The Destruction of the Western Canon: The Unnoticed Casualty of Progress

Modernity’s movement of inclusiveness is reversing monstrous injustices. Old, white, male intellectuals and artists are rightly downgraded in importance and their authoritativeness disavowed in the face of modern writers and artists from marginalized communities. Unfortunately, a consequence of this is the destruction of history. A thread of thoughts and a conversation can be stretched from Homer to Cicero to Pope to Orwell but then slowly is thinned into nonexistence. What happens when we no longer value the ideals and conversations that have formed Western Culture? The values of justice, individualism, freedom of thought, and political thought have all sprung from the Western Canon. Numerous individuals and artists were enriched from their participation and examination of those works. It is ironic that a white, Western, male-dominated strain of thought that centered on the superiority of logic and on the equality of mankind has undermined the august position of the progenitors of those ideals.

A sad fact is that minorities in Western society fundamentally lack power. Many gains made by minorities in the realms of social justice and equality are, in fact, granted by the majority. In much the same way, works reacting to the dominance of the white patriarchy are derivative of that same system of thought. If artists truly want to break from current power structures, radical, original art must be produced AND disseminated from sources that are entirely minority. Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” has generally been viewed as a pop-cultural piece rooted in minority experience, but it is promoted and released through corporate structures that are largely owned by white males.

If the Western Canon is to be disavowed, a new, radical minority-driven Canon should replace it with original thought and ideals, instead of being a reaction, there must be creation as well as destruction. If this does not occur then we will have abandoned the good of Western culture while disposing of the evil without actively replacing the missing virtues.

The Obvious Discrimination in North Carolina’s "Bathroom Bill"

It is completely apparent that North Carolina’s law restricting the use of public bathrooms to the sex listed on an individual’s birth certificate is designed to encourage and act against transphobia. There is no other logic that would require this bill to be passed now.

If the law is designed to protect children, why is it being passed how with a focused on transgendered people? Heterosexual males, who were born men, could dress up as women and enter a woman’s bathroom to assault people before any specific law was passed.

Further, heterosexual males, who are born men, are vastly more likely to be sexual predators. This ties in to one of the recurring themes of fear against the LGBT community. The idea that LGBT individuals are more likely to be promiscuous and sexually deviant is not supported by facts. It is a social panic for a problem that does not exist. Transsexual people have not been accused of assaulting people in bathrooms, and even if they did, they are such a small minority of the population that there is no overwhelming need to single them out for rigorous legal restraint. More people in the United States have had a sexual experience with an animal than there are transgendered persons. This law was only passed as transgendered people have prominently entered the public consciousness.

The final factor that makes clear that this is a discriminatory law that is designed to placate panic and demonstrate disapproval of the LGBT community is that it is unenforceable. It is a bad law. Police cannot monitor every public bathroom and demand individuals, who they suspect are transgendered to produce their birth certificates. It is unreasonable and it would seem to require some sort of invasive profiling.

Bad laws and unenforceable laws destroy respect for the law. This argument over social norms would be better litigated in other civic arenas besides the courts and legislature.

The Motivations of Leaders

Winston Churchill, in the third volume of The Second World War, offers several brief asides that betray a quizzical fact about his character. Within several pages of one another, Churchill praises the suicide of the Hungarian Count Teleki and of Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis as preserving the honor of their nations. A few pages later Churchill offers the thought that the British and Greek armies could make a heroic stand at Thermopylae, the site of a famous last stand in Ancient Greek history. Churchill’s naive notions of chivalric heroism are apparent in many of his famous speeches to the Houses of Parliament as well. Truly a man for the moment, Churchill wanted desperately to live out his dream of knightly heroism and often saw mass, industrialized slaughter as a worthy opportunity. His desire for an almost literary form of heroism (along with an ample amount of amoral Realpolitik) enabled his ascent to the pinnacle of the history of British leadership.

Vaulting ambition, the insatiable desire for power, is a well-known facet of great political leaders. But it is often this attribute with a mixture of a desire for praise and distinction that creates truly great leaders. John Adams, founding father and second American President, wrote:

“Every personal quality, and every blessing of fortune, is cherished in proportion to its capacity of gratifying this universal affection for the esteem, the sympathy, the admiration and congratulations of the public…”

He goes on to assert that government has the function of regulating these desires. This is important because it helps us to understand the process of government and of those who govern. Legislation passed and actions taken are not necessarily to solve some public issue, but to gain the esteem and adulation of the public. It also helps clarify the ends of different leaders. For instance, President Obama wishes to have a powerful liberal legacy, built on sizable achievements. He is not just seeking the moderate respect of the crowd but lionization in the historical record. That is why he was willing to forgo chances at prolonged cooperation with Republicans on lesser issues and instead focused on tremendous ones, like the Affordable Care Act, and the changes wrought by the stimulus bill.

When we better understand the psychological and emotional motives of or most consequential leaders, it provides a framework for understanding their actions.

The Post-Will, Post-Fate Future

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; are thoughts are ours, their ends none our own.

Shakespeare succinctly summed up a fundamental debate about human nature with that quote. It seems that we are predestined to play certain roles in our lives. When we look back at the episodes that define our existence, often we find that patterns seem to emerge from the randomness that permeates our interactions. This is possibly an illusion, but it also refers to something we know to be true, that we make unconscious decisions that subtly and overtly shape our lives.

Every bit of us is being broken down into discrete chunks of data. And all of that data is processed with other data, and constantly refined algorithms comb through all that data to sort and find patterns. It is the avowed goal of the founders of Google, for instance, to create a personal assistant that optimizes all of the minute decisions we make in a day. Less traffic than usual? Your sleep not quite as sound? Sleep in for 10 more minutes before getting up, this will be determined for you.

Now the AI deprives of us will, but it does not exactly exist as fate either. That is, it determines in a mathematical manner the most efficient way to live in our lives at the moment, from moment to moment. It does not determine an overarching theme for our lives. But how will we cope with this new aimlessness?

It seems likely that the majority of people will acquiesce, handing control of their lives over to algorithms and enjoying the placid comfort of decision-less existence. People who rebel will almost certainly be at a disadvantage, both in the comfort of their lives and in their place in society. This is I, Robot and The Matrix in real life. Will AI have to give us the illusion of control in order for us to maintain our emotional equilibrium? But we will know it is a lie. We will all have to find our unique pleasures and goals. Even the realm of art will be penetrated by AI, and a society of artists will be unnecessary, so will self-improvement. So what exists beyond the intellectual? The only thing that we will control or want to control, and the only thing that distinguishes us from an intelligent computer, is our emotions and physicality. Perhaps we will seek to manipulate our emotions, “I wish to feel joy!” Or maybe, due to the imperfections of human psychology, profound sadness. The other is physical pleasure. Drugs and stimulations will be in high demand.

I’m not sure where this leaves us as a species, but once our minds are rendered impotent compared to a computer, all we have left are our bodies and our primitive feelings. Existence, even immortal existence, could be rendered utterly meaningless. That flaw, that has driven humanity so far, to discover meaning, always asking “why?” and “how?” will certainly be our undoing once there is no purpose to answering those questions.

Succesful Institutions and the Republican Party

With Ted Cruz dropping out of the Republican race for the President, Donald Trump is left as the only truly viable candidate for the nomination. While this may be the will of the American voter, it is a failure of the Republican Party as an institution.

The Republican Party guides conservative thought into a useful and effective organization which seeks to advance those political interests, or it did at one time. The arc of this presidential election so far has mirrored the destruction of the Republican Party as an effective institution. As the party’s split, largely along racial lines in the 1960’s, as discussed in an earlier post, the GOP became the sole political party advocating conservativism. Since that time they have had an increasingly catastrophic failure in branding and while at the same time becoming sclerotic. While Republicans won national elections 7 times since 1968, they have failed to expand their party, they have stood still while the country has not.

They have failed to counter the argument that they are a party for wealthy white men. The evolution of American demographics have doomed the party due to its lack of foresight. Republicans were going to have a difficult time winning the Presidential election regardless of who there candidate was, simply because homosexuals, young people, women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans do not vote Republican in large enough numbers.

There other major failure is more recent. In an effort to overcome their demographic challenges the Republican Party co-opted and then ignored grassroots conservatives. The Tea Party was a robust movement with both major funding and an active and motivated core of supporters. Republicans gleefully allowed Tea Party candidates to run on Republican tickets in order to win seats in local and statewide elections and then failed (and over-promised) to enact their reforms. This has led to disillusionment with the Republican “establishment”.

The final major failure of the Republican Party has been cowardice. Key figures in the Party have allowed someone who represents both of their major flaws to become the front runner without disavowing him. Donald Trump has doubled down on their branding failure by representing the GOP’s old base of constituents with xenophobia and racism AND by railing against the Establishnent’s failure to take seriously the reforms demanded by conservative activists.

Some responsibility lies with the Obama administration for failing to take the Republican view into consideration and passing the Stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act without many and any Republican votes, thus alienating the group further. But the majority of the blame falls squarely on the Republican Party for allowing a duplicitous demagogue to hijack their institution.

The GOP is a failed institution, one which now, with the face of their Party as Donald Trump, no longer even supports reasonable conservative values. The real problem here is that it is bad for the nation to not have an organization that can properly harness major political thought but also to not have any counter for the Democratic Party. It is not good to have large swaths of the government controlled by a single party that does not have to refine its message, or moderate its most extreme impulses. Democrats will not win on the strength of their ideals, but on the basis of having no organized opposition. Ted Cruz was a poor candidate in this sense as well, but Donald Trump has signaled the death-knell of the Republican Party, and we will not have to wait until Election Day to discover that.