Can this please be over?

Vinod, at the Mutiny has a post up that makes me angry and sad. Apparently, former Senator Fred Thompson, on hearing an allusion to Gandhi in the recent antiwar rally in Washington, chose to take a swing at the Mahatma, effectively calling him an anti-Semite for advising a policy of non-violence for German Jews. Vinod goes on to call ahimsa "nihilism", and suggests that Gandhi's ideology comes down to "making the other guy feel bad".

This completely misses the power of Gandhi's strategies, but it also contains a pretty major internal flaw in logic. Namely, it assumes that it was possible for the Jews to avoid the Holocaust by doing ANYTHING themselves. Let's not forget that this is a real, awful event that occurred. People responded to it in many different ways, ranging from escape to violent resistance. Nothing worked. Yet Thompson and Vinod make veiled accusations about Gandhi's sentiment towards Jews because ... his strategy to prevent the Holocaust wouldn't have worked. Would the conservatives' favorite strategy -- a violent uprising -- have worked either? If anything, it would have resulted in an even faster, more brutal massacre.

But of course Gandhi's strategy wasn't just to make the British "feel bad". After hundreds of years of poor administration, replete with massacres and malign neglect, Indians did not have a strong hold on the British moral imagination, and no Englishman was going to cry over a brown corpse. Rather, Gandhi's strategy was twofold: first, to cripple the British economy (at least in India), and second, to bring international attention to the atrocities in India and, therefore, harm Britain's vital strategic alliances. This is REAL POLITICS, not some lame feel-good personal ideology. With the means of production in India immobilized and the Americans leaning on the Brits, independence was the only choice. The crux of Gandhian strategy is to know that the military power of one's foe is too great to defeat on that stage, so one must make one's own deprivations have political worth. If you must starve, starve because you're not working in the enemy's factories. If you must die, make sure you die in front of a foreign journalist's camera. Make sure that your suffering means something in the long term. Is that really such a squishy concept? The military alternative is the way of Ho Chi Minh or Che Guevara. Would an Indian version of the Vietnam war really have been a better way to gain independence?

Now, would a Gandhian strategy have prevented the Holocaust? As I said earlier, I don't think so. But I don't think it could have been any worse than REALITY, so why should the suggestion of strategy justify Gandhi-hate?

Independent of all of this, I'm just really sick and tired of being in this era of politics, in which the only thing that matters is whether or not people are on the "right side". Some liberal protester namechecks Gandhi, and we suddenly need to believe he's a weakling anti-Semite. "UnAmerican Activities" comes back into the lexicon and suddenly we're all supposed to love Joseph McCarthy. The alternate reality is getting so extreme we even need an encyclopedia to hold it. And y'know, I'm sure that similar things have happened on the Left too. It's not conservatism, really, it's the "us vs. them" attitude, in which you can believe ANYTHING about your political opponents but must remain absolutely blind about your allies. We've gotten to a point where you have to choose between People's History and Patriot's History, and either way the only objective truth or moral righteousness in the world is on "your side". I'm just sick of it.

Dude, it's raining

So hey, I'm in Seattle! I feel more indie rock already!

When I got to the rental car place, the guy asked me if I was here for business or pleasure. Good question! B-both, maybe? Pleasure, for sure.

But business? Well. Sort of. I'm not comfortable blogging about it yet (because this blog gets such incredible volume that my secrets could be RELEASED TO THE WORLD), but there are things brewing that could mean some huge, hopefully positive changes in my life. I'd kind of hoped that these changes would be happening in Seattle. In fact, I was really getting excited about the idea -- this city is very cool, and it's been looming in my imagination almost as long as I can remember. But it doesn't look like it's going to happen here. Too bad :(

But that still leaves me two days of free time in a friggin awesome metropolis! I'm spending a little downtime in the hotel after a very long, fun, but ultimately disappointing day (but that's still cool: cable TV! It's easy to satisfy me). But I'm going back into town tonight, and then maybe out to check out some of the famous Pacific Northwest landscape. I grew up in the Midwest and Florida, so the prospect of friggin M O U N T A I N S makes me happy.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Or: Two Heads are Better Than NONE!!!

Bryukhonenko wasn't alone in his fascination with bringing dead things back to life. As one might expect from a country that lost 6 million people to the Nazi's during World War Two, the science of resuscitation was something of a scientific and medical obsession The Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, where Bryukhonenko's dog experiments took place, was founded in 1936 by Vladimir Negovsky, a Soviet doctor who spent much of the Forties working on the front lines of the war with resuscitation teams, working to revive Soviet soldiers who were bleeding to death, and in some cases, had already bled to death. Negovsky's work prior to the war involved experiments with dogs, and Bryukhonenko was but one of many Soviet scientists working in this field.

In 1961, Negovsky defined his peculiar scientific specialty as "Reanimatology." From his obituary:

"Negovsky was able to develop reanimatology as a new medical discipline in the Soviet Union and trained and mentored several generations of "reanimatologists" in the communist countries, for whom anesthesiology, out-of-hospital emergency care and other acute clinical practices, became sub-specialties of reanimatology. Every hospital in Russia and former Soviet Republics has a Department of Reanimatology lead mostly by Negovsky's trainees."

Bryukhonenko also had protégés of his own, most notably Vladimir Demikhov, who in 1954 reportedly grafted a second head onto a living dog. You can see clips from his experiments here. The best view of Demikhov's creature is in the sixth clip (marked number "005").

Holy. Shit.

Elder Care and South Asian Families

One of the most frustrating things about living so far away from my family is that I often don't get news until long after the fact. It turns out that my parents have been trying to provide care for my elderly grandfather, who's had a pretty nasty infection lately. He seems to be doing better now, but it sucks that I'm not able to be there to help. One of the frustrations of my life recently has been that I'm pulled between the relationships I have here in Chicago, my family obligations in Florida, and decisions about school/work that don't necessarily lend themselves to either.

This situation also got me thinking about the challenges of South Asian cultural values about caring for older relatives crashing into the modern American always-on work schedule. In India (as in most Asian cultures) your family will provide care to your older relatives. No question about it. You open your home to them, you feed them, you cater to them, and you attend to them when they are sick. It's simply your duty, and most Asians I know accept it proudly.

But what do you do with an older relative who needs round the clock attention? My parents, thanks to a set of "mixed blessing" circumstances over the past few years, were able to provide this type of care directly while also keeping their jobs. But this isn't an option for most. It's especially not an option for those South Asians with legendary "Kwik-E Mart"-style work schedules. How do you care for an older relative if someone from the family absolutely has to be at the store? Even without a 24-hour obligation, the work schedules of doctors, lawyers, and other professions hardly allow much time for care.

So how do people deal with this? Some families I know just revert to long-established, and often long-buried, gender roles, where the woman is just expected to turn away from work in order to stay at home to care for an elderly father or mother-in-law (it rarely goes the other way). This just sucks. It promotes gender inequality, and losing about half the income is not a viable economic option for most families. One alternative would be for the man to stay home, but this is almost guaranteed not to happen, both because of Indian cultural norms and because of the economic issues. The way American families generally deal with this is (organ music, please) the nursing home.

But man. The compromise of cultural values needed to get South Asians to accept a nursing home is huge. The word itself is almost a slur -- it's shorthand for the perception of disconnection and lack of caring in Western families. I can see South Asian families being forced into this option by economic or medical realities, but I can't see them liking it. Does anyone out there in blog-land know of Asian families who've had to go this route? How did it work out? What were the effects on the family?

Hinduism in America

Poor little Not-Dead-Yet blog! I've been neglecting you, mostly because of a toxic combination of work, laziness, and a lack of bloggable material (lots of work + not wanting to blog about work makes Jack a dull blog).

But thankfully this post regarding commercial marketing of Dharmic (Hindu and Buddhist) religious beliefs at Sepia Mutiny forced me back in. The lovely and talented Cicatrix said:

But…but…but…I live in NY, land of the beautifully blonded yogis who teach classes on aligning chakras and smugly eat all-raw vegan meals while delicately puffing on their cigarettes. I’m wary of how easily complex Eastern philosophies become reduced to status items bought in a spiritual center’s gift shop. How easily the search for a harmonious understanding of one’s desires, relation to other people, and responsibilities in the world becomes transmuted into seeing oneself as a being superior to those who have not been enlightened.

I've always been really interested in the ways that people conceptualize and relate to the Dharmic faiths. It's complicated! It's particularly complicated because these faiths serve so many different, sometimes contradictory ends in the United States.

Ideas of Hinduism (I'm going to focus on Hinduism because it's my faith and I'm most familiar with it) designed to appeal to non-Indian Americans are distinct from those designed to appeal to Indian-born Hindus because they really try to market the faith. They focus on the exotic elements -- the polytheism, the rituals, the many famous traditions like yoga, Ayurveda, songs, etc... -- as well as spiritual-mystical elements that are supposed to restore balance to a heartless Western world by reorienting its chakras to sustain the atman (blah blah blah). I hope that these VERY shallow introductions to the faith will prompt people to explore the deep theological implications and vast diversity in traditions more deeply. But I doubt it. In my experience, they tend to attract people who think one yoga class at the Learning Annex entitles them to claim enlightenment. In short, this Western-oriented Hinduism often encourages a really noxious Orientalism. I'm not going to try to attribute motives to the people who teach these classes, but the net result is often to provide people a lifestyle accessory. A millenia-old religion as something you pick up in a gift shop.

But I think Hinduism is absolutely TERRIBLE at providing any sort of deeper alternative to people who did not grow up immersed in the faith. (A quick caveat here: my experience with Hinduism in America mostly consists of temples generally in the Vaishnav and Swaminaryan tradition in the Midwest and South, so I may be missing some huge cultural movement. If I'm wrong, please let me know.) The average Hindu temple offers virtually no access to people who feel most comfortable speaking English. They offer very little information about the theological underpinnings of the faith, and instead focus on the importance of staying true to the rituals and traditions of India. As a result, they serve as little more than a memorial of a lost life in India. Some have programs for American born youth, but these focus far more on maintaining traditional Indian cultural values (including the negative ones about caste, women, and skin color) than on understanding the theological implications of Hinduism. Now I don't want to sound too hostile here. Moving from India to the USA has to be a huge cultural shift, and it's important to have these institutions that make the transition easier. I know that it's especially important for older people, particularly since the temple has such a huge place in daily life in many Indian traditions.

But if the choices are theme park Orientalism for non-Indian Americans or a stuffy museum for Indian values, where do American-born Indians go? In particular, where do you go if some of your values differ greatly from traditional Indian ones? Where do you go if, for example, your strongest language is English (and you're ok with that)? Where do you go if you're in a relationship with someone who's not Desi (let alone in your caste)? Where do you go if you're not straight? Where do you go if you're a woman, and you think that women deserve to be treated equally?

I realize that all faiths have major moral lines, and that the exact point of these lines is often a subject of debate. In particular, I know that sexual orientation and gender issues are still major topics of debate in Western religious traditions. Gender equality is even a burgeoning field of debate in Islam (depending on the country, obviously). But I find it sad that (in my experience) there isn't even a debate about this stuff within a Hindu framework in the United States. People who feel strongly about any of these issues can either choose to silence their values, often in order to keep older relatives happy, or they can drop out of the faith altogether. I know that these discussions are happening in India, but I don't see them happening here. This is bad news because it leaves the millions of American-born Indians who have a mix of Western Enlightenment values and Indian Dharmic ones without a viable alternative.

Infidels!

Perhaps you’ve heard of the “New Atheism”. It’s profiled fairly well here. Theologically, it’s an argument that dates back at least as far as the Enlightenment: God doesn’t exist, and the only way to understand the world is through pure reason and scientific inquiry. Robespierre would have understood that argument. Darwin certainly would have. What makes it “new” is apparently that one must be as much of a supercilious, evangelizing asshole as possible while promoting it. It’s atheism sold with exactly the same insulting, hectoring rhetoric that James Dobson uses to push Christianity or Mahmoud Ahmedinejad uses to push Islam.

You may have gotten the idea that I don’t much like this movement.

I don’t like it for a number of reasons. First, the aggressive approach called for by people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris is not just annoying, it’s polarizing. It posits that there is one absolute Truth in the universe, and that only those who share their views on religion (namely, negative ones) can understand that Truth. Anyone else is delusional, insane, childish, and stupid. It therefore eradicates the “live and let live” middle ground of mutual respect necessary for a pluralistic society, and instead frames the world as a war in which only one side can be victorious. In other words, it encourages religious identity politics. One only has to look at Baghdad or the West Bank to consider how well that situation can turn out.

I do not believe that politicized, prescriptive atheism can win a political battle here in the United States. Not in a country where 80% of the populace believes in God. But I absolutely fear what religious identity politics in this country could unleash. Even the minor prods of feminism and “non-traditional” sexuality have sent some Christians screaming to the ramparts, with our decades of Reagan/Gingrich/Bush policies as a result. Surely this migration would only swell in the face of a frontal assault. What would the impact of politicized atheism be? With pluralism renounced by atheist intellectuals and reactionary Christianity gaining a populist base, where exactly do religious minorities go? Where do free thinkers go? Where do you go if you’re neither an angry atheist nor a Christian fundamentalist? I fear that if Dawkins and Harris pursue their little rationalist jihad, terms like “theocrat” will move out of the realm of left-wing boilerplate and into reality.

But the most hilarious part of this whole movement is the idea that, having given up on the petty rivalries and unsolvable problems of religion, the world will finally bask in the serene absolute truth of Science.

I can understand why Harris might think this, but you would think that an academic bomb-thrower like Dawkins would know better. Dawkins has made a career out of shaking up the scientific establishment with new, controversial ideas. He almost single-handedly created a new paradigm for understanding genetics and evolution in “The Selfish Gene”, and was a proponent of honest sociobiology at a time when most scientists considered the field little more than a refuge for nostalgic colonialists trying to rehabilitate the White Man’s Burden. I am CERTAIN that he knows that the process of science, at least on the scale of an individual’s career, is often as acrimonious, bitter, and, yes, irrational as the inner workings of any obscure cult (including the famous Christian ones that get invited to the White House).

So, will science function as the popular face of this New Atheism? For science’s sake, I sure hope not.

I could (and probably will) write many posts on the politicization of science. Unfortunately, this tendency is not limited to the Bush Administration. Science, in our society, comes with a patina of authority that is very attractive to people who want to bolster their political views. In some ways this is a good thing – when the scientific process is applied accurately and intelligently to controversial theories, it will either destroy them or contribute to our greater understanding of the natural world. But when one is dealing with politically relevant studies there’s always a temptation to draw sweeping conclusions that don’t quite fit the data, gloss over complications or subtleties, and underplay important design weaknesses. Anyone who has read studies of human behavior or society has likely seen these problems with papers – particularly papers that happen to provide backing to a popular political view.

With the New Atheism in charge and proclaiming itself guardian of absolute truth, what happens to the rough and tumble process of scientific inquiry and argument? I don’t mean to imply that science is going to be proving the existence of God, but an ideology with this level of confidence is going to develop its own culture and assumptions about what is “right” or “wrong”. Over time, as with any political culture, these assumptions will become inviolable elements of identity (ask a conservative to critique market economics or a liberal to critique civil liberties for an example of this). Science, acting at its best, simply CAN’T do that. Saying “this must be true” is antithetical to the whole process. You never say that a theory or framework is “true” in science (at least not in good science). Instead, you say: “we believe this to be true based on the data we have at this time”. Scientific findings must always be provisional and open to speculation.

Science thrives on iconoclasts and independent thinkers – people who pursue wild, radical theories in absolute defiance of the established understanding. We venerate eccentric geniuses like Newton, Einstein, or even Dawkins, precisely because they were willing to challenge everything they were taught about how the natural world “really worked”. Any ideology that demands certainty will recoil in the face of this attitude. Indeed, we’ve seen this happen in the past: both the French Revolution and Bolshevik Revolution made absolute fealty to Reason a founding ideal, and both later reacted to radical ideas with astonishing brutality. And so, in this brave new world, what happens to the people who complicate things? What happens to the people who do good research that introduces complexities into, say, evolution? What happens to the growing number of people who are skeptical about string theory? What happens to people who provide a more complicated look at global warming? What happens to the researchers who either define or disprove the latest silver bullet theory to explain human behavior (whether it’s violence, sexuality, obesity, or whatever)? With certain ideas central to the political dogma of a ruling party, will science still be able to apply the kind of rational, objective evaluation that is the hallmark of the process? Given the tone of the philosophy’s leading lights, I sincerely doubt it.

Get Moving You Stupid Idiots

It just took me an hour and forty minutes to go 14 miles.

Ok, yeah I know that morning commutes suck all over. And I know that there's always an element of unpredictability. I get that. But there's something wrong when it takes you an hour and forty minutes to get from the North side to the West side.

The cause of my terrible commute this morning? A ladder fell off a truck on Lakeshore Drive. At like 6:45 am. This COMPLETELY KILLED traffic for the next two hours. Granted, an odd event. But unfortunately not unusual. LSD has to be one of the most unreliable major highways in an American city. It seems that almost every morning something weird happens to it that completely freezes traffic. And it's not just localized blocks. Fender benders on North Avenue cause traffic to seize up at Bryn Mawr or Hollywood. It's getting ridiculous. I seem to be getting caught in hour+ commutes nearly every day -- on a route that Google Maps claims should take 20 minutes.

It's gotten so bad that I now have three viable alternative routes. And yet all three were tweaking out today. Lakeshore because of the Ladder of Doom, Ashland for some unexplained reason, and Western because of a broken water main.

The transportation system in this city just seems to be breaking down. And it's not as though public transit is any better. Busses are rarely reliable (thanks to the traffic). The trains WERE a little better, but budget cuts and ballooning ridership have taken their toll. Let alone the fact that, between the Loop fire, snowfall, and Oglivie Center shootings, Chicago hasn't had "normal" train service in months.

Ugh. I know traffic sucks in every major city, but I don't know how much longer I'll be able to put up with this breakdown. Going 9 miles an hour every morning is pretty fucking wearing.