Matthew T Grant

I’ve posted the second official installment of my Smallish Circle Podcast entitled, “Lauren Schellenbach on Lesbians, Red Diaper Babies, and Living in Los Angeles.” I’ve known Lauren for many years now and am very pleased to introduce her to the wider world via the miracle of podcasting.

If you are interested in communist childhood lore, how to become a lesbian, or why good food is so hard to find in Los Angeles, you should listen to this podcast. If you would like to hear what it sounds like when Vox Femina, the chorus in which Lauren sings and on whose board she serves as chair, cuts loose, you can check that out here. If you would like to catch future episodes of Matthew T. Grant’s Smallish Circle, subscribe via iTunes.

Finally, if you would like to hear the still, small voice which speaks to you with undying love from the center of your heart, just be very, very quiet.

A few months back at the playground with my children, we found a hatchling that had been knocked out of its nest by a thunderstorm. It was lying on the ground, half covered with ants, but twitching because it was still alive.

Walking around the neighborhood the other day, we found spots where a skunk or raccoon had dug up and eaten a bunch of turtle’s eggs.

I found a dead fisher cat by the side of the road. I told a friend about it and she said, “We had a raccoon’s nest in a tree in our backyard and one night the raccoons were screaming and freaking out because a fisher cat had climbed into the nest and was eating their babies.”

When some look at the so-called “natural” world, they see marvelous, even miraculous, complexity. Others see the hand of a loving and just creator. I see a combination of indifference, brutality, and madness. The sun and blue sky look down on your family vacation just as they did the Killing Fields.

Whenever someone invokes the “natural” as something inherently positive and good, I remind them that there is no moral value inherent in any aspect of the physical universe.

I’m also quick to acknowledge that imposing or imputing moral value to actions, events, and objects in the physical universe, as humans are so inclined to do, is perfectly natural.

Image Courtesy of DG Jones.

When someone deems your actions “unethical,” they generally mean, “your actions do not conform to a specific ethical standard’s notion of ‘right action’ and thus belong to the category of  ‘wrong action’.”

When you ask them the basis for their ethics, they will have two possible answers. On the one hand, they will refer to an authority who has established the ethical code and infer that you should abide by the code out of respect or obeisance to said authority.

On the other hand, and this is the post-enlightenment tendency, they will justify their ethical standard in terms of practical or utilitarian concerns regarding the outcome of actions deemed wrong.

Here is where conflict arises. No ethical standards can be immediately or unproblematically derived from the world of phenomena, particularly when the phenomena in question are social in nature. The ethical conclusions drawn in this way from or against any particular act are dependent both on the detailed knowledge and accurate depiction of the human situation concerned – both areas in which certainty is, for the most part, provisional.

Dispute is always possible when we are describing situations in human life and particularly when we are claiming that, “given situation x, action y, will lead to outcome z.” In the realm of science, the experimental method stipulates that exceedingly rigorous conditions be met if someone is to even make the claim, let alone experimentally verify, that, given x, action y leads to outcome z. In fact, the experimental situation is intentionally artificial, the connections between x, y, and z demonstrably tight, and the conclusions peculiarly modest.

Unfortunately, in human life, given the number of variables involved in even the simplest interaction between two people, let alone the complexities inherent in the multiple highly interdependent or even very weakly linked interactions that compromise any social process, ethical standards that are justified in terms of “inevitable” outcomes of specific actions are either trivially few or unquestionably questionable.

Yet, herein lies the conundrum. If you question the ethical standard, you are pointed to the utilitarian reason behind it. If, however, you question the utilitarian reason,  you are quickly accused of questioning the ethic.

It becomes clear that the ethic itself is not seen as the product of social consensus and thus open to revision or dispute. The apparent argument from utility reverts to an argument from authority. Thus, if you are questioning the ethic, you are implicitly questioning the authority. If you are questioning the authority, you are in opposition. If you are in opposition, you are an opponent. If you are an opponent, you must be overcome.

Any conflict that cannot be resolved via dialog and compromise, must be resolved by force. While such a resolution may be “comprehensible,” to the extent that it follows the laws of physics, for example, it will not be “reasonable.”

Disputes over ethics are sad and the sadness stems from weakness. The proponents of a particular ethical standard resort to force in order to silence opponents because, sadly, they do not possess the power that could transmute their ethic into law.

Image Courtesy of “T” altered art.

I may be late to the party, but I always have a good time.

See, I final caught Heath Ledger’s swan song in The Dark Knight and, like many people, his performance as the Joker really got under my skin.

Weird, damaged, and menacingly off-kilter, Ledger’s Joker embodies everything that Western rationalism apparently opposes and inevitably calls forth.

Unlike those shadowy figures who are thus labeled, this Joker is a terrorist in the most literal sense of the word: his sole aim is the production of a blithely dehumanizing, sanity annihilating, shockingly atavistic terror, specifically, the terror evoked by abject encounters with the chaotic void from which all reality issues and to which it inexorably returns.

The film gets evil precisely right when the Joker says, “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.” From the standpoint of law and order, in either a secular or non-secular sense, the idea that there is no absolute line dividing right from wrong or good from evil is intolerable. To celebrate those acts condemned by the dominant system leaves its hierarchy of values in place; to reject the legitimacy of any hierarchy at all is satanic rebellion.

(On a side note, I hear in the Joker’s ethos the pragmatic view that an unconditional flexibility – no fixed, dogmatic rules  – provides the key to adaptive survival. Of course, the amorality of adaptation, which is really just an opportunistic and even accidental “going with the flow,” is what truly frightens opponents of evolutionary theory.)

The film gets chaos precisely wrong. The violence and mayhem orchestrated by the Joker undeniably reflects the pervading notion of chaos as unpredictable, unassimilable, and overwhelming activity, but therein lies its error. True disorder is not characterized by a lot of something happening, but rather by a lot of nothing happening.

Indeed, the most accurate image of chaos we can muster is the heat death which awaits us as the entropic end of it all. When there is no longer any difference in energy states anywhere in the universe the pure state of chaos has been attained and it is, by definition, indistinguishable from nothingness. (Of course, this is why reviewers were unanimous in designating the Joker’s worldview “nihilistic.”)

By taking the side of the entropic decay and unstoppable disintegration of order, the Joker aligns himself with the grinding momentum of reality itself. It’s also why he is, as he says, “ahead of the curve,” and always one step ahead of Batman and the police; reality’s motion, its long march towards total dissolution is always one step ahead of us. We can never overtake it and are always, in the end and even before, overtaken.

Yet, it is this fact, the ultimate source of the Joker’s power, which also makes Batman’s adherence to his “one rule” truly heroic, though in the tragic sense. Belief in the timeless and unquestionable validity of “the rule” requires the denial of reality (that all rules are provisional, conventional, mutable ) and is, insofar, utter folly. Nevertheless, the faith expressed in devotion to “the rule” constitutes the stuff of valor and is, therewith, utterly human.

This raises the very question posed insistently and insidiously by the Joker as envisioned by Heath Ledger:

Does the unblinking acceptance of reality call for the overcoming of our humanity?

And if it does, should we?

Image Courtesy of Joan Thewlis.

Listening to Coltrane’s Settin’ the Pace. It’s not one of his greatest hits and even the various jazz cd review books give it second tier status, but I really enjoy it. “I See Your Face Before Me” is the lead track, an exquisite ballad that I humbly believe outshines the more famous “I Want to Talk About You” from Soultrane.

Still, saying this or that by Coltrane is better than this or that by Coltrane seems trivial and, frankly, beside the point (much like I found Ben Ratliff’s book on Coltrane’s sound). These are just opinions, after all, and vanity, moreover. Who cares what you/I think about any particular work by this man? It’s a mixture of hero-worship and elevation-by-association that frankly demeans the opiner by revealing a lamentable failure to listen.

I read an interview with Matisyahu once in which he pointed to the number of love songs out there as an indication of how much people are yearning for the love of God.  “People feel abandoned by God, they feel alone. You see by the number of love songs there are, it’s a proof of that,” he said.

Coltrane’s devotion to God causes me to hear in his ballads blessed celebration and the joy of reunion. The face he sees before him, is the face of God. The “you” he wants to talk about is You, My Lord.

Image Courtesy of Flykr.

I would say that my greatest weakness is a certain vindictive ruthlessness. I happen to be VERY competitive and when I compete, I don’t want to just win, I want to crush my opponent. Utterly. Totally. I don’t want to face them again in the future when they have gotten stronger, wiser, better. I want them broken. Forever.

Were I to name my second greatest weakness, it would be, ironically, a tendency to indulge in arbitrary acts of magnanimity and selfless mercy. For example, there are times when I stop short of annihilating my rivals and, instead, leave them with a sense of hope, even encouragement. That is, although my dominance and superiority will be painfully obvious to them, by praising their abilities and hinting at anxiety concerning an inevitable, future clash, from which I openly suggest I do not foresee myself emerging victorious, I practically invite them to return and challenge me again once their wounds have healed and their strength has been renewed.

Of course, when they do return, I obliterate them. Which I guess makes my second weakness just an extension of my first, when you really look at it.

So, what’s your greatest weakness?

Image Courtesy of vaXzine.

If you drop something, pick it up.

When the bill comes, pay it.

When the phone rings, answer it.

When the light turns green, go.

To be the same person in every situation, whomever you meet, whereever you go.

To be the same person, without masks, without ruses, without guile, without anxiety or greed, without schemes, agendas, or goals.

To be the same person you were before you were born and after you’re dead. A carbon atom doesn’t change when it belongs to a carrot or a rabbit or a hawk.

Why should you?