Update for Everyone IV - Hungover

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I kissed a glass-encased human heart tonight.

Wow!  Any idea whose it was?

Padre Pio's. Boston's been hosting it for the past several days, probably because our archbishop's a Capuchin.

I would have said that in the above post but I decided to lead with a 'hook'. Leave people wondering if I went to the Mutter Museum or something.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I kissed a glass-encased human heart tonight.

Wow!  Any idea whose it was?

Padre Pio's. Boston's been hosting it for the past several days, probably because our archbishop's a Capuchin.

Oh wow. I had no idea.

From what I've heard, in Italy he's venerated by some to an extent that strikes me as potentially reaching idolatry, though I don't know enough to have real thoughts on the matter.

Yeah, Cardinal O'Malley joked about that and how it was kind of weird in his sermon.

That aside, I'm a few pages into my first Psychology of Religion paper and should probably spend part of today watching primary sources (i.e. Japanese TV from about three years ago) for my thesis. I spent six hours lying in bed after I, technically, woke up, which was a terrible idea.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also: taking notes on "Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Domination, a Historical Overview" while drinking a six pack of Blue Moon because life is a meaningless vacuum punctuated by base pleasures. As classic, waiting on that text-back, yo. Tobacco? Sadly, no.

That's me with Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline and almost-flat gin and tonics.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Submitted the final paper for my directed studies graduate course "Roots of 21st Century Conflict". This'll allow me to refocus on my honors thesis.

Congratulations! My directed study's still plugging away.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Facing a crisis of identity as my Facebook feed has become overgrown with trashy attempts at political memeage or commentary. Most of these works are unoriginal in nature.

Dude, you and me both.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Due to events that have arisen in my life, I will be withdrawing from the forum for an undetermined period of time. I ask for your thoughts and prayers.

Kindly,
Isaac

You're in them. All the best.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've been feeling increasingly intrusive suicidal urges over the past few weeks, to the point where it's currently near-constant. I wonder if that's the sort of thing a meds adjustment could fix. It probably is, but my prescriber is hours away.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I watched a movie loosely based on the true story of French brother and sisters, executed for incest. It was really annoying because of a director's pathetic mixing of historical, more contemporary and totally modern elements (we have guys dressed like in the mid-19th Century and then... there's a f--king chopper?). Finally, they cut off their heads and this abomination of a movie ended

I saw 'French' 'sisters' 'incest' and thought the Papin sisters, but there wasn't a brother involved in that case, and they weren't executed. Who were these people? It sounds a grisly tale.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Hey guys, just finished boarding and sandbagging, rain bands are starting to hit us and the winds are picking up.

Good luck.

Stay in touch as long as you can, okay?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It took my therapist less than a minute to diagnose me with an eating disorder (on the basis of things I've previously said to her) after I brought up the possibility.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My PM score just jumped from -6, -5 to -4.5, -1.5. This isn't good. I'm gonna try taking some other tests and see if it's reflected in those...

(Side note: do we have a Political Matrix thread?)

EDIT: Spekr pegs me at Economic -47 and Cultural -15 (Social Democrat)

RIP Socially Liberal LLR

What issues have you grown more conservative on?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've also become a lot more pro-union

ONE OF US

Home for the extended weekend to work on my paper. Essentially just synthesizing a history of Russia with some of the very basic observations of "those types" of people--Skocpol, in this case. As opposed to the first two types of sections I tried to write--one largely complete, concerning just very general, open-source economic statistics; the other, concerning religion, that stopped just after a write-up on the Russian Orthodox Church--this is going to try to come up with some broad "social theory" based on dates and circumstances of industrialization. Very pathetic stuff, probably done before (I can only read so much).

My paper this weekend is going to use Wittgenstein--whom I actually sort-of-understand now, unlike the last time I brought him up on the forum--as a blunt instrument to argue that human language can't support any single, universally applicable definition of mystical experience.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had to drop a class because mental health.

Good luck, shua.

ETA: Also, my mother has been appointed Assistant Town Administrator of ______, Massachusetts, with an option to become Town Administrator in a few years when the incumbent retires. It's a hill town with about two thousand people.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had to drop a class because mental health.

Good luck, shua.

ETA: Also, my mother has been appointed Assistant Town Administrator of ______, Massachusetts, with an option to become Town Administrator in a few years when the incumbent retires. It's a hill town with about two thousand people.

Congrats on your appointment!

My mother's appointment, not mine, but thanks!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had to drop a class because mental health.

Good luck, shua.

ETA: Also, my mother has been appointed Assistant Town Administrator of ______, Massachusetts, with an option to become Town Administrator in a few years when the incumbent retires. It's a hill town with about two thousand people.

Good Luck!

Har har.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I found an article that one of my friends wrote for Christianity Today in like 2010 as one of the citations in a Wikipedia article.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm not leaving the country over the election but I might if the worst-case or even moderately-bad-case scenario for a Trump presidency eventuates.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I can't sleep so I took the Political Matrix again. I've gone from I think E -8.16 S -2.70 to E -7.74 S -1.39. The slight shift in the E score is probably due to increased uncertainty in my views on trade policy.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yesterday my mother, who turned sixty on Sunday, went to the emergency room with some pancreatic somesuch and now she's home and more or less fine but can't have anything to eat other than clear liquids. My father made her some turkey broth so she could get at least a little bit of the Thanksgiving spirit, but she's still not exactly happy.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I’ve discovered KindredSpaces, an “online discovery tool” for research on Lucy Maud Montgomery. I find myself once again wondering how different my life might have been if I had gone to Vassar and majored in Victorian Studies like I for a while intended.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Might've reached a turning point with my eating disorder, but not the good kind of turning point. Sad!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and wondering what this means for capitalism and small towns.

I'd be interested in discussing this with you some time.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and wondering what this means for capitalism and small towns.

I'd be interested in discussing this with you some time.

Go right ahead.

What do you make of the economic critique in the movie in light of Capra, Stewart, and Reed's own Republican politics? Do you think it's attempting to draw a potentially specious distinction between good ol' down-home American capitalism and wicked rapacious cronyism, or would you describe what the movie is doing differently? Do you think "Pottersville" is revelatory or prophetic? Because I'm not sure I'd say the movie's imagination really extends to how bad a lot of the problems that actually fall on places in Bedford Falls's circumstances get. Pottersville seems awfully tame and small-time and actually like kind of a good time relative to the extremes of declivity in a lot of actual small-town America over the past few decades.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and wondering what this means for capitalism and small towns.

I'd be interested in discussing this with you some time.

Go right ahead.

What do you make of the economic critique in the movie in light of Capra, Stewart, and Reed's own Republican politics? Do you think it's attempting to draw a potentially specious distinction between good ol' down-home American capitalism and wicked rapacious cronyism, or would you describe what the movie is doing differently? Do you think "Pottersville" is revelatory or prophetic? Because I'm not sure I'd say the movie's imagination really extends to how bad a lot of the problems that actually fall on places in Bedford Falls's circumstances get. Pottersville seems awfully tame and small-time and actually like kind of a good time relative to the extremes of declivity in a lot of actual small-town America over the past few decades.

My "observations" can only run so deep, but here goes my attempt to converse on matters of perceived import...

Were I Lief or Zizek, I would feel tempted to revel in pointing out what I consider obviously anti-semitic overtones of the film... The invasion of cosmopolitanism in the form of not just banking, but prostitution, vice, and so on. I, however, am neither of them. I do think there's some attempt to draw a distinction between "corporate capitalism" and "small town business"; this is obvious enough in the film. The filmmakers' Republican leanings do make it interesting, however. One is forced to wonder if they themselves were conscious of the distinction, or instead merely viewed it as an apolitical battle of a good man and a bad man. I recall reading on Wikipedia that Capra had wanted to put the film out in order to battle what he perceived to be a rising tide of atheism in the country; in such a light, it's little wonder that a conservative might see it as a moral battle rather than an economic one. In relating this to the real world, however, the film presents an ideal: a small, Christian town located somewhere aloof from the social ills of the urban world, marked not only by "good people", but by volunteerism, industry, and community. One is left to wonder if such a community can be allowed to exist; "good men" such as George Bailey cannot necessarily be counted on in every circumstance, and the natural alternative buttress against the Potter-esque encroachment of profit-driven rationalization and squalor is going to be an array of bureaucrats and government agents, just as much an anathema to Capra's American paradise as the bankers of the world. My own answer would lie in attempting to construct devices by which social capital could be fostered and, from there, indirectly recreate and restrengthen community ties; this is likely an impossibility.

There are a few other portions of the film I found interesting. In regards to the Second World War, one is reminded of Theodore Roosevelt's father (also name Theodore Roosevelt). Instead of being 4F on account of an ear, Theodore Roosevelt Sr.'s wife was a Southern belle and would see it that her husband had no formal part in a Yankee War of Aggression. Like Bailey, he found his means of participation through various informal and civic roles. There is one fan theory that claims this film is a portrayal of not a wonderful life, but indeed a rotting Hellhole; George Bailey is forever condemned to see to the affairs of his hometown while the rest of the world moves on--his brother Harry being the most poignant example, a man whose life he saves, only to see him not only gain work outside of town, but go on to be a hero in the war. The fan theory referred to George's disqualification from the war as the ultimate emasculation. The theory's main assertion--that George Bailey lived a life, nightmarish in quality--is something that, while perhaps believable, is not something I necessarily sympathize with. George's anger, boiling over in the scenes where he lays bare his feelings to Uncle Billy, and where he smashes his children's bridge, are powerful and believable. But that does not render his sacrifice meaningless, and I think it makes his actions all the more meaningful.

Secondly, what I found remarkable about the probably thirty seconds' reference to World War II is the amount of voluntary activity associated with it--and, conversely, the amount of acquiescence to non-voluntary restrictions. The list the narrator gives--air warden, supply drives, rationing, etc.--constituted a massive national effort. When asking ourselves why this spirit of participation seemed to peter out in the following decades, it seems rather obvious- if we really wished to fight and to contain communism on every front, the mobilization of soldiers and resources necessary would leave the country dry. By 1898, the young men of the country were itching for the chance to prove themselves in battle the way their fathers had done in the 1860's; by contrast, the short time it took to reengage America in combat after the end of World War II, and the immense length with which it took to wrap up Vietnam, demonstrated that a sustained, civic participation in American foreign policy was not something we were going to see in the future. On the other hand, the relegation of military duties only to those that volunteered in it ensured (A) that we could engage in war whenever and wherever and that there would be a class of people specifically reserved for the job of dealing out death and facing enemy fire; and (B) that the entirety of the country would never again be engaged in what it saw as a fight for the survival of the country or the world as a whole.

This, perhaps, feeds into an image of what a Republicanism--or, more rightly, Americanism--of a different time was. By the 21st Century, one need only ask "leave me alone" in order to qualify as a political conservative. Even for relatively "un-libertarian" members of the Republican coalition, the "faith alone" morality or the belief in warfare without participation, would come to encompass various facets of this worldview. For a Republican, or perhaps even a conservative, in 1946, duty to community appears to have a different meaning, as the ideal family man stands athwart the very forces that American (at least nominally left-wing) populism had itself aligned against in year prior.

I'm familiar with the interpretation you mention, and my feelings on it are a bit stronger than yours--I think it's a downright unacceptable way of looking at It's a Wonderful Life, and has moral as well as critical problems. Fundamentally the idea seems to be that real value in George's life would have been in doing something "big" and conventionally impressive like Harry or Sam Wainwright, and that the small and the ordinary and the everyday sacrifices that filled his days were only squandering his ~individual~ talent. I guess one could argue that that's a "liberal" idea but it certainly isn't any kind of left-wing one; if anything it's more reactionary than the story that Capra actually told (of course it originates in the pages of the archetypically complacent-centrist-liberal Grey Lady). I'm sure you and I could both find plenty of reasons in our respective worldviews to reject that reading of the movie.

Interesting to think that Capra et al. may have seen the story they were telling solely as a moral parable as distinct from any kind of economic one (morality and economics being--artificially, in my view--separated here). In some ways it reminds me of the widespread moral sterilization of A Christmas Carol.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm familiar with the interpretation you mention, and my feelings on it are a bit stronger than yours--I think it's a downright unacceptable way of looking at It's a Wonderful Life, and has moral as well as critical problems. Fundamentally the idea seems to be that real value in George's life would have been in doing something "big" and conventionally impressive like Harry or Sam Wainwright, and that the small and the ordinary and the everyday sacrifices that filled his days were only squandering his ~individual~ talent. I guess one could argue that that's a "liberal" idea but it certainly isn't any kind of left-wing one; if anything it's more reactionary than the story that Capra actually told (of course it originates in the pages of the archetypically complacent-centrist-liberal Grey Lady). I'm sure you and I could both find plenty of reasons in our respective worldviews to reject that reading of the movie.

Interesting to think that Capra et al. may have seen the story they were telling solely as a moral parable as distinct from any kind of economic one (morality and economics being--artificially, in my view--separated here). In some ways it reminds me of the widespread moral sterilization of A Christmas Carol.

I'm in general agreement with your statements in the first paragraph. The general message of such an interpretation looks like a blank checck on some Randian "master morality". As to your second point, I'll note that such a separation of economics and morality is nothing notable; my dad was a conservative Republican, Catholic in orientation, who loved both "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol". That doesn't mean he was in any way prepared to vote for some sort of platform of economic "social justice". Nevertheless, that someone around 1946 would entertain such notions politically--the ideal of small capital, estranged from both organized labor and industrial monopoly--is hardly token either. I'm reading a book for a class in January on the 1920's Klu Klux Klan; they regularly entertained a defense of capitalism alongside a hatred for both chain stores and multi-national capital, and for progressive reform. It's not surprising that such an idea, perhaps stripped down of certain overt racial ideas, would permeate int he north around the same period, especially in the context of the New Deal. I'm quite sure that in the mind of a 1940's conservative Republican, some idealized small town, family friendly capitalism, perhaps with certain restrictions on predatory activity, appeared far less threatening than secular/rational national progressive bureaucracy. George Bailey is motivated by community, not class, solidarity, paired with at least quasi-religious overtones.

Oh, I know that separating economics and morality this way isn't really noteworthy or unusual--I think it's wrongheaded, but that's because I'm a leftist. I'm perfectly aware that there's a whole half of the political spectrum (more or less) that disagrees with me. It's one thing to say that people like Potter behave unacceptably; it's another to say that their behavior should be subject to detailed top-down legal constraints. In fact, one of the reasons it's hard to honestly classify A Christmas Carol as in any sense a leftist text is that the definitive representative of love and charity by the élite towards the less fortunate isn't any of the early Victorian society's various modernizers and social reformers but the ultra-old-school, long-dead Fezziwig. (It's things like this in my favorite stories that make me way more emotionally sympathetic to conservatism than most people with negative-eight E scores.) When I refer to "moral sterilization" I'm not referring to reading works like these in a manner that happens to diverge from my own political sensibilities, I'm referring to refusing to locate in them any kind of politically meaningful critique at all. Nothing is preventing such a critique from coming from a civil-society, voluntaristic conservative perspective.

Interesting that the KKK was doing that but I don't think it's especially relevant here given that Capra was a Catholic immigrant (and, come to think of it, the church we very briefly see George going to on V-E and V-J Days seems to be Catholic). To use Catholic terminology there's something very subsidiaritarian about the movie. One is sort of tempted to imagine Ernie the cab driver or some such figure as a Sam Gamgee-type character, updated for the industrial age. (I was actually just thinking earlier about how part of my moral objection to the theory you linked is informed by my having imprinted on a lot of Tolkien's implicit moral sensibilities at a young age.)

Now Lost Horizon, THERE'S a Capra movie that goes in what I've come to regard as some deeply disturbing thematic and political directions.