Posted Saturday, March 8 I was a bit off-target in my anti-Zizek post of Thursday night. His Minority Report/Bush Doctrine analogy actually seems to go something like this: preemptively attacking a country in self-defense is like punishing someone for murder before they have committed the crime; or, possibly, like punishing someone for murder whom one is unsure is guilty. (These are distinct cases but Zizek does not seem to distinguish them, so we needn’t.) He concludes – absurdly, hence my gripe - that the Bushies must labor under the psychotically bizarre epistemological delusion that they are omniscient clairvoyants about the future. (It would obviously be wrong to convict someone of murder if one did not know they were guilty. Ergo, the Bush Doctrine is a declaration of omniscience concerning future behavior of potential enemies.) This is silly. But there is something a bit less inconsequential behind it, which I neglected to draw out. I think Zizek’s problem creeps in with his implicit equation of damage inflicted on an enemy in the course of a just war with judicially meted-out punishment. But soldiers taking pot-shots across the battlefield are not, so far as I can make out, like judges sentencing guilty prisoners to death. Why is this? Well, a whole bunch of reasons. But basically: just wars aren’t judicial acts (let alone built up out of lots of ballistically-individual judicial acts.) Just wars are lesser evils committed to ward off greater evils. The soldier who is shot is not getting what he deserves – let alone the civilian who is accidentally killed by the stray bomb. From here on in it gets complicated, admittedly. But it is obvious, surely – I always say ‘surely’ when I am unsure – that, once we are in ‘greater evil outweighs lesser evil’ territory, the arguments against a doctrine of preemption are going to be pragmatic and prudential rather than morally categorical. Preemptively striking someone you are very, very justifiably worried is about to shoot you in the face isn’t really all that different from striking someone who just shot at you and missed. The dilution caused by uncertainty, in the former case, does not change the basic character of the situation. (And, after all, why strike someone even after they have shot and missed? They might not fire again, or might be out of bullets.) In both cases I am exercising my right to self-defense. It is rather confused, I think, to suppose that in either case I am also moonlighting as a judge, as it were. The previous paragraph begged a lot of questions. I ignore their indignant, wheedling pleas thusly Posted Thursday, March 6 Zoë is suffering from eczema, an unwelcome legacy from her mother’s mother’s mother (we miss you Nannie!). I only hope that, a) it is the childhood-only kind, and not the life-long version Nannie suffered from and b) she also inherits the figure (yeah, the figure - that's the word for them), which only one cousin was lucky enough to do.We call the itchy places her “bites” (pronounced "mmbiydzs"); who’s going to try and teach a 19-month-old to say eczema? She assumes that everyone has them and she thoughtfully scratches me on the places where she has “mmbiydzs”: the backs of my knees, insides of my elbows, wrists, lower back, and neck. She also makes me put on special cream when she does, and band-aids. It’s both sweet and sad, like our new bedtime ritual. We lie down together while she nurses and I gently scratch her. Sometimes we pretend she is a kitty. It gives me heart-pangs. Posted Thursday, March 6 Life in this modern universe I’m making sort of a hobby out of documenting Slavoj Zizek’s silliness. (Here; and here.) He has struck again. So here goes: In Minority Report, the Steven Spielberg film based on a Philip K. Dick story, three humans, through monstrous scientific experiments, have acquired the capacity to foresee the future. The police employ these clairvoyants to arrest criminals before they commit their crime. (The “minority report” from the title refers to those rare cases where one of these clairvoyants disagrees with the others about a crime to be committed.) If one transposes this premise to international relations, does one not get an accurate picture of the Bush (or, rather, Cheney) doctrine now publicly declared as the official U.S. “philosophy” of international politics? The answer is: no. By way of arriving at this answer, let us distinguish some possible questions. 1) Is it wrong to punish people for things they will do but haven’t done yet? 2) Is it wrong to punish people whom one is unsure are actually guilty? 3) Is it a bad idea to saw off the limb you are sitting on? 4) Is it a bad idea to piss into the wind? 5) Is it wrong to try to predict or control what will happen in the future? Question 1 is a nice little puzzler. Minority Report poses it with imaginative vividness, then somewhat lamely changes the subject in the last 10 minutes, answering question 2 in the affirmative. (But it’s an entertaining movie, in spite of the philosophical bait-and-switch. Yes, I realize I just half-gave away the ending; but the ending stinks.) The Bush Doctrine may be challenged on the grounds that some subset of 2-4 deserve ‘yes’ answers. It is a source of concern that nations might go to war unnecessarily and mistakenly on preemptive grounds. It is reasonable to believe the best way to deter terrorism is by strengthening, not weakening, the bonds of international law. And it is reasonable to think the Bush Doctrine really, really upsets a lot of people whom it is quite unnecessary to upset in this manner. But I fail to see how question 1 has much bearing on the Bush Doctrine at the present time. (To pick an example not completely at random: Saddam Hussein is not much like Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report – i.e. foredoomed to commit a criminal act despite his undeniable good behavior, upright moral qualities and sterling intentions up until this very minute.) To make matters worse, Zizek actually seems to conflate a ‘yes’ answer to 2 with a ‘yes’ answer to 5. The problem with today’s Bush doctrine is that it leaves no room for the “realistic” possibility of chance or the unforseen... The Bush doctrine instead relies on the violent assertion of the paranoiac logic of total control over some future threat, and pre-emptively strikes against it. Such an approach in today’s universe is patently inept. The loop between the present and the future is closed: The prospect of a breathtaking terrorist act is evoked in order to justify incessant preemptive strikes now.[underlining mine] I like to think of myself as a man of today’s universe – it’s a now, happening sort of place (this ain’t your father’s universe.) Yet I cannot refrain from to asking: the Bushies are guilty of failing to realize they are not like those bald, vat-paddling clairvoyants in Minority Report? This is just plain silly. (Notice how, if one deletes the underlined words, the result is merely a statement of the doctrine? And notice how none of the underlined words really belong in the passage?) It is not wrong – indeed, it is morally obligatory – for US Presidents and their advisors to do their level best to foresee and shape the future. Which, of course, gets tricky when one starts to consider whether that might entail, in extreme circumstances, waging preemptive war. Yep. That’s a thing to think about. Posted Wednesday, March 5 Take back your blooming lion! Book five in the series - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - is coming out on June 21. But you knew that already. And it's Amazon sales rank is...number 1. Yep. And the product details further reveal...896 pages. Aaaah. That's crucial data. That's goood. Why is Harry so popular? I mean: it's not mysterious that the series is popular, but sooo popular? Let's ask George Orwell, shall we? In his essay, "Boy's Weeklies", I've found some funny hints. He talks about how the 'school story' is being supplanted by more sensational stuff. He quotes two bits to show why. Exhibit A: Billy Bunter groaned. A quarter of an hour had elapsed out of the two hours that Bunter was booked for extra French. In a quarter of an hour there were only fifteen minutes! But every one of those minutes seemed inordinately long to Bunter. They seemed to crawl by like tired snails. Looking at the clock in Classroom No. 10 the fat Owl could hardly believe that only fifteen minutes had passed. It seemed more like fifteen hours, if not fifteen days! Other fellows were in extra French as well as Bunter. They did not matter. Bunter did! (The Magnet) Exhibit B: After a terrible climb, hacking out handholds in the smooth ice every step of the way up. Sergeant Lionheart Logan of the Mounties was now clinging like a human fly to the face of an icy cliff, as smooth and treacherous as a giant pane of glass. An Arctic blizzard, in all its fury, was buffeting his body, driving the blinding snow into his face, seeking to tear his fingers loose from their handholds and dash him to death on the jagged boulders which lay at the foot of the cliff a hundred feet below. Crouching among those boulders were eleven villainous trappers who had done their best to shoot down Lionheart and his companion, Constable Jim Rogers — until the blizzard had blotted the two Mounties out of sight from below. (The Wizard) Orwell draws the obvious conclusion that Mounty on ice is preferrable to one hundred words to the effect that Bunter is in detention; hence is bound to win out in the market-place of ideas. The next bit would be impoverished by any attempt at paraphrase: Merely looking at the cover illustrations of the papers which I have on the table in front of me, here are some of the things I see. On one a cowboy is clinging by his toes to the wing of an aeroplane in mid-air and shooting down another aeroplane with his revolver. On another a Chinese is swimming for his life down a sewer with a swarm of ravenous-looking rats swimming after him. On another an engineer is lighting a stick of dynamite while a steel robot feels for him with its claws. On another a man in airman’s costume is fighting barehanded against a rat somewhat larger than a donkey. On another a nearly naked man of terrific muscular development has just seized a lion by the tail and flung it thirty yards over the wall of an arena, with the words, ‘Take back your blooming lion!’ Clearly no school story can compete with this kind of thing. From time to time the school buildings may catch fire or the French master may turn out to be the head of an international anarchist gang, but in a general way the interest must centre round cricket, school rivalries, practical jokes, etc. There is not much room for bombs, death-rays, sub-machine guns, aeroplanes, mustangs, octopuses, grizzly bears or gangsters. Oh, but that was where he was so wrong. Much of Harry Potter's charm - most of it: there, I said it - derives from the peculiar fisheye lens perspective on Hogwarts. The books are really about the school. (Think about it. If it turns out that book five is set in some cave, or forest...nah, wouldn't be the same.) The cosmology of the school is Rowling's one quite original trick. On the one hand, it's a school. On the other hand, it's in this magical world, allowing for all the ordinary school activities to be so seamlessly mixed up with tentacled things and flying cars and the rest. But that isn't all. If that were it, it would be a good trick not a great one; (just another world behind the wardrobe; been there, done that.) No, there's a truly original twist within a twist in the logic of the 'wizarding world', which is that Hogwart's is somehow the eternally strategic linchpin in the battle between good and evil. The oddity of this doesn't obtrude as you read. (There's the whole trick right there.) But there isn't any apparent reason, even according to the logic of the books, why Hogwarts should be the center of it all. Yet it certainly is. (It was with good reason that Hitler, in planning war against England, didn't say to his assembled evil advisers: curse that headmaster of Eton! We must break the spirit of those boys! No, he was worried about Churchill. And well he might.) The thing about being a kid is: your school seems really big; the people in it seem really important and powerful: intensely good and intensely sinister. Then later you go back to visit and see the two foot tall thing and say, 'this was my locker?' That's called growing up. Somehow Rowling manages to make these systematic misperceptions of youth part of the true geometry of her universe. And the dragons and wands and all the rest are really almost just flash and smoke to distract the eye while this trick is being performed. As a result, the characters get to be quite ordinary, yet cosmologically central, without the strain showing at the seams of the narrative. There are lots of fantasy stories featuring children who turn out to be future kings and secret magical beings : been there, done that. But after their true natures are revealed, they don't get to do completely ordinary things practically all the time. If they get called to save the universe, they have to drop out of school. But not Harry. Well, that's my thesis.