Black Hats

 

More woke wisdom from Unwind, the novel your children are reading in high school:

“One thing you learn when you’ve lived as long as I have—people aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives.”

The rap against American culture is that it tends to be white hats against black hats: villains in American novels and movies are one-dimensionally evil. Think of “Injun Joe “in Tom Sawyer.

Andrew Breitbart said that politics is downstream from culture. Yes; and culture is downstream from religion. This tendency to such a clear divide between good and evil characters comes, I warrant, from America’s Calvinist upbringing. Baptists are the dominant American denomination, especially in the South. Baptists are Calvinists. New England was settled by the Pilgrims. They were Calvinists. New York was settled by Dutch Reformed: Calvinist. By contrast, England is Anglican, a bit of everything; Canada Catholic and Methodist; not Calvinist.

Calvinism believes in predestination. People are simply created for salvation or damnation, good or evil. They do not have a choice. They do not have free will. This does not leave a great deal of room for character development; or for moral ambiguity.

No doubt in reaction, Unwound and modern wokery go too far. If we are all just moving in and out of darkness all our lives, there is no moral distinction to be made between Adolph Hitler and Albert Schweitzer; between Charlie Manson and Mother Teresa.

They preserve the idea that we have no free will, and ditch the idea that there is either salvation or damnation. Wrong move. 

The Catholic understanding is that we all sin; we must struggle constantly against temptation. Some of us have given up the fight, turned away from the good and committed ourselves to evil. In Jesus’s words, some of us seek the darkness and fear the light. Others, the saints, shine like a city on a hill.

 There are indeed good and bad people. But a bad person can become good.

American Cultural Hegemony

 

Folks on the left in many lands, including Canada, loudly lament about cultural imperialism and the “hegemony” of American culture.

This is nonsensical. 

They also lament about “cultural appropriation,” of course. Which is to say, if someone else assimilates American culture, Americans are doing something wrong. But if Americans assimilate another’s culture, Americans are doing something wrong. Only Americans seem to have free will.

What is culture? It is a collection of tools for living; systems for creating the best possible life for a group of people. 

If you went to the hardware store to buy a tool, what would be the most important consideration? Would it be whether it was made in your home town?

In principle, everyone on earth should have more or less the same culture, apart from what is dictated by varying local conditions: the best of everything. If they do not, it is only because of lack of communication, lack of initiative, and prejudice.

What is American culture? 

Because it is a nation of immigrants, the United States has been able to pick and choose the best tools from many parts of the world.

When you think of American culture, what do you think of? Aside from works of individual genius, you think of pop music, with its heavy rhythms, jazz music with its improvisational style; hot dogs, hamburgers, ketchup, pizza; cowboys and the romance of the West; and the democratic ideal.

The rhythms of pop and the improvisation of jazz are from Africa, mixing with Irish and other European traditions. Hot dogs and hamburgers are German; pizza is Italian; chili is Mexican; ketchup is from Indonesia. Cowboys are from Mexican/Spanish culture, with a mix of native Indian traits; the word “cowboy” is a translation from Spanish.

The same is true, to just about the same extent, for the same reason, of Canadian or Australian culture. It is also true of British culture—not due to immigration, but because England is a nation of traders, who went out into the four corners of the world and brought back whatever they found useful. Tea from China, curry from India, potatoes from the New World.

In the end, of course, not least because they share this openness to the world and to new things, the UK, Canada, the USA, and Australia are not really separate cultures. The differences are trivial, and are diminishing daily with improving communications. 

The three things we might claim to be the distinctive contribution of the Anglosphere, not imported from elsewhere, are the concept of liberal democracy, the mechanisms to produce it, and the doctrine of human rights, one the one hand, which have deep roots but owe a great debt to John Locke; the concept of the free market mechanism and free market liberalism, which again has earlier roots, but is largely from Adam Smith; and empirical science, which we owe to Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton.

I do not think there is anything wrong, frankly, with foisting human rights, democracy, free markets, or science, on anyone. These are simply the best tools available. Not being of English ancestry myself, I do not feel oppressed by them. Frankly, I would feel oppressed by not having them.

What we have here is not “American culture,” but an expanding world culture. Its lingua franca is English, but other elements can come from anywhere. 

A world culture must have a lingua franca. Language is a tool to communicate. The best language is self-evidently that which has the most speakers; and we should all desire and promote one world language.

As our communication improves, we are seeing our world culture enriched by more elements from more lands. Fifty years ago, it would not have included anime, or chicken tikka masala, or K-pop, or tacos. Now everyone knows them, from Saudi Arabia to Santiago.

To worry about the loss of other cultural elements is regressive. If a thing is abandoned, it is probably because it could not compete with something better; and because people freely chose against it. This is a little thing called progress. Adam Smith, John Locke, or Francis Bacon could explain.

American Religious Exceptionalism

Americans, as anyone can fairly readily see, are more religious, more interested in and committed to religion, than Europeans. Why?


I just heard an interesting theory.

A podcast interviewee suggested that, in comparison to Europe, America has had a freer market in religion. Its many denominations and indeed congregations compete to fill their churches each Sunday. If they fail, their church must close its doors. 

As a result, they have become and remained responsive to their congregations. But in Europe, there has been less religious diversity, and often, as in Britain and Germany, a state-supported church.  Religion as government bureaucracy drifts out of touch.

This never occurred to me, but it sounds right as soon as I hear it.

 The best argument for 

1. separation of church and state, and 

2. religious tolerance.

Was Salinger Demonically Possessed?

There seem to be two distinct schools on JD Salinger: those who remember him best for Catcher in the Rye, and those who better remember better Franny & Zooey. Among Catholics, this division is expressed equally well as: those who detest Salinger (the Catcher crew) and those who see him at least as a spiritual fellow-traveller (the Zooeys). David Warren is of the former party: not to be hyperbolic or anything, he sees Salinger as writing “under direct demonic possession.”

I am in the second camp. Catcher in the Rye left relatively little impression on me. I saw Holden Caulfield as sincere, and his problem as real and fundamental, but I did not really identify with him, because I felt, even as a teenager myself, that he was reacting to it in entirely the wrong way—just thrashing about instead of looking for a solution. I surmised, and still think, the author thought the same, and was ironically distancing himself from Caulfield in many ways—firstly be making him young. I feel a lot of people, including Warren, as well as the several million who have seen Holden Caulfield as themselves, and all been totally alienated from one another together, have been missing the main point.

As I see it, Salinger was using Catcher in the Rye to lay out the problem—the problem of life in general, or life in what Jesus called “this world,” the objective, physical, shared, social world. Caulfield calls it “phoniness”; Jesus and John the Baptist called it “hypocrisy”; Socrates and Plato called it “sophistry.” Any reasonably intelligent adolescent figures out, by about Holden's age, that things here are rarely what they seem, and rarely what they clearly ought to be. Those in charge are generally liars, and nobody says the truth to anyone else.

But so far, in Catcher in the Rye, he was only setting out the problem. I believe Salinger then created the Glass family to explore and debate possible solutions. Caulfield had nobody to talk to about his perceptions; and this alienation was itself a large part of the problem. In a world of phoniness, whom can you trust? Salinger's Glass family, as a mental experiment, at least solves this problem: because they are all siblings, and already know each other thoroughly well, they are rather more likely to be straight with one another, and permitted to speak at the deepest emotional levels. Being exceptionally intelligent, they are allowed, in ordinary dialogue, to refer to anything and everything that might be relevant, however arcane the scholarship, however subtle the point.

Salinger can then use these characters to each represent a different possible path out of this thicket of phoniness, and have them by their interaction draw out the strengths and weaknesses of each possibility.

Seymour was the first and most obvious option, and so the first one Salinger explored in his stories: suicide. Obviously, that is not the option Salinger himself chose, in the end, since he lived into his nineties.

We know less about Salinger's other characters, because their choices were more complex. One of them, Waker, was already, when Salinger stopped publishing, a Carthusian monk—the religious life. Buddy represents the life of the writer, or artist, standing aloof and commenting on the world. Walt, “the only truly lighthearted member of the family,” represents the option of laughter, of seeing it all as absurd and meaningless and not caring; but Salinger seems to have already dismissed that option by blowing him up. Boo Boo represents the conventional life, trying to “fit in” and be “normal.” Zooey represents the life of an actor, the option of eternally wearing a mask for the world. Franny has an emotional breakdown—she is well-placed, at least, to be elaborated into an investigation of the always-popular option of going mad.

My guess is that it was Salinger’s plan to work out the issue by following through with the life stories of all of the Glasses, not really knowing himself which option would win out in the end. It was his plan for his personal spiritual development, which is one reason he felt no need to publish. My guess is that he has followed through on this, and his posthumous manuscripts will include the full biographies of all the Glasses.

I’m not sure who will win out, or whether that will even be apparent; other than that it’s pretty clearly not Seymour, Walt, or Zooey.

I’m kind of betting on the Carthusian monk. His name seems to suggest he had the inside track as of the 1950s. And Franny & Zooey already ended on a distinctly Christian note.

Written with a child on my lap.

Good Neighbour Jerry

Here's a glimpse of the real Salinger, as he was known to his neighbours. Accept no BS about him being mad, eccentric, or a recluse.

The Mad Hermit Salinger

I'm starting to get irritated by the coverage of J.D. Salinger's death—or rather, his life, as described in his obituaries. Nobody seems to be able to accept his withdrawal from the world. One writer even insists he was “mentally ill,” as if that was an explanation instead of simply a pejorative. W.P. Kinsella claims archly that his attempt to avoid publicity was simply a ploy to get publicity. All speak of him as “eccentric,” and a “recluse.”

All I see is an intelligent man. He was, in his own words, “in the world but not of it.” Though Salinger was apparently not a Christian this is simply what all Christians are called to be. This, indeed, is the only sane option in life; everything else is madness. Holden Caulfield would have called it, the whole social game, "phoniness"; and this is exactly what Jesus called it: "hypocrisy" is simply the New Testament Greek equivalent. Having made enough from his first novel to live comfortably for the rest of his life, why should he have chased after more money? Why should he have sought more fame? Why not instead take the opportunity to spend the rest of his life writing, in its purest form—that being a form of prayer, a dialogue with God? Since God exists, nothing else matters nearly so much. Salinger made the wisest choice; I would have done the same.

Indeed, William James Sardis, the man with the highest IQ ever measured, did the same. The monastery is the same thing yet again—and our ancestors understood monks to be the happiest of men. Intelligent men do not seek money, beyond their basic needs, or fame, or the world's approval. This is the secret of happiness.

That people these days see this wisdom as “eccentric” or even “mentally ill” is the clearest evidence that the world is mad, madder than ever. Why would a sane man want any part of it?

Avatar--Is It Just Me Who Smells Smoke in this Crowded Theatre?

On urgings by techie friends, I went to see Avatar in IMAX last night. It is on track, I understand, to break the all-time box office record; and has already come out on top in the Critics' Choice Awards.

I thought it was drek. Take away the FX, and all you have is Disney's Pocahontas, without the songs, stretched out to three hours. It was drek in detail: no character ever said anything that was not a cliche. Whole scenes seemed to be taken from other recent movies; the final battle between the hero and the evil colonel in a mechanical suit was taken direct from Iron Man. And plausible? I'm as willing as anyone to suspend disbelief, but how about a few thousand armed with wooden bows and arrows taking out a futuristic fleet of helicopter gunships? How did the Na'vi tribe survive with no children? How does a soul pass through something like a USB port?

I read there is now something of a mental health crisis among those who have recently seen Avatar, and cannot adjust to not living in the “utopian” world of the Na'vis.

This I can understand, in a way, but it also surprised me, because I saw the Na'vis' world, personally, as anything but utopian. Although it is certainly a romanticised and falsified view of hunter-gatherer existence, if that is what it is meant to represent, there are lots of ways in which the movie itself suggests it is not really a utopia at all. First, obviously, the name of this world is “Pandora.” Pandora, in Greek mythology, was created by the gods as a punishment for man, and the most obvious association for most with the name is “Pandora's Box”--from which comes all the evils of life. Colonel Quarich at the start of the movie describes Pandora as worse than hell. If the Na'vi commune happily with some of Pandora's animals, they are also clearly tasty prey to many others; Jake survives the dangerous initiation ritual, but one must assume that most Na'vi are torn to shreds by it on the cusp of adulthood. If they have survived that long. There seems to be a nice level of community solidarity, but one can also apparently be put to death at the tribal leader's whim.

Note that the Na'vi themselves have some of the traditional characteristics of devils: the long, hairless tail, the pointed ears, fangs, a vaguely goatlike nose. To them, the invading humans are the “sky people,” and the association of up with good and down with evil is a strong one in the human consciousness. They are also creatures of the night: Jake's avatar awakes as he goes to sleep in our world, and vice versa. Their god speaks to them not from the sky, but from under ground; their religion is purely materialist. The term “avatar” in turn implies that we humans are gods, from the perspective of the Na'vi.

The Na'vi culture and village is built around a huge tree. Go behind the obvious “tree-hugger” reference, and you see the tree in the centre of Eden. Yes, Eden is a praradise, but the tree in its centre is the forbidden source of all evil; and these Na'vi actually worship the tree. To make the reference clearer, Jake Sully actually is offered and bites into a very big, very juicy fruit at the beginning of the movie, just after he is first transformed into a Na'vi; and the fruit is offered him by a woman, Dr. Grace, who is in charge of the mission and who is primarily responsible for turning him into a Na'vi. Adam, meet Eve.

To be clear, given their appearance, the fact that they worship the tree, and that Jake bites the apple on first becoming a Na'vi, I think we are to take them as representing, not the first humans, but the tempting devils, of Eden. They do not crawl on their bellies, like snakes—but neither did the snake of Eden, until after the fall and God's curse. He might as well have looked like a Na'vi. In becoming Na'vis, Jake and Dr. Grace are Adam and Eve.

Taken together, the symbolic point of the movie seems to be to tell the Eden story from the devil's perspective. If we only accept that apple, the apple in this case being the lovely imaginary world of the movie itself, and chow down on it hard, we inherit the world of the Na'vi, with all its glow-in-the-dark glamour and freedom from the ugly rules of civilization, that keep us from following our instincts and doing just what we want. All women will then be beautiful, all men strong and brave. Nature will conform to our wishes. There will be no children weighing us down with responsibilities, and we will live forever, in the Great Mother, become as gods.

Sounds good to some, clearly. But, at the same time, the devil is constrained to a certain level of honesty. If you really see Pandora as a paradise, you are not paying very close attention.

I doubt James Cameron himself sees or intends any of this—I gather his own sympathies are with the Na'vi. He has said, "the Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are." But all inspiration is ultimately from God; the devil must speak truth in spite of himself.

Of course, the movie is also quite harsh on the “sky people” --the communion of saints and angels. They have “destroyed their home planet.” There is nothing green there. They are prepared to kill all the Na'vi for the sake of an incredibly valuable mineral called “unobtainium.” So they too, loo like materialists.

Except that “unobtainium,” traditionally, is the term used by engineers for any ideal substance they would like to have, but cannot get. A substance, in other words, that exists entirely as an idea, but not in the physical world. A pretty good metaphor, when speaking to complete materialists like the Na'vi, for the human soul. And God did indeed, along with his avenging angel Colonel Michael, launch war on the celestial Na'vi for the soul of mankind.

If the soul is indeed of more genuine, absolute value, than all the material pleasures and perils of Pandora, or of this world, then it is just and not selfish for Selfridge to dispossess the Na'vi to obtain it; even if he is not God and did not create it in the first place. If there are more sky people than the total population of Na'vi, clearly quite small, in line to benefit, Selfridge is again justified, by JS Mill's principle of the greatest good to the greatest number. There is a point at which the common good supercedes the right to private property; hence the government right to expropriation when circumstances warrant. Selfish Selfridge is actually not being selfish if this is the case; and it quite probably is, given the movie's own premises. Of course, the mysterious corporation ought to do everything it can to convince the Na'vi to move peacefully before they send in the bulldozers—but the movie demonstrates that Jake and Grace themselves are certain the Na'vi will never agree to a peaceful settlement, and that the corporation knows this. It's all in their video logs.

The movie does what it can to keep you seeing everything from the perspective of the Na'vi, but it does make the moral issue fairly plain. You side with the Na'vi, you are siding with the wrong, merely because they and their world are attractive and they have big soulful eyes.

Sucker.

There's one fried every minute.

High Noon

As I was exercising last night, I rewatched High Noon, probably the first movie I remember from my childhood. I first saw it sometime between the ages of 2 and 8, and it burned some things indelibly into my psyche.

It remains one of the greatest artistic products and purest expressions of American culture.

Most striking is how it conforms to the traditional dramatic unities, as prescribed by Aristotle millennia ago. The movie lasts one hour and 20 minutes; the time covered in the movie lasts one hour and 20 minutes. All around one act and one action: that train rolling in at 12 noon.

One would have imagined these rules for drama really only mattered for the stage, and were about creating the willing suspension of disbelief. In fact, one would expect them to be a bad idea for the screen, because they artificially limit the visuals and so the visual interest. Not so: they apparently matter just as much in a movie. High Noon is not the only classic movie that attends to them: Night of the Living Dead and Twelve Angry Men also come to mind.

It is also of course, true that you can make a great movie, or a great play, without them. Shakespeare proved that.

Nevertheless, High Noon proves that there is some kind of magic here: all else being equal, if you can conform to the three dramatic unities, you are adding the weight of a spiritual sledgehammer to your performance.

As for American culture: if and to the extent that it ever forgets the essential message of High Noon, it has lost its soul.