I do not know whether James Krenov was a religious man or not.  A cabinet maker born in Russia, raised in and around America, educated in Europe, he certainly brought a passion, if not an obsession, to his craft that was close enough to religious, and his students and followers still revere him like a prophet. Today's reading comes from The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking.

Without a certain attitude to our craft, information itself is of little value.  It is what we do with what we know that matters finally: not only the results but also the doing itself.  After all, that is what we are left with, after the piece is done and has found its owner and we are back working again.  What some of us find is an enjoyment we can't weigh against money, recognition, or artistic aura.  By whatever term others call it, it is the feeling of doing something we want to do - and doing it well, be measures both honest and sensitive (p. 6).

And this is where we wonder whether Krenov was a religious man.  Though he is ostensibly talking about cabinetmaking,  the average Sunday sermon struggles to include that many Christian values.   Take the first line, "without a certain attitude to our craft, information is of little value.  It is what we do with what we know that matters finally."  Substitute "faith" for "craft" and you might think you were reading the epistle of James: "what good is it my bothers and sisters if you say you have faith but do not have works?  Can faith save you? ...faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (2:14ff).  All the theological knowledge in the world cannot save a faith which is not lived.

But there's more.  Take this line: "what some of us find is an enjoyment we can't weigh against money, recognition, or artistic aura."  He draws from his craft something that allows him to be content whether he is rich with money or not, whether times are good and he is popular with recognition, or not.  He is able to be content in all of those circumstances.  Remind you of anything?  In Phillippians Paul similarly explains that "I have learned to be content with whatever I have.  I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.  In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need" (4:12).  It is the commonly forgotten Christian doctrine of contentment.

Still there's more.  Look at the last line: "By whatever term others call it, it is the feeling of doing something we want to do - and doing it well, by measures both honest and sensitive."    Regardless of whether he would receive fame, money or power from it, Krenov was dedicated to the simple idea of just doing it well.  In a pragmatic society where results are emphasized and disposable consumerism is accepted as common place, even in the church, it is jarring to be reminded of a lifestyle that placed importance instead on just doing things - even the little things - well.  It should not be so jarring though, as it is a Christian value old and true.  Paul, again, wrote that "whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31).  We once understood that, among other things, that goal meant seeking a higher, God-glorifying quality in all the different aspects of our life.  Medieval Cathedrals, for example, were the finest buildings around not (just) because the church had money to waste, but because the church knew that if they were going to build a building dedicated to God, that it had better be the best building they could build, one that would glorify God by it's quality.  Does God care about the building itself?  Of course not.  But he cares about the attitude with which we build it.  And so did Krenov.  It's a theology that flows from his cabinetry.  It's no wonder then that Jesus, like Krenov, was a carpenter. 

On Spiritual Training

This reading from Alan Taylor's The Civil War of 1812:

To become proper soldiers, men needed to accept subordination to the orders of their officers... But the republic bred citizens who balked at the regimentation of military life.  Colonel Edmund P. Gaines lamented "The ordinary operation of civil affairs, in our beloved country, is as deadly hostile to every principle of military discipline, as a complete military government would be to a democracy... Every individual composing [the army] must leave at home all of what are considered to be the choicest fruits of republicanism." ...disciplining troops was hard enough for the British, who came from a stratified society which allotted honour to gentlemen and hardship to commoners. Compared to the more egalitarian Americans, British soldiers more readily accepted orders from their officers (p. 319-320)

It's a telling admission: that the culture of American society of the time, with its emphasis on individual liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and seeking after ones' own dreams, created citizens who were unprepared to accept the discipline necessary for effective military service.  Given that the New Testament authors and scores of other Christian writers since then have often compared our own spiritual development to the waging of war (put on the armour of God, anyone?) you have to wonder to what extent our spiritual discipline is undermined by our own society, which surely surpasses the early American republic in its emphasis on personal entitlement and pleasure.

On Ethics, Revisited Yet Again

As it turns out, social morality is not the only field in which each person cannot be left merely to look out for themselves and an overarching intervention for the common good is necessitated;  economics also discovered that implication of human nature.  As Keynes wrote,

It is not true that individual possess a prescriptive "natural liberty" in their economic activities.  There is no "compact" conferring perpetual rights on those who have or on those who acquire.  The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide.  It is not a correct deduction from the principles of Economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest.  Nor is it true that self-interest generally is enlightened.  More often individuals acting separately to promote their own ends are too ignorant or too weak to attain even these.  Experience does not show that individuals, when they make up a social unit, are always less clear sighted than when they act separately.

J. M. Keynes, apud Nicholas Wapshott, Keynes Hayek, p. 35.

On Reading Sympathetically, Again

Hayek has not read my book with the measure of 'good will' which an author is entitled to expect of a reader... Until he can do so, he will not see what I mean or know whether I am right.  He evidently has a passion which leads him to pick on me, but I am left wondering what this passion is."

J. M. Keynes, apud Nicholas Wapshott, Keynes Hayek, p. 97.

On The Least Of These

Redistribution of wealth is a phrase that is coded for use as a weapon in the American political war between right and left: use it favorably and you must be a socialist liberal pinko commie who wants to steal money from those who worked for it and give it to lazy homeless people who didn't; use it unfavorably, and you must be an uneducated redneck gun carrying republican too stupid to understand enlightened values.  It's unfortunate when words, phrases and the ideas they represent get co-opted like that by the political polemic, since it usually means any thoughtful consideration or honest conversation of them has come to an end.

Just as well, today's reading brings up the morality of wealth redistribution.  From The Case Against Perfection by Michael Sandel.  First you need to understand Sandel's idea of "giftedness."

But striving is not the point of sports; excellence is.  And excellence consists at least partly in the display of natural talents and gifts that are no doing of the athlete who possesses them.  This is an uncomfortable fact for democratic societies.  We want to believe that success in sports, and in life, is something we earn, not something we inherit.  Natural gifts, and the admiration they inspire, embarrass the meritocratic faith; they cast doubt on the conviction that praise and rewards flow from effort alone.  In the face of this embarrassment, we inflate the moral significance of effort and striving, and depreciate giftedness (p.28)

So success does not always flow exclusively from your hard work, but is based as well in your own natural giftedness.  What are the implications of that?  He argues later:

Why, after all, do the successful owe anything to the least advantaged members of society?  One compelling answer to this question leans heavily on the notion of giftedness.  The natural talents that enable the successful to flourish are not their own doing, but, rather, their own good fortune -- a result of the genetic lottery.  If our genetic endowments are gifts rather than achievements for which we can claim credit, it is a mistake and a conceit to assume that we are entitled to the full measure of the bounty they reap in a market economy.  We therefore have an obligation to share this bounty with those who, through no fault of their own, lack comparable gifts (p.91).

So there you have it: wealth distribution is a moral necessity because the means by which we gained that wealth were not of our own doing but were natural gifts that we inherited by fluke, and so it would be wrong to keep that wealth from those who did not benefit from the same fluke.

The conclusion is nice because it offers an outcome that feels fair and just, but does the argument hold?  It has potential, certainly, but there is something incomplete about it.

Let's accept his premise that success is in part due to our naturally inherited gifts and not solely based on our own effort.  Does that premise establish the necessity of sharing my success with the poor?  Sandel argues that "it is a mistake and a conceit to assume that we are entitled to the full measure of the bounty" and to that extent he is correct.  But agreeing that we should not assume something only means that we should have some more in depth discussion and reflection before accepting the conclusion, not that the conclusion must necessarily be denied.  Sandel's premise does establish that we should not presume the conclusion, and does make discussion and reflection a necessity, but it does not make rejection of the conclusion a necessity.  Despite that, in the very next line he proceeds as if his premise did in fact establish just such an obligation: "We therefore have an obligation..."   It does not, though, and that is the first thing that is missing from his argument.

So from where does that necessity come?  On what grounds must I share the success that I accrue through my natural gifts?  Why should I think that I am not entitled to the wealth created by my own giftedness?  A good argument could be made that you can claim credit for your natural gifts, and that their nature as gifts does not diminish your entitlement to profit from them.  For example, I may have received those skills and abilities by gift, but I still made the choice to exercise them.  And not just that choice, but I am still the one who made all the many previous choices in my life that brought me to a point where I was in a position to exercise them.  After all, even the most gifted of runners could have chosen to spend their life in front of the TV.  Doesn't that choice entitle me to claim at least some credit for the successful deployment of my gifts?

Reasoning and argument alone, therefore, cannot get us to a place where we have a moral obligation to share our success with the poor.  That obligation comes only from the moral revelations of God.  It is God who gives us that command, God who creates that imperative.  Theology shamelessly fills the gap. 

A second thing missing from Sandel's argument is a consideration of the other parts of our success.  Yes, some amount of our success is attributable to our natural gifts rather than our effort, but other parts of our success do spring from our own hard work and determination.  I am a very gifted professor, but that has yet to successfully land me a job; with over 100 rejected applications so far, if I do get one it will not be because of my gifts but because of my own determination and refusal to give up.  So what do we do with the wealth that does come from our own hard work and effort?  Is it a case where we have to share the wealth that comes from our gifts but get to keep selfishly that which comes from our work?  Obviously not.  Besides being impractical, the distinction is stupid.  But can a reason be given why we must share the bounty of our efforts?  Yes, and that reason, while similar in logic to Sandel's argument, looks outside rather than inside your person: it is based on society.  Simply put, all your good efforts wouldn't amount to a hill of beans if not for the social structures that we have in place that allow your efforts to be profitable.  All of the market infrastructure, the readily available manufacturing sector, the commercial complex, the labour pool, and everything else that is necessary to carry your efforts from wishful intentions to profitable enterprise -- those are all things that do not belong to you, but are created by and belong to the whole of society.  And you can know this to be true simply by pondering how successful Donald Trump would be had he been born to nomadic natives in the heart of the African jungle.  Since it was society's infrastructure that enabled the success of your efforts, then it is to society that at least part of the proceeds of your efforts is due.

Thus are the foundations of the moral necessity for the redistribution of wealth.

On Ethics, Revisited

From The Case Against Perfection by Michael J. Sandel:

Even among those who favor abortion rights, few advocate abortion simply because the mother (or father) does not want a girl.  But in societies with powerful cultural preferences for boys, ultrasound sex determination followed by the abortion of female fetuses has become a familiar practice.  In India, the number of girls per 1000 boys has dropped from 962 to 927 in the past two decades.  India has banned the use of prenatal diagnosis for sex selection, but the law is rarely enforced.  Itinerant radiologists with portable ultrasound machines travel from village to village, plying their trade.  One Bombay clinic reported that, of 8000 abortions it performed, all but one were for purposes of sex selection (pp. 19-20).

To start, let's be very clear about what we are not discussing.  We are not discussing abortion rights.  We are not discussing the morality of sex selection.  What we are discussing is how this particular example demonstrates the necessity of enforced community ethics: the right of society to tell you what to do. 

In the example above, what's wrong with sex determination?  Assuming the method used is moral, is there anything wrong with parents wanting one sex over the other?  One friend desperately wanted a baby girl and tried 4 times for one.  The result?  Four boys!  So what would really be so wrong about taking any moral steps available to ensure the desired sex of baby?  In each individual case, the answer appears to be: not much.

This is especially true in cultures that favour one over the other.  There can be, for example, a great many benefits to having a boy over a girl.  A son will likely earn more money over the course of his lifetime, and thus be better able to provide for you.  A son, in many cultures, is thought to bring more honour to the family.  In many cases, a son is the only way to continue the family name.  And so on.  We can (and should) begrudge the cultural misogyny that is the basis of many of those benefits, but can we really begrudge an individual family simply for wanting such advantages?

The bigger problem, however, comes when we look at the issue on the societal level.  While there may be a lot of benefits for individuals who have boy babies, there are a lot of cons for society as a whole when too many individuals avail themselves of that option.  Some of these cons are specific: for example, it is well known that men are disproportionately responsible for violent crime; ergo, a society with significantly more men than women will likely experience more violent crime than a society with a balance of men and women (or even more women than men).  That is a cost for society.  A more basic problem though is the simple continuation of society.  Obviously a society with insufficient women will inevitably suffer a declining birthrate, and as the problem compounds (i.e. if a higher percentage of even the declining birthrate is determined to be boys) society as a whole will simply run out of people.  In other words, baby sex selection literally gives us the ability to select ourselves into extinction.  That's a heck of a cost!  Thus, when parents choose to have boy babies, they accrue benefits for themselves but incur costs for the rest of society. 

That is an injustice, and that injustice is the grounds for enforced community ethics.  In other words, society has the right to prevent you from making a choice that will unjustly detriment the rest of society.  That sounds fine, on the surface, but the reason we took this example from today's reading is because of how beneficial the choice in question is for the individual.  A live-and-let-live perspective on ethics is essentially an ethical version of the economist's "invisible hand of the market place."  The economics version assumes that all the individual choices of individual buyers will cumulatively result in the right market corrections, e.g. no one person would choose to buy a bad product, therefore no one will buy bad products, resulting in bad products being selected out of the marketplace.  The ethical version follows the same logic: as each individual makes good choices for them, the cumulative result will be good for society.  What today's example shows, however, is that individual good can be opposed to the greater good: what's good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander.  All this is why, as a society, we have the right and need to tell you what to do with your life.  And that's called ethics.

On Faith

From Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert:

What is the conceptual tie that binds anxiety and planning?  Both, of course, are intimately connected to thinking about the future.  We feel anxiety when we anticipate something bad will happen, and we plan by imagining how our actions will unfold over time.  Planing requires that we peer into our futures, and anxiety is one of the reactions we may have when we do (pp. 14-15). 

In Matthew 6 Jesus is recorded saying:

27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?
  28 "And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don't work or make their clothing,29 yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?
  31 "So don't worry about these things, saying, 'What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?'32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.33 Seek the Kingdom of God* above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
  34 "So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today.

Similarly, James wrote:

13 Look here, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit."14 How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it's here a little while, then it's gone.15 What you ought to say is, "If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that."16 Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.

On Providence

One of the things that differentiates Christianity from a fringe cult is - or at least is supposed to be - that we submit to a rational-empirical epistemology.  In other words, we're not free just to make up whatever we want and believe it; beliefs must be be grounded in demonstrable facts.  That is the basis of the scientific method that undergirds the entirety of modern knowledge, and Christianity is not exempt from this simply because our worldview includes divine revelation.  God's revelation gives God's truth, but, as we know, no two truths can contradict.  The long and the short is that while revelation may transcend human knowledge, it cannot contradict it (and if it appears to, then one of the two is wrong and thus either not revelation or not knowledge).  This is the opposite of what a religious fringe will do.  The fringe will decide on their beliefs, and then desperately pretend that whatever reality they encounter accords with those beliefs.  That's not how religious knowledge works.

Christianity made that mistake already, most notably with Galileo.  When he demonstrated that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than trying desperately to deny that for the sake of their beliefs, the church should have seized the opportunity to learn about God.  Yes -- learn about God.  They should have said "the earth revolves around the sun, that is the reality, so what does such a reality imply about God and his character?  What type of God would effect such a reality, and what kind of meaning should we take from that?"  That is how religious knowledge works. 

With all that in mind, what can we learn about God from today's reading, taken from A Billion Wicked Thoughts by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam:

In fact, today's human population is descended from twice as many women as men.  According to recent DNA analysis, though the history of the human race about 80% of the women reproduced.  Only 40% of men reproduced.  This means that plenty of men were able to have children with multiple women -- but the majority of men never had any kids (p. 80).

On Glorifying God

Another reading from The Anarchist's Tool Chest by Christopher Schwarz:

We have become a culture that is obsessed with price more than any other attribute of the things we buy.  It doesn't matter if the item is ugly, poorly made or constructed of materials that cannot be recycled.  All that matters is if the price is low enough.  Because the price of our household objects has hit rock bottom, if an item breaks or starts to look dated, we can throw it away and buy something else.  For the first time in human history, manufactured furniture is shockingly inexpensive.  So it's no wonder that artisans are exiting the craft.  It's difficult to compete against furniture that costs less than what you pay for your raw materials (458).

Those in the church are equal participants in this trend, though we might even be worse.  While the common person may simply be motivated by saving a buck, or might even be honest enough to admit that they're being greedy, those in the church tend to dress it up in blame-diverting spiritual terms.  We call it "good stewardship."   When we make the lowest price the law, we are simply being "good stewards" of the money God has entrusted to us.  To spend any more than we absolutely have to is wasteful, bad stewardship.   You get extra pious-points too if you add in something about the poor starving people in Africa, and how sinful it would be to spend extra on something here when God's children over there are lacking everything.  (That line would be a bit more meaningful if every dollar we saved at Walmart actually did go to Africa).

An older strain of Christendom, however, would puzzle at the assumption that theology aligns so well with modern discount commercialism.  For them, the dominant thrust of Christian practice was not to be a good steward, but to glorify God in everything you do.  Since God is more glorified by good than by bad, it naturally followed that you could better glorify God by doing a good job than by doing a bad job.  The Christian worker, then, would seek to do every job to the very best of their ability, so that the end result of their work would glorify God.  Medieval Cathedrals, which are so often disparaged today as shameful wastes of money, were examples of this: if we are going to build a building for God, it better be the best one we can build.

On Drawing Lines

In his very readable treatise on fine woodworking called The Anarchist's Tool Chest, Christopher Schwarz sets out on a mission to re-establish woodworking as an art of craftmanship counter-cultural in this age of mass produced consumer grade crap:

Woodworkers generally labor alone, producing objects that are the result of just our tools, our minds and our hands.  And the objects that we build are a slap in the face of the chipboard crap that is forced down our throats at every turn.  Though woodworking might seem a traditional, old-time skill, it is quite radical in this consumerist age where buying stuff is good and not buying stuff is considered fringe behavior (p. 10).

The enemy of fine, well-built pieces of craftsmanship are the chipboard pieces of crap that masquerade as woodworking today.  On another occasion Schwarz calls them "cheap, mass-manufactured termite-diarrhea furniture in discount stores" (p. 25).  He might have just called them Sweedish!

Most of the book is devoted, however, not to describing honest and true woodworking, but honest and true tools of woodworking.  This is because real woodworking can only be made by real tools, and so separating them from fake tools is the first necessary step.  He calls these fake tools "tool shaped objects" and describes his childhood initiation to them thusly:

Somehow one summer I scraped together enough money to buy a coping saw.  I fretted (excuse the pun) over the decision because Ace Hardware and Sears both carried coping saws, and I can remember traversing the parking lot between the two stores as I made my choice.  I settled on the Craftsman coping saw.  What a piece of crap.  I regret that decision to this day.  The saw is still in my basement, and it is still a shining symbol of garbage.  It won't tension anything except my nerves.  The blade rotates sickeningly like a dislocated shoulder.  But it does have a nicely finished hardwood handle and a chromed frame.  This was my first experience with what I like to call "tool shaped objects" -- things that look all the world like tools but don't really do the job required of them.  At the time I should have tried to fix the saw with lock washers, a welder or chewing gum.  But instead I did something far more modern and stupid: I bought another coping saw.  It was the beginning of a pattern.  I bought tools believing the claims on their packages.  And when they didn't work, I'd look for a different tool that would promise more.  In other words, I tried to spend my way into good craftsmanship.  I ended up spending hours of shop time messing around with tools when I should have spent that time practicing basic skills (p. 94).

Humanity has long thought about the relationship between the "real" and the many imitations of the real.  Any first year philosophy student knows of Plato's allegory of the cave and its idea of forms, but less known is Baudrillard's theory of simulacra.  He argued that the imitations - which he called simulacra - had the power to usurp and destroy the original real, so that all that remained were multiples of diverse imitations.  This process occurs in stages:  first the simulacra reflect the basic reality, then they pervert the basic reality, then they mask the absence of basic reality, and finally they bear no relation to any reality; they are their own pure simulacra.  

How do you tell the difference though between the real and the imitation, the original and the simulacra?  For Schwarz, identifying a real tool from a tool shaped object is easy: they are revealed by how well they actually work.  Discussing chisels he writes:

...why the hell are so many modern chisels in the catalogs and stores so bad?  ... the truth is that most chisels look good on paper.  And they look good hanging on your shop wall.  But they are a sadly degenerated photocopy of what a real chisel is.  The important details have been lost.  Important decisions about how the tools should be manufactured have been made by people who have no idea how the tool will be used (p. 49).

 This is one way in which the practical arts are much easier than the liberal arts: truth is much easier to spot.  If something doesn't work, then it just doesn't work, and all the fancy rhetoric in the world isn't going to change that.  You can't argue someone into thinking that their roof really ain't leaking.  You actually have to fix the roof.

When we shift to the world of ideas though, imitations suddenly become harder to unmask, and their costumes grow better with the persuasive power of their proponents.  Sometimes scholars just give up entirely.  Take the field of textual criticism: what  are corrupt manuscript copies but simulacra, and what is David Parker's theory of "The Living Text" - which holds that every different copy is equally genuine in that they each express the different lives of their users - but capitulation to the simulacra?  You would never find Christopher Schwarz suggesting that crap chisels aren't really crap but simply reflect the different life situation of the millwright who made them.

That doesn't make them any less an imitation though.  Just as there are tool-shaped-objects, their are truth-shaped-ideas and wisdom-shaped-arguments.  It may be hard to draw the line between them, but that doesn't diminish the need to do so. 

On The Erotic Baptist

There was once a Baptist camp & conference ground that was obsessed with proper, orderly parking.  Everywhere one looked there were signs dictating where one could and could not park.  Violations of these dictates were regarded as one of the most serious offenses: do not mess with a Baptist and their parking!

Years later something odd had happened though.  The phalanx of parking signs had been surpassed in quantity by a new type of sign, these ones bearing a very different message.  What, one might wonder, could be more terrifying to the Baptists than disorderly parking?  Why, bikinis of course!  The signs all decreed that there was to be "Modest Swimwear Only!"

We can pick on the Baptists, of course, but in truth they are simply reflecting a long religious tradition of opposing immodest clothing.  Western Christianity has long thought it wrong for a woman to show too much skin.

But why has it thought that?  The popular answer - and in essence this is probably the accurate explanation - is that religion has been scared of sex.  Sex was considered evil, dirty, and bad, and thus anything that might relate to sex must be suppressed and covered up. 

God does, it appears, encourage some degree of modesty.  In the New Testament it says:

⁹ I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, ¹⁰ but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

But why?  Why does God encourage modesty?  Is it really for the reason that religion has usually thought - because sex is bad and needs to be hidden?  What if it were not for that reason at all?  What if the reason God encouraged modesty was not because sex was bad and he wanted to diminish it, but quite the opposite: because sex was good and he wanted to enhance it?

That brings us to today's reading, from Elaine Sciolino's La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life.  In western thought there is perhaps no culture more connected with sensuality then the French, so the following excerpt is interesting:

"Nudity is extremely violent to gaze at," [the French super model] said. "I would never walk naked in front of my husband.  Never, never, never."
"So you're only nude in the shower?" I asked.
"I'm nude when I'm alone, and I'm nude when I'm in his arms, but never in a sort of casually stupid gesture of the morning, or whatever.  Never."
"So nudity is not something trivial?"
"Of course not.  But we know that."
...I told her how different it was in the United States, where many women feel liberated and sexy walking around the bedroom in the nude.
...Her motto is "hide to show better," an expression of the French idea that partial concealment enhances the erotic (pp. 14-15, 140)

Letting it be hidden, then, rather than letting it all hang out is what enhances the erotic and makes sex better.  The purpose of modesty, therefore, may not be to suppress sex, but to improve it.  Of course, modesty must be understood relatively here -- the French invented the bikini, so the Baptists still have something to worry about.  In prescribing the principle of modesty, however, those Baptists may have been being more erotic than they realised.

On Fooling Ourselves

Today's reading comes from Gene Heyman's Addiction: A Disorder of Choice.

Given a series of choices, there is more than one way to frame the possible options.  It is always possible to choose between the available items one at a time, or to organize the items into sequences and then choose between different sequences.  This will be called local and global choice... Local choice is simple, but it ignores the dynamics that link choice and changes in value.  In global choice, the options... reflect the dynamic relationship between choice and changes in value (p. 119).

How do we make decisions?  Why do we choose to do the things we do?  Psychologists, Heyman explains, distinguish two different kinds of choice, which he calls local choice and global choice.  Local choice is a decision made by weighing the current pros and cons as they apply to the present situation, e.g. what do I feel like for dinner tonight? Global choice weighs the decision based on the overall effects of both that decision and the future decisions it will necessitate.  I would be tempted to say this is just a fancy psychologist way of talking about short-term and long-term thinking, but I do think it's more than that.  Global choice is about more than simply accounting for the aggregate long term effects of a decision; rather, it seeks to identify the true nature of the decision when it is viewed from a perspective that transcends our immediate situation.  You might call it a God's eye view.  And from that view decisions that we think are one thing can actually reveal themselves to be something very different.  An easy way to get this idea:  No one decides to get fat, but they do decide to have that piece of cake.  And that is the difference.  Local thinking chooses the cake because right now we want cake, and right now cake will taste good, and right now cake will have minimal negative effects:  it won't make us fat tonight!  And yet viewed globally, that decision to eat cake becomes a decision to get fat.  And that's the key.  More than long term effects, it's about the true identity of the decision.  The real nature that emerges over time. What are we really deciding to do?

And that is how we so often fool ourselves.  We choose to do something bad not because we are bad or because we intend to choose something bad, but because we're seeing it as something good; we're not seeing its true identity.  And in naming it wrong we undermine our own decision process and thereby sow the seeds of our own demise.  Then when the unbearable end naturally comes, we recoil and think "this can't be my fault, I never would have chosen this!"  True,viewed globally you never would have chosen that, but locally, you did.  That is why we need to find a way to be honest with ourselves about what we are really choosing.

As Heyman quotes William James describing those who struggle with alcoholism:

He has made a resolve to reform, but he is now solicited again by the bottle... If he says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out, or a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends, or a case of learning something at last about a brand of whiskey which he never met before, or a case of celebrating a public holiday, or a case of stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in favour of abstinence than he has ever yet made, then he is lost.  His choice of the wrong name seals his doom.  But if, in spite of all the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously furnishes him, he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name and apperceives the case as that of "being a drunkard, being a drunkard, being a drunkard," then his feet are planted on the road to salvation.  He saves himself through thinking rightly (p. 131).

On Human Nature

A new study from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University demonstrated, among other things, that men who had a higher number of lifetime sexual partners reported lower than average levels of sexual satisfaction:

Men and women both were likely to report sexual satisfaction if they also reported frequent kissing and cuddling, sexual caressing by the partner, higher sexual functioning, and if they had sex more frequently. On the other hand, for men, having had more sex partners in their lifetime was a predictor of less sexual satisfaction.

This compliments what Regenerus & Uecker documented in  Premarital Sex in America, namely that women who had a higher number of lifetime sexual partners were more likely to report above average levels of unhappiness and experienced depression and other mental health issues more often.  They further argued that the data showed that the correlation was causal, and thus concluded that, as a general rule, the more sexual partners a woman had the more unhappy and more depressed she was likely to be.

On the other hand, Regenerus and Uecker found no correlation between a higher number of sexual partners and depression in men, and thus concluded that having more sexual partners was not detrimental - at least mentally - to men.  This Kinsey study then appears to fill that gap.  While a higher number of sexual partners does not cause depression in men, it does rob them of their sense of sexual satisfaction.

So there you have it: having more sexual partners leads to depression in women and dissatisfaction in men.  In other words, it's bad for you.

Now we could respond to this by jumping up and down in a fit of pompous I-told-you-so-ness and ranting about how the bible was right all along, but I'm sure James Dobson is already doing enough of that for everybody.

We could conjecture reasons why this counter-intuitive truth is true with men -- why would more sex partners lead to less sexual satisfaction?  Is it because the multiplicity of reference points dumps them into an empty and vicious circle of comparison and envy, i.e. they can never be satisfied with one sexual partner because they are always wondering if they are missing out on a better future partner?  Or maybe regretting losing a past partner?

I would rather, however, take the opportunity to wonder about human nature.  The thing is, while more sexual partners appears to be scientifically proven to be bad for you, the average human has, historically, been obsessed with getting just that very thing.  The fact that most men, in general, would like to have sex with lots of women can be filed under obvious.  It is men, after all, who are more likely to cheat.  It is men , historically, who kept harems.  Even King David - famously a man after God's own heart - kept a harem, and his son, the divinely wise King Solomon, had upwards of one thousand wives and concubines.  In the moive The Man In The Iron Mask one of the young king's underlings note the king's harem and asks "so many women, do you ever really love any of them?"  The King smiles and replies "quite frequently!"  Bottom line, we seem to be hard wired in our nature to want more sexual partners.  So why does our nature want what is bad for us?

This leads to today's reading, from Robert Jensen's "Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity."  (And before you classify him as a Dobsonian conservative, it should be noted that Jensen self-identifies in his own words as a liberal, bi-sexual "radical feminist"):

In the ongoing cultural conversation, these issues often reduce to claims that some aspect of human behaviour is "natural."  At one level, this is a true but empty statement.  If human beings can do something, by definition it means that behaviour is within our nature to do and is, therefore, in some sense natural.  We all have within us, as a part of our nature, the ability to engage in a range of behaviours.  We have the capacity to be kind and loving to friends and family, and then turn around and torture them.  We have the capacity to love our children and to beat them to death.  All of these activities are natural in this basic sense, and they happen frequently enough that they cannot be written off as the aberrant behaviour of a limited part of the population that is sociopathic.  But most of the time when people assert that a behaviour is "natural," they are making a much more extensive claim; they are asserting or implying that the behaviour is either morally desirable or, if not desirable, extremely difficult to change.  Some argue that such changes are so difficult that the individual and or social "costs" of trying outweigh any likely benefit, though such claims are usually being made by just those people whose privilege is being threatened.  Is it surprising that such people are quick to assert the status quo is natural?  (p. 141-42)

And that much is true.  It is too common today to hear human nature and "it's natural" used to sanctify and justify any number of behaviours.  There seems to be a growing assumption that if something comes naturally, it must therefore be good and right.   As Joshua Knobe recently discussed in the New York Times, following your "true nature" has become a maxim of modern culture:

We might tell him that what he really needs to do is just look deep within and be true to himself. Indeed, this advice has become a ubiquitous refrain.  It can be found in high art and literature (Polonius’s “To thine own self be true”), in catchy pop songs (Madonna’s “Express Yourself”) and in endless advertisements for self-help programs and yoga retreats (“Unlock your soul; become your authentic self”).  It is, perhaps, one of the distinctive ideals of modern life.

As Knobe goes on to discuss though, traditionally in philosophy human nature has been thought of in a different - and indeed opposite - way.  Historically, the true nature of a person was thought to be the character that we rationally construct and strive for which rises above our baser instincts and desires.  In other words, base human nature was what we were supposed to overcome, not embrace:

If we look to the philosophical tradition, we find a relatively straightforward answer to this question.  This answer, endorsed by numerous different philosophers in different ways, says that what is most distinctive and essential to a human being is the capacity for rational reflection.  A person might find herself having various urges, whims or fleeting emotions, but these are not who she most fundamentally is.  If you want to know who she truly is, you would have to look to the moments when she stops to reflect and think about her deepest values.  Take the person fighting an addiction to heroin.  She might have a continual craving for another fix, but if she just gives in to this craving, it would be absurd to say that she is thereby “being true to herself” or “expressing the person she really is.” On the contrary, she is betraying herself and giving up what she values most. This sort of approach gives us a straightforward answer in a case like [this man's].  It says that his sexual desires are not the real him.  If he loses control and gives in to these desires, he will be betraying his true self.

This echoes Robert Jensen's conclusion, that human nature should not be allowed to act as some biological determinant, simultaneously justifying and necessitating our behaviour:

In the end, the question of biological determinism is in one sense irrelevant.  Even if one could demonstrate that men's aggressive sexual behaviour was hardwired and inevitable, so what?  If such behaviour has consequences that violate our most fundamental sense of justice, would we still not want to do everything we could to prevent it?  Would we not infact work especially hard to overcome that unfortunate reality of our evolutionary history? (p. 178)

 So let's look beyond the nature we are born with, and instead let's identify the true good and seek after it.

On Social Perception

Back in Regenerus & Uecker's Premarital Sex in America we learned that psychologists have identified the tendency of people to perceive other people as doing better than themselves; everyone else always has their act more together, has a cleaner, nicer house, politer children, and so on:

On the other hand, we also tend to think other people 'have it together' more than we do, and that they're happier and more successful than we are.  This classic phenomenon is called 'pluralistic ignorance,' a term coined by social psychologist Floyd Allport (p.118). 

 And this accords with our own experience.  Who hasn't felt inferior next to a person who seems to have it all together?  It's also the basis of the much ballyhooed "facebook phenomenon" wherein people - particularly females - get more depressed the more time they spend on facebook.  As Russel Smith wrote in the Globe and Mail:

From the Well Duh Science News department – the forefront of obvious science – we learn that scientists have proved that Facebook makes teens depressed. Years of study by the American Academy of Pediatrics have provided evidence that seeing lots of pictures of parties she wasn’t invited to can make an adolescent jealous.

And yet, while pluralistic ignorance is surely true, as is turns out the opposite is also true.  From Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational:

Our propensity to over-value what we own is a basic human bias, and it reflects a more general tendency to fall in love with and be overly optimistic about anything that has to do with ourselves.  Think about it - don't you feel that you are a better than average driver, are more likely to be able to afford retirement, and are less likely to suffer from high cholesterol, get a divorce or get a parking ticket if you overstay your meter by a few minutes?  This positivity bias, as psychologists call it... (p. 268).

There's those psychologists again, this time with "positivity bias."  This too, however, strikes us as true.  Who hasn't heard of the countless surveys in which the vast majority of people identify themselves as above-average drivers?  Levitt & Dubner explored this concept in Freakonomics, explaining it was the reason why people become drug-dealers even though only a minority succeed in making big money (or at least not getting shot): they all think that they are that special one who will be the successful minority.

So which is it?  As humans, which do we do?  Do we suffer from pluralistic ignorance which causes us to think everyone else is better than us?  Or do we suffer from positivity bias which causes us to think that we are better than everyone else?

Is it time sensitive perhaps?  Maybe some days we look down on ourselves while other days we look at ourselves too highly?

Or maybe it's focus sensitive, i.e. we think other people are better in general, e.g. "they just have their life more together than me" but when we focus on specifics we think we are better, e.g. "I am a much better driver than him."    Or maybe the focus is on the other; that is, when we take about other people in general - a vague, anonymous social mass - we think we are superior e.g. "I'm better than average", but when comparing ourselves to a specific other person we berate ourselves, e.g. "I'm not as good as him"?

Does it, in the end, all come down to our tendency to compare and the human proclivity for envy and jealousy?  As Ariely concludes:

Relativity helps us make decisions in life.  But it can also make us downright miserable.  Why?  Because jealousy and envy spring from comparing our lot in life with that of others.  It was for good reason, after all, that the Ten Commandments admonished 'Neither shall you desire your neighbor's house, nor field, or make or female slave, or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.'  This just might be the toughest commandment to follow, considering that by our very nature we are wired to compare (p. 15-16).

On the Trick to Happiness

From The Birth of Plenty by William Bernstein:

One of the strongest correlations with happiness is the perception that an individual has control of his life.  The solid connection between individual autonomy and happiness has been substantiated by surveys done in scores of nations, from Argentina to Zimbabwe (p. 302).

It's a trick, Ashton Allen sang, believing that you're in control.   Whether in terms of Calvinism vs. Arminianism, or the more philosophical free-will vs. determinism, control -- and specifically, whether we have it -- is something we've been debating since we first learned to debate.  I once heard an agnostic on the issue (Ok, it was me) quip that even if God has predestined all of our choices, it must mean something that he evidently made it so that we would experience them as if we had control over them.

Do we really have control over our choices though?  As a free man living in a liberal western democracy, it certainly seems like I do.  I live in my own house, listen to whatever music I want, eat what I want when I want, blog when I want, and so on.  It seems like I have control.

But do I really?  My alarm went off at 6AM this morning, and that certainly wasn't my choice: it was my boss's!  "But it's your choice to go to work" you might say.  Not really.  Everyone else in the Western world has chosen an economic system that necessitates one having money if they are to acquire the basic needs of living.  The aggregate of all those choices has created a system that robs me of mine: I have no choice but to work.  And all the same, I've been inculturated to desire a certain standard of living, and now I doubt I could settle for less if I wanted to.  Once I get to work the boss already has his music playing.  I wouldn't choose to listen to Hal & Oates, but it would be rude to shut it off on him, so relational etiquette robs me of yet another choice.  And on it goes.  By the end of the day, for how many of the choices I made did I really truly have the practical option of choosing otherwise?  Very few, if any.  Even my choice of socks was predestined by the availability of which ones had made it through the laundry.

So how much control do we really have?  More importantly, why is it so important to us to believe that we have it?  And why do we need to believe that in order to be happy?

On Redemption

From Blind Spots by Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel:

...Researchers found in one study that offering people an opportunity to wash their hands after behaving immorally reduced their need to compensate for an immoral action (for example, by volunteering to help someone).  In this study, the opportunity to cleanse oneself of an immoral action - in this case, physically - was sufficient to restore one's self-image; no other action was needed.  (p. 72)

Our first thought, of course, goes to the gospel account of Jesus' trial before Pilate.  In Matthew 27:24 Pilate, having sentenced Jesus after pressure from the crowds, wishes to absolve himself of the guilt:

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

So did it work?  Did Pilate, as this study would suggest, feel less guilty after that symbolic act?  More importantly, was he any less guilty?  Before God?

What about the sacraments of the church then?  What about our liturgical confessions and absolutions?  This study suggests why us religious folk might like them - these symbolic acts assuage our conscience - but are they actually undermining our spiritual development?  That is, by removing our feelings of guilt, do they thereby remove the main impetus we had for striving to do better?


Or is it in fact the opposite?  Why should we assume that spiritual maturity - spiritual development - involves us doing better?  Doesn't that line of thinking lead to what the old evangelicals called a "works righteousness", wherein we earn our way to heaven by doing good things?  "I'm a good Christian," the so-deluded might say, "because I live well.  I do good things.  I volunteer at the shelter, I give to the food bank.  Sure, I've done some bad things in my life, but who hasn't?  And more importantly, I think I've made up for them by now!"   So maybe this study shows how our symbolic redemptions can counter that.  Maybe, by removing our need to "make up for it" through our own efforts, these acts lead us to rely more on the grace and mercy of God?

Perhaps.  But you should still volunteer to help someone.

A Less Smelly Alternative

From Theodore Zeldin's Conversation.

I don't think the answer is simply for them to explain what they feel, because so long as they feel it, the same results will follow.  But in conversation feelings are handed back and forth until an intimacy develops, and the other person's concerns become one's own (p. 32).

It's a stinking shame that we normally find it easier just to argue them into submission, isn't it?

On Excrement and Death

From Harry Frankfurter's On Bullshit:

Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed.  Excrement may be regarded as the corpse of nourishment, what remains when the vital elements in food have been exhausted.  In this respect, excrement is a representation of death that we ourselves produce and that, indeed, we cannot help producing in the very process of maintaining out lives.  Perhaps it is for making death so intimate that we find excrement so repulsive (pp. 43-44)

and also, it stinks.

The Swinging Scribe?

From Eberhard Nestle's Introduction To The Textual Criticism Of The New Testament:

"For the preparation of his Bible, Origen procured the services... of girls who could write beautifully" (p. 50)

Seriously, why girls?  Maybe it's the fact that he's procuring them, or maybe it's the euphemistic use of servicing, or maybe it's the focus on beauty, but when Origen surrounds himself in all these girls in this way, doesn't it start to sound a little like maybe the scribes weren't the only ones dipping their pen into the ink?  Could this be Origen's harem -- the first ancient scriptoriharem!?

On a Sympathetic Reading

From George I. Mavrodes, "The Inspiration of Autographs," The Evangelical Quarterly 41.1 (Jan.-Mar. 1969): 19-29.

"Because the latter sense makes his sentence clear, I suspect that it is the one which we should attribute to [him] here as his understanding of the term..."

Mavrodes is here dissecting a statement by Machen.  He doesn't completely disagree with Machen, but neither does he agree with him.  He's not accepting him at face value, in any case. And yet, when given a point of uncertainty in Machen's writing - when given a part that isn't quite clear - what does Mavrodes do?  Does he seize the opportunity to have a "gotcha" moment?  Does he quickly assume the worst about Machen and box his statement in with all the other disagreeable ideas? Does he twist the line into something that can be mocked or used as ammunition in the debate?  No.  Instead, he bends over backwards to find a clear meaning in the sentence.  He gives Machen every benefit of  the doubt.  He assumes that Machen must have a reasonable idea in there somewhere, and he takes some responsibility as a reader to find it.  In short, he gives him a sympathetic reading.

On Ethics

From Premarital Sex in America by Mark Regenerus and Jeremy Uecker.

I should not judge anyone's sexual conduct except my own... 83%

While religious and  conservative organizations in this country may attempt to construct systematic barriers to sexual involvement, very few young Americans seem interested in expressing categorical barriers for others or for themselves.  To do so would violate the code of toleration and would just look prudish.  Emerging adults desperately wish to avoid both.  As a result, sexual choices become almost entirely privatized, subject to little oversight outside the self.  (pp. 113-14)

 Ethics is supposed to refer to a system of right and wrong - a system of morals and ideals that govern what people should and should not do.  That ethics is a worked-out system implies, of course, that it is supposed to be normative or prescriptive; that is, it is supposed to tell other people what to do just as much as it tells you what to do.  If it did not do this, then there would simply be no need for such a system in the first place: just as you do not need a factory in order to produce just one item, you don't need a system to govern the actions of just one person - your person.   For that, you only need your own preferences and opinions (which you, conveniently, already have).

So what is to become of ethics, as a field, if the coming generation no longer believes in it?  Regenerus and Eucker document that 83% of young people (university aged) do not think they have any right or standing to evaluate the sexual conduct of others.  To do so would violate the code of toleration.  Remember, R & E are not simply right-wing pundits off on another screed; they are sociologists and they are simply summarizing the results of primary research.  In other words, this is not a case of some grumpy old men complaining that young people these days don't care any more, this is a case of 83% of young people themselves stepping up and saying that they do not care any more.  Granted, R & E are discussing only sexual practices, but do we really think this trend is isolated to sexuality?  Do we really think that people, while not willing to judge others' sexuality, would be perfectly willing to judge, say, their spending habits?  Or their drinking habits? Or any other area of traditional ethics?  I'm sure there are still some areas in which people are willing to cast some judgment, but on the whole I think what R&E have documented is simply part of a greater trend to avoid the evaluation and judgment of the behaviour of others.  In other words, ethics.

And what a loss that is too, since, as R&E further document, your evaluation is precisely what so many others are looking for:

Emerging adults really are just looking around trying to figure out from each other what they ought to want and do, and when.  They can convince each other of all sorts of things. (p. 240)

 Why is it that they are looking to others for normative cues?  R&E offer a theory about socially constructed "scripts" that we instinctively look to follow.  I like that, but I think there's more to it.  I think it might also involve an instinctive desire for justice.

The desire for justice and fairness is, I think, built into us.  Margaret Atwood famously said that we can see this just by watching the line at the bank: watch someone try to bypass the line and cut to the front, and you can see the stiffening reaction of every person in the line - "something unfair is happening!"  These days, with ATMs, we don't see many bank lineups, so instead just go to the grocery store and watch the dirty looks everyone gives the one jerk who shows up at the 1-10 items express counter with 17 things in their cart!
What is the heart of fairness though?  It's the idea that your actions should not negatively affect an innocent other.  And that's how the sense of justice drives a system of ethics: we need ethics to regulate people's behaviour so that their behaviour will not negatively affect innocent others.  Phrased individually, we don't want others' behaviour to negatively affect us, so we instinctively want a system of ethics imposed upon everyone.

But, the argument goes, not all behaviour can affect others.  Personal behaviour - particularly sexual behaviour - affects no one but myself (and my consenting partner), so why should anyone else have a stake in it?  That argument sounds great in theory, but again R&E show it is contradicted by the evidence.  We may think of ourselves as individuals, but we do not live in a individuity, we live in a community, and our actions cannot help but affect the others around us.  Even if we do not see that effect, even if it is small and cumulative and takes a long time to make any difference, that effect is always there:

Other people's sexual choices matter.  Collectively they function as a powerful constraint on our own behaviour.  As the norm of sexual monogamy becomes a more robust characteristic of the wider sexual market, the mantra of letting everyone choose what they want to do becomes moot.  This is because free choice disappears when the majority of men and women become constrained by the structured expectations of fairly prompt sex within romantic relationships, fewer expectations for commitment and permanence, etc.  In other words, if a critical mass of men and women enjoy an extended series of sexual relationships and expect sex fairly promptly within them, it becomes quite difficult for a minority to do otherwise. (p. 245)

A Place of Common Place

By the 17th century, commonplacing had become a recognized practice that was formally taught to college students in such institutions as Oxford. John Locke appended his indexing scheme for commonplace books to a printing of his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The commonplace tradition in which Francis Bacon and John Milton were educated had its roots in the pedagogy of classical rhetoric, and “commonplacing” persisted as a popular study technique until the early 20th century. Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were taught to keep commonplace books at Harvard University (their commonplace books survive in published form). Commonplacing was particularly attractive to authors. Some, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mark Twain, kept messy reading notes that were intermixed with other quite various material; others, such as Thomas Hardy, followed a more formal reading-notes method that mirrored the original Renaissance practice more closely. The older, "clearinghouse" function of the commonplace book, to condense and centralize useful and even "model" ideas and expressions, became less popular over time.