Purity of Intention

More on the uses of political rhetoric, though as soon as I get hot under the collar about these things I wonder how I could be so naive. There was a discussion of the role of that most frightening of men, Dick Cheney, and the general idea that a State's strategic actions (eg securing the oil) would be routinely concealed under layers of moral justification that had nothing to do with the original and real motivation, justification in terms of the overcoming of tyranny, in terms of liberty and democracy, and so forth. This doesn't give Public Relations a good name as a profession. (Actually, I noticed that Cheney said on more than one occasion that there was no doubt that Saddam Hussein was amassing WMD. The wilier Tony Blair only ever said that he had no doubt that he had them).

But then the news turned to the situation in Gaza and that angry and eloquent Irishman, John Ging. The Israeli Public Relations team work with routine forms of defensive rhetoric. Thus Hamas intend to kill innocent civilians (which is wrong, certainly) whereas Israeli forces do not intend to kill civilians, they are concerned only to kill militants, and to that extent they are in a morally superior position because they are acting in legitimate self defence (with the implication that Hamas are not, and that rather than acting as a resistance to an occupation are sending off their rockets out of malice and nihilism).

But there is an interesting ambiguity in what they say. They don't intend to kill civilians, even though an awful lot of them get in the way and are killed because there are militants in their midst whom the IDF does intend to kill. The problem is ... that it is not the case that they intend to avoid killing civilians in such circumstances. It is significant that they get very angry when people say this sort of thing. To repeat what I said in an earlier post, it would certainly be wrong of Hamas to use civilians as human shields in a UN facility in the course of a military operation, if this is indeed what they have been doing. One Israeli spokesman said that their doing this constituted a war crime, with the implication that, rather than withdrawing, the IDF would rightly attack the position even in the knowledge that there would be many civilian casualties, civilians that they did not intend to kill but did not intend to avoid killing either. If they did intend to avoid killing civilians then they would have withdrawn.

Silence after music, again, as important as the music it is coloured by and follows.

It is in such silence, and just occasionally, that one regards the human condition, and thus one's own life, from a position beyond it. Well, I say beyond it, but this possibility is also part of it, isn't it, except that when one refers to the human condition one has in mind its bliss and blunder, its turmoil and calm, and I am talking about a regard that casts its gaze upon all of this gathered into a single whole. I should like to say that this regard is one of love, since that seems to be its quality, though it also takes the form of compassion.

I think I really do mean a perspective that looks quietly at the whole, often exemplified in a single scene. Thus it is to be contrasted with the real indignation that one feels about what is now being inflicted on the population of Gaza, and this, one might think, is an inescapable moral indignation, but the phenomenon and the response are also part of what one is sometimes aware of in the silence. Both, though, are capable of leading to action, and I wonder whether the transcendent perspective works towards peace and reconciliation, whereas the indignation inclines more to punishment and revenge, even though both seek justice, which is anyway a condition of peace and reconciliation. It would be a grotesque error and self-indulgence, though, to seek to cling to the contemplative aspect of this transcendent perspective at the expense of its active element which, I think, should sublimate (ie raise to a higher condition) the natural feelings of righteous indignation.

More generally, what is one to make of this capacity to be a witness of the whole, the whole nexus of cause and effect in human conduct? The most significant thing is that it is not neutral or 'disencchanted', it is from a point of view ...

And the music? I've been listening to Elizabeth Watts singing Schubert. most of the songs unfamiliar and yet at moments deeply familiar as they evoke memories of other songs by him in moments of the melody.

Naming prejudices and the full moon

Many names for racial or national groups start off as more or less descriptive or as abbreviations or metonymies for foreigners with curious dietary practices or common names (such as le bifsteak for a 'Brit' or Mick for an Irish male or Jimmy for a Glaswegian). Many other names are abusive from the start, often coined in times of war or conflict, or after conquest as expressions of contempt for those who are subordinate or inferior. But even the neutral descriptive terms come with an attitude, and the attitude contaminates the descriptive term so that it becomes an expression of racial prejudice, and so a new term is invented, but it is tracked by and then overtaken by the negative attitude, which then contaminates the term, so a new one is devised, but then is tracked by ... until there is no longer racial or sectional contempt. But political correctness can at least raise awareness and make people think about the cultural prejudies they hardly know they have.

You don't have to be drunk to fall into a ditch (though presumably it helps) but if you leave a house late at night on this island and walk back home you are liable to fall into one or walk into a wall if you don't have a torch because the dark is as dark as dark can be, especially if the sky is overcast with cloud. Thus one sees the benefit of a moonlit night which, as a townie I neglected except for its aesthtic aspects. The point is that you can see. On the other hand, I suppose there are circumstances when the concealing darkness is an advantage. One is close to anient times here .. the danger of attack, the advantage of surprise, it is still in the air, somehow, though the local citizenry is of course benign.

One thing that might start a person along the path to doing philosophy is just paying attention to the words of politicians, or perhaps one is already on that path when one assesses the relation of these words to the realities. Thus the Hamas spokesperson tells us that this war against the Palestinians is actually against the whole umma itself; thus George Bush says that Hamas is to blame for the current crisis; thus the Israeli spokespersons insist that Israel has a right to defend itself, and tell us that they are making hundreds of thousands of phone calls to request people to get away from the bombs and rockets. There are truths and falsehoods here, but in both cases there is evasion and a refusal to acknowledge the full dreadful reality. Thus it is true that Hamas should be condemned for embedding themselves and their weapons within the city and in the midst of the civilian population, and it is right that it should be condemned by Israeli spokespersons. But these same spokespersons then claim that their smashing of these human shields is just what any nation would do in defense of its own citizens, whereas what they thus do is itself quite wicked. It is the reality of rhetoric that leads to the necessity for dialectic. What is shameful is that the politicians still think that they can get away with it: that is to say, they still have cause to think that their populations are credulous. There is also much anger and much suppressed moral discomfort under the anger, disguised by the raised and indignant voice. There is a certain comfort in anger, it is a familar garment worn easily but not so easily discarded.

On the Meaning of Life

This picture of the Skara Brae village remains which look as though they are about to be overwhelmed finally by the waves ... makes me think of the fragilty and contingency of human existence. But as the New Year has arrived it's time to start thinking about work. I'm still reading and benefitting from John Armstrong's book on Goethe, though at some point I need to think my way through the issue of 'the Meaning of Life'. I have even bought a little book on the theme by Terry Eagleton ... I suppose to see what he makes of the question. There are certainly diverse and opposed experiences which some writers will describe as experiences of meaning, the sense that life has some meaning, or that it lacks meaning, and so forth. But I find myself quite doubtful about whether to go along with such assessments. I am inclined, perhaps wrongly, to associate talk of life having a meaning with the idea of its being a preparation for the life to come, though I know that puts it too crudely, with the implication that life does not have meaning after all if we abandon the relevant religious beliefs. But this is just to say that in that case the concept of 'meaning' has no application, rather than that meaning is now absent and it is all 'absurd'. However, there is still the problem of the negative sense of life that sees it is as allegedly pointless or meaningless. I wonder whether this negative experience of life, which is real enough, is better described in other ways, in terms of despair, perhaps, or a sense of futility, as opposed to engagement and fulfilment, absorption. Everthing would then turn on what it was that one found futile or absorbing. No answers here, just a preliminary thought that talk of meaning in relation to life is at best not helpful, possibly a metaphor. I suspect that what is more fundamental is an ethical sense. Okay, just notes ... I think this last thought is not quite connected. I'm thinking about the idea of Bildung or 'self-cultivation' and it seems to me that its deepest impulse is an ethical one, and that this determines the form of the cultivation or attention to the self. I don't say 'should' ...