Pursuing praxis

FOR LEXOPHILES (LOVERS OF WORDS):

A will is a dead giveaway.

A backward poet writes inverse.

A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.

Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I’ll show you a-flat miner.

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.

A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.

You are stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.

He broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.

A boiled egg is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

A plateau is a high form of flattery.

The short fortune teller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

Marathon runners with bad shoes suffer the agony of de feet.
—-

Coincidentally, two days ago I learned the word malapropism:

Malapropism: an incorrect usage of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with different meaning, usually with comic effect.

Shakespeare, among others, was quite adept at this. 

TIA Daily August 30, 2006

The Unlearned Lesson of Katrina

What the Mainstream Media Is Still Ignoring, One Year Later

by Robert Tracinski

In the press coverage of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we expect a fair bit of the usual throwing around of blame for political advantage, but to my surprise that has not been the main theme of the coverage (though Ted Kennedy couldn’t resist a crudely partisan tirade). Instead, the dominant theme of the anniversary coverage is what is not being mentioned. Having reported the wrong story about the flooding of New Orleans one year ago, the press is trying to protect its distortion by excising from history the events that gave many Americans their greatest shock.

What shocked many of us was not the hurricane itself, nor the response of the federal government - outrage against the Bush administration was cultivated later. What shocked us first was the response of the people of New Orleans themselves: the immediate looting, the violence and rape, the collapse of the city government as demoralized local police walked off the job in the middle of an emergency, and the thousands of people wallowing in squalor while demanding that someone else come to help them. These are the facts that the mainstream media has downplayed or just plain ignored.

Ironically, it was the press itself that first brought this story to our attention, by focusing its reporting on the crime and squalor at the Superdome and the New Orleans convention center in the days after the levies failed. But the press soon began to backpedal, realizing that they had miscalculated. They showed us too much of the squalor, too much of the rampant looting and lawlessness, and too many ungrammatical ravings by foul-mouthed New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. The American people began to lose their initial reaction of sympathy and to wonder instead why so many inhabitants of New Orleans were more eager to blame others for their plight than they were to lift a finger on their own behalf.

The media had hoped for an opposite reaction. They wanted to induce guilt, telling the rest of the nation that the wretchedness of New Orleans was somehow our fault. For example, New York Times columnist Frank Rich lectured us that the poor people of New Orleans "were left behind to suffer and die when the people of means began sprinting toward higher ground. They are the ones who are always left behind, out of sight and out of mind, and I’d be surprised - given the history of this country - if that were to change now." Didn’t we understand that the story was supposed to be about America’s heartless indifference to the poor?

Let’s take a critical look at the events, from a year’s perspective, and see what the real story was.

The left is correct on one point: the story is all about federal spending and the welfare state - but not in the way that they think.

Frank Rich and company claimed that people were trapped in New Orleans because they had been abandoned for decades by a stingy government that denied them an adequate level of welfare handouts. In fact, New Orleans received a higher per-capita rate of federal welfare spending than most cities - a full 78 percent more than the national average - and the districts hardest hit by the flooding contained some of the city’s largest public housing projects. The welfare state had showered its largesse on New Orleans, but with what result?

In fact, the disaster in New Orleans was caused, not by too little welfare spending, but by too much. Four decades of dependence on government left people without the resources - economic, intellectual, or moral - to plan ahead and provide for themselves in an emergency. I stated the lesson at the time:

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don’t sit around and complain that the government hasn’t taken care of them. And they don’t use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren’t doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them - this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

In the week after the disaster, a New York Times reporter profiled two New Orleans families and their different reactions to Katrina. The main difference was not money; neither family was well-off. But one was from the lower middle class - people who are used to working for a living and providing for themselves - whereas the other family fully represented the welfare state mentality. The first family pooled their efforts with their extended family to drive out of New Orleans before the storm hit and stay at an inexpensive hotel farther inland. The other family didn’t leave New Orleans until the flood waters reached their own home - and along the way, they blew their "last $25 dollars to buy fish and shrimp from men grilling them on the street" with apparently nary a thought for what would happen to them after dinner.

The main difference between these two families was not money but responsibility. That is also the difference between the people in New Orleans who stockpiled necessities like food, gasoline, and bottled water before the storm hit, and those who waited until after the storm and looted whatever they needed - which apparently included televisions, jewelry, and DVDs - from the local Wal-Mart. Many of these looters, especially those who struck within hours after the storm passed, were not in any kind of desperate need. As one of them explained to a reporter, "People who have been repressed all their lives, man, it’s an opportunity to get back at society."

This fellow acquired his sense of ethics from the welfare state - and from its spokesmen, like Frank Rich.

This sense of victimhood and entitlement brings us to the other mainstream media claim about Katrina: that it unmasked America’s institutionalized racism and showed, as one rapper proclaimed, that "George Bush doesn’t care about black people." (It could be argued, incidentally, that "rap music" is itself the most insidious form of institutionalized racism today, peddling a debased view of blacks as thugs and whores that exceeds the wildest slanders of Ku Klux Klan propaganda.) But what are the actual facts about Katrina and race? The Coast Guard and National Guard toiled relentlessly for four days to rescue thousands of people from their roofs, saving as many as 50,000 people - most of them black. And an analysis of deaths from the hurricane showed that mortality rates were slightly higher for whites than for blacks. So much for the myth of the racist hurricane.

But that doesn’t mean race was not an issue. Katrina exposed the virulent racism of many blacks, who are raised on a culture of victimhood and grievance and think the rest of the nation owes them a prosperous living. On September 10, for example, Fox News Channel broadcast a live interview with a Katrina evacuee in Houston, a self-parody of the Angry Young Black Man who demanded a $20,000 debit card from FEMA and shouted at the camera: "We didn’t ask to come on that bus. It’s like a slave ship. It’s just like, you know, back in history, you know, they put us on a slave ship. Just give us what the f— we deserve."

What was he describing as a "slave ship"? The buses sent to rescue people from New Orleans - the same buses whose absence in the first days after the flood were considered evidence of nationally institutionalized racism. There is certainly prejudice involved here; this young man has prejudged whites as guilty, and he simply grabs at any rationalization that will confirm his bigotry.

Like this young man, the media has blamed Hurricane Katrina on a massive failure of government - which is also true, but again not in the way that they claim. It was not primarily a failure by the federal government, which is not supposed to be the first responder to a natural disaster. The first responders are supposed to be the state and local governments - who failed utterly.

Mayor Ray Nagin failed to devise or administer an evacuation plan - remember that famous photo of dozens of school buses that were left to be swamped by the flood waters instead of being used to evacuate flood victims? Instead, Nagin spent the entire crisis complaining about what other people weren’t doing to save his city. When asked where he was during the crucial moments of the disaster, Nagin snapped back, to the world at large, "Where were you?" as if a random resident strolling the streets of Buffalo bears more responsibility for the plight of New Orleans than the city’s own mayor.

That Ray Nagin is still mayor of New Orleans, one year later, is the worst possible indictment of the city’s corrupt culture. In 1979, the people of Chicago voted out their mayor because he failed to ensure the timely plowing of the streets after a heavy snowstorm. Ray Nagin presided over an unprecedented collapse in city government, and the people of New Orleans re-elected him. A large number of New Orleans voters are still stuck in the fantasy of holding everyone responsible for their lives except themselves.

William Jefferson also represents the local political culture well. He’s the congressman whose home district is in central New Orleans - and he’s also the congressman recently caught hiding $90,000 worth of bribe money in his freezer. Nagin and Jefferson are typical political products of the welfare state. Their job is not to protect citizens’ lives and property, but to dole out vast sums in vote-buying patronage to their supporters and constituents, and occasionally to skim a little off the top for themselves.

And that brings us to the role of the federal government. The federal government’s problem is not lack of spending. Over the decades, Louisiana’s congressional delegation has funneled billions of dollars to a vast system of canals and levees, which failed - not because they were inadequately funded, but because they were inadequately designed and built.

And what about federal spending on the rebuilding of New Orleans? The federal government, far from ignoring the Gulf Coast, has pledged the astonishing sum of $120 billion dollars, far more than for any previous natural disaster. Tens of billions have already poured out of the federal coffers - largely to disappear into the unreformed swamp of Louisiana political corruption.

Yes, this is about a failure of government, all right. It’s about the failure of big government and the welfare state and the whole philosophy behind them. It is about the vital necessity to move away from government handouts and toward personal responsibility and private initiative. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the moral difference between self-reliance and dependence on government is ultimately the difference between life and death.

The only institution for which the press has any praise on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is, naturally enough, the press. They have spent much of this week congratulating themselves on what a marvelous job they did - which is the surest indication that they have completely missed the real story.

I was thinking about Aristotle’s "intuitive reasoning" and induction - which I unsubtly equate - and protothetical logic. And, having only a vague conception about the point and validity of the latter, much less its methodologies (so my evaluation remains on hold, though distinctly leaning towards "bunk"), my conclusions can only aspire to that level of clarity.

Nevertheless, in asking questions about (correct me if I’m wrong on protothetical logic) the origin of reason, the identification/definition of the unit or "one" (and the attendant historical setting, and therefore the purpose and range of applicability of the definition), and therefore the question of whether we are innately or arbitrarily rational, it seems faintly obvious to me that, as HWB Joseph has said, men can’t create logic, study it or talk of it, if men weren’t already rational (by capacity and choice, if not by necessity). And, given that our mode of reasoning - and therefore logic - are derived from both the observed nature of reality and the particular ways the human mind functions, it seems even more obvious that the human mind has more than adequately evolved in the context of said reality, and is in a sense programmed for knowing it tolerably well. That programming - or capacity or tendency or whatever - may even be a primary causal basis of our evolution, but that’s beyond our current knowledge and in need of demonstration. It’s also not essential to this argument.

And, if we are considering the origin of reason and our natural modes of cognitive operation, the most obvious line of inquiry and investigation is the domain of biology. For example: how does induction work at the neurological level? [current black blox]. Do other animals possess rudimentary or even highly complex and competent forms of induction? [Anyone can train a dog.] What happens if you artificially screw with an animal’s experience of perceived reality - if you change things arbitrarily such that no patterns emerge, nothing is reliable or repeatable? What happens to the animal behaviorally, psychologically, physiologically? In what environmental, social and cognitive context(s) did the human lineage evolve? Even, test the tenets of logic - psychologically and experimentally. Can a thing both be and not be something simultaneously? (That’d be a hideously boring experiment, but I won’t speculate on the desires and motivations of some; many important things are intolerable to some subset of the human population.)

In short, I think Aristotle’s "intuitive reasoning", and the mechanism of induction, are biologically based and therefore explainable, and not philosophically problematic. Quasi-automatic knowledge by induction is in many ways a given, and a valid starting point (a good working hypothesis) for more explicit investigations and knowledge-building. But it’s the job of scientists to explain how induction happens. And describing it won’t change the phenomenon of induction, though it can add tremendous amounts of context and understanding. This may in turn flesh out our understanding of human cognition, psychology, epistemology, etc - but I don’t think it will fundamentally change philosophy.

And, while it’s possible that the definition of the unit was arbitrary at its time of creation, by subsequent use (and therefore by thousands of years of implicit experimentation) it has lost any veneer or odor of the arbitrary, and is a fully legitimate and vetted philosophic concept underlying pretty much all human thought and action. I would even argue underlying the action of conscious animals (another testable hypothesis).

Thus, I have secured the rug that was once nearly pulled out from under me, and explains why I am not apologetic for my strong affinity to logic, reason, rationality, and analysis. By my experience and analysis I think that it works, when used carefully and properly, which leads me to accept its foundations.

Notes from the master

A succinct (relatively, given the magnitude of the perceived problem) presentation of the tangle of thoughts I’ve been struggling to name, investigate, order and resolve, from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. [Book VI, Chs. 12 and 13]. A transcription of the entirety. No need to crop the Mona Lisa.

Relation of philosophic to practical widsom.

What is the use of philosophic and of practical wisdom? Philosophic wisdom is the formal cause of happiness; practical wisdom is what ensures the taking of proper means to the proper ends desired by moral virtue.

Difficulties might be raised as to the utility of these qualities of mind. For (1) philosophic wisdom will contemplate none of the things that will make a man happy (for it is not concerned with any coming into being), and though practical wisdom has this merit, for what purpose do we need it? Practical wisdom is the quality of mind concerned with things just and noble and good for man, but these are the things which it is the mark of a good man to do, and we are none the more able to act for knowing them if the virtues are states of character, just as we are none the better able to act for knowing the things that are healthy and sounds, in the sense of not producing but of issuing from the state of health; for we are none the more able to act for having the art of medicine or of gymnastics. But (2) if we are to say that a man should have practical wisdom not for the sake of knowing moral truths but for the sake of becoming good, practical wisdom will be of no use to those who re good; but again it is of no use to those who have not virtue; for it will make no difference whether they have practical wisdom themselves or obey others who have it, and it would be enough for us to do what we do in the case of health; though we wish to become healthy, yet we do not learn the art of medicine. (3) Besides this, it would be though strange if practical wisdom, being inferior to philosophic wisdom, is to e put in authority over it, as seems to be implied by the fact that the art which produces anything rules and issues commands about that thing.

These, then, are the questions we must discuss; so far we have only stated the difficulties.

(1) Now first let us say that in themselves these states must be worthy of choice because they are the virtues of the two parts of the soul respectively, even if neither of them produces anything.

(2) Secondly, they do produce something, not as the art of medicine produces health, however, but as health produces health; so does philosophic wisdom produce happiness; for, being a part of virtue entire, by being possessed and by actualizing itself it makes a man happy.

(3) Again, the work of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral virtue; for virtue makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means. (Of the fourth part of the soul - the nutritive - there is no such virtue; for there is nothing which it is in its power to do or not to do.)

(4) With regard to our being none the more able to do because of our practical wisdom what is noble and just, let us being a little further back, starting with the following principle. As we say that some people who do just acts are not necessarily just, i.e. those who do the acts ordained by the laws either unwillingly or owing to ignorance or for some other reason and not for the sake of the acts themselves (though, to be sure, they do what they should and all the things that the good man ought), so is it, it seems, that in order to be good one must be in a certain state when one does the several acts, i.e. one must do them as a result of choice and for the sake of the acts themselves. Now virtue makes the choice right, but the question of the things which should naturally be done to carry out our choice belongs not to virtue but to another faculty. We must devote our attention to these matters and give a clearer statement about them. There is a faculty which is called cleverness; and this is such as to be able to do the things that tend towards the mark we have set before ourselves, and to hit it. Now if the mark be noble, the cleverness is laudable, but if the mark be bad, the cleverness is mere smartness; hence we call even men of practical wisdom clever or smart. Practical wisdom is not the faculty, but it does not exist without this faculty. And this eye of the soul acquires its formed state not without the aid of virtue, as has been said and is plain; for the syllogisms which deal with acts to be done are things which involve a starting-point, viz. ’since the end, i.e. what is best, is of such and such a nature’, whatever it may be (let it for the sake of argument be what we please); and this is not evident except to the good man; for wickedness perverts us and causes us to be deceived about the starting-points of action. Therefore it is evident that it is impossible to be practically wise without being good.

Relation of practical wisdom to natural virtue, moral virtue, and the right rule.

We must therefore consider virtue also once more; for virtue too is similarly related; as practical wisdom is to cleverness - not the same, but like it - so is natural virtue to virtue in the strict sense. For all men think that each type of character belongs to its possessors in some sense by nature; for from the very moment of birth we are just or fitted for self-control or brave or have the other moral qualities; but yet we seek something else as that which is good in the strict sense - we seek for the presence of such qualities in another way. For both children and brutes have the natural disposition to these qualities, but without reason these are evidently hurtful. Only we seem to see this much, that, while one may be led astray by them, as a strong body which moves without sight may stumble badly because of its lack of sight, still, if a man once acquires reason, that makes a difference in action; and his state, while still like what it was, will then be virtue in the strict sense. Therefore, as in the part of us which forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves practical wisdom. This is why some say that all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom, and why Socrates in one respect was on the right track while in another he went astray; in thinking that all the virtues were forms of practical wisdom he was wrong, but in saying they implied practical wisdom he was right. This is confirmed by the fact that even now all men, when they define virtue, after naming the state of character and its objects add ‘that (state) which is in accordance with the right rule’; now the right rule is that which is accordance with practical wisdom. All men, then, seem somehow to divine that this kind of state is virtue, viz. that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. But we must go a little further. For it is not merely the state in accordance with the right rule, but the state that implies the presence of the right rule, that is virtue; and practical wisdom is a right rule about such matters. Socrates, then, thought the virtues were rules or rational principles (for he thought they were, al of them, forms of scientific knowledge), while we think they involve a rational principle.

It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, or practically wise without moral virtue. But in this way we may also refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in separation from each other; the same man, it might be said, is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so that he will have already acquired one when he has not yet acquired another. This is possible in respect of the natural virtues, but not in respect of those in respect of which a man is called without qualification good; for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the virtues. And it is plain that, even if it were of no practical value, we should have needed it because it is the virtue of the part of us in question; plain too that the choice will not be right without practical wisdom any more than without virtue; for the one determines the end and the other makes us do the things that lead to the end.

But again it is not supreme over philosophic wisdom, i.e. over the superior part of us, any more than the art of medicine is over health; for it does not use it but provides for its coming into being; it issues orders, then, for its sake, but not to it. Further, to maintain its supremacy would be like saying that the art of politics rules the gods because it issues orders about all the affairs of the state.

I’m becoming a lyrics snob. Snob in the best sense: discriminating, with standards and a critical eye, ready to dish both criticism and sing high praise. Mostly the latter. Mostly I’m just putting words to things I already know, but have never verbalized before.

This change in musical taste is, of course, a by-product of many hours and trains of thought on other topics - a conclusion I didn’t seek for its own sake. It’s just kind of happened, and I noticed it, and now I act and reflect and that’s that.

The good news is that my playlist isn’t populated by just one or two artists. Some old, some new, but all newly chosen and appreciated. Today, the praise goes to this Bon Jovi song. I won’t speak for the corpus of Bon Jovi’s work, though.

"It’s My Life"