of stand-alone houses are owned, while just 17% of apartments are. There is a logic to this: for a landlord, an apartment building provides an economy of scale that a suburban development doesn’t. But that means that a system that glorifies and subsidizes homeownership pushes people to live in suburbs, where they, or developers, can find more-affordable patches of land on which to build. Of course, it’s fine to choose to live miles from a city, but that choice comes with broader consequences. People who live in detached houses use 49% more energy … than people who live in buildings with five or more apartments … Suburban living requires driving a car practically everywhere, which in turn means that U.S. energy policy prioritizes cheap oil — whatever the geopolitical and environmental consequences….
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On Herotodus’ Histories
By Namit Arora
“This, however, I know—that if every nation were to bring all its evil deeds to a given place in order to make an exchange with some other nation, when they had all looked carefully at their neighbors’ faults, they would truly be glad to carry their own back again.” — Herodotus in Histories. -
War and the American Republic
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)
Shortly before the appalling ‘Shock and Awe’
attack on Iraq, and for years after, public support for the war was
high in the U.S.[1] It was evident in the high approval ratings for Bush,
who had hoped that the war would turn him into a great president and
American hero. As if taking a cue from the Senate, the mainstream media
mostly stood united. Few even from the universities came out to protest. A great many Americans silently relished their mounting excitement. -
Marketing the Military
Check out these military recruitment ads from around the world: Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Estonia, Japan, Sweden, France, Australia, England, Lebanon, Singpore, and the US. They pack in so many clues to national character and the state of society.
Consider, for instance, the ad below from India, where recruits largely come from the lower middle class — from, say, the 40% of the population beneath the top 20%. In a society riven by class, how does the Indian military market itself? — as a ticket to a higher class, where people follow “the best traditions”, strive to “be the best”, dress smartly, speak Hinglish, attend garden parties, sail, play golf, ride horses, and frequent swimming pools. Indeed, borrowing a page from Bollywood fantasies, it almost makes the military seem like an exciting vacation package! Be sure to check out the other ads, no less fascinating! (Via Leanne Ogasawara)
