Do You Know The Phase Of The Moon?

I like to begin my class on ancient and medieval philosophy with two questions: (1) Do we know more about the moon than they knew five centuries ago?  (2) Do you know what phase the moon is in right now?

Of course, most of us would say "yes" to the first question, and with good reason.  After all, we've been to the moon several times, and we've brought samples back.  We have remarkable technologies for remote sensing.  The sciences have gone beyond what most people even a century ago could have imagined.

The second question might be harder to answer without looking up the answer somewhere.  When I ask my students, usually none of them know the current phase of the moon.  A recent facebook poll I gave my friends yielded many more positive replies to the second question.  Not a very scientific poll, since it might be that many who did not know simply chose not to reply out of shame.  Still, fewer than half of those who replied said they did know the moon's current phase.

I can think of no reason to be ashamed of not knowing the phase of the moon.  Most of us have no need to know it, and I don't ask the question in order to scold my students, but to point out something about how our knowledge has changed. It seems likely to me that five hundred years ago many more people would have been aware of the phase of the moon.  Children who play outside, farmers, fishers, sailors, and soldiers all wind up depending on the moon, or at least having considerable exposure to it.  Today, very few of us have reason to notice it, because our lives have changed so much. 

This brings me back to my first question: do we know more about the moon today than they knew five centuries ago?  In one sense, the answer is still obviously "yes."  But in another way, it has to be "no."  Most of us (myself included) don't pay much attention to the moon.  Our knowledge of its phase is not the knowledge of familiarity but rather confidence that, if we needed to know, we could look it up somewhere.  We have confidence in the knowledge of our community, and of its possession of data.

Which leads me to a third question: Is it enough to know that someone else knows the answer?  Sure, we don't need to know what the moon looks like right now.  But if you haven't taken a little time to stare at it lately, you might have forgotten something worth knowing: the moon is beautiful.  Go have a look.

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Photos: (top) Full moon over Sioux Falls, SD, summer, 2011. (middle)  The moon rises over the Atlantic and shines through mangroves in Belize, January, 2011.  (bottom) The moon rises over Buenos Aires, August 2010.

The Ethics of Hunting

According to the myth, Actaeon the hunter was turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own dogs.   Many versions add that this was because Actaeon offended Artemis.  He viewed her as she bathed, or he attempted to violate her.  His punishment was to be transformed from hunter to hunted.  His own dogs did not recognize him as they devoured him, (though Apollodorus adds that they later grieved as they searched for their master.)

Just as there are many versions of the myth, so there are many interpretations, and many things that Actaeon and Artemis might symbolize.  The divinity of Artemis suggests to some that hunters seek something much loftier than meat for their table.  Her femininity and virginity suggest to others that hunting represents sexual violence in another guise.

Both of these may be correct, but let me offer a third possibility: perhaps this is a story about virtue.  Actaeon acts without virtue, and he then becomes the victim of his own plans.  He makes the mistake of thinking that a hunter is the rightful possessor of all he sees, and so he fails to act with humility and gratitude.  As a result, he loses everything, including those relationships that were most dear to him.

The myth of Actaeon is a vivid picture of what good hunters know: the hunter is not lord of the forest nor master of nature.  Most of us live our lives as far from predation as we can arrange.  A certain type of hunter attempts to erase some of that distance.  The best hunters may be those who, in doing so, discover their true place in nature and emerge from the forest and field remembering their place with humility and gratitude.  Actaeon forgets who he is when he attempts to take Artemis as his own, and his forgetfulness is absolute.  

People Of The Waters That Are Never Still

Generations ago, one of my European grandfathers and one of my Native American grandmothers married, fusing in their offspring two peoples who had parted ways ages before, one heading west to the British Isles, the other to the Bering Strait and across to North America.  I grew up in New York, near where they met and married, and my childhood is marked by memories of that land: tall oaks and white pines, deep forests, rocky crags over which the water pours, never still, always the same, always changing.  The waterfalls of the Catskill Mountains are a constant presence in those mountains and in my memories.  They are the waters of my mothers and fathers, and of my youth.

(Photo: Kaaterskill Creek in New York State)

My family has since lost the languages those ancestors spoke, and this fusion of tribes has adopted the linguistic fusion of English.  I have no intention of claiming a legal place among either of the nations from which I am descended, nor even to name them here. But I find that the memory of both, and of the lands they lived on, is rooted deeply in my consciousness of who I am.  Last year, while visiting the British Museum, I saw a display of various Native American peoples, including my own.  It was the only time a museum has moved me to tears.  The words and ways of my forebears may be mostly gone, but they are not forgotten.  My father taught me to remember them and what they knew of the land we lived on, and often, while teaching me to know the woods, he would remind me that those woods were old family acquaintances.

Jacob Wawatie and Stephanie Pyne, in their article "Tracking in Pursuit of Knowledge," cite Russell Barsh as saying that "what is 'traditional' about traditional knowledge is not its antiquity but the way in which it is acquired and used." Our word "tradition" comes from Latin roots that mean something like "giving over" or "handing down."  Traditional knowledge is knowledge that is a gift from one generation to the next, a gift we give because we ourselves were given it. I am grateful to my father, in ways that I may never have told him - in ways that perhaps words cannot begin to tell - for the traditions he learned and loved and passed on to me.  I'm grateful that he has not let me forget.

There is, of course danger in emphasizing one's heritage and one's roots, especially if we make that the source of a distinction between ourselves and others, or a way of diminishing the lives and traditions of others.  Just as much as it matters to me that I am from the people of the waters of the Catskills, it matters to me that my ancestors shared those waters with one another, people from two continents recognizing, each in the other, the waters from which both arose.

For all that I have received, for the traditions like waters pouring over the cliffs, gifts like the Kaaterskill Creek, let me give thanks.  Let me give thanks with my life, offering to those who come after me, a taste of the sweetness of those same waters.

Taxing Mileage

Several recent news articles have mentioned the possibility of taxing miles driven rather than (or in addition to) taxing gasoline.

On the one hand, this is a fair way of making sure that drivers of electric vehicles share the cost of maintaining roads.

But if it is to be enacted fairly, any such law will have to:

• avoid placing an unfair burden on rural drivers, who generally must drive further to work and school, and earn less than their urban counterparts; and
• ensure Americans that the GPS devices that would track mileage are not also used inappropriately by government to track the locations and movements of citizens.

 Maybe any such legislation could be made more fair by correlating the tax rate to zip codes and to vehicle weight.  The latter probably has the greatest impact on road wear, after all, and correlation to zip codes could help keep us from placing yet another burden on farmers, ranchers, and other rural workers.

Pay-to-Play and Democracy

A South Dakota legislator has proposed that SD schools can save some money by introducing "pay-to-play" fees for students wishing to participate in sports, debate, and other school activities.  From a fiscal standpoint this may seem like a good idea, but it is not.  Pay-to-play ensures that only students who can afford the fees (which can be substantial) can participate.  Either these activities are an important part of public education for all students, or they are not and should not be a part of public education.  As I see it, sports and debate and similar extracurriculars can be excellent ways of teaching self-discipline, teamwork, diligence, respect for others, love of learning, and other things that we should want all students to learn.  For just that reason, we should resist limiting access to these activities to just those who - like my family - are wealthy enough to afford them. 

Wittgenstein, contra Hawking

Stephen Hawking recently said that philosophy is "dead" because it simply hasn't kept up with science in recent years. Hawking is not the first to make this sort of charge. A number of people have written replies to Hawking's charge, and I won't cover that ground again.  Instead, let me simply offer a reply from Wittgenstein:

“Philosophy has made no progress?  If somebody scratches where it itches, does that count as progress?  If not, does that mean it wasn’t an authentic scratch?  Not an authentic itch?  Couldn’t this response to the stimulus go on for a long time until a remedy for itching is found?”

No Room In The South Dakota Inn? An unjust and ironic law.

Manny Steele and two other SD legislators are apparently proposing that we criminalize hospitality.  Their proposed law would make it illegal to offer a ride or lodging to illegal immigrants, and it would also make it a crime for an illegal immigrant to ask for work. 

Putting aside the fact that this would be a very difficult law to obey and to enforce (Would bus drivers and cab drivers need to verify citizenship before taking on fares?  Would it be illegal to offer a ride to a stranger?  Would shelters be forced to turn aside illegal immigrants on freezing nights?) this is ironic news to appear on the first Sunday of Advent, the season in which we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  This is the Jesus who was born to poor immigrants who had no place to live in their hometown.  Who was born in a barn.  Whose parents were forced to flee their homeland to escape politically motivated violence. 

I propose that our legislators take some time this Advent to try to put themselves in the shoes of other poor migrants.  Think about it: if you lived in Mexico, would you willingly give up that climate for South Dakota winters if you could avoid it?  Would you give up your hometown, your family, your language, your familiar food - in short, everything - to come to South Dakota if you could avoid it? 

More to the point: Would you make Mary give birth in your barn or your garage?  I understand why you're concerned about jobs and about enforcing our laws.  We have a great country, and we should work to keep it great.  But we will not make our country greater by making our hearts harder.

Meanwhile, as for me and my family, we would rather stand with Mary and Joseph.  And we will continue to say, as Christians and Jews have said for millennia, that an unjust law is no law at all. 

María y José, bienvenidos en nuestro pueblo. 

Reading and Writing and Gratitude

It's easy to get too busy to read, and too busy to write.  My sporadic blog posting reflects the cycles of the academic year: some times I'm full of time to post and full of ideas for writing; other times, I'm simply too busy to write.  Those too-busy-to-write times seem to come more often than the other times.

Still, I make myself promise to write -- books, articles, reviews, essays -- as a means of self-discipline.  If I'm reading, I'm learning.  If I'm writing, I'm learning even more.

But I am busy.  So all this posting will do is acknowledge the giants upon whose shoulders I have been sitting this past week: Plato's Phaedrus; Augustine's City of God; Mooney's Lost Intimacy in American Thought; West's Prophetic Fragments and American Evasion of Philosophy; Apuleius' De Deo Socratis  and his Asinus; a handful of Rorty's essays; Royce's Problem of Christianity; a handful of books on environmental philosophy (trying to sort out both some ethical issues and the practical matter of next spring's syllabus!); and, as always, a smattering of Peirce.

No, I don't usually read quite that many books in a week.  (Actually, I think I'm leaving out a half-dozen or so - oh, yeah, there was some Rauschenbusch in there, and some Martin Luther King, too.  Lots of social and political thought about religion, politics, freedom, and creativity, mostly.)

Last week was a marathon of reading and writing.  The result was a book chapter and sketches of about ten other articles.  Not sure they'll all get written - I only have so much time, remember?  But the most important part of this has been not the words on the page, but the way those words have served as a tool for thinking.  For that, and for the life that allows me to do that at all, I am very, very grateful.