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| Credit: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-5YWjlgolr/ |
Wed. 1 July 2020
It’s July, it’s Canada Day, it’s …. Wednesday.
Last night I learned that Professor Eliot Deutsch died a few days ago. He was a giant in the field of Indian and Comparative Philosophy and one of the people who made the Philosophy Department at the University of Hawaii what it is today. I met him when I did my MA at the University of Hawaii (I took a class with him, and he served on MA exam committee). I saw him several times when I returned to Hawaii for conferences over the years.
I am sad to learn that Eliot Deutsch passed away the other day. I can't claim to have known him as well as many others, but here are a few of my memories. The first time I met Prof. Deutsch I was ushered into his office on my first day of graduate school in Hawaii. I was nervous because I had read his famous book on Advaita and felt like I was meeting a movie star. But he put me at ease, and we had a really friendly chat. One day in his Comparative Philosophy class later that year (or the next) he mentioned that we could write a dialogue or an epic poem for our final paper. I think maybe he was joking, but I wrote a weird philosophical dialogue anyway (with copious footnotes). I think he was slightly baffled by it, but mostly amused.
A few more memories: He always had students over to his house at the end of the term. It was a fabulous Japanese-style house up in the mountains (my memory of specific Honolulu geography fails me, but it was one of those suburban-type neighborhoods improbably built on the side of a mountain). Since aesthetics was one of his main areas, his art collection did not disappoint in quality or diversity. I remember being impressed by a beautiful antique Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscript. And he was a gracious host, of course. I didn’t stay in Hawaii for my PhD, so I didn’t get to know him as well as I would have liked (I fled back to Minnesota briefly to get married and then to the desert and PhD program of New Mexico). But I was always happy to chat with Prof. Deutsch when I returned for student conferences in the late 2000’s and then the big East-West Philosophers’ Conferences in 2011 and 2016. One of the last conversations I had with him was either in 2011 or 2016. He said he didn’t like being retired.
Here’s an obituary by Roger Ames.
Several of my former professors have died over the years (most recently before this, Nancy Holland from my undergrad institution of Hamline University). I suppose I’m getting to the age where this will happen more frequently.
Thurs. 2 July 2020
I put a post about Eliot Deutsch on the Indian Philosophy Blog.
I just used this phrase in a recommendation for an excellent student: “This may sound like typical recommendation letter hyperbole…” While I may have indulged in such hyberbole before, I was not in this case!
My other project this week has been revising an article on Le Guin and Daoism. It has gone through a few rounds of revision. It's an attempt to do philosophy in a Le Guinian fashion and so lacks a lot of what you typically find in academic philosophy, which is largely organized by metaphors of combat (as described by my friend Dr. Sarah Mattice and many others). I’m not discussing objections in order to “beat” them and “win” the battle of ideas against my “opponents.” I’m trying to continue a conversation, which is a lot more ambiguous, amorphous, and open-ended than you are usually allowed to be in a philosophy article.
I guess if they don’t like it, I’ll send it somewhere else. Maybe I’ll keep it for the book on Le Guin and philosophy I would love to write one day (or maybe it will be a book on Le Guin and Octavia Butler and the roles of Daoism and Buddhism in their works, or maybe I’ll edit an anthology with contributions from others).
Someday I may learn that philosophers, despite what you’d think, don’t really want to question their own methods and frameworks much more than normal people do. But it is not this day.
One for my Random Thoughts collection: If you’re not willing to at least occasionally entertain the possibility that your entire framework of understanding could be wrong, are you really doing philosophy?
Fri. 3 July 2020
Something I shared on social media:
Spending part of July 3 bringing lunches to poor people in the projects and homeless people in tent cities in the wealthiest country on Earth in the middle of a grossly mismanaged response to a pandemic makes me really excited about Independence Day this year.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m really, really glad to help. If people are suffering, one should help them. But it’s hard to get excited about a country that has the wealth to totally eliminate poverty, but has continued to choose not to do so year after year while the problems are in some cases actually getting worse. MLK made this point in the 1960’s. Others made it before him. There is no excuse.
I guess I’ve always been conflicted about my country. Even before the pandemic, we had a lot of problems: gross economic inequality, racial and gender disparities, a political system that seems designed for gridlock, a large part of the country that actively fights against anything that might solve our problems, etc.
But the pandemic brought this all into the light. As I was saying toward the beginning of the pandemic, many Americans finally saw that many of the pillars of our society were entirely imaginary—our culture of work, our economic system, our systemic racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia… all of this is erected on imaginary rules. But of course imaginary things can still cause suffering. It’s not enough to say that “money isn’t real” or “race isn’t real” when it’s our ideas about those things that cause suffering.
So, it’s especially hard to feel good about America on our Independence Day this year.
So why don’t I leave? To be entirely honest, if I had gotten a job in another country, I may well have taken it.
But if I’m being honest, despite all the ways that America breaks my heart, I love this place because of our diversity, our music (most of the best of which we owe to African Americans), our food (from hip New Orleans fusion cuisine to Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme there’s something weirdly creative about American food), our openness to innovation (if only we could put some of this innovation into societal issues), our friendliness (I know it’s hard to see with the obnoxious people lately, but for all our many faults, most Americans are pretty nice folks). But most of all I love our potential. We could make America truly great for the first time if we really wanted to.
And here I think we can all learn a lot from two famous Black Americans: Frederick Douglass and Janelle Monáe (stay with me here, it makes sense!).
Check out this amazing video of Douglass’s descendants reading his famous 1852 speech, “What to the Slave if the Fourth of July?” (Be sure to stay tuned to the discussion of the speech by his descendants.)
And check out Monáe’s performance of her song “Americans” from her 2018 album Dirty Computer.
Neither Douglass nor Monáe shy away from a bitter rebuke of their homeland. But neither is ready to entirely give up on America, either. Because of the potential that both of them see.
As a cishet white man in America in 2020, I feel these issues in different ways than either Douglass or Monáe of course. But the way I look at it is this: if Douglass and Monáe can have hope for America’s potential, then why can’t I?
Happy Independence Day.
(I guess I kind of wrote a blog post there. I think I’ll call it “Independence Day for Conflicted Americans” or something like that)
Mon. 6 July 2020
I guess I took the 4th of July weekend off. I did write that blog post. And then I read the Hugo nominees for Best Novelettes, and wrote a post about that, too.
One thing I keep forgetting to mention: Beth and I are planning to try a socially distanced beach vacation in Panama City Beach, FL in one of the less crowded parts of the beach. I’m not entirely thrilled about the idea to be honest, but I think it will be good for our mental health and mostly we’ll be doing what we do at home, just in a hotel room with an ocean to look at. I guess we’ll see how crowded the beach is, but we stayed at this place last year and it wasn’t nearly the shoulder-to-shoulder part of the beach that some of Panama City is, certainly not like all the Florida beaches to the south they’re showing on the news lately.
Mon. 13 July 2020
I guess I took a vacation from this journal, too!
I’ll say more about the trip, which was pretty good, later.
Today I’m catching up on email, which includes thinking about the fall. Earlier in the summer I still had some small hope that we might have some clarity or relief by mid-summer. Unfortunately that clarity is looking more like the movie Midsommar.
Anyway, the trip was good. We stayed at one of the places we stayed last year that’s in a less busy part of the beach. The good news was that everyone was social distancing pretty well on the beach, and the beach wasn’t crowded. Not many people were wearing masks around the hotel, but at least it was open air. We unfortunately had to go through the pool area to get to the beach, which was sometimes crowded.
We spent a lot of time reading on our balcony that overlooks the ocean, which honestly is most of what I like to do on beach trips, anyway. A chance to look at a beautiful beach while reading books all day is what a beach vacation is all about if you ask me.
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| Reading at the beach! |
The whole sitting on the hot sand in direct sunlight gets old for me quickly. We got a beach tent this year, which was pretty good for shade. I like swimming in the ocean, but getting mostly naked in front of strangers and being without my glasses while wearing the vile, unholy substance of sunscreen on my body are not my favorite parts of that activity.
We had a room with a kitchen, so we brought all our own food so we could avoid restaurants. We didn’t even get delivery while we were there.
The drive is about seven hours. We stopped at rest stops for the bathroom and meals we brought with us, which honestly is better. We only went inside a gas station once, which was slightly traumatic (crowded with only about half the people wearing masks), but we were in and out quickly.
So, it was a fun, relaxing trip. Now to be home for… well, a long time most likely.
Tues. 14 July 2020
It’s my little sister’s birthday today! She’s 30. Hard to believe… I was 13 when she was born, and I very distinctly remember it.
Beth and I decided to put ourselves in quarantine for two weeks after our trip. Not that the trip was particularly risky (being on campus this fall will probably be a higher risk), but it’s maybe good to be careful while we can. This means we might have to look into grocery delivery. And I won’t be able to help hand out lunches (I sent some money to my friend to cover the fruit I’ve been buying in recent weeks). It’s been super hot outside lately, which may continue with few breaks until October (it did last year). I don’t mind it being in the 90’s and humid so much in July and August, but by September it gets old. Last year it was 97 degrees the first week of October. Well, at least I’ll be mostly staying inside.
I haven’t done this in a while.
COVID-19 cases worldwide: 13,373,101
COVID-19 deaths worldwide: 578,467
US cases: 3,525,337 (we’re #1…)
US deaths: 138,943 (still #1…)
Hamilton County cases: 3,684
Hamilton County deaths: 38
Worldwide the number of cases per day has been growing steadily, but the deaths per day seem to have decreased slightly. Even here in the US, where our number of cases is growing rapidly, at least the number of deaths per day does seem to have decreased (at least if I’m reading the charts correctly). Maybe treatment has improved? Or there are other factors? (I was curious, so I found this article that considers several possible explanations)
In reading news, I took The Waste Lands (the third book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series) and Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January (a Hugo nominee) to the beach. I finished the first, and finished the second after we came home. I’m loving my Dark Tower re-read. Harrow’s book was beautifully written, but had a lot less world building than I was hoping for from a portal fantasy. I’m going to try to read one more Hugo book: Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade (luckily the deadline has been extended, so I get another week). And then: back to the Dark Tower with Wizard and Glass!
I can’t believe I forgot to say this yesterday: while we were at the beach I got my official notice that I will be tenured as of Aug. 1!!!!!
I mean, it’s only the thing I’ve been dreaming about for six years and the thing I’ve been looking forward to celebrating all summer. No big deal.
I’ll be promoted to Associate Professor, and I’ll get a 10% raise. And I guess it will be harder to fire me (but, as the pandemic has already shown elsewhere, it’s far from impossible). I’ll be thinking of more ways to use this privilege to help others. And, to be honest, to relax a bit myself.
I didn’t think it would take this long to get the official letter, but I guess I should have known it would take a long time. I should have started celebrating early. I wasn’t really worried about it not happening, but it’s nice to have the official notice, especially because it occurred to me that one way for the University of Tennessee system to save money would be to delay tenure and promotion decisions. So, I’m glad they didn’t do that to save money even though I’m still really anxious about what the next few years will bring for higher education.
Anyway, it feels good. I’m glad I got to celebrate at the beach. I already purchased the Dark Tower boxed set and reference books as self-congratulation presents. And I may have promised myself a fancy bottle of Scotch, which I hope to procure soon.
Thurs. 16 July 2020
Today would have been my Grandma’s 101st birthday. She died in 2014 at the age of 95. I always thought she’d make it to 100, but I guess we can round up.
A thought process I actually had the other day: I haven’t been to Arby’s or Dairy Queen since the pandemic started. Also, I have lost 7-8 pounds since the pandemic started. No way these two facts are related…
Something I shared on social media that started some interesting discussion.
Given the way we fund higher education in the US, I understand universities' fear of loss of income from tuition and housing/meals. But besides that concern, what reasons do people have for wanting to have in-person classes at universities this fall? I realize this sounds cynical, but it's a genuine question. I honestly don't understand why we're trying so hard to make this happen.
I’m getting pretty anxious about having agreed to do two of my classes as hybrid courses. I might consider changing them to fully online if I can. But I’m more anxious about everyone on my campus and in schools around the country. We in the US seem hellbent on making this pandemic longer and more severe than it has to be, and of course making the most vulnerable members of society pay most of the costs.
All for what? Because our economy is so fragile that we can’t handle a public health crisis without letting thousands die? Because we’re so dogmatic about how things have to be that we’re not willing to do the rethinking we probably need to get through this and other crises afflicting our society?
And Republicans seem to want the pandemic to go on longer, at least judging by their actions. There is no direction from the top, but governors and other leaders share plenty of blame. We luckily got a mask mandate at the county level here (not really enforced, but given the way police enforce things, this may not be a bad thing). Our governor recently said he refuses to enact a statewide mask mandate. And just seven miles away in Georgia, the governor is specifically forbidding any cities or counties to enact their own mandates. I don’t understand. What do they think is going to happen?
Mon. 20 July 2020
I had a pretty good weekend. We got pizza. I got a double dose of D&D. I think I finished up most of the Hugo reading I was going to do. I didn’t get to as many categories as usual this year, but the pandemic is taking a lot out of all of us, I think.
It’s the 51st anniversary of the first moon landing. And I don’t think anyone cares. Oh, well. I guess the big anniversary was last year (I wrote something about it), and there are plenty of other things to worry about.
Speaking of plenty of other things to worry about (which lately include unidentified federal agents rounding up protesters into unmarked vans off the streets of Portland, OR … no, really), Taco Bell is getting rid of some of my favorite menu items, like the 7-layer burrito and the spicy potato soft taco. The good news: through a friend’s post about it on Twitter, I learned of the existence of a literary journal called Taco Bell Quarterly. This must be one of those “silver linings” people talk about.
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| Credit: http://www.grymvald.com/2019/08/the-tuesday-sundries-golden-girls-and.html |
Anyway, today I’m finishing up revisions on an article that will hopefully be a new direction of official research in my post-tenure area (philosophy and science fiction!). I’ve been doing this for a long time, though my blog mainly, but also through my contribution to Philip K. Dick and Philosophy many years ago (which now that I’m tenured, I’ll put on my CV). But now I’m going to try to do this more formally and seriously. I guess I just wanted to see if I could get tenure through my “respectable” research. Now that I’ve done that, I can do other things. But I’ll still do work in classical Indian philosophy, of course. Which reminds me: I have a thing on Vasubandhu I need to write yet this summer.
Tues. 21 July 2020
I forgot to mention that Congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis died over the weekend. I’ve been sad about it, but what a remarkable life, from being the youngest speaker at the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom (where MLK delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech) to attending Comic Con a few years ago cosplaying as his younger self from the 1965 march in Selma, AL, to decades in the US House of Representatives fighting the good fight. Rest in power, John Lewis.
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| John Lewis at San Diego Comic Con (source: NY Times) |
I shared an article about it on social media, saying “Sure to be another chapter in a future book 'Well, That's Terrifying': A History of the Trump Years."
Some recent pandemic thoughts.
- I can’t take a shower today, because I have a meeting tomorrow and I can’t take a shower two days in a row.
- How long must one be awake before “going back to bed” becomes “taking a nap”?
- Does taking the garbage out count as “leaving the house”?
- Are Republican politicians deliberately trying to make this pandemic longer and deadlier than it has to be?
Thurs. 23 July 2020
I found out that I can’t switch my hybrid classes to online unless I go through an official accommodation process through HR. And I probably won’t be able to switch to a larger room, so I’ll have to split my class into four groups and each student will only attend in person once every other week. Will students think this is worth being a hybrid versus 100% online course? I suppose it lessens their exposure, but I still have to be there as often as if I were teaching a face-to-face course.
I think I’ve gotten to the part of pandemic summer where I should be thinking about my fall courses and finishing up some other work, but today I can’t even. I read an op-ed about Aristotle that I’ll add as an optional reading for my Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy course. That’s enough for today. Time to take a mental health day to read Wizard and Glass, the fourth in my re-read of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
Last night I read the part where the characters wander into the world (or a similar world) of The Stand.
Speaking of plagues, here are some numbers for a far less lethal but far more real plague.
Worldwide cases: 15,450,563
Worldwide deaths: 631,645
US cases: 4,113,950
US deaths: 146,378
Hamilton county cases: 4,539
Hamilton county deaths: 41
Sat. 25 July 2020
Some good news today: I got my hybrid classes moved to larger rooms, and my article on Ursula Le Guin and Daoism was accepted by the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy!
Tonight I attended a rally and march along with several of my fellow union members: Chattanooga Workers for Black Lives. It was good to highlight the connections between racial justice and economic justice. The local chapters of Tennessee United (an organization that advocates for immigrants and the Latinx community), the Poor People’s Campaign, Community Control Now (another organization I’m part of seeking a civilian oversight board for the police), and a few others were there.
And then: D&D! Not a bad night.
And more D&D tomorrow. Not a bad weekend, all the better for avoiding my doom-anxiety about the fall semester.
One funny thing: a student from last semester remembered that we briefly discussed the fun internet debate about whether a hot dog is a sandwich to get us ready to discuss Plato’s Laches (a dialogue on the definition of courage). The students always have fun with that activity—maybe a little too much fun, because they get so riled up by that question they have trouble focusing on Plato. Anyway, the student found some memes on the subject and emailed them to me (see my favorite below). It’s nice they remembered something from the course!
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