A Ku Indeed!

Andrew Sullivan, tossing around words like “virtue” and “filial piety” takes a stick to Liz Cheney’s enthusiastic embrace of torture as a practice. Liz Cheney’s understandable defense of her father’s (torture) policies, Sullivan argues, have since morphed into a warped view of what is permissible in the public sphere. One can only think of the famous case in the Analects of the son and the father:

The Duke of She informed Confucius, saying, “Among us here there are those who may be styled upright in their conduct. If their father have stolen a sheep, they will bear witness to the fact.” Confucius said, “Among us, in our part of the country, those who are upright are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son, and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this.”

Whereas Confucius clearly approves of the son who covers up for and defends his father, Confucius would obviously be appalled if that same son then decided to declare that stealing sheep was, upon further consideration, actually virtuous as a practice and so should be applauded by everyone in the state. The Confucian indictment of the Cheneys, both Liz and Dick, is clear enough.

David Frum links out to Gerson’s critique (in WaPo) of Obama’s UN speech. He calls it narcissistic. This is not the first conservative criticism I’ve read that had the same criticism, so this is making the rounds. I’ll have to admit, I’m a little confused by it, though it could be due to the brain strike that my neurons are currently engaged in. I’ll briefly outline below.

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My brain is shot. Have you even gotten to the point where your brain just simply refuses to engage in any sort of endeavor that requires any mental energy at all? I’ve been there for the last few days (hence no posts). It’s a really strange sort of situation. Part of your mind simply wants to carry on like normal. So I might reach for my mandarin book (I’ve been continuing my tutoring that began in China) and open it up, eager to start learning some new characters, and then my eyes see the first new one and its as if a huge breaker switch in my head gets powered down. Some other part of my mind throws up a picket sign that says “On Strike!!”.

Between the mandarin, the book project, the paper, and other various things (like blogging) perhaps I’ve overheated my mental processor. Whatever that means. Which brings me to the thing that makes me curious: when your brain is on strike, what does that mean? Are your neurons sore or something? What the heck does this correspond to, in the actual physical brain? Has anyone out there ever experienced brain strike before?

I came across this in my web-travels today. Alright, so the vice-chancellor of Birmingham University says that he wrote this piece, on how “female students are academic perks” in a satirical vein, but knowing that beforehand didn’t stop me from twitching as I read it. Or maybe that was the point? In any case, this piece makes me wonder: is there a limit to satire? Specifically, in this case, can one’s role (like being a vice-chancellor of a university) put boundaries on the degree to which is allowed to be satirical about certain things? Or perhaps satire has no such role-specific boundaries?

Over at his new blog, New Majority, David Frum has a post up entitled, “Obama Threatens to Repeal 2008 Promise Not to Raise Taxes on Families.” That’s pretty serious stuff! Once you get inside the post, it’s clear that the hubbub is the proposed mandated insurance fee on individuals and families who would refuse to purchase insurance. The question of the day: Is this a tax? Has Obama reversed himself? Oddly enough, Frum himself doesn’t seem convinced that it is and seems to contradict his own post title just a few lines into his own text.

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One passage from the Analects that always leaves me bemused is 17.20. It reads:

Ru Bei sought a meeting with Confucius, but Confucius declined to entertain him, feigning illness. Just as the envoy carrying the message was about to depart, Confucius got out his lute and sang, making sure that the messenger heard him.

Basically, we have the portrait here of “Confucius the Wiseass” (not the only one in the book, that’s for sure). Why is Confucius doing this, though? Is this really what a virtuous person would do? What’s up?

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I came across this piece in the Washington Monthly on the “future” of education — yeah, you guessed it, online education. Personally, I found the piece to be a fairly non-critical portrayal of the benefits of online education (it verges on being a paid advertisement).  Still, the endless questions persist. Other than providing access to education for non-traditional students (which is a different point that I’m not thinking of) — Is online education really a good thing?

Those who know me know I’m conflicted about it. While I’m not opposed to using online supplements, I am concerned about the expansion of “fully online” courses. As is typical in articles like this, the author makes the assumption that the product of a university is merely the transmission of content. If you look at it that way, then sure — why not online? Content, however, is not owned by the university. Content is public property — it’s in the library if you want to find it. So the product the university is selling can’t possibly be the simple transmission of content. Unfortunately that’s the assumption that the “virtual revolution” seems to hang onto  – and it’s with this sort of assumption that the whole thing goes horribly wrong.

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If you hate Stanley Kubrick, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Richard Strauss, click below the fold.

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In my thread below this one, “Tao of Kids,” I was reflecting a bit on the seemingly Taoist message (in poem 42) that using legalistic procedures of correcting and punishing a misbehaving child will likely not lead to changed behavior. If anything, it leads to more resistance (and to the cultivation of cleverness). Instead, positive reinforcement seems to do the trick.

I wondered whether this can be connected to the need (in Taoism)  for a person to surrender their own ego- on the need to give up on the desire to forcefully impose on the child your own will, and to step back from the egoistic urge to strike back at the child after he/she defies you. Instead, a Taoist parent might replace that urge with simply praising behavior that is good. I also mentioned in that thread that I thought here were Confucian points in that discussion too, so in this thread I’d like to think a bit about extending the discussion to Confucianism. I’ll say a few things about that below.

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Perusing the Tao Te Ching led me to reflect a bit more on my current relationship with my daughter, “Big-P” (see this post for more). You see, lately we’ve been having a bit of a parenting issue. Nothing unusual, typical kid stuff; I say X, Big-P says not-X. I say do Y, Big-P does not-Y. I reprimand her, she tells me to “zip it.”

Basically, Big-P seems almost hell-bent on creating maximum friction between us, looking for any and all places to resist me as a parent, even when what’s she’s resisting doing is something she might actually want to do. Essentially, she’s in “resistance for resistance’s sake” mode. She’s four years old and practicing for fourteen years old.

Thinking about psychological studies on childhood development lately with my wife (who is a psychologist) we’ve decided that our typical ways of reacting to her behavior – which include forcing her to do what we asked, discipline, punishment and a lot of focus on correction — has been all wrong.

Reading the Tao Te Ching, I think Laozi had the same thought. Perhaps he had children who resisted him too?

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My mom is a real character. It’s one of the most endearing things about her. She’s here visiting from Boston for two weeks, and as usual, serves as a never-ending source of funny comments and strange insights. Today we were having lunch in a local restaurant and ran into a few people, and this encounter later served as the fodder for a funny conversation that really exemplifies who my mother is and why she’s a character.

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Sullivan opines:

Limbaugh will enjoy the scorn. But he’s a disgusting opportunist and racist. And his acceptability – indeed total dominance – on the right is one reason decent people will steer clear of the GOP for the foreseeable future. There is no nuance or doubt here. This is a man who wants a race war. Until the GOP throws him out, they deserve oblivion. He’s a racist through and through, and if no one on the right stands up to this, they are complicit.

As I write this I think back to, oh, three  hours ago when I was at the gas station overhearing a very public discussion by a number of people about “that damn n____ president.” But you know, there’s no racial undercurrent under much of this stuff for many people at all, and Rush Limbaugh is really uninformed about what the majority of his audience thinks and believes and what gets them fired up.

More “conservatives in exile” need apply.

A few weeks ago my wife and I hosted two students from Tsinghua University at our home. The two students were soon to start their year of study abroad at Drury for the 2009 – 2010 year. One of them (Ma Ying) was kind enough to serve as my Mandarin tutor in China, and has continued in that role here in Springfield, graciously enduring my mangling of the Chinese language on a weekly basis. While they were here the two students were interviewed by the local county paper, and the story came out today in the Lawrence County Record. I’ve reprinted a photo of the story below the fold (hard to read in some spots due to blurring, but the general point of the story is clear enough).

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