The Self-Inoculating Insight of House of Cards

The Netflix series, "House of Cards," which is a remake of the British show by the same name, is in the second season.  Since the whole season was available at once, critics and just about everyone else binged.  While some critics (like those at Slate)  recognized that the series is trashy, many loved it (Under the Radar, Star Tribune, Rottentomatoes) and social media blew up with accolades.  What I find interesting is the way people think this show is profound, and the "the anti-hero turned villain"the best character on television.     
I don't think it is.  I think the second season is worse than the first, where there is an actual challenge to Frank Underwood's success.  It isn't just that the second season (SPOILER ALERT) where Frank moves from being the Vice-President to the President in 13 episodes by destroying the President, is difficult to believe, but it gives us a false sense of watching the workings of power.  We learn from Nietzsche that the powerful take pleasure in suffering and that we take pleasure in suffering because it gives us a feeling of power.  I'm struck by how this show works then to vicariously make us feel powerful, while dulling our outrage in response to the abuse of power.  In fact, I'm struck by the parallel that the effect of this show has to what one Plato scholar, Tom Davis, has called the self-inoculating insight that Socrates' interlocutors have over and over to prevent them from really examining themselves.
In Plato's Laches, Socrates is speaking with a number of Athenian generals about how to raise their sons.  Socrates leads them to see that the question that needs to be examined is whether any one of them is an expert in the care of the soul, the knowledge that would be needed to raise their sons to have good souls.  Socrates, as is his wont, denies that he has this knowledge, and encourages his Lysimachus, one of the generals to question Laches and Nicias, the other generals in order to see if they have this knowledge that would make them capable of caring for their souls.  But before that investigation could happen, an investigation that would force them to confront their own lack of knowledge about what they claim to be good at, Nicias interrupts and tells Lysimachus how Socrates works: that "Socrates will not let him go before he has well and truly tested every last detail" (188a).  Instead of submitting himself to this testing, Nicias discusses how the testing works and what it accomplishes.  It isn't that Nicias is wrong here--he describes Socrates' elenchus well--but that what he performs is a way of using his insight to escape having to actually respond.  I argue that this show accomplishes the same thing.
"House of Cards" allows us to act as if we have insight--power corrupts--but it protects us from having to respond and allows us to just wallow in the pleasure of a successful villain whom we may or may not be rooting for but are certainly captivated by.  It allows us not to think about and respond to the power structures that make corruption in power possible in a way that would force us to have to consider what role we play in that structure and what we can do to change it.  In this sense, I think "House of Cards," is very different from a show like, "The Wire."

David Simon's hit HBO show depicted a failed contest between cops and drug dealers where the losers were the cities and citizens.  There was a fascination with the show because of its grim reality that left the viewer never satisfied and often frustrated.  Drug plans that worked were cancelled because of "optics." The drive to statistics led to gross incompetence and the greater concern for closing cases than for justice.  In the end (SPOILER ALERT) one of the main characters, a homicide detective, invents a serial killer in order to get the much needed funds to stop a drug kingpin.  Nobody wins.  No viewer feels innoculated.  You keep watching because you think you are responsible to know.  And with that knowledge to respond.

The Walking Dead

In a world in which we have not encountered the actuality of "zombies," outside of someone drowning themselves figuratively in bath salts, they have become an increasingly hot topic in the pop culture realm. 

The Walking Dead is a hit TV series aired on AMC every Sunday night at 9 eastern. Having watched every episode of the show since it first premiered, I have found myself constantly engulfed in the happenings and decisions that take place within the show. I tend to love shows that make me think about how I myself might solve a similar problem if I was faced with a similar situation. This show had done this for me up until about the half-way point of last season. The show began to hit a "lul" or maybe a more proper term, dead spot (no pun intended). So I decided to take a look at viewership over time to see how my interest compares, and not surprisingly it has only increased since it first premiered on October 31, 2010. In December of this past year, it had reached a record 16.1 million viewers at the same time that Sunday Night Football was airing. This would presumably not make sense considering the obvious fanbase that the NFL has. It was then that I realized that this might not be a coincidence that the NFL and The Walking Dead have such a huge viewership. I have entrenched myself in sports for my entire life, so in no way am I arguing against the sport of football, however it may be possible that we as a society love the idea of chaos and fight. No matter how big or small the chaos or fight may seem, we love to figuratively stick our nose in and see what's going on. This is where I have lost a lot of interest in the The Walking Dead as well as the NFL. 

The Walking Dead sets up a very nice Platonic setting in which the main character, Rick Grimes, is played out as the philosopher-king, and Shane Walsh is playing the part of Thrasymachus.

In Plato's Republic he battles Thrasymachus to a point of physicality in that it isn't as much about Thrasymachus fighting with Socrate's argument as it is Socrates himself. This plays out very nicely in Shane's battle with Rick. Rick is the thinking and decision making mind for the group of survivors while Shane is the act now, decide later member of the group. Joseph Campbell's article goes more in-depth with this notion of the philosopher-king and I believe it to be a great insight for myself and possibly others who may have lost interest.

It would seem to me that for those of us who have found ourselves just watching the show in passing and not really becoming a part of it, or even becoming interested in it, it's because of the chaos and fighting that it has lost it's spunk. Obviously a show with zombies is going to include fighting when the zombie's character eats people. Fighting in the sense of little spats amongst the group that last for three episodes is the type of fighting that has become uninteresting and mind-numbing. The chaos falls in line with this notion of fighting in-so-far-as the philosopher-king does more acting out and less thinking now. Rick has to constantly defend and argue with the group about every single little decision that he makes, whether it's for himself, another person, or the entire group. He is no longer truly thinking and being the leader as he is the guy under the sheriffs cap waiting to be replaced by his son.

As a society I believe that we (I don't speak for everyone) have began to love the idea of acting and doing the reminiscing or thinking afterwards as opposed to the other way around. The Walking Dead has taken up this very mindset in my opinion and therefore has lost my interest as a show that I will cancel plans to make sure I see. I'm not arguing that Plato's Republic is what keeps someone interested in a show, but it's possible that a more thought-based society would be worth giving consideration to.

Existentialism in the Music

     Reaching the end of my adventure through undergraduate study I have come to only have one regret.  I do not even know if I call it a regret as the construct has nonetheless been a significant influence on my life.  The regret, at long last, if it is even regret at all, is that I entered college after Dave Matthews swept the college scene when he and his band first began touring in the 90s.  But that I missed their rise to fame is not the source of my fascination with the band.  The band's philosophy is.
      I discovered the Dave Matthews Band when I was somewhereabouts halfway through high school, but I only listened to this band because they had a bomb saxophone player, the late LeRoi Moore, and I had the Recently EP album, which was the first time I ever remember having an idol.  I am a saxophone player.  My whole family is of the musical sort, so why it is that I am trying to fool myself that I am an academic type I haven’t the slightest. I digress. Hearing the way that this band played really resonated with me, especially that I had never heard anything like this music, this jam-solo style, ever before in my life.  It was not until I came to college, in my freshman year specifically, that I began to absorb and try to digest the lyrics that Dave let loose amidst the band’s melodies.  It was at about that same time that I discovered Jean-Paul Sartre and the rest of the existentialist cohort while taking an intro Philosophy class.  Really, Jean-Paul Sartre is the reason why I chose Philosophy as one of my majors.  What does this have to do with Dave?  Existentialism appealed very much to me.  Especially since at that time I was amidst a very significant transitional phase in my life, the things that Dave spoke about echoed very much the same sense of responsibility and unity that existentialism focuses on.  The Dave Matthews Band, seemed and still do to me like an existentialist band.

     In an article written by Chris Schmarr on Dave Matthews' philosophy as evidenced by his history and lyrics, his interviews and what folks have come to call "Dave speak", he makes constant reference to things that make us all human, and Schmarr is keen to note many of the aspects of Dave's performances, as well as facets of his biography that resemble very closely themes in existential philosophy.  A passage from the article by Chris Schmarr that I think best captures the theme of The Dave Matthews Band's philosophy is this:

At one point or another in our lives we begin to question our self-worth and purpose in life. Why are we here? Existentialism is described as an area of philosophy that is concerned with the meaning of human existence (Friedman, 2009, p. 294). Dave Matthews struggles with this issue on a constant basis and it can be seen in his lyrics. Existential philosophers place the responsibility of personality squarely on the individual. How an individual deals with love, ethics, anxiety, triumph, and death is completely up to that individual (Friedman, 2009, p. 320).

Where Schmarr cites Friedman:
Friedman, H. S. & Schustack, M. W. (2009). Personality: Classic theories and modern research (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.      As odd as it may seem, I think that in the Dave Speak video, the decision on how best to poop in the ocean is a great example of personal responsibility and is made even better with the reference to the notion that we pollute the oceans terribly with our waste as a nation or society, but the one waste that is natural to an ocean, one that might actually be good for it, our individual pooping in an immense body of water, is something that we do not generally do for the construct of a social norm.   
     What made things very real for me was when I first heard the song, “Typical Situation” and Dave describes various things about nature and in our human world, things that I had taken for granted as existing.  Things that might not seem to have much bearing on the meaning of our existence. He juxtaposes these things with the social construct of socially keeping in line for fear of reprimand.  The idea of social conformity, for me, was and still is very troublesome.  I had been confronted with it while pledging a fraternity, which I have to say, in my opinion, is about the most useless process as it stands, but that is a topic for a vastly different blog.  Conforming is not something that I do unless I have very good justifications for doing so.  This practice causes me problems socially, but it keeps me satisfied.
     The song goes a little something like this: "Why are you different?  Why are you that way?  If you don't get in line we'll lock you away."   For me this can be taken as the one fellow standing out of line, not in line with the rules, against the conformity of all the human companions standing in line, following the rules.  Dave also says in that song, "Everybody's different.  Everybody's free.  Keep the big door open -- everyone will come around."  If one takes those two lines along with another and it follows this way: "It's a typical situation in these typical times.  Too many choices.  We can't do a thing about it; too many choices."

     I suppose the overarching theme here between existentialism and DMB is that both are concerned with the choices that we are faced with in our existence.  Numerous, overwhelming.  So many choices.  And another thing, if the final line, "It all comes down to nothing," has any bearing on this connection, then it is parallel to the despair one feels when one has the foundation of their identity stripped from themselves.  Perhaps it is the center of nihilist philosophy, where there is no meaning and no point in rules and institutions.  This is the nothingness that we find ourselves in, the absurdity that is the world through the eyes of an existentialist. The existentialists believe that there is no meaning in the world apart from what we assign to the world.  This reduces humans apart from their institutions and social groups, reduces them down to individuals, as Kierkegaard would have it, that are tasked with living life defined by themselves and understood on their own terms.
     But all this loneliness is not where it all stops. We don't just try to annihilate it all. It is not as Ivan Karamazov would say, that everything is permissible in the absence of God.
     Sartre and, for all intensive purposes, Dave are both flavors of atheists.  Sartre is a hypothetical atheist and Dave is just Dave (its a long interview, but I think that it is well worth it.  If you wish not to listen to it all, he says that if God is even out there, there is not conceivable reason that God would give a damn about a little human).  Responsibility comes full circle when existentialists claim that the value of a person is not given until they are dead.  We are the sum of our actions.  And for Dave, much of his concern comes from his existential angst toward the state of the humanity and the world.  He is deeply troubled by the things that we are doing to each other and to our planet.  Songs like Don't Drink the Water or Eh Hee (or Eh Hee for those of you that like the live stuff) where there is a strong urgency towards guilt and responsibility and the recognition of these things, one can see the concern Dave has for how we treat each other and how we act as humans.  The Dreaming Tree or Gaucho one can see the concern for our actions on how we treat the planet.  He is genuinely concerned with loving our fellow humans, on the grounds that we have nothing but ourselves.  We owe it to each other and our children after us to think about how we treat each other and the consequences of our decisions.
 

     I guess that the greatest thing that I have come to take away from my melting Existentialism and the Dave Matthews Band together is that I am just as screwed as everyone else.  And that we are all in this together, God or not.  I have suffered my own trials in my life and almost every time I had help from another person or persons along the way.  It would be a sin for me not to help a person in need.  That is the most important part of being human, aside from reproducing.  Loving, and it’s the part that I think is too often forgone.

Dirty Wars and Socrates

            Dirty Wars, a documentary made by director Richard Rowley and journalist Jeremy Scahill, has been nominated for best documentary in 2014, but it should turn heads for more reasons than mere critical acclaim. Dirty Wars follows Scahill as he travels the world following the exploits of the United States military. During his investigative work, Scahilll comes across one of the most secretive and powerful military units in the U.S.: Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC.

           JSOC, as the documentary explains, is the only military unit that the President can contact directly and is scarcely mentioned in any official military reports. As the film unfolds, Schahill continues to discover more and more unsettling truths surrounding JSOC, including the killing of a seemingly innocent family. Possibly the biggest problem Scahill uncovers, however, is the fact that U.S. forces have been carrying out planned attacks in countries we are not at war with: “As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams ‘find, fix, and finish’ their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the kill list… (official website ).” In other words, Dirty Wars provides sturdy evidence that suggests the United States’ war on terror has reached far beyond countries like Afghanistan.

            The government, including both President Bush and Obama, has used JSOC increasingly over the years, but the secrecy surrounding this outfit makes it hard to understand completely. Both Scahill and the audience are left to assume that our government is in the process of using force and violence to eliminate whomever our military deems as a threat, regardless of whether or not we have declared war.

            The political issues surrounding Dirty Wars might seem obvious, but I think America’s recent military trends have interesting philosophical implications as well. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates outlines different forms of government and explains various pitfalls associated with each. With regard to democracy, Socrates seems to caution against the exact thing our Scahill discovers in Dirty Wars. Socrates explains the motive of a democratic leader by explaining that, “ …when he is reconciled with some of his enemies outside and has destroyed the other, and there is rest from concern with them, as his first step he is always setting some war in motion…(Bloom, 566e).”

            Scahill is afraid that the war on terror has become a war without end, but why would a government be interested in constantly being involved in war? Socrates suggests that war can be used as a tool for power. If there is war, then the people of a democracy will need a leader to protect them from a perceived threat.  Furthermore, as Socrates explains, war costs money, and people with less money are more inclined to stick to their “daily business”, allow people in power to do as they wish.

            It seems that Socrates’ wisdom may apply to the discoveries in Dirty Wars, but it probably isn’t fair to assume American presidents are acting in such a sinister manner. But, luckily for us, Socrates has plenty of wisdom to share. Just as Scahill suggests in his documentary, Socrates explains that such constant war efforts will eventually harm the health of the democracy as a whole.

            Once again in reference to a democratic leader and people that disagree with him, Socrates states, “ Then the tyrant must gradually do away with all of them, if he’s going to rule, until he has left neither friend nor enemy of any worth whatsoever (567b).” As a democracy continues to go to war, the government and military will get stronger out of necessity. As war gives power to the government, the government continues to try and retain that power. More “enemies” are discovered, and those “enemies” must be eliminated by any means necessary, because the government’s fate depends on it. For Socrates, war in a democracy will eventually become something like a self-fulfilling prophecy. A government grows powerful from war and goes to war to remain powerful.

The problem? The people in charge of eliminating threats are the same people in charge of determining threats. War creates a need to consolidate power to increase efficiency, but it does very little to make sure that power is properly monitored. An “enemy” of the state can now be defined however the state sees fit. The goal of the democratic government becomes remaining powerful, and the citizens suffer as a result. What was once a government designed to preserve freedom devolves into something that takes freedom away.

As Dirty Wars illustrates, an “enemy” of America can be an American citizen, and the U.S. military is not afraid to eliminate such threats through assassination. Anwar al-Awlaki. An American citizen, and his 16 year-old son, also an American citizen, were killed by an American drone attack in Yemen on September 30^th, 2011( full article ). Al-Awlaki was affiliated with al Qaeda, but he was killed without going to court, which is something American citizens are constitutionally guaranteed. Even more shocking was the death of his son. The 16 year-old American citizen’s crime? Being the son of a wanted man. This case is both extreme and rare, but they are sobering nonetheless.

These facts are unsettling, especially when considered out of context, but their proximity to Socrates’ warnings about democracy is palpable. Socrates suggests that a democratic nation will value freedom above all else. He also suggests that this freedom can become corrupt. When a government obtains freedom with a war in which they are actively seeking out conflict, it runs the risk of jeopardizing the initially desired freedom.

All of these things lead us to one question: is America following the very errant path Socrates describes in The Republic? We have been at war for over ten years and spent countless dollars. We have increased surveillance at the price of personal freedom, and we have begun roaming the world in an effort to kill all potential adversaries, including one of our own citizens. Socrates warns against all of these thousands of years ago, yet they happen nevertheless.

Whether or not America has reached a point of serious concern is a debate I hope continues, but one thing is for sure: we have been warned.

Cartoon Ethics and Presumption's Ugly Face

Sometimes it's interesting to cut back on philosophical pretension and talk about something that everybody has the chance to interact with and, more than that, to enjoy. Wiley-Blackwell  lists 42 books in the Philosophy and... series, collections of authors and their articles employing philosophical lenses upon trending topics. The series gets mixed reviews, and John Shelton Lawrence addresses the issue of this popularizing trend over at Philosophy Now. He poses a few questions:
     

"Is this approach good for spreading philosophical awareness? Is it pandering to popularity, or progressive pedagogy that has finally realized where it must go to connect with student minds and hearts? Has philosophy sold its critical soul to entertainment franchises to recover student attentiveness?"

I want to claim that a philosopher ought to interact with social reality; could it be that we say that the philosopher dwells in an Ivory Tower because he refuses to engage with his immediate context too often? As a result and on the flipside, do those who are not philosophers ignore philosophy because the philosopher neglects to discuss things that exist outside of the academy? I think that these are worthy questions to ask, but in the meantime, I'm going to take the risk that philosophers should engage with social reality and trending topics sometimes. 

Last summer I decided to fill my few free hours between shifts at the gas station with episodes of Mike Judge's animated sitcom, King of the Hill. Proof of my interest in the series can be corroborated easily: check my last post--I use the character, Dale Gribble, as an example of the modern conception of a conspiracy theorist. The sitcom aired regularly for about twelve years and occupied a spot in Sunday night's primetime lineup. It was popular; actress Brittany Murphy voiced the character of Luanne Platter; it was on in a time-slot very close to the Simpsons. Kathleen Tuck, professor at Boise State University, described her summer time classes that connected pop culture and philosophy, and one source she drew from was the very same King of the Hill.

But now for the insight. I noticed something about the show's structure after running a marathon through the long list of episodes. If the specific episode's plot focused around a single character, the presentation of other characters was altered accordingly. When the patriarch of the Hill household, Hank, held most significance for the plot of the episode, his wife, Peggy, would appear dull or, at the very least, uninterested in Hank's conundra. Alternatively, if the plot of the episode concerned Peggy Hill's character the most, Hank would appear as a bumbling idiot with concerns that shouldn't be concerns.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, and perhaps it might not have been Mike Judge's conscious intention to form the rest of the characters in an episode around the mindset of the central character, but it appears to demonstrate a subtle, ethical point. Here we have a series about a fictional family that takes advantage of the average, white, Texan stereotype. But layered beneath the dilemmas in the story lines, the humor in the generalizations, and the entertainment value that depends sometimes on cartoonish excess, we can find a significant truth about the nature of human interaction. 

Both Hank and Peggy possess different lenses and each is probably ignorant of the opinions the other holds about them. The animated world literally seems to form itself around the central character of each episode. The ethical lesson is one of avoiding presumption. There's nothing worse than having someone believe or say that you're something or someone you're not. Misidentification hurts, especially when the one who isn't identifying correctly neglects to consult the object of identification.

The task before anyone hoping to intimately or purely understand God, a lover, a friend, or even a television series, is a laborious one that seems unsurmountable. But Peggy and Hank still live together, feel affection for one another; they bridge the gaps with something less impending than an inability to truly communicate and understand their respective worlds. Presumption thrives, of course, but we can stifle it back little by little, and we must, if we hope to make proper sense out of the beings we interact with.

It is of great argument as to whether women are being paid fairly in comparison to their male counterparts. A study completed in 2012 found that the median yearly earnings for full-time male employees was $49,398. However, for women it was found that the median was $37,791. This $11,000+ difference isn't something to scoff at. Figuring out how to fix this problem, if it is one, is of greater importance. After analyzing many statistics, it is hard to argue that there isn't a discrepancy in pay for men as opposed to women. However, let's entertain the thought of it not being about women being less fortunate, in pay, and instead happiness being lost.

Flipping an argument on it's head and completely undermining it should be met with hesitation but it will become clear as to why this shouldn't be such a surprise. If we take a look at what drives a human being, we may have a better understanding why it's possible that money isn't the root to all happiness. In fact, it may be possible that happiness is more important than money after all. Why would be arguing the amount of money one sex makes over another, if it isn't at the end of the day about the happiness of the individual?

A study done in 2010 found that happiness in the workforce, was at 30%. 30% of all full-time employees in the workforce were happy about their position and their life in general. If 30% are happy, then that leaves 70% that are obviously not happy/blah with the direction or landscape of their life/job. But making a median of $11,000 more than women per year; how can one be unhappy? It may be as simple as the fact that money doesn't buy happiness. 

The stress put on dollar signs, is being unfairly sought after as the ultimate goal in life. We understand that the money differential between men and women is obvious and can be understood as being unfair in the sense that each person, based on sex, isn't making the same amount on average. However, if we were to fix this symptom, would we truly fix anything at all, or would we just be running further from the problem? The problem being that happiness is what we truly long for, and if we want fairness in the workforce, we don't want it for "fairness" in and of itself, we want it so that we are all happy and no one is felt cast off. 30% of all full-time employees aren't happy now and some of them are making more money than the average. What does this tell us about what we are arguing about? Is it possible we are addressing an issue that is but a symptom of the greater illness; unfound happiness?

We must embrace the discrepancies and understand that it isn't about the dollar signs put behind ones name but the amount of non-quantitative data that is found within one's life. It cannot be the fact that wealth makes someone happy who hasn't had the chance to earn it. The reason for this is because they wouldn't know what it is like until they had accomplished it, and therefore wouldn't know the happiness that could be gleaned from their monetary wealth. We assume that more money will make us happy but since we don't know, how do we decide that it will? 

We only have an argument over something that we think will cause a difference in the lives of individuals in a positive manner. If this is the case than we are to assume that more money and more equal portions of money will equate to happiness within men and women. But then we are given a statistic that shows 70% of all full-time employees are either blah or hate their current job. But yet we want to pursue more money and equality in the thing that is causing over half of those involved to not be happy. Let us decide if happiness is what we truly want, or is it wealth. In this argument, it cannot be both. For if it is wealth than we have a larger problem on our hands, and that is, why do seek justice, laws, accountability, etc. if not for the happiness of each individual? And if it is happiness, than why pursue something that over half of those involved already dislike, and better yet, something that we don't truly know will make us happy? 

What good do we desire?

Last year, with the firing of the Philosopher, McGinn, for his grossly sexist acts and outright slap in the face remarks of his defense, many feminist bloggers took to the web with this call to action to reconsider the state of equality in the professional world, especially in the field of philosophy where the numbers of female faculty there are floundering as compared to other fields and professions.  In the midst of all this talk about equality and calling for a change in the sad statistics that are yielded in my beloved field of study I heard echoing somewhere in the distance something that Plato had illustrated to me once in his Republic.  In the midst of all that noise, valuable as it all may have been, I asked myself, “What good are we desiring?”  If what we desire we perceive to be the good, then why is it that there is such a terribly steep ratio of men to women in philosophy.

I am not talking about the “good intentions” of feminist or other civil rights groups here.  What I am aiming at is the more existential claim of where we are as a society with respect to the lack of diverse philosophy faculty. And I hope that I can adequately lead to a discussion of how we might or even ought to approach the various possible causes of the gendered cliff.  

I make a point about our existential well-being because I think it is an interesting avenue to consider the idea that if our society, at least here in America, were to be judged today its final judgment, what would we have to say for ourselves?  In a field that is the breeding grounds for social movement, advancement, and propagation of civil rights, how is it that this field is in possession of so little diversity.  Assuming that Heidegger was on to something about making use of one’s available possibilities, would it not seem beneficial to have the greatest array of equipment made available to oneself, equipment in the form of the perspectives that our educators bring to the academic table, making those perspectives available to us.  I am not one to take sides in feminist battles, really in any battles for that matter mainly on the grounds that there are too many opinions flying around, more than I care to keep track of.  But this is a matter not only of equality but also of the potential for greater knowledge and I can see a possible avenue for philosophy to rekindle its old flame, restore itself to its former grandeur in the public eye if it is made more readily available to more people.  Back to the existential question.  How would we look under an existential magnifying glass, if there were such a thing…consider it invented.  We would seem like hypocrites, preaching equality, having countless well-thought-out arguments about equality and existence but we would be a race of people that did not live up to the standards we set for ourselves.  What’s new?  Are we too idealist?  Have we set the bar too high?  Is the itchy bearded fellow stereotype illustrated by  really the case? Do women need beards to do philosophy?  I do not think that that is the problem. 

The problem, in my mind, lies within what we take to be the good as a unit, assuming all of us philosophers could be categorized as a collective whole, anyway.  There are a great many of us that say that things ought to be equally available to all.  Things including but not limited to job opportunities, ability to freely voice one’s own opinion, equal pay, you get the gist.  There are another great many that care, but not so much as to risk their livelihood in the name of equality.  Then there are some, like McGinn, that are satisfied with treating other people as means to ends and often in a discriminatory fashion.  We are so mixed up right now.  Some of us desire equality.  For some of us, equality is a good.  I would venture to say that that is a good worth having and one that is true to the category of good stuff.  But the reason why I got into philosophy was not to discuss my views all day about what the good is.  I got into philosophy because I found Jean-Paul Sartre inspirational, especially with his claim that a philosopher is a man of action.  For the ones that would like to accuse me of sexist language, go hug a tree.  Women of action are a possibility, only sixteen percent the possibility right now, but still a possibility.

I would like to see a change here, and not for the the women’s sake alone, but as well for the sake of minority groups.  As time passes, minority groups become less and less the minority.  They have more and more of a representation and both them and women deserve an equal amount of representation.  Why is it that they do not have this equality?  According to Linda Martin Alcoff's blog Click and her talk about this same topic, she makes sure to mention the cliff that is apparently before women at least, that the nature of philosophy is a battleground that might not be appealing to a vast number of women.  Also, according to Rae Langton's blog Click again, the caricature of the philosopher is a long bearded "Dumbledore".  Women cannot grow beards, at least most women.  This might not appeal to a women either.  It is also hard to be a woman in the field of philosophy if almost always in the past very useful texts and responses that have been made by females have also been made largely unavailable to those that are learning philosophy, according to Langton (men and women alike).

There are lots of other compelling reasons for this cliff to climb, but the most compelling, I think, comes out of Peg O'Connor's blog, The Double Bind, especially when she says her heart "soars and sinks" when that philosophical spark lights up the brilliant flame of reason, because as much as she wants the young lady to go on and be a great philosopher, she also knows that the deck is stacked against her.  This field is not widely accepted, for one reason or another, as a woman's art.  It is a woman's art just as much as a man's.  I think that this is a valuable point, but I jump off that wagon when she says that she takes it harder on her female students in order to prepare them for the harsh world that they might wish to enter into.  The problem I see here is that instead of preparing them for the harsh world by trying to gear them up and weather them, why not just tell them, "Do it!" at the moment when they think they want to pursue the career.  I can see in the graphs presented in Haslanger's Blog Click , when somewhere between pusruing a Ph.D. in philosophy (I always thought that that degree was a bit redundant) and the tenured/tenure track females in the academy.  

I would argue at this point that there is not as much effectiveness in this bootstrapping women for philosophy.  So many might be turned off by the various stigmas surrounding the philosophical academy and may choose a path that is less of a gamble, especially given the scarcity of jobs in the field as it is.  Perhaps this tapering off out of the fear, the uncertainty of the gamble in the game where the Others have the aces up their sleeves is not such a good thing and we ought to send as many as we can toward that area of the academy.

Organized Sports: America's Academy

Philosophers have been thinking about the impact storytelling has on society since ancient Greece. Socrates famously outlines rules and reasons for a strict censorship in Plato’s Republic, and more recent philosophers such as Sartre employed playwriting as a way to explore philosophical concepts.

Today, many thinkers and writers are beginning to pay more attention to how our culture understands people of different genders and races through the stories we tell. It seems implicit that the movies we watch, or the video games we play, have some sort of impact on who we are as a community. Possibly the biggest fear of storytelling, as well as the biggest reason for censorship, is how it affects children. Like Socrates argues in The Republic, people often fear that allowing children to bare witness to bad behavior will increase the chances that the children will behave badly themselves.

While examining film and literature seems like a valuable way to understand and mold a given culture, it seems investigating America’s modern obsession with athletic competition can offer a similar type of knowledge. Socrates suggests that allowing children to watch good people do questionable things can potentially lead to confusion. If children see a good person do something bad, then they might think it is good to do bad things. The underlying assumption is that children form important and lasting opinions about how to behave at an early age. It follows, then, that we must be careful about what we teach them, about what we allow them to see.

But what, if anything, do America’s children learn from sports?

According to statistics gathered by usafootball.com, 7.6 million High School boys play football in America. So many people watch the Super Bowl each year that airing single commercial costs millions of dollars, and a single ticket to the game is worth thousands. It is hard to deny how popular sports are in America, but perhaps we should continue to think about how this continuously growing obsession is impacting our culture, particularly our youth.

To explore the life of one of the 7.6 million Americans currently playing High School football, we must begin at the age of eight. The third grade is a common time to begin playing football in America, although that age is diminishing. By the time a young athlete hits High School, playing football becomes something more like a full-time job. The season ends in the fall, sometime around Thanksgiving, if you make it to the championship. The pre-season, which typically consists of weight lifting, conditioning, and “student-lead” practices, begins in the spring. Practice continues throughout the summer, and some time in August almost every High School football team will begin practicing two times a day.

If a High School student wants to play two sports, say baseball and football, their schedule becomes even more intense. Travel baseball season begins as soon as High School baseball season ends. Each summer, two-sport athletes commonly find themselves balancing football practices with the roughly 100 baseball games they play as well.

This intense dedication doesn’t simply start in High School. To offer a personal example, I began playing travel baseball when I was 13 years old, and that was a year or two later than many of my friends. It is also important to note that this type of commitment is not only required of young men. Just like boys travel baseball, girl’s soccer and volleyball teams travel the country playing a multitude of games during the High School off-season with equal vigor.

Why are these trends significant? Having our youth dedicate so much time to athletics calls us to entertain an interesting conclusion: various sports and sport cultures are raising many of America’s children. Things become more interesting when we challenge this conclusion with a question raised earlier in this article. What do our children learn from dedicating so much effort and time to sports?

Just like with literature and film, this question becomes difficult to answer as soon as you begin. Because athletics now require so much time and dedication to succeed even at the lowest levels, athletes have begun “specializing” at young ages. This has allowed many of the most popular sports to develop their own unique cultures. Some parents and families spend their summers traveling the country to play baseball and others travel the country to play basketball. It seems to follow that a young boy might learn different things from playing baseball his whole life than if he had played basketball; he would have been surrounded by different people and immersed in a different game.

There are, however, some characteristics that apply to all sports in general. One of the more discussed and obvious examples is competition. In sports, there is a winner and a loser. Teams or individuals compete with the goal to win—the point of playing the game is to try and win the game. With this in mind, we can see how raising children to play sports means raising children to compete. Almost as soon as they are old enough to run, kids are signed up to begin competing against one another.

            The possible negative ramifications associated with raising our children to become over competitive have not gone unnoticed. Youth sport leagues now usually give out participation trophies of some sort to each player, regardless of whether or not their team won the championship that year. The term “ everyone gets a trophy these days” is a running joke amongst mothers and fathers in the stands of their children’s games. Our culture has already grown more sensitive to the often-ruthless nature of competitive sports, and many parents have begun taking measures to guard their children against harsh realities.  

The possible negative ramifications associated with raising our children to become over competitive have not gone unnoticed. Youth sport leagues now usually give out participation trophies of some sort to each player, regardless of whether or not their team won the championship that year. The term “ everyone gets a trophy these days” is a running joke amongst mothers and fathers in the stands of their children’s games. Our culture has already grown more sensitive to the often-ruthless nature of competitive sports, and many parents have begun taking measures to guard their children against harsh realities, but the debate continues. The New York Times ran an article titled “ Losing Is Good for You” this past fall, and many parents currently resent efforts to minimize competitive attitudes in youth sports.

(see NY Times Article). 

          While discussions about our children being raised in an over competitive environment are happening around the country, the impact sports have on our culture reaches far beyond a single concern. The potential downsides to our fascination with athletic competition (e.g. extreme time commitments and pressure to succeed) shouldn’t be considered without remembering the positives as well. Sports teach our children how to struggle and compete to achieve a goal, and I suppose we live in a world where such skills are useful. Many of America’s best thinkers dedicate their time to exploring how the books we read impact the people we become, but perhaps we should focusing more of our efforts on examining something many children spend hours doing every day: playing organized sports.

Conspiracy Theory and the Nutritive Art of Pedagogy

Whenever there exists an explanation, especially when it exists in service of complex subject matter, it seems that it doesn't stand alone, that other explanations stand as competition. This is especially true in the scientific community and its notion of parsimony--if one explanation has simpler implications for its encompassing scientific system, it will be accepted before one that challenges the relevant system. 

Parsimony seems logical, right? After all, we do tend to feel more satisfied with clear, colored-in-the-lines accounts. And, if we've gotten it all right so far, if it works, if it's operational, what worth would we derive from changing? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," a modern-day proverb, sums up the issue, the inclination. But is this all to say that a dogmatic blanket is the ideal filter in every situation? It certainly appears to serve its purpose in the scientific realm. But does it?

Thomas Kuhn, philosophical physicist, had qualms with thinking of science as wholly comprised of such a blanket. Groundbreaking moments in the history of science have usually involved discoveries that defied the explanatory ability of the prevailing systems. Such discoveries shed light on rips in the fabric of a dogmatic blanket, rips large enough to reach through and feel out further boundaries.

This need not only apply to the world of lab-coats and research facilities, and I would like to make the case that it doesn't. In my undergraduate experience of discussion-based courses, answers to questions involving human relationships exist in the plural. Insights are broadly displayed, and sure, agreements are made, but multiplicity arises each and every time. The setup is simple and we can use any of the variety of instances when groups of humans interact to demonstrate it. But let's flash it up a bit! Let's talk about something weird. Let's talk about conspiracy theories.

Good ol' Dale Gribble from Mike Judge's animated sitcom King of the Hill never failed to develop an alternative theory for something gone wrong--a theory characterized by fault found with the federal government or some secret organization. His delivery was also always accompanied with an interesting duality of emotions: extreme paranoia with a dash of crippling anxiety. 

The philosophico-blogosphere isn't silent on the issue of conspiracy theories. JFK's assassination was topical last November 22nd, its 50th anniversary. Daniel Mullin's post over at the Unemployed Philosopher's Blog brings an interesting complaint against conspiracy theorists: if you're severely skeptical of the official account, what keeps you from calling out similar faults in the alternative theories you replace them with? True skepticism, Mullin holds, would demand that the skeptic be just as skeptical about alternative explanations or theories. 

There have been a lot of alternative theories proposed for why/how/if JFK was assassinated. But an event that evokes a similar response and is closer to public memory might be more appropriate for this discussion: 9/11. 

The philosophical community at large isn't silent on conspiracy theories either. Jodi Dean devotes a chapter to certainty and the modern day conspiracy theorist's interaction with 9/11 in her book, Democracy and other Neoliberal Fantasies. She uses psychoanalytic evaluation to paint a sociological picture of the psychotic and normal subjects. All of this to say that she claims that the conspiracy theorist rests in the former category, self-ostracized by the replacement of one significant understanding of the world with an alternative one. The psychotic subject can hardly even communicate among the normal subjects as a result of his replaced significance. 

But isn't this exactly the same sort of characteristic that qualifies for innovative science? The psychotic manifests itself in the scientist who encounters a groundbreaking discovery, one that Kuhn claimed could not be communicated by means of the prevailing scientific system. 

Dean continues to claim that the inability to communicate for psychotics is a problem fading away, thanks to communicative capitalism and the networks that similarly ostracized individuals can form with the use of social media and wide-spread information sharing. So now, not only do we have psychotic subjects, but we have psychotic communities. But I think it must be asserted that a call to caution is necessary among all of this description. After all, it does seem fairly compelling that the psychotic subject and the innovative scientist appear to match up.

So why is Dale Gribble so paranoid and anxious? At this point, I think it's fair to say that a conspiracy theorist is someone who maintains an alternative explanation for events that most people either neglect to consider or have nearly consensual explanations for. But when something ceases to be a conspiracy theory, like when the existence of an overarching, technological superpower was revealed, the NSA by name, the conspiracy theorist isn't liberated from his characterization as paranoid and anxious. Instead, the revelation makes the theory commonplace and resets the psychotic-normal relationship. The next person who holds an alternative explanation that doesn't at all align with the normal subject's understanding will be characterized like this:

even if he shows us something like this, or this.

This is where discussion of pedagogy becomes most pressing and worthwhile. We have to find interest in the methods of teaching. Just as we cannot instruct science students in how to make groundbreaking discoveries to test the dogmatic blanket, we cannot expect to be able to teach other students how to push the dogmatic blanket in fields like ethics, epistemology, logic, or aesthetics. But this doesn't put us at a complete loss. If my studies in philosophy have taught me anything so far, it would be unwise of me to ignore this obvious statement: the routes for approaching explanation are vast and number in quantities off-scale. 

No work would get done in scientific communities if nothing was taken for truth, to be built-upon, or as Kuhn says, to be "mopped up." But conversely, attachment to truth taken-for-granted sustains an ignorance of the tears in the dogmatic blanket. Skepticism of an official account, or any truth taken for granted should not be characterized by a shivering Dale Gribble or the bumbling, alcoholic father and farmer from Independence Day (although he did turn out to be right, after all!). 

Pedagogical methodology has to open itself up for internal discourses, critiques of the taken-for-granteds. This does not mean that classrooms should be overruled by "What if we're all, like, wrong about, like everything?" This only means that legitimate source-checking demands constant suspicion. When a graduate student composes a dissertation, I imagine that anxiety and paranoia take over when hoping that a source wasn't mis-cited or missing all together. Does this mean that she ought not to be meticulously tuned in to a heavy focus or worse, that we should hope to avoid such strenuous fact-checking because of the paranoia and anxiety associated with it?

Pedagogy has a real opportunity here to nurture and provide sustained conversations without the snapping elastic re-bound of the normal subject. And we have a lot to learn from conspiracy theories.