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Who’s The Greatest Revolutionary In History?

Larry Siedentop nominates St. Paul in his new book, Inventing the Individual. In a review, Jeremy Jennings unpacks the reasons why:

[A]t the core of both ancient thinking and ancient society was the assumption of natural inequality. Different levels of social status, Siedentop argues, reflected what were taken to be inherent differences of being. Crucially, it was this assumption of natural inequality that was to be overturned by the Pauline interpretation of the significance of the life of Christ. As Siedentop expresses it, Paul wagered on human equality and in doing so he set out a Christian understanding of community as “the free association of the wills of morally equal agents”. In essence … Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual seeks to show how this new assumption of the moral equality of humans came, over a thousand years and more, to transform the way in which we conceived of both society and government.

At its heart is the claim that the Christian assumption of moral equality in turn gave rise to a commitment to the equal liberty of all individuals. If this is true, it follows, as Siedentop states, that it was the canon lawyers and philosophers of medieval Europe and not, as has usually been assumed, the writers of the Renaissance and their rediscovery of ancient humanism who are largely responsible for our modern conception of liberty and who therefore can lay claim to having established the fundamentals of modern liberalism. As Siedentop writes, the canon lawyers and philosophers of the 14th and 15th centuries “laid the foundation for a private, rights-based sphere, where freedom and conscience prevailed”.

In an earlier review, Kenan Malik wasn’t quite convinced:

Siedentop usefully challenges the conventional narrative about the development of the Western intellectual tradition. But the story he tells in reframing that narrative is itself deeply problematic. Consider the issue around which Siedentop builds his whole account: the tension between the Ancient belief in natural inequality and the Christian idea of moral equality. Christianity certainly played a major role in developing notions of equality and universal visions of humanity. Yet, ideas of hierarchy and inequality remained central to the Christian tradition. “It is in the natural order of things”, Augustine preached, “that women should serve men, and children their parents, because this is just in itself, that the weaker reason should serve the stronger.” It was given by nature for the lower orders to serve the upper orders. …

Siedentop disregards, too, the distinctiveness of modern notions of equality. Christian equality was tied to religious belief; hence the long and fractious debates about whether non-Christians were equal, or even possessed souls. The crumbling of belief in a God-ordained order helped, in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, to develop a new, radical, inclusive form of egalitarianism. Having dispensed with God, there was, as the historian Jonathan Israel has put it, no “meaningful alternative” to grounding morality in a “generalised radical egalitarianism extending across all frontiers, class barriers and horizons.” The new egalitarians drew upon radical strands of Christian thought. But they transformed the very meaning of equality.

(Image of statue of St. Paul in front of St. Peters Basilica, the Vatican, via Wikimedia Commons)

Is Religious Experience Irrational?

Last year, David Sessions wrote an essay about his “deconversion” from Christianity, drawing on some of the ideas we aired last week about religious experience in a secular age. In particular, he noted that “something else besides just theories and arguments was driving the shift” and that, in addition to reading and thinking, he “was pulled along by massive changes in experience.” Dreher compares this to the story of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a lesbian academic who became an evangelical Christian (eventually marrying a man), and who admits to praying “that God would give me the willingness to obey before I understood.” Rod considers what this says about the limits of reason in our lives, especially with regard to religion:

The willingness to obey before I understood. Yes, this. Reading that line reminded me of my own slow, winding, herky-jerky path to conversion, and how I kept hitting a dead end because I wanted to understand it all before I obeyed. This doesn’t work. I was thinking about Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s point this morning, listening to our priest’s sermon about fasting …, and about how, when I first became Orthodox, I didn’t understand why we fasted, and fasted so strictly. But I did it because that’s what one does as an Orthodox Christian, and everybody in my church was doing it. Now I deeply get it, and as hard as it is, I’m grateful for it, because it’s exactly the medicine I need for my soul. But it took the experience of doing it for years before I really understood it.

What’s interesting about the Butterfield story of conversion in light of Sessions’s story of de-conversion is the role experience plays in both. It is epistemologically humbling, no matter what side of the belief/unbelief divide you are on.

Sessions argues that Rod takes the the comparison too far:

There is a superficial similarity in the sense that Butterfield and I both had experiences that changed us before we had a full explanation or argument for what happened. What Butterfield describes … is essentially her embrace of obscurantism, a “truth” that either defies or ignores well-established scholarship—and even her own previous experience—on human sexual orientation. But the fact that experience drives intellectual transformation is not a license to abandon intellectual rigor. For example, how does she know God has a point of view about homosexuality, or that it’s negative? Why does she think Christianity requires her to obey it before she understands? What if Christians disagree about what that view is, or think that view is something that’s obviously misinformed? Does it make sense that a Christian God would want a convert to break up a happy family? For a former scholar, Butterfield shows remarkably little philosophical skepticism; she also seems to cast aside her training in how to review and evaluate the available evidence to determine if these views she’s been introduced to are reasonable or even widely considered to be Christian.

Millman makes a distinction between Butterfield’s religious experience and the kind Sessions describes having, calling the former “the experience of divine command,” believing you won’t get very far in understanding religion “if you start from the proposition that God’s commands ought to be reasonable.” He defends this approach with an analogy:

An analogy: the experience of falling in love. Can we trust it? How should we understand it? How should we respond to it? These are not easy questions to answer. Should you marry the person for whom you experience that feeling? What if the feeling doesn’t last? What if you’re already married – should you leave your spouse for this new love? What if you never experienced that feeling with your spouse – now should you consider leaving them for this other person? Should you shun this person you’ve fallen in love with, lest the experience cause you to do something irrational or morally wrong? Or should you cultivate that feeling of blind devotion while, simultaneously, abjuring any socially or morally forbidden expression of affection? … These aren’t easy questions to answer – unless you answer that the experience of falling in love is a bad one, to be shunned, categorically, which, it seems to me, devolves into answering that experience as such should have no bearing on our actions. Which, to my mind, is an untenable approach to life.

Dreher agrees with Millman:

This is a fundamental point. Millman explains well why you cannot understand Biblical religion if you expect everything to make perfect sense, especially (he might have added) to a 21st century Westerner. What is reasonable about God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? What is reasonable about God incarnating as a Palestinian Jew and willingly suffering torture and dying, humiliated? God cannot be contained by human reason. This is not to deny the power (and the importance) of reason, only to put it in its proper place.

The View From Your Window

Boston, Massachusetts, 2.30 pm

Marathoners Anonymous? Ctd

Gracy Olmstead takes the debate over addiction to running another mile, giving it a theological gloss:

McWilliam’s runner is no stranger to us, whether we be runners or no. Most modern Americans feel compelled to develop an expertise—be it a career, hobby, or sport. The “specialist” or “expert” always receives greatest respect, while those who “dabble” in various trades or interests are less likely to garner acclaim. Indeed, in education, fields that teach breadth over depth are seeing less students and less interest. Take the humanities, or philosophy: as philosopher professor Rebecca Newberger Goldstein told the Atlantic, interest in philosophy has declined as students “want to get good jobs and get rich fast.” Money and renown goes to the specialists, not to the holistic scholars.

This isn’t meant to denigrate experts, professional athletes, and the like—most careers require a good depth of knowledge in a given subject. But it is important to consider whether we are practicing virtue in our trade, and whether we ought to “branch out” in order to become more healthy and well-rounded human beings. Perhaps the politician should pick up art (like Winston Churchill), the “foodie” should study literature, the economist should take dancing lessons. It isn’t that specialization is bad, so much as that specialization can often lead to obsession—and obsession leads to personal and societal disorder.

St. Augustine called such obsession a “disordered love.” The concept springs from his beautiful Confessions: disordered love seeks ultimate happiness in temporal, earthly objects or pursuits, “an action which engenders all kinds of pathologies in human behavior,” writes David K. Naugle.

Is Watching Porn Wrong?

I chose my profession of my own volition. I refuse to be shamed and stigmatized. I am a proud sex worker. I am #notyourrescueproject

— Belle Knox (@belle_knox) February 16, 2014

A startling percentage of Americans say yes to that question:

According to data from the Public Religion Research Institute, only 29 percent of Americans think watching porn is morally acceptable. Somewhat predictably, men and women have very different opinions on the issue: Only 23 percent of women approve, while 35 percent of men think it’s okay. … White evangelicals and people over 68 are the least likely to approve of watching smut: 10 percent and 9 percent, respectively. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Millennials and people who consider themselves religiously unaffiliated approve of porn the most: 45 percent and 53 percent, respectively.

But some trends are more surprising. White Catholics are twice as likely as Hispanic Catholics to find watching porn morally acceptable—28 versus 14 percent. People with an advanced degree are somewhat less likely than college graduates to think it’s morally acceptable to watch (34 versus 40 percent). But both of those groups are significantly more likely than high-school grads to approve—only 23 percent of that group told PRRI it was okay.

For those who like your porn, a new site called SkweezMe wants to “make accessing the content that people want so easy, seamless and stress-free that pirating porn starts to look like too much work”:

The site is structured around tokens — which users buy with money or bitcoin — each of which provides 24 hours of access to anything that’s on the site, period. Unlike a lot of sites that seem to penalize people who only want to take a dip by charging significantly less for monthly subscriptions than a day pass, users can get started on SkweezMe for as little as $2.97 for three tokens — which never expire. … “If I can take 0.01 percent of people watching porn on [piracy-prone] tube sites and get them to pay a dollar a day on Skweez, then we’ve done something that’s good for everyone,” [SkweezMe co-founder Mike] Kulich said.

The industry side of this is just as straight-forward: at the end of each month, 25 percent of SkweezMe’s total generated proceeds go into a revenue sharing pool. Then, the total number of minutes viewed is divided into the rev-share’s pool figure. This determines what a Skweez minute is worth during a particular month. Producers and studios are then paid per minute, all at the same rate, for the total number of minutes their content was viewed. To illustrate, say a minute ends up being worth $1 this month. Now say that Producer A’s content was viewed for 100 total minutes, while Producers B’s was viewed for 1,642. Upon payout, Producer A will get a check for $100 and Producer B will get one for $1,642.

Basically, consumer demand drives compensation in this model, not some predetermined percentage established on the back end. This, hopes Kulich, will encourage studios to pay attention to content quality and put more power in the hands of consumers.

The above tweet is from the young woman at the center of the Duke porn outing:

Knox is a College Republican[8] and considers herself a sex-positive feminist and libertarian. She believes her experiences are a testament to the rising costs of higher education in the United States.[7][19]

Email Of The Day

#sapiosexual pic.twitter.com/I2akWv3FrI

— elluz (@elbialuz) March 5, 2014

And fitting for NSFW Saturday night:

As I was renewing my subscription just now, I realized my motivation for doing so was one of the only ones that hadn’t been mentioned, perhaps with reason: being a Dish subscriber gets me laid.

The mechanism is fairly simple: most people only discuss the topics that show up on their Facebook news feed, and they have self-sorted so that the viewpoints are ones they agree with. Being a Dishhead gives me access to a wide variety of different viewpoints and lesser-known facts about all things non-Kardashian, allowing me to contribute to a conversation with nearly anyone worth talking to.

Thanks dude!

The Daily Grind

Melissa Gira Grant, author of the forthcoming book Playing the Whore, describes the work environment at a suburban sex dungeon:

In a dungeon, a client can expect that several workers will be available on each shift, and some of these workers will want to do what he wants to and some won’t. A receptionist will take his call, or answer his e-mail and assign him to a worker based on what he’d like, the worker’s preferences and mutual availability. Some dungeons might post their workers’ specialties on a website. They might also keep them listed in a binder next to the phone, the workers each taking turns playing receptionist, matching clients to workers over their shift. After each appointment the worker would write up a short memo and file it for future reference should the client call again, so that others would know more about him. … There are shift meetings, schedules and a commission split based on seniority. Utility bills arrive, and are paid. Property taxes, too. In some cases the manager would give discreet employment references. And sometimes people were fired.

There was one group of people who did perform unwaged work in the dungeon: the many male “houseboys” who would telephone, at least once each day, to ask to come and clean. The women who worked in the dungeon knew that managing these men’s slave fantasies was itself a form of work, but when they could just turn them loose on the dishes, the worst they would have to do is check later to see if anything untoward had happened to a glass or fork. It was never meant as a commentary on the years of feminists’ arguing over the value of housework, but it still could feel deeply gratifying that the houseboys were made to understand their only reward would be the empty sink.

Ancient Ales

Dr. Pat McGovern, author of Uncorking the Past, is “a notable pioneer in the fascinating field of experimental fermented beverage archaeology“:

Most recently, his team worked on artifacts found in various sites in Denmark and Sweden that once held ancient Nordic grog, a term loosely used to define beverages containing multiple fermentable sugar sources. With the help of this chem-lab technology they were able to detect the presence of tartaric acid, which hints at the presence of grapes, a group of plant compounds associated with lingonberry and cranberry, and traces of other compounds related to juniper berry, bog myrtle, and yarrow.

But rather than stop at a list of ingredients and a journal publication, Dr. McGovern has been taking his work one step further. Using these results and other evidence from Nordic dig sites, Dr. McGovern and Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione teamed up to bring this ancient grog, along with several other brews, back to life. Named Kvasir after a Nordic deity born from the spit of other gods, this orange-hued brew is made with wheat, cranberry, lingonberry, bog myrtle, yarrow, honey and birch syrup. The result is a tart and complex beer that is packed with spice and floral notes. Instead of coming off as a gimmick, Kvasir feels and tastes more like a refined museum artifact that should studied and pondered. Instilling this millennia-old historical accuracy into a large-scale production beer is certainly no easy feat. It’s a tricky task that calls for innovation and compromise.

A prime example of this is Dr. McGovern and Dogfish Head’s most ancient of ales, the 9000-year-old Chinese elixir known as Chateau Jiahu. … Chateau Jiahu is a brew that must be experienced with an open mind. Beer certainly isn’t the first word that comes to mind when taking the initial sips. Sweet and complex, with subtle grape and white flower nuances, this ancient concoction drinks much more like a dessert wine. I’d suggest slowly enjoying this contemplative brew while relishing in the thought of consuming something that hasn’t been tasted for 9000 years.

Previous Dish on ancient alcohol here.

(Image of Chateau Jiahu by Flickr user edwin)

When “Weed” Became Cool

According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, “weed” didn’t take off as a slang term for marijuana until the early 1990s:

Ngram Viewer includes data only through 2008, but it appears the trend has continued and weed is now on top. In Google Books searches confined to 2013 publications, smoke marijuana pops up 69 times, smoke pot 94 times, and smoke weed 149 times. That is also the sense one gets from Urban Dictionary, whose users have been inspired to contribute 225 separate definitions for weed. The most popular one, with more than 39,000 “up” votes, was posted by “AYB” and is short and sweet: “God’s gift to the world. Brings peace when used wisely.” …

Why the recent weed dominance? It seems clear to me that it’s a generational thing. In the 1990s, a new generation of users wanted to distance themselves from their parents’ dope or pot (the latter dates from the 1930s and apparently originated in African-American slang). Weed was already in the lexicon, and provided a nice implicit variation on the hippie-ish grass.

A Poem For Saturday

Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

Last night, the Poetry Society of America partnered with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center to present e.e.cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay: Two Mid-20th Century Stars, featuring the authors of biographies of the poets, Nancy Milford, whose Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, garnered praise from (among many others) Lorrie Moore and Toni Morrison, and Susan Cheever, whose new book, e.e.cummings: A Life has just been published by Alfred A. Knopf. The actress Blair Brown read poems by Millay and Billy Collins read poems by e.e.cummings, and the audience was enthralled. This weekend, we’ll feature some of the poems by Cummings read at the event. The first, “maggie and milly and molly and may” has been brilliantly set to music by Nathalie Merchant in her marvelous two-CD set, Leave Your Sleep. We also recommend the rain is a handsome animal, a sequence of 17 songs from the poetry of  Cummings set to music by the San Francisco band, Tin Hat.

“maggie and milly and molly and may” by e.e. cummings:

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

(From Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E.E.Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage © 1950,1952, 1956, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E.Cummings Trust. © 1979 by George James Firmage. Used by permission of  Liveright Publishing Corporation. Photo of Billy Collins and Blaire Brown in front of Cummings (left) and Millay, at the PSA event described above © Lawrence Schwartzwald. No reproduction without express permission of the photographer.)