I’ve come across several philosophers in my experience who consider our discipline as a kind of science of arguments. Philosophers are seeking, according to these folks (none of whom are made of very much straw), the truth through argument. So when a philosopher formulates an argument that cannot be refuted, he (and they have all been he’s) will have discovered a truth upon which philosophy may rest content. But a curious idea occurred to me a few days ago that I realized would make an excellent philosophy article, and stick solidly in the craws of all those truth seekers who would deign to take me seriously.
It started when I read Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, about men who synthesize every occult conspiracy theory for the past eight hundred years into a single, perfectly consistent history of the secret and hidden. The aficionados of ancient conspiracies (Masons, Templars, Rosicrucians, et al) then hunt down our heroes, killing them for their evidence, even though their synthetic history was entirely fictional.
Periodically, I’ll have a conversation about the 9/11 Truth conspiracies, the beliefs that some blend of the United States government, conservative establishment, intelligence agencies, and business elite carried out the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and that al Qaeda had nothing to do with it. Not all the conspiracy theorists are quite this extreme, but all the 9/11 Truth theories have some of these elements mixed and matched together. Even if you can point to an established fact of the case that disproves some aspect of their conspiracy theory, the theorist will not respond to modifying his beliefs. He will instead denounce this fact as an elaborate fakery of the conspirators.
Nothing in the arguments of the 9/11 Truth conspiracy theorist, or indeed any committed conspiracy theorist, can ever be refuted. The very nature of conspiracy thinking maintains the integrity of the theory above all else - even facts. Some conspiracy theories are more consistent than others, and an intelligent theorist will modify their theory when shown some internal inconsistency. But this amounts to a strengthening of the conspiracy theory, not its refutation. Refutation would involve the dismissal of the argument itself, admitting that the USA government did not, in fact, cause 9/11.
This puts the definition of philosophy as seeking truth through articulating an irrefutable argument in quite some bother. The arguments most durable to attack, most invulnerable to critique, most flexible in maintaining their validity, are the most outlandish conspiracy theories. Of course, I’m not troubled, because I don’t think philosophy is about seeking truth at all. But if you’re sympathetic to this idea, I think I have something that could trouble you.
Showing posts with label Sept 11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sept 11. Show all posts
Friday, July 23, 2010
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Many Falling Men and Women
Every week or so, I read through the New York Times obituary section to see who has died, and if any of them are interesting to me. I discovered a few days ago, the death of Ernest Trova, described in the headline as "Falling Man artist." I was immediately intrigued, though even more fascinated to discover that this was a completely different person from the Falling Man that I first thought they were talking about.
You can see a picture of Trova's statue at the linked obituary, and I was fascinated when I found out this existed. I think it makes an intriguing parallel for what I think was a transformative moment in world history. The intellectual movements that dominated the twentieth century shared a yearning for perfect rationality, societal unison in accordance with a master plan. The fascist and communist political movements, Le Corbusier-influence architecture of segmented machine-like functionality, the uniformity of mass production systems. I could go on, but I won't. Also, I should qualify that there was rebellion against these ideas that had equally powerful affects on humanity: the explosion of democracy and its freedom-encouraging offshoots. But these democratic ideas articulated themselves as rebellions and reactions to the totalitarian conformist ideas. Without the power of totalitarian structures in human society in the twentieth century, I don't think the democratic movements would have developed in so many diverse ways as they have.
Here's what this has to do with Trova's Falling Man. This is a sleek, perfectly crafted image, symmetrical along many axes, and implying a spherical perfection. Trova's sculpture is crafted in strict conformity to a very simple set of rules. Man is made into an abstract, sterile shape. Now contrast that with this image, Eric Fischl's Tumbling Woman. It's visceral, bumpy, irregular, asymmetrical, disturbing, and violent. This is an image of death that was so frightening to people that it was quickly hidden after its initial display. We stare in awe and quiet contemplation in Trova's Falling Man, and are made physically ill by Fischl's Tumbling Woman.
Not everyone I know takes Sept 11 seriously. I had one friend who said her strongest reaction on the day was being happy she got the day off school. I have yet to be able to explain this moment better than Don DeLillo did in his essay, "In the Ruins of the Future."
"[Sept 11] was bright and totalizing and some of us said it was unreal. When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our perceptions."
It's hard to find a better symbol for the totalitarian conformity to the simple idea than the architecture of the World Trade Centre, two giant rectangular prisms reaching high into the atmosphere. Their destruction was a moment of chaos, blood splattering, fire exploding, shards of glass flying jagged, dust hideous and liquid choking and invading every orifice. This constituted a kind of final proof that the totalitarian perfection of the 'modernist' idea was a sham, a dream that only made those who held it laughable. Only idiots still hold onto this dream after its final shattering.
•••
An internet update: I am now tweeting. So far, nothing from my phone, because that shit costs money. But when I'm in my house or at a computer, I'll be telling you exactly what I'm doing. I might not go so far as some do with their twitter accounts, but more of my minor brainfarts will be on the internet for all to ignore.
You can see a picture of Trova's statue at the linked obituary, and I was fascinated when I found out this existed. I think it makes an intriguing parallel for what I think was a transformative moment in world history. The intellectual movements that dominated the twentieth century shared a yearning for perfect rationality, societal unison in accordance with a master plan. The fascist and communist political movements, Le Corbusier-influence architecture of segmented machine-like functionality, the uniformity of mass production systems. I could go on, but I won't. Also, I should qualify that there was rebellion against these ideas that had equally powerful affects on humanity: the explosion of democracy and its freedom-encouraging offshoots. But these democratic ideas articulated themselves as rebellions and reactions to the totalitarian conformist ideas. Without the power of totalitarian structures in human society in the twentieth century, I don't think the democratic movements would have developed in so many diverse ways as they have.
Here's what this has to do with Trova's Falling Man. This is a sleek, perfectly crafted image, symmetrical along many axes, and implying a spherical perfection. Trova's sculpture is crafted in strict conformity to a very simple set of rules. Man is made into an abstract, sterile shape. Now contrast that with this image, Eric Fischl's Tumbling Woman. It's visceral, bumpy, irregular, asymmetrical, disturbing, and violent. This is an image of death that was so frightening to people that it was quickly hidden after its initial display. We stare in awe and quiet contemplation in Trova's Falling Man, and are made physically ill by Fischl's Tumbling Woman.
Not everyone I know takes Sept 11 seriously. I had one friend who said her strongest reaction on the day was being happy she got the day off school. I have yet to be able to explain this moment better than Don DeLillo did in his essay, "In the Ruins of the Future."
"[Sept 11] was bright and totalizing and some of us said it was unreal. When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our perceptions."
It's hard to find a better symbol for the totalitarian conformity to the simple idea than the architecture of the World Trade Centre, two giant rectangular prisms reaching high into the atmosphere. Their destruction was a moment of chaos, blood splattering, fire exploding, shards of glass flying jagged, dust hideous and liquid choking and invading every orifice. This constituted a kind of final proof that the totalitarian perfection of the 'modernist' idea was a sham, a dream that only made those who held it laughable. Only idiots still hold onto this dream after its final shattering.
•••
An internet update: I am now tweeting. So far, nothing from my phone, because that shit costs money. But when I'm in my house or at a computer, I'll be telling you exactly what I'm doing. I might not go so far as some do with their twitter accounts, but more of my minor brainfarts will be on the internet for all to ignore.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Why Barack Obama Must Win Tuesday Night
A book I just finished reading was Falling Man, by Don DeLillo. It was a document in miniature of a nation that was paralyzed by a national trauma, trying to come to grips with what had been inconceivable. Terrorism was something that happened on small scales of street corners and car bombs. The incredible scale, force, and the power of the symbolism of Sept 11 was like no other terrorist act before or since. It was an act with a purpose few people could understand. National traumas of a similar scale in the United States like Pearl Harbour or the Civil War at least had reasons that people could comprehend. The politics of an act like the destruction of the World Trade Centre, at the moment of its happening, seemed to transcend reason for the American people.
The first reaction of such an incomprehensible act is fear, and resolve in the face of fear. Yet that fear also encourages irrationality, a fear of self-doubt, the inability to think through one's actions. I do not mean to say that the Iraq occupation that began in 2003 was an entirely irrational act. The neo-conservative policy-makers in the executive branch (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz chief among them) had entirely rational plans. But these plans were written in the 1990s, under the think tank Project for a New American Century, and not in the chaotic national mood of the years after Sept 11. Dick Cheney and his ilk hijacked the American people when they were still too traumatized to understand fully what was happening to them. The lie was swallowed so easily because, with the ability to think critically still paralyzed in many Americans, people believe what they are told, what is suggested to them.
Throughout the immensely, unbelievably long campaign for the Presidency in 2008, the Republican party has returned again and again to fear. In the primary season, it was the fear of women, of a reversal of sexual traditions; then the fear of the black man, of the mysterious dark race that, in the words of Rev. Wright, damns America. And there was the return to fear after the candidates were chosen: fear of Russia, fear of economic collapse, fear of terrorism, fear of socialism and communism.
But Barack Obama asked Americans to put aside their fear. I first understood how special he was when I listened to his speech about Rev. Wright, A More Perfect Union. Instead of the easy denunciations that were coming from the Republicans, and from Hillary Clinton (who, progressive as she is, gendered as she is, remains a traditional American politician), Obama asked Americans to listen to each other, listen to themselves, and understand. Instead of hiding behind denunciations, he accepted the complexities and paradoxes of his own life. When we are overcome by fear, we seek simplicities to reassure us, to return us to easy security. Obama never offered people that.
He continues to offer a way forward for America out of its trauma, out of a political discourse based on fear and aggression. Instead of lashing out at enemies wherever they are perceived to be, he offers calmness, calculation, and understanding. The American people have cowered under the rubble of Ground Zero for too long, fretting about the next attack, their perspective dominated by the terror seared into their bodies. Obama offers no easy answers. He extends to the American people the opportunity to face the paradoxes of their lives, to understand their lives, their society, and their country. He calls this the perspective of hope. I see him offering an opportunity to heal the wounds that have been bleeding into the eyes of the American people for over seven years. He offers the opportunity to live again, not in ignorance of their trauma, but because of their trauma.
That is why Barack Obama must win Tuesday night.
The first reaction of such an incomprehensible act is fear, and resolve in the face of fear. Yet that fear also encourages irrationality, a fear of self-doubt, the inability to think through one's actions. I do not mean to say that the Iraq occupation that began in 2003 was an entirely irrational act. The neo-conservative policy-makers in the executive branch (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz chief among them) had entirely rational plans. But these plans were written in the 1990s, under the think tank Project for a New American Century, and not in the chaotic national mood of the years after Sept 11. Dick Cheney and his ilk hijacked the American people when they were still too traumatized to understand fully what was happening to them. The lie was swallowed so easily because, with the ability to think critically still paralyzed in many Americans, people believe what they are told, what is suggested to them.
Throughout the immensely, unbelievably long campaign for the Presidency in 2008, the Republican party has returned again and again to fear. In the primary season, it was the fear of women, of a reversal of sexual traditions; then the fear of the black man, of the mysterious dark race that, in the words of Rev. Wright, damns America. And there was the return to fear after the candidates were chosen: fear of Russia, fear of economic collapse, fear of terrorism, fear of socialism and communism.
But Barack Obama asked Americans to put aside their fear. I first understood how special he was when I listened to his speech about Rev. Wright, A More Perfect Union. Instead of the easy denunciations that were coming from the Republicans, and from Hillary Clinton (who, progressive as she is, gendered as she is, remains a traditional American politician), Obama asked Americans to listen to each other, listen to themselves, and understand. Instead of hiding behind denunciations, he accepted the complexities and paradoxes of his own life. When we are overcome by fear, we seek simplicities to reassure us, to return us to easy security. Obama never offered people that.
He continues to offer a way forward for America out of its trauma, out of a political discourse based on fear and aggression. Instead of lashing out at enemies wherever they are perceived to be, he offers calmness, calculation, and understanding. The American people have cowered under the rubble of Ground Zero for too long, fretting about the next attack, their perspective dominated by the terror seared into their bodies. Obama offers no easy answers. He extends to the American people the opportunity to face the paradoxes of their lives, to understand their lives, their society, and their country. He calls this the perspective of hope. I see him offering an opportunity to heal the wounds that have been bleeding into the eyes of the American people for over seven years. He offers the opportunity to live again, not in ignorance of their trauma, but because of their trauma.
That is why Barack Obama must win Tuesday night.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Moments that Define an Entire Life
I was going to write a slightly more date-appropriate post about this on September 11, but I never had time on Thursday, so I'll be late. When those buildings actually fell down, my mind was quite literally blown. It was an inconceivable event happening right in front of me, and I was swept up in the moment. I wasn't swept up to the point where I believed what the Bush-Cheney Administration eventually said about Iraq. But there was a moment where everything I thought about politics, society, and possibly ethics changed completely.
I was watching on live television a few days after the attacks when George W was touring the rubble at Ground Zero, and he was giving a sort-of-impromptu speech through a megaphone, a series of fairly mundane platitudes that are barely memorable. A male voice shouts just loud enough for the microphones to pick it up, "We can't hear you!" George shouts back through the megaphone, "But I can hear you!" And the crowd goes wild, and I went wild. That answer was worth more all the next four years of speeches about security and safety. Those speeches showed the incredible hypocrisy of Republican policy regarding global security, and their outmoded, foolishly simplistic moral approach to the world, "Axis of Evil" concept included.
But for that one moment of connection, of calling and answering, George W Bush amazed me. For at least a few days in September 2001, I supported George W Bush because of the power of this moment. I was astounded that this idiot could understand the transformative power of this moment. That one exchange I think was the greatest point of George W's entire presidency. I don't consider it hyperbole to say that September 11 and the immediate aftermath in New York is a single event that defines me as a person more than any other.
I have since realized that George W Bush is still an idiot, still misguided as to the nature of the world, still insular, and still barely able to think. Yet he remains a fascinating character, probably the most fascinating person in American political history of at least the past hundred years. I think George W Bush the person will be the focus of mesmerized scholars, historians, students, politicians, truck drivers, bureaucrats, activists, ministers – pretty much everyone who bothers to look – for centuries. How did this drunken lout become the president of the United States of America? How did he feel being the public face of Dick Cheney's disguised dictatorship? Did he even know he was a patsy?
This is why I'm looking forward to Oliver Stone's new film, W, which seeks to tell the story. The trailer is mesmerizing, and the film looks like a genuine exploration of this man. Stone's politics veer left, and so do mine. But I don't think politics is really the driving force behind this film W. Instead, it's that question from the trailer – Why this man? Of all people?
•••
Here is a moment of pure professional jealousy. Hanging out in a hotel room are various music industry people in 1965, including Donovan and Bob Dylan. They're talking and smoking and decide to trade songs. Donovan sings one he's working on, a nice enough little song. Then Bob Dylan sings "It's All Over Now Baby Blue." You will rarely see a face that seethes with more resentment than Donovan's listening to that song follow up his own.
•••
A small update since my post last week about the St John's music scene. In an article on the AE Bridger band in the first Muse of the semester, they discuss exactly the same problem that the structure and geographical isolation of Newfoundland creates for a working musician.
I was watching on live television a few days after the attacks when George W was touring the rubble at Ground Zero, and he was giving a sort-of-impromptu speech through a megaphone, a series of fairly mundane platitudes that are barely memorable. A male voice shouts just loud enough for the microphones to pick it up, "We can't hear you!" George shouts back through the megaphone, "But I can hear you!" And the crowd goes wild, and I went wild. That answer was worth more all the next four years of speeches about security and safety. Those speeches showed the incredible hypocrisy of Republican policy regarding global security, and their outmoded, foolishly simplistic moral approach to the world, "Axis of Evil" concept included.
But for that one moment of connection, of calling and answering, George W Bush amazed me. For at least a few days in September 2001, I supported George W Bush because of the power of this moment. I was astounded that this idiot could understand the transformative power of this moment. That one exchange I think was the greatest point of George W's entire presidency. I don't consider it hyperbole to say that September 11 and the immediate aftermath in New York is a single event that defines me as a person more than any other.
I have since realized that George W Bush is still an idiot, still misguided as to the nature of the world, still insular, and still barely able to think. Yet he remains a fascinating character, probably the most fascinating person in American political history of at least the past hundred years. I think George W Bush the person will be the focus of mesmerized scholars, historians, students, politicians, truck drivers, bureaucrats, activists, ministers – pretty much everyone who bothers to look – for centuries. How did this drunken lout become the president of the United States of America? How did he feel being the public face of Dick Cheney's disguised dictatorship? Did he even know he was a patsy?
This is why I'm looking forward to Oliver Stone's new film, W, which seeks to tell the story. The trailer is mesmerizing, and the film looks like a genuine exploration of this man. Stone's politics veer left, and so do mine. But I don't think politics is really the driving force behind this film W. Instead, it's that question from the trailer – Why this man? Of all people?
•••
Here is a moment of pure professional jealousy. Hanging out in a hotel room are various music industry people in 1965, including Donovan and Bob Dylan. They're talking and smoking and decide to trade songs. Donovan sings one he's working on, a nice enough little song. Then Bob Dylan sings "It's All Over Now Baby Blue." You will rarely see a face that seethes with more resentment than Donovan's listening to that song follow up his own.
•••
A small update since my post last week about the St John's music scene. In an article on the AE Bridger band in the first Muse of the semester, they discuss exactly the same problem that the structure and geographical isolation of Newfoundland creates for a working musician.
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