Joy

I've just finished reading Joshua Landy's Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust. It is the best thinking (and writing) on In Search of Lost Time I have read so far. Landy writes in a lucid prose with an analytic flair that is both a joy to read and relatively easy to understand. If any are interested in a novel and compelling view of what the Recherche is 'about', this is by far the best place to start, perhaps even better than the Recherche itself.

I'm now about to start Leo Bersani's Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and Art, but before I get there, I am taking a break to read parts of Samuel Brittan's Against the Flow. Brittan is a columnist for the Financial Times where he writes mostly on economics and politics. The book is a collection of his columns, essays and lectures. It will soon become a gift for a good friend of mine, as it was originally intended, but, not wanting to give her an unknown book on speculation, I am reading it first. I was initially drawn to the book by a review by The Economist, who wrote that "this book is so good that rivals in the field will, like this reviewer, put it down not knowing whether to feel inspiration or despair" ("Peerless Commentary" March 3rd 2005). Alas, the book is not, so far, that good. Some of the articles have been excellent indeed, those on economics in particular, but others, especially those focused on a political issues of a particular historical moment, are rather less enlightening. That said, I am inclined to agree with The Economist's closing hortative, "Against the Flow is the work of a remarkable journalist, a scholar and a profound thinker. Read it."

Old Witty

I've often wondered what Wittgenstein believed babies thought about before developing language. If I understand his views correctly (I've never read any of his writings), he would be required to claim that a baby's mind, to the extent that it lacks language, is a vacuous hole. This seems unlikely.

Self?

"As far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self." (John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689: 303; cf. Joshua Landy, Philsophy as Fiction,2004: 216n25)

“Involuntary memory indicates the existence of, and affords access to, a unique and diachronically stable self.” In Landy’s view, involuntary memory is Proust’s response to Hume’s contenstion that the self is just a fictitious creation, that though we have “a type of effective identity, as a ‘chain of causes and effects’ (Hume 262),” (113) we possess no “inner coherence, no common element shared amongst the various impressions that make up the mind. 'The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one,' Hume writes (259); it is 'nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux' (252); 'there is properly not simplicity in it at one time, not identity in different' (253). Hence 'when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other...I can never catch myself...without perception...When perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist' (252)." (Landy: 113)

Landy argues that “Proust would doubtless agree with Ricoeur (128) that Hume, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is in the above passage presupposing the very entity whose existence he denies. For if there is no me to be found, who is the I that is “always” looking for it? There must surely be a secret site of constancy after all in the “mind of man,” a part of ourself which can never be seen since it is always doing the seeing, something through which, and never at which, we stare. ‘Throughout the whole course of one’s life,’ Marcel confirms, ‘one’s egoism sees before it all the time the objects that are of concern to the self, but never takes in that ‘I’ itself which is perpetually observing them’ (F 628).” (113)

Does the terminology “secret site of constancy” not strike Landy as even a little silly? Does he not recognize the ridiculousness of predicating an ontological argument on the particular structures and divisions of a language? The subject-object divide that Landy argues assumes is necessary aspect of the faculty of sight may very well be an artifact of our way of speaking about things. Landy's argument based on disctinctions between the prepositions through and at is equally shaky.

Despite this, I should say that Landy's book is mostly brilliant and is amongst the best I've read on Proust.

Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah

I've spent a lovely day with my family and it is now a little after two in the morning. Boxing day has probably already begun in the online world. I've been passing the time looking at old Jon Stewart clips. Christmas this year has made me think of the friends and family who I miss and I've been less than cheerful through parts of today. To alleviate my woes I began by searching for Stewart's second appearance on the now deceased Crossfire. Freakin' hilarious and fuckin' brilliant. Classic Jon Stewart. After watching some clips from the Daily Show various links ended up leading me to an interview with Sister Joan Chittister on Bill Moyers. (The link is a 15 min audio file but it is well worth a listen. There's also a transcript.) Sister Joan might be accused of being a little less than pragmatic, of proposing unattainable ideals in a world of bitter compromises, but her message is clear and it is largely true. If ever you'd forgotten what Christianity is about, what spiritual contemplation, belief and practice were about, go listen to this interview, or go read some of her columns (eg. on the stupidity of recent brouhaha over the displacement of "Christmas" by "Holiday" in some public and government contexts). I'm serious. I cried (briefly) while listening to the Moyers interview. Beyond her touching messages about world peace, and her pleas for the poor, Sister Joan also has what I think to be an excellent understanding of Catholicism. Coming from a buddhist who was partly raised by an an ex-Catholic priest, one might take this endorsement with some skepticism, but I will support it with the following quotes. It's too late (I'm too lazy) to write about what disagreements I have with sections I'm about to quote, and they are beside the point. In particular, in addition to Sister Joan's perceptive views on Christian morality in contemporary America, I want to point to a little snippet of some of her theology: "Scripture is not a driving test. Scripture is a challenge to the heart and this moment. [...] we don't believe it's frozen in time."

---
MOYERS: Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and a lot of secular pundits and columnists are saying that this election was decided by moral issues. Do you think moral issues were that decisive in this campaign?

CHITTISTER: Well, I don't believe… I'm not exactly sure that they were as decisive in the end. And I'm not sure that there's any way we can measure that. But even if I say, "Yes, they were," the fact of the matter is that they are some moral issues, they're not all moral issues.

The fact of the matter is that they're all in contention with something else which is also a moral value and also equally important unless you put it completely out of your mind or your heart. For instance, let's look at the abortion question. I'm opposed to abortion.

But I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

---

MOYERS: Do you have anything in common with the Religious Right?

CHITTISTER: I have Jesus in common. That's enough for me provided that we're all allowed to talk about and to hold in our hearts that aspect of the Christ life that we really believe must be raised at this time.

MOYERS: And what are those? What are the moral issues that you would like to see us pursuing as a people, as a country right now?

CHITTISTER: Well, I believe we got the cue on the mountain. I think…

MOYERS: The sermon on the mount?

CHITTISTER: I do. I do. The Beatitudes, as far as I'm concerned are the most overlooked and underdeveloped aspect of Christian scripture.

MOYERS: Well, for all the people who are watching who don't know what the Beatitudes are, what are you talking about?

CHITTISTER: Well…

MOYERS: The sermon on the mount.

CHITTISTER: The sermon on the mount, Jesus gets up, faces a crowd who's saying to him, "What are we do now?"

And he said, "Remember the poor. Keep the poor as your criteria." We have 1 out of every 318 people on this planet this morning, Bill, are refugees. They're following garbage cans in the back of restaurants around the world. They're following the resources that we took from their countries that are now jobs in somebody else's country.

MOYERS: Blessed are the poor?

CHITTISTER: The poor, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. We've got somehow or other to recognize that when we go into a country and pay a little kid 20 cents an hour for a 70 hour week to make our shoes and our jeans, we have to ask ourselves how is it that we can export our industry but we can't export our Fair Labor Standard Act.

MOYERS: So, blessed are those who seek justice?

CHITTISTER: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are those who mourn. Remember those who are in grief, those mothers with dry breasts in Africa right now are mothers. And we're pro-life? Where are we?

Where are we in Darfur? Why do we have an army in Iraq for killing other mothers when with the power of this country, if this is going to be a moral country. Blessed are the peacemakers, the peacemakers, not the war mongers who are simply planting seeds of war for the next generation. That's our criteria. The Beatitudes must be our criteria.

MOYERS: See, this is the issue. People read scripture and reach different conclusions.

CHITTISTER: That's what scripture's supposed to do. Scripture is not a driving test. Scripture is a challenge to the heart and this moment. Scripture is the whole scripture. But we don't believe it's frozen in time.

MOYERS: Why are you a Christian?

CHITTISTER: Well, because of the Jesus story is my story. There's nothing else that really touches my heart or my spirit the way Jesus does. There isn't any other answer for me. There's no question about that.

MOYERS: Why are you a Catholic? I mean, the Catholic Church is still a paternalistic hierarchy. You're never going to be a Bishop, because doctrine forbids it. Your own Pope says, "Never." So why do you remain a Catholic?

CHITTISTER: Well, we've said "never" to a lot of things. We're very good at never, and then we say 400 years later, "as we have always taught." I'm a Catholic because I believe that the church is a treasure house of the Christian tradition.

---

Merry Christmas.

ps My admiration for Sister Joan, for the work she does, and for her type of Catholicism and Christianity more generally, should not be interpreted as implying some sort of new age equivocal approach to religious practice on my part. I am still a buddhist. I continue to be a buddhist because I think it is for me a more effective means of achieving what I want, namely an open and knowing mind, free from the discursive habbits of ego.

"It is true that the poorest countries often face the biggest obstacles to reaping the gains from trade and that economists' models often assume these obstacles away. Many rely on tariffs as a source of government revenue. Weak infrastructure and underdeveloped credit markets can make economic restructuring difficult. These problems underline why trade liberalisation is no substitute for either more domestic reform or foreign aid. They also suggest that some of the poorest countries need more time to open their markets than others. Unfortunately, the Doha negotiators are taking that logic much too far. And the losers will be the world's poor."

So writes The Economist in a recent article ("Weighed in the balance" Dec.8 2005) on the state of the WTO's Doha trade round. The article is worth a read, and as far as trade policy is concerned, much of it is pretty convincing. But their admission that free trade may not make the world's poorest people richer is relegated to a little coda at the end, "weak infrastructure and underdeveloped credit markets can make economic restructuring difficult." Indeed they do. And this points to what is probably the greatest barrier to prosperity for the world's poor: bad governance. How exactly we hope to change this is not clear in the least. I'm not even sure that it is entirely desirable that we change it. Effective governance that helps to create and guide the infrastructure (broadly speaking, ie. not just physical) and identity of a nation must include a significant degree of sovereignity. What to do, what to do?

Matt Cameron is God

(so for that matter is Dana Carrey [Tool]) I'm ?????? as I work a two hour shift at the paradox this afternoon. I worked a catering gig last night and came home to a dinner party at the French house. ?????? we discussed French and English slang. Unfortunately, ?????? the slang I learnt. Somehow, our slang discussion devolved into a very long-winded ?????? and needlessly complicated debate about whether an idea that is "broad" could also be "deep". I was doing something in the kitchen through most of it, what I don't remember, but kept poking my head around the corner to interject when I felt particular statements to be excessively ridiculous.

Somehow I got off track. I started this post really just to remind everyone of the greatness of Matt Cameron. I was listnening to Soundgarden's "Fell on Black Days" and was reminded of the man's genius. His drumming is an integral part of the song. Anyways, that's really all I have to say.

Linguistic differences and a united EU

Though the countries of the European Union aspire (in varying degrees) to some sort of political and economic union, there remain many barriers to integration. The most intransigent of these are cultural. France likes its farmers and would have the rest of Europe pay to subsidize them. The French like good food and pretty countrysides, and don't much care for farmers in developing countries. Britain, not having many farms itself, refuses to pay for such handouts and continues to demand the partial refund of its dues it has enjoyed since Margaret Thatcher declared the nation too poor to pay so much money and get so little back (at the time this was true). The Italian elite would prefer to run their country as a fiefdom and are annoyed when EU member states criticize their roughshod approach to governance. Such examples could fill many pages, but there are also more mundane problems to European intergration. Chief among these is the diversity of languages spoken in the EU. At present, there are eleven official languages, and consequently the EU Commision employs a rather large number of translators, some 1200 who tranlate over one million documents each year. I came across the following article recently, and it seems that they have finally decided to simplify things.

------

European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be
the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was
the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English
spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in
plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make
the sivil servants jump with joy.

The had "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up
konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to
reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always
ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is
disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with
"z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou"
and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understnd ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze
forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

------

I don't know where this came from originally. I received it via email from a friend and rather enjoyed it. I thought you all might as well.

The Art of Football

" 'Thinking man's football' is a bit like 'classy stripper': if the adjective modifies the noun too energetically, it undermines the nature of the thing."

Even if you're not much into football, the article "Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep" by Michael Lewis on Mike Leach and his unorthodox coaching of Texas Tech is a fascinating read. Under Leach, the mid-level Raiders have had some outstanding runs the past few years, and their success this year has earned them a place in the Cotton Bowl against Alabama. It's a lenghty article, but it's well-written and certainly worth the time. Head over to NY Times online.

On Academia and Cymbeline

"We have, nevertheless, the consolation of knowing that years of minute scholarly research have marshalled a body of minor evidence and hypothesis into a pattern imperfect in detail but seemingly reliable in its general outline." J.M Nosworthy, writing in the introduction to the Arden edition of 1955 about the difficulties of placing Cymbeline in relation to Shakespeare's other plays, and thus, more generally, to his age.

More on taxes

I promised I would come back to why progressive taxation is good. Specifically, I claimed in my last post that progressive taxes probably do not, in practice, reduce the incentive to work. Those who belive that they do say that as taxes increase the relative value of leisure also increases, and thus individuals will increasingly choose leisure over work. This is called the subsitution effect. Against this, there is also an income effect that says that as individuals face an increasing tax burden, they will work harder to maintain the same wage (or even to attain a higher one). No one is really sure which of these two predominates, many imagine that they come close to cancelling one another. If we imagine a theorectical extreme of 100% taxation, it is (mostly) clear that rational individuals would choose leisure instead of work. (Keep in mind that this is not 100% taxation of all income earned, but only of income earned above a certain amount, say 1 million dollars). Opponents of progressive taxation also claim that if marginal tax rates are set too high, then total tax revenues will actually fall. If we return to the example of a 100% tax, and assume that it produces no tax revenue because individuals choose not to work, and then add another point of zero tax revenue at 0% taxation, and then imagine (concoct) a line between the two, we have what is called the Laffer curve. Laffer argued that somewhere on this line there is a point, call it t*, at which tax revenues are maximised. However, it is difficult to discern where this point is, and so rather impossible to say what effect increasing taxes will have. The central difficulty is in determining the elasticity of work with respect to taxation.

This sort of economics has been variously referred to as supply-side economics, Reaganomics, Chicago-school economics, voodoo economics, and "that trickle-down bullshit." It was tried by Reagan, but without the fiscal discipline that would have been the true test of supply-side theories. During Reagan's years, the US deficit reached strastospheric levels, thanks both to Reagan's fear of communism and penchant for science fiction, and also his inability to cut spending on social programs (the Dems controlled the House) as he would have liked. It's thus difficult to say whether the economic expansion that occured during the latter part of his presidency was created by the tax cuts. Since Keynes, many economists have argued that governments should spend their way out of recessions (Keynes called this 'priming the pump'). Supply-siders have also gotten themselves elected in our own home of British Columbia. Again, though BC has enjoyed outlandishly good growth the past few years, there are a host of contributing factors, many of which are more important than Gordo's tax cuts. (I must admit that my knowledge of BC's economy has waned significantly since I moved away. All of my pronouncements on it, though I believe them to be correct, should be checked in available literature before being taken as fact.)

But back to Federal taxes in Canada. Reaching back into my memory from when I took a Public Economics course, I believe that some respectable studies have pegged the peak of the Laffer curve at somewhere betwen sixty and seventy percent. So how about this for a mostly unresearched suggestion: add another marginal tax bracket of 65% for income above $500,000. The income threshold could be raised, or lowered, and it might be desireable to split the jump from 46.5% to 65% into two jumps.

One last thing: because few things are more corrosive to democratic society than dynastic succession, we should bring back the inheritance tax. Inheritance over a million should be heavily taxed. I'm inclined to assess taxes on the inheritor in the case of immediate children (the inheritance received by a child above 1 million is heavily taxed, say 50% or more), and on the estate in other cases. The threshold for taxation, like tax bracket cut-offs, should either be linked to inflation, or re-assessed every few years.

"The man who dies rich thus dies disgraced." – Andrew Carnegie

Progressive taxation is better

There seems to be a pattern forming. Once again, I agree with the Conservatives—at least in part. Harper has pledged do reduce the GST by 1% next year and a further 1% within five years. As he claims, this will benefit all Canadians. In response, the Liberals have said that reductions in the GST favour the rich. Finance Minister Ralp Goodal was quoted by the CBC as saying that "the biggest savings will go to the biggest spenders." While true, this is misleading. As a proportion of income, sales taxes disproportionately affect the poor. They are amongst the most regressive forms of taxation. The Liberals recognized this in 1993 when they promised to eliminate the GST. Their fabled "Red Book" described the GST as "unfair, regressive [and] stupid." (Quoted from cbc.ca). Speaking about the GST in 1994, Chretien proclaimed "we hate it and we will kill it." (cbc.ca) Though the GST rebate does make the GST less regressive, it is not an ideal solution. In order to claim the rebate a tax return must be filed and an additional GST rebate claim made. This is an unecessary complication and it also reduces the transparency of the tax system. Tax regimes should always strive for simplicity. We would do better to rid ourselves of the GST entirely.

Though I disagree with the Liberals support of the GST, I do agree with some of their proposed tax reforms. They have pledged to increase the personal exemption from its present $8,148 to $10,000 by 2009. This is an excellent idea. Though poverty is difficult to estimate, this should push the personal exemption above the poverty line, making life much easier for the poorest Canadians. In addition, the Liberals plan to reduce the three lowest marginal tax rates by 1% and to raise the threshold at which the highest tax rate (46.5%) kicks in to $200,000. Setting marginal tax rates, and deciding on the number of brackets is never easy. Though I am generally in favour of taxing the rich, I also recognize that excessive taxation may adverserly affect economic prosperity. There are many arguments on both sides. To my mind, redistribution of wealth is supported by utilitarian principles (dimishing marginal returns of the utility gained by increasing income), by egalitarian principles of equality of opportunity (eg. we should tax the rich to provide social services so as to ensure that poor kids have a more equal chance of success), and by indirect benefits to society (eg. less crime). On the other side, the most frequently cited arguments are (1) that progressive income taxes reduce savings, which then reduces investment, thus reducing growth, and therefore depriving all of society of a greater economic prosperity that might have been, and (2) that progressive income taxes reduce the incentive to work. The first argument has some merit, but the second probably does not obtain (except in theoretical extremes). More on this later, but I need to go and have a beer.