Light On Dark Water

Sunday Night Journal — October 12, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:48:00 +0000

Those Mysterious Atheists

(Reading the first draft of this, I noticed that I had been obliged to qualify the words “atheist” and “atheism” several times, so I decided it would make things simpler if I explained myself in the beginning: when I use the word “atheist” below, I don’t mean the casually atheistic and areligious person who doesn’t give the matter much thought. I mean the doctrinaire atheists like Richard Dawkins who believe that nothing exists except physical phenomena and for whom evolution is not just a scientific theory but an all-encompassing explanation of everything, a religion for materialists.)

When I find myself feeling (and it is feeling, more than thinking) that atheism is actually more plausible than belief in God, it always helps to listen to the atheists and realize, once again, that although science has done a marvelous job of explaining physical phenomena it is utterly unable to explain the human person. I was brought up against this recently by an argument on National Review’s web site in which John Derbyshire, one of the resident atheists, gave this typically snide response to the charge that evolution cannot account for unselfish behavior:

The evolution of moral behavior has been an active field for over 40 years, since William Hamilton's 1964 papers. It has all been extensively explained to interested nonscientists—most issues of the New York Times Science section has something related. Or you could read up on the Prisoner's Dilemma in Chapter 12 of Richard Dawkins' excellent book The Selfish Gene. (The chapter title is "Nice Guys Finish First.")

Altruism and co-operation in social animals, including this one, are perfectly explicable by the laws of biology—what you call the "reductionist understanding of Darwinian natural selection." (I guess the Moon is maintained in her orbit by "the reductionist understanding of Newtonian gravitation.")

This isn't even God of the Gaps; the gap in question here is pretty well filled. Supernatural agents are no more required for explaining moral behavior than they are for explaining earthquakes (for which the wrath-of-Poseidon model is a dead letter, I'm afraid).

(This was a post on NR’s blog some weeks ago; I neglected to bookmark it and don’t want to take the time to find it now, but I assure you the three paragraphs above were copied and pasted directly from the NR page).

In the specific context here, Derbyshire is correct—evolutionists can provide plausible after-the-fact explanations for unselfish behavior. But “altruism and co-operation” are hardly synonyms for “morality.” They may or may not be elements of a particular set of moral principles, but they are not morality itself. To say that altruism and co-operation exist is one thing; to say that they are good is quite another. There is at least one philosophical system—objectivism—which has millions of adherents and which denies vehemently that altruism is good. To say that altruism can be accounted for by evolution says nothing at all about whether it (or any other human quality) is good. To say that it assists in survival is only equivalent to saying it is good if you believe that survival is good.

Anyone who wants to take a serious look at atheism and morality must ask this question: on what grounds can one say that even physical survival, much less co-operation, altruism, or any other mode of behavior, is good in any definite and permanent way?

The debate usually doesn’t get very far from here, because most atheists prove, upon examination, to have very fixed and definite ideas on some fundamentals of morality. They tend to believe, for instance, that it’s a self-evidently good thing for the human race to survive and prosper. But one can make a reasonable argument that this is not a good thing at all, that the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short and that most people are better off dead, or that we pose an unacceptable danger to the rest of nature and should be eliminated, and that the well-lived life is the one spent killing as many people as possible.

Or, at the individual level, one could quite reasonably conclude “To hell with co-operation; I want not just any human genes but my genes to survive, and to that end I devote my life to impregnating as many females, and killing as many males, as possible.”

At this point the atheist, unless he happens to be one of the very small number of people who actually believe things like this, usually begins to bluster and shout and appeal to what is obviously right, to some universal sense of what is decent, or to a presumably shared purpose such as “building a better world for everyone” (I saw that not long ago at the end of a furious denunciation of Christianity). But what are any of these except the sort of abstract moral principles that are by definition not accounted for by evolution—which is, we’re forever being told, a process that operates on the purest sort of pragmatism by preserving only whatever is conducive to physical survival? This is not my parody of evolutionary thinking but one of its proudest boasts, the assertion which is held to prove that moral principles have no metaphysical standing.

Evolution simply has no logical means for speaking of right and wrong, only of what works, and that only with reference to the production and survival of offspring. It can’t, as the saying goes, move from is to ought.

That we should concern ourselves with building a better world is either an abstract principle independent of our wishes or it is a mere subjective preference. And if it’s a subjective preference there is no reason why it should be binding on anyone other than the person doing the preferring. Atheists tend to say that moral questions are indeed a matter of personal preference until you come up with an example that they don’t prefer.

A very few atheists will go so far as to admit this: “All right, the rule against, for example, murder is just a subjective preference, but most people share it, and we will enforce our will upon you if you break the rule.” Well, that’s consistent, at least. But it is not morality. The appeal to morality as such is an appeal to the sense that some things are either right or wrong with reference to some general rule or standard. Not that they are either useful or un-useful, pleasant or unpleasant, but right or wrong.

The fact is that most people including atheists experience the sense that some things are simply right because they’re right and other things are wrong because they’re wrong. Of course there are many differences about the specifics, but almost everyone knows the sensation I’m describing, and the rare exception would be considered sick or evil in any society.

Evolution can offer an explanation of these feelings by asserting that they were conducive to survival, and insist that “right” and “wrong” are simply names for feelings of attraction or aversion to behavior that either does or doesn’t facilitate survival. It can’t say that anything is in fact right or wrong, and it must deny that the sense of right and wrong is what we all experience it to be: a reference to some standard outside our selves and our species. In short, the atheist must deny his own direct experience in order to maintain his intellectual consistency.

Another, similar wreck happens when the atheist confronts the universal direct experience of being a self, a conscious soul which is somehow in a body and is continually perceiving, desiring, deciding, and acting, and conscious of itself as doing so. But for atheism there can be no “ghost in the machine,” no entity which is distinct from the body and which is truly acting freely. Apparently a lot of effort these days is being put into research hoping to prove that consciousness is purely physical in origin and that the notion of the choosing and acting self is some sort of illusion. But this leads to the bizarre and self-contradictory notion of an illusion experiencing itself.

I wonder how evolution might explain the development of an entity that denies its own existence.

Music of the Week: Scarlatti - Sonata in E K.380 (piano vs. harpsichord)

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:00:00 +0000

The first Scarlatti I ever heard was a collection played on the harpsichord by Wanda Landowska. And for a long time I didn’t want to hear his music played any other way. The truth is that I have never really loved the sound of the piano, in spite of all the great music that’s been written for it. And I’ve always liked the sound of the harpsichord. Now that I think about it, that Landowska recording may have been the first time I heard the instrument; certainly one of the first times, anyway, as it was back when I was in college.

But I’m beginning to change my mind. I don’t own the Landwoska recording (I think it was out of print for a long time) but I have a couple of other Scarlatti-on-harpsichord recordings and never really warmed up to them. The sound often seemed just as jangly and clanky and buzzy as people who don’t like the harpsichord have always accused it of being. I’ve begun to wonder if maybe it was something in the atmosphere of the Landowska recording that I liked; it was recorded in the ‘50s at the latest, maybe earlier, and perhaps the poorer reproduction actually improved the sound of the instrument.

Anyway, I’ve recently been comparing piano and harpsichord versions and finding that I prefer the piano: more expressive, more varied, more clear, and generally more listenable for a longer period of time (although three or four Scarlatti sonatas in a row is usually enough). I’ve heard four versions of K.380, one of my favorites (if you’ve ever heard much Scarlatti you’d probably recognize it): two piano, two harpsichord. Only one of these is by a performer, Horowitz, generally considered great, so maybe the comparison is unfair, but I do like his best of the four. I resisted it a bit, as Horowitz seems to play Scarlatti as if he were Chopin, which doesn’t seem exactly right, but, still, it’s very beautiful.

The Horowitz performance is from a Carnegie Hall appearance in 1968, found on YouTube, though with fairly bad sound. (I have the same sonata on an LP, Horowitz in Moscow, but I like this performance better.)

And here’s a harpsichord version; compare for yourself—the instruments, anyway; it’s probably not fair to compare the performers..

By the way, both these seem to omit some repeats, or something: at any rate they’re barely half as long as the other performances I have (Michele Campanella on piano, Richard Lester on harpsichord ). I’m inclined to think the omissions are a good idea, much as I like this sonata. And I do still like the sound of the harpsichord, but less as a solo instrument than as a color mixed with strings or other instruments.

More Escapism (Or Maybe Not)

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:14:00 +0000

Pink Floyd: “Grantchester Meadows.” The funny thing about nostalgia is that you can have it for places and times that you didn’t actually experience. That was the way I felt when I first heard this ca. 1969. Then, hearing it again years later, I had that same feeling, plus the memory of the pleasure of hearing it for the first time. It’s atypical Floyd, and the one track of theirs that I would hate to be without. I bought Ummagumma, a two-disk album, a few years ago, mainly to get this song.

Studio recording with fan video of the real Grantchester Meadows (6:53):

I think it was C.S. Lewis, or maybe Tolkien, who remarked of what is usually called escapism that the people who are typically most concerned about escape are jailers.

Weekend Music Video

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:38:00 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a pretty depressing week. In an attempt to escape I’m indulging myself in a bit of sentimental nostalgia, which I here share with you. It’s a little over two minutes long. Don’t adjust the volume until you’ve gotten past the screaming girls at the beginning.

The album on which this song appeared, Catch the Wind, was probably among the first dozen or so records I ever bought.

Martin Moleski, S.J., on Newman and Polanyi

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:13:00 +0000

I think I mentioned a few days ago that I had come across a very interesting essay bringing together the central insights of these two men, Polanyi’s “tacit knowledge” and Newman’s “illative sense.” At the time I hadn’t finished the essay, but now that I have I recommend it very strongly. I haven't read any of Polanyi at all, and although I read Newman’s Grammar of Assent some years ago it was a very fragmented, late-night reading and I really didn’t get it. The basic idea in both cases seems to be summed up in the phrase “we know more than we can say”—that we can have genuine knowledge that is not reducible to propositions and not expressible in words at all (or not fully expressible). Here’s a key paragraph:

The faith that can be put into words is not the real faith. At the core of the act of faith is a personal encounter between God and the believer. Newman held that there were two luminous beings in our experience, the self and God. But the very fullness of direct apprehension of the self and God mocks all of our efforts to capture self or God in words. Even in the act of speaking as best we can, we know that the self that can be put into words is not the real self and the God that can be put into words is not the real God. No set of propositions can fully disclose who I am. Even as I try to tell a few truths about myself, my mind surveys other aspects of my interior life that run deep into the tacit dimension. When the words run out, I remain—a mystery even to myself, luminous, real, incommunicable, a small image of the inexhaustible mystery of God. In both cases, the material that resists abstraction and that cannot be communicated in words is not a negligible residue, devoid of intellectual meaning, but is instead the heart of the whole matter and the point of every proposition.

(My emphasis). I can’t agree strongly enough with this; it’s behind a lot of what I write, including the name of this blog. The echoes of the Tao te Ching (“The way that can be known is not the eternal way...”) are deliberate.. But don’t think there is some kind of mushy syncretism going on here. On the contrary, this is a model of the way insights from other religions can illuminate and augment Catholic thought without being used as a tool for undermining it.

Here’s the essay. The author teaches at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. I had not encountered his name before but I may read his book, Personal Catholicism, although maybe I should read Newman (again) and Polanyi first. By the way, the formatting of the essay leaves something to be desired; it isn’t typographically obvious where the quotations are.

Agreeing to Pray

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:18:00 +0000

Interesting bit from Wednesday’s meditation in Magnificat (Thursday is my Adoration night, and that’s when I catch up):

It really isn’t up to us whether or not we’re going to pray, as though prayer were something we start. It’s up to us whether or not we’re going to agree to pray. Because prayer is going on inside of us all the time.
—Fr. Francis Martin

In the context, he’s speaking to and of believers, but I wonder if it isn’t true of everybody.

Speaking of Rand

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:02:00 +0000

The mention in comments earlier today of the recent Ayn Rand discussions (here and here) reminded me of something I ran across during those discussions and meant to link to, but never did. It’s an account by Michael Prescott, a former Objectivist, of why he was attracted to the philosophy in the first place, and of why he left it. On the basis of having read Atlas Shrugged and nothing else by Rand, I can say at least that he more than confirms the impression I was left with by the book. I’m tempted to quote at length but instead will just invite you to read the whole thing.

Memorable Song Titles

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:32:00 +0000

In my daily or almost-daily perusal of the new arrivals at eMusic, I often come across some great song and album titles. Best of the week so far: “The Truth Hurts So This Should Be Painless”.

Another favorite which I swear I saw once but now can’t find was something like: “Depression Brought On By the Knowledge That the Rest of My Band Is Really Trying.”

Sunday Night Journal — October 5, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:58:00 +0000

The First Beautiful Thing I Ever Saw

I was at the home of my maternal grandparents. I was probably about four years old, maybe a bit older. Some of the men had been out duck hunting. Later when I was old enough to hunt, I found it mainly boring, and I didn’t like killing things. But I remember being intrigued from the beginning by the paraphernalia: heavy canvas jackets and hats lined with red and black checkered flannel, the guns of dark metal and polished wood, shotgun shells with bases of gleaming brass and red or green cardboard sleeves. Later on the winter sky and the dead fields were added to these impressions.

They had brought back at least one duck, a mallard. The male mallard is the one with the bright green head; here’s a good picture. They must have let me hold it; at any rate I remember not only how it looked but how it felt to the touch. The feathers were miraculously soft and smooth and lustrous, but the body was unnaturally limp.

I had some idea what death was; at least I knew that it was possible for people to go away and never come back, though I’m not sure whether I had ever actually seen a dead thing. Anyway, I knew the duck was dead, and there was a sadness in that. But it was beautiful. I didn’t have that word and couldn’t have expressed my feelings. All I knew was that looking at the bird was intensely pleasurable and that I wanted to keep on looking at it. This is my earliest memory of that sensation.

The duck’s head was a dark green that remains one of the colors I like most—dark, and yet shining, green with streaks of something like gold where the light struck feathers at a certain angle. And on that green there was one perfect drop of brilliant red blood. That drop of blood still bothers me, because it was part of the beauty.

Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #9

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:15:00 +0000

As another musician, once famous but now half-forgotten, said: you can’t touch this.

Gone for the Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:41:00 +0000

Just letting everybody know that I’ll be out of town for the weekend. I may have a chance to check in once or twice but will mostly be offline. Enjoy your weekend. Clare’s links to her pet photos in the comments (whatever thread that was) reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post this one. I have a larger version somewhere but no time to find it now.

The Four Temperaments Test

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:59:00 +0000

Ok, I finally did this. If I tell you either the results or the length of time it took me to complete the test, you can probably guess the other: (1) melancholic (59%) / phlegmatic (41%) and (2) 45 minutes or so, i.e., too long. I kept getting hung up on questions that didn’t really have a definite answer. For instance, in a question about the condition of my house I wanted to know where “cluttered” ends and “a mess” begins. (For this one I considered not my house, which, obviously, is shared with my wife, but my office at work and my study/office/whatever at home, the places that are totally under my control.)

And then there were a number of questions to which I wanted to answer either “all of the above” or “none of the above”, like this one:

When I realize that I have made a mistake, I tend to want to:
deny it
apologize and try very hard to make sure everyone still likes me
blame others
wish that I could deny it, but I take full blame
fix it

(Correct answer: all of the above, although the first, third, and fifth may be a bit stronger. And yes, I realize some of them are mutually exclusive.)

Reading the description for this type, I find it reasonably accurate, as far as these things go, except for this: “...capable of long-range planning, organization, and attention to detail that makes them excellent and conscientious scholars.” That’s just totally, laughably inaccurate. Unfortunately.

Not Exactly Banned In Fact Not Even Seriously Threatened Books Week

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:38:00 +0000

I was just reminded, at the Touchstone blog, that this is so-called “Banned Books Week.” Most of the incidents deplored in this posturing are simply disagreements about what books belong in a public or school library, or in a classroom, and it’s always irritated me (to an unreasonable degree, really, and I’m not sure why) that no distinction is made between that sort of thing and real repression. No doubt it has something to do with the fact that real repression is pretty hard to come by in the U.S.A. Here is S.M. Hutchens’s succinct demolition of the pretension. Hutchens is himself a librarian.

Portrait of the Blogger As a Four-year-old

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:39:00 +0000

From The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes:

It is alleged by a friend of my family that I used to suffer from insomnia at the age of four; and that when she asked me how I managed to occupy my time at night I answered, “I lie awake and think about the past.”

—Fr. Ronald Knox

Sunday Night Journal — September 28, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:27:00 +0000

Hope First

One day last week Francesca Murphy said something in a comments thread that I wanted to pursue a bit further, but I was too busy. So I’ll do it now. Francesca said:

In modern times, especially in the 19th century, Christianity re-presented itself, (partly) and partly was re-presented by others, as being essentially about ethics. Its metaphysical not even to mention its mystical claims were not of great interest to moderns, but its ethics were.

I think this is true. It strikes me, too, looking at Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, that an emphasis on the faith as primarily concerned with ethics is characteristic of many factions that are in their specific concerns very hostile to each other. (I’m just going to refer to “Christianity” here, as what I’m going to say is applicable to the Christian community at large, not only to the Catholic Church.) The religious right, the social-justice left, and even traditionalists who wish to restore a past Christian order or create a new one have in common that they appear to the world as simply one group among many with a set of ideas about how to run the world. There’s nothing wrong—in fact there’s much right—about Christians presenting their social-political vision to the world on its own merits, and not as something of interest only to Christians. But if that’s all people see of the faith then its nature is being fundamentally misrepresented and misunderstood.

It’s a commonplace that Christianity is not to be identified with any specific political system. But more importantly, and more essentially, it shouldn’t be seen as a primarily an ethical program at all, whether social or personal. Christian morality comes after the Gospel and much of it only makes sense in that light.

That’s a matter of truth, and also an important point for evangelization. If the first and possibly only thing an outsider knows about Christianity is, for instance,a its sexual morality, he may just laugh and pass on, believing it silly, outmoded, and repressive. To really understand why Christianity teaches what it does about sexual behavior, you have to understand what it teaches about the essential nature of sex itself and of the human person.

Moreover, to preach a system of ethics is usually to engage in an argument, and in this case it may well be an argument that is crippled by lack of agreement on underlying principles. And when an argument begins people usually want to win more than they want to arrive at truth, and this is as true of the Christian in this case as of the other. So a situation may be created where the non-Christian has a strong (and probably unacknowledged) motivation not to agree. This is especially true now when so many people are so angry about politics and all the cultural questions connected to religion.

The core of Christianity is that it is an answer to the most fundamental questions and deepest longings of human life: What is my purpose? Why must I die? Is the longing for perfect happiness that I’ve had since I was born simply an illusion that will die with me? To say to a person asking these questions that the hope of such fulfillment is as reasonable as the hope of water to a thirsty man seems a much better place to start than the moral principles which are a means toward that end. To preach morality first is often to preach in the very unpopular sense of that word. Christian hope logically precedes Christian morality.

Returning to Francesca’s comment: I would like to think we might be entering a time where the world is once again interested in Christianity’s metaphysical and mystical claims. If this is true in the modernized world—Europe, America, much of Asia—it’s probably because we have attained so much and are still so unhappy.

I don’t mean, obviously—well, maybe not so obviously, as I’ve occasionally had some very curious views attributed to me when I didn’t explicitly deny them—I don’t mean that Christians should avoid discussing ethics or refrain from making a Christian case on political and cultural controversies. It’s a matter of emphasis, and of what comes first.

The Princess Bride

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:43:00 +0000

Just finished watching it. Delightful. I can see why people are such big fans of it. I think I mentioned when it was discussed in the comments that I had seen bits and pieces while other family members were watching it, to which Ryan C replied that you really need to see it from the start, which is true.

Music of the Week: Metallic Falcons - Desert Doughnuts

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:05:00 +0000

Although this album could be categorized broadly as coming from the world of indie rock, it’s not a collection of songs but an extended sonic ambience in which fragments of music appear and disappear. I would think most people would find it either irritating or captivating. I’m definitely in the latter group.

How to describe it? Imagine a ghost town in the desert, “ghost” not only in the sense of being abandoned, but in the sense of being inhabited by ghosts. First there are the ghosts of the late 1800s when the town was born and died with a gold rush that soon fizzled out, or was built on the path of a railroad that proved to have no good reason to exist. And then there are ghosts of the mid-1900s, when hippies and rock bands used it as a brief escape from the city. You’ve been set down in the middle of the street (there’s only one) in the middle of the night. And you start to hear sounds coming out of the darkness: distant instruments and voices from the old music hall, a rock band fooling around with half-finished songs, whispers, sad young girls singing of loneliness and longing, encounters with strange beings (perhaps angels) and the sounds of the desert itself.

If that sounds at all intriguing to you, you’d probably like this. It’s mainly the work of two young women, and has a sort of guarded whimsy that I’ve noticed occasionally in sensitive young women who seem to be trying to escape or protect themselves from the brutal sexual climate of the times—notice the cover art, here, where you can also hear samples. And here’s a video; this track, “Airships,” is one of the more straightforward ones. By the way, there’s no sound until about 37 seconds in, so don’t crank the volume on your PC till after that. Length: 3:55.

Summer Afternoon

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:49:00 +0000

This hot-weather image is about out of season now, so I’ll go ahead and post it before it becomes even more so. Summer is over, astronomically speaking, but it takes a while to phase out here. I went outside a little while ago in my usual warm-weather off-work uniform of shorts and t-shirt and found the temperature almost cool enough to be uncomfortable, at least with a breeze blowing—somewhere in the low 60s (F, 16 or so C).

(Click for larger)

Sunday Night Journal — September 21, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:25:00 +0000

My Election Prediction

No, I’m not going to predict who will win this November’s presidential election, because my guess on that subject would be no better than anyone else’s and worse than many. My prediction is that no matter who is inaugurated on January 20, 2009, the country will not be all that much different in January, 2013 as a direct result of that person’s policies.

This may seem a strange prediction to be making at the very moment when the expanding financial crisis seems in fact to have the potential for changing things a great deal, and for the worse. But that’s why I include that final clause: as a direct result of that person’s policies. If things are in fact very different four years from now, the difference will probably have been made by events that are mostly outside the control of the president.

Domestically, it seems to me that, broadly speaking, the situation that existed in roughly the mid-1970s has not changed very much and is not likely to change very much unless some external event causes it to. It was in the ‘70s that the great shifts of the ‘60s resulted in a social, cultural, and political landscape very different from that of the period between roughly 1945 and 1965. And it seems to me that the basic picture that fell into place then has not fundamentally changed.

To fully support my view would require much more time and space than I want to devote to it, but here are a few instances. It was in the 1970s that:

The sexual revolution was won by the revolutionaries; long-standing moral traditions about sex, marriage, and family lost their standing as widely accepted principles. Of course most people didn’t go as far as the extreme revolutionaries, but enough of their ideas took hold to change the basic consensus. The connection between sex and marriage was denied and both were trivialized. Pornography became mainstream.. Etc.
The movement of women into the workplace became the norm, conceptually if not statistically. The middle-class neighborhood that in the past had been filled, during the day, with women and children was, by the 1980s, pretty much deserted between 8 and 5: almost everybody went out to work, school, or day-care.
Health care costs shot through the roof and insurance became an increasingly expensive and uncertain proposition.
Alarm set in about the ability of the government to maintain Social Security and other long-term “entitlements.” The loud expression of this alarm and an absolute refusal to do anything concrete about the situation became a feature of every election.
What we now call the culture war, which began as a battle between hippies and Christians—yes, that’s an oversimplification, and I meant for it to be funny, but I think it’s broadly justifiable—became a permanent feature of national life, with a polarizing effect on politics as moral and cultural disputes became political ones, each side wishing to gain control of the state or at least prevent the other from doing so.
Energy costs went from being a minor concern to a primary one, with dependence on oil helping to tie us to the explosive politics of the Middle East, and everyone decrying the dependence but no one taking any serious steps to mitigate it—not the people, who simply wanted big cars and houses at the lowest possible cost, and not the politicians, who wanted votes and didn’t think that delivering bad news was the way to get them (look what happened to Jimmy Carter).
After the great leap away from legal segregation, the promise of racial harmony dissipated into an unhappy and uneasy estrangement which still exists.
A sort of Chicken Little mentality set in, with the fervent partisans on both ends of the political divide seeing the other as being on the verge of destroying the country. Throughout the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II administrations there have been people screaming that very little of the republic would survive the current presidency. But at the end of each, the domestic situation has emerged looking a great deal as it had before.

I think things are both not as bad as and rather worse than the more agitated among us do. I don’t think, for instance, that the Iraq war has undone us as a nation, allowed the Bush administration to “shred the Constitution,” etc. Nor do I think Islamic terrorism is a threat to our existence. I don’t mean to minimize the effect of these things on the people who are close to them, or to deny that presidents have made any difference at all, for good and ill. I’m only saying that for most people most of the time the daily routine of life in the America of today is not dramatically different from daily life in the America of September 10, 2001.

Nor do I mean to minimize the long-term effects of events like 9/11, or of the slow cultural changes of the past thirty-plus years as they have affected, for instance, marriage—because I do believe that things have changed, and are changing, and overall for the worse. But that’s another story. Suffice to say that I think the changes are slow and relatively subtle, that they drive politics more than they are driven by politics, and that—to return to my prediction—they won’t be affected dramatically by whoever wins the next presidential election.

There are two obvious possible calamities that could have truly serious effects on everyone or almost everyone in the country: a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons and a complete financial collapse. (Of course there are others—an asteroid striking the earth, for instance—but those two come first to mind for me.) If either of those happens it will probably be the case that the president and his administration bear some, or perhaps much, responsibility for not having done things that might have prevented it. What I’m saying is that I don’t think any direct positive action by a president is likely to produce effects on that scale. And that a significant part of the emotion we invest in the election is a struggle over symbols and rhetoric.

These thoughts were prompted in part by a review in a recent Atlantic by Ross Douthat of Nixonland, a history of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s (read the review here). I agree with Douthat that those who believe we are now in a major crisis don’t fully appreciate the seriousness of the crisis of the late ‘60s. Let’s not forget that--to pick two examples—cities were burning in the riots of the late ‘60s and the university system was all but paralyzed in the spring of 1970. By the mid-‘70s those shocks had passed and the country had stabilized in a new configuration. And we’re still living in it.

Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #8

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:38:00 +0000

This symphony would probably be heard more often if someone else had written it. Had it been the one lasting work of a minor composer, it would be regarded affectionately and might appear more often on concert programs. But as a lesser work by a greater composer, it’s easily overlooked. When you have a yen to hear a Beethoven symphony you’ll probably pick one of the more impressive ones.

It almost seems a bit of a throwback to an earlier period, more of the 18^th century than of the Romantic period. There’s a sort of down-to-earth good cheer about it that makes me think of Haydn. It doesn’t reach for great heights or depths but it’s lively and inventive and companionable. The finale makes me smile.

My recent re-acquaintance with most of the symphonies has been just that, a fresh look at something that was once familiar. Not so with the 8^th; I must not have listened to it very much in the early days, because I didn’t recognize it at all. So I feel as if I’ve made a new friend.

Einstürzende Neubauten - Stella Maris

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:30:00 +0000

While writing last Sunday’s journal I looked for the hymn “Stella Maris” and came across this song and video. I recognized the name of the group: Einstürzende Neubauten (“new buildings that are collapsing”) is known as one of the originators of a musical style called “industrial” which sounds very much like you might expect it to (I’m assuming most people who read this blog don’t know this). But I’d never heard any of their music. Apparently they’ve branched out from their industrial roots. Anyway, I think both the song and the video are very beautiful. (The clip is 3:41 long.)

Demonic Peachdroid Menaces Interstate Travelers

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Ok, I admit I’ve been taking pictures while driving again. This is from a few weeks ago when I made a trip up to north Alabama. (For the full effect, click through to the larger version.)

Up in Chilton county, 200 hundred miles or so from here (300 km or so), they grow really, really good peaches. And they are very proud of their peaches—so much so that they built and painted their water tower to look like a peach. I really wanted to get a picture of this rising out of the trees like the moon as I approached, but I missed it and didn’t want to go back. Next time...

Abusing the Union Jack

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:25:00 +0000

This morning’s local paper had a letter from a transplanted Englishman (an acquaintance of mine, actually) complaining that the various Union Jacks being flown around Mobile are upside down. (They’re part of displays commemorating the fact that in the course of its history the city has been under a number of different flags.) This came as a surprise to me, as I had no idea that the Union Jack has an upside-down—if you had asked me I would have said it was symmetrical horizontally (and vertically, for that matter). My wife, who knows his wife, remarked that “N says he complains about that all the time.”

So I made a point of checking out the Union Jack that I pass (without noticing) most mornings on the way to work. I couldn’t see that flipping it over would have changed it at all.

My wife did a little research on the web and here are the results.

Right:

Wrong:

It kind of makes my head spin to look at these together. So now you know, and if you ever need to display the flag of the UK you have no excuse for getting it wrong. Although as soon as I look away from the picture I can no longer remember which is right.

By the way, I think it would look better if the small red stripes were centered in the white ones. I wonder if the queen has an email address.

Ross Douthat On the Recent Brideshead Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:24:00 +0000

It was just a couple of days ago that I got around to reading Ross Douthat’s review of the new Brideshead adaptation in the Sept.1 National Review. Many of us had concluded from the publicity that it was going to be really bad and we weren’t interested in seeing it. If Douthat is right, so are we.

After noting that he is more likely than, for instance, me, to be open to it, because he doesn’t consider the book an untouchable classic and hasn’t seen the 1981 version, he continues:

Alas, the new Brideshead Revisited has one damning disadvantage: It was produced by a group of utter fools. Indeed, if the passel of philistines responsible for this botch of a movie didn’t exist, Waugh himself would have had to invent them. One can’t dismiss outright the possibility that the new Brideshead is some sort of posthumous prank by the master, and that its writers and director, in particular, exist only as Waughian send-ups of a certain modern movieland type, rather than as actual flesh-and-blood nincompoops. Not since Roland Joffe transformed The Scarlet Letter into a bodice-ripping vehicle for Demi Moore’s thespian ambitions (and surgically augmented breasts) has an adaptation of a classic novel labored so strenuously to miss the point of its source material.

He concludes that it must be “a satire of clueless, artless secularism.”

World’s Most Inappropriate Album Cover

noreply@blogger.com (Maclin Horton) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:34:00 +0000

Craig Burrell says he’s found it, and I’m inclined to agree. See what you think. (This, by the way, is an appropriate use of the word “inappropriate”.)