Scottie Cometh

this is actually beautiful

Happy Bloomsday!

The Last 50 Lines of Ulysses

that’s about humanity’s dignity

An Open Letter to TFioS

Dear TFioS,

I got you for Christmas and I watched you in the movie-theater last Saturday and I like you. I like you but that doesn’t mean I don’t have something to say to you.

Of course your unorthodox and irreverent plot is refreshing and it really talks to people in many ways. This is somehing that people are craving—what I personally am craving and thank you for being this way. A book review said that you are “damn near genius” and you are so. It sounds like a huge compliment (one that I’ve never received, so I sort of envy you for it) but this isn’t the greatest one, which would be:”it’s genius”. John Green is made of awesome and so are you, TFioS, still, neither of you are made of genius. Let me elaborate:

#1: Is the fault really in our stars? John Rawls would probably congratulate you on the fine point you have made about how nature is creating random inequality and unfairness. What mindless animal would one have to be to say that it is fair what Hazel and Gus went through, none of it out of their own making or desert? Their example—and the title really—shows what a great fault there is in what our lot is in life. It would have been fair if Hazel and Gus’ cancer was given to an evil mass-murderer—yeah, I don’t really mean that; no one should get cancer, ever. You tell it wondrously that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, this sort of pain is unbearably immense. Everyone deserves the same and that same would be a normal life, which is free of disease, free of tragedy, free of all sorts of bad things. Everyone deserves it because of human dignity, which is everybody’s. When Gus calls Hazel to the petrol station to help him because he got very sick, we get to see the unromanticized version of dying from cancer, which is the true version of dying: painful and miserable. This whole thing is an attempt to introduce us—through characters we get to care about and truly heartbraking events happening to them—to the reality of undeserved suffering in the world. I used the word:”undeserved”, but is it really? It would also be fair if everyone on earth was suffering the same as these kids, wouldn’t it? As I’ve said before, only a terrible person would say that, and that’s because of human dignity. And where does that come from? One could say that:”Yes, people do terrible things sometimes but no one deserves to suffer or experience pain.” Such a statement would be based on the concept of dignity, which’ existence we can only assume, following our moral compass, our feelings. Naturally, I wouldn’t say that there’s no such a thing as human dignity or that I want to see someone go through this hell. My point is that the origin of dignity is not inspected thoroughly and it cannot be a groundless assumption. If we built on it, first we’d need to see why it’s an unshakable foundation. 

#2: Infinities are problematic. I’m not going to discuss the mathematical inexactitude of your statement about the size of the infinity between 0 and 1 compared to the one between 0 and 2 because you’ve already apologized for that and also because it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the story, when Hazel remembers her time together with Gus, she is really grateful for their “little infinity”. I suppose she means that their relationship and their experiences were immeasurably valuable, even if smaller in number than the one’s of someone with a greater lifespan. This serves as a poetic and sublime element, though it also implies that even where there is great pain, there’s beauty. But if all that is equal in worth to what other people have, then why is it sad that they have to die? Or is it not sad at all? Is it okay for them to have to go through all that horror and then die so young? It’s rather terrible—or unspeakably terrible. But if only the quantity and the length of beautiful things in life matter, what’s the limit of having a good life? If everyone had the same amount of happiness and the same length of it and an equal lifespan, I suppose that’d count as a good world. But wouldn’t we try to extend the length of our lives if everyone was to live 80 years already? It would be neat if everyone lived for 200 years, wouldn’t it? And if Hazel and Gus were to live 80 years, whereas everyone else 200 years, would that count as a tragedy, too? Is it just the relative length and amount that matters or is it the absolute of them? It seems that both do: we want a relatively and an absolutely longer, richer life. That’s alright, of course. The ultimate thing we would settle with is infinity—literal infinity, not just the allegorical one. To have Hazel be grateful for what they shared is really awesome, my point is really what this tells the audience is unclear and/or indefinite.

#3: Where’s that extra mile? When Hazel and Gus are talking about what comes after death, I thought some conclusion would be made. Okay, there was actually this: even people, who believe in something transcendent aren’t necessarily morons. Thanks, I appreciate it, but whether or not there’s an afterlife, or whether or not God exists, these are sort of important questions. Especially when you’re so conscious about your imminent death. The whole thing is understandable, of course, since to someone who is not a believer, it’s obvious that there’s no Heaven, no Lord, no nothing, yet I was extremely let down, when Gus said that there has to be a point to it all and Hazel’s reply was about the overall pointlessness of everything AND then no distinct conclusion, apart from what’s above. It’s nice of you not to take away the hopes of christians though. But to make two teenagers so profound as Hazel and Gus are and then just let them be diplomatic about the point (or the pointlessness) of being is just lazy. It’s popular to think that a writer’s duty is to ask important questions but it is also their duty to offer answers to important questions and not be like:”Yeah, ‘A’ might be the ultimate truth, but whoever says ‘B’ is it, well, yeah, they’re totally cool to say that.”

Okay, TFioS, I’m sorry for criticizing you, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or something. You are a beautiful book—you never forgot to be awesome. Thank you for existing and thank you for feeling the pain of everybody, especially of those who feel the greatest pain.

Best wishes,

B

P.S.: Okay.

Optimism, Pessimism, Perspective and the Question of Society and Art

Recently I experienced an emotional antinomy in regards of how current technology and social media affect art.

My first observation was that it multiplies the art outlets and creates a vast stock of memorabilia about artists for the ages to come. How nice would it be to read Fitzgerald’s tumblr posts.

The second observation was that the increased outlets and the conservation of everything brings about a horrific picture about our age. As cheap horror flicks went down the sewers a hundred years ago and then disintegrated from human remembering, we cannot anticipate today’s trash to just disappear because it will haunt the internet forever.

But just today I woke up with a realization that alleviated my passionate opinions. I remembered that people read and watch and touch what they choose to. The internet does not change the people fundamentally, it is exactly the other way around. However the current society wishes to shape the world of art, it is not a danger on the bigger arc of things. The case has never been changed, not even slightly, dumb people have always been into dumb things and smart people have always been into smart things. Any alternation that has ever happened happened in the individual’s life. We, as persons, and not as society, move forward. It is because of each individual’s limited time on earth: we start from nil and run as fast as we can to get the farthest possible but it does not affect society, as it survives the individual. Unless people can somehow learn to give birth to children with a refined sense of society in their heads, society will not become smarter or dumber, just a mass of us.

Well, bravo. I'm a huge fan of capitalism myself. It's great to see well thought out arguments like yours.

There's only one major issue that I've identified: This isn't about capitalism--it's about libertarianism. I'm not sure if you've read Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia but that's the thing for you.

Robert Nozick talked a lot about the minimal state, a concept that celebrates economic and moral freedom of the individuals and gives only limited role to the state: creating a legal system that protects people's property and guarantees the validity of contracts. This is very similar to your reasoning but it's libertarian philosophy and not directly the theory of capitalism.

Capitalism and libertarianism seem infinitely intertwined. Even so, if you look up the definition of capitalism and study the main ideas of libertarianism, you will find yourself wondering if the two are separate at all. They actually are. The U.S. didn't cease to have a capitalist system under Obama's presidency, though he's definitely not a libertarian.

In today's world, after Keynes and his successors, we have a mixed economic system, that's not laissez faire but it's also clearly not communist economy. The state does this and the state says that, courts rule this and that way and many complain why we don't have the original capitalist freedom. So why is this? Is this something good?

I could bring economic arguments but I'm sure I'd be making mistakes but more importantly the reason for having the current system can be found in political considerations:

#1: The market might always find balance eventually but, in the meantime, individual lives, which' survival are dependent on economic safety, can be hurt. So the economy of the country may find balance after a year or two of necessary fluctuation but in those years a family may go bankrupt, people can become desperate and not all of them are good-enough economists to be able to avoid undergoing serious losses. You said that these are inevitable casualties but politicians found it otherwise. More on this later.

#2: In a competition the strong/smart prevails and the weak/feeble-minded stays behind. You understood this as the order of nature. But nature isn't fair. We can say it's random and random doesn't equal fair but receiving in proper proportion in accordance with one's desert is. Being born strong or weak clearly has no relation to our desert.

According to Weber, capitalism was an unavoidable consequence of the emergence of Protestantism: People experienced a new freedom and the sensation of equality and autonomy spread very fast. And of course capitalism was a much better system than feudalism that preceded it in Europe. But it seems today that capitalism is and has been evolving.

You found morality in rewarding the productive and by the promise of these rewards motivating new members of society to become productive. It is, in fact, very moral, however, this can mean in a way rewarding the capable and ignoring the incapable and that is immoral. Why? Because no one made themselves capable. You might think hard work is your own merit, though if you can work hard it means that you have sufficient concentration and the sufficient abilities. These depend on genes and other external variables, so they do not originate from your own doing, ergo it isn't moral to reward you for something that you just happened to have.

I have introduced some political and moral arguments against laissez faire libertarianism but what are ideas for corrections--you may ask--nobody asks this, of course, but it's good to think that I'm not writing to myself...

One of the most famous political philosophers of the 20th century, John Rawls, recognized how libertarianism is unfair and so he said that a system should be formulated from behind the veil of ignorance: We decide without knowing what will be the most profitable environment for us, only considering what will surely be beneficial for everyone, since we can be successful salespersons or Hispanic cleaning ladies. Of course the veil of ignorance is an abstract thing, not something real, but it is a fair concept. Or is it? 

Even Rawls came to realize that even though capabilities are contingent, the able should not be withheld their reward because they used well what was given to them. So he created the difference principle: Inequalities may exist as long as they are profitable to the whole community.

Politicians seem to have adopted Rawls' ideas, though in a very weakened way (for which I am grateful by the way). What we see today is capitalism but fixed with the tools of fairness. Politicians understood and admitted that capitalism is a clever system, working very well most of the time, but they also said that people should be protected and aided because not everyone can stand their ground in an economic competition. They decided to help the weak because politicians can't settle with inevitable casualties of any standing economic system but they ought to bring welfare to the whole community. In the other hand, politicians can never ignore what is owed to the productive and able.

At the end of the day, though, I still root for capitalism because so far it's been working nicely. What must be observed in this question is that this system has been based on morals and values, not on figures and balances. We should be critical and be critical with the eyes of the idealist and not the pragmatist.

Is capitalism working?

I believe that people should be left alone and allowed to succeed or fail. People need liberty and a system that guards their liberty.

I love capitalism. Capitalism is good but it has a bad name. It’s not primarily about capital and investing. It is about property. As the legal thinker William Blackstone wrote:

There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. [Note: By “despotic,” Blackstone means “absolute.”]

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Battle of tastes

What book (Out of ALL!) has the best opening lines?

This song...

We all must try to be good.

Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald