The intelligentsia and civil war


Etel Adnan in Marin County, California. Photo by Simone Fattal. Source: EtelAdnan.com.

The New York Times carried an obituary this morning for Etel Adnan, who died yesterday in Paris at the age of 96. I was saddened to hear this, because I knew Etel and her partner, Simone Fattal, during their Sausalito years, when I was living in San Francisco.

Etel was best known for her novel about the Lebanese civil war, Sitt Marie Rose. Part of what I find remarkable about Etel Adnan is how her literary reputation was built entirely on the work of small presses. As far as I know, none of her books was ever published by a commercial press. Etel and Simone had established their own micropress during the 1980s, the Post-Apollo Press. It was Post-Apollo that published Sitt Marie Rose, translated from the original French by Simone. Even in the early ’90s, inspired by Simone and Etel, I aspired to starting a micropress someday.

When I reflect on what I remember about Etel, what stands out is her sadness and grief about what civil war did to her country, Lebanon, and in particular to the immense damage of what war did to the city of Beirut, which Etel compared with San Francisco. The New York Times writes: “Her most widely acclaimed novel, Sitt Marie Rose, (1978) based on a true story, centers on a kidnapping during Lebanon’s civil war and is told from the perspective of the civilians enduring brutal political conflict. It has become a classic of war literature, translated into 10 languages and taught in American classrooms.”

As Simone and Etel drove me home to San Francisco one night after dinner in Sausalito, Etel asked me as we crossed the Golden Gate bridge to imagine how I would feel if San Francisco suffered such destruction. It was December, and she was bundled up in their Volvo like a Lebanese peasant (though she came from a wealthy family). Of the thousands of times I have crossed the Golden Gate bridge, I remember that time the best — stars over the Pacific, and the lights of San Francisco reflected in the bay. I always felt safe in San Francisco, a refuge from what is worst about America.

Today, the news is horrifying, and it’s getting worse. When we watched as the U.S. Capitol was attacked on January 6, we did not know that what we were seeing was an actual, organized, serious attempt at an authoritarian coup. New books have revealed much, but I expect the congressional hearings to reveal even more. The law is closing in on Trump’s enablers, and I have little doubt that Trump himself, and two or three of his children, will be indicted next year. At the very least, those indictments will be about financial crimes, and those crimes will be the easiest to prove. But, as Trump enablers such as Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, and a bunch of right-wing lawyers face the choice between longer prison sentences and testifying against Trump, I expect them to testify against Trump, and I expect the evidence to be damning.

The rise of an organized authoritarian power structure is scary enough, but the gullibility of Americans is even scarier. Recent polls show that a majority of Americans may be willing to go right on voting for Republicans. We have no choice but to imagine the worst. If the Republican Party either steals or wins the national elections in 2024, then that will be the end of the American democracy and the end of the rule of law. Part of what I find I find incomprehensible about the politics and religion of America’s non-intelligentsia is that they imagine they would prosper under such a regime. No they wouldn’t. As soon as a right-wing authoritarian government was installed beyond the reach of democracy and the rule of law, ignorant Republican voters would feel the other end of the stick as the country’s wealth is transferred ever more quickly from the bottom to the top. A right-wing authoritarian government in the United States could never be stable. At least half of the population — largely those in the cities and on the coasts — would never put up with it. The Republican Party and its propaganda would ensure that there are brownshirts, scapegoats, and turmoil. Sham right-wing-run elections would never permit a democratic change of government. What alternative would be left other than civil war?

Already, authoritarian governments are working to escalate the turmoil. A story in the Times of London on November 13 reports that Britain’s most senior military officer has warned that the risk of an accidental war with Russia is now greater than at any time since the Cold War. There are increasing fears that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. British troops have been sent to the Polish border with Belarus because Belarus is trying to create a crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East and sending them to the Polish border. Things such as this get little attention in the dysfunctional and not-very-smart American media.

I’ve tried to do some Googling to determine what has been written about intelligentsias in time of war. Most of what has been written is about Russia. But intelligentsias, at many times in many places, have seen and understood what others are slow to see and understand. It happened in Russia. It happened in Germany. It happened in Etel’s Lebanon. And now the United States could be well on its way. I’m afraid I was mistaken when I thought that this country was out of the woods when Trump left the White House. I still believe that Trump will go to prison. But that is not enough, as it has become increasingly clear that the Republican Party, post-Trump, will continue to try to establish a right-wing authoritarian government beyond the reach of law and fair elections. The details about their intentions grow ever uglier — for example, Michael Flynn’s remark about “one religion.”

In my Googling, I found this, written in 1972 by Richard Hamilton for Dissent magazine:

“In the world view of liberal intellectuals, those persons who share decent and humane values form a tiny minority standing on the edge of an abyss. In that world view they are always standing there, the problem being that there are so few people who share those values and so many potentially powerful and, if aroused, dangerous groups present in the society. The best one can hope for is that the threatening groups remain quiescent, that they not be aroused.

“The American liberal finds himself in a difficult world; he is sincere, concerned about the pressing problems in the society, willing to see changes made, but he also is trapped by the inexorable dictates of the situation. If these hostile groups were to be aroused (at one time the dangerous lower middle class was the problem, now there is also the dangerous white working class), the liberal minority would be unable to stem the reaction that would follow.”

As always, my disclaimer is that no one knows what is going to happen in the future. But my fear is this: If the American right wing succeeds in installing a Putin-style government, which is their clear intent, then there is a future in which this country is torn apart by civil war.

New from Acorn Abbey

The newest title from Acorn Abbey Books will be released on December 30. The book is The Outnation: A Search for the Soul of Japan. This is a new edition (with a new foreword) of the book, which was first published in 1992 by the Harvard Business School Press.

The author, Jonathan Rauch, is an old friend of mine. He is the author of seven books, most recently The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, published last June by the Brookings Institution Press. Dreux Richard, who wrote the new foreward, is the author of another book on Japan, Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century, published earlier this year by Pantheon.

The Outnation is a classic in its genre, first published at a time when the world was struggling to learn about Japan during what we now call Japan’s bubble economy. The book’s first edition has long been out of print, and there was no digital version of the first edition. Acorn Abbey is publishing digital editions (including Kindle) as well as a paperback edition.

Louis Wain

Cat fans — not to mention fans of Benedict Cumberbatch — will want to see “The Electric Life of Louis Wain.” Louis Wain (1860-1939) was the late Victorian artist who charmed the world with his paintings and drawings of anthropomorphized cats. It is a sad story in many ways. Wain’s eccentricity eventually became overt mental illness, and he spent his last years as a mental patient.

I cannot vouch for the truth of it, but it is said that cats were not regarded by the Victorians as suitable housepets. If so, it was Wain who changed all that. We cat lovers owe a flower on his grave. He is buried in London.

The film can be streamed on Amazon Prime video.


Source: Wikimedia Commons

Finch ★ ★ ★ ★

Could a movie possibly go wrong with Tom Hanks, a teenagerly robot, a dog, and a post-apocalyptic plot? That would be difficult. Of course the plot, the situations, and the sentiment are predictable. But who cares if you’ve got Tom Hanks, a teenagerly robot, a dog, and a post-apocalyptic plot?

This is a classic, family friendly kind of story with a near perfect screenplay. The science, the engineering, and the brilliant (though salvaged) tech are bonuses. The story starts in St. Louis. After that, the irresistible ingredients include a postcard from the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s also a beat-up, heavily modified RV, the steed which carries the three characters on their quest toward the Golden Gate.

I watched it with my cat.

Tomorrow: first feeze

The National Weather Service has issued a freeze warning for tomorrow night. I made my rounds this evening as the birds were bedding down in the arbor vitae trees. Some blooming things will bite the dust in tomorrow’s freeze. Others, such as the camellias, will survive, but winter shabbiness will start to set in. I lit the pilot in propane fireplace. I had the last fresh pesto from the garden’s basil before it freezes. Summer is gone. Here in the Appalachian foothills, it was a good summer.

Dune ★ ★ ★

Updated below

Though it’s two and a half hours long, this is a bare bones, abbreviated Dune. Much of what makes the book such a classic had to be left out — for example, the politics, including the intricate political scheming of the Bene Gesserit witches and the wickedness of House Harkonnen. The dialogue, though good, is remarkably spare. There is character development for only two of the characters — Paul Atreides and his mother, Jessica. Those who have read the book will be able to fill in the gaps. Those who haven’t read the book will become acquainted with only two parts of the Dune story — the character Paul Atreides, and the planet Arrakis.

Thus the camera is often in Timothée Chalamet’s face, and he is a good enough actor to handle it. The deserts of Arrakis are lavishly presented as a vast sea of deep sand, sand which, when roiled by the giant worms, rolls up in massive waves and crashes against skelligs of rock like a stormy North Atlantic against the western coasts of Ireland and Scotland.

Though there is just enough narration at the beginning of the film to set up the plot for those who haven’t read the book, the film never tries to explain anything, leaving time to focus on: Paul Atreides and the planet Arrakis. That probably was smart. It would take many hours of cinema time to tell the full story. And since that could not be done in two and a half hours, why not do the key parts of the story well. The film ends, by the way, before the book does. No doubt there will be a sequel.

My only complaint about this version of Dune is that, once again, when the film industry gives us the science fiction and fantasy blockbusters that so many of us crave, it’s stories that we already know. Part of the awesomeness of Star Wars was that it was a new story, with new faces and new characters like Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. Dune gives us an old story and the stars du jour — Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Mamoa. Must they be in everything? The faces of familiar actors inevitably evoke memories of their recent roles, creating friction for suspension of disbelief and immersion in the story.

Dune is in theaters and can be streamed on HBO Max.

Update:

The Washington Post here touches on my complaint about the Hollywood star system and how the same faces keep appearing in different roles in quick succession. My complaints are two: First, that our ability to lose ourselves in a story is impaired by famous familiar faces that remind us of what we just saw them in. And, second, that re-employing popular actors again and again and again deprives us of seeing brilliant new actors of the sort that Game of Thrones introduced in droves.

The Washington Post story is here: Welcome to our future of omnipresent Timothée Chalamet. It’s not that I have anything against Timothée Chalamet, who is a brilliant young actor. It’s that I’d rather see Chalamet go do the stage for a while so that we can bring some new stars on line at the cinema.

Fall sproutings

My attempts during the spring of this year to get an early garden going under a cold frame were pretty much a total failure. I’m not sure why. But my guess would be that the soil was just too cold for good germination, because spring was unusually cold and dry. Now I’m using the cold frame to try to get winter crop of greens under the cold frame. So far, so good.

Ken sowed the mustard while he was here, after he cleared the summer weeds out of the garden. There’s a bit of lettuce and even some celery seed mixed in. I have no idea how the celery will do, but we figured that it would be a nice experiment. Germination was excellent, and growth has been rapid. When hard freezes arrive, I’ll have to drain the drip irrigation system. But I’ll use the drip for as long as I can.

When the garden fades, sprouting season begins for indoor sprouts. I’m using the LED grow lights that I bought last winter for basil to give the sprouts some extra light.

Speaking of light, it’s a shame that our modern lives give us little reason to be outdoors under the night sky. And, even if we were, light pollution would ruin the effect. Thought it’s a poor substitute for the primeval night sky, my bedroom windows keep me aware of the night sky. Though the projector clock shows the time, I’ve learned to estimate the time by the position of the stars outside the window. In this photo, the bright light on the window frames is the full hunter moon on October 21. The moon is still in the east, left of the windows.

These are all iPhone 12 photos. Though my my big Nikon is a better camera for most purposes, the iPhone makes a very handy camera.


Click here for high resolution version.

Fall desserts


Poached pear. Click here for high-resolution version.

Though it’s mid-October, it was nice for Ken to be able to have some abbey-grown foods while he was here for a five-day visit — persimmon pudding from persimmons he picked from the wild persimmon trees that grow in the yard, a poached pear from the abbey’s orchard, pesto from basil still growing in the garden, and tomato soup and tomato sauce from tomatoes I grew and canned.

I wish I had known about poached pears a long time ago. I’ve been getting pears from the orchard for several years now, but they’re as hard as a rock. I’ve come to understand fairly late in life that pears as hard as rocks are normal, and that the fix is to poach them. I poached these pears in tawny port, with some spices. I had bought the tawny port by accident and didn’t know what to do with it, because I greatly prefer ruby port. Problem solved.


Persimmon pudding. Click here for high-resolution version.

The moral status of animals


The gorilla Ndakasi, shortly before she died in the arms of her keeper, Andre Bauma. Source: Virunga National Park via Twitter.

Ndasaki was 14 years old when she died, after a long illness, according to the BBC. When Ndasaki was a baby, her mother was killed by poachers. Andre Bauma, who remained her keeper at a gorilla orphanage, rescued Ndasaki, who was clinging to her mother’s body.

Every culture that I am aware of teaches that animals are a lower form of life than human beings. The life of any human being, no matter how vile or violent that human life may be, is held to be of more value than the life of any animal, no matter how rare or intelligent or majestic that animal may be.

Most of us, I feel sure, have loved animals whose lives we valued much more than the lives of many — or most! — of the humans around us. It’s only because we are never forced to make a trade that this attitude is never put to the test.

Societies are increasingly squeamish about our treatment of animals. However, a serious rethinking of our treatment of animals has yet to occur. A week ago, there were reports that the president of South Korea is considering a ban on eating dogs. Worsening environmental problems, along with the development of “cultured” meats, are encouraging us to rethink our costly habit of eating meat. But this is not happening fast enough. What government wants to be the first to start regulating and closing down the meat industry, while mandating the substitution of cultured meats? The uproar will be horrendous, most of it coming from the sort of people who consider even mask mandates during pandemics to be a heinous offense against their liberty.

A better sort of human beings will have two choices of philosophical reasons for not eating animals and switching to cultured meats.

The first is the utilitarian case: Our planet can no longer handle the inefficiency and filth of the meat industry. Though the cost of imitation meat is much too high today, that cost will surely come down as the cultured meat industry develops and scales up. At some point, cultured meat should cost much less than “farmed” meat, because it is much more efficient. Philosophers tend to use longer words when smaller ones will do. “Utilitarian” just means “useful.” It would be useful to human beings if their burgers were cheaper and just as good, and if human communities were less polluted by vast hog farms, massive chicken operations, and cattle feed lots, all of which are disgusting to human beings and turn the human stomach for the purpose of making human food.

The second is a moral case, rooted in the rights of animals: the right to habitat, the right to life and to live according to their instincts, the right not to be incarcerated and treated cruelly, and the right not to suffer and die for the sake of human dinner plates. This is their planet, too. Dare I suggest, to use a loaded term, that animals have natural rights? I do.

Readers of this blog are aware that I am persuaded by John Rawls’ theory of justice and that I believe that Rawls has rendered the utilitarian moral philosophies of the Enlightenment now obsolete. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls was aware that many of the principles he lays out can be extrapolated to animals. As I read Rawls, he practically begs other philosophers to do the work of applying justice as fairness to animals, with any adjustments that may be necessary. Rawls says explicitly that he does not mean for his theory to apply to the question of “right conduct in regard to animals and the rest of nature.” The question, to Rawls, if there is a difference between the moral status of animals and the moral status of humans, is whether animals possess “the capacity for a sense of justice.” He writes, “Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil.” But otherwise Rawls steers clear and writes that the moral status of animals is “outside the scope of the theory of justice.”1

As for utilitarianism, animals didn’t stand a chance, even to the best of minds. The kindly Edinburgher David Hume, writing in 1751 in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, has this to say in the section on justice:

“Were there a species of creatures, intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment; the necessary consequence, I think, is, that we should be bound, by the laws of humanity, to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. Our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on the one side, and servile obedience on the other. Whatever we covet, they must instantly resign: Our permission is the only tenure, by which they hold their possessions: Our compassion and kindness the only check, by which they curb our lawless will: And as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of a power, so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally useless, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy. This is plainly the situation of men, in regard to animals.”2

I have said that I consider utiliarianism obsolete. Many don’t. It’s almost certainly true that, as utilitarian philosophies were developed during the Enlightenment, they advanced the causes of fairness and justice. I would argue, though, that the faults of utilitarianism have been blocking human progress for a long time. Utilitarians — or some of them, at least — could find room in utilitarianism even for slavery, on the grounds that it is useful (and therefore good) to enslave the few if the many are better off for it. Right-wing political and moral philosophy today is deeply rooted in utilitarianism, though there is much deceit involved. For example, there is the constant argument that light regulation and the preferential treatment of the rich is just, even if it is unequal, because it “floats all boats.” Even if the utilitarian case is sound, the deceit destroys the right-wing case, because further enriching the rich does not float all boats.

One of the side effects of political turmoil in the U.S. is that it drowns out conversations about progress that we ought to be having. The European Union has invested modest amounts of public money in research on cultured meats. Singapore has already brought a product to market. The United States is lagging. Vox, in May 2021, wrote that animal agriculture is completely missing from President Biden’s infrastructure and climate plan. Even so, there was right-wing screeching about a Biden “burger ban,” just one example of how right-wing obstruction prevents us from having conversations that we ought to be having.

Why is gorilla poaching still going on in Africa, where deforestation and other factors have been so devastating? As far as I can tell, it’s partly because some people eat gorillas. Some are sold to go live in cages.

My personal position, I think, would be seen by many people as radical. I would start from the position that the moral status of animals is in no way different from our own, and then see who has arguments good enough to force me to retreat. For example, why might the moral status of an overpopulation of rats in the New York City subways be different from the moral status of wild tule elk at California’s Point Reyes? One might argue, for example, that where animal overpopulation is a threat to the health of human beings, human beings have a right to defend themselves, just as a brown bear has a right to defend her cubs from an overpopulation of humans. Nor would I argue that our partiality to dogs and cats is somehow hypocritical, because dogs and cats are compatible with human families and become members of human families. Having domesticated them and bred them to live in human families, we now have a duty to every cat and dog that is born to sustain them as lifelong members of human families.

Ndasaki’s life and her life story are important because she compels us to see things to which we are usually blind. Ndasaki’s story is much like the story of Cecil the lion, who was killed by poachers in 2015. Cecil’s death caused an outbreak of shaming in social media, along the lines of “how dare you be more concerned about the death of one animal than [fill in the blank with some other cause].” I wrote about Cecil here, arguing that we’re entirely capable of concern about more than one injustice at a time. The sad thing is that, because we are usually blind and distracted, people with causes must compete with other causes to draw attention to their own cause, as though caring about a lion or a gorilla somehow makes us care less about injustice against humans.

But the death of a gorilla does not distract us from other matters of justice. Ndasaki’s story doesn’t distract us from Cecil’s story; the death of a gorilla reminds us of the death of a lion. Ndasaki’s death reminds us that we have a lot to think about, a lot to talk about, and a lot of things to roll up our sleeves and do. And even where collective action remains obstructed by the kind of people whose uncaring attitudes and sorry thinking diminishes the moral value — not to mention the usefulness — of their own unexamined lives, we can still make changes in our own everyday lives that make the world a little bit better.

Notes:

1. Rawls, A Theory of Justice. See the third entry under “animals” in the book’s index. This is page 448 in my 1999 Harvard Belknap edition.

2. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Section III, “Of Justice,” Part 1.

Another note: Yesterday, a neighbor’s milk cow was hit by a car and killed while they were herding their cows and a calf from pasture to pasture along a country road. Today, the calf broke through two fences to try to get to the place where her mother was killed. The calf was frantic. It took several people to catch the calf, tie her, and, to use Kay’s word, incarcerate the calf in a stock trailer where she is safe. The calf, Kay said, is too traumatized to eat. We are in denial if we can’t see how aware even young animals are.

Persimmon season

Persimmon season has started. Ken picked (and shook trees) for only a little while this morning and got more than enough for the first persimmon pudding of the year. This is only about a tenth, Ken said, of what we’ll get this year just from the persimmon trees in the yard. We’ll make a video next week on the process of harvesting them, pulping them, and making persimmon pudding.

Ken is on a college speaking tour, by the way, and is here at the abbey for a few days before he returns to Scotland.