A Modest Proposal: Police Killing Parity

According to a study by the Guardian newspaper in 2016, 1,134 American Black men were killed by the police in 2015.  The police seem to have a problem refraining from killing Black men.  It is the case that some actions are more difficult to moderate than to leave unrestrained -- take dieting, for example.  Perhaps, then, instead of trying to restrain police from killing Black men, we simply require that they kill a proportional number of White men.  In other words, for ever 2 Black men killed by the police, the police should make it their duty to kill 9 White men.

They could start with the executives responsible for the 2008 Great Recession, none of whom has ever been charged with that crime.  Not to discriminate and applying this same ratio, since Hispanics are being kill at about half the rate of Blacks, for every Hispanic that is killed by police, the police should make it their business to kill 2 additional White men.

		RACE % TOTAL NUMBER SHOT+ PER 10 million PARITY 2015 Parity Killed* Black or African American 13.4% 43,952,000 235 53.4674190 53 1,134 American Indian and Alaska Native 1.3% 4,264,000 ***** 5 110 Asian 5.9% 19,352,000 ***** 24 499 Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander 0.2% 656,000 ***** 1 17 Hispanic or Latino 18.3% 60,024,000 158 26.3228042 73 1,549 White alone, not Hispanic or Latino 60.4% 198,112,000 370 18.6763043 241 5,111 TOTAL 99.5% 328,000,000 +Statista 2020 * Guardian 2015 study ***** No data

What Should The Police Be For

1.  How often, under normal conditions, does police presence prevent crime?

In the broad sense, this is difficult to tell because prevention is only measurable in a relative sense, in comparison to the lack of police presence under the same conditions.

For mobile crimes such as street drug dealing, the crime can move to a location where the police are absent.  This is not so much crime "prevention" as crime "suppression".

2.  What about law enforcement.

There are many law enforcement agencies in addition to the police:  Food inspectors, building inspectors, bank inspectors, etc.  What differentiates these agencies from the police is that the police are empowered to use physical force to compel following their orders.

Science and Sausage -- an attempt at a fan letter.

This is my second fan letter.  The first one I wrote when I was about 13 or 14-years old to science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, whose “juveniles” especially, were considered “hard science” fiction.  That was about 1963.

I think I was moved to write this letter because of the confluence of two pieces, the first from the Boston Herald (one of Boston’s two major daily newspapers), an opinion piece by Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review, entitled “Science can’t tell us how to respond to the coronavirus”.  And the second, your link “Hats off to the father of Brandon Truett, who took out a billboard to congratulate his son on achieving a PhD.” 

I see the latter as a true celebration of the pursuit of knowledge and the former about the pursuit of political power.  The term “science” is used in many different ways, to refer to many different things and activities; as a noun and a verb and an adjective.  All these meanings and usages have been collapsed into this one word in a way that pretty much makes the word meaningless.  When we communicate using meaningless words we only get confusion -- garbage in, garbage out.

The enterprise of science is a messy, complicated thing, something like the metaphorical making of a sausage.  The point being that people don't want to experience the process, they only want to savor the outcome.  Unfortunately for the image of science in this time of coronavirus, the  public is getting to watch the sausage being made, and is finding the experience upsetting.  

For me, during the time that I have been a reader, your newsletter has put this process into the context of the people working to solve this problem:  It's still messy, but it is much clearer why the mess is necessary, and that ultimately it is the way that human beings solve big problems.  

On a less abstract note, my favorite features are "Where I Work" and the quotes with their references. 

I believe that using a word in a vague way, without a clear definitions or out of context or in the wrong context is more a tactic of political or social manipulation than it is a way of reaching a sound, disinterested conclusion.  This former usage, to me, seems to constitute almost all of public discourse today. 

Perhaps vague terms designed to inflame the emotions have always been the stuff of public discourse, but to enfold “science” into part of that discourse is to do damage to the enterprise of science, and to subvert humanity’s attempt to improve itself. 

In our current public discourse,

Ethics

Ethics as a motivator of behavior must originate either from within or without.

An external motivator of behavior determines a person's behavior regardless of what the person may want.  This motivation is different from a person's reflexes or reactions or learned behavior all of which may occur without consciousness.  Rather, this is a conception of a person as a puppet which behaves in the way it does in response to the puppet master's manipulations, regardless of whether or what the puppet itself may consciously or unconsciously want.  A puppet may pick up an apple and eat it, but its actions are determined not by the puppet's wants, but by the puppet master's manipulations.  The puppet may explain its behavior by saying that it was hungry, but explanation is merely a justification or description of its behavior that agrees with the puppet master's manipulations.  The same puppet may refrain from eating the apple by saying that it did not want to spoil its dinner.  But that is still only a justification of the puppet master's manipulations.  From this perspective, an ethics of puppets is meaningless.

Moral or ethical behavior requires consciousness or awareness of one's behaviors or actions and their consequences.

"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," requires that one is aware of others, that one is aware of one's actions toward those others, and that one is aware of the consequences of those actions upon those others.

On can only consciously justify breaking this rule if one lacks compassion or altruism which means a lack of understanding or awareness of one's own feelings or sensations.

The Irony of Left Organizing

There is a certain irony in the fact that while Left groups are always talking about the need to organize, they themselves are unorganized on a national level, and are therefore unable to put forward a credible challenge to the organized Right.

There are many Left networks with members throughout the country, but these networks are only themselves connected through the members whom they share in common; and these shared members are not the leadership of these networks -- if they have anything like real leadership, since they are often more like affinity groups organized around a specific shared interest.

The Left has a bigger problem than the Right when it comes to organizing since the Left tends to believe in democracy and the democratic process, and probably lacks the concentrated financial resources available to even one or two of the members of the Right.  Nor does the Left have the financial political resources which would enable a Left member of Congress to forego fundraising and thus spend all of their time and resources crafting and fighting for legislation.

The left may be for the interests of the vast majority of the American people, but they have scant ability to establish that fact in the hearts and minds of the American people.

Perhaps this has to do with the difficulty of conveying the Left's message in a way that can be easily and quickly visualized or understood.  It is easy to show Donald Trump in his gold-plated bedroom; but how do you show, in the same amount of time, 300,000,000 Americans living in decent housing?  It is easy to show the owner of a large company treating his workers well; but how do you show a unionized shop ensuring good working conditions and job security in a 30-second news segment?  It is easy to show a philanthropist with a large check funding a community center; but how do you show the contribution of a whole community in building that community?  But where is the media company with the reach and "credibility" of Fox News that can bring the Left's views and accomplishments to the nation?

Even within the Left, most people subscribe to the American religion of Individualism.  While the individual's good may be a tenet of other national religions, the value of the greater good, or the common good is mostly absent in the American national religion.  While Americans may be willing to give the highly abstract money, or even volunteer in civic projects, their willingness to change their behavior to benefit others is largely in conflict with the internalized and entrenched value of individual freedom or liberty; which provokes the gut response of refusal to consider the consequences of their individual behavior on those around them.

Perhaps it is built into the bones of American society -- its customs, its laws, its rules and regulations -- to prioritize the individual good over the common good.  Such laws and customs were institutionalized to benefit someone.  Capital gains taxes only benefit someone with significant capital gains, as these gains are taxed at a significantly lower rate than regular income (wages, tips, self-employment) -- the source of money that most people live on.

Since America is "a country of laws", and everyone must obey the law, those laws largely determine how people are treated.  But even for a good cause, the popular narrative is that of the individual lawyer who "beats the system," wins over the corporation.  But the individuals who were affected by this corporate malfeasance are largely props for the story.  And the general public who is also affected are largely ignored because a law suit rarely affects the law or how laws are written or who benefits from the law.  When the greed and fraud of major banks caused the Great Recession of 2008, causing millions to lose their homes or saving, none of the executives of those banks ever had to answer for the acts in a meaningful way.  In fact, the American people had to pay -- through taxes and reduced government services -- for what they did, while these bankers ended up as wealthy as ever. 

It is probably the case that the increase in inequality in America can be directly tied to how the law has worked, and how people have worked the law -- what the law has allowed and what it has forbidden -- to increase that inequality.

Perhaps alienation in a large industrial or post industrial society is the common fate of  the working class, regardless of their living standards and even education.  Alienation may be a biological human response to overwhelming complexity.  Alienation -- in a sense, "not caring" -- may be how people respond when they do not understand what is going on, or have no control over what is going on.  Escape from alienation may reside in a social movement or group that makes meaningful their experience and suggests that they have control over what is happening to them.  The control may not be proximate, by blaming someone or something else, or putting the solution in a discernible future may be enough, so long as the wait can be filled with like-minded company.

The Argument for the Existence of Hawaii

Blom, Philipp. Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present (p. 153). Liveright. Kindle Edition. 

Descartes (via Anselm) argued that: 
A Perfect Being must really exist, because if it had no existence, it would be imperfect. Therefore, a Perfect Being exists, unlimited in time and space (otherwise, its perfection would be destroyed), and hence omnipresent and eternal, the origin of all being, the creator of this temporal, material world. Moreover, the idea of perfection also means that a Perfect Being must be be truthful, because any lie would be falsehood, incoherence, imperfection, and therefore irreconcilable with its perfect nature.

Blom, Philipp. Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present (p. 152-153). 
Liveright. Kindle Edition. 
the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who cheekily asked whether, if he could conceive of a perfect island in the ocean, this island would also necessarily have to exist.

Blom, Philipp. Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present (p. 153). Liveright. Kindle Edition. 

Another word for 'racism'

“It’s hard to explain why the authorities did not up the ante in terms
of infection controls at the dorms -- perhaps there was a policy blind spot with the focus being on Singaporeans,” said Eugene Tan, a political commentator and law professor at the Singapore Management University. But “in public health, the migrant workers are very much a part of the community, and the early vigilance against community spread did not embrace the foreign workers.”
....
Low-wage foreign workers comprise a fifth of the overall population in Singapore, but largely live separate from the local community. The dormitories -- where clogged toilets and overflowing rubbish chutes have been reported -- are a far cry from the country’s glitzy skyline showcased in Hollywood blockbusters like “Crazy Rich Asians.”

How Singapore Flipped From Virus Hero to Cautionary Tale
By Faris Mokhtar
Bloomberg.com

Lazarus Redux: The Death of the Novel ... Again

I will confess that I am a lowbrow; therefore my thoughts and opinions on "the novel" are probably trite, superficial and unoriginal; lacking understanding of the depths of the human heart, of the grandeur and pity of human existence; lacking any understanding, knowledge or experience of the human condition; are deaf to the nuances and meanings and poetry of language; are just plain ignorant, lazy and stupid.  With all that as my qualifications, it seems to me that Joseph Epstein, in his Commentary essay "What Happened To The Novel?" is saying is that he can't find new doses of his drug of choice anymore, that he cannot find any contemporary novelists who speak to his particular understanding of existence, no one with whom his particular experience resonates.

Having stated my lack of qualifications, you can feel justified in reading no further.

To further affirm my lack of qualifications to an opinion, I have read, Brothers Karamazov (Constance Garnett translation), Ulysses and Moby Dick.  Mostly, I found them turgid and boring, though among them Moby Dick is my favorite.  I tried reading other "classics" but gave up because I could not get past their style, grammar, mostly long-winded syntax and cultural references.  Finally, I can't stand reading Shakespeare other than in very short doses ("To be, or not to be ....").  I would rather watch the plays, and even those are difficult to understand which makes them mostly boring.

To begin with the aside with which Epstein ended his essay: perhaps he does not understand that the great cathedrals of Europe -- Chartres, Notre Dame de Paris, Westminster Abbey -- the symbolism of floor plans, their vaults, and their stained glass windows are all giant comic books for the education and edification of their illiterate congregations?  Or even for their literate ones?  As are the Bayeux Tapestry, the Tres Riches Heures or the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel.  Translating the impulse or meaning of one art form or technique into the form of another art form requires an understanding and appreciation of that other form's techniques and conventions, limitations and capabilities -- how the authors of these other arts try to convey their ideas and intentions.

I am not saying that the graphic novel of In Search of Lost Time is or is not a "success":  It is a comic book, not a novel.  It is like suggesting that Michelangelo's David is better than Shakespeare's Hamlet, or perhaps that Terry Southern's Candy is better than Rembrandt's Susannah and the Elders.  I did attempt to read Remembrance of Things Past (the previous translation of In Search of Lost Time), but gave up for the above reasons.  I also looked into the graphic novel version but did not pursue it because I was not  attracted to the author's drawing style and because it had too many words -- show rather than tell -- and "showing" in a novel is different from "showing" in a painting.  Conversely, has there ever been a great novelization of Citizen Kane or Casablanca?  Or are all movies only worthy of the groundlings and riff raff?

Epstein seems to be saying that he cannot find a modern novel that is worthy of being compared to his "classics".  He quotes Bottum to explain that the modern novel "no longer tells us 'what we are… the way we live now...'"

But could it be that rather than not telling us about our lives today, modern novels are saying "what we are… the way we live now..." in a way that Epstein cannot understand.  Thus his complaint that the novel is dead, or at least dying.   This is a human trait: that if something does not agree with what we have been trained and rewarded to believe in, then we humans have a strong tendency to reject, oppose, become angry at that thing, to see it as heresy, not just another opinion, another way of understanding and interpreting the world.

That would make him, like me, just another lowbrow in the culture of today, unable or unwilling or too lazy to engage in the intellectual struggle that would enable him to find the greatness in the works that so despises today. 

Another problem is that there are so many books being written today, by so many more people, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find that one great work among millions of lesser value.  Not only are there more agents and publishers than ever before, but self-publishing is able to reach audiences beyond the dreams of earlier best sellers.  And what about those billions of novels whose authors have never considered releasing into the world, now sitting on hard drives or memory sticks or floating somewhere in the cloud.  Perhaps Epstein just hasn't found the classic he so longs for yet because he just hasn't looked in the right place.  Could it be that the gate keepers of the novel are doing as so many do, betting on prior success, and therefore are publishing only published authors, no matter how bad they might be.  Maybe the great novels of today are being written by the authors of chick lit.  But the chances are, he'll never know.

Hell is People

The great mosque in Damascus is a visual depiction of Paradise.

Seeing these pictures of beautiful buildings, succulent fruit and plenty of water, one realizes that all of these delights are well within the capacities of humans today ... not only these delights, but much more. 

Furthermore, this vision of Paradise exists in the physical world today, in may places.  Among these places, many are a pleasure to live in, but for others living, or more likely existing, there, it is Hell.

So, what one can conclude is that Paradise is not Paradise because of its architecture and accoutrements, but because of the people who live there and how they treat each other.