Spoken Word

The core session on the role of translation began today. The keynote speech was given by Esther Allen of PEN World Voices New York, who hazarded several challenges about the current state and future of translation. I have virtually no experience in the subject at the moment, but the speech was extremely interesting for its first allusion. In order to tease out the genesis of the problem of translation, Allen called upon the story of Nimrod, whose frustrated appearance in Inferno rouses a harsh scold from Virgil the intellectual. Nimrod is the giant who conceptualized the Tower of Babel, a mutiny which, as the legend goes, rendered the world pluralingual. The punishment that he suffers in hell is noncommunicability; he is unable to understand anybody, is likewise unable to be understood, and rails against his misfortune by belting thunderclap blasts on a tremendous horn. Allen's relation illustrated the lesson that often, this is the very dilemma-turned-paradox that many linguists constantly face: some pieces, for all their nuance and organic beauty, are impossible to translate properly, and still others are so vivid and common to the human experience that they do not require any translation at all.

This dichotomy underscores a principle point, as far as I can tell, about the objection many might have about the nature of translation. Allen notes that an enduring feeling amongst the academic community is that the new work is necessarily of a different, perhaps lesser quality or merit than the original, because it is impossible to put the original author's whole meaning into equivalent foreign words. Additionally, the translator's interpretation of the content of the text is just as prone to misunderstanding at it would be if any reader attempted the original, and it is difficult establish definitively whether a particular translator or reader has provided a version which is more convincing than another. But this idea seems to be more incomplete, the more correct it is. If it is so that language, experience, worldview, and other aspects of culture are so ingrained in the translator and his language that even so skilled a wordsmith loses the original beauty of the text, it cannot be too far of a step to imagine that an average reader in the original language also experiences a novel, an essay, a piece of poetry, or indeed a speech, song, movie or sitcom through this same sort of corrupting lens; it is a non sequitur to condemn translation, because this problem of misunderstanding is common to anyone's experience of any piece of art. If we extrapolate this point, then each great piece of literature has a qualitative deficiency that is proportionate to the amount of diversity in the society which reads it: the more differences between the author and the readership, the higher the likelihood that the piece is going to be misunderstood. Thus, it appears as if literary translators would not necessarily introduce anything corrupt by way of their art that an average reader would not introduce anyway; the specific problem that a translator might contribute seems to be a slightly different one.

At this point, it should be mentioned that the entire argument I am making is inextricable from my belief that in many pieces of literature, the author intends to present a specific message or set of messages; this is an easily disputable issue, and I would imagine that especially among literary translators, the opinion that literature is made even more vibrant with every new reading of the work is equally contended. The problem here is semantic: if literary translation is an art, then it must be referred to as a science just as well, at least in terms of the words used to describe it qualitatively. Regarding a poem or a mathematical proof or a touchdown pass, one could use any one of the synonyms of beauty; but for a translation, this is not so. If a translation is called something like beautiful, it seems to me that this is either a misnomer or a bad thing. When a reader calls a translation beautiful, he could actually mean that the text he is reading is beautiful, or, in other words, that if the translation is accurate (a tenuous word in itself), then the original work is beautiful, and that the translation reflects the quality of the original work. To be reductionist, we might instead say that the translation is good, and that the original work is the one that is beautiful. Alternatively, if the reader truly means to deem the translation itself beautiful, it seems to me that that adjective might support the charge that translation is an intrinsically flawed practice: if beautiful is accurate, that one word represents the dissolution of the original author's voice by highlighting the presence and skill of the translator. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does act as sort of an asterisk for the new piece, which is to say that it should be read as a translation which is additionally a commentary, which may very likely be intentional.

Perhaps we should rather abide by the vocabulary that is more commonly associated with science, not art, both in terms of a goal and an evaluative metric. Of course it is possible for a translation project to look more like a work of art, because these projects seem to be more exercises than assignments. We learned today that there is an author in the States who is taking all the English versions of Comedia, and making a unified English translation of all of those first translations. There was a similarly playful work published in the recent past, in which the dialect was that of rural 19th century Australia. Examples such as these are clearly in a different category from traditional translations, and they more easily fit into the artistic category: the voice of the translator, or some distinct skill that he possesses, is unmistakable. But to bring this same voice to all translated works would, I think, be a tremendous disservice to the canon of second-language works. There is something to be said for those types of creative productions; but also worthy of merit are the translations which intentionally pursue a very precise translation of the words contained in the original text, which may allow a foreign reader insight into the literary technique of the place and period; and further still, equally valuable are the productions which are not necessarily word-for-word transcriptions, but instead are themeatically identical, and would therefore consider a sort of cultural translation as well as a lingual one. If the practice of performing only beautiful translations is instituted, it is plain to see how quickly the closest version of the original work would be a forgotten pursuit; we would be incalculably worse off for it.

On the Practical Irrelevance of the God Question

One of my principle interests in philosophy, besides logic and ethics, is the very human struggle with ontology. There is no need to delineate the tremendous bulk of speculation about the manner and conditions of our existence, which can be plainly identified in even the oldest texts and oral traditions. I can see the way in which this question of our origin is an enticing one, a useful one to answer, and even a challenge to the brilliant minds which, should they conclude something fantastic about ontology, would be immortalized in the sparse canon of genius. But along with the limitless inquiry has come an equally immeasurable amount of disagreement, which has over the past several thousand years bordered on vitriolic. This is intolerable.

I have heard a dozen or more debates which feature paramount scholars of both sides: one who scoffs at the idea of the existence of a deity, against one who proclaims that at least One must exist. I openly admit that while I am decidedly a resident in the former camp, I have been impressed, on rare occasion, by the argumentation style--and, every once in a while, the content--of the faithful. Most often, debates of this manner seem to generate questions about the origin of the universe, each side asking the other how it is that they conceive of that pivotal moment, and demanding that his opponent prove the case or face falsification; the religious man questions the atheist's lack of a conclusive evidence and classifies his dismissal of divine influence as its own sort of leap of faith, whereas the atheist disregards the religious man's devotion as blind, unsubstantiated, or hypocritical. And reliably so. I do not recall seeing a debate over this issue in which these roles were not filled, and although the rhetorical style sometimes morphs and the quips are nuanced, the skeleton is recognizable. I therefore aim to break with the tradition a bit, to borrow a strain from Cartesian soliloquy, and to pose to the pious man the following thought experiment.

Let us presume that you are correct, and that some divine entity is responsible for authoring and generating the universe, or life on the Earth, or life in general, or any other iteration of "existence" that you wish to assert. I still perceive an extraordinary leap in the suggestion that the Being/s that governed this creation is caring, in two senses of the word. First, it seems to me that it is equally likely, considering the evidence of the whole of recorded human history and present condition, that the divine is a twisted and vindictive Thing, and not a loving or nurturing one at all. Second, it seems far more likely still that even if this creating Entity is omniscient and omnipotent, It is very likely apathetic to the result. In other words, I have no problem with conceding that some Designer created everything in existence, because I have no evidence which demonstrates that it either must be so or that it cannot have been so. I concede the point, in order to support an argument that it is entirely irrelevant whether or not we were created or we happened by chance, because this resolution does not answer the actual question behind this point of contention: how does this distinction matter, if it does at all?

I have labored over the issuance of my atheistic proclivity, and while I stand firmly by it, I actually believe that it is a case no more worth arguing from an evidential perspective, than is the case forwarded by the theists. Neither one of us has any irrefutable evidence that the other will agree is cogent and applicable, so I will let it alone as an argument and instead keep it simply as a stance. But just as life sometimes opens a window when it closes a door, so to say, I too will subvert my humble concession by posing what seems to be an even more daunting challenge: demonstrate, you believers in the unsubstantiated, that It is a Being that we should be glad to have around. It seems incomparably clear that this is an impossible task, so let me suggest this resolution: given that we can extract morality from some other construct, and given that we can still discover brilliant meaning in our lives without the divine to justify it, let the argument instead revolve around the consideration paid to religion in social movements, with specific reference to the extension of civil rights and liberties, for this is one truly measurable way in which deity does govern us, whether It exists or not.

I will concede that one explanation for the origin of the universe might be that some omnipotent being influenced it, to whatever degree. But imagine that you were certain that this is how things happened, that it were somehow provable and verifyable, and that there was nonetheless no holy writ to influence your perception of this being. I wonder if there would be any evidence prove that the diety was a good one, or if there might be evidence to suggest that wickedness or that indifference are at least equally likely. In other words, even with the certain knowledge of the existence of a First Mover, I do not see any evidence to support any inclination whatsoever to worship it any more than fear it, to love it any more than bemoan it. How, I wonder, can you men of faith bear to say that you will think, act, speak, or vote a certain way, which is in keeping with your holy text, when you cannot demonstrate that the holy text reflects a divinity that cares about what you do or that you do at all, to say nothing of whether or not a loving divinity would favor your particular mindset? How can you further suggest that acting in a way that is in keeping with a so-called holy writ, which is in some cases a centuries-old copiously-translated highly-edited text, resembles anything like what it is to act the way that the divine would wish, having already made the tremendous assumption that one exists? How can you know that you have the right god/s, how can you know that you have the right guidelines, and how can you know that you are reading them the correct way? 

And ultimately, what if there is no Creator, Governor, Mover? Surely we must take this to mean nothing, in the end, because the alternative would be that we all give up the lives we have so welcomed until now; this is no alternative at all. These are the important questions, I think--the ones which reflect the human decisions and understandings, not the sanctified ones. I assert that these are the meaningful intellectual pursuits in part because, as they are designed to be posited to other humans, they are answerable, even--and especially--with the admission of ignorance. Furthermore, I believe that these are the important questions to ask because the answers to them reveal the way that we each apply whatever opinion we have about holy writ, divine existence, and the ontological question. It is the application which is truly important, not just our respective opinions, or just the actual fact of the matter, because it is not some objective Truth which governs the way we act: at least, this must be true, or else this entire debate is moot in the first place. And what use can there be for debate answers which have no hope for verification; much better to concede one side or the other and to reorient the questioning, especially since the outcome of either answer to the God question is necessarily the same.

Morality in the Modern Communitarian Archetype

The thrust of communitarianism, as I understand it, is the assessment that we are no longer a nation-wide community, but rather we identify more closely with smaller communities based on some shared human quality, such as an ethical standpoint, pop culture appetite, linguistic distinction, and so on. Although the idea for this entry finds its genesis in a plenary session given by Michael Daxner, I have heard an identical sentiment very often in the States, and in a disturbingly increasing frequency: one man has no right to judge another, at least in part because the first does not and cannot know the circumstances of the other. I assume that in order to give the argument another figment of support, there is a tangential assertion that it is not proper or suitable for one person to judge another because that is not the charge of humans within a community or between communities. Neither of these claims holds any logical weight, not least of all because the people who hold the belief are necessarily all-purpose dunces, and I will seek to dissolve both of them with stark and abrasive force. Daxner raised several brilliant points, well-measured and finely conceived, which linked the idea of communitarianism to the practice of civil disobedience, examined the nature of morality as rooted in our self-consciousness, and then constructed a framework by which we could evaluate the legitimacy of a world court. Ubiquitous in his lecture were the themes of membership, responsibility, and judgement, which will likewise be echoed throughout this reflection.

One of the vicious dangers of communitarianism is that a system of checks is rendered execrable and, in some way, an unwelcome moral imposition. If communities are allowed to establish their own versions of morality and of law, two constructs whose differences I will attempt to outline presently, then it would be difficult to moderate which system of thought prevails in a community, and to determine how efficient and fair is that mode of action which punishes infractions. Indeed this is the crux of communitarianism, which forces a clumsy respect between communities, and more, a tacit permission for each to govern itself, based on internal laws and customs. This concept seems to be grossly incomplete, in two major ways, which confound the mind for their ignorance of the inclusions requisite to complex societies. First, communitarianism fails to acknowledge, and indeed plainly rejects the possibility of objective morality, even in cases which relate to basic efficiency. Secondly, because of the difficulty inherent in defining the boundaries--and thus the constituents--of a given community, communitarianism is a riddle whose amorphism augments the grasp of the powerful and striates the necks of the meek. It seems that if a community is defined too broadly, that is, if a community is based on something so broad as racial background but then contains several different and oppositional political ideologies, it would be impossible for every group to feel as if has a stake in leadership; the opportunity for alienation and subjugation based on ideological disagreement is obviously present, and given the non-interventionism implicit in communitarianism, that subjugation would have to be addressed internally. In simpler words, for all the cultural safety and heterogeneity that communitarianism provides, it likewise confounds the effort to assure intra-communal equality. Objectivism thus destroyed and disregarded, control is also lost, and balance is become dust.

Global Citizenship as a Misnomer

One of the principle pursuits of the ISP sessions is to establish a groundwork for the term global citizenship. We use the phrase constantly, because a chief concern of the programs run by the Seminar in general is to conceive of a way to work towards a more frequent and dependable paradigm of conversation and collaboration between international scholars. I suppose the theory behind the importance of defining global citizenship is two-fold. In the first place, if we are aimed at revolutionizing the isolationist, elitist attitude that is sometimes prevalent in Western countries, it is prudent to recognize and give a framework to the idea that we each of us share a great deal in common, by virtue of the fact that the reality of a nation-state being an autonomous agent is absolutely void. The extent of the connection between each of our countries is so extraordinary that to qualify it even as a connection misses the point: we are interwoven, in policy and in action, laced together in such a way that the heartbeat of one fuels the arteries of many. Second, to suggest that something like global citizenship exists is to correctly identify our residence on the planet, a conception of self which is not commonly at the forefront. It sets aside nationalism as a defining stripe of identity, and instead repositions the human at the center of a world in which each of his actions spiderwebs out from his fingertips, tugging and nudging at the lives of everyone who he will never meet, all of their options constricted by his choices.

The first manner in which establishing a definition is important, is simultaneously the chief downfall of most of the definitions I have heard so far. It seems to me that a great many thoughts in the academic sphere are reactionary, in that they aim to correct a specific problem which has arisen, usually in the face of declarations that it would arise in the first place. The response to new challenges such as these is often very bold and sometimes fairly aggressive, which needlessly echoes the understandable frustration felt by many of the contributors to the solution. For example, I have heard several advanced faculty suggest solutions which immediately seem unworkable, but which nonetheless highlight the point that some sort of change is dire. Furthermore, many of the suggestions that some visiting scholars have voiced truly reveal the disconnect between the work that they do behind closed oaken doors, and the results that occur in the classroom; the schism between what university faculty imagine that we are thinking, and what--indeed, how--we are actually thinking; the divide between what they believe is meaningful, and the reality that each student faces about what is actually practical and desired by the people who will eventually employ us.

Asked what sorts of elements comprise global citizenship, faculty tend to give answers that are in some way disheartening, because I never see anything that impresses me as being transformative. Appreciation and recognition of the value of other cultures, I have seen. Learning another language: there it is, on the board. Study abroad experience, yes. Ability to identify with the struggles of other classes, creeds, and races. Yes, yes. Yes, there they are, scattered across the graph paper board like a cluttered desk drawer of old newspaper rubber bands. And each certainly a valuable part of cross-cultural understanding, or international competency, or cosmopolitanism, some other term packed tight with buzzwords; each, though, being a definition which must be conceived as independent from global citizenship, because for all their merit, they do nothing to address the pressing concern that each of us faces as a citizen of the globe. In some way, these suggestions underscore the frustrations I have about the identities which many people hold dear. Instead of jumbling together the terms which we believe are germane to a functional, savvy world traveler--skills which no doubt have their place in a person who considers himself to be a global citizen--it is absolutely crucial that we exercise tremendous acuity in imagining each separate definition, lest the functionality of one of the terms--indeed, the utility of the term, because we would lose the ability to charge people with it, and to render them dutiful--should fall away, because its meaning is muddled.

I believe we can extrapolate the identity of a global citizen by thinking first about what it means to be a citizen of any country. Legally, the issue is senseless to argue, because there is no mitigating situation that would prevent someone from being a citizen of the globe; we can rule out all concept of legal standing. I can understand that when a person is raised in a country, he might be indoctrinated with the values of that country, either tacitly or overtly, and that in some way this is unavoidable. Furthermore, it seems to me that in the extreme majority of cases, there is engendered in a person some connection between himself and his land, such that a triumph or a disaster there would be taken as personally as if it had happened to him directly. This is the internal agent of nationalism, that one feels so much a part of his country that the land and the landmarks are extensions of the body. In this way, it is in the soil of identity that citizenship plants its feet, rooting itself in the character of a person yet being sustained by the character of the nation. Thus demonstrated, I would advocate that a weighty part of the definition of global citizenship should reflect this same type of an emotional resonance: a recognition that the world sometimes faces calamity that is somehow intolerable, that it affects a person intimately and meaningfully, and that it becomes of paramount importance to act intentionally to correct the problem. In a very important way, global citizenship is nothing more than taking the globe to be home in the same way that we have traditionally taken nations.

Thus conceived, there are many things that we can infer about how a global citizen must act, and we can delineate the myriad ways that the definitions that have been given by so many scholars are necessary, yet insufficient. In order to keep this essay to a readable length, I will only briefly address some of the most frequent suggestions about what makes up global citizenship, and I will discuss how those fit into the three marginalized terms that I mentioned above. I will also show how it is that those terms are each valuable, but how those ultimately fall short of garnering the solution-oriented mindset that the global citizenship I have defined seems to afford. For the duration of this essay, the idea of global issues or world problems or some such language will be applied, and each of these should be taken to mean some hazard that affects the planet as a body of land on which we all live. In some ways, the definition which I will put forward will be equally workable for solutions to calamities which affect humanity although this is not my express intent, nor do I believe that global citizenship as such should encompass this mode of action. For this type of duty, that is, our responsibility to protect each other and humanity, we might devise some other term, or refer to others which presently exist, such as the ethic of care, a popular tenet of feminist theory and many modern prima facie ethical discussions.

Some of the most commonly suggested terms are perhaps the first to come to academic minds because of their ease to defend, when imagining the sort of world that a mentor would like to create for this pupils. Such suggestions included to build in an emphasis on learning at least one foreign language, participating in study abroad, executing a service project, being able to respect and appreciate other cultures, and possessing a willingness to engage and overcome the differences that one sees between himself and another. These are surely each respectable traits for an individual to have, but they constitute different terms than global citizenship, and if we settle for these as adequate definitions for that term in question, we cheat our way out of rightful ownership of certain universal problems.

In the first place, learning a foreign language does not make a person any more accomplished in the area of addressing a solution that faces the globe. Perhaps a common language would facilitate communication between two parties who engaged a problem together, but increased ease is the only benefit: this commonality would not encourage a certain worldview or additionally persuade a person to be able to address any global problem. It would not be too much to suggest that learning a foreign language might make a person too confident that he is able to identify with the plight or concerns of a people, given that he can already identify with them in some fundamental way. But this presumption would be out of order: it does not follow that two people who are able to communicate with each other are any more likely than any two others to be tightly knit in kinship; look plainly at the existence of civil war to support this fact. It seems absolutely proper to suggest that learning a foreign language is a helpful skill, and even a helpful exercise; but perhaps only in the area of multi-national competence or cultural affinity or something of the sort, because the new skill might spark within a student the passion for travel, or might be taught concurrently with a history course which discussed the country in greater detail. And even if the language is learned with no attention to any other subject, the student is at least able to understand a variety of new texts, navigate a new space, and perform other tasks which might somehow brighten his life. But he is not a global citizen; he is a citizen of more or perhaps two countries, who can trek through either with equal ease, but he does not necessarily care an inch about the rest. Surely, then, he cannot consider himself to be a citizen of the globe any more than he can consider himself to be a lemur.

The misstep of second suggestion echoes that of the first, in the sense that it is simply a physical instance of this tendency towards familiarizing oneself with elements of a foreign culture, and as such, is incomplete. However, just the same as the last example fell short, I cannot see how it is that participation in a study abroad session would necessarily make a student any more than a long-term traveler, which does nothing to demonstrate care about the country which he visits, and none the more for the globe, with which we are more specifically concerned. It is easy to support and prudent to object that traveling to another country would infuse some of that country’s values or tendencies into the traveler, thus making him likelier to be a more socially apt individual; but after all, certainly the opposite might be true. For it cannot be that every student who travels to another country enjoys his experience and internalizes the great truth that cultural diversity is a beautiful occasion of the vibrance of the human appetite. A student abroad is entirely capable, just as any traveler is, of finding something repulsive in the people of the nation he inhabits, and would thus return with a certain distaste for inter-cultural fluency. Notwithstanding, even the best study abroad experience could not ensure that a student would transition from an average collegiate to a global citizen, because travel and cultural savvy do not by themselves constitute, nor would they necessarily engender, a perspective centered around addressing a calamity that faces the world, as if it were just the same as a nation with which he so strongly identified.

Perhaps performing a service project most closely approaches what would count as global citizenship, but only because of the ambiguity of the term. Depending on the aim of the project, service could indeed count as the exercising an act of global citizenship, although it must be service of a certain specific type. It is obvious that ideal service to humankind in whatever form is beneficial to those whom it targets; this is plain to see, and moreover its negation would not serve to disprove the thesis of this essay, so we need not to waste time bickering about whether a particular sort of service is efficient, or whether it cares for the proper people, or any other argument which condemns its practice. In order to count as global citizenship, it seems as if the type of service has obvious constraints: it must act to somehow mend a pressing concern which affects the planet, or it must in other words be aimed at relief of an ailment--such as global warming, oceanic carbonation, overfishing, et al.--which afflicts the physical space of the world, and by implication, our success in it. But the focus must always be external, and founded upon the notion that we must be mindful of the deleterious effect that we constantly exact on a global scale. It is this wording that brings into light a chief concern that I have about generating global citizens, in the sense that I suggest: it seems to be necessarily implicit that if someone cares about the earth itself being in danger, he also cares about human beings being in danger. In other words, it does not seem possible to care about the condition of the earth and nonetheless maintain that humans are not germane to the conversation; it would be difficult to suggest that the planet should exist for its own sake, and that our collective existence should not rightly be considered. However, too liberal of a conception of the notion of care for humankind reduces the composition of a global citizen to the suggest elements which this essay contests; in other words, the notion that service is important serves to highlight the crucial fact that care for humankind is a tangent of global citizenship, but the one does not collapse into the other, nor does the one exist when the other is too prominent.

Two suggestions which sounded incredibly valuable actually carried little weight when constructing a definition of global citizenship, although in another way, they do give global citizenship some meaning. Being able to respect and appreciate other cultures, and possessing a willingness to engage and overcome the differences that one sees between himself and another are certainly relevant to any iteration of talks about two groups of nearly any stripe, but the old objection still holds: these consider relations between people, and miss entirely what seems to be the aim of global citizenship. Instead, as I have suggested already, these cherished characteristics should instead be members of a list of traits which describe ideal peacekeepers, or empathetic diplomats, but surely they are of little consequence when considering our relationship to the planet on which we find ourselves. One sort of term is needed for this interpersonal type of cultivation; quite another is needed to reflect a need for attention to global ailments.

It may be interesting to note here, that much of my conception of a global citizen has a focus which is distinctly reactive, preventative, defensive. This might come from my generally radical approach to how I perceive the world, an attitude which philosophically resembles having constantly to put out fires. Let me then very clearly aim my effort here at ringing the alarm on two distinct fires, thus calling attention to a division which the whole of the conversation about global citizenship seems to miss. There should be one set of terms, along with unique descriptions and goals, for the sort of individual that the conversation about global citizenship has, until now, seemed to describe: a person whom, if we were all a bit more like him, would transmogrify us to a more compassionate, understanding, patient people, and not the least bit xenophobic or ethnocentric. There should be quite another set of terms devoted to the discussion of what it properly means to be a global citizen, that is, a person who considers himself to be a member of the world just as much as he is a member of his nation or his family, and who takes quite seriously any impending misfortune which he can see will befall the planet, with effective respect towards the care for, excellence of, and betterment of humankind.

The persistent theme to be seen in these suggestions is that they are each of them new skills that the educator who mentioned it seeks to instill into his student; or at best, they are passions which the educator believes will make the person more well-rounded, capable of creating a better world. Each of these is probably a fair position to hold, but it no further demonstrates the definition of what it means to be a global citizen, because these oft-mentioned traits only misappropriate the term under examination. The error they encounter is that they each circumvent the crux of the simple language, which can perhaps be understood just a bit better if it is phrased differently: we must ask ourselves, what does it mean to be a citizen, and then, to make the debated definition a practical one, how is it that a citizen of the globe itself would react to a global hazard, given what we know about what it is to be a citizen. In this way, we establish first a definition and then a test, the latter acting as sort of a metric for the former, and each further validated because the other is logically taut and pragmatic. After all, it is unreasonable for us to expect to solve for ourselves the great calamities which now clearly face both our globe and our race, if we neglect to establish a language which properly directs those who are charged with solving such problems.

A New Approach to History

The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a new group whose purpose is to lobby to President Obama, has affixed this plaque to the earth in Washington, D.C., a tree which springs from a root of etched marble. I cannot concede that they speak on behalf of many people, but certainly the only world which I can conceive of as sustainable will hold this statement as fundamental to its credo. Indeed, such a world would be the realization of exactly this hope, now only lines in a stone.

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I stand now, for the purposes of this thought experiment, in direct opposition to everything with which I have formed a dear and lasting confederacy. I have, for as long as I can remember, been a tremendous fan of knowledge and its acquisition, truth and its dispensation, argumentation and its merits. But the combative position that philosophers often take towards their challenges is dwarfed in scale and in venom by the posture that seems to have won favor in recent years, one constructed on a platform of blind and brutish force. Surely, the examples are plenty: intelligence failures, addressed by silencing any contrary voice with an inspection, a dismissal, and explosion; shrieking talk show hosts, who hector at the height of their lungs to squelch factual evidence and to confound logical process; nations, who would sooner ambush and detonate than sit and dialogue; an emphasis on picking sides, racing to arms, identifying alliances by declaring an enemy, and none of it anchored on the slightest toehold of pragmatism in the mountainous glyph of humanity. Has it become of us, now, that we learn who it is to hate, and then we do our best to perform the task, lead down the righteous path to warring by only the vitriolic legacy of our ancestry? Must we fight today because we are taught that this is the way that we have fought every day for as long as we choose to remember, right the way up until yesterday? To assay the problem which plagues us today, let us dissect the germ of it with the feared antidote of that whole breed of violent action: a willingness to imagine the contrary.

To begin. During an academic session that was held here in Salzburg, I had the opportunity to discuss several prominent issues in intergovernmental policy and meta-ethics with the visiting scholars from the United States and Europe. Along with the ideas that I had not heard before, mostly concerning the new presidential administration and the role of the United Nations in the new decade, there were foisted several ideas that I had. For whatever reason, I immediately weakened in my interest, and instead of listening as acutely as I habitually do, I began to build my defamation case. Several times, a Fellow mentioned the pride that an ambiguous we should feel for our country, by which was meant either the country of our ancestral origin or the country to which we currently declare our citizenship, or both. I can understand the emotional attachment to a country, but only to the extent that we admire some bit of the environment or the culture or the history of a people. It cannot be said, after all, that a person have love for a country, but only for a way or a state of being that used to be common to that country. There was also a great deal of talk about the tragedies of the past and the hope we have for the future, all laden with a tiresome amount of self-affirmation. The linguistic key that it is important to recognize here is that, in cases of prudent assertion of one's sovereignty, it must be the case that there is a force which is doing some subjugating; otherwise, this sort of presentation is either empty, as it is not the result of any actual strife, or it is trivial, as the preening would necessarily fall on prejudiced ears. But who, among this group of highly-educated professional intellectuals who reside in the United States, is being kept down? It is my postulate that these assertions of self are in fact by proxy: the speaker who laments his condition to you is very often a surrogate for the cries of his ancestors.

Before continuing, it should be made clear that there is no reason to believe that even the most privileged among us has not at some point suffered the burn of stigmatization. It should not be inferred by these past few paragraphs that it is improper to feel sympathy or remorse for calamities of the past. These feelings certainly perform some sort of social function, such that we are each of us reminded that the empathy we feel for others is a symptom of our shared nature: that an infraction of one man against the rights or person of another is a slight against his own potential and character. In an ideal society, one could imagine that a high and stable degree of this kind of empathy would be a fundamental practice in the elimination of social injustice, but certainly exaggeration should be left out: it is tempting imagine that a heavy percentage of the people who bemoan the way things are actually mean the way things have been. That sort of criticism is certainly important, in its proper context, but the disconnect seen here between intent and actual meaning--or, more precisely, between accurate representation and transposed urgency--is highlighted by one's experience of history. It is intuitively apparent that the retelling of historical atrocities can have a dramatic impression on anyone, and most certainly on one who has some sort of kinship with the affected group. It is not too much of a stretch too assume that a recollection of the 1960s civil rights movement in the United States, for example, would shape the attitude of a young philosopher of any race, or would impress a heavy sense of inheritance upon black and white students in particular. But this is the very issue which strums a dissonant chord: if a historical account stirs the vigor within a person, is it too much to assume that the resultant mind is not preferable? How many agents of cruelty and discord have themselves been avid students of the worst lessons of history, impassioned and fueled forth by the venom they internalized from the story? And worse, how many have we created, who now seek their own version of reconciliation?

This is the inspiration for a thought experiment regarding the import of teaching history as a text instead of extracting only its lesson. Let us take first the common paradigm, which is to instruct students in institutions of learning from the time they are very young until they graduate with their final degree, about the events of history. Very often, the emphasis of these classes is placed on huge reactions, stark developments, prominent and influential people; categorically, the most lasting impression, and very likely the extreme bulk of the instruction, seems to revolve around clashes between two or more ideologies, and the resultant heroism of one party or another. But what about the villain of the story? Surely every hero needs a nemesis to make his struggle possible. The fight between the two has lead us to our condition today, and generally speaking, it seems that the majority seem to be thankful for the dedication and the perseverance of the victor. But a genealogy remains. I have many strains of Celtic ancestry. This very likely means that my people were tortured and killed by the British, or, having escaped that rule, were persecuted, although less vehemently, in the United States. If not, then perhaps they were more affluent, and thus the necessary benefactors of the lucrative practice of slavery, economic brutality, and international wars. Taken too much to heart, either version of that history paints a clear tormentor and a clear sufferer.

I can understand the appeal of having a history, which I will elucidate briefly in an effort to quell the critics I am certain to have built by this point. The extra-experiential ownership of history, that is, the internalization of strife from the past, has its merits. It establishes a sense of belonging, both in the sense of creating an idea of self in the context of a tremendous narrative, and in the sense that it gives a person a feeling of membership to a community which identifies with the same challenges, the same ills, the same triumphs. Further than a casual belonging, a knowledge of history produces in the learner a change to intuit intentionality, of causality. In other words, once some major historical tension and victory is understood, a man can better understand how he it is that he came to be, and thus how it is the he is a product of both the terror and the brilliance innate in the human potential. This understanding is crucial, provided that he is in turn a cog in the giant machine which will irrevocably produce, indeed in some ways determine, the future. In this way, history is an explanation, in addition to being a recollection. If things are bad, they demonstrate the why and the how, which is their link to self-affirmation: one may say--Look at how we have suffered, and yet are now so strong! If things are good, history might demonstrate the transition from poverty to sovereignty, which fosters what I will call achievement complex; or it may demonstrate the same state of good fortune and maintenance, which fosters I will call entitlement complex. History also provides context, by examining the relationship between one group and another, but this facet can be a burden as often as it can be a perk. It seems that a constant and biased re-telling of one kind of relationship has the power to subjugate or embolden the group which hears the story, to shame them or to revivify them: each of these stimuli has its social utility, but surely not a one of them serves to quell tension between two historically combative groups.

Additionally, history as an inheritance establishes an emotional connection to a sort of family narrative, which is disrupted only at the tremendous objection of those who enjoy the comfort provided by this kind of ownership. Inherent in this attitude is the idea that if the past is not retold, it will be forgotten, and the "family" to which each of us belongs would lose significance. There also seems to be pressure from the community of elders to continue some sort of tradition, by custom or by speech, or even by upholding an enduring type of relationship with each different social group. By way of this pressure, there is a tacit acceptance that it is the duty of the next generation to inherit the problems and the solutions of the last. Retelling, then, is a manner of defense of ancestry as much as it is a remembrance: a way to ensure that the fight happened for a reason, not just a commemoration that it happened. But this leap seems to miss the mark a bit. For reasons that will be outlined in the next section, it is feasible to suggest an alternative method of approaching reconciliation that does not include retelling history per se; this model will exclude the story of the embittered struggle, and will demonstrate the way in which animosity can easily fall away. Here, defectors to my upcoming proposition may issue the retort that language presents an exception which seems to fit this function as well, but that language is indispensable from complex society. This objection is respected and accounted, and is probably one of many. But it is easy to demonstrate the way in which language has an independent utility in the way that memories do not. Language allows for more rapid communication of thoughts, which have an equal capacity to praise or to condemn: to create as much good as evil. However, language also permits art, enables cooperation and cohesion, and promotes an ethic of care in the way that memories alone fail to do so. This test is repeatable against other exceptions which may be presented against the following argument.

I cannot understand the import of studying the story itself as it relates to some of the more serious human problems facing each of us today, including inter-class, -creed, -national, and -racial warfare. It is demonstrated that history has its value, but let us for a moment pretend that an institutionalized teaching of the subject was eliminated. Let us suppose further that stories about specific historic strife, with names and faces and alliances, are not told even in the most private of circles. Certainly there is no chance that this experiment could ever be implemented--nor would anyone, I think, suggest that it should--but let us postpone these objections for a moment and imagine that they were, in order to demonstrate the true point of this essay. If each of us is raised without an idea of the historical incongruity of race in the United States, for example, how could there be any animosity between the two races today? And in order to ensure that we do not repeat the injustices of the past, or to counter the theoretical predisposition that a person has to commit such injustices, we must instead simply teach the lesson that we have rightly learned, borne of tragedy.

This is the way to honor the battles of our ancestors. Instead of underscoring the importance of treating each other with respect or governing based on equality by relating the story of Antoine Condorcet or Rosa Parks, simply demonstrate the validity of those lessons a priori. Leave behind tussles between elites which restrict the rights of the public and who battle for power while ignoring the common man; but read the writings of John Stuart Mill and Henry David Thoreau, who have it figured out. We do not need to retell the story of a genocide in order to condemn all genocide, just as we do not need to have experienced falling on a sword in order to appreciate the tremendous pain. Some things are demonstrable, prima facie rights or protections, and an example of their denial does not further prove the case. Anecdotes are good for illustrations, but they might as well be fictitious enough to avoid spawning animosity, for what good is the lesson imparted if the heart is made so callous that the ears ignore a message? A retelling of history opens anew the opportunity to internalize either hatred or shame, which have no part to play in repairing the conflicts that have lasted for so long. A thought experiment works as well as a cultural immersion, if the truth is sound and its speaker is artful. It requires a change in the model we use for learning, and an alteration in our attitude both as students and as teachers. But the merit of this approach to history, while virtually unimplementable, seems to cripple the ability of one group to inherit hate for another, and may go a long way towards humanity's capacity to learn to hate based on group identity.