Sunday 22 May 2011

Rights, Animals, and Vampires

This comes from a conversation about True Blood and the Vampire Rights Amendment. Should vampires have rights, when they're not human? Do rights begin with laws, or do they exist before they are legislated - and if so, where?

It seems obvious enough to me that non-human animals should have rights. Not only human-like animals like vampires, obviously, but also all other complex animals (there is the question of line-drawing, with insects and things like that, but let's leave that aside for now). I also asserted that animals do have rights: the right not to be tortured or cruelly harmed. In other words, it's illegal for people to cause needless suffering to animals. Doesn't that constitute a right, for animals, to freedom from nedless suffering? Or do rights have to be framed as rights?

The US Bill of Rights is a complex example. Take the first clause of the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It's totally not phrased as a right for the people to the free exercise of religion. But it seems to be meant for that effect, and that's how it's generally interpreted; indeed, its presence in the Bill of Rights implies that we're dealing with a right here, despite the phrasing.

The idea of Bills of Rights, and rights law in general, seems to be to defend rights that already exist. But I'm not sure about that either.

The distinction between rights, which are attached the potential victim (i.e. your rights can be infringed), and prohibitions, attached to the potential act of infringement, seems to me a false distinction. We're really dealing with a structure of behaviour, where surely it's the outcome that matters most. So, if the outcome of a law is that I can freely practice my religion, then I have that right. I think you could characterise this position as pragmatist: it's a question of outcomes and structures, not of 'essential' or 'fundamental' truths.

It seems to me the question really worth asking here is not "what rights do we have," but "what laws should we have"?

Thursday 19 May 2011

Writing History

I've never been able to write creatively in my academic work. The essays I write now are an evolved version of what I wrote at school. To be fair, the key moment in the development of my academic writing was that very first tutorial in Roman history, where the tutor (can't remember her name right now) went through my essay and rewrote it with me, making it analytical rather than narrative.

Building on that, the thing I've always absolutely focused on has been putting the argument down. The way I plan an essay is something like, a) know the argument, b) work out all the elements needed to make the argument, and defend it against potential criticisms, and put it in scholarly context, c) arrange all those elements in a line, which ends in the conclusion of the argument.

It doesn't actually seem bad, right? Isn't this what an academic essay should be? But I've started to realise, I think, that there are all sorts of questions and problems relating to this.

It's related to thinking more about writing fiction: the thing there is, fiction shows that sometimes a straightforward argument isn't the best way to get something across. Especially, I suppose, if what you want to do isn't just make a point that you already think you understand, but to ask also ask something, investigate something, recognising that whatever answer you have will be incomplete. That's how fiction treats life; doesn't it apply just as much to history?

And maybe in a more dishonest way, I also think there might be something in using a less confrontational method; an oblique approach. If you put an argument straightforwardly and linearly, there's little for the reader to do but to agree or disagree with all or parts (and it's hard to read something like that and think, "I totally agree" - for one thing, if you want to contribute to a debate, disagreement is the most obvious way). But if you're not obviously doing that, if you appear to be mainly telling a story, or exploring a theme perhaps, then readers can take something else from it, can look at it in a different way - maybe you can have a different kind of conversation.

Monday 16 May 2011

An Unlikely Project

I frequently have ideas for fun new plans, usually self-improving in some way. I'm currently (a) learning the accordion, and (b) learning French by writing to a pen-pal. I'm also just about to take up rowing (first outing soon). And I'm thinking I should do proper French lessons with the University language school next year, to take advantage of the opportunity, and maybe get to a decent level.

But French is such a standard language to learn. Of course I should learn it, if anything, for that reason: sometimes it seems like you can hardly even call yourself educated if you can't speak it. So many people I know do, and I have the opportunity to go there often, so it's stupid of me not to make the effort to learn. But there's a very different language-learning experience that some of my recent reading has exposed me to: the totally-obscure language, which lets you into a truly different world, and not just that, but makes you part of a much smaller club. Imagine how cool it would be to be one of the relatively few people in the world who could understand a particular language? Imagine what it's like to go to that country and show the people there that you want to take the time to learn it!

On the very slender basis indeed of having enjoyed Ferenc Karinthy's Metropole, and being piqued by the quotation from Laszlo Krasznahorkai's War and War in James Wood's lecture last Thursday, plus a general interest in Eastern Europe born out of factors I can't here discuss, I have decided that Hungarian (that is, Magyar) will be my obscure language.

So, briefly, here is my plan for this adventure. In the next academic year, I will put effort into French, including keeping up this correspondence with some regularity, and hopefully going to the language classes. This will give me a grounding in foreign language acquisition. Learn to crawl before you can walk, and all that. Meanwhile, I will also familiarise myself with Hungarian literature in translation. There's enough to last me a year, alongside all my other reading. I'm planning to start a new blog to record this, maybe.

When I am part way through these things, get in touch with some people who might help - Hungarian translators and expats, the British Council, or the embassy perhaps - to see if they can give me tips on how to learn, or, ideally, an opportunity to live, work, and learn in Hungary itself, for a few months. I have no idea if that's likely to get me anywhere, but it seems worth a try. The aim, really, is just to have an adventure, to experience something new and exciting. It's good to have plans.

Sunday 15 May 2011

Selfish/less

I've written before that shyness is a form of selfishness. Since shyness is sad (I mean, I feel worse when I feel shy), that seems to mean that selfishness leads to sadness.

But how about this. In a selfish mood, I think about how things and people add to my life. What do I get from all the things I do? That's a positive way of thinking, because it seems like everything adds something - or if it doesn't, you can just decide not to do it. And when I'm thinking 'selflessly', i.e. when I'm considering what other people think, or trying to think from their point of view, that's when things start to go wrong, and get sad, because I think "do they like me as much as I like them," or "what do they think of me, or of this thing I did?"

I suppose you could say there's a certain selfishness even in that supposed 'selfless' outlook - it's still directed towards 'I', just from a different perspective. Maybe the positive outlook I'm talking about really is exactly that, an outlook: it lives right inside the 'I', so it's actually directed outwards at everything else. Inside the tent pissing out. But it is still self-centred, sort of solipsistic even.

Maybe the upshot is that selfishness (and selflessness) just aren't good ways to think about the world, especially about relationships with other people. I guess that's something that I should already know (wasn't the dichotomy already deconstructed by the idea that 'pure altruism doesn't exist'?). But I've been used to thinking about things, often, in these kinds of terms. What will my thinking be like if I try to stop? What basis can I use instead to think about relationships and obligations and my happiness?

Could the solution be sort of 'utilitarian' - aim for the increase of the total sum of happiness, including both your own and others', indiscriminately? Trying to work out what makes others happy is so hard. But does that mean we should just fall back on making ourselves happy, and let others fend for themselves? Surely not, although I feel like I've heard that point made, in not so many words, before.

Does the satisfaction of love come from resolving this fundamental difficulty? Knowing what makes somebody else happy, and being able to fulfil that, and making yourself happy in doing so. Sounds like a good set-up. Except, I guess, it never quite works like that - or, not for long, anyway.

Saturday 14 May 2011

Inscrutable Blind Chance

I guess people prefer complaining to praising, and it is easier to criticise than to pick out what's good. Why is that, though?

What I'm especially thinking about is love (or, at least, relationships). What does it mean when your friend is always telling you negative things about his girlfriend? Not even just silly little things, but things that actually seem like kind of major character flaws. I think I have to accept the strange truth that it doesn't mean he doesn't love her. And even if you asked him to tell you, instead, all the wonderful and great things about his girlfriend, and he couldn't do it (or was just really vague, for example), it still doesn't mean he doesn't love her.

That's why you can't ever ask, "What does she have that I don't have?" You know it doesn't work like that. And I guess you don't even really want it to work like that. After all, there's always someone who "has" more than you "have". We need the inscrutable blind chance aspect of love. It is our saving grace. Yeah, it can work against us too, and that is very hard. But maybe we can take some sort of comfort - joy? - from seeing that blind chance working, even right then when it feels like our worst enemy, because we can still hope, then, that it will work in our favour in the end.

Wednesday 11 May 2011

Think Happy Thoughts

It's a pretty classic question: is all the best music sad music? I was talking about this today with my friend Mike. Is it because you only [feel like you] need music when you're sad? Or maybe there really is good happy music? The best example Mike could think of was The Smiths' song "Ask". So we listened to that. But I think we both came out agreeing that of course it's not completely happy. Mike summed it up as hopeful, which is right.

How close to "happy" is "hopeful"? I think hope is the most interesting emotion, maybe. Things have to be bad to be hopeful. That is, you can't really be happy: you want something to happen, to change. But you think (but no, you don't think! You hope!) that change will come. So it's something like happiness, hope. You are more likely to smile when you're feeling hopeful, I think. That must be a good sign.

So but what's happiness? We wondered if it was the same as "contentment", but that doesn't seem enough. There's something banal and empty in contentment. Maybe that's just our prejudice. When you feel happy, though, you feel something; contentment seems like you would feel nothing (like nirvana I guess). Is happiness the feeling of achieving what you hoped for - is it just a momentary feeling, an adrenaline buzz that wears off quickly? It does seem like happiness is fleeting. But people talk about a "deeper happiness" - what's that about?

I've decided on a project. For the next 100 days, I will write down one thing that makes me happy. I thought of this when I was about to "tweet" something negative about my insecurity and sadness, and I thought: you know what, maybe the first step to not feeling these things is to not tweet them. Then I nearly tweeted that thought. Then I thought, it's one thing to try to cut out negative thoughts. But surely better to replace them with positive ones. So: this project.

People sometimes deride people for trying to be happy. Maybe they're right in a way - moments of happiness seem to be self-forgetting moments, which defies trying. But in the moments when we are not happy (most of the time), when we have not forgotten ourselves, it must be better to think about our happiness than to think about our sadness, right?


Monday 9 May 2011

Student Lit Fest '011

Totally made-up speculative sample programme!

Sunday       6pm - Opening party at Blackwells; copies of festival programme distributed
Monday     2pm - Submitting Your Work, a workshop for poetry and short-fiction writers
                  7pm - Twenty-One Poets Under Twenty-One, sponsored by OUPS
Tuesday     5pm - English Faculty Prize-winners, past/present, introduced by the judges
                  8pm - Five Minute Novels, extracts from unpublished works, Albion Beatnik
Wednesday 10am-10pm - interactive exhibition of complete unpublished manuscripts
                  9pm - Mid-way party in the exhibition room
Thursday    2pm- 6pm - Journal/Magazine/Zine-Fair, student publications on show
                  8pm - Future of the Essay, winner of short non-fiction contest; discussion
Friday        7pm - Let Us Now Praise Famous Women, student success-stories talk/read
Saturday    10am - 5pm - Tea, Cake, and Stories, readings and refreshments all day
                  8pm - Closing party, somewhere swanky; after-party, afterwards

Monday 2 May 2011

The Bliss of Academic Life

   "All hail, unvex'd with care and strife,
The bliss of Academic life;
Where kind repose protracts the span,
While Childhood ripens into man;
Where no hard parent's dreaded rage
Curbs the gay sports of youthful age;
Where no vile fear the Genius awes
With grim severity of laws..."
-  from a speech of Dick Hairbrain, in John Trumbull, The Progress of Dulness, 1773