I can't beat Jeff's Thanksgiving post from last year. Unfortunately, Heraclitus was right, and this year's Turkey Day is marred by hundreds-years'-old strife raised to a boil by events in Missouri. As such. the idea of a single day of commercial boycotting fades gently under the penumbra of rioting induced by the wretched systematic injustices of power-mad goons.
The goons I refer to are, of course, the ones elected or appointed to positions of nominal authority. They bear the seals of office, wear the badges of service, and enjoy all the prestige and protection that the "justice" system affords them. Which is quite a bit.
So what am I thankful for this year? I'm thankful first and foremost for my family and friends, their warm companionship and love, and the comfort they bring. But I'm also thankful that our society has [mostly] conquered hunger (unless you're homeless in Florida), violent crime (unless you live in a community hobbled by mandatory unemployment legislation aka minimum wage statutes), and the violent oppression of minorities (unless you have the keys to surplus war materiel courtesy of the DoD as well as carte blanche justification for the use of civil asset forfeiture). In other words, I'm privately, narrowly thankful for my privilege.
In a more just, more euvoluntary America, more residents, including those who move here freely from abroad would enjoy all the same privileges I do: the privilege to walk around without being molested or harassed by anyone, including cops and private citizens, the privilege to accept employment with whom I choose under mutually agreeable terms, the privilege to truck, barter, and exchange goods and services I find pleasing and to recompense my trading partner so as to encrease the opulence and joy of the both of us.
It is customary when splitting the collarbone of the turkey to make a wish. If I get the better part of the wishbone this year, I wish for an end to the systematic injustice that still plagues the beautiful country I love so dearly.
A happy Thanksgiving to you all, or at least as happy as you can manage in these bleak times.
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
404: RITUAL NOT FOUND
In a post I haven't yet roused myself to critique, Double-D identifies the activating element of the sacred spaces among us. 'Tis ritual. Even with the priest and the congregation assembled inside the church, the assembly is incomplete without the Eucharist.
Yesterday, the United States held its annual Mass dedicated to Veterans, living and dead. I urge you to recall that what we in the US call Veterans' Day is referred elsewhere in the Anglophone world as either Remembrance Day or Armistice Day, a day to remind citizens of the horrors of the Great War, the War to End All Wars, known retrospectively as World War I. Poppies are laid out row on row outside the Tower of London, a grim reminder of the oceans of blood spilt to slake the vanity and lust of long-dead political elites. These displays of public humility constitute a solemn ritual to remind the constituency of the costs of war, specifically the war that saw the rise of mechanization and the unspeakable horrors of Better Killing Through Chemistry.
Virginia Postrel includes a chapter on the Glamour of War in her latest book. By the end of WWI, the pre-war glamour of courageous gentlemen fighting a just war against heathen enemies had largely worn thin. Both sides were threadbare, weary of sending its boys to die, choking in the cold mud. The Armistice and its remembrance bid fare thee well to the kayfabe-drenched lie that there was glory in the stubborn trenches at Ovillers-la-Boisselle. Now, it isn't that Veterans' Day is a cheery, breezy glee-filled romp, but the mood affiliation is much different. We remember the sacrifices our veterans have made, often with the rider that these sacrifices were for the common good, or to secure the blessings of liberty, a curious conceit not immediately evident in the experience all Americans. I report that my time in uniform has done precious little to stem the rise of abusive civil asset forfeiture practices, or to halt the self-evidently erroneous decision in Kelo or curb any of the other many tiny assaults against the Constitution I vowed to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic when I took my Oath of Service some 23 years ago.
Yikes. Has it really been that long? It is to sigh.
Recall your Hume. The sovereign who seeks to encrease his dominion abroad shall avail himself of whatever means he might pursue to obtain the service of the constituency. He will strip them of their luxury, he will wheedle their children, and he will ensorcel their patriots with the kayfabe of glory and honor. Armistice Day was the one day of ritual during which that the nation took to the ritual of breaking kayfabe, if only for one somber pass of the calendar. Schoolchildren recited In Flanders Fields, and the VFW sold poppies alongside their brothers-in-memory at the American Legion.
Then the tone changed in 1954.
Imagine what the year might look like if Congress would authorize separate days each year to commemorate the fallen in each of America's conflicts, to reflect on the dire toll paid on that august body's behalf by the blood and bone of America's sons and daughters. Imagine if you will, whether or not US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright might have uttered to General Colin Powell her infamous 2003 remark "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" in an America where we all partake in the ritual of reminding ourselves of the bloody cost of war. One day for each war. One day to scrape the veneer off the relentless glorification. One day to reflect. One day to remember.
One day to indulge justly-deserved, messily earned regret.
Yesterday, the United States held its annual Mass dedicated to Veterans, living and dead. I urge you to recall that what we in the US call Veterans' Day is referred elsewhere in the Anglophone world as either Remembrance Day or Armistice Day, a day to remind citizens of the horrors of the Great War, the War to End All Wars, known retrospectively as World War I. Poppies are laid out row on row outside the Tower of London, a grim reminder of the oceans of blood spilt to slake the vanity and lust of long-dead political elites. These displays of public humility constitute a solemn ritual to remind the constituency of the costs of war, specifically the war that saw the rise of mechanization and the unspeakable horrors of Better Killing Through Chemistry.
Virginia Postrel includes a chapter on the Glamour of War in her latest book. By the end of WWI, the pre-war glamour of courageous gentlemen fighting a just war against heathen enemies had largely worn thin. Both sides were threadbare, weary of sending its boys to die, choking in the cold mud. The Armistice and its remembrance bid fare thee well to the kayfabe-drenched lie that there was glory in the stubborn trenches at Ovillers-la-Boisselle. Now, it isn't that Veterans' Day is a cheery, breezy glee-filled romp, but the mood affiliation is much different. We remember the sacrifices our veterans have made, often with the rider that these sacrifices were for the common good, or to secure the blessings of liberty, a curious conceit not immediately evident in the experience all Americans. I report that my time in uniform has done precious little to stem the rise of abusive civil asset forfeiture practices, or to halt the self-evidently erroneous decision in Kelo or curb any of the other many tiny assaults against the Constitution I vowed to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic when I took my Oath of Service some 23 years ago.
Yikes. Has it really been that long? It is to sigh.
Recall your Hume. The sovereign who seeks to encrease his dominion abroad shall avail himself of whatever means he might pursue to obtain the service of the constituency. He will strip them of their luxury, he will wheedle their children, and he will ensorcel their patriots with the kayfabe of glory and honor. Armistice Day was the one day of ritual during which that the nation took to the ritual of breaking kayfabe, if only for one somber pass of the calendar. Schoolchildren recited In Flanders Fields, and the VFW sold poppies alongside their brothers-in-memory at the American Legion.
Then the tone changed in 1954.
Imagine what the year might look like if Congress would authorize separate days each year to commemorate the fallen in each of America's conflicts, to reflect on the dire toll paid on that august body's behalf by the blood and bone of America's sons and daughters. Imagine if you will, whether or not US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright might have uttered to General Colin Powell her infamous 2003 remark "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" in an America where we all partake in the ritual of reminding ourselves of the bloody cost of war. One day for each war. One day to scrape the veneer off the relentless glorification. One day to reflect. One day to remember.
One day to indulge justly-deserved, messily earned regret.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Zombie Apocalypse: Can I Get Some Death, Here, Already? EE Halloween!
Suppose there is a zombie apocalypse. Dan Drezner and a bunch of other 5'8" guys walking around drooling blood and pus.
Is it morally permissible to "kill" the zombie? What does that even mean, really? The thing is dead, in terms of its own moral agency at least. But it may have memories. It has at least SOME brain function, right?
Now, you know. The answer is: hard to say, actually.
Is it morally permissible to "kill" the zombie? What does that even mean, really? The thing is dead, in terms of its own moral agency at least. But it may have memories. It has at least SOME brain function, right?
Now, you know. The answer is: hard to say, actually.
What Can Halloween Teach Us About Tolerance?
The sentence you are about to read may seem contrary to your expectations, but try to bear with me. Euvoluntary Exchange generates less tolerance. To make sense of this, I'd like you to consider a particular conceit of mine wherein I retain the hubris needed to provide my own definition of "tolerance". With a little luck, it'll be close enough to your own to make enough sense to support my claim.
Tolerance means stifling a sense of disgust, displeasure or outrage when confronted with objectionable material or behavior. It doesn't mean that you can't feel offended at vile behavior, just that you refrain from acting on it. It means having enough integrity and discipline to live and let live, even when you witness someone doing something that upsets your sensibilities. Tolerance under this definition is a private virtue. Only I can swallow my own bile. No bureaucrat, no board member, no officer of the peace can relieve me of that burden.
I've deliberately bent this definition to be purgatorial. Halfway between The Pit and The Firmament, Tolerance is a mountain to summit on the way to Acceptance, perhaps even to Understanding or the glorious heights of Love. But it's a mountain with a treacherous path, one you can toboggan down into the depths of intolerance, spite, even hatred. At its center, locked in living ice awaiting the Judgement Day fires of perdition slumbers the Beast of Legislated Morality.
To continue with the thin metaphor, one of Gary Becker's contributions was that market interactions and the threat of economic loss is that the discipline of competition forces bigots to bear the costs of their own intolerance. Euvoluntary Exchange is a set of crampons and an ice axe up the side of the mountain of mere tolerance.
I don't want to give third-string buffoons any more press than they've already earned this Pumpkin Season, so I'll confine myself to saying that there have been a few examples of fools thinking it's once again acceptable to revive the minstrel show aesthetic. At least one quasi-celebrity (reminder to self: write something about how celebrity has perplexingly become disconnected from talent lately) has slathered on blackface and got caught on film. Several years ago, it was a British royal in Nazi regalia (I think that was just a run-of-the-mill costume party though). Point is, some audacious people have summoned the gall to dress up in truly horrible costumes on a day when the horror is meant to be campy rather than sharp.
Those of you old enough to remember the PMRC hearing years should recall that the Satanism scare was a real thing. Those of you old enough to remember the Spanish Inquisition should recall that this scare had its roots in antiquity. But now? Think of all the cultural horrors that prowled the landscape when you were younger that were more or less trampled to dust in the intervening years. Yes, institutional bigotry is a stubborn hobgoblin, dug into statute law thanks to public choice forces, but when was the last time you heard someone let loose with casual racism or sexism in a public forum who didn't suffer swift agony? These ideas have been tested and found wanting.
And so I take the opportunity this All Hallows' Eve to celebrate the happy accident that shone the cleansing light of market discipline on the bugbears of intolerance while I also celebrate folks' euvoluntary decision to strap on their hiking boots and make the arduous ascent out of the dismal terrain of de minimis tolerance towards a community where a slutty boggart can stand proudly shoulder-to-shoulder with an old-school gelatinous cube. It's a euvoluntaryier world after all.
A very euvoluntary Halloween to you all.
Tolerance means stifling a sense of disgust, displeasure or outrage when confronted with objectionable material or behavior. It doesn't mean that you can't feel offended at vile behavior, just that you refrain from acting on it. It means having enough integrity and discipline to live and let live, even when you witness someone doing something that upsets your sensibilities. Tolerance under this definition is a private virtue. Only I can swallow my own bile. No bureaucrat, no board member, no officer of the peace can relieve me of that burden.
I've deliberately bent this definition to be purgatorial. Halfway between The Pit and The Firmament, Tolerance is a mountain to summit on the way to Acceptance, perhaps even to Understanding or the glorious heights of Love. But it's a mountain with a treacherous path, one you can toboggan down into the depths of intolerance, spite, even hatred. At its center, locked in living ice awaiting the Judgement Day fires of perdition slumbers the Beast of Legislated Morality.
To continue with the thin metaphor, one of Gary Becker's contributions was that market interactions and the threat of economic loss is that the discipline of competition forces bigots to bear the costs of their own intolerance. Euvoluntary Exchange is a set of crampons and an ice axe up the side of the mountain of mere tolerance.
I don't want to give third-string buffoons any more press than they've already earned this Pumpkin Season, so I'll confine myself to saying that there have been a few examples of fools thinking it's once again acceptable to revive the minstrel show aesthetic. At least one quasi-celebrity (reminder to self: write something about how celebrity has perplexingly become disconnected from talent lately) has slathered on blackface and got caught on film. Several years ago, it was a British royal in Nazi regalia (I think that was just a run-of-the-mill costume party though). Point is, some audacious people have summoned the gall to dress up in truly horrible costumes on a day when the horror is meant to be campy rather than sharp.
Those of you old enough to remember the PMRC hearing years should recall that the Satanism scare was a real thing. Those of you old enough to remember the Spanish Inquisition should recall that this scare had its roots in antiquity. But now? Think of all the cultural horrors that prowled the landscape when you were younger that were more or less trampled to dust in the intervening years. Yes, institutional bigotry is a stubborn hobgoblin, dug into statute law thanks to public choice forces, but when was the last time you heard someone let loose with casual racism or sexism in a public forum who didn't suffer swift agony? These ideas have been tested and found wanting.
And so I take the opportunity this All Hallows' Eve to celebrate the happy accident that shone the cleansing light of market discipline on the bugbears of intolerance while I also celebrate folks' euvoluntary decision to strap on their hiking boots and make the arduous ascent out of the dismal terrain of de minimis tolerance towards a community where a slutty boggart can stand proudly shoulder-to-shoulder with an old-school gelatinous cube. It's a euvoluntaryier world after all.
A very euvoluntary Halloween to you all.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
A Very Euvoluntary Valentine's Day!
As far back as I can remember, I loathed greeting-card holidays. In elementary school, participation was quasi-mandatory. Sure, you could opt out, as long as you were willing to be the weirdo in class (a role I eventually found myself embracing). Most of the children I recall either gleefully swapped chalk-candy hearts and sappy cards or just muscled through all the awkwardness. The costs of being the withdrawn, sullen kid are high, even if the cause of this attitude is simply resistance to coercion. I never liked being told what to do without a plausible, convincing explanation. No one was ever able to give me a good reason for why I should have to wear green once a year or dress up in a silly costume a few weeks after my birthday.
But that's for kids. What about for (young) adults? I'm pushing 40, so if I elect to refrain from celebrating popular holidays, I bear next to no social cost. In between, there's a magical epoch in the arc of a human life where all these absurd holidays are perfectly euvoluntary. If you're in the dating market, celebrating Valentine's Day is one of the boilerplate terms in the standard contract. Even if everything else in the muddy waters of dating is obscure, at the very least, holidays like the 14th of February have a perfectly clear set of expectations, governed by rules no individual sets alone.
How great is that? It's a day where you can switch to autopilot. You get your (possibly potential) sweetheart some roses and a box of chocolates and blammo! Pre-packaged affection. Negotiation costs drop precipitously for one day out of the year. Sounds like a heck of a bargain to me.
But it's weird being a parent now. I'm faced with the choice of how to socialize my daughter to this institution. If I'm lucky, she'll end up enjoying it of her own volition and I won't have to slog through a lecture about relative prices and tradeoffs. We should all be so lucky, right?
A Very Euvoluntary Valentine's Day to all my readers, however you might elect to enjoy the day.
But that's for kids. What about for (young) adults? I'm pushing 40, so if I elect to refrain from celebrating popular holidays, I bear next to no social cost. In between, there's a magical epoch in the arc of a human life where all these absurd holidays are perfectly euvoluntary. If you're in the dating market, celebrating Valentine's Day is one of the boilerplate terms in the standard contract. Even if everything else in the muddy waters of dating is obscure, at the very least, holidays like the 14th of February have a perfectly clear set of expectations, governed by rules no individual sets alone.
How great is that? It's a day where you can switch to autopilot. You get your (possibly potential) sweetheart some roses and a box of chocolates and blammo! Pre-packaged affection. Negotiation costs drop precipitously for one day out of the year. Sounds like a heck of a bargain to me.
But it's weird being a parent now. I'm faced with the choice of how to socialize my daughter to this institution. If I'm lucky, she'll end up enjoying it of her own volition and I won't have to slog through a lecture about relative prices and tradeoffs. We should all be so lucky, right?
A Very Euvoluntary Valentine's Day to all my readers, however you might elect to enjoy the day.
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