The Three Motives

 It's easy to scoff at radical left-wing projects of reconstituting human society on the basis of love or other forms of voluntary pro-social behavior; but one can equally ask how far any human society would get if it tried to operate without these motives. Opening John Ruskin's classic work of Victorian social criticism, Unto This Last—a work that profoundly influenced Gandhi and other social reformers—one may feel tempted to roll one's eyes at first with world-weary skepticism at his project of rearing a new society on the foundation of the "social affections." But Ruskin then catches one up short with his observations on a line from Adam Smith. 

Somewhat unfairly, Ruskin quotes the great Scottish political economist—out of context—on the subject of what generally motivates people to be honest. In this passage, at least, Smith claimed that the chief motivator was the threat of being penalized on the market—after all, a dishonest supplier engaged in sharp dealing and offering shoddy merchandise would soon find himself without employment. While this might appear uncontroversial to most of us, Ruskin begs us to consider what would become of a society that treated Smith's idea of self-interest as truly the sole basis for human society. How long would any political community survive, he asks, that recognized no other reason for honesty than this? 

The War Against the Machines

 On the latest episode of a podcast I follow regularly on national security topics, the guest panelist—a law professor—was arguing earnestly that we should drop the "AI" label when discussing emerging generative language models, and substitute for it something broader like "advanced information processing." His reasoning was that the AI catchword inevitably conjures images of the "Frankenstein" archetype. "People start worrying that it will come alive," he said, and therefore get distracted from the more realistic and immediate dangers of the new technology—which are chiefly that it will fall into the hands of malign human actors. 

I felt the professor may be missing the point. After all, the fear that the new language models will start acting autonomously is not speculative at this point. They can already "hallucinate" and interact with human interlocutors in ways that go against the latter's wishes and expectations. Of course, this does not mean they are "really" alive or conscious—but to some extent it does not matter whether they are or otherwise. Even if all they are doing is guessing statistically-probable correlations between words, after all, and using these stochastic models to construct sentences—does it matter if these same mathematical models lead them to act in ways contrary to human interests? Do we not therefore have to spend at least some time contemplating the "Frankenstein" problem regardless?

The Right Age to Read Hesse

 Hermann Hesse's perennially-popular Steppenwolf begins—in its post-1961 editions—with an earnest note from the author expressing discomfort with the vogue the novel has enjoyed among young people. He urges his readers to look beyond the book's stylized ennui and romantic discontent—those eternal passions of youth—to see the larger spiritual message behind Harry Haller's crisis and redemption. Fair enough; and indeed, there is something deeply ironic about the infatuation of generations of young people with the book, not least the fact that its title became the name of a rock group, even as the book is filled with vehement protestations against modern "radio music." 

Still, one can see in reading it why the book has long been a young person's novel. Here, it can almost be said, is the ur-text and template of every indie movie ever filmed. There is the over-educated intellectual protagonist with a habit of thinking his way into the most despair-inducing spiritual blind alleys; the prototype of the "manic pixie dream girl" in the form of Hermine, who takes it upon herself gratis—seemingly requesting nothing in return—to cure the gloomy protagonist's melancholia by introducing him to the free-spirited pleasures of bohemia. 

Tautologies

At some point during the Trump era, a certain familiar sign began to appear in innumerable front yards of countless suburban homes and on the wayside pulpits of liberal churches. You know the ones I mean: the signs that always lead with "In this house, we believe...", followed by a series of progressive activist slogans. 

Now, surely all such slogans have their place. Under the reign of our grotesque former president, the signs often operated as a convenient shorthand and social signifier: here, they informed us, was a home or church where one would be in the company of fellow members of the Resistance. Phew! As such, the signs played their useful role. And of course, as a good liberal, one did not actually disagree with anything on the signs—to the extent they were saying anything specific at all. 

Arrested Development

 In the aforementioned Richard Schickel biography of Walt Disney, The Disney Version, an episode occurs early on in which one of Disney's business associates catches the future mogul bent over a drawing board, "practicing variations on his signature." Schickel observes the irony of this fact, since, of course, Disney's loopy rendition of his own last name would go on to achieve iconic brand status (even though, in later life, Schickel reports, Disney in granting autographs could not actually replicate the signature in the logo that was supposedly his own). But Schickel writes that Disney's practicing of his signature also reveals a psychological truth: the activity of rehearsing calligraphic variations on one's own name is, after all, "often associated with willful attempts to resolve the identity crises of adolescence." 

I felt instantly called out. For I can't help but notice that there has been a sharp uptick over the past year of the amount of time that I spend in a typical day practicing my own signature. Since starting law school, I have filled pages of notebooks with my own name written over and over again in cursive script, foreboding block letters, cuddly bubble letters, and so on. 

Family Separation and Shame

 Reading Richard Schickel's justly famous 1968 critical biography of Walt Disney, The Disney Version, I tensed up instinctively when he got to the point in history when the studio produced Dumbo. I knew, based on the biographer's narrative approach so far, that he would have to include a description of the film's plot and its artistic achievements. And I knew in turn, therefore, that he would have to reckon somehow with one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in cinematic history: the one in which the baby elephant protagonist is separated from his mother by prison bars. Still today, without having seen the film in years, if not decades, the mere memory of this scene makes me want to sob in anguish. 

Schickel does not shy away from his difficult task, and he points out that I was far from unique in my reaction. The family separation scene in Dumbo, he observes, plays on one of the deepest fears of small children. Thus, he recounts, when viewing the film with an audience that includes children and their parents, one can always feel an intense emotional reaction in the room when they get to this sequence. It is up there with the episode of the children transforming into donkeys in Pinocchio as one of the most potently disturbing and upsetting images in all of cinema: a scene that has left its raw impression on generations of adults who saw it for the first time as kids. 

Jumping the Shark

 One of the eternal debates in pop culture is over the ideal length of a TV series—and here it must be said that Britain and the US have adopted manifestly opposite philosophies on this subject. The perennial complaint of American viewers of every popular UK series is how little of it gets made. "Why?" we cry, "Why are there only three episodes of Sherlock per season??" Or: "Why is the UK version of The Office so much shorter than the American one?" But to this, the British viewers can always fire back: "at least our shows know how to end when they ought to. They don't drag on for years, long after they have run out of fresh ideas or interesting storylines." In other words, the UK shows have managed to avoid that distinctly American TV phenomenon: the problem of "jumping the shark."

I penned a critique recently of the decline and fall of the US version of The Office, for instance, and I notice that I failed to dwell at sufficient length on what is probably the one single, greatest flaw in the series: its inordinate length. The first season of the show set up a compelling central drama: will the two charming and lovable romantic leads manage to overcome their inhibitions and current emotional entanglements enough to arrive at the dénouement we all feel to be necessary and inevitable: in brief, will Jim and Pam finally get together? But this central plot was resolved after three seasons. Nevertheless, the increasingly rudderless show drifted on for years more, losing viewers and descending into increasingly broad comedy and improbable storylines in order to clutch at some fleeting relevance. 

The Turk's Head

 One might not think it would be possible to be more incensed about the banalities of modernist architecture than Tom Wolfe was, in his book-length screed on the subject (the unforgivably named From Bauhaus to Our House). But apparently there is a contemporary online conspiracy theory that has managed to outdo even the seersucker suit–wearing author of Bonfire of the Vanities for sheer vituperative fury on the subject of Mies van der Rohe's creative offspring. 

As angry as Tom Wolfe was about boring and drab buildings, after all, he at least attributed their construction to nothing more sinister than the cloistered elitism of contemporary architects. But now, not content with this explanation, a generation of online crusaders has apparently become convinced that the shift in fashions from the splendors of Beaux-Arts and Art Deco of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the glass boxes of Philip Johnson can only be explained by a massive coverup and conspiracy. 

Professional Murderers

In the introduction he penned to the 2004 Modern Library edition of Nikolai Gogol's epic historical novella of the Ukrainian steppes, Taras Bulba, Robert Kaplan observes that the Russian author's "account" of the region's violent history "mirrors the conflicts, the confusions, and the nuances of our own era." One is already prepared to acknowledge that Kaplan's words are only too true. But then he pinpoints what he has in mind with words that seem even more startlingly prescient, with the benefit of hindsight: "It remains unclear, for instance, whether Ukraine will survive as an independent country or at some point will dissipate within the pressure cooker of a resurgent Russian Empire." 

Kaplan's words must have sounded alarmist and morbid in 2004 (or rather 2003, when the introduction was copyrighted). Most Americans were at that point still optimistic about the ultimate success of the post-Soviet Russian democracy. The George W. Bush administration was seeking a closer relationship with Vladimir Putin, of whom the former had recently remarked that he had been able to "look into his eyes and see his soul." The conflicts and annexations that would justify warnings of a "resurgent Russian Empire"—from South Ossetia to Crimea to the 2022 Ukraine invasion—were all still far in the future. Two decades later, though, Kaplan's words seem preternaturally prophetic. 

Deductible from What?

 My sister and I were discussing the other day the largely unhelpful recommendations of most personal finance advisors. We agreed that their suggestions typically fail to account for at least two unpleasant facts of economic life: first, the biggest ticket items pulling money out of one's bank account tend to be the ones that are also the least negotiable—rent, insurance, debt service, etc. One can cut down all one wants on daily coffee purchases or take-out, to be sure, but these trimmings around the margin will forever leave untouched the largest sources of personal expenditure. 

Second, the personal financial advice always seems to merely take it for granted that one has something coming in on the front end. This is what is most baffling about the advice columns from the standpoint of anyone in the creative professions. The self-help gurus tell us: save ten percent of your income! But... we have to ask—ten percent of what? What are these mysterious sources of money that the advice columnists all assume we can turn on at our pleasure, leaving only the task of managing it? The real hard question of personal finances remains forever unaddressed: how is one supposed to make more money in the first place? 

Flaubert's Heresiology

 In Ariel Sabar's extensive reporting on the scrap of papyrus dubbed the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife," the journalist revealed two striking truths: first, the document was in fact a hoax, perpetrated by an amateur eccentric with just enough training in ancient Coptic and Egyptology to make a convincing fake. But second—the hoax, artfully-constructed though it was, also met with far too credulous a reception from scholars who ought to have known better. 

The reason for this slip in academic rigor, Sabar suggests, is that the con artist cleverly selected his marks—offering them far a discovery that catered directly to their deepest wishes. The Harvard Divinity School scholar who gave the fragment her imprimatur and authenticated it before the world, Karen King, had been searching for precisely this document all her career. Sabar relates video footage of King describing the ideal hypothetical find in a previous lecture—and it turns out that it matches perfectly with the fragment the con artist ultimately placed before her. 

Why So Serious?

 The literary origins of the Batman franchise's perennially favorite villain are often attributed to an 1869 Victor Hugo novel (or, more specifically, its 1928 film adaptation). But is it possible The Joker's true prototype is to be found in another French literary work ("novel" is not the right word) that partially appeared in the same year as Hugo's—namely, that notorious nineteenth century forerunner of Surrealism, the Chants de Maldoror? 

Here, after all, in one of the prose epic's early scenes, the eponymous antihero gives himself the same iconic scars that mark the Joker's visage (the ones the latter threatens to inflict on then-Senator Patrick Leahy, in a memorable scene in The Dark Knight). Maldoror also provides an explanation for this act of self-mutilation worthy of any Batman villain: he found himself incapable of smiling or laughter, he tells us, and so he carved a perpetual grin into his face in order to imitate the signs of mirth that he saw on the faces of a humanity that remained to him otherwise inaccessible and incomprehensible. 

Something Better

One of my posts last year started off with an anecdote about a friend. We had a minor disagreement about whether or not the minor inconveniences and frustrations of life could be accurately described as "injustices." His position was that they could not—because for something to be unjust, agency is required. There would have to be some god, creator, or pantheon that set up a framework of universal laws and promised justice in the first place. If no such being or beings existed, then a misfortune could not be characterized as a departure from any system of justice. It was merely that: a misfortune. 

I couldn't disagree with his reasoning; but still, I insisted that there was something about the experience of minor frustrations in life that felt like an injustice. I cited the authority on this point of Thomas Hardy. Here was someone who officially believed in an empty and indifferent universe. Yet he was simultaneously furious at that fact. He was perpetually railing against a god he didn't believe in; and every one of his great tragedies is a massive fist shaken in protest against a heaven that he believed to be uninhabited.