Golf as a Metaphor for Life

Just like in life, there’s a plan. (Drive it onto the fairway. Hit an iron to get you around the green. Chip it near the pin. Put it in.) And like in life, you spend more time trying to make up for errors, whacking it out of the woods and smashing your way out of sand traps, than adhering to your initial strategy. 

As in life, there’s a standard. It’s called “par.” And for the average player, it’s unattainable.

And as in life, all that really matters is that you enjoy the setting, the struggle, and company of your peers.

On Realizing You're Not a Genius

Until just a few years ago, I was convinced I was a genius. I would have bet on myself to win the Nobel Prize in Literature at some point during my lifetime. I was completely sure my first novel manuscript would be published and go on to have a massive impact on the contemporary literary landscape. Sure, I knew how few manuscripts manage to turn an agent’s head, how few beginning writers find success with their first novel attempt, but, in a classic pique of prefrontal-cortex-devoid youthfulness, I was sure that those types of concerns had no bearing on a genius like me. 

Well, as you might have predicted, that novel didn’t sell. I’ve had a few short stories published in small online journals, I’ve been accepted into a fully funded MFA program, and I’m generally satisfied with the trajectory of my writing life — but there’s been nothing to suggest otherworldly levels of extraordinariness. Who'd've thunk it?

Which leads me to today’s reflection: It’s easier to think you’re a genius when you’re young because the burden of proof lies in the future. When you’re older, the present bears that burden, and your essential normalness is painfully apparent.  

Try Turning Your Beliefs Into Arguments. You’ll See How Little You Know.

This post was supposed to have a different topic: how people of various political stripes fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of literature. I was to start by giving examples of how people on both the left and right incorrectly assume that literature is always directly edifying — that is, that the author transmits ideas and values directly to the reader. Then, I would explain how literature is more often indirectly edifying, with the reader learning from the material by placing it within various personal and social contexts. 

I had the whole argument laid out — all I needed were the examples. And that’s where things got tricky. I was sure self-righteous arbiters on the left, many of them cultural elites, were seeking to “cancel” works they considered problematic. Finding an example would be easy — I was sure there were dozens. 

First, I thought of Junot Díaz. He’d been canceled, right? But no — a little research showed that he was still widely read, and his work widely admired, despite allegations of sexual misconduct. Then I thought of Dr. Seuss. Hadn’t some of his books been taken off shelves for racist depictions? Yes, but that was different — the idea was to protect kids from harmful stereotypes. Besides, it was a matter of images, not words — hardly the perfect example for an argument about literature. I considered the Philip Roth biographer whose book had been ditched by the publisher after allegations of abuse, but the issue there seemed to be the injustice of the expected financial windfall rather than the harmful content of the book itself. Finally, I considered the criticism of To Kill a Mockingbird — but just for a moment, before recognizing that replacing a book on a syllabus doesn’t quite count as repressing it.

And so I was stumped. I couldn’t find a single example to support my argument, which could only mean one thing: My argument was flawed. 

And so I scrapped the plan for the article. Then, most importantly, I re-evaluated my views. 

***

Forming opinions is easy. Defending them is a whole lot harder. It’s in preparing the defense that we ensure our views are accurate. If I hadn’t set out to turn my vaguely held belief into a persuasive argument, I’d never have noticed its inherent flaw, its (rather consequential) detachment from reality. 

Joan Didion said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” Similarly, you can discover what you do think but shouldn’t by trying to explain it. 

P.S- I still find the distinction between “direct” and “indirect” edification useful — which is why I slipped it into the introduction.

Thank God for Music

Thank God for music — and I mean that literally. Thank you, God, for the unlikely gift of music.

I enjoy writing more than anything else in the world, but how profane the scratching of the pen sounds besides Schubert’s Ave Maria!

How grateful we should be that such sounds can affect us so!

A blessing, a blessing, a blessing.

***

There are lots of things like that, no? — Things that are absolutely fantastic and yet kind of weird, kind of inconsistent with the bare facts of life — the divine adornments that add up to make life so incredibly enjoyable.

We can imagine a world without those things, but it would be much, much duller. 

That sounds can be so pleasant, so exhilarating, so meaningful! 

That food can taste so good. 

Sex! Imagine a world without orgasms? Yes, thank God for sex!

Thank God that we've evolved in such a way —  and the world's evolved in such a way — that where we meet the world we can experience so much pleasure.   

Looking for more insights from an intrepid writer and committed travler? Follow Benjamin Clabault on Twitter, read his work on Medium, and check out his website for all the latest news on publications, appearances, and more.

Pro Soccer's Growing in a Way That's Reckless and Unsustainable - Just Like the Economy That Supports It

There’s one word that applies to almost every recent development in soccer: acceleration. The players themselves have become faster. Modern tactics are geared around speed. The best teams are those who can shift the ball around as quickly as possible. All this means that today’s young fans would hardly recognize the game as it used to be, with its lethargic build-up play and aimless backpasses. 

As the play on the field accelerates, so too does the game’s economic engine. Clubs are earning more money than ever before, and they’re determined to drive the trend as far as it can go. Competitions are expanding since every extra game brings the promise of additional revenue. Breaks are becoming shorter, and midweek matches are now the norm. When growth means money, the people in charge can't help but want more, more, more.

There are all sorts of problems with this approach. First, the obvious: The players are exhausted. Nobody can maintain their highest level while playing almost 100 games a year. The richest clubs survive by rotating their squads and playing the bench, but most teams aren't so lucky.

This dynamic only exacerbates the inequalities in most domestic leagues. Manchester City can buy 22 elite players and split the excessive game time between them. Smaller clubs can’t afford this type of depth, making a Leicester-like upset less probable with every passing year.

Then there’s the biggest problem of all: oversaturation. We fans love to watch the games, but we can’t tune in every single day of the year. We appreciate the sport’s breadth of competitions, with the combination of domestic leagues and international tournaments providing a variety that traditional American sports could never muster, but we’re not interested in yet another contest that doesn’t need to exist. When we hear about some new mini-league or cup competition, the response is no longer, “Oh, cool!” It’s, “Seriously? Another one?”

The poster child for the overexpansion trend is a proposal that hasn’t yet been implemented, but has the dollar signs flashing in FIFA’s greedy eyes: a biennial World Cup. For the moneymakers, it’s the obvious next step. The world’s most popular sporting event is wildly lucrative. Why make that money only every four years when you could make it twice as often?

But the response to the plan has been negative, with most criticism centering around an obvious point: The length of time between World Cups is what makes the tournament so special.

I distinctly remember each World Cup summer of my childhood. There was 2002, when I watched the underdog American team play Germany in the back of my father’s bait shop. Then there was 2006, when we watched local hero Clint Dempsey (he played for the New England Revolution at the time) score from our 6th-grade classroom. 2010 was an especially exciting tournament, with champions Spain employing a smooth, possession-based style that we tried our best to imitate in the backyard pick-up games that followed every match.

For moments to become lasting memories, they must be special, and a moment can only be special if it’s rare. When you take something special and multiply it, all you do is cheapen it. Hopefully FIFA gets the memo before it’s too late.

What’s striking about soccer’s excessive growth is that it seems like a metaphor for society at large. Faster, faster, faster. More, more, more. What hasn’t been going in that direction in the past two decades?

There’s plenty that’s good about growth. Economic growth lifts people out of extreme poverty. A more lucrative soccer landscape could see more investment in soccer programs for poor kids around the world (although one doubts the constant claims that this is where the money would go). Done right, growth is awesome. Done carelessly, it can prove fatal. 

Overextend the world of soccer and you’ll destroy the magic of the game. Overextend the global economy and you’ll destroy the planet.

The answer isn’t to develop an antigrowth strategy. We probably couldn’t check growth even if we tried. Today’s economy must expand to survive, and most thriving industries within that economy, soccer included, will expand right along with it. 

What we can do, on a societal level, is master that growth and demand that it remain sustainable — and that means making our voices heard.  

A Probably-Unoriginal Bare-Bones Post-Postmodernist Manifesto

If modernism broke everything apart, postmodernism confirmed that we can’t put it back together. 

So where are we now? All we can do is try to make meaningful art in a world we’ve already declared meaningless. 

Note, I said we’ve declared the world meaningless, not found it to be meaningless. The meaning might still be there — but then, it might not be. Our job as post-postmodernist artists is to poke around just in case it exists.

And it’s exasperating, of course, looking for something that might be nonexistent — but it’s the lot we’ve been given. 

How and where to search? That’s the question every artist today must answer for themselves.

https://benjaminclabault.webnode.com/

The Dialectic of Doubt

I recently had an essay published in Literary Traveler about existential doubt assuaged by a belief in literature as a life-affirming mythology.

The response has been positive, and I think I know why: The mental-emotional process I described is familiar to many readers. 

The cycle I outlined in the piece looks something like this: 

-An aching or vacuous sense that life is meaningless…

-Followed by a thrilling realization — “Wait, I find this thing (in my case it was literature) meaningful, so life must not be meaningless after all!”

After the piece was up on the site, like any vain writer, I re-read it in its polished, published form. I wasn’t surprised to find myself doubting my own conclusion. Literature might be a worthy activity, but there’s nothing ultimately meaningful about it. It doesn’t explain everything like many religions claim to do. It doesn’t satisfy that questioning: why, why, why? 

So, I thought, “If literature hasn’t actually supplied my life with meaning, then life IS meaningless…Except that it’s not — because I have my wife! And love! How can life be meaningless with love?!

“But then love is nothing but a biological function, something that keeps us living in units capable of survival. So, life is meaningless. But still, love is pretty sweet.”

Looking at these mental convulsions from afar, it’s impossible not to notice a cycle — or a dialectic of doubt. 

-Thesis: Despair.

-Antithesis: Hope that meaning resides here or there. 

Synthesis: An acceptance that life is ultimately meaningless, but that it’s full of all sorts of small delights in which we can construct provisional meaning. 

And, in a post-religious mind, this might be about as good as it gets — and that’s alright. Any thinking person is bound to doubt. Sisyphus can’t be smiling all the time, but maybe he can manage a laugh now and then. As long as he’s able to push beyond despair, as long as he can reach that next moment of provisional meaning, he’ll find joy — and hopefully that joy comes often enough to save him.  

Looking for more insights from an intrepid writer and committed travler? Follow Benjamin Clabault on Twitter and check out his website for all the latest news on publications, appearances, and more.

Another Reason to Travel: Combating Geographic Exceptionalism

There’s no lack of adages about why travel is good for you. “It helps broaden your horizons.” “You learn about other cultures.” “You grow as a person.”

Well, I’d like to add another:

Traveling eradicates notions of your own town’s/region’s/country’s exceptionalism. 

And I mean “exceptionalism” in a neutral sense. We’re liable to think our place in the world is especially good, and we’re also liable to consider it especially bad. When we travel, we learn that it’s neither. 

There are assholes everywhere. It’s not just a Massachusetts thing.

Pluckiness and determination are as common outside the U.S. as they are within it.

This isn’t to say places have no unique characteristics. Of course they do. And of course places have certain strengths and weaknesses. Some tendencies are more prominent in one country and less prominent in another. Just check out this fascinating work to learn more. 

But what travel shows us is that very few traits are truly unique to a single place. When you get out there and see the world, you learn that humanity’s foibles and nobility are remarkably universal.

***

Looking for more insights from an intrepid writer and committed travler? Follow Benjamin Clabault on Twitter and check out his website for all the latest news on publications, appearances, and more.

The Sacrilege

In How Should a Person Be?, Sheila Heti’s narrator attempts to fuck her way to a better place. She’s feeling lost after being abandoned by a rightly offended best friend, and she responds by letting herself become the sexual plaything of a cold, heartless man. 

At one point, she says she’s indifferent to the possibility of having the man’s child...she’d as soon kiss the head of his baby as the head of his penis. It’s all the same to her.

There’s a stunning vulgarity to this sentiment, a sentiment that carries with it the essence of the mess we’ve created in the secular Western world. 

Is it too conservative, too reductive, too cliche, to suggest a lack of respect for the sacredness of certain parts of life — in this case, the creation of children — contributes to our general sense of societal malaise? This passage found a place in Heti’s book for a reason. She clearly felt it meant something.

Our old cultural and spiritual edifices have come crashing down — the religions and social orders that taught so many generations of our ancestors what to think — but maybe, just maybe, those legends and structures, proscriptions and rules were based on a real, biological, evolutionary-derived sense of what matters in our lives. Maybe we’re destined to find certain things sacred.

There’s a reason Heti’s narrator’s account inspires derision in a reader.  Violent sex as equal to parenthood? We don’t need any tradition to tell us the very idea is profane.

Is Twitter Part of the Real World? Are Twitter Handles People?

 

Some recent happenings:

Dutch soccer player Georginio Wijnaldum, who recently signed with PSG, said of his time at ex-club Liverpool, “There was a moment when I didn't feel loved and appreciated...The fans in the stadium always supported me...On social media, if we lost, I was the one who got the blame.”

Simone Biles, the U.S. gymnast who pulled out of the team competition, said of her pre-Olympic stress, “There were a couple of days when everybody tweets you and you feel the weight of the world.”

Singer Billie Eilish lamented the difficulty of doing good in the world when people online “are just going to keep saying that you're doing wrong.”

All these folks are high-profile individuals whose mental see-saws have been tipped off their fulcrums by the bullies (or adoring masses) of social media. And while I can empathize with their pain, I can’t help but wonder if we should make a key distinction once and for all, the distinction between the Twittersphere and the real world of flesh and blood.

The Wijnaldum case is especially intriguing. He noted himself the difference between fans he interacted with in person and those hurling insults through the void, saying "My feeling was that the fans in the stadium and the fans on social media were two different kinds.” Where he seems to have gone wrong is in giving each of these subsets equal weight. Who counts as a “Liverpool fan?” The dad and his son, wearing jerseys and waiting for an autograph from the little boy’s favorite player outside the stadium? Certainly. How about an anonymous Twitter user posting nasty things after the game, who could be someone genuinely displeased with Wijnaldum’s performance... or a casual observer who enjoys causing trouble… or some random person a half a world away who gets a kick out of winding up whoever they can, wherever they can, taking advantage of the anonymity and normalized vulgarity that Twitter provides? Does this last entity deserve its place in Wijnadlum’s mental category titled “Liverpool fans?” Does this entity even belong in the category of “people?”

A person interacts with the world, interchanging words and gestures with others, dealing constantly and inevitably with the consequences of their communications. A Twitter handle isn’t so much an extension of a person as a non-personal entity a person takes up when they’re looking to take a break from personhood. Why should these entities be given any weight by real people operating in society?

Of course, dragging social media entities below the threshold of personhood isn’t always so easy. This is most keenly felt in the case of physical threats and racial abuse. When athletes are subjected to such nastiness, as they increasingly are, it must be immensely painful, producing a fear and disgust I can scarcely comprehend. And no matter how much the athlete intellectualizes the concern away, there is still that unavoidable fact: Real human fingers typed those worlds.

But even these extreme cases are best dealt with by insisting on the non-personhood of the Twitter entity and the non-reality of the Twitter world. It’s by no means a perfect formulation. Twitter does, of course, exist. But it exists not so much within our social world as alongside it.

El Baile de la Conquista: The Tale the Conquered Are Allowed to Tell

This past weekend, Santiago Atitlán held its annual fair to commemorate Saint James (Santiago in Spanish), the community’s patron saint. It was a slightly under-illuminated affair, the pandemic exiling the carnival rides to an empty field well outside the city and cancelling the annual marimba concert altogether. Still, much went on as usual. The image of Saint James traveled the streets atop the shoulders of persevering bearers. The patron’s special brotherhood inaugurated his feast day with several rounds of sleep-depriving 4 AM rocket blasts. Feathered and masked young men danced for hours in a historical reenactment called “el Baile de la Conquista.” 

It was this last event that most captured my attention

The dance itself is less a simple set of movements than a full-scale theatrical production. The plot concerns the original Spanish conquest of the Mayan population. In the dance’s penultimate scene, the Spanish commander defeats the heroic Tecún Umán (a figure whose historical existence is dubious, but whose role as a mythological focal point is undeniable). The defeated Mayans, watching their leader’s downfall from the shadows, are left to bend the knee and take on the religion of their conquerors: Catholicism.

The dance is no modern invention. Combining age-old Mayan movements with Spanish narrative tropes (most notably those of el Baile de los Moros), el Baile de la Conquista originated in the conquered indigenous communities of colonial Guatemala. The Spanish friars encouraged its proliferation, confident its pro-Catholic conclusion could only benefit their cause. They had no reason to disapprove of a story glorifying their own triumph. 

When it comes to historical narratives, we’re used to hearing that the winners always get to tell the story. Here, however, we see something a bit more complex: the winners letting the losers tell the story, but in a way that the winners find satisfactory. Perhaps in the years after the conquest some Mayan dances told a different tale, one depicting the true price of Spanish brutality and the spiritual pain of forced conversion. If those dances did exist, they weren’t allowed to survive. It’s little wonder why.

Bright, Not Brilliant: Overcoming Trounced Notions of Orginality

 

It’s awfully fun to be young and creative. You wrap your limbs around a handful of new ideas, each of which seem to define the world in its entirety, and then you set about sprouting new ideas of your own. Each of these, you’re sure, could change the world of art, science, or social relations just as much as it changed your own perceptions. The people are silly, backward, or blind, but now a young genius has come along who will truly make them see.

One day, among the readings for a college class or in an old documentary, you happen upon an idea you thought was your own. The first time, it’s exhilarating. “Oh my God,” you think, giving yourself not so much a high five as an exuberant celebratory shaking. “I produced the same thought as X, so I must be just as brilliant!”

Then it happens again and again, and the initial euphoria at seeing yourself as a fellow traveler of the greats gives way to a growing sense of panic as all your grand theories, all the private breakthroughs that marked your superiority to your peers, fall claim to the thinkers of the past. Sure, you were clever enough to come up with some novel ideas, but they were only novel to you. What had seemed a blast of innovation was just a parochial lack of awareness.

This is an unsettling, demoralizing, and profoundly humbling realization. You’re not brilliant, but merely bright. You’ve created or changed nothing of note. As far as the arts and sciences are concerned, you might as well have never been born.

So what is one to do? Put down the pen, shred the library card, and commit oneself to the guiltless enjoyment of pop music? 

Or keep at it?

It’s the latter path I’ve decided to make my own. I find solace in the fact that countless greats, almost all thinkers, innovators, and enactors of true genius, must have passed through their own share of ultimately unoriginal innovations. They, too, saw their ideas suddenly appear among the flotsam of the past. And what did they do? They kept thinking, kept innovating, kept pushing the boundaries of what they were sure they already knew. And eventually, even if they didn’t realize it at the time, they came up with a philosophical formulation, artistic method, or scientific hypothesis that really was new. 

Looking at some of my past literary efforts can be cringe inducing (and I’m sure I’m not alone in that). What’s even worse is remembering how proud I was of each “innovation” at the time. 

Despite my shame at my hubristic past, the only solution is to keep pushing the limits, keep stretching beyond my own understanding in the hopes I’m stretching beyond the readership’s understanding as well. All it takes is a little bit of courage — the courage to look back, cringe, and still try again, knowing full well that my current endeavors might some day produce that same gnawing embarrassment.

Antiracism = Anticapitalism? An Argument for Multiple Analytical Perspectives

Whenever we analyze the world, we’re bound to privilege some channels of analysis over others. We can be purposeful in choosing to view the world through a particular lens, thereby discovering valuable insights into how society might be understood. Recently, theorists have done this to great effect by putting racism at the heart of the American story. The 1619 Project and the positioning of racism as central to the country’s past and present has illuminated the full extent of the horrors perpetrated against people of color, showing racism to be far more than an “unfortunate aside” to some noble American tale.

Problems arise when people assume the lens they’ve applied to the world for the sake of seeking new insights actually represents the world in its objective state, and think all matters in society can be adjudicated in accordance with the insights this lens has provided. 

Take, for example, Ibram X. Kendi’s case for “anticapitalism” in How to Be an Antiracist. He argues that racism and capitalism are inextricably linked, and so we ought to oppose capitalism in order to dismantle racism. You can see how one would come to that conclusion if they were to apply one lens — that which focuses on racism’s presence at the heart of the American story — to understand the world. The problem is that, in order to reach more supple conclusions, we must force ourselves to simultaneously consider how the world appears through other lenses. When considering the issue of capitalism, we should consider how the world looks when viewed through the lens of global poverty. When we do so, we see that the spread of markets has coincided with a remarkable decline in the rate of global poverty. With this insight in mind, dismantling capitalism seems like a very bad idea. 

(* It’s worth noting that Kendi employs a rather unique definition of “capitalism.” He rejects the notion of capitalism as “markets and market rules and competition,” instead defining the term as “the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin.” This is quite the bit of intellectual chicanery, forming an argument against something by redefining it as self-evidently abominable. Even if he means his “anticapitalism” to focus on exploitation, his use of the term suggests an opposition to capitalism as traditionally construed — that is, an economic system relying on markets to determine prices and wages.)

So, what’s our way forward? It seems an “objective” understanding of human society is impossible to come by. No matter how much distance we take from our object, when the object is something as complicated as the entire world, we simply have to privilege some sets of factors over others. It makes sense, then, to purposefully apply a lens to our observations without drawing all our conclusions from that single perspective. We can use various lenses, various perspectives, to gather a sizable collection of insights. These insights, sometimes obnoxiously contradictory or incoherent, will then comprise the closest thing to “objective reality” we’ve got. It’s from this amorphous blob of convoluted insights that we‘re forced to decide what ought to be done.

We live in a world where racism is linked with capitalism, and capitalism is linked with higher standards of living. The response to such a conundrum requires less wholesale eradication and more surgical extricating. It’s a messy business that requires the insights provided by new perspectives, with the latest takes on racism central among them.

Understanding "Meaningfulness" As A Rational Consequence Of Evolution

The idea that life could ever have a single definable “meaning” disappears with ample consideration of the infinite possibilities of what a person could find meaningful, the myriad crystallizations of meaningfulness that form where consciousness and circumstance meet. But while a definitive “meaning” is out of reach, the phenomenon of experiencing “meaningfulness” is undeniable. We perceive some activities, like writing a blog post on a worthy subject, to be meaningful, while others, like mindlessly scrolling through social media, seem an obvious waste of time. Where does that distinction come from? It must arise from evolution. 

A longing for meaning is nearly universal among homo sapiens, and so it must bring some evolutionary advantage. Natural selection makes us both selfish and communal beings. Our desire to survive and thrive brings a concurrent desire for our communities to survive and thrive. We’re also hierarchical creatures, with certain members of a community surviving, reproducing, and thriving more than others. We’re wired, then, to (a) make our communities as strong as possible while (b) pursuing the highest possible rank within a social hierarchy. The activities that satisfy both of these innate desires are the activities we experience as meaningful.

Writing a blog post on a worthy subject could add insight to society’s understanding of itself while bringing esteem to the author. In effect, it strengthens both the community and the author’s standing within it. Therefore, we experience it as meaningful. Mindlessly scrolling through social media helps neither society nor the scroller, and can even be alienating. Therefore, we experience it as meaningless. This same thought experiment can be applied to practically every activity we engage in.

So life might not have “a meaning,” but we certainly experience meaningfulness. Looking at the question from an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense that we would.

Immanel Kant, Types of Truths, And Why We'll Never Talk With Aliens

Immanuel Kant, eminent German philosopher and key player in the Enlightenment, postulated that we humans possess a priori “rules” for processing and understanding the universe around us. We perceive events occurring in time and space according to our own mental capacities. This means that “truth” can only exist for us insofar as our constitution allows us to perceive it. What’s true for us, whether it be a physical law or the existence of a particular color, is our truth, inseparable from our ability to recognize it.

Which brings me to life beyond Earth. If our constitution is such that we perceive truths that an animal could never conceive of, wouldn’t an “alien” similarly perceive truths that we could never conceive of? And, given the discrepancy in understanding between creatures on Earth — a relatively small, constrained area considering the size of the universe — doesn’t in stand to reason that a being from a distant galaxy would have a constitution that separates it from us even more than our faculties separate us from a fruit fly?

In our hubris, we often fail to acknowledge the very limited scope of our understanding. Theorists and physicists seem to think we could “figure it all out,” with some even championing the possibility of a unified “theory of everything.” Really? Everything? It seems patently absurd. 

We are indeed a remarkable species, aware of our own consciousness and mortality in ways apparently unique among life on Earth. But it’s safe to assume there are truths inherent to the universe that exist beyond what we’re capable of grasping. We can “understand” reality to the best of our ability, just as a fruit fly can understand its buzzing around a jar of raspberry jam, but that understanding is likely to far far short of what a greater being would be capable of, a greater being for whom communication with us would be as pointless as us talking philosophy with an insect.

This isn’t to belittle humanity or its achievements. It’s just to instill a sense of perspective. 

“Truth” is still an important concept (perhaps the most important concept), but it clearly exists in levels or degrees. There are relative truths (“Democracy is preferable to autocracy”), which are derived from human experience; scientific truths (“For any system closed to all transfers of matter and energy, the mass of the system must remain constant over time”), empirically derived and representing as solid a picture of physical reality as we can muster; and absolute truths, which exist hopelessly beyond our understanding, reason, and language.

Beyond our understanding...but there may be other creatures in the universe who carve their own relative and scientific truths from reality. But the real, absolute truth? It’s almost certainly unknowable by any conscious mind, which makes it a strange sort of truth, indeed.

Cancel Beethoven? Politics Shouldn't Override Artistic Merit

 “Cancel Beethoven” has, apparently, become a serious battle cry among some on the left, with the classical composer cast as a stale, overrated, and all-too-white impediment to greater diversity in the arts. In a recent opinion piece in the University of Cambridge newspaper, a student wonders if the cancellation of Beethoven would bring about a “more diverse, inclusive and accessible classical music scene.” He muses on the benefits of a cancelation, “notwithstanding that some people actually like Beethoven’s music.” While he ultimately concludes that a “mass cultural boycott” would prove counterproductive (since other white composers like Mozart would take his place), it’s the relegation of the work’s artistic merit to a secondary concern that should trouble lovers of the arts.

Far from an isolated incident, the “Cancel Beethoven” movement is just one manifestation of a well-intentioned but dangerous notion: that political-minded engineers must realign the artistic world in accordance with their agenda. This agenda, normally, revolves around diversity, which in itself is a worthy goal. The problem is that in the pursuit of this end, art itself becomes secondary to the group identity of its creator. Last week, Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote in the New York Times that white writers who don’t address political issues are guilty of “a retreat back to white privilege,” as if the tenor of someone’s artistic creations should be dictated solely by their race and historical circumstances, and individual artists are ethically-obilgated to take on only certain topics.

Now, there’s no denying that art is inescapably political. Decisions about what gets published, displayed, or performed are inseparable from sociological and political circumstances. And yet, the way out of this morass comes through eliminating restraints, not imposing them. A certain freedom of spirit and imagination is necessary for the appreciation and creation of art, and we should all be rooting for art to keep slipping from the hands of those who would seek to control it.

A lack of diversity in the art world is certainly a problem. A New York Times study recently found that, among a dataset of books published in 2018, 89% of the writers were white. That’s shocking, and it needs to change. Through the breaking down of barriers and increased opportunity, people of color need greater access to artistic spheres. But what I can’t abide is an atmosphere where Renior’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” Beethoven’s “Midnight Sonata,” or Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” are blithely disregarded, simply for being the work of white men.

Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca once spoke of “the mystery, the roots that cling to the mire that we all know, that we all ignore, but from which comes the very substance of art.” German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe referenced that “mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained.” This is where the essence of art lies. This is where the magic happens. And there’s nothing so inhuman as banishing or controlling instantiations of artistic magic for political purposes, no matter how good the intentions. 

U.S. Soft Power Can Save the Amazon and the Planet

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, perhaps the United States’ best literary work and almost certainly its most optimistic, reads a bit like a eulogy in October of 2020, commemorating a nation that’s ceasing to exist. While the country Whitman praises for unfurling itself into its manifest destiny was actually far from perfect, the idealist spirit he captured was unquestionably real.

We are now learning that a deeply flawed United States striving for a beautiful ideal was still much better than a country with no ideals at all. 

Whitman described the United States as “Earth’s modern wonder,” a country where other nations gather “beneath thy banner Freedom.” In Trump’s America, such notions sound quaint. 

The United States has not been stripped of its global leadership position, but willfully abdicated it. Nowhere is this more evident that in the fight to protect humanity from the perils of climate change. You would expect the supposed international leader to take charge in dealing with humanity’s first truly global issue. Instead, the United States — with billionaires counting on fossil fuel industries and a population that largely scoffs at scientific consensus — has become a major impediment to international cooperation. 

But there’s still time to change. We can still lead, and we can still serve as an example to other nations in the climate fight. This is most clear when we look at the situation in Brazil. 

The Amazon Rainforest is uniquely important to the health of the planet. The 2.1 million square miles of rainforest most of which are in Brazil, play an instrumental role in producing oxygen and sinking carbon, both of which mitigate the effects of industrial pollution and decrease global warming.

Brazil’s President Bolsonaro, a no-nonsense leader who proudly styles himself after Trump, has slashed environmental protections and encouraged further economic exploitation of the Amazon. The results have been as devastating as they were predictable. While the Amazon’s fires were major international news last year, they’ve actually been even worse in 2020. This nauseating trend shows no signs of abatement. 

Bolsonaro and his supporters insist that the Amazon is their territory to be dealt with as they choose. And, in a sense, they’re right. European powers telling a developing nation how to use their resources has more than a whiff of imperialism, and even if the intentions are good the resistance is understandable. 

But the issue at hand is more complicated. The natural processes underlying global warming have no respect for national borders. What happens in any one country affects what happens in all the others. A vibrant Amazon is crucial to the wellbeing of the planet and the future of humanity. It’s on all of us to save it. 

But how? No country can force Bolsonaro or Brazil to do anything, but they can prod, cajole, and lead by example, insisting that every nation, Brazil included, works toward a sustainable future.

The United States, still the eminent global superpower, is the country best suited to push Bolsonaro and other leaders to do the right thing. But in order for that to happen, the U.S. needs to take the issue seriously and resume its leadership position. 

This is yet another reason why the coming presidential election is so important. When scoffing at the dangers of the coronavirus pandemic or ignoring climate change, President Trump invites Bolsonaro and other like-minded leaders to join in his irresponsible behavior. The United States used to be a country that pushed ideals on the world. Under the current administration, it only encourages other nations to replicate its shortcomings. 

If elected, Joe Biden would reunite the U.S. with the reasonable nations that understand the stakes of the current climate catastrophe. He would also push Bolsonaro and other renegade leaders to join the fight, building the type of board coalition necessary to defeat this mortal, non-discriminating enemy. 

It might sound dramatic, but the future of the planet really does depend on the electoral defeat (and subsequent removal) of President Trump.