I’m out of it, and this is going to be digressive even by my standards (but with the hidden theme and other literary junk I can’t help). I spent 24 hr without electricity, which is nothing, only to then have the Internet go out, which is nothing, only to. . . well.
See. . .I live in a small house that I refer to as “The Crack Shack.” It’s 24’ x 27’, pacing the outer walls. Next door is a larger house with five gentlemen from Mexico (really; this is not Yanqui stupidity on my part). Our houses were built around 1941, and they were wired for electricity through the backyard to a large house belonging (then) to a wealthy (then) woman who had a primary connection.
The storm knocked three trees down onto the two electric lines from that (long dead) lady’s house to our houses. Both lines were/are on the wet ground, but both kept giving us electricity. (Wealthy lady became old lady. “Crabbed” and “unpleasant” became “crazy mean” (chasing her husband through the yard, in her wheelchair, with a stick). She died. Her granddaughter now lives in the house with her husband. These are the Two Least Aware Persons in the World. They fight a lot. They get off work at 3:20 AM and go out onto their ‘porch’ (our backyard) and have their friends over for loud, drunken conversations until 6:45 AM. I know these times well. So do the guys next door because it just doesn’t occur to them that other people might be asleep. 50/50 whether they realize other people exist.)
At 7:45 AM, the least aware people in the world had subcontractors over to clean up their yard. The subs disturbed the fallen trees. The wire going to the Crack Shack sparked. I smelled ozone, then burning PVC, and then. . . .
I don’t want to talk about the storm, though. After all, I have a workhouse to go to, and my dog has short hair, and the water comes into the house when called only.
No. I want to talk about listening to NPR. I hate doing that. My Roadie (TM) XM radio, which I have had for over a decade, fell down one time too many and began refusing to come on or turn off. Timing being what it is this would happen just when XM is about to charge me for my annual fee, too. Anyway, before the power went out, I was stuck with “All Things Considered” on terrestrial radio this morning, as I refuse to watch television in the morning. (It’s not an option now that the power is out, and I have cable that doesn’t offer MSNBC — just loads of Foxen Fiends and local broadcast of “This Morning Today, AM Edition Coastal Georgia.” There is only so much of watching the local con-man car seller affecting a southern accent he does not possess or another storm story like the last story that is possible on an empty stomach, or a full one.)
NPR has garnered complaints for its “bothsiderism” and its fascination with “Trump voters are still loyal” stories, and for good reason. In general, NPR seems to be trying to feed the alligator, again, to try to keep it from biting.
I suppose, if I were a contented or wealthy or stupid person, hearing that “both sides” do it would be consoling, as it would give me a way to feel better about being on the sidelines, apathetic, or uneducated, and it would give me peace with my vote for the Republican congressman or governor. If I were a stupid person, it might make me confused into bafflement and inactivity. In either case, the true pay-off for “both sides do it” and “Trump voters are still loyal” is not as much “Trump feels good about NPR” as it is “wealthy and stupid people don’t get involved in opposing conservative actions.”
What got me, though, was this morning, when they wondered whether the massive flooding in Houston might ‘start a conversation’ among ‘ruling politicians’ there over “climate change.” First, “climate change” is an especially odious term in this context, because we’re talking about warming, not “maybe a little cooler, little warming. . . who knows. . . just. . . you know. . . changes, like weather.” Second, that “ruling politicians” is a way to avoid saying “Republicans.” The correspondents were breaking their tongues and teeth to avoid saying the party’s name. Third, no, it won’t, and the reason is the same reason that logic has never saved a soul.
There are these people — simple creatures — who deny the role of humans in global warming and call themselves, or like to be called, “skeptics.” They claim to be “skeptical” of the science that says global warming is largely aligned with the Anthropocene. Thus, they claim to be part of a noble tradition, like David Hume! The truth is that they’re more like the skeptics who doubted that inoculations would prevent small pox. Sane people point out that, when the scientific consensus is 96% — 4%, and the 4% doesn’t deny global warming, but only the certainty of the degree of human power, one is not a skeptic, but a denier. Never mind all that, they say: “I’m not a scientist, but it’s not prudent to rush into anything without understanding all sides.”
Blaise Pascal gave a joking argument for religion for a gambler (in the account provided in The Immortal Dinner; Pascal worked it out more rigorously in Pensees). In a simple square of action and outcome, one sets up actions/wagers (belief/disbelief), then outcome/results (is not/ is a God), and then the payoff (rot in the ground/ Hell/ paradise). A believer who is wrong shares the same “payout” as the disbeliever who is right, but the disbeliever who is wrong has a very different payout from the believer. Therefore, any sane gambler would bet on belief. It is an imminently logical argument within its own terms, but its terms are a joke.
There is no reason to believe that Pascal thought he would be persuasive. This is especially true given the circumstances, since the “argument” was the result of a dinner and a teasing little puzzle. Also, Pascal, the Jansenist, is unlikely to have viewed faith as a matter of indifference. Still less would he have regarded it as a matter of pure reason, or even reasonableness. Jansenism was at least implicitly hostile to the rationalism of the counter-Reformation Church. Finally, the wager posits religion in terms of gain — something antithetical to Pascal’s own religious feeling. (I hope I don’t have to “save” Pascal from the charge of apologetics. It just doesn’t stick. He’s engaged with mathematics, deduction, and what would be an ongoing project of dealing with the unknown.)
The reason Pascal’s wager doesn’t “work” — doesn’t win any converts — is as simple as it is obvious: belief is not a matter of logic. Neither is the choice here (belief) analogous to a throw of dice, but instead of lifelong conduct. The question is not, what do you think, but how will you live?
To say “Yes” to belief is to be forced to logical and ethical consequents. It is also to be forced to practical, physical alteration. It may mean performing rites in the temple or abstaining from foods or changing customs or natural habits, whether we’re talking about circumcision or a face veil. Most of all, it always requires inserting something else before or beside the self in acts and desires, whether we’re talking about pagan or Abrahamic religion. It requires putting some other principle before or beside the ego in all decisions. Pascal’s “gamble” is a full life devoted to one path or another.
So, the creatures of NPR were talking to “red state” officials. One said, effectively, ‘Why not plan for the greenhouse effect?’ (Sorry, it said “climate change.”) ‘If you’re wrong, you have safer buildings and more energy efficiency. If you’re right, you help save the region.’ It’s Pascal’s punter again. It’s a failure again, too, and for the same damning reasons.
What aren’t we talking about, when we frame the issue this way? “Planning for
global warming” means thinking about something else at every turn. It means “loss of freedom,” because something — anything, really — is involved in each decision besides self-profit. You and I will say that such planning is for profit and true self on a scale of real value and real time, just as Pascal would say that Catholicism was of real profit, but the people we’re talking to recognize the profit and the cost of dollars, not progeny or well-being, the benefit and loss of gratification and appetite, not security and society, the happiness and peace of the physical self and physical possessions, not nations or nature. They measure freedom by instinct and achievement by the moment or month, not by any extension of time or society.
Listening to NPR correspondents wheedle does nothing but irritate me. Truly, though, their misdirection and dishonesty of refusing to grab our listeners and viewers by the lapels and say, “Look: you are not the measure of meaning. You are not all there is. Other people existed before you, and other people exist now, and other people will exist after you. Only by recognizing duties to them all — the dead, the living, and the yet to be — can you enjoy the freedom you shout about so loudly” accelerates the rot. They, and we, have become certain, individually, that we are individuals alone: owed, not owing; free, not liberating; right, but not judged; authorities on God’s will, but not subject to it; lessened by all of those Others, but never one of Them.
Soon, you will have forgotten the world, and it will have forgotten you, too.” — Marcus Aurelius