Color the World

My teenage daughter's car earns a lot of attention on the street:

People honk and wave, strangers ask to add their own art, five-year-olds drop their toys and gawk.  A few people look annoyed and turn away.  (Kate describes her car as a "personality tester".)

A couple of years ago, I had promised my 2009 Honda Accord to Kate when she earned her driver's license.  But knowing that Kate cares about appearances -- stylish clothes and all that -- I promised that I'd have it repainted first, since the paint jobs on these old Hondas age badly in the southern California sun.  But when I saw the cost of a proper paint job, I was shocked.  So I suggested that we turn it into an art car, which she and her friends could decorate at will.  (In the 1980s, a few of my friends and I did the same with our old beater cars, generating "Motorized Cathedrals of the Church of the Mystical Anarchist" numbers 2 through 4 -- number 1, of course, being Earth itself.)  She accepted my offer, we bought paints, and voila, over the months the art has accumulated!

I'm not sure exactly what makes the world intrinsically valuable.  I reject hedonism, on which the only intrinsically valuable thing is pleasure; I'm inclined to think that a diversity of flourishing life is at least as important.  (Consider what one would benevolently hope for on a distant planet.  I'd hope not that it's just a sterile rock, but richly populated with diverse life, including, ideally, rich societies with art, science, philosophy, sports, and varied cultures and ecosystems.)

Multitudinous brown 2009 Honda Accords populate the roads of America.  What a bland, practical car!  The world is richer -- intrinsically better -- for containing Kate's weird variant.  She and her friends have added color to the world.

We might generalize this to a motto: Color the World.

It doesn't have to be a car, of course.  Your creative uniqueness might more naturally manifest in other forms (and it's reasonable to worry about resale value).  It might be tattoos on your body, unusual clothing, the way you decorate your office, house, or yard.  It might be your poetry (even secret poetry, seen by no one else and immediately destroyed, timelessly enriches the fabric of the world), your music, your philosophical prose, your distinctive weirdness on social media.  It might be the unusual way you greet people, your quirky manifestation of the rituals of religion or fandom or parenthood, your taste in metaphor, the way you skip down the street, your puns and dad jokes, your famous barbecue parties.

It would be superhuman to be distinctively interesting in all these domains at once, and probably narcissistic even to try.  Sometimes it's best to be the straight man in boring clothes -- a contrast against which the dazzlingly dressed shine more brightly.  But I think most of us hold back more than we need to, for lack of energy and fear of standing out.  Hoist your freak flag!

I see three dimensions of excellence in coloring the world:

(1.) Your color must be different than the others around you, in a way that stands out, at least to the attentive.  If everyone has a brown Honda, having the only green one already adds diversity, even if green is no intrinsically better than brown.  If baseball hats are abundant, adding another one to the mix doesn't add color; but being the one baseball hat in a sea of fedoras does (and vice versa of course).

(2.) Your color should ideally express something distinctive about you.  While you might choose a baseball hat to contrast with the fedoras simply because it's different, ideally you choose it because it also discloses an underlying difference between you and the others -- maybe you are the ragingest baseball fan in the group.  Your moon-and-cat tattoo isn't just different but manifests your special affection for cats in moonlight.  Your dad jokes wink with a je ne sais quoi that your friends all instantly recognize.

(3.) Your color should ideally arise from your creative energy.  A baseball cap from the merch store might (in some contexts) be color -- but a cap modified by your own hand is more colorful.  Let it be, if it can, your own artistic endeavor, your paint and brush, your own selection of words, your own decisions about how best to embody the ritual, organize the party, structure the space.  If it's prepackaged, put it together a little differently, or contextualize or use it a little differently.

Can I justify these subsidiary principles by appeal to the ideal of diversity?  Maybe!  Diversity occupies a middle space between bland sameness and chaotic white noise.  By grounding your difference in your distinctive features and your creative inspiration, you ensure the structure, order, and significance that distinguishes meaningful diversity from random variation.

I imagine someone objecting to Color the World by counterposing the motto Walk Lightly.  I do feel the pull of Walk Lightly.  Don't make a big fuss.  Let things be.  No need to scratch your name on every tree and upturn all the sand on the beach.  Walk Lightly, perhaps, manifests respect for the color that others bring to the world.  Fair enough.  Make good decisions about when and where to color.

Goodbye for today!  Time to drive my own bland car home.  When I walk in my front door, I'll ritualistically confirm with my wife and daughter that they abided by my usual morning advice to them: (1.) no barfing, and (2.) don't get abducted by aliens.

Wearing Band T-Shirts of Bands You Don’t Know

guest post by Nick Riggle

A recent trend has teens and twenty somethings wearing band t-shirts of bands they don’t know. You can know that they don’t know the band because you can ask them: Are you a fan of AC/DC, Nirvana, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, The Doors, Slayer, Led Zeppelin? They will respond with breathtaking nonchalance: Huh? Oh, this shirt?

They wear it for the look.

Could the look be flattering? For Millennials, and most certainly for Gen-X, there might be no clearer example of a negative volitional necessity that generates the unthinkable. Thou shalt not wear a band t-shirt if thou knowest not the band. No thought is so bold, so unafraid of rejection, as to cross the Millennial and Gen-X mind.

But to them it’s edgy. It’s street. It’s rock n roll. It’s Kendall Jenner.

*

Who knows where it started (perhaps Ghesquière for Balenciaga in 2012), but everyone knows that Jenner slays. Long an influencer in the glammed-up band t-shirt game (along with her sisters), Jenner has been spotted wearing, among others, Metallica, Kiss, AC/DC, ZZ Top, and Led Zeppelin shirts, but when it comes to concerts she favors Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, and Fleetwood Mac. Philosophers have wondered whether you should be consistent in your personal aesthetics. Jenner seems unconcerned. When the metal band Slayer’s guitarist Gary Holt wore a t-shirt that read “Kill the Kardashians” on the band’s farewell tour in 2019, Jenner responded with classic Kardashian shade. She rocked a Slayer shirt that said “RIP” and (probably) helped bump the legacy band’s merch sales up to 10 million dollars that year.

*

Is it wrong to wear band t-shirts of bands you don’t know? In one sense it is obviously a mistake. I find it useful here to think about the groundbreaking theory of aesthetic value that Dominic McIver Lopes develops in his 2018 book Being for Beauty. Lopes argues that aesthetic value is metaphysically tied to the rules and norms of specific aesthetic practices. Your aesthetic reasons for acting one way rather than another when it comes to e.g. pulling an espresso shot are tied to the specific norms and achievements of the practice of pulling espresso. In the practice of band fandom that produces and distributes band t-shirts, one of the rules is crystal clear: wear a band shirt only if you love the band. If you wear one without knowing the band, then you’re not very good at the practice. You are not responding to the reasons the practice generates.

But Lopes’s theory allows for a single non-aesthetic property (or set of such) to ground different aesthetic properties in different practices. Different practices have different ‘profiles’, mapping different movements, shapes, colors, images, and so on onto different aesthetic values. The same contours and colors that are lively in minimalism are subdued abstract expressionism; the same sequence of movements that is beautiful in tap dance is awkward in ballet; a few perfect poetry verses make for a few terrible rap verses.

Maybe Kendall Jenner (and whoever else) established a new aesthetic practice of wearing band shirts as a non-fan. Wearing the shirt will potentially have different aesthetic values in each practice. Wearing one as a fan is metal, dark, unruly. As a non-fan it is edgy, indie, street, and…Kardashianesque.

*

There are many aesthetic practices that cast the products of another aesthetic practice in a new role. In bad cases it is ignorant cultural appropriation. In good cases it is brilliant fusion or avant-garde innovation. Even with billionaire influencers involved, wearing band t-shirts of bands you don’t know seems less like Ikea selling “jerk chicken” (bad) or sushirritos (good) and more like Jim Stark, the rebel without a cause, the jobless teen wearing work boots. Some aesthetic practices are freeloaders. Some other practice imbues the band shirt, the boots, the jeans with meaning. Outsiders detect that meaning, are somehow attracted to it, they latch onto and repurpose it without contributing to the original practice. In a sense they have to repurpose it because they don’t really know what it is. But it seems cool or interesting or irresistible and so whatever they do with it is unlikely to be the aesthetically right thing according to the practice. But being moved and inspired in this way is just part of what it is to aesthetically value something—it is to want to imitate it, incorporate it into your life, make it yours and share it with others. And in a sense they are not wrong: Band t-shirts are obviously cool.

*

If wearing band t-shirts of bands you don’t know is a new aesthetic practice, then there is ignorance on each side. From the fan’s point of view, the Kendall Jenner imitators are brazenly ignorant and disrespectful, flippantly adopting a mere ‘look’ by exploiting something deeply personal. From the Jenner point of view, the fans are at best overly protective, at worst plain pretentious. It’s just a t-shirt, after all, and look how dope it looks with jeans, heels, and the right jewelry!

But these freeloader practices are sure sources of confusion and letdown. Fan shirts are a quick path to aesthetic community. As a fan, you might get excited to see the youth—or perhaps billionaire influencers—in your fan club. You give a knowing nod to the unusually cool-looking person wearing an ‘80s Megadeath shirt and they return a cold stare. You say what a proper fan might say: Endgame was surprisingly good huh? To which they respond: Oh, the shirt? I don’t really know this band, I just like how it looks.

If the aesthetic goods in the non-fan’s practice piggyback on the goods in the fan’s practice, then surely the fan is owed something: Deference? Recognition? Respect? This suggests a rule that structures aesthetic practices in general: aesthetic freeloaders should orbit and defer to their source practice; they should not spin away in an attempt to create their own orbit.

What could justify this rule? It’s not that bad to ignorantly wear band t-shirts—it just kind of sucks—so the idea that it’s morally wrong seems off. And if specific aesthetic practices are practical worlds unto themselves, then it’s not immediately obvious what resources Lopes’s theory has to make good on the wrongness. But here is a thought: the aesthetic value of band t-shirts lies in the way they promote aesthetic community. They anchor individuality, express it to others, and occasion community. The t-shirt freeloader misunderstands the aesthetic value of their clothes. Doing so is apt to produce confusion and missed connection, and so some deference to the aesthetic goods of a source practice is called for.

When the right deference, recognition, or respect is not forthcoming, one might be tempted to respond with contempt at the failure of aesthetic connection, at the disrespect for the norms of a good practice. But just beyond the confusion and let down is a social opening—an opportunity for these different individuals to bond. The failure of communication is an opportunity for enlightenment: “Well you should check out Rust in Peace. “Tornado of Souls” is my favorite song.” That might take a little extra swagger on the part of the true fan. All the more reason to do it. Boldly opening up can create a bridge between worlds, and venturing into each other’s different aesthetic worlds can both expand and refine our own.

Bridges go both ways. As it turns out, Gary Holt’s encounter with the Kardashians made him a lot more Kardashianesque. Although he wore the “Kill the Kardashians” shirt because he wanted to “kill their careers”, they seem to have rubbed off on him. He now sells a lot of those t-shirts online and has expanded his collection of merch to include a range of anti-Kardashian graphics and products. A bona fide influencer.

One of my brothers is a deep player in the niche sneaker world. Like, Pizza Hut branded Reebok Pumps deep. And he got me a pair of niche sneakers that I wear now and then. I barely understand what I own. My main relationship with the shoes is that they are by far the most comfortable pair I have ever worn. So I rock them gladly, and almost every time I do some stranger comments: Nice kicks; dope shoes; fire *whatup headnod*. I happily reap the communal benefits of a practice I don’t understand.

The older I get, the more I get used to being ignored in public. Increasingly rare is the lovely random encounter, sparked by whatever, lighting up the day. Maybe I’ll buy half a dozen random band t-shirts, wear them around town, and see who I meet.

[image source]

Uncle Iroh as Daoist Sage

You're a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Of course you are! How could you not be? (Okay, if you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here.)

And if you're a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, you love Uncle Iroh. Of course you do! How could you not?

So my son David and I have been working on an essay celebrating Iroh. (David is a cognitive science graduate student at Institut Jean Nicod in Paris.) Uncle Iroh deserves an essay in celebration. Yes, there will be spoilers if you haven't finished viewing the series.

Uncle Iroh, from Fool to Sage -- or Sage All Along?

by Eric Schwitzgebel and David Schwitzgebel

Book Three of Avatar: The Last Airbender portrays Uncle Iroh as wise and peace-loving, in the mold of a Daoist sage. However, in Book One, Iroh doesn't always appear sage-like. Instead, he can come across as lazy, incompetent, and unconcerned about the fate of the world.

Consider Iroh's first appearance, in Book One, Episode 1, after Prince Zuko sees a giant beam of light across the sky, signaling the release of the Avatar:

Zuko: Finally! Uncle, do you realize what this means?

Iroh: [playing a game with tiles] I won't get to finish my game?

Zuko: It means my search is about to come to an end. [Iroh sighs with apparent lack of interest and places a tile on the table.] That light came from an incredibly powerful source! It has to be him!

Iroh: Or it's just the celestial lights. We've been down this road before, Prince Zuko. I don't want you to get too excited over nothing.[1]

On the surface, Iroh's reaction appears thoughtless, self-absorbed, and undiscerning. He seems more concerned about his game than about the search for the Avatar, and he fails to distinguish a profound supernatural occurrence from ordinary celestial lights. Several other early scenes are similar. Iroh can appear inept, distractible, lazy, and disengaged, very different from the energetic, focused, competent, and concerned Iroh of Book Three.

We will argue [in this post] that Iroh's Book One foolishness is a pose. Iroh's character does not fundamentally change. In Book One, he is wisely following strategies suggested by the ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi for dealing with incompetent leaders. His seeming foolishness in Book One is in fact a sagacious strategy for minimizing the harm that Prince Zuko would otherwise inflict on himself and others -- a gentle touch that more effectively helps Prince Zuko find wisdom than would be possible with a more confrontational approach.

We will also present empirical evidence [in a subsequent post] that -- contrary to our expectations before collecting that evidence -- Iroh's wisdom-through-foolishness is evident to most viewers unfamiliar with the series, even on their first viewing. Viewers can immediately sense that Iroh's superficial foolishness has a deeper purpose, even if that purpose is not immediately apparent.

Iroh as a Zhuangzian Wise Fool

Like Iroh, Zhuangzi mixes jokes and misdirection with wisdom, so that it's not always clear how seriously to take him. The "Inner Chapters" of the Zhuangzi contain several obviously fictional dialogues, including one between Confucius and his favorite disciple, Yan Hui. Yan Hui asks Confucius' political advice:

I have heard that the lord of Wei is young and willful. He trifles with his state and does not acknowledge his mistakes. He is so careless with people's lives that the dead fill the state like falling leaves in a swamp. The people have nowhere to turn. I have heard you, my teacher, say, "Leave the well-governed state and go to the chaotic one. There are plenty of sick people at the doctor's door." I want to use what I have learned to think of a way the state may be saved (Kjellberg trans., p. 226-227) [2].

Zuko, like the lord of Wei in Yan Hui's telling, is a young, willful prince, leading his companions into danger, unwilling to acknowledge his mistakes. Even more so, the Fire Nation is led into peril and chaos by Fire Lord Ozai and Princess Azula. If ever a nation needed wise redirection by someone as practiced in conventional virtue as Confucius and his leading disciples, it would be the Fire Nation.

Zhuangzi's "Confucius," however, gives a very un-Confucian reply: "Sheesh! You’re just going to get yourself hurt." Through several pages of text, Yan Hui proposes various ways of dealing with misguided leaders, such as being "upright but dispassionate, energetic but not divisive" and being "inwardly straight and outwardly bending, having integrity but conforming to my superiors," but Zhuangzi's Confucius rejects all of Yan Hui's ideas. None of these conventional Confucian approaches will have any positive effect, he says. Yan Hui will just be seen as a plague and a scold, or he will provoke unproductive counterarguments, or he'll be pressured into agreeing with the leader's plans. At best, his advice will simply be ignored. Imagine a well-meaning conventional ethicist trying to persuade Zuko (in Book One), much less Ozai or Azula, to embrace peace, devoting themselves to improving the lives of ordinary people! It won’t go well.

So what should Yan Hui do, according to Zhuangzi's Confucius? He should "Fast his mind." He should be "empty" and unmoved by fame or accomplishment. "If you’re getting through, sing. If not, stop. No schools. No prescriptions. Dwell in unity and lodge in what cannot be helped, and you’re almost there." Advising another worried politician a few pages later, Zhuangzi's Confucius says:

Let yourself be carried along by things so that the mind wanders freely. Hand it all over to the unavoidable so as to nourish what is central within you. That is the most you can do. What need is there to deliberately seek any reward? The best thing is just to fulfill what’s mandated to you, your fate -- how could there be any difficulty in that?

Zhuangzi's advice is cryptic -- intentionally so, we think, so as to frustrate attempts to rigidify it into fixed doctrines. Nevertheless, we will rigidify it here, into two broadly Zhuangzian or Daoist policies for dealing with misguided rulers:

(1.) Do not attempt to pressure a misguided ruler into doing what is morally right. You'll only become noxious or be ignored. Instead, go along with what can't be helped. "Sing" -- that is, express your opinions and ideas -- only when the ruler is ready to listen.

(2.) Empty your mind of theories and doctrines, as well as desires for fame, reward, or accomplishment. These are unproductive sources of distortion, wrangling, and strife.

Despite advocating, or appearing to advocate, this two-pronged approach to dealing with misguided rulers, Zhuangzi doesn’t explicitly explain why this approach might work.

Here Avatar: The Last Airbender proves an aid to Zhuangzi interpretation. We can see how Iroh, by embodying these policies (especially in Book One), helps to redirect Zuko onto a better path. We thus gain a feel for Zhuangzian political action at work.

Iroh doesn't resist Zuko's unwise plans, except in indirect, non-threatening ways. He does suggest that Zuko relax and enjoy some tea. At one point, he redirects their ship to a trading town in search of a gaming tile. At another point, he allows himself to relax in a hot spring, delaying the departure of their ship. Despite these suggestions and redirections, he does not outright reject Zuko's quest to capture the Avatar and even helps in that quest. He does not make himself noxious to Zuko by arguing against Zuko's plans, or by parading his sagely virtue, or by advancing moral or political doctrines. Indeed, he actively undercuts whatever tendency Zuko or others might have to see him as wise (and thus noxious or threatening, judgmental or demanding) by playing the fool -- forgetful, unobservant, lazy, and excessively interested in tea and the tile game Pai Sho. In this way, Iroh keeps himself by Zuko's side, modeling peaceful humaneness and unconcern about fame, reward, wealth, or honor. He remains available to help guide Zuko in the right direction, when Zuko is ready.

A related theme in Zhuangzi is "the use of uselessness." For example, Zhuangzi celebrates the yak, big as a cloud but lacking any skill useful to humans and thus not forced into labor, and ancient, gnarled trees no good for fruit or timber and thus left in peace to live out their years. Zhuangzi's trees and yak are glorious life forms, for whom existence is enough, without further purpose. Uncle Iroh, though not wholly useless (especially in battle) and though he can devote himself to aims beyond himself (in caring for Zuko and later helping Aang restore balance to the world), possesses some of that Zhuangzian love of the useless: tea, Pai Sho, small plants and animals, which need no further justification for their existence. Through his love of the useless and simple appreciation of existence, Uncle Iroh unthreateningly models another path for Zuko, one of joyful harmony with the world.

We can distill Iroh's love of uselessness into a third piece of Zhuangzian political advice:

(3.) Don't permit yourself to become too useful. If the ruler judges you useful, you might be "cut down" like a high-quality tree and converted to a tool at the ruler's disposal. Only be useful when it's necessary to avoid becoming noxious.

Iroh is an expert firebender with years of military wisdom who could surely be a valuable asset in capturing and dispatching the Avatar if he really focused on it. However, Zuko rarely recruits Iroh's aid beyond the bare minimum, probably as a consequence of Iroh's façade of uselessness. Through conspicuous napping, laziness, and distractability, Iroh encourages Zuko and others to perceive him as a mostly harmless and not particularly valuable traveling companion.

By following Zhuangzi's first piece of advice (don't press for change before the time is right), the Daoist can stay close to a misguided leader in an unthreatening and even foolish-seeming way without provoking resistance, counterargument, or shame. By following Zhuangzi's second piece of advice (empty your mind of doctrines and striving), the Daoist models an alternative path, which the misguided leader might eventually in their own time appreciate -- perhaps more quickly than would be possible through disputation, argumentation, doctrine, intellectual engagement, or high-minded sagely posturing. By following Zhuangzi's third piece of advice (embrace uselessness), the Daoist can avoid being transformed into a disposable tool recruited for the ruler's schemes. This is Iroh's Zhuangzian approach to the transformation of Zuko.

Throughout Book One and the beginning of Book Two, we observe only three exceptions to Iroh's Zhuangzian approach. All are informative. First, Iroh is stern and directive with Zuko when instructing him in firebending. We see that Iroh is capable of opinionated command; he is not lazy and easygoing in all things. But elementary firebending appears to require no spiritual insight, so there need be no threatening moral instruction or questioning of Zuko's projects and values.

Second, Iroh gives Zuko one stern piece of advice that Zuko rejects, seemingly thus violating Policy 1. In Book One, Episode 12, Iroh warns of an approaching storm. When Zuko refuses to acknowledge the risk, Iroh urges Zuko to consider the safety of the crew. Zuko responds "The safety of the crew doesn't matter!" and continues toward the storm. When they encounter the storm and the crew complain, Iroh attempts to defuse the situation by suggesting noodles. Zuko is again offended, saying he doesn't need help keeping order on his ship. However, at the climax of the episode, when the storm is raging and the Avatar is finally in sight, Zuko chooses to let the Avatar go so that the ship can steer to safety. The viewer is, we think, invited to suppose that in making that decision Zuko is reflecting on Iroh's earlier words. Iroh's advice -- though at first seemingly ignored and irritating to Zuko, and thus un-Zhuangzian -- was well-placed after all.

Third, consider Iroh's and Zuko's split in the Book Two, Episode 5. Book Two, Episode 1 sets up the conflict. Azula has tricked Zuko into thinking that their father Ozai wants him back. In an un-Zhuangzian moment, Iroh directly, though mildly, challenges Zuko's judgment: "If Ozai wants you back, well, I think it may not be for the reasons you imagine... in our family, things are not always what they seem." This prompts Zuko's angry retort: "I think you are exactly what you seem! A lazy, mistrustful, shallow old man who's always been jealous of his brother!"

The immediate cause of their split seems trivial. They have survived briefly together as impoverished refugees when Zuko suddenly presents Iroh with delicious food and a fancy teapot. Iroh enjoys the food but asks where it came from, and he opines that tea is just as delicious in cheap tin as in fancy porcelain. Zuko refuses to reveal how he acquired the goods. Iroh is remarkably gentle in response, saying only that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of and noting that their troubles are now so deep that even finding the Avatar would not resolve them. When Zuko replies that therefore there is no hope, Iroh answers:

You must never give in to despair. Allow yourself to slip down that road and you surrender to your lowest instincts. In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength.

A bit of sagely advice, kindly delivered? This is the next we see of Zuko and Iroh:

Zuko: Uncle ... I thought a lot about what you said.

Iroh: You did? Good, good.

Zuko: It's helped me realize something. We no longer have anything to gain by traveling together. I need to find my own way.

Zuko's and Iroh's falling out reinforces the Zhuangzian message of Avatar: The Last Airbender. As soon as Iroh deviates from the first of the three Zhuangzian policies -- as soon as he challenges Zuko's morality and starts offering sagely advice, however gently -- Zuko reacts badly, rejecting both the advice and Iroh himself.

Zuko and Iroh of course later reunite and Zuko eventually transforms himself under the influence of Iroh, with Iroh becoming more willing to advise Zuko and dispense explicit wisdom, in proportion to Zuko's readiness for that advice and wisdom. Apart from his un-Zhuangzian moments in the first part of Book Two, Iroh "sings" only when he is getting through, just as Zhuangzi's "Confucius" advises. Otherwise, Iroh acts by joke, misdirection, and a clownishly unthreatening modeling of peaceful humaneness and unconcern.

How might a Zhuangzian Daoist might effectively interact with a misguided ruler? Iroh’s interactions with Zuko throughout Book One serve as illustration.

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[1] All transcripts are adapted from https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Wiki:Transcripts

[2] All translations are Kjellberg's, with some minor modifications, from Ivanhoe and Van Norden's Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed.

[image source]

Review Drift

Guest post by C. Thi Nguyen

Here are three stories about one thing. The first story is about social media and donuts.

Before COVID destroyed travel, I kept having this same experience. I’d be in some new city. I’d do a little online research and hear about some new donut shop that everybody was raving about. I’d go, wait in the enormous line, see all the stickers about winning awards, and admire the gorgeous donuts in joyous anticipation. And then I’d eat the donut — and it would turn out to be some horrible waxy cardboard thing. Each bite was, like, some kind of pasty mouth-death. And then I’d sit there on the curb, with my sad half-eaten donut, watching the line of people out the door, all chattering about their excitement to finally get to be able to get one of these very famous donuts, everybody carefully taking donut pics the whole while.

And weirdly, totally different cities would give me the same kind of bad donut. These donuts all had a similar kind of visual flair: they were vividly colored; and they were big, impressively structural affairs — like little sculptures in the medium of donut. But they all had that weird, tasteless, over-waxy chaw. My theory: these donuts were being optimized, not for deliciousness, but for Instagram pop. And that optimization can involve certain trade-offs. You need a dough that’s optimized for structural stability, and a frosting that’s optimized for intense color.

Right now, Instagram is where food goes viral. And I’m not saying that the visual quality is unimportant. Appearance is part of the aesthetics of food. But what makes food unique, in the aesthetic realm, is the eating part: the taste, the smell, and texture. And I’m not saying it’s impossible to make a beautiful, yet delicious donut. I’ve had some, rarely. But Instagram seems to be enabling the rise of donuts made primarily for the eye. When Instagram becomes a primary medium for recommending food, you get this weird kind of aesthetic capture. Instagram will rewards those restauranteurs who are willing to trade away taste and texture in exchange for more visual pop.

The second story is about clothes. I’ve been buying my clothes online these last few years, and I keep having the same experience. I buy something from a relatively new company with a lot of Internet presence and very good reviews. The clothes arrive. They look awesome; on the first wear, they’re incredibly comfortable. Then, pretty quickly, they start falling apart. They stretch out of shape, they start pilling, they fall apart at the seams.

Some of it is surely the current economics of fast fashion. And some of it is that a lot of these companies are spending more on advertising than on clothing quality. But that doesn’t explain the barrage of good reviews on uncurated sites. What I’m starting to suspect is that, in the online shopping world, a lot of companies are starting to specifically target the moment of review.

The vast majority of online reviews are submitted close to the moment of purchase, after only a few wears. So online reviews mostly capture short-term, and not long-term, data. So new companies are heavily incentivized to optimize for short-term satisfaction. A stiff piece of clothing that slowly breaks in to comfortable and lasts forever won’t get great reviews. A piece of clothing that has been acid-washed to the peak of softness will review quite well — and then fall apart a few months later. (You can find a similar effect on Twitter. Twitter Likes are usually recorded at the moment of first reading — so simple ideas we already agree with are more likely to get Likes, but long-burn difficult ideas that change our minds, eventually, get lost.)

Call this phenomenon review drift. Review drift happens whenever the context of review differs from the context of use. In the current online shopping environment, good online reviews drive sales. So companies are incentivized to make products for the context of review. If the context of review is typically short-term, then companies are incentivized to optimize for short-term satisfaction, even at the cost of long-term quality. (A related phenomenon is purchase drift: when the context of purchase differs from the context of use.)

A third story: Seventeen years ago, I was backpacking and camping almost every weekend. In quick succession, I had three horrifying moments with some cheap folding knives. One of those left me cut to the bone. So I had a “As God as my witness, I’ll never use crappy knives again!” moment. I decided to ask some park rangers for recommendations. The next three park rangers I met all turned out to be carrying variations on the same pocket-knife, from the same company. And I read some reviews online praising these same knives to the stars, as lifelong companions. So I bought one.

Here is a picture of my own personal Spyderco Delica 4, which has served me incredibly well for 17 years.

It is basically indestructible. I dropped if off a 100 foot cliff once and it was fine. It also has a thousand subtle design features that took me years to really appreciate. One of the interesting things about Spyderco knives: they look fucking weird. I think we have a particular Platonic image of a knife — military, stabby, tough — and Spydercos don’t look like that. (A common complaint among bro-type dudes that want to look all tactical tough: “Spyderco looks like wounded pelicans.”) But all those weird organic design swoops are amazing in the hand. Spyderco’s ergonomic design genius is well-known in the online knife appreciation community. The classic Spyderco designs just meld into your hand; they become fully intuitive, natural extensions of you. But it took me years to fully appreciate it. When you first see and hold one of these knives, especially the lightest and grippiest plastic-handled ones, they just feel cheap and weird.

A couple months ago, somebody stole my other favorite pocket-knife out of my car. It was pandemic, and my brain was starved for sensation, so I had no other choice but to go looking at updated knife reviews. And what I found was that, in between my last knife-buying venture, 17 years ago, and the current one, a vast sprawling network of knife reviewers had arisen, mostly clustered around certain YouTube channels. There is now entire online community that had sprung up dedicated to constantly reviewing and collecting knives. And this community had developed an obsession with a feature called “fidget-quality”. This is how fun it is just to sit and open and close the knife, over and over again.

A folding knife has a quality called “action”. The way that it opens and closes — the speed, the feel of the flick, the satisfying hefty click of the locking mechanism — can all be aestheticized. There are even love-odes to which knives sound good — which ring like some kind of hyper-masculinized bell when they snap open and closed. And I’ll give it to you: good action is sweet. I’m totally up for aestheticizing anything and everything. But — and some of the Internet Knife Community[1] have started to notice this — some of these very expensive, wonderfully fidgety knives don’t actually cut that well. Or that some of them have handles with really clean, pretty metals — which Instagram nicely, but which also turn out to be really, really slippery.

Here is a theory: knife sales right now are driven by the Internet Knife Community. The Internet Knife Community is driven by Instagram, but most heavily by YouTube knife reviewers — like the knife-review superstar Nick Shabazz. Nick is a great, fun, lively reviewer. But, to get popular, a reviewer has to put out a lot of regular content — like multiple knife reviews a week. But somebody who is sitting in their room, making multiple knife-review videos a week, isn’t out in the woods for years with the same knife. So what they’re doing, to review the knife, is cutting the few cardboard boxes they might have around, and then fidgeting with it — and paying lots of attention to the fidget-quality. The context of review exaggerates the importance of fidget-quality, compared to the importance of, you know, cutting stuff.

A similar thing seems to happening in the boardgame community. Boardgames are, one might hope, made for hundreds and thousands of plays. One of the reason boardgames are such a good value proposition is that you can slowly discover the depths of the game over years of repeat play. But the community is now getting driven by popular reviewers, often on YouTube, and getting popular requires putting out frequent and regular content — multiple reviews a week. Which means the most dominant voices, which drive the market, are playing each game a couple of times and then reviewing. And that drives the market in a particular direction. It drives it away from deep rich games that take a few plays to wrap your mind around. The current landscape of popular reviewers seems to be driving the market towards games which are immediately comprehensible, fun for a handful of plays, and then collapse into boring sameness.

So: the structure of the online environment right now seems to demand that superstar reviewers put up frequent updates. Which means reviewing lots of products in rapid succession. But if you’re reviewing the kind of thing that is subtle, that takes a long time to really get to know, then the context of review has drifted really far from the context of use. So we’re evolving this perverse ecosystem centered around influential reviewers — but, where, to become influential, their review-context must be really far from the standard use-context.

Review drift isn’t new. Every age has its own mediums for review and every review medium has its strengths and weaknesses. An earlier era was dominated by written reviews, which have their own limitations. (A lot of the times, I suspect that much art that’s been critically revered in the past has gotten that status, in part, because it’s the kind of thing that’s easy to write about. Like, clever symbolic intellectual stuff is easier for academics and clever art critics to write about than subtle, spare, moody stuff.)

The new wrinkle, I think, is the degree to which many modern contexts concentrate review drift and homogenize it. This is starting to become apparent in all kinds of technological circumstances. A lot of modern technologies create concentrated gateways, which channel the majority of the public’s attention through a single portal. So much of our collective attention is set by how, exactly, Google’s search engine algorithms work, and how it ranks the result. So much of our collective purchasing is set by how exactly Amazon’s algorithm works. And one thing we know is: the more a single system becomes dominant, and the more legible its internal mechanics are, the easier it is for interested parties to game that system and to hyper-optimize. There are whole industries that exist around optimizing your Google search ranking and your Amazon product ranking.

So: there’s always going to be review drift; reviews can never be perfect. But if, at least, review drift happens for different reasons, and in a plurality of directions, then it’ll be a hard target for a big company to optimize for. But if there is some kind of systematic, structural feature that encourages the same kind of review drift across a whole reviewing community, then we create a clearer system for companies to target. And this can happen when a whole body of reviews gets filtered through a particular portal — like Instagram or YouTube — which homogenizes the patterns by which reviewers get famous, or strongly filters the kinds of reviews that get recorded. The more uniform the review drift, the more legible the target for the optimizers.

This is part of a larger pattern we’re starting to see more and more. We can call it the phenomenon of squashed evaluations. When an entire rich form of activity gets evaluated through one tiny window, then the importance of whatever’s in-frame gets over-exaggerated — and whatever’s outside of that frame gets swamped. So the same general kind of pressure that’s giving us high schools laser-focused on standardized tests, pre-meds obsessed with their GPAs, and journalists obsessed with click counts, is also giving us beautiful tasteless donuts and sexy flickable knives that aren’t good at cutting.

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[1] This is their actual name for themselves.

Ethics Without the Costs: Two Tropes in Fiction

I've been binge-watching Doctor Who, and two days ago I finished Susanna Clarke's new novel Piranesi. I love them both! Doctor Who is among my favorite TV series ever, and the images of Piranesi will probably linger with me for the rest of my life. But. But! I'm a philosopher and a critic and I'm never satisfied and I've spent 52 years cultivating a fussy intellect. What good is a fussy intellect if not to find fault in everything?

Clarke is wonderful in part because she bends and defies genre expectations and fiction-writing expectations (also in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell). She writes slowly and atmospherically -- with prose so beautiful that you don't mind that nothing is happening. After a while the almost-nothingness becomes its own kind of plot and tension -- surely something will happen soon! Ah... ah... ah... as if you're on the edge of a sneeze. The tiniest thing becomes major plot news. On page 52, Piranesi is given a pair of shoes!

With as unconventional a writer as Clarke, you might expect the climax of Piranesi to be... SPOILER ALERT.

Spoiler alert. Stop reading.

[image: The Round Tower by Giovanni Piranesi]

You haven't stopped. Last chance! I'll wait if you want to get the book and come back in a week or two. I'm patient. I'm not even a real person, just some html code on a Google server somewhere. Time is meaningless.

Trope 1: HTSBGLBFBBGIJTV

The climax of Piranesi is surprisingly ordinary. It fits perfectly into an overused and predictable trope. I'll call it Hero Tries to Save Bad Guy's Life but Fails Because Bad Guy Is Just Too Vicious. (Suggestions for a shorter name welcomed.) Behind the trope is a sugary ethical fantasy that we probably shouldn't indulge too regularly, lest we mistake it for the world.

In Clarke's version, Bad Guy is caught in a flood, trying to shoot Hero who is taking cover with Helper behind some statues high up above water level. Near Bad Guy is an empty inflatable boat. If Bad Guy gets into the boat, he will live. If not, he risks drowning. Hero tries to save Bad Guy. Hero shouts "Get in the boat! Get in the boat before it's too late!" Bad Guy ignores the shouts (or maybe doesn't hear amid the noise) and shoots again at Hero. Hero shouts again to get in the boat, the tide is almost here! Again, Bad Guy ignores or fails to hear, instead leaving the boat behind to aim more shots at innocent Hero. The flood arrives, killing Bad Guy.

So familiar! Bad Guy is trying to kill Hero. In the attempt, Bad Guy falls into danger. Hero admirably finds the compassion and courage to try to rescue Bad Guy. In some variants, Bad Guy is temporarily rescued. Regardless, Bad Guy viciously continues the unjust attack on Hero, confirming Bad Guy's deep wickedness. This final, especially unjust attack precipitates Bad Guy's death despite Hero's rescue efforts, delivering a happy ending of moral clarity in which Bad Guy's evil directly causes Bad Guy's death while Hero needn't do anything as unseemly as intentionally permit that death.

Examples of this trope abound. Consider the end of Disney's version of Beauty and the Beast. Gaston (Bad Guy) is chasing Beast (Hero) across a roof. Gaston slips. Beast reaches down, grabs Gaston, and helps him up, momentarily saving his enemy's life. Instead of abandoning the quarrel in gratitude, Gaston stabs again at Beast, loses his balance, and falls to his death.

The appeal of this trope is part of the broader appeal, I think -- which we see throughout literature and film -- of ethics (or seeming ethics) without costs. Hero gets to do the (seemingly) ethical thing of forgiving and helping even the Bad Guy, revealing Hero's amazing courage, compassion, and strength of character. But Hero pays no price for this choice. Bad Guy dies anyway, in a final act that confirms his irredeemable viciousness, and the world becomes safe. It's win-win. Hero gets to embody a certain version of deontological ethics or virtue ethics and then also gets the good consequences too.

Yes, sometimes things to work out that way! I confess to being tired of how often, in fiction and movies, they work out that way. Good luck engineers a happy ending with no real costs or tragic losses (for Hero at least; we can feel faint sadness at bad outcomes for some minor characters). Escapist fantasy, I suppose. Which is a fine thing. We all need it sometimes. But from the scintillatingly unconventional Clarke I guess I'd been hoping for something a little less middle-of-the-trope.

Trope 2: SOILARWWWIFA

Doctor Who makes no pretense to be anything other than escapist fantasy, right in the middle of every trope. Sometimes it's so absurdly on trope as to verge on parody. At the end of every timer is the destruction of (at least) the entire Earth, and salvation never arrives until the last hair of a fraction of a second. Every whiff of trouble, with utter predictability, means real trouble, with some preposterously destructive Bad Guy behind it.

Last night, we watched "Kill the Moon" (2nd era, s8:e7). (Spoilers coming.) The Moon, it turns out, is an egg about to hatch a giant bird! The heroes face a moral choice: Kill the innocent bird embryo an hour (a minute, a split second...) before it hatches, to prevent the risk to the Earth that would presumably be entailed by having an unpredictable Moon-sized hatchling nearby, or let the innocent thing hatch and accept the risk to Earth.

Thus looms another familiar trope of escapist ethics. Let's call this one Save One Innocent Life at Risk to the World but Whew the World Is Fine Anyway (SOILARWWWIFA for short). Of course the heroes choose not to kill the innocent creature. And of course it works out fine. In the denouement, the minor character whose unfortunate plot role was voicing the consequentialist argument to nuke the egg is forced to humbly thank the wiser others for staying her hand. It's foolish to favor killing one innocent life, even to protect the world! The dour consequentialist is shamed, and the moral order of the universe is affirmed. Emotionally, we learn that there's never any real conflict between saving the innocent creature before you and protecting the world.

I loved it. Of course I loved it. If the egg had birthed a monster that intentionally or accidentally destroyed humanity, or if they'd nuked the egg and the beautiful corpse had drifted sadly but safely away -- well, my family and I wouldn't have been reassured with the comfortable thought that ethical criteria never seriously conflict. You can have have your compassion, your respect for every individual's life, your softness and humaneness, and all of your good consequences too, in one yummy package. We can retire for the night remembering the beautiful Moon-bird that, in our courageous and compassionate wisdom, we chose to let live.

ETA 09:11

The acronyms are intentionally absurd, but here's pronunciation advice anyway. For "HTSBGLBFBBGIJTV", just say "hits biggle" then give up. For "SOILARWWWIFA", "solar wife" might serve.

The Peak-End Theory of Dessert: A New Philosophy of Wolfing

My daughter Kate eats desserts slowly -- has done so as long as I can remember. She is what I'll call an extreme savorer. In other words, she is a completely irrational moral monster, as I will now endeavor to show.

I'll admit that on a superficial analysis, Kate's approach to dessert appears wise. Someone bakes brownies. Everyone in the family receives a brownie of equal size. My son's is gone in a flash. My wife and I eat ours moderately quickly. Kate delicately saws off an edge and puts it on her tongue, waits a while, saws off another edge. Ten, fifteen minutes later, Kate is still enjoying her brownie while the rest of the family watches enviously.

At such moments I think, "Why don't I slow down and savor my dessert like Kate does? She obviously derives much more sweet pleasure from her slow ways!" Several days later, of course, it's "Yum, ice cream sandwiches!" munch munch munch and once again after my share is gone I find myself envying Kate's slower pace.

[Kate at work on a Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cup]

Now I'd rather not see myself as quite as terribly irrational as this pattern suggests. Fortunately, being well-trained in both philosophy and psychology, I have a wealth of theoretical resources from which to concoct a plausible justification of pretty much anything. Our task for today, then, is to demonstrate that I am right and Kate is wrong.

We need a philosophy of wolfing.

The Peak-End Rule

In a classic series of studies, Daniel Kahneman, Donald Redelmeier, and collaborators found that in retrospectively evaluating negative or painful experiences, people tend to disregard the duration of the experience. Instead, people evaluate their experiences mostly based on how the experiences felt at their peak and how they felt at the end.

Some of the results are startling: For example, in one experiment, ordinary colonoscopy patients were either given standard painful colonoscopy procedures or instead the same standard painful procedures plus the extra (but less severe) discomfort have having the colonoscope rest in their rectum unmoving for an additional three minutes at the end. Patients reported their pain levels in real time throughout the procedure. The peak level of pain was the same in the two groups, as was the overall pain during the main part of the procedure. Consequently, patients in the second group had more total pain: the pain of the main procedure plus an extra three minutes of discomfort. Nonetheless, patients in the second group retrospectively reported having experienced less pain, and they reported a less negative overall attitude toward the procedure.

What's more, the patients acted accordingly: Over the next five years, patients who otherwise were predicted to have a low propensity to return for another colonoscopy (patients with less past history of colonoscopies and no detection of abnormalities) were more likely to return for another colonoscopy if they were in the experimental group who had received the extended procedure than if they were in the control group who had received the standard procedure.

Kahneman and colleagues found similar results with participants asked to hold their hands in painfully cold water. Participants held one hand for 60 seconds in water that was 14.1 degrees Celsius (painfully cold but not damaging) (Procedure A) and also, either before or after, held their other hand for 60 seconds in water that was the same 14.1 degrees C and then kept it in the water for an additional 30 seconds while the temperature was slowly raised to 15.2 degrees (still uncomfortably cold) (Procedure B). When told that they could choose either Procedure A or Procedure B for the third trial, most chose Procedure B. They chose more pain over less.

According to the "peak-end rule", the retrospective evaluation of either a positive or a negative experience is an average of the quality of the experience at its positive or negative peak and the quality of the experience at its end, with little regard for duration. Despite the fame of this rule (including in guides to managing one's business, etc.), it isn't as thoroughly studied as one might expect, and findings remain mixed.

Still, let's assume that something close to the peak-end rule is true about the enjoyment of desserts: How fondly you remember your dessert is a function mostly of the average of your most pleasant bite and your last bite.

Wolves Will Remember Dessert More Fondly

It should now seem plausible that if you wolf down your dessert, you will remember it more fondly.

The peak will be better: Instead of modest bite after modest bite of moderate pleasure, you will experience the unrestrained joy of a giant bite of popping deliciousness all at once. Maybe the best part is the cherry atop the icing. The wolf will get that great mouthful of cherry, icing, and cake all at once, while the savorer will have no such moment of sudden decadent indulgence.

The end will also be better: We grow weary of even the best things over time. Although the twentieth bite of chocolate is still good, it's never as wonderful as the first few bites. By bite twenty your mouth is accommodated to the sweetness, and the pleasure is only a temperate, lingering continuation. The last bite will be more flavorful if you don't take too long in getting around to it.

Furthermore, there is a joy in not holding back. What could be more childish fun than just diving in, biting the whole head off the Easter bunny or shoving a great spoonful of cherry, whip cream, and cake right into your mouth? The savorer's experience will always be tainted with the slightly unpleasant feeling of self-restraint.

This figure compares the Wolf's and the Savorer's dessert experiences over time:

[click to enlarge and clarify]

Although the savorer enjoys dessert longer and the total sum pleasure (represented by the total area between the line and the x axis) might be larger, both the peak and the end are higher for the wolf. If peak-end theory is correct and duration is mostly ignored, then looking back on the dessert, the wolf will think, "wow, that was great!" while the savorer will think "okay, that was pretty good".

"But Peak-End Reasoning Is Irrational!"

Look, I know what you savorers are thinking. It's irrational to choose according to the peak-end rule. It doesn't make sense to tack some extra pain at the end of a colonoscopy just so that it doesn't conclude on quite so vividly painful a note. You should want to immediately withdraw your hand from the cold water rather than keeping it immersed longer while the water warms slightly. We should want less total pain, not more. It's a mistake to disregard duration as much as we do. And the wolfer, you think, is making exactly that mistake, while the savorer rationally sacrifices peak pleasure for enduring pleasure. If she does it rightly, the savorer derives more total joy from her dessert, wisely shaping her behavior to maximize not the peak or the end but instead the entire integral under the line.

This argument errs in two ways.

First, part of the pleasure of dessert is remembering it fondly and anticipating the next one. (Colonoscopies might differ in this respect.) If the wolfer sustains a more positive attitude toward dessert due to his memory of a great peak and a good end, the wolfer multiplies that pleasure in recollection and planning. "Wow, do you remember how great those brownies were? Let's make more next week!" Smelling the next batch in the oven, or putting the Swiss chocolate in his shopping cart, the wolf rekindles his greater bliss.

Second, a life with peaks and valleys is overall better and more choiceworthy than a life at steady medium good. Here I side with Nietzsche against the Stoics. This is, I think, especially true on the positive side, when the valleys are not too low. (I would not wish suicidal depression on anyone.) Given a choice between 2 2 2 2 2 and 1 0 10 -1 0 -- both summing to ten units of pleasure -- give me the second every time. Give me the wolf's sloppy peak bite off the top of the sundae, even if it's finished soon, over the savorer's monotonous, slow licking.

Envy Becomes Pity and Maybe Forgiveness

Now that I am thinking about these matters clearly, I see that our envy of Kate's slow ways is misplaced. As we sit there watching her still eating her brownie, we envy her because we imagine the pleasure of wolfing down the brownie that remains before her. But we should pity Kate instead: In her faux wisdom she will never know that wolfish pleasure. Not only does she deprive herself, but she negligently or recklessly or even intentionally (as part of her pleasure?) teases and torments us wolves, which makes her choice not only prudentially but morally wrong.

But Kate, I promise not to judge you too harshly -- I will forgive you, even! -- if you will share that last bit of the peach cobbler with me. Pretty please?

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If you enjoy my blog, check out my recent book: A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures.

The Edge of Chaos

Last Monday, a curfew was announced in Riverside -- blaringly announced, with calls on my landline in both English and Spanish, emails from the city and from my employer, cellphone text alerts from emergency services. I decided to violate it.

Being a middle-class white guy in my fifties, when I think of curfews, I think of the former communist countries of eastern Europe. I think of police states and dystopias. The curfew started at six. At seven, against the advice of my wife, I drove downtown. I noticed boarded up shops, loitering groups mostly of young men, blocked off roads, parking lots with police cars. I parked several blocks down a side street, donned my face mask, and walked toward the center.

Heading toward the noise, I felt conspicuous for my age and race. I felt examined and judged by groups of young black and Latino men who were leaning against the buildings. A stream of wailing police cars looped around toward me. I dashed around a corner onto another street and they rolled past.

On Market Street, people were milling in all directions -- mostly not protesters, it seemed. No one was chanting or holding signs in a large organized group. Instead, they appeared to be curious residents out to see what's happening in their neighborhood, men looking for excitement or trouble, and a few college or high school students with friends and cameras.

Someone called out to me, "Hey, weren't you my professor for Evil?" (Every fall, I teach a 400 person class on the moral psychology of evil.) A couple of Asian students approached me. They had been at the protests, taking pictures. The protesters had been fired on with rubber bullets, and my student (or was it his friend?) showed me an injury on his hand -- an inch-long laceration where a bullet had struck him while, he said, his hands were in the air and he was shouting "don't shoot". He had picked up the bullet that struck him. I took this picture:

Someone who takes a round of this sort to the neck or head can be seriously injured or potentially even killed.

Ahead, I heard an explosion -- not for the first time -- and saw the bright star of a firecracker rising over the roofs of the two and three story buildings. The protesters were taunting the police with commercial-grade firecrackers. They were moving as a mob from place to place. When police advanced, the protesters would flee and regroup somewhere else. Teams of squad cars looped around with sirens on, attempting to intimidate and scatter curfew violators, but they couldn't cover the whole area. A least two helicopters were also circling.

Cars would drive down Market Street when the lights were green. Most cars seemed to be traveling on ordinary business, but a few drove slowly and honked, some with signs. One car had windows rolled down and a sign that said "Fuck you Karen". Pedestrians shouted "Fuck you, Karen!" several times to cheers.

Groups of about a dozen people would suddenly appear, fleeing down the middle of Market Street. Crowds on the sidewalk would briefly run too, or duck around corners, in case police came chasing. I saw a man who had been shot in the leg sitting by the side of the road. Some people stood on the sidewalk with their phones out. Others appeared to be fleeing a T-Mobile cellphone store. I heard, but didn't see, shouting and more firecrackers. People were mostly wearing masks -- I suspected both because of the pandemic and to reduce the chance of being identified by police.

Two women in a car pulled up, windows down, and demanded several times that the crowd stop taking pictures. No one paid attention to them until I asked them why. Their reply was drowned in the noise and they drove away. An ambulance roared past.

Photos don't capture the tension, the feeling of a crowd despite the broad California streets, the sense that chaos might approach from any direction.

Maybe seventy protesters turned onto Market Street as a group, some carrying signs, some shouting, none threatening or violent. At that time I saw no police, except in helicopters. I headed back in the protesters' direction, taking photos from the sidewalk.

Ahead of me, I heard a crash, then saw a broken window and someone in a shop, messing with the blinds and broken glass. On the sidewalk, I was suddenly surrounded by large, strong men -- and then they were running. I was jostled among them, then I tripped up against bolted down sidewalk furniture. I feared becoming the tail end of a group that was being shot at by police, so I ran amid them. After about half a block of running, people calmed down. I could hear squad cars blaring on nearby streets.

A crowd was stopped in the street, looking various directions but mostly up at a crane -- a huge, bright blue crane rising maybe 120 feet. A lone man was climbing its interior. The crowd cheered him on and probably, like me, wondered if he would fall. I watched him climb nearly to the top, but then I heard explosions or gunfire and nearby sirens and decided I'd seen enough. Later, I heard that the crane climber had somehow entered the control booth and turned the crane. Under what conditions might a badly operated crane fall?

Leaving the scene, again I felt assessed by loitering men and curious residents. The last person I saw was also the only person my age that I recall seeing the whole time I was out. He greeted me from the small front yard of his house. I don't recall his words, but I thought he looked at me in camaraderie, one middle-aged white guy to another, as if we stood together above or to the side of the chaos.

I returned home and related my adventures to my family. That night, as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I found myself longing to return downtown, despite the risk and fear I had felt. It seemed exciting and important, compared to daily life as a professor, compared to being caged at home amid the pandemic. If I were younger, more in love with excitement, if I had no children, no job, the streets would call to me more strongly, I'm sure.

The Riverside police couldn't handle a thousand curfew-breakers downtown. They, we, pushed the police to the edge of what they could do with rubber bullets and their existing rules of conduct. It is easy, so easy, to imagine this amplified -- larger, more persistent tumult in the streets, unpredictable, potentially violent, police frustrated and tempted to use more extreme measures -- street-level chaos of the sort we in the U.S. are used to hearing about in other countries, but rarely imagine happening in our own.

In Praise of Weirdness

I'm a weirdo. It's been a lifelong thing. The popular girls in middle school called me weird for relentlessly riffing on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and 1st edition D&D. In high school, I wore the wildest second-hand 1970s clothes I could find and people wrote things in my yearbook like "you have amazingly bad taste in shirts!" Now I spend my time writing bizarre essays and stories about group consciousness, simulation skepticism, infinite immaterial Turing Machines, and garden snail sex.

So let me own it. I'm weird, and I like weird things! You too, I hope?

What is it to be weird? I propose this: Something is weird if it's not normal. To be weird, a thing has to be somehow unusual -- but simply being unusual isn't enough. A blade of grass might be bent slightly differently than most other blades of grass. That doesn't make it weird -- not unless it's bent in some weird way. Similarly, your car's license plate number is unusual (no one else has it) but probably not weird. To be weird, a thing must be in some respect strikingly contrary to expectations. A high school kid wearing flower-print bellbottoms amid the black skinny jeans of 1985 is weird. So is a philosopher who has enough of a sliver of dream skepticism to spread his arms to try to fly across campus. A blade of grass with a slightly different bend isn't strikingly contrary to expectations, but one that doubled back on itself in a triple loop then ended in a stringy fluff -- that would be a weirdo piece of grass, man. Totally not normal.

Most philosophers think of norms either statistically or normatively (where to violate a norm is to be in some respect bad), but the kind of violation of normality that is constitutive of weirdness isn't either of those. Statistical rarity isn't enough, as I just explained. But neither is the weird necessarily something that violates our ethical, epistemic, or aesthetic norms. On the contrary, weirdness in my sense is good.

Imagine a world without weirdness -- a world where everything proceeds more or less according to expectations. The grass all shows the normal range of variation; the high school kids all wear normal clothes; philosophers endorse only the normal range of sensible theses. How dull! A certain amount of weirdness is wonderful. When I imagine my ideal world, I imagine a world of variation and difference, where people, events, and objects often have surprisingly strange features.

Now before you read this an endorsement of the view that we should all go completely bananas, let me mention two strong counterpressures toward normality.

First: If everything is surprising, nothing is surprising. There can be no expectations in sheer chaos. Weirdness blooms only against a contrasting background of normality. Not everything can be weird. We weirdos require a sea of straight-men to differ from. So thank you, straight-men!

Second: If most things of Type X lack Feature F, typically there's a reason: Feature F is bad in things of Type X. If an X, then, weirdly has Feature F, that's a problem. It's weird to eat scrambled paper for breakfast. It's weird to glue your socks to your hair instead of sliding them comfortably onto your feet. There are excellent reasons people don't do those things. But those things aren't bad because they're weird; they're weird because they're bad.

The best weirdness is weirdness against a background of normality where the weird-making feature is not also a bad-making feature. This is weirdness as harmless (maybe even helpful) novelty and difference. It's the weirdness of my father, one Christmas, flocking and decorating a tumbleweed instead of a tree for the living room. It's the weirdness of the girl who wears cat ears and sparkly eye shadow to school. The world's capacity to produce weirdness is one of the most wonderful things about existence, right alongside pleasure, knowledge, kindness, and beauty.

[image source]

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If you enjoy my blog, check out my recent book: A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures.

Does It Matter If the Passover Story Is Literally True?

[Originally published in the L.A. Times, April 9, 2017; revised version published as Chapter 25 of A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures]

You probably already know the Passover story: how Moses asked Pharaoh to let his enslaved people leave Egypt, and how Moses’s god punished Pharaoh—killing the Egyptians’ firstborn sons while “passing over” the Jewish households. You might even know the new ancillary tale of the Passover orange. How much truth is there in these stories? At synagogues during Passover holiday, myth collides with fact, tradition with changing values. Negotiating this collision is the puzzle of modern religion.

Passover is a holiday of debate, reflection, and conversation. In 2016, as my family and I and the rest of the congregation waited for the Passover feast at our Reform Jewish temple, our rabbi prompted us: “Does it matter if the story of Passover isn’t literally true?”

Most people seemed to be shaking their heads. No, it doesn’t matter.

I was imagining the Egyptians’ sons. I am an outsider to the temple. My wife and teenage son are Jewish, but I am not. At the time, my nine-year-old daughter, adopted from China at age one, was describing herself as “half Jewish”.

I nodded my head. Yes, it does matter if the Passover story is literally true.

“Okay, Eric, why does it matter?” Rabbi Suzanne Singer handed me the microphone.

I hadn’t planned to speak. “It matters,” I said, “because if the story is literally true, then a god who works miracles really exists. It matters if there is a such a god or not. I don’t think I would like the ethics of that god, who kills innocent Egyptians. I’m glad there is no such god.

“It is odd,” I added, “that we have this holiday that celebrates the death of children, so contrary to our values now.”

The microphone went around, others in the temple responding to me. Values change, they said. Ancient war sadly but inevitably involved the death of children. We’re really celebrating the struggle of freedom for everyone....

Rabbi Singer asked if I had more to say in response. My son leaned toward me. “Dad, you don’t have anything more to say.” I took his cue and shut my mouth.

Then the Seder plates arrived with the oranges on them.

Seder plates have six labeled spots: two bitter herbs, charoset (a mix of fruit and nuts), parsley, a lamb bone, a boiled egg—each with symbolic value. There is no labeled spot for an orange.

The first time I saw an orange on a Seder plate, I was told this story about it: A woman was studying to be a rabbi. An orthodox rabbi told her that a woman belongs on the bimah (pulpit) like an orange belongs on the Seder plate. When she became a rabbi, she put an orange on the plate.

A wonderful story—a modern, liberal story. More comfortable than the original Passover story for a liberal Reform Judaism congregation like ours, proud of our woman rabbi. The orange is an act of defiance, a symbol of a new tradition that celebrates gender equality.

Does it matter if it’s true?

Here’s what actually happened. Dartmouth Jewish Studies Professor Susannah Heschel was speaking to a Jewish group at Oberlin College in Ohio. The students had written a story in which a girl asks a rabbi if there is room for lesbians in Judaism, and the rabbi rises in anger, shouting, “There’s as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the Seder plate!” The next Passover, Heschel, inspired by the students but reluctant to put anything as unkosher as bread on the Seder plate, used a tangerine instead.

The orange, then, though still an act of defiance, is also already a compromise and modification. The shouting rabbi is not an actual person but an imagined, simplified foe.

It matters that it’s not true. From the story of the orange, we learn a central lesson of Reform Judaism: that myths are cultural inventions built to suit the values of their day, idealizations and simplifications, changing as our values change—but that only limited change is possible within a tradition-governed institution. An orange, but not a crust of bread.

In a way, my daughter and I are also oranges: a new type of presence in a Jewish congregation, without a marked place, welcomed this year, unsure we belong, at risk of rolling off.

In the car on the way home, my son scolded me: “How could you have said that, Dad? There are people in the congregation who take the Torah literally, very seriously! You should have seen how they were looking at you, with so much anger. If you’d said more, they would practically have been ready to lynch you.”

Due to the seating arrangement, I had been facing away from most of the congregation. I hadn’t seen those faces. Were they really so outraged? Was my son telling me the truth on the way home that night? Or was he creating a simplified myth of me?

In belonging to an old religion, we honor values that are no longer entirely our own. We celebrate events that no longer quite make sense. We can’t change the basic tale of Passover. But we can add liberal commentary to better recognize Egyptian suffering, and we can add a new celebration of equality.

Although the new tradition, the orange, is an unstable thing atop an older structure that resists change, we can work to ensure that it remains. It will remain only if we can speak its story compellingly enough to also give our new values the power of myth.

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Related:

Dreidel: A Seemingly Foolish Game That Contains the Moral World in Miniature (Salon.com, Dec. 22, 2019; also LA Times, Dec. 12, 2017 and Chapter 24 of A Theory of Jerks).

Birthday Cake and a Chapel (blog post April 21, 2018 and Chapter 36 of A Theory of Jerks

[image source]

Snail Weather

Yesterday was a good day to be a snail. Spring rains are rousing them from hibernation, and on my morning stroll I saw hundreds cruising the vacant sidewalks of suburban Riverside.

The streets were so quiet, even this snail appeared to be in no particular danger:

I took dozens of photos in the rain, my usual fifty-five minute walk stretching to an hour and a quarter. It was peaceful -- just me and the snails. Normally on a Monday morning, cars fill the streets, leaving for work and school. Yesterday I counted only fourteen cars the whole time I was out, less than one car every five minutes. Nor were there other pedestrians.

Alone in the rain with the snails, I thought back to couple of days previously, when my wife Pauline, my teenage daughter Kate, and I had been walking our dog in the sun. Pauline had wondered aloud if the world would be better without humans. Think of all the destruction and suffering we cause, she said.

But without humans, I replied, there'd be no science, no philosophy, no art, no heroes -- none of the distinctively human things that make Earth such an amazing planet! Isn't it better that the universe has planets like this, even with all the suffering we inflict on ourselves and other species, than it would be if every planet were just a paradise of cows?

But how much destruction and suffering is worth it, Pauline asked. What if we wiped out every species, including ourselves, and turned the planet into a sterile rock forever? Would our great accomplishments have been worth it?

Probably not, I conceded. But if we wiped out 90% of species and then the world recovered, with new wonderful species emerging later -- then we were worth it.

Kate had been listening in. I asked her opinion.

"The world would be better without humans," Kate said. She loves animals. She was thinking, I'm sure, of all the wild animals that would flourish better without us.

Two antinatalists in my own family!

I'll give Pauline and Kate this much: It's not a bad thing to let the snails to enjoy a day without us once in a while. I've noticed more birds and squirrels recently too. We humans can tuck in for a nap and let some other species cruise around for a while, in our suddenly quieter spaces.

The big, beautiful ones are common garden snails, Cornu aspersum. The low, sleek ones are decollates, Rumina decollata, predatory snail-eating snails, sneaking up on the garden snails in their slow-paced hunt.

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If you enjoy my blog, check out my recent book: A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures.