“Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.” — George Orwell
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You may disagree with me that your sovereignty as citizens has been largely stolen by the political and financial oligarchy that I believe rules this country. You may disagree that your Constitution, literally and in spirit, has been gravely violated by the previous and current administrations. That the so-called suspension clause of our founding text, concerning habeas corpus, has been abused, twisted, and stretched.
But I trust that as Columbia intellectuals—mercifully free of received wisdom, resistant to cant, confident in your own skill as readers—you’ll all agree with Edward Said’s summary of your responsibilities and your rights: “The role of the intellectual is to ask questions, to disturb people, to stir up reflection, to provoke controversy and thought.… The role of the intellectual is never to justify power, to always be critical of power, whether it is the power of the weak or the power of the strong … the role of the intellectual is to challenge power by providing alternative models and, also as important, resources of hope.” I would only add that the role of an intellectual is to be prepared to tackle any text.
” — Another wonderful address, this time by the publisher of Harper’s, John R. MacArthur. Some good ones this year!“
So what’s the purpose of the interpretive disciplines? The biologist who comes up with a new antibiotic will save lives. The engineer who figures out how to create safe, affordable energy from fusion could save lives. The fundamental physicist, like the mathematician, can legitimately aspire to having definitively answered some question. But in the humanities we don’t sell answers: we invite you into that ongoing human conversation, the one that Socrates was near the start of, that Montaigne and Jefferson continued.
And through that conversation you come to answer for yourselves the questions no one can answer for you: the ones you have to decide for yourselves. The humanities help you think about what to do with technology, and what not to do. They help you think about the immense potency of scientific thought, and about its limitations. And even when they offer no definitive answers, they help you ask good questions. Such as: What’s the meaning of life? (I did have an answer to that, but the margin was too …)
Never imagine, though, that the sciences and the humanities belong to two separate realms. They don’t. Some of the most exciting work in historical and literary scholarship these days is in what’s call the ” digital humanities.” Social psychology and neuroscience send tendrils into the realm of art and criticism and ethics. Conversation-which I said was central to the humanities-involves communication. And no more powerful mechanism of communication, across the planet, has been devised than the Internet. Information, data, has never been more abundant. Remember all those books and blogs and magazines and tweets.
” —Occidental College :: Kwame Anthony Appiah Commencement Speech
A wonderful address at my future place of employment. I’ve long been an admirer of Appiah’s philosophical insights, which make me that much more disappointed that I couldn’t be there earlier to hear him in person and to perhaps strike a conversation.
Excellent rant by Stephen Walt:
Strategy is all about setting priorities: Deciding which problems merit the most attention and allocating the right level of resources to each challenge. It is about not letting the urgent overwhelm the important, and not getting blown off course by random events or unexpected surprises. Whether we are talking about a country’s overall policy menu, a corporate business plan, or a military engagement, success requires first identifying what really matters.
So when I read James Hansen’s op-ed about climate change yesterday, my first thought was: “Boy, do we have our priorities screwed up.” Here in America, we spend endless hours arguing and debating trivialities, like who is going to get to run Afghanistan (a country whose entire GDP is about one-third the size of the municipal budget for New York City). We turn issues of personal freedom and preference (like marrying whomever you want) into Grand Moral Challenges. We kvetch about a single blind dissident in China, and work ourselves into a lather over not-very-powerful countries like Iran that pose no serious threat to any vital U.S. interests. Like a paranoid nation of sheep, we accept an increasingly onerous set of security restrictions in a futile attempt to drive the probability of a terrorist attack on an airliner down to absolute zero, no matter what the cost or the inconvenience. (And some people now think the current level of TSA madness isn’t enough!)
Meanwhile , we merrily go about finding new sources of hydrocarbon-based energy — like Canada’s tar sands — and get excited about the possibility that “fracking” will free us from dependence on “foreign oil” and allow us to keep using energy at our current profligate levels. Instead of orchestrating a gradual increase in the cost of hydrocarbon-based fuels — to discourage consumption — politicians search instead for ways to keep the cost low (and our SUVs running).
If Hansen is right — and his track record is pretty good — this behavior is utterly myopic. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t devote some attention to other issues — and if you’re been reading this blog, you know that I’m as guilty as everyone else of doing just that — but I wonder how much of Barack Obama’s time and attention has been spent thinking about what his administration could do to advance a sensible agenda of long-term environmental protection, as opposed to the time he’s spent on things that basically won’t matter a damn in a few years. Remember that big climate-change summit back in 2009? Haven’t heard much about that agenda lately, have you?
When historians of the 22nd century look back on our era, I suspect we’ll take a lot of heat (sorry for the pun) both for what we did, but also for what we failed to do. Especially if a lot of places that are dry land today are under water. The only good news: China and its various Southeast Asian neighbors won’t be squabbling over all those bits of rock in the South China Sea that are barely above sea level now.
Tar Lake, Iran
One of the most memorable outings with my family when we lived in Tehran was our trip to Tar Lake. The lake sits atop a mountain peak (near the Damavand region), and so is very difficult to access by car. My father resolved to get us and some Japanese guests to the top in his awesome Nissan Patrol, where we had the tastiest Loobia Polo prepared by my dear mother.
Henry Moore - Summertime off Cornwall (1883)
(via quartertonebloom)
“His observations hold eerily true even in the era of Facebook and YouTube.”
The Daily Beast reports that Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan has chosen Daniel Boorstin’s timeless book, THE IMAGE, as one of her personal picks in the guest book bag for the PEN World Voices Festival:
“Jan. 31, 1977: A horse and rider watch as the space shuttle Enterprise is towed from a Rockwell International facility in Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base for a year of flight tests. Townspeople lined the route for a glimpse of the 110-ton shuttle. A 90-wheel transport was used and accompanied by a 20-vehicle convoy.” (via)
(via akratic)
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