Secretly Ironic

One of my Spanish profs in college was from Argentina, and had been in college during the Dirty War years. She thought at the time that she had kept herself safe by not associating with subversives, keeping her head down.

After the dictatorship, when she learned who had done what, when she found out just how bad it was, she realized she was totally wrong. Just being in a class with a suspected subversive, knowing the wrong person, being in their addressbook, was grounds for detention, disappearance, death. All her efforts to keep herself safe were useless: only chance averted disaster.

Similarly, although I have tried my best, I recognize the more-than-significant role of chance in my own good fortune. I am not sure if I deserve it, and more importantly, I am not sure how much my own efforts have determined any of it. It makes the phrase “those less fortunate” ring in my ears: in many cases it’s only luck that brings people low.

Much will be expected from those to whom much has been given.

Crooked Timber has some interesting articles on identity and humanity and nature.

Questions: To what extent is the nonhuman world an obstacle to human endeavor? What about the endeavor to change human nature? Does the human portion of the natural world become an obstacle to human endeavor?

Genetically modified food, for the most part, does not bother me. I am not troubled by ‘golden rice’ or by pest-resistant bT soy any more than I am by a hybrid rose, a plumcot, or a purebred dog. Which is to say, there’s potential for trouble there, but not, for the most part, awful trouble. It’s perfectly possible to have all of these things without ethical problems– but they can arise.

So what if we synthesize all of our food some day? So much of what I eat is contaminated with industrial waste: the mercury in my fish, the pesticide in my vegetables. Why wouldn’t hothouse everything be safer? An individual hothouse tomato, grown without pesticides, might be better. An individual farm-raised fish could be safer than one roaming free in the heavy-metal ocean. But human beings cannot maintain the biodiversity or healthy balance of nature. At least, not yet. Remeber what happened to the various biodome experiments? Systemic failure.

I saw a blind woman in the T this morning, holding the cane just a fraction of an inch below her foot level as she descended the stairs, so it tapped only when she reached a landing. She went all the way into the station, mostly not touching the walls or the floors, tapping only once or twice when she needed to make a turn. But she was close by the wall. She’d need sight, (or a much longer cane, or a lot of practice) to walk down the exact middle.

Moderation is often the hardest route to take. It’s much easiser to hew closely to one wall or another.

Reasons to be a Republican. And a complimentary list of candidates for the White House in ’04, scoring them based on ‘scandal points.’ I like the scandal-points system.

Some people seem to be betting against John F. Kerry because they have been unsure of his ethnicity. Apparently he had Eastern-European Jewish relatives, and everyone has been assuming he’s Irish because he has an Irish-sounding name and wants to be John F. Kennedy.

I’m surprised that this is an issue. But then again, I’m also surprised when people do things like confuse religious law for secular law. Not to say I’m immovable or perfect. I’ve been swinging more and more towards gun-ownership, on the premise that guns, like drugs, are best regulated rather than criminalized. The statement “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns’ is, in essence, true. And nothing is made safer by placing its manufacture, distribution, and usage into the hands of organized crime.