February 2011

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Pet Peeves: “A Necessary Evil”

by Alex Knapp on February 28, 2011

First in another irregularly updated series are my pet peeves — in particular, the common proverbs and colloquialisms in our culture that, when examined, don’t make any sense.

Let me tell you a phrase that I hate. That phrase is “a necessary evil.” It doesn’t make sense. If something is necessary, how can it be evil? And vice versa! The entire phrase seems to be premised on the idea that there’s some sort of separation between morality and pragmatism — in other words, an idea that moral things aren’t practical. Ergo, practical things are immoral.

I beg to differ. In the long-term, the moral course of action is also the practical course of action. Else, how can it be moral? If moral actions don’t result in beneficial consequences in the long-term, how can you judge them to be good? It doesn’t make sense.

I think if you take a look at how necessary evil is typically employed, I think the concept that is truly being conveyed is that sometimes the right course of action has negative short-term consequences. To use a recent Oscar-nominated example, if your arm is caught under a rock, it might be necessary to cut it off in order to save your own life. Short-term – that’s bad, because you’re short one arm. Long-term – it’s good, because you saved your own life!

So while I get what the phrase “necessary evil” is meant to convey — short-term sacrifice for a greater good — I have to tag it as ultimately a bad phrase, because it carries with it a greater implication that morality is one path and pragmatism another. And that’s just shoddy thinking.

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A Song to Enjoy – “Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton

by Alex Knapp on February 25, 2011

The cake is a lie.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Film Reinterpretation Fridays: The Star Wars Series

by Alex Knapp on February 25, 2011

The Movies: Star Wars – Episodes I-VI

The Reinterpretation: R2-D2 can manipulate the Force.

The Evidence:

Let’s talk R2-D2. Arguably the hero of the Star Wars saga. Where he is, the good guys win (the first Death Star, Endor, Naboo). Where he is not, they lose (the Emperor’s throne room; his separation from Anakin while he was being seduced by the Dark Side). How can one little droid wind his way through 30 years of Galactic history? Easy – the Force is strong with R2-D2. Here’s three aspects of the series that indicate, in my mind, that this little droid has the Force on his side.

1. R2-D2 Can Manipulate the Humans Around Him

Throughout the Star Wars series, humans clearly don’t give a crap about droids. They’re considered disposable objects fit for trash. They are used, abused, and traded. Some bars don’t allow them inside. They are not, in any sense, regarded as being the equal of humans.

Well, with two exceptions — R2-D2 and his best friend, C-3PO. R2-D2, who is personally commended by the Queen of Naboo and is cleaned and repaired by her, personally. R2-D2 has his memories preserved after the fall of the Republic, even though C-3PO’s memories are wiped. R2-D2 is entrusted with the absolutely vital mission of transporting the plans to the Death Star to Obi-Wan Kenobi. When 3PO and R2 are almost separated when Uncle Owen doesn’t purchase R2, the droid that Owen does purchase is suddenly destroyed. There are other examples throughout the series, but these are major ones.

So how does this droid get treated with respect and admiration in a way that no other droids are treated? Easy. Because “the Force has a powerful effect on the weak-minded.” And compared to an intelligent droid, all humans are weak-minded.

2. The Luke and Leia Conundrum — solved!

At the end of Revenge of the Sith, Luke and Leia Skywalker are born. It’s decided that the two should be separated in order to protect them from the Emperor and their father. Luke is sent to live with his remaining family on Tatooine. It’s decided that Obi-Wan Kenobi will go to Tatooine to watch over Luke. That makes sense. Obi-Wan is, after all, one of the two remaining Jedi in the Galaxy. So logically, you would expect that Yoda would remain with Leia. But he doesn’t. Instead, he goes to Dagobah. And Leia is left in the care of Bail Organa — and R2-D2, who pointedly does not have his memories wiped. Why? Because Yoda knew that R2 could manipulate the Force, and therefore was ideally placed to watch over young Leia.

And how do we know that Yoda knew that R2 could manipulate the Force? We know that from….

3. The Mystery of the Missing Midichlorians

In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn explains to a young Anakin Skywalker that the source of the Force are microscopic organisms know as “midichlorians.” According to Qui-Gon, it is the actions of these microscopic organisms that produce what the Jedi and Sith refer to as “the Force.” Three decades later, however, when Luke Skywalker is trained as a Jedi and asks Yoda about the nature of the Force, Yoda replies, “For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”

Clearly, for Yoda, the nature of the Force is beyond merely the action of midicholrians, or else how can there be a connection between the rocks, the land, the ship that involves the Force. So what happened in the intervening years between The Phantom Menace and The Empire Strikes Back? Easy. Yoda interacted with R2-D2 – a droid capable of manipulating the Force. And from that Yoda learned that the Midichlorians had nothing to do with the Force after all. Or at least, they didn’t cause the Force.

* * *

So there you have it. The dirty little secret of the Star Wars saga. R2-D2′s ability to manipulate the Force makes him the real hero of the Star Wars saga! I mean, wasn’t he in Luke’s X-Wing when the torpedo destroyed the Death Star? Are we sure it was Luke using the Force to guide the torpedo to its target? Or is this another example of R2-D2′s abilities? After writing this, I’m starting to suspect the latter….

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The Scope of the Commerce Clause

by Alex Knapp on February 25, 2011

Over at my politics hangout, Outside the Beltway, I’ve been rather vigorously debating the scope of the Commerce Clause in light of Judge Kessler’s upholding of the Affordable Care Act earlier this week. I sketched out my initial position here:

For my own part, I think the individual mandate is clearly within the Constitutional authority to regulate commerce, and that the rulings in its favor are much more in line with Commerce Clause jurisprudence since the days of John Marshall than those rulings against. The rulings against the ACA have, in my mind, been more in line with the Court’s radical departure from traditional Commerce Clause jurisprudence in 1905′s Lochner v. New York decision, a line of jurisprudence that lasted less than 30 years before the Court returned to the Supreme Court’s original Commerce Clause jurisprudence during the New Deal era.

I go on to more detailed defenses in the comments. My colleague, Doug Mataconis, doesn’t agree with my position, and says so here.

My thoughts and reasoning are more devleoped in the comments section of each post.

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Oscar Predictions

by Alex Knapp on February 24, 2011

Troy Patterson makes some Oscar predictions:

The lack of suspense is killing me. Everybody knows that Firth will crinkle and twinkle as he humbly collects his hardware and that Christian Bale—who proved resoundingly charming at the Golden Globes, not for nothing—will do much the same. Everybody knows that Aaron Sorkin will walk-and-talk off with the screenwriting prize for The Social Network. Anyone can predict that at least two acceptance speeches will mention trade unions and that at least one cable news network will accept those speeches as further evidence that Hollywood hates America.

I suspect that he’s right.

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Old Man’s War Is Off to Hollywood

by Alex Knapp on February 23, 2011

This is cool news.

Paramount Pictures has acquired screen rights to the John Scalzi novel series Old Man’s War, with Wolfgang Petersen attached to direct and David Self adapting the tale into a large-scale science fiction project. Scott Stuber will produce through his Stuber Pictures banner, with Petersen also producing. The hero is a 75-year old man who, having lost the love of his life, is amenable to trading his old carcass for a younger, genetically enhanced body so that he can combine the experience of age with the strength of youth and join an outer space military coalition sent to protect human colonies in outer space. Inductees agree to leave their past lives on earth behind, and are promised land on distant human colonies if they live. Injured in battle, he’s rescued by a special-forces officer who seems to be a younger version of his wife. She doesn’t recognize him, but he’s so convinced he has another chance with her that he abandons his unit and risks everything to be with her.
Old Man’s War is a fun book and, I think, pretty amenable for movie adaptation. Looking forward to this!

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When You Die, Who Are You?

by Alex Knapp on February 23, 2011

Let’s pick back up where we left off in discussing the afterlife. Where I left off was to propose a definition for the afterlife, which is “the survival of consciousness after physical death.”

It’s at this point that I honestly have difficulty figuring out how the afterlife is possible. And that’s because for the past 200 years, it’s become increasingly clear that our personal identities are a product of our physical bodies. Our minds — and by that I mean our thinking and our feelings — are pretty apparently part and parcel of the workings of our physical brains. Damage someone’s brain in the right spot — and they can completely change their personality. A large portion of the elderly suffers from dementia — sometimes to the point where they forget who they are and who’s around them.

And it’s not even brain damage. Long-term habits that affect the mind can affect the brain for good or for ill. Long-term drug abuse can permanently stunt intelligence or impulse control. Long-term meditation can also lead to long-term personality changes. People diagnosed with mental illness can be cured with long-term medication use.

What we eat effects how well we’re able to move around, which affects how we feel about ourselves — which affects who we are. Studies show that protozoan and bacterial infections can actually lead to personality changes.

So I guess my question is, given that our personalities and identities are so tied up with the physical nature of our reality, how is it even possible for that to survive death? How can a “spirit” or “soul” mimic those physical properties of matter that are the very essence of our personalities, thoughts, and feelings?

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Inequality in One Lesson

by Alex Knapp on February 22, 2011

Mother Jones has a pretty brutal set of charts highlighting income and wealth disparity in the United States. I pretty much knew all this, but seeing it all at once is pretty eye opening.

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The Challenge of Jesus

by Alex Knapp on February 22, 2011

Living in the Midwest of the United States, as I do, it is hard to avoid the omnipresence of Christianity. Every corner has a Church. Every shopping mall a store selling “Christian” merchandise. (Which, sadly, never sell any whips for chasing merchants out of the Temple, thus proving Lenin incorrect about capitalists.) The radio is filled with “Christian” rock music (about which the less said, the better), and sermons. There is also plenty of religious brodcasting on television, as well.

Of course, when one gazes at the world of politics, the reach of Christianity is even longer. It dominates our politics in a way quite alien from the influence of religion at the Founding. Consider that several of our first Presidents were Unitarians. Can you even imagine a Unitarian being elected to office today? I certainly cannot. The tincture of not being Christian so besmirches a politician that remarkable resources are often employed against the suggestion, as during the 2008 campaign when Obama was accused of being Muslim.

Yet despite the constant reach of Christianity, I cannot recommend thouroughly enough that all of you–regardless of your religious beliefs–read the words of Jesus Christ himself. Because despite 2000 years of supposedly being influenced by him, everything he is stands as a challenge to the world as we see it.

It boggles the mind, for example, that Jesus Christ is beloved of the Republican Party when he teaches

Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
And this is far from the only passage in which Jesus encourages us to not concern ourselves so much with the material; with economics.

This is tough. Tough to read, tough to think about. There is, of course, a part of us that believes this makes perfect sense. On the other hand, there’s a huge part of us that worries about money, and status and new things. I worry about these things. I love gizmos and gadgets and going out to eat. But is there more to life than that?

Jesus says yes. Even as he encourages us to go against our basic nature:

But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.
This is and remains a startling rebuke to the whole of human society. This is often dismissed as passivity and it is often argued around by those who profess to follow Jesus, but the challenge remains.

Love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who persecute you.

When was the last time you heard a preacher talk about this? When was the last time you heard a politician encourage kindness towards an enemy? When was the last time you saw anyone respond to an insult with kindness and compassion?

Probably never. I know that in my day to day life these are rarely priorities to me. But these words burn me. They sting at me. And not because I think of Jesus as some ever benevolent smiling hippie, but because I know he isn’t. He’s full of a rage that goes hand in hand with his compassion. Pick up the Gospel of Mark and his anger is palpable. He’s angry at the Pharisees for placing piety above love. Angry at his disciples for not understanding him. Angry at the world because he knows we can be better.

Read the Gospels. Even the one’s that didn’t make the cut into the Bible. Think about Jesus. Let him challenge you. There’s a reason why this one, single preacher has so dominated our culture for so long. It’s because he has something important to say.

Don’t ignore Jesus simply because many of those who profess to love him the most know him the least. Don’t ignore him because you don’t think he was a god–that doesn’t matter, either.

What matters is his challenge to reject the things in this world that make us miserable. His challenge to deal with one another without hatred or indifference.

Pay attention to that challenge.

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An Observation About Tough Talkers

by Alex Knapp on February 21, 2011

Have you ever noticed that in politics, the people praised for being “tough talkers” or laying down “hard truths” tend to be people who actually get very little done when you examine their results?

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