Tree Hugger

“Tree Hugger” has pejorative connotations; a tree hugger isn't in step with the economic program. Over the weekend I went to a party in an urban neighborhood. Pittsburgh is a hilly place and because of the geography neighborhoods are often little enclaves. Behind this house are two paper streets on paper, but never developed because there was mining underneath years ago and the danger of subsidence made building untenable. So in my friend's back yard and beyond is an urban forest. Dominating the view is a huge Black Locust tree, a fairly common native species here. I've never seen a more perfect specimen.

The tree inspired awe and affection in me, and my gushing about it among other things prompted a friend to remark about me approximately:

“You say you don't believe in God, but you tell stories like this. Sooner or later don't you think the stories fit together in a pattern that belies your profession 'There is no God?'”

Posts at Keith Hart's blog The Memory Bank are always though provoking. Hart is anthropologist and looks closely at economics through that lens. In his recent post about speculation in the art market, Hart writes:

My favourite definition of religion is Durkheim’s, the attempt to build meaningful bridges between the known and the unknown, between everyday life and the disasters that lie in wait for all of us, especially death.

In my study of the human and behavioral sciences, way back my early days in college, I became increasingly sure there was a fundamental problem about them, a rather philosophical problem about how we think about objects and subjects. Identifying the problem in this way points to the territory Durkheim stakes out for religion: building meaningful bridges between the known and unknown. And turns attention towards the meaningful bridges between knower and known.

Anyhow, about this sense that there's something fundamentally missing in the human studies, the work of Gregory Bateson has provided me with a reference and a guide since my college days in the 1970's. He was British and trained in British school, but worked during his career in the United States. He was an anthropologist, and also in on the beginnings of the development cybernetics.

The issue I'm dancing around goes by many names which are pairs; partial listing of pairs would include: mind/body, form/substance, subject/object. German philosophers had much to say about the topic of these pairs and their relations; American and British philosophers too. Bateson was a bit idioscyratic in the ways he talked about everything. When it comes to this general subject, partly his way of talking has to do with the British and American schools of philosophy, and part his unique insights.

Stewart Brand's inspiration for the first Whole Earth Catalog were the writings and ideas of Buckminster Fuller. Gregory Bateson the inspiration for the Whole Earth Epilog. It's hard to imagine today that catalogs printed on newsprint would be influential to a generation of Americans, but these were indeed. Yet I've never really met anyone much interested in Gregory Bateson. Among those I've talked to interested in the problem of human studies have been more steeped in German philosophy or various stripes of post-modernism. It seems people come to the topic of objects and subjects with very different frames with particular vocabularies. Whenever I bring up Bateson, I seem to get into a muddle.

In thinking about “Why Buddhism?” an observation that Bateson makes in the introductory chapter of his book Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity seems important. Bateson wrote:

I hold to the presupposition that our loss of the sense of aesthetic unity was, quite simply, an epistemological mistake...

A part of the stroy of our loss of the sense of unity has been elegantly told in Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being, which traces the story from classical Greek philosophy to Kant and the beginnings of German idealism in the eighteenth century. This is the story of the idea that the world is/was timelessly created upon deductive logic. The idea is clear in the epigraph from The City of God. Supreme Mind, or Logos, is at the head of the deductive chain. Below that are the angels, then people, then apes, and so on down to the plants and stones. All is in deductive order and tied into that order by a premise which prefigures our second law of thermodynamics. The premise asserts that the "more perfect" can never be generated by the "less perfect."

I found online a page of a handout for a philosophy class taught by Peter Suber. Suber has organized the claims of the great chain of being to show how they fit together to form a single large argument.

Bateson points out that in the history of Biology that Lamark was the first to invert the great chain of being. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is mostly known for Lamarkian errors of the heritability of acquired characteristics. Nevertheless Lamarck's theory of "tranformism" presaged Darwin's theory of evolution. Bateson was concerned with epistemology, a branch of philosophy which deals with the theory of knowledge. He was interested that what he said contained fewer epistemological errors. He doesn't follow the logical argument of the great chain of being, nor an inverted form. Rather he points to them to show a hierarchic structure of thought. Steeped in Anglo-British philosophy he relies on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Logical Types.

A sort of a recap of my recent ramblings over my last few posts:

A friend who is very knowledgeable wrote a proposal to do a session at the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions on Buddhist economics. She opened up the process of making the proposal online. I wrote some of my thoughts about it, but they didn't come together. So I thought to break my writing into parts here to see whether I could get the parts to hang together better. I began this with the post Why Buddhism?

I mentioned a post at Religious Dispatches about America's oldest man, as well as E.F. Schumacher's essay "Buddhist Economics." Two anecdotes don't make a trend, but it seemed enough to frame a question why Christians would use Buddhism to explain something. While I am genuinely curious about this, posing the question really was rhetorical, a means to begin speculating wildly. I don't know much so clearly anything I say falls into the "for what it's worth category."

For what it's worth, my hunch is part of the reason why Christians turn to Buddhism to explain something has to do with skirting around the deductive logic of the great chain of being.

In religion and philosophy distinctions are of great importance, so it takes a great deal of skill and study to negotiate these areas. About how we think and how we make are lives meaningful are questions everyone ponders and have something to say about. When discussions about religion and philosophy come up there's a tension between insisting on important distinctions and a spirit of tolerance which enables conversation across differences.

I know my friend Linda Nowakowski, who's deeply immersed in the study of Buddhist economics is very careful about making distinctions. And she very much people with differencing views to speak to each other, hence the effort to make a proposal for the Council for a Parliament of World's Religions.

Economics like other human studies has to contend with the problem of subject and object. That's a problem religions address too. The intersection of interest around this problem makes me want to persist in laying out my views, even when I see that my writing isn't making much sense, and is boring. For better or worse I plan to explore this line of thinking in future posts.

Sometimes Things Just Don't Come Together

That's me trying to light a folded piece of news paper. The folds are quite simple; a piece of newspaper is folded much like an envelope. At the center where the corners of the paper come together they're twisted a bit, then the construction puffed up a little. The tricky part is to quickly light the four corners and then allow the flaming contraption to float into the sky from the updraft of a camp fire. Done right it can float high and then the disintegrating embers float wildly to the ground. I hardly ever get it right; the paper is in flames and simply drops into the fire. Some people have a knack for it.

I like having the MyBlogLog widget here to see who's been stopping by. I thank BlairSupporter for leaving a comment on my last post. Daisy of Daisy's Dead Air commented too and Phil Jones gave me a nice shout out about the post. I see that Linda Nowakowski has been around and Geoffrey Philip too. I end up spouting off on the Internet quite a lot, but the idea that anyone reads what I write is a bit frightening. Most of the time it doesn't come together.

Daisy's Dead Air always gets me thinking. I didn't link to anywhere for Linda Nowakowski because I'm not sure of the etiquette about linking to content on social networks. But she writes at Ned.com among other places and what she writes always makes me think hard. Linda often writes on the subject of Buddhist economics. There are many schools of thought outside the mainstream of economic orthodoxy, often together called heterodox economics. Heterodox economics are not simply anti-neoclassical economics, or at least that's not what I find so interesting about them. What's important is cross fertilization across schools of thought in economics and with other disciplines.

Daisy posted a long post Ash Wednesday ruminations on feminism, religion, etc. During the week I had been struggling to write something regarding a proposal Linda was making to make a presentation at the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. I'd written many pages, but it just wasn't coming together. Reading Daisy's ruminations on religion among other things caught my attention because I was thinking and trying to write about that too.

One of the reasons I enjoy reading Daisy's blog so much is I get to click on links to feminist blogs. It would be great to say I would find such links otherwise, but that's probably not the case. Part of her "ruminations" post has to do with how commentary at feminist blogs sometimes runs towards vitriol. That's a more general fact of the Internet which often seems impossibly hard to figure out and to imagine how to stop. Phil Jones has written smart commentary about this phenomenon, including Sarcasm Doesn't Scale. Phil has really smart comments on his blogs and various discussions on them have clued me in about what a knotty and interesting issue this is. Something I love very much about Daisy and Linda online is their arguments. It's not just that their arguments are good, it's also their fearlessness in engaging that I admire.

Nowadays more people my age are getting online and getting involved in the social Web. I've got one friend who's been involved since before there was a World Wide Web, so of course she knows a thing or two about Internet discourse. But talking with most of my friends about arguments online I'm greeted by blank stares, apparently they've never encountered such. I can't imagine how this is possible. The exciting thing about the Internet is people can engage in discussions across all sorts of boundaries. As it turns out this is very hard to do, not for technological reasons but for social reasons, and fireworks ensue.

More generally, it's difficult for people immersed in disciplines to engage with people immersed in different disciplines. But such interdisciplinary work is fertile ground for increasing knowledge.

Ethan Zuckerman has written brilliantly about xenophilia, which is a love of engaging across boarders. Homophily is the opposite number of xenophilia, meaning "birds of a feather flock together." Zuckerman observes:

Homophily can make you stupid.

Daisy's post notes that religion seems a sure fire way to kindle big and unreasonable arguments on the Web. That's of course true in meat space too. Mother always told us to avoid sex, politics and religion at the dinner table. I don't think she mentioned sex come to think of it, but sure she meant to.

Something really interesting about Buddhist economics is the intersection of religion and what is considered by many the dreadfully dull subject of economics. I had been vaguely aware of E. F. Schumacher before encountering Linda Nowakowski, but was quite uninformed about Buddhist economics, a term Schumacher coined in 1955, the year of my birth. Buddhist economics is not a huge school within economics, but is remarkably widespread. I'm impressed with the spread and durability of the whole notion of it.

Collen Wainwright *[update] writes a wonderful blog Communicatrix. I'm a bit confused about religion, I tell people that I don't believe in God, and yet I "hew to the woo." I knew I'd read that last bit somewhere, but couldn't remember where. I searched the term and Communicatrix came up and as thought to myself, "yes, of course." This isn't the post that came up in search, but is the post I remember reading it. I'm pretty skeptical about The Law of Attraction which communicatrix writes about, but her approach to thinking about it won me over.

I think about all sorts of issues in religious terms. Because of my upbringing I tend to think in terms of Christianity. I just do. I'm also skeptical of these habits of thought. Far from rebelling and turning into a staunch atheist in response to my internal dialogs, thinking about how my thoughts turn to religion seems to inform the subjects I'm thinking about. But what comes out of this sausage making is hardly ever doctrinally sound in any religion!

Linda is sure that economics must take into account not only value in economic terms, but human values as well. That is a subject near and dear to my heart. My thinking about values is somewhat peculiar and overlaps with iconoclastic thinking about God. The really odd thing about my thinking of values and God, is these come into play when I'm trying hard to be rigorous in my thinking, that is, when I'm trying to think about science in a formal way, or philosophy and other subjects. What I've just written seems easily misconstrued, and I'm not sure how to correct that. I'm not saying that I think it's necessary for people to think of God when they think about science, philosophy and other subjects in a formal way. What I am saying is that when I do that thoughts come together in some surprising and fascinating--to me--ways.

Alas, most of the times when trying to show others these patterns I've imagined too often things just don't come together.

The deadline for Linda's proposal has passed. I've seen the drafts of it and they look great. I didn't contribute a thing, but am very happy she opened up the process to view and comment. I think there are some parts in the draft I'm writing that make some good points. I won't give up trying and one day will share them.

What this post is about is really how people on the Web share the process of thinking. Their sharing changes my thinking, but not always, or even most of the time, by argument. Rather, first is a modeling of good thinking and second by their wonderful creations the encouragement to think. Sometimes thoughts come together nicely, but often not. Often that's when the most joy comes, like a puzzle where there's clearly a solution and the fun is in trying to discover it.

Cheers to the generous souls on the Internet who don't hide their light under a basket.

*Update: I'm not sure why, but I mistakenly identified Joann Wypijewski as the communicatrix. I apologize both to Colleen Wainwright, the real and inimitable the communicatrix and to JoAnn Wypijewski. Furthermore I must apologize for not only the misidentification, but also for butchering the spelling of JoAnn Wypijewski's name.

Most of the time when I screw up I can't figure out why. In this case I'd just watched a videonation video at YouTube Church Sex Scandal: False Memories, False Justice, the print version of the story is here and took note. I probably wrote down JoAnn Wypijewski's name on the same scrap of paper I wrote down Colleen Wainwright's name.

I've mentioned that religion is a hard topic for me, especially the notion of collusion and conspiracy. I took note of JoAnn Wypijewski's report about a Massachusetts court taking up the scientific, evidentiary basis for repressed memory, because the subject of repressed memory is such a staple or the conspiracy minded. A big part of that conspiracy are attacks on the reporters who report that scientific studies do not tend to support repressed memory claims, neither have courts who've examined the issue.

Knowing what a hot button issue repressed memory is on Internet discussion boards, I was impressed that Wypijewski is willing to report on the issue and to do do a video too. Taking up subjects ignored by most, but which are so vigorously attacked by a few, seems hardly a great career move. Wypijewski must see her role as reporter to present the facts in news stories and not to back away, even when it might be advantageous to do so. I applaud her gumption.

What We Make of It

The illustration was scanned from Babar And His Children by Jean de Brunhoff. Shamelessly ripped under the guise of fair use for discussion. The real crime here is that I clipped the illustration when scanning it so you can't see Alexander's--the elephant flying out the carriage--bemused expression.

I looked on the bookshelf to see if we had Barbar stories because in this week's The New Yorker Adam Gopnik writes about Babar in an article entitled Freeing The Elephants: What Babar Brought. The copy of Babar And His Children on the shelf is an old library edition. Many of the pages are repaired with tape. I also notice that signatures have been re-sewn to some brown packing tape to atatch the cover securely, which was surely my mother's handiwork. I loved Babar stories as a child. My favorite stories however were Rupert Bear stories.

We had books in my house when growing up. Many of them were rummage sale finds. My mother particularly liked library bindings and those books were often rubber stamped with the word discarded. I do remember asking about the word as a child, but can't remember the answer. I presume it was something like, "It's ours now." In fact many of the old library books still had the pocket for the library card, some even a card. I can remember taking the cards out when I looked at these books and putting it back when I was finished.

I don't know many other Americans my age who knew Rupert Bear books. Rupert is huge in England, having been serialized in the Daily Expresssince 1920. It's fortunate my mother picked used books for us, otherwise I would never have had Rupert stories as a childhood companion. Rupert Bear is one reason my disenchantment of nature is incomplete. The possibility of brownies and gnomes still intrigues me.

I've been writing lately about religion and American politics and somehow haven't gotten around to saying anything important about it. Last Friday Jeremy at Naijablog posted a short post A world without god... I've got Naijablog in my feeds, but was alerted to the post by one of Emeka Okafor's "Quick Hits." I hurried over to read because the comments at Naijablog are very often quite lively.

In a conversation a Nigerian friend recently off-handedly remarked that he didn't believe in God. Jeremy wrote:

I wondered: if this chap can make the route out of the forces of unreason, how come most others fall into its snares and stay trapped staring at shadows deep within Plato's cave...

I've got an atheist Internet friend in Uganda. Over the years we've talked about Humanism. I told him about Tai Solarian whom Jeremy mentions in his piece. But my atheist friend is like Solarian a fierce critic of religion. I've told him I don't believe in God, but every once in a while my friend will begin to tell me something with, "A Christian like you..." I think where the confusion comes from is that he knows I'm not one to throw out unreason altogether.

Recently my friend and I were talking and the clans of various people we know came up. Talking with Ugandans on the Internet there are so many subjects with a common frame of reference, but an American like me can talk long without discovering differences which are hard to translate and to understand. How clans work is one of the topics for me. Here is a page listing the Clans of Buganda. The Buganda are the largest ethnic group in Uganda. I learned for the first time which clan my friend belongs. My friend sometimes will rail against tribalism, but in fact he seemed to relish telling me about the clans. His relationship to Buganda culture perhaps is a bit like my relationship to Christianity, in that for each of us there is a refutation of the tradition yet still tradition has its sway on us.

Google Book Search is cool. In looking for more information about Buganda clan totems I stumbled upon James G. Frazer's 1910 Totemism and Exogomy. Frazer's theories belong to history rather than main currents in anthropology today. Still I was struck by his descriptions of the Buganda clan totems ad by how the totems together created a cultural fabric.

In his article about Babar Gopnik addresses how Babar is controversial literature. In particular he mentions Ariel Dorfman who wrote The Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds. In brief here's Gropnik on the controversy:

Babar, such interpreters have insisted, is an allegory of French colonization, as seen by the complacent colonizers: the naked African natives, represented by the "good" elephants, are brought to the imperial capital, acculturated, and then sent back to their homeland on a civilizing mission.

Gropnik finds those who would burn "Babar" have missed the true subject of the books. For Gopnik the books are not colonial propaganda but rather;

a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination and its close relation to the French domestic imagination.

If Babar was a part of your childhood, or perhaps you have introduced Babar to your children, Gopnik's article is really worth reading.

Jeremy really is a master at getting conversations going on his blog, shortly after his first post World without god.. he posted a second The God particle and the comments are superb. We in America would be better off if we made an effort to talk more about religion in politics. It's hard to do because so often such talk can seem attacks.

As my Ugandan friend has noticed, my position seems a bit wishy-washy. On the one hand I say that I don't believe in God, but on the other hand talk about how important stories are to our understanding of things. And there's no doubt that religious stories are among my most favorite. Jeremy's wholesale rejection of God is ironically less likely to cause offense. Either way, it seems a willingness to suffer a bit of offense is necessary for discussion.

Much of what we Americans seem to think of as religious are stories with a different origin. Babar in translation offers a cross-cultural exchange and through that makes our stories more visible to us. If Americans of differing religious and non-religious views would talk more, we would become better aware of the stories we use to navigate through life. It wouldn't hurt either for more Americans to listen to what people around the world are talking about too. We miss out by making our religious views too private.

I notice that Republican presidential candidate has caused a minor international incident. In an interview with Spanish press he suggested he would not be willing to meet with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero. According to Talking Points Memo reporting most Spanish observers believe that McCain simply had no idea what Spain's head of state's name is and got confused thinking Zapatero must be a bad guy in Latin America. One would expect that a presidential candidate would get some sort of briefing prior to speaking with the foreign press. So some in Spain figure McCain must know who Zapatero is and is signaling frosty relations. My take is that surely McCain was confused and did not intend the insult. My opinion stems from observing McCain's bellicosity and a worldview of enemy's all around.

Pardon my French: Jesus! McCain scares the crap out of me.