A Child, a Death, and a Memory

by Kyle Cupp on February 10, 2012

Not quite a few years ago, in a room as dark as the night sky, my wife and I held our newborn daughter close to our hearts as her heartbeat slowed and she breathed her final breath.  We had met Vivian fifteen hours earlier, when she let out her one and only loud cry.

I am often given to recollect some moment or other from her incredibly short life, and when I dwell upon these memories, her life flashes before my eyes.  It’s strange: our time together was so brief I could not come to know her personality, her character, her interests, her likes and dislikes, and yet despite all this, and while she was missing the top of her skull, she was to me then and remains to me now a whole person.  Complete.  A life lived. A story told.  Not as complete as it should have been.  Not as long a life as I would call fair or just or right.  But there it was, and here I remember it.

Perhaps this perception of fullness in the face of brokenness speaks to the power of love.  Perhaps love reveals to us what cannot be discovered by the pursuits of the intellect.   I’m inclined to believe this.  I’m inclined to say that love is the master key to unlocking the meaning of life.  I say this because, if I have not been deceived, love has shown me the world in the bruised face of a dying child.  I have seen everything because I have loved another completely, from the beginning of her life to its untimely end.

It is strange, this gift of death.  When Vivian ceased her precious movements and her body relaxed as if in slow motion, when our inexhaustible love and sadness poured out of our exhausted hearts, eternity opened before us.  When I reflect upon these memories, I am bathed in the light of a timeless, once distant world.  What is that world?  That world is love.

{ 10 comments }

Pluralistic Society and the Culture Wars

by Kyle Cupp on February 9, 2012

I detest the culture wars. I really do. My disposition toward cultural and societal difference is typically to cheer the dialogue and cherish the multitude of differing voices as we try to figure out the best ways of moving forward, and yet in my two recent posts I’ve taken sides in what is unmistakably a culture war. I’ve staked a position in support of seemingly out-of-touch, self-described religious authorities and their papal-ringed handful of devoted followers. I’d be lying if I said my raising the banner wasn’t partially due to a desire to be a faithful son of Holy Mother Church, but familial loyalty to my faith isn’t my only reason for drawing the sword. I’m a pluralist at heart. I do not yearn for a world in which my religious faith is the only game in town. I would vociferously oppose any attempt to enshrine my political philosophy and morality as the uncontestable law of the land. I’m a firm believer that my thoughts and beliefs can benefit from encounters with their other. Society as well, I believe, benefits in the long run when it welcomes the foreign, the alien, and the excluded.

Catholic morality has certainly become foreign to our culture and the culture of most Catholics. Its tenets seem everything from silly to barbaric. It’s understandable that contemporary thought would see Catholic morality buried in the sands of time, never to return. As a pluralist, that’s not something I favor. And as a pluralist and a Catholic, I cannot sit idly by when the government proposes to coerce my coreligionists to act contrary to the principles of their faith.

I’d much prefer that we as a society address our conflicts of values without famine, sword, and fire crouching for employment. I dearly hope my hope is not unreasonable. There are, for example, feasible alternatives to attaining universal access to contraceptives that do not compel Catholics to violate their conscience. I can’t imagine the church would like any of these alternatives, as it looks with a disapproving glare on contraceptives as contrary to the natural law, but it would, I suspect, tolerate one of them if it meant the preservation and protection of religious liberty. Or maybe I’m wrong about that. Like the rest of us in the postmodern era, the Catholic Church is still learning how to proclaim and make a case for its worldview within the framework of a pluralistic democracy. With all the trials and difficulties of this framework, the temptation of our time is to enforce similitude modeled on the dominant moral and political worldviews. Silly me, though: I associate justice with hospitality to those we’re tempted to leave out in the cold to starve, wither, and perish.

{ 45 comments }

Religious Liberty Only for the Majority and the Mainstream

by Kyle Cupp on February 8, 2012

Kevin Drum captures what I take to be the thinking of the Obama administration regarding conscience protections in the HHS mandate: “Americans don’t have any problem with contraception. American Catholics don’t have any problem with contraception. And on a public health basis, requiring healthcare plans to cover contraception is common sense. No one — almost literally no one — thinks there’s any problem with it. It’s a non-issue.”  He’s right that most Catholics have no qualms about using contraceptives, but wrong to think the church hierarchy’s objection to contraception is a non-issue.

I can testify to the fact that there is a small minority of Catholics who live according to the teachings of a “tiny number of men in the formal hierarchy of the Catholic church.”  And no, contra Drum, this minority isn’t ideologically driven.  Drum mistakes assent to orthodoxy for adherence to ideology; that those who object to birth control tend to be Republican is not a sign of ideological motivation, necessarily, but rather the consequence of the Republican Party’s general hospitality to religious and social conservative values.  But I digress.  Some Catholics—not many, but some—have a deep moral objection to contraception.  They object to it on moral, metaphysical, and religious grounds.  Contraception is a matter of conscience for a minority.  So is material cooperation with it.

Drum’s position here is that the conscientious objection of this minority shouldn’t matter because it’s a minority, fringe view: “it’s arguably reasonable, I think, for the government to tread carefully in areas where there’s substantial, highly-charged controversy, such as abortion. But contraception just isn’t one of those areas.”  In other words, hey, there’s a consensus even among Catholics in favor of contraceptives, so there’s no need for the government to tread carefully, i.e., protect the conscience rights of those few who dissent from the consensus.  I’ll be blunt: if religious liberty is recognized only for the majority and the mainstream, then it ain’t worth a damn.

Drum may be on more solid footing when he says that the church’s policy on contraceptives has “caused incalculable pain and misery for millions of women around the globe.”  I’ve no doubt a few Catholics would disagree with this assessment, but there’s no contesting that Drum is here arguing against the orthodox Catholic position on contraceptives because of the evil consequences he attributes to it.  This is a better argument.  However, even if we assume Drum’s assessment of the church’s policy is accurate, it doesn’t on its own establish grounds for forcing Catholics and Catholic institutions who freely wish to follow the church’s teaching to violate their conscience or suffer the consequences under the law.  It would establish reasonable grounds on which to oppose any attempt by the church to use, say, the force of law to coerce people into following its teachings, but that’s a separate issue.

{ 33 comments }

The Catholic Bishops Are Right to Oppose the Health and Human Services Mandate

by Kyle Cupp on February 7, 2012

There’s a joke out there that the Obama administration has been able to do what the pope could never dream of doing: bringing almost all the U.S. bishops into agreement.  As of now, 169 Catholic bishops have voiced their opposition to the HHS ruling that will require many Catholic institutions to cover contraceptives and sterilizations in their insurance policies.

From what I’ve seen, a lot of commentators simply don’t get why the bishops are so adamant about this.  Most Catholics use contraceptives, and no Catholic is being forced to use them against his or her will, so what’s the problem?

Well, this: in addition to the mandate constituting a basic violation of religious freedom, it will inevitably result in material cooperation of Catholics with acts deemed immoral by their religion.  Because the bishops, in keeping with the faith they’re charged with upholding, consider material cooperation with the use of contraceptives to be itself a gravely sinful matter, they object to Catholics being forced into such participation.  The condition of being coerced may diminish the culpability of Catholics who are forced to cover the costs of contraceptives, and in effect pay for their use, but even so their participation still amounts to complicity and therefore something to be avoided.  In sum, the mandate, by requiring in practice material cooperation with contraceptives, requires Catholics to act in a way contrary to the moral teachings of their faith. For these reasons, the Catholic bishops argue they have the right to oppose and fight the mandate.

Now I would be remiss to imagine that the religious and moral principles espouses by the bishops are the only ones at play here.  As Noah Millman rightly observes, what we have here is a clash of values.  The Obama administration has done what it thinks is the right thing to do: expanded access to contraceptives and sterilizations, which it, with most of society, sees as an important part of healthcare.  In its view, the people who work for Catholic institutions, who, after all, are not all of the Catholic faith, should be included among those given greater access to contraceptives and sterilizations.  The administration is looking out for the healthcare rights of people working in the United States.

So what’s the solution to this clash of values?  In my not-so-humble opinion, religious liberty should win over government mandated access to healthcare.  Here’s why.  Because the mandate is an act of government, we are not, in assessing it, faced with the question of whether or not the Catholic Church should provide coverage for contraceptives.  That’s an important question and one well worth discussing, but answering it, even in the affirmative, does not tell us whether the mandate is legitimate.  Rather, the question with which we are faced is whether or not the government has the authority under the law to violate the Catholic Church’s religious freedom in order to provide greater access to health care goods and services.

Given that 1) protecting religious liberty is a more fundamental role of government than regulating healthcare and 2) the Catholic Church’s teachings on contraceptives, sterilizations and so forth do not, in themselves, constitute a grave harm (though they may be put to ill use), I have to say no, the mandate, as written, is neither legitimate nor just.  Healthcare is part of the common good, and as such government has a responsibility to ensure that people have access to it, but it makes no sense to me for the government to undermine one of its fundamental reasons for existence in order to expand access to contraceptives and sterilizations, however important they may be.

{ 130 comments }

In Defense of Art Pluralism

by Kyle Cupp on February 7, 2012

Tod Kelly makes elitist art snobbery look good.

I’m something of a snob myself when it comes to the arts, and so it should come as no surprise that I agree with his case against art relativism, “the belief that in any particular study of art, all works are inherently equal,” even though I have, on some documented occasions, been known to flirt with relativism.

I’m not a relativist, however. I want to make that clear. I’m a pluralist.  I affirm truth; I just think truth is not one, but many.  The nutshell reason: what we call truth is something both disclosed and created by signification, by the expression of meaning through language, art, music, etc.

So I’m not an art relativist like Sam Wilkinson.  I affirm that works of art give us a basis on which to judge them and compare them to one another, but only to an elusive point.  I can give you reasons why George R.R. Martin is a better writer of fantasy than R.A. Salvatore, why the films of Paul Thomas Anderson are far superior to the movies of Michael Bay, or why Katie Melua should send your consciousness into heavenly flight while the songs of Britney Spears will only sputter the movement of your soul.  For each of the reasons I would appeal to the works of the artist and to a set of standards by which I judge and compare them.

Sounds simple, right?  Except it’s not.  Even if you agree with my set of standards, you will not see, or hear, or grasp each work of art exactly the way I do.  Part of this difference in our perceptions of each work is due to our respective tastes, affinities, abilities to experience and appreciate the art, and to what each of us uniquely brings to the experience.  But there’s another reason, and it’s the reason that I’m an art pluralist.

Each and every work of art establishes a world of meaning distant from all others.  Each has its own meaning, of course, but also its own direction, its own laws and rules and regulations.  Each has its own language, its own vocabulary, and its own truth, beauty, and goodness.  Each is doing its own thing, apart from all others and even apart from the intentions of the artist and the approaches of those who experience it.  The differences here are not absolute, but nor are they insignificant.  I can assess William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Evening Mood by the same set of standards that I assess a Renoir or Monet, but by doing so, I cease to see and respond to each work individually.  In considering them together, I may make a valid judgment, so far as it goes, but I also lose sight of them and treat each as something they are not.  Bouguereau’s realism is unlike any other realism; he’s clearly in a different universe than the impressionists.

In sum, it’s possible to compare two works of art, but only by abstraction and with a loss of perception.  It’s impossible to compare two works while retaining each work’s fullness of expression and meaning.  At the end of the day, then, while I can judge and compare works of art by a set of standards corresponding to the works themselves, I cannot ultimately make a final judgement because the differences of their worlds make them incomparable.

{ 4 comments }

Understanding Anti-Choicers

by Kyle Cupp on February 4, 2012

Anti-choicers are trying to marginalize comprehensive health care for women basically to put us in our place, to demote us from the status of people and return us to the status of objects.

[...]

The debate over health care is basically about this ultimate fight over whether or not women are people.

- Amanda Marcotte

If Amanda Marcotte has a modus operandi, it’s overgeneralization.  Misogyny persists among some “anti-choicers,” and kudos to Marcotte for pointing it out where it exists, but it doesn’t adequately explain the opposition to abortion.  Even if one could magically rid all misogyny from the world, there would still be a basis for an anti-choice movement: the belief or the conclusion that nascent human life deserves legal protection.  This proposition needs no misogyny to originate or gain widespread assent.  And assent it has.  So unless you can show conclusively that this specific assent historically originated from and continues to originate from misogyny, then there’s no rational sense to think a desire to demean women explains “anti-choicers.”  Anything less and you’re at best overgeneralizing and almost surely wrong.

{ 90 comments }

A Qualified Defense of Prequels

by Kyle Cupp on February 3, 2012

I gather Alex Knapp is not overly fond of prequels:

For reasons surpassing my understanding, current pop culture has just become entranced with prequels, prologues, and unnecessary exposition. What writers today seem to have forgotten is that background information is just that – background. It’s color or information that should be brought up only as it serves the plot.

I don’t know about this.  I guess I’m more welcoming of writers taking what is background in one story and developing it into the foreground plot of another story.  Unlike Alex, I liked the idea (in theory) of depicting in separate films the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker.  If a new story can be told, why not tell it?

Well, okay, there may be some good reasons.  I share Alex’s skepticism about the proposed Watchmen prequels, for example.  My rule for the writing of prequels (and sequels): tell a new story that 1) succeeds artistically on its own aspects and merits and 2) doesn’t in the mere telling debase the literary value of the original narrative or any of its parts.

The writing of a story creates a world.  Sometimes that world is open to expansion, further development, or even narrative reinterpretation.  Sometimes, however, that fictional world functions as a closed system, so to speak, or in such a way that what is left untold or told with only hints and traces is just as important and meaningful as what’s explicitly shown and said.  In such cases, writers would do better to leave the original story alone to work its magic.

{ 14 comments }

The Best Video Game RPGs

by Kyle Cupp on February 1, 2012

My liege lord E.D. calls Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim “quite possibly the greatest role-playing video game ever made,” and after reading his review and watching the trailer, I can see why.  Alas, the gods of video gaming have not held me in their favor–the last video game I purchased was Final Fantasy XII in 2006–and I regret to say that I won’t be visiting the world of Skyrim anytime soon.  Not for want of desire, mind you.  My plate is full with…other responsibilities.  Anyhow, I can neither confirm nor deny Erik’s assessment, but I have played a fair amount of RPGs over the years, and have some titles to suggest for the honor of being named the greatest role-playing video gave ever made.

First up is the best video game I’ve ever played, period: Yasumi Matsuno’s masterpiece Vagrant Story.  The Playstation dungeon-crawler featured some of the most compelling fictional characters I’ve met anywhere, an unconventional and tightly-knit fantasy narrative, an eerie setting, and a script of pure writing gold.  The game play was unique, versatile, and challenging.  Weapons were divisible into various kinds (swords, maces, staffs, etc.), by elemental aspects, by strength against particular kinds of monsters, and by the type of damage they inflicted (blunt, edge, piercing).  You could construct and customize individual weapons and use them against particular kinds of foes to improve their stats.  You could also find yourself with a typically kick-ass weapon that proved useless against a powerful or even relatively weak enemy with unusual or unexpected defenses.  Battles therefore involved strategy, trial-and-error, and luck.  The game’s dated today, of course, but for the technology of its day, it was as close to RPG perfection as I think possible.

My second suggestion is Square’s Final Fantasy Tactics, another game by Matsuno.  This strategy game suffered a little due to a less-than-stellar translation, but damn was it fun.  Individual battles could last half an hour, but they’d be tense start to finish.  Like Vagrant Story, its characters and story were morally ambiguous and fascinatingly so.  When I first started reading A Song of Ice and Fire last year, I immediately thought of Tactic’s world of Ivalice and its political, moral, and magical intrigue.

I’d also consider bestowing the top honor upon Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy VII, but, at the end of most days, I’d have to go with Vagrant Story.  But that might change some day when and if I get the chance to play Skyrim.  So what other outstanding RPGs have I missed?  What title would you call the greatest video game RPG ever made?

{ 21 comments }

Game of Thrones and Religious Rationalities

by Kyle Cupp on January 31, 2012

Alyssa Rosenberg makes a smart observation about A Song of Ice and Fire:

In fact, the whole series is really about what happens when you try to assert purely rational governance in a world where fairy tales and Gods reach out into the world and muck up your affairs. It’s one thing to play the Game of Thrones when the rules are stable and the motivations of the actors you’re dealing with are predictable. It’s quite another when dead men walk, dragons return from extinction, and even humans are governed by things other than pure self-interest.

Indeed.  I’m particularly curious to see how Petyr Baelish, who’s shown devilishly superior prowess as a player so far,  fares as mysterious, unpredictable powers and their otherworldly rationalities advance upon the board.  Baelish has succeeded thus far by subtly and secretly putting others in positions where he knows how they’ll act, but the influences of the Others and the fires of the red god R’hllor may be more than he can handle.  We’ll see.

To win, whatever winning means for him, he’ll need to understand these and other mythical forces and wisely interpret how they may reshape the game board and influence the actions of those, major and minor, who play the game of thrones.   If his plans and strategies leave no room for religious ruptures, he’ll be in for a world of pain.

There’s a song the players should be singing, and it’s not the song of purely rational governance. It’s a song of ice and fire.

{ 2 comments }

What Is Alterity?

by Kyle Cupp on January 30, 2012

Now that this blog has a new home and some new readers, I account it high time to recapitulate what I mean by alterity and why I choose, at the risk of provoking some online inquisitor general, to associate myself with this obscure, unsavory word. First, though, a little history of philosophy.

Philosophical thought today largely occurs under, in response to, or at least aware of what Jean-François Lyotard termed the postmodern condition, a condition of thought characterized 1) by incredulity toward master systems of thought in which there’s a place for everything and everything has its place and 2) by the affirmation of pluralism and paralogy, the non-totalizing, creative search for whatever doesn’t fit nicely into systematized knowledge. A search, in a word, for otherness or alterity.

Whenever we attempt to understand someone or something, we conceptualize him, her, or it in terms familiar to us—in terms of similitude. We categorize and classify: we apply the same words to different things. Alterity, to quote philosopher Brian Treanor, is “that aspect of things, and others, that is (absolutely) unfamiliar, alien, or obscure.” Absolute alterity cannot be categorized or classified or conceptualized.

I remember well my first real experience of alterity. I was standing in line with my younger brother, looking at his face, when it suddenly dawned on me that I both knew and didn’t know who he was. I realized in that moment that no matter how well I would or could come to know him, there would always be a mysterious remainder to my knowledge. I knew then that I could never know him or anyone else completely. I understood that there would always be something other about every other. Levinas, I imagine, would be pleased to know that my experience of alterity literally came from looking into another’s face.

By “journeys in alterity,” then, I mean my underlying concern and various attempts to expose my thought and beliefs to their other—to other ways of thinking and believing and through these, I hope, to what cannot be thought or believed because it is absolutely unfamiliar, alien, or obscure. I welcome, albeit with a little fear and trembling, the visitation of that which may shatter my present thoughts and beliefs.  Against my better judgment, I do not bar the door and lock it securely; rather, I keep it ajar, on the off chance I may be visited by strangers, gods, and monsters.

I am, you may have noted, decidedly a postmodernist.

{ 8 comments }

← Previous Entries