Kierkegaard about “what the times demand”:

What the times need most urgently, however, can be put neatly into one word: eternity. The misfortune of our time is precisely that it has become only “time”, temporality [Zeitlichkeit], which, impatient as it is, refuses to hear of eternity. Then, well-meaning or frenzied, it even tries to make the eternal superfluous by false emulation, which will fail in all eternity. For the more one thinks it possible to dispense with the eternal, or hardens one’s heart against it, the more fundamentally one needs it.

From Either or, as quoted in Taubes, Occidental eschatology, 173–74.

A while back, I received a reminder from an ethereal UC machine to go online, mouse over squared ABCD answers to various questions and show my willingness to enter the fictional world of management. A world with conflicts of interest, apparently, self-serving, back-biting, and so forth. Somewhat depressing but not new. It came from something called the UCLearningCenter and in its best passive voice suggested that I,

As an employee of the University of California, […] have automatically been registered for the mandatory Compliance Briefing: UC Ethical Values and Conduct (20-30 minutes to complete). This briefing is designed to raise continued awareness of the University of California Statement of Ethical Values and Standards of Ethical Conduct, and to convey University employment obligations with respect to ethical and compliant behavior. The purpose is not to teach University policy or ethics but to familiarize UC employees with important ethics and compliance information, issues and resources. You are required to complete this course by December 31, 2010.

So it’s not about dusting off the old Aristotle. But how about the “familiarizing” with “important ethics … issues and resources?” Wouldn’t reading the official statement be enough? I read it. But no, you have to give proof, not that you read it, but a devalued digest of it. Proof to whom? To be used how? So that my “continued awareness” be “raised?” But if it is already an “awareness”, and “continued”, how can it be raised? Raising the ethics flag would be enough to modify behavior? It all looks very muddled.

According to UCOP where I found a presentation giving a very good idea of the thing, 192,000 UC employees are to spend an average of 20-30 minutes doing that every year. I.e., 60,000-92,000 hours at say an average $20.00/hr, an investment in “raised continued awareness of … Statement… Ethical… Value” of $1,200,000–1,920,000. I’m sure the public will be convinced and happy to see public dollars properly spent.

Back in 2007, I wrote sundry emails with questions like: what company did you hire (Workplace Answers still?), why a private company, what is the cost (above that of the employees’ time)? Why this decision was taken by the regents in November to May 2005 (when a few scandals happened among the top brass of UCOP), etc… Please get back to me, before I contemplate raising my continued awareness of the thingy. What of the example set by a top teaching institution automating the “conveying of obligations”? Has the down cost of that been factored in?

I shouldn’t be bothering about this matter. . And that’s what’s counted on I suppose: fatigue. “Yes, it’s silly, but come on, just do it. Submit.”

The message ends with this call:

For anonymous reporting of non-compliant behavior, please call [number] or visit [site address]

Please do.

In occasional conversations with men or women who were in WWII’s concentration camps, I have been surprised to discover a certain way they had of referring to that world didn’t fit the vocabulary I learned. They spoke of “there,” “sham,” “là-bas,” and the context was enough to understand, if you meant to. The surprise came because I naïvely expected more precision. I expected words I had learned in books and newspapers to originate from people who were there and would speak of it as event. And perhaps also, in the back of my mind, incongruously I think, there was the last word in the book of Ezekiel. We speak of “the camps,” “extermination camps,” “l’univers concentrationnaire”, “holocaust”, “shoah”, “ḥurban”…. Each with a peculiar history, each leading in a certain direction where one is in danger of losing the little chance one has of thinking straight. These words carry allusions to other things one can and would have to explain. They are dangerously long, classificatory, conceptual, specular, and products of a historical reflection looking for causes, even when the speakers admit their inability or reluctance to categorize. Why not use “then” instead of “there”, however? Because between “then” and “now” the chasm is too great, and “then” or “in those times” would be the beginning of an impossible story? While with “there,” “sham,” or “là-bas,” I imagine that something like both the distance and proximity to “here” allow the possibility of a secret mourning within an all-present life. “There” still exists, it is the same earth and land beyond oceans and rivers. Near.

A few days ago, I read the interview given to Le Monde by Raffaele Simone whose book Le monstre doux. L’Occident vire-t-il à droite? (= The gentle monster. Is the West taking a turn to the right?) just came out in France. He starts from the realization that the European left has collapsed ideologically, psychologically, and electorally. For three main reasons: the evolution of a society given to consumption, pleasure, and selfishness; the blindness of the left regarding this evolution and the forgetting of its ideals and achievements; and the ability of the right to occupy the ground, a right that goes along both with business, especially banking and media, and the desires and fears of a consuming, self-centered population. In his interview, he refers to de Tocqueville’s prophecy about a new form of domination, which I cite here at greater length:

Je pense donc que l’espèce d’oppression dont les peuples démocratiques sont menacés ne ressemblera à rien de ce qui l’a précédée dans le monde; nos contemporains ne sauraient en trouver l’image dans leurs souvenirs. [….] La chose est nouvelle, il faut donc tacher de la définir, puisque je ne peux la nommer.

Je veux imaginer sous quels traits nouveaux le despotisme pourrait se produire dans le monde: je vois une foule innombrable d’hommes semblables et égaux qui tournent sans repos sur eux-mêmes pour se procurer de petits et vulgaires plaisirs, dont ils emplissent leur âme. Chacun d’eux, retiré à l’écart, est comme étranger à la destinée de tous les autres: ses enfants et ses amis particuliers forment pour lui toute l’espèce humaine; quant au demeurant de ses concitoyens, il est à côté d’eux, mais il ne les voit pas; il les touche et ne les sent point; il n’existe qu’en lui-même et pour lui seul, et s’il lui reste encore une famille, on peut dire du moins qu’il n’a plus de patrie.

Au-dessus de ceux-la s’élève un pouvoir immense et tutélaire, qui se charge seul d’assurer leur jouissance et de veiller sur leur sort. Il est absolu, détaillé, régulier, prévoyant et doux. Il ressemblerait à la puissance paternelle si, comme elle, il avait pour objet de préparer les hommes à l’âge viril; mais il ne cherche, au contraire, qu’à les fixer irrévocablement dans l’enfance; il aime que les citoyens se réjouissent, pourvu qu’ils ne songent qu’à se réjouir. Il travaille volontiers à leur bonheur; mais il veut en être l’unique agent et le seul arbitre; il pourvoit à leur sécurité, prévoit et assure leurs besoins, facilite leurs plaisirs, conduit leurs principales affaires, dirige leur industrie, règle leurs successions, divise leurs héritages; que ne peut-il leur ôter entièrement le trouble de penser et la peine de vivre? (De la démocratie en Amérique, vol. 2, 4.6)

And especially these lines, even though the context is of an aristocratic elevation (how not to lose what constituted virtue, courage, abnegation):

Il est, en effet, difficile de concevoir comment des hommes qui ont entièrement renoncé à l’habitude de se diriger eux-mêmes pourraient réussir à bien choisir ceux qui doivent les conduire; et l’on ne fera point croire qu’un gouvernement libéral, énergique et sage, puisse jamais sortir des suffrages d’un peuple de serviteurs.

De Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt perhaps share the same notion of democracy. It doesn’t depend on notions of human rights or humanitas that look so vague and little defined in the face of the triumphant “self”. Undefined except by number and therefore in danger of being milled down to the smallest common denominator, which is the particular desires framed in infinitely repeated images.

No time to say much about this now, with classes beginning. But two surprises: the moralizing regarding over-consumption is open to suspicion. It’s not all about Berlusconi bronzing himself and ha-ha-ing with young women. And: the theme above is approached from different angles by Zygmunt Bauman and others. I especially think of Pierre Manent whose Les métamorphoses de la cité. Essai sur la dynamique de l’Occident just came out (Paris : Flammarion, 2010). He follows the four great “versions of the universal”, i.e. Jewish law, Greek philosophy, the Church, and humanity according to the modern version. For the first three, the idea of the divine is key, whereas the modern concept is suspending the notion of depth to embrace the broadest possible number, though here too the mediation of the divine still flickers, though inverted or en attente. As Manent says, a “religion de l’humanité”. More on his book later.

An ad from Whitman’s campaign says that her plan as governor of California is to decrease government’s expenditures on health, pension, welfare system, workforce (= fire 40,000], and waste, the proverbial election-time, magical pot of gold. She would transfer some of that money to UC and State University system to continue to provide a cheaper and better education to many. I.e.—worthy goal—stop the tuition fee increases and make sure research can continue as before. Sounds good, but what of the tit in the tit for tat? Make life even more difficult for tens of thousands of people, empoverish and threaten them in their daily life, in order to … help many who can help themselves already? As for government, what of our fabled prison system and its extraordinary cost? She would reduce health expenses there too… I see she could squeeze 3 to 5 billion dollars a year, spend them immediately (transfer), but 15 billion dollars? And tax cuts on top of that? With 12.4% unemployment, official number as of today, and a number unlikely to change.

Just read on a new urinal in a university bathroom: “Saves 88% more water than a one-gallon urinal.” Since most urinals (the functioning ones, I mean) USE water (well, some don’t use water at all), a more accurate statement would be: “Uses 88% less water than a one-gallon urinal.” But this would imply that one still uses water, whereas the first statement hopes the pee-er accepts the far-fetched notion that the company is a redeemer redux who is helping you save the planet when nature calls. Welcome to the moral flush. How much water and energy it took to design and produce these automatic valves, repair them when they malfunction, get rid of the old ones cannot and should not enter calculations, I suppose. It is a bit worrisome to see well-intentioned and important sustainability plans become part of modes of forced consumption parading behind facile ethics.

A message from the UC Oakland cloud just came announcing that there will be a Web Town Hall on UC Benefits on Friday, Sept. 24, 2010, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

UC leaders will host this online town hall meeting to talk with faculty, staff and retirees about post-employment benefits, health care costs, UC’s budget and other university issues. It is presented as an opportunity for faculty, staff and retirees to ask questions about UC benefits and share concerns.

That word “sharing” is beginning to sound like an insult and the medium of the message indicates it is too much of an opportunity. It will be a “live, interactive webcast” farmed out to a company called “ustream”. You log on, sign name, address, etc, so you are on yet another facebook-like crap-machine and can ask questions and submit comments.

What happened to the real live meetings where representatives of unions and associations are deputied to ask real UC members’ questions, ranked and organized, rather than have this sharing soup?

I just listened to three cello pieces done by the Portland Cello Project and loved them. Titles: Turkish Wine, Mouth for War, Halo 3 Theme.