Quote II

"A belief system that preaches innate imperfection and guilt has to have as it's centrum a gospel of self-hate."

Quote I

"Removing poverty and inequality isn't going to work. That would remove one of the main institutions of fear, which in turn would remove one of our main fulcrums of control."

Right to die?

Excuse the equivocal nature of the title of this post.

This morning the papers are awash with a story concerning the euthanasia of Dr John Elliot in a Swiss clinic last Thursday. This is a well written, objective article. It had me in tears.

Then we turn to a smh.com.au opinion piece titled "The line that must never be crossed" in which the author makes his intention clear very early:

However, emotion cannot be allowed to cloud the ethical and practical principles that must inform the euthanasia debate. Whatever the circumstances of Dr Elliott's case, the principles remain the same. So, too, is the conclusion to be drawn from those principles: the law must continue to prohibit euthanasia.

Fair enough - state your position up front. But let's look at the article. What reasoning is given? Does the author successfully steer clear of emotional motivations and arguments? Does the author make arguments that could be applied universally? Does the author argue from a utilitarian perspective? If so are contradictions avoided? Is the author simply justifying a stance (stated at the outset) or are we seeing an example of clearly reasoned, logical thought?

The author seems intent on drawing a distinction between euthanasia and other avenues of hastening death.

Yet a string of surveys here and overseas suggests doctors are readier than ever to administer pain-killing drugs or to withdraw or withhold treatment even when that will hasten death. Such relief for the terminally ill is to be welcomed, and the law's application is appropriately sensitive to this need. Such surveys of doctors' actual practice undermine the common argument by euthanasia advocates that patients suffer unnecessarily because doctors fear criminal prosecution. How often are doctors criminally prosecuted? Patients who suffer pain at the end of life can expect an easeful death, and that the law will not stand in the way.

It seems clear that the author is agreeing that some doctors are already hastening the death of certain patients in some cases. We should note carefully that the author justifies this by stating that the law is "sensitive" to such cases; that is, the medical practitioners in question won't be prosecuted, and that "Patients who suffer pain at the end of life can expect an easeful death, and that the law will not stand in the way."

What's wrong with the argument pointing out that swift death at the behest of the patient is more humane? How is forcing someone who wants to end their life to live in pain and take expensive pain-killing drugs, more ethical than giving them the freedom to end their life? We're not talking about people who aren't judged fit to make such a decision. We're talking about people with terminal illnesses in excruciating pain making a clear-minded and considered decision about their situation. From a consequentialist perspective what is the difference? In the former case, the patient undergoes severe pain. Family members, rendered helpless, stand by and watch. We have a course of action that results in substantial pain for the patient, considerable distress for the family and the potential shortening of patient life due to medical treatment or lack thereof. What about the latter case? The patient and family, along with professional medical advice make the decision to end the person's life. There is no more physical pain for the terminally ill patient. The family is saved the distress of watching their loved one suffer avoidable pain. In short, the patient is empowered to make a decision which allows death with dignity.

The whole argument which outlaws euthanasia almost smacks of typical authoritarian reasoning. "We" know better than you. What if you regret it? I'll make the decisions about this on your behalf, because it'll be better for you in the end. Just hold on tight, denying you the right to end your life is the "ethical" thing to do. If the patient were to ask why, the answer is simple. You're not in a "correct" state of mind. You can't be thinking clearly. I wonder how much of this attitude is motivated by society's deep seated need to control its citizens?

Why doesn't an autonomous, sentient person have the right to end their life? For that matter, why is it ok to deliberately keep the area "grey" and allow ad hoc decisions to be made by patients and doctors to use treatments which may shorten their life or to not use treatments that could extend it? What moral code makes this ok? Is it just because the whole situation is then somehow distanced from a black and white ethical decision? Are we supposed to feel ok about this approach because it dilutes the reality of hastening someone's death? What about the benefits of opening the issue up, and clearly attempting to demarcate it?

I think we need stronger arguments than:

There is no knowing where euthanasia law would take us once it had a foothold in the statutes. Overwhelmingly, families wanting to hasten the death of loved ones are motivated by love and compassion. But removing existing criminal sanctions could leave little to inhibit family members conniving with compliant doctors to end a patient's life for other, unacceptable motives such as greed or impatience. And cash-strapped health systems will surely find it cheaper to institutionalise death than care for the physical and emotional wellbeing of the old and frail.

And what stops that from happening now? How is this an argument against euthanasia, but not against procedures which could shorten a persons life substantially and keep them in a semi-comatose state for the rest of their "life"? Surely this is a non sequitur.

I think there needs to be open and logical debate resting on current ethical theory, rather than proposing hypothetical "doomsday" situations which obviously support a given view. To my mind this is another clear example of the author "justifying" a stance, rather than reasoning about it.

Honestly, it's disgusting to consider such sub-standard pseudo-intellectual drivel is/could become the modus operandi of a paper as widely read as smh.com.au.

Link

Is Philosophy Progressive?

Question II

Why is Marijuana or Mescaline illegal but Alcohol is not?

Question I

Is anything not an abstraction?

Tastes of Yukio Mishima

Corruscating excerpts from Yukio Mishima.

Once I sat for hours on the grass watching a colony of ants engaged in transporting minute particles of red earth. It wasn't a matter of the ants having aroused my interest. On another occasion I stood for ages outside the university, staring like a dolt at the thin wisp of smoke that rose from a factory chimney at the back. It wasn't that the smoke had caught my fancy. At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was myself. The world outside me had cooled down in parts and had then been reheated. How shall I put it? I felt that the outside world was spotted and again that it was striped. My inner being and the outer world slowly and irregularly changed places. The meaningless scene that surrounded me shone before my eyes; as it shone, it forced its way into me and only those parts of the scene that had not entered continued to glitter vividly in a place beyond.

'What about it?' he said. 'Something broke inside you just now, didn't it?' I can't bear to see a friend of mine living with something inside him that is so easy to break. My entire kindness lies in destroying such things.'

I did not expect that I should encounter the sea here on any intimate terms, although of course a jeep might come along from behind and push me into the sea just for fun.

The mouth of the river was unexpectedly narrow. The sea lay there indistinctly mingled with the dark cumuli of clouds, melting into the river, assaulting it. In order to get a tactile perception of this sea, I still had to walk a considerable distance with the wind blowing fiercely on me from across the plains and the rice fields. The wind was drawing its patterns over the entire surface of the sea. It was because of the sea that the wind was thus wasting its violent energy on these deserted fields. And the sea was a sea of vapor that covered this wintry area, a peremptory, dominant, invisible sea.

from The Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Yukio Mishima

The Leaf Patch

A man is walking home from work along the side of a busy road. There is only one path and it is narrow. He sees a collection of leaves on the path in front of him. It is a matted collection of leafy vegetation, matted from a soggy cycle of rain and sun. Rain and sun.

He sees a woman walking towards him. She is an older woman and well dressed with a certain allure smarting about her hips and finely cut business accouterment.

She veers towards him.

Man: I am going to walk straight. This is ridiculous. I am not going to move for this woman. Why can't she walk straight? Does this woman think she owns the path? This path was here before both of us. I have intimated "straightness" in my journey for the last 30 minutes.

The woman continues to veer closer to him. It is evidently self evident that she is attempting to circumnavigate the matted leaf patch. She shows no concern for the imminent meeting of their trajectories.

Man: Oh come off it! She's going to walk into me to avoid the leaf patch? The leaf patch is on her side of the path. The burden of leaf patch is hers to deal with! Why must she confer this responsibility on me? It seems such a particular act and yet we're total strangers!

The woman comes to within two metres of the man. The man looks at the woman, being careful to express his look of severe annoyance. The woman continues unabated in her veering, for she is power-suited and exercising her right of post-feminist womanhood.

The man's body jerkily responds. One foot after another betrays his resolute promise to practice self-worth. He admonishes himself privately. He sinks to the primitive role of hunter-gatherer. The man sidesteps and lets the woman take the clear path. He has been displaced. He is on the grass beside the path. She is on the clear path. He is on the grass.

Man: "Ergghh!!"

The woman acknowledges his grunt with a look. The man tries to focus his frustration in his eyes and shoot it at her....

Woman: "I can't walk on the LEAVES!!"

Man: "Is it going to murder you?"

The woman shows the man a look of obvious disdain. They pass each other and keep walking. The man has learned his place.

Bourgeois hate

... it is as from the moment when a typist earning twenty pounds a month recognises herself in the big wedding of the bourgeoisie that bourgeois ex-nomination achieves its full effect.

Mythologies - Roland Barthes

The Art of Procrastination and The Order of Things

I'm only documenting this because it happens throughout most of the day. Every day. I understand that I will have necessarily had to procrastinate equally as long to observe this compulsive procrastination, but I have to keep telling myself that I'm doing this for the betterment of humanity.

Here is a small snippet in time (approximately 45 odd minutes) which describes the actions of possibly the most extreme and perverted procrastinator I've ever seen. He's been at my current place of work for just on 2 weeks. I haven't seen him do any work the entire time he's been there. He's had conversations about hypothetical situations and potential ideas or designs, but I haven't seen him actually *do* anything.

Update: for those of you who don't believe this actually happened - believe me. I typed this in exactly the correct order and at precisely timed intervals while he did it.

[4:30pm]
clicking repeatedly on individual days in a Lotus Notes weekly calendar view.. then back to clicking repeatedly through windows.. staring at screen.. clicking through windows again.. scroll down 10 lines through code.. click through windows repeatedly.. click repeatedly through individual days in a Lotus Notes weekly calendar view.. click repeatedly through windows.. stare at a command prompt with output text in it.. rub hair repeatedly.. stare at a command prompt with output text in it.. rub hair.. click through windows.. scroll up through code by about 100 lines.. stare at code and rub chin thoughtfully.. click through windows.. scroll down through code by about 100 lines.. click through windows repeatedly (for about 2 minutes this time).. scroll up through code by about 10 lines.. rub hair and face repeatedly.. click through windows repeatedly.. scroll up and down through java code repeatedly.. look at code and rub hair.. click through windows repeatedly..

[4:45]
use the keyboard! go to yahoo mail.. check mail.. read email from Peoplebank¹.. click through windows repeatedly.. stare at empty MS Word window (no open document).. click repeatedly through windows.. rub hair repeatedly.. scroll up and down through yahoo mail inbox.. open email.. pick up the phone.. put the phone down (without calling anyone).. appear to be reading email²..

[4:50]
click repeatedly through windows.. open email from Peoplebank.. click repeatedly through windows.. rub hair repeatedly.. stare at intranet homepage.. type(!) url in window (without pressing enter).. click through several windows.. go back to browser and ponder url.. alt tab to yahoo mail window.. logout of yahoo mail.. log back into yahoo mail.. open previous email.. pick up phone.. dial a number.. click through a few windows..

[4:55]
speak to someone in Chinese³..

[5:01]
hang up.. start clicking repeatedly through windows again.. rub hair repeatedly.. go back to clicking repeatedly through windows again.. sigh⁴.. stare at code.. rub hair.. click repeatedly through windows (for several minutes).. rub face and hair and stare at command prompt.. go back to clicking through multiple windows..

[5:07]
start scrolling through code with the keyboard.. stop.. rub hair.. pick up pen.. look around.. put pen down.. lean back and start repeatedly stroking hair.. go back to clicking through windows..

[5:13] Get out of chair.. walk outside..

[5:15] Sit back down.. begin clicking through windows repeatedly again.. click repeatedly on individual days in a Lotus Notes weekly calendar view (which he continues for the next minute or so)..

And we've come full circle.

What is to be done with such people? I really don't know, but I would like to leave you with a quote from peoplebank.com.au:

"Some agencies throw up resumes in a shotgun approach. Peoplebank don't do that. They are willing to spend time getting to know my business, and that allows them to put up quality candidates, with the right technical skills who will fit into my team.

¹ http://www.peoplebank.com.au - "Are you ready to deal with a company
that is empowered to perform?"
² perhaps the first thing that could result in work?
³ using torturously stretched, sighing phrases...
⁴ this is obviously becoming quite taxing

Ofelia, Linda, Jenny, Anna, Sarah, Caroline...

You like Swedish librarians huh?

Poets worth reading

Ted Hughes
W.H. Auden
William Carlos Williams
Dylan Thomas
Ezra Pound
Sylvia Plath
Seamus Heaney

The Red Wheelbarrow

Classic by WCW. Am going to pick up a book of his poems this weekend as a priority.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

Never read Homer?

How about:

Odysseus
I rule.

Poseidon
For your sin of pride, I curse you for all eternity.

(Unfazed, Odysseus boards his ship and sets SAIL for Greece, where his family is awaiting his RETURN from Troy. A STORM happens, and it drives them off course into the MEDITERRANEAN, where they come upon a strange LAND owned by the giant Cyclops POLYPHEMUS who eats some of the men ALL UP, but then they ESCAPE. Still lost, they run into the island of the sorceress CIRCE who turns some of Odysseus' men into ANIMALS, and it takes YEARS before they escape, and then they sail by some singing SIRENS, but they can't hear because they have STUFF in their ears. Then they come upon an island where there is a field of HERBS, and they all get HIGH, until Odysseus says it's time to GO. Then Odysseus' men let a WIND out of a BAG, and some more men DIE. And they sail on to HADES to talk to some DEAD people, and some more men DIE. And they steer the ship between the six headed monster SCYLLA and the torrential whirlpool CHARYBDIS, and Scylla makes some more men DIE, and Charybdis makes the rest of them DIE. Then the ship busts up into a JILLION pieces, but Odysseus is SAVED by the nymph Calypso who confines him to her ISLAND because she thinks he's HOT, and she wants his BODY. Then years later she lets him GO, but Poseidon is determined to terrorize him FURTHER. And then SUDDENLY Odysseus has an IDEA.)

Odysseus
Poseidon, I am sorry.

Poseidon
Ok, you can go home now.

(Odysseus goes home.)

from Book-a-minute Classics. Classic take on the classics! ;) Check it out.

Why is it cool to "cross things out" in blogs and on the web generally?

Answer: it's not.

The Literary Life

We climbed Marianne Moore's narrow stair
To her bower-bird bric-a-brac nest, in Brooklyn
Daintiest curio relic of Americana.
Her talk, a needle
Unresting - darning incessantly
Chain-mail with crewel-work flowers,
Birds and fish of the reef
In phosphor-bronze wire.
Her face, a tiny American treen bobbin
On a spindle,
Her voice the flickering hum of the old wheel.
Then the coin, compulsory,
For the subway
Back to our quotidian scramble.
Why shouldn't we cherish her?

You sent her carbon copies of your poems.
Everything about them -
The ghost gloom, the constriction,
The bell-jar air-conditioning - made her gasp
For oxygen and cheer. She sent them back.
(Whoever has her letter has her exact words.)
'Since these seem to be valuable cabon copies
(Somewhat smudged) I shall not engross them.'
I took the point of that 'engross'
Precisely, like a bristle of glass
Snapped off deep in my thumb.
You wept
And hurled yourself down a floor or two
Further from the Empyrean.
I carred you back up.
And she, Marianne, tight, brisk,
Neat and hard as an ant,
Slid into the second or third circle
Of my Inferno.

A decade later, on her last visit to England,
Holding court at a party, she was sitting
Bowed over her knees, her face,
Under her great hat-brim's floppy petal,
Dainty and bright as a piece of confetti -
She wanted me to know, she insisted
(It was all she wanted to say)
With that Missouri needle, drawing each stitch
Tight in my ear,
That your little near-posthumous memoir
'OCEAN 1212'
Was 'so wonderful, so lit, so wonderful' -

She bowed so low I had to kneel. I kneeled and
bowed my face close to her upturned face
That seemed tinier than ever,
And studied, as through a grille,
Her lips that put me in mind of a child's purse
Made of the skin of a dormouse,
Her cheek, as if she had powdered the crumpled silk
Of a bat's wing.
And I listened, heavy as a graveyard
While she searched for the grave
Where she could lay down her little wreath.

Ted Hughes - Birthday Letters

How to write about book(s) you probably haven't read...

I'm guessing Letter From America: Atheists throw down the gauntlet by Richard Bernstein is a fine example. I wonder if Bernstein has read Dawkin's "The God Delusion"? He certainly quotes Sam Harris from "Letter to a Christian Nation". Perhaps he's flicked through that at least?

From the article:

What is going on? One conclusion is not so far-reaching. It could be simply that there's a market for just about anything in this country — whether atheism or psychic channeling.

I can imagine it must have taken about 2 minutes to come up with this stunning insight. What informs a view such as this? A guess perhaps? A rumination over coffee and stale toast? How novel!

and

The best-sellerdom of books like those of Harris and Dawkins shows that there is a market for militant atheism, but the market for religious belief is bigger. I wouldn't imagine any candidate for office winning on a platform of disbelief in God. I would similarly suppose that Billy Graham and other televangelists will have far vaster audiences than Harris does.

Does Bernstein realise that (at least) Dawkins deals directly with these issues in his book? He certainly doesn't comment on it. If we're supposed to accept that Bernstein is presenting an informed opinion on the subject he certainly succeeds in looking absurd.

Harris is obviously bothered by the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the United States, which has coincided with the very violent rise of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East, one product of which was the attacks of Sept. 11.

The two movements are almost entirely dissimilar, of course, with Christian fundamentalism engaging in no violence or threats.

Again, Dawkins deals with this in his book. Having read both "The God Delusion" and this watered down mental prolixity from Bernstein I can't help feeling that perhaps he hasn't.

This article is banal. All we're getting is an oversimplified, recycled, mediocre mess. This smacks of someone paid to write about the first thing that comes to mind on any given topic. Imagine actually adding to the debate, rather than regurgitating commonly held views which are addressed in some depth by (at least one of) the books mentioned?

Will he succeed? It is doubtful. There are no available statistics on who exactly is buying the books by Harris and Dawkins, but it seems reasonable to suppose that the majority of them are already solid members of the rationalist choir.

I kid you not - Bernstein doesn't justify this statement. For all we know it probably just "felt right" at the time.

What trivial thinking. What shitty writing. Way to go iht.com!

How to write a thank you note...

Groovy. What's with all my inane, pointless posts lately?

1. This is a blog


2. I'm still on holidays

Bring. It!

New Years Resolutions

This Year I Resolve to... This has to become my standard reply to people asking me what my new years resolutions are :)

David Hicks

Bento has a good post on his blog showing a bomb¹ of a photo he shot somewhere in North Sydney :)

¹Note terrorist allusion

Advertising in Oz

Why would NRMA Insurance feature a woman in their ads who has different coloured eyebrows from her hair (red vs. brown)? Wrong.

The mind boggles.

Poor Poms

What's wrong with the English? To say that two of their best bowlers struggled to get two of our best bowlers out is a massive understatement (Warney and Clarke batting?!). The Poms were slapped all over the place.

One of the crummiest English teams I can remember watching¹. Poor buggers.

¹Update [05/01/2007] - How does "2 wickets remaining. England leads by 20 runs" sound?

Kolahstudio

Kolahstudio.com Iranian underground Art and Artists Media

Foucault: Madness and Civilization

Update: As Scottio rightly pointed out, this is hard to read without me letting on that each paragraph is a separate excerpt :D

Enjoy! (and buy and read this book - phenomenal!)

An important phenomenon, this invention of a site of constraint, where morality castigates by means of administrative enforcement. For the first time, institutions of morality are established in which an astonishing synthesis of moral obligation and civil law is effected. The law of nations will no longer countenance the disorder of hearts. To be sure, this is not the first time in European culture that moral error, even in its most private form, has assumed the aspect of a transgression against the written or unwritten laws of the community. But in this great confinement of the classical age, the essential thing -- and the new event -- is that men were confined in cities of pure morality, where the law that should reign in all hearts was to be applied without compromise, without concession, in the rigorous forms of physical constraint.Morality permitted itself to be administered like trade or economy.

Confinement hid away unreason, and betrayed the shame it aroused; but it explicitly drew attention to madness, pointed to it. If, in the case of unreason, the chief intention was to avoid scandal, in the case of madness that intention was to organize it. A strange contradiction: the classical age enveloped madness in a total experience of unreason; it reabsorbed its particular forms, which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had clearly individualized into a general apprehension in which madness consorted indiscriminately with all the forms of unreason. But at the same time it assigned to this same madness a special sign: not that of sickness, but that of glorified scandal. Yet there is nothing in common between this organized exhibition of madness in the eighteenth century and the freedom with which it came to light during the Renaissance.

There comes a moment in the course of passion when laws are suspended as though of their own accord, when movement either abruptly stops, without collision or absorption of any kind of active force, or is propagated, the action ceasing only at the climax of the paroxysm.

Madness designates the equinox between the vanity of night's hallucinations and the non-being of light's judgments.

Madness and Civilization - Foucault