Questions in the Dark

Murder mysteries can be fiendishly difficult things to unravel. However, there are certain assumptions we often take for granted: the laws of physics are constant, time moves linearly, the human perception of reality is - by and large - an accurate representation. But what if these basic rules of existence could not be assumed?

What constitutes a human being? More specifically, what makes a human being act? The Marxists tell us that class and the economic realities of society condition our behavior. The chemists, pushed to their farthest extremes, might tell us that chemicals in our brains explain all our actions. Likewise, the psychologists would tell us that past experiences condition our behavior in the present. But are any of these answers fully sufficient?

Do those who possess great power know how to utilize it? This is frequently our assumption, but what if those with superhuman powers could only exercise them clumsily?

These questions may seems quite disparate, but Alex Proyas' Dark City (1998) manages to address all of them, and quite artfully. Set in a surreal 1940s-esque future, Dark City might seem confusing or disjointed at first - or even just plain weird - but the loose ends pull together in a way that is quite satisfying. Visually compelling, intellectually rich and narratively satisfying, Dark City is a winner.


(Sadly, I think the trailer fails to quite capture the feeling of the film. Think more noir and less techno.)

Happy Constitution Day!

Please celebrate as you are able (preferably with friends, food, drink and song).

Benedict & Kirk: On Ideology

In his recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI writes:

Today the picture of development has many overlapping layers. The actors and the causes in both underdevelopment and development are manifold, the faults and the merits are differentiated. This fact should prompt us to liberate ourselves from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways, and it should lead us to examine objectively the full human dimension of the problems. (Section 22)

I do not think Benedict is here advocating the "moderation" of the politically lazy or cowardly, who cannot be spared the time or risk involved in choosing sides in difficult questions. No, I think Benedict is advocating a level of nuance and sophistication in our political and economic dealings that surpasses the slogans and phrases that typically characterize our political discourse: progress, change, limited government. As if any of those were sufficient to apply to all situations, in all times and places. And yet, that is what most political ideologues try to do.

On reading the above passage, I was struck by how well Benedict's admonition harmonizes with the writings of another thinker, Russell Kirk (1918-1994). In the the forward to the 7th edition of The Conservative Mind, he writes:

The conservative abhors all forms of ideology. An abstract rigorous set of political dogmata: that is ideology, a "political religion," promising the Terrestrial Paradise to the faithful; and ordinarily that paradise is to be taken by storm. (xv)

An overzealous conservative might be tempted to claim that Benedict is here alluding to Kirk. I highly doubt it. But that need not rule out the possibility of some unknown intellectual connection. Two men as well-read and thoughtful as Benedict and Kirk are likely to have vastly overlapping libraries. Indeed, the most obvious intellectual tradition shared by these two is their Catholic faith. Icons point beyond themselves; idols point only to themselves. Ideologies that oversimplify to the point of losing touch with reality have become idols. Benedict and Kirk, and like-minded Christian intellectuals, recognize this.

One final thought, a disclaimer of sorts. Some might object to my favorable comparison between the Holy Father and the father of modern American conservativism. Am I suggesting that all good Catholics must be conservatives? Hardly. One of my rabbis in the world of conservative thought explained, "I naturally shy away from the term conservative because it has become an ideology of its own in the culture at large." (Which is why many self-identified conservatives have criticized the neocons as being ideologues of the very kind Kirk warned about.) However, insofar as the writings of conservatives such as Russell Kirk harmonize with the teachings of the Church - and I think they do fairly well - I have no qualms about commending them.

Special thanks go out to Maggie Perry and Daniel R. Suhr for their assistance on this post.

Is Anything in Life Not Economic?

In my Constitutional Law class the other day I came across a rather troubling idea: that nothing in life is not economic in nature, or--if you just shuddered at the sight of a double negative--that everything in life is economic in nature.

Let me back up a second and explain how such a preposterous notion came up in a class on the Constitution. There is a clause in the Constitution called the Commerce Clause (Art. I, § 8, cl. 3), which gives Congress the power to regulate "commerce...among the several states." At the beginning of this nation's history, this clause was interpreted rather narrowly. "Commerce" meant essentially only merchant and trading activity, and was usually distinguished from manufacturing, farming, and producing goods for sale. But, over time lawyers started playing fast and loose with the definitions (I know, you simply can't believe that). The Commerce Clause soon encompassed not only commerce but also manufacturing and production.

That's a pretty broad definition of commerce, isn't it? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. During the New Deal, commerce came to include anything that "in the aggregate might have a substantial effect" on commerce. Pretty soon lawyers and judges were simply using "economic regulation" as a shorthand reference for Congress' power to regulate commerce. And, what's more appalling, these same lawyers and judges were allowing Congress to regulate everything in sight, on the grounds that everything in life is economic.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court appears to have put a stop to some of this insanity in two recent cases (United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison) and ruled that Congress cannot declare everything economic and then regulate it. In Lopez, the Supreme Court held that the federal government did not have power under the Commerce Clause to outlaw guns in school zones. It's not that the Supreme Court was in favor of guns in schools; it's just that it's a simple non-economic criminal matter for the states to handle. But--the government's lawyers pleaded--if you allow guns into one school in Texas, that can affect the way students there behave; and if those students don't behave well, they won't perform well academically; and if they don't perform well academically, they won't get good enough jobs; and that in the long run, repeated thousands of times, will affect interstate commerce. A simple crime by a dumb teenager has been transformed (by crafty lawyers) into an assault on the economic foundations of America.

But, how did we get to the point where many of the brightest people in the land think that carrying a gun in a school is an economic activity? It's more than just a devious tactic employed by lawyers to win cases. On the contrary, it has been theoretically justified by many thinkers, and reflects the course of society in the last 250 years. At first blush, it may remind you of Karl Marx's economic determinism. But this idea has also been advanced by at least one leading contemporary legal scholar, who is usually (though, in my opinion, mistakenly) considered a free market zealot. Judge Richard Posner, the maven of the Law and Economics movement, has defined crime in purely economic terms as the "coercive transfer of either wealth or utility from victim to wrongdoer." The word "utility" is telling. It should remind you of the theory of utilitarianism, first systematically articulated and named by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. What Posner (and many modern libertarians) have contributed to Bentham's and Mill's theories is an emphasis on modern economic analysis as a way of determining the "aggregate social value" of an activity. Economics no longer examines individual choices, but arrogates to itself the right to judge everything in society.

So, is there anything that's not economic in nature? Can we prove the utilitarians wrong? I think many readers of this post (if indeed there are many readers of this post) would automatically name examples of non-economic activities such as art or love. And they would of course be right. But, what about blogging? As one cynical website explains blogging: "Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few." Doesn't that prove that blogging has no real utility, and therefore isn't economic in nature?

I think that we here at the Guild Review should transform this cynical witticism into a joyful affirmation of blogging, and of non-economic activity in general. We do it because it's useless--we do it because it's not economic!

Seeing Beyond the Human

One day, while eating lunch at the National Archives (pictured left), I heard the next table over discussing the Bible. My ears immediately perked up, since matters of faith are hardly normal lunchtime conversation material in such quarters. I was disappointed, however, to realize that the discussion was strictly about translations of Scripture, and not matters of faith or theology.

I have complained before about the inability of contemporary culture to consider the Highest Things. Recently I have observed another dimension of this problem.

Outside the confines of the Quincy House - whose dining room alone contained a dozen religious images at last count - and similar circles, I have frequently observed that the Church is viewed as a strictly human institution. More to the point, even the Church's claims to being more than human are overlooked. This often - though not exclusively - focuses on the Church's failures and the crimes that have been committed in her name. Admittedly, the Church's failures are real and not to be overlooked; aside from historic massacres and torture, in our own day there are many who have been profoundly hurt by injustices committed by the sons of the Catholic Church.

In light of such visible shortcomings, I would expect one of two responses. The first, which you can hear from the Church's adherents, is that the Church is both human and divine, always sanctifying while herself in need of sanctification. Moreover, not all who call themselves Catholic, or are even visibly joined to the Church, are in fact members of Christ' mystical Body and animated by His Spirit (cf. St. Augustine's City of God). The other response I would expect would be to argue that a loving God would never allow such injustices and therefore Christ' presence must not reside in the Catholic Church (or, for that matter, any human institution. If you really want to get picky, you might even call into question the Incarnation or the notion of divine self-revelation, both of which are bound to get mixed up in human messiness).

Oddly, I rarely hear this second response. Instead, the Church's supernatural claims are usually ignored. Rather than denouncing the Church for failing to measure up to perfection, she is simply castigated for being a tad lower than other human institutions, which are thereby deemed better. (By extension, on the days when the Church is perceived as doing good - feeding the hungry, caring for orphans - she may rise to the top of the heap, but it is nevertheless a low heap.) Nowhere is there a consideration of the Perfect, the Absolute, something that might circumscribe all human institutions and activities.

Perhaps this is simply a result of the fact that much of my time is spent with fellow historians, who are some of the more practically-minded members of the liberal arts family. But I think the problem is far more widespread than that, and it has a name: materialism.

Materialism is by no means new. The First Vatican Council condemned it in its First Canon: "If anyone is so bold as to assert that there exists nothing besides matter: let him be anathema" (section 2). Of course, most people would not be so bold as to say that. It is fairly difficult to prove that nothing but the material exists, so most folks are intelligent enough to concede that the spiritual may be out there. But aside from this single concession, the same people will elsewhere ignore the possibility of the spiritual, both in their thought and in their actions.

What then are we to make of this rampant materialism? What are we to do in such times? I am afraid I have no genius answers, other than to throw generous quantities of salt about and pray for the best.


Incidentally, if you would like a tshirt with today's Vatican I quotation on it, just steer your browser over to anathemasit.com.

Anonymity: A Revolt of the Masses?

In the past (here and here) I've complained about the anonymity of modern politics, and I suspected that many people shared this concern with me.

Well, now I know that I'm not not the only one. Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal thinks that the voting populations around the world are finally running out of patience for anonymous bureaucrats and irresponsible politicians putting our countries deeper and deeper in debt.

I'm not so sure that we're going to see a "revolt of the masses" any time soon, but hopefully the current financial crisis will inspire some people to reconsider the anonymity of modern politics.

Inglourious History - The German Response

I have a confession to make: I have not yet seen Inglourious Basterds. This may not, in and of itself, be a bad thing. Except that I am now writing a follow-up to my last post on the film.

At first I was worried that Tarantino doing a nominally historical film would be a dangerous thing, blurring the line between fact and fiction in a way that a film like Kill Bill - with its Texas sword fights and anime flashback - could not. The completely over-the-top ambush of the Nazi leadership, seen in the trailer below, seemed to lay my fears to rest: at last, we could sit back and enjoy the show, knowing that this had very little to do with any actual history.



But now the New York Magazine's Vulture blog reports that the film has received an overwhelmingly positive response from German critics. One of them wrote:

This isn't camp, it isn't pulp — you miss the point using such categories with Tarantino — but rather a vision never before seen in the nearly exhausted world of cinematic images.... It took 65 years for a film-maker, instead of bringing Germany's evil 20th century history to life once more to have people shudder and bow before it, to simply dream around it. And to mow all the pigs down. Catharsis! Oxygen! Wonderful retro-futuristic insanity of the imagination!

Perhaps. But if the film is "retro-futuristic insanity," can it really exercise the daemons of Germany's Nazi past? Doesn't "Germany's evil 20th century history" need to first be brought to life, if it is be finally slain?

Some might contend that expecting a cathartic release from the nightmare of Germany's Nazi past is asking far too much of this film; instead, we should be expecting nothing more than a sort of World War II Rambo. Fair enough - except that the German critics think they see more, a film in meaningful dialogue with history.

Yes, I realize that any invocation of the Nazis is, necessarily, historical in some way; but it seems to me that the relationship between a film like Tarantino's and the actual events of history is complex, at best. That so many German critics are raving about the film suggests to me either (a) that they all have great insight, successfully navigating this complex relationship or (b) some of them are missing the point. And that's a tragic, even scary, thing, when we're dealing with the legacy of something as appalling as the Third Reich.

Special thanks to Santiago Ramos for bringing this Vulture blog post to my attention.