Four Again
I received my first dog at such an early age, I have no recollection of her puppy years. When my mom and I moved from rural East Texas to the DFW metroplex, Lacy went to live in the country with my dad. I only knew her in her early years, and while I loved her, I can’t say I was a dog person back then.
Around age ten to twelve, I can’t exactly recall, my mom and I adopted my second dog. Buddy and I never clicked. I was a moody pre-teen, uninterested in the responsibility he required. He always wanted more of me than I was willing to give. My mom ultimately rehomed him with a friend. I was an adult before I really felt the mistake I’d made.
Away at college, I tried my hand at having pets again. I had a ferret (Bokonon) and a bunny (Abbie), and by chance ended up with a dwarf hamster (subsequently rehomed with a family that had several). If you’ve never seen the latter, they are quite small:
In my final year of undergrad, my then-girlfriend and I adopted a corgi. It was late December of 2007, and I named her for the recently assassinated former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto.
Benazir made me a dog person. She was quite small for a corgi and very quirky. She was particular about where she would be touched, hyper-focused on toys, and always on the move. I loved her dearly and had her from 8 weeks old until she passed last March.
I wasn’t always the most patient with her. I didn’t become a dog person overnight after bringing her home. She was a great dog, but could be trying and I simply wasn’t as mature at 21 as I liked to think. But she was patient with me. She loved me dearly, and she helped me learn to be better.
I miss her. I think of her most days. It took 9 months for me to feel comfortable looking for a new dog, by which time the holidays were upon us and that would have been too stressful for a rescue dog. We held off until early January before we brought this little guy home.
This is Amos. He’s a pit terrier mix like our other dog Pili, and he’s about 1.5 years old. His name comes from my favorite character in the Expanse series of novels/TV show, as well as from the 8th century BCE Jewish/Christian prophet. Out of a whole list of contenders, this name felt most appropriate because:
The Prophet Amos told it like it was, chiding the Israelites for paying lip service to their faith. He said that all should follow God’s word, and that Israel was not exempted by virtue of their covenant with God. While I’m not a believer myself, Amos’ virtue, his honor, are deeply laudable. He also shamed the powers of the day for their wealth accumulation and treatment of women, which is why…
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted Amos 5:24-5 in his “I Have a Dream” speech:
But let justice roll down as waters,
and righteousness as a mighty stream.
We chose the name just ahead of MLK Day and the end of The Expanse tv series.
As this newsletter hits your inbox, he’ll have been with us for 3 weeks. He’s quite smart and taking to commands and structure well, but he still has a lot of chaotic energy and pup flop in him. Pili, who has more than settled into being the only dog in the house, has taken to him very well and seems to have renewed energy.
Amos is an excellent addition to the family, and I’m so grateful for my lil Benazir for teaching me the patience and humility that made me a dog person. 🐾
John Locke: The Colonizer’s Philosopher
John Locke, born in the early 17th century, left an indelible mark on Western philosophy (if such a term isn’t so broad as to be nearly meaningless) and economics. Continuing along the path Sir Francis Bacon walked before him, he is considered one of the most important figures in the development of empiricism. Empiricism is the conception that knowledge is derived from that which we can measure with our sense, and is thus central to the philosophy of science and the scientific method.
Locke’s contributions to the theory of mind are often characterized as the origin of contemporary ideas of identity and the self. His work would go on to influence Rousseau, Hume, Kant, and Voltaire. The breadth of his influence on epistemology is difficult to overstate, and in many ways his foundational ideas, now nearly 400 years old, are ever more relevant today.
And his work has been the justification for incredible misery and evil for centuries.
A quick caveat that I am no believer in the Great Man view of history. Had Locke not existed, I’m certain that another (or perhaps many others) would have developed similar ideas to his. Locke was as much a product of his time as you and I are of ours. All that said, when we craft narratives, they are more often than not focused on individuals (some Lockean influence at work, perhaps) and their specific impact. The crux of the problem lays in the social ideas of the time, but just as we often talk about the issues of inequality by naming today’s greatest hoarders of wealth (Musk, Gates, Buffet, Bezos, etc), so too can we talk about what Locke did to impact our history and present.
Locke was born to English Puritan parents 140 years after Columbus made landfall in the Americas. His adolescence and education took place in a culture still rediscovering its historical and cultural legacy by way of recovery of lost Greek literature and knowledge. At the same time, European thought was undergoing a new (renewed?) process of schismogenesis.
In anthropology, schismogenesis “describes people’s tendency to define themselves against one another” (The Dawn of Everything, Graeber & Wengrow, pp 56). The term was coined to explain why certain cultures which developed in close proximity to one another might choose to live is divergent, even oppositional, ways, even when one option might seem clearly beneficial to us today. That is to say, the concept seeks to explain how people often define who they are in opposition to others rather than simply by what they are. Instead of saying “this is who we are,” we often say “they are those kind of people, but we are these kind.”
Locke came of age during the nascent years of the Enlightenment, a period which is generally described as valuing human happiness, reason, the pursuit of knowledge, liberty, empirical evidence, etc. It was a period that sought to elevate Western ideas developed during the Renaissance. Among Locke’s many contributions was his Second Treatise of Government (1690) in which he put forward his Labor Theory of Property.
The Labor Theory of Property basically says that one can gain ownership over natural resources by performing an act of original appropriation. Put more simply, he claimed that the natural world belonged to no one by default, but by working, one can put their labor into the natural world and thereby make it their property. This view of property certainly conforms to modern ideas of private property, and it was hugely influential to the American Revolution and subsequent governance in the Americas, but it is predicated on ideas about civilization, what/who doesn’t get included in the Western definition of civilization, and the protection of Locke's own wealth (he helped craft the Virginia Constitution, the state from which he garnered much of his wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans).
“Colonial appropriation of indigenous lands often began with some blanket assertion that foraging peoples really were living in a State of Nature—which meant that they were deemed to be part of the land but had no legal claim to own it. The entire basis of dispossession, in turn, was premised on the idea that the current inhabitants of those lands weren’t really working [it]” (Graeber & Wengrow 149).
The idea that indigenous peoples in the Americas were not working the land, but rather living in a State of Nature, sounds pretty clearly racist today. It is very much part of the “Noble Savage” conception of native peoples. Yet the justification of taking their lands was entirely predicated on the belief, and it made Locke and his ilk immensely wealthy.
Somehow, we manage to at least feel that the ideas of the “savage” and “Noble Savage” are two-sides of the same racist coin, and yet this feeling far too often fails to extend to subsequent ideas predicated on the idea of an idyllic or brute “state of nature.” Despite a willingness to dispense with these ideas, we are often unable to even see them at work as they are so embedded in how we tend to see the world.
Put another way, we’ve thrown out the bath tub but are holding onto the bath water and somehow see nothing nonsensical about the situation.
I say all of this in support of the concept that people are not good or bad, but rather are constantly engaged in a process of justifying themselves, their lives, their ideas, etc. Locke was not a cackling evil genius, comporting himself like a self-aware Disney villain. He was a product of his time and circumstances and came up with a theory that justified why and how he and his class were able to make money out of misery.
We do the same today, and understanding that is the very heart of critical thinking and true literacy. Everything else is memorization.
What the Hell is ‘Free Speech’?
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1919
“You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre" is oft employed to express limits on free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Whether you’re American or not, if you speak English, the aphorism is likely familiar. It is, unfortunately, not legally true.
Holmes offered the analogy as dictum—a legal term referring to aspects of a judicial opinion that are not directly related to the case at hand and have no specific legal bearing—before presenting the Supreme Court’s ruling in U.S. v. Schenck. Charles Schenck was the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and he was tried under the Espionage Act—an oft-abused, odious piece of federal legislation enacted during WWI and typically wielded against those on the Left; see also Debs v. U.S.—for distributing a pamphlet containing his opposition to the draft.
Choice quotes from the pamphlet include:
Do not submit to intimidation
Assert your rights
If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain
Schenck’s pamphlet, authorized by the SPA, further urged men not to accept being drafted on the grounds that conscription was no different than involuntary servitude, which is prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
A quick aside that the Thirteenth Amendment doesn’t apply when the involuntary servitude (a.k.a. slavery) is “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall [has] been duly convicted.” Lil’ fun fact for ya.
After his dictum about crowded theaters, Holmes went on to opine that the First Amendment’s speech protections were not absolute and that the pamphlet presented “a clear and present danger.” Schenck was imprisoned. For a pamphlet.
The impact of “a clear and present danger” was unfortunately long lived. The doctrine informed Supreme Court decisions for half a century. In 1969, the SCOTUS decision in Brandenburn v. Ohio largely overturn Schenck v U.S., dispensing with the doctrine of “clear and present danger” for a measure of “imminent lawless action.” That is, potentially dangerous speech is not sufficient. Rather, there must be incitement to violence.
This isn’t always the most comforting concept. It means inflammatory rhetoric from the Klan is protected, so long as it isn’t urging specific action. “We should kill X group,” is ok, but “meet me at Y and we’ll kill Z” isn’t.
Unfortunately, the idea that one cannot yell FIRE in a crowded theatre has proven rather sticky. Despite being overturned over 50 years ago, it is still bandied about every time people want to point to the problems of free speech.
Funnily enough, there is a particular topic about which we’ve heard so very much of the last year that doesn’t so much pass the Brandenburg test. I wonder if anyone who was actually instrumental in it’s planning will be charged under this much more current precedent. 🤔