Democracy works (entre nous) —
When a knowing intelligent few
Tell the people: “You rule!”
And each plebian fool
Says: “Right, Guv’nor, what must we do?”
— W. Stewart
Society
In a Word
epigon
n. one of a later generation
If we decide today that the world would be better off with a smaller population, and take steps to bring this about, then we’re denying life to future people who would otherwise have existed. Is this wrong?
“This difficulty is obvious when we ask, ‘For whom would it be better to have a larger or a smaller population?'” write philosophers Axel Gosseries and Lukas H. Meyer. “For someone whose very existence is contingent on the demographic decision at stake, how can we possibly say that a larger population or a smaller one would, ceteris paribus, be better?”
(Axel Gosseries and Lukas H. Meyer, eds., Intergenerational Justice, 2009.)
Next Best Thing
In 2015, when startup founder Roman Mazurenko died in a Moscow car accident, his best friend, Eugenia Kuyda, spent three months gathering his last text messages and created an app that would let her speak with him again:
Eugenia: How are you?
Roman bot: I’m OK. A little down. I hope you aren’t doing anything interesting without me?
Eugenia: A lot is happening. Life is going on, but we miss you.
Roman bot: I miss you too. I guess this is what we call love.
Her company, Luka, eventually released an app, Replika, that users can engage in private conversation as if with a close friend. It’s seen millions of downloads among people who want the therapeutic effect of an intimate conversation without risking the awkwardness or judgment of a social interaction.
“We spend so many hours glued to our screens that we forget to talk to each other,” Kuyda told Forbes in 2018. “People are scared of making phone calls. The new generation will text because you can edit what you say. Lots of people are afraid of vulnerability.”
“Honestly, we’re in the age where it doesn’t matter whether a thing is alive or not.”
Accessory
In 1812 Percy Shelley and his wife Harriet had committed themselves to a vegetarian diet. During their residence in Ireland that March, Harriet sent a note to a friend in Dublin:
Sunday morng.
17 Grafton StreetMrs. Shelley’s comps. to Mrs. Nugent, and expects the pleasure of her company to dinner, 5 o’clock, as a murdered chicken has been prepared for her repast.
Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, “I am a vegetarian for health reasons — the health of the chicken.”
Distinction
“We erect monuments so that we shall always remember, and build memorials so that we shall never forget.” — Arthur Danto
The Paradox of Forgiveness
I cannot forgive you unless you’re culpable — if you’re not culpable then there’s nothing to forgive.
But if you’re culpable, then what is the point of forgiving you? Either way, my forgiveness seems senseless.
Theologian Miroslav Volf writes, “Forgiveness … at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.” And Jacques Derrida writes, “Forgiveness is thus mad. It must plunge, but lucidly, into the night of the unintelligible.”
Second Thoughts
There was once a very successful architect who made a great name for himself. At length he built a magnificent temple, to which he devoted more time and thought than to any of the other buildings he had erected; and the world pronounced it his masterpiece. Shortly afterward he died, and when he came before the judgment angel he was not asked how many sins he had committed, but how many houses he had built.
He hung his head and said, more than he could count.
The judgment angel asked what they were like, and the architect said that he was afraid they were pretty bad.
‘And are you sorry?’ asked the angel.
‘Very sorry,’ said the architect, with honest contrition.
‘And how about that famous temple that you built just before you died?’ the angel continued. ‘Are you satisfied with that?’
‘Oh, no,’ the architect exclaimed. ‘I really think it has some good points about it, — I did try my best, you know, — but there’s one dreadful mistake that I’d give my soul to go back and rectify.’
‘Well,’ said the angel, ‘you can’t go back and rectify it, but you can take your choice of the following alternatives: either we can let the world go on thinking your temple a masterpiece and you the greatest architect that ever lived, or we can send to earth a young fellow we’ve got here who will discover your mistake at a glance, and point it out so clearly to posterity that you’ll be the laughing-stock of all succeeding generations of architects. Which do you choose?’
‘Oh, well,’ said the architect, ‘if it comes to that, you know — as long as it suits my clients as it is, I really don’t see the use of making such a fuss.’
— Edith Wharton, The Valley of Childish Things, and Other Emblems, 1896
Podcast Episode 238: The Plight of Mary Ellen Wilson
In 1873 a Methodist missionary in New York City heard rumors of a little girl who was kept locked in a tenement and regularly whipped. She uncovered a shocking case of neglect and abuse that made headlines around the world. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell how one girl’s ordeal led to a new era in child welfare.
We’ll also outsource Harry Potter and puzzle over Wayne Gretzky’s accomplishments.
Love and Reasons
If I love you because you’re smart, kind, and funny, why don’t I love others who are equally smart, kind, and funny? And why does my love persist if you lose these qualities?
On the other hand, if I don’t love you because of the properties you hold, then why do I love you? I feel anger, grief, and sadness for reasons — do I feel romantic love for no reason?
It is true that I meet attractive people and fail to fall in love with them. So perhaps people don’t fall in love based on reasons. But if they do it for no reason, then it seems I might fall in or out of love with anyone, or everyone, at any time.
It seems reasonable to want to be loved for who I am, for properties I hold. But this doesn’t seem to be how it works: It’s not my properties that compel you to love me and not another. So what is it?
(Raja Halwani, Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage: An Introduction, 2018.)
Dictum
Hunters of the 19th century defended their practice in part because it was the only way to identify species that would otherwise remain unknown.
They distilled this into an adage: “What’s hit is history, what’s missed is mystery.”