Three Visions of the Good Life

Today, in a very strange conjunction of circumstances, I was exposed to three radically different visions of the good life. It was too strange, and too moving, not to share.

It started with my class at the UW, on Aristotle's Ethics. The topic for the last couple of classes has been the nature of the good life, specifically, Aristotle's claim that the appropriate human end is happiness. Aristotle takes this in two roughly common-sense directions. On the one hand, he says, happiness typically requires certain external goods, such as wealth, family, and friends:

[Happiness] needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment. In many actions we use friends and riches and political power as instruments; and there are some things the lack of which takes the luster from happiness – good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy, and perhaps a man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death.

But on the other hand, Aristotle is quite clear that happiness does not consist of external goods. On the contrary, he defines happiness in quite a different direction, as "an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue". We are only truly happy, in other words, when we are doing something worth doing. Wealth and other external goods can help us to accomplish those worthwhile things, but they have a purely instrumental value. The life of virtue, performing acts of moral and intellectual excellence, is the appropriate goal of human existence, and is what makes for a truly happy person.

I think you could do a great deal worse than this, and independent of God's revelation in Christ, I don't know that you can get much better. But of course, Paul is clear that human beings generally choose to remain willfully ignorant of the nature of the world, and I don't think you could find a much more clear example of this than the second vision of the good life to cross my path.

Last night, I was reading Joel Stein's column in the latest Time about his evening with Flo Rida's "posse". I'd never heard of Flo Rida before, but apparently he's a flash-in-the-pan rapper who made some money last summer off a typically misogynistic hip-hop song called Low. I thought the column was entertaining enough to read it to my wife, who said, "You know, I think our ten-year-old niece was doing a dance to that song last summer." That got me interested enough to look up the lyrics. Apparently the song is about a stripper that Flo Rida (with some expectation of success) would like to, umm, sleep with. A selection of the poetic gifts in question:

So sexual She was flexible,  Professional,  Drinking X&O Hold up wait a minute, do I see what I think I whoa Did I think I seen shawty get low Ain't the same when it's up that close Make it rain, I'm making it snow Work the pole I gotta bank role I'ma say that I prefer her no clothes I'm in to that I love women exposed She threw it back at me I gave her mo' Cash ain't a problem I know where it go

That's when I threw her legs on my shoulders I knew it was over That Heny and Cola got me like a soldier She ready for Rover, I couldn't control her So lucky, oh me, I was just like clover Shawty was hot like a toaster Sorry but I had to fold her Like a pornography poster

Of course, apart from the fact that my 10-year-old niece was doing a dance to this song, there's nothing here to shock us anymore, nothing that we haven't learned to expect from our culture generally, and hip-hop more specifically.

Still, it was thrown into dramatic light by an email I received a little later in the day. The last time I was in Israel, I had the opportunity to visit Dr. Hanna Massad, the once and future pastor of Gaza Baptist Church. As I mentioned in my blog posting, he and his family were at the time living in the West Bank, having fled Gaza for their safety. Just a few months before, Rami Ayyad, a friend and employee, had been kidnapped by Islamic extremists for being a Christian. He was tortured and eventually killed, and his assailants dumped his body in a field.

Today was the one-year anniversary of Rami's death, and Dr. Massad sent me a link to a website which had been established in his memory. Especially moving was this message, written by Rami's mother:

I write about my son while my heart weeps. I will weep all my life. My pain grew deeper when four months after his death, his daughter Sama was born. What wrong has this baby committed not to be able to feel the warmth of her father? What crime have his wife and two boys done to live without a dad? What crime has Rami done? His only crime is that he had faith in Christ Jesus. We trust the Lord that he will not leave his wife and children because the blood of the martyr is not given in vain. Rami defended the word of God. He has made us all proud, all the Ayyad family. We are proud of his martyrdom because he died while defending his faith and refused to deny Christ.

As plausible, reasonable, and perhaps even as persuasive as Aristotle's account of the good life is, an event like this throws it into some relief against the New Testament. It's true, as Aristotle says, that no one can be happy on the rack: no one could say that Rami ended his life "happy", by any definition. But the question is whether Rami's life was a good life. "I am crucified with Christ," Paul said, and it's clear that this moves substantially beyond metaphor. "No man can be blessed [μακαριος] if he meet with fortunes like those of Priam," Aristotle says; and yet Jesus very specifically contradicts him: "Blessed [μακαριοι] are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

Of course, there's a great deal of overlap between Aristotle's ethics, and the moral vision of the New Testament: Aristotle also knew that courage, and perhaps even death in battle, could be a part of the good life. But where Aristotle looks to the edge of the world and sees a final horizon, Christians look to an empty tomb; and in the darkness of this tomb they see beyond the horizons of this world.

Thoughts on the Presidential Race

One of my wife's friends is a US citizen who has been living in the UK since she married a theology professor at the University of Edinburgh. She asked me recently for a stateside perspective on the presidential race. What follows is a lightly edited version of what I wrote to her.

Up until very recently, I was pretty solidly planning to vote for McCain. He's always been willing to answer tough questions, has never been tied up in party politics, and has had a reputation for integrity.  More than any other politician in modern history, he's been willing to critique himself and to admit to mistakes that he's made over the years.  He was also unique amongst politicians for his commitment to answer the question the reporter asked instead of the question that he wished the reporter had asked.  That sort of honesty and risk-taking impresses me in a politician like nothing else.  I was for McCain back in 2000 (he would have made a far, far better president than Bush), and I've remained a fan ever since.

I should also note that this would be a first: I registered as a Democrat back in college (mostly because the dude running the registration booth really wanted me to register Republican), and I have yet to vote for a Republican presidential candidate. Despite that, I've always been more of an independent than a Democrat, but I've also found myself tilting in a more conservative direction recently. Specifically, I find myself more of a social conservative as the years go by, or at least, I attribute more value to those issues.  I'm not a pro-life fanatic, but I think abortion-on-demand is abhorrent, and I strongly believe that, with a few exceptions, there's no question that it should be against the law.  The Supreme Court decision legalizing it was horribly reasoned: in my opinion, it stands right next to the Dred Scott decision as an indelible stain on the Supreme Court's legacy.  (I bring this up not to convince anyone, but to let you know my reasoning.)  McCain himself is only a mild social conservative, but he's also a strict constructionist, and there's no question that he'd be far more likely to appoint judges that could overturn Roe v. Wade than Obama (who is ardently pro-choice) would be.  And so with other, similar social issues that I tend to think are important.

At the same time, I also think that Obama would make a fairly good president.  I don't like his stand on moral/social issues, full-stop, but he's clearly got a good head on his shoulders, and the way he's handled his campaign shows that he's got great political instincts.  He's the most charismatic candidate we've had since Ronald Reagan, and he's a great deal more intelligent and thoughtful than Reagan ever was.  Obama is more like Bill Clinton than anything else, but I think he's more charismatic even than Bill, and from what I can tell, he has a great deal more integrity.

Between the two, McCain may yet get my vote, but I have to say, I've begun to waver, for two primary reasons.

1. McCain has completely abandoned his "straight talk express".  Some of this is sad, but just what you have to do when you're running a national campaign: he's thrown the press off the bus, he sticks to his talking points, he's started speaking in sound bites.  But some of it is a real mark against his integrity.  I'm a McCain fan, but even I think he's been stretching the truth in his attacks against Obama, and lots of other folks think that he's been lying outright.  That was working for a while, and it helped to get his polling numbers up a little bit, but it turned me off.  (Of course, Obama has made his share of exaggerations and stupid claims, but McCain's, in my opinion, are more egregious.)
2. I'm beginning to think that it was a mistake for McCain to pick Sarah Palin.  There was a period of time when it looked like that decision might have been sheer genius.  Palin has energized the religious right like nothing I've seen.  No conservative Christian that I know was enthusiastic about McCain (though they were pretty much all planning to vote for him).  But when he announced Palin as his choice, these same conservatives were nearly ecstatic.  Dobson, for one, changed his tune on McCain completely, and began singing his praises in radio show after radio show.  My mother teared up during Palin's RNC acceptance speech – and I have to admit, Palin turned in a phenomenal performance that day.  But it was a very short honeymoon.  Palin has stumbled badly since then, in a number of areas, but most notably in her interviews with Katie Couric.  Granted, I might not have been able to answer all those questions in a very intelligent manner, either – like Palin, off the top of my head, I can't think of any Supreme Court decisions besides Roe v. Wade that I disagree with.  But I expect the occupant of the chair next to the President to be a great deal more intelligent and experienced than I am; and on the whole, in her interviews, Palin has seemed to be a great deal less.  As Galena pointed out yesterday, Palin has substantially less foreign policy experience than we do.  And while Palin didn't embarrass herself in her debate with Biden, it was clear that Biden was not only more experienced (of course), but also, in my opinion, much more intelligent.

So all that said, I'm not sure where I'll end up.  I don't think either of them would make a bad president, and I think there's a reasonable chance that either one might make a great president.  But I'm disappointed in McCain's performance lately, and it's made me less excited to see him in the Oval Office.

An Explanation of the Crisis

Dan Edelen just posted an excellent explanation of the economic crisis.  It was written by an economist friend of his, and it explains more about why the meltdown on Wall Street, and the subsequent tightening of credit, could have a huge impact on Main Street than anything else I've read.

Our economy uses credit so systematically and it is so much at the core of our economic effectiveness, that to constrain it just the littlest bit sends shock waves throughout the whole system. The businesses that are right on the edge—the ones that need to borrow money even for a day or two to cover the cost of inventory and make payments to manufacturers before inventory is sold—are in a very precarious position. If they can’t get credit they’ll get caught between paying for inventory and paying for payroll, for example. That’s a tough spot…if you don’t pay for the inventory on time you get no more and you’re out of business. If you don’t pay the employees, they all quit and/or the news gets out and your suppliers dry up. Any way, you’re out of business.

The Veep Debate

Galena and I don't have TV, so we didn't get to watch the Veep debate live. But we just watched it off the Internet tonight, and I want to record my initial impressions. (We're actually still watching it – Galena's annoyed that I'm typing on the same computer we're using to watch the debate.)

1. I thought Palin gave a phenomenal nomination speech at the RNC nomination. It was amazing.
2. Palin embarrassed herself pretty badly in the Katie Couric interviews. Ouch.
3. Palin didn't embarrass herself in the debates. She was far better than Admiral Stockdale, who very helpfully set the modern standard for embarrassment at the national level.
4. Palin didn't impress me. Whenever Palin didn't know what to say to a question, she didn't try to answer it, or give it any thought; she transparently changed the topic. And of course, she was generally parroting canned answers, which I don't mind so much as I mind noticing it.
5. Biden generally impressed me. In nearly every instance, gave a clear, concise, impressive answer. Of course he spun every answer, but that's just what you expect. Like Palin, he sometimes changed the topic when he didn't like it, but he generally did it after answering the question, rather than instead of answering the question.  (The big exception was when he was asked which of his ticket's promises would have to be postponed due to the financial crisis.  The answer he gave -- and which Palin also gave immediately afterwards -- was a complete weasel answer, and it almost made me turn the debate off.)
6. I hated the format. The 90 second timeline forced each candidate to give sound-bite answers rather than anything remotely resembling a thoughtful response.

I'm rather depressed about McCain's strategy lately. I liked McCain initially because I really bought into the "maverick" rhetoric. I was impressed by the thoughtful answers he gave to tough questions, and by his unique ability to critique himself. But all of that has changed. I know why it's changed, of course: it wasn't working anymore. The press pretty much anointed Obama, and McCain simply couldn't get any airtime. During Obama's overseas trip in July, McCain could have stripped naked in Times Square and run around screaming "I hate America," and he wouldn't have made it past page 3. So I understand why he's changed strategy. But I like the old McCain more.

Deregulation as the Cause of the Liquidity Crisis?

I keep reading, in well over a dozen different articles now, that deregulation was one of the primary causes of the current credit crisis. It's a de rigeur part of any Democratic attempt to explain this crisis (with a finger pointed implicitly or explicitly at the Republicans in general, and John McCain in particular). I have no partisan axe to grind here – I'm a Democrat, if not always a very good one – but what I haven't heard is any more detailed explanation: just a naked and unsubstantiated claim.

Indeed, my mother, a bank COO, tells me that from her perspective, there's a great deal more regulation now than 10 years ago. In a recent email, she said:

We bankers have been advocating deregulation for years, but I haven't seen any lessening of regulations; in fact, I'm sure we have way more regulations now than ever before. We've spent the last four months getting ready for the newest hot button - "Identity Theft Prevention Program" requirements, creating a 70-page document that hopefully covers all that we need to do. Actually, most of the regulations are good, but sometimes they become so cumbersome and we are required to give so many disclosures, that customers don't read any of them. Case in point: A year or so ago, our Chief Lending Officer had to appear in court to testify against a customer who had defaulted on their loan. She presented their signed Loan Agreement (which, due to numerous regulations, was many pages long); the judge took one look at it, and tossed it aside, saying, "You don't really expect people to understand all of that, do you?"

Now, she's a commercial banker, not an investment banker, and there's a pretty significant world of difference between them. But I've read and heard all sorts of details about the debt instruments at the heart of this crisis: mortgage backed securities, collateral debt obligations, credit default swaps, and all the other terms that way too many folks on Main Street now know way too much about. But I haven't heard a single detail, or even a reasonable attempt at high-level explanation, as to what deregulation occurred, why it occurred, and how this specific removal of regulations (or lack of enforcement of existing regulations) contributed to the crisis.

I'm not saying it didn't happen – I'm just saying that I haven't heard any explanation or details. Does anyone know anything about this, or can anyone point me in the right direction to understand better what's being claimed here?

Real Estate Roller Coaster

For a simple, visceral explanation of the insane increase in home values which has driven this latest crisis, see this video, produced in 2007, as home values were peaking, but well before there was anything like general recognition that we were facing a crisis.

It will give you a pretty good sense for the height of the fall we might be looking at.

Frighteningly Prescient New York Times Article

My mother, the COO at a small bank in Longview, forwarded me this article from the New York Times, written in 1999. The article describes steps by Fannie Mae to lower their lending standards, in order to increase minority and lower-income home ownership. Two of the paragraphs are eerily prescient:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

I heard an economist on KUOW this morning refer to the difference between "home ownership" and "home borrowership". We've gotten the two confused, he said. Nobody who takes out a negative amortization mortgage, or who buys a home with no money down, really owns the home. Any future US policy in regard to home ownership should absolutely take note of that distinction.