“The invocation of ‘evil’ in the language of the nineteenth century Temperance Movement and the twenty-first century war on drugs is more than a trivial coincidence. To secularists, the word ‘evil’ may be synonymous with ‘very bad.’ But to the religiously inclined, evil can represent the unified and active force of Satan in opposition to all that is good. Defining a problem as an unqualified evil makes it that much easier to draw normative boundaries and crack down on those who fall on the wrong side of the divide—the evildoers. As a moral crusade, prohibition is a fight against evil, a shining path to the pearly gates. The problem with this position, both practically and theologically, is that drugs are chemicals without a moral agenda. Even drugs that are undoubtedly bad are not evil.” Peter Moskos, Cop in the Hood p.160

Moskos’ experiences in the Baltimore city police department make for entertaining reading, but his academic approach to the drug war misses the forest for the trees. While drugs are indeed simple chemicals with no intrinsic evil, drug addiction is a spiritual crisis that engenders evil actions. Addiction (from the Latin “religious devotion”) is evil because it opposes life. The drug addict abandons society, rejects his or her obligation to others, and escapes his or her own feelings. If we want to live in a functional society, we can never decriminalize all drugs.

Alcoholism is evil. Alcohol is not. The reason that alcohol is legal is that its addiction is harder to slip into: hangovers, social pressure, and alcohol’s own potency each ensure that an addict must work hard to become enslaved. It takes a lot of despair to drive drunk to work at eight in the morning. Not so with opiates, for instance. That high is easy, and there is no hangover. Physical dependency begins without the desperation that drives a drunk. Opiates satisfy consumer society’s injunction to enjoy better than any product because they are chemicals: they directly increase enjoyment in a reliable way, and often become available in easy installments of $10.00.

So what should we do? Instead of a war on drugs, perhaps we should wage a war on addiction. The “normative boundaries” of a war against evil have their motivational purpose: as Donald Barthelme once wrote, “Fear is the great mover, in the end.” We should fear addiction and condemn drugs. But Moskos is right to insist that a carceral state isn’t the proper vehicle for the war.

Related to drugs in Baltimore, an article in the NYRB: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/oct/14/life-wire/ that discusses the TV show the Wire would have benefited from a more careful viewing.

For example:


[Chris and Snoop] open Season Four using a nail gun—a nod, perhaps, to Cormac McCarthy’s cattle bolt—to kill young black men (number one males, in police terminology).
-they use a silenced gun, this is not a nod toward McCarthy.

For a feminist heroine the show has only the quite imperfect Detective Kima Greggs, and only because in her strength, humor, passion for work, and apparently secure hold on her biracial identity and lesbianism, she is slightly better than almost anyone else.

-so Rhonda and Marla Daniels don't count?

There was once a generation of Americans who fought in a world war. They were called the greatest generation because they were sexist, racist, and weren’t afraid to say that they believed in community norms. These included sneaking a kiss and ‘smear the queer.’ You could find out more if you asked your older brother.

Then their children, the baby-boomers, began to grow up and the older generation became alcoholics.

For the greatest generation, your friends were secretly more important than yourself. This has its pluses and minuses. But their kids never fought in a war together, they just watched it on TV.

The baby-boomers were so resentful for that, they bought whatever they could to express it. Doyle, Dane, and Bernbach.

Then the greatest generation surrendered. The baby-boomers just wanted to enjoy life, was that so wrong?

The thing about it was that no one knows how to enjoy anything unless someone explains it to you. Even sex.

Community norms became the province of big companies, who created far more stringent and exclusionary rules than anything possible just after the world war. I call these the secret rules, because they are properly ideological (as in, ‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’).

But the problem was that communities based on buying things only talked to each other about buying things, layout/design, and enjoyment. They didn’t know how to deal with something like domestic abuse unless it could be put into syndication. They liked buying things because it didn’t hurt. You always feel better an hour after watching Schindler's List.

The rules of the greatest generation hurt a lot.

As the century went on, social mores became further and further defined by the new secret rules, until everyone was impossibly free. You can’t deny it. One secret rule is this: you will always feel stupid talking about the things most important to you.

This site is annoying. In the FAQ, it states: "We live in a culture where advertisers directly influence and in some cases control and create the culture at large. Honesty of the writing is affected when corporate interests are paying the bills." Note that the owl has closed its eyes.

Blogging is not the creation of culture. There is no knowledge in shorthand observations and accumulated links. Instead blogs feed consumption by always pointing outward, toward more images, books, feelings, and ideas. Maybe some readers dig deep through these signals and come to appreciate new forms of art - but then, it's not the blog that's doing the work. Indeed, blogs are essentially one-person advertising agencies, who prove the value and intelligence of an author by recommending the right things.

Anyway, most corporations are far too clever to advertise on low-rent blogs. It seems that pyramid schemes and discount clothing retailers buy more Google Ads than anything on the NYSE.

If you don't want your blog to enable consumption, delete it. And if your blog is meant to display family photos or other private content, no one is there to look at the ads in the first place.

XXII. FRUIT BOWL

His mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Geryon opened the screen door.


He had taken the local bus from Hades. Seven-hour trip. He wept most of the way.

Wanted to go straight to his room

and shut the door but when he saw her he sat down. Hands in his jacket.

She smoked in silence a moment

then rested her chin against her hand. Eyes on his chest. Nice T-shirt, she said.

It was a red singlet with white letters

that read TENDER

LOIN. Herakles gave it--and here Geryon had meant

to slide past the name coolly

but such a cloud of agony poured up his soul he couldn't remember

what he was saying.

He sat forward. She exhaled. She was watching his hands so he unclenched them

from the edge

of the table and began spinning the fruit bowl slowly. He spun it clockwise.

Counterclockwise. Clockwise.

Why is this fruit bowl always here? He stopped and held it by the rims.

It's always here and it never

has any fruit in it. Been here all my life and never had fruit in it yet. Doesn't

that bother you? How do we even

know it's a fruit bowl? She regarded him through smoke. How do you think it feels

growing up in a house full

of empty fruit bowls? His voice was high. His eyes met hers and they began

to laugh. They laughed

until tears ran down. Then they sat quiet. Drifted back

to opposite walls.

They spoke of a number of things, laundry, Geryon's brother doing drugs,

the light in the bathroom.

At one point she took out a cigarette, looked at it, put it back. Geryon laid

his head on his arms on the table.

He was very sleepy. finally they rose and went their ways. The fruit bowl

stayed there. Yes empty.

-Anne Carson, from Autobiography of Red

1979 / 1974 + 1998 / 1977

Above: Red. A comic-book style triple window is in both lower right corners. In both series, one partner is exploiting the other. Mod Lang: "I can't be satisfied, whatchu want me to do?"

Below: Abstracted brown horizon, cloudless sky. Is it the same flag?

Even though I really hate lists, here are some reasons why "iBooks" sucks:

1. Not typeset. Maddening to read from line to line.
2. Little countdowns at the foot of the page, instead of page numbers, which take all the excitement out of reading and make it a chore with a clearly defined end-point.
3. Size limit chops up paragraphs that are meant to be read as one cohesive unit.
4. Page turning animations just make me nostalgic for real books but aren't as responsive as real paper.
5. Terrible selection of poetry on ibookstore.
6. Users are unable to buy books on their desktop iTunes or read books on the computer screen.
7. No notation method, eliminates marginalia.
8. You can't pass on iBooks to a friend or a child. You can't inscribe an iBook.
9. Featured titles selected by sales and broad appeal rather than quality or importance. "Top Charts" highlight bad books - the top paid book is called "Sh*t My Dad Says."
10. Hurts the business of physical bookstores, which may be massive corporations, but at least offer people a place to read and talk about books with other living, breathing people.

I just responded to this post at The Monkey Cage, about this column by David Brooks. Figured I'd post it here too, as the blog takes a swerve toward poli sci (some of the time)...

I remember reading in one of Brooks' books a line, no doubt frustrating to many social scientists, that suggested: "one needs to tolerate the imprecision of the poetic if one can truly understand the essence of a people, place, or thing." While Brooks might doubt the ability of any science to capture the essential feelings and "ancient insights" of a complex problem like addiction, he is not totally dismissive of "Enlightenment" thinking. Brooks suggests that AA works for people on a very mysterious, unscientific basis (for a vastly more thorough exploration of the topic read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest), and I would be inclined to believe him. Sure, studies of AA's effectiveness ought to guide its public promotion, but those studies miss the personal part of the picture. AA was designed "to arouse people’s spiritual aspirations rather than just appealing to rational cost-benefit analysis;" it addresses a spiritual crisis (addiction) with a spiritual solution. In slightly more scientific terms, it changes fundamental attitudes and dispositions some of the time, for some people. Brooks is not saying that science has no business fighting deep and spiritual problems like addiction - but simply that a rational analysis (within the specific program) fails to capture the intricacies of the problem. No perpetual drunk can be swayed with the promise of a better life and a rewarding job - only through specific social supports and an almost religious devotion to a higher power can he or she freely choose sobriety, much of the time. Thus Brooks concludes that "the business of changing lives" is not a game of costs and benefits, which I think anyone familiar with addiction would agree with.

The tricky question is how and if social sciences can capture and apply those ancient, personal insights when devising public policy. I think they can. While for Brooks, a great work of literature might always hit the ineffable target better than a precision guided case study, I don't doubt that he'd find scientific investigations of unconscious dispositions and deeply felt emotions (and addiction) useful. I read this column as polemic directed against game-theorists and behavioral psychologists who pretend to know all the answers when they clearly do not. Brooks' essential point - that human beings are not rational creatures - is a valid one, and Enlightenment thinking will never completely understand our selves.