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. 

In Search of (Reading-Induced) Mental Patterns

I'm just now finishing In Search of Lost Time, a book with a special power to invite personal reflection.  As Marcel Proust describes it in the book's unforgettable final chapter, the novel compels readers to "read" their own lives alongside that of the protagonist. 

The way people change over time is a constant theme in the book.  Just as Heraclitus says you can never again step in the same river, Proust insists you never meet the same person twice.  Every time you see your best friend they're a different person than they were the day before, and the previous day's version of them exists only as a memory.  

Naturally enough, reading all of this got me thinking about my own life and how I've changed.  I realized my attitudes, my personality, my tastes, and even my appearance have changed less in the past year than they did the year before.  I then realized that the two years ago I'd changed even more.  Back in college, my entire worldview would shift during a single semester.  In high school, I seemed to reinvent myself every week as puberty and rapidly-acquired experience dragged me from adolescence toward adulthood.  I can scarcely imagine the yearly (and monthly...and weekly) changes my parents saw in me when I was a child. 

These observations begged analysis.  I determined that every year we change a little less than we had the year before- until old age, that is, when the changes again accelerate.  A line graph showing the rate of annual change over a lifetime would look like a V, albeit one where the second line fails to reach the initial height of the first.  

Whether this line of thinking is novel (or even accurate) I'm not entirely sure.  What I do know is that the process by which I came to my conclusion fits a pattern that, for me, represents one of the principle joys of reading.  The book spoke of general truths (personified by the characters), these general truths evoked my personal reflections, and I extrapolated on these personal reflections to compose another general truth.  My personal experience served as a conduit by which a general truth from without became another general truth forged within.  

Perhaps this phenomenon isn't unique to literature, or art.  Maybe it's the universal process by which we add what we learn to what we already knew, thereby producing what we're just now knowing (new knowledge + personal experience= new understanding).  In any case, reading is one of the principle means by which this process is actuated in my mind, and for that I'm eternally grateful to the magic of the written word.

On Wanting to Say "God Bless You"

"God bless you always."

It's a phrase I hear almost every day here in the highly-religious community of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala- from my fiancee, from her family, from friends, from neighbors and people on the street.  It's a darn good way to express a genuine concern for another's well-being. 

I wish I could say it, too.  But, given my lack of religious faith, I'm afraid I can't.

This little problem represents a lot of what's missing in a secular, non-religious world- a world where, as Nietzsche put it, "God is dead."  Without belief in a divine being, how does one express the sentiment behind "God bless you?"  "Have a nice day," doesn't cut it. 

I might just be looking for an adequate phrase- or maybe this superficial concern covers a deeper longing for much, much more.