Due to a fit of insanity, I both signed up for NaNoWriMo this year and actually started writing, thus depriving myself of approximately 2 hours a day which I might have used to do other things. Like, oh, I don't know, I'm not particularly good at accomplishing anything in my free time. So on the whole, I think this counts as a benefit overall despite my terrible style and complete lack of writing ability.

Anyway, today I went to a write-in, which is to say a bunch of people get together with computers and notebooks and write things. This would probably work better in Australia this time of year as you could actually go outside; in Korea, while it's plenty warm enough (stop with the 65 in November already!) it was kind of overcast and drizzly most of the day. So seven of us started out in a coffee shop where the staff was a little nervous about us being there. So after collecting everyone 45 minutes in we moved out in search of greener pastures.

They turned out to be kind of pinker pastures - we somehow ended up in a cafe think that caters to, apparently, couples on dates and small parties (hence the pink). They were very nice to us there - and oddly didn't even seem very surprised. I'm not sure whether they just considered us crazy foreigners or what (no Koreans in the group, for some reason), but we were treated extremely well. I can't say the food was particularly excellent, unfortunately - I suppose for their usual clientele that's one thing that can slip a little bit; it wasn't a particularly high-end place.

Still, an afternoon fairly well spent. There are pictures somewhere. I don't know if I'll ever see them.

The following question occurred to me late last night, probably because I stayed up too late, but I don't know what to make of it:

Suppose we have a bunch of parallel universes, as proposed but many science fiction novelists and a decent number of philosophers as well over the last century or so. Specifically, suppose we take the version that says that if you can imagine it, it's real "somewhere". Now I can imagine a universe with no god. Whether it would just be complete chaos, or nothing particular, or perhaps unguided evolutionary principles and all the other fluff as per standard materialist explanations of this world actually managed to produce something - or maybe all three could exist separately - I can imagine it. But I can also imagine - leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not believe it - a universe with a god. This would cause "god" to both exist and not exist, depending - and yet the standard conception of god (in the West, at least, thanks in large part to the Judaeo-Christian tradition) imagines him as outside the universe. So this conception of a multiverse seems incompatible with this notion of god.

So the questions: apart from the whole problem where an alternate universe isn't actually observable more or less by definition, how can you go about proving something on such a metaphysical level? If you believe in god, do you have to abandon any multiverse theory? If you don't, how do you know limits? If you accept an "infinite multiverse" theory such as I mentioned, do you have to be an atheist? An agnostic? Why would you accept this theory anyway (and I even took a class where we sort of dealt with some of this stuff)?

Anyway, I confused myself with this question (or scenario, or what-have-you). A friend of mine claims she thinks too much, and I occasionally suspect myself of the same problem.

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On a different tack, I've been puzzling rather over a question that's rather politically charged at the moment. As Americans, we have this document that's supposed to supply the legal framework for our country's federal government. Whether it does or not any more is open to debate but at any rate most politicians will - if not ignoring it completely - at least pay lipservice to the idea. This raises two questions in my mind:

First, suppose the Constitution is flawed. Are we bound to obey it anyway, down to all the formal details (of which there aren't many), or does it then count as - since we had nothing to do with the signing - a promise as it were made under duress?

Then, if it is still binding, are we also obliged to follow laws made by legally constituted authorities which are nevertheless provably unconstitutional laws? For instance, suppose Congress passed a law restricting churches from holding assemblies on public property (or if you don't like the churches example, substitute redheads or dance clubs or transsexuals or Mississippians living in other states or former firefighters - the idea is the same). This would fairly clearly be a violation of the first amendment right to assemble - and yet with the specter of hate crime legislation and what-not floating around it's not entirely inconceivable that it could be passed, and even upheld in court. Do you hold your assembly anyway, civil rights movement style? Or do you respect the new law - and why?

Second - well, is it flawed? In large part the Constitution was based somewhat in English common law but largely on early-ish Englightment individualism - it might be summed up as equal treatment for each person regardless of height, sex, race, weight, creed, health, family size, or favorite baseball team. This doesn't really sit well today, as the prevalent "establishment" mode of thought is socialism or groupism or something - I don't know exactly what term applies, but the idea of thinking by groups: blacks, whites, undereducated, urban, rural, Latino, conservative, liberal, wealthy, business - the individual is classified by group and (largely) judged on that basis. I'll make no secret of the fact that I tend to be individualist: a person is a person.

As far as I can tell, whether you're Korean-American or generic Caucasian has as little to do with what the law should say about you as whether you're right- or left-handed, or prefer Elton John or the Beatles (or hate them both). This is in fact necessary because the individual really doesn't live in a vacuum. In the history of this country, there really have been examples of injustice by groups - largely because many people tend to think in groups, from Little League on up. How should the law handle this? I mean, we are facing a situation now where in many parts of the world - and starting to happen in the US - various groups are given special protection. To cite one example: Germany's banning of Holocaust denial. Now, denying the Holocaust is a really stupid and offensive thing to do, and certain versions I've seen could probably be prosecuted for libel - but we like (or liked) to say there are no laws against being wrong. But is it also illegal to deny the Thirty Years' War? The Reign of Terror? Why should the Holocaust get special treatment? Or to take the hate-crimes thing: why do we need an extra law making something extra-illegal just because a crime is committed against Minnesotans with Irish grandmothers? Is it now less bad to kill a non-Minnesotan? If this is what we're saying, what happens to our idea of individual worth?

But now I'm getting off into what some would call individualist screed, and the modern "liberal" will counter by reminding me that no one is suggesting that Minnesotans need special hate-crimes legislation to keep them safe, we're just concerned about persecuted minorities like [gays, blacks, Muslims, factory workers; pick one]. And it's at this point I start to wonder. Because is it really sufficient just to insist on "equal" justice for everybody? How do you enforce that? What if statistically red-headed Albanians do have the highest crime rate on the West Coast? Are they just being picked on because they're easier to catch and identify? Do they tend to live in neighborhoods with bad schools or what-have-you? This sort of thinking does have a point. What I'm trying to say is that if we're going to talk about equal worth and individualism, on some level we still need to assess groups - I mean, we talk a lot of nonsense in conservative circles about individual effort and capitalism solving things and what-not, but on some level the government (however constituted) should be concerned to reduce the number of "bad neighborhoods" under the idea of general welfare, and that will require special attention.

But I think we need to look at how that special attention is applied. To pass a law for a specific group is a bad precedent, since the American tradition of law considers law largely impersonal, and as such, it's a bad instrument for specific corrections. But it's fairly easy to pass a law, and it's hard to hire more police, sack corrupt judges, hire good teachers, etc. So we pass laws when we should be doing all the other things.

And at this point I sort of lose track of where I'm going. I'm fairly sure I'm right so far - as confusing as my vague explanations may be - but questions still remain: what should the government do specifically? How do we get the government to do it? If the government doesn't - and to cover anything it can't - what do we need to do? I'm not a fan of just doing "something" and hoping, but I don't like doing nothing either, and doing the wrong thing is hardly productive. So yeah. End rant.

I have this laundry rack, and it confuses me. How can something so simple be confusing, you ask? Well, it has a somewhat schizophrenic stability. If I'm setting it up, hanging clothes on it, etc. it has a habit of falling over/coming apart (yes, it's one of those folding racks) if I look at it funny. However, if it's just sitting there outside in high-ish winds, with clothes on it, it will... just sit there. Like nothing's the matter. Like I'm nuts to worry about it. I find this deeply troubling on a metaphysical level, but the laundry rack just sits there. Laughing at me.

I thought of several titles for several posts I keep intending to make, each focusing on one aspect of the question perplexing me at the moment. These are things such as "The Fallacy of Rule of Law", "King Alfred and GKC", "The Failure of Individualism", or "What the Left Got Right".

Preventing me from writing any of these things is that I do not really have a practical program of political philosophy myself, and as such I am not entirely sure I can defend my positions satisfactorily. If you asked me to sum up my politics, I would refer you to two Biblical verses: Romans 13:4 and Micah 6:8. Here, I will quote them for you:

"For [the ruler] is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil."
"...and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Which is, being interpreted, "Do what is right yourself, and the government is there to punish those who do not."

I am aware that this does not precisely meet the requirements for a political constitution. If you asked me for further elucidation, I would refer you first to various poems of Kipling (two especially: "Danegeld" and "The Gods of the Copybook Headings") and Bastiat's The Law - not that either source is without problems. I would also remark that the major problem with the Declaration and the Constitution is that they focus overmuch on rights without considering duties particularly, and in America today that mindset has set in and begun to rot despite the best efforts of Jefferson and Lincoln. I do think overall that Western political philosophy (as a whole) has gotten hold of the right end of the stick in identifying localization of authority as important; but anarchy would take things too far. I am fairly confident in saying that the focus on the individual - the individual person, the individual family, the individual class, the individual town, the individual case at law - is correct; but I would also caution that this makes no sense without maintaining a sense of the thing as a whole - that man was not made, by God (or that vague thingamabob stand-in "Nature" if you so insist) to live alone.

What I am not convinced of is that any particular form of government - what is it Plato calls them, monarchy, polity, and republic? - is particularly desirable. I am totally convinced that as far as they descend into bureaucracy they become, if not evil then certainly less good, as they then obscure the nature of their authority, which is to say personality. It does no good to talk about rule of law - rule of law is rule of fear, fear of the authority which backs up the law. Do you wonder why we look increasingly to the courts? Because the courts are men we can see, not a congressional mob we cannot understand. Do you know why the government can have the power it does? It is because we have reduced our mental image of the government to a single man - we know the legislators are ineffective - and A Man is something we can follow. The Congress has power maybe - the power of legality. The Man has authority, a presence you can hide behind legal facades but not deny. But I digress.

I am not advocating an Imperial rule - far from it - but I am faced with a quandry: the more I investigate, the more it seems our current political notions are founded on faulty logic, backed up with nothing but a superstitious awe of The State without even the excuse of Divine Right. Of course, in comparison to this edifice - however fictional - my own misgivings and attempts to argue towards a just government are so far insubstantial. It is easy to question, but unfair to question without some attempt at presenting a better alternative, and my confidence in my alternatives is less than complete.

So the Lions get pounded, 45-27 by the Saints. On the bright side, they put up 27 points, 20 of those from the offense. The Saints don't have the best defense, but still. On the (entertainingly?) bad side, the following losses were worse:

Carolina 10-38 Philadelphia
St Louis 0-28 Seattle

Of course, Philadelphia actually has a defense, but Seattle's probably not as good as New Orleans, so... yeah.