Saturday, February 24, 2024

Yale Divinity School

On February 21-23, 2024, Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a series of lectures on the topic of solidarity in moral theology. In my own research, I relate that field to ethics and historical economic thought. Williams’ theory of solidarity goes beyond what he calls “the vague feeling of empathy” that is emphasized in the moral writings of David Hume and Adam Smith. Williams has solidarity, unlike mere "fellow-feeling," reach a person’s identity and even one’s soul through a shared experience of existential fragility. Solidary pertains to interpersonal relations and is thus relevant to neighbor-love, which includes being willing to attend to the human needs even of one’s detractors and enemies, as well as just plain rude people. I contend that the upper echelon at Yale Divinity School is at two-degrees of separation from this sort of solidarity, especially as it is wholistic rather than partisan in nature. It is no accident, by the way, that the self-love that characterizes the school's culture has manifested in some courses being almost entirely oriented to advocating very narrow ideological partisan positions, politically, economically, and on social issues at the expense of sheer fairness to students, wholeness, theology, and academic standards. At the time, the school was accepting 50% of studen applicants. I leave these ideological and academic matters to the side here so I can focus on the astonishing distance between the school's dean and the sort of solidarity that he heard of in the lectures and that could lead to Christian leadership for Yale's Christian divinity school, which includes two seminaries. 

Decades after having studied at Yale in its divinity school and Yale College, I returned to do research because I could finally intellectually integrate two very different areas of my formal studies at Yale and elsewhere. I was stunned upon my return to find so much meanness by employees, who insisted that alumni in residence are not “members of the Yale community,” by a security guard who profiled me with intimidation, by faculty who rudely dismissed Yale’s policy that alumni can audit courses, and by faculty administrators whose skill in passive aggression surpasses all understanding. In such an organizational culture, a Christian divinity school may seem like an oxymoron. A Christian school within a university that is known “inside the beltway” for having a nasty organizational culture is likely to display hypocrisy.

Christian hypocrisy (and downright meanness) applies to even the highest level of Yale’s divinity school. For example, I walked up to the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at the reception just after his final lecture at Yale's divinity school. The dean didn't want me talking with him. In fact, the dean had refused to speak to me since I had returned on the preceding Labor Day. I had introduced myself, but he just walked away. At the reception, the dean of a "Christian" divinity school was perpetually stationed near the archbishop, watching him like a hawk. As soon as the dean, Greg Sterling, saw me beginning to talk to Rowan Williams, I knew it was only a matter of time—that I would not be talking long to the archbishop, who, by the way, was very interested in my biological relation to a previous archbishop of Canterbury. Unfortunately, the paranoid, controlling dean who does not tolerate criticism of Yale quickly turned the archbishop around as I was midway through my second sentence in order to prevent me from talking further with the archbishop.  Nice, huh? Very Christian.

Ironically, Williams had just given the last of three lectures on solidarity with one's neighbors. In even deeper irony, the dean had publicly praised the lecture and the topic during the Q&A session, which the dean, rather than the archbishop controlled (although the latter tried twice). Just a FYI to the "Christian" upper echelon at Yale's de facto seminary: Holding a grudge is antipodal to empathy, solidarity, and helping even one's detractors. To be sure, as I had been marginalized at that divinity school even while I was a student (for raising theological questions), and again during the 2023-2024 academic year, when I was back to do research, even by the school’s director of Alumni Engagement, I had written short essays critical of the sheer meanness at Yale (https://lnkd.in/gpRptb6A and https://lnkd.in/enej8PEa). Even so, to intentionally prevent me from talking with another scholar of moral theology and philosophy at a reception really says something about vengeance and abject hypocrisy.

In The Godfather III, a cardinal in the Vatican tells Michael Corleone that even though Christianity had been in Europe for centuries, little of the religion has seeped in. The cardinal takes and cracks open a small rock from a fountain in a beautiful courtyard, and likens the dry inside as akin to Europe immersed in Christianity, yet little has penetrated. Caring for one’s detractors, and even enemies, is not something in the Godfather’s playbook. Neither, I submit, is it in that of Greg Sterling, dean of Yale’s “Christian” divinity school and even a pastor in the United Church of Christ denomination, or sect, of Christianity. Perhaps, as he appeared during my stay to be desiccated inside in spite of the baptismal waters of Christianity, he might benefit from my booklet on Christianized leadership. Although the booklet is geared to business leaders, presumably Christian leadership can also be applied at Yale’s divinity school.

Williams’ three lectures over three evenings were on solidarity, which in turn can lead to communion. Although this includes with the non-human world, the archbishop’s focus was on going beyond a “vague feeling” of empathy to share in one another’s fragile and dependent nature as living creatures. To recognize another person’s dignity and depravity, and thus one’s need to be recognized in discourse and caring is the essence of William’s theory of solidarity. Communion goes on to a greater unity and in explicit relation of all as finite creatures to God. Solidarity takes work; as it extends to a person’s detractors and enemies, that work is not always easy, but it is mandatory. I would add that religious experience, whether in prayer or meditation, or inner, concentrated yearning for communion with that which transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion (sorry, Augustine), can heighten a person’s sensitivity to other people once one is back in the world. By analogy, it is like walking outside of a theatre during the day after watching a movie for several hours in the dark. Existential sensitivity is on a physiological, emotional, and spiritual level, and is inherently oriented to William’s conception of solidarity. Put another way, regular religious or spiritual experience can heighten a person’s instinctual urge to connect with the dignity and radical dependence of other people as well as oneself. Being more aware of another’s inner pain or existential hardship is another way of putting this. The sharing of this condition, which naturally occasions fear that can be detected outwardly, is the foundation of solidarity, and from this foundation the actual work in caring even for one’s enemies can begin. It is in valuing such work that a person is religious; it transcends creed and even cognition or belief, as if religion were mostly cognitive rather than of the human heart.

It is from that perspective that I want to shed translucent light on the shadows and proffer my advice even to a detractor on Christian leadership, for it is self-less rather than vengeful, caring rather than mean, and thus of a power distinct from that of the world. In talking truth to power in the upper echelons of the Danish Church, Kierkegaard emphasized subjectivity over empty shells in Christianity. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre in the decadent twentieth century, I think it is foolish and unnecessary to base everything on subjectivity. Although Nietzsche’s dictum that God is dead was meant to address a logical contradiction in a conception of the deity by humans, and the philosopher proffered good insight on the will of the priests (and pastors) to power as controlling others, he missed the power that lies in helping even one’s detractors, or at least not acting on a vengeful instinctual urge. Such an urge Nietzsche claims runs wild in the weak, even and especially in a Christian priest (and dean) from whom hypocrisy condenses and drips from a dry core. False humility as a means to invisibly extract vengeance is the hallmark of self-love and is antipodal to neighbor-love seu benevolentia universalis rather than just as amicitia.

Judging from how self-identifying Christians typically treat their respective detractors, and even people who are simply downright rude, I submit that the kingdom of which Jesus speaks in the New Testament is still woefully not of this world even though it could be. All it takes is some hard work in being caring rather than retaliatory where it is least convenient. I know I have work to do, but I’ve also made the difficult choices to help my detractors and the spiritual dynamic between the two people when that takes place can indeed by said to turn the world on its head in a spirit of wonder—even expanding human nature. It is very difficult, but possible, and it has been done.

For example, at the reception for Rowan Williams, I put a retired chaplain of Battel Chapel, which is on Yale’s main campus, in touch with Jerry Street, who had been Yale’s main chaplain and was still working in some capacity at the divinity school at the time of the reception. When I had been a student, I interviewed him for my radio show on WYBC at Yale; he had been furious after the interview, declaring, “I will not be edited!” The station’s chief explained to him that it was dreadfully unfair to demand no editing. In spite of Street’s anger and unfairness to me, I greeted him warmly at the fall convocation in 2023, and I gave him and the retired chaplain of Battel a gift, as she put it later, in reuniting the two of them at the reception. I wish I was not so distracted that I could have felt the joy of giving to a former detractor; I really wanted to speak on research with Williams. Had the dean fallen or dropped something at the reception, I would have helped him up or picked something up for him. It gets easier if you have put in work in establishing a habit even if it falters from time to time when the emotions are too strong. The spiritual dynamic of peace that is felt between former detractors as one helps the other on a human level is that which Jesus describes in the New Testament as the peace in God’s kingdom. Such peace is possible in this world. Maybe the dean will become a Christian leader as a result of reading my booklet. 

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Yale Vipers

Even though it is sometimes difficult to "read between the lines" to assess whether or not people in an organization are welcoming or tacitly "showing you the door," the message is undoubtable and even palpable when "all the arrows are pointing in the same direction." In the case of Yale, where I have been an alumni scholar temporarily in residence during the 2023-2024 year, the university's administration could do its alumni a big favor by explicitly saying that we are not welcome back on campus, except to visit and of course donate money. Instead, passive aggression, unaccountability, and even unwarranted retaliation rule the roust there, in what is a toxic organizational culture. 

Since I have been back in residence doing research this year, I have unfortunately had to put up with non-academic employees telling me that Yale alumni, including more specifically those who are themselves scholars back on campus for a term or two to work on research as academics, are not "members of the Yale community." This is particularly rich when the person is not a student or faculty, but is instead a non-academic employee. Even the divinity school's Alumni Engagement director, Barbara Sabia, told me in person that I am not really a member of the Yale community, even though my connection to Yale is academic and her own is not; she was fixated on Yale's ID that students, faculty, and staff have (alumni doing research have different Yale ID, which Sabia decided is not a real Yale ID). Zero donations from me to Yale's "Christian" seminary. 

I've also been profiled by Yale security employees (whom, I must say, need to take it "down a notch"; they aren't prison guards). 


He was not even supposed to be in that lobby

He was circling me because I had looked at the building directory.

Last but hardly least, although Yale advertises to alumni that we can return to campus to audit courses, almost all of the faculty whom I asked rudely gave truly pathetic excuses as to why they don't allow auditors; some don't even distinguish between students and alumni in the making of the requests. Seminars are off limits, even for visiting scholars wanting to attend some of the lectures strictly for research purposes, and even then no participation is allowed (hence falling short audit in this way too). This sets up a "bait and switch" situation for alumni who return in part to audit courses. I returned in part to do so, but the faculty have been so rude that I have demurred. Even in trying to get to guest lectures on campus, I have been distressed that my Yale ID does not permit me access to classroom buildings. I did attend some lectures of a large lecture class in the fall, but the professor ignored my presence and later refused to give me the information on when her make-up lecture would be; her graduate-student teaching assistant reneged with impunity. All of the arrows were pointing in the same way; I didn't even retain the notes I had taken of some of the lectures, and I do not plan to cite the professor, as academic discourtesy goes both ways. I had contacted another professor, Teresa Morgan, before I arrived at Yale to request to audit her course. She demurred, saying that she was near her enrollment cap (even though alumni don't count against that cap and there was ample room), so I replied that I would wait until she gives the go-ahead after the first class. When I contacted her, as she did not follow up with me, she said, "I'm going to have to reconsider your audit because you missed the first class and there was a lot of important material in it." I wrote that I had taken the decision not to audit her class, to which she wrote, "That's fine!" No, that was very fine. 

For less than a month during the spring semester, I had been attending lectures by Kevin Elliot that he gives to his EP&E (ethics, politics, and economics) undergraduate class. I had made clear that I was not auditing the entire course, as I would be attending only several lectures directly relevant to my current research project. In other words, I approached him as a scholar rather than as an alumnus. My mistake with Yale, given the wholesale disrespect for scholars not on the faculty, was to do scholarship as an alum. The previous semester, even before I had arrived in New Haven, I had requested Shelly Kagan's permission to audit his EP&E course; I had read most of his ethics book and wanted to solidfy my grasp of normative ethics. But he kept referring to me as "another student" and said that even with my seven years of philosophy, "It would not be fair to the other students for me to audit the undergraduate course without having taken the prerequisite course. Only months later did I learn that Yale does not even track prerequisites, so Kagan is not able to do so. So what I got was a dish of arrogance, rudeness, and the refusal to extend academic courtesy to an academic colleague even though I am an alum. 

Although Elliot's lectures in late January and early February were very relevant to my current research, this would not be true of his lectures after the spring break. Because I had encountered so many faculty who had quite rudely refused to allow me to audit their courses last semester, I had decided not to audit any classes anyway. I contend that a scholar listening to another scholar's lecture is not the same thing as auditing an entire course. 

On February 7, 2024, as the house at 31 Hillhouse that houses Elliot's office and classroom was locked even on school days (and half of his class during the fall term had not been able to enter the building!), I asked the department secretary to open the front door for me. She refused, even though it was quite cold outside and there was no reason to doubt me (and she could have consulted with Elliot). Eventually, she told a student that the student could size me up and decide whether to let me in. The secretary's distrust was palpable, and thus very insulting. When I had been a student at Yale, the university go along just fine without locking classroom buildings and having security guards and its private police employees on every corner even during school days. I submit that the secretary was paranoid and passive aggressive even to alumni; I would have shown her my Yale ID, but she refused even to come to the front door. Petty.

I spoke by phone to Jocelyn Kane of Yale's Alumni Fund because I thought she would have a financial incentive to see that employees do not treat alumni so rudely and as if we are lethal threats. However, Ms. Kane almost immediately laid into me for auditing without going through "the proper procedures," and of course for not paying a heafy fee, which I would not do anyway as I would not be allowed to speak in class. I explained to her that Kevin Elliot had acted on the basis of collegial courtesy to another scholar in inviting me to attend his lectures that would be useful to my specific research, and that that basis is distinct from course auditing. For one thing, a visiting scholar does not participate in class, and does not typically intend to attend all of the lectures. The point is to extract specific material that is highly relevant to one's current research rather than to attend a class. 

But Ms. Kane dismissed my academic credentials and decided she knew better even though she is a non-academic employee. Somehow, from her doubtlessly, either directly or indirectly,  Kevin Elliot got the word that I would have to audit the course in order even just to listen to four or five lectures. It did not escape my notice that in so doing, Ms. Kane was not oriented to address the secretary's rude conduct toward me, and presumably not those of the faculty whom I had told her had not open to alumni auditing courses anyway. At the very least, she should have been sympathetic rather than having me in her sights. Clearly, she instantly oriented to reporting me rather than helping me. Zero donations would come from me to Yale's development office. 

Ms Kane's inability or unwillness to master her own instinctual urge to retaliate even against an alum reporting bad, and even hostile, treatment on campus evinced an overwhelming desire to "turn the tables" on people. I suspect that his mean weakness is eched in the school's organizational culture, for back in September, I had written to Yale's transportation department to report that a supervisor, Shelly, at Transdev, the subcontracted company that operates Yale's shuttles, had thrice shouted over me when I had asked if a shuttle could pick me up at the West Haven train station on that shuttle's return trip to Yale's main campus, as some dispatchers and a driver had allowed and suggested, respectively, the practice. The employee at Yale was instantly obsessed on getting my "Yale NetID" to verify me rather than to "have my back" in going after Shelly. I submit that this fits the same pattern as that which Ms. Kane evinced. It may be that this dynamic is distinct and even epitomizes Yale's dysfunctional organizational culture. 

Weeks later, I happened to meet Yale's "Dean of Ministry," a high position in Yale's divinity school. I said that generally speaking, Yale's faculty don't want alumni anywhere near the classroom, which means that Yale's promotional claim that alumni can audit courses is misleading. The ministry dean dismissively said, "We just say it's possible," to which I replied, "Not to Yale's faculty." Rather than apologize once he realized that what I was trying to describe is essentially the "bait and switch" unethical sales tactic in business, the expert on Christian ministry quickly turned his back on me and walked away under the cover of the night. I wonder what kind of ministry he advocates to his students. Evidently not that they should apologize when they or their respective churches have wronged someone. In a dysfunctional organizational culture, apologizing is weakness. I guess it's not Christian either. That's interesting in part because I was on my way to Yale's divinity school to hear a lecture on moral theology from Rowan Williams, a retired Archbishop of Canterbury. I wonder if he realized that he was in a festpool of hypocritical vipers.

All this leaves a very bad taste in my mouth concerning not only the lack of accountability at Yale, but also the taint of vituperation and and the instinctual urge to retaliate, essentially to "turn the tables" on alumni even by a manager whose task it is to ask alumni for donations! As a rationalist (and yet also a Nietzschean), I wonder whether Ms. Kane has any cognitive dissodence in that her squalid attitude and conduct towards at least one alum contradicts her fundraising task. I also wonder whether she realizes how inappropriate and unsightly it is for a non-academic employee to dismiss what a scholar says about academic courtesy and research. 

In general, I don't like the meanness that I've encountered from non-academic employees and faculty at Yale. All of their arrows point in the same direction: alumni are not members of the Yale community. To be so brazen as to explicitly tell alumni who are on campus for a term or two that we are not members of the Yale community goes beyond being a pathetic fundraising strategy; the underlying psychology is in need of a Nietzschean critique. The weak who seek to dominate resent the strong because the weak, "new birds of prey," know that they do not have the inner constitution to be innately strong. Hence, the weak are full of resentment. This sordid mentality saturates Yale's faculty and non-academic faculty. 

I might add that I raised concerns about the comments that alumni are not members of the Yale community and on the hostility of security guards who have profiled me without cause to Yale's president, the dean of Yale College, and even to Weili Cheng, the director of Yale's Alumni Association, but nothing changed through the year. In person, Cheng was dismissive. I had already contacted her organization about the hostile security guards, and when I mentioned this to her, she said, quite dismissively and even in a hostile tone, "Oh, you," and then immediately turned her back to me and walked away. Nice. 

From my experience, both Yale's development office and alumni association are hostile rather than helpful to alumni who are back on campus for academic purposes, and the faculty are absolutely not on board with the university's policy (and promotions) on alumni being able to audit courses. Even the faculty's understanding of what it means to audit a course is conveniently deficient. I would like to leave you with this observation: I am truly perflexed as to the extent that arrogance and even meanness can trump rationality. Of course, Nietzsche wrote that the content of reason (and ideas) is instinctual urges, and reasoning itself is the tussle of contending urges seeking dominance over other, competing urges. At least it can be said that reasoning is impacted, or even warped, by a person's instinctual urges. So when a faculty employee at Yale's divinity school teaches that a country should not have borders, that the family unit should be abolished, and that monogamy (and even marriage) oppresses "other lifestyles," I am under no illusion that reason is in the driver's seat. 

Monday, May 22, 2023

I Wasn't Supposed To Be A Writer

Ideally, a person is able to earn money doing something that matches one's authentic self. In other words, working in a field that is also passion and involves an innate talent or ability can add a lot to the happiness of a life. Many people get sidetracked, whether by greed or limited opportunities. Still other people do not know what their passions are, or have not realized what natural talents, or "gifts," could be tapped. Some people get trapped in dysfunctional organizations in which the organizational culture discourages self-discovery or is otherwise negative and even vindictive. I never thought I would be a writer, and I would not say that I have an innate talent for it, for it has taken much direction and practice for me to excel in the craft. My innate "gift" lies in seeing through societal blind-spots and wanting to present ideas that would otherwise remain hidden from general view. Even so, looking back at what I used to pretend to be vocationally as a boy, I have a glimpse of what I naturally am oriented to doing, before the contours of upbringing and school had a chance to mold me. Rousseau wrote that we are born free and yet live out our lives in chains. If so, it is worth looking at our early years to grasp what we have may have subsequently forgotten. Societal channels can cause a person to lose touch with the innate inner-being that naturally expresses its desired vocational proclivities through play, for such pretending is not dictated from outside but comes out naturally from within. In such a "pre-societal" stage, a person's passions and innate talents are those which become actualized in play, and as adults we can learn from this in a process of self-discovery that bypasses the imprint of upbringing and the wider culture, including education. In hindsight, my decision to switch from the liberal arts and sciences to business in my first college degree was reckless because this choice was discontinuous with what I had pretended to "be" as a boy. Of course, what a person does is not what one is. This lapse wherein the functional is erroneously taken to be existential is significant in that it attests to how important a career is to a person's happiness. 

Growing up, I used to pretend the large colonial house, which my parents had built on the edge of a small forest, was a school and I was either a teacher or the principal. Usually I pretended to direct a fire drill, when no one was home of course. My mother would have had a fit had she seen me opening all the doors so the imaginary students could leave the building, which was actually a house. My active imagination was by no means limited to education; sometimes I would pick up a short stick to serve as a microphone, walk out in front of the large house and pretend I was a singer looking out on the large front yard, which in my imagination supported risers filled with concert-goers. In reality, I was tasked with mowing the expansive lawn using a tractor. I used to sing Tom Jones, if you can believe it. It's not unusual, for boys to play-act. You have to be a certain age to spot the play on words just made for your edification. 

Teaching, coordinating fire-drills, and singing, and it should be mentioned through play-acting. Admittedly, being a teacher played second fiddle to being the principal, a role in which coordinating people was most salient in my playing. Additionally, I used to direct and act in impromptu short plays at my maternal grandparents' house with my brothers and cousins. It seems in retrospect that I was more interested in and even proficient at the use of power than in desceminating knowledge. I had been held back a grade in elementary school because, as found out only after a bachelors and a masters degree, the neurological mechanism that automatically fuses the two eyes together at the same point did not develop in my case. Eventually, I came to use one eye more for distance and the other for close work such as reading. Truth be told, however, I am not "hard-wired" biologically for a vocation of heavy reading and writing.  Hence I wasn't supposed to be a writer. Had I paid attention to what I had instinctively pretended when I had been a boy, I would not have continued with more study after getting the MBA. To be sure, I love ideas and theories, but other than my innate curiosity I had lost touch with what my boyhood imagination, unfettered by institutions like schools, was been telling me about my authentic passions and perhaps even what I would naturally do well vocationally. 

Besides looking back at childhood playing, a person can discover an otherwise hidden talent and or passion by looking at what tends to talk about in one's free time. Often times even off-the-cuff casual statements can be just as informative as the habits we develop in adulthood in what we tend to talk about in casual, unplanned conversation especially with strangers. 

Preaching and making political speeches could be added to my bag of tricks even though they I did not pretend to preach sermons or give campaign speeches in front of the my boyhood house. Actually, now that I think of it, I can vaguely remember speaking in front of the house; I would think out the speech (or sermon) rather than say anything out load (whereas I would actually sing). Although I was in student government and did not shy away from religious conversations with other students in college, I didn't notice the extent to which had conversations in politics and religion. To be sure, I worked on Reagan's campaign locally and was a Eucharistic Minister back then. Even so, I mentally severed all that from my studies in first majoring in botany and then switching to business. 

I did eventually get to studying theology and philosophy even though by then I knew I was paddling up stream in the mechanics of studying (namely, reading). But I was brought to those academic areas not by looking back to my boyhood pretending or even by realizing what I tended to talk about, but, rather, by noticing the trajectory of my academic studies. In particular, a seminar on comparative religions, political systems, and economic systems at Indiana lead me, still within the business fold, to fortify my knowledge of religion. Had I noticed what I had pretended as a boy and what I tended to talk about as a young adult, I would have dropped the pretense of business been free of my own constraints that were artificial rather than innate. 

Since graduating from a divinity school, I have discovered the extent to which I engage person to person in preaching the ideal of kindness and compassion, especially to one's enemy, as the main point of Jesus' message. Without love, Paul wrote, faith is naught. I suspect that many church-going "Christians" forget that, as the monopoly of attention is overwhelmingly on salvation after death predicated on true belief in Jesus' identity.  I have come to realize that Jesus' preaching is in need of being applied (rather than contradicted) in Christian congregations, and thus to Christianity itself. I recently heard an evangelical preacher distinguish being a disciple (i.e., discipleship) from being a Christian. He had the idea, though unfortunately his message did not go far enough, for he preached forgiveness, kindness, and compassion generally but left out that those virtues are especially noteworthy when done least conveniently, as to people who have been insulting and otherwise rude. "Love thy enemy" is the traditional expression, but it is of limited applicability as it does not  include people who are not quite a person's enemies. Someone steps in front of you in line for tickets and drops his umbrella. You pick it up in a spirit of helpfulness

Well, I have lapsed again into preaching. Although I know the value of utilizing writing to reach people, I never thought as a boy that I would become a writer. I used to be a terrible writer (and speller), so I have had to put a lot of effort into the craft to be tolerably good. Had I paid attention to what I had pretended as a boy and how much I engaged in conversations in political (economy) and religious matters, I would have utilized a means that is much better suited to me, even biologically. 

Regarding "the craft," I assiduously made appointments weekly at a university's writing center for over a year,  but only after I had graduated from Indiana University with a MBA and Yale with a M.Div. degree. I had previously gone to college at another, albeit marginal, distended, and ethically problematic university in the Midwest. Fortunately, I was able to go on to better universities to make up for the deficiencies in the courses. I qualified for a doctorate at another academically marginal and ethically problematic university, but I refused the offer. My three years at Yale in the first degree in theology (in which I studied philosophy of religion, history, and philosophy too) and an additional year of non-degree courses outdid even the previous doctoral seminars at the low-class university that had offered me a doctorate. Thanks but no thanks. It was worth it to keep my self-respect from being tinged even by association with such an institution. When I was finishing up at Yale, professor there offered me the chance to study for a doctorate in history, but I was already 40 and did not want to be a student for six or seven more years. In hindsight, I wish I had accepted that offer, though the the huge amount of additional reading would not have been good for my eyes as I was by then using one eye for distance and the other for reading. That I even considered the offer demonstrates yet again that I had lost touch with my limitations as well as what my childhood games and topics of later conversations could have told me about my innate strengths. 

Even after Yale, I was still climbing the academic tower even though it should have been obvious to me that it was not where I belonged or was wanted. I should have taken that as a hint that my natural place lies elsewhere. 

Between audited courses and 1 credit-hours of independent study, I was able to study for three years with a Harvard scholar who for twenty years had been flying weekly during the fall and spring semesters from Boston to Madison, Wisconsin to teach (and qualify for a pension) at UW. When he retired from Wisconsin (as soon as he could), he wrote me a letter in which he stated that I am qualified to teach political theory at the graduate level. I asked him to use Harvard stationary, as he still graded doctoral comprehensive exams written in other languages there and Wisconsin's flagship public university was ethically problematic; a staffer of the chairman of the state's legislative Assembly told me, "It is an open secret at the statehouse that UW is run like the mob." I had seen the sordid mentality up close, and had heard first-hand accounts by the rejected professor, who was by my time teaching at Edgewood College locally, and the chancellor (himself!) about a tenure-vote having been illegally rigged. 

Alas, I had to settle for UW stationary, but even so, that letter meant more to me than all of my transcripts put together because I finally had the close-up judgment of an excellent scholar educated and still working at Harvard that I had become an excellent scholar in my own right. "None of the faculty (in liberal arts) here are doing research on your level," he once told me when we were walking on campus to one of his discussion sections. That a full professor would lead one of his own discussion sections (graduate students almost always do that) was itself a testimonial to the scholar. I could have replied to him, "And no other professor here is leading a discussion section of a lecture class." Antithetically, an employee in the non-degree student office told me while we were walking on campus that I should feel privileged to be on that campus. "This is a taxpayer-supported public university," I wish I had replied. I could have added that I had indeed felt privileged to be on Yale's campus and felt privileged to be a Yale alumnus. Instead of thinking up such an appropriate reply, I was stunned at the staffer's arrogance. Educationally, his university was not in the same league. Both Professor Patrick Riley and I knew this; as soon as he could, he retired, taking (as his departmental chairman told a journalist) "his carriage back to Cambridge." Ouch! I too decamped from that chilly university, heading home to Illinois, where I had several decades earlier pretended to be an elementary-school teacher and a singer, and, I might add, a rather unsuccessful major-league baseball pitcher. 


Thursday, May 18, 2023

Patrick Riley: An Antiquarian Harvard Scholar of Justice as Love and Benevolence

In the 2000s, I had the honor of studying under Patrick Riley, a scholar of historical moral, religious, and political thought. Even though I had had "old-school" professors in the course of my degreed studies at Indiana University and Yale, Riley's approach can be said to be medieval. After four years of auditing his courses and those of many of other professors at Riley's request at a large Midwestern university, I received not a degree nor even many academic credits, but. rather, a hand-written letter in which he let his colleagues know that I could teach graduate-school level political theory. It is no accident that he periodically visited the University of Bologna, which, aside from hosting the huge project of publishing Leibniz's correspondence, was as the first university in Europe, founded in 1066. Back then, I bet letters of recommendation were the principal way in which scholars got hired; a scholar became recognized as one when the scholar he studied under realized that the budding scholar knew enough of the field, which is more than merely doing well in some classes. How technocratic and artificial contemporary universities would seem to ancient and medieval scholars. I think they would be startled at how many pedestrian scholars there are, who relish making narrow distinctions based on technicalities. In contrast, Patrick Riley a product of Harvard, where he continued to work and live even during the many years in which he took weekly flights during the semesters out to a Midwestern university, viewed European intellectual history in the great book tradition and was thus able to see intellectual inheritances well beyond Augustine's in Plato and Aquinas' in Aristotle. Riley traced how the theory of justice as love and benevolence came together from strands of thought in Plato and Augustine in the thought of Leibniz, and how the social contract school of political thought changed in going from Hobbes to Kant. Moreover, I admired Riley's relating of historical theological and moral thought to the political thought. How technocratic or pedestrian so many other twentieth-century scholars were, but not Patrick Riley. 


Riley was an extraordinarily kind man, an excellent scholar, and admittedly a flawed man, which made him human like the rest of us, and a man who struggled with mental illness, which presented challenges for me. All this made for an idiosyncratic man even if his academic ideas were rather orthodox (i.e., he was a Leibnizian rather than a Nietzschean, though he and I had studied the German philologist and philosopher enough to agree that he was not an existentialist). Perhaps even more than the ideas in his classes, Patrick Riley left a greater imprint on me by having passed on to me historical uniquely-academic values and customs, which, although not generally esteemed in American society and modern universities, can nonetheless withstand encroaching usurpers at the university level, depending on the university and local environment. The arrangement that Riley made for my study with him was not only distinctly academic, but also reminiscent of the world of academia before the advent of the modern university. 

Because of the richness of Riley's knowledge and the quality of his idiosyncratic lectures (the first of which that I attended--a seminar on Kant and Leibniz--featured Riley's voice on a tape recorder, as he was out of town that day), I extended my studies past my formal education. My tutelage under Riley was what he and I made of it, as his chairman at the University of Wisconsin would never accept Patrick's request for a visiting student out of resentment or dislike of the senior professor. Riley and I made of my four years of study with him as close to formal as we could by using 1 credit-hours of independent study. I attended every lecture of every class he taught during the period, and even repeated one of his survey courses so I could finish all of the 12 or 14 books assigned and cement the basic knowledge. In addition, I was able to audit courses in the philosophy department thanks to Riley. My studies under him worked out so well because we both valued the pursuit of knowledge, perhaps too much to fully realize the sacrifices made. 

I approached Riley doing a year of research at the university's business school, which had been a great disappointment to me. I found that the professors were not really scholars. One even warned his seminar of doctoral students to alter survey results in case they would otherwise interfere with future consulting opportunities. The night before I left the school to study under Riley in political science, a tenured professor specializing in insurance advised me to be careful because only the faculty in history read books; faculties in the other departments read only professional journals. These business professors have really no clue about academia, I thought to myself. Wow! It was telling that the business school building looked like a bank. Its inhabitants were business practitioners training and being trained. 

I was already aware of the illegal political ploy that the business school's dean had used a decade earlier to lie to the university committee on tenure about the results of a business ethics professor's tenure vote in order to get rid of the ethicist, whose interview on public radio criticizing the bank that had endowed a banking professorship, and thus the occupant thereof. The ethicist's lawyer discovered the alleged election fraud. I had known the ethicist during my doctoral studies, as we had both been in the same department, and he was still living in Madison when I was there. So on one cloudy morning outside the administration building sitting atop Baskin Hill from which the Wisconsin Capitol can be seen, I asked the university's chancellor about the fraud, and he replied, that the ethicist had been "a problem," as if that justified the unethical (and illegal) conduct. As a business ethicist myself, I felt the business school to be a chilly place even a decade after the fiasco.

Even so, I was taken back when I sat in on a doctoral strategy seminar one day. the professor actually urged his students to check with the respective managements of companies before publishing empirical research articles so to not to inadvertently cut off the opportunity for a consulting role. This occurred years before the financial crisis of 2008. That other managements, including those of investment banks, might rely on published "knowledge," presuming it to be unadulterated rather than warped, was apparently of no concern to the professor (who would go on to become a full professor!). I thought of this in the midst of the crisis because a hedge-fund company in Connecticut had relied on a flawed academic metric for assessing risk. Perhaps the metric had been "adjusted" to understate systemic risk so managers at financial companies would feel comfortable taking on more risk. 

It was from the sordid, moneyed interest of the University of Wisconsin's business school that I ventured out after the one-year appointment and found Patrick Riley in the political science department. I initially approached him because of his early work on federalism. While at Yale, I had wanted to study not just historical theology, Christian ethics, and philosophy of religion, but also history, constitutional law, and film studies. Regarding law and history, I had spent considerable effort studying the federal systems of the E.U. and U.S.; I had even stayed at Yale two years past my graduation to audit constitutional law courses and learn by teaching (as a teaching assistant) in the renowned history department (one course being on the history of European integration since 1950). It was amazing to be affiliated with History and Law when both were ranked number one, at the very least in the United States. I would learn only years later that philosophy of religion was tied for number one with Princeton. But I still wonder whether the sacrifices I made to extend my studies so far beyond my doctoral studies were worth the value of my Yale education. 

Even so, in approaching Riley at Wisconsin, I leapt at the opportunity to add real intellectual depth to my previous studies on federalism at Yale. I was impressed that the governance system had been able to hold such antithetical political cultures as those of Arizona and Massachusetts within a more general political system. To me, the benefits stitched into a federal system's very design outweighed the fact that bad laws such as slavery could be perpetuated without the anti-slavery states being able to stop the practice. 

Riley demurred on even discussing the topic of federalism. I was admittedly disappointed even though I could understand why. Sadly, he was still disgusted by the overly self-confident German professor at Harvard, Carl Friedrich, who had been the federalism expert on Patrick's dissertation committee. Furthermore, Riley's mind had traveled quite a distance from his dissertation on the history of thought on federalism, so he instead kindly invited me to study social contract and justice theories under him. I was honored by his welcoming demeanor; I had experienced no such attitude at the business school. 

I followed Patrick's advice to take two years of French, German, and Latin as a test-taking auditor approved by the relevant departments and audit seminars on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, and historical ethical theory in the philosophy department. Patrick generously arranged all of that. In the spirit of jest, he did not appreciate my desire to learn German so I could read Nietzsche in the original. In fact, so ensconced in the historical ethical edifice was Riley that he refused to give his final lecture at UW on the radical German philosopher. Leibniz and Kant were Riley's favorites. As idiosyncratic as Patrick was, his thought was purely orthodox.

Others have written on Riley's scholarly accomplishments, so I need not get into those. Instead, I would like to add what Patrick himself told me of his approach and values. We had a conversation about his emphasis on relating theorists to each other ideationally, and, moreover, focusing on the thought of other scholars rather than coming out with his own theory. He demonstrated the value of having one’s own thought being on that of others (i.e., who had original theories), on how they relate to each other, and in interpreting not only their thought, but also how both similar and different ideas (of others) relate. I had asked him why he hadn’t come out with a new theory. Kant’s Kingdom of Ends and Leibniz’s wise human love (caritas sapientis) as universal benevolence (within what is reasonable, or wise) were well worth introducing (and living out) in Riley’s day and in sync with one of Riley’s own doctoral professors, John Rawls, whose ethical theory emphasizes people who are worst off in organizational, governmental, or societal systems. In academic terms and I suspect in his personal life as well, Riley sympathized with the individual up against obstacles, whether internal or external. 

Only in writing now do I see a thread through Riley's early and later work. Specifically, Patrick ended his dissertation with a second reference to the American Confederacy. I contend that the American Confederacy, and especially its stain of slavery, was clearly on Riley’s mind as he wrote his dissertation. In fact, Patrick may have selected historical theories of federalism as his topic because greater knowledge off it could stave off sordid applications in the future or in order to give a fuller account of why the American confederation came to be. The message, in other words, is perhaps that the history of federalism in theory at least contains a weakness. Riley's disapprobation of the Confederate States of America (1861-1865) may result from the high value he placed on Kant's Kingdom of Ends—treating other rational beings not only as means but also as ends in themselves—and Leibniz’s wise, upward-directed love as universal benevolence to other rational beings (i.e., all human beings).

I initially said to Patrick after one of his lectures, “I don’t see how justice can be founded on love.” I believed that love is above justice because the dominant justice notion had long since shifted to public legal justice. Justice as love and benevolence had long since gone extinct. Riley wanted to resurrect it. Instead of taking a pound of flesh, dispensers of justice could base it on love used wisely as universal benevolence. In the space of a few years, I had a much broader and deeper knowledge of justice itself. I already had a doctorate whose fields included business and religious ethics as well as (international) political-economic theory. My studies with Patrick provided theoretical depth not only to these fields, but also widened my prior theological studies at Yale include understanding how Kant’s Kingdom of Ends and Leibniz's justice as universal benevolence relate to Jesus’ notion of neighbor-love. Paul's dismissiveness toward the wisdom of Athens, I realized, is premised on a false dichotomy.

As for the administrators in UW's governance hierarchy, I contend that both the Kingdom of Ends and wise justice were recessive. Patrick and I had to arrange my informal study ourselves because he had to contend his department chair, who would not allow him to set up a formal visiting scholar arrangement for me out of spite for Patrick. We tried to do so in the history department, but its chairman was corrupt. In a French class, I told a student that I was researching comparative federalism by comparing the E.U. and U.S.; the instructor, a young French graduate student, was offended at the comparison so she lied to her professor that I had insulted her to the point that she was crying. The chairman of the history department would barely listen to my disavowal of the fiction. A year or so later, someone from a legislative office at the statehouse admitted that it was an open secret there that UW as "run like the mob."  That is, organized crime. 

I was often frustrated in dealing with Riley outside of class because he would often evade academic conversations unless they were conducted in a classroom. An undergraduate student told me that Professor Riley was most comfortable around impressionable young students, and that I should not take his anxiety personally. Admittedly, Patrick's excuses could be quite entertaining. The most so was his tactic of suddenly running down the hallway from his office in North Hall, as if he were Euthyphro suddenly remembering that he has an appointment just as Socrates has torn apart Euthyphro’s notion of piety. “You are a rascal!” Socrates finally says. 

To be sure, Patrick was not on solid ground at Wisconsin. University administrators had it out for him. One told me that Riley had unethically added his son’s hotel expenses to his own from an academic conference. That university-level administrator advised me not to study ethics with Riley. “He’s not the one I would learn ethics from.” Riley subsequently told me as he sat in his darkened office and I stood just outside the doorway that the additional receipts had been an oversight on his part. He sounded sincere, but I can only remain agnostic, not knowing for sure. It is possible that Riley created the legal fiction to help his son, but it is also possible that the university's administration did not take his word out due to the climate of distrust.

My own attitude toward that university’s administration had already soured not only from what I knew of the business school, but also when the director of the Memorial Union and Union South ignored two student referendums in which the vote went against a new bond issue to be paid by students to renovate Memorial Union and rebuild Union South from the ground up. The third time, the voting was made so difficult that the students who used the unions were, I suspect, of a higher proportion of the actual voters. Shady! As a 1-credit-hour special student, I joined the opposition's efforts in "chalking the pavements," which was commonly done on that campus. We were so good at it that one of the administration's student-sycophants complained and I then discovered something I had chalked on the front page of one of the newspapers. Shady! 

When Patrick showed me a story on the front page of the local paper in which his department chair makes fun of Riley, my estimation of the university’s dominant hierarchy lowered even more. The chair had unloaded on Riley to a journalist, who in turn published that the full professor was a problem because the antiquarian did not use email. Further, Patrick’s participation in the department was too limited because he "takes his carriage back to Cambridge" every weekend. Ouch! What sort of participation occurs on weekends? Whether out of ressentiment or a grudge held much too long, the chairman had gone too far. He had eschewed academic courtesy as if it were a stained, short-sleeved, and button-down white shirt.

Shortly after the story's publication, Patrick sat on a table in the small room of his social-contract seminar, looked at me in hurt astonishment, and said, "My own chair did that to me." I saw the man behind the scholar—a man who perhaps did not understand how a rational being could act so opposed to Kant’s Kingdom and Leibniz’s wise love. Instinctively, brewed perhaps from Leibniz’s caritas sapientis seu benevolentia universalis, I readily provided emotional support by replying, "The problem is him, not you. As I see it, your feelings make sense. I would be hurt too." I supported Patrick in his wavering decision to go to the chancellor on the matter. Neither of us thought it would make any difference, as the hierarchy was very corrupt, but we both thought he should do it on principle, based on the illusion perhaps that accountability exists even in dysfunctional organizations.

I had a good idea by then why Patrick had moved from Madison back to Cambridge twenty years earlier (after his sons graduated from High School) and continued to maintain a relationship with Harvard even as he commuted by air weekly to his day job in the Midwest. I was not surprised at all in 2007 when Patrick retired from Wisconsin as soon as he could at the age of 65 and decamped to Harvard, where he would teach and write until his death in 2015. Sometimes when I wore my Yale sweatshirt to one of Patrick's large survey classes at UW (I didn't own any UW clothing), he would teasingly bring up the matter of the rivalry between the two Ivy-League schools. In actuality, we were on the same side.

Fortunately, at Harvard, like Yale, academic custom was (and presumably still is) valued enough to accommodate at least an appreciation of the uniquely academic customs that don’t necessarily fit in a business or bureaucratic thicket. Riley in turn doubtlessly respected Harvard more than the University of Wisconsin, even given the great difference of academic quality. Interestingly, this thought occurred to me when just today I saw a picture of Patrick teaching in retirement at Harvard; whereas at Wisconsin his longish white hair had been disheveled (in a mad-scientist way), at Harvard his hair was styled. Respect goes both ways.

Regarding the value Patrick Riley placed on academic quality, respect for distinctly norms and values, and disdain when exogenous norms or values presume superiority in academic institutions, the imprint that Riley left on me was indeed a valuable gift. As a scholar, I would say to Patrick today, "I have decided to be what you made me." He would of course think of Rousseau’s Emile. "But where in that is there a will, a choice?" Patrick would ask. "Perhaps the word decided here really means realized, so I have realized that I am what you made me as a scholar." Riley resisted my efforts to resolve a good paradox, so he would no doubt reject my attempt here. Trying again, I might suggest that mature wills have some discretion to choose whether to carry on as they were made or select to be otherwise based on a myriad of influences that pile up as a person ages. The paradox would still exist for a young person such as Emile, having been taught so recently by Lycurgus. 

As Patrick and I used to compare the study of others' thoughts to coming up with a new theory (which are not mutually exclusive but can differ in emphasis), I would be inclined to add that a mature will, along with a unique perspective not dependent on the dominant assumptions in a field of knowledge, can result in new theory. Nietzsche explicitly warns his followers to strike out on their own rather than continually interpret Nietzsche’s own philosophy. Nietzsche also claims that no philosopher is a person of his or her own day. Even though Riley remained a faithful exponent of Leibniz, Rousseau, and Kant, the quirky twentieth-century scholar raised on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood was not a man of his day. Indeed, that a kid raised in such a decadent neighborhood came to love classical music and historical ethical and political thought seems to dispel the inevitability of Emile's declaration. At some point, Riley's mature will likely realized its ability to choose and then could proudly exclaim on Sunset Blvd, "I have decided to be other than you made me!" By that time, Riley would have had access to an alternative education of the formal sort.

A commercialized pseudo-corporate business school, such as the one at Wisconsin, would be hard-pressed to recognize the value of a course of academic study that was not formalized into an academic degree, which in turn could be monetized vocationally. The contemporary university of the time, moreover, would be hard-pressed. In the first few decades of the twenty-first century, students would find that they could earn a doctorate "on-line," meaning through a computer. While I was studying under Riley, I taught an online course at Walden University A doctoral student who was taking my masters course in leadership of all things unacademic, demanded to know why I was requiring students to have a thesis statement in their term papers. He wanted to know why only I had the requirement only after I had to tell him what a thesis statement is! He was about to turn to his dissertation, having completed his coursework. I felt bad for the guy, for he had lacked an academic relationship with a senior scholar who would have been able to flag the student even though the coursework requirements had been met. My letter from Patrick Riley means a lot to me because it goes beyond what even good grades course by course could say. I am a scholar in the old sense of the word, something that is not recognized by or even recognizable to administrators or even many "scholars" from the twentieth century on. 

Rockford University: Paranoid on the Periphery

A young library supervisor of student workers at Rockford University insisted that Christmas is only a private holiday because it is exclusively religious after I had said that I wanted to finish the book by Christmas. When I pointed out that in this country (the USA) Christmas is recognized as a national holiday, the library employee said that it is only a holiday for the federal government (not the rest of us) and demanded that I define "country." Then, presumably out of ideological spite, while I was taking an hour walk break outside, he intentionally took the book from its proper place on a bookshelf and demanded that each time I want to use the book, I had to ask him for it. It was neither a reference nor a rare book. Surely he had not spied on every patron, or taken books from the shelves so any patron wanting to use a book again would have to ask him at the front desk; and yet, his boss, the provost of the small college whose office was off to the side of the library's entry hallway, rebutted my complaint about his subordinate and instead angrily threatened me that I had to respect library policies, or of course I could go to another library. No wonder that college was in financial trouble and could not keep its CEO. 

The case of the missing book. 
A psychological thriller surpassing those of the Hardy 
Boys and Nancy Drew!

Imagine my surprise, upon returning from an hour break after having put the book I had been using in it's proper place in the shelving area, for I could not check out the book and use it at home: I saw that the book was missing! The library employee seems to have had me under surveillance and so had known when to go to the shelving area to remove the book so I would have to ask him for it, even after just taking a break. This could not possibly be done in the case of everyone who reads a book in that library. I returned to the provost, who angrily said, "You need to respect the library." I pointed out that the employee had disrespected me. Did I need to point out that a library employee was being disrespectful to a senior scholar? "There are other libraries," the provost retorted. There would be no collegial courtesy from that "colleague." I then went to the college president's office. The new interim president would not even pick up the phone to call the provost or the library employee so I could return to my research without having to bow before the rude employee. Adding insult to injury, the interim president, who had come from a largely online university, said, with a grin, "Have a nice holiday." I had told her what the library employee had said about Christmas, though her little stab was as primitive as it was petty.

On the next day, I returned to the library to verify my gut feeling that the library employee had not returned the book to its rightful place in the shelving area. I was betting that there would be no accountability. Sure enough, the place on the shelf where the book should have been was empty. The employee's ideological vindictiveness and stubbornness evinced his stupidity, for what if someone else had come to use the book? Who would come to study at a college of such idiocy? 

Before leaving the campus, I stopped by the Institutional Advancement office in another building. While I was suggesting that treating a scholar visiting his hometown so badly would not do the advancement of the institution any good, a security guard bounded in and interrupted me, demanding, "Is there something I can help you with?" I said no. The Advancement person was as surprised as me, so the security guard said, "I got a call." I have no doubt it was either someone in the provost's office or the library employee. Really I think the latter was being vindictive as I had claimed that Christmas is a national holiday and had complained about him.

The "shoot from the hip" security guard thought nothing of interrupting me as an administrator and I were talking. "Can I help you with something!?!" he rudely demanded in a hostile tone. His question was of course a lie. Nietzsche would rightly point to the "helpful question" actually being an attempt by a weak person (who is not strong enough to master his instinctual urges) to feel the pleasure of power. Such a new bird of prey can only be cruel or morally beguiling, according to Nietzsche. So the answer to the guard's question is obviously, "No, of course not. How could you possibly think you are relevant and thus even potentially of help?" 

Nine or so years earlier, I had used the library while visiting. Ironically, I was writing about ethics (conflicts of interest). In spite of the fact that I had academic journals on a table and was working from them, a security guard felt the need to push open the stall door in the bathroom while I was using the toilette. The employee at the front desk said that he probably thought I was using drugs. I asked where the guard was. "He just now ran out the front door there," a student employee said. "He lives in a (fleabag) motel just off campus." The sheer creepiness of such a weirdo having a look at me on a toilette sunk in. I since spoke to relatives of two former instructors. "The administrators and security are paranoid there," one relative said. I should say so, and they are also intolerant and vindictive. That is definitely the organizational culture at that college. No wonder they are in financial trouble. Interestingly, they rely to some extent on the tuition money of the Saudi government. This is why they changed in name only from being a college to being a university. What if the man sitting on the toilette had been a Saudi with connections to the Saudi royal family? Surely such a man would not be treated like a scholar. A friend suggested that someone actually doing academic research in that library may have been so unusual that to a small mind the activity would be suspicious. 

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Ideological Word Games: The Modern Weapon of Choice?

When I was young, my dad would sometimes criticize me for engaging in “word games.” Perhaps I was already parsing words; my parents and maternal grandfather were all lawyers. My last name is Worden, after all. I was raised to pronounce the name, war-den, and only after decades did it occur to me that people might spell the name as Worden rather than Warden if I pronounced it as word-n. I was the first even in the extended family to use the alternative; as Nietzsche wrote, no philosopher is a man of his time. We tend to think outside the proverbial constrained “box” because we critique assumptions and arguments (i.e., critical thinking), including those of the “boxes” that society leaves unquestionably standing as part of the status quo—the tyranny of which has repelled philosophers wetted to the idea that no stone should be left unturned, even if a society deems some stones as sacrosanct. It can be dangerous even to question the solidity of those stones, especially if they formed out of ideological controversies wherein tussling instinctual urges contesting for societal dominance. In this too, I am drawing on Nietzsche, who even viewed the content of ideas as being instinctual urges. In being willing to subject societally cherished ideas to fundamentally unique and deep scrutiny, Friedrich Nietzsche is the last, at least as of my time living in an American desert, both academically and geographically, where plenty of Nietzsche’s “herd animals” freely roamed. They were particularly vulnerable to ideological word-games in unquestioningly accepting the words from the insurgent ideologies as valid.
For example, the mindless expression used by retail employees, “Have a good one!” had become ubiquitous by 2020 in America even though no antecedent is mentioned for the pronoun, one. “Have a good what?” I would sometimes answer. The response would be even worse, such as “Whatever you want!” so I vanquished that experiment with truth. Why had “Have a good day!” or “Thanks for shopping here” succumbed to a vacuous “one”? To be sure, the grammatical error was more of an indication that business schools, like law and medical schools, should accept students for their respective first degrees after those students have earned a first degree in another school, such as that of the liberal arts and sciences, so the basics are not truncated. Certainly no passive aggression is involved in the ungrammatical expression.
Such aggression, I submit, underlies some cases of word games wherein ideological advocates insist that their respective instinctual urges, which include dominance, be accepted by adopting a questionable word-change even though it renders comparisons highly (yet invisibly!) unfair. Not by accident, the linguistic “game board” is tilted. People who do not play along with the change, perhaps because they can sniff the obvious yet hushed ideological game, can unfairly be subject to presumptuous pressure to use the new word appropriately. In short, the assertion, “That word [or comparison] is [now] inappropriate” can be used as a weapon.
For example, by 2020 the words male and female had come to be regularly extended from animals to human beings. So whereas formerly a person might ask, “Is your dog a female?” it had become proper to ask, for example, “Was the driver a female?”  The same applied to the word, male. Initially, I would answer such a derogatory question with, “You mean was the driver a woman?” In answering my question affirmatively, the person, whether a man or woman, would tacitly acknowledge that the use of the word female was based on a conformist ideology. Feminists could have used implicit comparisons, such as in the statement, “Was the driver a male or a woman?” and anti-feminists could have resorted to, “Was the driver a man or a female?” I had not heard such comparisons being made, but just in reading the two questions I can detect passive aggression. Indeed, that would likely be the purpose behind the respective wordings.
Racial hatred could also manifest through comparisons. On February 12, 2020, President Lincoln’s birthday ironically, a political reporter on National Public Radio discussing the previous day’s 2020 New Hampshire presidential primary said that the state is “mostly white so African Americans had not yet had the chance to be heard.” Then the reporter referred to Iowa and New Hampshire as “lily white.” This expression points to a racial bias, at least in regard to areas in which mostly Caucasians live. In using the actual name of the race, Caucasian, I am trying to correct for the convenient category mistake in the reporter’s comparison of whites with African Americans.” The latter term is an ethnic rather than a racial term. A Caucasian man from South Africa who has moved to American is an African American. That this term was invented by Jesse Jackson, a civil rights activist, is a hint as to the ideological impetus behind the ideologically-driven intension behind the switch from “Black,” a racial term, to “African American,” an ethnic immigrant term. The force of the ideology is responsible for the category mistake. On two occasions, I made statements in which the axis of comparison is skewed in the other direction. One interesting example is, “Caucasians and Blacks can get along.” Even in spite of the friendly idea, my acquaintance scolded me. “Don’t use Caucasian.” Yet if I had used “whites” instead, as in “Whites and Blacks can get along”—a statement that Martin Luther King likely said many times—a Caucasian with a certain ideological bias would likely have corrected me, insisting that I use “African American” rather than “Black” even though the former is not a term that refers to a race! Passive aggression fueled by an insurgent ideology can all too willingly rip through reasoning. Nietzsche would say that such reasoning is itself a tussle of instinctual urges, the most dominant in this case being one that clashes with the urge behind the ideology.
I submit that many people take words and linguistic comparisons at face level only. The real uses, at the ideological (and even instinctual urge) level, are frequently overlooked. The operative assumption is that in the selection of words, even in comparison to others, speakers and writers are ideologically neutral. The encroaching natural tendency of an ideology (and the instinctual urges behind it) is not recognized in its fullness. I submit that both the overlooking and the selection can be done unconsciously, though conscious intent in the selection can also exist. The person who feels a little uncomfortable but cannot identify why after hearing, “Was the driver a man or a female?” or “Was the driver Caucasian or Black?”---or even worse, “Was the driver a Caucasian woman or a Black male?”—unconsciously senses the ideological bias, especially if the listener’s ideology, and thus dominant urges, are at odds with the bias. The listener who knows that the comparisons are insulting or otherwise diminutive to one gender or one race also knows that passive aggression was involved. Sadly, the human “race” can be too creative and subtle in turning something into a weapon. At the very least, making specific instances of linguistic weapons transparent to other people can be done such that those instances may lose their fangs in the antiseptic of sunlight. 

Monday, June 24, 2019

So You Want to Become an Excellent Writer

A good writer writes well. This truism maintains that a good writer is has mastered the craft of writing. Unfortunately, this feat does not come without considerable effort, for takes some good old-fashioned study in grammar and spelling. Unfortunately, the linguistic mechanics furnish only the means of entry, though this point seems to be lost on the American English teachers who slighted grammar pedagogically in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Perhaps the novelists who have felt immune from being grammatical for the sake of style have been the interlarded culprits behind the trend of grammar be viewed as relative or an elective. To be sure, style has right of exception, but the problem is when the exceptions become the norm and even an excuse for bad grammar. This is all just foundational stuff; the quality distinguishing the excellent writer from even a good one is passion-fueled insight. The writer who writes out of a strong urge, or instinct, to express an insight publicly naturally finds his or her own voice, and thus identity, as a writer.  In this sense, a writer is like an entrepreneur whose passion breaks through the confines of an organizational structure like lava pushes through the tough shell of a lava dome.
As an entrepreneur, Richard Branson founded the Virgin Group, which went on to include more than 300 companies in the second quarter of 2011. Ordinarily, the reality of running a cumbersome corporation saps entrepreneurial talent, which enables managerial creatures to swoop in and take the reins of power from the founder. In the case of Branson, however, having a large company did not prevent him from taking on new commercial ventures that reflected his dreams in a way that solidified rather than weakened his control. "I'm just ridiculously lucky," he said, "and [I] just love to live my dreams." True to form, he pioneered Virgin Galactic into space and Virgin Oceanic into the deep sea, utilizing the wealth of a large corporation to do so. 
The key to Branson’s business success was his strong passion for exploration. "The interesting thing about exploration is . . . you never quite know what you're going to discover," he said. A discovery is often a significant find, even one that is of a hitherto unknown paradigm. For example, commercial flights into orbit or even the moon would change the meaning of flights. The uncertainty alone of such a paradigm-changer could easily be choked by organizational managers reflecting the caution that has been innate in most corporate cultures. 
Similarly, editors at publishing houses can act as conservative hedges against a novel idea reaching an audience and hopefully society itself. Like Branson, an excellent writer merges the strong motive of a passion with something new enough to matter. Accordingly, Branson’s advice on choosing a profession has bearing on writers: "don't try to start a business because you think you can make money. Start a business because you really want to."
Similarly, the excellent writer utilizes the mechanics of writing to express an underlying passion rather than merely to write for its own sake or to make money. Such a writer is likely to deliver a unique and interesting perspective that is a real contribution because passion tends to go further in the sense of uncovering. Passion-fueled insight can be revolutionary, and thus be a provocation to the interests vested in the status quo. 
In terms of writing, revolutionary ideas such as those of the European philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the nineteenth century can simply be ignored until long after the writer’s death. No philosopher is a man of his times, Nietzsche wrote. No paradigm-wrestling philosopher that is; plenty of pedestrian philosophers fit perfectly well in the society of their day. Such philosophers tend to study minutia and fit in cubby-holes at universities. To question the assumptions of the operating paradigm of the day and even present alternatives is the mission of a learned philosopher whose learning has enabled him or her to escape the usual orbits. Unitary explorers who have a passion for their respective unique ideas, which are of tremendous value, are not only those philosophers, but great writers more generally who have something very significant to present to the world.