Corzine May Never Know What Hit Him -- In Every Sense!

I continue to experience problems accessing my msn group. As of May 1, 2007 at 3:17 P.M., I cannot access my e-mail account. See the items in the General section at my msn group Http://www.Critique@groups.msn.com .

David W. Chen, "Corzine to Leave Hospital Today, Earlier Than Expected," in The New York Times, April 30, 2007, at p. B4.


"HOBOKEN, N.J., April 29 -- Gov. Jon S. Corzine will be released from a Camden hospital on Monday afternoon, 18 days after he was critically injured in a traffic accident, his office anounced Sunday night."

"The release would come a day earlier than even Mr. Corzine had predicted late last week. On Friday, the governor told the Senate president, Richard J. Codey, who also is the acting governor, and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. that he expected to leave Cooper University Hospital on Tuesday or Wednesday."

It is very likely that the Trenton gang will "hint" (through media friends or secret employees) that Corzine is not competent or is not really in command -- if, and when, Mr. Corzine resumes his duties. The goal for the Syndicate is to terminate any state reforms by the Corzine Administration and to forestall or complicate federal law enforcement efforts aimed at curbing corruption in the Garden State, hoping that a Democrat will be elected in the next presidential election, which seems likely. This will allow the organization (they hope) to continue with business as usual. Asked about corruption, Mr. Codey will say: "We're looking into it."

We may never know who or what was really responsible for Mr. Corzine's accident or why no "citizen" felt compelled to sign a summons against the guilty driver, since the driver causing the accident, allegedly, was permitted to vanish from sight and memory without any tickets being issued to him.

"Mr. Corzine is expected to use a wheelchair for much of the time during the next several weeks. But in a sign of his quick progress, he began using crutches on Saturday, well ahead of when doctors had been predicting."

Mr. Corzine may wish to avoid having any New Jersey State Trooper -- or Mr. Codey, for that matter -- push him around in that wheelchair (unless he wants to travel at 91 miles per hour!) especially any time he comes near a stairway. Corzine may also wish to hire his own bodyguards. "Better safe than sorry," as the saying goes, especially in the Trenton area.

Does the wheelchair have a safety belt?

Attacks and Smears Against Corzine Continue!

David W. Chen, "The Governor Of New Jersey Often Wasn't In New Jersey," in The New York Times, April 29, 2007, at p. B29.


With Mr. Corzine's return to Trenton, attacks against him -- disseminated by media friends or employees of the Jersey Boys -- are increasing in intensity and viciousness. Mr. Corzine's trips outside the state are now being subjected to scrutiny. Zulima Farber's experiences are pleasant by comparison. Recently Corzine was depicted dancing with a woman with whom he was "involved" for some reason. What Corzine does with his own money or the history of his relationships is an irrelevant distraction from the crimes committed by the Trenton Syndicate.

Corzine is accused of "escaping" the Garden State (for which I would not blame him). Actually, it is well-settled that a person with "reasonable fear" for his physical safety has every right to depart a jurisdiction under the doctrine of "necessity." No one is required to return to a torture chamber or to make himself available for assassination.

Given the mysterious habits of drivers of red pickup trucks -- and some state troopers -- Mr. Corzine would do well to stay off the roads in New Jersey for a while, also to hire his own bodyguards and keep his back to the wall at all times. Don't eat any lunch brought to you by Richard J. Codey, Jon.

I wonder if Corzine regrets leaving the U.S. Senate? I suspect so.

In addition to threatening a victim's physical safety, the Trenton Syndicate likes to have underlings (or hirelings) file grievances or complaints -- even preparing them, sometimes, for "complainants" who often cannot even read them -- against those they target for destruction. Attacks against Mr. Corzine will always come while his back is turned. Preferably, from someone who calls himself a supporter or "friend" of the Governor. This is yet another reason for Mr. Corzine to be wary of remaining in New Jersey unprotected.

New Jersey's swamplands have been known to contain more than one corpse floating by on pleasant summer evenings, adding to that punget odor of ethical rot for which the state's swamps and the "Old Raritan" are justly famous. Many such corpses were once popular politicians in the state, but are now only victims of New Jersey's rough political tradition of mob dominance of government and the judiciary. "Hey, they had it coming ..." the Jersey Boys say.

Meanwhile, as politicians scheme to destroy one another's lives, GM has fallen behind in global car sales for the first time in 75 years to Japan's leading automaker, Toyota. Global pollution rates are reaching dangerous levels -- and nowhere more so than in New Jersey's "cancer alley" -- while technology and science students are increasingly recruited from other countries, for the same reason corporations hire foreign workers over Americans in high tech jobs: education levels are better and so is performance in many places outside the United States. Ireland, for example, is the destination of choice for insurance companies and high tech industries looking for a well-educated work force at reasonable rates. Also, Iraq is less than a glowing success for the U.S. government. Headlines focus on alleged love affairs between governors and union leaders. Who cares? I don't.

Rather than admitting errors -- or even crimes -- "ass covering" operations designed to conceal atrocities and obvious bungling are the tired responses of old school, machine politicians in places like New Jersey. This is usually combined with character assassination "attempts" against critics in the mass media and rival politicians. The results for the state and country are not good.

"How the hell are ya?" Trenton's politicians ask, with a greasy hand extended and a capped-toothed smile, reeking of insincerity and halitosis.

Isn't it time to do the right thing? Get well soon Governor Corzine.

A Night at the Opera.

This essay is for M.S. & I.G.M. ...

E tu m'amavi per le mie sventure
ed io t'amavo per la tua pieta.

"Tea & Sympathy" 108-110 Greenwich Avenue, New York, NY info@teaandsympathynewyork.com (Please visit "Live Opera Heaven" in Manhattan. They're on-line.)
John W. Freeman, The Metropolitan Opera: Stories of the Great Operas (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), Foreword by James Levine.

Overture.

My "bizarre" interest in Opera began when I was very young, poor, a "minority group member" (whatever that is) and unaware of anyone among my peers with similar interests.

My fondness for people singing loudly in Italian and other foreign languages was enough for me to be regarded as "weird." In addition, of course, there was my reading of many books -- not just in school, but even at home -- and my lack of interest in most of the occupations and passtimes that fascinated my contemporaries, notably, criminality.

Added to this strangeness was a fondness for dance and art house cinema, philosophy and science. I guess I was -- and I still am -- "weird."

I continue to be very interested in Opera and books, strangely unapologetic about either passion. Although I certainly have not gained in any "practical" way from these interests. In other words, I haven't turned these interests into money.

My education also hasn't helped me much socially, come to think of it. So why do I recommend education to young people?

I don't know how to explain why you should care about literature, ideas, science, books or the arts. I can only tell you that, if you don't, then you are choosing a kind of spiritual poverty which can worsen material deprivation or become a kind of emotional destitution, in itself, even when a person is surrounded by great monetary riches and luxury.

I have seen very wealthy and powerful people whose inner lives are nonexistent. I have even found myself pitying them. Their suffering is only made worse by their failure to understand its causes or the remedies that are close at hand. Zachary Wolfe of the Times may be an example of irreversible imbecility despite being fictitious.

What is Opera? Why is it beautiful? What are my favorite Operas? Is this art form still "relevant" today?

I will attempt to answer these questions not as a scholar of the art form or as a performer, only as an audience member, one who applauds and shouts "Bravo!"

I think that Opera is magnificent. Opera is a very beautiful art form in which some of the most fragile and rare aesthetic experiences are still available for everyone to enjoy.

I do not know for how long we will be able to make this claim. It appears that great voices are disappearing from the Operatic stage -- especially dramatic tenors -- but we must continue to hope that so beautiful an art form will survive.

In this age of recordings, even the poor or middle class persons (like me) may delight in some of the very greatest performances of all time. These performances were only available to monarchs and aristocrats not so long ago. They could not be preserved for posterity.

Today, the performances of our best stage artists are preserved forever and made available to all who are interested. Nothing compares with live theater, of course, but tape is second best.

I will answer my final question first: This art form, Opera -- like all authentic artistic expressions -- is and always will be "relevant" for human beings.

The more interesting question today is how long human beings capable of enjoying any real art will continue to exist. Donald Trump is unlikely to attend Opera performances. Perhaps we are entering an age of "cyborgs." But until we arrive at a fully "posthuman" world, I suppose that we may always expect some persons to become passionate Opera-lovers.

A few people will even indulge in the occasional improvised concert in the shower, as I just did moments ago, ending with a dramatic rendition of "Vesti La Giuba," from Pagliacci.

My rendition of this aria required several bows to an imaginary audience made up entirely of attractive women even as I wore a fashionable towel draped around my waist while waving with a white handkerchief held in my left hand, like Pavarotti ... until I realized that my towel had slipped. Making certain not to turn my "back" on the audience, I picked up my fallen towel, with all of the dignity that I could muster.

Will my audience appreciate the gift of my voice?

I also recite great Shakesperean speeches in the shower, often bringing myself to the point of tears -- even when I don't get shampoo in my eyes: I am Othello, Hamlet, Lear ... until the hot water runs out.

I am taking my daughter to London today. Not really. You see, we have decided to pretend to visit the UK -- since we can't afford to do so in the "real" world -- by having a genuine English tea at Manhattan's "Tea and Sympathy." We will bring our English books, speak with English accents (better than Gwyneth's!), all day long, and agree to vote only for Labor candidates in the upcoming elections. (They spell it "Labour" in that funny English way.)

Next week we're going to Germany. Before she returns to school from her winter break, I have agreed to take her to Paris and Rome. We have to find a French place and a good Italian restaurant, preferably in the Village, selecting our favorite writers from those countries to accompany us. My daughter is reading Tolstoy at the moment, so Russia is next. We have discovered several good Cuban restaurants, including one near Columbia University, whose authenticity we doubt -- since I do not remember "bagel with lox and cream cheese" in Havana.

My daughter now refers to me as "Ivan Ivanovich." I call her "Princess Annoyance-and-Spolied-Rottenness" -- the First Czarina and Empress of the Inwood section of Manhattan. As a matter of fact, "Ivan Ivanovich" sounds like a great Opera title, something by Mussorgsky maybe. Literal minded half-wits should note that my child (unlike myself) is not "spoiled."

It has been suggested that my life has its Operatic quality and moments. I take a slow bow, accepting the tribute to which I am entitled, sharing a rose with my partners on stage and acknowledging -- with becoming modesty -- the orchestra, as I head off to London with a casual toss of a long white scarf over my shoulder even as I clutch my towel. (I just remembered that I am wearing my formal bow tie to complete the outfit and I won't say exactly where I am wearing that bow tie.)

I must protect my voice. In fact, my family members insist that I protect that golden voice by refraining entirely from singing. Their concern is touching. However, I cannot deprive my public of one of the few heroic tenor voices in the world today.

I am a dramatic tenor, highly dramatic. Oh, I just found a bent nail. That's good luck!

Act I.

The word "Opera" means "Work." In other words, an "Opera" is an artistic "work" combining drama with singing and music. Curiously, I am often called "a piece of work."

I am now drawing on my limited fund of Operatic knowledge. Opera is usually traced to the seventeenth century. Monteverdi (1547-1643) is often described as the first Operatic composer. I suspect that we will find earlier performances uniting music and drama in some fashion, probably in the medieval morality plays or songs of wandering minstrels. Yes, I know about Gilbert and Sullivan.

The Mantuan composer's invention was made possible by the advances of Renaissance theater. Monteverdi was not born in Mantua, but he was associated with that city as an artist. More recently, we can thank the Mobil corporation and PBS for a great deal of Opera. Incidentally, Shakespeare provides many composers with material -- including, especially, the greatest composer for the Operatic stage, in my opinion, Giuseppe Verdi.

Italy is the essential country for students of Opera and music, since the first music conservatories were created in Italy (in the eighteenth century) and musical notation is still in Italian. As with the history of painting, Italy leads the way in musical drama.

Italian philosophy is a neglected topic in the English-speaking world that I will discuss, as a student, in a future essay. Among my favorite Italian philosophers are Benedetto Croce and Umberto Eco today. Others I have already discussed include Antonio Gramsci, Cesare Pavese, even Thomas Aquinas and Antonio Negri display surprising parallels.

Italian-Americans are deservedly proud of their artistic heritage, but often they do not know much about Italian philosophy and science. I highly recommend Michael Gregorio's fun and instructive novel, Critique of Criminal Reason (New York: St. Martin's, 2006). (Immanuel Kant is a detective in search of a murder suspect making use of the latest scientific discoveries by Italian inventors of criminology in the eighteenth century.)

I will mention ten Operas that you should know at least at the level of "bluffer's knowledge" -- that is, if you wish to be regarded as an educated person. I will suggest a few recordings, when appropriate, that you ought to own -- placing them, discreetly, on your coffee table when women visit your home after a date.

Like Woody Allen, I once purchased a hundred yard dash medal for display on such occasions. Finally, I will say a little more about the Opera that is, in my opinion, the greatest Operatic work ever written: Verdi's Otello. (I will refer to the character in the Italian Opera as "Otello" and Shakespeare's original is always "Othello.")

Do not allow anyone to intimidate you with their alleged superior knowledge of Opera. The world -- and even the MET -- is filled with "Opera bluffers," who often have no clue of what they are talking about. The only way to know about Opera is to love the art form and listen to great performances. One anecdote may suffice to illustrate this point concerning "bluffing."

In the memoirs of Gatti-Gazzaza -- who was the first great impressario at the MET -- he describes an evening's special performance for the New York glitterati early in the twentieth century. The tenor hired to sing Flotow's Marta was ill. No one could be found to sing the role and the house was sold out. The Maestro ran into a tenor friend in a restaurant as the singer was enjoying his massive dinner. Gatti explained the emergency offering the shocked tenor twice his usual fee to sing that evening.

For three times the standard fee, the tenor (admittted) that he would have sung the performance naked while standing on his head -- as, indeed, would I.

The tenor explained that he only knew the aria "M'Apari" from Marta. Gatti was unperturbed: "Great, just sing that single aria every time you don't know what's going on."

This is like asking an actor to speak the "to be or not to be" speech in Hamlet during the entire play, every time the prince is required to say something. Needless to say, the tenor did exactly what he was told and received four curtain calls after the performance.

I am not "approving" of, or "endorsing," this deception. I can neither endorse nor condemn this deception, at this time, subject to further information at some future time, unless there isn't any -- further information, that is, as opposed to time -- since I hope there will be future time for all of us, for some more than others.

I am "deploying" a picaresque anecdote to suggest that life itself can be Operatic. In this story, life is Opera as farce; all too often, life is Opera as tragedy -- tragedy whose pains can be alleviated by the catharsis of art and laughter.

I am clearing my throat and vocalizing. The aria will now begin.

Act II.

The ten Operas you should know well enough to discuss at a cocktail party (don't say anything about that word "cocktail"!), will probably be different for each Opera lover. I am sure that some of these works will be on everyone's list. Here they are presented in no particular order:

1. Mozart, Don Giovanni.

2. Puccini, La Boheme.

3. Puccini, Turandot.

4. Verdi, La Traviata and/or Aida (preferably sung by Leontyne Price)

5. Wagner, Tristan und Iseult.

6. Beethoven, Fidelio.

7. Verdi, Otello. (Greatest Opera ever written!)

8. Wagner, Complete Ring Cycle.

9. Verdi, La Forza del Destino.

10. Puccini, Manon Lescaut.

O.K., I have to add five more because I can't just leave it at ten:

11. Verdi, Il Trovatore.

12. Mozart, Die Zauberflote. (Make a mental note to supply the two little dots over the "o" or Germans will get pissed off.)

13. Puccini, Tosca or Madame Butterfly -- You decide, I can't.

14. Mascagni, Cavalleria Rusticana/Leoncavallo, Pagliacci. Ditto.

15. Giordano, Andrea Chenier.

As for recordings, I think any of the following are worth the big money -- if you can find them: Callas, Di Stefano, Gobbi Tosca; Del Monaco, Tebaldi, Protti and Domingo, Scotto, Milnes recordings of Otello are completely different yet equally good; Pavarotti, Sutherland, Milnes in Rigoletto; Carreras, Ricciarelli, Bruson (?) in Don Carlo and Pavarotti or Carreras with Ricciarelli in Un Ballo in Maschera; Corelli, Nilsson, Merill Turandot. The usual suspects are always worth the extra effort: Price, Tucker, Warren Il Trovatore and the "black-and-white" Price/Domingo recording of duets is already a classic. The Jonas Kaufman and Kristina Opalais Puccini recordings are right up there with the best of them. Ramon Vargas has one of the best tenor voices in the world today and he is probably the best "Rudolfo" in La Boheme at the moment.

See if you think of anything unique about the Domingo/Price recording of the love duet from Act I, Otello: "Gia, nelle note densa ..." (Remember the accent over the first "a," which I can't supply here, or Italian speakers will be upset!)

Also, the Domingo/Price Trovatore has not been surpassed -- and won't be for some time. It is allegedly available in a pirated recording. For one image of the Opera gods, see: http://grecja.home.pl/galeria/callas5.jpg

Opera is an attempt to enlist all art forms in the service of ultimate human emotional experiences represented on stage in a single "work" -- love, eros, conflicts in loyalty, murder, death and most other human crises are depicted powerfully in Opera.

Music is made to encompass all of these themes, and so is poetry (in the form of amazing librettos), drama (some Opera singers have been great actors, as evidenced by Dame Judy Dench's comments on the Callas/Gobbi "conflagration" on stage at Covent Garden in the sixties).

I think Domingo is in that tiny group of great singers, musicians, actors. Again: Kaufman, Opalais, Fleming, and a few others are also great.

Dance is also an important component in many Operas, which often contain small ballets -- as in Ponchielli's masterpiece "Dance of the Hours" in La Gioconda -- also costumes and fashions designed for particular productions require the contributions of fashion designers and other artists. Sets must be built, direction on stage is needed, lighting. In short, all of the magic of theater is essential to this art form.

Great Operatic performances are almost a miracle -- and an expensive one! -- which is always a unique and non-duplicable experience that has a lot to do with luck.

There is something about live experience in theater and Opera which no film or movie captures. Cinema -- even filmed Opera, as cinema -- is simply a different art form from live theater or Opera, which is more immediate and direct, personal for each recipient of the experience, also fleeting and elusive, mysterious.

The experience of a great Operatic performance is a passionate love affair between audience and performers that lasts two-and-one-half hours, maybe a little more.

For some people -- George Clooney perhaps! -- this may be (or once was) longer than their usual love affairs.

A great Operatic/dramatic performance is always unique. Even if a performance is filmed. Once a performance is complete, it can never be experienced again by those who "shared" it -- not even by seeing a film of the event.

Every audience contributes to the experience of a great Operatic or theatrical performance, knowingly or not, even by such gestures as an intake of breath or applause.

When something magical is happening on stage, there is a feeling of electricity in the theater, as audience members become a "community" attending a semi-religious event, tapping into collective archetypal forces, images and emotions in a communal catharsis and explosion.

The audience member is one more character in the Opera, another instrument for which the composer has written music, including revealing silences. I am not surprised that ancient Greek theater was aligned with religious festivals and ceremonies. It is also clear why Beckett and Pinter have been described as "Operatic" dramatists whose silences are always pregnant with meaning.

I will now attempt to give a small sense of an experience of genius on stage in a single performance that I attended which (I know) will stay with me for the rest of my life.

By way of comparison, see http://www.gmmy.com/tenors/delmonaco/othello.JPG and accounts of the experience of Del Monaco's Otello. See Dyneley Hussey, Verdi (New York: Collier, 1962).

I have enjoyed friendships with several professional tenors discussing singers and Opera for hours with these ladies and gentlemen along with highly knowing audience members. Among the best tenors and friends from years gone by, I include Carlos Montanes (a beautiful Rigoletto at the MET was recorded, I believe) and Guillermo Prieto, a wonderful lyrical-spinto tenor who sang dramatic roles -- including "Otello" in what was then Yugoslavia -- for many years.

Act III.

A. Background.

As I recall, the performance I am about to describe took place on a Saturday evening in 1979. I invited my sister to accompany me. Orchestra tickets had cost me almost six months' wages. I was not suicidal enough to ask a young woman I did not know -- not from my neighborhood! -- to go to the Opera.

"What's that? Opera? Are you outta your mind?"

I never answer such questions from a charming female interlocutor. It is always best to plead the Fifth Amendment and ask for a lawyer when questioned by any woman.

My sister kindly agreed to go with me -- for a small fee -- and brought a book, in case things got dull. She didn't need it. The Opera was Verdi's Otello, sung by Placido Domingo ("Otello"); Sherill Milnes ("Iago"), one of the best or maybe the best baritone I have ever heard; Gilda Cruz-Romo ("Desdemona"), a fine, big-voiced Mexican soprano filled-in, superbly, for Diva Renata Scotto.

Ms. Scotto is a great Puccini soprano, incidentally, and also a magnificent thespian. Ms. Scotto will always be the definitive "Madame Butterfly."

Otello is a musical drama in four acts, music by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901); the text, inspired by Shakespeare's masterpiece, was written by Arrigo Boito -- whose librettos are brilliant works in themselves -- that drew less on Shakespeare, than on Romantic interpretations of the Bard in the translations of Giulio Carcano and Victor Hugo (1802-1885).

This Opera offers a reading of Shakespeare not as the Renaissance poet we know in the English-speaking world, but more as a suffering Romantic artist in the vision of the nineteenth century's Latin world.

Victor Hugo is another Verdi favorite, several of whose novels I read early in my life. Verdi's personal emotional drama finds echoes in Hugo's life and novels, especially (in my opinion) The Hunchback of Notre Dame and L'Homme Quis Ris ("The Laughing Man").

This most intense and masculine Operatic drama reveals swirling passions that are vital, even today, especially in Latin culture. I have yet to know a man -- especially a Latin man -- who is not deeply moved by this work, even when he is not musical or interested in the arts. Clearly, something powerful and universal is going on in this Opera.

The first performance of this work was in La Scala, February 5, 1887. Otello was first heard in New York at the Academy of Music, April 16, 1888. The experience of such a drama is only enhanced by the respectfulness of audience members wearing a nice suit, approaching the theater with a sense of reverence and awe for what is about to be brought to life on stage.

The beauty of the surroundings at New York's Lincoln Center, modelled on the Piazza Navona in Rome, the splendor and luxury in the plush red seats and glittering, star-like chandeliers that rise slowly -- like cherubim -- when the performance is about to begin adds to the feeling of anticipation. All of these elements are part of the total experience of Opera.

A composer (like Verdi) knows this and is well aware of how to make the most effective use of his effects in order to deliver a powerful emotional wallup to the audience -- Otello does exactly that.

Otello is a tragedy of self-doubt, loss of love, disintegration of identity, displaying on stage, in public, male anxieties and fears concerning self-worth, along with the acid-like effects of social stigma, racism, violence, poverty and also the heroism of self-giving in love. This drama is about a man's spiritual death, more than the physical death which follows and is incidental to it.

Verdi is both Otello and Desdemona, as Shakespeare is Hamlet, Ophelia, and all of his characters.

Verdi has placed on stage all of the pain of growing up poor, unrecognized, doubted, insulted by self-styled "social superiors." Verdi understood slavery -- which he passionately opposed -- as an Italian nationalist and patriot ("Aida"), yearning to expel the Austrians from the Italian penninsula.

Verdi represents, metaphorically, in this Opera his personal drama of romantic love for a woman who was a celebrated artist when Verdi was only a starving young musician.

Giuseppina Strepponi became Verdi's second wife after living with the composer for decades. Braving social stigma and insults together, the couple endured many slights at the hands of rich and powerful foreigners and aristocrats, experiences which are also there, in the music. So is evil, envy, betrayal of trust, balanced by innocence and goodness, "in" the music.

This Opera is one of the glories of Western civilization.

Comparisons to various filmed versions of Shakespeare's tragedy will help in appreciating this Opera. I like Olivier's performance as "Othello" (because of his beautiful voice and command of the text), though there are some problems. The same may be said for Orson Wells, who provided Franco Zefirelli with his idea for film locations in Cyprus. I also admired Ian McKellen's more recent "Iago." Lawrence Fishburne is a perfect cinematic interpreter of this classic role, whose performances will only ripen with the passing of the years. Morgan Freeman would be magnificent in the role. Anthony Hopkins was terrific in a BBC production I loved as a college student. James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer created a Broadway legend in this play. I think Samuel L. Jackson would play Othello as a warrior unable to abandon battlefield suspicions. Imogen Stubbs is meltingly beautiful and heart-breaking as Desdemona and is the proud owner of one of the most gorgeous voices in the English theater today. Ms. Stubbs' recording of "Ophelia" opposite Simon Russell Beale as "Hamlet" (first delivered as a BBC radio play) is not to be missed. Who knew "Lucy Steele" was so nice? (See the film and read the novel of "Sense and Sensibility.")

I believe that the finest stage interpreter of this great tragic character who is more timely in the twentieth century -- a character who is only equalled by Hamlet and Lear -- must be Paul Robeson, who endured many torments similar to those experienced by Othello.

To say that Shakespeare's "Othello" or Verdi's "Otello" are about jealousy or "misoginy" is like saying that War and Peace is about Russia. Both play and Opera are about life.

B. Performance and Performances.

A storm explodes on stage as the curtain rises. Otello's entrance is on a high note and killer verse, where breath control and musical intelligence are challenged, immediately, so that some tenors have been unable to continue after the First Act. Verdi eliminates Shakespeare's introductory sections dealing with Venetian hostility and hinted racism in response to Otello's love for Desdemona. ("What? The Duke is in his council, at this hour? ...")

Verdi trusts "interpreters" to emphazise musical hints concerning these tensions in the course of their performances. Domingo certainly does this hinting at racism. The Spanish-born tenor was a man possessed on the evening that I especially remember, exceeding all other performances (including his own) in this role. I suspect that there were family members and "friends" in the audience that night.

Otello's entrance ("Esultate!") signals the most triumphant moment for the character. Every step he will take after this point will be doomed, each being a further descent into utter destruction, eased by the serpentine Iago, whose "motiveless malignity" has puzzled critics and audiences for centuries.

Evil is a mystery. Evil is not subject to rational comprehension. Evil is depicted (both by Shakespeare and Verdi) with full respect for ambiguity and mystery.

I can attest to that enigma of evil (among other reasons) from the experience of hackers altering this text, for the sake of destroying it and no other purpose that I can see.

Much more familiar is the evil of sadists delighting in inflicting pain through forced separation from loved-ones, slander, destruction of relationships, and worse. No rational explanation -- certainly not resentment at Cassio's promotion -- justifies Iago's hatred and (I think) envy of Otello.

Iago desires not Otello, but Otello's talents and gifts. Iago's second act "Credo" is one of the moments when this Opera's music achieves a bottomless profundity. At such moments, this score can only be compared with the best of Beethoven or Wagner.

Iago's monologue is a celebration of nihilism that only became possible in the nineteenth century, as Christianity waned and Darwin's humbling discoveries concerning human origins would initiate a new era for Western civilization.

Iago's "Credo" would become the song of Himmler or Eichmann in the twentieth century. Iago's words are the outpourings of an emptiness filled by resentment and hatred -- they might have been scripted by theorists of totalitarianism in the hideous century to come that Verdi foresaw with great clarity.

It is frightening to consider that the worldview expressed in Iago's Credo may find its echo in the anti-religiousness of, say, Friedrich Nietzsche -- or in the self-indulgence of Martin Heidegger -- both of which "ideologies" (narcissism and nihilism) have become banal in our day. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

The pieces for this chess game in which Otello's simplicity -- despite his courage -- never had a chance are carefully aligned.

Cassio is a young, naive member of Desdemona's class and race. Hence, he is Otello's reminder of self-doubt and insecurity, racism, insults and wounds.

Cassio's role is understood by Iago, not by Otello.

Desdemona is a personification of goodness, who (unusually in the nineteenth century!) is also eros, confidently and unselfconsciously sexual. Desdemona is both sexually desirable and desiring. Desdemona is both Bizet's "Carmen" and "Michaela" in one woman.

No other nineteenth century composer -- with the possible exception of Puccini -- saw women in so full-rounded and rich a manner, as complex and equal human beings. Violetta in La Traviata could only have been created by Verdi. Verdi experienced a very limited erotic life, probably far less active than Giuseppina's, and never (apart from epistolary flirtations) really wanted any other woman in his life during her entire existence.

Verdi indicates the beauty and goodness of the shared passion and mutual adoration of these two characters in one of the greatest duets ever written for tenor and soprano that closes Act One.

Otello and Desdemona reveal subconscious fears and their essences as well as foreshadowing doom at this instant of mutual vulnerability and surrender. In English, at the cost of the rich poetry of the Italian verse, notice the words here:

Otello:

"Now in the dark night
every noise is silenced,
My beating heart
is lulled in this embrace and stilled.
Let war thunder and the world be engulfed
if after infinite wrath comes this infinite love!"

Most importantly:

Otello:

"Let death come! And in the ecstasy
of this embrace
may the supreme moment take me."

This is Romanticism's celebration and unification of eros and thanatos -- love and death -- inherited by Freud, for example, from his favorite German poets and the ancient Greeks (who obsessed nineteenth century Germans), notably Holderlin and Novalis, then Nietzsche on the German side. Also, the shadow of Schopenhauer falls on Freud's pages.

Dionysious becomes Don Juan in Otello's crucial moment of passion. "Lucia di Lammermoor" is more steeped in Keats, Shelley and Byron by way of Sir Walter Scott's novel, but the themes of the Romantics are also very much present in Donizetti's masterpiece. ("What you will ...")

For Verdi, the key insight is derived from a poetic, visual (Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and "Bachus" were also way ahead of Freud), and musical direction, not from philosophy. This is ultimate masculine wish- and fantasy-imagery. After all, can you think of a better reception after a hard day (don't say it!) defeating the Turkish fleet?

There she is: blond, beautiful, curvy, and in love with you -- in a silky nightgown no less, probably from the nineteenth century equivalent of "Victoria's Secret." And what does she say? Get this:

Desdemona:

"My proud warrior!"

I can't remember the last time a beautiful blond in a sheer nightgown said that to me.

Like Woody Allen, I might be tempted to respond: "Are you talking to me? I was going to get a sandwich, but I can definitely stay for a while ..."

Desdemona:

"-- How much suffering,
how many sad nights and how much hope
have led us to these sweet embraces.
Oh, how sweet it is to murmur together:
do you remember?"

It is with this love that the doorway to memory is opened for both characters. The acceptance of painful remembered conditions of slavery -- literal (his case), figurative (her case) -- is made possible giving each of them a final sense of peace and fulfillment.

Each character has seen not only themselves "in" other, but the other's pain and torments experienced in the imprisonment and solitude of their similar early lives.

Each of these two characters knows -- and shares -- the other's nature and history.

There is an exchange of missing fragments of soul in this duet -- strength and worldliness for her (from him), gentleness and serenity for him (from her) -- and it is that exchange that allows for their only possible mutual achievement of identity.

By destroying this union both of their lives and psyches will be shattered, resulting in a physical destruction that is merely redundant when it finally arrives. This is high tragedy with a measure of hope offered in compensation for the pain endured and witnessed.

Verdi -- like Shakespeare -- must be merciless and cruel to his creatures.

Why do such different people love each other?

Otello:

"And you loved me for the dangers
I had passed
And I loved you that you did pity them."

Notice the echo of this line, which is underlined for the benefit of the audience:

Desdemona:

"And you loved me for the dangers
I had passed
And I loved you that you did pity them."

Equality in recognition and in the "dangers" each has passed is not incidental. Repetition is reinforcement, reassurance. Otello's physical courage and military heroism is matched only by Desdemona's passion and capacity for self-giving in love. These two characters are twin-aspects of the composer's psyche -- Verdi is on the side of his love -- that is, Verdi's judgment (like Shakespeare's) falls on all, except Desdemona.

This Opera's culmination is the instant Faust yearned for, what Mephistopheles could not provide, the moment that one might wish to "linger forever," an eternal now. "A kiss ... a final kiss."

Even in this garden of earthly bliss, there is a shadow of evil and destruction, together with the vision of what must come in this imperfect world -- even to lovers -- if never to their love:

Otello:

"Such is my soul's joy that I am afraid.
I fear that such another divine moment
will never more be vouchsafed me
in the unknown future of my fate."

What follows in the remainder of the Opera is only the confirmation of this foreboding: the destruction of this beautiful love is the death of both Otello and Desdemona.

The characters' love is the fragile crystal -- a unicorn figurine for Tennessee Williams, a Golden Bowl for Henry James -- which shatters, destroying their universe, leaving rubble and debris where once there was happiness and beauty.

The Second Act's crescendos are the insinuation of suspicion and doubt by means of the use of Shakespeare's brilliant device and symbol, a handkerchief -- which is always white in my experience -- designating the virginal purity of the couple's love, that is about to be stolen and tarnished.

Arias and duets are "bookended" in this work: the First Act love duet is shadowed by the suspicion duet in the Third Act; Otello's lamentation aria is balanced by Desdemona's humiliation aria -- which is a small Opera in itself.

The baritone and tenor duet at the end of Act Two is Iago's greatest moment of triumph, for he has won Otello back to the hatred in which Iago lives and battlefield rage. This is masculine rage winning over feminine grace, something Verdi sees as dangerous and evil, which arrives with Fascism in twentieth century Italy and elsewhere. This malignant tendency to militarism and violence is always with us. This is something for Americans to think about today. ("America's Love of Violence.")

Desdemona's unwillingness to suspect malice is her undoing. Emilia's worldliness and guile is a mechanism of survival for embryonic feminists in male-dominated societies.

Shakespeare's "Emilia" warms the hearts of man-haters everywhere, even pleasing those of us who are sympathetic to feminism without hating masculinity or men.

Most of these ideas are bound to be stolen by dissertation writers in "feminist studies." Whatever!

Otello's great aria -- possibly the most revealing and compelling aria ever written -- comes after the tenor has sung the equivalent of two complete Operas. I do not envy any tenor attempting this role.

Domingo has mastered the art of painting with the voice, shading darkness in deep blues and grays in the lower register, then shifting in lyrical passages into pastel colors, adding poignancy in the upper sections of his voice, which is burnished with a brass-horn quality and the biggest tessiture (middle register) of any tenor that I have ever heard.

Few voices these days fill the MET as his voice did -- and still does.

A recent Adriana Lecouvrer sung by Domingo with Maria Guleghina and Olga Borodina was spectacular, with the tenor sounding more fresh than some of the young tenors at the MET.

Domingo is a consummate vocal magician, using the acoustics at the MET to great advantage. Otello is a bravura moment in Opera that has earned Domingo recognition as one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century.

Otello's spiritual death arrives in Act Three, long before the final events in Act Four:

Otello:

"God! Thou might have tried me with
afflictions of poverty, of shame;
made of my brave triumphal trophies
a heap of rubble and a lie ...
And I would have born the cruel cross
of suffering and of disgrace
with unruffled brow and have
been resigned to the will of heaven.
But, O grief, O anguish! Torn from me
is the mirage
wherein I blithely lull my soul!"

A world without goodness and beauty -- where love is an illusion -- is not one in which Otello can live.

Given the life of violence and loss that he has experienced this is not surprising. For Otello, Iago's nihilism is unlivable. Nihilism is unlivable for all sane and healthy persons. ("Out of the Past.")

Influences on Domingo's interpretation include the obvious: Domingo sung the role of Cassio, as a very young man, when Mario Del Monaco was "Otello" in Mexico City. The lyricism in Domingo's interpretation may be traced to Ramon Vinay, the great Chilean tenor from the forties at the MET, also to Domingo's careful study of recorded versions of the role by the great Giovanni Martinelli and, even earlier, Mr. Lauri-Volpe.

Influences on Domingo's style include Spanish Zarzuela's more open singing, also the great Giuseppe Di Stefano's passionate phrasing and Franco Corelli's stentorian quality, though neither of those two Italian tenors sang the role of "Otello."

Di Stefano's late recording of Dio mi potevi is the best recording of that single aria that I have ever heard, even though the role came too late in Di Stefano's career to count in his repertoire.

Bergonzi and Di Stefano must not be judged by late efforts to cope with this role.

Otello:

"... now you [Christ] must cover your holy face
with the horrible mask of hell!"

Otello is in hell. He is beyond human compassion or mercy. This is a condition afflicting millions in our world. It explains many horrors that we live with, including what happens to young men living with violence, rage, hatred, racism, poverty, insults on a daily basis in many places in America.

This seemingly esoteric art form, Opera, is not so "weird" or distant from our realities after all. Like all great art, this work examines and comments, profoundly, on the human condition. Love between men and women. War. Betrayal. Power. Hatred. Compassion. Faith and its absence. All of these are themes in Otello.

Is Opera relevant today? I think so. I also believe that it is important to educate young people to appreciate such works, as their artistic inheritance, in order to provide outlets and cathartic experiences for many of us, who really need them. Boy, do we need them. At this point in my life, there are still persons questioning my intelligence and writing ability, while others alter, deface, even seek to destroy my work with impunity. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

The alternative to despair or self-destructive violence is creativity and love. I will not allow this venom of hatred to poison my life any more than it already has.

Cinema allows many people who cannot afford the hefty cost of Opera tickets -- I cannot afford them these days -- to experience such art.

I suggest that you rent Zefirelli's film version of this Opera and then Lawrence Fishburne's Othello. Then see something totally (or seemingly) different, like the film O.

What relationships and themes do you find in these works? Now see Equilibrium. Why are feelings dangerous in the society depicted in Equilibrium? Was the wisdom of the mythical society's banishment of feelings in Equilibrium vindicated or the opposite? Why or why not?

Refer to any sources that you like. Essays should be double-spaced and neatly typed. No chewing gum on the pages, please.

Finally, Otello's "Niun mi tema ..." (after Desdemona's sublime "Ave Maria") conveys all the weariness and painful wisdom of a life destroyed and denied by evil.

I can relate to that.

Desdemona's vindication of human love, even as a response to violence, is the restoration of a most Christian affirmation with human dignity. This man and woman on stage, this night, were destroyed by the poisoning of their love, through envy and hatred.

Otello sings "anima, mia ..." so that it is his own soul that he has killed. Biographical "issues" for Verdi are suggested in this passage, in his own youthful insecurities and in his feelings at the hostile reactions by others to the woman that he loved.

Verdi's love triumphs in the end. Desdemona, in my opinion, is also a "winner" because of her willingness to love no matter what, at any cost, knowing perfectly well what that cost would be.

I think I can also relate to Desdemona's gift for loving. A person "can be destroyed, but not defeated" -- to quote Ernest Hemingway. Otello's and Desdemona's love is restored and is triumphant in death.

Comparisons are available to the hunchback's great final aria in Rigoletto.

Curtain Call.

Otello is a masterpiece by a composer who should be likened to Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart and a few of the great French and Russian masters, who is (I think) the finest composer for the Operatic stage.

Otello was way ahead of its time in viewing women, as equals, struggling against forms of oppression -- Desdemona's "humiliation aria" merits a full essay, as I say -- symbolizing the human capacity to create and preserve beauty and passion, as forms of strength, in a hostile, indifferent, often cruel world.

Verdi has placed his "femininity" in tension with his "masculinity" in this work -- opting for his creative, "feminine" talents over rage and resentments that he must have felt, which might have destroyed others (and which certainly hurt him deeply), so as to conclude with hope and optimism. Yes, optimism about the human condition.

Final suggestion: compare A Streetcar Named Desire with this greatest musical drama. In death, Otello's and Desdemona's love is restored providing all of us with a kind of redemption. ("Master and Commander" then "The Soldier and the Ballerina.")

"Un altro baccio ..."

New Jersey Police Chief Norman Winters Indicted!

David W. Chen, "Corzine Leaves Hospital Bed For First Time Since Crash," in The New York Times, April 25, 2007, at p. B4.
Ronald Smothers, "Police Chief and Wife Accused of Bilking a Volunteer Group," in The New York Times, April 25, 2007, at p. B4.
"Corzine Says He's Blessed," in The New York Times, April 27, 2007, at p. A1, B5.

This is the third time this short piece is posted as a result of alterations by hackers. I am blocking "doubleclick" -- as usual. After reading this item, see if you can identify the parties responsible for this censorship effort. As of 12:48 P.M., April 27, 2007, I cannot get into my msn account or group. I'll keep trying.


Mr. Corzine appears to making a speedy recovery, much to the chagrin of acting governor and president of the State Senate, Richard J. Codey. Mr. Codey's prompt reaction to the Corzine accident left observers stunned both at Codey's lack of compassion for the governor and at the well-orchestrated campaign of vilification in blogs and media "outlets" suggesting that elected Governor Corzine somehow "caused" the accident by not wearing a seatbelt. It all seemed so well-prepared ahead of time. How strange? Next they will suggest that Corzine is "not in his right faculties." The goal is to continue the smear campaign, so as to intimidate other politicians and law enforcement officials. Corzine is stupid, not insane.

How could the Jersey Boys have known that the accident would take place? Now someone (probably at the behest of the Trenton Syndicate) is filing a citizen's complaint against Corzine for not wearing a seatbelt. This ugly and obvious effort to destroy a man's reputation, after he has suffered serious injuries in an accident taking place under mysterious circumstances, reveals the evil in the criminal-political organization still "running things" in New Jersey. How can any federal or other official feel safe in New Jersey? They can't.

The reaction from the people's governor is muted, but unmistakable: "It is not known when Mr. Corzine will make his first public appearance, or greet visitors beyond the small circle of family, friends and aides who have been allowed to see him so far. Mr. Codey, for one, has asked when he and his wife can visit but has yet been given no date."

Corzine is not anxious to see or hear the good wishes of the man who leapt into the governor's office, within moments of the accident, with the words: "I wear a seatbelt." Most of the reaction to Corzine's injuries -- despite an aggressive smear campaign in the media from fellow New Jersey Democrats -- has been positive and encouraging. You definitely want a stupid governor in Trenton if you're in the mob. They're not going to like Christie.

Mr. Codey now claims to have spoken to Governor Corzine by phone for six minutes while the acting-governor was on the Parkway. "I wore my safety belt," Mr. Codey said, rubbing a little more salt in Corzine's wounds with undisguised glee.

Miraculously, the Democrat machine in control of New Jersey government went after political corruption on a small scale -- but only in the form of a member of the opposing political party -- indicting Norman Frank Winters, Chief of Police in Clayton, N.J., on the grounds, allegedly, that Mr. Winters presumed to steal as much as Trenton's Democrats. Winters joined the wrong party in New Jersey. Such effrontery must not go unpunished:

"Mr. Winters and his wife, Bernice, were accused of bilking Mothers Against Drunk Driving of $150,000" -- New Jersey's Corrupt Political Machine calls that "chump change," with a hideous chuckle, as billions more continue to disappear in Trenton -- "in the three years when one or the other [of the Winters] headed the state's volunteer chapter."

Members of the Trenton Syndicate are hoping that these items will serve as distractions for the public from the billions "exiting" the state's pension fund. Trenton anticipates federal indictments of prominent Garden State politicians resulting from any one of several federal investigations into the aptly named "Christmas Tree" items in the state's budget and those infamous "shenanigans" with the pension fund.

Meanwhile, New Jersey's Supreme Court "justices" have officially approved the composition of a symphony and volumes of poetry in their honor, accompanied by new portraits of each justice scheduled for unveiling sometime this summer. The "justices" are now renewing requests for increased pay for themselves and guarantees that their pension funds will not be stolen, whatever happens to the pensions of other state employees.

Mr. Corzine's return -- accompanied, no doubt, by further stories in the media concerning Mr. Corzine's love life or how he spends his own money -- may curtail some of the worst excesses of the Jersey mob, although this can never be known for sure. I am still dealing with the usual harassment efforts taking place in public and known to the authorities. Thus, "urinating" (as it were) on the First Amendment is a matter of hilarity and indifference to the Jersey mob and their "paid for" judges. Youz guys make me sick!

Mr. Codey, allegedly, was overheard to say: "Hey, nobody messes with my pension money!"

How to be Modern Again.

March 20, 2012 at 12:00 P.M. "Errors" reinserted in this essay were corrected, again.

March 27, 2011 at 11:48 A.M. A previously corrected "error" was reinserted in this essay and corrected, again. For a discussion of these techniques, see "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory."

October 6, 2010 at 2:52 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected. Mr. Suarez will begin his trial for corruption in federal court this week. More arrests are coming to Hudson County. Yuk, yuk, yuk ... right, boys? ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "New Jersey's Legal System is a Whore House.")

5 essays were defaced today. I hope to make all corrections soon. Many of the inserted "errors" have been previously corrected. I will bring the pop corn to the Suarez trial. Who is next? Bob Menendez?

October 26, 2009 at 4:12 P.M. "Errors" were inserted, once again, and I have corrected them -- until next time.

Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 329-367, pp. 515-551.

Marcelo Dascal, "Reflections on the 'Crisis of Modernity,' " in Marcelo Dascal & Avner Cohen, eds., The Institute of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? (Illinois: Open Court, 1989), pp. 217-240.

Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1-55.

Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Ontario: House of Anansi, 1991) entirety.

Robert Pippin, Modernity as a Philosophical Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 1-16, pp. 148-167. (If you are planning on attending the University of Chicago, this is the book to read now.)

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 73-122.

George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 133.

Roberto Unger, Knowledge and Politics (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1975), pp. 104-142.

"Onwards and Upwards," in The Economist, December 19, 2009, at p. 37. (Uncharacteristic lapse into incoherence at this magazine.)

What is modern? What is Modernity? (I will capitalize "Modernity" to designate the specific cluster of ideas associated with the bourgeois revolutions and industrialism in Europe and the United States.) How are the two related? Are you modern? Or are you postmodern? Maybe you're a post-postmodernist and a "Vegan"? (No, Vegan is not something sexual.)

Most people in a so-called "pragmatic" culture fail to appreciate how the boundaries and horizons of their lives -- what they think and/or experience -- are shaped by ideas, often unfamiliar ideas that they do not understand very well. We live within prevailing world-views, including those we detest and try to reject.

In a recent editorial focusing, allegedly, on the idea of "progress" (which is undefined and confused by the anonymous author), assumptions are made concerning scientific and moral progress "conflicting," unavoidably, and there is a failure to see: 1) this distinction depends on the assumed validity of Modernity's fact/value divide; and 2) genuine "progress" of any kind implies a moral component which undermines the fact/value divide. Perhaps it will also be assumed, for some unstated reason, that all forms of empiricism must conflict with idealism. ("Derek Parfit's Ethics" and "What is Enlightenment?")

"The point is not that science is harmful, but that progress in science does not map tidily on to progress for humanity." (Economist, p. 38.)

Progress is both a term of factual assessment and an "evaluation" or judgment of worth. Even to say that a weapon is better is to imply that it is "worthwhile" or that there is a kind of progress in making a better weapon.

Are there beings other than humans who do science? Is "progress" in science different from moral progress or "progress for humanity"? Or does the concept of progress always imply, necessarily, that things which "progress" are more rather than less "good" for humans? The concept of "good" is a moral concept: "From the perspective of human progress, science needs governing."

Haven't you told us previously that science "progresses"? What kind of progress do you wish to "govern" in order to ensure that "progress" is "progressive"? Please provide an example of "progress" that is not "progressive." We are told that: "As Joseph Schumpeter famously observed, silk stockings were once only for queens" -- Does this refer to sexual-orientation? -- "but capitalism has given them [queens?] to factory girls." (Economist, p. 38.)

Unfortunate logical problems and linguistic incoherence are EMBARASSING aspects of this article that are unusual for this wonderful publication. What happened? ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")

"And [And?] it is not just that material progress does not seem to be delivering the emotional goods. People also fear that mankind is failing to manage it [what?] properly -- with the result that in important ways, their children [whose children? mankind's?] may not be better off than they are." (Economist, p. 40.)

Are not all children part of "mankind"? Finally, my favorite of about fifteen absurdities: "People want to determine how the world works, not always to be determined by it." (Economist, p. 40.)

Determined by the world, you mean? Or how "it" works? To learn how the world "works" is to discover what, allegedly, determines our material actions, if not our meanings or values. Again: what is meant by "progress"? Causality operates in the material world, according to those pesky scientists -- who "progress," allegedly, even if they do not "progress emotionally." Incidentally, this author mangled the quotation from that obscure text "The Declaration of Independence." Jefferson refers to "inalienable" rights not rights that are "unalienable." No, that is not "the same thing." (Economist, p. 40.)

For a sense of what this author may have wished to say, if the person were coherent, see "S.L. Hurley on Beliefs, and Reasons for Action." Perhaps the author was drunk.

I was surfing channels the other day when I came accross an interview on PBS with a religious-political leader from a country that I will not name. This interview was featured on American television for several purposes: 1) We all want to feel superior to such people, to see ourselves as enlightened and "educated" whereas "they" are not. 2) Demonizing the opposition is effective in any military conflict. Part of what was going on by broadcasting this interview is to say: "Aren't these people scary?" 3) A message of "gloom-and-doom" always sells on television, setting up viewers for a one minute pitch for hemorrhoid medication and life insurance that comes later, either on this t.v. station or elsewhere.

I am fascinated by the connections that may be traced between high-cultural developments and philosophical conversations -- conversations often taking place above most people's heads -- and such daily phenomena as television's claim to "bring you the world in three minutes." How much control is exerted on people simply through denial of philosophical education or sophistication is difficult to say. The struggle against philosophical slavery will never end.

From the point of view of the person interviewed by the intrepid American reporter, the caricature of American society to which he is reacting is not only less worthy of admiration than his own country, but a kind of insane asylum. America is depicted as a collection of lunatics with great technology and weapons of mass destruction. That caricature (like the bizarre view of his society for most Americans) bears little resemblance to either reality.

I sensed the interviewee's horror and polite attempts not to be insulting when he was asked about America. How can it be that I predicted at these blogs the uprisings in Yemen, Syria, and continuing rumblings and discontents in Saudi Arabia long before the events unfolded, seemingly to the surprise of American officials, who only needed to read newspapers to see what was obvious in that part of the world.

The subject of this interview is not a stupid person. The problem isn't that persons in Islamic societies, for example, are "uneducated." It is not that such persons may be ignored because they are without a university degree in "marketing" or an MBA, say, from the University of Pennsylvania.

Many such highly devout persons in non-Western societies certainly are educated. The person I am thinking of happened to be a physician, a graduate of an elite university in France -- also multilingual. Many members of the elite class in Middle Eastern and other Islamic societies attend universities in the U.S. or Europe, as well as in their own countries, earning impressive graduate degrees. How can he think of women that way? Why doesn't he eat organic rice? Why isn't he a liberal subscriber to the Nation? We must educate him.

These reactions from Americans -- who think of ourselves as highly enlightened -- merit careful examination because they are products of the forbidden topic of culture. Concerning the intellectual basis of equality for men and women, Charles Taylor says some things that are even more applicable to the encounter between cultures:

"If men and women are equal, it is not because they are different, but because overriding the difference are some properties, common or complementary, which are of value. They are beings capable of reason, or love, or memory, or dialogical recognition. To come together on a mutual recognition of difference -- that is, of the equal value of different identities -- requires that we share more than a belief in the principle; we have to share also some standards of value on which the identities concerned check out as equal. There must be some substantive agreement on value, or else the formal principle of equality will be empty and a sham. We can pay lip-service to equal recognition, but we won't really share an understanding of equality, unless we share something more. Recognizing difference, like self-choosing, requires a 'horizon of significance,' in this case a shared one." (pp. 51-52.)

So much of the problem during that interview -- and many others like it -- is the complete lack of communication between journalist and subject, each of whom inhabits a totally different philosophical worldview, or culture, even as they coincide in a single historical moment. Part of me wanted to laugh as I saw that neither person could understand the other. Another part of me wanted to cry as I realized how many young men and women in the world will die because of avoidable violence produced by such "failures to communicate."

Cruel embargos? Ignorance among the powerful is lethal in a complex and multicultural world, where civilizations rub up against each other in an overcrowded planet, even as they grow further apart, both intellectually and culturally -- although the language used to describe very different "things" is deceptively identical -- so that this interviewee (like the President of Syria interviewed by Diane Sawyer) is a "Star Wars" fan.

The meaning of the imagery in those films, however, is evocative of entirely opposed archetypal systems, though this is not perceived by the two persons "in dialogue." They have seen very different films, even if they were at the same movie. Cinematic discourse, offering true opportunities for encounter and communication, is dismissed by both parties as trivial. That's just aesthetics, which can't be important.

"Have you seen any good films lately?" This is usually the warm-up question. People fail to realize that cinema is one shared "horizon of significance." If you were to ask each dialogue participant afterwards whether he or she was a "modern" person, both would say "yes!" -- while claiming that the other is not. And both persons would be correct. They are simply referring to different understandings of Modernity.

Progress? What kind of progress? Whose progress? The statistics quoted in the Economist article -- or some of them -- may have been fabricated. No source is listed for these facts. "Feminism" is a contested term today, so is "sexism." Neither of those words can be defined apart from "power." This does not deprive of us of the concept of truth. These issues were also ignored by the journalist for this magazine.

When a person sees a movie -- like, say, The Matrix -- an entire cultural and individual history is brought by each person to the encounter with the cinematic text. This includes childhood religious and narrative experiences: 1) Christians experience the movie's relation to the Gospel story in a visceral way; 2) Jews will sense the allusion to the messianic component in Judaism and the search for a "homecoming"; 3) Moslems will identify with the theme of struggle, moral and other kinds of struggle -- which is the true meaning of jihad. Agon. (If you don't know that last word, look it up.)

Others will bring similar archetypal references to their experience of such a film, including universal ones. Thus, everyone will relate to what Campbell describes as the "hero's quest." Struggle is what I do, for example, by making the same corrections numerous times, after every reinsertion by hackers of "errors" in this essay. The hackers' goal is to discourage and frustrate me, to induce depression and despair. These techniques are used by powerful forces in American society, I believe, to narrow the scope of public debate. This is difficult to do on the Internet. It may have the opposite of the desired effect on me.

Harassment tactics are a form of censorship. Censorship and other forms of oppression are as common in America as they are in most other places, but we are more hypocritical about it. Occasionally, through confronting the society with its own Constitutional principles, you can force politicians and judges to do the right thing. This may be a good time to insert an "error" in this essay, again, New Jersey.

As for Modernity, the conflict between religion and politics is not found in Islam. The idea that religion is not part of a "modern" objective approach to political problems does not seem obvious to highly intelligent men and women in Islamic societies. This is not because Moslems are "stupid" or "don't get it." Religious and political culture are different in Middle Eastern societies because these cultures are not defined against a context of "secular objectivity."

The concept of "objectivity" is not understood to be in tension or conflict with "religion." Subjective/objective in Islamic thinking is a continuity, not a bifurcation. This Islamic view is highly compatible with current scientific thinking. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")

Western Modernity is shaped by such factors as the French and American revolutions, scientific triumphalism, and industrialization. These phenomena then result in the bifurcation of the private and public, fact and value, spirituality and public life or politics. These paradoxes or "antinomies" (Roberto Unger) are not defining of the project of Modernity -- as it has been reinterpreted elsewhere in the world. Paradoxes and pathologies may be one undesired effect of Western scientific knowledge and technology -- efficiency in public life -- which is accepted, pretty universally, even if democracy is not. China understands this dilemma and has been making exactly this point to America for years.

"The general 'German' idea of self-determination or self-grounding is, Hegel says, the principle of modernity, as fundamental in that tradition to the modern authority of natural science as it is to modern claims for liberal-democratic institutions. And it is the principle that has generated the most suspicion among those convinced that this is what would have to be defended if modernity were to be defended, but who remain dubious about such prospects." (Pippin, p. 14.)

For Westerners, Modernity or the "Enlightenment Project" is about coming to terms with Kant (autonomy). The thinker who lived through the entirety of the Critical theory -- responding most powerfully to Kant -- is Hegel (community) and Marx (social justice in community).

In cultures where these men are not first on the lips of intellectuals their ideas are nevertheless entangled with desired benefits of the project of Modernity (such as the scientific revolution, technology, intense industrialization). These are things which most people everywhere want, intensely, usually without realizing the philosophical baggage that comes with them. Appreciating intellectual entanglements becomes, literally, a life or death issue in this context. To quote Duncan Kennedy, these entanglements "are the link-back that completes the system."

Autonomy without community is not enough. But then, neither is the opposite: no real community is possible without individual autonomy. The greatest mistake in seeking any understanding of the U.S. is the failure to appreciate that, at the heart of American Constitutionalism, there is and can be no final resolution of this tension. America is the balance between these necessary and mutually dependent values -- a balance that is always shifting.

The United States of America is always a paradox because it is an once the modern and also the exemplary postmodernist society. There are multiple and -- necessarily conflicting -- aspects to this nation or "universe" in which we live. ("Master and Commander.")

If you wish to have an image to keep these ideas in focus, then think of two children -- one is male and well-dressed, white; the other is African-American, female, poor, shoeless -- and they are on a seesaw. One end of this seesaw is autonomy; the other is community. The more affluent boy sits at the autonomy end of the seesaw (Republicans), the young African-American girl sits at the community end of the same seesaw (Democrats). If either child falls off the seesaw, or fails to cooperate with the other, everything stops and there is no more fun. That seesaw experience for those children is American Modernity (Republicans)/Postmodernity (Democrats).

We are both of those children. At the moment, the two children are not cooperating at all -- so nothing much is happening. This is called "political paralysis." It is sometimes fatal.

Time to plagiarize this text? Keep the insults and attacks coming, New Jersey. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")

Chief Justice John Roberts is the well-dressed boy on that seesaw; Judge Sonia Sotomayor is the shoeless young girl on that same seesaw. Both justices are needed on the United States Supreme Court. The issue is not whether the life-experiences of each person will enter into decision-making by him or her, but whether objectivity is nonetheless possible. The answer is "yes, objectivity is possible." ("What is Law?")

There is a greater chance of achieving objectivity and truth for the Supreme Court of the United States of America if both sides of that eternal American dialectic are represented in judicial decisions.

As a man who has been raped, stolen from, slandered, enslaved, and otherwise violated, whose writings are censored, suppressed, altered, whose professional life has been destroyed, who is illicitly and in an evil fashion separated from a loved-one whose presence in life he needs -- as someone who has suffered in these ways, I nonetheless continue to believe in America. One day we will abide by our Constitution. ("America's Holocaust!" and "Give Us Free!")

Autonomy may be crucial to science and democratic freedoms, despite the tension between autonomy and valued aspects of any society's traditional cultural life -- such as links to nature, emotive meaning, aesthetic production, religious experience, family, political community. Societies may want the "bonus" (science, industry, free enterprise) of Modernity without its "onus" (loss of community, permissiveness, sexual licentiousness, loss of religious faith).

The ONLY place where persons from any society concerned with the problem of Modernity (including those who do not refer to it in such terms) may meet for genuine communication is the aesthetic realm, especially popular media today. We must not forget to communicate in the language of symbols. I fear that we are neglecting this capacity for symbolic communication in a search for impossible scientific knowledge of human subjectivity and its products.

"I do not believe that the answer to its challenge" -- the challenge of nihilism -- "can be found within linguistic theory ... I do not believe that the 'dismantled fortress of consciousness' (Paul Ricoeur) can be restored or made stormproof by replacing this or that fallen brick. Appeals, however 'blameless' and commonsensical, to the pragmatic, to the history and daily volume of intelligibility, of mundane reference and interpretive consensus, which ... continue to 'do the job' in the Platonic-Augustinian accomodations of our ordinary lives, will not yield an adequate reply. Or, more exactly, for them to do so must, I think, require of us a readiness to envisage, literally to look upon the face of, foundations beyond the empirical. We must ask of ourselves and of our culture whether a secular, in essence positivist, model of understanding and of the experience of meaningful form (the aesthetic) is tenable in the light or, if you will, in the dark of the nihilistic alternative. I want to ask whether a hermeneutics and a reflex of valuation -- the encounter with meaning in the verbal sign, in the painting, in the musical composition, and the assessment of the quality of such meaning in respect of form -- can be made intelligible, can be made answerable to the existential facts, if they do not imply, if they do not contain, a postulate of transcedence." (Steiner, pp. 137-138.)

America is associated both with the bonus and onus of Modernity. Hence, the love/hate relationship among many people in the world with the United States. Hollywood -- no matter what trendy bullshit to the contrary is spouted in places like the East Village of Manhattan -- is overwhelmingly on the "love" side of the ledger for billions of people. Hollywood is one territory where all of these tensions are happily resolved, partly because American imagination is given free reign there, even as it is increasingly curtailed elsewhere -- in government and law, for example.

A good Hollywood/New York movie is a successful ride on that seesaw, and everybody likes that, but a great film is also an effort at what Steiner calls: "transcendence." My "tip" is to see any movie made by Mr. Harvey Weinstein's company -- remember "Miramax"? -- especially if a film is set in New York.

Only one inserted "error"? Come on. You can do better than that, Mr. Rabner. ("No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!" and "Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Every good movie -- movies may be good or great in different ways -- is a bundle of symbols communicating multiple messages, only some of which may be intended or understood by film-makers. No one is better at this powerful language than Americans. It is also true that Hollywood earnings and all media revenues far exceed earnings for U.S. car companies. This is a significant fact. Perhaps we can no longer speak of what is good for GM being good for America, but we can be confident that the success of American cinema, at its best, still says something important, good and true about what is indestructible and beautiful about the United States of America.

If you have not done so, especially if you are not an American, see "Saving Private Ryan." You are Private Ryan, unless you are a Nazi. Sorry, Mr. Santorum. Whatever mistakes are made in American foreign policy, remember the U.S. is a nation that paid that high price -- never entering into any "pact" with Hitler -- and will do so again, if necessary, to protect not simply freedoms guaranteed and always threatened under the Constitution, but also the very idea of fundamental rights and human dignity as applicable to all persons.

That's no bullshit. Those values are at the center of America. The Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan is a guy and/or gal that I have met, more than once, studied with, spoken to in America -- even in New Jersey. What you see in Spielberg's war movie -- heroism and courage in defense of freedom by ordinary people -- is real.

I have to find that one honest guy in the FBI. I may be able to get some of the computer criminals in Trenton arrested. Raylan Gibbons? No, Raylan is a U.S. Marshal. ("'Justified' -- A Review of the FX Television Series.")

In light of contemporary international politics, see "High Noon" and ask yourself: "Would I join that sheriff? Or run away when the bad guys show up? Is there a danger that any of us -- including the sheriff -- may become one of those bad guys? What is happening to American law today? How do we explain not just Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but the indifference to the atrocities on the part of legal authorities temporizing when it comes to human rights and due process of law? We need Judge Sotomayor on the High Court.

My daughter's thumbs up signal after the Sotomayor nomination was anounced suggests that every American may now feel represented in the Court's reasoning about our priceless Constitution. New Jersey, it is time to stop defecating on the Bill of Rights.

October 26, 2009 at 4:05 P.M. Several new "errors" were inserted in this essay since my previous review of this work. Just this afternoon, my computer's clock was altered by an hour. This is an example of abuse of government power that allows officials from America's most corrupt state, New Jersey, to urinate on America's Constitution as young men and women give their lives for freedoms violated by Trenton's censorship and cover-ups. I will spend part of every day for the rest of my life "urinating" (metaphorically speaking) on New Jersey's legal system and soiled Supreme Court. Mazeltov, Stuart. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

These collective-subconscious insecurities and anxieties reveal themselves in our dominant cinematic culture, for example, where ideals of Modernity have become problematic in a cynical, post-Holocaust age. Nothing better is yet available, of course, while the need for belief has never been greater. This dilemma is experienced by people all over the world as important. It is lived intensely. Hence, the "Star Wars" saga and "Matrix" story to which we withdraw for guilt-free pondering of the question of meaning, so that no one is offended. Plus, a "Supercombo" and some twizzlers always makes philosophy more fun. "The Hunger Games," can't be as bad as it seems.

I would accept death or any torment if I could go at least once to a movie with someone very special, then for a burger afterwards to discuss the movie and do my best to make her laugh. When she laughs, all the infinite pain in her life goes away. American cinema often makes people everywhere laugh for similar reasons -- to take away the pain. And there is a lot of pain to take away. (See "The Sure Thing" and any of Woody Allen's comedies, especially "Play it Again Sam.")

Love, philosophical speculation, notions of community have been banished to the denigrated private realm, the "feminine" territory of the trivial, having to do with weekend plans and other such insignificant stuff; important masculine energy is concerned with business, military matters, science, politics. The result is the wonderful success that America is enjoying in the world right now. Everybody just loves us.

This last statement is an example of "irony" which is something we are not good at any more since it seems to have something to do with aesthetics. America's political culture has become schizoid. It's only a matter of time before these ideas are stolen by magazine writers, usually when they become obsolete. Why isn't more original thinking seen in those "elite" publications? ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "What is it like to be tortured?" then "Derek Parfit's Ethics" and "What is Enlightenement?")

America's "self-delusion" and excessive fantasy is such that N.J. officials defacing these essays, publicly, may be incapable of detecting the irony and hypocrisy in any ettempt on their part to discuss my "ethics" or legality for all of us. ("Legal Ethics and Legality" and "New Jersey's Unethical Judiciary.")

A word was deleted from the foregoing paragraph, again.

"In my utopia, human solidarity would be seen not as a fact to be recognized by clearing away 'prejudice' or burrowing down to previously hidden depths but, rather, as a goal to be achieved. It is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created." (Rorty, p. xvi, emphasis added.)

Isn't it a little of both, creation and discovery? Take a look at Diane Sawyer's interview with Syrian president, Hafez Hassad. Notice the change in both persons' expressions when American movies were discussed: the relaxation, smiles, traces of youthful enthusiasm visible in their eyes. The interview, briefly, became a genuine conversation between two people, where warmth was felt and trasmitted. It was no longer "work" for a journalist and political leader. A great opportunity was missed to delve into deep issues relevant to the peace process.

Why not remain on that aesthetic level just a little longer and address some "serious" issues in terms of cinematic language? Why not evoke the positive archetypes that are embraced everywhere in the world, associated with America (accurately in many cases), that may open cultures to a true dialogue with us?

Think of this challenge of communication as just another mission for Luke Skywalker. The bad guys are those corporate blue suits, wearing dark glasses, with money in their pockets. Agents. Rebel forces in Washington lead the forces of light. People smiling at these suggestions have already proven my point. On the Republican side, both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani can do kung fu against the machines. Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama are up on jiu jitsu in the air, in slow motion. Whoa ...

"Hey," my teenage daughter said to her friend recently, "Ms. Rudeness Giuliani, why didn't you call me?"

Humor about political figures and unselfconsciousness about laughing at powerful politicians is essentially American. Well, duh. In aesthetic play these tensions of our world are kept in balance. Something about America still captures and expresses the imagination of the world -- along with humanity's capacity for optimism. We are a hopeful people. American enthusiasm and passion are contagious -- both will be found in the best American movies -- and in the next president of the country.

Does my saying this really provoke hatred and hostility? Why? Is it more about the messenger than the message? Is it unacceptable that I am saying these things, despite being denied publishing opportunities while coping with harassment and censorship? Why do I frighten powerful people in this country? Truth to power? ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")

It may be time for America to invite all the other "kids" on the block to play soccer with us in the park. During that game, we can talk about our differences and how we might improve things for all. We refuse to give up on the goal of improving things for everybody. We also refuse to abandon anyone who wishes to meet us half-way.

The global soccer game today is a great movie. Everybody is invited to join us and share the popcorn. "Mad cool."

Return to Planet of the Apes.

Nicholas Wade, "Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior," in The New York Times, March 20, 2007, at p. F3. (Is this the Harvard guy who cooked-up his research after observing gorillas in a tenure committee debate at Yale?)
Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie (London: Phoenix, 2000).
Mary Midgley, Beast and Man (London & New York: Routledge, 1995). (3rd Rev. ed.)
Mortimer Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993), based on lectures at The University of Chicago, 1966.
Marin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait (New York: Signet, 1964) (2nd ed., 2000).
Robert C. Solomon, A Passion for Justice (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990).


Hackers have again altered this text. I will make corrections of "errors" inserted into the essay that do not appear in other versions of this work. I may have to do so yet again in the future. Stress and frustration are a powerful combination when seeking to discourage creative efforts or to induce depression and collapse. I expect more such difficulties in the future. This is the tenth revision of this essay -- and some of the same "errors" have been corrected at least seven times. Please see the essays in the general section of my msn group "Critique," essays concerning criminals' involvement in New Jersey politics and courts. These blatant and unpunished violations of human rights are what I mean by "urinating on the Constitution."

A fascinating article in the "Science Section" of the newspaper provides many suggestive arguments for those who believe in God, also in the objective foundations and cognitive contents of ethics. Despite numerous errors and some unfortunate gaps in philosophical knowledge revealed by this journalist, there is much here that I find useful. I plan to read more of this literature. There are implications of this research and materials in the philosophical literature that may not have been fully appreciated by many readers.

A number of biologists have detected surprisingly altruistic behaviors in chimpanzees, "... who have drowned trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days." I know human beings who are far more despicable than those apes. Many of them are New Jersey lawyers, others are behaviorist psychologists, quite a few may be found in American politics and the judiciary.

This observed behavior has led biologists to claim that "social behaviors are the precursors of human morality." While I believe that this claim is mistaken because it is based on confusion concerning the meaning and scope of morality, there is much fascinating information in this scientific material worthy of further philosophical investigation. For example, what is meant by a "precursor"?

To speak of "behaviors" and leave out "intentionality" -- or freedom of choice -- is to exclude the essence of morality from one's definition of moral behavior. "Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book ''Moral Minds'" -- I thought we didn't have minds? -- "that the brain [is the "brain" identical to the "mind"?] has a genetically-shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language."

Professor Hauser is now attending law school in New Jersey. There are several difficulties to notice: First, what happened to Richard Dawkins and those "selfish genes" that makes us brutal "survival machines"? It turns out that we are not so selfish, after all. The "we're-just-animals" school of thinkers will then counter that "we are selfish, but the best way of ensuring selfish goals of survival for the group is altruism. That's why we're altruistic." However, altruism is not a form of selfishness. Altruism is the opposite of selfishness. Dialectics? Philosophers -- like Sartre, for example -- are self-professed dialogical thinkers, but scientists claim not to be anything but rigorously "empirical." (One "error" inserted since my previous review is not too bad. Anthony Coviello, Esq.?)

This research lends support to the suggestion, on a Chomsky-like analogy, that we are "wired" or predisposed for community or even (when among fellow humans) equipped with a disposition to love others. I wonder why that is? It's back to Aristotle and Aquinas.

"Is we is or is we ain't" selfish? Nobody knows. The concept of selfishness already involves moral assumptions. Group interest is not always identical to, and may even conflict with, individual interests. Either animals are "predetermined" or "wired" for sefishness and survival, or they're determined to be altruists. Maybe it's a little of both, a choice, as philosophers have suggested. Biologists, no doubt because of their scientific training, have a hard time with the concept of free will. "Perhaps philosophers are right and it is a little of both," they say, and scratch their heads -- like apes when they are confused about something. Banana, anyone?

Either way, morality is irrelevant. Genetic predetermination precludes the element of choice, so that "behavior" which is not chosen by a subject (whether altruistic or not) is outside the scope of moral action for which one is responsible because it is chosen. An unchosen action is not subject to moral assessment. To speak of morality is already to accept the concept of choice, which implies the linguistically-based capacity for deliberation. My car refuses to start and I am late for my daughter's Christmas play. I cannot sit down and have a chat with my automobile about being more responsible and thinking of others in the future. The car has not chosen its "behavior" which is the result of mechanical operations.

Do chimps "choose" their supposedly altruistic actions? No, say biologists. Then those actions have nothing to do with morality -- not even as "precursors" of morality -- whatever that may mean. To suggest that genetic programing dictates behavior is to eliminate choice. Hence, morality no longer applies since there is no choice. And choice or awareness of choice is something which is impossible anyway for an organism which is not self-conscious or self-aware. Only humans are self-aware, as language- and concept-using animals. Therefore, descriptions of animals as "moral" is a misnomer. At this point, the scientists begin to backtrack:

"Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies."

All animals are entitled to moral concern and respect as living and pain-feeling beings. This does not make non-human animals moral "subjects," capable of choice or responsibility, as distinct from subjects of moral concern felt by persons. Take a look at the dictionary and think twice about using the word "society" to refer to any group of animals. New Jersey may be an exception to this rule. I think that humans are the only animals who are moral, being emotional in the right way. All animals may be capable of affection, which is not the same as morality.

Alas, among the species chosen by these biologists as primary examples, there are behaviors which cannot be described as meeting with our moral approval. Worse, this chimpanzee behavior seems to undermine all of the claims made in this article concerning chimps as altar boys. Come to think of it, so did much of the behavior of many of the altar boys I knew in my Catholic high school.

"The Kasakela chimps rushed and trapped Godi. One male Humphrey, pulled Godi to the ground, sat on his head and pinned down his legs while the others spent ten minutes hitting and biting him. Finally, an attacker threw a large rock at the whimpering Godi, before the whole party left. Godi, who was covered in desperate wounds and puncture marks, was never seen again, presumably dying from his injuries." (Malik, p. 198.)

Stephen Jay Gould argued persuasively that we should not look to nature to satisfy our moral urges or meet with our moral approval. Nature's processes are not shaped in the image of human compassion. Empirical reality is governed by causal necessity to a substantial extent. Human subjectivity thrives in the realm of freedom. Presuming to determine God's compassion or intentions in the realm of freedom is hubris, even for tenured scientists. Morality is the province of freedom, allowing for responsibility. It is up to us to be moral and to interpret the universe in moral terms, perhaps, for our purposes of comparison or instruction, not to interpret morality in non-human terms -- which is absurd.

A moral ape would need not only to choose his actions, but to desire their consequences and accept responsibility for them. Such an ape is no longer an ape, he would become a person. The philosophically interesting question has to do with the difference in degree with regard to intelligence and affect that makes for a difference in kind -- just how or when did that difference arrive on the scene? Did someone eat an apple?

I am angry today, with justification. Yet I will choose to turn away from rage and concentrate on the love I feel in an effort at transcendence. It is both with regard to this capacity for choice and power of transcendence that the mystery of human goodness fascinates investigators. No matter how many times errors are inserted into this essay, for example, you do not diminish the truth that I am communicating nor will you stop me from expressing that truth. You may only succeed in hurting me further, but I am used to that now. I've got tenure in being hurt.

Dr. King spoke with great sadness, shortly before his death, in visible pain that colored his beautiful baritone voice "... Some of our sicker, brothers and sisters," he said, had shouted horrible threats and insults to him on his journeys. Telephone calls to his home late at night threatened his family and himself. I have received such calls. Perhaps from the fine folks in New Jersey's legal circles, who are very ethical in their own minds. "We must pray for them," said Dr. King, "for they dwell in darkness." Dr. King also had tenure in pain. The horror revealed by Dr. King's experiences is the pleasure in causing pain derived by a few morally hideous individuals. Diana? Tell me, Mr. Rabner, how can any legal system or tribunal cover-up such atrocities and retain even the semblance of legitimacy? I think some of those chimps might be better creatures than many lawyers and judges I knew in New Jersey.

Seeing animal interactions in moral terms may be unavoidable, for us, because we are moral creatures required to choose ourselves, constructing systems of meaning in which we live, spiritually and culturally. Where this research is valuable is in revealing a "logic of sociability" that suggests, by analogy, the role of moral reasoning and concern arising naturally in groups of persons. There is also a comforting "feeling" that other-regarding emotions may be more pervasive in nature than we have previously thought. Aquinas will be more helpful than B.F. Skinner at this point.

For Aquinas -- who was no fool about the reality of evil -- the human disposition towards the good is identical with the realization of the human essence or fundamental humanity, which is incomplete without leading us to God (substitute the word "love" for God). The importance of culture is neglected in all of this scientific moralizing. This criticism is grudgingly acknowledged: "[Persons] apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals." This undermines the flawed and false assertion that: "religions are recent additions. Their 'functions' may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do."

Is that what religions "really do"? Is that religion's "function"? Your refrigerator has a "function," so religions should have a "function," right? But then, what is your function? "Survival," says the biologist. I "demur." Survival as what? As a slave? No thanks. Every person who succumbs to violence, except as a final form of self-defense -- even when it is highly understandable -- has become a slave. Violence is what those who wish you to be something less than human hope that you will accept, so that you will prove their accusations true. Never resort to violence. This is the most effective technique that I have developed to live with rage and hatred at those who violate us and, hypocritically, presume to judge us. It is a comfort or a source of strength to realize that there are more -- many more -- persons who are oppressed in this world than there are oppressors. I prefer the company of the victims to that of the victmizers. Malbus?

Survival is certainly essential. It should not be confused with human flourishing. Take another look at Aquinas, then see my essay concerning the ideas of John Finnis. Love is essential to flourishing. So is religion perhaps. Both may be needed to survive as a person. Humanity and feeling is crucial to that fourishing. Ken Tynan once suggested in response to the Russian threat of nuclear destruction: "I'd rather live on my knees than die on my knees." I wouldn't.

I'd rather die fighting for my freedom and humanity, much preferring love to its absence, even at the cost of wealth and ease or luxury. Fighting against violence and hatred, together with all forms of conditioning. I'd prefer a journey to a concentration camp with Jewish friends to a nice comfortable stay in a Vienna Hotel for the duration of the Second World War, if I am required to associate with Nazis. I prefer the company of slaves to that of their masters, a concentration camp to life in the guestapo. I am told that this makes me "unethical."

To suggest on the basis of animal behavior that our "noblest achievement -- morality -- has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior -- warfare" is absurd. This gets things exactly backwards. It is our animal natures that can pull us away from our calling to spirituality and love, which leads us to neglect our freedom, seeing ourselves as determined by genes or environment, mere "things," rather than capable of choice -- within constraints. ("Not One More Victim.")

Freedom and the responsibility that is made possible by human freedom are difficult aspects of our human nature, so we seek to escape that freedom and use scientific value-systems in order to do so. The effort is doomed, however, since these attempts at scientific determinism are also expressions of human freedom. The healthy human animal accepts his or her natural spirituality as the call to love his fellow creatures; cherishing his or her gift of precious life; to celebrate this sharing in the mystery and eternal beauty of Being, here, now, together. (See "Amistad.") You are never alone in that "now." All of your human ancestors and those you love are with you in that place within the self where you find love.

As an American, your entire Constitutional tradition is concerned with vindicating these values through an eternal process of clarification. That tradition and all of those Supreme Court decisions exist for you and all Americans. The framers did not draft the Constitution or design the Supreme Court in order to create nine lifetime federal jobs for aging lawyers. Most of America is better than New Jersey.

What is encouraging in all of this research, again, is the scope of emotive meaning and universality of sympathy, as an ingredient in nature for which even the simplest animals seem to reach, just as they move towards warmth and light rather than cold and darkness. Hence, many of the discussions of philosophers' disagreements concerning the role of emotions in moral motivation, pitting Hume (who is poorly understood) against Kant (who is even more poorly understood) are pointless, since they are based on the false assumptions of this journalist and researchers that emotions and reasoning are somehow distinct -- or even opposed -- forms of cognition for organisms. They're not. They are aspects of a single cognitive capacity. Just ask your mom.

To suggest that moral actions may begin or be concerned with "feelings" is not to say that they end with feelings, or that reasoning and feelings are ever really so separate, since judgment soon enters into the picture. Reasons and calculations balance emotive understandings and promptings, so that "selfishness" or "survival" are only some among many considerations -- often not the most important ones -- in our moral lives.

Ethics is not primarily about rules, as opposed to principles and empathy, not even in a legal context -- where primal obligations, such as the love we feel, may render ethical rules "unethical." A society that requires me to betray someone I love or a friend -- say, because he or she is a Jew -- is unethical. I refuse to do it, as a matter of principle. Dr. King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" comes to mind:

"How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in the eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. ... [Racism] to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, [unjust law] substitutes an 'It-it' relationship for an 'I-Thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things." Why We Can't Wait, pp. 70-71.

I am not a "thing" to be tortured and enslaved. My writing is not to be destroyed by those incapable of understanding it. Now consider Robert Solomon's discussion of Hume and the tradition from Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas of "cultivating" emotions in a character-building effort, which is designed to enhance the "virtues." The work of Alasdair MacIntyre becomes very useful, also the concerns of Bernard Williams. See Solomon's A Passion for Justice, pp. 198-241; and this quote from Frances Hutcheson:

"Were there no such moral sense and sense of honor in our constitution, were we as entirely selfish as some refiners allege, human life would be quite different from what we feel every day, a joyless, loveless, cold, sullen state of cunning and suspicion."

That sounds like New Jersey's legal system again. Surely, we can do better than that. Richard Dawkins says we can't. Our genes make us bad. I am not convinced. It is too easy to get off the hook, as a species, by simply "interpleading" (as lawyers say) our genes. Goring and Himmler were responsible for their crimes, not their genes. Time to delete another letter from one of my words?

To speak of genes or animal natures is to neglect the full horror and responsibility found in human evil. We are much worse that the apes who beat a stranger to their group. For we do such things not instinctively or defensively, but for the pleasure derived from evil by some very sick "brothers and sisters" of all races, ethnicities, and nationalities -- to which the only civilized response is justice tempered by compassion and, mostly, pity. Evil-doers have voluntarily relinquished a part of their humanity. Nothing is more pitiful than such grotesqueness.

I am not sure about my computer again. More attacks every day continue to obstruct my writing efforts. Perhaps this is an effort at provocation or distraction. I am doing my best to cope. I do not believe that, whatever happens to me or whether I am able to continue writing, my arguments in defense of these views have been seriously challenged. Perhaps it is this cogency in my writings that is unforgivable. Why should people learn from someone like me? Maybe God has a sense of humor, who knows?

Continuing to hurt me, destroying my work, preventing young people from reading my essays, classifying me in any terms you like -- none of this has much bearing on the validity of these arguments or on the human calling always to be better, more spiritual, loving and good.