Peter Singer argues that we should be wary of the ethical implications of technological advances. Of all of the ethical dilemmas of the modern world, however, the one he introduces is the legitimacy of fighting to keep premature babies alive, given their proclivity toward health problems. Unbelievable, really.

Why so much emphasis lately on choosing whether or not to keep babies? Why is this even a legitimate question? I can't help but see the introduction and legalization of birth control as the crux of this matter. Separating sex from procreation and introducing choice is an unstoppable process.

On Altered Desitiny and Friendship as Fundamental

Besides being fabulously over-the-top (suddenly, self-exiled prince runs into a woman dancing on a mountain top/cut to her in a waterfall/cut to her coming to him for milk when he was learning to milk a cow), Asoka carries a tremendous and powerful message with political implications.

Asoka is a prince who should not ascend to the throne based on birth order, but destiny has chosen him to rule. The film is full of themes that show that birth is not relevant, but the life you make for yourself is. When Asoka believes the woman he has fallen desperately in love with has been killed, he becomes a killer himself--a strong warrior with an evil soul. He has only one friend who attempts to stop him from his lawless rampage but cannot.

Asoka meets his first love on the battlefield at the end of the film. Suddenly, in her eyes, he sees what he has become. The film is truly a tragedy, for it is precisely the clever, Jacob-like qualities in Asoka that protected him early in the film that get out of control and overtake him. And without love, he has no one else's eyes through which to see himself. He cannot see his pride, then. It is only at the end of the film that he feels remorse, because he sees in the eyes of his love the evil man he has become.

This film, then, is about friendship. Friendship is the thing that draws us outside of ourselves in order to evaluate ourselves and our actions toward others. Even more than friendship, the film is about erotic love--a species of friendship. It is this love that speaks to him more than the love of his second wife, which is less erotic, more than the existence of his children, more than his one friend and protector. It is erotic love that actually has the force needed to change Asoka. In the end, this love drives him to repent and renounce his ways and become a Buddhist. It is only in the self-giving, then, that accompanies love, that the redemptive possibility is open.

On Confession

Today was my first confession. Suddenly the priest put on a purple fabric loop and turned his head down and I said my sins as best I could. Everyone raves about how good this is.

The idea of doing penance and healing the separation between us and God and us and ourselves and us and the Church is beautiful. There is a searching for unity and wholeness and harmony that is important and perhaps only possible in the Church and not in the state. It seems consistent with a Voegelinian understanding of always turning toward or away from the Divine Ground of being. The Catholic understanding is that we can't separate the divine from the others we are turning with. We have to turn ourselves and also as part of the body of Christ.

Bly's so fly

"Women in Crete loved the young men, but when

'The Son of the Deep Waters' dies in the bath,

And they show the rose-colored water, Mary says 'Amen.'"

Robert Bly

This is the end of a poem that I heard Robert Bly read tonight (he has fabulous hair!). This is not, first, an allusion to Christ, but the second layer of allusion to Christ is lovely. The Son of God, or The Son of Deep Waters, dies, surrounded by rose-colored water, which refers to his blood. Mary's role (and this applies to many mothers) is to accept His death. Her "yes," as it was at the annunciation, was an aligning of her own will with God's in a profoundly holy way. Her "yes," continued to his death and resurrection. And this is what is also required of us as His church.

So I've been intrigued by obituaries for several years. I got interested in them by occasionally strikingly well-written obituaries at the end of "The Economist" and have learned to lament the decline of the art of obituary writing, which has been replaced by a form that is filled in and newspaper space boughten, like some sort of morbid advertisement (note: please pronounce advertisement in the Canadian manner, because that is much more aesthetically pleasing and evokes thoughts of Gilbert Blythe).

What led to this change? A lack of respect for life? A modern aversion to death (as opposed to a previous respect for and understanding of death that we have lost and must replace with a shunning of death)?

What is it that makes a good obituary (which, at its finest is a concise biography that captures and conveys the essence of the person)? It seems that T. S. Eliot's idea of the "objective correlative"--an object that stands for and gets at a corresponding emotion---is useful here. An excellent obituary contains images from that person's life that sum up that person's life. Or, better yet, the obituary includes specific seminal moments of that person's life that frame and give us categories for thinking about his life. This story should provide insight and order to that person's life.

If I died now, I think that good objective correlatives for my obituary would be my typewriter, my room, my tea-light holder, and my picture of a woman reading.

Dry Your Eyes, Mate

In one single moment your whole life can turn 'round

I stand there for a minute starin' straight into the ground

Lookin' to the left slightly, then lookin' back down

World feels like it's caved in - proper sorry frown

Please let me show you where we could only just be, for us

I can change and I can grow or we could adjust

The wicked thing about us is we always have trust

We can even have an open relationship, ...

I'm not gonna fuckin', just fuckin' leave it all now

'Cause you said it'd be forever and that was your vow

And you're gonna let our things simply crash and fall down

You're well out of order now, this is well out of town

Dry your eyes mate

I know it's hard to take but her mind has been made up

There's plenty more fish in the sea

Dry your eyes mate

I know you want to make her see how much this pain hurts

But you've got to walk away now

I wonder if what resonates about this song is that the narrator has a proper conception of marriage--as something that is inviolable and lasting until death. The tragedy of the song is that the society does not support the narrator's true understanding of marriage. Rather, the society tells him to give up, to move on, to walk away, using an appropriate animal metaphor. For if marriage is not a substantial thing with its existence outside of a contract, then we are, in fact, like animals. This song shows the death of love and marriage. It purports to offer a sort of hope in exchange ("There's plenty more fish in the sea"), but this is not hope--it is hope of physical satisfaction, but not of emotional completion. There is something in the song's melody that is properly mournful, supporting the narrator's loss of his love and the society's loss of stability.

Modern Eugenics

I don't know if it's because I'm an emotional wreck at the end of the semester and struggling to finish papers without entirely breaking down, but I read a New York Times article lately on the problem of a decreasing amount of down syndrome babies being born because parents are screening for this and choosing abortion over giving birth and every time I think about this I start to cry.

The New York Times reporter had the right urge--realizing that this is a problem--but had no way to really articulate that problem, except to say that there will be fewer down syndrome children for those who are born to play with. This is entirely unconvincing--if the only evil is indeed pain and imperfection (as our society believes), then why have any imperfect people if we can avoid it? Why is having more imperfection better? And why make a person live with that imperfection?

No, what we really need is an ethical system that provides reasons why giving birth to a down syndrome baby is good and why aborting one is evil and why it isn't a choice to bear the child, it is a responsibility. We need to understand that imperfection is human and must remember Nathanial Hawthorne's warning in his short story, "The Birthmark" that if we try to eliminate all imperfections and strive for utopia, we will disconnect from our own humanity.

What beauty a person with down syndrome offers: he reminds us of our own dependence on each other and on God. He reminds us of our own limits and imperfections. And with his sinlessness, he reminds us of the innocence with which we must approach God. How dare we reject what has been given to us to love?

Serial Monogamy

Isn't it ironic that polygamy is considered the most backward, uncivilized, unthinkable phenomenon, while repeated marriages are considered normal? Really, what is the difference between serial monogamy (at best, more often, though, accompanied by affairs) and polygamy? People put on a ring for sex (possibly) and sign some papers before they have a new partner. Marriage is quickly becoming a meaningless contract. Societal support for marriage that endures as long as one's spouse is alive is almost non-existent. And yet we have such a proud view of the progress that we've made over the barbarians who used to have several wives. Isn't this just a cyclical revisiting of a very old problem? Goodness gracious, couldn't we do with some humility for starters?

On Apology

This afternoon, I hadn't yet made it out of my pajamas (I'm in the middle of final papers) and a friend of mine was at the door. My roommate let him in while I dressed up in some gym clothes. He has brought a cake and a card and an apology.

If politics and justice has to do with our ability as humans to make promises, then what happens when we break those promises? As in intense, at-all-costs conflict-avoider, I find apologies to be a violation of the "ignore embarrassing things" rule of which a friend of mine, who was raised in a posh upper-class home where they learned "manners" (manners in the sense of a conglomeration of duties imposed on you that must be strictly followed), informed me.

Apology, if we are allowing now for its existence, seems to be the interpersonal parallel to Catholic confession and penance--it involves the restoration to right order of a damaged relationship. Confession does this perfectly, while apology is a reflection of the process of confession.

Apology itself relies upon the innate human ability to enter relationships (and to make promises). Furthermore, apology recognizes the human ability to re-make relationships and re-build and re-establish what is broken. It acknowledges the necessary results of our limitedness in politics. We aren't perfect and apology is comfortable with that.

Perhaps apology is one of the most profound indications of the power and limitedness of politics. Politics can offer a degree of civilization, moving away from our wild, non-existent state of nature status. And yet the relationships of politics and society will inevitably break down and require attention. Apology allows us the means to continue on in this limited and yet useful community.

The life is in the thing that flows.

This is the life to which all love, lust points.
The moment in the car, saying good-night.
The moment on the bench, turning away.
These are intimations of an un-awk
Ward moment promised. When we push, flying
Like water, delight, vivacious, spilling
Singing, willing, together toward our end.

The Contemporary Colosseum

Paris Hilton going to prison. Aside from my typical frustration with our care for and attention about people who are this far removed from us, this reminds me of older forms of frenzied support for the pain of others. Really, the amount of joy people take in the pain of others (I would argue that this isn't just joy in justice--and even if it were, shouldn't we privately hope for mercy?) astounds me. It reminds me of a mob caught up in a lynching or people at a bullfight or gore-filled "entertainment" at the Colosseum or the sort of perpetual human need for a scapegoat. Don't get me wrong: I have little love for or interest in Paris Hilton. But that disinterest continues from her good days to her bad days.

In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer writes about the blurring of the line between the sacred and the profane in ancient civilizations: "To us these various classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind." There are also primitive (and modern) traditions of killing the god and eating him. I wonder if the Paris Hilton phenomenon isn't yet another case of confusion regarding exalted status that can quickly switch to scapegoat when the people's mood swings. It isn't that I'm advocating ignoring the transcendent in the future, let's just work a little harder to properly locate it.

The Politics of the Present

In the vein of Oakeshott and Eliot ("History is now and England"), I give you Henry David Thoreau:

"All these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. ... Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains."

Thoreau obviously gets the transcendence that inheres in the person. Also, his craving for reality speaks to a search for truth, including the truth of existence that is admirable, and seems to be acknowledging the connection between the "is" and the ought." The theology, however, is a little iffy (although I do think heaven will be something of an eternal present, but one that includes within it action and movement--it will be an actualized telos).

And for free: "To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea." Although I don't appreciate the dig at old women, I have felt repeatedly the truth of this assertion. Why is there this obsession with news? Really, shouldn't we be concerned with what is closest to us? And even then, not with the squirrels outside our window--but with the ideas, literature, wine and cigars that really matter. See, I can be concerned with mundane things as long as they are a conduit for conversation.