No Union Left Behind

Time Magazine gave a "report card" to the "No Child Left Behind" education reform. Parts of the story they got perfectly right: states have continually dropped their standards to create the illusion of progress, and an enormous emphasis on basic reading and math skills is deforming the educational process, squeezing out other subjects and ignoring students at either end of the Bell curve.

And yet . . . how did Time manage to get through an entire seven page article without ever talking about what was causing the schools to fail in the first place? Not once in seven pages could they screw up the courage to talk about suspected (but still hotly debated) causes of low performance in inner-city schools: black culture that undervalued education, low involvement of parents, diminished expectations due to continuous poverty (perhaps caused in part by racial discrimination), more single-parent homes, less unstructured play, more television watching, and (God forbid we should say it) poor quality of teachers. At least the New York Review of Books could talk about these issues, addressing important factors without rushing to find single causes or single solutions to the problem.

I suspect, more than anything, that discussing such factors would make their recommendations less compelling. Every single recommendation that Time makes -- remove punitive measures, create national standards, don't do drastic overhauls of schools, provide more funding for teachers -- are practically identical to the talking points from the teachers unions. Hmmm . . . is this really an unbiased evaluation?

I should hope that it's clear that more money is not the answer . . . at least, not pouring more money into the current system. While those defending the education status-quo have sliced and diced assertions that we spend more money than any other industrialized nation on education, there are numerous internal examples of how some schools get vastly improved performance without spending more money. (See the NYRB article for descriptions of the KIPP Academies.) Some complain that the strategies of such schools "cannot be widely reproduced." That may be true . . . in the current culture and the current system. But who said we have to keep the current system? Oh . . . yeah . . . the unions.

If I grow old before I wake . . .

The New Yorker had a fascinating article on aging, and how we (fail to) cope with it. ("The Way We Age Now," Atul Gawande, April 30, 2007.) The delusion of the young is that they will live forever; the delusion of the middle-aged is that they will never grow old. It seems conceivable to us that life will someday end; we make estate plans, buy life insurance, arrange for succession in our roles. But very few seem able to accept simple diminishment -- the fact that we will inevitably lose more and more of our physical and mental powers.

I think, ultimately, the ego finds death less threatening than diminishment. Why else would a "live hard, die young, make a pretty corpse" philosophy ever arise? We will readily embrace a kamikaze death if it establishes our eternal meaning and purpose, an expression of our being at it's highest state. But to diminish . . . to have our abilities robbed slowly, until we spend our days either dozing or shuffling around in confusion -- that is intolerable. And so we pretend it will never happen to us.

And while the evidence of anyone cheating death is sketchy at best, there are at least a few examples of individuals cheating age. We love to read about 90-year-olds running marathons or amassing fortunes or still having some decent looks. It gives us hope that with the right medicine, the right vitamins, and a little bit of luck we could live pretty much as we do now, our entire lives.

Alas, the exceptions are indeed exceptional. The best most of us can hope for is to postpone, not evade, the ravages of age. And while that might be something very good, it's not as much as we were hoping for. When we exercise and eat low-fat and go to the doctor, we want to be supermen in our eighties, not merely mobile and self-sufficient. But that's what you're working for: just hang on to the basics for as long as you can, because life gets very difficult once you lose them.

And the secrets to aging well are not exactly secret, either. It's the same things the doctor tells you to do now, and which you routinely ignore: get more exercise, eat more fresh vegetables, work on your flexibility, floss your teeth. And maybe a few things he doesn't tell you: stay involved, work as long as you can, avoid isolation, have lots of friends. If you find yourself saying, "I don't really have time for those things right now," remember that the time will come when you have nothing but time. Really . . . nothing . . . but time. Are you ready for that?

Summa Cum Laude

Friday's Wall Street Journal had a story on "The Most Praised Generation Goes to Work," describing how many employers now struggle to heap praise onto the twenty-somethings that grew up with lots of positive affirmation and can't stand to be without it. Older managers are baffled by the trend, and while handing out an unending stream of "atta-boys" is contrary to their nature, they feel they have to do it or else lose their younger talent.

According to the Enneagram personality typing, I am a Type Three, a "Performer." It might as well be labelled "Praise Junkie," because Threes fundamental sense of worth derives from how they imagine other people see them. I understand all too well how legitimate ambition and desire to succeed can degrade into a reflexive, unending need for praise and recognition. I have great sympathy for those who became hooked on positive affirmation; vanity is a cruel master.

Still, I don't think those managers are losing too much if their uber-stroked employees hit the door. This is not merely a matter of communication style, where you can swap one set of words for another and keep going. This need for constant affirmation is a serious limitation on a person's capacity. When I hire someone to do a job, it's not necessarily because I need a skill set that I don't have myself -- usually it's because I don't have time to do everything, and I need to delegate to others. I hire out work because I want to stop thinking about it. By that standard, the best employees are the most autonomous: those who just do their jobs, reliably and well, with a minimum of supervision. But if I have to watch an employee's every move, providing feedback every minute, then my attention is still chained to that job. If the management overhead is too much, I might as well have done it myself.

Could a praise junkie possibly be fit for genuine leadership? Could someone who needs a pat on the back every day possibly start and run a business? Because, last time I checked, customers are not known for giving out unstinting praise. Just the opposite: they tend to be full of demands. Vendors do not fret over your feelings. Employees, if they think about you at all, usually complain, or (these days) demand that you give them the pat on the back. Entrepreneurs, with their large and varied constituencies and perpetually limited resources, play an unending game of "Who am I going to disappoint today?"

I suspect that the younger generations praise-fixation is also an attention deficit in disguise. The trend towards "snack culture" -- where the content is short and the payoff quick -- has attenuated their capacity to stick to something for a long period of time. In those realms where they did exercise discipline -- school, sports -- the activities were completely defined, with clear winners and losers, beginnings and endings. They probably didn't get enough unstructured time: time to play in the sandbox, time to read a book, time to organize their friends into a baseball game. Their parents taught them to win the game; it never occurred to them the world needed people who can make up new games.

To accomplish anything of real significance, you have to be liberated from the need for praise. You have to want something else. You have to be focused on the accomplishment itself, rather than people's opinion of it. Rather than teaching managers how to praise, they should be holding workshops for the employees: "Learning to live with ambiguity."

What he lacked . . . and why

"Do you believe in 'bad seeds'?" my wife asked last night.

Is evil the result of trauma and deprivation, or are some people just born bad? Kenny pointed me to an op-ed piece in the New York Times in which a professor made a case for "evil genes." While the mood of tragedy still hangs in the air, no one is willing yet to assign blame, but nature/nurture debaters are standing by on high alert, anxiously awaiting details on Cho's background.

American psycho-mythology has two models for understanding this sort of case. No one will be surprised if Cho was the victim of some sort of neglect or abuse: another basically-good kid who had his humanity strangulated at an early age. Then again, it seems equally likely that he might have just been born that way: a smaller amygdala, a paucity of serotonin, a mix-up in the wiring. Both models are difficult to falsify: both abuse and bad genes can lurk under the surface, hidden from view. Both the nature and nurture sides will probably claim points in this case.

I, for one, will back up NBC in their decision to air some of Cho's video. We do need to see this. I don't think we need to fear for Cho's immortal soul, because looking at that video confirms, for me, that he had lost his soul long ago. His words are angry, his face is fixed in hate, but fundamentally I could sense no affect in him. He was dead inside. (I find it somewhat ironic that his affectless face reminds me so much of the Botox blankness of certain celebrities, the very people he probably despised.)

Whether born or created, it certainly happens early on. As his great-aunt said: "He didn't talk. He was always cold." Even by eight years old, "warning signs" were present. So much of our fate is determined so early on . . .

Fantastic wealth can be yours

Actually, fantastic wealth already is yours.

I heard a segment on NPR about the lives of the those in "the other India," the 80% or more in the rural parts of the country that are still living in absolute poverty while the urban economies are racing into the world scene. Phillip Reaves travelled down the the length of the Ganges River, interviewing what he hoped would be a cross-section of the population. He spoke with a Muslim woman who makes her living scouring the beaches for coins tossed in by Hindu pilgrims. Her take on a good day is about 25 rupees, or 50 cents.

Ok, just let that soak in for a moment. Loose change that you would throw away is someone else's day wages. What's more, this woman knows about the other world, the world with television sets and cell phones and automobiles.

So why do so many people feel like they are poor, like they are "struggling to keep up?" Perhaps it is because we, too, have our super-rich with whom to compare ourselves. Larry Elison, CEO of Oracle Corporation, would have to spend $11 million a week just to keep his fortune from growing. He, also, would likely throw away our day wages.

On Easter, we are supposed to remember how much God has given us. While you contemplate the supernatural miracle of grace, don't forget the material blessings as well. In the context of the larger world, we are kings, millionaires, lottery winners all.

Consciousness Ensnared?

The New Yorker recently did a story on Paul and Patricia Churchland, two philosophers who have worked together on the mind-body problem for all of their 37-year marriage ("Two Heads," by Larissa MacFarquhar, February 12, 2007). The Churchlands are avowed materialists when it comes to the consciousness question -- they are so sure, in fact, that consciousness is identical to the brain that they look to neuroscience to provide an explanation for the apparent mind-body dualism. This is somewhat unusual, even among materialists and especially among philosophers of mind, who do by and large believe that the brain gives rise to the mind, but who don't like to entangle themselves in the squishy and seemingly arbitrary complexity of a living brain.

The Churchlands are attacking the non-materialist, non-reductionist views of mind, especially those articulated so well by Kenny Felder in his "Are You a Robot?" lecture. Those arguments run something like this: no matter how complex a computer gets (and the human brain is an exceedingly complex one) it still doesn't explain what consciousness is. Doing lots of really complex operations in no way necessitates the rise of a subjective observer who witnesses those operations happening, and is aware of the witnessing. That awareness of thought and experience is, to the subjective observer, completely irreducible. It just is. That's what leads meditators and mystics to conclude that consciousness is what philosophers call a "primative," a fundamental building block of reality itself. This line of thought is also the bedrock of my own personal theology, so I take this question very, very seriously.

The Churchlands critique of this line of reasoning runs like this: OK, you can't imagine how a mechanistic brain gives rise to experience. So what? The history of science is chock full of truths that were unintuitive and completely unimaginable until scientific disciplines and knowledge evolved sufficiently to make sense of them. At one time, it was perfectly obvious that the world was flat, and no one could imagine how you could explain the experience of earth and sky any other way. And yet, eventually, that "obvious" truth was eventually overthrown, and everyone takes for granted their current concept of a round earth. Consciousness is just another phenomena that will eventually be explained. To argue otherwise -- "I don't believe it because I can't imagine it" -- is to essentially argue that ignorance is absolute, and is indistinguishable from the position of those who would have killed Galileo for suggesting the world was not the center of the universe. It is the same sort of reasoning creationists use to establish the existence of God: "I can't imagine how such a complex world could come to be without a Creator; therefore, there must be a God." To which most scientists reply: "No, that doesn't mean there must be a God. It just means you have a pretty lousy imagination."

The Churchlands don't really have a compelling explanation of mind; they just don't want people to assume that all truths must be intuitively compelling to be acceptable or true. And I think that's a perfectly legitimate (and troubling) bit of epistomology to wrap your head around. You can't assume that you will recognize the truth when you first meet it. Nor can you assume that the mysterious and irreducible will stay safely mysterious.

Brave New

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel about a society that had simultaneously eliminated all suffering and all meaning, has always been high on my recommended reading list. But there were parts of it that I always thought were a little far-fetched. The people of the future had such super-attenuated attention spans that they couldn't begin to tackle a full story; their entertainment consisted of hyper-abridgements, Hamlet in 60 seconds and such. "Ok, he's exaggerating for effect," I thought. "Surely people wouldn't really subsist on minute-long entertainment."

And yet the future is here, and about 500 years ahead of Huxley's timeline. The cover of this month's Wired blares: "Snack Culture: Tasty Bits o' Fun!" They chronicle the inevitable progression of cultural condensation: the rise of abridgements, Cliff's Notes, and most recently, the emergence of YouTube and other one-minute-media. People don't have the patience to sit through a whole hour of TV anymore; they watch one-minute clips on their iPods. Even a ten-minute piece of music is deemed too long, and services now rip them down to about two minutes. Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube is seen as the death-rattle of old media, full-length content vainly struggling against a sea of snippets.

And who am I to scoff? This blog is representative of the same trend. I don't have time to write a novel, so I content myself with 500-word essays instead. Nor is anyone interested in reading more than 500 words at a go. . . mine or anyone else's. I was seduced by the power of instant entertainment last year by Scrabble on a cell phone . . . it's amazing how many hours you can kill five minutes at a time.

The only bright spot that I see, the one place where our society is not following Huxley's script, is the realm of user-generated content. We are not merely soma-doped cows consuming government-mandated entertainment. More people than ever before are creating the content. A five-minute blog reading can take an hour to write, and a five minute video can take days to create. So there's the sliver of hope that the interactive, participatory nature of the new media will engage more brain cells than it kills.

Getting In

Yesterday NPR aired an extensive story, both morning and evening, about the college admissions process, and how many admissions professionals are calling for a major rethinking of the stressful, pressure-laden rite of passage. Applying and being admitted to prestigious schools is a teenager's initiation into social stratification. Parents and teachers call upon them to "be their best," which in this case is inevitably translated to, "get accepted to the top-ranked schools." The frenzy of test preparation, test-taking, personal coaching, strategic planning of extracurriculars, all for the sake of looking better than everyone else, is enough to make the "greedy 80's" look like European socialism.

At first I thought it sounded like a marketing dig from the smaller colleges: "Oh, those big schools aren't so great. You can get a fine education at a smaller school, with more interaction with professors and peers and a better atmosphere." To a generation schooled in educational elitism, any call for "re-thinking educational goals" sounds a lot like apologizing for less-than-optimal performance. The parents, more than anyone, are interested in brand-names: "I'm not paying that much money for a chummy, collegial atmosphere. I'm paying that much money for Yale, dammit! Harvard!"

But the call for change is coming from some of the top schools in the country. The dean of admissions at MIT, one of the most selective schools in the country, is saying the emperor has no clothes. The system of college ranking, she claims, is a tyrranous system that forces colleges to game their numbers. To make their stats look good, they encourage people to apply who really shouldn't, just so they can boost their percentage of applicants denied admission. They also are highly rewarded for having high graduation rates, which means there are strong disincentives for having high academic standards and flunking people out. In the end, the academic mission of the schools is being compromised for a sake of a highly orchestrated kabuki dance of social status.

What interests me most is that the call for new perspectives on college admissions sounds an awful lot like what the Self Knowledge Symposium has been saying for the last fifteen years: "Why are you in school? What do you want to accomplish here? Your life is about more than just finding a job or lining up an upwardly-mobile career. Find a setting and lifestyle that will let you do what you really want to do." Maybe our hardworking, ambitious culture is finally ready to let young people be young, and let them explore aspects of life that don't necessary translate into paychecks.

Kaiser sues Los Angeles for patient dumping

Videotape catches city police leaving indigent patients in hospital waiting rooms and driving off

Los Angeles - February 11, 2007

A Kaiser Permanente hospital made headlines recently when a video camera at a skid row mission recorded a patient wearing only a hospital robe being left by a taxi. The city's attorney general sued the hospital for 'patient dumping', expressing shock and outrage at this "inhumane and illegal practice."

Meanwhile, Kaiser has filed a suit accusing the city of similar tactics of patient dumping. The suit claims that hospital security cameras show 256 separate instances last year of the L.A. police bringing injured homeless people to the hospital emergency room . . . and then leaving.

"The city believes that it can solve its problems of urban blight and homelessness with a simple strategy: make it someone else's problem," said Ray Czusindignation, media spokesperson for hospital. "Night after night, the city's police bring these people to our hospital emergency rooms, and just leave. No arranging for payment; no attempt to assess their situation and find a permanent solution. They just leave. And they expect that, because we took a Hippocratic oath, we've got to take care of these people, at our expense, and do everything necessary to insure they are safe when they leave."

"I've got news for Los Angeles," he continued. "That's not our job. We didn't sign on for that. If you want us to take care of everyone, get off your butts and establish a system of universal health coverage, so we can actually get paid to take care of these people. Or better yet, spend the money to make sure these hard-luck cases never get to the hospital to begin with."

When asked about the unlikely prospect of the government actually establishing a universal health care plan, Czusindignation replied, "The truth is we already have a universal health care plan. It's called, 'go to the emergency room, get treated for preventable health problems, and not pay your bill.' Then the hospitals pass the costs on to the insurance companies with ludicrously high charges, who in turn pass them on to the consumer with yearly double-digit premium rate hikes. It's a ludicrously inefficient way to take care of people."

"[City Attorney Rocky] Delgadillo can get on his high horse and act all outraged if we discharge someone with no clothes and no place to go. But, hey . . . that's pretty much how they were when they got here. You think we got we some magic fairy dust to solve homelessness? You think this is our problem? Who's really doing the dumping here?"

Set that teacher's hair on fire

Janet heard a story on NPR about an award-winning teacher, Rafe Esquith, and she forwarded a link to me about the guy and his book, Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire. I am full of ideas about teaching, mostly untested and half-baked, so you would think that I would be immediately keen on hearing about someone who was actually doing new things in the classroom.

My first reaction to NPR's page on the story was surprisingly cold. I looked at Esquith's head shot, with the classic chin-on-knuckle thoughtful pose, and something inside of me said, "Slick. Phoney." Then I looked at the cover of his book. Esquith is wearing a suit and tie, and he is surrounded by kids all looking at him as he gestures. He is literally the center of attention. I wonder if actually wears a suit when he teaches . . . it's possible. Then I read the prologue to his book, and it starts out, "It is a strange feeling to write this book. I am painfully aware that I am not superhuman." Harumph. False modesty if ever I heard it. "Not a day goes by when I do not feel overwhelmed by the attention . . . " Just how much attention has this guy gotten?

And the rest of the prologue is more me-me-me, what he hopes and what he's done and how hard his job is and . . . not much about the students at all. A few cliche claims about how "crazy" his methods are. So my first impression was, "Raging egomaniac."

But I also remembered my previous post about being objective and fair and taking responsibility for what one writes . . . and I thought, "I can't pan this guy just because his head-shot gives me the willies." So I listened to the NPR interview.

And . . . I was very impressed with the guy.

He was extremely articulate and composed. Some of the things he said I had been saying for years: teach fiscal responsibility, teach economic principles of budgeting and responsibility and ownership, things nobody teaches but everyone knows are critical to success. (Yes, I know . . . of course I think he's brilliant if he shares some of my ideas. So who's the real egomanic now, huh?) And, when he spoke about the level of his dedication, and how it wouldn't be fair to expect it from everyone, I believed him. I heard someone who had found vocation, and was pointing the way, knowing that few could follow. And when he said that he only wanted to teach and wasn't interested in being a full-time education pundit, I believed that, too. "Well, other people can do that, but that's not what I do."

Then I went back and read the book prologue again . . . and I started to see what I had missed. "Our culture is a disaster," he writes. He clearly saw that the problem was one of culture and values, not merely technique.

So what am I to make of this? Was my first reaction just wrong, an allergic reaction to some good self-promotion? Or was my initial reaction correct, and my intellect papered over it once it warmed to the content? I think he's the real deal, he's doing good things for the kids, and he is worth listening to. He may also think very highly of himself. But . . . mea culpa. Perhaps I only see a mirror of my own ambition and my own ego.

Steal this Lecture

The News and Observer reported that an NCSU professor has been asked to stop selling his lectures as online downloads. Interestingly, the university was not contesting whether the professor owned the rights to his lectures -- they affirmed that he did own the copyright to his own material. They were worried that he might have a conflict of interest, if he is making money on material that students expected to have already been covered by tuition costs. At least, that's what they are saying . . .

I am fascinated by this development because for the last five years I have been predicting the coming of the "rock-star professor," an educational free agent who will generate syndicated multi-media interactive content (what in ancient days was called a "class") used by many more institutions or individuals than a single teacher could previously reach in the traditional classroom fashion. Such an evolution in higher education would create a competitive market for good teaching, something often shockingly lacking in colleges and universities. An engineering grad student once told me: "This is probably the only professional job one can get with absolutely no training. I have zero preparation to teach." Nor does anyone have an economic interest in teaching him: the pay is comparable to unskilled labor.

In the case of Dr. Schrag, it looks like the university is trying to side-step the legal question of ownership, but still frames up the question in the status-quo assumption that the university is the seller of the education, not the professor. He is being told he can't sell it to his students because they already bought it . . . in the form of tuition to the school. Given the ever-mounting costs of college tuition, I can see why students might object to being nickeled and dimed . . . but it's hardly without precedent. When I was in school, professors routinely created course packs, photocopied materials of articles, reprints, and original material made specifically for the course. They were printed at Kinkos, and sold to students. It was just another textbook to buy, that's all. And at the price of $2.50 per lecture, his entire course could be had for $80, which is not uncommon for a textbook. (Ahhh, textbooks . . . that's another racket I would love to see undermined by a truly free market.)

When the university officials say "we just need a little time to look at the issue closely and sort everything out," what I hear them saying is: "look, you're going to create a lot of confusion in the marketplace. You're opening the door to people buying from you instead of us. Our whole branding message as a university will be shot if you start offering a la carte lectures. More importantly, that's our action. Hands off."

But the day is coming, mark my words. When a better-quality product can be had online for a fraction of the cost the universities charge, the market will there. The universities will get into the education syndication business, lending their branding to such efforts . . . or they will get run over by it.

Tipping . . . the other way

Last year (or maybe it was the year before . . . or the year before that . . . I'm old enough now that it starts to blend together), around the holidays, NPR did a little human interest story on tipping service people during the holidays. They interviewed a number of New York doormen to see just how generous the tips were in the Big Apple. They were reported to be considerable -- some were pulling in ten to fifteen G's in December alone. It was a generally upbeat piece, marvelling at the fiscal generosity of a city otherwise not disposed to kindness to strangers.

This year, on American Public Media's Marketplace Morning Report, I heard them start into a tipping-during-the-holidays-in-New-York segment. "Jeez," I thought. "That was a tight news cycle, especially for public radio. Didn't they do the same story last year?" But this time it was a little different. They interviewed the people who gave the tips, just like they did the year before, and they said much of the same things: "When somebody has been here for a really very long time, you do have a kind of a family feeling, a rapport with each other. . . "

But then they went fishing for the dark side: "Are there some people you don't want to tip?" "Oh yeah, absolutely! We have a superintendent, who doesn't earn his tip. But it's almost like you tip just in case. You tip so that he doesn't do something evil. You tip as protection."

And the doormen were a little more forthcoming, too: yes, some guys who go the extra mile can make up to 15 grand in tips, but really that only makes up for what they're not making the rest of the year. And they definitely are not treated like family: "Twenty-six years here, family no, help yes."

* * *

I had a few thoughts about the piece. My first reaction was, "How very American Public Media." Marketplace is ferociously liberal, especially for a business news program, and it doesn't surprise me that they let the servants get the last word. And it seems especially vicious to take something as seemingly good as freely-given-gifts and turn it into a nexus for class warfare.

On the other hand . . . it was well done. It's not often that you have a reporter get on both sides of a transaction to show how both sides are seeing it. News often bifurcates coverage into "both sides of the story", but usually that's either two openly opposing camps who have marked out their positions, or two cooperating parties that have tightly scripted talking points. Some candid reactions to a daily ritual . . . that is actually something to think about. It made me start to think about myself . . . how am I perceived, when I toss down a dollar next to my Waffle House plate?

Deus Caritas Est

The latest issue of First Things also had a commentary on Pope Benedict's first encyclical letter, "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love"). When you hear about the pope speaking ex cathedra, as the absolute authority of the Church on matters of theology, this is what they are talking about. The encyclical letters are the vehicle for the pope to explore certain questions of theology. Reading them is not unlike reading a Supreme Court ruling -- while full of certain technical jargon, they are nonetheless generally readable and try to use philosophic principles to guide matters of real relevance in the world. (Yes, I like to read Supreme Court rulings, too. It restores my faith in government when I see important matters decided, not by sound bites and opinion polls, but by rational argument and fundamental principles.) I first got interested in the encyclicals when someone turned me on to Pope John Paul's "Fides et Ratio" ("Faith and Reason"), the last pontiff's attempt to describe the proper role of rationality within spiritual life.

There is a certain irony here. Benedict is generally viewed as a cold, prickly kinda guy, but his first theological publication as pope is all about the passionate, involved nature of God's love. (In contrast, John Paul II was the rock-star of warm fuzzies, but wrote about reason and "the splendor of the truth.") There might be some political calculus going on -- perhaps Benedict is aware of his image problem and wants to bring attention to his genuine love for the church and its people.

I've not read the entire encyclical yet, but I'm glad that Benedict decided to write it. I think the question of Love is the most important topic in Christian theology to address, since it is at the very center of the faith and is so radical in its nature that it sets it apart from other religions and philosophies. As Kierkegaard pointed out, other philosophies had recognized the importance of loving one's family and friends . . . but to love one's enemies . . . that was (and still is) radical stuff.

Dicing Dennett

For a couple years now I've been subscribing to First Things, a highly intellectual conservative Catholic publication. I think it was the very first time I responded immediately to a direct-mail campaign. I had never heard of it before, but I liked their pitch and signed on. Sometimes my eyes glaze over from subtle analyses of authors I've never heard of about authors I've never heard of . . . but other times I get the most hilarious, cutting, clever critiques I've ever read. Think Slate for people who know the meaning of "apophatic."

The most recent issue had a critique of Daniel Dennett's latest pro-atheist, anti-religion tract, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomena. David B. Hart compared the book, quite effectively, with Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. Dennett tries to build a case that religion evolved originally as a meme with survival value for the human species, but that eventually became a parasite that forwards its own survival to the detriment of its host. Hart's most telling criticism was that these two theses -- that religion had survival value, but now it doesn't -- are essentially contradictory and render his hypothesis unfalsifiable. Dennett does not for a moment want to suggest that religion might actually be a force for good -- that would undermine his whole agenda. But he can't propose a sociobiological origin of religion without acknowledging that at some point it had some survival value. So he splits the difference, trying to have his evolutionary cake and eat it, too.

Hart also calls out Dennett's totalitarian social agenda -- to essentially outlaw religious instruction. Evidently he, along with Richard Dawkins, believe they would be doing the world a great service by trying to "protect" children from the superstitions of their parents. While Hart didn't say it, I crying out from the peanut gallery: "Oh, of course, because we all know what a shining example of moral decency came out of the last attempt of a state to institutionalize atheism." Do I come across too red-blooded, to yell "communist!" in a crowded theater?

Republicans for Barack Obama?

NPR aired a story last night on the political phenom Barack Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois who is swiftly gaining support as a "dream candidate" for the 2008 presidential election. I've been watching Obama for a while, now, ever since he gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I was not the only one to notice that he sounded like a Republican. In fact, he sounded an awful lot like the Republicans who have become disillusioned with their leadership and who, while not exactly deserting the cause, sat on their hands and let the Dems retake Congress. That is to say, he sounded a lot like me.

When I read Obama's public rhetoric, I am increasingly impressed for both his subtlety and his candor. At some celebrity roast, Obama said something to the effect of, "Democrats have been criticized for standing for nothing. That, of course, is not true. Democrats will stand for anything." I cannot for the life of me remember another Democrat who was willing to publicly lampoon his own party, on exactly the points that are so sensitive to them, and do it so lightly and with such confidence. It was a play straight from George W., who was always willing to laugh at his own gaffes, infuriating the Democrats who could not for the life of themselves understand why he wasn't more ashamed.

Obama also gets props for talking openly about his religious faith, which will carry him farther with the Red states than most Democrats are willing to admit. He has not done so with much fanfare, either, which conveys his absolute sincerity. The Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Jesse Jackson (sarcasm dripping from the titles) never evinced as much honest faith in God as this man. He is undermining the very religious and racial divisions so many Democrats labored to create for their own advantage.

So, without reservation, I can say: I like the guy. The only remaining question is: what kind of president would he be? His legislative record is light, probably deliberately so. Everyone agrees that, for Presidential aspirants, it's best to have all the authority of public office without the baggage of real hard-fought positions. And I would hate to be seduced by a politician strictly for his charm and grace, as so many were with Bill Clinton. But if his record bears scrutiny, I would be willing to get behind him. I might even register as a Democrat, just to have one more opportunity to vote against Hillary Clinton.

Believe in me

Wired had an interesting cover this month: "The New Atheism: No Heaven, No Hell, Just Science. Inside the Crusade Against Religion." I expected something splashy and superficial, but it actually turned out to be an extremely thoughtful treatment of the most famous non-believers and their current attempts to dispel religion from modern thought.

The author makes no bones about being generally sympathetic to their cause, and he lets the proponents of non-belief -- Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett -- make their case in their own terms and on their own turf. He also isn't shy about bringing up the natural counter-arguments to their positions. How can they be so critical of close-minded certainty, when they themselves are so damn self-righteous about knowing the truth? Dawkins, especially, seemed to be full of social-engineering aspirations, thinking it much better if the state could teach children instead of the parents.

The most interesting exception the tone of strident rebellion was Daniel Dennett. I've always had mixed feelings about Dennett, because I loved The Mind's Eye, and yet the man himself was rather unpleasant, in a sneeringly superior way, when I extended him an invitation to speak at my school. (The experience contrasted strongly with my talk with Douglas Hofstadter, Dennett's co-author of The Mind's Eye, who was extraordinarily nice to me, even though he turned down the offer to speak.) But I liked Dennett's tone; he was not out to get faith, like all the others. More importantly, he knew that reason alone could not generate values, and that at some point humanity had to have faith in something, even if that something is just their moral intuitions. It was a subtlety lacking in almost all the other atheists.

I guess I was most disappointed in the fact that no one, not even Dennett, really addressed the question of meaning. The atheists recognized that they needed to do more to make their philosophy more attractive, if they were going to change people's minds. It seemed to me that the first job of such a philosophy would be to make a compelling case for morality, meaning and purpose. There are a brave few, like Stephen Pinker, who are trying to show that you can have a real morality and purpose without positing divinity. I wish there were more . . . but then again, if they were fully aware of those needs, they might not have been atheists in the first place.

Peace in our timelessness

I've been listening to Even the Sun Will Die, an interview with Eckhart Tolle that took place on September 11th. Eckhart Tolle is one of those people you have to hear as well as read, because you pick up a lot from him just in his voice.

The center of Tolle's teaching is that of timeless awareness; essentially, "Only the present moment has reality." Past and future are creations of the mind, and the only thing that is ever real is what is happening right now. All thinking (and therefore all the traps that thinking can create) is focused on past and future: we remember events from the past, try to make a story to make sense of it, and hope and fear about what's going to come. Focusing on the Now immediately removes a person from most of what they thought was real: a person has almost no identity in the present moment, since our memories of past and ambitions for the future are most of what we consider ourselves to be.

Tolle is not really breaking new ground here; "be here now" is one of the most hackneyed spiritual truisms of the last century. Which, I think, is why it is finally hitting me so directly. I had spent so much time being dismissive of such hippie-talk, which often served as a thin rationalization for evading responsibility, that I had missed the truth that it contained.

The phrase that Tolle repeats that haunts me is: "Many spiritual seekers think they need more time to become enlightened. But the one thing that is essential -- your true nature beyond form -- time cannot give you. You can only find it right now."