Truth and Inconsequential

An online acquaintance of mine was lamenting the rise of "people who deny such a thing as truth exists at all." Because they have become cynical about truth and distrustful of everyone, they have come to a place where: "The opinion of a nameless blogger is just as good as the opinion of a medical scientist. The opinion of a conspiracy theorist is just as good as the opinion of a historian. The opinion of a casual reader is just as good as the opinion of a seasoned investigator."

As a nameless blogger myself, I understand the frustration, but I would submit the following. In some instances, opinion of a conspiracy theorist is just as good as the opinion of a historian. And this state of affairs comes about when the purpose of seeking information is for validation, rather than action (for lack of a better term).

Let's take a conspiracy theory that I recall once having some small amount currency in the Black community, that Church's Fried Chicken has chemicals in it that will sterilize Black men. It's mainly died out, and I had never encountered it "in the wild," as it were. Rather, I first (and last) encountered it during a television program about race in America. But let's say that, because some random conspiracy theorist told me to, I did believe, beyond anything approaching good sense, that the Ku Klux Klan secretly owned all of the Church's Fried Chicken franchises and found a way to put chemicals in the food that would sterilize me if I ate it.

What difference would it make? It wouldn't have any impact on my ability to do my job, given that I don't work for Church's Chicken or their parent company (which, contrary to the article, is a private equity firm), and have never needed into interact with them professionally. And given that, it pretty much would have no impact on any part of my life. There aren't any franchises in the immediate vicinity of where I live (the closest one is some 20 miles away) and so I never encounter them in my day-to-day routine. As a result, were I to believe the Church's Conspiracy, my life wouldn't change in any noticeable way. Other than people repeating the theory would validate whatever understanding of the world, myself and my place in the world that believing that nefarious actors are out to sterilize me supports. But my material well-being on a day-to-day basis doesn't depend, either way, on whether or not I believe the conspiracy. And since there's no real consequence to my belief, other than the exasperation of my more critically-thinking friends, what does it matter if it's true or not? What does it matter if I believe it or not?

And this strikes me as being true of most conspiracy theories; and the better part of the news media, for that matter. The "real world" consequences of belief or disbelief are somewhere between exceedingly minor and completely non-existent. And this is why it becomes a simple matter to deny the reality of truth. Because its relevance is so limited. Except for the few people who go out and do something mediagenic and stupid, conspiracy believers don't face much in the way of consequences. A person who believes a conspiracy theory about the price of a stock, for instance, and then trades on that information, is likely to find themselves the poorer for it in one way or another. Likewise the person who believes that there are actually Nigerian bankers who enlist the aid of random Americans to smuggle millions of dollars out of the country, and will part with enough to return on in return for using one's bank account as a thoroughfare is going to be burned on that, if they sign up. But even here, the believing is harmless, it's the acting that is likely to cause a problem. And for many news-related conspiracy theories, there's nothing to act on. So former President Obama does turn out to have been born in Kenya and ineligible to be President. What would a random citizen on the street do with that information? Go back in time and change their vote?

And this, perhaps, is the problem that arises when one venerates Truth for its own sake. Truth for its own sake is fairly trivial. Truth may have a definite existence in the world, but it doesn't interact with that world strongly enough in all cases to make a difference.

The Lesson

A few years ago, I picked up an Aesop's Fables book from Costco. The book was inexpensive, and I was bored. It turns out that it's a reprint of a version that came out in 1912. I came across it again at the start of the weekend, and read it here and there when I had some time.

One thing that I noticed is that some of the stories had their moral made explicit, and others did not. Those that did had a short aphorism at the end of the tale, such as the classic "SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE." Reading these stories as an adult, I was struck by the degree to which the aphorisms tended to not match the text of the story they were mated to. In some cases. you could see the resemblance. Although if I were going to boil down the story of The Tortoise and the Hare to a single sentence, it wouldn't be "Slow and steady wins the race," I can see how you arrive at it from there.

There was another story, The Farmer and the Stork, in which a farmer, setting traps for the cranes that raided his fields, also catches a stork. The stork pleads for his life, but the farmer says, in effect, that since the stork was in the field with the cranes, it will die like the cranes. "Birds of a feather flock together" seems like an odd choice for the moral to that tale, although I can understand the superficial similarity. The Blacksmith and His Dog, in which a blacksmith pseudo-scolds his dog for sleeping while he works, but always being there for mealtimes is given the moral: "Those who will not work deserve to starve," despite the fact that the story is quite clear that the smith only pretended to be put out by his dog's behavior.

In a way the whole thing comes off as if a person had a small store of random aphorisms in need of homes when someone dropped a load of old fables and folktales into their lap to marry together as best they could. The disconnect between the stories and the aphorisms that serve as the morals to some is interesting, because eventually, one starts to see the hand of class. Things like "There is always someone worse off than yourself," and "There is no eye like the master's" point to this. "It matters little of those who are inferior to us in merit should be like us in outside appearances," and "It is absurd to ape our betters," make the class judgements more explicit; although, perhaps, "It sometimes happens that one man has all the toil, and another all the profit," and "Might makes right," take the award for that.

It comes across as a very Victorian (for lack of a better word) enterprise. I suspect that the attaching of aphorisms to the stories is an artifact of even earlier times, when the fables were turned first into sermons and miniature morality plays. In the end, it seems unnecessary, the stories are simple and straightforward enough that even most children could be expected to understand the lessons each is meant to convey. And so it become a sort of window into the past, courtesy of lapsed copyrights. It's kind of a shame that the morals to fables have apparently become fixed. I wonder which of our own aphorisms we would place on them today, and how they would be received in a century's time.

More Precious Than...

I suppose that there is a renewed debate on physician assisted suicide taking place in the United Kingdom. Early this month, BBC news ran a story about a Dutch woman who elected to die die to severe psychiatric illness, and The Economist has been grappling with "The Case For and Against Assisted Dying" in its Open Future feature.

The arguments are well worn; autonomy versus the sanctity of life, unbearable suffering versus the potential for abuse. In this sense, it seems like a waste. You could find an accounting of pro and con arguments in the BBC's archive of old pages, and learn everything you may want to know about the topic. The current debate seemed to cover the same ground, just in the form of essays of varying quality.

Be that as it may, this excerpt from one of the essays in The Economist, stood out for me:

Being a burden is an important consideration but not a reason for taking this action. A group in Britain which opposes any weakening or repealing of existing laws against euthanasia or assisted suicide, “Care Not Killing”, has as one of its principal tenets that: “Any change in the law would put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional, or care burden on others.”

What nonsense. Such burdens are created by families who no longer want—or are able—to care for vulnerable family members. They are caused by costly nursing homes offering drug-induced sleeping days, where the highlight of your week might be being wheeled out to be left in a courtyard garden or worse, a “memory-lane” sing along. They are not caused by any laws.
Patients alone have the right to decide whether to end their lives

My ex-girlfriend's mental health took a sudden turn for the worse, and for a time, I was her primary support mechanism. She would constantly lament the burden that this placed on me, tell me that she understood how hard it all was for me and ask how I was doing with all of it. I understood; it was her way of attempting to make recompense for what I was doing on her behalf, but from time to time, I would admit to growing weary of her continuously going on about what a burden she was. "I am choosing to be here," I would tell her. "After all, I can simply walk away." (And I will admit to there being a couple of times, early on, where I was going to do just that. My ex-girlfriend could be good at burning bridges, and she set the one to me alight on more than one occasion.) I mention this, because the anonymous author of "Patients alone have the right to decide whether to end their lives" touches on the unspoken factor in the whole assisted suicide debate; the role of family and other caregivers.

The whole point of laws against assisted suicide is to deny the person a choice to request assistance in taking their own life. They don't necessarily criminalize the act of suicide itself, although here in the United States, some states to have anti-suicide (or self-murder, as some places term it) laws on the books. Rather they simply leave the suffering person with poor options, to a certain degree in the hope that they will seek help to live, rather than to die. But while we can strip them of the choice to die by certain means, the law does not guarantee them the choice to live as they might like. Families, paid caregivers and insurers are under no obligation to do what they can to alleviate a person's suffering. And laws that mandate that a person cannot seek aid in dying don't generally mandate the provision of resources to allow them to seek material aid in living. In nations like the United Kingdom, where health care is provided as a service of the government, this is somewhat ameliorated. But here in the United States, being left to one's own devices is a real risk.

One cannot legislate into existence a willingness to see things through to the bitter end. And while we can perhaps force a terminally ill or suffering patient to endure the slings and arrows of their condition until their body simply fails them. we can't force the people around them to stick around for the duration. They always have the option of walking away. We can, in effect, force a person into bankruptcy in order to fund treatments that turn out to be ineffectual, but we cannot force their community to value sick persons' lives above their own material well-being. They always have the option to keep their money, and leave the patient to whatever charity might be available.

While it's certainly true that in a regime that allows for a person to seek the end of their own lives, they may attempt to preempt that choice, to ensure that their family and community don't have to grapple (or not, as it were) with the dilemma, maybe the problem is that we're not having the discussion over whether they should have to. And perhaps that's the problem with being able to simply outlaw assisted suicide. It allows for reassurances that life is valued, but doesn't concern itself with who values it, or what they should be willing to trade for it.

Armed and Ready

The tactic of weaponizing existing American racial tensions seems to work. And maybe that's because there's just a lot to work with.
Long Before Facebook, The KGB Spread Fake News About AIDS

Articles like this, I think, let us off the hook somewhat. Racial tensions in the United States were weapons-grade LONG before the KGB came around. Thomas Jefferson predicted that there would never be harmony between White and Black Americans, which is why he advocated sending former slaves back to Africa. He predicted that Black people would have long memories for the harms done to them, and what White people would keep adding to the list. And, after more than 200 years, we're still not at a point where we can say that he's finally wrong about that. The KGB simply took steps to say to people, "Your suspicions about those who govern you are correct." And since they were already pretty much convinced of that to begin with, the message felt like validation, rather than manipulation.

But the KGB weren't, and aren't, the only people to indulge in this practice. American politics is rife with appeals to (and reinforcement of) people's deep-seated suspicions towards their fellow citizens, and constant reminders of how they've been unjustly impoverished by cynical actors who hide behind smiles and platitudes. And because it lets people off the hook for their own condition in a society that actively dislikes the idea that "sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug," it's appealing. "My community is ravaged by drugs because the government is out to get us," is comforting when compared to, "We have problems that are too large for us to fix on our own, and that makes us less deserving of support and assistance." A society that subscribes to a Just World theory tends to tell people "you're unsuccessful because you're morally subpar." Someone coming along and saying, "actually, you've been targeted by a bad actor," provides relief from that. And so it's a constant undercurrent. And the fact that there are plenty of bad actors out there, and that they can go unpunished, if they're careful about their targets, doesn't help matters.

While people are quick to say "That was in the past," when it's their group being accused of a historical wrong in the context of a present injustice, they tend to be slower to want to part with the entries they've placed in other groups' Catalog of Sins. But until a society decides that "we're all in this together, so old slights are now genuinely forgiven," there will be a domestic incentive to play on those lingering resentments, because even if you want to enact policies that would heal them, you have to get into office first, and that often means telling people what they already understand to be the Truth. And given that many people understand that a) the forgiveness of transgressions is an invitation to further transgressions, and b) that the unforgiving are themselves unworthy of forgiveness, it becomes a difficult stone to roll up a very steep hill, even when there is an understanding of the consequences of it staying at sea level.

Any Way the Wind Blows

The Iowa murder, by contrast, signifies the inversion—the corruption—of that “traditional order.” Throughout American history, few notions have been as sacrosanct as the belief that white women must be protected from nonwhite men. By allegedly murdering Tibbetts, Rivera did not merely violate the law. He did something more subversive: He violated America’s traditional racial and sexual norms.
Peter Beinart "Why Trump Supporters Believe He Is Not Corrupt"

The idea that Mr. Beinart bases this column around, that Trump voters are convinced that he's their man because he stands up for traditional notions of the privileged place of Whites in the United States, may be correct. But the idea that the reaction to the alleged murder of Mollie Tibbets by illegal immigrant Cristhian Rivera strikes me as over-argued at best, and a straw man at worst.

Mainly because Mr. Rivera would have been a convenient villain no matter whom he was alleged had killed. Had the victim been another person in the country illegally, there would have been an easy argument for how violent and depraved migrants are; after all, they even prey on their own. Had the victim been a legal immigrant to the United States, it's easy to imagine a story proclaiming that lax immigration laws put the hardworking people who follow the rules at risk from immoral people who don't. And had the victim been born to American citizenship, the story would be much the same. Criminal aliens coming into the country to prey on hardworking Americans. And it's hard to understand how the ethnicity or gender of the victim would have changed this. Sure, there is a strain of White supremacy that views the virtue of White women as something in desperate need of protection, but given that many Trump voters find the entire idea of illegal migration to be an existential threat, it seems unlikely there's anyone whose death spares Mr. Rivera from slings and arrows.

One can even imagine the a non-White victim for Mr. Rivera would only have served to increase his usefulness as a foil (and representative of all that's wrong in the world) for supporters of President Trump. If Ms. Tibbetts had been Black, one can see a case being made that Mr. Rivera's presence in the country is proof that the Democratic Party, in its  zeal to pack its voter rolls with illegal migrants, is more than willing to abandon Black voters. And while this argument is unlikely to win any converts, negative statements almost never are. Instead, the hope is that it sows enough fear, uncertainty and doubt that some number of Black voters stay home in November, and in so doing, take the energy out of a possible Blue Wave.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't to put words in anyone's mouth. I am not attempting to predict what a Fox News article would have said, had Mr. Rivera killed someone other than Mollie Tibbets. It is useful, I think, to understand what such an article could have said, and still served the same purpose. It's a common enough trope that supporters of President Trump are unreconstructed White Supremacists, would-be Nazis and Confederate apologists that no expression of White nationalist identity is beyond them. But they don't need to be. Their simple nationalism, regardless of color, would be enough to make Mr. Rivera a Public Enemy, regardless of which member of the public he'd targeted.