Mr Mugabe Goes to Paris

There's a lot to wonder about the French, but I do think Americans overplay how anti-US they are. I’ve been to French more than a handful of times, and have never received any pent-up “anti-globalist” hostility. However, their government does do a lot of crazy things, and the news today is a bit bizarre. It seems its old rival Britain had objected to the presence of Zimbabwe President Mugabe at a Franco-African summit in Paris next month. Since helping liberate the country over twenty years ago Mugabe has held onto power with an increasingly brutal regime, not only taking away land from the white Zimbabwean elite, but consistently repressing the liberties of all Zimbabweans and rigging election after election. France's only justification for granting continued legitimacy to Mugabe's brutal regime is that "everyone does it." Said a French human rights leader: "Two-thirds of the former French colonies in Africa are run by dictators who are just as bad. If we stopped inviting them, we’d have no one at the Franco-African summit."

That is, we'd have no dictators to give legitimacy to.

Do I Have To Hate Legislatures?

Roe v. Wade was decided 30 years ago today. As a life-long pro-choicer and a believer in substantive due process I should be happy the decision still stands. Yet, I’m having trouble accepting that the Court was correct in overturning dozens of abortion laws through reliance on a non-textual constitutional interest.

I really do think a first-trimester embryo/fetus is not a human being. I also think pro-life advocates have excellent arguments that a zygote is a living person. In an issue so contested as this is it right for seven (in the case of Roe) jurists to overrule the wishes of state legislatures across the country? If I’m wrong a person dies every time an abortion is performed. I have a hard time dealing with that possibility. The Roe Court dodged the possibility entirely. Instead it spoke of the woman’s liberty interest.

And that liberty interest is insanely important. If the government told me I couldn’t save myself from twenty years of responsibility (or nine months—still a heavy burden—in the case of adoption) by undergoing an easily performed medical procedure, I’ll call it tyranny in the highest degree. If abortion did not involve a potential life, but still involved a burden as heavy as pregnancy and parenting, there would be no question that it should be protected under substantive due process.

But many people believe it does involve a potential life, and that’s where my doubts come in. Some issues are so contentious that even if liberties are involved, perhaps the legislative process is the best method with which to deal with them. Libertarians may reel with horror at the prospect of legislatures making decisions over our liberties, but isn’t there something to be said for open debate and discussion in the political process, instead of in the back chambers of our academic elite? Yes I do think economic substantive due process should be reintroduced to American jurisprudence, and yes the courts should be active in nullifying laws intruding on our liberties, even those not enumerated in the Constitution. However, when so many reasonable people believe there’s another life involved (a life which would have its own liberty interest) perhaps liberties are best left to the political process and the legions of special interests (i.e. people who actually care) protesting across the country today.

But then I remember that I am pro-choice, and that I abhor the power legislators wield over our liberties. I simply don’t know what to do. Any suggestions?

Kingsfield is Watching You

I finally got around to watching The Paper Chase. After viewing the 1973 horror flick I concluded that I am damn glad I did not view it before or during my first year of law school. (Read: I would have dropped out and joined the French Foreign Legion.) Even in my current status it shocked the woolies out of me.

Law school really is one of various levels of hell. Different levels for different people, but they’re all down there in the inferno. Every hour of every day is full to the brim with case after case, paper after paper, citecheck after freaking citecheck. Not only that, but the competition truly does drive people to vomit. I know of one instance where a student, upon hearing that their Contracts grade was in, threw up THREE TIMES before they actually saw what the grade was. God knows how many times they hurled after that.

As the somewhat true, somewhat charlatanic Planet Law School tells us, a modern American law school education is not designed to teach the law. It’s designed to create nervous wrecks who won’t know what they’re missing when they work for a Wall Street factory firm. The Socratic method does have its benefits—it forces students to think about how the legal rules apply to the facts of the case—but I don’t think it’s the best way to mold legal minds.

There’s gotta be a less painful way to become a lawyer. Lawyering isn’t all that hard. In many countries it’s only a bachelors degree. Why not give students lectures on the law (as you might get if you read from a commercial outline) and then ask them to apply that knowledge in writing assignments? Expand the legal writing requirement (which in most schools is one measly credit) so that students learn to apply the law in regular installments instead of through fear-laden interrogations followed by ulcer-inducing regurgitation rituals (otherwise known as exams).

Its Lovecraftian ethos aside, one thing I really did like about The Paper Chase was how characters were either called by their last or first names. Everyone calls the main character “Hart” throughout the entire movie—even his girlfriend. The one guy who can’t quite make it, “Kevin,” is the only law student blessed with a human-sounding title. I used to think professors who used first names were being a bit too informal, but now I see their point. Sometimes a mark of distinction, like a surname, can distinguish us from who we really are.

Religious and atheistic bloggers alike should enjoy two inspiring pieces written by Will Wilkinson and Marie Gryphon. Although I thank them for provoking my often-unused philosophical training, I also see them too easily accepting a couple dichotomies—the religious versus the atheist in Will’s, and the common man versus the intellectual in Marie’s (although, as I read her post, I think she rejects the dichotomy in the end). I’m using my new found blog-space to give my, hopefully, unifying thoughts on the subject.

Will speaks of the path of the atheist and the path of the churchgoer. I see these paths as arriving at the same end. The paths may look quite different, but eventually people on each journey are merely trying to fulfill the same human needs.

I’ll get back to the two paths, but first I’ll ask an opening question: Does one need to be “right” to be “happy?” This depends on what “happy” means, of course, but it’s actually not that hard to define. You could say “happiness” equals “pleasure,” in which case people certainly wouldn’t need to be “right” to be happy. (Just take a life-long soma holiday by sticking an electrode into your brain.) This isn’t what most people mean by “happiness,” however. I feel most people would be more comfortable with Aristotle’s conception.

For Aristotle “happiness,” or eudaimonia (“the good life”), is the end of all human activity. We may work a job, start a car, or cook a meal for all kinds of secondary reasons, but if you ask what those reasons are for, in the end the ultimate goal is to be happy. Now, Aristotle thought that the best way, in fact the only way, to get to this goal was by cultivating our virtues. For each person, however, the way we cultivate our virtues will be a bit different. Some require a life as a carpenter, some that of a sailor. Some should eat a whole lot, some just a little.

The point is that everyone wants happiness. If you say “I don’t want happiness, I just want what’s good for my family” or “I just want to be right,” then, if you’re being truthful with yourself, those things, in fact, bring happiness to you. There are certain things that all human beings need in order to be happy. In my opinion this includes the need for a story.

When people go to church, they may not really think there is a God, or that Jesus literally rose from the dead. They may secretly think that we are just random groupings of stardust. What they know, however, is that the story of Jesus inspires them, helps them relate to the world, and gives them faith to keep on acting justly in a world where there is plenty of temptation to do otherwise. They believe in the story as far as it fulfills their deep human need for spirituality.

The most ardent of materialistic atheists go through the same experience. For example, where do Objectivists look for guidance in the choices they make in life? To a syllogism on man’s rational nature? No! They look to how Howard Roark overcame obstacles in order to design the buildings of his dreams. They think about Dominique’s struggle between her love for beauty and her fear for its fragility. They internalize these stories (dare I say these myths) as a way to connect with their spiritual needs.

The devout Christian, the skeptical churchgoer, and the atheist all need to connect with the spiritual, whether the spiritual be a shaft of light from our souls to God, or a component of evolutionarily-created human consciousness. They need the spiritual because it is a required aspect of happiness.

Now, this brings us to the “right” versus “happiness” question. From the perspective of the Christian, they want to be happy. They want to fulfill their spiritual needs, and so they devote themselves to “God.” They may not really care one way or the other if they’re “right” in believing in God, the afterlife, etc. Their religion is a foil (perhaps correct, perhaps incorrect) through which they can self-actualize themselves. In other parts of their lives they might actually want to be right. They might question falsehoods such as the lies of spouses and/or politicians.

But in these matters it makes a difference if they are right or wrong. To ignore whether these are true has a real-world impact (divorce, corrupt government, etc.). In the spiritual side of things, however, many paths may be taken. Maybe the underpinnings of a religion aren’t true. So what? People can accept a bit of falsehood in their lives because the “falsehood” is helping them achieve happiness. The Christian “falsehood” perhaps works just as well as a post-atheistic-conversion myth structure does.

In my life I examined the truth-value of God and rejected it as false. I later came to realize, however, that I had the same needs of myth, beauty, and mystery that believers do. That is why I now call myself a pagan, because in meditating on the classical pagan myths I find my human needs met much more fully than through merely telling myself I have a rational understanding of the world.

I think the best way to conclude this post is to consider Nietzsche’s view of truth. He had a rather Pyrrhonic view of the world—that everything and every argument eventually breaks down. He thought that when we proceed philosophically we should to be true to this view and not refrain when something could be critiqued and argued further. No absolute truths for Nietzsche, and therefore no ultimate objective reality or morality.

He had no problem with this bleak view, however, when it came to one’s own life. (He had many personal problems, but those went beyond any stemming from philosophical doubt.) He thought we have to tell ourselves lies such as “there is good and bad,” or, “there is the beautiful and the ugly,” because we live our lives better when we do so, and that these “lies” are wonderful. We are creating a reality replete with beauty, adventure, and romance—what a fabulous achievement! I don’t know if I agree with Nietzsche’s degree of skepticism, but I do think that EVERYONE, intellectuals included, tells themselves lies in order to get on in the world and create amazing things. The atheist and the churchgoer are doing the same thing—cultivating their souls and engaging with beauty. Both paths are as “right” as they need to be. Perhaps the atheist is a bit more “right” on one question, but that question (whether God exists, whether TM actually raises human-consciousness, etc.) is merely a foil for our spiritual needs. The need to be right is, similarly, a foil for achieving happiness. The intellectual gets her jollies from the pursuit of truth, but if we examine the motivation for that pursuit, we will discover that she does it in order to find happiness, not in order to find truth itself. She, just like the common man, is an artist weaving a path of eudaimoic pleasure.

The first place I go to in the morning is Drudge. I'm not exactly sure why, as there are all kinds of better news portholes, and you often miss the stories he hasn't latched onto. Plus, whenever I go there I feel as if the end of the world is at hand. He does, however, provide me with a dose of sarcasm that almost always gives me my needed chuckle.