Sucks To Be You

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matt: 19:24)

"Don't give me that dogoody good bullshit" Pink Floyd, "Money".

Despite my Liberal inclinations and my Leftist fantacies, I am painfully aware of this one thing: THE UNITED STATES IS A CAPITALIST COUNTRY. No, really, I get it. It is. We love money here. And one of the great things about being here is the fact that there are opportunities to make money. Lots of money. Oprah money.

Although I took econ in high school, and I remember something about the objective in our culture is to "make money", I don't remember learning very much beyond that point, nor do I remember learning much about the creator of capitalism, the Scottish economist, Adam Smith.

Honestly, I didn't read Smith until I got to college -- in a philosophy class.

I also know that I am not the only American who has had this experience.

What I had learned in school is that being a capitalist means that, if I made a shitload of money and other people didn't, that the appropriate response to their misfortune is "sucks to be you!". I had plenty of teachers on this kind of capitalism, mind you. I learned from the media that "greed is good", and that if I made a whole lot of money that I could get on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous ( I guess it's getting on something like Real Housewives now). I learned that pursuing one's interests above all is not only the key to success, but the only truly American way to do it.

Funny how sometimes you learn that you didn't know what you thought you knew when you actually read something.

Like the American Founders, Smith was a product of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment emphasized science and reason, which was meant to counter the prevailing belief in stuff like superstition and the diving right of kings -- stuff that told people that wherever they found themselves was their lot in life, and that if you were born poor, you were consigned by God to be poor. The Enlightenment threw all those old ideas out and relpaced them with new ideas like, any one can be as rich as a king (and if you really know how to play the game, even richer). The idea was that man could improve on himself. He could be inventive and that by using the skills of an entrepreneur, he could make himself rich. This sounds ok so far. But here's the deal...

The Enlightenment stressed reason as it's primary motivator. That is, reason was vaulted as paramount among the virtues. So far so good. But, this thinking led to the idea that there are some people who just can't ( for some reason or another) reason like other people. And if this is so, there must be some sort of explanation. This of course led to the idea that some people were naturally inclined to think better, and since thinking was a virtue and virtues are a sign of excellence, people who were better thinkers were not only better thinkers, but better people. This notion got a big help from Darwin's theory of natural selection, which was, by way of the likes of folks like Herbert Spencer, turned from the natural world, to the social world. So, societies that were better thinkers were better societies. Those better societies were superior to other less-thinking societies. So, if you couldn't think, using Darwin's theory (as applied to people) you had inherited a set of bad genes. Not just you, mind you, but your entire culture had done so. And people who are stupid don't succeed, and if you don't succeed, you can't get rich. So, if you're poor, your biology made you poor. You're not "fit" as Spencer would say. This ethic was best expressed by Dicken's Ebeneezer Scrooge. When Scrooge is asked if he will give to charity, he says he is not in the business of making idle people merry and that the poor will have to do with what they have . When Scrooge is told that thre poor will die if they do not get help, he says (rather famously) that they had better get to it and "decrease the surplus population". Scrooge is merely repeating the capitalism-meets-Darwinism vibe of the latter half of the 19th century. He believes that not only are the poor to blame for their condition, but that they are taking up room and worse yet, sponging off of hard working capitalists like himself.

It's by no mistake that we are supposed to be outraged by Scrooge's comment. What he says isn't only cruel, it's not capitalist philosophy, either.

Although Smith wrote that self-interest is the prime motivator for acting in the market, he believed that men would automatically also benefit the whole. Men, Smith believed, had an intuitive sense to work toward the common good. In benefitting ourselves, we also benefit society as a whole. Smith writes that no society can flourish if a part of its people are poor and miserable. Smith writes that with the improvement of the "lower ranks" of society, the entire society is likewise improved. He says that we should not think of tis as troublesome but as an advantage. The pursuit of capital is not a free-for-all, nor should wealth be gained while the greater population suffers. Business, Smith observes, is not to go unregulated. Smith wrote that business should be conducted as if all transactions were conducted under the watch of an "impartial spectator". Smith wrote that the spectator is, in reality, the watchful eye of the individual over his own actions (this is tied to the oft mentioned idea of the "invisible hand". The supposedly invisible market forces that influence the behavior of capitalists and capitalism). However, Smith recognized that actual government regulation of markets is necessary to ensure that business is conducted in a manner that does not harm the greater society. Smith knew that, given the ability to collect large sums of personal wealth, greed can impede one's ability to regulate what one consumes. That is, Smith recognized the fact that rich people tend to be greedy and will consume more than their fair share of resources. We need regulation to " restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections...". Smith wrote that we need regulation to make" nearly the same distribution of the necessities of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among its inhabitants". For Smith, unlike what we hear in the popular discourse, being a capitalist didn't mean that we should, or even that we have the right to allow others to fall by the wayside while others clearly make and consume more than they will ever need. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that Smith was nearer to Socialism than he is to the "capitalism" that we practice here in the U.S. I don't think he'd be a fan of any sort of socialistic distribution of wealth scheme. What I think that Smith is saying is that when we value money over other people, we are bound to get into trouble. That trouble, unfortunately, tends to affect more than just the handfull of greedy people who may have thought that they can, or should get more than everyone else. You don't have to watch TV for long to see that unobstructed greed isn't just wrong in some sort of abstract, moral sense. It's wrong in that people die and nations are brought to the brink of collapse when we think of capitalism as a "take what you can when you can" (that's a line from The Secret Of NIHM) way of running markets. Adam Smith wanted us to have the opportunity to get rich, but he wanted us to be cautious about what we may put on the line in our pursuit as well.

I'll end here with another Smith quote,

"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices".

Gee, it's not like that's happened recently.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

When I was a philosophy student, I participated in this shindig called "ethics bowl". What ethics bowl isn't as important than to say that I had a teammate who was an avowed anarchist. Really, he was. I don't think that he was the type that wants to burn down buildings or wants chos and disorder as much as I think that he believed that people were better off governing themselves. I think that he believed, in the long run, governmental power was more pernicious than it is useful. There is a general feeling out there, not just among anarchists, but among Libertarians, Conservatives, even among Liberals and Progressives, that all government is in some way inherently bad. They are guided by the mantra "the government that governs best governs least". As soon as governments gain power, they believe, man loses his freedom. These people are easy to spot. They're the people who spell "government" GOVERNMENT. And a growing number of Americans see GOVERNMENT as a failure. This is not just a Tea Party sentiment. From Rush Limbaugh to the late Howard Zinn, not only are Americans (and their political spokespeople) distrustful of GOVERNMENT, they believe that government is at best incompetent and at worst dangerous. Ronald Reagan famously said, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem". And the GOVERNMENT has wasted no time proving Reagan's sentiment. Intelligence failures, the Katrina debacle, runaway deficit spending, crony capitalism, the potential ELE oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the expanding, invasive role into the lives of average Americans has a growing number of people not only agreeing with Reagan's sentiment, but agreeing with Grover Norquist's sentiment of wanting to shrink government to the size that it can be drowned in a bathtub. The recent primary victory of Tea Party fav, and son of Ron Paul, Rand Paul, in Kentucky is a testiment to the fact that more Americans are thinking of their government as the GOVERNMENT. Maybe the people should be alone to rule themselves. This idea is by no means a new one. As Americans, we are raised with the notion that people are or should be, for the most part, able to care for themselves. This is the way man's nature truly is, some say. Where we go wrong, is that we institute GOVERNMENT, that, given it's nature to take freedom away, busies itself with making otherwise independent creatures wholly subservient and dependent on it. Listen to enough talk radio, and you'll hear how we're supposed to be. It actually sounds a little like Rousseau's depiction of man in the state of nature. According to Rousseau, man, in the state of nature (that is, before civilization), cared for himself. He enjoyed unlimited freedom, and success depended upon his ability or own willingness to do for himself. Man, in his natural state, did not require supervision from an institutional authority. This is about as close to a Garden of Eden as man can get. However, like the fabeled Garden, Rousseau's nature man did not exist. The story is an allegory, an idealized notion of how man should be -- how man is in his heart (as we all feel the longing for total liberty). Unfortunately, as anyone who has ever tries to hang a seiling fan alone has discovered, there are some things that individuals simply cannot do for themselves. We cannot defend our borders as single people (although there are some people who believe this is possible), we need governments to secure our borders for us. A single man cannot fight against an entire nation. Therefore, we need governments to create armies to protect and defend us. We cannot survive alone in a world, where all fight against all, where Hobbes says that life is "nasty, brutish and short". We need protection. We would rather give up some of our freedom in exchange for safety and security. This is why man agrees to be governed. We also know that no matter how much we try to educate some, there are people who simply will not or cannot not make rational decisions. Governments take all suggestions of how to govern and mitigate as to which course of action is the best for the people to take. The Founders were well aware of this fact. Just ask yourself why the franchise was so limited at the Nation's founding? This is why Bentham believed that government should occasionally take an activist role. If the common good can be achieved by government occasionally acting as a GOVERNMENT, then the government should do so. And our government has certainly done so; the Reconstruction amendments following the Civil War, civil rights legislation, Supreme Court decisions reversing segregation, etc. Government should always be at the ready to reverse bad decision making when the people either cannot or will not do it themselves. Of course, the government does not have unlimited power. We may have forgotten this, but our government was created to protect our rights, not to grant them. The Rights of the People are not doled out by men in Washington, but handed to us by our Creator. Our Rights are inalienable (that means we can't even give them away voluntarily). But, like government, our rights are not absolute. We can have them taken from us by way of due process. And we know that our rights end as soon as they infringe on the rights of another person. I cannot execute a person for walking across my property, even if I post a sign that says "No Tresspassing". My rights to have an unmolested lawn do not overide another person's right to life. At their heart, all governments require some degree of coersion to achieve their ends (which is protecting and promoting the common good). I think that this fact is what sets some people off about GOVERNMENT -- it's the fact that they feel compelled to do anything at all. You can feel the spirit of Rousseau's nature man in your heart, but you have to recognize that if you wnat to live in a country of 300,000,000 people, you're going to have to do some things that you don't wan to do, and that you are definitely not always going to get what you want. Great political thinkers: Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, the American Founders, even Reagan, recognized that government is necessary. American Founder (and big GOVERNMENT enthusiast) Alexander Hamilton, said if men were angels that governments wouldn't be necessary. Well, men aren't. Even Reagan said that the aim wasn't to destroy government, but to find a way to make it work. The big question is how do we go about finding a government that protects liberty, serves the common good, promotes justice, and serves the wider group? The plain truth of the matter is that democracy is messy. It's prone to tyranny and bad governance. But, as Winston Churchill observed, as bad as democracy is, it still beats out every other bad form of government. We the people are in charge of this democracy. This is why we cannot fully blame our elected politicians nor can we fully call ourselves blameless when government goes wrong. To run a successful government, it takes lots of responsibility and alot of homework. Our task is not to drown government, but to do as Reagan said and find a way to make it work. So, my advice for anyone who complains about how much they hate GOVERNMENT and how much they's like to see the drowning, simply think of the places where the drowning has already taken place. And then ask yourself, is there some reason why you're not already in Somalia?

A Fate Worse Than God

At the end of the movie American Beauty, a post-murdered Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) tells us, the audience, that he is, despite all appearances, grateful for "every single moment of my stupid, little life". Now, there's a philosophical pinata in this movie, and it's been written about and commented on by professional and layman philosophers aplenty. A common theme that emerges among those who look at American Beauty philosophically (and I assume even those who don't), is the question of the meaning of life. At first glance, Lester's life seems pretty pathetic -- loveless marriage, crap-ass cubicle job (from which he is fired), and a daughter who propositions the neighbor kid to off her dad, not to mention Lester's growing obsession with the best friend of his teenage daughter. We look at Lester and see someone worthless, someone who has let life pass him by, someone who, if he disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice. Lester's life stank of the quiet desperaton that Thoreau wrote of in Walden. However, even though we know that Lester's life has come to nothing, at the end, he's still grateful for every single moment of his life. So, there are no wasted moments after all. At the end, Lester found meaning in something that seemed so meaningless. But for the rest of us, in the real world, how can we tell that, in the end, we'd be so grateful like Lester? How do we determine that the lives we have are worth living? The 18th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was nice enough to give us a method for solving one of life's most vexing questions: Is my life worth living? Nietzsche's solution? Eternal return. Nietzsche's "eternal return" goes a little something like this: a demon come to you and says "this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it... every pain and every joy... everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you..." . Nietzsche says if our response is that we "throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus", that our lives are not meaningful. that is, if, at the prospect of having to live your life over again for an eternity, you greet the news as someone would greet a death sentence, you had better rethink how you're living your life, and fast. Because your life sucks. Most of us would say yes to the demon if we had the possibility to change things we had done in our past -- to improve on ourselves, to change things for the better. Most of us wouldn't have a problem if the demon presented us with the situation that wheatherman Phil Connors experienced in the movie Groundhog Day. Phil was stuck living the same day repeatedly, but each time he began a new day, he was able to change his actions. Eventually, Phil discovered that the point of repeating the same day over and over was so that he would change something about himself. At the outset, Phil wasn't a very nice guy. Repeating Groundhog Day allowed Phil to see where he was going wrong. The day became a kind of cosmic mulligan. He did it 'til he got it right. Only when Phil improved himself was he allowed to move on to February 3. But with Nietzsche, there is no release. There is no moving on to the next day. And absolutely no changing things, either. What would we do if we realized that, wnlike Phil, we couldn't change what happened? We would have to live every excruciating detail of our lives forever? I suspect that only after a few times, we would end up alot like Michael Palin in the "Deja Vu" sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus. It doesn't take long before Palin's nerevs are frazzled, knowing that the same thing will happen over and over and over again. (if you haven't seen this sketch, watch it). The idea that is scary is that there aren't enough good times to make the truly awful times bearale for an eternity. For every fantastic birthday or trip to Cancun, there's that time that you were attacked by the neighbor's dog, or the time you spent a week in jail for unpaid traffic tickets. Those times sucked. In Nietzsche's eternal return, the demon gives us a choice. We can decide whether we want to take him up on his offer or not. But what if the afterlife (or whatever lies beyond our plane of existence) is more like what happened to Phil Conners? What if we don't have a choice? What if when our lives end, nature or God automatically pushes the "repeat" button? What if repeating our lives was something that wasn't meant to teach us a lesson about life so much as it becomes a punishment for our lives? There's this movie that came out in the mid-80s called High Spirits. It's reallya forgettable movie, but there's a character who is doomed to live the night of her murder for an eternity. Every night, she and her husband Martin reenact their wedding night. Martin accuses her of cheating (which she wasn't), chases her down and then stabs her. She dies and then the next night it's back to the same thing chase and stab again. By the time the audience sees the unfortunate bride and her husband replay her murder, they've been at it for over a hundred years. (Once again, however, she is released from her eternal bonds by love. She finds the true love of her life, played by Steve Guttenberg. Win some, lose some, eh?). But this poses a very interesting question. Ok, Nietzsche wants us to find meaning in our lives, but what if the real meaning is in our death? There's this idea that meaning has to be cultivated over a lifetime. That, taken as a whole, life either has or hasn't meaning. But why is this so? There are plenty of people who say that their entire point of view about life changed in a single moment. All the meaning of one's life can be crammed into one, singular moment. So why not live that moment for an eternity? That's ok, only if the moment we are living is worth living for an eternity, but what if it's one of those punishment moments? What if, if we are doomed to eternal punishment, we have to live the single worst moment of our lives for an eternity? In the movie Salvage, a young woman is forced (again, for seemingly inexplicable reasons, well at first anyway) to live the day of her murder over and over. As she begins to realize that she's repeating the same day over and over, she attempts to find ways to stop her murder from taking place. But, it seems that no matter what she does, she always ends up at home, where the murderer brutalizes her before murdering her and burying her body in a field. We think, like she does, if she can just figure out what's going on, much like Phil in Groundhog Day, she can break the cycle. But here's the thing. She's not repeating her murder to figure out anything about her life at all. In the grand scheme of things she really doesn't matter at all. It's because it's not about her life, it's about her death. She is a part of someone else's punishment. She's not stuck in her own eternal return, she's struck in her murderer's eternal return. He is being punished for murdering the young woman, her boyfriend, and a bunch of other people. He has to feel her pain, but the only way he can feel her pain is if she feels the pain of being murdered. That made me think, if a person chooses to take the demon up on his offer, exactly whose lives are involved? Is everyone you know doomed to be a part of your eternal repetition? If they are not, are they just facsimilies of the people you know? Is eternal return a group effort or is each person's recurrance solipsistic? (and if that is, how can I be sure that my life isn't now?). If I'm in something like Groundhog Day, and if everyone else wasn't repeating the day as I was, who were those people that I was dealing with? Were they convinvingly realistic looking holograms like the holodeck on Star Trek:TNG? If Igot to know those hologram people, did I really know the people that I thought that I knew once time returned to normal? You know, this may have all been an exercize in overthinking. I should try to just sit back and enjoy what I'm watching instead of analyzing everything for it's "philosophical significance".

I Heard They Play Speed Metal In Hell

It's been 150 years since Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species. There is, I hear, a re-release of Darwin's classic, including a brand spankin' new introduction co-written by the star of the switcheroo flick Like Father, Like Son, and Growing Pains, MEGACHRISTIAN Kirk Cameron.

Apparently, Darwin's book is in the public domain, so anyone can write a version of it if they want. Kirk says that he's doing a new intro with the intention of presenting a balanced view of Darwin's work. Apparently a "balanced" view means saying 'this book is bullshit' in an introduction.

Ok, so he wouldn't say "bullshit".

When I was a bit younger and a church-goin' person, I fell victim to just about the worst thing that could happen to a God-fearin' fella. I was sitting in church one sunday morning, thumbing through my Bible (I think the sermon had to do with something in Luke), when I experienced only what I can call a "reverse revelation".

It was at that moment when I suddenly stopped believing in God.

I can't explain it any other way than to say that it was sudden, like a bolt of lightening from the heavens. Really, at that moment I felt like it must have felt for Saul on the road to Damascus, except for the fact that I was suddenly an atheist. Sitting in church, no less.

I didn't feel too bad about it, though. While I was sitting there (beacuse it would have been rude to just get up and leave during a sermon), things became clearer and I finally understood. The heavy load of doubt had been lifted. I no longer felt the gulit of wrestling with my doubt because it had been revealed to me that the thing that I doubted did not exist. It was like God did me a little favor in whispering in my ear, "I'm going to tell you something, but don't tell anyone else here. I don't exist".

I thought that I should have been feeling something about not believing... guilt, worry, a sense that I was doomed to hell... nope. Nothing. I didn't feel bad about it at all. That morning while I was sitting there, receiving the most amazing news that I could have ever received in my life was the most singular moment of clarity that I had ever felt the entire time that I had even gone to church. All these years later, I still feel the same.

When it first happened, I thought that the problem might have been the church that I was going to. But each time I went to another one, the feeling was the same. I had even tried dabbling into "alternative" religious practices (yes, including Wicca, and no, it had nothing to do with that movie The Craft. But given my size and gender, Wicca would seem a natural choice). As if I were hit by the backhand of God, God said to me, "why are you insisting on doing this to yourself? I don't exist!!" I finally had to admit to myself what I already knew.

I was an atheist.

The funny thing is, is when you make the discovery of your non-believingness, none but the most millitant atheist wants to admit that that's what they are. Many of us cling to the badge "agnostic", believing that it's better to "keep our options open", than to say that we flat-out don't believe that there is a God. It's better to say that one is non-practicing than to say that one is non-believing. Eventually, however, the charade catches up with us when we realize that we aren't aganostic at all, that it's not a matter of not believing that no major religion has got it on what God is, but a matter of the fact that we believe that there is no omnicompetent being that occupies any role in the galaxy (I decided to use a definite description instead of saying that "God does not exist" for some positivist-leaning butthead saying that I've made a negative existential claim, which is something that I cannot do). Still, after many years I hadn't given up the hope of eventually believing in something. The idea of having no belief seemed like being lost, or worse yet, it smacked of disingenuity. The accusation towards many atheists is that we actually do believe in God, we're just acting out. It's not wanting to believe in God that the atheist is guilty of, not actually not believing in God.

But I knew what I felt. I felt that He did not exist. I had tried to get back the feeling that he did but failed. I had drifted from Christendom into agnosticism, theism, deism, and finally tried my hand at paganism. It was toolate for Pascal's wager and I was too disillusioned to take Kierkegaard's "leap of faith". But something still nagged at my, dare I say, soul. It wasn't long before I found myself with a copy of the Satanic Bible in my hands. I don't think that the average misanthropic teen escapes high school without at least one encounter with the late Anton LaVey's paean to the Dark Prince.

For those who are unfamiliar with LaVey's tome to the Devil, the Satanic Bible includes the Nine Satanic Statements, the 9th of which reads: "Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!" LaVey says that, while in his youth, he worked at a carnival, and on Saturday nights he would see the men leering at the young nubile dancers. The same men, who when they returned to the carnival grounds the next morning for the tent services, would stand next to their wives and children singing hymns to God. He saw the hypocrisy of the men who indulged their flesh on Saturday night and then begged for forgiveness on Sunday morning. LaVey says that he saw how the devil was used to manipulate people into believing that all things physical were inherently evil. But as he saw it, wanting physical pleasure comes natural to people, so how can what is natural be sinful?

After reading LaVey's book, I didn't come away an atheist (namely because LaVey's "satanism" is more akin to secular humanism than actual diabolism. So one conceivably, can be a Satanic atheist), but I did see one big point to consider: namely, that LaVey's Ninth Satanic Statement works in reverse.

It's easy to say that God has been the atheist's (humanist, satanist) best friend for all these yers, as he is the one that they've been railing about for all this time!

*although I know at this point that the Wiccans would say that since their religion has nothing to do with the Christian God, that he is not their best friend. If you don't believe this, just cruise on up to your local Wiccan and tell her (because it will almost always be a her) that Wiccans are like devil worshippers. If you don't know how to spot a Wiccan, just look for the "goddess" sized young lady with the flowing hair (she'll most likely look like a heavier-set Tori Amos) and the gossamer dress if Wiccans worship the devil. Sit back and get ready to hear about the 3-fold rule and the "burning times".

After reading Christopher Hitchens' god is not great, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, Russell's "Why I Am Not A Christian", and a handful of stuff by Michael Shermer, I realized that while I may be an atheist, I am a very Christian atheist. I realize that an atheist is only an atheist if he does not believe that there is no god. So far as our culture is concerned, that god that I maintain does not exist, is a Christian one. And like Christopher Hitchens, the god that I believe does not exist is not only Christian, but decidedly Protestant as well. I quote Hitchens, "I know enough about all religions to know that I would always be an infidel at all times and in all places, but my particular atheism is a Protestant atheism". As a product of the Protestant tradition, my atheistic values tend to echo exactly what I learned in Sunday school. I shouldn't kill or steal, or bear false witness. I believe that hard work will be rewarded, and that if one has a relationship with god, it is a personal one... And that the Pope is a sham. I cannot escape my Christian values even if I try to leave them behind. I find myself quoting Jesus on the subject of taxes or who we should treat the poor (heck, I even found myself referring to the feeding of the multitude when discussing health care). I still celebrate Christmas and prefer to hear traditional christmas hymns to the contemporary Christmas jingles by Michael Bolton or Boyz to Men (although I do like Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime"). I say "bless you" when someone sneezes, and I still write the word God with a capital G. And unlike Richard Dawkins, I wholeheartedly disagree that raising children in a religion is the same as child abuse. I always say that my hypothetical children are Christians. They gotta get their morals from somewhere, right?

We are all influenced, in one way or another, by the dominant culture. And whether I like it or not, I live in a Christian dominated/influenced culture. I can choose whether I accept the fact and move on, or whether I waste time protesting putting up "happy holidays" signs at Target. This is why I am, as I tell my friends, the most Christian atheist I know.

Although I find those who believe in God a little delusional, I understand that I can't be rid of him. I may say that I know that he doesn't exist, but there is a world out there full of people who believe that he does. And so far, I'm outnumbered billions to one. Nietzsche may have been correct when he wrote that God is dead, but like Elvis, there are still a whole hell of alot of people out there who go around singing his songs.

Tuesdsays With Maury

If there is any bit of television that makes me think that deja vu is real, it's the Maury Povich Show. Every time I tune into the show I swear I'm watching something that I've seen before: some bird has dragged in a number of equallly morally suspect young men (some of whom are related to each other) to have Maury erveal which fine specimen of erudite gentlemen is the sire of her child. By the time they figure out which one is, Maury has DNA tested half the guys in BFE Kentucky. Although I find the whole matter disgusting (I mean really, if there's one thing that a woman should be keeping track of, it's how many guys that she's balled in one week), I can't tear my eyes of the spectacle. And I'm so delighted when some dude is on who insists that he's never even had sex with his cousin's girlfriend ( he's usually the one hurling the most insults about her easy virtue) turns out to be the father. Spectacular! Watching the moment of revelation almost beats the fact that I've spent an entire afternoon not doing anyting even remotely constructive, like working for an actual paycheck. It's not that the entire experience is without shame --at least on my part. All the while I'm watching, I keep asking myself "why are you watching this crap?". When did Maury Povich's bi-weekly "you are NOT the father" show become something that is acceptable to air on broadcast television? I look at the parade of trash talkin', baby makin', semi-illiterates on Maury and I ask, from under which rock did these people crawl?!? Now, I'm not calling these people substandard to be insulting, I'm sure that when they're at home, some of them are really wonderful people. But what gets me mad is the fact that these people aren't just cartoons that entertain and then disappear as soon as the show is over. They're real people, who exist among us. And if that's the case, I think, then we, as a species, are in a bad way. I think while I'm watching, that there is no such thing as dignity anymore. Or modesty, or decorum, or shame. And I say shame on myself for watching the show in the first place. They wouldn't be there airing out all of their dirty laundry if there weren't an audience to watch. In an interview on NPR, Chris Hedges said that our culture has been emptied out and replaced by fantasy. He says that the worse that reality becomes for us, the more we run to distractions; what Hedges calls "pseudoevents" like, gossip, trivia, celebrity breakdowns, and the eroticization of our culture. When I was getting my poly sci degree, I had this professor who would go on rants from time to time about how things like Girls Gone Wild are ruining society by breaking down the barrier between the public and private spheres. He said that when we take our private business into the public arena, we make things that shouldn't be acceptable to do in public (like showing your boobs and other areas) acceptable. Once we've broken down that barrier, he said, there's nothing that is inappropriate. That's degrading to the culture, he concluded. I gotta say that I don't disagree. Everywhere is casual friday. You don't have to look around too hard to see it, either. Cell phone calls that are way too personal and way too loud, prominently displayed undergarments, people wearing pajama pants everywhere, celebrity sex tapes dominate what we see in the media and on the street. I used to think that eventually things would get back to "normal", that is, people wouuld see that they're making fools of themselves in public and start to behave. So far it hasn't happened. I used to think that acting stupidly on television would be an embarassing enough experience that people wouldn't do it. Apparently it's not. Because every week there's a new batch of ladies on Maury gene testing another batch of suspected fathers. They seem happy as clams up there on the stage. The point it seems, is that the important thing is to be on TV. So long as cameras are on them, they don't care why -- it's just to be on TV! They can go back home and watch the show when it airs and be local celebrities for awhile, jsut like all the other floks who make their living being professsionally famous. This seems to be the point of the whole thing. It doesn't matter how you get on the boob tube, so long as you get on. We get so fascinated with ourselves that we don't see what all of our narcissism is doing to us. In the movie Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle called it "morbid self-attention". It's getting so wrapped up in yourself that you fail to see that you're destroying yourself. Because when we look at ourselves we fail to see the world around us. And if you're always looking at yourself, then you're never looking at what's going on in the world. I remember when the whole President impeachment thing was going down, and Monica Lewinsky was making the rounds on the talk shows. Did it matter to anyone that she got famous for putting the president's weenie in her mouth? No, it didn't. Least of all, it didn't seem to matter to her. She never said "gee, I wish I had gotten famous some other way. This was is something that I should really be ashamed of". In our fame-based culture, you used to actually have to do something to get famous -- invent something, be good at something, cure some disease, act, dance, write, or sing (or all if you're a quadruple threat, like Justin Timberlake). There was an idea that notoriety had to be earned. Now it seems all you have to do is get on TV. Unfortunately, this is extremely easy. All you have to do is be freaky enough or better yet, have someone post your freakiness on YouTube, and you're set. You can be famous. So you can give the pres oral, it doesn't matter. Monica Lewinsky was going to be famous, and we were going to see her being famous no matter whether we objected or not. So is every other freak out there. That makes me think of a character in the movie The Ring, who tells a reporter to ind her own business and stop trying to find out what happened to his daughter. She tells him that she's trying to help. his response is one that I think applies to the Mauryization of our culture. He tells the reporter that they "take one person's tragedy and force the world to experience it... spread it like sickness". I think that shows like Maury Povich's have the same effect. I would think that Maury, if you asked him, would come up with some reason why having these people on his show benefits the public. He wouldn't realize that what his show does is spread an infection. It's a culture destroying infection. One that makes the obscene reasonable and feeds us nothing of any use for our minds or souls. Its's all bread and circus. And we all know what that did to the Roman Empire. Chris Hedges says that our culture has devolved into a culture of moral nihilism. Funny, that I think that ultimately Hedges and the founder of nihilism (that being Nietzsche) would conclude that our culture is headed on the path of destruction. Nietzsche says that our society is so screwed up because of the "plebian bias of the modern mind". Nietzsche laments the triumph of the common and the vulgar over the Noble and the Good. For Nietzsche, the ruination of society is in the triumph of the slave over the master. Nietzsche blamed the shift on Christianity, which places compassion among the most desired qualities of man, as the "slave" morality that has weakened the power of the master class over the rabble (that is, over you and me). Christianity elevated the poor, the weak, the meek (you know, all those inferior people who deserve to die), to the status of equals of the rulers. They did this, he says, because they had grown resentful of those who rule. So the slaves had to create a god that would tell the rulers that they must treat the slaves as equals, have compassion for those who cannot do for themselves. For Nietzsche, this is the wrong way to go. Although I don't connect Christian ethics to the cultural degradation of society as Nietzsche did, I think he is right on one point, that is, that our culture has bee overrun by appealing to the lowest common denominator. When people get famous for blowing the president, there is something wrong with us. If we don't have something that is the "better" morality to show us what is morally right, we'll continue to slide down towards the abyss of the Maury P0vich show as a way of life. A little overstated, but it's true. Back in the 60s, John Lennon famously said that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus". He was blasted for what he said, but in a way he was exactly spot-on. He was repeating what Nietzsche had said about God. For Nietzsche, we had killed God by replacing him with science. For John Lennon, he noted that his fans were more into the music of the Beatles than they were into gong to church on Sunday morning. Lennon was right in suggesting that celebrity often fills the role of god. When we talk about celebrities, we call them "stars". Stars, of course, are in the heavens, where God lives. We look t the TV to see the stars -- to see our cultural gods. This is the victory that Nietzsche was talking about, and what Chris Hedges meant when he says that our culture has been triumphed by spectacle. The victory (in our case) of the pseudo-famous and the fame wannabees over those who really should be looked at (meaning people of fine moral standing). Unfortunately or fortunately, whichever way you want to see it, I'm no Nietzsche. I'm not terribly eager to throw off all this spirit-destroying slave morality and live according to the will of the masters. I've got a feeling the the Ubermensche show wouldn't be all that entertaining. I mean, there would probably be no chance of a fist fight breaking out on stage between a couple of two-timing lesbians.

And Now Here's Something I hope You Really Like

You ever see a movie that just blows your mind?

Some people think that a movie needs lots of special effects or lots of bare boobs to be good. This is just not so. Sometimes the most amazing things you'll see are in black and white, and need no more than a psychotic little girl with steel-toed shoes and a fierce determination to win a penmanship medal.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Bad Seed.

I'm not talking about the updated (I think 70s) version. I'm talking about the original 1956 film adaptation based on the Maxwell Anderson stageplay (based on the novel by William March) starring Patty Mc Cormack as Rhoda Penmark, 8 years of tow-headed evil, and Nancy Kelly as her more than frazzled mother. The Bad Seed may be responsible for launching the sub-genre of "devil child" films, which includes The Omen, The Exorcist, Problem Child, Clifford, and this summer's enfant terrible tale Orphan. It's one of those monster movies (and Rhoda is indeed a monster) that you don't think will stay with you, but it will.

And it does.

The scary thing is, is that Rhoda is the devil you know. She comes off like a pigtailed sweetie who'll exchange a basket of kisses for a basket of hugs, but inside that child a murderous beast is lurking. When Claude Daigle wins the penmanship medal, that Rhoda thought she had rightfully earned, she clobbers him over the head with her shoes and takes the medal as the boy drowns by the pier. When she returns home, she asks her mother for a peanut sandwhich and tells her mother that watching the boy die was "exciting". The thing that is all the more disturbing is that we've all met potential Rhoda's during our lifetimes (they turn out to be those people that we went to high school with who think that Faces of Death is a cool movie and continue to do so long after graduating from high school). She doesn't look like a monster at all. She looks normal.

That's the thing with alot of serial killers, they look normal.

And make no mistake, Rhoda Penmark is a serial killer.

When the handyman LeRoy runs afoul and crosses Rhoda's path (by accusing her of having to do with Claude Daigle's death), she promptly sets him ablaze. When Rhoda decides that her elderly neighbor Monica needs to hand over her lovebirds now, she plots to kill the old woman (we know this when Rhoda asks her mother how long lovebirds live). We also know that Rhoda may have killed another elderly neighbor when the family lived in Wichita.

At the heart of the drama is psychology. The Penmark's neighbor Monica is a psych junkie. Her rambles on about inherited evil and the exploits of some of history's most notorious killers, including the evil murderess, Bessie Danker. When Rhoda's mother, in a flashback sequence that would make Dr. Phil envious, discovers that she is the daughter of Bessie Danker, she wigs out, fearing that Rhoda might have inherited the evil (she eventually atempts to kill both Rhoda and herself).

That's funny.

Not ha, ha funny, but funny.

Of course, when we talk about things like inheriting a certain disposition, or the idea that one's future is determined by outside forces, we slip into the realm of the philosopher. The idea that a person's outcomes are determined by outside forces (genetics, environment, etc) is determinism. The Penmark's neighbor Monica seems to subscribe to the psychological theory that certain psychological tendencies are passed down from parent to child. As a fidgety parent will have fidgety children, likewise a serial murderer will breed killers. Monica seems to favor what we would call a reductionist view of human nature. Our behavior can be predicted by looking at the various mental and physiological processes that take place within our bodies. If a parent passes what Kurt Vonnegut called "bad chemicals" to their offspring, it is highly likely that that child will also exhibit the same tendencies as the parent. Freud said that "anatomy is destiny". This is what Monica seems to believe as well. We know that mental illnesses tend to run in families (this is also bolstered by twin studies that find that twins raised apart tend to share physical and personality traits in common). We find clusters of manic depression, depression or schizophrenia in families, as do certain organic disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease. So, if we believe as Monica believes, the child of Besssie Danker would be a natural born killer. So, ir would not be beyond the possibility that the granddaughter of Bessie Danker would have inherited some strange personality disorder that causes her to kill.

This may be ok for the hard-core determnist, but some people may say no way, they don't believe that our destinies lie in our genes. We are not merely the products of our anatomy, but we are influenced by other things outside of ourselves. Ultimately, the choice to kill or do anything else is made by the individual -- not an impulse that we are incapable of resisting. In philosophy, this is the classic debate of free will and determinism.

When we think of Rhoda, we ask if the little girl perhaps suffered from a broken moral compass - that she may have been unable to legislate morally. But when we watch the film, we see that Rhoda has a moral code -- a strict one at that. Her code is strictly egoist. She wants what is best for her. If others stand in her way, that's their problem.

When I watched The Bad Seed, I thought that the biggest philosophical question that stood out was whether our decisions are a product of free will or if our decisions are determined. But when I looked closer, I discovered that I was thinking about ideas of divine retribution (it ultimately takes and act of God to stop Rhoda Penmark), ideas of karma and justice, and how we should treat mentally ill children? I asked, when God struck down Rhoda, did she get what she deserved? When her mother Christine tried to kill her, was her action morally correct? Would I have felt differently about it if Rhoda wasn't a child? Was Christine morally obligated to kill her daughter? If there is a real child like Rhoda who has killed or we think may be capable of killing, how are we to deal with that child? In the interest of the greater society, are we obligated to detain them? alter them chemically (like how criminals are "rehabilitated" in Demolition Man?)?should we euthanize them for their own good? Just a few of these questions popped up when I was watching The Bad Seed. I'm sure than there are more to ask. There are a couple of different versions of the story (including the original novel) so I'm sure that each interpretation will stir up a new set of questions.

So my advice is Netflix the movie, nuke a bag of popcorn, and indulge in wishing that God would strike an 8 year old child dead and gleefully cheering when he does for a couple of hours.

But you might want to be careful next time you promise a couple of birds to the neighbor kid.

Especially if you live anywhere near staircases.

White Ford Polanski

Ithink that Chris Hedges says this so much better than I ever will so to hear him say it better, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch0fl0m60Oo And now for my pathetic take on something important... You know when someone is supposed to be important. It's when you call them only by their last name.

Nietzsche, Reagan, Christ.

The world of entertainment is no different. We know the greater than famous only by their last names. Which means, conversely, if one is not great we would say the whole name. For instance, if I am watching Die Hard 2, I'm watching a Renny Harlin flick. But cinema belongs to Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, Hitchcock, and recently, Tarantino.

You get the idea.

One of the great ones has drawn some attention to himself these days, but not for his filmmaking.

Polanski.

I'm in no way a movie expert but I've been told that Roman Polanski is a pretty heavy-duty movie director. They say that before I die, I'm supposed to watch these movies: Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, and Chinatown -- all directed by Polanski. Well, I've seen Rosemary's Baby (and unfortunately its sequel, which may have started that horrible Hollywood tradition of following up fairly decent movies with sequels that you wouldn't show to someone you really wanted to hurt). For those who don't watch cinema, Polanski is probably more (well) known for being the husband of Sharon Tate, who was murdered in 1969 by members of the Manson Family. These things made Polanski famous, but recent attention given to the director has focused on something that made him infamous. Namely, the 1977 drugging and rape of a 13 year old girl at the home of fellow famous person Jack Nicholson following a photo shoot.

Polanski admitted that he gave the girl champange and quaaludes (now that says 70s!), and eventually pled guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor.

As a culture, we tend to look somewhat negatively at people who have sex with kids.

Knowing that this is so, and that he stood to find himself on the bad end of the law, Roman Polanski fled sentencing and went to France, a country that does not have a full extradition treaty with the United States -- thus avoiding spending any time behind bars. After 30 years of avoiding his sentence, Polanski was arrested in September of 2009 while on his way to the Zurich Film Festival.

Better late than never.

In a not-so stunning move, the Hollywood community stood up and rallied to Polanski's defense. Some of Polanski's fellow Hollywoodites signed a petition calling for his immediate release. Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Woody Allen, Debra Winger (who you almost have to ask "who?" when you hear her name), and Whoopi Goldberg (who, thankfully informed us of the difference between rape and rape rape) are among the stars who have called for Polanski's release. Even the governments of France and Polanski's native Poland have called for Polanski to be set free. Many, including the Swiss and the Los Angeles DAs office, haven't been swayed by the pressure from our fine moviemaking community. Some have gone so far as to dismiss the chatter as Hollywood's rallying around one of their own, no matter how awful the crime (funny, I remember a considerable lack of this reflex when OJ was accused of double murder). Although Whoopi Goldberg's remark may have been another example of celebrity-induced boneheadedness, she brings up a point that most assuredly many have pondered since Polanski's arrest -- was what he did really a crime? Not only that, but if it was, has the passage of time lessened the offense?

Did time heal these wounds?

Some of Polanski's supporters (and some people in general) say that attitudes were different in the 70s. I suppose that this sentiment has something to do with the fact that, at the tail end of the sexual revolution, sexual attitudes, even concerning children was more laxed than they are now. So, some say that determining whether an actual crime was committed has to do with whether a child is able to consent to sexual activity.

Psychologists say that children much younger than 18 are morally aware (thus responsible) for their actions. Chlidren as young as 9, according to psychologists, have moral distinct sensibilities.

A 13 year old is, according to Freud, in the genital stage of development -- a stage wherein children begin to initiate romantic and sexual relations with members of the opposite sex (or same sex if that's the way you roll). Traditionally, common law recognized that children as young a 14 could be held legally accountable for their actions. And anecdotally, we've all either seen or heard of the kid who neither looked nor acted like a child. So, in the minds of some, a child of 13 is more than biologically capable of deciding of she wants to have sex with a grown man.

But this assertion doesn't sound right to some people (myself included). It can easily be stated that there is a difference between biological maturity and mental maturity or moral awareness. When we say that someone is "mature", we're including the idea that he is capable of rational decision-making. Rationality is connected (if not required) to the ability to consent to any activity. So if we bring up the idea of rationality as required for engaging in consentual activity, we must ask when is a child rational? When can a child make decisions concerning sexuality.

I've decided to take a look at what Kant says about rationality.

Kant says that moral judgments are products of reason or the rational mind. Rational beings possess rational minds. And having rational minds, humans are rational beings. Rational beings possess a free mind and are capable of deciding according to their free will ( meaning that we are free moral agents). Moral agents must be treated as ends-in-themselves, that is, we are obliged to treat others as rational moral agents and not as a means to our own ends. Although Kant says a great deal about what free moral agents are, he spends little time telling us when a person is a free moral agent -- he doesn't specify at what age a person becomes a moral agent. It is obvious to us that an 18 month old child does not share the same moral capacity as his 28 year old mother. But, if we look at the toddler's 6 year old sister, the distinction between the moral awareness of adults and children aren't so clear. We can see that a child of six possesses some capacity to perform moral judgments. But, according to Kant's view is "some" enough? I think this is Kant's answer: Kant says that when we interact with others, we must treat them as if they are rational beings -- irrespective of whether the individual is in fact a free moral agent.

So, if psychologists say that children as young as 9 can render moral judgments, and Kant suggests that we treat people as if they are rational moral agents, then Whoopi Goldberg may have a point.

Roman Polanski is not guilty of rape rape.

But this still doesn't sit well with me. I still feel like he has done something wrong for which he should be punished. But I realize that, despite my gut feelings, the supporters may be right. But then, I remember one, small, detail. He drugged her.

We know that when it comes to sexual activity and the law, a person who is inebriated or mentally diminished cannot legally consent to sexual activity. This is why if you give a girl a roofie (even if she said that she wanted to have sex with you hours eariler), you could find yourself facing rape charges. The fact that she was unable to consent to sexual intercourse at the time that the activity took place meant that you performed an unconsentual sexual act with a drugged person. You could not only find yourself facing rape charges, but also charges for administering the drug (I think in some states it's considered poisoning). Kant's idea of rationality requires that a person be fully engaged in their decision-making ( which means that in addition to being sober, a person cannot be forced or coerced into moral judgments according to Kant). If a person is under the influence of drugs, Kant would say that the person is not fully capable of using their ability to reason. By drugging the girl, she became a mere means to Polanski's ends. So, in this circumstance, she could have looked Roman Polanski in the eye and demanded that he make her a woman, but the fact that he filled her full of booze and ludes made her unable to participate in the act as a free moral agent.

So Whoopi is wrong. He is guilty of rape rape.

But still there are others who would hold that Polanski's arrest is unjust. Debra Winger stated that Polanski is being punished by a "philistine" legal system. The French Culture Minister said that Polanski has been "thrown to the lions". They feel that he is being treated like a dangerous criminal when he is not. They argue that he is a good man and a humanitarian who has not hurt anyone. Treating a good man like a hardened criminal they say, is a makes a mockery of the concept of justice.

Of course this claim forces us to look a little at what justice (exactly) means.

We ask, what is justice? Some suggest that justice is each getting what he deserves. Others say that justice is equal treatment under the law. Others say that it is acting according to one's virtues, or that justice is whatever the ruler says that it is. Kant's theory of retributive justice holds that those who harm others ought to be harmed in return. In short, you get what's commin' to ya. But, Kant states, the punishment must be proportional. If an offender commits a minor offense, the punishment must be minor as well. If he commits a major offense, then we must punish him accordingly. In this way, Kant's justice is much like justice under Roman Law which held that "the constant and perpetual will to render to each what is his due". In our system of justice, prison sentences are either long or short, depending on the severity of the crime.

So, using Kant's theory of justice, we can say that Polanski knowingly and willingly gave drugs and alcohol to a child and then had (forced) sex with her ( did I mention that she says that she initially put up a fight and that she said "no" repeatedly?). Kant says that, as autonomous moral agents, we are to repect Polanski's actions. If we fail to do so, we are not giving him the proper respect that is required for him to act as a free moral agent. Since he acted freely, we are bound to respect his actions. And since he acted in a manner that was (and is) against the law, we must give him the proper punishment for his crime. Failure to do so is not only harmful to Polanski, but also harmful to us as well.

(Here's the thing... his pals in Hollywood think that they're doing a good thing by saving their colleague from a corrupt justice system. But in reality what they're doing is preventing Roman Polanski from being responsible for his own actions. This is what over-protective parents do when thay want to save their children from every harm in the world. Ultimately, all these good intentions serve to do more harm than good, as the act to protect is less protective than it's paternalistic, thus robbing an individual the ability to make their own moral choices).

So, using Kant yet again, we must see to it that Polanski serves his time.

But, for every Kantian there is an equal and opposite Utilitarian waiting in the wings, ready to say his peace. A utilitarian may say that punishing Roman Polanski now is of little use. So much time has passed and he hasn't done anything like that crime since. Polanski is not a threat to anyone and that sending him to prison would be a waste of time and money, and it only goes to dredge up old memories that even the "victim" has suggested that we let go. To punish him now would be a negative (as it detracts from the common good, and it wastes resources that could have been spent bringing real criminals to justice, and by incarcerating Polanski we're locking up a productive, upstanding, creative member of society). On the first notion, that too much time has passed, and that to do anything now would be useless, Entertainment Weekly contributor Chris Nashawaty put it like this: Roman Polanski may be a great director but he's still a convicted felon. The fact that 30 years has passed has not made the crime any less morally repugnant. If we wanted to argue that time lessens offenses, we can use the same argument to release Manson family member Leslie van Houten, and likewise argue that it was morally wrong to keep a dying Susan Atkins in prison (there are those who would argue that the passage of time has not made the Manson murders any less morally repugnant --even if Atkins was dying). The utilitarian not only has to consider those who are directly affected by the crime, but everyone who stands to be affected (which in te case of the justice system means everyone). If Polanski is released without serving his sentence, the utilitarian must consider the negative effects of that decision as well, including the possibilty that the integrity and reputation of the justice system might be damaged if people percieve that the legal system is unjustly weighing in favor of Polanski. We see justice is a matter not only of conviction but also of serving the sentence. By fleeing before serving his sentence and possibly getting away with not serving one at all the public may lose confidence in the system's ability to administer justice equally under the law ( as there is already the popular perception that there is a different system of justice for celebrities). Letting Polanski go may seem like the utilitarian thing to do, but may in fact do more harm than good.

And it's this point of two systems of justice that I would like to end.

Rawls held that we could bring fairness into society if we pursued justice from under a veil of ignorance. Rawls believed that if we made laws that benefitted everyone and reduced inequality that we could maintain a just society.

There are those who believe that this idea is complete bullshit.

When we watch TV and complain that OJ "got away" with double murder, or that Leif Garrett paralyzed his friend in a car accident and served not one day behind bars, or that Robert Downey, jr., pulled off a B&E and we were supposed to feel sorry for him, we often say that it seems that there are two systems of justice -- one for the rich and famous and one for everybody else. And seeing Hollywood types like Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg rallying around a convicted child rapist only goes to show that some of our beliefs about a multi-layered justice system are true. We think that the fact that Roman Polanski is a celebrity earns him better treatment than the average barber or computer programmer or some poor undocumented dude who some kid says that he touched her in the park on her way to school. If Roman Polanski were anything other than Roman Polanski, we say, he'd be behind bars before you can say Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby? sucked eggs. Perhaps this is why: maybe the real problem is not that there is no morality in Hollywood, but that the famous operate under a different system of justice than everyone else does. Perhaps their view of justice is Aristotelian.

According to Aristotle, some people, because of their character or virtues deserve more. Unlike Rawls, who seeks to minimize inequality, the Aristotelian thinker sees inequality as a mere fact of life. Some people are, by nature, better than average. Inequality is natural. I remember Sharon Tate's sister saying that her former brother-in-law is a philanthropist. And we see that if she is correct, he is not only philanthropically-inclined, but as an artist, he gives his art to the people. By doing his natural talent, he is enhancing the lives of all -- he contributes to Happiness. Aristotle called these types of men magnanimous. And of magnanimous men Aristotle writes, "... since he deserves most... for the better man always deserves more, and the best man most".

And perhaps this is it.

It really isn't a matter whether a child consented to have sex with a man more than twice her age in the home of a mega-star in 1977. It doesn't matter whether she gleefully and rationally entered into sexual relations with Roman Polanski. What matters, we see, is that people like Roman Polanski are just different than people like me and everyone who isn't famous. If he had played his cards right, he should have looked the judge squarely in the face, announced that he was better than everyone in the courtroom, and walked out. I'm sure that it would have worked.

I don't see whay he's hesitating to do it now.

And if anyone believes that I actually think that he shouldn't be behind bars, I need only say that I may be an egoist, but at heart I am a Kantian.

They guy shouldn't know what sunlight feels like for some time.