Would You Bed Your Celebrity Crush? (More on Milan Kundera's Immortality)

When I posted "Milan Kundera's Aside on Journalism in Immortality," I didn't expect to blog any more about the book, but I was wrong. I keep thinking about a question toward the end that Professor Avenarius poses to the author:

“Imagine that you are given the choice of two possibilities: to spend a night of love with a world-famous beauty, let’s say Brigitte Bardot or Greta Garbo, but on condition that nobody must know about it. Or to stroll down the main avenue of the city with your arm wrapped intimately around her shoulder, but on condition that you must never sleep with her.”

Later, Avenarius talks about how most people would answer:

“Everyone, including the worst no-hopers, would maintain that they would rather sleep with her. Because all of them would want to appear to themselves, to their wives . . . as hedonists. This, however, is a self delusion . . . No matter what they say, if they had a real choice to make, all of them, I repeat, all of them would prefer to stroll with her down the avenue. Because all of them are eager for admiration and not for pleasure.”

As playful as the question may be, it does strike close to the serious theme of Immortality, which the title of the book states. Much of the book consists in reflections on the care we take for our image: how we look to others and how our image lives on without us. According to Kundera’s character Avenarius, being seen with your celebrity crush is more important than actually bedding him or her. Kundera’s point is well made, and I find it intriguing that however one answers the question, the answer conceals a desire for admiration.

Answering with a preference to sleep with the great beauty is the result of a wish to look like a hedonist, the sexual conqueror, the lucky dog. Answering with a preference to be seen with the great beauty, rather than an admission of the truth, is the expression of a desire to come off as a nice person more interested in purely emotional interaction than sex.

In both cases, it's the appearance that counts. But is all appearance rather than reality? Avenarius presents a bleak outlook:

 

“Reality no longer means anything to anyone.”

I would add that perhaps we do not even know our own true desires. Perhaps, as psychoanalysis claims, part of us hides other parts of us from other parts, so that all this concern for our image, for appearance, isn’t hiding any solid core of true desire or motive. Perhaps tending the image, projecting a fantasy of ourselves, sometimes even to ourselves--as we do through endless posts on social media about what a positive, healthy, intellectual, witty, or weird person we are--is as substantial as we get.

For my part, I can’t decide whether I would prefer a meaningful encounter in seclusion or a night on the town that ends when the great beauty withdraws into a taxi, leaving me on the sidewalk feeling like a million bucks and needing a stiff drink. Either way, it would just be what I want you to think of me.

 

Surely We Can Disprove Certain Gods

Many atheists like Bill Nye the Science Guy also identify as agnostics (video)--as atheists because they see no reason or evidence for belief in God, and as agnostics because it cannot be proven that God does not exist. This last point provides a favorite comeback for Christian apologists--“Sure, we can’t prove God exists, but you can’t prove He doesn’t!”--and atheists usually grant this, but I’m not sure they should.

Many of a scientific bent allow the apologists this point for empirical reasons: We haven’t observed everything in the universe, so God could be out there somewhere, in a distant galaxy, in the space between the smallest of subatomic particles, perhaps racing along the strings that bind us. If God is a thing to be discovered, then we really won’t be sure until every last nook and cranny of the great unknown has been known.

On rational grounds, however, the arguments against the existence of God are much tighter. One of the most well-known examples is David Hume’s formulation of theodicy based on the supposed attributes of God:

"Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)

In other words, because evil exists, we know that God, if such a being exists, cannot be what people say God is: omnipotent and good. To build upon that, if there is a being out there who is extremely powerful but falls shy of omnipotent and isn't benevolent, then we would not call that being God. Therefore, God as we think of such a being, does not exist.

God is fraught with other paradoxes as well. If God is out there in the universe somewhere and involved with the world--walking his dog behind the Ring Nebula, curing a loved one’s sickness, or opening up a slot at the local daycare when you really need it--then God would be subject to the limitations of space-time. Even to break the rules of nature--like by stopping the sun as in Joshua 10:13--God would have to do something to break the rules, have to exert a certain kind and degree of effort to get the job done, have to put him/herself out. And none of this is coherent with the idea of God as limitless and subject to nothing but divine will.

It solves nothing to posit a God outside the universe, because then God would have absolutely nothing to do with us--and that doesn’t fit our idea of God either. But what about a God outside the universe, but one who reaches in to fiddle around? No, then you are back to a God subject to the laws of reality, at least to some degree.

Ontological arguments for the existence of God, abandoned by serious theologians centuries ago but still popular among charlatans on the speaking circuit, attempted to prove the existence of God by his very definition. They said the definition of God, the idea of God, includes his actual existence, so the very fact that we have an idea of God must mean he exists.

The case I’m making is sometimes called the Reverse Ontological Argument, because it seeks to disprove God’s existence by the very definition of the word. In defining God as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, benevolent, limitless, absolute, absolute other, and so forth, we give rise to logical contradictions.

Such a being cannot exist if we take reason seriously.

I suspect that the reason Nye and other prominent atheists don’t often bring up such ontological objections is they aren’t primarily philosophers. Their books mostly stick to their respective areas of expertise. Also, public debate isn’t encouraging of dense, abstract arguments.

Not being the world’s greatest philosopher, I have probably missed weaknesses in such rational arguments. A formula like Descartes’ cogito ergo sum seems about as watertight as a first principle could be, but great minds have found holes in it. At the very least, rational arguments make a strong case for ruling out the existence of certain kinds of gods--any gods worth the name anyway--and it's a point I wish atheists were more willing to press.

 

Milan Kundera’s Aside on Journalism in Immortality

I recently finished reading French-Czech writer Milan Kundera’s novel Immortality. It proved fascinating for its unconventional narrative, insight into the human condition, philosophical reflections, and social critique. While it’s hardly a good indication of the overall book, a passage describing the recent history of journalism leapt out at me.

To summarize the narrator, journalism early in the 20th Century, back when Hemingway was on the beat, was about drawing near to the facts, asking questions with pen in hand, noting down what you were told, and then faithfully conveying it through print or radio, and later television. Ask a question, receive an answer, pass it on. This first stage of modern journalism strikes me as somewhat passive.

Later, journalists learned there was power in asking questions. Kundera raises Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigation into the Watergate scandal and the way it eventually led to a president resigning from office. Despite the Nixon administration’s attempts at a cover-up, the two dug until they uncovered the defining political misdeeds of modern times. Journalists learned to ask the tough questions, and the answers could have a powerful effect.

The legacy of this second stage of journalism is visible today in every television or radio interview covering topics even remotely debatable. Have you ever watched Stephen Sackur on the BBC program HARDtalk? This is my least favorite style of interview, but there’s a lot of it going around. Sackur seems to have gotten his job for the alarming way he can begin every sentence with “but.” “But your opponents would say . . . ” “But doesn’t that strike you as a little . . . ” “But surely you don’t believe that . . . ” “But I have a quote from you here that says . . . ” I long for just a moment when a statement can simply stand.

When it is balanced, aggressive journalism has its merits, but when Immortality was first published in 1988, this second stage of modern journalism was just getting warmed up and would soon slough its objective skin. The following decades have seen journalism and activism mixed thoroughly through the rise of radio talk show hosts, 24-hour cable news, and the Internet’s bewildering array of blogs, articles, blurbs and worthless tidbits. This type of journalism is so active it only asks questions so it can then provide the answers itself.

The worst of this is represented by Fox News Channel, but other networks are guilty as well. The only facts they are interested in are those that support their interests, and when the facts aren’t on their side, they’re willing to peddle fantasy. Kundera’s second stage of journalism has reached the point of propaganda.

Which brings me to what I believe is a third stage--or mode--of journalism. I believe the antagonistic mode of the journalist’s interview has evolved into a curious performance in which the two sides pretend to engage in a duel in Q&A form but all the questions and answers are known by both sides from the start. The next time Wolf Blitzer interviews someone on Capitol Hill or out on the campaign trail, he and his guest should come to me so I can write up their exchange ahead of time and spare them the trouble of coming up with something to say.

And that’s what makes the farce complete. We the audience collude in this cover-up of truth. We know the questions and we know the answers, so nothing is coming to light and nothing results. It’s like watching an episode of an old sitcom for the umpteenth time. It isn’t funny anymore, but at least we know what comes next.

Immortality isn’t really about journalism--it’s about life and love, with significant doses of big ideas--so I feel bad about focusing on a brief aside for a blog about something as bleak as the state of mass media today, but there you have it. Maybe I’ll have more uplifting things to say after reading Kundera’s better known novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

 

Katy Perry vs. the Social Consciousness Nazis

When Australian television presenter Karl Stefanovic asked Katy Perry if she is a feminist, her answer was fluff. And as usual, the Social Consciousness Nazis--bloggers and intellectuals as strict and demanding with regard to pet issues as the Soup Nazi is about his soup--can’t simply groan and click on something else. They have to bring all their wit and condemnation to bear on the supposed offender, and by their puerility discredit their cause in the eyes of many.

Perry’s answer (watch it here at 1:40):

"A feminist? Uh, yeah, actually. I used to not really understand what that word meant, and now that I do, it just means that I love myself as a female and I also love men."

The response on The Huffington Post (article) included this:

 

This diagram--drafted by Rebecca Searles, a Huffington Post editor--is representative of much that is wrong with dialogue in our internet-drenched, memed-to-death times. It reduces a complex issue into a simple, snarky visual that you would have to be stupid or evil to disagree with. The posted meme with its Like button and Comments section doesn’t allow for anything Plato would recognize as dialogue or even conversation.

The Huffington Post’s definition is all right, but feminism clearly does not only mean that. Words don’t have a single definition, they have families of definitions, they have uses, and clouds of connotations that can be hard to pin down. Feminism is no different.

Perry’s definition is pretty airy, but I take her to mean that she is a strong woman and wants this confidence for other women as well. Isn’t this an important part of feminism? I think it is, but it isn’t good enough for the Social Consciousness Nazis, who insist you see everything in exactly their terms. They will eat their own for straying from the approved script.

I suspect Perry and others are uncertain about feminism because to them the word suggests a certain style of feminism, one that many see as overwrought and unpleasant. Judging by the Huffington Post’s diagram, I have been a feminist for as long as I can remember, but I recently became more interested in it after blogging about the Greta Garbo film Queen Christina. Surfing the internet, I often find myself reading feminist content. While it is often good (I admire Laurie Penny), there is a surprising amount of pure man-hating posing as serious commentary.

No wonder girls like Perry hesitate to associate with that.

Statistics regularly show that women still do not enjoy equal opportunity in the U.S. and around the world, and the Republican War on Women is real, so I’m glad there are aggressive feminists (like attorney, activist and candidate for California State Senate Sandra Fluke) who fight hard for the cause. But ill-conceived ideology and snarky blurbs by the rank and file online will only turn away people who would otherwise be there fighting alongside them.