You Want Some of This Sauce?

First Things has a nice summary of the thought of scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne as a guide to the road that winds between theological modernism and fundamentalism. Excerpt:

“Theology conducted in the context of science must be prepared to be candid about the evidence for its beliefs,” he says forthrightly, but science does not dominate the conversation: There are clear limits to its authority and competence that both believers and unbelievers need to realize.

The overall message Polkinghorne brings is a crucial one: Science cannot provide its own metaphysical interpretation. As he says with typical precision, “Physics constrains metaphysics, but it no more determines it than the foundations of a house determine the precise form of the building erected on them.” This is especially true in a post-Newtonian world characterized by greater epistemological humility. “The twentieth-century demise of mere mechanism,” he says, provides “a salutary reminder that there is nothing absolute or incorrigible about the context of science.” Some questions lie “outside the scientific domain,” and here “theology has a right to contribute to the subsequent metascientific discourse.” Anyone familiar with the writings of such preachers of scientific atheism as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, or Christopher Hitchins will immediately appreciate the very different world in which Polkinghorne dwells. “The tendency among atheist writers to identify reason exclusively with scientific modes of thought,” he notes pointedly, “is a disastrous diminishment of our human powers of truth-seeking inquiry.”

Theology in turn has something to say to science. “Science offers an illuminating context within which much theological reflection can take place, but in its turn it needs to be considered in the wider and deeper context of intelligibility that a belief in God affords.” As an expert in fundamental physics, Polkinghorne likes to advance a modest form of natural theology—not the older kind of argument that places design in direct competition with biological evolution and stresses “gaps” in natural processes, but a newer style of argument based on the very comprehensibility of nature and nature’s laws. The universe revealed by science “is not only rationally transparent,” but also “rationally beautiful, rewarding scientists with the experience of wonder at the marvelous order which is revealed through the labours of their research.” Why should this be so? The laws of nature “underlie the form and possibility of all occurrence,” but science can treat them only “as given brute facts. These laws, in their economy and rational beauty, have a character that seems to point the enquirer beyond what science itself is capable of telling, making a materialist acceptance of them as unexplained brute facts an intellectually unsatisfying stance to take.” The very possibility of science, in his view, “is not a mere happy accident, but it is a sign that the mind of the Creator lies behind the wonderful order that scientists are privileged to explore.” In short, “the activity of science is recognized to be an aspect of the imago Dei.”

I'm still only halfway through reading Caritas in Veritate, but of the many summaries and responses to the Pope's new encyclical on economic matters, this one at the Financial Times appears to be the very best I've run across so far (at least, of the ones that aren't themselves half as long as the encyclical itself).

It's fascinating to see literally a dozen interpretations of the encyclical, right and left, that are happy to report that the Pope believes exactly what *I* believe. The motivations are different on each side: The righties greatly respect Benedict and thus can't countenance the idea of him standing athwart the true orthodoxy established by Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, the left are cynically savoring the notion of the arch-conservative "God's Rottweiler" taking a redistributionist bite out of capitalism. Both reveal the paucity of any political characterization of Catholic social doctrine. Perhaps, if one finds himself convinced of the integrity of Benedict's viewpoint on both economics and life issues, they even suggest the twisted self-contradiction of both sides of contemporary politics.

Rhetorical questions for the Swedish couple keeping their child's gender a secret, in the order they occur to me:

• If gender is purely a "social construction," then what is it you are hiding?
  
• Remember that guy in Monty Python's Life of Brian whose desire to have babies was symbolic of the Jews' struggle against the Romans?
  
• If it's "cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead," didn't you bring one into the world with one in its diaper?
  
• What definition of "free" are you using to when you describe the suppression of a basic physical fact about a child by his/her parents as "growing up more freely"?
  
• If you despise society's constructions so fiercely, is it possible that withdrawing from society is better than putting your child at odds with his/her society?
  
• Which are you more ashamed of, your culture or your son?

Well, it's always good to see someone making an unpopular argument. But for myself, I have to say I'm unconvinced. Sure, we all like to see things blow up and, like the flaming piano, there is a trangressive element of such an event that we can rarely enjoy.

But firework displays are like the public, theatrical version of war or riot. If Aristotle was right about tragic theater--that it was meant to artificially ("mimetically," he would say) evoke fear and pity--then fireworks are the same, but the feeling is (if I may use a newly minted cliche) shock and awe. I count it as one of the few holiday traditions that is still quite successful; that is still a true tradition and not commercial artifice; a true civic service provided with generosity and grace instead of bureaucratic tedium; a moment shared between neighbors with anticipation, mutual understanding, and simple joy. Let it be.

Oh, he does have a point about Grace Kelly, though.

Attached to a worth-reading article on Robert Nisbet and the loss of community, a bold combox warrior named DW Sabin has written a nifty little paragraph which, if melodramatically, sticks it pretty well to Our American Situation:

In this kinder gentler Fascism of the Corporate-State combine with its constant peddling of fear and want, Clans or guilds have been replaced by branding and through this branding, whether it be in the form of sports team support or fashion or food or whatever other kind of packaged good we consume, the human urge to clan affiliation is sated with a high carb, low protein diet that leaves little muscle and a lot of flab. It is inexorably a moveable feast, changing with the season. The individual is glorified in the pitch[,] as the dignity of the soul...the temple of the individual... is pick-pocketed in the distraction. We then have neither individual nor group, we have only consumer or focus group masquerading as individual in a collective of half-truth discount house idolatry. A reverence for life is replaced by reveries in the vicarious agora. Knowledge becomes illusion.

That'll put some hair on your chest!

Meanwhile, my friend Paul has some thoughts about the inevitability of our economic woes and the kind of leadership that we need to weather it all. I for one am more and more convinced that "usury"--a term more antiquated-sounding than a princess dowager--is precisely the operative sin in question, and all the worse because it appears we are enjoying a kind of usury that is invisibly institutionalized in the fabric of our society.

It's bad enough that she's my congresswoman. It's bad enough that she seems to have an embarrassingly bad understanding of the issues she's written a whole book about. It's bad enough that she shows outright contempt for my Church, with its many "tentacles."

What's really bad is that she expresses the absolutely poisonous position that ethics ought to be subservient to science.

Mr. Levin says, "we should not be surprised to find [this attitude] at the highest levels of the Democratic party in Congress," but I wouldn't be surprised to find it at any level of either party. Our politicians are increasingly incapable of handling the responsibilities they find themselves possessing. As the issues get more technical and the stakes get higher, the threshold for political success requires more and more bloviation and less and less statesmanship.

Or stateswomanship. Diana DeGette should quite simply not be in Congress. She's an embarrassment to our state.

President Obama has disbanded the President's Bioethics Council and will "appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that 'offers practical policy options.'" This is a great shame and a loss for our polity. As Joe Carter points out: What other government entity produces--or has ever produced--serious and valuable philosophical output? (You can take your time thinking about it.)

There was a constant outcry that the council was "ideologically biased." Perhaps. But only if you think they were there to produce "practical policy options" does it really matter. As it was, the council produced philosophical rumination, which if you ask me requires if not an ideology (with its negative connotation), then a philosophical standpoint. For instance, the council's documents were constantly guided by a notion of "human dignity." Some people think this is a problematic standpoint. But it's not the same as being shills for the Republican Party or George Bush in particular.

As bioethics professor Carl Elliot pointed out about one of the council's documents, attempting to balance biotechnological progress against human dignity puts you at odds with both the left and the right:

The report is skeptical of America's faith in technology, worried about America's radical individualism, alarmed at the transformation of medicine from a profession into a business, and deeply concerned about the role of the market in driving the demand for new medical technologies... As much as it pains me to admit that anything worthwhile could come from a council appointed by the Bush administration, Beyond Therapy is a remarkable document: gracefully written, thoroughly researched, ideologically balanced, and philosophically astute. It will be a benchmark for all future work on the topic.

The fact is, some people don't want bioethicists advising the President, at least not ones that take human dignity seriously and that show skepticism toward unrestrained technological "progress" and the medical marketplace. There are too many pet policies that can be stymied by deep thinking about large topics like human nature.

Our pragmatic new President will get his "practical policy options." And the rest of us will be poorer--and possibly endangered--because of it.

The metaphysical consequences of algebra?

Here's an article on an issue that I think is going to become more crucial than people might imagine: Secession. See if you disagree.

Oh, and I forgot to link it earlier, but if you haven't already, read ocschwar's post about the fantasy of the electric car. As I become more and more skeptical of the fossil fuel economy (I know, I'm late), I become simultaneously more skeptical about "alternative energy." At the level that we currently use fossil fuels, my gut tells me, replacing them with solar or wind or whatever will have enormous consequences--economic and, yes, environmental. We can't just change our sources of power; we have to change our expectations, our attitudes, our way of life.

What the Internet does best:

Yessssss!

[deep breath]

YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!

For our anniversary this weekend we went to see Flight of the Conchords at Red Rocks, where "the dinosaurs came to rock out," as Bret said. Their show was pretty much just how you would expect: sing a funny song (once in robot costumes), then talk meanderingly (once about how they talk "professionally," not like the rest of us do). It was basically like seeing them stand-up, which is neat because most of their songs work best in that setting, and are kinda dampened by the detachment of the tv show format (not sure if this is true for Season 2, I should say). Good fun.

I got the tickets because Rosemary and I had kinda discovered Flight of the Conchords together and had fun watching the show on DVD.... but I would be lying if I said I wasn't delighted to see that Iron & Wine was the opening act. We showed up late and missed his opening songs, but I caught Boy With a Coin and Flightless Bird, American Mouth which, despite being an apocalyptically good closer, was followed by a song I didn't know called The Trapeze Swinger. Apparently hidden on some soundtrack. Check it out:



Like most of his songs, I find the lyrics both baffling and evocative. The repetitiveness of the melody would be extremely grating after 8 minutes, but to me the lyrics are so constantly surprising and sparkling that they really carry the song (the tempo changes don't hurt).

( The lyrics )

If you missed the legendary #2, here it is:

Ever hear of "distributism"?

The term comes from some eccentric British writers of the 19th Century, Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, and is used to describe a "third way" of social and economic order between capitalism and socialism.

Belloc and Chesterton developed distributism under the umbrella of Catholic social doctrine, but many similar ideas have coalesced in other contexts. Movements like local food and local currency initiatives, put forth often by liberal environmental and human rights activists (Bill McKibbens' Deep Economy is an example), are perfectly in line with the distributist philosophy. Thomas Jefferson arguably had a distributist vision of an agrarian United States (quickly foiled by Hamilton and the Federalists).

But what is it? I first heard the word six or more years ago and it's taken awhile to find any really good synopses, despite reading several weblogs dedicated to the idea. Wikipedia isn't particularly helpful. And heaven forbid you want to read about peoples' proposals to actually bring about distributism!

Anyway, today I ran across a pretty good basic summary of distributism. It still glosses over plenty, but it puts the basic enterprise into perspective.

I have a feeling there are at least a few of you out there who might be interested in this basic idea of distributism: The equal division of property between people, for the purpose of encouraging individual ownership of small enterprises and returning the connection between ownership, work, and product. It ain't socialism, and it ain't capitalism. I'd be curious to hear the impressions, questions, or challenges of anyone who feels like reading through the short-ish presentation I linked to.

Personally, I find it exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. It's really quite radical, and thus, seemingly a political impossibility. At the same time, there are so many economic knots, especially in the current economic situation, that it theoretically untangles--the tendency for firms to grow "too big to fail," the increasing dependence on financial instruments of greater and greater abstraction. Every day I actually see more and more distributist-spirited ideas gaining purchase. But the fact is, capitalism is still a behemoth of an idea.

Anyway, thoughts welcome. Perhaps you can help me shake out my own feelings.

Haven't had time to dig deeply into these subjects, so here's a quick drive-by:

1. Tom Brokaw wants to decimate municipal governance in the name of efficiency and cost reduction. I like Tom Brokaw, but this would be a terrible policy. It's bad enough that people no longer care very deeply about their local communities and are instead obsessed with the reality television show that is federal politics, where they have only the illusion of power and the best solutions on offer are craptastic. Brokaw wants to officialize this state of affairs, with the economic crisis (which couldn't possibly have been caused by bad-acting or incompetent large organizations) as the impetus. Greeeeeeeeat.
   
   
2. If you spend time on the Internet you've probably been inundated with gossip-talk and manufactured praise about Susan Boyle singing on Britain's Got Talent. (Personally, I preferred Paul Potts, but whatever.) I've read one interesting (if debatable) thing about it all, and that by music professor Michael Linton:
   

   Watch the video again of Miss Boyle’s performance, but this time watch the judges. There comes a time when about two thirds through the song they are transformed.
   
   Just for a flash, Simon Cowell breaks into one of the most genuinely radiant smiles I’ve ever seen. And for the few moments of that song’s end I don’t know when I’ve seen three more beautiful people than these judges listening to Miss Boyle sing.
   
   Seeing the faces of Cowell, Holden, and Piers as they listen to Miss Boyles is to see people almost beatified. This event, the music, the words, the woman, the judges’ recognition of their own shame at misjudging her (and all those other ladies in their pasts who they similarly dismissed), sensing shame of the audience and hearing their cheers—through all of this the beauty of Boyle’s singing hovers like a benediction over them. For a moment, only a moment, we glimpse them as they most fully are: generous, happy, blessed, the way God sees them in His love. And they are deeply, magnificently, beautiful.

   
   Mr. Linton at least gets points for originality amidst the pointless Susan Boyle blathering.
   
   
3. Speaking of boring blather, there have been a lot of predictable bombs lobbed around in the wake of the University of Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to speak at the school's commencement. Should a Catholic school be giving a platform and an honorary degree to someone who explicitly stands against some of its core notions of justice? The US Bishops' statement about Catholics in Political Life says "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions." That's pretty clear, and Notre Dame should follow that advice. ND's president has given a weak, typically academic, possibly sincere, defense: President Obama's presence is intended to encourage a "discussion" about the fraught issues in question. To that end, it appears he also invited Mary Ann Glendon, a faithful Catholic and former ambassador to the Vatican, offering her its Laetare Medal (previous recipients: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Walker Percy, Dorothy Day) and an opportunity to give a speech of her own.
   
   Here's where things get more interesting: Glendon declined. A commencement address, she says, is "not the right place," or "the right vehicle" for a "discussion" like ND's President, Rev. Jenkins, has proposed. Now Rev. Jenkins has lost his cover and is scrambling, as proven by the fact that he intends to reward the medal to someone else, presumably someone who will play along with his game plan.

"It's about one man's perseverance against impossible odds," said director Tom Dunlop, whose previous credits include the Lifetime for Men original films Suffocated Independence and Not With My Hard-Earned Money You Won't. "Hopefully Gary's struggle will inspire other men out there to empower themselves and stand up to frigid women who attempt to micromanage every last minute of their lives."

This has been on my mind for awhile, and I realized why I can't seem to unravel the basic conundrum of what--if any--console system I should be looking to buy (whenever I can actually spend hundreds of dollars in good conscience, which isn't soon anyway). It's really about my emotional reaction to the various options, oddly enough:

If I buy a Playstation3, I feel like a dupe.
It's way too expensive, with the smallest library of games, and I don't give a hoot about Blu-Ray (can't afford an HD tv after buying a PS3). I'm bitter that it's almost impossible to get one that will play PS2 games. And yet, I work for a studio whose primary working relationship is with Sony. PS3 development is likely to be my career for awhile.

If I buy an Xbox 360, I feel like a traitor.
There's a lot to recommend the Xbox as a solid default console purchase. Lots of games--including a ton of downloadable stuff, which I'm a sucker for. Probably the most likely to be the PS2 of this generation, with the widest variety of games including the most daring and unique ones. Despite all that, emotionally, the Xbox just makes me feel... kinda... bluh. I'm not that excited to own an Xbox.

If I buy a Nintendo DS, I feel selfish.
...because these are basically the kinds of games I want to play and to make. This is a bit like career isolationism, and I'm already the guy who brings up comparisons to Star Control or Defender of the Crown or System Shock instead of Gears of War or Assassin's Creed or LittleBigPlanet because I basically haven't played those games. Which is kinda the problem in the first place.

If I buy a Nintendo Wii, I feel unserious.
It's affordable. And, yes, it has the most family fare, and I am a father before I'm a game designer. And with the way it's selling, there are plenty of benefits of knowing this platform, at least in theory. But like the DS, it's like putting myself in a niche, which probably isn't good.

Yesterday, our head of development at work made a (very gentle) point of saying we should be on top of the latest games. And while I think there are plenty of things I bring to the table because of my interest in small, casual, retro, and indie gaming... still, he's right.

I don't think I will be getting anything soon. (Carpets first, honey!) But I figure my opinionated friends might be interested in my dilemma (tetralemma?).

Bonnie Erbe:

The media have also been rife with stories portraying this trend [the "rising number of couples and single mothers...deciding this is no time to bring a child into the world" and having an abortion] as something of a tragedy. Let me propose a counter view: It is not.

Now, I'm not going to argue the question of when abortion is or isn't wrong here. None of you want to read that and I don't want to write it. What interests me here is the meanings of "tragedy"--Ms. Erbe's meaning, and the proper meaning.

Suffice it to say, I think it likely that Ms. Erbe has confused the meaning of "tragedy" with something else. Maybe just "Bad." Perhaps that's unremarkable, but I think it is quite remarkable because it seems to me the failure to understand tragedy is, for one thing, not uncommon, and for another, symptomatic of a wider failure of ethical discourse.

( Help Us, LJ-Cut, You Are Our Only Hope! )

(Not nearly as funny if you haven't seen the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are.)

Hat tip to ocschwar