text:
Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible by Jerry Coyne. Viking Press, 331 pages, $28.95.
I - Prelude in Heaven
On the world's last day, according to the authoritative Baltimore Catechism[1], "the bodies of all men [sic] will rise from the earth and be united again to their souls, nevermore to be separated." This general resurrection will be followed immediately by a Last, or General, Judgment, "in order that the justice, wisdom, and mercy of God may be glorified in the presence of all." Everyone who has ever lived will be judged, and "every deliberate thought, word, deed, and omission of every person's entire life will be manifested at the general judgment."
This could take a long time, so I imagine that, during the intermissions of this lengthy plenary session, the Almighty will organize smaller panel discussions, both for variety's sake and for the edification of the saved and the damned. Topics might include: "The Popes: More Trouble Than They Were Worth?", featuring Garry Wills and John Paul II; "Women in Islam," with Ayan Hirsi Ali and Ayatollah Khomeini; and "Tolerance: Truth or Snare?," featuring Torquemada and Voltaire. All panel discussions will be moderated by God - simultaneously if necessary, since He is not subject to limitations of time or space.
Surely there will also be a panel on "Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design." On the side of the angels might be Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and David Berlinski. Arguing for Darwin would be Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Jerry Coyne. I foresee a full house.
Calling the proceedings to order, God will issue the usual divine injunctions against name-calling, question-begging, and selective quotation. He might also introduce a personal note, along these lines:
"Ladies and gentlemen, cherubim and seraphim, powers and principalities, welcome. Around the middle of the twentieth century, I was greeting some recent arrivals from Earth, including one rather cheeky person named Bertrand Russell. He had been a staunch and regrettably influential non-believer in My existence during his lifetime, and when I ventured to reproach him for this, he retorted indignantly: 'Not enough evidence, God!' It was a chastening experience. I rather liked this Russell and was loath to consign him to the outer darkness. Moreover, I could see his point; I had heard a similar objection from earlier unbelievers. It was at that moment that I made a momentous change in Heaven's admission policy. Henceforth, I resolved, everyone who argued in good faith would be welcome in Heaven, regardless of what conclusion she arrived at concerning My existence. Hell would be reserved for those who, as Jesus put it so eloquently in the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 25, verses 31-46), hacked away at the social safety net and imposed draconian fiscal austerity while the people perished. So it is my pleasure to announce that all the participants in tonight's panel are saved, and they are hereby encouraged to continue their extremely interesting discussion in Heaven through all eternity."
God may forgive - that is, after all, as Heine observed, his job[2] -- but Jerry Coyne will be harder to appease. An evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago and the author of a bestselling popular book, Why Evolution Is True,[3] Coyne was appalled by recent religiously based efforts, harking back to the famous 1925 Scopes trial, to modify or "balance" science teaching in American public schools. As other examples of faith-based public policy came to his attention, his indignation deepened. With Faith Versus Fact, he has launched a frontal assault on theistic religion, accompanied by a ringing vindication of the spirit and method of the natural sciences. Coyne is a little late to the fray, and he lacks Dawkins' gift for storytelling, Dennett's philosophical exuberance, Christopher Hitchens' panache, and Sam Harris's instinct for the jugular, so he will probably not be acclaimed as the Fifth Horseman of the New Atheism. But Faith Versus Fact is a solid, earnest, persuasive book.
The most important (though of course not the only) subject of contention between religion and science at present is Darwinism, the theory of evolution by natural selection. The main elements of Darwinism are simply stated. Life on earth began around 3.5 billion years ago with one species, which branched into various species as a result of mutations, small random alterations in the DNA code that transmits genetic information. Some of these mutations caused changes that were unfavorable to the altered organism's reproductive success; others caused changes that were favorable. The former mutations disappeared; the latter persisted.
According to the Book of Genesis, the earth and all plant and animal species were created simultaneously several thousand years ago by a supernatural being. Forty-two percent of Americans believe this "young earth" theory.[4] Others, mostly but not exclusively Christians, accept some aspects of evolutionary theory but not others: they accept, for example, the greater age of the earth, the genetic basis of inheritance, the occurrence of mutations and their differential survival, but do not accept common ancestry, the mutability of species, or the randomness of mutations. Something distinctive about human beings - consciousness, complexity, free will - can only be explained, they insist, by purposeful direction from an external source. The usual name for this hypothesis is "Intelligent Design."
Coyne has replied to most criticisms of Darwinian theory in Why Evolution Is True, but at least a few of the most frequent ones should be touched on here, if only to help account for his combativeness in the present book. One objection is purely logical: Darwinism is allegedly a tautology. According to Phillip Johnson, "natural selection" means nothing more than that "the organisms that leave the most offspring are the ones that leave the most offspring."[5] Johnson, a law professor, suggests that most biologists recognize this circularity and that only outsiders, or rare mavericks within the profession, are willing to acknowledge that Darwinism is, for this reason, not a scientific theory at all.
"Tautology," according to the American Heritage Dictionary,[6] has two meanings: 1) "needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy"; and 2) "a statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it true whether the simpler statements are true or false; for example, 'Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow.'" Tautologies therefore convey no information. Does the formulation Johnson ridicules convey any information? In virtually every context in which I can imagine a biologist making the statement, it will mean: "Does any type of inherited modification - of beauty, complexity, speed, strength, size - invariably enhance reproductive success? No, that always depends on the environment into which the new trait is introduced." Whether true or false, that seems highly informative. Perhaps Johnson was misled by the form of the statement. "Men are what they are" may in some contexts be a tautology, conveying no information. "Men are what they are," muttered by a woman to a distraught girlfriend, probably means (depending on the offense she's being consoled for): "They're all incorrigible liars/lechers/brutes/slobs." Again, highly informative in context.
Another criticism is evidential, concerning what is widely thought to be the most compelling confirmation of evolutionary theory: the fossil record. The philosopher David Berlinski, writing on Phillip Johnson's website, asserts that "every paleontologist writing since Darwin published his masterpiece in 1859 has known that the fossil record does not support evolution"[7] - a claim he and others have made elsewhere as well. But ten years before Berlinski's astonishing declaration, the American Geological Institute and the Paleontological Society issued a joint report, "Evolution and the Fossil Record" (2001). From its "Summary": "The theory of evolution is the foundation of modern paleontology and biology. ... Evolution is as well-supported by evidence as the theory of gravity or the heliocentric theory of our solar system. The data supporting evolution are vast."[8] It is conceivable, of course, that an international organization of paleontologists could have been mistaken about the significance of the fossil record. But it could hardly have been mistaken about the beliefs of "every paleontologist writing since Darwin."
Arguably the chief pillar of Intelligent Design theory is the concept of "irreducible complexity." Popularized by biochemist Michael Behe (with a hat tip to Bishop William Paley), this argument asserts that some processes (e.g., cellular metabolism) and organs (e.g., the eye) cannot have been produced by natural selection, since they could not have evolved gradually. Every component of an irreducibly complex process or organ must be in place before it can function at all; in order to be adaptive, all the required mutations (sometimes thousands of them) would have to occur simultaneously, which is impossible. Hence humans and other complex life forms cannot have come about by accident; they (we) must have been designed.
"There is no publication in the scientific literature," Behe writes, "that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred."[9] This is not quite so reckless a claim as Berlinski's about paleontology; but it was rash even in 1996, when Behe's Darwin's Black Box was published. In response, the cell biologist Kenneth Miller devoted a chapter of Finding Darwin's God (1999) to reviewing recent publications in the scientific literature describing how complex biochemical and other biological systems "either did occur or might have occurred" through natural selection.[10] Dramatic proclamations of impossibility like Behe's do compel one's attention, but since they are disproved by a single counter-example, they are generally imprudent.
According to Coyne, "the most effective weapon in the arsenal" of Intelligent Design proponents is the argument - accepted in one form or another by 69 percent of Americans - from "fine tuning."[11] The numerical values of several physical constants - e.g., the strength of the strong and weak electromagnetic forces and of gravity, the masses of the fundamental particles - cannot have varied by more than an infinitesimal amount or life could never have developed. Either those values came about by chance, against apparently colossal odds, or they were selected by a Designer (or Engineer).
As Coyne points out, there is a bit of hand-waving implicit in "apparently colossal odds." In fact, "we don't know how improbable the values of the constants really are"[12]; nor are we sure in all cases that the range of values compatible with life is so extremely narrow. It may even be that the "infinitely many universes" hypothesis proposed by some cosmologists will pan out, in which case the extremely improbable will turn out to be wholly inevitable. (Perhaps the infinitely many universes are not simultaneous but successive - an infinite sequence of big bangs and big crunches - which would dispose of the argument from First Cause as well as from fine tuning.) At any rate, Coyle remarks exasperatedly, it would be helpful if there were any positive evidence of cosmic fine tuning, rather than merely an a priori deduction of its necessity.
The most intriguing and, to my mind, most plausible argument (more a sketch of an argument, actually) for how a Designer might have gone about producing complex, conscious life is based on quantum indeterminacy. Quantum theory has a long history of playing hob with philosophically minded scientists. (Allegedly Sir Arthur Eddington, when the theory was explained to him, announced: "Science hereby withdraws its objection to free will.") Quantum indeterminacy is the source of the "many universes" theory, which proposes that at every quantum-level decision point, a new universe branches off into existence. It has other implications for the evolution debate as well: some of the events that cause mutations - X-rays and cosmic radiation, for example - may be indeterminate. This means, if I understand the argument correctly, that a Designer could have guided those quantum-level events and so produced the desired mutations without violating any physical laws. The present reviewer has no idea whether this conjecture is true, but it should certainly earn theistic evolutionists many points for ingenuity and persistence.
As this brief overview suggests, to a nonprofessional reader - this one, at any rate - the arguments against evolution do not seem very substantial. This verdict would hardly satisfy Jerry Coyne, however. It is not merely the substance but the style, the logic, and above all the influence of religion-based anti-evolutionism that alarm and annoy him throughout Faith Versus Fact.
Near the beginning of his immortal essay "The Will to Believe," William James quotes a younger colleague: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." That is also the gist of Coyne's lengthy and impassioned sermon. Faith Versus Fact is an inventory of the fallacies that theistic religions propagate and the harms they inflict in the contemporary world, as well as a warning to scientists that a conciliatory attitude toward believers in the public sphere will only encourage further assaults on intellectual freedom.
Our devil's advocate doesn't mince words. "Religious claims are empirical hypotheses" (Coyne's emphasis); and they are, without exception, unproven.[13] He doesn't mean historical claims - that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed actually existed, for example; or moral judgments - for example, that a camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a member of the richest 0.1 percent will enter heaven; or advocacy of secular "spiritual" practices, like mindfulness-based meditation. He means supernatural claims: that a personal God, omniscient and omnipotent, created the world from nothing, infused immaterial and immortal souls into human beings, performs miracles, answers prayers, is pleased or offended by human actions, and will confer eternal rewards or punishments on every human being. These are "existence claims"; evidence for them could, in principle, be adduced and should be demanded. And of course, only testable evidence, confirmed by observation and experiment, is admissible. Appeals to tradition, scripture, church authority, personal intuition, and mystical experience may suffice in private life or within denominations, but they carry no legitimacy in the public sphere.
Above all, religious beliefs should have no influence on what is said in publicly funded science classrooms. Nor should they allow parents to escape responsibility on religious grounds for denying their children medical care - as is the case in thirty-eight states within the US, resulting in the preventable deaths of more than a hundred children over a twenty-year period, a few of them described at length in Faith Versus Fact. Nor should they impose limits on the rights of terminally ill people to end their lives when and as they see fit - a right denied in all but a handful of states. The list of religiously-based interventions in public policy goes on: laws restricting the use of stem cells from extra embryos created during in vitro fertilization has hobbled promising medical research; sex education is often forbidden in school districts where boards of education are dominated by believers; the US withholds funds from United Nations AIDS-prevention programs that distribute condoms to women in developing nations. Coyne is right to be incensed about these things.
The baneful effects of religious dogmas on public policy are one reason for Coyne's rejection of calls for peaceful coexistence between science and religion, which he labels "accommodationism." The most influential recent advocate of this "live-and-let-live" attitude was the paleontologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould. In Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (1999), Gould proposed that since religion and science deal with "widely different aspects" of life, they should leave each other alone, or at least refrain from overt aggression. Science "tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories" that explain these facts; while religion is "wholly wrapped up in the contemplation of moral and aesthetic values," of "purposes and meanings."[14] Why can't they just scrape along, limiting their hostility to amused contempt, like academic colleagues in different departments?
They can't, Coyne retorts, because religion won't hold to the bargain. Instead of pronouncing only on the good and the beautiful, it claims also to possess truths - privileged truths, which science may not challenge. But unfortunately, science has a tropism for truth, which can't be suppressed.
The fundamental strategy of religious apologists, Coyne complains, is an appeal to ignorance. When no secular explanation is available for some phenomenon momentous enough to require one - from lightning to leprosy, from mortality to mind - God is liable to be invoked. This was no doubt a rational strategy as long as relatively few secular explanations were available. Better any number of inadequate explanations, after all, than a panicked sense that the most important things in life are wholly inexplicable. But science has changed all that - if not entirely, then mostly. We have no explanation yet for mind - or meaning or morals - but we do for lightning, leprosy, mortality, and a great deal else.
And so, says Coyne, vogue la galère! Let us fare forth and see how much we can explain. Not so fast, reply believers; it's not that simple. Precisely because sacred truths are so momentous, they are also mysterious. The quotidian methods of science cannot reach them. An act of will, a leap of faith, is required; or a special faculty, a sensus divinitatis. You scientists are notoriously brash and irreverent, but that won't do; you can't cross-examine God. You must be docile - which, after all, only means "teachable" - and wait humbly for the gift of faith.
Coyne is hardly alone in being infuriated by this special pleading. Even the irenic William James scoffed at it:
The talk of believing by our volition seems, then, from one point of view, simply silly. From another point of view it is worse than silly, it is vile. When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submissions to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness, -- then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream! Can we wonder if those bred in the rugged and manly school of science should feel like spewing such subjectivism out of their mouths?[15]
The most profound incompatibility between science and religion, Coyne suggests, stems from their opposed attitudes toward intellectual freedom. Science "prizes doubt and iconoclasm, rejects absolute authority ... and depends largely on falsification. Nearly every scientific [hypothesis] comes with an implicit rider: 'Evidence X would show this to be wrong.'"[16] Religion depends on faith in a divine revelation, as interpreted by religious authorities, to whom intellectual submission is due. The methods are antithetical: on one side, the cultivation of doubt; on the other, the suspension of doubt.
But doubt, like desire, cannot be indefinitely suppressed without psychic cost. Sensitive natures will break down; coarser natures will lash out, i.e., persecute. Historically, opposition to free thought and untrammeled debate virtually defines organized religion, Coyne and his fellow New Atheists claim. If religious authorities can censor, they will; if they can't, they will proclaim their undying commitment to freedom. By and large, I would say, with all exceptions duly noted and praised, the historical record bears them out.
For all the vigor with which Coyne pursues his bill of indictment against organized religion, he leaves out one important charge. As he says, the conflict between religion and science is "only one battle in a wider war - a war between rationality and superstition."[17] There are other kinds of superstition - he mentions astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing - but religion "is the most widespread and harmful form." I'm not so sure. Political forms of superstition, like patriotism, tribalism, and the belief that "human nature" is unalterably prone to selfishness and violence, seem to me even more destructive. Questioning authority was humankind's original sin. It is also the first duty of a democratic citizen. It is something of an understatement to say that organized religions do not, on the whole, encourage the questioning of authority. Hence, it is probably not be a coincidence that, among developed societies today, the most humane and pacific are the least religious. As Sam Harris laments: "Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 72 percent believe in angels. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the heart and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world."[18]
At this point, believers will object strenuously: "Don't blame us! Look at the history of the twentieth century - the worst crimes were committed by unbelievers." David Berlinski (a skeptic about both religion and evolution) has put this point with great force and verve:
In the early days of the German advance into Eastern Europe ... Nazi extermination squads would sweep into villages, and after forcing villagers to dig their own graves, murder the victims with machine guns. On one such occasion ... an SS officer watched languidly, his machine gun cradled, as an elderly and bearded Hasidic Jew laboriously dug what he knew to be his grave.
Standing up straight, he addressed his executioner: "God is watching what you are doing," he said.
And then he was shot dead.
What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing.
And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either.
That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.[19]
This is masterly rhetoric but faulty reasoning. Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism were rank superstitions, no more tolerant of doubt or committed to intellectual freedom than Counter-Reformation Catholicism or contemporary Salafism. They were secular religions. Sam Harris has addressed the tu quoque argument, not so eloquently as Berlinski but far more cogently:
While some of the most despicable political movements in human history have been explicitly irreligious, they were not especially rational. The public pronouncements of these regimes have been mere litanies of delusion - about race, economics, national identity, the march of history, or the moral dangers of intellectualism. Auschwitz, the Gulag, and the killing fields are not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; on the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to say, my argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem ... is dogma itself - of which every religion [supernatural or secular - GS] has more than its fair share. I know of no society in human history that has ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.[20]
No institution endures for thousands of years unless it serves an essential need. Ignorance, inertia, and indoctrination cannot be the whole story - religion must be good for something. As an evolutionary theorist, Coyne understands this. Religion, he speculates, is probably an "exaptation": an outgrowth of some behavior originally favored by natural selection. For children, believing what one is told by elders and caretakers has obvious survival value. Explaining altruism and cooperation naturalistically, without reference to religion, is a flourishing sub-field of evolutionary biology these days.
But will gene-level explanations, even combined with political ones (religion as "the opium of the people"), be enough? Perhaps, in addition to their faulty worldviews and dubious practices, religions also transmit some useful, even indispensable, memes. Perhaps, for example, they model goodness.
In a passage quoted by Coyne, Alfred North Whitehead referred to "the beauty of holiness" as one of religion's special concerns.[21] It would be absurd to suggest that only religious values can motivate moral heroism, or that most religious people are heroically moral (or moral at all). But it is perhaps not absurd to wonder if there mightn't be some connection. When the greatest English-language novelist, the unbeliever George Eliot, sought to portray the aspirations of Dorothea Brooke, the protagonist of Middlemarch, the example she chose was Saint Theresa of Avila.
Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were the many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self.[22]
The rigid and fanatical Saint Theresa is not my idea of a moral exemplar; I would probably choose Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Dorothy Day. But they all thrilled to the same exhortations to selflessness and devotion - "Give all you have to the poor and come follow me"; "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be" - however differently they applied them. They were all in love with the beauty of holiness.
Religions may also enable solidarity - not only the destructive kind on display in the Crusades, the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, or the Sunni-Shia wars, but also the kind necessary to rescue our species from the current neoliberal war of all against all. Kin-selection is sometimes said to provide a "rational" explanation for solidarity and altruism. This usage reflects the subtle corruption of that term by economists' conceptions of "rational self-interest" and "rational choice" - as though there were something rational, in the ordinary sense, about free riding, tax evasion, asset stripping, regulatory capture, influence peddling, and all the other perfectly legal and economically "rational" means by which cunning and unscrupulous people exploit the rest of us. In this perverse sense, it would be irrational for energy companies to leave the remaining deposits of fossil fuel in the ground, even if their executives and major shareholders have grandchildren who may suffer in the social and environmental chaos that climate change is bound to produce. Will it ever be possible to persuade the energy industry and its political hirelings that imperiling civilization is wrong, even if economically rational? Only, I expect, through extra-rational appeals - to unselfishness, compassion, and a sense of earth's and humankind's sacredness.
Finally, religions may enact gratitude. Coyne refers to Spinoza's and Einstein's "naturalistic pantheism," quoting the latter:
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavor in art and science. ... To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness.[23]
Few of us can match Einstein's or Spinoza's sense of hidden beauty and sublimity. But we all do occasionally glimpse the haunting interconnectedness and intelligibility of things, or have the equally mysterious experience of powers and delights that come to us unearned - nature, love, the upwelling contentment that Spinoza calls acquiescentia in seipso. The desire to give thanks, individually or communally, for such gifts, even if to no one in particular, seems fitting. Here is a strange and striking example of such collective homage from an unpublished fragment by D.H. Lawrence, a fantasy about a man who wakes up after a thousand-year sleep in a kind of pagan utopia. He observes a rite.
When the [sun] touched the tree-tops, there was a queer squeal of bagpipes, and the square suddenly started into life. The men were stamping softly, like bulls, the women were softly swaying, and softly clapping their hands, with a strange noise, like leaves. And under the vaulted porticoes, at opposite ends of the egg-shaped oval, came the soft booming and trilling of women and men singing against one another in the strangest pattern of sound.
It was all kept very soft, soft-breathing. Yet the dance swept into swifter and swifter rhythm, with the most extraordinary incalculable unison. I do not believe there was any outside control of the dance. The thing happened by instinct, like the wheeling and flashing of a shoal of fish or of a flock of birds dipping and spreading in the sky. Suddenly, in one amazing wing-movement, the arms of all the men would flash up into the air, naked and glowing, and with the soft rushing sound of pigeons alighting the men ebbed in a spiral, grey and sparkled with scarlet, bright arms slowly leaning, upon the women, who rustled all crocus-blue, rustled like an aspen, then in one movement scattered like sparks, in every direction from under the enclosing, sinking arms of the men, and suddenly formed slender rays of lilac branching out from the red and grey knot of the men.
All the time the sun was slowly sinking, shadow was falling, and the dance was moving slower, the women wheeling blue around the obliterated sun. They were dancing the sun down, and dancing as birds wheel and dance, and fishes in shoals, controlled by some strange unanimous instinct. It was at once terrifying and magnificent, I wanted to die, so as not to see it, and I wanted to rush down, to be one of them. To be a drop in that wave of life.[24]
Lawrence always called himself a "fearfully religious man." This is as close as he ever came to describing his religion. It is indeed terrifying, as collective emotions can be. But a culture without any such instinctually-based communal rituals would probably be imaginatively and emotionally impoverished.
In saying these few words on behalf of (mostly natural) religion, I don't mean to gainsay any of Jerry Coyne's criticisms of supernatural religion. The dogmas Coyne derides in Faith Versus Fact are indeed, as James said of their 19th-century versions, "fifth wheels to the coach."[25] Even more valuable is Coyne's resolute championing of critical thought and intellectual honesty. But his and others' efforts do, I hope and believe, have dogmatic religion on the run, however long it may take to complete the rout. Meanwhile, it is important to identify and preserve whatever in religion's vast and varied heritage may be of use to our emancipated descendants.
George Scialabba (www.georgescialabba.net) is a contributing editor of The Baffler. He is the author of four essay collections: What Are Intellectuals Good For?, The Modern Predicament, For the Republic, and Low Dishonest Decades, all published by Pressed Wafer.
[1] 3rd edition, 1949.
[2] On his deathbed, the poet Heinrich Heine was urged to repent his unbelief. He allegedly replied: "Dieu me pardonnera; c'est son métier."
[3]Viking Press, 2009.
[4]Faith Versus Fact, p. 9.
[5] Darwin on Trial, IVP Books, 2010, p. 42.
[6] 2nd College Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1985.
[9] Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press, 1996, p. 185.
[10] Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, Harper Collins, pp. 130-164.
[11] Faith Versus Fact, pp. 160, 161.
[12] Ibid., p. 162
[13] Ibid., p.21.
[14] Quoted in Faith Versus Fact, pp. 106, 107.
[15] James, The Will to Believe.
[16] Ibid., p. 65.
[17] Ibid., p. xii.
[18] Sam Harris, The End of Faith, Norton, 2004, p. 230.
[19] David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion, Crown, 2008, pp. 76-77.
[20] The End of Faith, p. 231.
[21] Faith Versus Fact, p. 106.
[22] Middlemarch, Prelude.
[23] Faith Versus Fact, p. 101.
[24] "Autobiographical Fragment" in Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers, vol. 1, Viking, 1972, p. 832.
[25] James, "The Will to Believe."
Abiding Our Question After All
Securus judicat orbis terrarum, the Romans used to say - the whole world can't be wrong. If there's one thing that nearly the whole literary world has agreed on for four hundred years, it's the supreme greatness, the divine genius, of Shakespeare. "He was not of an age but for all time!" (Ben Jonson). "Others abide our question. Thou art free" (Matthew Arnold). "Shakespeare and Dante divide the world between them; there is no third" (T. S. Eliot). Even that intrepid icon-smasher, Susan Sontag, when asked her favorite author, replied "Shakespeare."
There is something empowering as well as constraining about a critical consensus. As a young reader adrift on the bounding literary main, I was glad to be sure of something. I read Shakespeare with reverence as well as gusto, conducting my quotidian internal dialogue in (very fractured) iambic pentameter for days after every exposure, happy to be intimate with - according to the highest authorities - "the best which has been thought and said in the world."
Then Trickster - in the form of George Bernard Shaw - gave me a tumble. Shaw made his living for years as a drama critic, and in a tossed-off review of an apparently forgettable adaptation of Pilgrim's Progress, he observed in passing:
Search [in Shakespeare] for statesmanship, or even citizenship, or any sense of the commonwealth, material or spiritual, and you will not find the making of a decent vestryman or curate in the whole horde. As to faith, hope, courage, conviction, or any of the true heroic qualities, you find nothing but death made sensational, despair made stage-sublime, sex made romantic, and barrenness covered up by sentimentality and the mechanical lilt of blank verse.
Later, in the "Epistle Dedicatory" of Man and Superman, Shaw repeated this judgment, calling Shakespeare a mere "fashionable author who could see nothing in the world but personal aims and the tragedy of their disappointment or the comedy of their incongruity," and who never understood that
true joy in life is being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
At first this didn't compute. But on second and subsequent thoughts, it began to. Shaw frequently contrasted Shakespeare with Bunyan; that was my clue. By comparison with Bunyan's, Shaw claimed, Shakespeare's view of life was impoverished, his sense of motivation and personality cramped, his imagination fertile but only within narrow limits. His characters have no sense of a purpose larger than themselves, their political or romantic ambitions, their dynastic allegiances, and other trivial matters. Bunyan's, by contrast, live by and for something truly great, a conception of stark moral and intellectual grandeur. Bunyan and his Hebrew forebears, if I understand Shaw correctly, were heroes because they cared little about their individual destiny, having identified themselves generously and wholeheartedly with an explicit cosmic moral order, unlike Shakespeare's heroes, with their comparatively trivial purposes and preoccupations.
There was nothing vital at stake, at least as represented by Shakespeare, in the quarrels between English Catholics and Protestants: they were simply religious factional squabbles, with political prizes at stake rather than profound moral or metaphysical differences. The Hebrew prophets and the Puritans were -- even if one rejects their beliefs and ideals -- moral and religious geniuses and heroes. Shakespeare's protagonists may have been brave or loyal or in other ways virtuous, but they are all the servants of paltry, utterly conventional purposes. Shakespeare was a fine dramatic craftsman and very clever wordsmith, but no more than that.
All this is what Shaw meant by saying that Shakespeare's sense of life is hackneyed and petty, while Bunyan's is vital and original. For all his profound psychological insight and dazzling verbal virtuosity, Shakespeare is the supreme exponent of the philosophia perennis, the conventional moral and political wisdom. Of course, the conventional wisdom is still wisdom, even if not the highest. And wisdom is not, in any case, all literature has to give. But is Shakespeare the paragon, the nonpareil, I once assumed he was? I'm no longer sure.
Aesthetic judgments are hardly objective; often enough, they're not even aesthetic. Taste, like morality, is an expression of temperament and circumstance. Perhaps I've grown querulous or snobbish, eager to épater my fellow critics. Perhaps I've grown doctrinaire, willing to subject authors to ideological interrogation. Most likely, I don't understand - will never understand - the all-important distinction between form and content, which is why I value Tolstoy and Lawrence above Flaubert and Joyce, Bellow (or even Vidal) above Nabokov.
It's probably too late for third thoughts, as I shift into a lean and slippered pantaloon. No matter: for better and worse, I'm no longer in quest of a philosophy of life. Whatever ultimate truths Shakespeare does or doesn't have to offer, I look forward, before this strange, eventful history ends, to quaffing many a draft of his intoxicating word-music and lapsing contentedly into second childishness and mere oblivion.
George Scialabba is the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For?, The Modern Predicament, For the Republic, and the forthcoming Low Dishonest Decades (all published by Pressed Wafer).
A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption, and American Culture
by Alexander Cockburn. Verso, 592 pp, $29.95 .
On Christmas Eve 2010, Alexander Cockburn began a journal entry, or letter, or short column for his newsletter Counterpunch, in this fashion: "The prime constant factor in American politics across the last six decades has been ..." [p. 478] Let us pause for a moment to conjecture how commentators of diverse political complexion might have completed that sentence. The exercise may give us some sense of Cockburn's place in the culture of late-20th/early-21st century journalism.
A Tea Partier might say: "... the ever-increasing tyranny of Federal bureaucracies." A paleoconservative might say: "... the expulsion of God from the public square." A neoconservative might say: "... the weakening of American resolve and the global decline of American power." A neoliberal might say: "... increasing recognition that markets work better than government intervention." A feminist or gay activist might say: "... the gradual extension of equal rights." A civil libertarian might say: "... the gradual erosion of civil liberties." An environmentalist might say: "... a blind emphasis on economic growth at all costs." A social democrat might say: "... the dwindling of social solidarity from its high point just after World War II."
All these perspectives have at least a grain of truth. But Cockburn's answer cuts deepest: "... a counterattack by the rich against the social reforms of the 1930s." [478] Class warfare is not the only kind, or always and everywhere the most important kind. But it is the most intractable and invisible kind, and Cockburn was one of very few American journalists who never lost sight of it or failed to rub it in.
This determined reassertion of business dominance has transformed nearly every aspect of American society. The non-enforcement of labor law and the resulting decline of unions, most obviously; but just about everything else as well: the increasing cost of elections; voting restrictions and election logistics that keep working-class and minority turnout down; the exponential growth of lobbying and corporate public relations; dependably lucrative private-sector employment for corrupt (i.e., nearly all) former legislators; the concentration of media ownership; "free-trade" agreements and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs; a new and draconian intellectual property regime; the metastasis of the tax code; the infestation of regulatory agencies, especially at the policy level, by industry hacks; the privatization of war-fighting and the corrections system; the creation of business-friendly precedents by packing the appellate judiciary with conservative extremists; endless factually-challenged broadsides against Social Security and the estate tax; the tightening of the screws on bankruptcy and student debt; the brazen promotion of junk science and dubious "experts"; the underfunding of the IRS, the Postal Service, Amtrak, public defenders, public broadcasting, public education - public anything and everything, except public surveillance. It's as though the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, making use of both political parties, had engineered a brilliant, multi-faceted, devastatingly successful campaign to roll back the New Deal.
Which, as Cockburn pointed out, is pretty much what happened. Indeed, so tirelessly and tiresomely did he persist in drawing attention to the fact that the United States is a class society that he was gently ushered to the margins of American political discussion, whose center is occupied by such intellectual titans as Thomas Friedman and George Will. Very Serious People do not make a fuss about class. It is not a Very Serious Subject. Nor do they indulge in loose talk about American "imperialism," as Cockburn did repeatedly. That would be vulgar and irresponsible. America abroad makes mistakes, sometimes genocidal ones, but always with good intentions. To doubt this betrays a lack of Seriousness.
Alexander Cockburn (1931-2012) was born in Ireland, schooled in Scotland and England, and apprenticed to Grub Street. His father, Claud Cockburn, was a witty and dashing left-wing journalist, a member of the British Communist Party, and an accomplished novelist and memoirist. In 1972 Alexander came to New York, the belly of the beast, the heart of the empire, to write for the Village Voice, the liveliest and most influential journal of the then-thriving counterculture.
His star rose rapidly. "The Greasy Pole," a biweekly column on national politics, co-authored with James Ridgeway, was well-reported and hard-hitting. "Press Clips," a weekly column of press criticism, was even more raucous. Cockburn's suave prose style and stinging wit delighted his readers and infuriated his targets: blandly deceptive corporate or governmental spokespersons and self-important newspaper or TV pundits spouting conventional wisdom.
Particularly infuriating was his forthright criticism of Israel's expansionism and its harsh treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and elsewhere. Predictably, false accusations of anti-Semitism dogged him, and when it was revealed in 1982 that he had accepted a $10,000 grant from an Arab-funded institute to write a book on Middle Eastern politics, had not written the book, and had not returned the money, the furor was intense. He was suspended briefly from the Voice, lectured incessantly by self-designated guardians of journalistic ethics, and portrayed as venal and dishonest by the Israel lobby. He soon moved over to the Nation, but "Grantgate" was a bitter experience and, I suspect, contributed to his decision to leave New York a few years later.
Christopher Hitchens has a charming essay in his last collection, Arguably, about driving cross-country, on assignment for the Atlantic, in a rented red Corvette. But except for occasional forays to Iraq and Afghanistan to bolster the morale of the freedom-fighters, Hitchens stuck pretty close to New York and Washington DC. Cockburn was forever on the move, driving around the country in beat-up old cars and finally settling in one of the remotest and least gentrified areas in the lower forty-eight. As a result, A Colossal Wreck and its predecessor, The Golden Age Is In Us, are two of the best American books of travel and commentary since Tocqueville (if you like Tocqueville, that is; since Mark Twain if, like me, you don't). George Packer's earnest, Serious The Unwinding will probably pick up the prizes, but A Colossal Wreck is a more penetrating, more colorful, and vastly more entertaining account of how early 21st-century Americans think and feel.
Like everyone else's, Cockburn's oeuvre was a mix of continuities and idiosyncrasies. The continuities were standard left-wing preoccupations: opposition to unilateral American military intervention, corporate-designed globalization, the scapegoating of immigrants, and the growth of the National Security State, with special bêtes noires including the war on drugs and the dependable cowardice and hypocrisy of the Democratic Party. Unlike his collaborators James Ridgeway, Ken Silverstein, and Jeffrey St. Clair, Cockburn was not an outstanding investigative reporter. He did not do much digging in databases or archives; did not identify whistleblowers or cultivate sources deep inside malign bureaucracies; did not hurry to battlefields or disaster scenes to see first-hand. (Though he sponsored plenty of all those things in Counterpunch.) His methods, insofar as he had any, were to read a staggering volume and range of the world and local press, transmitting and embellishing whatever piqued his interest, or to arrive somewhere and learn everything about the area and its residents, serving up historical curiosities along with political observations.
But A Colossal Wreck is even less methodical and more miscellaneous than that description suggests. It is a potpourri, a gallimaufry, a salmagundi, highly seasoned. A typical morsel:
Here's why I'm against the UN as a promoter of federalism and world guv'mint. This just in from Geneva, Switzerland, via Reuter's wire: "UN upholds French ban on 'dwarf-throwing.'" It turns out that a diminutive stuntman who had protested against a French ban on the practice of "dwarf-throwing" has lost his case before some sort of UN human rights judicial body. The tribunal issued some typically pious UN claptrap about the need to protect human dignity being paramount.
The dwarf, a fellow called Manuel Wackenheim, argued that a 1995 ban by France's highest administrative court was discriminatory and deprived him of a job being tossed around discos and similar venues. ...
Dwarfs and their throwers will now have to search out venues, like prize-fighters in eighteenth-century England. Soon some place like Slovakia will be their only venue. No doubt a UN embargo will then ensue, with draconian sanctions, appointment of inspectors/spies, followed by the inevitable intervention, NATO bombing, and occupation.
So here's a bunch of UN administrators, each of them probably hauling down an annual salary hefty enough to keep a troop of dwarfs in caviar for life, dooming poor little Wackenheim to the unemployment lines, before going home to scream at their underpaid Romanian maidservants. ... In the old days, dwarfs could stand proud, strutting down the boulevards, around circus rings, or forming part of some amusing display, or matching themselves against pitbulls (a popular nineteenth-century English pastime). I can remember dwarfs from my childhood in Ireland, along with other bodies remote from conventional anatomy. Walking down the main street of any Irish town reminded one of Breughel. Not any more. I guess even in Catholic Ireland the doc takes a look and chokes nature's sports before they've got out of the starting gate. [229-30]
Fall is always the best time to meander around the country. Across the Midwest the corn is being harvested. The browns and golds of stubble and still-standing stalks warm those vast flat or slightly undulating vistas. ... Around 100 miles along 94 from Minneapolis we came to Sauk Centre and espied a sign for the Sinclair Lewis Interpretive Center. Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, which he offered to the world as Gopher Prairie in Main Street, the novel published in 1920 that made his name.
Fortunately the Info Center has not yet found the money to transform itself into an interactive learning experience in the modern manner. In fact, the "center" is an old-fashioned small museum with fading photographs and photostats of Lewis's working manuscripts. Some of these were detailed plans Lewis drew of his fictional towns, plus his real-estate maps of the inhabitants' precise locations and their family histories. Every time he visited a graveyard, he'd take down names for future use. ...
I'd forgotten how good a writer Lewis was. "This is America," he wrote in the epigraph to Main Street. "Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to Ezra Stowbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the unprofitable isles of the sea; whatever Ezra does not know and sanction, that thing is worthless for knowing and wicked to consider." [119-20]
There's much more of this - perhaps too much. My only complaint about A Colossal Wreck - an ungrateful one, I know - is that the collection is weighted a little too heavily toward the light-hearted. I wish there had been more long and powerful essays like Cockburn's incensed post-mortem tribute to Gary Webb, who revealed the CIA-cocaine connection and was hounded mercilessly (he finally committed suicide) by establishment media over minor flaws in his reporting. Or like his moving review of The Whisperers, Orlando Figes' monumental study of private life in Stalinist Russia. Or like his brave and prescient meditation dated September 12, 2001.
Cockburn liked to recount an exchange with an editor early in his career. "Alex, is your hate pure?" "Yes, Jim." [181] But it wasn't. He was too fond of pleasure: of cooking, gardening, old cars, curious learning, elegant phrase-making; too amused by the inexhaustibly hilarious absurdity of life that only Irish writers from Wilde to Beckett to J.F. Powers have seemed able to convey in English. (And not only of life but of language too. He imagines a revolution against cliché, with the legendary prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville consigning one after another modish or obfuscatory expression to the guillotine. Among my favorites: "reach out," "closure," "vibrant," "contrarian," and the Nixon-Obama standby, "Let me be clear,") There is plenty of rancor - fully justified, by and large - in A Colossal Wreck. But the dominant tone - the overriding impression one takes away of the author - is a near-unique fusion of saeva indignation and joie de vivre.
The most amusing ten pages in the book are a playlet set in the antechamber of Heaven, where the newly-deceased Christopher Hitchens runs across the not-yet-deceased Henry Kissinger, on an advance diplomatic mission. The wily K lobbies the irate Hitch to withdraw the latter's scathing indictment, which has caused some murmuring among the liberal faction of Heaven's admissions committee. Hitchens refuses, but with the support of John Paul II and Mother Teresa, Kissinger wins a promise of salvation, returning to earth to arrange a dramatic deathbed conversion.
This is probably the kindest light in which Cockburn ever portrayed Hitchens, whom he never forgave for supporting "humanitarian intervention" in the Balkans and Iraq. How do the two, once joined in the popular imagination as clever lefty Oxbridge types, stack up? Hitchens was a superb literary journalist; his portraits and review essays will endure. As a political critic, he was not so good, even before 9/11 overwhelmed his critical faculties and he became positively bad. His Nation columns often seemed phoned-in, and his Slate columns were a public menace. Cockburn seldom wrote long-form, alas, but his prose style was superior to Hitchens' and his political judgment generally more astute.
Not always, however. I mentioned Cockburn's idiosyncrasies. They call for brief enumeration. There was his tiresome sniping at Orwell, who had criticized Claud in Homage to Catalonia. More seriously, there was his antipathy to gun control, which he saw as just more evidence of the bourgeois state's aspiration to total social control. Evidently he thought several thousand accidental deaths a year, and even the proliferation of assault weapons, less intolerable than giving up the remote possibility of armed popular resistance. If guns are outlawed, only the police will have guns, he might have said.
Then there was his unyielding anti-Malthusianism. He seemed to think that population control was indistinguishable from eugenics, supposedly a perennial progressive fetish. Most distressingly, there was his skepticism about global warming. His inveterate distrust of consensus among the high-minded, plus his discovery that the moribund nuclear power industry was looking to the anti-fossil fuels movement for its salvation, led him to pay attention - too much, perhaps - to the tiny minority of dissenting scientists.
I can see a shred of plausibility in each of these opinions. But mostly sheer orneriness.
Between the malevolence of the Republicans and the mediocrity of the Democrats, the last four decades have been a pretty dismal time to be a left-wing radical. Few of us have stayed scrappy; still fewer have kept a sense of humor. Cockburn's example - hedonist, populist, brawler, dandy - made it a little easier. I wish the next generation one of him.
George Scialabba is a contributing editor of The Baffler and the author of three essay collections: What Are Intellectuals Good For?, The Modern Predicament, and For the Republic.
Arnis Rītups in conversation with George Scialabba (Nov 2015)
RL: Are you proud to be American?
Scialabba: Well... I'm proud of some parts of the American heritage and very unhappy about some parts of contemporary American culture. I don't worship the American Constitution as many of my fellow Americans do. Americans tend to be a little bit superstitious in their reverence for scripture, both religious and political. But I think the Constitution was an expression of the Enlightenment - the European and to some extent American Enlightenment. It was a step forward but there were objectionable parts of it.
RL: Could you point out some of these objectionable parts?
Scialabba: Well, one of them is that slaves were counted as part of the population for purposes of a state's representation in the Congress but were not allowed to vote, of course. In other words, it legitimised slavery.
RL: Anything else?
Scialabba: Oh yes, a number of things, but the main thing is that it's very imperfectly democratic, that is, it has far too many safeguards on private property. I don't mean individual private property - you know, yours and mine - but the power of wealthy people to maintain inequality, both economic and political.
RL: But what's wrong with the idea of private property?!
Scialabba: Nothing is wrong at all! I mean, as I say - private property for use is one thing but the unlimited accumulation of private property, to the extent we see it in contemporary America and have always seen it throughout American history, at least since the arrival of industrialisation and mass production in the late 19th century - it is not legitimate.
RL: But it's constitutionally legitimate. In what sense is it illegitimate then?
Scialabba: Morally.
RL: What do you mean by 'moral legitimacy'?
Scialabba: I believe in the morality of democracy. I believe that those who are affected by actions and policies should have an equal voice in deciding those actions and policies.
RL: And by 'equal voice' you mean...?
Scialabba: Equal opportunity to influence the outcome of the decision, of the collective deliberation.
RL: So already here your utopian views are present.
Scialabba: Yes, although... They're probably a very long way from realisation, but they're not utopian in the sense that... They're not extremely eccentric or idiosyncratic - it's what John Stuart Mill believed, it's what the Fabians, it's what all of the great Anglo-American democrats believed.
RL: Yes, but they were delusional about the human nature - they thought that equality is implementable, which is obviously false.
Scialabba: Well, equality of treatment, equality of right doesn't depend on equality of endowment - of talent or capacity.
RL: But the equality of what you mentioned, 'the voice', would imply the equality of the ability to make use of one's endowment. It presupposes that one should be able to do something with one's endowment, whereas the majority of people are completely unable to do that.
Scialabba: Well, not completely - most people muddle through their lives. But it's true, of course - when it comes to managing wealth, when it comes to influencing public opinion... When it comes to virtually every human capacity, we're not equal. Nonetheless, what ought to determine our opportunity to influence decisions, public policy, is not the luck of our endowment, of our birth, our genetic gifts - it's the degree to which we would be affected by those policies. So if a workforce should collectively have the ability to determine what is done with the surplus that a factory or an enterprise produces it should have a right to determine the conditions of work. This doesn't mean there shouldn't be managers, superiors - people who have more experience or more insight, who are delegated the authority to make one decision or another. But the delegation is itself a democratic process, it's part of democratic theory - representation is the only form democracy can exist in in our societies.
RL: ...outside, say, the ancient Greek polis, with a limited number of citizens. But let me press you a bit more on this point... I have questions regarding the very idea of equal opportunity - because this idea presupposes that it is possible for people with unequal abilities to have equal opportunities. That is part of what this opportunity is - it includes the ability, whereas abilities are not equal. Don't you see that the very idea of equal opportunities contains an oxymoron?
Scialabba: Well, if you press it to its logical limits... I'm sort of Wittgensteinian - that is, I believe that there are no autonomous, separate meanings of words. I believe that all words are part of a language. So what I think equality of opportunity, equality of political rights has meant among democratic theorists generally is, roughly, an equal vote. It's true that what it meant in classical Athens... There were certainly people who could sway the demos one way or the other, but all members of the assembly had one vote. Likewise, in this workplace democracy I was talking about not all workers would articulate an opinion about where to invest or how the work process should be organised. But once all the people who wanted to have their say and were capable of it and had the self-confidence to get up and present it had had their say then everyone affected would have an equal vote. That's a rough, practical form of equality that we are a long way from in the United States or anywhere and that I think is the minimum level of effective democracy that we should work for. And the Constitution does not enhance or foster that kind of equality.
RL: The only problem with Wittgenstein I think, when it comes to language games, is that from his writings it's not clear how the rules can be changed. As we know from history, rules do occasionally change, and Wittgenstein, believing that a philosopher should only consider the world as it is, apparently hadn't thought about how the rules might be changed. If you were Wittgenstein, I would ask - what do you say to that?
Scialabba: Well, if I were Wittgenstein, I would probably scratch my head, look up into the air for several minutes and then say: "Well, I guess people will misunderstand each other - they will talk past each other for a while and bump up against each other. And then, if they really want to understand one another, they will say - 'look, are you meaning this by this word?' And the other person would say - 'no-no, I mean this!' And then the other person will say - 'well, I know some people think the word means that but, really, don't most people think it means this?' And they would negotiate and eventually come to a consensus, if they wanted to. Of course, if people didn't want to be understood or understand each other, then this process won't end in an agreement or a consensus - it will end in manipulation."
RL: Apart from slavery and not enhancing that understanding of equality, what other shortcomings of the Constitution can you think of?
Scialabba: Well, the Electoral College is a hopeless idea. You know, the presidents of the United States are not elected by popular vote - they're elected by this archaic institution called Electoral College. Each state is apportioned by population a number of electors with a capital 'E'. The electors were originally appointed by the state legislature - the people could vote but the legislatures chose the electors and the electors decided who the president was. It could happen - it has happened four times in American history - that the majority of electors chose someone different from the majority vote of the population. Because all the electors of the state vote the same way - they have to vote the same way. Whichever party wins the majority in a given state wins all the electors in that state - it's called 'winner-takes-all', very foolish system but it ensures the monopoly in power of two parties, Democrats and Republicans. So even though more than a hundred times the reform or abolition of the Electoral College has been introduced in Congress and has passed the House of Representatives it is always defeated by the Senate - because the Senate is the first thing that would go if there were a radical reform of that sort. The Senate is an absurdly undemocratic institution! It's clear even in the federalist papers that the purpose of the Senate is to frustrate the majority will - because the majority was not trusted by the founding fathers, all of whom were members of ...
RL: Well, the very idea of democracy at that time was not as developed yet as it became in the 19th century. Democracy was considered a very suspicious political system up to the mid-19th century. What good do you see in radical democracy?
Scialabba: Do you know that saying by Churchill that democracy is undoubtedly the worst political system, except for all the others?
RL: Yes, and he also said that a five-minute conversation with an average voter makes one doubt the value of democracy.
Scialabba: Right... As Kant said, the only way to learn to exercise free will is to exercise freedom - to make mistakes and learn from them. The premise of democracy is that each person is the best safeguard of his or her own interest, or at least can learn to be.
RL: But you see, these are fundamentally different positions - each one 'is' or 'could be'. Those are fundamentally different views on human beings!
Scialabba: Yes, but the only way one can learn to be is by exercising that freedom.
RL: Do you think that out of the 320-350 million people the majority want to exercise that right, even if they had it?
Scialabba: In the United States?
RL: Yes, for example.
Scialabba: The population is... The population is not awake, politically.
RL: Or maybe not awake in any sense?
Scialabba: Right, well... They're all very clever and alert shoppers - they're awakening as consumers, but as citizens they're not. And that has a long history of development. One of the most recent reviews I wrote is of two books which explain how American political culture got to such a state of torpor and apathy and confusion. It's in The Nation, in May or June. One of these books is by an American historian Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence, and the other is by a novelist David Bosworth, called The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America. They're both small masterpieces - well, The Age of Acquiescence is not small, it's a lengthy, detailed account of how the vigorous self-assertion of the 19th century working classes and small proprietors, which was I think as close to mass democracy as the world has come, that is, early and mid-19th century America, was transformed largely by the advent of mass production into a mass society of passive, apathetic, ignorant, deskilled consumers.
RL: And you think these passive, apathetic, ignorant and deskilled consumers should have equal opportunity to decide the matters of common concern?
Scialabba: Well, what are the alternatives?
RL: I don't know yet.
Scialabba: Enlightened guardians?
RL: Yes, philosopher kings! (Laughing.)
Scialabba: Well, I might be willing to entertain the notion if there were a reliable source of philosopher kings on the horizon.
RL: But maybe this picture of the American society which you just described is the only possible picture which could support the process of the United States becoming the world's policeman and banker? Maybe in order to acquire all this power that it has the US needed such a society?
Scialabba: Unquestionably, the American political elite needed precisely this kind of acquiescent, uniformed society in order to, as you say, become the world policeman and banker. The fact that we have become the world's policeman and banker is not good, either for the rest of the world or for the American population.
RL: Why is it bad for the American population? You can take whatever you want - you don't even have to borrow, you just take it and live in affluence. Why is it bad?
Scialabba: One has to disaggregate. When one says that 'America' can take whatever it wants...
RL: ...one means the ruling class.
Scialabba: Yes! I mean, there's unequal distribution, let's say, of the proceeds of imperialism or globalisation. And the American people, of course, are the ones who are sent to fight, to police the world, which has involved not only a great deal of bloodshed on the part of our victims but also a certain amount of bloodshed on the part of the American population. And also this regime that has made it possible for us to become the world bankers, that is, the regime of unrestricted, globally mobile capital, means...
RL: ...having a money printing machine.
Scialabba: Yes, but also having the ability of investors to move wherever opportunities favour them most, which has simply destroyed America's industrial workforce. It's in those senses that becoming the policeman and the banker of the world has made the American elite the happiest and wealthiest stratum, ruling class ever. Good for them, but not so good for the rest of us!
RL: And 'the rest of us' is 99.99%?
Scialabba: Yeah, roughly - 99.9% I'd say.
RL: Ok, but let's come back to the beginning of our conversation, when you said that you were proud of some parts of the American heritage. Could you mention two or three examples?
Scialabba: Freedom of speech. We do have a tradition of relatively unrestricted ability to criticise the government. It will take a great deal more rollback before any American actually has to watch what he or she says in public, or even in private, as has been the case in most of the world for most of history. Until very recently the idea of the government having a secret political police spying on the population was a scandalous idea! The FBI has been doing it ever since the First World War, basically, but it has been kept very secret. Occasionally organisations like the American Civil Liberties Union and enlightened sectors of the ruling class have pushed back - there have been court decisions restricting the government's ability to spy on and harass political dissidents. Lately, after 9/11, the attack on civil liberties has intensified. It's not just since 9/11 but since 1994, when the new Republican majority took over the Congress - that's more of a watershed in American politics than a lot of people realise. But there's also freedom of the press! The idea that a press would need prior approval to publish sensitive documents rather than going ahead and publish them and taking its chances in court, defending their publication against the government - until 10, 20, 30 years ago it was unthinkable! I mean, Nixon got in great trouble for trying to pull tricks like that - they had to be kept secret, they were called 'dirty tricks'. And the libel laws... I don't know much about Europe but I certainly know that Britain have shameful libel laws! Virtually any rich person who dislikes something that was said about him or her in public can just hire a lawyer, sue and force whatever person or institution responsible for that opinion to either bankrupt themselves with legal costs or publicly retract.
RL: So you're saying that you're proud of freedom of speech but that in the last 20-30 years it has been undermined. I spoke recently with an old mathematician from the Soviet Union who was imprisoned five times. He is 91 years old now and has been living in the United States for the last forty years. He said that the United States was a better place because he could think and speak whatever he wanted, without being imprisoned. So, comparatively speaking...
Scialabba: Yes, comparatively speaking it's something to be proud of.
RL: What else, apart from the freedom of speech, are you proud of?
Scialabba: Well, there's a tradition of what we call 'know-how' - a kind of practical aptitude. Another phrase besides 'know-how' is 'can-do'. Americans are can-do types, that is, when we're faced with a difficult problem we tend not to theorise about it, we tend to roll up our sleeves and pitch in - at least that's the national image, the stereotype. There's something to it, as with all stereotypes - it's true! Americans are a pragmatic, common-sensical, generally tolerant people.
RL: You could also extend this list by adding 'superficial', 'hypocritical' etc...
Scialabba: Yes, and it could get less admirable.
RL: You're highly critical of how the American democracy functions. How do you cope with the helplessness of criticism?
Scialabba: Do you know that immortal phrase by Samuel Beckett: "I can't go on, I'll go on"? (Laughing.) What can you do? You go on as long as you can and then you... you just take a vacation. (Laughing.) I don't know the answer to that. It's difficult, it's frustrating, exasperating... It's maddening! It actually has... I could say, literally, driven me mad. I have a history of clinical depression, and at least a couple of those episodes were triggered I think by... just a constant, seething indignation at what was being done to American political culture. I mean, from 1994 to 2005 I was grinding my teeth and clenching my fists and holding my breath in indignation countless times every day. And in 2005 I finally broke down and had the longest and worst depression I've ever had. I don't think it was a coincidence that all those years of political despair, humiliation, agony, anguish terminated in that episode. You know... you just go on as long as you can and then you stop - like life. (Laughing.)
RL: These changes you are referring to, which started in 1994, seem very gradual though, at least from an outsider's point of view. Maybe you could point out some of the most crucial turning points which, as you claim, changed the political culture?
Scialabba: Well, another watershed is 1980, the election of Reagan. But, of course, it all started with the New Deal.
RL: You mean, in the 1930s?
Scialabba: Yes. American capitalism was in crisis, and there were two schools of thought about what to do. The old school, laissez-faire, the classical liberal idea was - we just wait it out, it will pass. The farmers, the workers, the banks, the small businesses - a lot of them will starve, but it will be even worse if we try to help. Very convenient for the bankers and for the rich people. And then there were the so called 'Progressives' - followers of John Dewey and... kind of an enlightened liberal segment of the ruling class. Their representative was Roosevelt, and they thought - well, maybe... Yes, a lot of people will starve but possibly we could put up with that if we were sure that capitalism would survive. But look at Russia, look at the failed revolutions after the First World War in Germany and elsewhere - maybe capitalism won't survive! We can't be sure, so let's try to help. And Keynes was there, with his new theory. So they tried, it worked with a little 'help' from the Second World War, and the New Deal seemed to be a permanent part of American public policy and political culture for several decades after the Second World War. But this first segment, this very straitlaced, single-minded - simple-minded! - segment of the ruling class never accepted the New Deal, never accepted the restrictions on business, the powers granted to labour to organise and bargain collectively, the extent of regulation on business, on commerce and pollution. At first all they could do was fume and scheme in private - the John Bridge Society, these small groups of Texas millionaires who would meet and...
RL: So this undercurrent never died out?
Scialabba: Exactly. It persisted and it saw a tremendous opportunity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the high working class dislike of the student movement and the counter-culture. It formulated a new strategy called 'the culture war'. Part of it was playing on the resentment of Southern whites at the extension of civil rights, and part of it was playing on the resentment of religious [populace], especially Midwest evangelicals and Southern evangelicals, of the sexual freedom and the equality of women advocated in the 1960s. They had money to hire the very best public relations consultants, propagandists, and they whipped up this cultural war and it was successful! They brought Ronald Reagan to power and...
RL: Sorry, before you proceed... The fact that they thought out this cultural war sounds a bit like a conspiration theory - that they were so smart...
Scialabba: Well, of course they weren't half-a-dozen masterminds.
RL: So by 'them' you mean a large group of people and not a very unified effort?
Scialabba: Right - not unified but coordinated. There are industry associations in every large industry, there's the US Chamber of Commerce, there's the Business Roundtable, and there's the Republican Party. All of them communicate a great deal! I don't mean that they have secret meetings in a lodge out in the woods...
RL: Although they do. (Laughing.)
Scialabba: Occasionally, but... They know what each other is thinking, they know what their grievances - their common and individual grievances - are... They all disliked regulation - they were all against the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Labour Relations Board... I mean, as soon as someone came to them - some enterprising politician or the Republican National Committee - and said: "Look, these are Democratic initiatives. The Democratic Party is trading away some of its political capital among white and Southern voters and religious voters by going along with racial equality and sexual equality. We think that if we whip up these resentments on their part we can steal those voters from the Democrats! And once we do, once we get the executive power and maybe even the control of Congress (which they didn't get for three quarters of the Reagan administrations) we can start undermining the New Deal." And that's exactly what happened! Reagan got elected. If you look at the political polls of those times, most people didn't know - and to the extent that they did know didn't agree with - the actions that Reagan immediately started taking: undermining social security, undermining labour protection, undermining environmental protection... He was sold as 'one of us', a real American, somebody you could have a beer with, and the Democrats were considered effete and snobbish, arrogant, condescending, liberal. These stereotypes are a great pity but great issues were decided on the basis of these superficial stereotypes. And, again - Reagan was not elected to appoint people to the Environmental Protection Agency, who came straight out of polluting industries and immediately declared their intention to roll back regulations on PCBs, this deadly chemical that was raising much public concern. But he did! And, likewise, he appointed people to the National Labour Relations Board, and ever since 1980 the National Labour Relations Board has had a majority of people on it from industry, who don't believe in unions. And so the average time for arbitrating a complaint... Typically what will happen is that the union will go to a workplace, try to organise while the employer will hire a law firm, which will come in, interview every worker, tell them that their jobs will disappear if they join the union, etc. And these law firms typically provide Republican appointees to the National Labour Relations Board, so every time a grievance against one of these things is filed these appointees grant one continuance after another. It takes roughly two years for the average complaint to reach a judgment - and by then, of course, the union has disappeared and the passion has dried out. So in countless small ways like this, starting with the Reagan administration, the 'capillaries' of the New Deal were tied off. It was like the American infrastructure - it was left to decay. Infrastructure needs constant maintenance - you can't just build it and then expect it to remain functional forever. It's the same with political infrastructure - it needs to be sustained by capable public officials who want to fulfil the policy goals rather than undermine them. And both, the American physical infrastructure and the American political infrastructure have decayed disastrously - largely starting in 1980. Of course, in 1994 there was... I don't know precisely what produced this extra degree of ideological fanaticism among the incoming Republican Congress that Newt Gingrich was the leader of. Reagan was not very subtle but compared to them Reagan was... you know, Machiavellian. They just went after the government itself! One of the chief strategists of this Gingrich revolution, the Contract with America - you may recall it was their program, their platform - was Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform. He is perhaps the most influential lobbyist in Washington - he convenes a weekly or monthly meeting of Congressional leaders and conveys to them what his business constituents are thinking. Anyway, in 1994 after this victory he was rubbing his hands and said not only "we're gonna shrink the federal government" but "we're gonna shrink it so small that it can drown in a bathtub".
RL: And you mean that they were successful?
Scialabba: Well, not fully successful, but the movement towards plutocracy accelerated. It began in 1980, it accelerated in 1994 and in 2001 there was another turn of the wheel, especially concentrating on the executive power and secrecy in foreign policy. And now American democracy is just very sick.
RL: How do you explain the drive of this sick democracy to impose this same democracy on the rest of the world? Afghanistan, Iraq - these campaigns went under the slogan of spreading democracy.
Scialabba: The tobacco industry once had a slogan: "Even doctors do it!" And there was a picture of a man in a white coat smoking a cigarette - in the 1950s. Slogans are just that. The American crusade for democracy is simply and solely public relations.
RL: You mean, it's purely propaganda?
Scialabba: Yes, it's purely propaganda. That's not to say that there aren't mid-level, perhaps even high-level, people in the foreign policy apparatus who don't believe that somewhere down the line, in some way that's not very clear, American intervention will lead to more political freedom. But the US has had a really hegemonic power over a large number of client states throughout the 20th century - starting in the Philippines in the very early 20th century, then Cuba, Nicaragua, all of Central America, most of Latin America and many small states in Asia and Africa. In all of those states a word from the American ambassador on freedom of the press or freedom of speech would've had a significant effect. The United States continually intervened whenever there were threats to the freedom to do business. Whenever a country like Iran decided in 1953 that the agreement that we have with American and British oil companies really is not fair - in fact, it's ridiculously unfair - in fact, it's a national humiliation! So they elected a moderate social democrat. Immediately the CIA was tasked with overthrowing him - and they did. In 1954 in Guatemala, which was practically a fiefdom of the United Fruit Company, there was a large amount of land that the company owned but was not using. The Guatemalans elected another social democrat, Arbenz, who said: 'We're gonna take this land and distribute it to our landless population and we will compensate you - we will pay the United Fruit in fair amount of value for the land'. But the very idea that a client state could contravene an American business interest merely for the welfare of its citizens was too much! The CIA was tasked with... Well, in this case it was the Guatemalan military, who were supplied by and trained by the US military, who themselves were unhappy - they were simply given approval to overthrow the government, and the government was overthrown.
RL: But let's stop here because otherwise it will take us an hour to...
Scialabba: My point is just that if you want to look at what the United States government really cares about, look at what prompts it to intervene. How often does it intervene in countries where there's no political freedom but American business is free to operate? How often did the US intervene to promote political freedom? I can't think of one instance. How often has it intervened when a movement or a government has attempted to constrain the freedom of American business in order to enhance the welfare of its population? Innumerable times.
RL: Are you a Russian spy?
Scialabba: Ha! No, of course, like most American leftists I loathe Leninism and Stalinism. In fact, it seems to me that the worst thing that ever happened to socialism, really... If only Lenin had fallen under the train in the Finland station instead of riding in it, the world would be a much happier place.
RL: Well, Lenin died a long time ago, but are you a contemporary Russian spy?
Scialabba: No, no! I mean, Putin is just a gangster. No, there hasn't been socialism ever anywhere in the world. (Laughing.)
RL: But do you see where my question is coming from? Your critical comments of the American state undermine its glory - its self-righteousness and strength. Do you want to make the United States weaker?
Scialabba: Well, again - you have to disaggregate. 'The United States' - what exactly is that? "The United States benefits from globalisation." Oh yes? Who exactly? "The United States despises the government of Cuba." Who exactly? "The United States considers Iran the biggest threat to the world peace." Well, who exactly? You know, in all of those cases it's not you, me, people on the street...
RL: I agree that these are the right questions to ask but are the answers available? Is the system transparent enough for the answers to be reliable?
Scialabba: No, I think the system is set up not to look for answers to those questions but rather to marginalise them - to distract the population from taking an interest in those questions and asserting their own views, figuring out their own interests.
RL: What could bring a major change?
Scialabba: Well, if only everyone would subscribe to The Baffler, I think...
RL: But apart from that, is there anything else you can think of?
Scialabba: People are always asking Noam Chomsky that question.
RL: And what does he usually say?
Scialabba: He sometimes says: "Well, you know as well as I do. What do you think?" But more often he says: "You know it perfectly well - just go and do it!" Asking the question is almost the irreversible beginning of serious social change, because the recognition of the need for major change is the main obstacle. Once people start asking themselves... "Why is it that the head of Blackstone Fund, who gave a ten-million-dollar birthday party for his daughter, pays a lower proportion of income tax than I do? I must write to my congressman about that! And I must organise a little study group among my friends to find out if that's an exception or if that's the rule. If I don't hear back from my congressman then maybe my group and I will get up a petition, or maybe we'll go to Washington and speak with his aide, or maybe we'll get in touch with other groups in other cities." Once you ask the question and decide to do something about it, then ... you know, the American can-do spirit will come to your aid. Americans can do things once they decide to do them! But American culture, most of it, is a gigantic and very effective distraction from political self-mobilisation.
RL: To what extent do you think your critical attitude towards the status quo mirrors your inner psychological life?
Scialabba: Well, I think that I have been fortunate in my deprivations and misfortunes. That is, my parents were literate, but just barely - I don't think I ever saw them reading a book. That is, I wasn't socialised into middle class aspirations - I wasn't instilled with these ideas of prestige, success, financial security... Instead I latched onto the only thing in my childhood environment that looked interesting and exciting at all, which was the church. At first the church meant the Franciscan Order, which was my home parish, but the Franciscans were just kind of... a little dull. They were kind of unbookish and... a bit simple-minded, so I don't know what I would've done. But I was recruited by Opus Dei, and Opus Dei was all about, you know, being a saint but in the world - in the professional world. So they said: "By all means, go to the best college you can get into and study hard. But also you must have this very rigorous spiritual life - we want you to be a saint as well as a success." So I had a very rigorous spiritual life in college: I meditated for an hour a day, I read the gospels every day, did spiritual reading every day, prayed the rosary every day, went to mass and communion every day... But it did give me a hunger for the ideal - it did give me a sense of commitment to something larger than myself and my own success. And once that hunger, that taste is awakened in someone, - it stays. So because I had the fortunate misfortune not to be brought up with middle-class values and aspirations, because I had the fortunate misfortune of being recruited by this fanatical Catholic counter-reformation group that insisted that you sacrifice everything for God but still be in the secular world, I wound up in my twenties secular and...
RL: ...and clueless.
Scialabba: And clueless - but with this hunger for the ideal, still.
RL: And you think that this hunger for the ideal is the main source of your critical attitude towards the status quo?
Scialabba: Yes. I mean, there are plenty of people without this history who have the same critical attitude toward American democracy and the same utopian, if you want to call them that, ideals. People come to visions and sentiments by their own paths but... Yes, I think this was my path.
RL: You have forty years of recorded clinical depression - from 1972 to 2012, if I'm not mistaken. My main surprise when reading these published records of yours was that it's not clear what depression is - not clear at all. Have you now, retrospectively, understood what kind of aggregate is called depression? What is it?
Scialabba: Well, the closest I've come is recorded in an essay in the last collection I published, For the Republic. The essay is called Message from Room 101. In Orwell's 1984, you may remember, 'Room 101' is the place which Winston Smith is continually threatened with - '101' is where the worst thing in the world awaits you. In that essay I tried to describe what depression was like, where it comes from and tried to draw a political moral from it all. I think it's fundamentally a matter of your psychic constitution. We all have a certain amount of resiliency - you can think of it as a shock absorber, like the one in your car. We all go through a certain amount of stress - you can think of it like potholes in the road. If you are unlucky enough to be born with a poor shock absorber and happen to encounter a lot of stresses, that is, a very rough road, then your shock absorber gives out and the car starts to shutter and shake - it's a very bumpy ride. I think I was born with a weak shock absorber.
RL: From what you have read, isn't there a way to improve this 'shock absorber'? Or if you're born with a weak one you'll die with a weak one?
Scialabba: Well, I think if you inherit an independent income or if you're lucky enough to be born in a society which actually cares for its citizens - you know, Scandinavia and other European social democracies - or if you're lucky in other ways then the shocks in your life are rendered less traumatic. Yes, that's in some ways the political point of the essay. It makes this rough calculation of how much extra disposable wealth that top 1% of the population has and how many depressed people there are in the US at any one time - it divides that number into the sum of extra disposable wealth and comes out with a figure close to a million dollars.
RL: A million dollars for what?
Scialabba: For each depressed person. A million dollars of surplus wealth on the part of the 1% for each depressed person - 40 000 depressed people or something like that.
RL: And if each of those 40 000 people received a million dollars it would reduce that number to zero?
Scialabba: Not necessarily zero. For some people it's not financial insecurity - it's other kinds. But I think it would mop up quite a bit! (Laughing.) Certainly it would've I think mopped up mine.
RL: So in a way you have made a political point even out of your long experience with depression.
Scialabba: I tried, yeah.
RL: I'm impressed. There's one aspect though which I think it would be hard for you to make a political point of... Your understanding of luck - what is it based on?
Scialabba: I would've thought that question is kind of intrinsically uncomputable. Why luck? I mean, the definition of luck is something for which there is no... Why?
RL: Well, there are several definitions of luck but one of them refers to the lack of understanding of its causes. What Aristotle tried to do in a couple of his works was to try to understand what determined luck: whether it's just sheer luck, e.g. when throwing a dice, or whether there's something in that mental constitution or mind, or whether it's simply human nature - 'the constitution' as you said. Aristotle thought that some of these do attract luck and some of them push it away.
Scialabba: Well, that's true but what accounts for that differential - attraction or lack of attraction - I would say that's luck. Some people have it, some people don't.
RL: Are you a determinist?
Scialabba: Well, this again is one of those words about which one could argue endlessly. But in a rough sense - yes, I don't believe in free will.
RL: You had a free will to meet me or not.
Scialabba: There's a short book that I've just finished reading that answers that question - it's called Free Will by Sam Harris, the famous atheist who wrote The End of Faith. I pretty much agree with him that... There were vectors in all directions - do I want to meet this unknown Northern European person? Well, yes! I would like to be known in Latvia - I would like my friend Sven Birkerts to be impressed by my appearing in the same magazine he appeared in. But, on the other hand, it means getting up early in the morning. I have to get up at 11 to meet this person. All the vectors together just balanced out and...
RL: And this was a conscious calculation?
Scialabba: Not conscious - semi-conscious.
RL: How do you understand the last words by Wittgenstein: "Tell them I had a wonderful life"?
Scialabba: I've pondered it a great deal... I think, among many other things, Wittgenstein had a saintly streak. You know, he was capable of giving up his entire fortune and going to teach kindergarten in the Bavarian Mountains.
RL: Yes, but look who got his money - instead of giving it to the poor he gave it to his relatives, artists etc. But yes, I know what you mean - he had sort of ascetic aspirations.
Scialabba: Yes. So I think it may have meant simply that he wanted to make his friends feel good about his death. Or it may have meant that the satisfaction of achieving certain insights was so intense, so compelling that it made up for all of those dreadful depressions that he went through. I would guess it was one of those - or maybe some of both. But it's just a guess.
RL: And on the level of 'just a guess', what do you think could or should be your own last words?
Scialabba: Hm... In this book that I just read by Sam Harris on free will he quotes the last words of the Primate of England, who was an unusually liberal Catholic. As he was dying he said: "I'll see you in purgatory I guess." You know, it would've been conceited to say 'I'll see you in heaven', it would've been frightening to say 'I'll see you in hell'... I don't know, I'll say whatever I think the people - a person or persons there - what would make them least unhappy.
RL: So even in your last words you would care for them, not for...
Scialabba: Of course, if the only person at my deathbed were Henry Kissinger, I would try to say something that would make him very unhappy! (Laughing.)
RL: My last question - what is the most important thing you have understood in life?
Scialabba: Oh, what a marvellous question... (Sighs.) I would say the sheer fact that it all fits together, that it's intelligible down, down, down - as far as at least I can go and possibly as far as any human can go. A few glimpses I've had of the vast intelligibility of the human and physical universe is the biggest thrill I've ever had.
RL: And this intelligibility never led you to a thought that it might exist thanks to a superior intellect?
Scialabba: Well... I sometimes have wished that I had never started thinking, but... It's another uncomputable thought - you can't... you can't be unconscious once you're conscious.
RL: No way back, you mean?
Scialabba: No way back.
RL: And you think that if you're conscious you cannot accept that there's an intellect which has devised the whole world and all of us?
Scialabba: Oh, you can if that's where your thinking leads you. But once you've understood something - you may change your mind about it but you can never again not have understood it.
RL: And you understood at some point that there is no God?
Scialabba: As it seemed to me - yes. And I haven't seen any reason to change my mind, although I'm still pondering the question. What do you think?
RL: There was an Orthodox priest who once said that there is no true faith in anyone unless that person has seen eternity in somebody else's eyes - without it all the faith is just a façade. So I wish you to meet someone in whose eyes you could see the eternity.
Scialabba: Thank you.]]>
Neurotic Beauty: An Outsider Looks at Japan by Morris Berman. Water Street Press, 501 pages, $27.50.
Cross-cultural comparisons are thrilling but perilous. Pronouncing authoritatively about one culture is difficult enough; running the gauntlet of two communities of academic specialists is a daunting prospect. Fortunately, Morris Berman is intrepid.
Most historians would be content to have written one deeply researched and interpretively wide-ranging trilogy on a large and important subject. Berman has written two: one on alternative forms of consciousness and spirituality (The Re-enchantment of the World, Coming to Our Senses, Wandering God) and one on the decline of American civilization (The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America, Why America Failed). The second trilogy, a grimly fascinating inventory of the pathologies of contemporary America and an unsparing portrait of American history and national character, is a masterpiece. Unsurprisingly (considering how self-critical and historically informed most Americans are), it was not well received. At interludes while writing his grand historical syntheses, Berman has also produced fiction, poetry, a memoir, and a volume of essays.
He has returned to the grand scale and the prophetic mode in Neurotic Beauty. Even the most pessimistic of prophets cannot help looking for hopeful signs. Berman ended his "American decline" trilogy on a despairing note. Four centuries of relentless territorial expansion and manic economic growth have left American resources exhausted and American society in a state of befuddled anomie. And it seemed as if the rest of the world had been so thoroughly Americanized that there was little chance of escaping a global collapse and a subsequent Dark Age, this one probably resembling dystopian science fiction rather than medieval torpor.
Like many other jaded Westerners, Berman turned toward the East, searching not so much, however, for interior solace as for glimpses of a viable human future. Looking beneath Japan's Westernized surface, he finds a submerged psychic and cultural stratum, which contains some possible antidotes to the consumerist and individualist fevers that have driven the US to delirium.
According to Berman, Japanese culture has two sources, both external. In the 6th century, itinerant Chinese and Korean monks brought Buddhism to Japan, thereby opening the country to large-scale importation of Chinese culture. There was little Japanese culture - in fact, no written language or legal system - before that time, and Japanese literature and institutions remained imitative of Chinese exemplars for many centuries.
It was a peaceful and prosperous society, even if isolated. This did not protect it, however, from the second great event in Japanese history: the arrival of the American fleet under Admiral Perry in 1853. With supreme arrogance, Perry informed the Japanese that if they did not open their country to trade with the West, he would bomb their capital. The Japanese submitted, but so intense was their humiliation that the country's leaders embarked on a crash course of military and industrial development, to catch up with the Western imperialists.
The Western imperialists did not, of course, look kindly on this ambition. The resulting competition for markets and resources led to war in the Pacific, which ended with an even greater trauma for Japan. The Japanese reacted, as before, by imitating their conquerors, once again to the point of outstripping them, at least by some measures.
Today, though, as Berman demonstrated at great length in his "American decline" trilogy, their conquerors are looking less and less worth imitating. Japan is still a country of bullet trains and elegant skyscrapers, as well as the world's largest net creditor, with a higher average standard of living than the United States. But resistance to Western modernity is growing. Not only have prominent Japanese literary figures, like the aristocratic Yukio Mishima and Japan's first Nobel Prize winner, Yasunari Kawabata, carried their protests over the erosion of the country's cultural traditions to the point of ritual suicide, but an astonishing number of young adults - around a million, by some estimates - have in effect seceded from the society and economy, withdrawing with their books and video games into a bedroom of their parents' house and not emerging for years at a time. These hikokomori, or "recluses," one sociologist writes, are an "utterly rational indictment" of Japanese society, which offers them eighty-hour workweeks at meaningless jobs, usually with long commutes. The fate of many of those who accept the eighty-hour week is a stern warning: Japan's suicide rate is twice that of the US.
Another million young adults are unemployed, not in school, and not looking for work. Another 3-4 million are working part-time at dead-end jobs and (mostly) living at home. There is also a disturbing "celibacy syndrome": a third of Japanese youths between 16-24 say they have no interest in sex; a third of people under 30 have never dated anyone; and fewer than half of all those from 18-34 are in any kind of romantic relationship. In quantitative economic terms, at least compared with the US, Japan is a success. But more and more Japanese feel a deep malaise.
The reason, Berman suggests, is that unlike Americans, the Japanese know that there is more to life than getting and spending. "Japan remembers what it is like to be old, to be quiet, to turn inward," writes a Japanese academic. The long centuries of isolation and self-sufficiency before the mid-19th-century American irruption are "in the nation's DNA." Reading that DNA, and patiently explaining to impatient Americans what it is that the Japanese know, is the aim - and achievement - of Neurotic Beauty.
One thing the Japanese know is nothing; or better, nothingness. As Berman emphasizes, there are two kinds of nothingness, which are actually two different ways of experiencing nothingness. When possessions and sensations - stimuli - are eagerly pursued, they will sometimes be used up or unavailable. The result is negative nothingness, a state of anxious deprivation. But when stimuli are considered distractions and are foresworn, positive nothingness results: a state of pure, concentrated attention or mindfulness. This is the frame of mind in which the Japanese craft masters - sword makers, potters, calligraphers - and athletes - archers, martial artists -have worked. It is also the precondition of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism.
Zen is quintessentially Japanese, Berman writes - for better and worse. The power to concentrate attention is, after all, morally neutral. One can be a mindful pacifist or a mindful militarist. During the 1930s, as Japanese nationalism reached fever pitch, the prestige and techniques of Zen Buddhism were frequently co-opted by the state. Unlike most other religions, Zen lacks an "axial" principle, an objective or transcendental criterion of morality, like the will of God or the dignity of the individual. This has spared Japan the dogmatism of more religious societies and the litigiousness of more liberal ones; but it has left many Japanese with no moral center, no means to withstand group pressure or the tides of history.
This is, Berman points out, at once a strength and a weakness. In emergencies, Japanese typically behave with extraordinary self-restraint and orderliness. (And not just in emergencies: the stampedes that occasionally kill shoppers at big department-store sales in America are inconceivable there.) But initiative ("thinking outside the box" in management-speak) is just as spectacularly lacking; and the conscientious objector, the stubborn moral individualist, is a rare character type in Japan. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima offers a poignant illustration: workers and residents stayed calm and shared food and shelter freely among themselves; but executives at the Tokyo Electric Power Company covered up to protect their superiors and punished whistleblowers.
Should one admire this distinctive capacity for self-sacrifice and national unity or deplore it as abject conformism? Both, obviously; but a more interesting question is: can a world that has overdosed on assertive individualism and manic consumerism of the American variety learn something useful from Japanese culture? Berman thinks so. Economic austerity is nearly universal today, and may be for quite a while - for that matter, the environment may not survive another epoch of capitalist prosperity. As one Japanologist points out, the country seems to have a "gift for minimalist living."
American systems and assumptions based on constant growth, wealth and prosperity, many of which are pathologically corrupt, are dying fast. The demands of the new world we live in feel a lot more Japanese - equitable, careful, quiet, and modest.
The Japanese, Berman observes, seem to have attained something like "luxury in austerity," the elements of which include "aesthetic awareness (the presence of beauty and sensuality in daily life); care, precision, and mindfulness; continuity with the past." Traditional craft values are incorporated into contemporary industrial design and processes. Berman calls it "archaic modernism."
For a very long time - perhaps forever - American individualism and the distinctively American dream of limitless abundance must be renounced, or they may prove lethal. Of course the world still needs, and will always need, American ingenuity, tolerance, self-reliance, and our culture's many other virtues. But a humbler America must now, for the first time, learn another culture's virtues if the world is to avoid another Dark Ages.
George Scialabba is a contributing editor of The Baffler and the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For? and other books.]]>
The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 304 pp., $26.
In the impassioned polemic, "Darwinism," that opens The Death of Adam (1998), the first of her four philosophical/theological essay collections, Marilynne Robinson hurls a flaming spear at all of modern thought:
Now that the mystery of motive is solved - there are only self-seeking and aggression, and the illusions that conceal them from us - there is no place left for the soul, or even the self. Moral behavior has little real meaning, and inwardness, in the traditional sense, is not necessary or possible. ...[T]here is little use for the mind, the orderer and reconciler, the artist of the interior world. Whatever it has made will only be pulled apart. The old mystery of subjectivity is dispelled; individuality is a pointless complication of a very straightforward organic life. Our hypertrophic brain ... that house of many mansions, with ... all its deep terrors and very rich pleasures, which was so long believed to be the essence of our lives, and a claim on one another's sympathy and courtesy and attention, is going the way of every part of collective life that was addressed to it - religion, art, dignity, graciousness. Philosophy, ethics, politics, properly so called. ... [H]ow much was destroyed, when modern thought declared the death of Adam.
Robinson has not ceased from mental fight since then, nor has her sword slept in her hand, though she has also, over the same period, published three exquisitely beautiful, wholly untendentious novels, the acclaimed Gilead trilogy. With an equal abundance (though varying proportions) of eloquence and lyricism, her essays have made a case for her Calvinist theological vision, while her novels have made a world out of it.
Religious thinkers have tried to beat back rationalism in many and various ways. Pascal cajoled; De Maistre snarled; Kierkegaard mocked; Newman preached; Chesterton punned; C.S. Lewis allegorized. Robinson mystifies. I don't mean that she's ever willfully misleading or obscure, but rather that she looks at the commonplace and continually finds the uncanny, the ineffable, the mysterious. The idea that human nature and behavior are lawlike and predictable, that sociobiology or psychoanalysis can even begin to account for the complexity and depth of a single personality, she regards as a fatal failure of imagination. Like Blake shuddering at a clockwork universe, she prays: "May God us keep/From Single vision and Newton's sleep"; though her own bêtes noires are Darwin and Freud.
More particularly, it's their contemporary epigones she objects to, especially evolutionary psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists, who draw out and embrace the supposedly anti-religious implications of the Darwin's and Freud's discoveries. Evolution may be unimpeachable, she acknowledges: we may have descended from creatures without minds, through modifications caused by accidental genetic mutations that conferred advantages or disadvantages in the competition for survival. Yet we have minds, and souls too, she insists, however we got them; and not all of life is a competition for survival. There may be no thought without brain activity, but brain activity is not all there is to thought.
"Merely" is a fighting word in Robinson's lexicon. The self is not "merely" physical; virtues are not "merely" adaptations. The gravest intellectual sin in her catechism is reductionism: of mind to computation, generosity to self-interest, beauty to functionality, love to desire. We don't even know what "physical" means, she protests: "On scrutiny the physical is as elusive as anything to which a name may be given." [P. 8] It "frays away into dark matter, antimatter," and beyond; it is "a pure artifact of the scale at which, and the means by which, we and our devices perceive." [9] It is sheer arrogant pretense to employ such an unstable category to discredit the idea of the soul, whose character was "established in remote antiquity, in many places and cultures, long before such a thing as science was brought to bear on the question." [9]
Evolutionary psychology is equally pretentious and vacuous, with its insistence that any traits not obviously necessary to "establish and maintain homeostasis ... to live and propagate" are somehow less real than those that are. "So generosity is apparent and greed is real, [and] the great poets and philosophers toiled in the hope of making themselves attractive to potential mates." Like cognitive neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists are soul-deniers.
The soul is Robinson's guiding idea, her master concept (not to mention her stock in trade as a novelist). "A very great deal depends, perhaps our humanity depends, on our sensing and acknowledging that quality in our kind we call the soul." [235]Nonphysical, it is and is not the self; it is stained by moral failings but "untouched by the accidents that maim the self or kill it." The soul is "sacred" and "immortal," a "statement of the dignity of a human life and of the unutterable gravity of human action and experience." Heroism, creative fire, immortal longings are irrefutable evidence of the soul. That science will someday be explain it in terms of "nuts and bolts ... signals and receptors" is an empty promise.
Science is, in any case, no longer in a position to make promises. With recent developments in quantum physics and cosmology, Robinson declares, our conception of Being has exploded and all bets are off. Undecidability, indeterminacy, non-locality, entanglement, multiple universes - nowadays the scientifically literate must be prepared to swallow ten impossible things before breakfast. Reality is so very strange, it appears, that believing in God, immortality, and free will is hardly a stretch anymore. If even space and time are utterly mysterious, why expect that grace or the soul will be any less so? "Anyone who has spent an hour with a book on the new physics knows that our old mechanistic thinking, useful as it is for so many purposes, bears about the same relation to deeper reality that frost on a window pane bears to everything beyond it, including the night sky and everything beyond that." [210]
What might Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, or E. O. Wilson (all of whom Robinson pillories in one essay collection or another) say in response to her anathemas? They would first of all, I imagine, reject her insinuation that Darwinism logically implies Social Darwinism and indeed was partly inspired by Malthusianism. The fact that the forceful and cunning usually win the contest for survival in the state of nature does not guarantee them equal success in the state of culture. Indeed, there is no contest for survival in the state of culture, since culture is simply a society's way of spending its surplus over subsistence. Moreover, force and cunning are not the only successful strategies even in the state of nature; cooperation often trumps them. On the primeval savannah, teamwork sometimes outwitted tooth and claw.
Neuroscientists might point out in their defense that the up-to-date among them no longer refer to the brain as a hunk of meat (which greatly annoyed Robinson) but as a design space, and to the mind as a software module. (Though this may annoy her only slightly less.) As for the soul, they may respectfully reply that while they're perfectly comfortable with the vernacular sense of "soul" or "spirit," the metaphysical sense - something "untouched by the accidents that maim the self or kill it," and which will be reunited with the body at the Last Judgment - is just a blank to them, so could Robinson please try once more to explain it?
And the new physics - does it license Robinson's ontological maximalism? Some physicists think so; some don't; most have no opinion and no interest. But even those who agree with her generally limit their wilder imaginings to the subatomic or intergalactic spheres. Few would agree that because quarks may have free will, people have free will; or that because an electron may be in more than one place at the same time, a mountain may be in more than one place at the same time; or that because subatomic events may have no cause, everyday events may have no cause. Very freaky things do happen at quantum scales, but statistically they cancel out. In any case, wouldn't it be a bit perverse of God to have made His existence seem so implausible from Laplace to Bohr?
The Givenness of Things is by no means wholly polemical. Much of it is devoted to theological discussion, or meditation, about the interpretation of scripture, the nature of Christ, and the inexhaustibly inventive and persevering love of God for humanity. The prose is as finely wrought as in any of Robinson's novels, though less relaxed and elegiac. Not every reader will be convinced by her arguments, or even understand them, but any reader not tone-deaf will be enchanted by her grave, urgent music.
The surest way to take the moral measure of a professedly devout Christian is to ask how she feels about Matthew 25, where Jesus says to the saved and the damned: "What you have done to the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done to me." Robinson feels very strongly about it. "The souls we let our theories and our penuries frustrate are souls still, and, if Jesus is to be trusted, they will be our judges, they are now our judges." [235]
George Scialabba is a contributing editor of The Baffler and the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For? and For the Republic.]]>
Aristotle and Marx may not have agreed on much else, but they agreed on the purpose of life. Aristotle defined the highest happiness as "the pursuit of excellence to the height of one's capacities in a life affording them full scope." For Marx, the mark of a rational, humane society is that free, creative labor has become "not only a means to life, but life's prime want." Not leisure, not entertainment, not consumption, but creative activity is what gives human beings their greatest satisfaction: so say both the sage of antiquity and the prophet of modernity.
How much creative activity does work life in the contemporary United States encourage or allow? "Creative" is not a well-defined word, so no precise answer is possible. But it's hardly controversial that the "de-skilling" of the workforce has been the goal of scientific management since the beginning of the industrial age, and is accelerating. In an invaluable recent book,[1] Simon Head tracks the rapid spread of Computerized Business Systems (CBS): job-flow, business-process software designed to eliminate every vestige of initiative, judgment, and skill from the lives of workers and even middle managers. CBS, he writes, "are being used to marginalize employee knowledge and experience," so that "employee autonomy is under siege from ever more intrusive forms of monitoring and control." Head cites a 1995 report that "75-80 percent of America's largest companies were engaged in Business Process Reengineering and would be increasing their commitment to it over the next few years," and a 2001 estimate that 75 percent of all corporate investment in information technology that year went into CBS. They're expensive, but they're worth it: insecure, interchangeable workers mean lower labor costs.
The end result of de-skilling was foreseen nearly 250 years ago by one of capitalism's earliest and most penetrating critics:
The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgement concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.[2]
Prescient though he was, Adam Smith did not foresee the degree to which the state would become a largely-owned subsidiary of business, with no interest in preventing the stultification of "the great body of the people."
In recent years de-skilling has been joined by omnidirectional saturation advertising in a pincer movement aimed at turning our non-work as well as our work lives into profit centers. Matthew Crawford's brilliant and searching new work of social criticism begins with a familiar modern ordeal: boarding an airplane. Those plastic bins you put your shoes, wallet, and keys into? It dawned on some marketing genius that the insides of them could be plastered with ads. The tubes of lipstick advertised on the bottom of Crawford's bin resembled flash drives, so he almost failed to retrieve the flash drive containing the lecture he was flying somewhere to give. Once past security, he looked for a quiet place to sit and think. Forget it - shops, huge ad posters, TVs, "the usual airport cacophony." Virtually every inch of this public space made a claim on his attention for private commercial purposes. Except one: the business class lounge, the only place in the airport quiet enough to work, where the samurai of commerce sat devising the innovative marketing and business-process strategies that appropriate and direct the attention of everyone else, including the poor shlubs in the rest of the terminal.
These banal frustrations gave rise to some original reflections on the political economy of attention.[3] Though we rarely think of it this way, control of our attention is both a public good, -- a commons - and an individual right. In public places like airports, subways, buses, stadiums, streets, and schools, and even more in quasi-public spaces like television, newspapers, and social media, our attention is sold to advertisers in ever finer increments. This is, Crawford suggests, strictly analogous to environmental pollution and the plundering of public resources.
There are some resources that we hold in common, such as the air we breathe and the water we drink. We take them for granted, but their widespread availability makes everything else we do possible. I think the absence of noise is a resource of just this sort. More precisely, the valuable thing that we take for granted is the condition of not being addressed. Just as clean air makes respiration possible, silence, in this broader sense, is what makes it possible to think. We give it up willingly when we are in the company of other people with whom we have some relationship, and when we open ourselves to serendipitous encounters with strangers. To be addressed by mechanized means is an entirely different matter.
But for those who hold to the psychological model of rational choice that underlies neoclassical economics, it is not a different matter. On that view, decisions are made by ranking all available options on a single, unidimensional scale of utility or desirability. Ads, however seductive, are simply information, and the more information we have, the better - freer - are our choices. Consumers have a right to be bombarded with solicitations, however distracting, just as workers have a right to accept any conditions of employment, however degrading or unhealthful. Any government interference between seller and buyer or employer and employee is paternalism, the bane of American liberty.
Although even economists are beginning to abandon these simplistic notions of individuality and freedom,[4] they continue to inform the official ideology of our governing party and are entrenched in law and policy (to the advantage, not coincidentally, of sellers and employers). Crawford proposes a different model of individuality and choice, at once traditional and radically new. Expounding it, with richly informative excursions into neuroscience, experimental psychology, intellectual history, mass culture, skilled crafts, and sports, is the main business of The World Beyond Your Head.
The detached, autonomous self of rational choice theory assumes the possibility of what philosophers call "the view from nowhere." In quest of empistemological certainty, we "take a detached stance toward our own experience, and subject it to a critical analysis from a perspective that isn't infected with our own subjectivity." Analogously, moral autonomy requires (paraphrasing Kant) that we "abstract from all objects ... they should be without any influence at all on the will, which should not bend to outside forces or attractions but rather manifest its own sovereign authority."
Though these formulations did much useful work historically, asserting and defining human freedom against oppressive traditional authority, they don't, when pushed to the limit, hold up. There are always initial conditions, presuppositions, things our previous experience has primed us to notice or overlook; there are always pre-existing appetites, values, commitments. We can't abstract from all these things when making judgments or choices, because they are, taken together, us. Our selves do not exist apart from circumstances, accidents, consrraints. We are situated beings. "How we act is not determined in an isolated moment of choice; it is powerfully ordered by how we perceive the situation, how we are attuned to it, and this is very much a function of our previous history of shaping ourselves to the world in a paticular way."
What this means in practice is illustrated by Crawford's superbly detailed, psychologically astute descriptions of motorcycle riding and repair (the subject of his previous, best-selling Shop Class As Soulcraft), glass blowing, short-order cooking, organ-making, and other demanding skills. In each case, a beginner submits to the rules and traditions of some practice. A sustained narrowing of focus and intensification of discipline gradually yield a wider vision of possibilities and an increase in freedom of action. Internalizing the past of the activity and identifying with the community of its practitioners make one capable and desirous of carrying it forward - of creating something new. The joint attention required by any shared effort creates a new viewpoint, in which our genuine individuality is more accurately perceived and more reliably confirmed. Rootedness, obedience, and self-limitation are thus the conditions of autonomy and mastery. Crawford summarizes:
Genuine agency arises not in the context of mere choices freely made (as in shopping) but rather, somewhat paradoxically, in the context of submission to things that have their own intractable ways, whether the thing be a musical instrument, a garden, or the building of a bridge. ... When we become competent in some particular field of practice, our perception is disciplined by that practice; we become attuned to pertinent features of a situation that would be invisible to a bystander. Through the exercise of a skill, the self that acts in the world takes on a definite shape. It comes to be in a relation of fit to a world it has grasped.
But does individual character matter in a liberal democracy? On the neoclassical model, work, culture, and politics are mutually independent. In the political marketplace as in every other, we are presented with an array of options, inform ourselves about them, compute our preferences, and select one. We decide in much the same way as IBM's Deep Blue decides on chess moves: we start from scratch every time and calculate. Of course the analogy is imperfect: computers don't have habits, prejudices, impulses, or memory lapses; and their capacity for attention is virtually unlimited. The neoclassical model needs quite a number of simplifying assumptions, like pre-Copernican epicycles. But the alternative - to acknowledge that humans are not simple utility maximizers with arbitrary preferences and unbounded desires, but rather that there is a hierarchy of human goods, with limits on the scale and rhythms within which we can flourish - would upend our current political economy.
It would mean, among other things, revulsion against what work has become, or is becoming, for all too many of those Americans lucky enough to have jobs: not merely ill-paid and insecure but just as importantly, repetitive, stressful, wholly scripted. The only way workers can resist this degradation is (as Adam Smith pointed out) collectively. But neoclassical economics frowns on unions, committed instead to the fiction that fully autonomous individuals can negotiate freely and on equal terms with large corporate employers; and likewise to the dogma that the only proper subject of this negotiation is the price of the employee's labor, not its meaning.
Seeing past the liberal model of individual autonomy might also mean recognizing that consumerism can have civic consequences. Just as atmospheric fine particles can clog our lungs and impair our society's physical health, an unending stream of commercial messages, some overwhelming and some barely perceptible, can clog our minds, fragment our attention, and, in the long run, impair our society's mental and civic health. Even intelligent and straightforward ads, in sufficient quantities, might do this to us; the dumb and manipulative ones we are daily subjected to are surely accelerating our moronification. "Please," Crawford pleads, at once jokingly and in earnest, "don't install speakers in every single corner of a shopping mall, even its outdoor spaces. Please don't fill up every moment between innings in a lazy college baseball game with thundering excitement. Please give me a way to turn off the monitor in the backseat of a taxi. Please let there be one corner of the bar where the flickering delivery system for Bud Lite commercials is deemed unnecessary, because I am already at the bar."
This - and no doubt a great deal more of The World Beyond Your Head - is just what John Ruskin, William Morris, Ivan Illich, Christopher Lasch, Wendell Berry, and other great conservative radicals, or radical conservatives, would say to our over-managed, ad-choked, out-of-scale society. They were all skeptical of inevitable progress, alert to the costs as well as the benefits of new technology, able to distinguish the blessings from the cruelties of tradition, and as anxious to preserve the former as to abolish the latter. We're lucky that Matthew Crawford has updated this invaluable dissenting thread of cultural commentary. But our ecologies - of attention, of imagination, of civic virtue - are eroding ever faster. All too soon, it may no longer matter what anyone says.
[1]Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans, Basic Books, 2014.
[2] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.
[3]Encouragingly, two other new books arrive, in their own idiosyncratic ways, at similar political insights: David Bosworth's The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America: The Moral Origins of the Great Recession (Front Porch Republic Books) and Craig Lambert's Shadow Work: The Unseen, Unpaid Jobs That Fill Your Day (Counterpoint).
[4]For an influential example of applied "behavioral economics," the new branch of the subject that takes some account of human nature, see Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2009).
The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power by Steve Fraser. Little, Brown & Co, 480 pages, $28.
The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America: The Moral Origins of the Great Recession by David Bosworth. Front Porch Republic Books, 256 pages, $29.
Economists use a suggestive word to describe a developing country's increasing involvement with international finance: they speak of the "deepening" of its capital market. As more transactions take place between borrowers and lenders, as more mediating institutions are formed, more financial instruments are introduced, and more laws and regulations devised, something intricate and integrated emerges across national borders: the mighty "financial markets" that dictate government policies and decide the fate of populations. With innumerable connecting threads forming a complex, near-organic unity, this spectral entity is at once extraordinarily sensitive and extraordinarily stable. The slightest external stimulus registers, its effects transmitted rapidly throughout the system; but as with all complex organisms, a homeostatic process swiftly restores equilibrium. Deep enough markets are impossible for individuals to dominate or disrupt - there are simply too many controls, shock absorbers, balancing mechanisms. By the same token, non-market-based purposes and motives - e.g., equality or the general welfare - can get no traction. The constraints are structural: no one is visibly oppressed or discriminated against in the financial markets. Everyone's money is equally green, and procedural fairness is rigorously enforced. The same rules apply to the 99.9 percent as to the 0.1 percent; as the great capitalist philosopher Thomas Friedman sagely observed, the rules put everyone, rich and poor, in the same "golden straitjacket." What could be fairer?
Steve Fraser's The Age of Acquiescence and David Bosworth's The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America brilliantly document a parallel form of "deepening": the long-term undermining of popular sovereignty and its replacement by the sovereignty of organized money over an atomized, impotent populace. Like the market, the American political system (unlike those who actually staff it) commands considerable public legitimacy, even while generating inequality, cynicism, and apathy. In both cases, an elaborate legal structure produces an appearance of fairness, while the vastness and intricacy of each system seems to suggest that there is no alternative, that elite dominance is inevitable and popular resistance futile, even irrational. In market democracies, Amartya Sen writes, "discontent is replaced by acceptance, hopeless rebellion by conformist quiet, and ... suffering by cheerful endurance." [p. 212]
This sense of frustrated and bewildered acquiescence is something new in American history, argues Fraser, an accomplished journalist and historian. In previous eras, "the sinews of resistance were tougher and more resilient ... the popular imagination audaciously leapt beyond the boundaries of business as usual. Great waves of social upheaval regularly rolled across the landscape of American life. Their reverberations lent public affairs a frisson we no longer sense." Comparisons between post-Reagan America and the first Gilded Age in the late 19th and early 20th century are now commonplace: levels of inequality, corruption, and financial buccaneering are strikingly similar. What's starkly different, however, is the temper of politics today: the absence of organized resistance and the "frailty and passivity" [4] of the left.
To point up the contrast, The Age of Acquiescence offers a short but vivid history of class warfare in America's first industrial age. Capitalism always begins with primitive accumulation, the large-scale expropriation of labor and natural resources. Freed slaves and prisoners (very often, in the South, the same persons) formed a large part of this new proletariat, but the majority were dispossessed farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers, whipsawed by mortgage and other interest payments on the one hand and volatile commodity prices on the other. By the end of the 19th century, the indomitable American yeomanry celebrated by Tocqueville and Lincoln had largely vanished, absorbed into a mass of industrial wage laborers alongside streams of immigrants, welcomed then as now by employers for the downward pressure they exerted on wages.
Early industrial America was wracked by financial crises, occasioning great pain among workers, which they did not take lying down. The Age of Acquiescence opens with a description of the "Great Uprising" of 1877, a countrywide railroad strike that many ruling-class voices (including the contemporary Nation) feared would incite a new civil war. Sabotage, arson, and occupation by workers were met with murderous violence by police, militias, and private armies. Though the uprising was defeated, many novelists, clergymen, professors, and journalists - along with millions of workers and farmers - questioned the viability and legitimacy of capitalism. In subsequent decades, large agrarian and working-class organizations flourished: the Knights of Labor, the People's Party, and the Socialist Party, for example, sometimes wielding considerable economic and electoral power.
Their challenge to capitalism failed. Historians have usually attributed this to the dampening effect of American prosperity - socialism here foundered on "reefs of roast beef and apple pie," wrote one foreign observer. That judgment surely understates the ferocity of official repression. Nearly every time in those decades that a strike or a factory occupation had to be broken or a demonstration quashed, municipal, state, and federal authorities placed themselves at the service of employers, while judges reliably issued injunctions and punished agitators harshly. Finally, using World War I and the Russian Revolution as pretexts, the Wilson administration decimated the anti-capitalist left.
That ideological
and institutional bloodletting insured that the next great crisis of
capitalism, in 1929, produced no fundamental transformation but only top-down
reforms. The economy languished until another global war made another cycle of
primitive accumulation possible. The New Deal reforms, and the Keynesian ideas
on which they were based, "civilized" capitalism. For a few golden (in
retrospect) post-World War II decades, unionized white workers did
unprecedentedly well. "Pensions and medical insurance, vacations,
cost-of-living and productivity escalators, credit unions, and sick days - all
that and more became the norm for a sizable segment of the American working
The Indochina war, the OPEC oil embargo, and other costs of empire, along with the increasing competitiveness of Western Europe and Japan, put an end to this civilized interlude. American capitalism began to cannibalize itself in the 1980s, morphing from a manufacturing economy to a finance-based one. Individual plants and whole companies were sold off or drastically downsized, the proceeds going to hedge funds or private equity firms, or else directed overseas to regions with cheap labor and few regulations. Unionized jobs (and unions) disappeared, government revenues plummeted, public services starved, and infrastructure decayed. Levels of median income, home ownership, public health, and educational performance all tanked. In nearly every measure of general welfare, the United States fell below nearly every other developed country. The Age of Acquiescence does a stellar job (even better than George Packer's widely praised The Unwinding) narrating this protracted devastation of a way of life.
Fraser's purpose, however, is not to point out how bad things are, which every newspaper reader already knows. It's to ask how the authors of this catastrophe have gotten away with it - why there is so little organized resistance to plutocracy in the second Gilded Age. Occupy Wall Street was an inspiring outburst but left little institutional residue. Minority-rights and gender-equality struggles scored great successes but have not carried over into opposition to economic inequality and corporate dominance. Why, compared with the tempests of a century ago, are there only scattered showers of resistance now?
The most obvious reason is the decline of organized labor. This was not a spontaneous development; it was the primary element in business's strategy of rolling back the New Deal. In the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Republican Party played the "race card," inflaming resentment among Southern whites, which was a major obstacle to labor organizing there. A large-scale odyssey of manufacturing industry to the non-union Sun Belt followed. The Reagan administration began the now decades-long practice of stacking the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor appointees determined not to enforce the Fair Labor Practices Act. And then came globalization.
During the Cold War, the "Free World" meant that part of the world in which American business could operate free of unruly unions or excessively welfare-minded governments. Democracy was unimportant to US policymakers, except for public relations purposes; and "communism" simply meant unwillingness to provide a sufficiently favorable investment climate. When the Cold War ended, business rejoiced, not because people were liberated but because capital was. A century after it was launched, the Open Door Policy triumphed on a global scale. One "free trade" agreement after another has extended a common regime of "investor rights" worldwide, empowering debtors and sharply limiting the ability of workers or consumers to organize and of states to tax, regulate, or provide essential services.
In addition to attaining this stranglehold on economic life, business has undertaken a long march through the political landscape. Concentrating media ownership in a few giant corporations; slashing public funding for education at all levels; creating a cottage industry of junk science and dubious policy research; placing industry flacks at the head of regulatory agencies; packing the appellate judiciary with younger, less experienced, but rabidly partisan conservative judges; and most important, spending huge sums to elect friendly legislators and providing them with lucrative employment when they leave office: these are the mechanisms of business hegemony in 21st-century America. The resulting political system is as dense and intricate a web as the financial markets; and like the latter, it wonderfully facilitates certain kinds of initiative - money-driven ones - while efficiently frustrating others - citizen-driven ones. It has been skillfully engineered to make fundamental change extremely difficult - not that there is much demand for such change beyond a tiny, marginalized left.
Why isn't there?
What makes "flexible" capitalism tolerable to its victims? Like all societies,
ours has its legitimating myths. "Three fables of freedom in particular,"
Fraser writes, "have marked the last half century: emancipation through
consumption; freedom through the 'free agency' of work; and freedom through the
heroism of risk, a fable in which the businessman emerges as plebeian
Advertising is the primary motor of consumption, of course. About the average American, an authoritative observer wrote: "Nearly everything he sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells is an attempt to sell him something. To break through his protective shell the advertisers must continuously shock, tease, tickle or irritate him, or wear him down by the drip-drip-drip Chinese water torture method of endless repetition. Advertising is the handwriting on the wall, sign in the sky, the bush that burns regularly every night." No, this is not Vance Packard or some other left-wing social critic; it is Fortune magazine in the innocent 1950s.
And as Fraser shrewdly notes, consumerism has an even deeper source. Some minimum of pleasure and autonomy is a necessity in every life, and contemporary capitalism has managed to render work, for most people, both stultifying and insecure. (A recent book by journalist Simon Head, Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans, is an eye-opening tour around the new world of Computerized Business Systems, designed to eliminate initiative, skill, or judgment in the workplace.) Consumption is a haven in this heartless, boring world. "Leveraged by debt, consumer culture has helped make the state of permanent wage labor - even a declining, downwardly mobile one - tolerable."
Another thing that made it tolerable was the overthrow of the old ruling elite - the WASP, Ivy League, Social Register elite. Not, alas, by a popular movement but by a new cadre of swashbuckling financial entrepreneurs like Gordon Gekko, determined to "rip their fucking throats out." [293] This manhandling of the genteel Establishment didn't do the rest of us any good - on the contrary - but it vicariously released some of our aggression. Michael Milken, Carl Icahn, and their ilk became heroes. Even though they were no less rapacious then the aristocrats they replaced, at least they hadn't inherited their money. They were our sons of bitches.
And if they did it through sheer greed and grit, why couldn't we? If they thrived on risk, mobility, freedom of action, on breaking ties and burning bridges, scorning institutional support and civic obligations, why shouldn't we? So much for solidarity. The difference between a nation of individuals and a nation of individualists is the difference between a republic and a barely sublimated war of all against all.
Critiques of capitalism's false promises are not exactly a novelty, of course. If Fraser's nevertheless packs a punch, it is not only because, unlike most of his academic and Marxist predecessors, he writes lively prose and furnishes much colorful detail. It is, even more important, because he insistently contrasts the typical character structures of America then and now, two countries "geographically the same, separated by a century, one on the rise, a developing country, one in decay, becoming an underdeveloped country":
During the first Gilded Age the work ethic constituted the nuclear core of American cultural belief and practice. That era's emphasis on capital accumulation presumed frugality, saving, and delayed gratification as well as disciplined, methodical labor. That ethos frowned on self-indulgence, was wary of debt, denounced wealth not transparently connected to useful, tangible outputs, and feared libidinal excess, whether that took the form of gambling, sumptuary displays, leisured indolence, or uninhibited sexuality.
How at odds that all is with the moral and psychic economy of our own second Gilded Age. An economy kept aloft by finance and mass consumption has for a long time rested on an ethos of immediate gratification, enjoyed a love affair with debt, speculation, and risk, erased the distinction between productive labor and pursuits once upon a time judged parasitic, and became endlessly inventive about ways to supercharge with libido even the homeliest of household wares.
Can these two
diverging political economies - one resting on industry, the other on finance -
and these two polarized sensibilities - one fearing God, the other living in an
impromptu moment to moment - explain the Great Noise of the first Gilded Age
and the Great Silence of the second? Is it possible that people still attached
by custom and belief to ways of subsisting that had originated outside the
orbit of capital accumulation were for that very reason both psychologically
and politically more existentially desperate, more capable, and more audacious
in envisioning a noncapitalist future than those who had come of age knowing
nothing else?
To readers of the late Christopher Lasch, this reasoning will sound familiar. Throughout his career, and especially in his masterpiece The True and Only Heaven, Lasch argued that the advent of mass production and the new relations of authority it introduced in every sphere of social life wrought a fateful change in the prevailing American character structure. Psychological maturation depended crucially on a rhythm and scale that industrialism disrupted. The result was a weakened self, more easily regimented than its pre-industrial forebear and less able to resist illegitimate authority. Unfortunately Lasch, following Freud, called this new self a "narcissistic personality," which practically guaranteed that he would be misunderstood as merely scolding the rest of us for our triviality and self-absorption.
Lasch died prematurely, without explaining (or, perhaps, deciding) what we should keep of modernity and what we should jettison. His complex, wide-ranging argument has not found many echoes among social critics since, though it seems to have found one now in novelist (The Death of Descartes) David Bosworth's powerful polemic The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America. Bosworth aims to tell "the story of a profound transformation in the national character," through which "an American ethos initially geared toward prudence, pragmatism, and plain speaking came to generate instead the greatest con game in human history." Fraser frames exactly this history in the categories of political economy; Bosworth in those of moral psychology. Fraser's narrative is fast-paced and broad-gauged; Bosworth's is granular, with frequent parables and case studies.
The "American
ethos" whose decline Bosworth chronicles had three main sources: Protestant
Christianity, local self-government, and agrarian/artisanal producerism. The
virtues these practices fostered were self-control, self-reliance, integrity,
diligence, and neighborliness, among others. What has made these virtues
superfluous, even a little ridiculous, is the triumph of "Evangelical Mammonism" - the pseudo-religion of the "free market," uniting blind faith in progress
with fervent worship of profits. "Through a relentless campaign of
architectural enclosure and psychological saturation over the last sixty years,
our consumer economy has managed to gain effective control over both our
physical and virtual homes."
An intensely cynical entertainment industry imagineered a "mythic America" oozing with sentimentality, its highly rationalized engines of narrative production formulaically projecting the romantic fantasies of feel-good triumph.
A Protestantism once rooted in a sober recognition of sinfulness, and whose savior threw the money-lenders out of the temple, began to sell instead the promissory notes of a prosperity theology: spiritual deal-making for material and psychological profit-taking in the here-and-now.
A whole host of cultural liberators proclaimed their righteous freedom from this or that oppressive system only to commit to alternative regimens that proved more punitive than the ones they rejected: from a heady pursuit of bacchanalian bliss or therapeutic mood enhancement into the deadening trap of chemical dependency; from a giddy promotion of "consumer choice" into the grim schedules of compulsive shopping and credit-card indebtedness; from a libertarian rejection of governmental regulation into the draconian regimes of corporate efficiency and the rigged markets of global monopolies and Ponzi schemes; from a celebration of the "sovereign self" into a passive submission to the robotic schedules of self-esteem and self-help.
Bosworth sees Evangelical Mammonism everywhere: in the disappearance, for example, from his hometown (and thousands of others) of nearby woods and other undeveloped areas, where little epiphanies of stillness sometimes visited children pausing from play. In the airport lounge where his request to turn off one or two of the ubiquitous blaring televisions was met with incomprehension. In the mall, where security cameras suss out any civic activity or other distraction that might momentarily disrupt the flow of happy shopping. In the prettifying by Disney and others of fairy tales like "Pinocchio" and "Three Little Pigs," which in their original form sometimes exposed children's imaginations to nasty or frightening emotions and so helped them grow up. With these and dozens of other examples, from antidepressants to "Prosperity Gospel" preachers to the hucksterism of Wayne Dyer and Tom Peters, and with excursions into the psychic roots of recent mass delusions like the Iraq War and the housing bubble, Bosworth probes the decay of American culture as skillfully and as clinically as a dentist. (An exceptionally literate and eloquent dentist, it should be said.) For the reader/patient/citizen, the resulting pain is acute but necessary.
Decay can sometimes be reversed, but not always. Can the collective solidarities and individual virtues whose decline Fraser and Bosworth lament be preserved or, if they're already too far gone, reconstituted? It's not clear: in the economy, polity, and culture alike, the rot is very deep. The worst are not only full of passionate intensity, they are damnably clever. Thank God (that is, Technology) for social media and the Internet, of course, but can they compensate for the enemy's control of the commanding heights?
Still, "decline is no more predestined than Progress was once thought to be," Fraser helpfully reminds us. And Bosworth promises a sequel, programmatic as this book is diagnostic - a prospect that will keep this reader, at least, hopeful for a while.
Discouragement is, in any case, out of the question. "We are never permitted to despair of the commonwealth," Thomas Jefferson wrote. The people united may be defeated again and again, maybe forever. But maybe not.
People Who Influence Influential People Are the Most Influential People in the World
George Scialabba
Insurrections of the Mind: 100 Years of Politics
and Culture in America, edited by Franklin Foer,
Harper Perennial, $17.99
"Twentieth-century liberalism has won." So ran the first sentence of The New Republic's eightieth-anniversary anthology back in 1994. Liberalism "inspired democratic revolutions from the Soviet Union to South Africa," according to the anthology's editor, Dorothy Wickenden, and finally "disabused this country of its prolonged infatuation with conservatism." Occupying the White House were two men with "intellectual edge and moral intuition," the magazine's editors enthused, who offered "the best chance in a generation to bring reform and renewal to a country that desperately needs both."
How accurate you think this judgment is depends on what you understand by that perennially disputed word, "liberalism." Originally it meant the opposite of mercantilism, the close government regulation of commercial policy to benefit domestic merchants by means of tariffs and restrictions on the movement of capital and technology. Mercantilism, protectionism, and industrial policy all name various aspects of the impulse to limit competition from abroad. As Britain and the United States became the world's leading economic powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, each decided that other countries' efforts to favor the home team were no longer cricket and that unregulated (i.e., "free") competition--which, by the merest coincidence, they were most likely to win--was in everyone's best interest. "Liberalism," from the Latin word for "free," is the name of this ideology. Even now, European political parties that call themselves "liberal" mean by it "pro-business." The leading voice of nineteenth-century liberalism was The Economist, which famously argued that to provide famine aid to Ireland would be to interfere with the necessarily benign workings of the free market.
In English (as in Latin), "free" has more than one meaning. Besides "unconstrained," it also means "generous," as in "Give freely to those in need" or "Though a Nobel Prize winner, she's pretty free with her time when students ask." So in the United States, "liberal" also came to denote redistributive, welfare-state policies that aim to extend to the nonaffluent a modicum of economic security, equality of opportunity, and civil rights. This sense of "liberalism," the bête noire of the right from Nixon to the Tea Party, might seem to have swept the terminological field, but now there is also "neoliberalism," which, since the Clinton administration, has described the bipartisan consensus on free trade, privatization, financial deregulation, and all other dictates of the sovereign Market. No wonder books with titles like What Is Liberalism? appear regularly.
Whatever liberalism is, The New Republic is generally considered to be its American avatar. The magazine was founded in 1914 by Herbert Croly, a sometime architectural critic who had written a book five years earlier, The Promise of American Life, that greatly impressed a wealthy philanthropic couple. Croly's book argued that Hamilton's federalism had eclipsed Jefferson's localism, and that America's destiny was to be a national, indeed global, commercial power, with its activist executive branch coordinating policy with business, financial, and cultural elites. "The whole point," Croly wrote to Willard Straight, the magazine's first owner, "is that we are trying to impose views on blind or reluctant people." This self-conscious elitism--the conviction that an inert, ignorant populace needs to be mobilized from above by executive power, public and private, which in turn requires the guidance of enlightened, responsible intellectuals--has remained at the core of the journal's self-conception throughout its variegated history. Populism, class conflict, radical democracy, mass movements--all these were for outsiders. The New Republic, from the beginning, was for insiders.
Croly himself, though well off and well connected, was not exactly an insider, but his fellow TNR editor Walter Lippmann certainly was. Like generations of his successors at the magazine, Lippmann was a bright young Harvard graduate who quickly plugged himself into political Washington and literary New York. Soon he and Croly were dining regularly with President Wilson's senior adviser, urging him to "let us know whether or not we are misinterpreting what the President is trying to do," lest the magazine unintentionally "conflict with the purposes of the government." Intelligence at the elbow of power--this has always been The New Republic's ideal. Nowhere is this ideal more lovingly commemorated than in The New Republic's latest anthology, Insurrections of the Mind, published last year to mark the magazine's one-hundredth anniversary. Respectful Suggestions of the Mind would have been, on the whole, a more accurate title.
The "marriage of welfare statism and civil liberties," Franklin Foer writes in his introduction to Insurrections, "is essentially the definition of American liberalism." That marriage came under strain in the 1980s and '90s, when the New Right's largely bogus critique of big government conquered official Washington and the media. Faced with a choice of righteous irrelevance or glamorous relevance, The New Republic chose relevance. The editors supported cuts in taxes and social spending, criticized affirmative action, published a notorious cover article opposing Hillarycare, and hired a slew of conservative writers. Official Washington loved it; the Reagan White House even sent a courier over every week to pick up twenty copies. But though this rightward shift was opportunistic, it wasn't unprincipled opportunism. Opportunism, after all, was the bedrock principle of The New Republic. Not the uncomplicated, self-serving kind, but the well-meaning, deluded kind that believes above all in maintaining credibility with the powerful, since how else can anything be accomplished except by whispering in their ear?
Not all the results were entirely bad: Mickey Kaus's "civic liberalism," for one, was an earnest if problematic effort to craft a humane alternative to the welfare state, and TNR was an early and consistent supporter of gay marriage. But mostly the magazine spent these two decades distancing itself from grassroots liberalism, following Clinton, Gore, Schumer, and other centrist Democrats in embracing the business-friendly neoliberalism of the Democratic Leadership Council and supporting such ultimately disastrous initiatives as NAFTA, financial deregulation, and welfare reform, which helped kill the New Deal. Al Gore's candidacy was the magazine's last gasp. Since 2000, New Republic writers have seemed demoralized, rousing themselves only for occasional spiteful attacks on the left (Nader, Occupy, Snowden), for fervent warnings about the dangers of Islamic radicalism, and for frequent admonitions to presidents to use American military power wherever possible.
Foer's definition of American liberalism is incomplete: the "marriage" he describes has actually been a love triangle. From the outset, American liberalism's preference for government activism at home has been matched by its internationalism; it has advocated for a unilateral, interventionist foreign policy. Here is where liberalism--and TNR--have gone most egregiously and damagingly wrong. "Liberalism cherishes skepticism more than any [other] ideology," Foer writes in Insurrections, with a touch of self-congratulation--and self-deception. On the contrary, it is The New Republic's credulousness, its uncritical acceptance of the premises of official policy, that is most apparent whenever the use of force is in question.
The magazine supported America's entry into World War I, accepting Wilson's argument that only American participation could give us the moral authority to ensure a fair and democratic peace settlement. The actual peace settlement was nothing of the sort, and The New Republic, having trusted Wilson's assurances, looked foolish. TNR enthusiastically endorsed the Truman doctrine, blamed the Soviet Union for the ensuing Cold War, and ignored inciting actions on the part of the United States, including its insistence on rearming Germany, maintaining nuclear superiority, and keeping leftists, even democratic ones, out of power everywhere in the postwar world. The Indochina war was a "colossal blunder," which should lead us, the editors admonished, to reflect on "the contrast between our idealism and our crimes." That it was blundering "idealism" rather than a strategy of global economic integration requiring the suppression of independent nationalism that led to America's intervention in Vietnam and dozens of other places in the twentieth century has always been an article of faith.
That faith was on display when, endorsing the Reagan administration's Central America policy in 1986, the magazine pleaded that "it is . . . certain that our aims are different than they were sixty, even twenty, years ago," argued that the United States' only aim was to "aid in the restoration of democracy," and asked tough-mindedly whether "anyone believes the Sandinistas will ever peacefully transfer power by election." (For the record, the Sandinistas did, four years later.) Twenty years later, this same "fighting faith"--the title of a 2004 manifesto by editor Peter Beinart included in Insurrections--caused TNR to welcome the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The war against Islamic totalitarianism is, like the former war on Communism, "the defining moral challenge of our time," Beinart wrote, the "arena in which [liberal] values find their deepest expression." Those who urged skepticism in response to government claims or who proposed abiding by international law were "softs."
Credulousness toward another favored state--Israel--has led The New Republic to support still other futile and bloody military interventions. The magazine has continually harangued its anxiously pro-Israel readership about the existential dangers the plucky little nuclear-armed, American-backed regional superpower faces from the revanchism and irredentism of the prostrate Palestinians; implied that Palestinian rather than Israeli intransigence is primarily responsible for the failure of peace negotiations; and scolded the left for maliciously exaggerating Israel's faults and indulging Palestinian terrorism. But although thousands of Palestinian noncombatants have been killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank--at least an order of magnitude more than Israeli civilian victims of Palestinian violence--no one at The New Republic has entertained, even to reject, the idea that these old-fashioned war crimes and law-enforcement excesses also deserve to be called "terrorism." Notwithstanding Israel's frequent assurances that it was eager to trade land for peace, by now it is clear that no Israeli government, Labor or Likud, has been willing since 1967 to halt the gradual annexation of the West Bank and its resources. But occasional meekly expressed misgivings from the magazine's doves--Irving Howe, Michael Walzer, Leon Wieseltier--have always been drowned out by an unceasing barrage of pro-Israel apologetics from Martin Peretz, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Oren, and The New Republic's other resident hasbarists.
Why has the magazine's vaunted liberal "intelligence" lined up so often in support of brute force? Part of the answer has been supplied by Christopher Hitchens, who knew what to think of contrarianism before he succumbed to it:
In the charmed circle of neoliberal and neoconservative journalism, "unpredictability" is the special emblem and certificate of self-congratulation. To be able to bray that "as a liberal, I say bomb the shit out of them" is to have achieved that eye-catching, versatile marketability that is so beloved of editors and talk-show hosts.
But the serious intellectuals who founded The New Republic were no less eager to rationalize state violence than their lightweight present-day successors, and with similar motives. In a masterly essay on "The New Republic and the War" (i.e., World War I), Christopher Lasch retraced the tortuous arguments by which Lippmann, Dewey, and the rest of the original cohort convinced themselves to follow Wilson to war, and concluded:
Logic may have dictated non-intervention, but something deeper than logic dictated war. The thirst for action, the craving for involvement, the longing to commit themselves to the onward march of events--these things dictated war. The realists feared isolation not only for America but for themselves. Accordingly, they went to war and invented the reasons for it afterward.
Skepticism? Not when the war drums are beating.
(A minor continuity: the old New Republic and the new were about equally ungracious to those who got it right, from forcing Randolph Bourne off the magazine in 1917 because he opposed intervention to setting up an "Idiocy Watch" in 2004 to ridicule those who doubted the wisdom of invading Iraq.)
What The New Republic's long history teaches above all is that power goes its own way. Those who control investment and employment, opinion-formation and electoral finance, are the ones who set the state's priorities and constrain its initiatives. These leaders don't care about good new ideas; they have their own ideas. Intellectuals can help those in power to market their strategies, or to refine them. But they can't change them. "You've convinced me," FDR is said to have told a group of left-leaning visitors. "Now go out and force me." But that--mobilizing popular pressure to counterbalance the power of business--is just what The New Republic has never shown any interest in doing. At its most daring, the magazine has fancied itself speaking truth to power, and sometimes it has. But the real responsibility of intellectuals is to speak truth, patiently and perseveringly, to the powerless. Of this, The New Republic has never had a clue.
The cover or masthead of The New Republic has, for most of its life, sported the subtitle "A Journal of Politics and the Arts." If it had been only a journal of politics, there would be very little reason to regret its recent frontal lobotomy at the hands of its new owner. Like liberalism itself, the magazine had already definitively surrendered to technocratic managerialism long before Chris Hughes and company came along in 2012. But there was always the back of the book. The New Republic has been lucky in its literary editors: Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Doris Grumbach, Jack Beatty, and, yes, Leon Wieseltier. Peretz and Wieseltier each spent around three decades at the magazine, and each launched more than a few young writers. While Peretz's recruits are a mixed legacy, Wieseltier's--James Wood, Sven Birkerts, Ann Hulbert, Ruth Franklin, Jed Perl, William Deresiewicz, Adam Kirsch, and, when compos mentis, Lee Siegel--are a gift to criticism. So were Wieseltier's own all too infrequent reviews. (His all too frequent "Washington Diarist" entries, on the other hand, were a calamity. Rarely has so much verbal ingenuity been expended to so little point, except perhaps in fulfillment of some imagined moral obligation to sound intelligent. And the diary entries bear a heavy responsibility for the plague of pseudo-clever putdowns that eventually infested the magazine.)
The richness of the magazine's arts coverage was bound to be underrepresented in any anthology, but even so, there is far too little of it in Insurrections of the Mind. There are a few distinguished pieces of criticism, above all W. H. Auden's "Freud" and Irving Howe's "The Value of the Canon." But not nearly enough. Even Wieseltier's finest essay, "Matthew Arnold and the Cold War," is left out. If Wieseltier were to employ his forced retirement in compiling a selection of TNR's best criticism, it would be a real service to the culture, and keep him out of political mischief besides.
The last item in Insurrections is a short afterword by Chris Hughes, the Facebook billionaire who rode to the magazine's rescue three years ago and who in December oversaw TNR's transition to a "vertically integrated digital media company." Apart from a passing phrase or two promising "adaptation"--a cloud no bigger than a man's hand--it is largely boilerplate, offering no hint of the digital media clusterfuck waiting just around the corner. Mostly, it makes the right noises, genuflecting toward "quality writing" and "putting politics, culture, and ideas side by side and on an equal plane." Hughes even gets what's wrong about the magazine right, albeit inadvertently: the mission, he writes, "is to offer deep, thought-provoking analysis that encourages critical dialogue between influential people in our country and world." Too true. The magazine's editors have always behaved as if "influential people" were not the problem but the solution. But of course, anyone who understood that would have come to bury The New Republic, not to save it.]]>
Class and the Classroom
How Elite Universities Are Hurting America
By George Scialabba
GEORGE SCIALABBA is the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For? and For the Republic. He is a contributing editor of The Baffler.
One of the most fruitful ideas to emerge from twentieth-century social theory is Max Weber's notion of the "iron cage" of purposive rationality. Weber argued that once some principle of organization--market competition, say, or ideological orthodoxy--has achieved dominance in the spheres of production and governance, the rest of a society's institutions find themselves gradually but inexorably adopting the same principle. In an ideology-dominant society, everything fluid turns to stone; in a market-dominant society, everything solid melts into air.
Not everything, of course. The iron cage is, like most other useful theoretical notions, an ideal type. All societies retain protected (or neglected) spaces where not-yet-rationalized traditions and communities flourish. Still, although the mills of rationalization turn slowly, they grind exceedingly fine. In time, Weber believed, every practice or institution in a modern society, regardless of its original purpose, experiences an irresistible pressure to adapt to the society's fundamental organizing principle.
That's one way to understand the story told by Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz's important jeremiad on the deterioration of higher education in the United States. Deresiewicz chronicles how in recent decades U.S. colleges and universities have reflected and reinforced the ascendance of neoliberalism, which has served as the organizing principle of American society for the past 30 years or so. Deresiewicz, who taught English at Yale for ten years before leaving academia in 2008, laments the way that U.S. universities have replaced the traditional quest for liberal enlightenment with the goals and demands of late capitalism: consumer sovereignty, labor-market flexibility, debt financing, "scientific" management and marketing, and technologically driven increases in productivity. Universities have gone from nourishing their students' spirits to facilitating their careers--especially careers in finance and consulting.
College, in Deresiewicz's view, is supposed to be the place where one discovers an allegiance to something larger than oneself: service to a community or a cause, the practice of art or science or scholarship. The problem is not merely pedagogic but political: unless American elites are dedicated to something larger than themselves, an American commonwealth is impossible.
Deresiewicz's highly personal account draws on his own experiences and those of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students who have shared their frustrations with him over the years. He has produced a stark and dismaying portrait of the contemporary American university. Schools have relegated the task of instructing undergraduates to meagerly compensated adjuncts while entering intense bidding wars over academic superstars who have little contact with students. Health, security, and custodial services have been outsourced. Support staffs have shrunk, and benefits for university employees have been reduced while top administrators' salaries have soared. Development offices have expanded and, like marketing departments elsewhere, have inserted themselves into policymaking. Intellectual property, in the form of patents and technology licensing fees, has become a major source of income for universities, and businesses increasingly fund (and hence shape) academic research. Schools now see students as customers, and achieving customer satisfaction has meant building expensive social centers and athletic facilities even while cutting library and research budgets. The university, always a corporation in the ancient guild sense, is now a corporation in every sense.
A college education is no longer a rite of passage, frivolous or solemn according to the sensibility and temperament of the student; it is an investment--"the best investment you can make," a truism borne out by the fact that, on average, Americans who have a four-year college degree now earn 98 percent more per hour than those who do not. The investment in college starts long before a young person takes out a student loan or makes a single tuition payment. Adolescence and even childhood have become arenas of intense competition for the future students of elite colleges, whose typically upper- or upper-middle-class parents hover nearby at all times, reminding their tykes of the stakes. Resumé building begins with selective preschools and continues uninterrupted through primary and secondary school, with parents securing private tutors and a rich menu of extracurricular activities, chosen with an eye toward impressing college admissions offices. As Deresiewicz writes: "The grades, the scores, the trophies. That is what you are praised for; that is what you are rewarded for. Your parents brag; your teachers glow; your rivals grit their teeth. Finally, the biggest prize of all, the one that draws a line beneath your adolescence and sums you up for all the world to see: admission to the college of your dreams."
And that's hardly the end of it. "College," he writes, "is naturally more of the same." Elite colleges "do little or nothing to wake students up from the values and habits they bring with them from high school." One reason is that many elite universities seem to no longer care very much about what undergraduates actually experience in the classroom. The most prestigious colleges generally form part of research universities, which means that academic departments hire and promote senior faculty primarily on the basis of their scholarly or scientific output. Undergraduate teaching and mentoring are secondary responsibilities. "Winning the campus teaching award is the kiss of death when it comes to tenure," according to Ernest Boyer, who served as president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "This is not a joke," Deresiewicz assures readers.
As a result, he claims, although elite U.S. colleges offer enviably low teacher-student ratios, superb facilities, and every conceivable kind of counseling service and extracurricular activity, they increasingly do not foster the essential experience of a liberal arts education as it has been traditionally understood: engaging with small groups of peers under the supervision of a skilled and devoted teacher and discussing ideas and works of art that force each student to consider the purpose of his or her life and the validity of his or her fundamental assumptions.
Of course, it would be nearly impossible to measure with any precision the decline of a particular kind of education, and Deresiewicz does not present a quantitative case to back up his lament. But there is objective evidence for the trends he describes. First, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, during the past five decades, the proportion of undergraduates majoring in humanities decreased from approximately 14 percent to just seven percent. During roughly the same period, the proportion of business majors increased from 14 percent to 22 percent. These same decades also witnessed an upsurge in the number of students majoring in economics, which is now the most popular concentration at two-thirds of the 40 top-ranked universities and liberal arts colleges. Finally, Deresiewicz notes the mass migration of elite college graduates to careers in finance and consulting: at many Ivy League universities, at least a quarter of all students go into those fields after graduation. Deresiewicz believes that these shifts have occurred not because students find economics, finance, and business intellectually or morally fulfilling but because they fear that holding out for more interesting work would be too risky, or because they must pay off student loans, or simply because, in a winner-take-all society, who wouldn't want to be one of the winners?
For the most part, Deresiewicz bases his argument on the 20 years he spent observing Ivy League institutions from the inside, first as a student at Columbia, then as an instructor at Yale. He also relies on an outpouring of correspondence and conversations generated by articles he has written and talks he has given on this subject. What he claims to have witnessed is the near abandonment of what was once a primary goal of colleges: making souls. To acquire a soul, as Pascal exhorted seventeenth-century readers in Pensées, one must sometimes quietly sit alone. Deresiewicz adds that, at other times, preferably in one's youth, one must sit with small groups of others, perhaps with great books open in front of them, arguing passionately about the good, the true, and the beautiful.
That's the kind of learning, untethered to practical achievements or career goals, that Deresiewicz believes is in danger of disappearing from campuses. He quotes the philosopher Allan Bloom: "Every educational system wants to produce a certain type of human being." To Deresiewicz, it appears that the twenty-first-century American educational system wants to produce bright, healthy, knowledgeable, hard-working, well-behaved young adults with undeveloped moral imaginations and a disinclination to question authority. When a member of one of Deresiewicz's student audiences pondered this description of herself and her cohort, she replied, "You mean we're excellent sheep?"
Not all students are sheep, of course, and those who do fit that description should not be blamed for the ways in which they were socialized or for the incentives that shape their behavior in college. Nor are parents at fault for wanting to pass on their elite status to their children; the fate of the nonelite in the United States is indeed a thing to be avoided. It is even possible to exonerate the universities themselves, which can hardly avoid reflecting larger social trends and responding to financial pressures created by the evaporation of state and federal funding for higher education.
But by rewarding already-privileged young people and then adding to the advantages they enjoy as adults, higher education has become the primary mechanism of class stratification in the United States. Parents with the means to do so shell out money for tutors, music and dance lessons, enrichment programs, summer travel, and college application coaches; there are even, Deresiewicz reports, outfits that provide high school students with "essay-ready" summer experiences. Well-off parents can also give large gifts to the colleges of their children's choice. Cultivating and massaging donors is a near obsession on most campuses, and the children of sufficiently generous donors enjoy an enormous advantage in the admissions process. No one believes that such preferences are justifiable, but no college can afford to forgo them.
Individual resistance and small-scale reforms cannot address such fundamental problems. High tuition costs, massive student debt, bureaucratization, an ethos of hypercompetition, and the gradual extinction of playfulness (the wellspring of creativity, in education as elsewhere) have not emerged from a vacuum. Rather, they have resulted inexorably from some of the same deep shifts in American society that have produced levels of economic inequality unseen since the Gilded Age: the rise of finance, the growing power of organized money in politics, and the widespread embrace of an ideology of endless economic growth.
Many readers will have murmured to themselves by now: "Yes, I've heard all this talk about souls and individuality and self-creation before: very inspiring. And I'm well aware that severe economic inequality is a feature of contemporary American life. But what does Deresiewicz propose? If he had the authority and the resources to change American universities, how would he go about it?"
One common answer he would eschew is technological innovation: online education may be a commercial bonanza, but it is a pedagogic dead end. Nor would he move to merely increase faculty compensation; rather, he would double the number of professors and reward them for teaching and mentorship no less than for their research prowess. Cutting-edge research is invaluable, of course, but it does little to confer a liberal education on an undergraduate who, if he or she is lucky, might get to spend two or three hours a week for three months in the presence of a brilliant researcher, in the company of dozens or even hundreds of other students.
Deresiewicz also urges universities to base affirmative action on class rather than ethnicity, limit or discontinue the practice of favoring applications from athletes and the children of donors, and adjust SAT scores to account for socioeconomic factors. And he calls on universities to stop cooperating with the regrettably influential U.S. News & World Report rankings, which "measure market position rather than educational quality."
Deresiewicz would also move to liquidate the student loan industry, which has been a catastrophe for everyone except the lenders. Transferring the expense of education from public funding to private debt is an example of what the political scientist Jacob Hacker has dubbed "the Great Risk Shift," which has taken place over the past four decades: "a massive transfer of economic risk from broad structures of insurance, including those sponsored by the corporate sector as well as by government, onto the fragile balance sheets of American families."
Excellent Sheep's bottom line is clear: free, high-quality public education at all levels is indispensable if the United States is to be a nation of individuals. And because "for kids to have an equal chance in college, they need to have an equal chance before they get there," this means profound reform at the elementary and secondary levels of education as well. Public schools are funded through property taxes and thus often correspond in quality to the median price of a home in the towns or cities where they are located. Class stratification begins in kindergarten, socializing Americans into accepting inherited privilege starting at a very young age.
Deresiewicz would eliminate the practice of funding public schools through property taxes and then equalize funding, at least at the state level, as many other developed countries do. Unfortunately, because the United States is far more tolerant of socioeconomic inequality than most other developed countries, this is "the one reform that almost no one in authority wants to see enacted." Deresiewicz claims, without going into detail, that such equalization has produced the "best educational systems," such as those in Canada, Finland, and Singapore. That would have been an interesting claim to unpack, but Deresiewicz seems more concerned with the political consequences of inequality in education than with its effects on pedagogy.
Above all, Deresiewicz believes in the need for systemic changes to help reverse the Great Risk Shift and to make more public funding available for education at all levels: measures such as radically reducing defense spending, ending the criminal justice system's reliance on mass incarceration, and raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. No doubt he understands that there is very little chance that any of these things will happen. But telling apparently impractical truths is sometimes the responsibility of intellectuals. After all, if the United States wishes to be a nation of reflective, argumentative, self-governing individuals rather than insecure, uninformed, apathetic sheep, drastic measures must be taken.
Meanwhile, students, parents, and educators who read this book might find themselves questioning conventional measures of educational quality. In considering their options when it comes to higher education, they might become more likely to ask whether a particular college is likely to stir its students' souls as well as enhance their career prospects.]]>
The Endlessly Examined Life
A most chronic depression
George Scialabba
My mental health file whirs to life in 1969 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'd recently left Opus Dei, the Catholic religious order to which I'd committed my young soul, and a major depression had followed. The records printed below are out of the mouths of my many caretakers; they chronicle my treatment at various medical offices and psychiatric clinics in the Boston area, from then until 2012.
How did I come by them? As I headed into a depression two years ago, a friend who was helping out thought it would be useful to see my records, so I asked for them. Why publish them now? Certainly not because I think these extracts from my treatment notes display any special literary facility or reveal an exceptionally interesting psyche, nor because I intend the slightest scandal to be visited on my therapists, employers, or insurance company. All proper names have been altered.
Our distractible human intelligence needs as many ways of talking about depression as can be provided--that's all. Plus, given the longevity of this particular demon, it seems important to try to squeeze some insight from the mass of words and array of prescription drugs applied against its havoc. Even the most comprehensively bureaucratized medical knowledge can be made to speak, if only we are willing to listen closely to the blank spaces, the paraphrases. Even acronyms have feelings.
A note on medications: Fifty-plus years into the Antidepressant Age, it's still not clear that drugs are better than placebos. There aren't many long-term studies of efficacy or side effects, and the FDA requires surprisingly few trials before approval. Each of the drugs comes with a more or less plausible scientific explanation for why it should work. But all we know is that some people get better after taking them, some people don't, and some people get better without taking them.
Of course, from a patient's point of view, this is all moot. If you're jumping out of your skin and the doctor says to take some pills, you take them. In my case, none of them worked spectacularly well. But only a couple had intolerable side effects or made the depression worse.
The following records have been lightly edited. Spelling errors
have been corrected, abbreviations standardized, and doctors' names changed.
-The Editors
August 16, 1969
Trigg Clifton, MD/MB
Harvard University Health Services, Psychiatric Clinic
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Patient is seen as a courtesy visit because he is no longer actually eligible for consultation here, as he graduated here from the college [Harvard] in June of this year. He has plans to attend Columbia Graduate School.
He comes with very intense questions regarding Catholicism. In the last several months he has begun to question increasingly whether he can support a body of thought which stresses orthodoxy and lack of investigation. He approaches the problem with me and with himself quite intellectually, but he is indeed, in spite of intellect, feeling in much emotional turmoil over this. Support was given to him to move towards a middle ground, which, in his style, is very hard for him.
He has felt frightened of the loss of the church, and, therefore, it was clarified that he need not give up the church, or an organization to which he belongs in the church, to pursue his questioning, and that he would not be able to be content in any position he took until he opened up the questions with himself and others. He was also concerned that some of his actions have been inappropriate, and I did not feel that they were inappropriate save that they were indicative of a young man in considerable turmoil over some very important questions in life, and this was stated to the patient.
He will be talking with several priests and may indeed, when he gets to Columbia, seek psychiatric help for the personality problem of a semi-crippling obsessive-compulsive personality, i.e., he is often paralyzed by self-doubts and inability to be decisive.
At the end of the interview he questioned whether his difficulties would make him draft deferrable, and I stated that I did not think so.
DIAGNOSES: Adjustment Reaction of Adolescence in an obsessive-compulsive personality.
September 30, 1970
Trigg Clifton, MD/MB
Harvard University Health Services, Psychiatric Clinic
Cambridge, Massachusetts
The patient has been in New York City in the graduate school at Columbia, but really had a severe obsessive breakdown in functioning, necessitating his dropping out of school. He was in treatment about eight months in New York City at the clinic, but left treatment for reasons that are not clear approximately two months ago. He is now up here, hoping to pull himself together, and plans to take six courses through the Extension [School].
He came to see me to reestablish contact, and to question if he could get into treatment. I am aware that his treatment has been difficult for him, but see him as a very troubled man, and I would venture to say probably sicker than an adjustment reaction of adolescence--more likely borderline personality with obsessive-compulsive features. Obviously he could not be treated at this clinic, and he is uncertain whether he wants to get into treatment at all. I told him that if he did, he should feel free to get in touch with me and I would find him a clinic in the area.
He is not suicidal, and there are no signs of acute decompensation.
August 17, 1981
Jennifer R. Hornstein, MD/MB
Harvard University Health Services, Psychiatric Clinic
Cambridge, Massachusetts
This was the first Mental Health Service visit for this 33-year-old young man who is currently working as a receptionist for the Center for International Studies. He presents with the chief complaint, "I am worried about my medical condition. I tried to go to the clinic but wasn't sure whether I should go. I think these symptoms are getting worse."
The patient is a neatly groomed, articulate, extremely anxious young man who presents with a history of anxiety for the past four months. He states that since April, when he became 33, he has been increasingly anxious with difficulty falling asleep, midnight awakening and early morning awakening. He says that over the past few weeks he has only been able to sleep approximately five hours per night. He describes compulsive eating and heavy intake of "junk foods." He says that he has gained about eight pounds since April. He reports a loss of energy, anhedonia, and a decrease in sexual interest as well as a difficulty in obtaining erections. He denies suicidal or homicidal ideation. He denies history of hallucinations or delusions. He denies confused episodes. Furthermore he denies drug or alcohol intake.
Over the past four months, he has become increasingly fatigued and unable to cope with his current situation. He says that he is reminded of a period when he was 21, when he decided to leave the Catholic religious order which he had committed himself to.
Since leaving the Order, an Order for laymen who dedicated themselves to chastity and poverty, he has not been able to commit himself to any pursuits. Over the past several months, he has gone from one therapist to another and has recently been involved with primal therapy. His involvement with primal therapy has lasted six months, but he now says that he would like to pursue other avenues, and is unable to explain why. He also saw several therapists, including a therapist at the Harvard Community Health Plan who prescribed some Valium for him, which he takes at a dose of 2.5 to 5 mg by mouth as needed to a maximum of 5 mg at night. He says that this occasionally helps him sleep but it has not relieved his anxiety in the long term.
He also states that approximately a month ago, he saw a therapist who prescribed Sinequan for him. He took several doses of this but says that it did not help and he discontinued this medication and has not seen the therapist since.
Patient reports symptoms of severe anxiety and obsessionality. He reports being unable to make a decision about anything, even whether he will be able to continue therapy or not. He is worried that there might be something medically wrong with him, and has made an appointment to see Dr. Shepard for Wednesday. He is not sure what he would like from me at this time, other than some instant relief, or reassurance that his symptoms will not get much worse. He is worried he will become so tired that he will not be able to return to the clinic or even walk across the campus to see me for our next appointment.
I suggested that he come in again for further evaluation. I will see him Friday and then refer him for the two weeks that I am on vacation. He says that he does have friends who will visit him so that he is not entirely isolated. We also discussed the possibility that he may come in to Walk-In at any time during this week, or that he may call the Emergency Room if he feels the need.
My initial impression is that this young man presents with an agitated depression or anxiety attacks. He denies hyperventilation or palpitations. However, he does describe some phobic symptoms in that he is worried that he will stay in his house and not be able to leave. I did not think that acute hospitalization was necessary at this time. I discussed the possibility of beginning antidepressants, which may be helpful in treatment of both the depression and the panic attack symptoms. However, I also advised him that we would need further work up before beginning medication.
This patient appears to have difficulty in following through with appointments in the past, and I discussed the necessity of continued evaluations and appointments in order that the evaluation be completed. My plan is to see him Friday and refer him for continued evaluation during the next two weeks.
August 26, 1981
Jeffrey F. Parsnip, MD/MB
Harvard University Health Services, Psychiatric Clinic
Cambridge, Massachusetts
As arranged by Dr. Jennifer R. Hornstein, I met with Mr. Scialabba today. My assessment, which is in agreement with Dr. Hornstein's, is that this man suffers from a rather severe endogenous depression superimposed on a schizoid personality.
Symptoms of major depression that he admits to, which have been present for two to four months, include frequent early morning awakening; constipation; absent interest in sex; diurnal variations, with the early morning the worst; increased appetite with eight pounds weight gain; and profoundly decreased energy. I do not think that he suffers from true panic attacks, but rather somatic symptoms of anxiety.
The only family history of emotional illness is a first cousin, mother's brother's son, who committed suicide at age 21. There is no family history of alcohol abuse.
Certainly the chronic decline in functioning from his levels of a decade ago is disturbing. After graduating Harvard in 1969 with a group 2 average, he flunked out of Columbia, where he was studying history. Since then, he has spent a number of years working as a social worker in a local welfare department, but he says that this job was largely paper work. He has been working as a receptionist at Harvard for the last year. He has no close friends and although he has had sexual intercourse he has not had close or enduring relationships.
He describes his mother as having been dominating, although very nervous, and his father as a timid, weak man. Father held an office job and mother was a stitcher. There is one brother who is taking night school courses at Suffolk Community College and works in the Public Works Department. Thus, the patient greatly exceeded the level of the success of his family, simply by going to Harvard and doing well there.
I wonder whether part of his subsequent decline is attributable to oedipal fears which his success represented. He now has multiple fears of losing control, which he fantasizes would result in his becoming passive, being unable to hold a job, going on welfare or into a hospital and not being able to take care of himself. This may be a regression prompted by his earlier successes.
He describes having wanted to be a priest from second or third grade, and such a role was highly respected within his community. He currently has fears that his turning away from religion may have been a mistake and that he could be damned to hell for this. He also fears punishment for compulsive masturbation, which he says he engaged in daily for ten years prior to his loss of sexual urges these last few months.
Given the chronic schizoid adaptation, the apparent decline in function over a ten-year period, and his albeit culturally sanctioned interest in religion and philosophy, I looked hard for a thought disorder but was unable to satisfy myself of the presence of one. His functioning within the last four months is clearly discontinuous with his chronic level of functioning over the last ten years. During these four months he has classic signs of an endogenous depression of severe degree, with agitation.
Physical examination has been performed and is normal. CBS, SGOT, urinalysis, and thyroid function tests are normal. BUN is marginally elevated. Dexamethasone suppression test is negative.
It is my assessment that he will likely benefit with a course of tricyclic antidepressant therapy. I began discussing this with him today and will meet with him for further discussion tomorrow, and probably start him on desipramine at that time.
July 6, 1987
Melinda R. Maron
McLean Hospital, Ambulatory Care Services
Belmont, Massachusetts
Chief Complaint: Patient saw Dr. Mason once, and he referred him here because of financial concerns. Generally feels emotionally fragile. Is high-strung and unable to make life decisions. Feels he's drifting professionally. "Ridiculously over-qualified for what he does!"
History of Present Problem: Early traumatic break from religious tradition, Catholicism, at age 21 and feels that he's never really recovered.
Family Information/Current Living Situation: Lives alone. Parents and one brother live in the area.
Medical History/Current Medications: Physically in good health--not "bursting with energy." No meds. No alcohol or drugs.
Previous Outpatient Treatment: Yes--few times in the '70s.
Previous Hospitalizations: None.
Additional Psychiatric History: No. One cousin had psych problems and suicide at age 22.
Insurance Coverage: HVHP
Impression at Intake: Patient found it very difficult to talk, seemed very constricted and upset.
December 30, 1987
Melinda R. Maron
McLean Hospital, Ambulatory Care Services
Belmont, Massachusetts
Problem No. 1: Depression as shown by social isolation, inability to make career decisions, and overwhelming feelings of guilt.
Goal (long term): Reduce feelings of guilt, paralysis about decision, and social isolation.
Objectives (short term): Patient will understand more about the connection between his behavior and his depression. Patient will feel less despair and guilt about his choices.
Expected Achievement Dates: Long term--6/90. Short term--9/88.
Specific Plans: Individual psychotherapy, once per week.Psychopharmacology with behavior therapy, once per month.
Problem No. 2: Personality disorder with obsessive-compulsive style and depression that contribute to his paralysis and lack of intimate relationships.
Goal (long term): Modification of obsessive-compulsive defenses.
Objectives (short term): Patient will become more flexible and tolerant of himself and his affects.
Expected Achievement Dates: Long term--6/90. Short term--9/88.
Termination Criteria: Reduce depression. Modification of rigidity of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
Identifying Data: Mr. Scialabba is a 39-year-old white single male who works full time in a clerical position at Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard in 1969. Mr. Scialabba described himself as growing up a devout Catholic, but he left the church after graduating from Harvard. He was referred by Dr. David Mason, attending psychiatrist at McLean.
Data Source: Mr. Scialabba has been seen by Roberta Tate, LICSW, in once-a-week psychotherapy since 8/87. The patient was assessed on 7/23/87, by Dr. Juan Durendal, and some of the data in this report has been taken from that assessment.
Chief Complaint: Mr. Scialabba described himself as "emotionally fragile, high-strung, and unable to make life decisions. I am ridiculously over-qualified for what I do; I feel stalled in my life and want to know if there is a medication that could help me."
History of Presenting Problem: Mr. Scialabba dates his psychiatric symptoms back to age 17 when he developed incapacitating anxiety when he had any sexual impulse and he would have guilty ruminations that disrupted his usual activities. He went to a priest who told him he would be responsible to God for the patient's sexual impulses, and the anxiety episodes stopped. Mr. Scialabba also joined a very devout all-male Catholic organization called Opus Dei, and he became very involved in that organization during his undergraduate years at Harvard. He felt a missionary zeal about converting others and involving them in Opus Dei. Mr. Scialabba describes his commitment as "intense, demanding, and lifelong." After four years of college he "lost all belief in Catholicism."
Mr. Scialabba describes his leaving the church and Opus Dei as extremely difficult, and he described an episode of confusion and perhaps of depersonalization in which he didn't know what he was going to do, but he went into a meeting of Opus Dei and tried to speak about his loss of faith. Instead he became agitated and had to be led from the room. Mr. Scialabba feels he has never recovered from this emotional upset. He describes the time leading up to his departure from Opus Dei as the most intensely meaningful, exciting time in his life, when he felt that all of life and intellectual and philosophical pursuits were open to him.
He attempted graduate school at Columbia in European intellectual history as well as Harvard Law School, but he dropped out of both because whenever he attempted to do serious work in philosophy or intellectual history, he would become unbearably agitated and have to stop. He returned to Cambridge after one year at Columbia and has remained here ever since.
Mr. Scialabba has had a series of "undemanding and unrewarding jobs" such as substitute teaching, welfare social worker, and currently is a receptionist/staff assistant at Harvard's Center for International Studies. Mr. Scialabba, during the last 5 years, has done a fair amount of freelance book reviewing for the Village Voice and a journal called Grand Street.
May 28, 1996
Bert Milliner, PhD, MPH
Harvard University Health Services, Psychiatric Clinic
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mr. Scialabba is 48, born in Boston and grew up in East Boston. His parents are living, married, and live in East Boston. He is the second of two with an older brother. He is single, never married, in a relationship with Janice at 45 or 46, and she is an editor at an academic press and writing her dissertation. The relationship has been ongoing for 2.5 years, and Mr. Scialabba has no children. He does not have a lot of friends but has a few. He has a master's degree in history, is a building manager at the International Studies Center, but spends much time in freelance book reviews. He has been at the International Studies Center for 16 years. He lives in Cambridge alone, does not smoke, does not drink, does not use any drugs, has no history of these, no family history, and in terms of psychiatric history, he had a first cousin who committed suicide at 20. He notes his mother is a severely dysthymic and severely obsessional person, diagnoses which have been applied to him by an eminent psychiatrist and which seem right to him. He has no physical problems and takes Zoloft, up to 250 mg at this time, although he was on a maintenance dose for three years of 50 mg. He does not get very regular exercise, jogs once a week, and does 5-10 minutes of calisthenics each morning. In terms of psychological treatment, he has been in psychotherapy a number of times, he would say unsuccessfully, only once for more than a year. He has had two clinical depressions in the last 15 years, both for several months, but pretty awful. He has seen Dr. Woodcourt for about five years.
He presents today noting that he was a little shaken by the episode six weeks ago. He does not know what brought it on, noting he wound up in psychodynamic therapy three years ago after five years. It was someone he liked but it didn't seem to help. He thinks his concerns are partly biochemical and he is grateful for Zoloft.
He has come across a number of articles that say cognitive therapy has the highest success rate, he has read Feeling Good and one or two books by Aaron Beck, although he was rather scornful of these and still is. He is sympathetic to psychoanalytic ideas, but he has been humbled by these depressions.
The overall problem he notes was that he was a very devout Catholic, part of a religious order, which he left at 21 during the summer between college and graduate school. He was so agitated he had to drop out of graduate school. Seemingly, the pieces of his life never came back together. He did not feel able to do any intellectual work, never resumed his life again. When he tried to read philosophy or political history, he was unable to focus, felt a certain background tension. For the past 15 years, he has been in literary criticism, written about 150 book reviews, won a ational award. However, it is not the same as having a career, and he still feels kind of disabled. On a micro-level, he has always been very obsessive, fretful, replaying decisions, defensive, and feeling he has to defend himself against imagined threats, although he has never been delusional or psychotic.
I explained our more focused and briefer time frame and noted if he was going to begin something that would be longer term, he'd want to actually change his basic affect. He never went back to graduate school because he didn't think he could handle it, and although he would not choose to do so now, he would want to feel he could. He seemingly had felt that if he pulled out all the stops, he would freeze up. If we had only a few sessions, he would want me to convince him to decide on whether to go on in terms of therapy and what kinds of therapy it would be or what realistic goals he might set.
I briefly explained my view of cognitive therapy as involving the belief system of both the therapist and the patient and involving the belief that one's cognitions could affect one's experience and one's feelings. He said this sounded reasonable to him and that he was ready to try anything. We set a follow up for June 17, at 10 a.m.
© Brad Holland
May 16, 2005
Allan Woodcourt, MD
Harvard University Mental Health Services
Cambridge, Massachusetts
In the past three days he's sunk into a severe agitated depression again. He feels worse than he's ever felt. He feels like pacing all day, and has trouble sleeping, though he feels exhausted. It's getting harder and harder to eat. He thinks of death, but would not kill himself, and hasn't been making plans. He wants to go to a "rest house." We agreed that hospitalization would not help because of the environment. He has nobody he can turn to. His girlfriend is too busy to take time off. He hasn't called her and told her what he's going through, but I encouraged him to. He doesn't have faith in the Effexor, but it worked for years, and he's relapsed at least partly because he lowered the dose. We agreed he'd increase to 150 mg immediately. He'll also use lorazepam during the day, which has helped before, and olanzapine at night, for its antidepressant-augmenting possibility. He'll be back to me tomorrow, late in the day, and knows about the availability of urgent care.
June 9, 2005
Allan Woodcourt, MD
Harvard University Mental Health Services
Cambridge, Massachusetts
He says that, within the last 24 hours, the agony is a bit less, but he doesn't trust the feeling. He still has a worm's eye view of himself and his life. It turns out that he won't have to be housed in a corner of his boss's office in the new building, but will have a very small office of his own, which is a huge relief. He'll have to come to work on time (11 a.m.) in the new location. He's not used to that. In his old job, he was able to get the little which needed to be done accomplished on a very flexible schedule. He chides himself for his "immaturity" in that he has a menial job, etc. But at this point, he's still not in touch with what new freedom he might like which more "maturity" would give him. He'll continue to see Dr. Pingloss in June and, when I'm back in July, we'll work on another referral for him. He'll see Ms. Lewis next week (June 15) for monitoring.
He found his consultation with Dr. Morrell helpful, partly because the appointment was longer, and "I was able to tell my whole story."
September 21, 2005
Luke Honeythunder, MD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Boston, Massachusetts
Electroconvulsive Therapy, Treatment #1
I. Subjective/Objective
Clinical Assessment: I met with him & brother as outpatient. I again discussed with him the ECT benefits & risks, with the latter including death, cognitive problems, cardio-pulmonary problems, & others. He understood and agreed.
Suicidal Assessment: He denies suicidal or destructive ideas, intent, plan.
Memory Assessment: Cognition intact.
Observations: He tolerated the procedure well.
III. Post ECT
Observations: By 65 minutes after ECT, he was recovering well, cognitively and physically.
September 23, 2005
Luke Honeythunder, MD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Boston, Massachusetts
Electroconvulsive Therapy, Treatment #2
I. Subjective/Objective
Clinical Assessment: "Depressed" mood with dysphoric affect. Asked about when to expect improvement in mood. Psychomotor retardation.
Suicidal Assessment: No SI voiced.
Memory Assessment: Grossly intact for recent events.
Observations: Patient tolerated ECT well.
III. Post ECT
Observations: Within 30 minutes after ECT, patient was recovering well physically (with nausea) but continued to have difficulty with orientation. He notes he is still depressed.
October 18, 2005
Allan Woodcourt, MD
Harvard University Mental Health Services
Cambridge, Massachusetts
He's now had about eight ECT treatments. He's having significant short-term memory problems, and forgot his appointment with Ms. Trone, and forgot that he had any appointments scheduled with me. His brother called me and we straightened that out. He says the agony is gone, but that he feels "numb" and unmotivated. He's not working now, and spends much of his time in bed. He is beginning to read a bit, and we talked about something in the New York Review of Books. He says he has little appetite. He's seeing friends, "a bit," but finds it hard with his memory problems. He's not been seeing Dr. Gusstav during the series of ECT, and thinks he may not be a good match for him anyway.
November 3, 2005
Allan Woodcourt, MD
Harvard University Mental Health Services
Cambridge, Massachusetts
He says, for the first time in at least six months, "I'm alright." His mood is definitely better. He's dressed better, and even smiles a bit. He still has decreased concentration and motivation, but he's eating better, and is doing some socializing. He went to a friend's birthday party last weekend, and is going to a concert this weekend. He'll be continuing the ECT treatments, twice weekly, for now.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
February 16, 2007, 7:33 p.m.
From: George Scialabba
To: Allan Woodcourt, MD
Subject: zoloft
I've started to see someone and I'm a little concerned about the effect of Zoloft on my libido. Do you think it would be all right to go down gradually to 100 mg? --George
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
February 18, 2007, 11:05 a.m.
From: Allan Woodcourt, MD
To: George Scialabba
I'm extremely reluctant to see you taper the Zoloft, but I can well understand your frustration with the current situation. When I get back to work on Tuesday, maybe we can set up an appointment to brainstorm about what to do. --Al Woodcourt
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
February 20, 2007, 1:38 p.m.
From: George Scialabba
To: Allan Woodcourt, MD
OK, maybe you're right. I suppose I shouldn't take any unnecessary risks. Do you feel the same way about 150 mg? --George
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
February 20, 2007 5:02 p.m.
From: Allan Woodcourt, MD
To: George Scialabba
I doubt that going down to 150 mg would improve your sexual function very much if at all, and it would increase the risk of a relapse, so I wouldn't be in favor of that either. --Al Woodcourt
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
February 20, 2007, 5:19 p.m.
From: George Scialabba
To: Allan Woodcourt, MD
Ok, better safe than sorry. I'll stay at 200 mg. --George
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
August 1, 2008, 9:30 a.m.
From: Allan Woodcourt, MD
To: Deborah Simmons, MD
Subject: George S.
We share George Scialabba, who has a history of devastating depressions. He's been well for the past two years, but before that he was nearly dead, and was only rescued by ECT, which he had at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has a therapist whom he sees every other week, and I see him only every 4-6 months. He does well on his sertraline 200 mg [Zoloft], but he's always tempted to cut it back. My role is to point out to him what a big mistake that would be.
He's relied on me for many years at University Health Services, but his relationship to me is ambivalent. He felt very attached to Dr. Cindy Shepard and feels very comfortable with you. I am wondering if you would take over monitoring his sertraline after I retire? If his depression returns, you'd have to refer him out, and my own thought would be that he should go back to ECT early rather than after many drug trials. I'd be happy to be available to consult about him by email or by phone.
If you don't feel comfortable with this plan, please don't hesitate to say so, and I'll hook him up with someone down here before I go.
Thanks for considering. --Al
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
August 1, 2008, 9:33 a.m.
From: Deborah Simmons, MD
To: Allan Woodcourt, MD
I think I have an open and thoughtful relationship with him and would be happy to monitor his meds. He is having a sleep study soon since he has a sleep disorder that is not entirely clear to me. --Deborah
July 6, 2012, 11:15 p.m.
Lenora Giles, LICSW
Harvard University Health Services After Hours Urgent Care Clinic
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Reason for Call: Patient called the After Hours Urgent Care Clinic at 11:15 p.m. Friday evening requesting help for an "emergency." He reports being "seriously depressed and suffering, in a tremendous amount of pain." When asked if he felt safe, he replied, "this is an emergency, I don't think I would do that but it can't get much worse."
Patient of mental health for over twenty years with history and treatment of major depression, including ECT. Had recently "foolishly" (his report) began tapering his medication. In the last few days he has felt significantly worse, not sleeping, not eating, in acute "pain and suffering." Denies any ETOH use. His initial request was for medication. Based on what he was reporting, my recommendation was that he go to Cambridge Hospital, saving the step of a visit to University Health Services. I suggested to him that would be the most efficient way for him to be evaluated for medication and potentially inpatient. He agreed and was relieved. He asked me to speak with his girlfriend who was with him. She had come over to "support him" and found him "curled up on the bed, crying."
They will go together to Cambridge ER, she will stay with him and present her observations to the evaluating clinician. They will ask the hospital to call and report the disposition to AHUC.
July 23, 2012
Joanne Levy, MD
Harvard University Mental Health Services
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Chief Complaint: "I have been feeling very depressed."
History of the Present Illness: Mr. Scialabba is a 64-year-old self-described writer and academic coordinator at Harvard who has a 30-year history of major depression. He has had at least 5-6 major depressive episodes in his life, the most recent of which started in the spring of this year following a taper of his Zoloft medication from 200 mg to 100 mg daily. He described feeling very irritable a few weeks after starting the taper (which was started by his PCP after patient voiced concern over decreased libido), but that the onset has been somewhat gradual and insidious in general. Mr. Scialabba began seeing Dr. Filep in Behavioral Health in January of 2012 and tapered his Zoloft slowly. By June of 2012 he began feeling increasingly depressed. The Zoloft was restarted, but the decline continued. Was hospitalized about 2 weeks ago in Everett (went to Cambridge Health Alliance ER) for 3 days, where Ativan was started with some effect on sleep and Zoloft was increased further to 100 mg daily. Continues to have anxiety.
Last saw Dr. Filep on July 10, 2012, and, at that time, the Zoloft was increased from 100 mg to 200 mg daily. Patient came in today with a close male friend, John, who feels strongly that the patient cannot wait for his symptoms to improve and was concerned that the patient would be headed towards a severe depression if there was not an urgent intervention. Currently, patient endorses low energy, depressed mood, difficult focusing, poor sleep, agitation, as well as a tightness in his chest and a "flaming sensation within me" (which is reportedly characteristic of his past episodes). Does not have suicidal thoughts currently, but has wished in the recent past that he would be able to go to sleep and not wake up. Has many friends and supports here in Boston, who reportedly give him hope for the future. Discussed options for immediate intervention, as well as longer-term medication/treatment options. Patient does not feel that he needs to be hospitalized at this time. Suggested increasing the Ativan for agitation and continuing to give some time for the increased dosage of Zoloft to take effect. Also discussed ECT, as that has worked in the past, though this clinician feels it is premature to discuss this as patient was maintained on Zoloft for more than 5 years with no reoccurance of his depression in the past and he is still in the middle of an upwards titration.
Past Psychiatric History: At least 5 major depressive episodes in the past with very chronic symptoms (per past notes, symptoms resistant to a multitude of treatment at times), one prior inpatient hospitalization just this month (July 2012), no prior suicide attempts, history of ECT in 2005 which was very effective. Past medications have included: Parnate, desipramine, nortriptyline, Effexor XR, Wellbutrin, Adderall, Strattera. Saw Dr. Woodcourt at Harvard University Health Services for many years (at least since 1993-2008). States that he has an outside therapist who is an analyst that he sees every 2 weeks for the past 5 years, but that the therapist is on vacation for a month and that he has not seen the treater in quite some time. No history of a prior manic episode or psychotic symptoms.
Past Medical History: (Per chart) sleep apnea, benign prostatic hyperplasia, impotence, and sexual dysfunction.
Social History: Works as a coordinator at Center for Government and International Studies at Harvard. Has been able to work recently, but in the past has missed many months of work due to depression. Lives alone in Cambridge. Is very close to his brother and notes that he has two other close friends who check in on him regularly (one of whom is present today with him). Denies having access to any weapons in the home or otherwise. Likes to write and has several published pieces.
Family History: Both of patient's parents were reportedly dysthymic, maternal grandmother had ECT, first cousin suicided at age 21.
Detailed Mental Status Exam: Decently groomed, thin, frail man. Discusses his symptoms and suffering openly.
Treatment Review: Discussed a goal of decreasing patient's mood symptoms and anxiety from a 8/10 to at least a 5/10 over the next week.
Current Plan:
1. Add a second dose of Ativan in a.m. when anxiety is at its worst (0.5 mg)
2. Follow up again this week (July 27, 2012) to assess if the symptoms have improved due to medication compliance with Zoloft and addition of Ativan dosage. Was instructed to call (during business hours) or go to the nearest emergency room for help if he feels actively suicidal or unsafe at home.
3. Will consider ECT consult if symptoms worsen or if no better in 1-2 weeks.
4. Patient will resume care with assigned clinician Dr. Filep when she returns from vacation.
I am as puzzled and frustrated by the above records, and by the rest of my psychiatric file, as any casual reader could be. So much earnest effort, so much expert knowledge, so little success. The world's most common disease is still this opaque.
Having read half a dozen compelling depression memoirs--Styron, Jamison, Millett, Solomon, Kaysen, McMurtry--I was skeptical, when The Baffler proposed publishing extracts from my file, that there was much more to say. Maybe there isn't, at least not in that register. But maybe it's enough just to keep talking.
Let me bring this melancholy chronicle up to date. The last record printed here is dated July 2012. Things remained bad through August and September. In early October I began a three-month medical leave of absence, with pay; I had taken a similar leave in 2005, when the depression was at its worst. Harvard has a generous provision for medical leave, perhaps because of the presence of a strong union, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). Once again, the medical leave made possible a course of electroconvulsive therapy, this one only about half as long as before.
What would have happened if I had not received those medical leaves is something I'd rather not think about. At the least, a psychological ordeal would have eventuated in a financial calamity. The combination of an enlightened employer and a strong union is one that ever fewer Americans enjoy. Universal financial security is probably the single best countermeasure to the depression epidemic. It would certainly be more effective and more humane--and even, perhaps, cheaper--than providing antidepressants and ECT.
Since early 2013, I've been depression-free. A good therapist has helped, as well as a few sweet professional successes. A doctor once cautioned me that after three major depressions the probability of a recurrence approaches 100 percent. She didn't say how soon, though. Hope springs eternal.
--George Scialabba]]>
We Sicilians are connoisseurs of malevolence. So I approached Paul Berman's hatchet job on Alexander Cockburn (The New Republic, August 1) with an alacrity tempered only by my apprehension that Berman wasn't quite up to the job. His previous attempts at character assassination (Noam Chomsky, Ian Buruma) had been disappointing: shrill, inaccurate, marred by too-obvious rancor and wounded vanity. Cockburn, in the shape of his final collection, A Colossal Wreck, seemed a perfect target: lethally sharp-tongued and infuriatingly charming while alive but now conveniently dead. I feared, though, that Berman would muff it.
From the technical point of view, he turned in a creditable performance this time. Berman (or his editor) managed to leaven his usual portentous and overwrought style--as though the intellectual honor of the age had been entrusted to his keeping--with a few dashes of wit and sly malice. Cockburn was an "eccentric British journalist," a "famously insolent ... old rogue," who could nevertheless be "wonderfully charming," with his "odd and clever combination of English literary self-satisfaction and outrageous raillery." With an "air of bookish sophistication," he was always dropping authors' names ("Browning and Conrad and Trollope") and quotations into his columns, though of course it was just a veneer, as was his insular New Left Review Marxism, at least when compared with the grittier, more rooted democratic socialism of Michael Harrington and Irving Howe. A glib and supercilious Euroscoundrel, in other words, unlike the high-minded, erudite Berman, the plodding but salt-of-the-earth working-class types over at Dissent, and the cold-eyed tragic realists of The New Republic.
And Cockburn's views--how dreary! On and on he maundered about his "hobbyhorse," the CIA: "Uncle Sam's true face ... not a 'rogue' Agency but one always following the dictates of government, murdering, torturing, poisoning, drugging its own subjects, following methods devised and tested by Hitler's men, themselves transported to America after World War II." Berman wrinkles his nose at this, and also at Cockburn's vision of late-twentieth-century America: "the corrupt and hypocritical center of a doomed imperialism ... swinish, criminal, tawdry." "This was not a subtle picture of the world," Berman sniffs. New Republic readers, accustomed to hearing leftists ridiculed and left-wing views dismissed without argument as pernicious or absurd, will snigger and nod along with Berman's lofty contempt, confirmed in their conviction that the Beltway-centered chatter and TED-talk-level idea-mongering that the magazine specializes in are the real substance of politics and culture.
It's familiar enough, this ideological blood sport with which intellectuals occupy ourselves while waiting for the world's attention, and no doubt harmless in the larger scheme of things. Anyway, Cockburn drew a lot of blood in his time, some of it Berman's, so why shouldn't Berman try to get his own back now? In our wiser moments, most of us recognize how little all this matters. But how few and far between, those wiser moments! And so once more, wearily, unto the breach.[*]
For decades Berman and others have promulgated a misleading and self-serving distinction between the "anti-imperialist" left and the "anti-totalitarian" left. The former allegedly attribute all the world's evils to capitalism, unquestioningly support anti-capitalist revolutionary movements, and are reluctant to criticize any regime that calls itself, however unjustifiably, "socialist" or "communist." For the anti-imperialist left, the United States can do no right and its enemies can do no wrong. ("Human rights was never an issue that could appeal to a man of [Cockburn's] spirit," jeers Berman, whose long record of non-support for Timorese, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Turkish Kurd, and Palestinian human rights speaks eloquently for itself.) The anti-totalitarians have moved beyond this outworn, simplistic binary thinking, asserting instead the primacy of democracy and human rights. Social and economic justice is important, of course, but freedom of speech is fundamental. And since American leaders repeatedly profess their determination to assist freedom and democracy everywhere, American foreign policy, even if it involves the illegal use of military force, will often deserve support.
The anti-imperialist/anti-totalitarian distinction is misleading because, broadly speaking, one side (Cockburn's) is protesting crimes that their readers can readily, as citizens, do something about, and in fact are ultimately responsible for, while the other side (Berman's) is not. Abuses by Castro and Chavez, and crimes by Saddam and Iran's ayatollahs, are undoubtedly real. But the U.S. government did/does not support those regimes and was/is not responsible for their crimes. (Actually, the U.S. did support Saddam for decades, during his worst crimes, but the anti-totalitarians mostly kept quiet about that.) Certainly the U.S. should do everything possible (and legal) to undermine, or at least chastise, those authoritarian regimes. But of course, it already does that--and in fact does a great many illegal things as well--not out of excessive zeal (or in fact the slightest concern) for human rights but rather for strategic reasons. Embargos, support for coup attempts, and outright invasions are all acts of aggression--crimes, strictly speaking--which the anti-totalitarians have a distressing tendency to wink at.
They also seem remiss about protesting atrocities for which the U.S. bears considerable responsibility. For the last four decades at least, human rights abuses in U.S. client states--Turkey, Indonesia, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua under Somoza, Argentina, Brazil, Iran under the Shah, Iraq under Saddam (until 1991)--vastly exceeded those in Soviet client states. The anti-totalitarians said comparatively little about the former, even though the U.S. could usually have halted the abuses simply by threatening to cut off military and diplomatic support. On the other hand, the anti-totalitarians kept a sharp focus on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, over whose governments they had no leverage and whom the U.S. government needed no encouragement to oppose.
The anti-totalitarian position amounts, in practice, to this: vigorous criticism of the crimes of one's government's enemies, whose policies one cannot affect; feeble or no criticism of the crimes of one's own government, whose policies one can affect. That doesn't sound like moral seriousness to me. And yet the anti-totalitarians do so earnestly insist on their own higher Seriousness and the other side's deplorable frivolity! It's tiresome, of course, but a little amusing too, this pantomime of moral superiority.
There's nothing amusing, though, about Berman's many brazen insinuations of anti-Semitism on Cockburn's part. "He shivered at Zionism, whose nature seemed to him intrinsically ghastly." He could never understand the American public's affection for "the Zionist entity"--putting the jihadist designation in Cockburn's mouth. His "distaste for Jewish concerns" (i.e., for Berman's calumnies about "Noam Chomsky and Holocaust denial") explained his otherwise unaccountable "sniping" at the innocent young Berman. "When it comes to the tears of the Jews," Berman approvingly quotes Jack Newfield, "Cockburn's heart is made of stone."
Anti-Semitism is race-hatred, persecution, discrimination, and libels about the collective guilt of Jews. A healthy contempt for AIPAC, A. M. Rosenthal, Norman Podhoretz, and Martin Peretz is not anti-Semitism. Harsh criticism of Israel's relentless expansionism and violent repression, and loathing for the hypocrisy and deceit of Israel's American apologists--this, pretty clearly, is all Berman means by "anti-Semitism," in accordance with the first principle of hasbara. And yet this is the substance of Berman's measured and scrupulous rebuke--so much classier than Cockburn's indiscriminate "railing" against "the Israel lobby, homosexuals, Democrats [and] liberals," and a shining example of the moral fastidiousness and intellectual integrity Berman has been preaching to his readers for many decades.
Cockburn was occasionally cruel, taking an unholy pleasure in taunting thin-skinned types like Berman and Irving Howe. (A brontosaurus like Newfield, with a hide of steel and a brain of stone, was impervious to Cockburn's rapier.) Regrettably, he was not content to prove his political opponents wrong; they had to appear fools or villains as well. The fact that many of them were indeed fools or villains is neither here nor there. Cockburn was one of the forefathers of snark, the mindless verbal savagery that has overgrown the Internet like kudzu. Snark has countless progenitors, of course, but Cockburn must take his share of blame for it.
Still, snark kills no civilians and blows up no power stations. At least Cockburn was never an American exceptionalist--the incarnation of useful idiocy in our time--urging the leaders of his benevolently hegemonic country to subdue and civilize the turbulent heathen in the name of the higher values. That his country's leaders had, throughout the previous century, dutifully professed but, whenever convenient, brutally disregarded those values was not lost on Cockburn, as it evidently is on Berman.
"Ultimately," Berman surmises, "his problem was an unreliable sense of humor." There's something in that. Cockburn's keen Irish feeling for absurdity; his simultaneous zest in lampooning prigs like Berman and lummoxes like Newfield and despair at their amazing resilience, their seemingly inexhaustible reserves of uncomprehending indignation and robust self-satisfaction; and a long-delayed but finally devastating recognition that he had broken his lance on the American behemoth and it had scarcely noticed--perhaps all this, along with the isolated beauty of Humboldt County, eventually impelled what Berman perceives as a demoralized retreat to "democratic and screwball California." "We are never permitted to despair of the commonwealth," Thomas Jefferson exhorted us. I suspect Cockburn did. In an age of Clintons and Bushes, Rahm Emmanuel and Lawrence Summers, Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein, I find it hard to blame him.
[*] My own view of Cockburn is comprehensively set down here and in the title essay of What Are Intellectuals Good For?
George Scialabba is a contributing editor of The Baffler and the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For?]]>
Things That Matter: Three Decades of Pastimes, Passions and Politics by Charles Krauthammer.
In his essay on Coleridge, John Stuart Mill wrote (I've updated his terminology a tad):
A conservative public intellectual cannot be wholly conservative, but must often be a better liberal than liberals themselves; while he is the natural means of rescuing from oblivion truths which conservatives have forgotten and which the prevailing schools of liberalism never knew. ... "Lord, enlighten thou our enemies," should be the prayer of every true progressive; sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers. We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength.
When I first encountered this passage, I agreed wholeheartedly with Mill. Now I'm less sure. Conservatism was different in Mill's time. What he rejoiced at in Coleridge's example was the prospect of deliverance from "the owl-like dread of light, the drudge-like aversion to change, which were the characteristics of the old unreasoning race of bigots" - Sir Leicester Dedlock, for example, or the Duke of Wellington. A conservative intellectual was virtually an oxymoron before the Industrial Revolution; too much cleverness made a man "unsound."
Nowadays conservative intellectuals are legion, and some of them are very clever. But they have not become enlightened or enlightening, as Mill hoped. Instead of rescuing forgotten truths, they devise novel fallacies like New Class theory or the efficient markets hypothesis or American exceptionalism. No longer automatically subversive of authority, the intellectual has become authority's chief of staff.
Feudalism shunned intelligence; capitalism profits from it: partly by controlling the institutions that manufacture public opinion - advertising, media, publishing, education, research - and partly by cultivating talented individuals with suitable views and values. According to the pioneering political scientist Harold Lasswell, the advent of modern society "compelled the development of a whole new technique of social control, mainly through propaganda ... the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery, or other possible control techniques." Irving Kristol, propagandist par excellence, foresaw that "intellectuals would move inexorably closer to the seats of authority" and devoted his long career to furthering that rapprochement, recruiting lavish support from an anxious business class for the right kind of intellectuals. The contemporary neoconservative intelligentsia, including Charles Krauthammer, is the result.
Krauthammer, a nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist, Time essayist, and frequent guest on Fox and other networks, is quite possibly the most widely respected neoconservative public intellectual. On the occasion of Krauthammer's first collection, Cutting Edges (1985), Michael Walzer praised the author as "intellectually tough and morally serious" (exactly the qualities whose absence on the left Walzer complained of in his widely discussed essay "Can There Be a Decent Left?"). In 1987 Krauthammer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his "witty and insightful columns on national issues." According to Henry Kissinger, Things That Matter, with its "learned examinations of history and policy," demonstrates Krauthammer's "sharply honed analysis, humane values and questing mind."
High praise, though it withers a little under the heat of this blast from the as-yet-unreconstructed Christopher Hitchens:
In the charmed circle of neoliberal and neoconservative journalism, "unpredictability" is the special emblem and certificate of self-congratulation. To be able to bray that "as a liberal, I say bomb the shit out of them" is to have achieved that eye-catching, versatile marketability that is so beloved of editors and talk-show hosts. As a lifelong socialist, I say don't let's bomb the shit out of them. See what I mean? It lacks the sex appeal, somehow. Predictable as hell.
Picture, then, if you will, the unusual difficulties faced by Charles Krauthammer, newest of the neocon mini-windbags. He has the arduous job, in an arduous time, of being an unpredictable conformist. He has the no less demanding task of making this pose appear original and, more, of making it appear courageous. At a time when the polity (as he might well choose to call it) is showing signs of Will fatigue, it can't be easy to write an attack on the United Nations or Albania or Qaddafi and make it seem like a lone, fearless affirmation. An average week of reading The Washington Post op-ed page already exposes me to appearances from George Will, William F. Buckley Jr., Jeane Kirkpatrick, Norman Podhoretz, Emmett Tyrrell, Joseph Kraft, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, and Stephen Rosenfeld. Clearly its editors felt that a radical new voice was needed when they turned to the blazing, impatient talents on offer in The New Republic - and selected Krauthammer. I dare say Time felt the same way when it followed suit. We live in a period when a chat show that includes Morton Kondracke considers that it has filled the liberal slot.
Krauthammer can dish it out too: he is a savage scoffer and merciless mocker (though hardly in a league with Hitchens). He is a commercial as well as a political success: Things That Matter briefly topped the New York Times best-seller list last fall. Facility in framing the conventional wisdom, however vacuous, with perfect assurance, indeed with an edge of impatience in one's voice that such truisms need to be explained at all, is a singular gift, and probably the supreme qualification for an op-ed columnist or talk-show guest. But Krauthammer has paid the unavoidable price for composing too many 1000-word essays for Time, 800-word columns for The Washington Post, and 20-second sound bites for Fox News. There is very little intellectual tension, dialectical drama, or sense of discovery in his arguments, and very little rhythm, color, or finesse to his prose. He floats like a vulture, stings like a tarantula.
Krauthammer does have his amiable side (or corner). The first section of Things That Matter, labeled "Personal," contains a few affectionate portraits: of his older brother; of a kindly dean who made it possible for him to continue in medical school after a paralyzing accident; of a beloved, famously eccentric mathematician; of an obscure major-league baseball player's brief, brilliant comeback several years after an initial flop. But these ingratiating pieces are few and a little awkward. Lightness of touch doesn't come naturally to Krauthammer; he's too embattled.
The object of his hostility is ... why, you, dear Nation reader. I suspect that if Krauthammer were asked to sum up everything he stands against intellectually in two words, they would be "the Nation." Virtually every position regularly espoused in this magazine, and on the left generally, comes under his fire. Even where there is a measure of agreement - sexual equality, gay marriage, stem cell research, creationism - it is grudging and usually accompanied by a rebuke to callow radicals. When it comes to political economy and, especially, foreign policy, his contempt is unabashed.
Sometimes it unhinges him. One column tells of a 60s radical, part of a bank robbery in which a policeman was killed. She escaped, became a chef, lived undetected for 23 years, and finally turned herself in. The moral of the story, according to Krauthammer: "It starts with people power. It ends in polenta. A fitting finish to the radical '60s." Another column sensitively discusses the case of a 39-year-old woman who gave birth at home using a lay midwife, and whose baby died. "It was about the mother's karma. It was about the narcissistic pursuit of 'experience,' the Me Generation's insistence on turning every life event - even those fraught with danger for others - into a personalized Hallmark moment."
As these jibes suggest, the Hammer strikes hard, though not always discriminatingly. He is tough all right, and excruciatingly serious, though not quite in the complimentary sense Walzer meant those epithets. Still, he is not merely provoking but- unlike his less acute comrades George Will, William Kristol, and David Brooks - often thought-provoking as well. Because he fiercely despises left-wing opinions rather than, like Will et al, smugly ignoring them, he has a nose for their weaknesses. Which is, after all, a blessing, however bitter, for those of us who profess them.
He is furious, for example, at the suggestion that the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the New World should be an occasion for "repentance and reflection" about the unhappy (for its inhabitants) sequel. "For the left," he jeers, "the [anniversary] comes just in time. The revolutions of 1989 having put a dent in the case for the degeneracy of the West, 1992 offers a welcome new point of attack." True, mistakes were made. "The European conquest of the Americas, like the conquest of other civilizations, was indeed accompanied by great cruelty. But that is to say nothing more than that the European conquest of America was, in this way, much like the rise of Islam, the Norman conquest of Britain, and the widespread American Indian tradition of raiding, depopulating, and appropriating neighboring lands." Besides, he concludes, "the real question is, What eventually grew on this bloodied soil? The answer is, The great modern civilizations of the Americas - a new world of individual rights, an ever-expanding circle of liberty."
Was there really nothing special about the conquest of the Americas? By the end of the 19th century, the indigenous population had shrunk by 90 percent, with 95 percent of their land lost through violence or fraud. Millions were enslaved; hundreds of tribes, languages, and cultures in both hemispheres simply disappeared. Nothing on this scale happened during the rise of Islam or the Norman conquest of England, much less in pre-Columbian America. The circle of liberty did not expand for most of the population of South America until quite recently, as US dominance declined. And where it did expand - for the white population of the 18th- and 19th-century United States - the expansion turned erratic as the society was regimented by mass production, plundered by a rising finance capitalism, and battered by storms of political hysteria.
Still, some deep and troubling questions lurk beneath Krauthammer's crass celebration of America's manifest destiny. The flowering of equality, self-reliance, and civic virtue in the non-slave states from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century is one of the political wonders of the world, a signal achievement in humankind's moral history. It was made possible by a great crime: it all took place on stolen, ethnically-cleansed land. Likewise that other pinnacle of political enlightenment, Athenian democracy, which rested on slavery. But in both cases, didn't the subordination or expropriation of the many allow the few to craft social relations from which the rest of the world has learned invaluable lessons? Is some such stolen abundance or leisure a prerequisite of moral and cultural advance? Even if we acknowledge the dimensions of the crime, can we really regret the achievement? Krauthammer is no help in answering such questions, but he is clever enough and truculent enough to force them on our attention.
Krauthammer is an unapologetic - strident - hawk. He chides Jeane Kirkpatrick, no less, for suggesting that after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the United States might become "a normal country in a normal world." On the contrary, he admonishes, we live in a permanently abnormal world. "There is no alternative to confronting, deterring and, if necessary, disarming states that brandish and use weapons of mass destruction. And there is no one to do that but the United States," with or without allies. Of course there is no question of deterring or disarming the United States. The very idea is outlandish - America is uniquely benign, history's first "reluctant hegemon," almost quixotic in its "hopeless idealism." Only twisted leftists would deny that "freedom [is] the centerpiece of [American] foreign policy."
America, it is true, has no concentration camps or overseas colonies, and our government regularly proclaims its devotion to freedom. For Krauthammer, those facts evidently outweigh our having subverted dozens of governments, many of them democratically elected, and supported dozens of others that were not democratically elected at all, with the only consistent motive being the promotion of a favorable investment climate for American business. Actual history is thin on the ground in Things That Matter.
Even so, there's a shred of plausibility to Krauthammer's arrogant unilateralism. He proposes an interesting coinage, the "Weapon State": a category of anomalous states with little popular support, shallow historical roots, weak civil society, unbalanced economies, overdeveloped militaries, and powerful grievances or militant ideologies. They are not what social scientists call "rational actors." Such states, Krauthammer argues, may well have fewer inhibitions about using weapons of mass destruction or massacring civilians on a vast scale than more developed and democratic states. Iraq under Saddam is Krauthammer's prototype of a Weapon State; North Korea and Libya are other examples. Since nuclear emergencies or ongoing genocide may require instant response, and since Security Council action may be delayed or vetoed by a single major power, a status-quo hegemon may be a good thing to have on hand in certain circumstances.
International law is currently a weak reed, and international institutions are mostly dysfunctional. Mightn't the United States sometimes have to act unilaterally to save innocent lives or keep the peace in a supreme emergency? It is true (though you won't learn it from Krauthammer) that the United States has done a great deal to undermine international law and institutions, having used weapons of mass destruction for political purposes (Hiroshima and Nagasaki); supported their use by client states (Saddam's Iraq, against Iran); approved the slaughter of civilians on a vast scale by other clients (Indonesia in 1965 and again in East Timor; Turkey against the Kurds); ignored an adverse judgment of the International Court of Justice (which ordered the US to pay reparations for its aggression against Nicaragua); and repeatedly declared its readiness to use force without Security Council authorization, in defiance of its most important treaty obligation, the UN Charter. But so what? Even bad governments can do good things; sometimes even for bad reasons. The fact that the United States killed a million or more Indochinese civilians during the 1960s and 70s and bombed to the ground virtually every structure in North Korea during the 1950s does not disqualify it from saving civilians in Rwanda, Darfur, or Congo. Legality is very important, but not all-important.
Occasionally, then, Krauthammer is interestingly and usefully wrong. More often, though, he is tiresomely and mischievously wrong. His misconceptions begin with the Cold War. "Where would Europe be," he demands to know, "if America had not saved it from the Soviet colossus?" In fact, after World War II, the Soviet Union desperately sought a demilitarized Germany, having twice in three decades nearly been annihilated by that country. It offered to withdraw and allow free elections in a unified Germany in exchange for a guarantee that Germany not be part of a hostile military alliance and that the Soviets have a veto power over major foreign policy decisions in the Eastern European countries - a kind of Soviet Monroe Doctrine. The United States, then enjoying a monopoly on atomic weapons, refused. Germany remained divided and the Red Army remained in Eastern Europe.
Of course the Evil Empire never ceased its menacing machinations, and by the early 1980s cowed liberals were duped into supporting a nuclear freeze, "a form of unilateral disarmament in the face of Soviet nuclear advances," according to Krauthammer. In fact, US nuclear superiority at that point (and throughout the Cold War) was unchallenged. Soviet "advances" almost always followed, and responded to, American advances; and most of the disarmament initiatives, including a self-imposed unilateral test ban in the 1980s (unilateral because the Reagan administration refused to follow suit), came from the USSR. Moreover, as sensible people understood, the probability of a lethal accident involving nuclear weapons had become terrifyingly high by the time the Cold War ended. According to a Brookings Institution study, the US alone experienced 19 nuclear alerts between 1946 and 1973. On two occasions - one on either side - a large-scale missile attack following a false warning of incoming enemy missiles was aborted within minutes of launch. Eric Schlosser reports in Command and Control that 1200 nuclear weapons were somehow involved in accidents during the first two decades of the Cold War, at least two of which nearly caused catastrophic damage within the United States. As a former head of the US Strategic Command remarked: "We escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion."
About Central America, Krauthammer resorts to brazen falsification. Reagan's so-called "illegal war," he writes, was really "an indigenous anti-communist rebellion that ultimately succeeded in bringing down Sandinista rule and ushering in democracy in Central America." [In reality, the US throughout the 20th century supported business-friendly oligarchies and military dictatorships in Central America that violently suppressed all democratic stirrings. When Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was overthrown (the US supporting him to the bitter end), the CIA assembled, trained, and paid thousands of former Nicaraguan National Guardsmen on either side of the Honduran border. There was no "indigenous anti-Communist rebellion." These contras commenced a rampage, torturing and murdering peasants and sabotaging agricultural collectives. During this onslaught, a national election was held, far more democratic than any the country had seen under Somoza. The Sandinistas won, after which the US organized an illegal international embargo that, as with Cuba, bled the country dry. As for the right-wing forces the US supported in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, they were, if possible, even bloodier and crueler than the Nicaraguan contras.
Unsurprisingly (he began his career at the New Republic, after all), Krauthammer is less than wholly objective about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There would be no conflict, he insists, but for "the long history of Palestinian rejectionism"; talk of Israeli "intransigence" is "mindless." His prime exhibits in evidence are the "three times since [1994]" when "Israel has offered the Palestinians land for peace. ... And been refused three times." These three occasions are Camp David (2000), Taba (2001), and a mysterious episode in 2008 when Ehud Olmert allegedly made an "incredible" offer, an "ultimate capitulation to Palestinian demands." Each time, Krauthammer charges, the Palestinians "walked away." They have never wanted a "final peace" if it meant "reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state." They prefer "an independent Palestine in a state of war with Israel."
Matters are not quite - not nearly - so simple. At Camp David, Krauthammer writes, Barak offered Arafat "a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza - and, astonishingly, the previously inconceivable division of Jerusalem. Arafat refuses." What Barak actually offered was a West Bank divided into three cantons separated by salients containing 12 percent of the land and all the existing Israeli settlements; continuing Israeli control of water resources; a Palestinian capital in Abu Dis, a village adjacent to Jerusalem; virtually no provision for Palestinian refugees; and an agreement that UN Resolutions 194 and 242 should no longer apply to the conflict. What is "inconceivable" is that anyone but a hasbarist could portray this as a reasonable offer.
Clinton was disgusted with Barak's fakery and proposed an alternative, which formed the basis for discussions at Taba a few months later. Krauthammer calls this "an even sweeter deal," which Arafat again refused out of hand. In reality, the Palestinians did not refuse out of hand, and it was not a sweet deal or even a genuine offer. It was a campaign ploy. According to Israeli journalist Tanya Reinhart:
There was not even a serious attempt to hide the fact that these talks were part of the election campaign. "A senior source in Prime Minister Ehud Barak's office says the purpose of the Israeli-Palestinian marathon talks starting on Sunday at Taba is to neutralize the Israeli Left." ... It was clear from the start that the purpose of the talks was to produce some optimistic "statement for the press," a goal that was essentially obtained: "Ehud Barak sent the leaders of the Left - Shlomo Ben-Ami, Yossi Beilin, and Yossi Sarid - to Taba, with the aim of attaining an 'endorsement' for his candidacy from the Palestinian Authority. ... The three emissaries succeeded in fulfilling their mission. They convinced Abu Ala and his colleagues to sign a declaration stating that the two sides "have never been closer to reaching an agreement.'"
According to another Israeli journalist, there was clearly "a determined decision made by Barak not to reach a settlement with the Palestinians in the time that is left until the elections." In any case, the Israeli offer at Taba differed very little from the one at Camp David: it too called for annexation of the settlements and surrounding land (though somewhat less of it); no Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem; barely any notice of the refugee problem.
About Olmert's "incredible" 2008 secret offer, little was known for several years. Last May a report appeared in the Jerusalem Post with new information. Krauthammer's claim that "every settlement remaining within the new Palestine would be destroyed and emptied" turns out to be inaccurate. Olmert proposed to keep 6 percent of the West Bank, including the largest settlements, still effectively cutting the new Palestinian state into three parts. Several Palestinian holy places would be returned or internationalized, definitely not amounting to the "division of Jerusalem" (Krauthammer). And 1000 Palestinian refugees - out of 5 million - would be repatriated to Israel each year for five years. It was extraordinarily credulous of Krauthammer to imagine that Olmert, who in 2006 announced his intention to carry out Ariel Sharon's plan for greatly expanding existing settlements in the West Bank, should only two years later have proposed dismantling every single one of them.
In the overcharged ideological atmosphere of Things That Matter, atheism and even veganism are suspect. Krauthammer summons us to remember the wise observation of Arthur Schlesinger ("and others") that "declining faith in the supernatural has been accompanied by the rise of the monstrous totalitarian creeds of the 20th century." For, Krauthammer continues, "as Chesterton put it, 'The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they believe in anything.' In this century," Krauthammer grimly reminds us, "'anything' has included Hitler, Stalin, and Mao." It has also, I would remind him, included Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Albert Camus.
And beware the moralizing tyranny of liberal educators. Having replaced soulcraft with hygiene, they are scheming at this very moment to "teach your kids safe sex, take Alar off their apples, feed them yogurt and broccoli for lunch and, for the ride home, lash them to their safety seats in cars with mandatory air bags." There is no end to this pernicious liberal nonsense, as witness "the mania for health foods," which "feeds a nutritional fanaticism and fastidiousness that make Islamic and Jewish dietary prohibitions look positively, well, liberal." Actually, as a practicing vegetarian with an Orthodox friend who observes Jewish dietary laws in their full rigor, I can assure Krauthammer that his concern for us deluded health-food maniacs is misplaced.
For the tragic waste of Krauthammer's considerable talents represented by Things That Matter, a good deal of the blame should doubtless go to the bad habits fostered by op-ed writing and talk-show commenting. Krauthammer is an expert simplifier, summarizer, and close-quarters scrapper. His skill at producing zingers is enviable. But remarks are not literature, and zingers are not political wisdom. You can't surprise yourself, breathe deeply, get to the bottom of things in 800 words or 20 seconds.
By and large, the quality of the eighty-eight pieces in Things That Matter is proportional to their length. Hearteningly, Krauthammer mentions that he is, at long last, writing a book: two books, in fact, one on domestic policy and one on foreign policy. Perhaps in the course of them he will, at least occasionally, surprise himself and us, vindicating Mill's generous hope.
George Scialabba is the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For? and For the Republic. He blogs at www.thebaffler.com.
The Baffler Blog
Whenever someone buttonholes me and demands to know my position on tort reform, corporate governance, campaign finance, regulatory enforcement, citizen utility boards, or reductions in the defense budget, I just reply: "Ask Uncle Ralph. He has all the details." He does, too.
Ralph Nader, now eighty years old, has always been such a whirlwind of activity-speeches, demonstrations, talk shows, organizing and mentoring citizen groups, pestering Congress-that many people are surprised to learn how prolific an author he is. Starting with Unsafe At Any Speed almost fifty years ago, he has written or co-written thirty-six books. Five have appeared in the last five years, not counting this year's Told You So, an aptly-titled 500-page collection of his weekly columns over the last half-century.
Probably the best-known and least appreciated of his recent books is Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, a 700-page political fantasy sneered at from the New York Times and The Nation and others. The Author's Note preceding the text began: "This is not a novel." The gist of nearly all the book's reviews, however, was: "This is not a very good novel." Most left-wing reviewers added censoriously: "Does Nader really think that well-intentioned billionaires are the only hope for radical political change?" This was almost as obtuse as criticizing a book with no literary ambitions for not fulfilling its literary ambitions. Did reviewers not notice the quotation marks around the title or read the author's prefatory explanation of where it came from? (It was an ironic paraphrase of the widely reported cry of despair from one of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, on realizing that the federal and state governments weren't going to be much help.)
Only the Super-Rich is premised on a fantasy: suppose that sufficient financial and organizational resources existed to fight the plutocracy--how would we go about it? Nader's answers, laid out in great detail (and admittedly unexciting prose), add up to an astute and plausible war plan. True, those resources do not actually exist, as of now. But some of what Nader envisioned can be done even without them, and merely showing how it might be done is very useful for raising morale-perhaps even for raising money. The left, however, was largely uninterested.
Which may be why Nader's new book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State (Nation Books, 240 pages, $24.99) reaches out to the right. You might think that after Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, every liberal and leftist in America would have thought long and hard about how to persuade those tens of millions of non-elite Republicans to stop voting against their own interests. Apparently not. Nader has. For decades, in fact. What's more, he's been successful at it. For example, in the 2000 election-get this, you liberal Nader-haters-the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans voted for Nader. (See The Daily Kos for the final nail in the coffin of the "Nader Elected Bush!" myth.) The same was true of his first presidential primary, in New Hampshire in 1992.
Why would any conservative vote for someone universally labeled an ultra-liberal, the country's prime crusader against corporate fraud and abuse, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's public enemy number one? Because a lot of them hate the corporations and the corporate state as much as leftists do, and are equally disgusted with the two major parties. Substantial public majorities favor single-payer health care, tax hikes on the rich, raising the minimum wage, cutting the defense budget, increased spending for education, and reducing the role of money in politics, yet most or all of these things are off the table politically. It's true that the members of this anti-corporate, anti-militarist majority disagree sharply about many other things. But why can't they nevertheless achieve the goals they have in common?
Unstoppable is a step in that direction. Nader has rounded up humane and sensible statements from quite a number of conservative eminences, including Friedrich Hayek, Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, and George Will, and cites the surprisingly reasonable positions occasionally taken by generally unreasonable politicians like Chuck Grassley, John Kasich, and Alan Simpson. He even turns up a grain of good sense in the platform of the Texas Republican Party. It is just conceivable that some conservatives, if challenged by down-to-earth, un-smug, non-sloganizing liberals, for the sake of limited but nonetheless important goals, would respond.
There's already one hopeful sign. The American Conservative magazine is about as friendly to Wall Street and the CIA as The Nation is. Its writers have spoken out consistently and forcefully against preemptive war, Executive-Branch secrecy, wasteful defense spending, unconditional bank bailouts, corporate-dictated "free trade" agreements, and the corruption of politics by money. It has published leftist heroes like Alexander Cockburn and Glenn Greenwald, as well as leftist nonentities like yours truly. It has just excerpted a chapter of Unstoppable, and in the same issue, Pat Buchanan devotes his monthly column to commending the book.
How to begin? Nader being Nader, Unstoppable features a twenty-five-point anti-corporatist platform and an outline of strategy for the "convergence" movement. Sounds like wishful thinking, you say? Well, good luck waiting around for the Democrats.]]>
Economics is full of wonderful concepts. One of my favorites is "effective demand." Like a magic wand, it can make billions of people disappear.
Suppose a farm can produce 100 pounds of food and there are 100 very hungry people who'd like to eat it but have no money. You might think that there's a demand for 100 pounds of food. Silly you! There's a need for the food, of course. But this is civilization: you can't demand something just because you need it. If food costs a dollar a pound and each person has ten cents, then there's ten dollars of effective demand. If each person has 25 cents, there's $25 of effective demand. In that case, any sensible farmer-capitalist would produce only ten or twenty-five pounds of food. Supply has to equal demand, and demand equals need plus money.
But what about those 100 people and their needs? Well, they exist, I suppose, in some world or other, but not in the market economy. In the market economy, if you're not a cost or a revenue source, you don't exist. Some of those people may have once lived on the land now owned by the farmer-capitalist and have been been physically expelled. Others may have been expelled from their jobs by factory-capitalists, often at the behest of finance-capitalists. In any case, all of them have been expelled from the Promised Land of the Market and condemned to wander in the outer darkness, invisible.
According to Columbia University sociologist Saskia Sassen in her new book Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press, 286 pages, $29.95), the above is not a just-so story. There has been a shift in the logic of global capitalism. Until the 1980s, the fundamental dynamic was inclusion: bringing ever more people and resources into the economy and society, for example, by incorporating subsistence producers and self-governing communities into market relations and citizenship. For the last several decades, the logic has been one of exclusion: excluding vast numbers from their livelihoods, their land, or their homes; excluding vast areas of land and ocean from the biosphere; and excluding vast quantities of resources (above all, water) from the global commons. Sassen writes:
Economic actors once crucial to the development of capitalism, such as petty bourgeoisies and traditional national bourgeoisies, are ceasing to be of value to the larger system. . . . People as consumers and workers play a diminished role in the profits of a range of economic sectors. From the perspective of today's capitalism, the natural resources of much of Africa, Latin America, and central Asia are more important than the people on those lands as workers or consumers. This tells us that our period is not quite like earlier forms of capitalism that thrived on the accelerated expansion of prosperous working and middle classes. Maximizing consumption by households was a critical dynamic in that earlier period, as it is today in the so-called emergent economies of the world. But overall it is no longer the strategic systemic driver that it was in most of the twentieth century.
The bulk of Expulsions consists of case studies. Sassen details how, in the last decade, foreign governments have bought up a half-billion acres of land in other countries and evicted millions of small farmers. Millions of Southern European workers have exited the workforce, perhaps for good. Millions of mortgages in Europe and the United States have been foreclosed. The imprisoned population in the United States has grown by 600 percent since the mid-1970s, an increasing number of them profit sources for the burgeoning private corrections sector.
A combination of resource extraction, pesticide runoff, extreme weather, and waste dumping have created 400 vast "dead zones" in the oceans and ruined millions of acres of agricultural land and many local fisheries--impoverishing and often dislocating untold numbers. Even governments that want to help their populations are prevented by foreign indebtedness and "free trade" agreements. Increasingly, the victims sink below the horizon of civic or economic visibility. That's what happens when you have no effective demand.
Mass expulsions from jobs, houses, farms, pensions, health care, citizenship, the welfare state, large-scale disappearances of species, arable land, clean water, open ocean--it's a shrinking world. On the brighter side, as Sassen also documents, corporate profits in the last few decades have soared.]]>