The Zero-Sum Game

I've recently started reading Atlantic columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Like his stuff a lot, even if he thinks of Prince as "his mother's music."  And god knows he could use a proofreader.  But anyway.  Not only are his posts interesting, but he's built up a large and mostly well-behaved commenting community.  I haven't joined it because it is so large and well-spoken even without me, and I just don't feel like creating one more damn account for myself, but I have to respond to this comment anyway:

As a white person (I don't presume to speak for all white people), one of the reasons why I find myself getting annoyed at anti-racists is because of their insistence that the only reason why I enjoy any comforts today is because of the suffering of others. . . . By speaking of racism as a zero-sum game, you are GUARANTEED to turn white people off. After all, if whites prospered at the expense of blacks, many whites reason that if blacks prosper, it will be at their expense.

Well, yeah, actually, the reason you are where you are today is because of the people who suffered and died to get you there.  To name just one example, as a white male Christian friend of mine wrote on his Facebook recently, "People died to give you the right to vote.  So go vote!"  I'm really astonished that anybody could be unmindful of those who came before them -- even if you just think of it in terms of your own ancestors.  (This reminds me of the piece I wrote three years ago.)  Perhaps the problem is that you don't like to think of people suffering unwillingly.  Is is really any better to imagine them gladly sacrificing their comforts for you?

As for the zero-sum game:  again, yes, that's what it is.  We all prosper at someone else's expense.  Take jobs for example. If you apply for a job and get it, everyone else loses out.  I'll assume for the sake of argument that the person who wrote this post and called themselves "Star Wars Nut" is a man, although it doesn't really matter.  So, if someone else gets hired for this job, and you find out it's a black person, do you get upset because black people are stealing jobs from whites?  If a white woman gets hired instead of you, are women stealing jobs from men?  If another white guy gets the job . . . well, who is there to be outraged against?  But it's still a zero-sum game, and you still lost.  Unless you congratulate yourself with the thought, "Well, at least the job is safely in the hands of a white person."

I don't think the problem is the zero-sum game.  I think the problem is a sense of entitlement, the belief that those people should stay in their places and not be taking jobs, etc. from the guys who have always had those jobs, always should, always will.  (Gee, this does remind me of a recent Presidential election.)  It makes sense to me that white men would feel threatened and want to cut down on the competition.  But then, of course, you're stuck with feeling guilty about those people who suffered so that you could continue to live in the style to which you're accustomed.  Nope, just can't win.

Ambivalent Legacy

Two recent news stories collided in my mind and I imagined that the late Ted Kennedy had once kidnapped an 11-year-old girl, kept her captive in his backyard for 15 years and fathered two children on her.  (Is that worse than leaving someone to die in a submerged car?  Answer to rhetorical question:  yes, I believe that prolonged abuse is worse than a "quick" death.  But anyway.)

On one of the blogs I visit, a discussion began on who was the "greatest American Senator" ever.  Someone suggested Henry Clay (about whom I know nothing) and someone else objected on the grounds that Clay owned slaves.  Then they headed into "you can't judge the past by the standards of the present" territory.  Personally I can't bring myself to agree with that.  It implies that nobody back then knew that slavery was wrong.  I am sure that the people who were living in slavery knew it was wrong. 

It's just that their opinions didn't count (because slaves are not human.)  And possibly there are people today who think that their opinions still don't count.  A thing does not become immoral until the ruling class decides that it's immoral. Isn't that right?

The Kennedys are just a big heap of moral ambiguity.  They did so many good things!  They did so many bad things!  Which one outweighs the other?  We all hope to be judged kindly.  But I . . . I don't think it's just a question of "I did ten good things and five bad things" or "I did three really good things and 15 things that were not really all that bad."  I think it's a question of power.

If someone uses their power for good, then that's good.  If they use their power for bad -- yeah, that's bad.  Abuses of power count for much more on the bad side than right uses of power count for the good.  And the reason is that people excuse abuses committed by the powerful.  They do this because they want to ally themselves with the powerful. There's no point in standing up for someone who has no power.  How can they benefit you?  You want to curry favor with someone who has favors to hand out.  You don't associate with losers.

I blogged recently about a conversation between a childhood friend of mine, and someone who bullied me in childhood.  I didn't mention that the bully also wrote "I admire you standing up for her."  Because it is so very unusual to take the side of someone who's demonstrated themselves to be a loser.  She didn't mean standing up for me at the time, either.  She's talking about their present conversation, years later.  Even now it is admirable, in the mind of a bully, to say just one little word.

Yes, a certain number of people are willing to side with the underdog, at least some of the time.  A large number of people are the underdog . . . sometimes they side with their oppressors and sometimes they don't.  I'm trying to say more than just "side with the underdog" . . . I'm trying to say, that powerful people are dangerous.  Because somehow, crimes against the powerless are always minimized.

I appreciate the ambiguity of someone who uses their powers both for good and for evil.  There's also a saying about "someone who has the power to do evil, but refrains . . . ."  But I just can't join in unmitigated, or even faintly mitigated, praise.  Because there are too many people, alive and dead, who never got a chance to speak for themselves.  That's why.

Washington Irving

A friend recently loaned me Washington Irving's Sketch Book. She thought I would like it and she was right. I liked it so much that I headed over to Wikipedia to see what the dish on Irving is. Some of this info comes from there.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) is said to be one of the first Americans to make a living as a writer. He created the following items:

• "Gotham" as a nickname for New York City.
• the myth that in 1492, Columbus and his compatriots believed the Earth was flat. Yes, apparently it's a myth.
  
• the tale of Rip van Winkle, which retained its popularity for a long time.
• the tale of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, which also retained its popularity for a long time, and was even made into a Walt Disney cartoon in 1958.
  

He did not invent the two stories listed above; his original contribution was an American setting and, I suppose, his writing style.

He lived in England for many years. As a Jane Austen fan, I have to remark that they briefly overlapped, chronologically as well as geographically. He first moved to England in 1815; Austen died two years later. It seems unlikely that they ever met, but they both worked with the same publisher (John Murray) and it is tempting to think that they had mutual acquaintances (I do not know if a publisher counts as an acquaintance.)

Sir Walter Scott was an admirer of both writers - Austen and Irving - but a personal friend and benefactor to Irving alone. In his preface to the Sketch Book, Irving tells the story of how Scott offered him the position of editor of a magazine. Perhaps because he had tried this before, Irving had to refuse. He quotes from his letter to Scott:

"My whole course of life has been desultory, and I am unfitted for any periodically recurring task, or any stipulated labor of body or mind."

I find it rather amusing that, after having declared himself completely incapable of doing any actual work, he ended up going into the diplomatic service.

Throughout the Sketch Book he portrays himself as a dilettante, a rootless, homeless wanderer and essentially lazy person. This must have been somewhat of an exaggeration. The fact is that he did a lot of writing, which is hard work (especially if he was able to make it seem effortless), and a lot of traveling, which always requires exertion. It seems to have been part of his technique for charming people, to insist that he was not to be taken seriously.

The person who wrote the afterword to this edition of the Sketch Book claims, among other things, that underneath his light-hearted facade Irving was melancholy and obsessed with death. "Underneath" is not quite accurate. The Sketch Book contains many stories about tragic deaths, funerals, and so on, along with such lines as "[I was] indulging in that kind of melancholy fancying which has in it something sweeter even than pleasure." Apparently some later editions of the book removed all the depressing chapters - but that's not Irving's fault, now is it?

As for being obsessed with death: it may seem that way to a modern reader. But people paid much more attention to death in earlier times. It was present for them in a way that it's not for us. When Irving asks, "who is so fortunate as never to have followed someone he has loved to the tomb?" he's referring to ordinary reality. He himself was one of eleven children, of whom three died in infancy. His fiancee died at the age of nineteen (in fact, he never married.) I don't think he would have written so much about death and funeral customs if he didn't think his audience would be interested.

In some ways, he was a very conventional person. Many of the stories in the Sketch Book praise old customs and old writers, lament their passing, and criticize novelty. But he did allow himself a few rebellions. His sympathy for Native Americans was apparently very unusual for his time. He retells from a "volume of early colonial history" an incident in which a group of Europeans surround an Indian village, set fire to it and kill all the inhabitants (mostly women and children, as the warriors had been defeated in a previous battle.) He quotes:

"they were in much doubt then, and afterwards seriously enquired whether burning their enemies alive could be consistent with humanity, and the benevolent principles of the Gospel."

And yet you will note that they didn't discover their doubts until afterward.

A Visit to the Cemetery

There is a fairly large cemetery near my house, which apparently has always been a sort of tourist attraction. But not in a tacky way. It is known for its landscaping. Many of the trees and plants are labeled, so you know what you're looking at, which is a very helpful feature. Everything in nature should be labeled.

I saw a witch hazel bush, which I have never knowingly seen before, and an "alumroot" plant. Does alum come from plants? They have a couple elms, which were planted in 1998. When I was growing up, all the elms one ever saw or heard about were dead. These must be a new disease-resistant kind. I also saw some trees labeled "plane trees," but which I would call sycamores.

I do not know if the cemetery is still accepting reservations, as it were. But we saw one tombstone which is reserved for two people. One was born in 1923 and died in 2002. The other was born in 1920 and has not yet arrived at his final resting place.

At the center of the cemetery is a hill, and upon the hill is a tower. No one is buried there. You can go up to the top and look out over the landscape. There are 95 steps in the tower (which is spelled "ninty-five" on the informational placard) and when you get up to the top of the stairwell the walls of the tower curve inwards over your head.

I find cemeteries to be very peaceful places. There is no rational reason for it, but irrationally speaking, it's enough to make me wonder if death is not what we suppose it to be.

My Two Favorite Movies

When I was a teenager, my favorite movie was Harold and Maude. It's a perfect movie for adolescents, because it depicts hopelessness and hope with equal accuracy. Or to put it another way, if Harold can finally decide not to kill himself then I can too.

I haven't watched H&M for a few years now, and I'm starting to think that my new favorite movie is Performance. The two films have a lot in common. Most significantly, they date from the same era, the late 1960s (yes, I was born 20 years too late.) Performance was filmed in 1968 and released in 1970. Harold and Maude was released in 1971 but the screenplay was probably written some time earlier. They are both very rebellious films, I would say . . . "unconventional," perhaps, although that's an understatement.

Another thing the two films have in common is the high quality of the music. H&M is almost all Cat Stevens--I've heard that he wrote a couple songs especially for the film. Performance features Mick Jagger prominently in the supporting cast. He only performs two songs (as I recall), but all the rest of the music, I would say, even when not by him is the sort of music you would expect in the sort of film that would cast Mick Jagger. I like it, anyway.

Performance is a much more adult film. There are no easy answers. There is quite a bit of sex and violence. The protagonist is an anti-hero, in the sense of not being someone you (or I) would really want to emulate. He thinks he can handle anything, but he gets in over his head. I think that's why I've come to like this movie--because life will do that to anyone.

Neither film has a traditional happy ending, although of the two Harold and Maude is slightly more optimistic. And yet the ending of Performance doesn't bother me--and I am someone who usually insists on a happy ending. It's a very low-key ending. It just fits. I suppose there is one easy answer, after all.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 –2007

When I was in high school, I was a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan. Then I drifted away from the "white male" school of literature. Although it's amazing how much those white males actually understood. One thinks of them as being self-absorbed, indifferent to -- if not contemptuous of -- anybody who's not like them. But (even with these constraints) some of them were able to understand human nature, and many of them in fact experienced suffering. Strange, that.

Anyway, a couple Vonnegut quotes have stayed with me:

A gun is a tool for killing people with.

Like Joseph Conrad, English is my second language. Unfortunately I don't have a first one.

I read that he described himself as a pacifist, which not many people dare to do these days. One imagines that getting firebombed in Dresden had something to do with that. Although I'm a pacifist too, and I've never been firebombed. But one of the benefits of being human is the ability to learn from other people's experiences.

Kurt Vonnegut, y'all.

Red-Tailed Hawk?

If you see a bird with a red tail, and a generally hawkish configuration of the tail and wings, does that mean it's a red-tailed hawk? I didn't get a very good look at the head, but it may have been vaguely hawkish. There are hawks around here, but I've never been so sure of seeing one as I was today. In fact, there seemed to be a pair of them. They were not large birds.

I wondered if they were taking an interest in the dead squirrel that lay almost exactly in the middle of the road. That could be dangerous. I waited until no cars were coming, and then walked out to the center line. Not giving myself time to think, I kicked the corpse. It flew into the air and landed by the side of the road. I followed and kicked it again, so that it lay squarely on the sidewalk, and then got myself out of the road. It seems disrespectful, doesn't it? But it is in fact safer, for birds and animals that eat carrion, if their meal is not lying in the path of oncoming traffic.

Those Who Died for Us

1)

The animals who died to feed us.
It's dead. You're alive.
Is that fair? No.
So you do what you can,
towards a debt that can never be repaid.

2)

The people who died -
"for us," some say.
"for revenge," some say.
That's not as clear. It's not like food.

I've never looked into the face of a human being
(unlike an animal)
and understood that this person was dying for me.
But that's what I've been told.

3)

To the people who died -
for something,
for nothing.

You went to that place
where people die
and you died.

It's a debt that can never be repaid.

At least, speak their names.
At least say, it is not fair.
Death is not justice.

4)

To say, "Never again,"
is like trying to repay a debt that can never be repaid.
It's not possible.

But I say: "Never again."
Not for me.

---

Note: see also "Why I Became a Vegetarian."

New Buds of Spring

Some people think that Nature is a cruel and violent place. I was on a web site recently where someone commented, "Once you start looking closely at nature, all you will see is things killing other things." Death is part of nature. Certainly on this blog I write about dead animals rather a lot.

But anybody who has looked closely at Nature in the springtime will see more than things killing other things. The trees are budding out in green and red. The birds are suddenly making a lot more racket. In some places (not here) frogs' eggs will soon be hatching and at night the little tadpoles will start peeping. Not to mention all the flowers, which get mentioned so often.

Nature is about life: life passing into death and returning into life. If it weren't for Nature, none of us would be here. We are the natural world.

We are the natural world.

Skunk in Daylight

So, walking down the street yesterday afternoon, I saw a skunk lying on the sidewalk. It appeared to be dead, although it didn't look particularly flattened, nor was it bleeding. Its eyes were open - its eyes were red. It had a beautiful white plumed tail. I felt very bad.

I went on my errands, and coming back, I saw a man walking down the street ahead of me. I wondered what he would do when he saw the dead skunk. He made a wide circle around it, stepping out into the street. That seemed a little odd.

Then I came up to the skunk. The first thing I noticed is that its position had changed - it had turned around. Then I thought, "Is it moving?" It was moving. Which was not actually a good sign.

This was the first time in my life that I've ever seen a skunk in the daytime. It didn't seem right. I backed off a little (much like the other guy had done) and observed it carefully. It was sneezing and rubbing its face with its paws, like a cat. I was thinking about the fact that skunks carry rabies. I saw some white stuff around its mouth, but I couldn't tell if it was froth or fur.

I didn't do anything about it. I just went on my way.

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006

So I dropped by Making Light and saw the link in the sidebar: "Octavia Butler, 1947-2006." What does that mean, I thought. It doesn't mean that she's dead. She's not dead. She can't be dead. It must mean something else.

I have to admit that I haven't read as much of her work as I should have. It's heavy stuff. Heady stuff. A little of it goes a long way, like strong drink. Compressed and concentrated, like coal turning into diamonds, like a white dwarf turning into a black hole.

But I find that I'm still grieving. Why is she gone, when all of these stupid people are still permitted to be walking around?

A couple weeks ago, I was pleased to learn that the man who invented LSD had his 100th birthday, and his physical and mental states are as good as can be expected from someone that age. Butler was only 58. I can't quite wish that we could have traded his lifespan for hers. But I almost can.

Waterfowl, Alive and Dead

Watching a flock of Canada geese: they fly in two V-shaped clusters. They are coming in perpendicular to the river, so that in order to land, they have to make a sharp left turn. The first V splashes down in the water; the second group flies over their heads to land upstream.

Some people are of the opinion that Canada geese are turning into a pest in this city. There are a lot of them around, but I still think they're beautiful. They watch out for each other: each flock always has one or two individuals keeping a lookout, while the rest of them eat.

In addition to geese, the river near my house also attracts ducks (and occasionally the swans I wrote about earlier.) I can recognize mallards, but there are two or three other species of duck among them that I don't know the names of.

The other day, I found a dead male mallard by the side of the road. All those shining green feathers. The body both swollen and flattened. A long time ago, I read a poem by Gary Snyder called "The Dead by the Side of the Road." I didn't know at the time that he was some kind of famous poet, but the phrase has stayed with me. Poems about roadkill.

While I'm on the subject, if you find a dead animal on the road, and it's safe for you to do so, it's a good idea to move it off of the road. Scavenging animals will come to eat it - and they're all too likely to end up as roadkill themselves.

The First Noble Truth

From The Sword and the Flute, by David R. Kinsley:

The First Noble Truth of the Buddha is "All is suffering [duhkha]," a truth that the Hindu tradition, too, has assumed for most of its history. What the Buddha articulated in his formula and what duhkha means to the Indian tradition is not simply that life has its misfortunes, bad luck, or tragedies. Duhkha suggests something much more fundamental in Indian spirituality: it underlines the inevitable realities of sickness, old age, and death, the inevitable change and passing away of things.

I first read this book a few years ago, and just re-read it this week. Here are my reflections:

A couple months ago, a friend of mine asked if I knew what duhkha was. I had completely forgotten about that passage quoted above, so I said no. But I did remember the First Noble Truth, and we talked about the existence of suffering for a while. I wish I had remembered what I read about duhkha, because then I would have said, that even though sickness, old age, and death are inevitable, we can still seek happiness in this life, whereever possible.

Reading that passage again naturally made me think about my own old age and death. It was not something I wanted to think about. I put it out of my mind.

Yesterday, riding to work on the bus, I saw an old person disembarking. He had to move very slowly. I thought, "That is duhkha right there: old age and disability." In that moment I realized: The fact that suffering is inevitable means that it is our duty as human beings to avoid increasing the amount of suffering in the world. There is already enough.

Having said all that though, I do wonder about one thing: the cause of suffering. The Second Noble Truth explains that suffering is caused by desire, or attachment. Or, as this web site puts it: "the cause of this suffering is Craving, born of the illusion of a soul." To say that old age, sickness and death are caused by desire seems odd. Although I would kind of agree that they are "caused" by the illusion of a soul--that is to say, the illusion that each one of us exists as a separate entity. (I would use the term "ego" instead of "soul.")

Suffering exists. There you have it.

Cat Hit by Car

I did not see the cat get run over. I turned around and there it was, lying in the middle of the road, kicking one hind leg. Then it lay still.

One of the people waiting at the bus stop with me walked out to take a look at it, and the person who ran it over actually stopped his car and came back to attend to it. But I am pretty sure it was dead. The young man carried it carefully to the side of the road. A small, thick bloodstain remained behind. Then the bus came and we had to leave.

Was it the same cat I have seen there before? It was orange and white, with a long fluffy tail. I think the other cat that lives around there is yellow. Well, one cat's luck ran out, all the same.

Death comes like that, suddenly, on a bright summer morning. So of course I had to dash off and write about it on my blog.

One of my cats got hit by a car once. He was not badly injured (comparatively), but it was still awful. His leg was broken, and he managed to get himself home. (I'm still not absolutely sure he was hit by a car. How could it have caused so little damage? But that's what the vet said.) Of course I felt guilty for letting him go outside, although I'm sure he enjoyed it, until the encounter with the car.

What really upset me, though, and haunted me, was the thought of his tiny body and all these big, hard, dangerous machines that move so fast and kill so easily. I don't blame the drivers. But looking at a road from a cat's point of view is truly terrifying.

There doesn't seem to be anything else to say.