Chimera 2

Mood: sleepy and thoughtful
Music: Led Zeppelin - IV

A while back I mused about the attempt humans make of defining themselves. Even without the blurred boundaries of science, religion, politics and arrogance, humanity is very hard to define. Jose Ortega Y Gasset supposes in his Dehumanization of Art that the condition of being unsure what humanity is, is what humanity is. That is to say, if you're wondering if you are human, then you are human. This is particularly eye-opening when you realize that we are indeed the only species of creature that seeks to define our existence. We have been charged (by God or by ourselves) with the task of defining. It pervades everything humans do. When we run up against the task of defining the definer we have all sorts of trouble... it's like a feedback loop.

The chimera in the NYT story is allegorical. The boundary between human and not-human is so blurred that the creature itself is not one thing, but many, like the mythical Chimera. She brought chaos with her wherever she went and so does this primate with human brains. The debate is hard to frame because it reaches secretly into all manner of hot topics. No decision sits well with anyone so the Chimera does set the country ablaze. If we claim that the human tissue makes it partially human and worthy of some human treatment then we must admit that a foetus is partially human and worthy of some human treatment. If we refuse it humanity then we open up the possibility of arbitrarily determining who is human and who isn't by imperfect criteria. For example, is a man with artificial arms and legs enough human to have some human treatment? The problem is that we have absolutely no idea where to draw a line that one of us might find ourselves on the wrong side of one day. The great anime theme of cybernetic ethics continually asks how much of a human being can you take away before you are left with a machine? In the case of the primate, how much human brain goes in before a monkey becomes a man? Or in Phillip K. Dick's short story, The Prepersons, at what age is an embryo, foetus, child an actual person?

The target is moving because we have no good tools for making it hold still. That, I believe, is because we persist in asking the wrong questions about humanity. We continually attempt to ask ethical questions in terms of biology. This is the invisable threshhold of science. Science can provide us data to inform an opinion, but cannot form opinions on its own. We can ask many scientific questions about human beings, but none of these will lead us to a definitive test for determining personhood. This is mostly due to the fact that science is a fabrication of personhood... a system of organizing data and divining a shadow of the reality it hints at. Personhood belongs to something bigger than the world of human thought. It exists in a sphere which does not intrude into the microcosm of human experience. Everything we know is inside a bubble called human perception. Perceiving personhood from without requires that we not be within humn perception... in other words: a clear definition of personhood requires that we not be persons at all.

This is why Bellerophon on Pegasus's back succeeds where men on foot had failed. He is lifted above mere human action and given a vantage point that is super-human. Thus Bellerophon is able to immobilize the moving target and destroy it. To answer the question of the Chimera in the NYT article or find the end of the debate on abortion, euthanasia, cybernetics, genetic engineering, or cloning, we must give up our humanity somehow and answer to a superhuman paradigm. Believing that any person can tell you what is or isn't human is laughable. A higher authority is necessary. We are no more capable of determining what's human than a computer is of determining what is a computer.

Book Burning

Mood: exhausted but alert
Music: Nick Warren - Back to Mine #6
Weather: Getting HOT! AC in full effect tonight.

Political Compass runs a fascinating service that will determin your political bent based on your responses to about 6 pages of questions which take about 10 minutes to answer. I highly recommend everyone spend a few minutes there to see how they really weigh-in on politics. Here in Lexington, KY it's easy to find your self-image tending toward either radical-right-wing or left-wing-socialist-liberal. Much of that has to do with the wildly paranoid and rabid political debate this country is subjected to lately. Lexington has the additional handicap of being a very left leaning town in a very right leaning state. So you get caught between the warring ideologies and slowly see yourself more aligned with one or the other and eventually lose sight of what you really DO believe. So, I take the political compass at somewhat regular intervals to remind myself that I am not really part of the ideology war Americans are apparently having right now.

I clock in in the lower, right hand quadrant... +2,-2. Apparently, this is uncharted political territory (right-libertarian?) Political Compass will offer you a plot of various politicians and historical figures after you've taken the survey so you can see where you sit in relation to people who's politics are public record. In any case, I'm far from even with George Bush... though disagreeing with a liberal will get you that gold star pinned to your shirt. What seems to get me in trouble with everyone is my suspicion of authority and community. It's my experience that the collective will f*ck you on any day the authorities don't. Why give either of them power? I'm of the leave me alone school of thought mostly. When properly petitioned I will through my energy and support behind any worthy cause, but I won't be bullied into it. I think that plays out suscinctly in the compass.

So, why did I title this entry "Book Burning"? Good question! I was originally thinking about the popular conception that if you are a conservative, you are against arts and learning. In the US, we have the Footloose phenomenon to project on all conservatives (the 80s movie where Kevin Bacon finds himself in a town where music, dancing, and self expression are verboden.) This certainly CAN be true; however, the Christian right does not own the rights to hysterical reactionism. It's an authoritarian gig. Right or Left... doesn't matter. The great socialists, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were famous persecutors of intellectuals, artists and free-thinkers. We forget Hitler's great book burnings during the reign of the National Socialist party (Na-Zis.) Mostly, we forget that "book-burning" can be metaphorical. The act of destroyuing what you fear, or fail to understand, or cannot make peace with, is the larger context of a book-burning. When something is demonized, or denounced, those who do the demonizing and denouncing are engaging in "book-burning."

It goes on a lot. More often than we may realize. We don't see too many Salem witch trials, but we see plenty of media assassinations. Nothing as straight forward as Joseph McCarthy's great red-scare, but not too far from it either. There is the great conservative-scare and the great liberal-scare. I've personally been in court for both offenses... aquitted ultimately on lack of evidence, but certainly eyed with distrust afterwards. The great self-proclaimed duopolies of thought -- conservative or liberal -- are engaging in book burning on a daily basis. They vilify and demonize each other; force feeble-minded people to reject anything which is alien to their ideology and seek to destroy those alien ideas and the people who hold them. Everytime you or I feel reluctant to speak our minds on an issue, someone is engaging in book burning. They are creating a fire of opinion which is intended to consume any ideas we might offer that would weaken their position. So I end up with my secret hidden stash of ideas that the hysterical idealogues must never find. I feel like the book readers in Farenheit 451. I'm hiding my ideas,; hoping no liberal fireman is going to come bursting in and arrest me, setting fire to my opinions.

It's silly, but that's the climate out there. I believe I lost a long-time friend a few months ago over the simple request to not send me anymore quasi-factual anti-Bush emails. I explained that I knew the facts and have made my own decisions about the election. I explained that I feel it's vitally important to explore all sides of a story before making up your mind based on the lobbying propaganda of action-groups. This illicitted a very angry retort which seemed to accuse me of being shallow and out-of-touch. More importantly, there was the assurance that she knew more than I did and that my suspicion of her source was a clear indication that I wasn't worthy of her friendship. I'm paraphrasing a lot... mostly because I deleted the email almost immediately and because I was taken aback by the angry response to my desire to be left out of such things. I really liked this girl. We went way back... like to high school. One of the few McDonogh people I still corresponded with. She found one book in my house and torched the place. Amazing! So, I'm getting good at avoiding politics unless the person is a stable individual with real opinions. I like people who can disagree and have a friendly conversation about it anyway. I don't want to be converted or do any converting.

If a person's world view leaves no room for compromise then that person is not going to get along with me. They'll feel they need to prove me wrong when I decline to agree and convert me to their view. That will really annoy me since I'd rather have a conversation and go away feeling like we each know the other a little better and have added something to our idea of the world. If a person can't get into that, we're going to annoy each other mercilessly. People like that are the ones who end up burning books.

If you take the political compass, take note of where you actually land. Don't let other people tell you who you are. Take an objective look at how you feel about the issues that really define your political geography. Not the hot issue of the day. Also, try to avoid burning other people's books...