Digressions&Impressions

Cosmic Balance and Civic Flourishing in Omelas.

    They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.
    This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

    The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.--- Ursula Le Guin "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

Omelas has an unusual coming of age ritual: the would be adults are initiated into a horrible truth that is simultaneously the foundation of civic happiness. And they may not alter this state of affairs on pain of losing their prosperity (and other good things). In addition, their subsequent free speech is limited in a crucial way, they may not comfort or express compassion to the child that is sacrificed for their flourishing. This would violate "the terms" of a kind of (social) contract (recall here; and here) that is either the actual root of this commercial republic, or a kind of civic religion that structures its social reality. 

A skeptical reader may well deny that such "terms" could ever express a truth since it is so manifestly unjust. But as I have noted before, if the terms actually constitute (political) justice in the city, then this move is external to the civic consciousness of Omelas. (Of course, a defender of natural right might take that as evidence that forms of legal positivism are pathways to evil.) And moreover sometimes the truth indicates the abominable misery of the status quo.

But my present interest is to note that the ritual expresses the significance of social and political knowledge in Omelas. Because this ritual is initiated in order to convey a key knowledge about social life of Omelas when the would-be-adults are capable of "understanding" the "explanations" of it. The reactions of those exposed to it, suggests that those not yet ready for understanding are carefully guarded from the truth. So, the miserable child is a social taboo from which the young are guarded carefully. That is to say, the not young maintain a culture of silence among those who are not yet initiated.  This suggests that in so far as it is a civic religion it is carefully expressed. It is by no means obvious that the many visitors to Omelas that the proud city receives would know about it since these might well tell the children of Omelas or be tempted to protest the state of affairs. (This suggests that freedom of speech is curtailed even more widely in Omelas.)

I have noted before that despite the fact that the actual religion of Omelas lacks clergy, the miserable and innocent child is a kind of piacular scapegoat. To me this suggests that the state and its civic religion has claimed for itself that which properly belongs to revealed or clerical religion.

One of my students, Robin Kan, pointed out to me that the sacrifice of the innocent child functions like a cosmic balance principle in their civic religion. For, at any given time of the polity's existence, the child's immense suffering balances out the flourishing of the polity ("that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.") Structurally, such a cosmic balance principle is very similar to Christ's redemptive suffering for the sins of humanity (which is sometimes discussed in terms of such a cosmic balance), except that Christ voluntarily takes on this task and the child is forced into it without ever being allowed any understanding of its role. It is not even offered an ideological explanation for its suffering, and thanks to Omelas' social taboo on it, it has literally no chance of anticipating it. Of course, Omelas' balance principle is not cosmic, but local, bounded by the the territory of Omelas; the child does not redeem all of humanity.

It is natural to teach Omelas as a means to discuss the limitations of utilitarianism in an introductory context. This year my own students saw in it a parable of colonial/imperial conquest or capitalist exploitation, and the way the media makes that available to viewers at the center and simultaneously makes us it feel impossible to change. In a future post I want to discuss one such interpretation because it centers on the purported absence of war in Omelas.

But it is worth noting that if one reads the story on its own terms, it depicts the horrors of state power devoted to the "happiness" of its people. And in the story this is a power that rests on the well informed understanding and tacit consent of its adult citizens, and it is presented as the best kind of polity that accepts the legitimacy of state power. That is to say, the implied point of view of the narration is the question whether it is worth paying the price of the benefits of state power.  

Of course, my present interpretation is informed by my recent (recall) reading of Le Guin's "The Day Before the Revolution." This story invites us to see in one of those who walk away from Omelas the revolutionary founders of a form of anarchism (which rejects state power).* That is, if we take Omelas as a best case scenario for statism, then it invites us both to reflect on the price we're willing to pay to accept our complicity in its horrors, and to what degree we're willing to contemplate (and to pursue) serious alternatives.

One final thought: the line of interpretation that I have offered here is not an alternative to, or a refutation of, treating Omelas as a means toward discussing the limitations of utilitarianism. For, as Foucault emphasizes, utilitarianism is not merely an ethical system, it is also a technology of governance. And so it does ask us what price we're willing to pay in pursuing such technologies and if we're willing to contemplate doing without them.

Le Guin (and William James) on Sacrifice; on Political Aesthetics and Truthful Ideology

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no real doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.--Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

The narrator of this "fable" -- Le Guin hesitates calling it that  -- at times situates her (his?) own description in the history of utopian thought: she contrasts the citizens of Omelas with the "bland utopians" (of More). Le Guin, who takes categorization  of her fiction rather seriously (in the playful way in which the serious is properly addressed) may be right to insist it is not a utopia because the narrator also admits not knowing "the rules and laws of their society." But it is possible that we learn more than the narrator realizes (as is often the case in the best utopian writings). Rules and laws are intrinsic to utopian reflection, when considered as a species of (what I call) Socratic political theory [recall here and here]. One might easily be confused about  this point because the narrator describes Omelas as "happy" (without being "stupid" or "naive and happy children") in a way that is often associated with utopian thought.

In order to show that they are genuinely happy, the narrator claims that the Omelasians (the Omelians?) are (i) capable of distinguishing and discriminating among "what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive."  And (ii) they have  chosen to live beyond necessity and allow technology that is "neither necessary nor destructive," but simultaneously to reject the (potentially) destructive kind. That is to say, Omelas is a society with metaphysics (or philosophy) and capable of taking, what we would call, inductive risk seriously. (In some respects -- especially the fact that there is a religion without priests -- it is like the true city of Plato's Republic.) Some other time I hope to reflect a bit more carefully on the logic of modality in which necessity and destructiveness are contraries.* (One would also like to know more about how they apply their knowledge.)

Above, I have quoted the central element of the story, or a necessary ingredient, that is supposed to make the 'joy' and the 'city' believable.** This reveals that a criterion for a happy city is some trade-off or some discordant element.  This element is a sacrifice.+ The happiness of the city is founded in a contract (James calls it a "bargain") which has three clear terms: (a) a miserable child; (b) no talking to the child; (c) "the happiness" of the citizens of Omelas.  Before one complains that this contract is obviously invalid say on the Hobbesian ground that the child is thrown back into the state of nature (really worse--she is deprived her use of reason), it is worth noting that from the perspective of the contracting parties the child is a mere externality. This is true of all contracts in which beyond the contracting parties and the arbiter/sovereign who enforces it, there are always parties who are effected by the contract, but not included (as contracting parties or in its language). The contract would be invalid if the sacrificed child were itself one of the contracting parties. But as Hobbes reminds us (recall), in the state of nature mothers have supreme dominion over their children and can dispose them at will (on my interpretation this justifies right to abortion in his view). This right need not be given up in the bargain. So this is a legitimate contract.

It is tempting to discuss here the question if it is a moral contract. If the child were spoken to -- and so readmitted to community, and so made part of the contract -- its objections and pleas would have to be taken into account. But today I am going to resist the casuistry (although I am quietly relying on your eagerness to do it yourself), and the familiar debates between consequentialists and deontological perspectives, we would have to enter into.[1] For prior to the question of morality, there are two, all too easily ignored, issues that are explicitly raised in the fable. One is a question (with a nod to Hannah Arendt [recall my valedictorian pieces at NewAPPS, here and here]) connected to politics of aesthetics: "the treason of artists," which is a "refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain." One of the narrator's points on this issue is that modern artists self-limit in such a a way such that a skill has been lost (or at least 'almost lost')++ that is, the skill to represent joy and happiness without, simultaneously, thereby turning it in a moral tale or a political message. As such artists are incapable of conveying the full richness of human life. (This is something Coetzee also worries about.) The narrative situation of the fable is made complex because our narrator ends up performing what she decries. Part of the issue then is to what degree there is space for non-acceptable and non-believable art. That is to say, by bringing in the question of acceptance and belief, the narrator obliquely reminds us that her art is not isolated, but itself part of a larger political community; our expectations and standards are implicated in her representation.

I emphasize the obliqueness of this issue because, second, the representation of Omelas shows how an ideology that is grounded in the truth, in a society in which philosophy and knowledge exist, is possible.  For, everybody in Omelas (above a certain age) knows of the child sacrifice performed there. (Perhaps, this is even a fourth publicity requirement in the contract!) There is no noble lie here. And it is this knowledge that grounds a lot of the best features of the activities that bring (let's stipulate) true glory to Omelas ("nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science.") That is, this is a society in which its best activities do not require -- something familiar to us -- the effacement of the ugly foundations of flourishing. This is, indeed, a "responsible happiness." (How this connects to "barbarism" -- the narrator introduces the contrast -- is actually a tricky matter, but we can't do everything at once.)

Even so, I insist that their self-understanding is a form of ideology. By 'ideology' I mean (without pretending to have offered an analysis or to be at all precise) a discourse that (i) justifies a status quo -- in which some are subjugated (made miserable, exploited, etc.) -- and (ii) which prevents from conceiving alternatives to the status quo. Only (i) is necessary for something to be an ideology, but (ii) is an important function. This (i-ii) is precisely what happens when the children begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom." What they say is (let's stipulate) all true, but it ends up justifying continued misery for the child. 

Now, the story shows that two alternatives in play are (i) continue to agree to terms of the social contract, or (ii) quietly leave town (that's the closing "incredible" paragraph of the story) and end one's complicity with known misery from which one benefits.  One may grant that releasing a child after such degradation may cause as much wretchedness as staying in confinement because she would be released into a collapsing society. But it is notable that they do not seriously contemplate ending the practice when this child dies. That is, in virtue of accurately describing the world they inhabit, they do not prepare for an alternative, communal future path, beyond Omelas.***  

 

 

 

 

On Being a Non-Vegetarian

I am unsure when I realized that the moral arguments against eating meat and fish are compelling. It was some time after my period of being a practicing vegetarian (being in a relationship with a vegetarian). I would not be surprised if reading and teaching Coetzee's novels moved me decisively.

Thus, I admire the vegetarians.

As a non-trivial aside, I am no fan of European animal rights's movements that have for very obvious political reasons focused on ritual slaughter of animals -- practiced by unpopular, weaker, and often disadvantaged minorities -- as some of the main means of getting the message out  (as opposed to taking on the much more powerful agricultural-industrial-killing complex) and thereby entrenching other very serious systematic patterns of exclusion. I am not claiming hypocrisy. But one often gets the impression that among animal welfare advocates there is not just contempt for religious minorities, but also that one happily takes advantage of other people's xenophobia in the service of noble ends. This is not to excuse cruelty toward animals, if any, practiced by religious minorities and also not to deny that religious thinkers and authorities ought to have ongoing reflection on reforming their own practices.* 

Despite knowing it's wrong, I continue to eat meat and fish, albeit -- as a good bourgeois citizen -- the more expensive 'biological' and 'humane' stuff sold in the upscale farmer's market and specialty stores (with exclusive labels, etc.). I have wondered if I should describe my behavior in terms of weakness of will, or the power of (Humean) habit. Undoubtedly a bit of both. My behavior is certainly not some kind of rejection of morality or the feelings that might animate it; the idea of eating my (now long deceased) pet dog continues to horrify me. I am inclined to think, however, that my continued immoral behavior also reveals something else: that I tend to experience the pull of morality alongside other normative and non-normative pulls; some of which revolve around meals as a shared experience -- admittedly that sounds better in principle than the practice of trying to ensure that an overtired kid gets to be put to bed on time -- in which well prepared meat and fish add aesthetic, emotional, and sensual lustre to a meal. Unlike today's philosophical fashion, I am inclined to think that morality does not trump all other normative realms, so maybe my behavior is consistent with my larger normative commitments. (I am leaving aside here issues of health.) Of course, even if one were to grant my normative pluralism, it does not follow that my behavior ought to be excused.

I sometimes worry that knowing that it's wrong to eat, say, steak contributes to my pleasure of eating steak. There are guilty pleasures, after all, and it strikes me that -- given my occupation -- such guilty pleasures compensate for the cultivated tendency to 'over-think' quite a bit. I suppose akrasia can be a consequence of guilty pleasure, so maybe this should be my all things considered (that is self-deceptive) self-diagnosis. But I note that this akrasia is, then, in part philosophically induced and, oddly enough, that contributes to the pleasure.

Que sera sera...the future's not ours to see...

Because my beloved is on lecture-tour in South Africa, I sing a different set of lullabies than we would do if she were around to my almost-five-year-old-son before he goes to sleep. I let him choose and he nearly always wants my version of Doris Day's Que sera sera. I picked up the tune from my mom when I was a kid. I adapt the lyrics and improvise the story of his life and connect them to the main events of his day. When I first started doing this, when he was still an infant, I respected the generational structure of the stanzas, but during the last six months my son has encouraged me to focus the lyrics primarily on his life--luckily 'Avi' rhymes well with 'what will be, will be.' By the time I am done he is half-asleep; I wait in the darkness twenty minutes or so before leaving the room (if I don't fall asleep on the rocking chair).

Ordinarily, if I think about it at all, I associate the song with the importance of story-telling and a kind of amor fati. Sometimes my digressions drift, one associated impression too far, toward the very possibility of knowing too much. But last night, I noticed that the lyrics to Que sera sera (also) describe epistemic uncertainty ("the future's not ours to see"). And, not for the first time, yet always a familiar surprise, I recognize that my enduring intellectual commitments pre-date whatever philosophical skill I have developed.

On Being a Naked Baby

I am 11 years old and I realize I am like a "naked baby" and a total misfit. I must learn to fit into a normal society and I have no training for that, no education to speak of, no manners, such as table manners, hygienic training, etc.. When I speak it is a mixture of three languages, German, Dutch, and Yiddish.

I know how to survive and live in a camp. But that is all I know. I am not proud of some of the things that spell "survival". I am a camp-rat, and I am comfortable with it. I don't know or remember that there is an "outside" where things are different. I feel very angry, bitter and ashamed for being so different from others -- perhaps even for surviving, when so many others did not."--Betty Gerard "The Pain of Liberation."

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked--Genesis 3:7

A few days ago, my dad told me that a friend's mom had died. She had been a member of the Dutch resistance during WWII. Because Jews had no organized resistance in Holland, I asked, "a communist?" My dad nodded. "How did she survive the war?" My dad said, "I don't know." "You never asked or heard about it?" "No. It's not the kind of thing we spoke about." The commercial and political exploitation of collective memory is so familiar to us that we might easily overlook the possible existence of shared reticence.

When we got home from lunch, he handed me two typed written pages. Betty, who died this past year, was my dad's oldest surviving friend. (Below the fold a short interview with her.) Betty and my dad spoke of each other as siblings.  They met in Westerbork (around 1940).* Betty's text helped me grasp features of the "conspiracy of silence" among a community of survivors of persecution. 

Lice, Biopolitics

On the second day of school, before he could take his seat in the circle around his teacher, my son's hair had to be inspected by one of the four luizenmoeders [i.e., lice-mothers]. While he was quietly undergoing the inspection for Pediculus humanus capitis with an unsharpened pencil, I was quickly informed this was a biweekly ritual; "if they find lice," my informant told me, "they send him home at once; a real pain." Dutch society still assumes that at least one of the parents (i.e., the mother) is able to drop everything else in our ongoing battle with critters. She must have seen the flash of panic on my face, and added, "it doesn't happen very often." Meanwhile, the luizenmoeder-in-charge effortlessly managed to obtain my email address, "in case we need to contact you."

While since the pioneering days of Swammerdam (see this image), the Dutch have always been fascinated by lice and civic hygiene (see Schama on Mandeville), I didn't recall this ritual from youth, and -- indeed -- it seems 'luizenmoeder' seems to have entered Dutch around 2000. (Sadly google does not have Ngrams in Dutch yet.) When one googles, 'luizenmoeder,' one finds three kinds of articles: (a) reports from anguished mothers that are berated by other moms for not volunteering their skills; (b) reports from anguished moms that are berated by their daughters for volunteering their skills to participate in a shameful and yucky ritual; (c) politicians purportedly anguished about the lack of luizenvaders (a word that entered Dutch apparently in 2001). The glacial progress of Dutch feminism is indicated by the fact that instances of (c) are relatively rare and more recent than instances of (a-b).