Recession Will Not Hurt Billionaires--Perhaps They Welcome It

Why should billionaires worry about a plummeting stock market? If stock prices go down, billionaires can buy stocks cheap and massively increase their control and eventual profits.

 

Why should billionaires worry that tariffs will hurt farmers? The more independent farmers go out of business, the more land will be available for corporations to buy, giving them increased control over food supply and prices. 

When certain crypto "meme coins" came on the market, there was a rush to buy, Big Money cornering the market and sending the price soaring--after which the “smart” “investors” sold at the high price to the gullible hordes whose “investments” promptly plummeted.

 

A little recession? Billionaires will be able to weather it easily, knowing they will benefit from it in the long run. How about you?

A day later, I'm coming back to clarify. The big take-away here is not that billionaires are insulated from recession by their wealth. As a friend of mine says, that’s always been true. What’s more important to see is that engineering a recession, however much it hurts the general population, can be so greatly in the interest of billionaires that while the general population is continually distracted by a nonstop flood of non-monetary issues, the financial rug can be steadily pulled right out from under them by the billionaires.

Believing

Belief and Knowledge (in Theory)

 

In the study of epistemology (theory of knowledge), the generally accepted definition of knowledge is “justified true belief.” That is, I know something if (a) I believe it, (b) it is true, and (c) I am somehow justified in believing it true. When you first encounter and consider the definition, that last component seems the trickiest: What counts as justification? What justifies my belief that the earth orbits the sun? Entire books have been written on the question of justification, but my focus today is different.

 

Many people – probably all of us – hold some beliefs that fall short of knowledge, believes we hold on faith and/or because we have made a decision to believe. What, though, about the opposite? 

Is it possible to know something and yet find that same something impossible to believe? To see daily bits of reality as too insane to be true?

 

Okay, that’s one question, but now, for the moment, I want to set it aside and ask a different question about belief. I’ll come back to disbelief after a long detour….

 

***

 

Believing vs. Not Believing in Something,

Stated “Belief” vs. Actual Choice

 

Years ago I had a community college student, an older married woman, who “did not believe” in government programs. She acknowledged – believe me, I had not asked! – that she and her husband lived on unemployment and disability, but she insisted that they “did not believe” in such programs. She “believed” the programs were wrong and should not exist. She “believed” the money was “stolen” from taxpayers. And yet she was comfortable receiving money she considered “stolen.” It didn’t make sense to me. 

 

I could not bring myself to press her on the question in class. I would have felt cruel to do so. And yet, all these years later, I still cannot make sense of her statement. When stated “belief” and personal choice are in stark contradiction, what sense can be made of the stated “belief”?

 

(Please forgive all the scare quotes in today’s post. I can’t see a way to omit them.)

 

When people call themselves “pro-life” because they oppose abortion yet are unconcerned with higher sepsis rates in places where medical personnel are afraid to intervene during a miscarriage for fear of going to jail, I feel a similar disconnect. Sepsis, when not treated in a timely manner, can result in the inability of a woman to have children in future--or even in her death! Do these women’s deaths not matter? Is their future fertility something for others to sacrifice? I hear no concern, either, about the risks to a woman’s life if an ectopic pregnancy cannot be terminated by abortion, if a nonviable fetus must not be removed, etc., etc. 

 

What is “pro-life” in this? To me it looks more like an exaggerated and misplaced concern for fertilized eggs and a complete lack of concern for the lives of women and girls in dangerous situations. To “believe” in life and choose to risk the lives of others is, as I see it, a blatant contradiction. And yes, it would be different to me if these people simply chose to put their own lives at risk, but none of the male “pro-lifers” will ever have to face that challenge.

 

Many abortion opponents in recent elections have been single-issue voters, and they were one block of voters (among others) that helped to elect (assuming votes were accurately cast and counted) a man three times divorced and six times bankrupt … who mocked a disabled reporter, made numerous vulgar remarks about women, boasted that he could shoot someone in the street and not go to jail for it … who was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying his business records … who railed against “criminals” and bragged about supporting police and then, almost the minute he got into the Oval Office, issued full commutations and pardons to everyone convicted in the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021 (which he fomented), including those who had most violently attacked the police guarding Congress that day. He was probably right about being able to shoot someone in the street and not go to jail, because these single-issue voters were certainly willing to overlook everything else for his promise to oppose abortion. 

 

(Actually, his “promise” was not always clear, and he is not, in generally, very good at keeping promises or honoring contracts, although he does, much more consistently, follow through when he makes threats. But it isn’t the word of an established liar that concerns me today. It’s the people who call themselves “pro-life” that I don’t understand.)

 

One anti-abortion friend told me that lowering abortion numbers with education and contraception was not enough: Only the goal of zero abortions is acceptable, nothing less. How does my friend square his obviously unreachable ideal (zero) with the obvious fact that more girls and women will die, once again as in the past, of unsafe, illegal abortions if no exceptions whatsoever are to be made to a total ban? Again, these lives that will surely be lost seem to count as nothing. Pro-life? Hardly. More like pro-punishment.

 

Let’s be clear about something. No one “believes” in abortion. Unlike economic safety nets such as unemployment insurance and disability payments for those unable to work, abortion isn’t something anyone wants. Only a worse alternative makes it something a woman ever chooses. Because sometimes, more often than oversimplified, hypothetical dilemma problems acknowledge, life presents us with situations in which there is no choice that does not involve loss and/or regret. 

 

I suppose my student and her husband--that couple living on disability and unemployment checks--felt the choice they made, while bad, was not as bad as allowing themselves to become homeless and starving to death, and if my student had put it that way, I would agree. It’s that framing of “believing” and “not believing” that troubles me, that business of absolute right vs. absolute wrong, such that a person can apparently feel in the right while doing what s/he thinks is wrong.

 

Does it make sense to you?

 

If I say I believe in charity and yet live like a miser, how is my belief demonstrated, and how can it be called a belief at all? If I speak in favor of nonviolence and live a violent life…? If I vocally advocate free speech and seek to shut down voices that do not echo my own…? If I talk “law and order” but flout the law at every turn…? If I call myself a truth-teller and utter nothing but falsehood, bearing false witness right and left…? 

 

By their fruits shall you know them.

 

***

 

I know it’s true, and yet –

 

Circling back around to my opening, I return to another troubling question: Can I know something and yet find it impossible to believe? Obviously, if I can, the traditional definition of knowledge is false, since the first component of the definition is belief. These times we are living through, however, strain credulity. Day after day, events occur to which I can only respond with horrified disbelief. This cannot be happening in my country. And yet it is. I know it is.

What Is ‘Woke,’ and What Is So Terrible About It?

At its simplest, ‘woke’ means being awake to the facts of history and biology and life in the United States from colonial days to the present. 

 

‘Woke’ means learning not only that Africans were brought to our shores in chains but that they were considered property here for two centuries, often treated worse than livestock. It means learning that each black human body was counted as 2/3 of a person—not given the vote, you understand, but just counted so as to give Southern states greater representation in Congress. Woke is realizing that the Emancipation Proclamation was just that, a proclamation, and that enslaved people were not freed until long afterward—and then, after an all-too-brief period when their rights were protected by U.S. troops, once more treated as subhuman by white men in power. 

 

‘Woke’ means knowing the history of the indigenous peoples of North America, the litany of broken treaties, slaughter of Native women and children by the United States military, slaughter also of the buffalo so that the people would starve, leaving their land open for railroads and homesteaders. It means learning about boarding schools where Native languages were prohibited, abuse was rampant, and where many children died and were buried in unmarked graves. Native American adults were not allowed to vote in U.S. elections until 1924, but the Snyder Act passed that year left it up to states to decide eligibility, so Native peoples were still frequently barred from participation in American democracy, and even today people on reservations without street addresses have difficulty registering to vote.

 

‘Woke’ means learning that until 1870 in the United States, only white men were allowed to vote. In 1870, black adult males were supposedly eligible to vote, but poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, etc. kept the ballot from most men. Women were not “given” the vote until 1920, with passage of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution. Native Americans had to wait until 1924 and, as noted above, still have trouble registering today in many places, though in 1964 poll taxes were outlawed by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, and in 1965 the Voting Rights Act officially secured the vote for all adult Americans.

 

But ‘woke’ also means awareness that there is more to equality than voting rights. It means recognition of ways that discrimination persisted in laws and social customs, such as insurance and real estate practices, etc., that intergenerational trauma has been passed down through families and communities, affecting health and longevity, and ways in which privilege enjoyed by white Americans by virtue of their skin color is unearned and exceptional. 

 

About one percent (1%, or 1 in 100) of human beings are born gender-nonbinary, or intersex (having both male and female sex organs), with a mismatch between visible sex organs and sex hormones that activate at puberty, or with some other variation from a clear male or female identity. ‘Woke’ means recognition of this minority and respecting each individual’s way of dealing with the binary world.

 

‘Woke’ means, basically, being politically and socially aware, having an awareness that rests on thorough knowledge of history, along with recognition of privilege and its absence. The antonym is ignorance. 

 

A number of Republicans use ‘woke’ as a pejorative term and proudly declare themselves ‘anti-woke.’ In this context, the term ‘woke’ is carelessly thrown around to inhibit open inquiry and discussion. 

Ron DeSantis, for instance, calls it the belief that there exist systemic injustices in American society that need to be addressed. Does he think this is a false belief? Does he not see examples of injustice? Does he see them but want them left unaddressed? What he would have, rather than asking God to mend our country’s flaws, is that we insist that our country is flawless. Book bans and exclusion of “sensitive” topics in history are the result of anti-woke campaigns. 

 

As to the matter of gender terms, the current administration in Washington has declared, with unintentional humor, that the government will now recognize only two sexes, those fixed at conception. This is humorous because sex organs of embryos are not yet developed as male or female. And who is there at conception to conduct a sex test? 

 

As a white female American, I have known unearned privilege. I certainly did not earn the parents to whom I was born. And yet, as an adult in certain situations in company with a white male adult, I have been ignored while the man was recognized. In situations with an African woman friend, however, I was the one recognized while she was ignored, and when shopping with an elderly white woman, again I was the one recognized while the older woman was ignored. Women, people of color, people with foreign accents, old people, the disabled, the mentally ill—all experience discrimination. It’s a fact, and pretending it doesn’t exist, being indifferent to it, is downright callous.

 

Years ago members of my undergraduate department had not participated in graduation and wanted to make up for my disappointment (it took me 20 years to earn a B.A.) by taking me to lunch. One of the late arrivals at lunch was the university president, who sat across the narrow table from me and never once made eye contact or acknowledged my existence. Later I compared notes with another employee in the college where I worked. She, a black woman with a Ph.D., had had a similar experience with the president and thought it was because of her race, while I’d thought it was because I was a new and very lowly B.A. We concluded, perhaps too easily, that the president’s problem was with women. It took years for me to consider that his antipathy towards women did not rule out a racist attitude. He could easily have been biased on both counts. Perhaps also fixed on academic status, I think now.

 

Much earlier in life, I was called to babysit for a couple with two young boys and a new baby. Before they left for the evening, I was given instructions about what to do “if ‘it’ [the baby] wakes up.” It? They did not use a name for the baby, which I found very strange. Later, when the baby cried and needed a diaper change, I was shocked and confused about what I was seeing, and it took years for me to sort it out. Whatever happened to that baby? How did the parents raise their nonbinary child? I was not called to babysit at that house again (had only gone once when their regular sitter was unavailable) and never talked about the baby with anyone, my parents or my friends. My parents were never comfortable talking to my sisters and me about anything to do with sex, so we were not comfortable asking them questions. I’m glad to say they did better with questions of race and religion and taught us to respect people of different backgrounds and faiths. 

 

The questions remains, why are people so afraid to wake up? Why do they fear history? Why do they fear nonconforming genders? Realizing where our country falls short is the only way we will ever make it better, so teaching history honestly is our only chance. As for gender issues, the fear no doubt arises from confusion and shock, but that can be overcome. Human beings come in many variations, a very wide range of skin colors and in a wider gender range than is generally acknowledged. 

What’s strange can be frightening. But it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to stay stuck in fear and let it turn to hate.

Are you brave enough to explore learning? The Revolutionary Love Project is not about hating yourself if you have had privilege: You can't love anyone else if you hate yourself. Check it out. Be brave. 

Soldiers of the—Cross??? Or Something Else?

My Lutheran confirmation Bible

Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was bigtime. Churches were destroyed, worship meetings forbidden, clergy arrested, and followers of Jesus commanded to sacrifice to Roman gods. Margaret Nutting Ralph, Ph.D., writes that “Christians were vulnerable to persecution because they would not participate in emperor worship” and were therefore seen as unpatriotic.

Present-day countries with the highest levels of persecution against Christians are North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, and Yemen--persecution that can involve physical attacks, legal discrimination, torture, arrest, even death. It should be noted here that North Korea is a single-party state, ruled by a single “Supreme Leader.”

 

If your Christian faith is discovered in North Korea, you could be killed on the spot. If you aren't killed, you will be deported to a labour camp and treated as a political criminal. You will be punished with years of hard labour that few survive. And it's not only you who will be punished: North Korean authorities are likely to round up your extended family and punish them too, even if your family members aren't Christians.

 

That is persecution. That is what it means to risk being a martyr to your faith in the 21^st century. 

 

On February 7, 2025, however, the president of the United States signed an order to create a national task force to “eliminate anti-Christian bias.” Official statements claim that this task force will promote “religious liberty” and increase grant opportunities (i.e., government funds) for “faith-based entities.” Presumably, focus will be on Christian “faith-based entities” (we'll look closer at that in a minute), since the formation of the task force implies bias against Christians and a need to correct that bias. 

 

Christians have never been persecuted in the United States of America. On the contrary, without any establishment of a state religion—and the Founders were very clear about wanting to leave Americans free to worship or even not worship as they might choose—Christianity has managed to be the dominant American religion from the beginning of the nation to the present day. Yet being dominant is not enough for many so-called Christians today. Nothing short of imposing their own political agenda on everyone else—and make no mistake, many groups of nominal “Christians” in America have a strong and determined right-wing political agenda—will satisfy the ambitions of those who have abandoned the teachings of Jesus but continue to use his name.

 

Back in October I wrote about a book published in 1833, Three Years in North America, by James Stuart, Esq. You can go back and read what I wrote earlier, but if you don’t want to bother I’ll repeat myself briefly. The Englishman who wrote the book, as his title indicates, spent three years traveling around the United States in the early 1800s, going as far south as Mississippi (maybe New Orleans, but I’d have to check that) and as far west as St. Louis, and during his time in our nation’s capital he attended a meeting of Congress where the business of the day was consideration of a bill that would close post offices on Sunday to respect the Sabbath.

 

One argument against the bill was that it violated freedom and equality (what we since came to call the separation of church and state) by elevating one religion above others. 

 

The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual, than that of a whole community. 

 

Another argument (that I found absolutely fascinating!) was that the bill insulted Christianity by implying that its followers were so weak in their faith that they needed to be forced by government to practice it! This argument can be generalized to oppose any attempt to establish a state religion.

 

A third argument was that favoring one religion over another had not made life peaceful in European nations. 

 

One member remarked that it was “perhaps fortunate” that the question was coming up so early in the life of the nation, “while the spirit of the revolution yet exists in full vigour,” the spirit of freedom of conscience belonging to every American and not to be abridged by what we would call Congressional overreach. The Founders thought they had settled the matter in Philadelphia, and the early 19^th century Congress clearly reaffirmed the answer to the question. But now we have a president who curries favor by granting special status to the already dominant religion, pretending that it has been under attack. 

 

How fragile must be the faith of Christians who see persecution when they hear the greeting “Happy Holidays!” in December!

 

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

 

Attacks against world relief provided by Christian organizations initially seem at odds with the new protect-the-faith task force. How does it compute? For example --

 

Example #1: Relief aid around the world provided by Lutheran agencies (Lutheran Social Services, etc.) has been targeted by people in the current administration of Washington as “illegal payments.” One accuser was Michael Flynn, a Catholic, retired Army general, and former adviser to the current U.S. president. Unelected Elon Musk, a self-described “cultural Christian” (???), moved quickly to shut down payments. It is thought by some that work to resettle refugees was the blackest mark against the Lutheran relief agencies. Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, responded (read her full statement here):

 

As a faith-based nonprofit, we have proudly served legally admitted refugees and immigrants for more than 85 years. This includes Afghan Allies who risked their lives to protect U.S. troops, as well as persecuted Christians, all of whom have been extensively vetted and approved by multiple U.S. government agencies before traveling to our country. We also remain committed to caring for legally admitted unaccompanied children forced to flee to the United States.

 

Example #2: J.D. Vance, another avowed Catholic, along with Flynn, has also targeted Catholic relief agencies. With USAID already forced by Musk to cut programs in war-torn Gaza and elsewhere, National Catholic Relief, a group founded by American bishops in 1943 to help survivors of World War II, says,

 

Now, Catholic Relief Services is facing the most serious existential threat in its history in light of proposed federal funding cuts [my emphasis added]. 

 

The director of the Office of International Justice and Peace for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2004 to 2018, Stephen Colecchi, characterizes Musk’s stoppage of USAID funds as “haphazard and irresponsible”:

 

To target this tiny portion of the federal budget in such a haphazard and irresponsible way is going to cost people's lives and livelihoods. It is not a thoughtful or humane way to go about treating programs that help the poorest of the poor all over the world.

 

In Colecchi’s words, “the poorest of the poor.” In the words of a former board chair of Catholic Relief Services, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, “desperate people, living in desperate situations, struggling day by day, hour by hour.” These are the people who have been helped, whose risk of survival is now greater than ever. You have seen photographs of present-day Gaza! 

 

And yet, only the other day (everything done is “only the other day” in an administration not yet a month old, God help us!), the president ordered the creation of a “White House Faith Office” to “root out anti-Christian bias” in government and protect the Christian faith by supporting “faith-based entities.”

 

The woman named to lead the president’s new faith office is Paula White, a televangelist. I will not rehash her background or go over her many public statements (you can look those up yourself if you are unfamiliar with her) but want to highlight one single aspect of her ministry. Her teaching is that of the so-called "prosperity gospel." The message is pretty simple: God wants you to be rich! Follow me, and you’re following God! You can start down the road to riches by sending money to me so I can continue spreading the word (says the television preacher), and I promise it will come back to you tenfold. 

 

Where, I ask, is the Christian gospel in this? Where is Jesus? Where are the Beatitudes? 

 

Where is Matthew 6:19-21?

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

 

Where is Matthew 6:24?

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

 

But put the pieces together, and they fit perfectly. 

The new administration in Washington has no interest in protecting the Christian faith or serving those truly persecuted (whatever faith they may profess, if any). Catholics and Lutherans are not "Christian" enough, in their warped view of a major world religion. The real sin of these long-established, traditional Christian churches is that by sending relief funds abroad, they are not directly enriching the greedy at home. 

What the billionaires now in charge really want to do is to make the world safe for the worship of mammon. Their sign is not that of the cross but of the dollar sign. Put the pieces together, and it all makes sense. 

Please Stop Using That Word!

 

One summer on Nagonaba Street....

What do the dictionaries say about the meaning of the term ‘conservative’?

 

The American Heritage Dictionary says it means “favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.” 

 

Merriam-Webster defines it as “tending to favor established ideas, conditions, or institutions. 

 

Oxford Languages (a new “brand” under whose umbrella resides the Oxford English Dictionary, it seems) defines the adjective ‘conservative’ as follows: “averse to change or holding traditional values.” (And now I cannot find that page again online.)

 

The Cambridge English Dictionary describes the same word as meaning “not usually liking or trusting change, especially sudden change.”  

 

Britannica calls ‘conservatism’ this way: “a political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices.” 

How many “principles” of political conservatism are recognized in the U.S. Some say five, some seven, others ten. It depends on your source. Congressman Mike Johnson, present Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who claims to be a conservative, cites seven “core principles,” and let’s take him at his word, since he is the Speaker. Those principles are, he says: 

 

1. Individual freedom

2. Limited government

3. The rule of law

4. Peace through strength

5. Fiscal responsibility

6. Free markets

7. Human dignity

 

In your opinion, how does the current Republican administration in Washington stack up on these core principles, taken one by one?

 

As for the more general term, I do not see the present administration’s scorched earth raids on government as “favoring traditional values,” “favoring established institutions,” or “opposing sudden change.” There is nothing conservative about filling the most important Cabinet positions with loyalists (most of them unqualified, even unfit for office; many guilty of all manner of crimes and ethics violations) who see their mission as eliminating the very departments they are appointed to oversee. There is nothing conservative about handing the keys to government over to an unelected billionaire (an immigrant, therefore ineligible to be president himself) and his hastily assembled “team” of young, inexperienced tech nerds. And there is nothing conservative about the Supreme Court of the land deciding that the man in the Oval Office is above the law. None of this is conservatism. A coup d'état is by its very definition anything but conservative.

 

So if what's going on in our nation these days isn't conservatism, what is it? Perhaps anarcho-capitalism comes closest. What a dream come true that is for billionaires frustrated that none of them yet controls all the world’s wealth!  Someone else suggests technofascism for what is planned and will shortly be executed if not stopped. Question: Are anarchism and fascism contradictory? An answer to that would depend, I guess, on how one regards law.

P.S. Don't lose heart!

Meeting Challenges/Why I Write

Ready for a Challenge!

I thought I was well prepared for cold weather and was not surprised on Monday morning to learn that the outdoor temperature was a frigid three degrees Fahrenheit, not expected to rise above 10 degrees by afternoon. After all, that’s what the forecast had shown in preceding days. And it is January in northern Michigan. So, from under the bedcovers, with coffee and book and dog at hand, it seemed like a pretty ordinary winter morning until, finally, I noticed that the bedroom was colder than it should be, the house unusually quiet. Why wasn’t the furnace blower coming on? Up to investigate! Only 45 degrees in the living room? Even I am not that frugal! 

 

Four days earlier I’d checked the outdoor propane tank and called to order a refill, but no way could I have gone through 20% of a tank in four days! Checked the circuit breaker box. No problem there. Emergency call to my furnace guy (had to leave a message), and then Sunny and I went out for a very short, quick run. As snow quickly turned to ice between her paw pads, she gave me no argument about cutting short our first sortie of the day.

I won’t go through my Monday morning hour-by-hour but instead will cut directly to the chase to say that the furnace guy found the propane tank was empty, after all. I’d probably gotten a false reading from the gauge, he said, sharing that his home tank gauge had once read zero when the tank turned out to be 85% full. I called for propane delivery once again, explaining the emergency situation, and by 12:30 p.m. my house was on its way back to normal. By 2:30 the chicken I’d planned to cook in the big cast iron pot, braising with it vegetables, was at last underway, and I’d managed to read almost 40 pages of Eig’s biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., much of that reading accomplished—before the propane delivery—with a sleeping bag over my legs, throw around my shoulders, wool scarf around my neck, and knitted cap on my head. 

 

Life lesson: No one is coming to save us. Now that’s not 100% true, is it? After all, the furnace guy came, and the propane delivery came, and my goose would have been cooked—no, frozen!—without them. But, no one made the calls for me or unearthed the space heaters to aim at pipes under kitchen and bathroom sinks or filled the bathtub and kitchen sink and washing machine with hot water to keep things under control until the situation was resolved. Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth wouldn’t have gotten any of those jobs done. Wishin’ and hopin’ and dreamin’ would not have accomplished a thing.

 

People are often asked what advice they would give to their younger selves, if such a thing were possible. I’d say, “Cowgirl up! What’s the first step? Take it! Then take it from there.” 

 

When someone says “Cowgirl Up!” it means rise to the occasion, don’t give up, and do it all without whining. [Source of quote online here.]

 

Sometimes, honestly, the first step is hard to see. What does need doing? What should I do? For me, even if I can’t see right away the first step to resolve a particular situation, there’s always something that needs doing. It may be completely unrelated, but experience has taught me (I only wish it hadn’t taken so long!) that doing anything constructive, even if it’s nothing more than cleaning the bathtub, makes me feel more effective, more capable in general, and that staves off the paralysis of helplessness and hopelessness. 

 

That’s probably the reason I keep writing these blog posts, these little-noticed bits of thought that I toss out into the great uncharted ocean of humanity, like messages in bottles, without knowing if they will ever even make landfall. Writing is something I feel capable of doing, and when I do it, I feel more capable of dealing with life in general. 

Strength comes from dreams, too.

Playing Defense, Yet Again

No, not football (sorry, Lions fans!), but ah yes, philosophy. If a book review in last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section, a review of a new book on Henri Bergson, is any indication of the contents of the book, I can certainly skip ordering Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People, by Emily Herring. As it is, I’m only worried that too many people will read either the review or the book or both and never read Bergson to realize how inaccurately his philosophy is too often portrayed by others. 

 

(I see that the reviewer of Herring’s book, Anthony Gottlieb, a British historian of ideas and admirer and defender of Leibniz, has a book on Wittgenstein coming out in the coming year. Will he also find the later Wittgenstein “nonintellectual”? We shall see.)

 

Gottlieb quotes Bertrand Russell:

 

Bertrand Russell complained that Bergson rarely argued for his views, relying instead on “their inherent attractiveness, and on the charm of an excellent style.” 

- Anthony Gottlieb, in New York Times Book Review, "The French Philosopher Whose Romantic Theory of Time Was All the Rage," 11/23/2024 review of Herald of a Restless World, by Emily Herring 

Is Russell’s accusation itself an argument? I think not. (Was he jealous of Bergson’s style? Perhaps.) Russell’s critiques have always made me wonder if he ever read Bergson at all. He certainly did not do so carefully. Russell once wrote that Bergson’s views on duration based on sensory perception were all vision-based. Absolutely false. Possibly because Bergson’s artist daughter, his only child, was deaf, he focused more than once on auditory perception, one example involving a clock chiming the hours. We don’t have to have begun counting with the first sound, Bergson notes, to have a sense of the final number, because we have retained the whole in memory (as we hear a melody, not simply one note and then another).

 

As for Einstein and Bergson, working in very different domains, neither one understood the other’s concerns.

 

Gottlieb winds up his review of Herring’s book by speculating that the reason for Bergson’s falling out of fashion was (“Perhaps”) that his “ideas were not substantial enough to endure.” It’s true there is no school of “Bergsonism,” but careful reading of the French existentialists and phenomenologists reveals a strong debt to Bergson, all too frequently unacknowledged. Merleau-Ponty, for example, takes great pains to distinguish his views from those of Bergson, but methinks he doth protest too much. Read Bergson first, then Merleau-Ponty, and the genealogy of the ideas is clear. 

 

 

Bergson was not “nonintellectual” or anti-intellectual. He did not denigrate intellect at all but recognized its essential function in our daily, practical life. His concern, as a philosopher, was that our mind’s analytic powers, equipping us brilliantly to deal with the material world, were misplaced when called on for answers in areas outside its expertise. 

 

Similarly, he was an admirer of physical science and all its (intellectual) achievements but opposed to what we now call ‘scientism,’ a worship of the scientific method that leads us astray when we seek to apply it outside its domain. Chemistry, for example, rests on a base of discrete and separable elements, physics on invariable laws, but human psychology as a subject of study, particularly as applied to human emotions and motivation, can only be deformed if submitted to rigors such as found in chemistry and physics laboratories. So must the intellect, in order to act effectively on the material world, deform time by representing it as a series of intervals (le temps, time as objectively measured in segments) rather than a continuous flow (la durée, time as intuitively experienced).