27 January 2008

In the preceeding two blog entries, I discussed two different approaches - to business and to knowledge/education/r&d - stemming from adoptions of different world perspectives guided by specific though varying realities. At the heart of the approaches is the 'reality' guiding the respective perspective.

But what if we change the reality and its resulting perspective altogether?

Hyphenation is the clarion call signaling the existing doxa to two choices: either sustain itself through moderate-to-conservative change or break free completely by aligning with a new, revolutionary, and prescient reality wherein electronic technologies enable virtuality as living, existing, and working spheres amongst multiple spheres of interdependent virtual-realities and real-virtualities.

Indeed, hyphenation posits the individual on the hyphen between virtual and real that is itself potentiality in action, in effect, and in realization...

And this, this juggling is not a huge feat because it is the current state of our living presence and a naturally evolutionary stage in our co-existing development alongside our creative and creating technologies...

It is always remarkable when I happen upon 'hyphenation-in-action' that is a lived and recorded actuality, so it is with great pleasure when I read about the next generation of 'social entrepreneurs' who effect social change on their own terms, and with remarkably substantial success (Nicholas D. Kristof, "The Age Of Ambition," The New York Times, 27 January 2008).  However coincidental, Kristof captures and echoes key elements of hyphenation in his article:

1) Kristof quotes Soraya Salti, creator of the Injaz organization:

" 'If you can capture the youth and change the way they think, then you can change the future' "

2) Earlier in his article, he quotes Bill Drayton, Chief Executive of Ashoka:

"...social entrepreneurs [...] neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry."

Changing the way we think effectively demands a re-appraisal of and re-purposing towards the assumed reality. This, coupled with 'revolutionizing the fishing industry' are exactly the actions hyphenation asks of each individual.

Returning to the first of this three-part series, I wrote of business models adopting either the 'cuts for sustainability' approach or the 'investment for growth' approach.

But what of doing away with the cog, the wheel, and the material existence of the machine itself?

Whereas the trends of business models, modalities of information, and successful social movements paved by our 'next generation' collectively work towards effecting change, hyphenation is not satisfied at stopping with assumed realities. No, it beckons every individual to extend beyond the comfortable status and to reflect, re-purpose, and account for his living presence - a presence that forces him to juggle virtual and real and exist in both spheres simultaneously in seamless, inexorable, and perpetual transitioning...

In this spirit, let us take pause and discuss 'reality':

'Reality' is affected by what the individual allows into his realm of the possible. What she sees is what she allows into her recognitive reality and in turn, becomes her world, regardless of physical 'sight'. The difference between the social entrepreneur and hyphenation is the latter 'switches venue' to an infinite realm of multiplicity inherent in creative potentiality.

The inhabited spheres of potentiality extend beyond the real and are rather super, supra, and hyper-real. They are the materialized imagined and the virtual simultaneously...

...because the stage of potentiality exists beyond the existing doxa of assumed possibility, hyphenation demands the doxa to recast its assumptions, to change perspective and thus, to account accurately presence in the now, here, and today for a decisive step forward...

...there is a veritable precipice; our success is a matter of all positive and unwavering action...

27 January 2008

To the overall success of a nation and its people - to sustain competitive relevance in a world market and to pave the way towards continued innovation - education, research, and development are integral to be encouraged, fostered, and subsidized. Towards this end is a 'democratization' of ideas, information, knowledge, and even the arts - 'ars gloria cultura' - at the heart of the open source movement. Just as there are two principal (capitalistic) business models (cutting back for profit and growth or investing for growth), so too are there two principal directions for knowledge and education in an 'internet world': open or closed.

The most recently published proponent of the 'open' direction is Intel's Chairman, Craig Barrett. As more a reaction to a "recent budget deal between Republicans and Democrats" to undercut government spending on scientific research and math and science education, Barrett effectively and passionately wrestles the 'political tree' (Craig Barrett, "Flagging economy needs science investments," San Francisco Chronicle, 20 January 2008). He sums up succinctly and aptly:

"At a time when the rest of the world is increasing its emphasis on math and science education...and increasing their budgets for basic engineering and physical science research, Congress is telling the world these areas are not important to our future. At a time when we are failing our next generation of students, politically charged topics such as steroids in Major League Baseball and the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes command instantaneous congressional hearings while the seed corn...of our future is ignored and placed lower in priority than billions of dollars of earmarks."

No doubt true in every sense, should he be shocked?

This is not new and surely he must realize this not as pressing, but rather as a consistency of the failings within the American political arena...

And this arena, along with its surrounding realities must be amended, corrected, dare say - overturned - or it will forever be left to be railed against...

Following suit from Congress' model, the recording industry, radio, and most notably, medical research, is also (somewhat publicly) firmly maintaining its staunch position in a closed forum and dead-end direction of seeming regression:

1) Whereas Barrett calls for the encouragement of math and science in particular and education in general, the recording industry would rather pursue vigorous monetary litigation against college students in the name of 'piracy crackdowns' (Verne Kopytoff, "Recording industry threatens to sue students," San Francisco Chronicle, 22 January 2008). Despite the fact that such litigation goes against the heart and spirit of education - of open-source, of sharing knowledge, culture, and the arts in the name of broadening minds for a collective growth and development - the industry is holding firm to its position.

2) Along a similar vein, Arizona's Proposition 300 legislates against college students who can not prove their legal residence by denying them state financial aid (Jesse McKinley, "Arizona Law Takes a Toll On Nonresident Students," The New York Times, 27 January 2008). Although they argue the Proposition is a means (effective or otherwise) to crackdown on illegal immigration, it effectively discourages an 'open' mindset towards educational growth, empowerment, and sharing in a supposedly colleagial and collaborative environment.

In every sense, this is a proposition inappropriate in a collegial setting...

Pity, our businesses can successfully and almost seamlessly adopt collaborative partnerships for open growth, but our educational institutions and the very powers effecting and affecting knowledge-creation and enhancement can not and will not...

3) From education and the music industry to the very air above us, there is a 'closed movement' taking momentum. In Washington, it was recently announced that Verizon, AT&T, and Google will participate in an auction for "a highly valuable swath of the nation's airwaves...to include multibillion-dollar bids" (Stephen Labaton, "Airwaves, Web Power at Auction," The New York Times, 22 January 2008). The parcelling out of radio spectrum licenses as "the building blocks for the next generation of broadband services" appears to be the last remaining bastion of closing an erstwhile free entity - of transmogrifying a free element and autonomous entity into a commodity - chained and thus, defiled.

4) Here is where the movement to free information becomes critical - at the level of every human being, no matter race, religion, political affiliation, and economic status: medical (oncology) research.

Nothing is more equalizing than mortality, illness, and the united voice for our cures.

Nothing unites man more than a call for wellness, quality of life, and the pursuit of a life lived in happiness (to at least a modicum degree)...

So what possible explanation or excuse can we give for the proclivities in research towards secrecy and hording information, rather than for open forums of shared discussion and fostered environments of cross-collaborative and interdisciplinary public research? In a world where we can mediate a transcendence over our physicality - limitations of time, space, and geography - through electronic technologies, even one fatality to cancer is one too many. There should be a zero-tolerance to death by cancer when there are cures kept secret - in the name of profit.

To repeat and yes, I did state it: there are cures for the cancers killing thousands today. Pity the cures are kept secret, discouraged, discredited, and even ridiculed...but that is to the (Western) medical 'profession' to answer...

...and whether their answer is HIPAA, fear of litigation, or uncomfortability in sharing data, the answer is inadequate and unacceptable when it comes at the sacrifice of lost lives by the minute (Andrew Vickers, "Cancer Data? Sorry, Can't Have It," The New York Times, 22 January 2008).

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Living in a 'walking city' I inevitably lose patience when witnessing someone who vacillates between left and right side of the street, refusing to let others pass by - others who know to pick a side and stay the course - but here is where vacillation becomes dangerous in setting precedence:

Rupert Murdoch almost had it right when he announced to Australian shareholders his intent to allow free access to the Wall Street Journal site to draw more readers and advertising revenue (Richard Perez-Pena, "Murdoch Said to Stress Free Access to Wall St. Journal's Web Site," The New York Times, 14 November 2007). Where he fell short is in his (wavering, lack of) follow-through, as revealed in his announcement to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to continue charging for content (Richard Perez-Pena, "Wall St. Journal to Continue Its Charges for Web Content," The New York Times, 25 January 2008).

Unfortunately, in not staying his course, rather than set the pace to 'free' information, Murdoch further sustains the precedence of inaccountability and the further shackling of an erstwhile open and free society within the net...

And so in the spheres of innovation, research, education, and development, we heed no example from our business sphere and resign ourselves to regression. 

Where it is most vital to our overall sustainability and competitive relevance to take action and progress forward, we stumble, we stammer, we stall...

...to what end?

27 January 2008

One type of business model proceeds from a world-perspective approach of cutting costs, or 'trimming the fat' to sustain growth. (Something along the lines of: 'you have to cut back to go forward'.) According to his rather dramatic 'swan song', James E. O'Shea does not adopt such an approach.

Indeed, before leaving/being fired from (depending on perspective) his post as editor of The Los Angeles Times, O'Shea issued out a "scathing critique of the newspaper industry" in a memo and advised "that it could generate more revenue and higher profit by offering more, not less" (Richard Perez-Pena, "Editor Fires Parting Shot at His Chain," The New York Times, 22 January 2008). Something in his memo and parting 'hits home' and merits a little pause, for to be in his position - to see, to know, but not to correct or stop fatal errors or 'missteps' of a company you have a vested interest in to see towards success - this is quite an uneasy position to maintain and to foster...

On a general level, apart from his specific case, for anyone to work daily on a sinking ship and to be forbidden to plug the hole fast becomes unacceptable until your inevitable exit, and then it is a matter of just not looking back...

Yes, this is a position contrary to - at the extremest of polar opposites to - hyphenation...

...and in his commentary is something to be said for the state of the 'outspoken' and the erstwhile 'taboo'...

...of forthright candor in the Saul Bellow, "truth comes in blows" variety, for we do not have enough 'truth' today, and to shun it as taboo, as uncalled for, or as 'sour gripings' is useless and rather obsolete in irrelevance...

...capitalizing on the luxury of absolute, unmitigated, and uncensored candor, blogs are perhaps the last safe harbor of protected speech and with the increasing 'media-zation' of bloggers and blogging, I fear an impending defilement of this arena fast approaching...

...but I digress.

Returning to O'Shea:

The politics surrounding his resignation/termination and the Tribune Company's decision to make some cuts notwithstanding, O'Shea's perspective and advice are very telling of the current media market. The Tribune Company's recent decsions are examples of a cut-back-for-growth approach, a direction also shared by NBC Universal in its decision to save as much as $50 million by eliminating pilots (Eric Pfanner, "To Cut Costs, NBC Universal Ends Pilots," The New York Times, 23 January 2008).

Fortunately, not all media follow this model and rather seek to grow, to cooperate, and to share with other media, as recent reports attest:

1) By investing in bloggers, video, and staff, The Atlantic has increased viewership of its website from 308,000 in December 2007, compared to 72,000 in December 2006 (Richard Perez-Pena, "A Venerable Magazine Energizes Its Web Site," The New York Times, 21 January 2008).

2) Polaris, True Ventures, Radar, and the Times Company have combined to invest in Automattic, the commercial branch of WordPress, it is an open-source software used by bloggers to publish posts and it signals the new arena of conquest and success for web sites today (Brian Stelter, "Times Company in Group Investing in Blog Publisher," The New York Times, 23 January 2008).

3) CNBC and The New York Times recently announced their mutual agreement to share (video and news) content on their respective web sites and so by partnering together, they each become strengthened and a formidable opponent to their competitors (Richard Perez-Pena, "TImes and CNBC to Share Material on Web Sites," The New York Times, 7 January 2008).

4) In an international partnership, the BBC is expected to share content on the News Corporation's MySpace (Brian Stelter, "Growing Online, BBC Is to Join With MySpace," The New York Times, 24 January 2008). The move will enable the BBC to reach a younger audience and share British culture worldwide and apparently is not a new move - it partnered earlier with Google's YouTube to much success.

5) Beyond media, advertising is moving in this same direction of leveraged partnerships for mutual growth, sustainability, and competitive relevance in the market. The Publicis Groupe announced its collaboration with Google to improve upon digital advertising by making it more "creative and technologically savvy" (Victoria Shannon, "Google and Ad Conglomerate Teaming Up," The New York Times, 23 January 2008).

6) Beyond media and advertising, mobile networks are entering partnerships to leverage sustainability, competitive relevance, and wider networks - at lower costs and higher profits - as seen with the partnering last year of T-Mobile UK with 3 UK (Eric Sylvers, "Two British Mobile Phone Operators Share Networks," The New York Times, 31 December 2007).

Of course in the business sphere, the bottom line - the profit margin - is what drives actions, decisions, and innovation. Collaboration that leads to proven success and greater profit at lower costs is a seamless 'no brainer' that comes at no great risk, so here, the move is relatively non-monumental...

...pity, the other spheres refuse to catch on...

20 January 2008

"The life of the ever-present Spirit is a cycle of stages that on the one hand, co-exist side by side, but on the other hand, seems to be past. The moments which Spirit seems to have left behind, it still possesses, in the depth of its present."

--Hegel, Reason in History

Although all arguments point to the logical debunking of morality, it remains with History to maintain our ties, if for no other reason than to remind us of our precarious reality, our pivotal positioning in it, and the actions, behaviors, and choices made daily to affect it in constant re-purposing and re-positioning...

There is an amazing realization and materialization of our creative potentiality, particularly mediated by electronic technologies. At the same time, there is an incredible amount of devastation, atrocity, political crimes, and social injustice still too much with us, unchecked, untempered, and unaffected by claims of morality. Yet, as Nietzsche reminds us, at the other end of the staircase to our immorality is our morality and so too is the balance of our matter, our universe, and our creation.

Perhaps there is no easy solution to the morality issue, no matter how tempting it is to debunk it altogether. Whether you rename morality a 'science of the moral sense' as Pinker does and concentrate on multiple spheres or themas in relation to morality, or whether you examine, analyze, dissect, and define it for what it is in all attempts to replace it with a resounding will to truth, to power, and ultimately to greatness as Nietzsche does, it refuses to disappear, nor will it accept treatment in an 'all-to-neat' package. Indeed, Pinker's is too neat a treatment of the issue, while Nietzshe's is a force of passion and brilliance of lightning thoughts that rather overwhelm it so as to allow it to skim below the surface in perpetual survival...

Possible clues to this quagmire might just lie in our antimatter and the violence of our universe:

Recently, scientists have confirmed the reality of antimatter, describing it as the opposite of an electron - a positron - produced by the radiation released when stars are devoured by black holes or neutron stars (Charles Q. Choi, "Source of Mysterious Antimatter Found," Space.com, 11 January 2008). Here we learn that destruction is a powerful source of creation and from extraordinary matter, is an even greater source for antimatter.

Similarly, in a recent annual meeting of US astronomers, there was deep-seated discussion of, among other things: the constant threats to our galaxy just 47 quadrillion miles away; the violent manner in creating stars; the roaming rogue black holes; and the creation of a vocabulary to accommodate this newly discovered phenomena of our universe (Seth Borenstein, "Astronomers Describe Violent Universe," Associated Press, 11 January 2008). Here is a case of language necessarily coined and created to accommodate real and newly-discovered phenomena.

So the question remains: how long must we wait for the doxa to coin and create a language accurately reflecting and accounting for the current reality? How long before a serious examination of hyphenation, at least as a critical reflecting prism?

Although morality no longer really 'fits' in our present, it also can not be dispelled altogether. It is a very important term and concept precisely because it exists as blatant proof to thought in hyphenation - thought existing within the in-between with the remaining potentiality towards vitality and simultaneously with a heavy foot mired in the history of its past.

The universe, the galaxy, the heavenly bodies all have been above as a constant. It is our manner of looking, our perspective, and our ability to utilize some of our potentiality that allows us variegated glances at our constants and see the world of chaotic, violent, whimsical creation and the potentiality too much with us...

Ahem, hyphenation...

20 January 2008

There is a great irony perpetrated today and mediated by our electronic technologies. In tandem with morality pleas, calls to moral authority, and outright moral hypocrisy, there is an increasing realization of our inherent greatness - a greatness qua Nietzsche - that is our creative potentiality. Examples abound, and so I take a moment to pause and to glorify:

I) Toyota announced it will offer an improvement to its hybrid car - the Prius - upgrading its battery from a nickel-metal hydride to a lithium-ion plug-in (Micheline Maynard, "Toyota Will Offer a Plug-In by 2010," The New York Times, 14 January 2008).

II) Along the lines of hybridity, a hybrid business model is emerging, and to much success. Indeed, Mozilla is an excellent example of the hypbrid non-profit foundation with a for-profit subsidiary fostering a continued commitment to open-source (John Markoff, "Mozilla Names New Chief, but Reaffirms Open-Source Commitment," The New York Times, 8 January 2008).

III) In the remediation sphere (remediation qua Bolter and Grusin), DJ hardware and software is launching far, wide, and to great applause:

In February 2008, Swedish company, Tonium, will release the Pacemaker - DJ equipment reduced to the size of a PB&J sandwich with a 120-gigabyte hard drive and built-in mixer to layer tunes seamlessly so the music never stops (Anne Eisenberg, "For Disc Jockeys as Well as Desk Jockeys," The New York Times, 20 January 2008). In the spirit of open source, Tonium will make the Linux-based software used in the Pacemaker public so users can improve, innovate, and share the software with others.

In September 2007, Numark Inc. released iDJ2, its mobile DJ device that is a lightweight mixing console with a docking station for an iPod (ibid).

IV) In what seems the last realm of possible remediation, technology is actually remediating the grocery cart. In the second half of 2008, Microsoft in tandem with MediaCart Holdings Inc. will bring digital advertising to grocery carts and will rig them with RFID that will enable the system to identify where the cart is in the store and thus to stream particular ads depending on location in the store (The Associated Press, "Video Ads Are Planned for Grocery Carts," 14 January 2008).

V) Of course, I can not get away with a discussion of the latest in technological advancements without a turn to Apple. (Good timing to, with the recent Electronics Show in Vegas.) Along with his introduction of the self-proclaimed "world's thinnest notebook" - the MacBook Air - Steve Jobs announced the turn towards mixing media in mixed mediums through the iTunes movie rentals and the Apple TV (Ellen Lee, "Apple introduces slim notebook, online movie rental service," San Francisco Chronicle, 16 January 2008).

VI) Further along the lines of mixing mediums in mixed media, is the recent phenomena from Japan: cellphone novels - novels composed on cell phones uploaded to web servers and with luck, published in its original medium - print (Norimitsu Onishi, "Thumbs Race as Japan's Best Sellers Go Cellular, " The New York Times, 20 January 2008). This phenomena has taken such popularity that five of the top ten Japanese novels of 2007 were originally cellphone novels.

Apart from these published and commercial technological innovations today, perhaps the most impressive show of potentiality rests in quantum mechanics' Bose Einstein Condensate. A truly remarkable attestation to the evolutionary challenge from past to future - from the mastery of heat to the conquest of cold - the virtual capture and utilization of absolute zero promises to enable yet unimagined discoveries. My personal interest is to see a quantum computer at work - the q-bit - zero and one simultaneously!

Materialized creativity, realized potentiality, hyphenation in presence, today...to dare to dream and to act upon that dream with successful achievement.

Above morality, beyond good and evil, Nietzsche's position is greatness indeed!

20 January 2008

--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, "Epigrams and Interludes," 95

--Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, "The Problem of Socrates," 11

Turning again to Pinker's five spheres of morality/science of moral sense, his sphere of authority deserves particular examination, especially in light of some recent grimm realities against our most basic instincts:

In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution to intervene and stop genocide in states showing an unwillingness to act itself (Warren Hoge, "Intervention, Hailed as a Concept, Is Shunned in Practice," The New York Times, 20 January 2008). Unfortunately, between 2005 and now, the resolution has not launched far from ideology to praxis. In fact, it has not launched at all.

Case in point - Darfur:

In a seeming absence of any moral authority and lack of any moral appeal to harm, fairness, and community, the Darfur genocides are ocular proof to the perilous difference between ideology and praxis, and the fatality of the bureaucratic entanglement quagmire. Indeed, the bureaucracy cesspool signaled yet another empty promise from the symbolic champion of morality - the UN - and there were three critical factors enabling, justifying, and sanctioning, respectively, all initiatives to intervene:

1) The Security Council's approval for the largest peace-keeping force in history with the capacity to stop the killings,

2) The vocal, organized, and worldwide campaign supporting intervention, and

3) The 2005 General Assembly resolution legally sanctioning intervention.

With everything in its favor, and with so many spheres of morality on its side, why is there inaction. Why are the Darfur genocides still persisting? Where is our morality, science of moral sense, or moralization? When faced squarely against political injustice, the natural instinct is to intervene to right the wrong and bring the crime to justice. There is a gross injustice far deeper than inaction - that of accountability and the fear of holding the criminals accountable for their unspeakable crimes.

Rather than morality, I find all signs of cowardice and hypocrisy in its place.

Degeneration by genocide, degeneration by bureaucracy, degeneration by hypocrisy - and Nietzsche is proven right.

Unfortunately, we need not look internationally to find moral hypocrisy. Painfully, this reality is inflicted all too close to home - literally:

It is with great pain that I discuss child abuse - corporal discipline issue, especially as it surfaces in the news around the Nixzmary case (Andy Newman and Leslie Kaufman, "Murder Case Tests Limits On Parents' Right to Hit," The New York Times, 20 January 2008). Perhaps the most gaulling factor in this case is the defense's ability to come up with their explanation and still maintain any sense of morality, logic, or sense of integrity. And the defense's argument, believe it or not:

" 'It was done to him, and it didn't kill him...How was he to know that it was something that would cause death?' "

Nietzsche wrote of one problem inherent in morality is its opposition to the instincts. Giving Mr. Rodriguez the benefit of a doubt, it still flies against all common sense that his instincts knew no better.

After reading Newman's and Kaufman's article, the general message becomes clear: just as with Darfur, the bureaucratic quagmire strikes again to stymie any progressive, effective, successful action to stop domestic violence. The justification bandied about court for the continued abuse today is that the laws are too vague and the breadth too wide for any effective action to take place.

From the perspective of someone at the receiving end of excessively severe and frequent beatings since the womb (in the battle of wills between my mother's will to miscarriage and my will to life, I apparently won), corporal discipline, physical abuse, however you want to call it - violence on a child - any child - affects that child. It messes with his mind, actions, behaviors, decisions, interactions, and has lasting detrimental consequences throughout the entirety of his life to his death. If that child can actually survive through the abuse to live into adulthood, that violence comes with profoundly ingrained and irreversible ramifications. And when the mind forgets, the body itself retains the memory of that pain...

One beating is one too many.

Immediately around the abused child is an impenetrable, invisible, intractible wall between him and any sense of normalcy. Instantly, there is a permanent barrier between him and all that is normal. Normalcy is a permanently unattainable goal.

So to this, where is the morality? Where is the moral sense against harm, towards fairness, community, purity, and authority?

Morality as a tyranny against instinct is a fatality against the integrity of humanity.

It is a perpetuation of our death sentence rather than a call to the progress of reason...

It is a sentence for the degeneration of man, for his extinction...

So in the face of the veritable morality quagmire, to the ridicule, to the denial, as Nietzsche rightly identifies, is it not about time to affirm, to create, to fly above rather than than fall below the unbearable weight?

20 January 2008

Upon closer examination of Pinker's morality/science of the moral sense through his five spheres of harm, fairness, community, authority, and purity, I find his delineation of morality wobbles too unsteadily and on too many contingencies. Granted, he concedes that culture determines the ranking of the five spheres and that personal illusions and sanctimony can cloud the way to reaching common ground for moral understanding. However, the same can be said of ethnicity, race, and religion (factors perhaps more decisive than others in ranking the spheres), so why are they not specifically accounted for or categorized?

Just approach each sphere on a bare-bones logical basis, and we will begin to uncover the inherent problems:

(From Pinker's article, "The Moral Instinct, The Varieties of Moral Experience" published in The New York Times on 13 January 2008)

1) Harm - Sticking a pin into yours or your child's palm.

What he describes as self-mutilation or the infliction of pain, another might describe as acupuncture. In this case, one man's mutilation may be another nation's form of medicine.

A matter of culture, practice, and perspective...

2) Fairness - Accepting a TV from a friend who received it either from error or through theft.

Because this is not a good example - both are forms of theft - indirect or direct, theft is theft - I will supply my own examples:

Markus Frind is a 29-year old web entrepreneuer who works ten-hour weeks and earns about $10 million a year through his online dating site, Plenty of Fish (Randall Stross, "From 10 Hours A Week, $10 Million A Year," The New York Times, 13 January 2008).

In Yangmiao, China, it was recently reported that "people are too poor to heat their homes in the winter and many lack basic comforts like running water. Mobile phones, a near ubiquitous symbol of upward mobility throughout much of this country, are seen as an impossible luxury [...] ...experts say Henan and other heavily populated parts of the Chinese heartland are often excluded from the financial support that goes to the coastal areas, and what antipoverty measures there are have little effect. Typically, residents of those areas say, money intended for them is appropriated by corrupt local officials, wo pocket it or divert it to business investments" (Howard W. French, "Lives of Grinding Poverty, Untouched by China's Boom," The New York Times, 13 January 2008).

To those who might attribute the disparity between these two examples as a disparity between West and East, I will bring the case home to a domestic example:

Recently, GoldenTree Asset Management sued John Visconti and Ron Garber of payroll firm, Axium International Inc., because they and their ex-wives used Axium funds for their personal use, personal gifts, vacations, and in general, " 'as their own personal piggy bank to finance their extravegant lifestyles' " (Andrea Chang, "Suit accuses 2 ex-owners of payroll firm," Los Angeles Times, 16 January 2008). As a result, entertainment industry workers with Axium paychecks learned they were worthless, production companies were told that thousands of dollars were frozen in payroll accounts, and four hundred Axium employees were fired - via e-mail in a terse message telling them not to return to work, forget pension, forget accrued vacation, and forget any salary owed to them.

So here, the extravegancies of two at the sacrifice and livelihood of 400+...the moral fairness in this, please?

What is the fairness in a world where extraordinary wealth stands so mockingly parallel to grinding poverty, graft, and corruption? The fact that this disparity is so blatantly omnipresent is already a signal to the further degenerative repurcussions of morality, as per Nietzsche.

3) Community - Saying something bad about your nation - that you do not believe - either in your nation's radio station or in a foreign nation's radio station.

Again, because this is not a good example - both are deceitful because in both cases you are stating something you yourself do not believe, the geography is irrelevant -whether in Pars, Peru, or Pennsylvania, deceit is deceit - so I will supply my own examples:

Recently, it was reported that the Associated Press' Los Angeles assistant bureau chief issued an internal memorandum dictating coverage of Britney Spears, stating that " 'Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal' " (Brian Stelter, "A.P. Says It Wants to Know Everything About Britney Spears," The New York Times, 14 January 2008).

Truly, there is a downfall of community when an article can be so casually published extolling the ease of accessibility in getting cosmetic procedures done - in a mall! (Janet Morrissey, "Having a Little Work Done (at the Mall)," The New York Times, 13 January 2008). Rather than comment on the resoundingly detrimental implications of this new reality, Morrissey instead discusses the ease, economy, and convenience this brings to consumers.

From bad to worse...

Advertisers and marketers in general have a rather 'tainted' image as it is. To splash some more mud on their facade, they are specifically targeting youths to market virtual worlds to "deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers" (Brooks Barnes, "Web Playgrounds of the Very Young," The New York Times, 31 December 2007).

4) Purity - Attending a performance-art piece that includes idiotic behavior or one that includes animalistic behavior, nudity, and urination.

Personal preferences aside, performance-art and art in general, must of necessity hold to an entirely different rubric than normative standards because it wells from an individual's expression and his right to that expressive tendency that secures his artistry. To deny this would be to suffocate that spring. All this being stated, it does not take an idiot to understand the point. And again, the point to this sphere wobbles on too many contingencies to make a categorical delineation and imperative of what is (im)moral purity.

5) Authority - Slap a friend or slap a minister in the face with their consent, in the name of comedy.

Again, this is not a good example because if an act is done with the consent of both parties - moreover, in the name of comedy - morality can not be at issue.

On moral authority, Weber examined it best. Suffice to note that the slippery marble upon which this sphere rests leads to far too many pratfalls.  Indeed, moral authority is affected by so many contingencies - ethnicity, race, faith, myth, illusion, sanctimony, and ultimately, perspective - that this is perhaps the most variegated of the five morality themas.

Case in point: elementary grade teacher naming a bear and causing a whole nation to call for her execution.

Beyond this, there is an even greater - dare say, fatal - flaw to this particular sphere: the fatality of hypocrisy. Unfortunately, there is too much of this around us today, further proving Nietzsche true...

20 January 2008

The catalyst for my examination of morality stems immediately from books and essays recently published on the topic, as if morality should be a topic 'in vogue' again. Particularly, I refer to Professor Steven Pinker's latest article, "The Moral Instinct" (The New York Times, 13 January 2008), in which he begins by invoking Mother Teresa, Bill Gates, and Norman Borlaug before going on to explain morality as a sixth sense. As he discusses it, morality is a topic "close to our conception of the meaning of life" and is what "gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings". Rather than being a "trick of the brain", Pinker declares that morality as "the science of the moral sense" can be a means to strengthen our "grounds for being moral".

In his section "The Moralization Switch", Pinker likens moralization to a "mind-set" and "psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch". He names two 'hallmarks' of moralization that really come from two great minds before him: Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell, respectively. The first hallmark is the application or litmus test of universality - that a moral act would be deemed so and agreed upon universally. The second hallmark is that of retribution - "divine retribution" - for immoral acts.

Of course, there is a fatal flaw in the science of morals approach and in the universality approach in moralization, as Nietzsche points out:

"In all 'science of morals' so far one thing was lacking, strange as it may sound: the problem of morality itself; what was lacking was any suspicion that there was something problematic here. [...] indeed, in the last analysis a kind of denial that this morality might ever be considered problematic - certainly the very opposite of an examination, analysis, questioning, and vivisection of this very faith" (Beyond Good and Evil, "Natural History of Morals," 186).

"All these moralities that address themselves to the individual, for the sake of his 'happiness', as...recipes against his passions, his good and bad inclinations insofar as they have the will to power and want to play the master...all of them baroque and unreasonable in form - because they address themselves to 'all', because they generalize where one must not generalize" (ibid, 198).

...and by this measure, one would be wise to heed Descartes dictum: de omnibus dubitandum (of everything, is to be doubted)...

Nietzsche not withstanding, Pinker makes a good point that through the science of morals, we can track the shifting of perspectives of erstwhile moralizations to amoralization and vice-versa. In particular, he discusses the switch to moralization of smoking when findings concluded its possible harm to others. Likewise, he discusses the switch to amoralization of divorce, sexuality, and some diseases, categorizing them with lifestyles of the present. Here, there is a sense that when the act harms others, it is immoral, but when the harm is contained to the individual only, it is not immoral - or not for us to deem immoral.

There is a suspicion of slippery contingencies here...

Indeed, we learn of another contingency in his section "Reasoning nd Rationalizing" - where he cites Philippa Foot's and Judith Jarvis Thomson's "Trolley Problem" to add the 'hands-on/hands-off' factor as another category in determining (im)moral behavior:

"On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissable to throw the switch, killing one man to save five?"

"Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge?"

Foot and Jarvis found that most people answered 'yes' to the first scene and 'no' to the second scene and explained this to a difference "between the acceptability of switch-pulling and man-heaving" as a basis of justification.

Although many would find no problem with the first scene being moral and the second immoral, I vehemently disagree. In both situations, the decision of (im)morality rests in its science and its claims to universality as Nietzsche points out. And the correction to this univesality is a direction Pinker seems to be headed on - perhaps in coincidence with Nietzsche:

"...our moral philosophers...never laid eyes on the real problems of morality; for these emerge only when we compare many moralities" (Beyond Good and Evil, "Natural History of Morals," 186).

As if understanding the critical need to approach morality through a multiplicity of pivotal themas, Pinker cites psychologist Jonathan Haidt's five moral concerns: harm, fairness, community, authority, and purity. Pinker explains that it is how these themes are ranked as a cultural determinant that allows moral sense to be simultaneously universal and variable. Here is where he contributes some interesting insight:

In his section "Is Morality a Figment?", he offers two benchmarks for determining when judgments of our moral sense are aligned with morality:

1) the prevalence of nonzero-sum games where both sides are unselfish, and

2) the interchangeability of perspectives where the rationality for the act cannot depend on the egocentric vantage point of the reasoner (this also happens to be a point identified by Spinoza, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls, and Singer).

Finally, in his last section "Doing Better by Knowing Ourselves", Pinker comes to some veritable points of morality:

1) the science of moral sense alerts us to ways in which our psychological makeup factor in our (illusions) of moral ground, that we can be blinded by our own sanctimony, and

2) in keeping with Leon Kass, former chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, there are times when we should go with our gut and disregard reason. Indeed, there is something resounding in his statement:

"Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder" ("The Wisdom of Repugnance")

Ultimately, Pinker sees in his science of the moral sense an advancement of morality "by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend". In his estimataion, rather than look for the moral villain, we should look to 'fix the bug'...