Redeeming Value

The elections in the States are mostly decided, now, with Patty Murray having locked up Washington and clearing up some of that unsettling picture: we have, as a nation, shifted the balance of (especially financial) power in government to a party which seems to have no platform. I do know what their platform isn't, but a lot of stuff isn't. Like Louis C.K. would advise, "Some things are, and some things are not. Because you can't have 'everything is'--then, nothing wouldn't be. You'd have giant ants in top hats, tap dancing, all sort of crazy shit." And as a result of what we now don't know anything about, I have discovered something.

First, what we do know. Most clearly, we do know that we have elected three new congressmen who are categorically opposed to abortion, and one in particular from Kentucky, who is against it even in the case of the mother's life being compromised. I don't agree with it, not least of all because it's logically inconsistent--if you're for small government and for government charge over women's right to choose, your brain is either non-functioning, or you just don't like women very much, or you're religious, which fervently compels you to both. And speaking of inconsistency--and incompleteness, while we're at it--we know that there is a huge groundswell--a thing whose type I quite like--which has an aim that I very much do not, to the point of being scared of it. This is one of the principle points I am planning to come to in a later post, concerning the Contract from America. One pervasive theme that seems to exist in a lot of the rhetoric I read or see indicates that we, as a nation, are falling away from both deontological ethics and empirically-based utilitarian ethics, and we are starting to embrace a virtue-based system of ethics. By no means is this switch embodied by one part and not by another; nearly everyone with a microphone or under a spotlight seems to be guilty of this, and the only variance is the degree to which those ethics are supportable a priori or, which is more convincing in government, by way of precious evidence. This is deeply concerning to me; virtue ethics are a turret whose gunman does not require training to operate it.

When you embrace the fundamental truth of virtue ethics, that intrinsic and instrumental value are relative and individually determined, you necessarily trust everyone to make his or her own judgements about the common good and about the production of happiness against a rubric that you admit does not exist. In other words, you could equally defend selfishness and charity, and you can do either one as often and as vibrantly as you feel is appropriate. The kickback, and really the only check against being inconsistent or heinous, is that people eventually just stop hanging out with you, if you are horrible. But what if everyone behaves this way? Where is the check? And how can you tell who is more horrible, if that is all you are used to; or you are given a choice between equally vapid, detrimental options; or you are too ignorant to know the difference between horrible and nourishing? If you refuse to outline a cogent and consistent moral outline, as with deontology, then you lose even an attempt at rigidity or predictability. If you refuse utilitarianism, you admit that past evidence is not sufficient to persuade you that some action or attitude or stance is, or can be, more likely to cause happiness in people than another. And, having shrugged off those two structures, you embrace the whirlwind of relativism which has snapped up virtue ethics, and which can drop that system on its head, in a field a thousand miles away from where it was standing seconds earlier. All the systems have their flaws, and I have written a handful of papers on these; but I don't understand why, when the consequences of the decisions made by our politicians routinely govern our air, our bodies, our privacy, and our futures, we would so quickly abandon the idea that predictability is precious. It seems that we would rather vote for who we think a person is, and we want to leave behind what a person does and why a person chooses what he does.

I am confused by almost every politician who exists, because it seems as though they are either bad at thinking, bad at empathizing, or bad at feeling shame. To be worse is to be all three, and therefore to be the vast majority of suited grinners who we would see in newspapers, if we read them enough to know that you are doing us a disservice even by shaking our hands. I am confused by the people who are allowed to vote in our country, because of exit poll data and because of quotes in media. I am confused by priorities inculcated by most adults, in most states of the union, most of the time. I feel as if my future, or at least my satisfaction with it--my sense of confidence--is standing in front of a pillbox, and I am already looking down at my chest, touching the tear in my scorching jacket, knees weak and teetering, breathing smoke.

In the Morning, and Amazing

Here's the counter-intuitive key to winning thumb wars: when you get pinned down, what you have to do is push down, not pull up. You only have a ten count to do it, so listen up. When you push down, you create some cushion between your opponent and the top of your thumb, and you can squeeze out if you slip to the outside. If you pull up, you meet your opponent's strength directly, like trying to get through a wall by sprinting. It doesn't matter if you have way more talent, or you're far stronger, or even if you have beaten this same person a thousand times before: it's not about skill, force, or precedent. If you act like a poor tactician, then you are. You pull straight up, and you might as well waste your time praying. Sometimes thoughts like these get to me when I'm working, but I'm not the one in charge.

So what we did was, we went to Munich last weekend. And it turns out Oktoberfest is pretty fun.

Active

I start my day before the sun does. It's a rare thing for me to be able to say that, which is no surprise to anyone who actually reads this thing. I often say that my three favorite things are sleeping, eating, and napping, and the Austrians certainly make sure I eat well; but as for sleeping, well, my nights are thinner than a butcher's dog. This is a metaphor my headmaster dropped on us in our first week. It's precise.

Sunday is the only off-day that the school provides the students, and it was still as packed as a day of rest can be. Breakfast is at 8, and it was pancakes, and it was fruit and yogurt, and it was hot cocoa, and it was delicious. We then had cakes and coffee at Dallman's, a pastry shop up the road owned by the husband of one of the administrative gurus at the school, a lovely and smiling woman named Natascha. That's how things are in St. Gilgen; everyone is related to everyone, and the fashionable spread of news and secrets very strictly underscores that fact. Then just after noon, we cooked four pizzas the size of Vatican pulpit bibles, and we rode mountain bikes. That is, some of us did: I napped. This is also how St. Gilgen is: we are frenetic in pace, or we are power-switched off. This is the way of the restaurants, of the kids, of the weather coming over the mountains.

The first full week of school is over now, and I finally feel like I can update something worthwhile. This case proved impossible last week for two reasons. First, I knew that I would be way too busy to concentrate on something that calms me down. And second, I figured that most of what I said would have been nonsense, because it would simply change again this week. Both reasons were proved right, but those are no bother now: I have something of a schedule, and even though I'll be ragged come December, I'm glad I finally have a routine. On Mondays and Thursdays, I will take out a team of kids in the quad skiffs that the school reserves, and we'll be doing some rowing around Wolfgangsee. Tuesdays and Saturdays will be football. Wednesdays and Fridays, we have rehearsal for a stage adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes tale, which we will be putting on at the end of the term. Hopefully I'll also be able to shadow the advanced English and Math classes, and the philosophy equivalent in the International Baccalaureate program, which is called Theory of Knowledge. If that sounds packed, then our trips, hikes, mountain bike courses, and team sports visits are peppered into nearly every week of the term. We do, very happily, find ourselves served chocolate mousse or some kind of pastry with every lunch: you just can't complain about compulsory mousse.

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I started my first day of rowing coaching today. It was a delight. For the next year, I will be a member of the rowing club in St. Gilgen, and I will have two sessions a week. On Monday afternoons for four hours, I'm in charge of the juniors. Sixteen girls and one boy, as excitable as house cats, and some of them with equivalent swimming experience. A group of them, however, are remarkably skilled for their young age, and all of them are lovely and excited to learn. Rowing makes you feel like you're in charge, but also reminds you that what you are in charge of is very small and, through the lens of the other agents affecting you, you find that your keep is insignificant: a life lesson which cannot be learned too early, or it makes you tired the rest of your life.

Tomorrow is my day off. I am set to spend it in Salzburg, I think, with another boarding assistant who I am quite fond of, and with whom I get along as well as anyone in presently in Europe. I can't think of what to do yet, even, because my eyes hurt when I blink them and the kids, although this will never happen again, were given an erroneous quantity of sugar right before study period. This had made them unmanageable and dangerous, like gorillas wearing haberdashery. It is decided: tomorrow will be Schloss Leopoldskron, Old Town, the river, and when everyone comes to meet up with us at night, and the river is jetting with the newly lay storm water, it has to be the Augustinerbrau. I'm thankful to be active, finally, but there is just no substitute for the arrival of a very anticipated day off.

The Weight of History

A thing happened to me when I lived in Washington D.C. that made me realize how old I have become. It also happened to be one of those things which, when it happens to you, you get the immediate and undeniable feeling that you'll always remember it so very clearly: the smell in the air around you will seem to hang the same way as it did at that moment, spiced with the scent of salt water taffy and old books.

It was too big to write about; the import of all these wars, their meaning to their participants and their inheritors. You can stare at the memorials and read up on the battles and acts of Congress, the soldiers, with their hawkish eyes. But I will never feel the foundation of a church thundered out by another country's planes. I will never have to care for or carry one of my countrymen, because he cannot walk, his legs stolen by an enemy mortar. We were at the Smithsonian American History Museum.

The war dedication is my favorite full-length exhibit, although it has every reason not to be. I hate the glory of war. Everything seems set to violin music, or to far away drums. When the throaty commentator on an audiobook tells you stories about these too-long wars, about the men who order them and who comprise them, you think of men with more grizzle and composure than you have, or ever will: and it almost must be that way. To at least somebody, a grainy picture is a hero, if he wears fatigues. I don't quite buy into it, but considering even my objection to it's actual practice, the influence of war is impossible to let alone, or even to undermine. As are the outrageous strength shown by some of its principle agents, foreign and domestic. As are, for a thinking man, its elegant, conciliatory alternatives, which I would favor categorically, and which are borne of compassion as much as calm; as much, even, as cowardice. You sit by the atomic bomb layout, and you think about your generation in every country: how many millions must die because of an argument? An impulse? An accident? An idea? How many today, and how many of their sons? How many brave?

The corner of the exhibit that is devoted to military action taken since the first Gulf War, it's hidden past a shadowy foyer with a drinking fountain and a man with two middle school daughters. The guardians of the present, these three whispy middle Americans. The dad is a balding man in his late forties, whose back looks like the part of a walking cane where your hand goes, and with just as much weight pushing down on him. His daughters were quiet, and narrowed their eyes as they found their words floating past them, in the air: ''But, why did they crash the planes like that?'' Old dad's mouth slanted down and touched the cold tile floor, and his forehead crinkled. He scratched an eyebrow, wondering whether or not a way to answer his girls even existed. They have a favorite movie, by now, and they know what they like having on their pizzas. Each girl has a best friend, each has a personality and an email address, a each has taken vitamins and has read Steinbeck. They have slang, pets, formalwear, secrets. Scars. Journals. Heroes. And they were too young to remember September 11 happening.