Until It Bleeds – Until It Burns

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Ethics, Ferguson, General Philosophy, Race

Tags

The predictable, self-righteous clucking by privileged White commentators of various stripes that followed especially upon the Ferguson rioting (which followed upon a grand jury result that shows every sign of having been aggressively manipulated so as to avoid, even preclude, any indictment of the White cop who killed an unarmed Black teenager) betrays a level of willful obtuseness that is truly beyond all measure. Add to this now the similar refusal to indict in the Garner case in Staten Island, and the shock and outrage in minority communities has reached levels not seen since the 1960’s. This rage continues to leave many people – almost entirely White people, and regardless, almost certainly members of some significantly privileged collection of people – completely dumb-founded as to the reason why this rage is fulminating in so many minority communities, a rage that often expresses itself blindly in violence. Why are black people, especially, so angry? Why do they lash out so violently at their own communities? These respective cases went before their grand juries, and when presented with all of the evidence, the grand juries said that there was not evidence enough for an indictment. Isn’t this how the system is supposed to work?

But that, of course, is precisely the problem: that IS how the system is supposed to work. The system IS supposed to dismiss the value of minority, especially black, lives. Because the system that we live in is one of monstrously institutionalized racism in which black people can be safely viewed as not even human by people who insist that this is not a problem. Yes, the system “worked.” Such “working” is the moral catastrophe of our age.

I wish to make two points here, the first is quite patently clear, while the second and longer point will be far more problematically speculative. Point #1 is that, while rioting – which is not at all the same as civil disobedience – is almost certainly not helpful, it is understandable. The second, far more speculative, point is an approach toward such an understanding that I’ve not seen suggested elsewhere.

Continue reading →

HERSTEIN’s FIRST LAW

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in General Philosophy, Philosophy of Logic, Psychology

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

being human, Climate change Denial, Critical Thinking, Race

Never underestimate human capacity for denial.

I first formulated the above phrase – and flattered myself by naming it – some decades ago; so long, indeed, that I’ve no clear idea when I first said it. Other people have probably said similar things, long before I ever first quipped the idea. But my first contact with the phrase was in my personal act of formulating it. The second person to invent the wheel still invented it if she didn’t know about the first person. The earliest example of the exact quote (it is important that you search on the quote, otherwise the search registers all the words, regardless of their order) that I can find on Google brings up the pseudonym of “Logic Deferred” as first stating the phrase publicly back in February of 2010. Feel free to click on the pseudonym to see who it is that comes up. But as I said, I’ve used the phrase for many decades now.

And I am quite sincere about this statement: Never underestimate human capacity for denial. Smart people can be the worst cases when it comes to denial, because rather than using their intelligence for inquiry, they will use it to justify their ideology.

Continue reading →

Black Devils

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in appeal to emotion, Critical Thinking, Ferguson, General Philosophy

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

being human, Critical Thinking, Ferguson

“And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.” This is how Officer Darren Wilson described Michael Brown in the moments before Wilson killed the unarmed Brown. According to Wilson, Brown wasn’t angry, infuriated or even enraged – because for Wilson, Brown wasn’t even human. Notice that Brown’s face isn’t even his (Brown’s) face; Wilson calls Brown’s face an “it.” (Found on pp’s 224 — 225 of Wilson’s testimony.) Brown was a demon, he was a black devil. And because Brown was a black devil, it required nothing more than Wilson feeling he was threatened for the threat to have the legal standing of an objective fact.

Continue reading →

Making Sense 2: Storytime

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, General Philosophy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

being human, Narrative, Philosophy of Mind, Relational thinking

Making sense of things is a process of variously discovering and applying logical coherence, empirical adequacy and – the hard one – narrative intelligibility. Narrative is the subject of this post.

Narrative is a fancy word for “story telling.” And there is quite a story to tell.

Let us go back a bit, and by “a bit,” I mean before human beings even existed. Why would early hominids ever develop language in the first place? Did it somehow facilitate hunting? Well, other pack hunters like lions, dolphins, and troops of chimpanzees do not seem to suffer from its absence. (The latter group will evidently go out on murder raids against their own kind, again without any assistance from language.) Exactly what information could one convey with language, while hunting, that observation, practice and hand signals could not do better? Just imagine one hunter using language to assist in the hunt: “HEY FRED! CIRCLE AROUND TO THE LEFT! THERE’S A HERD OF ANTELOPE RIGHT OVER TH… oh … Never mind.” As anyone who has ever hunted in any capacity – or merely thought about the subject for an instant – will instantly recognize, stealth is of far greater importance than extended communication.

Continue reading →

Don’t Do It, Wuss

17 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Academia, General Philosophy, Personal History

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

being human, Stories

This one is rather more personal than most of my entries, so I beg your patience.

The title above is based on a pet saying of a friend of mine; the meaning is a little more complicated than a first reading might suggest.

It has to do with something most of us have witnessed – and many have not only participated in, but actively brought about – when exactly the wrong person, at exactly the wrong time, takes exactly the wrong stand, for exactly the right and noble reasons, all without the slightest hope of “survival,” much less success. (Usually they/we literally survive, but with physical and emotional scars that are added to an already long list.) Witnessing such a train wreck, you say to yourself (because the disaster is too overwhelming to even say it out loud): “Oh dear god; don’t do it wuss …” But you can see that it is already too late; even though it has not yet been done, it certainly is going to be.

Continue reading →