NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION: BEING A BETTER PERSON WITH HELP FROM A GOAT

El Cabrero has resolved to be a better person in the coming year and can think of no better way to do this than to reflect on the subject of ethics and morality.

However, my earnest efforts for self-improvement have been stymied by philosophical confusion.

In order to resolve that issue, it seemed necessary to me to discuss these dilemmas with someone with unassailable moral standing and a reputation for wisdom.

At Goat Rope Farm, that means alpine goat Arcadia S. Venus. What follows is a transcription of a philosophical dialogue between us.

EC: Venus, thanks for taking time for this little talk. As you know, I really want to be a better person this year and I'm not sure how to get there.

VENUS: Whatever.

EC: I've consulted the wisdom of the ages and found that philosophers disagree on how to do it. Some say that what really matters is our motivation while others think its what we really do. If I could figure that out, I'd have a better sense of which way to go.

VENUS: Are you going to talk all day or are you going to give me some alfalfa cubes?

EC: In a minute. According to the deontological school, it's all about intention. If I mean well, that's the main thing, regardless of how it turns out. But then we know from experience and psychology that all human motivations are ambiguous and we can even deceive ourselves about them.

VENUS: Cubes. Apples. Some of those things you keep in that jar.

EC: And then, sometimes we do the right things for the wrong reasons and vice versa. Is it better to have really bad or cynical motivations if you do things that are good or to mean well and do things that don't work out?

VENUS: Slice the apples first. And don't drop them. When you finally get around to it.

EC: But Venus, I really can't get around to being a better person until I figure this out. This is serious!

VENUS: You're still just talking.

EC: Alright, let's use an example. Suppose I intend to give you an alfalfa cube but don't. Would that be just as good as the real thing?

VENUS: That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

EC: Or suppose I didn't really mean to but left a bunch of alfalfa cubes just lying around where you could get into them?

VENUS: That's what I'm talking about!

EC: So you're saying that what we really do matters more than just intentions?

VENUS: How are those alfalfa cubes coming?

EC: Thanks, Venus, now I think I understand. It's all about what we really do! Now maybe I really can start being a better person. I feel so much better after talking to you!

VENUS: Are you still here?

(Note: Goat Rope will resume regular posts on Jan. 2. Happy New Year!)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE GOAT ROPE READING LIST: BEST PHILOSOPHY BOOK OF 2006

Caption: Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd? Castor the curious peacock does! In this photo, he contemplates the meaning of being.

During the usually slack time between Christmas and New Year's Goat Rope will highlight greatest hits from El Cabrero's 2006 reading list.

Yesterday's post featured Vermont poet David Budbill. Today's is philosopher Karl Popper, whose works include The Poverty of Historicism and this year's winner, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vols. I and II.

In these books, written around the time of the nearly triumphant totalitariansm of the 1940s, Popper takes merciless aim at theoretical and practical totalitarians of the right and left.

Speaking of poets and philosophers, Popper slams the later Plato, who would have banned uncensored poets from his Republic, as an early apologist for authoritarianism. He is especially merciless to Hegel, who I still kind of like, and is respectful of but severely critical of Marx.

For Popper, people have a temptation to want to return to the closed society of tribalism which we often pretend to remember as a golden age as a way of escaping from the messiness of modern life. He argues that we can't go back (even if we think it's forward) and it would be bad if we did.

There are no laws of history or ready made utopias to save us. Our best hope is to try to preserve democracy and try to improve social ills through trial and error. Here's a sample from the rousing last paragraph:

"We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom."

He doesn't rise to the rhetorical heights of Camus, but they two are kind of on the same page.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE GOAT ROPE BOOK SHELF: BEST READS OF 2006, POETRY

Caption: The state of Vermont graciously agreed to pose for this picture.

El Cabrero is pretty sure most of you guys are slacking off at this time of year and is quite willing to join you.

Between now and New Year's, Goat Rope will highlight some of the best books I've read this year (although they were not generally published this year).

The hands-down winner of the Goat Rope Poet of the Year is David Budbill of Vermont, whose poetry chronicles the imaginary but real village of Judevine in that state's Northeast Kingdom.

I go to Vermont quite a bit to visit inlaws and it is a great state, even if it's not as endearingly screwed up as El Cabrero's Beloved State of West Virginia.

Though not a native of that state, Budbill has lived there for many years and has a very strong sense of place. Here are three books that I'd particularly recommend.



The first is Judevine, which is set in and around that village and captures many of the voices and stories of its residents.



Two others are in the modern iteration of the Chinese Zen/Taoist mountain poetry tradition: While We've Still Got Feet and Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse.



El Cabrero is himself aspires to be a reclusive Taoist mountain sage (of the High Church Anglican/Mahayana variety) and knows from experience that it's not easy, especially if one is not a sage and has trouble with the recluse part. One amusing theme of these poems is the contradiction between higher aspirations and our ordinary foibles.



Here's particular favorite of mine on the difficulty of maintaining equanimity (it also illustrates the difference between Taoism and strict forms of Buddhism):

Ahimsa Next Time, Maybe

or

The Taoist Mountain Recluse

Stands in his Summer Garden and

Says to the Deerfly About to Bite Him

Back to the undifferentiated Tao,
you son of a bitch!

And he smashes the triangular fly
into the hairs on his dirty brown arm.

(Comment: they really do have some nasty bugs up there.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: THE CANINE FILM CRITIC'S HOLIDAY EDITION

Goat Rope is pleased to offer a special Christmas edition of the canine film critic. In this holiday feature, Goat Rope Farm film critic Sandor Sege (pronounced Shandor Shegg-AY) will discuss the perennial seasonal favorite, "A Christmas Story."

Once again, we must remind our readers that Mr. Sege suffered a head injury from crashing into a wall whilst chasing a squeaky toy. As a result, he has on occasion been known to transpose the plots of the films he discusses. Nevertheless, we believe that his insights into the world of cinema more than compensate for this regrettable shortcoming.

It is our hope that features such as these will elevate the level of public discourse and contribute to a greater appreciation of both the humanities and the animalities.

And finally, the human and animal staff of Goat Rope, with the possible exception of the goats, join in wishing a happy whatever-ticks-off-Bill-O'Reilly-day to one and all.

(Production note: regular publication of Goat Rope will resume on Dec. 26.)

THE CANINE FILM CRITIC EXPLAINS "A CHRISTMAS STORY"

OK, so this movie is awesome. Some people may not think this movie needs explaining by a film critic but there's a lot going on there that you might not get at first.

First, there's this kid who wants a BB gun for Christmas so bad it's driving him nuts. But everybody keeps telling him he'll put his eye out with it.

What they don't know is that he really needs this BB gun because this evil robot from the future who looks like some kind of muscle governor is coming back and trying to kill him.

The evil robot catches the kid and puts him in a prison down south where he makes friends with everybody by eating 50 eggs.

I could probably eat 50 eggs if Moomus and Doodus would let me...

The 50 eggs is sort of a symbol for the 12 days of Christmas.

Anyway, he escapes from New York and these Christmas ghosts show him what's going to happen to him if he doesn't straighten up. So then he trades in his BB gun and buys Christmas presents for everybody, even the evil robot whose name is Tiny Tim, who gets the girl that works at the fashion magazine.

It's awesome, especially if you eat eggs and popcorn while you watch it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: SUBLIME

THE "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" AND OTHER GIBBERISH, VI

Caption: Venus volunteered to help Santa deliver toys in a car. Warning: don't try this at home. Only professionally trained goats should operate motor vehicles.


This is the fourth and final installment on the
bogus "war on Christmas," which El Cabrero stoutly maintains is a diabolically clever distraction in the merciless war of extermination on Groundhog Day.

If this is your first visit, please scroll down to earlier entries.

It was encouraging last year to read a thoughtful letter to the editor about Christmas in the Huntington West Virginia paper where it was suggested that we make it unacceptable to “use this holy day as a means of profit monetarily.”

Instead, the writer recommended that “If you want to give, give your time and talents to those who truly are in need, not greed. Give to your church and the poor, the homeless, the sick and inform, the lonely and downtrodden and all others who otherwise may be or have been forgotten.”

If people took that advice, they’d be too busy to get their undergarments in a knot over holiday greetings. We really don’t need any more jihads.

I’m already starting my wish list for next Christmas. I’m asking St. Nicholas, the 4th century bishop of Myra who somehow got morphed into Santa Claus, to help the Christmas jihad crew find something better to do next holiday season.

Or, failing that, to find them a different religion to disgrace.

And, by the way, y'all have a good one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" AND OTHER HIBBER-JIBBER, III

Caption: There's no need to bug out about the holidays.

This is the third post in a series about the bogus "War on Christmas," which in El Cabrero's mind is a diabolical conspiracy to distract the masses from the real assault on Father's Day.

If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the earlier posts

At the historical level, no one knows exactly when Jesus was born, although most scholars would put their money on any day but Dec. 25. The earliest church didn’t mark the holiday. By the year 200, the church father Clement of Alexandria found that the people who tried to mark the exact day did so “overly curiously.” Early dates from around that period set the birth in March, April or June.

The Dec. 25 date didn’t catch on in the western church until the 4th century of the Christian era. This time of year was already celebrated in pagan customs honoring Saturn, Mithras, and the return of the sun after the winter solstice. A lot of other Christmas customs, including trees, Yule logs, and the exchange of gifts were adapted from Mediterranean, Germanic or Celtic paganism. In other words, there are a lot of reasons for things done at that season.

I think the decision of the ancient church to fill the calendar with sacred days marking key events in the life of Jesus, the early church and the saints was a wise one, even if the days don’t match up exactly. Maybe one reason some people get so weird about Christmas is that they have an impoverished sense of the sacred year. Making do just on Christmas and Easter from this perspective is kind of like playing cards with just two in the deck.

When I buy gas on Jan. 1, for example, I don’t get worked up if the person says “Happy New Year” instead of “Happy Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord.” I don’t tell the people I’m taking my business elsewhere if they don’t say “Happy Epiphany” on January 6. I’m even OK if folks don’t wish me a happy Nativity of John the Baptist on June 24th.

These are things you just deal with...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS" AND RELATED JABBERING, II

Caption: Christmas or not, I'd avoid any manger these guys hang out in.

(Note: please excuse any weirdness of format and spacing. The "improved" version of blogger is turning out to be a, well, goat rope.")

This is the second post in a series on the bogus "War on Christmas," which is in El Cabrero's opinion merely a cynical diversionary movement in the long term war of attrition against Mardi Gras.

If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the previous entry.

You may have noticed that some people work themselves into a frenzy of imagined martyrdom when someone says "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

That's pretty jacked.

At a moral level, there is something pretty perverse going on when a person claiming to be a follow of Jesus walks into a big box store where the products were made by women and children in sweatshops who live in miserable conditions, is waited on by a person who probably doesn’t earn a living wage or have health insurance, and only manages to get mad if the worker says something other than “Merry Christmas.”

This is the kind of thing the real Jesus—remember him?—called “straining at gnats and allowing camels.” In fact, I don’t think any of the gospels quotes Jesus as saying “Thou shalt get royally ticked off if the occasion of my birth is not marked by everyone exactly according to your liking.”

Maybe I missed that part.

At a religious level, there is something pretty blasphemous about thinking that the current annual Saturnalia of materialism, greed, commercialism, and over-consumption in a world where billions of people are desperately poor has anything to do with the person or birth of Jesus. As I recall, when Jesus himself was exposed to the commercialization of sacred things in the Temple, he started overturning tables and raising a ruckus.

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was probably onto something when he said that true impiety consisted of “attributing to the gods the ideas of the crowd.”

At a semantic level, there seems to be some confusion about persecution and how to deal with it. Jesus was literally persecuted to death. When he warned his followers to expect the same and told them to bless and pray for their persecutors, he probably didn’t have the greeting “Happy holidays” in mind.

Maybe a real example of persecution would help clear things up. About 25 years ago, three American nuns and a church worker went to El Salvador to stand with oppressed people. They did this because they took Jesus’ teachings about justice for the poor seriously. (Apparently these teachings have been excised from some versions of the New Testament.) They were kidnapped by the Salvadoran National Guard and were raped, tortured, shot, and buried in an unmarked grave precisely for being faithful to the Gospel.

That was persecution.

Equating a generic holiday greeting with persecution is an insult to thousands of authentic Christian martyrs from the stoning of Stephen to the present day.

Next time: history.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" AND OTHER LOONINESS

Caption: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills...

(Once again, please excuse the weirdness of spacing etc. as Goat Rope tries to deal with a change in software.)

One of the loonier cultural moments in the last few years--and the competition has been fierce--has been the whole "war on Christmas" jihad, (which in El Cabrero's opinion is just a distraction from the real war on Arbor Day).

I haven't heard a lot about it lately, which is probably one advantage of living too far out in the sticks to get cable.

Anyhow, the next few posts will share a version of a rant on the subject that appeared in an op-ed of mine in the Charleston Gazette last holiday season.

Here's the first installment:

I usually enjoy customs and rituals, especially when they are sanctioned by age and tradition. Some of the newer ones, however, get on my last nerve.

A case in point is the recent holiday ritual of the annual Christmas jihad, a feeding frenzy of pretended persecution and pseudo-martyrdom the coming of which is heralded not by the singing of angels but by the braying of jackasses.


The jackasses in question summon the faithful via the airwaves to a veritable hissy fit of outrage over the fact that some people have the gall to say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” This apparently is seen to be the latter day equivalent of being being fed to the lions in the Roman coliseum.

As a practicing although not entirely successful Christian who celebrates Christmas, this seems bizarre. I don’t personally care how I’m greeted at that season, having learned as a child that it’s rude to get angry when someone wishes you well, however they express it. But there is more to this than bad manners.

Which will be the subject of the next installment...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A POSTMODERN MOMENT, WITH A BONUS WV RANT

Caption: Ferdinand likes to watch the people channel. This is how it starts.

(First, an apology: Goat Rope was recently switched to a new form of software which is getting on El Cabrero's last nerve. Please excuse weirdness in spacing and format.)

El Cabrero is having more and more postmodern moments lately. These are those times when the current cultural shift from things to images of things to images of images is particularly striking.


Here are some examples:

*Two perfectly healthy kids playing a video game version of basketball on a fine day when a real basketball court is a minute away;

*The political switch from substance to soundbite and policy to photo op;

*Cyber-dating and related virtual activities;

*Movies about making movies, and movies about the breakdown of the distinction between images and "reality" like Blade Runner or The Matrix, etc.


But the one that takes the cake is the booming market in virtual reality. According to the Dec. 18th Business Week,

"In 2006 the fast-rising virtual world, Second Life, became the hottest commercial (un)real estate online. It resembles a video game, but here people create avatars, or graphic representations of themselves, and proceed to build everything from buildings to businesses. Thousands of people make at least $20,000 a year from selling virtual clothing, houses, shopping malls, games, and more."


More and more business are spending real money buying virtual real estate with real money as a way of reaching more (presumably real) customers.

It is virtually the understatement of the year to say that things are starting to get really weird.



By the way, for as good a definition of postmodernism as you are likely to get, check out this talking animal blast from the Goat Rope past.

BONUS WEST VIRGINIA RANT

In the same issue of Business Week, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who recently tried and failed to buy the state legislature, had the dubious distinction of being cited in an item on CEOs who offer the best and worst bang for the corporate buck. He wound up on the "Worst Value" list, "earning" $32.6 million himself while the company's return on investment was -27.1 percent.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WEEKEND SPECIAL: THE CANINE FILM CRITIC CONTINUES

Goat Rope is pleased to once again feature a contribution by boxer and official Goat Rope Farm film critic Sandor Sege (pronounced Shandor Shegg-AY). You can check out his previous two weekend contributions in the Goat Rope archives.

Once again, we must remind our readers that Mr. Sege sustained a head injury whilst crashing into a wall chasing a squeaky toy. As a result, he sometimes transposes the plots of the films he discusses. Nevertheless, we are convinced that his insights into the world of cinema more than compensate for this regrettable shortcoming.

It is our hope that these weekend features will help to elevate the level of public discourse and promote a greater appreciation of both the humanities and the animalities.

A BOXER EXPLAINS "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE"

OK, so this is like everybody's all time favorite Christmas movie. It's about this Jimmy Stewart guy, except he's pretending to be someone else. That's acting, which sometimes happens in movies.

After he loses a bunch of money and thinks he messed up his whole life, he thinks about killing himself. But just before he throws himself into the river, this big twister comes and picks up his house and drops it on a witch. Only her feet are sticking out. And these little people are real happy about it.

Glenda the Good Witch tells Jimmy/the other guy that he needs to go see the Wizard to figure it all out with this angel named Toto who wants to get his wings.

Toto kind of looks like a squeaky toy to me.

So anyway he takes off on the Yellow Brick Road and is joined by some hobbits, an elf and a dwarf. They have to fight off a lot of orcs and trolls, which is kind of cool.

Moomus and Doodus say I look like a cave troll...

So anyway, they finally get to the wizard and destroy the ring. And when the bell rings, Jimmy gets his wings and goes back to Kansas.

And here's the thing: he could have got there all along.

The cinematography is outstanding. This is a technical film critic thing, but it's like in these old movies they take a bunch of pictures and show them quickly so it looks like people are moving around. So it looks like there are people moving around.

They say if you play Pink Floyd's The Wall while watching this movie you get real confused and depressed.

I think that's only true if you run out of popcorn.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GETTING THERE

Caption: We apologize, but the gratuitous animal picture feature didn't work today. It would have been an adolescent peacock displaying.)

This is the fifth and final post in a series on what a just society might look like. It was written in response to a challenge from a Goat Rope reader. If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the earlier entries.

(Also, sorry for the delay in publishing this post. Goat Rope is undergoing some renovations.)

El Cabrero survived graduate statistics classes at (we are...) Marshall University by attempting to entertain his professor. Fortunately for me, the late great Dr. Bill Westbrook was easily amused.

I could at least count on getting one question right on his tests because he asked it every time. It gave sage advice on breaking down complex statistical problems (not that I ever did) and might work pretty well in terms of solving social problems.

Here it is:

Q. How do you eat an elephant?

A. One bite at a time.

In the context of working for a better society, that would mean approaching problems through what Karl Popper called "piecemeal social reform" rather than trying to swallow the whole elephant at once. The whole elephant approach would lead to gastronomic problems in a culinary sense and a lot of carnage in the social sense if past experience is any indicator.

For one thing, many if not all human actions produce unintended consequences which could be good or bad. We don't have enough experience or knowledge of complex causal connections to anticipate all these. Nor can we predict the future or control the actions of others. A piecemeal, experimental approach gives us a chance to fiddle with things and make adjustments and corrections before too much damage is done.

Given the choice between the New Deal and the other revolutions of the 20th century, I'd take the former. It is one of the cruel features of history as I see it that during most of it revolutions are impossible and, on the rare occasions when they are, they often make things worse (admittedly, there may be some exceptions).

To quote again from Karl Popper,

In all matters, we can only learn by trial and error, by making mistakes and improvements; we can never rely on inspiration, although inspirations may be most valuable as long as they can be checked by experience. Accordingly, it is not reasonable to assume that a complete reconstruction of our social world would lead at once to a workable system. Rather we should expect that, owing to lack of experience, many mistakes would be made which could be eliminated only by a long and laborious process of small adjustments; in other words, by the rational method of piecemeal engineering whose application we advocate.

That doesn't mean we should just work on one issue at a time. We don't have that luxury when so many things are being thrown at us.

And it may be true that if we get better and better at working together to make things less bad, the world would look a lot different than it does today.

And if not, we should try something else and see how that goes.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED