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< | NOT READY FOR GRADING -- overhaul in progress | >
> | READY FOR GRADING
open for commenting | | | | |
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< | Having finished sixteenth in a race for fifteen seats -- having sat out the popularity contest in the back of the caboose -- I'm ought to take the lesson personally, but also constructively. What the referendum said (in binary) about my Senate Statement was analogous to this community's (nuanced) judgment of the last draft of this paper. And so I'll write the history of both, by way of describing the last draft: "It failed, because I failed, to find a thesis in my personal narrative." | >
> | Media Rerum | | | | |
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< | The narrative starts with me going to Eben’s office late last semester, to ask if I could transfer into his class. He asked why I wanted to be a lawyer, and I answered; and he said, “You do not belong in my class. I don't know what kind of surgeon your is, but he taught to view bodies as organs, and you and I will not get along." And I said something else -- and here I am. | >
> | I'm picturing three scenes we have in common, in which my use of the English language was an antagonist:
- the senate election, where I finished sixteenth and last;
- your responses to a previous, poetic draft of this paper;
- and Eben's excoriation of me in his office last semester.
I wanted to use this paper to identify this common language problem, but I'm finding that I haven't got the writing talent (gasp!) to do it justice. So I'll describe just one of those scenes; but I'll also charcterize the symptoms that are plaguing my ability to properly express myself, in words I still can't make explicit. | | | | |
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< | Before I trust you to understand the things I said immediately before and after his comment about my father (who, as is now legendary, is in fact a vascular surgeon), you need to know what came before that meeting, by which I mean, my life up to that point. I've always regarded myself both blessed and cursed to be among those who are well-educated and highly perceptive. We are both blessed and cursed, you and I, and all of us, in that we cannot disprove what Voltaire meant only ironically -- that “to understand all is to forgive all" -- for, the more we learn about the Actors we think harmed us, the harder it is to define boundaries around Actors, such that our indignity knows where to lay its crosshairs. When we discover that our enemies "know not what they do," we have to blame their teachers -- and then their unions -- and then their political system -- and then the repression of the male instinct to urinate on a fire -- the grid gets finer ad infinitum. | >
> | As you know, I went to Eben's office last semester to ask him to transfer me into this class, and he asked why I wanted to be a lawyer.
I told him, and he said: “I wonder what kind of surgeon your father is, that you grew up learning that humans are arrangements of organs. We won't get along. I don't want you in my class. No."
I responded, and he wrote a note to the registrar, and here I am. | | | | |
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< | Mechanized forgiveness is great, if you’re trying to be a good Christian ... But I’m Jewish. Where by "being Jewish" I mean this: I've been COMMANDED --
- to believe that my social position, and the information impacting me about others’ social positions, can never be “arbitrary,” --
- to ignore what I'm learning about physics, biology, evolution, psychology, sociology, and path-dependant accounts of history—because all of these bottom-up accounts are ruled, from the top down, by Morality.
- to ACT! as though beneath the descriptive meanings I’m so adept at finding, there lie latent normative meanings, for the very purpose of finding which, my father and mother gave me these cursed smarts.
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> | But you may not be aware that this scene comes at the middle of a larger story. For you to understand how my words triggered Eben's inquiry into my father's surgical specialty (which happens to be vascular), you need to know what came before those words, by which I mean, my life up to that point. I've always regarded myself both blessed and cursed to be among those who are well-educated and highly perceptive. We are both blessed and cursed, you and I, and all of us, in that we cannot disprove what Voltaire meant only ironically: “to understand all is to forgive all." The more we learn about the Actors we think harmed us, the harder it is to define boundaries defining Actors to put within the crosshairs of our moral indignation. When we discover that our enemies "know not what they do," we have to blame their education; but their educators also knew not what they were doing -- and you can see how blame flees forgiveness all the way back to Creation. | | | | |
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< | And yet, for all my blessed perceptiveness, I've never ever seen a single one of these meanings. What a curse! -- To be apathetic towards things that should make a mensch indignant. To hesitate before making Holocaust jokes, not because they make me uncomfortable, but they make others uncomfortable, and those people then attack me. When I deferred my admission to Columbia Law School for a year—and worked for the American Jewish Committee -- explaining that I was looking to learn what issues I should be concerned about -- I emerged a year later with a list, but I couldn't care less whether I ever checked anything off that list -- and even today, I still have no idea what order I'm to go about crossing things off. | >
> | Which is a great outcome, if you’re a Christian ... But I’m a Jew. Using these terms as ideal types, I mean by Jew the child who's been taught -- COMMANDED --
- to believe that his social position, and the information impacting me about others’ social positions, can never be “arbitrary,” --
- to ignore what he's learning about physics, biology, evolution, psychology, sociology, and path-dependant accounts of history—because all of these bottom-up accounts are ruled, from the top down, by Morality.
- to ACT! as though beneath the descriptive meanings I’m so adept at finding, there lie latent normative meanings, for the very purpose of finding which, his parents gave him these cursed smarts.
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< | So you can understand why, between Eben’s asking why I wanted to be a lawyer, and his telling me that I ought rather to be a surgeon, I said this: “Because I hate myself, and I want power.” I presented the phenotype of the son of Jewish parents, who wanted me to do good and to do well, but who also wanted proof that I would do good and do well. | >
> | And yet, for all that blessed perceptiveness, I've never ever seen a single one of these meanings. And that's my curse -- to be apathetic towards things that should make a mensch indignant.
- I hesitate before making Holocaust jokes, not because they make me uncomfortable, but they make others uncomfortable, and those people then attack me. What do they have, that I lack, that's making them indignant?
- When I deferred my admission to Columbia Law School for a year—and worked for the American Jewish Committee -- looking to learn what issues I should be concerned about -- I emerged a year later with a list, but I couldn't care less whether I ever checked anything off that list. Even today, I still have no idea what order I'm to go about crossing things off. The only indignity I feel is against myself.
I presented Eben the phenotype of the son of Jewish parents, who wanted me to do good and to do well, but who also wanted proof that I would do good and do well. | | |
- Given the dilemmas that parents face, the rational response is to train a son to seem rather than to be.
- Given that their control over our choices must eventually end,
- parents first train us to seek things verifiably (call that "language acquisition");
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- or easy for lawyer to do well for the client but bad for society.
I, like everyone, was taught to favor living well over living good—indoctrinated to use education to inject myself into power, and to postpone figuring out why I deserved that power until I'd consolidated it. | |
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< | Eben understood, and so he forgave -- If by "forgiveness" you understand Jewish forgiveness, the forgiveness of Maimonides, "charity by stealth" -- he indicted that story to my face. MY STORY: not me. He attacked my background, my assumptions, my history, my sociology -- everything EXCEPT ME. Only that kind of indictment that could crack open my Jewish-boy graph-paper precocious brain-cage and tell me to do something -- something, anything, just not what I was doing before. | >
> | Eben understood, and so he forgave -- If by "forgiveness" you understand Jewish forgiveness, the forgiveness of Maimonides, "charity by stealth" -- he indicted that story to my face. MY STORY: not me. He attacked my background, my assumptions, my history, my sociology -- everything AROUND me. Which was the only kind of indictment that could crack open my Jewish-boy graph-paper precocious brain-cage and tell me to do something -- something, anything, just not what I was doing before.
He indicted my society, but I took it personally, and this is what it meant to me:
Of course, your Jewish boy head prefers finding descriptive truths rather than normative truths; your father taught you to be this way, to make you a good boy, because it made him a good surgeon. But fathers, though perhaps moral authorities, cannot be their sons' moral authorities. Moral authority comes from Rabbis, persons who study Torah. Which in a secular era, means, those whose purpose in studying truth, is to reveal NEW ETHICS, not ossify the old.
But to coexist in a pluralist society, we need common authorities, and the strongest ones are secular. The story of Socrates becomes our Creation myth -- the Big Bang of secular gestures towards justice. | | | | |
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< | And this is what I heard: Of course, your Jewish boy head prefers finding descriptive truths rather than normative truths; your father taught you to be this way, to make you a good boy, because it made him a good surgeon. But fathers, though perhaps moral authorities, _cannot be their sons' moral authorities. Moral authority comes from Rabbis, persons who study Torah. Which in a secular era, means, those whose purpose in studying truth, is to reveal NEW ETHICS, not ossify the old._ | >
> | Why did Eben write that note to the registrar, based on my response? We'd have to know everything about Eben, and about everything else that followed that meeting. We would have to derive a new Republic. But we have too little time, and too few words remaining, in this paper, and in this month of the semester, and in this century, to have that conversation. We get busier every year. And so I'll postpone asking you to identify people you don't identify with -- at least, until my writing skills improve enough for me to identify something that our lives have in common with the scene in that picture. | | | | |
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< | Christian or Jew: if we are secular, we must look to Socrates. We must look to him, and forgive his mild pedophilia, because he was the first, the Big Bang, of secular ethicists. But we have too little time, and too few words remaining, in this century, and in this month of the semester, and in this paper, for me to tell you what sort of Republic I plan to derive for my life— too little time for me to tell you what I said to Eben, that got me into this class. You'll have to ask me in person, what I mean by personally deriving a personal "Republic." | >
> | If you're still confused, it's not the idea's fault, but my failure to express it. We should talk again soon. | | | | |
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< | My answer to that question has been as unsteady as my answer to this enigma: Which figure is Plato, and why? I'm not trying to be cryptic. My father surprised me by sending me this print for my birthday. I've lost sleep looking at it. What the hell is David getting at? To me the answer has a lot to do with Peter Drucker's definition of marketing. Which is why I give a shit about marketing. | >
> | -- AndrewGradman - 13 Apr 2008 | | |
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< | My guess: He's the depressed dude sitting at the foot of the bed. He is depressed because he knows Socrates points to the ceiling, and not a higher realm of existence. Perhaps he thinks Socrates is foolish not to flee. | >
> | I really enjoyed this paper. It is very honest. I recommend getting a new checklist from an experience that allows you to connect and relate to people from different walks of life. I'll comment more later... I want to think about this some more. | | | | |
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< | Anyways, I really enjoyed this paper. It is very honest. I recommend getting a new checklist from an experience that allows you to connect and relate to people from different walks of life. I'll comment more later... I want to think about this some more.
-- JosephMacias - 11 Apr 2008 | >
> | -- JosephMacias - 11 Apr 2008 [I removed your first paragraph, which was about a phrase I've since deleted -AG] | | | | | |
Jesse
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< | Thank you for being willing to admit when you do not understand what I write: that's my fault, and hearing you say it is the best form of constructive criticism. It's the writer's sin to not make himself understood (William James and Teiresias again).
I guess this is the lesson I learned:
- One must in some way already be relevant to his readers (e.g. shared election / public "father surgeon" story) before his writing can portray him in a way that they consider relevant ...
- ...just as you need some data (from an election or a poll), before you can craft a message to your voters.
- --> thus the "Senate Election" was a POLL, telling me that my Second Paper sucked.
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> | Thank you for admitting when you don't understand what I write: It's the best form of constructive criticism -- it's my sin not to make himself understood. Your saying it, adds meaning to a formerly meaningless rambling. | | | -- AndrewGradman - 11 Apr 2008
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