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Thinking of the Children

Posted January 2, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Every now and again my belief that people can be reasonable runs smack into the evidence that we sure as hell aren’t rational. We can lay out in advance what the “rational� choice is, the choice that makes the most sense given circumstances, needs, opportunities, and so on, but there are points where the human brain just refuses to follow that script.

I’ve noticed a blind spot I have when it comes to kids, and it’s no surprise that it’s grown since I’ve become a father. Thinking about kids being hurt, deprived, suffering in any way makes me recoil, sometimes physically. I had a particularly vivid case of that today that still has me shaken up a bit. I’m trying to sort out a whole bunch of emotions, but I keep coming back to this lizard-brain impulse I have that You Don’t Mess With The Kids. And I’m trying to figure out why I feel so strongly about it. I mean, I know why I feel that You Don’t Mess With MY Kid. And I have a lot of intellectual support for a general You Don’t Mess With Anyone position. But somewhere, I think I have a belief that childhood should be a happy, relatively carefree time – not just from big stuff, but from as many of the little heartbreaks and disappointments that life throws at us, and so anything that interferes with that is some sort of extra heinous offense.

And I don’t even know how much sense that makes. I mean, I don’t want to coddle anyone, leave them unable to deal with disappointment. And as they get older, kids certainly have the ability to ostracize and torment each other without any of us grownups getting involved. So the idyllic vision of childhood that I keep in my head probably doesn’t even exist, so why should I get so worked up when it doesn’t pan out in reality?

Then I think about the hugs I get from my daughter, affection with reckless abandon. I think of the story that Peter King wrote last week about an Army sergeant home from Iraq, whose young daughter curls up on the couch next to him and says, “Daddy, I’m glad you didn’t die in the war.� And there’s an honesty there, there is something pure there, and life just chips away at it relentlessly. So when someone or something comes in and just takes a wrecking ball to it, maybe it’s not so surprising that I react so viscerally to it.

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

Order, Order in the System

Posted January 1, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Happy New Year, everyone. I’m gonna try and get back on the horse with a post I’ve been mulling over for far too long.

I’ve talked before about the idea of deliberative democracy – that people should have a great deal of political power, but that they must provide reasons to each other for the decisions they make. I mentioned theorists like John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, but my introduction to the term actually came through the work of Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. In books like Democracy and Disagreement and Why Deliberative Democracy?, Gutmann and Thompson try to steer between the procedural and substantive poles and make the case that any successful democracy implies both. Equal access to power and mutual respect are necessary for the procedures of democracy to function properly, but they are substantial moral commitments. I find Gutmann and Thompson’s arguments to be clear and well-presented and a good picture of what a deliberative democracy should look like.

One of the things I find most interesting about their sense of deliberative democracy, though, is that they argue that it is a second-order system for answering political/ethical questions. What’s a second order system? It’s the system you use to figure out what system you’re going to use for settling contentious questions. Think of it this way. A law is the answer to a particular question – how much should we tax such-and-such, what should the penalty be for this action, etc. The first-order system by which we answer that question is our government – Congress, the executive branch, and so on. That system is put in place by the Constitution. Attempting to amend or even replace the Constitution would be a second-order question – important because it sets the ground rules for everything that follows, but hopefully giving room to maneuver when it comes to the nitty-gritty details.

Gutmann and Thompson see deliberative democracy as a second-order system for sorting out some of the contentious social and cultural controversies of early-21st-Century American life, such as the role of religious precepts in the lawmaking process. And I personally find that to be an appealing prospect. But I do wonder if part of the reason I find it appealing is that it stacks the deck in the direction I like. Most deliberative democrats say that the reasons that we provide to one another to justify a course of action should be publicly accessible – inspired, perhaps, by the empiricism of the scientific revolution, the idea is that if I say that something justified a particular course of action, you should be able to check my work and see if that justification actually holds. That would tend to “solve� the contentious social and cultural controversies of early-21st-Century American life by short-circuiting them, because many of these arguments rest on a conflict between pluralism and belief in a particular absolute moral code. Whether that code is divinely inspired or just part of a universal natural law, it does not appear to be publicly accessible. So many of the justifications that one side would offer can’t even be brought to the table.

Now, like I said, there’s a certain appeal to me here. But I’m a pluralist. And I doubt any absolutist is going to participate in a second-order decision process with me that would put them at such a disadvantage. My gut instinct is that deliberative democracy, with is combination of procedural and substantive concerns, is more like a first-order system that gets adopted once certain ground rules are accepted, and that a messier second-order system will have to determine whether we adopt the ground rules that deliberative democracy requires. But I’m still trying to work this one out for myself.

Filed in Philosophy
        

Now it makes sense… Sort of

Posted October 6, 2006 By Pattie Gillett

So much has been written about the horrible killings of Amish schoolgirls in Lancaster County, PA this week, I wasn’t sure if we could add anything to the discussion. There are only so many ways to say “senseless” after all.

Then I came across this story:

The Pocono Record reports that monies are pouring in from all over the world to help the families of victims pay for that most visceral of modern “conveniences” – high hospital bills. Several paragraphs down in the story, you’ll find that the victims’ families were not only reluctant in accepting the money, they also insisted that similar funds be set up for the shooter’s children. This corresponds with earlier accounts that Amish community elders visited Roberts’ wife on the very day of the shootings to tell her that they forgave her husband for what he did.

That kind of foregiveness and compassion for those who would hurt you, who have hurt you, is unheard of in these times.

It sort of makes you understand, in a way, why the Amish separate themselves from our world in the first place.

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

Baltimore and Barry Kitson

Posted September 20, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Pattie, Alex and I went to the Baltimore Comic-Con earlier this month. We’d heard a lot about the con, but never quite managed to get there. It’s quite a nice gathering – very comics-focused, unlike cons like San Diego and Wizard World that have a heavy pop culture emphasis. I’d say the guest list was 99% comics, and the retailers were probably 80% comics with some non-comics toys and DVDs thrown in. I really wish I had brought my want list, because I may have actually made a dent in it.

George Perez was there, but was swamped. I don’t know if he was taking commissions that day, but if he was, his list filled up in nanoseconds. I did meet Perez’s old partner on New Teen Titans, Marv Wolfman. Wolfman seemed excited to be writing Nightwing for an extended run. I really hope it works out. I like happy endings, and I don’t think the last few years of Wolfman’s run on the Titans count as one by anyone’s measure.

By far the highlight of the con for me was meeting Barry Kitson, who had flown into the States for a meeting and was thus available to do the show. I’ve done two interviews with Barry for the site and swapped e-mails with him over the years, but this was the first time I’d get to see him. Better yet, he was doing sketches – for free! (As long as they were in a sketchbook or personally dedicated, as a small line of defense against the sketch being immediately resold. As one guy in the line joked, “Yeah, could you make that out to Mr. Bay? My first initial’s ‘E’ . . .”) I got in the line, and we pretty quickly realized that Alex was not yet into the whole line-for-sketches thing. We had the following dialogue:

ALEX: Why are we here?
ME: Daddy wants that man to draw a picture for him.
ALEX: Why?
ME: Daddy likes the pictures he draws.
ALEX: Why?
ME: Well, kiddo, art’s a subjective thing . . .

After that, Pattie took Alex back to the hotel pool. There was a fire alarm that evacuated the hall, but once that was over everyone very politely resumed their original place in line. The folks in front of me were serious original art collectors, buying pages and bringing full-sized boards and paper for Barry to draw on. As I watched Barry do full-figure drawings, I started rethinking how I’ve been going about this whole sketch business. Maybe it would be worth it to ramp up to a higher scale. (Then I look at my bank account and think maybe not so much.) At any rate, Barry was every bit as nice a guy in person as he has been over e-mail, and eventually I got this sketch of Golgoth from the Empire series: Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Comics
        

Good Grief – No Nanos at Amazon?

Posted September 20, 2006 By Dave Thomer

So I’ve been keeping my eye on Amazon’s page for the new iPod Nanos. We went to the nearest Apple Store over the weekend to take a looksee, and I was generally impressed. 8 GB would comfortable hold my whole music library and leave plenty of room for podcasts and such, so I think I’m gonna make the move some time soon. (This means ripping into AAC the CDs I just finished ripping into WMA. I feel like Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black.) I was kinda hoping that Amazon would discount the 2G Nanos the ways they did the first generation. But right now they don’t seem to be able to keep the 8 GB models in stock at full price – the page indicates they ship in one to two weeks. Yikes.

Filed in Life in Practice
        

Breaking Blog Silence Again

Posted September 19, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been getting myself settled into a new semester, teaching at two local colleges. I’m almost stunned at how much more I’m enjoying teaching now that the whole dissertation/grad school thing isn’t hanging over my head.

Over at theLogBook, Earl has finished overhauling the episode guides and putting them into a WordPress-based format that adds some new navigation and search options. I think the new look is pretty sweet, and it does reinforce how much easier it is to add content when you don’t have to code it. (I’m coding the very minimal syllabus pages for my courses, so that XHTML manual I bought isn’t going entirely to waste . . .)

The R.E.M. geek in me has been having some fun this week. The band was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame this past weekend, and Bill Berry participated in the festivities. If you go to Murmurs.com, you can seee YouTube video of the performances at the induction. A little lower on the page there’s a clip from a tribute concert a few days before, where the band showed up to play a couple of songs. I think I prefer the performance at the 40 Watt Club. I think the sound mix wasn’t quite right on the V broadcast of the induction. Plus, there’s something about the shots of middle aged folks at their banquet tables trying to dance to Begin the Begin that kinda reinforces the whole best-days-are-behind-them vibe that’s surrounded the band for a few years now. Like I mentioned to my classes the other day, you know you’re getting old when your favorite band has released more best-of compilations than new material over the last four years. The band, minus Bill, says they’re going back into the studio soon to make their next album. From a selfish standpoint, I hope they kick the energy level up a notch. But if they’re still doing stuff they like, more power to them.

Pattie and I just watched the first episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sorkin got the band back together, all right. Thank goodness for DVD and DVR, because the television season looks like an embarrasment of riches.

More on democracy later this week. Promise. 🙂

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

Big Music Aims at, Hits Foot

Posted August 24, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Pete Yorn’s new album Nightcrawler comes out next week. Ordinarily, I would have already pre-ordered it. Possibly twice. (But probably not.) But Yorn’s on Columbia Records, and they’re owned by Sony, and Sony has a recent history of putting obnoxious software onto its music CDs that can royally mess up a computer. From the news reports I’ve read, Sony has cleaned up its act. But now I’m seriously wondering whether it’s worth it to me to order a CD that might damage my machine. So rather than protecting an artist, Sony’s created an incentive for me to not purhase his work.

And the punchline is, if I decide to purchase it over iTunes to avoid this problem, the artist will likely see less of a cut. What a racket.

Filed in Culture and Media
        

Something’s Wrong with This Picture

Posted August 22, 2006 By Dave Thomer

The Marines have announced that they need to fill 1200 roles in the “global war on terror,” and they don’t have enough volunteers to do the job. So they are recalling inactive Marines who are part of the Individual Ready Reserve. The Reuters article I linked to explains a few key points.

  1. No one can say exactly what the global war on terror is, or how long it’s going to last, or exactly who it is we’re going to beat and how we’re supposed to do it. Now that seems to be the kind of fuzzy mandate that can eat up your volunteer pool and then some. Which leads to
  2. Some people call these callups a “back door draft.” Now, these Marines agreed to be available for recall as part of their contract. So this is part of what they signed up for. But it’s worth noting that the Marines look for volunteers from this pool of inactive Marines, and they couldn’t meet their needs. Which says something about how attractive service in the military seems right now, which brings us to
  3. Outside of the fact that being involved in a couple of difficult occupation/nation-building exercises is a bit of a turn-off, maybe this says something about our social priorities. I keep meanign to research and write a separate Policy essay on this, but my shorthand feeling is that if your job description is to possibly get shot and/or run into a burning building to save or protect my life, you really ought to be paid damn well for it. For a nation that believes in supply and demand, we don’t appear to be showing much demand for people to fill these vital but dangerous roles.
Filed in Public Policy
        

Quick Link – The Nature of Ability

Posted August 22, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Lemme just point you over to a discussion on hyper-textual ontology about the concept of “natural ability” and its relationship to effort, level of interest, and those things about ourselves that we generally feel like we have some control over. In the comments, I press the notion that “natural ability” means something. But on an even-numbered day, I might feel differently. I do think that if we’re going to take seriously the idea that we are embodied beings, it makes sense to say that those bodies might have some specific constraints built in. But I will add the caveat that this is all working from our current understanding of nature, matter, and physicality, and sometimes I think those notions are going to get a serious thrashing one of these days.

Filed in Philosophy
        

Blogging Dewey: Keeping the Connection

Posted August 17, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Peter Levine offers a cautionary tale on his blog about service learning programs in education. Levine sees such programs as a valuable tool for building the skills that people would need to be deliberative citizens – he sees a direct connection between a method of educating and a particular kind of political environment. He sees parallels to many of the reforms Dewey advocated. He then argues that many of those reforms lost their direct connection to a desired political outcome, and became more compartmentalized and separated from a larger social view. Levine sees the same thing possibly happening with service programs, as other priorities take hold. Not to say that any of the other priorities are bad, but that if we’re really going to build a better democracy, we have to pay attention to how we prepare ourselves to live in it.

Levine also participates in the blog at deliberative-democracy.net, which worth a look-see.

Filed in Philosophy
        
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