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“A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine.”

-Hector Berlioz

The Swartz Imperative

“You literally ought to be asking yourself all the time what is the most important thing in the world [you] could be working on right now, and if you are not working on that why aren’t you?”

– Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, describing the views
of Aaron Swartz in The Internet's Own Boy (2014)

This I Believe: There is so much bullsh**.

I wrote this "This I Believe" essay as a sample for my students a few years ago. Here it is decensored:

I believe that our society’s attention to detail is wrongheaded.

By this, I mean many things. I mean that we are more concerned about the perception of progress than the reality of progress. I mean that we are more alarmed by sexuality than by violence, depravity, and suffering. I mean that, as George Carlin once said, we are more offended by four letter words than by the intentions behind them. I mean that we are more fixated on rationing sodium and ketchup packets in the school cafeteria than developing the habits that underlie healthy eating. I mean that we are more focused on raising test scores than with eliminating poverty. I mean that we are more adamant about adequately funding prisons than adequately funding schools. I mean that we are more occupied with carefully selected statistics than with genuine, abundant signs of improvement or atrophy. I mean that we are more interested in SparkNotes summaries than with the raw, experiential meaning. I mean that we are more alarmed about microscopic nudity in Where’s Waldo than with naked bigotry in popular culture. I mean that we are more concerned, that is, with perception than we are with substance.

There is an inappropriate word that we use to describe this trend. A philosopher by the name of Harry G. Frankfurt writes about it in his insightful, book-long essay, “On Bullshit.” He writes:

One of the most salient features of our culture is there is so much bullsh**. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. [… but it] is more polite, as well as less intense, to say “Humbug!” than to say “bullsh**!”

However, Dr. Frankfurt’s conclusions and mine differ. He concludes that “[o]ur natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial—notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case,” he says, “sincerity itself is bullsh**.”

This statement of his is complete humbug—err, bullsh**. In my mind, another philosopher by the name of David Hume resolved this dispute ages ago. Hume’s law tells us that what is does not dictate what ought to be. We might ask, if our politics are dysfunctional, if our society is dysfunctional, if our schools are dysfunctional—is that due their nature? Due to our nature? Are we ourselves dysfunctional?

Bullsh**.

I believe we should always strive to make things better, and not merely acquiesce to their "nature." I believe that words matter, but so does substance. And I sincerely and substantively believe in substance.

A poem, slightly revised

we that have yet to end,

the great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great
grandchildren

of soil and
shards of bone,

again looking with wonder

at a canvas
bright with dying stars

on a cold evening

My new favorite joke

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse if it's an alcoholic considering all the bars he frequents, to which the horse replies "I don't think I am." POOF! The horse disappears.

This is the point in time when all the philosophy students in the audience begin to giggle, as they are familiar with the philosophical proposition of Cogito ergo sum, or I think, therefore, I am.

But to explain the concept aforehand would be putting Descartes before the horse.

1. The driest, most esoteric joke I know. (r/Jokes)

"Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down to Area Man"

HAZELWOOD, MO—Twenty-six years after Ronald Reagan first set his controversial fiscal policies into motion, the deceased president's massive tax cuts for the ultrarich at last trickled all the way down to deliver their bounty, in the form of a $10 bonus, to Hazelwood, MO car-wash attendant Frank Kellener. The late President Ronald Reagan clearly had people like present-day car wash attendant Frank Kellener in mind when articulating his "trickle-down" economic theory in the early 1980s.

"Back when Reagan was in charge, I didn't think much of him," Kellener, 57, said, holding up two five-dollar bills nearly three decades in the making. "But who would have thought that in 2007 I'd have this extra $10 in my pocket? He may not have lived to see it, but I'm sure President Reagan is up in heaven smiling down on me right now."

Leading economists say Kellener's unexpected windfall provides the first irrefutable proof of the effectiveness of Reagan's so-called supply-side economics, and shows that the former president had "incredible, far-reaching foresight."

"When the tax burden on the upper income brackets is lifted, the rich and not-rich alike all benefit," said Arthur Laffer, who was a former member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board. "Eventually."

...

The $10 began its long journey into Kellener's wallet in 1983, when a beefed-up national defense budget of $210 billion enabled the military to purchase advanced warhead-delivery systems from aerospace manufacturer Lockheed. Buoyed by a multimillion-dollar bonus, then-CEO Martin Lawler bought a house on a 5,000-acre plot in Montana. When a forest fire destroyed his home in 1986, Lawler took the federal relief check and invested it in a savings and loan run by a Virginia man named Michael Webber. After Webber's firm collapsed in 1989, and he was indicted on fraud and conspiracy charges, he retained the services of high- powered law firm Rabin & Levy for his defense. After six years and $7 million in legal fees, Webber received only a $250,000 fine, and the defense team went out to celebrate at a Washington, D.C.-area restaurant called Di Forenza. During dinner, lawyer Peter Smith overheard several investment bankers at an adjoining table discussing a hot Internet start-up that was about to go public. Smith took a portion of his earnings from the Webber case and bought several hundred shares in Gadgets.com, quadrupling his investment before selling them four months later. Gadgets.com's two founders used the sudden influx of investment capital to outfit their office with modern Danish furniture, in a sale brokered by the New York gallery Modern Now! in 1998. After the ensuing dot-com bust, Modern Now! was forced out of business, and Sotheby's auction house was put in charge of liquidating its inventory. The commission from that auction enabled auctioneer Mary Schafer to retire to the Ozark region of Missouri in 2006. Last month, while passing through Hazelwood, she took her Audi to Marlin Car Wash, where Kellener was one of the employees who tended to her car. She was so satisfied with the job that she left a $50 tip, which the manager divided among the people working that day.

1. Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man - The Onion