"The Fountain": A Movie Review.

May 13, 2010 at 4:09 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected, again.

This review was written as my computer was subjected to 10 intrusion attempts. According to Norton Security, my main attacker today (as on November 29) is 82.165.243.51 -- New Jersey? I am unable to read this essay at my msn group today, February 26, 2007 at 1:53 P.M., after 268 intrusion attempts (the most recent took place at 2:41:20 A.M., yesterday), attackers: 24.192.23.208, 24.192.219.84, 3358 (NJ Supreme Court?), 24.192.33.116, 2312, 124.128.101.172. (NJ Attorney General?) Coincidence? I doubt it. More "errors" inserted and corrected in 2010.

Mysterium Tremendum.

I wanted to be alone. So I went to see Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. It is a beautiful film that is both entertaining and a work of art. Solidly grounded in cinematic and surrealist imagery, this film poses a set of entangled questions and offers suggestive interpretations concerning the ultimate mysteries of life by way of an answer from our philosophically-minded director.

The "world-knot" or ultimate riddle of metaphysics, religion and science is the entanglement of love and death, the "dance" between creation and destruction that generates both life- and death-principles, which are symbolized in the mystical union of day (masculine) and night (feminine), man (sun) and woman (moon).

For Christian alchemists and mystics of the ancient and medieval world (comparable terms exist among kabbalists, Hindus, Buddhists and the pre-Colombian rituals) this puzzle was known simply as the mysterium tremendum. One is reminded of Quetzalcoatl -- the ancient Mexican winged serpent god -- swallowing his tail in an image of eternity among Aztecs. Also felt in this movie is the presence of the Maya's "great father" (sky) and "great mother" (earth), who (I love this term) "fecundate" the earth with life. The subject of this movie is neither mortality nor immortality. Many reviewers got it wrong. Aronosfky's theme is love's eternal power to defeat death and time, here and now.

The film is deeply romantic. It is a kind of symphony in three movements, whose resolution is a return to the beginning. The exploration of triadic relations establishes a connection between this work and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that is concerned with self, other and spirit; with Beethoven's great symphonies and their composer's quest for resolution and fusion of self with the Absolute in ultimate peace and lasting harmony; also with the transformation of science in our times into religious insight, even as religion has anticipated and been reinforced by science's most important and newest discoveries.

This magnificent cinematic work of art -- and Mr. Aronofsky's vision -- suggest not a conflict between science and religion, but the resolution of that conflict in a higher synthesis that includes both forms of knowing in the service of humanity. Writing of the romance of science and technology, in a time skeptical of traditional religions yet still hungry for spiritual experience, Norman Mailer comments:

... our voyage to the moon was finally an exploration by the century itself into the possible consequences of its worship of technology, as if, indeed, the literal moon trip was a giant species of simulation to reveal some secret in the buried tendencies of our history. It was as if technology had determined to invoke the god of magic it had already slain, even as a priest might step via his nightmare into the powerful passions of sexual instinct so primitive he had once cast it out, and wished to see if he were powerful enough to cast it out again.

Of a Fire on the Moon (Boston: Little & Brown, 1969), p. 161.

The plot of The Fountain concerns two lovers incarnated in three distinct settings: As knight protector to the Spanish queen (Hugh Jackman) is given a mission, the "lover's quest," to discover the tree of life in Central America in order to rescue his threatened queen (Rachel Weisz), whose lovely features fill the screen with an ethereal and graceful beauty that alone justifies the $10.50 cost of seeing the movie. He is asked to find Eden. Ms. Weisz conjures associations with the eternal feminine in global -- and especially Western -- iconography. She looks like the Virgin Mary as painted by Juan de Ribera or Diego Velazquez.

Both the movie camera and director are obviously in love with Ms. Weisz. Who can blame them? By the end of the movie the audience also is besotted. The acting is amazing. Mr. Jackman impressed me with scenes calling for depictions of a man's extreme emotional pain at the loss of an adored woman, which are truthful and heart-breaking. Whatever they paid this fine actor was too little for the psychic places that he visited in this story.

I no longer know how to explain what it feels like to discover a new "error" inserted in this essay-review since my previous revision of this work -- an inserted "error" which is not found in my printed version of this essay. Perhaps this inserted "error" is related to the arrests in New Jersey this week. I will correct this "error" and do my best to discover other writings which may have been vandalized today. ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

The tree is found and then pierced with a knife. The tree is between earth and sky. The tree "bleeds" life -- like the sacred heart of Jesus -- pointing to the number three. The three-sided pyramid is central to this story as are the three settings. As in Daronofsky's previous movie Pi, numbers are mystical symbols. Numbers are a language spoken by nature/God, revealing the doorways of perception and reality. "Death," our hero is told, "is the pathway to awe and alternate reality."

Those interested in comparisons between scientific representations of our protean realities and religious efforts to account for this same intuition of plural selves and realities may wish to juxtapose theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities From Plato to String Theory (by Way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, and the Twilight Zone) (New York: Penguin, 2005), pp. 10-19 and physicist F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 85- 113 with Robert C. Solomon, Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 58-74 and Carlos Fuentes, El Espejo Enterrado (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura, S.A., 1992), pp. 99-125:

"Cuando era de noche, en la oscuridad, los dioses se reunieron ..." y crearon a la humanidad: "Que haya luz", exclama el libro de los mayas, el Popol Vuh, que nazca la aurora sobre el cielo y la tierra. ..." (Fuentes, pp. 100-101.)

"When night fell, in the darkness, the gods were united ... " and they created humanity: "Let there be light," exclaimed the book of the Maya, the Popol Vuh, may the aurora be born over the sky and the earth ..." (My translation.)

The lovers, then, in a contemporary city are struggling against a malignant tumor (like a dark tree that "bleeds" death?) growing in a woman's brain, even as her husband, a scientist, seeks a cure based on substances from the same Central American region and tree that provides the first scenario's ambiguous symbol. As the piercing of the tree yields the sap that flows into creation -- only in agony and death, is life born -- so with this scientist's work, discoveries are made which lead to extensions of life for others, but at the cost of his beloved's life. A Woman's bodily death is also this man's spiritual death.

Finally, in a distant future (which is also present) the two are reunited, restored to the confrontation with life-principle (tree), mystery (death and separation), resolution and reconciliation (love, which is serene acceptance of life's mystery or redemption). The stars from which we come -- from which we are made and to which we return -- serve as silent witnesses drowning the suffering lovers with their pity, as angels in Christian scriptures confer their infinite compassion on humanity by sharing, willingly, in human suffering. See Wings of Desire and 2001, A Space Odyssey.

Life necessitates death. The decomposition of all organisms into the "primal unity" (Buddhist terms) of matter is inevitable. Love takes us out of the cycle of life and death, however, as measured by time's ticking clock, through eros ("with woman on top" -- according to Maya wisdom!), which makes lovers immortal. "Helen, make me immortal with a kiss," says Marlowe's Faust.

Mr. Jackman's character finds "Eden" and "eternal life" -- both are love. The price of that love for him is tragedy and pain, as it is for most of us. The first act of creation is the kiss of earth and sky. The achievement of human completion, for Romanticism, is the lovers' kiss.

A key symbol in this work is the ring, made of metal, of star dust, of the three vignettes that constitute eternity. The absolute center of nothingness is zero. The star cluster is a circle. So is the story we have seen, which viewers -- like the husband of the dying woman who was writing a book titled "The Fountain" -- are asked to "finish." We are given the task of completing this work for the creator, as humanity must complete creation through human choices, freedom. "Finish it," we are told. ("Sinbad's Excellent New York Adventure" and "Metaphor is Mystery.")

This is a film demonstrating a free hermeneutic exercise by inviting audiences to "interpret." In the same way, it is up to each generation of Americans to contribute to "finishing" our experiment in Constitutional government and revolution by interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Consider this late poem by T.E. Hulme:

The fountain is turned on. It has a definite geometrical shape,
but the shape did not exist before it was turned on.
Compare the arguments about the pre-existence of the soul.

T.E. Hulme, "Cinders," in Speculations (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1924), p. 240.

Love and Death in the Language of Symbols -- Where Science and Religion Meet.

A. Tree.

A key symbol throughout the world is the massive centering tree (have you decorated your Christmas tree?) which shelters and feeds, lives and dies, dropping its seeds upon the earth. In Chapters 1 and 3 of Genessis, we are told of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and tree of life -- both are mentioned in the film -- which become a single tree that is the cross on which Christ is crucified, also the tree under which Buddha is seated for eternity as he achieves enlightenment. The tree, like humanity, touches earth and sky. We are spirits in a material world.

We are returned to the earth and cycles of all life, as the roots of the tree connect it to the planet, even as its branches reach for the stars. The ultimate act of human pride is defiance of our earthly natures and the aspiration to escape our ultimate destiny, which is death that gives poignancy and meaning to our works and days. One expression of this Promethean hubris is art, another is science. Philosophy and religion serve as correctives to our overweening pride as a species. Here is a famous serpent in Eden -- possibly the first scientist and philosopher -- who (wisely) chose to speak to woman and not to man:

Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?' And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.' " But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Quoted by Elaine Pagels in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988), p. xiii.

The first fully human act is defiance. It is humanity's rebellion which makes us "god-like," moral subjects because we are free; hence, possessed of the knowledge of good and evil. The fountain in Genessis is the tree of life -- as in Maya scripture and in this film -- which is the earth, dual, life-giving and life-taking, tree of knowledge of good and evil, bringer of freedom or death. Life is dual, but then so are we: masculine and feminine, within and beyond ourselves. The "Fountain" in this film is a tree, and the tree is man and woman in relation with the cosmos.

I will pass over in silence the simplistic Freudian interpretation which sees the tree as phallic. The tree is as feminine as it is masculine in this art work. Jung will be better than Freud in coming to terms with this film.

B. Pyramids.

The three-sided structure, pyramid, is holy for ancient people. This is true both in Egypt and in the "new world" of the Americas. The number three is symbolic of human cycles -- man (1) and woman (2), then child (3). Also, the pyramid structure is the vessel symbolizing the female womb, which is the center of creation, like the earth, which is the "womb" from which humanity emerges. Think of the Holy Grail and individuation.

C. The Ring.

The ring is symbolic of wedded bliss or romantic union between man and woman, as representatives of the love of God for humanity. Hence, the ring is symbolic of eternity in the union of God and man. In all world religions the ultimate source of life and creation is life-giving love, which yields itself to create the world. Love is the bleeding heart of Jesus from which flows salvation -- which is sharing in Christ's love -- along with compassion in suffering with and for others. (See my story "Pieta.")

Islam addresses these themes with extraordinary poetic beauty. Although pictorial representation is prohibited in Islam (since creation is the province of God), recognition of organic intricacy and intertwining can be seen in the lettering of texts from the Koran found in decorations of structures throughout the Islamic world, an intricacy also mirrored in the entaglement of all life on this planet. Even more, it is the great theme of Sufi verses:

In the Sufi view, "Everything in the world is in some mysterious way connected with Love and expresses either the longing of the lover or sings of the beauty and glory of the eternal Beloved who hides His [Her] face behind a thousand forms ... " Love between men and women is part of divine love, for the human experience both conceals and reveals the ultimate Lover and the ultimate Beloved. Indeed the love of God is really the only love there is . Divine love is the depth, meaning, and esoteric secret residing in profane love. The eleventh century Sufi Ibn al-Arabi writes:

"It is God who in each loved one manifests Himself to the gaze of each lover ... for it is impossible to adore a being. ... Thus it goes for love, a creature loves no one but his Creator."

John R. Haule, Pilgrimage of the Heart: The Path of Romantic Love (Boston & London: Shambala, 1992), pp. 3-4. See also Joseph Campbell, "The Mythology of Love," in Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam, 1972), pp. 152-174.

Love's Wound: The "Bleeding Heart of Jesus" and Life Principle.

A. Mystical Union/Eros

The piercing of the flesh of this tree of life and the shedding of its "blood," conjures associations with the "bleeding heart" of Jesus in Christian iconography, as I have noted, which is symbolic of divine love and suffering for humanity. It is this love which gives eternal life. This is accomplished not by repairing the flesh forever, but by unifying the person with all of life and creation "here and now." Mr Jackman's character becomes vegetation, reconnected to nature, through consuming the sap of this tree.

The analogy to sexual union among lovers is a powerful part of theological speculation on this subject for centuries before Freud. The representation of this in religious ritual was misunderstood in The Da Vinci Code. Thus, St. Theresa of Avila writes of her "Mystical Union" with divinity:

I can only say that the soul feels close to God and that there abides within it such a certainty that it cannot possibly do other than believe.

George Brantl, ed., The Religious Experience (New York: George Brazillier, 1964), p. 593.

It is only by blending into the life of another, that one experiences both the loss and preservation of self. The lovers' embrace in the film is shadowed by death that awaits this lovely young woman. With the death of the individual comes his/her return to the earth and eternal cycles of creation, even as the flesh dissolves into the totality from which it has emerged. "You must die," Hegel says, "in order to live." You must understand yourself less in terms of individual appetite and desire, as ego, so as to become self-giving in and for the other in community. Resurrection. Think of the Buddha holding a lotus flower. Think also of the shattered glass bound in cloth in a Jewish wedding ceremony.

B. Separation/Loss.

Love presents us, therefore, with the agony of separation and loss. All that we love will be blasted by time. Hence, to seek spiritual fulfillment in time is a doomed venture. Moreover, to choose love is to accept the inevitability of suffering "for" the other, whose pains and eventual destruction become our own. Yet love is the meaning or call of life. It is why we are here: to learn to give up our selves and unite with that larger Absolute which contains us and to which we contribute, willingly or not, achieving our place in creation. Love can only be kept by being given away. The same is true of the self. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")

Jung's descriptions of the Self rely on images of the Absolute from the various world religions: Christ, atman, Tao, emptiness, and the like. Images of the irascible, jealous Yahweh of the Hebrew scriptures and the blood-thirsty Kali of Hinduism are set side by side with the Good Sheperd, the Lamb of God, and the playful Krishna. The divine is the absolutely powerful factor in the universe and within the psyche. In Jung's language, that is Self. Insofar as it is the source of all life and harmony and unity, it may be called the mythic rhizone out of which flowers transcendent meaning with its capacity to make life secure and soul-satisfying. Insofar as its synthesis is tenuous, doubtful, fragmentary, a bridge of fog, it may be called the wound.

Pilgrimage of the Heart, pp. 76-77. ("Out of the Past.")

Religions teach this lesson of interdependency through poetry and symbols; science teaches this same wisdom by means of knowledge of our humble place, again, whether we like it or not, in an infinitely vast universe where all of life and all that "is" matters in relationship to us and we matter in relationship to all that is. Philosophers may be associated with great mystics from all over the world, also with our finest physicists and biologists, when seeking to place humanity and the narrative of the earth's trajectory in time, as well as the evolution of life, within a grand cosmic story that contains us.

To worship science, Norman Mailer writes, was like being married to a beautiful woman who furnished your castle, bore your children, decorated and illuminated your life, filled your days, was indispensable. Yet all the while you did not know the first thing about her true nature. Was she in love with you or a masterpiece of hate? There, in the center of dream, was not an answer but an enigma. Was light corpuscular or wave? Or both. Both!

Of a Fire on the Moon, p. 166. ("Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")

You begin to see why the serpent spoke to woman. Also, why Germaine Greer confronted with Mailer's echo of Freud -- "What do women want?" -- responded: "Well, it certainly isn't you."

Something of the exasperating and bewitching mystery of the feminine principle, so linked to life and death, to that "fountain" which is the earth that nourishes us and to which we return when we die, is captured on screen in this film in the enigma of Ms. Weisz's character, wearing dangling white pearl earrings -- like the white sap of the great tree -- symbolizing tears and breast milk, loss and nourishment. Woman is associated by this director with the ambiguity of life; men are concerned with the search for answers that woman, somehow, already knows.

C. In the end is my beginning.

The pain of separation is overcome, then, only through the affirmation of the moment, the eternal now, which is a defeat of time and death in passion or eros by means of a surrender of self with and to another. This is the "eternity" of which poets speak. In the act of love, the union is established forever, even as the decay of the body proceeds to the inevitable and ultimate dissolution of the bodily self. Love-making is a spiritual act and protest against -- as well as acceptance of -- death.

The Fountain is a religious celebration of love's defeat of death, even as it offers a grim and realistic depiction of the tragedy of loss in human life. Science and religion meet in what we are told in this work of art of human destiny: We must suffer and die, but if we have loved at least one other person, then we may affirm our single instant of worldly existence (our lives), insisting that, for a fleeting moment, we were here and the stars and all that is were "here" only for us, now.

Conclusion.

A. "Bed is the Poor Man's Opera."

What is this work of art that Aronosky has given us? It is a "repetition," to use Kierkegaardian language. It is a depicting on celluloid (or digitally, nowadays) of that primal human journey that is the concern of religion and science, also the true subject of all great art. This film is saying this is what we are -- loving and dying creatures, aware of incompleteness and in search of one another, coming home to that source of life from which we have been born.

This work is only a way for you to see yourself. It is also a way to ponder those mysteries that are always beyond us. This film is -- like all genuine art or the face of someone you love -- a mirror and door. I will close with Ernst Cassirer's meditation on art applied to this movie:

Wordsworth defines great poetry as "emotions recollected in tranquility." But the tranquility we feel in great poetry is not that of recollection. The emotions aroused by the poet do not belong to a remote past. They are "here" -- alive and immediate. We are aware of their full strength, but this strength tends in a new direction. It is rather seen than immediately felt. Our passions are no longer dark and inpenetrable powers; they become, as it were, transparent. Shakespeare never gives us an aesthetic theory. He does not speculate about the nature of art. Yet in the only passage in which he speaks of the character and function of dramatic art the whole stress is laid upon this point. "The purpose of playing," as Hamlet explains, "both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty.

What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says "yes" as soon as he begins to think for himself ... He rebels because he categorically refuses to submit to conditions that he considers intolerable and also because he is ... conviced that his position is justified, or rather, because in his own mind he thinks that "he has the right to" ... Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.

We must take the great civilizing step of abolishing the death penalty.

Albert Camus

We live in the age of legal sleight-of-hand. Mysticism and mumbo-jumbo are found in American courts much more than in places of worship. The American legal system has too often become a mechanism of oppression in our late capitalist wonderland, a cruel lie, a shameful betrayal of the promise of the U.S. Constitution for which so many brave Americans have fought and died.

If there is a single hope at the heart of the U.S. commitment to a government of laws and not of arbitrary whim on the part of rulers, it is the hope that legal rights will be recognized to constrain the actions of government. It was once unproblematic to assert that no one would be confined in an American prison without due process of law; no one would be subjected to Star Chamber-like "secret" proceedings; no one would be tortured or be made an unwilling subject of psychological experiments. None of these claims can be made today.

I am saddened and dismayed to comment on developments that I never imagined would become "issues" in American political and jurisprudential discourse. A weariness steals over the soul and a paralyzing feeling of hopelessness afflicts us when contemplating the spectacle of corruption and filth in state courtrooms -- courtrooms where men and women are deprived of their liberty and wealth every day, with no semblance of legality, decency, or even transparency, only a naked and brutal use of power that is thinly veiled with the forms and rhetoric of law, even as justice is denied.

Victims of such legal frauds -- and I can relate to this -- must live with the knowledge that their torturers and oppressors are thriving as a result of the very injustices and crimes to which victims have been subjected. You can only "kill people in electric chairs" by speaking of "terminating petitioner's appeals so as to carry out the legally mandated penalty." This is to invoke jargon and ideology for the sinister purpose of obscuring the moral reality before our eyes. You are killing human beings if you approve of the death penalty.

How did things reach such a level? When did we lose our democracy and system of laws?

Merely having a Constitution in place as a form of decoration, an attractive display under glass, yellowing with age, may be worse than simply admitting that the American experiment in freedom under law has been abandoned or that "we" (at least some people who wield power) have decided that this experiment in freedom has failed:

The "Military Commissions Act of 2006," which passed both houses of Congress in late September, will ensure that the U.S. government can do openly what it had to cover-up until recently. The bill grants the president wide leeway to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions, institutes military tribunals for the prosecution of "unlawful combatants," and allows the CIA and the U.S. military to conduct "alternative interrogation procedures" (read: torture).

Everything the framers hoped to abolish when they drafted the Constitution is restored in this legislation, which "sets the clock back a thousand years on legal rights":

The new law legalizes such practices as waterboarding (holding a victim's head under water to induce gagging and fear of drowning), sleep deprivation, and psychological and mental stress techniques in interrogations.

All of these methods are used already (secretly) in New Jersey, where shrinks are paid to question people (also secretly) under hypnosis, often raping and stealing from them for good measure. Sexual assaults on incarcerated men and women -- often by authority figures, even "therapists" -- are not uncommon. (See "The Tuchin/Riccioli Torture and the Constitution in New Jersey" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

In the military tribunals endorsed by the new law, defendants' statements obtained through torture and coercion will be admissable, as will hearsay evidence and evidence obtained without a warrant. The bill also ratifies the legality of indefinite imprisonment at U.S. military prisons like the one at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Finally,

... anyone designated an enemy combatant can be denied the right to habeas corpus. Habeas corpus petitions allow defendants to challenge their unlawful imprisonment and to seek their release if their cases were tried unfairly. By suspending [this most ancient writ in common law,] the new law takes human rights back to the thirteenth century.

Nagesh Rao, "U.S. Congress: Legalizing Torture," in International Socialist Review, November-December, 2006, at pp. 6-7.

Nowhere is the cruel barbarism resulting from American legal mendacity more obvious or unethical than in capital punishment jurisprudence. As I contemplate photos and portraits of pontificating hypocrites, presuming to judge the lives and values of others -- deciding who lives or dies -- usually displaying a sickening self-satisfaction and smugness, a visible contempt for ordinary persons, as in New Jersey, I despair of any possibility that reason and rational arguments can ever reach minds dwelling in such darkness, consumed by such greed and "amusement" at the suffering and pains of others. "We can learn from you," torturers say.

I have been laughed at and insulted by such persons. More than anger, I feel great sadness when pondering the effects of power on mediocrities who delight in depriving men and women of that dignity which even the humblest person must be allowed in facing tragedy and death, thus achieving the ultimate corruption not only of the law, but of themselves and their black robes. What have you become? ("Is New Jersey Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz unethical or only incompetent?" and "Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey.")

I am heartened today to learn that for many people throughout the world -- and in this country -- such experiences of humiliation and violation are a badge of honor. Compare any group portrait of the New Jersey Supreme Court Justices with this image http://www.urban.org/images/americaschildren.gif.

Do you believe that these affluent persons, depicted in their flowing black robes, are capable of understanding what is shown in this image of affliction? I doubt it. Unfortunately, those judges are all that stands between you and the power of the State. This is not only worrisome, it is terrifying. I cannot be certain of when the next obstruction campaign will be directed against my computer. Despite the First Amendment, it would not surprise me if state government agencies or courts are involved in efforts to silence critics, like me. I will do my best to express my opinions quickly and briefly. The death penalty today is unconstitutional. It cannot be made "fair" in a society burdened with America's history of class and racial bias.

The death penalty is a grotesque and archaic form of punishment, which has been abandoned in most "advanced" societies in the world. The disproportionate imposition of death as "punishment" upon minority men -- mostly African Americans -- in the United States, in an obviously racist and arbitrary manner, makes the continued use of this punishment a monument to legal cruelty and evil. I do not accept that anyone should be executed in my name, or in the name of the people who adopted and live by the U.S. Constitution, as long as bias is pervasive in the "legal machinery of death."

The death penalty offends the Constitution's equal protection and due process clauses, it is cruel and unusual in practice, in what is now (much too often) "a cruel and unusual" society burdened with the legacy of slavery which is persistent, insidious, and lethal racism. It is not possible to remain silent in response to continuing death penalty decisions. All of us, all of our children, are being imprisoned and executed by courts relying on these laws. Invited to attend an execution, Christopher Hitchens writes eloquently of what any sensitive and intelligent person must feel on such a grisly occasion, given the realities of America's legal system and bloody history. It is that history that makes all tinkering efforts absurd and ineffective:

Every attempt to make this procedure more rational, more orderly, and more hygienic succeeded only in calling attention to something that I'm now firmly convinced is inescapable -- namely, that it's irrational, random, and befouled and bemerded with the residues of ancient cruelty and superstition. They can deny it's cruel, they can certainly make it less unusual, but they are still stuck with the task of running a premeditated state killing: Big Government at its worst. (When the French finally abolished the guillotine in 1981 they did so on the noble grounds that "it expresses a totalitarian relationship between the citizen and the state.")

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays (New York: Nation Books, 2004), p. 242.

It is no answer to speak of the terrible crimes committed by offenders because societies must be a little better than heinous criminals. We legitimate violence and cruelty by imposing death on those who kill. There is no correlation, as Hitchens notes, between the death penalty and ANY reduction in murder rates.

It is no response to say that, at least, the executed criminal is "deterred." Such gallows humor on the part of America's judicial humanitarians and comedians is not very persuasive because there are numerous studies suggesting that violence and murder only breed MORE of the same, increasing the likelihood that where death is a punishment that is legally sanctioned, those who are disproportionately subjected to it will make use of the same penalty against their oppressors. In a legal system that is frequently idiotic and incompetent, with a judiciary sometimes staffed by "political whores" and unapprehended criminals, errors are bound to be made. The innocent are certain to be executed. William Styron dips his pen in satirical acid to suggest:

Until by legislative mandate all executions are carried on the television networks of the states involved (they could be sponsored by the gas and electric companies), in a dramatic fashion which will ensure the entire population -- men, women and all children over the age of five -- [will] watch the final agonies of those condemned, even the suggestion that we inflict the death penalty to deter people from crime is a farcical one.

This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (New York: Random House, 1982), p. 125.

As I write, Mumia Abu-Jamal is still facing execution for a crime to which another person has now confessed. This alone should give appellate tribunals cause to err on the side of caution so as to halt the imposition of the most irreversible and ultimate penalty. On December 17, 2006, between 5 to 10 P.M., at 125 Fifth Ave. (at Sterling Pl.) Brooklyn, NY -- thousands of people will gather to protest and appeal for all "class-war prisoners" in the U.S., asking for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. I urge you to join those of us who are opposed to this execution and every other death penalty in America in this protest and struggle. We must not allow Mr. Abu-Jamal to be executed. We should work for his immediate release.

After years of efforts to "fine tune" death penalty laws in order to accommodate the demands for human dignity and justice, as well as those inviolable individual rights which he discovered in the greatest Constitution the world has ever seen, in a nation which must remain the greatest nation in the world -- not in a simplistic military way, but in a moral sense -- Republican appointee, Mr. Justice Harry Blackmun, concluded in 1994 that it could not be done. The U.S. Constitution and death penalty laws, given our evolving understanding of what the document and tradition require of us, cannot be reconciled. We must choose between them. Either legally sanctioned death or the Constitution. We cannot have both. I agree. Like Mr. Justice Blackmun, I choose the Constitution.

I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than twenty years I have endeavored -- indeed I have struggled -- along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.

More on the Jersey Gang and Corrupt Courts.

As of 8:25 P.M. on November 25, I have been hit with a virus or browser theft which makes use of my computer very difficult. If I am unable to write over the next few days, I promise you that it will not be voluntary. I will do my best to continue somehow. I don't know how people who direct such malice at others live with themselves or whether they can honestly believe that it is any kind of response to an argument to seek to censor the person making it. I urge you to read these posts with care. Ask yourself whether the society and power structure thriving in New Jersey, for example, is the sort of reality that you wish to have your children experience during their adult lives. We must struggle to end political corruption and organized crime's involvement in state government, regardless of whether criminals call themselves "Democrats" or "Republicans." Ethics?

David Kocieniewski, "Latest Twist in a Scandal Hits a Medical School When it's Down," in The New York Times, November 24, 2006, at p. B3.

"TRENTON, Nov. 22 -- As New Jersey's state medical school has been shaken in the past year by disclosures of widespread financial mismanagement, administrators there have repeatedly defended [the institution,] by insisting that the scandals have affected its treasury but not the quality of care for the more than two million patients it treats each year."

"But a federal monitor's recent accusations that the cardiology unit at the university's main hospital has been paying kickbacks to doctors for referring heart patients have undercut that argument at a time when the school's future remains in doubt."

"A report issued by the federal monitor, Herbert J. Stern ... charged that 18 cardiologists had taken part in an illegal kickback scheme and had DEFRAUDED Medicare and Medicaid of $36 MILLION."

This is in addition to the $70 MILLION admitted to have been "misappropriated" -- in other words, stolen -- based on last year's audit. All of this was accomplished, probably with the help of lawyers and judges in the Garden State.

"The report also accused the university's interim president, Bruce C. Vladek, whom Gov. Jon S. Corzine appointed in the Spring, of covering up the misconduct. ..."

"When the university's financial irregularities became a public issue last year, they were viewed as just more instances of a New Jersey government institution plundering taxpayers. News organizations published articles about administrators and board members who padded their expense accounts, gave campaign contributions to their patrons [i.e., political bosses,] and awarded millions of dollars in no-bid contracts" -- all with the help of lawyers -- "to vendors with political connections."

Hospital legal advisors and spokeperson "Anna Farneski" ("we don't know from nothing!") are not under investigation by the OAE and neither are the lawyers responsible for greasing transactions making the defrauding of federal taxpayer dollars -- in the millions -- possible. Many of them serve on ethics committees, no doubt, and some will soon become judges. These are the people who will judge you or your family members, probably, if you are unlucky enough to wander into a New Jersey courtroom. Luckily, judicial outcomes in New Jersey are usually "for sale."

I wonder why New Jersey's ethics system is so incompetent or dishonest? Politics?

I also wonder how the "Tuchins" and "Ricciolis" of this world bill for their psychological torture techniques and which branches of New Jersey government cover up for them, very likely in exchange for a share in their ill-gotten gains. No doubt some of the goodies get back to Supreme Court justices.

It is impossible to rule out the possibility that the reluctance to do something about these crimes on the part of New Jersey government entities, including the befouled judiciary of that corrupt and pestilent jurisdiction, has a little something to do with under the table financial gain for officials. What other explanation could there be? None, not after all of these years.

Why bother with state laws criminalizing graft and corruption, fraud for medical services, if the state authorities will do nothing, thus allowing understaffed and overworked feds to worry all by themselves about crimes in New Jersey's state government?

I am unable to purchase a copy of my new book or to get an ISBN number for it. However, if you visit the site where it is available (at least, I hope it is still available), and look for it, you will be helping to register a protest -- whether your presence is counted or not. Due to tampering with that text, probably, I will make a new set of revisions and republish it yet again. The true number of visitors to this blog has been estimated at about three times the number being shown in my profile. My first book has generated in excess of 2,500 hits. I am searching for alternative means of publication for the second one.

http://www.lulu.com/JuanG

The message delivered by means of these obstructions and frustrations is that my work is no good and I should not bother to write. In fact, they tell me the opposite.

THERE IS MUCH MORE COMING.

New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.

Due to continuing attacks and viruses directed against my computer, I cannot be certain that I will be able to continue posting essays. However, I will struggle to do so. Hackers still alter and deface these texts on an almost daily basis. November 29, at 9:50 A.M., the following web site was blocked: http://iview.adtmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90x (NJ, Attorney General?)

"University Sued By Ex-Employee Amid Scandal," in The New York Times, METRO, November 19, 2006, at p. 45. Many obstructions today from something called: http://adfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/bn/1091-43545-2060-7 ? I wonder why? I was unable to access my book or make a purchase at lulu. I find this so puzzling. Do you think that someone's mad at me? I can't imagine why. I certainly find it upsetting that efforts are made to destroy these writings.

"NEWARK, Nov. 18 (AP) -- A former project coordinator at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has sued the embattled medical school over her termination this year."

"The former employee, Carol Caparola, claims that she was fired in May after warning university officials that they were engaged in illegal conduct involving political contributions. The termination occurred after she testified before a federal grand jury and after a critical memo she wrote was published in The Star Ledger of Newark."

If Ms. Caparola is an attorney, then she may expect that -- in addition to being fired -- her honesty or unwillingness to conspire to violate federal criminal laws will result in ethics charges being brought against her by the Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE), probably after the OAE gets a call from a politician or one of their friends in "other" industries.

These corrupt bureaucrats will then solicit grievances against Ms. Caparola, in violation of their own ethics rules or make use of corrupt shrinks, like Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli, to get dirt to use against Ms. Caparola. It's a "means and ends" thing. No big deal. The rules are for other people. I hope they explain that to the people they use as unwilling informers against family members, who will have to live with the consequences of the OAE's questionable practices for the rest of their lives. What does that "E" stand for again?

Hey, Terry ... Are you still a Jew? Do you attend services in Ridgewood with a straight face? How do you do it? "We can learn from you," Terry. "I'll go to bat for you." "It's no big deal." It is a big deal, Terry. It is going to get bigger. The American Psychiatric Association is next. Oh, boy. How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry?

" ... 'U.M.D.N.J. hired political hacks" -- there are political hacks in New Jersey?! -- "who viewed the public's resources as a political slush fund,' Ms. Caparola's attorney, Charles Sciarra, told The Star Ledger for Saturday's editions. 'Carol wrote an unambiguous memorandum warning against funding political campaigns with U.M.D.N.J. money. She later assisted the federal government's probe. For her efforts, she was terminated.' ..." ("The Politics of Corruption and Waste in New Jersey.")

"According to documents obtained [by the newspaper,] the university contributed nearly $60,000 to state and local political officials from a 'community events fund.' The largest checks went to the Democratic Senate Majority, the political action committee that funds Democratic campaigns in the Senate." ("More Democrats Arrested in New Jersey.")

I wonder how much of this loot went to good old Bob Menendez? No comment from New Jersey's Attorney General Stuart Rabner? No comment from the state's Supreme Court justices? No comment from the OAE? Not even an "anonymous" comment/smear from the OAE? Is the OAE "not cooperating" in efforts to get to the bottom of these disgusting actions? How shocking. I am appalled to learn this news.

"Ms. Caparola's suit alleges that she was fired only after she warned officials that they were engaging in illegal conduct. The suit also claims that she was asked to develop a plan to finance political donations, and that she did so but advised caution." ("Law is Dead in New Jersey.")

This person sounds like a good candidate for a surreptitious Tuchin/Riccioli torture and interrogation session to extract information from her, preferably while she is drugged or under hypnosis. Maybe she will be raped. Perhaps her family members will be asked to inform, secretly, on her casual statements over dinner. I urge Ms. Caparola to be cautious and stay away from the "Jersey Boys" until after this suit is settled or decided. ("More Mafia Figures Arrested in N.J. and N.Y.")

New Jersey's ethics enforcement system is a well-known cruel joke. Part of the problem and not the solution, responsive to organized crime and corrupt politicians, many of whom wear judicial robes in that aromatic jurisdiction, where the Constitution and criminal laws are regarded as only vague suggestions and where every hack on the bench has a hand out for a "tip." (An "error" was inserted in this last sentence since my most recent reading of this essay.) No doubt the same hand where bribes are placed is then used to wipe things, probably with the very laws that judges are sworn to uphold. ("More Figures Busted in New Jersey" and "Kickbacks and Theft in New Jersey.")

In New Jersey, ethics officials only go after minor offenders (especially if they are honest and cooperate with feds and, ideally, are minority group members). Heavy duty criminals and serious offenders get away with their crimes, provided that they have political "juice." ("More on the Jersey Gangs and Corrupt Courts.")

Next time you throw up, think of New Jersey's legal system and those who wield power in the Garden State's feces-covered courts.

"New Jersey -- Come and See for Yourself!"

Surprise, surprise ...

David Kocieniewski, "Corruption is Charged Over a Common Practice," in The New York Times, November 22, 2006, at p. B2:

"Vowing to pursue political corruption 'no matter how large or small,' [irony?] New Jersey's new Attorney General [Stuart Rabner] anounced on Tuesday the indictment of the mayor of a small Salem County community on charges of offering a political opponent two municipal jobs if he drops out of this month's race."

My estimate is that this arrest was a signal to "others" to play it cool for a while. ("New jersey Court Clerk Charged in Bribery case" and "Law is Dead in New Jersey.")

These kinds of bribes are a way of life in New Jersey politics. What is significant about this story is: 1) "an increase in the number of corruption prosecutors to 20 from 7, and ... double the organized crime detective unit that investigates official misconduct, which now consists of 16 detectives" some of whom are probably honest; 2) a grudging admission that "since Christopher Christie became United States Attorney, his office has won convictions or guilty pleas from nearly 200 elected officials and other corrupt political operatives" and when those involved in criminal conspiracies with such officials -- notably contractors -- are added to the list the number of federal corruption-related convictions of New Jersey's political whores (a category that includes many judges) soars to MORE than 200, so far.

Maybe outraged citizens now have Mr. Rabner's attention. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

I will not be prevented from purchasing a copy of my book, eventually, and putting it out there. I will not stop writing. I will not be prevented from expressing my opinions. All of the harassment is a great motivator. Face-to-face is next. There is much more coming. ("U.S. Attorney Battles New jersey's Culture of Corruption.")

Ayer's Critique of Collingwood's Metaphysics.

Primary Sources:

A.J. Ayer, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 1984), pp. 191-213.
R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), entirety.
R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), pp. 185-213 ("The Existence of God") and pp. 231-273 ("The Metaphysics of Kant").

Secondary Sources:

R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), pp. 113-136.
John P. Hogan, Collingwood and Theological Hermeneutics (New York: University Press of America, 1989), pp. 71-92.
The Collingwood and British Idealism Center. http://www.cf.ac.uk/euros/collingwood/

An apple for the teacher.

A few days ago I dressed neatly and purchased an apple as I visited my daughter's high school on "parent/teacher" day.

My daughter is fortunate to attend a very good school, a school where high school studies are accelerated and completed in two years, so that students (top 2% in reading scores in N.Y.) may spend their final years of secondary education "taking" college courses. They usually go on to Stanford or Yale, Brown or Wellesley bringing joy and the experience of financial bankruptcy to their proud parents.

All of the teachers at this school have graduate degrees, most have a Ph.D., and yet my encounters were somewhat ... disconcerting.

Each person employed as a teacher at this special school laid out a methodical plan of instruction. One person even had a chart and graph complete with an alarming set of numbers arranged on a scale. Considering that this was a history teacher I wondered whether students actually pondered historical issues in the class.

"Oh, yes ..." I was assured. "We've got discussions down to a science." I bet you do.

There are many places in the world where what is taken for thoroughness, rigor, seriousness in American education, even in some of our best schools, is interpreted as a kind of blindness to what is most important in education -- which is to make possible for students (in the full meaning of the word) a "civilized" life.

One goal of education, especially in the humanities, should be cultivation of taste and development of the faculty of judgment in civic and (for those who are religious) spiritual matters along with a sharpening of the student's capacities for moral reflection and striving towards wisdom.

Nothing that I heard from my daughter's teachers -- at least not in an immediate or direct sense -- had anything to do with these goals, or so it seems to me.

My attempts, tactfully, to raise the subject were greeted with puzzled stares and shock. This was not hostility from teachers, only noncomprehension. A French counterpart of these teachers would have understood me and agreed. Maybe the same is true in Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, or Argentina.

What has been lost in American intellectual life and education is the sense of eros in learning. Scientism is the unofficial and unspoken religion of the American public school classroom. Yet the nicest and most humane person encountered at this school is my child's science teacher. Weird.

As Desi Arnaz used to say, "Wha' happen?"

The Greek notion of dialektic ("philosophical exchange") as a form of passionate intimacy among participants -- participants whose shared goal is a kind of self-improvement or spiritual realization of the self -- or the Athenian understanding of "happiness" as directing "all of one's energies towards excellence" are endangered ideas or theories of education. The first is a Platonic/Socratic notion; the second is an Aristotelean-Eudemonian concept. Both may be found in Mortimer Adler's proposals for the University of Chicago (Paedia?), recently discussed in new terms by Robert Pippin. R. Pippin, "Liberation and the Liberal Arts: The Aims of Education," http://www.uchicago.edu/docs/education/aims/2000.html ("The Allegory of the Cave.")

I think the triumph of social science learning combined with the doctrine of neutrality and hostility to traditional religions -- also a suspicion of patriotism as, somehow, old fashioned or "corny" -- has led to this blankness and emptiness. "Neutrality" dominates the cultural space of public schools. Passion is outlawed. So is all discussion of ends. Method is substance. Everything is means; ends count for nothing. Objectivity and not imagination or insight is admired. We are creating a nation of insurance "salespersons." Brand Blanshard, "The Uses of a Liberal Education," in The Uses of a Liberal Education and Other Talks to Students (Illinois: Open Court, 1973), pp. 27-45, then Mary Midgley, "Philosophical Plumbing," in Utopias, Dolphins and Computers: Problems of Philosophical Plumbing (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 1-15.

People have "values" that we must respect (but not discuss). What is regarded as thoroughness -- a "sacred" value in our secular public square -- is often a mask for a frightening substantive nothingness. Nihilism wears a smile and bakes a cake for the dance on Saturday night. Analysis and clarity have replaced or been mistaken for understanding people and events. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

This unintentional celebration of shallowness is the result of a debate still taking place at the level of high culture which is often dimly understood or not known at all by these same highly talented and dedicated teachers who simply take their methods of evaluation for granted as the only possible ways of conceiving of knowledge and of how one communicates it.

These are profound philosophical errors leading to a flawed view of professionalism and competence. This point is not irrelevant to the legal profession. Yes, there are many exceptions to this generalization. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

I will examine a critique of R.G. Collingwood's doctrine of absolute presuppositions developed by A.J. Ayer which (I hope) yields a contrast between logical positivism and atomism as opposed to historicism and dialectics as methods in social thought. I will defend the latter method which has mostly won on the European Continent along with Critical Theory in politics whereas logical atomism and positivism mostly triumphed -- until recently -- in American intellectual culture.

We need a mix of both approaches in public schools that make use of ALL of these different theories. In closing I will return to my parent/teacher day experiences. ("Is clarity enough?" and "Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch On Freedom of Mind.")

Ayer's Critique of Collingwood's Metaphysics.

The disagreement between Ayer and Collingwood is a classic example of a failure of philosophical communication and understanding. The misunderstanding of Collingwood's work results from Ayer's temperament and from his previous philosophical commitments.

Logical atomism and positivism lead this exceptionally gifted philosopher -- A.J. Ayer is not David Stove! -- into serious misreadings and errors.

Ayer begins by claiming that Collingwood's metaphysics amounts to nothing more than "the debris of Absolute Idealism." (p. 193.)

Ironically, Ayer's own logical positivism is now in ruins while idealism is undergoing a dramatic revival from an ethical and political direction leading to impressive new work in epistemology and metaphysics, notably, the development of a new "transcendental phenomenology." (Quentin Lauer, Don Ihde, Paul Ricoeur.)

Similar developments in Continental theory -- especially among phenomenologists and those working in the hermeneutic tradition -- underline the importance of these persistent perspectives, both rationalism and idealism, in Western intellectual culture, including science. (Gadamer and his recent interpreters.)

Ayer focuses on two issues central to Collingwood's metaphysics: 1) Collingwood's theory of absolute presuppositions; 2) Collingwood's ideal historicism. I begin by defining these concepts, distinguishing them from Ayer's inaccurate understanding of what is at issue. I then set forth Ayer's full critique while indicating where I believe his greatest mistakes are made; I return to Collingwood's writings and offer a defense of his views. I will argue, however, that Collingwood's theory needs to be supplemented by F.H. Bradley's more important and profound philosophy. Finally, I suggest that both Bradley's and Collingwood's' systems lead, necessarily, to religious insights or culminate in theology. Some great scientists find the same to be true in their work. More on that later. ("'Inception': A Movie Review" and "'The Matrix': A Movie Review.")

Logical positivists and adherents of scientism will immediately interrupt to say that this means idealism is (to use a technical term in philosophy) "bullshit." Not necessarily.

Philosophers in America and Britain have brought many of the insights associated with idealism up to date in recent work examining revived metaphysical issues. (I urge readers to examine the works of Nicholas Rescher and Robert Brandom within analytical philosophy, allegedly, as well as many others in the Continental tradition.)

Admirers of New Age spirituality will rush forward to object that I question mind/brain identity theory so how can I suggest that "thoughts" affect reality? Duh.

Alternatively, befuddled empiricists insist that, "like, thoughts do not add any information to the world and stuff, because everything a priori is tautological, or something. Ideas cannot affect reality!"

I have encountered a twisted version of a combination of Hume and Wittgenstein that is a bizarre distortion of both of those philosophers' views.

It should be clear that my focus is on method and styles of reasoning for classroom discussion. However, I also argue -- for the benefit of people who are religious -- that there are highly sophisticated scientific and philosophical defenses of religious belief. No one should be intimidated about his or her religious faith on the assumption that religion is somehow forbidden by current philosophical or scientific learning. This is not the case. ("Is this atheism's moment?")

Faith in God and acceptance or rejection of religious tradition is a choice for each person. I have always described myself as an atheist. By means of philosophical effort I have come to recognize that belief is just as respectable a choice, intellectually, as the opposite.

Much more important than formal religious beliefs, for me, is the ethical commitment to others that one makes in life. In being a "good" person it helps to stay far away from New Jersey. Otherwise, goodness seems to be equally compatible with religious faith or its absence.

The struggle to be a good person is a daily one that is never finished. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

1) The theory of absolute presuppositions.

Ayer's statement of this issue is interesting because, unconsciously, Ayer reverses Collingwood's ideas. As we say in the neighborhood Ayer reads Collingwood "backwards":

His [Collingwood's] first step is to advance the supposition that 'Every statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question.' As stated this is plainly false if it implies that a question has been posed in every case. We may perhaps assume that Collingwood was thinking of scientific statements ... (p. 198.)

Collingwood's second proposition is that every question involves a presupposition. I doubt whether this is true either, if it is understood to apply universally, but it may be true of the sort of scientific questions that Collingwood has in mind. (p. 198.)

Now let us begin by reversing Ayer's presentation of these statements.

There are presuppositions for every form of human activity or inquiry. At the most obvious level you had to be born in order to do philosophy in your twenties. You had to learn a language and master a highly technical discipline with a long history. Intellectual activities arise to satisfy a present need. You find out stuff in order to get things done that will be helpful to you: "I am hungry." This statement may be understood as a response to the unarticulated questions: "How do you feel? or, Do you want to eat something?"

Questions call for answers. Neither questions nor answers need to be conscious or even fully understood (or articulated) by the questioners. All human inquiries are attempts to answer large clusters of questions, though often not questions that are well understood. Sometimes, the questions giving rise to a discipline have been forgotten. As a result our answers no longer make much sense. Ignorance of the history of structures of thought makes disentangling the strands and sub-inquiries that have accumulated over centuries impossible. Hence, people in these fields no longer understand one another. Besides, other forces cloud the nature of the original "query" -- like the subtle and pernicious presence of power as Michel Foucault suggests. ("Michel Foucault and the Authorship Question.")

Suppose you go into a grammar school classroom and play "telephone" with the children. Have each child whisper something to the student sitting next to him or her then ask the last child in the row what was heard. Often that child will say something with no connection to what was first spoken.

Enter a conversation involving a crowd of speakers one hour after it began, with no knowledge of what has been said before your arrival, and you will be lost. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")

Every person is asking or presenting you with a "question." Rarely are these questions articulated verbally. Almost always -- this is especially true of women -- explicit formulation of these questions will be greeted with hostility. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")

Philosophy is a conversation that began at least two thousand five hundred years ago. The same is true of science. There is good reason to believe that these words -- "philosophy" and "science" -- designate different aspects of a single "conversation/inquiry" among persons.

Ignoring the history of that conversation -- call it "dialectics" -- will make genuine progress or even meaningful participation difficult. ("Master and Commander.)

Every question involves presuppositions. These presuppositions are so obvious to the people who initiate the dialogue that there is no felt need to state them explicitly. After centuries of discussion and debate, however, such presuppositions may be forgotten rendering much of the on-going discussion absurd. See Alasdair MacIntyre's "disquieting suggestion" in After Virtue. Collingwood writes:

When Plato described thinking as 'a dialogue of the soul with itself,' he meant that it was a process of question and answer, and that of these two elements the primacy belongs to the questioning activity, the Socrates within us. (p. 35, Autobiography.)

Again:

For a logic of propositions I wanted to substitute what I called a logic of question and answer. It seemed to me that truth, if that meant the kind of thing which I was accustomed to pursue in my ordinary work as a philosopher or historian -- truth in the sense in which a philosophical theory or an historical narrative is called true, which seemed to me to be the proper sense of the word -- was something that belonged not to any single proposition, nor even, as the coherence theorists maintained, to a complex of propositions taken together; but to a complex consisting of questions and answers. (p. 37, Autobiography.) ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism" and "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

Collingwood sees truth as totality, or as something dynamic and relational. ("Conversation On a Train.")

Ayer's idea of precision is to isolate and sharpen a single atomic proposition and test its verifiability to determine truth-content.

This is exactly the wrong approach when examining philosophical claims arising as part of an enormously complex conversation spanning centuries, that is, wrong when examining a "form of life." In all encounters with other cultures and their residents we are "meeting" forms of life different from our own. ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")

The idea of love and its transformations as well as "relations" (term of art) with every important idea in Western thought, if pursued rigorously from Plato's Symposium to Jean-Luc Marion's current speculations, will yield a complete depiction of Western speculation on ultimate matters from a feminine-masculine as opposed to the usual masculine-feminine perspective.

The same inquiry may be pursued, dialectically, by focusing on the idea of evil with equally synoptic results. Networks-theory interlocking with systems-thinking. This is a new way of "doing" philosophy that is inclusive of literature, cinema, music and performance, also science and mathematics. This may be a new way of doing an old style of philosophy. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

Atomism seems hopelessly flawed as an approach to the understanding of people in social settings. Hence, the problem with standardized tests created by and for "standardized" people. In any relationship, including the student and teacher dialectic, each person serves as question and answer for the other. Quantum mechanics has made the importance of all "entanglements" clearer than ever vefore. ("Is clarity enough?" and "Dialectics, Entaglements, and Special Relativity.")

"We teach students to have a thesis statement and three supporting propositions."

Right, Mr. English teacher. This sounds like an excellent method for interpreting and getting the most out of Shakespeare's profound literary enigmas and wise poetry. It makes literary discussion into a "science."

Hamlet is a good play. (Thesis statement.) This is followed by three supporting propositions.

I am not sure that this is the best way to encourage original and creative thinking about literary texts or anything else. This may be seen as "Newtonian thinking" in a "post-Einsteinian age."

American lawyers and many others, including teachers doing education science on the side, are taught this atomistic approach to intellectual questions. This is also how students are evaluated by such persons. Teachers develop "lesson plans" in "learning modules" (classrooms).

How specific can you be? Answer: I don't want to be specific. I want to be inclusive of a vast field (explanatory power) and universalizing (predictive power). I hope to be less specific, sometimes, but more general and profound or inclusive:

"Knowledge of natural necessities stimulates knowledge of natural kinds which stimulates knowledge of their ways of acting, which, invoking the generalized concepts of reference and referent," Roy Bhaskar writes, "leads to an extended concept of existence (embracing causality) and a fortiori of classification, such that transfactually active tendencies may themselves be grouped into natural kinds (of causal laws)."

Plato Etc. (London: Verso, 1994), p. 27. For Bhaskar's discussion of Ayer's positivism and the problem with verificationism as well as Karl Popper's falsificationist response, see page 37.

Bhaskar is sometimes misquoted by the "it's-all-relative" school as one who denies the objectivity of truth. Nothing could be more inaccurate. To suggest, as Bhaskar does, that all knowledge is social knowledge of an independently existing world is: 1) not to deny that the knowledge thus acquired may be objective (Hegel), in terms of a rational or historical scheme; or 2) that knowledge can ever be known to exist without knowers (Kant).

Bhaskar's thinking is best compared to Putnam's and Rorty's thinking, so that both coherence and correspondence features in his "Dialectical Critical Realism" which is also compatible with religious commitment or its absence.

This is not "vagueness," but universality leading to the widest possible understanding -- which is the goal of dialectics where the subject of discussion is always evolving as a process possessing a logic and specific history. Kind of like people.

Think of Constitutional law in America. It ain't real estate law, right? O.K., law students explain the difference between those two areas of law. Can you understand Constitutional law without understanding the history of the subject? If not, why not? "Where" is American Constitutional law going? How do you know that?

Can you understand any person without knowing his or her history? If not, why not? Where are "we" "going" New Jersey? ("New Jersey Filth, Failures, and Flaws.")

I want a thesis statement and three supporting propositions.

This atomistic and positivistic method is a helpful approach in some inquiries. Although even in the sciences such method is drastically limited when theoretical insight or imagination is called for. In philosophy and the so-called human or social sciences including psychology and law -- when logical atomism is pursued in exclusive and isolated fashion -- it can be disastrous.

Analytical precision, as opposed to synthesizing or narrative intelligence and synoptic vision, can result in a highly methodical form of imbecility. But enough about our appellate courts in New Jersey. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.")

Imagination is desperately needed to project the knower into the situation of questioners and dialogue participants confronting what is to be known so as to formulate adequate responses to the appropriate questions at issue and in order to provide "successful" answers, that is, to "know" things. Fundamental questions are always changing. Answers must continuously address new challenges while preserving what "works."

This Hegelian notion of dialectical movement leads to Collingwood's "ideal-historicism."

2) "All history is the history of thought."

Collingwood's explanation of his famous historicism which -- despite his claims to the contrary -- can only be understood as a contribution to the idealist-hermeneutic tradition suffered from confused articulation due to illness. Collingwood suffered several strokes while working on The Idea of History. 

Absolute -- as distinguished from relative -- presuppositions cannot be compared. They are not eternally true or false, valid or invalid but only historical artifacts. Notions of truth as distinct from Truth itself are always evolving. Gadamer on prejudice and Lonnergan on insight and horizon in interpretation come to mind at this point. So does Ricoeur's phenomenological-hermeneutics. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

I can hear the relativists grumbling and salivating. Not so fast philosophical fashionistas.

Collingwood's historicism is supplemented (and even motivated) by religious concerns, it serves a function comparable to Bradley's Absolute. I read Bradley into Collingwood's system as the completion of Collingwood's dialectics.

To understand the thinking -- including scientific thinking -- of any period, it is necessary to understand the presuppositions on which that thinking is (often unconsciously) based. Ayer's presuppositions dictate his reading. Collingwood believes that this is true for all of us. Different historical conditions give rise to unique presuppositions, all of them arising from what has come before, but not necessarily deliberately or willingly "historical."

No one set of presuppositions is "better" -- except that they may be more accurate or useful -- than others. "Better" is always linked to "purpose" for Collingwood as payoffs are connected to favors in New Jersey's legal and political circles. ("Menendez is Charged With Selling His Office" and "Is Menendez For Sale?")

Collingwood is missing Bradley's Absolute, as I say, or a direction to universal history.

Bradley would insist that feeling tells us of levels of reality beyond mundane truth or any epistemological presuppositions, a reality which is linked to the primal experience of Being.

Heidegger now comes in handy. All narratives seem to point in the direction of ultimate Being. That's "God" in case you didn't get it. Quentin Lauer comments of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit:

Hegel is convinced from the beginning that the odyssey he describes is a "spiritual" one; that consciousness, if permitted to reveal itself, will reveal itself at every level as "spiritual," as opposed to [merely] natural activity.

A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 4.

In the same way, I read Spinoza as a step towards Kant and Hegel.

I direct the reader, once again, to MacMurray's and Lonergan's theological writings.

I now offer quotes, first, from the writings of a theoretical physicist and priest; second, from the writings of F.H. Bradley. Ready? Here we go:

Reality is built up from relationships. Wholes have a significance exceeding that of the bits that make them up. ... I AM saying that the existence of the Creator would explain why the world is so profoundly intelligible, and I can't see any other explanation that works half so well.

John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos & Christianity, p. 36, p. 75.

"... our main wants -- for truth and life, for beauty and goodness -- must all find satisfaction" in the Absolute; in short what is supremely real is also supremely valuable."

W.H. Walsh, quoting Appearance and Reality, in D.J. O'Connor, A Critical History of Western Philosophy, p. 431.

I'll throw in one more:

Bradley's Absolute is a harmonious, unitary, supra-relational system werein all appearances were included and reconciled, and the external divisions introduced by discursive thinking overcome. Even thought itself would be absorbed within this all-embracing whole, reaching a consumation that could at the same time be said to involve its extinction. [Unity with God?]

Patrick Gardiner, Nineteenth Century Philosophy, p. 403.

All history is thus the history of thought since it is based on cognitive presuppositions. History is about how people understood themselves and the world (resulting from what they must presuppose about both) given their placement in the on-going "conversation" of humanity.

[Metaphysics] is primarily at any given time what people of that time believe about the world's general nature; such beliefs being the presuppositions of all their 'physics,' that is their inquiries into its detail. Secondarily, it is the attempt to discover the corresponding presuppositions of other peoples and other times, and to follow the historical process by which one set of presuppositions has turned into another. (Autobiography, p. 65-66.)

Ayer's logical positivism and self-contradictory verificationism is steeped in thirties' suspicion of idealism and the German metaphysical tradition associated (by Ayer's generation) with World War I -- which was still fresh in people's minds -- and with the atrocities of the Nazis that were only beginning then and the anticipated World War that was to come.

People failed to appreciate then that this hostile reaction was also very German, not least in its extreme form in the works of some members of the Vienna Circle. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

To understand a historical development or any person moving through time, acting purposefully, it will be necessary not to isolate atomic propositions, but to INTERPRET and even construct narratives seeking to account for (explain) a historical journey in its entirety.

In addition to analysis, in other words, there will be a need for imaginative scope and ambition, holistic thinking. These qualities are in short supply even at my daughter's excellent school. Narrative or interpretive rationality will be vital in our intellectual lives besides or supplementing analytical clarity. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom" and "David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

A few academic disciplines are really good at developing interpretive skills: Philosophy, Constitutional law, literature, performing arts, science, but also religion. 

All of these "subjects" are or may be secular studies, appropriate for public school classrooms even in our secular society; all may also be pursued "religiously" as forms of devotion. Science pursued by an atheist may be devotional and highly spiritual. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")

Ayer's Discontent.

Ayer both misunderstands and ineffectively critizes the "ontological argument" for God's existence:

There is no need to press the question whether the idea of there being something than which nothing greater can be thought has any meaning. Let the concept be allowed to pass. The mere fact that someone entertains it is not in the least inconsistent with his [a philosopher's] denying that there is anything to which it applies.

The difficulties associated with this passage are both internal and external: 1) internal to Ayer's Humean empiricism is the argument that what is in the mind, always and necessarily, comes from the senses. This is something which cannot be established by sense data. There can be no sense-knowledge of God; however, Ayer has allowed for the acceptance of the concept of God as a Being "than which no greater can be conceived" (Aquinas, Anselm), which then requires the further acknowledgment by Ayer that a Being who exists is greater, necessarily, than one who does not. Since God is a "Being none greater than which can be conceived," as a matter of logical necessity, the mere use of the concept of God and its acceptance, demands postulating God's existence as following from His nature by definition. This is an a priori argument.

Analogously, I may use the word and concept "universe." If I do, and if I accept the definition of the word and concept, then I cannot say: "I am excluding Trenton, New Jersey from the universe." Given what the word and concept "universe" means, Trenton and (alarmingly!) the entire state of New Jersey must be "in" the universe as a matter of logical necessity.

"Everybody," Jackie Mason says, "has gotta be somewhere."

Some unfortunate persons will have to be in New Jersey.

Worse, there may be an infinite number of New Jerseys in an infinite number of universes each of these New Jersey-states with a Supreme Court in which seven persons in black robes are equipped with typewriters -- or computers -- to wreak havoc on unsuspecting citizens. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")

Additional difficulties with this passage from Ayer's essay arise from external philosophical positions, that is, from outside logical positivism.

Phenomenology has established that consciousness is a quality of directedness (intentionality) in the human mind. Consciousness is ALWAYS characterized by intentionality. Consciousness must be consciousness "of" something. Consciousness is a pointing towards that which is the object of consciousness -- which is not necessarily empirical, yet still "real" as the content of mind(s).

A mathematical formula is not empirical, but it is real. Einstein's E = MC2 is a real and true description, but this formula is not physically located in any one particular place more than another.

When thinking of God, therefore, the mind must be pointing at something external, giving rise to such a concept in the first place, but easily "locatable."

No mind is conscious of a cup, say, if there is nothing in the universe to correlate with the object; but it may be that mind and consciousness itself -- this mysterious and unique human faculty -- is already a participation in (or product of) something that is tentatively designated by the word "God," particularly when contemplating what this short word is meant to designate.

For there seems to be no other successful attempt to account for this mysterious "world-constituting" power of humanity, which is consciousness or mind, imagination and intelligence, than God. Josiah Royce insists that you can only direct yourself towards or conceive of something of which you already have an idea in your mind.

Why is Einstein's formula "real"? What is the external "order" which makes that formula real or that it describes? ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

In a recent article in Discovery, Mr. John Horgan assumes the truth of what he says cannot be known to be true by stating: "... modern researchers ... attempt to locate the physiological causes of religious experience, characterize its effects, perhaps replicate it, and perhaps even begin to explain its abiding influence." (p. 52, December, 2006)

This assumes that religion and God are produced or caused by mental processes, which are then assumed to be identical with brain processes -- and these assumptions are made without arguments or explanations. Mr. Horgan says:

"Science cannot tell us if God exists only in our imaginations or as an entity beyond our comprehension." (p. 57, December, 2006)

If God may exist externally, objectively and "beyond our comprehension," then looking for the causes of God and religion "in" the brain does not sound like a very smart plan. ("Pieta.")

Also, what does Mr. Horgan mean by God? Or religion? No definitions are offered that can possibly address the complexities of these concepts. The God idea may include both the thinking process as well as what is thought about or "of." ("Metaphor is Mystery.")

Ayer makes a statement that reveals scientific ignorance. Ayer states at page 205: "One may hope that it is only philosophers who conjure with possible worlds and make heavy weather of necessity."

This book appeared in 1984. It was written in 1982. The first experiments with dark matter suggesting alternate realities or the "multiverse theory" date from the early sixties and seventies. Hawking's work with "black holes" also dates from the late sixties and early seventies.

Discussions by thinkers -- such as David Lewis concerning counterfactuals -- were also available to Ayer. Hence, Ayer is simply mistaken about (or unaware of) the science of alternate universes or the "mutiverse theory." He is unaware when writing this book that SCIENTISTS were deeply concerned (and still are) with "possible worlds" not to mention a postulated "God gene." Research concerning the "Higgs' field boson" dates from about 1964.

Why would we be equipped with such a "God" gene, if we are? Would such a gene not serve some objective purpose in the empirical world? Would there not be "something" to which that gene "corresponds" or refers? Maybe there is something that makes the God gene "real."

A third error or inadequacy in Ayer's essay is strictly for the philosophical cognoscienti. 

Like most analytical philosophers, Ayer recognizes Kant's genius and yet he has great difficulties with Kant's system. Ayer says: "The Kantian form of idealism is accurately described by Collingwood as representing nature, that is to say, the material world of Galileo and Newton, as a 'rational and necessary product of the human way of looking at things'; what it omits and is condemned by Collingwood for omitting is a consistent account of what things are in themselves." (p. 208.)

Ayer fails to realize that he should have written for us nature must appear in a rational and necessary way, according to Kant, but that we can not know nature as it is itself, apart from all knowers. However, Kant goes on to say that we can know some things about the universe: namely, that it makes itself known to rational -- and spiritual? -- agents only in a certain way, i.e., in space and time-thinking, subject to rational constraints.

This leads Kant to a "warranted belief" or practical postulate that God "is" and the idea of God alone suggests as much necessarily. Here is Kant doing the philosophical equivalent of a slam dunk:

But, surely, people will proceed to ask we may admit a wise and omnipotent Author of the world? Certainly, we may answer, and not only we may, but we MUST.

Kant does not make Ayer's mistakes when deploying metaphysical concepts, like the idea of God, even as he rejects a traditional understanding of the ontological argument which becomes a practical postulate in Critical Theory suggesting God's existence "in reason."

That idea, [God] therefore, is entirely founded on the enjoyment of our reason in the world ... And although we can discover but little of that perfection of the world, it is nevertheless a law of our reason, always to look for it and to expect it; and it must be beneficial, and can never be hurtful, to carry on the investigation of nature according to this [Deus] principle.

Critique of Pure Reason, [A 698-701; B 726 - 729] (New York: Anchor, 1966), F. Max Muller translation of the 1781 and 1786 editions, together, at pp. 453-455.

Thinking is what we are here to do, but only so that we learn to love one another. When we love, we find ourselves -- wherever we turn -- "thinking" or sharing in one thought above all others.

Hegel came to the same conclusion as Kant on this issue by deploying a different vocabulary.

Einstein found himself believing in Spinoza's God after a similar chain of reasoning.

We find at the end of all our exploring a warm and welcoming presence. It is a short word I am thinking of, but if you prefer to speak of "love" that will do:

"Synchronicities give us a glimpse beyond our conventional notions of space and time [a hint of the Mind of God?] into the immense patterns of nature, the underlying dance which connects all things and the mirror which is suspended between inner and outer universes. With synchronicity as our starting point, it becomes possible to begin the construction of a bridge that spans the worlds of mind and matter, physics and psyche."

F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind (New York: Bantam, 1987), p. 2.

Dr. Peat is a theoretical physicist who worked with David Bohm. Dr. Peat's first articles raising these issues appeared in 1974. There is a direct line from Plato's Symposium to the most recent research in the so-called "hard sciences."

Ayer's discussion of Collingwood's historical thesis is even more inadequate.

"Neither is it clear," Ayer writes, "why history should be limited to the history of thought." (p. 212.)

Ayer suggests that descriptions of natural events are "objective." This reveals Ayer's inadequate understanding of history.

The distinction between natural and "spiritual" events -- with empirical manifestations -- is a historical one. In thinking of any event meaning or understanding is always "historical and must be thought" which is exactly Collingwood's point. To a person who cannot conceive of a divide between spiritual and natural reality (and there are millions or billions of such persons on the planet today), Ayer's distinction between objective events and subjective meanings of events is absurd. This includes much of Islamic civilization. Not everyone in the world is a child of the European Enlightenment accepting the fact/value dichotomy. Occurrences may be both "actions" and "events." ("S.L. Hurley on Beliefs and Reasons for Action.")

It is not the same event if Vesuvius erupted for explicable "natural" causes than if it exploded because the gods were angry at men. See Susan Neiman's recent book on evil and her discussion of the great earthquake in Lisbon, you'll see what I mean.

The historian wishes to understand the event as men and women who lived through it understood it. However, to understand it in today's terms is also to think it in a new and different way. There is no way to think about historical events while not thinking. "Think" about it. Then take another look at the ontological argument for God's existence.

Two cookies and ice cream for anyone who makes a connection.

Are drone attacks against Al Qaeda targets seen in the same terms by Americans and all others in the Middle East?

If Jacques Derrida is correct that in the realm of human meanings there is nothing outside the text then the challenge becomes to step out from those "texts" that are no longer "working" in order to develop new ones.

Ricoeur seeks to capture this process of new beginnings in terms of a "hermeneutics of freedom."

Are we (or our enemies) supplying the "text" in the Middle East? Who is making the effort to define America's "War on Terror"? Are we (or our enemies) defining America for the world?

The Iran deal, a new beginning with Cuba, unprecedented possibilities in international economic relations are ways, I believe, that Mr. Obama is creating alternative options for failed conversations between nations that may some day become successes or at least better conversations.

In thinking of God -- even rejecting God -- you are involved with the concept of God, which is (from a logical point of view) to postulate God's reality, as an idea (ideas exist), possibly also as much more. This is an exclusively philosophical reasoning or argument.

Many great philosophers have found this conclusion inescapable, even critics acknowledge the subtlety and richness of the argument. Ayer does not get it. Yet this highly successful argument was not produced in a laboratory and cannot be verified empirically.

"Back to Parent Teacher Day."

Along with tons of homework and a concern to have students learn plenty of facts and a methodical approach to subjects, I suggest that imagination should be encouraged and narrative intelligence developed in students. Learning at its best is a kind of playing or joyful self-expression.

Values and religion -- discussed in secular terms as an important social phenomenon with cognitive significance -- may be "appropriate" subjects even for the public school classroom.

I wonder whether any of my daughter's teachers is reading Collingwood's books?

I hope so, but I doubt it. ("Whatever" and "America's Nursery School Campus.")

Kickbacks and Theft in New Jersey.

David W. Chen & Laura Masnerus, "Overseer Finds Kickback Plan at University," The New York Times, Novemeber 14, 2006, at P. B1.

Several efforts to post this essay have been obstructed or blocked. I will spend today trying to post it. If necessary, I will go to public computer tomorrow and try again. My MSN group is under attack at the moment, so I will move between several sites.

"Nearly a year after avoiding prosecution for medicaid fraud by consenting to have a federal monitor investigate its finances, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey is engaging in 'illegal activity' that 'persists to this day,' according to a report from the monitor released on Monday."

"The report also accused the university's interim president, Bruce C. Vladek, who was appointed by Gov. Jon S. Corzine in the spring to restore credibility, of 'trying to refute, rebut and bury' information about violations of kickback laws . It was the first time that the federal monitor Herbert J. Stern had directly criticized Mr. Vladek."

Vladek is Corzine's man, like Menendez, who is another pillar of honesty. There are rumors of new allegations in connection with the Grand Jury investigating Senator Menendez. It is alleged that Mr. Donald Scarinsci accepted $2.88 MILLION from a New Jersey Casino Authority for "legal work" and that a number of Casinos, or individual representatives affiliated with the gaming industry, may also have contributed to the Senator's campaign. See http://www.edmecka.com/article855/cat/102/

Is there a connection between Mr. Scarinsci's well-paid "work" for the Casino Authority, if any, and his friendship with the Senator? How does Mr. Scarinsci show his appreciation to his good buddy, Bob? Christmas cards? Or something more?

"The report charged university officials at 'all levels' were 'complicit' in concocting an illegal plan to pay 18 cardiologists nearly $6 million, starting in 2002, to refer their patients to the university's hospital in violation of federal law."

In some cases physicians were promised no show jobs as instructors at the school for $150,000 a year to bring their business to the hospital, regardless of what might be in the best interests of patients. Why should physicians care about patients when there is money to be made and shared with New Jersey's crooked polticians and judges, probably including the state's corrupt Supreme Court justices? No reason. Hey, why not operate on people just for the laughs and fees paid for by taxpayers? Great idea.

How do you wear those robes, folks? Ethics? Makes you want to puke when you look at them, doesn't it? Take 'em all out to dinner, doc. What the hell. No wonder they want to destroy my computer.

By the way, how did you bill for your services as torturers, Terry and Diana? Hey, is Diana still a self-professed "dyke"? Or has she changed her mind again? It's O.K. with me either way. Her sexual contacts with unwilling, impaired or damaged persons -- probably (mostly) young women -- is not so cool. I wonder if she's still in Clifton? Does Diana "bill" for her "sexual encounters" with victims? Paramus? What exactly did she do to Marilyn? What do you tell the family in Ridgewood, Terry? Anything?

I bet there's all kinds of people looking for you two "therapists," huh?

"The cardiology kickback scheme led to $36 million in illegal Medicare and Medicaid payments that the school may have to repay, along with $46 million in potential fines and penalties, the report said. The doctors who participated in the plan could face lawsuits, the loss of their medical licenses and even federal criminal charges ..."

Just like Terry and Diana? I hope. Oh boy. That money is also coming out of taxpayers' pockets, eventually, since costs will be passed on to consumers. New Jersey politics. What else is new? Where did Diana get her medical degree? When did she pass the board examinations? Or did she?

The next time your family member is denied a Medicaid benefit, you can explain where the money went. New Jersey's crooked politicians -- apparently, there are plenty in both parties -- stole the bucks and are having a party on you. As drivers enter the Garden State, they should be given a sticker that says: "Sucker."

None of New Jersey's law enforcement agencies had anything to say about this. The OAE is not reported to be investigating the lawyers making these billing transactions possible, then lying on behalf of the hospital and university by denying that they did what they clearly did do, which was steal your federal dollars -- and how. I wonder why? You think politics had something to do with it? Nah, I bet it's just a means and ends kind of thing. That's what a really smart OAE lawyer once said to me about ethics -- "it's a means and ends kind of thing."

There is more coming folks. Don't go anywhere, it gets better. New Jersey is one of the few states with towns spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on school districts that have no schools or students in them. Wow. Anybody been to Teterboro, N.J.? Ethics?