Weekly Post 1: Aristotle's Rhetoric, Book II, Chapter 9

When Aristotle discusses indignation, displeasure at another's undeserved good fortune or pleasure at their deserved bad fortune, he says "Both feelings are associated with good moral character; it is our duty both to feel sympathy and pity for unmerited distress, and to feel indignation at unmerited prosperity; for whatever is undeserved is unjust, and that is why we ascribe indignation even to the gods."

While this is a pretty standard statement for a guy with a top-down worldview, I think it's interesting that Aristotle chalks everything that isn't deserved up to injustice. Do people exist in constant states of deserving or not deserving everything in the universe? Can I, at this moment, be said to deserve or not deserve to win a free car out of the blue, because of my moral goodness or badness? Could I be said to deserve a free car, but not a free house? Should I be keeping a balance book?

Here is where I have to remind myself that Aristotle believes in deities. In Aristotle's world, when people are morally good, they ARE rewarded -- every time, at least in theory. The gods bless a good person with wealth or health or public office. If a person is morally bad, it's lightning bolt o'clock. Aristotle believes in a totally (or almost, anyway) incorruptible social system, whereby justice is meted out from a higher authority. The Greek gods, unlike many of the gods from modern traditions, can be tricked, hurt, evaded, and even temporarily thwarted, but the stories where these things happen are usually about heroes, and the average Greek citizen is expecting his comeuppance around every corner. Even Greek rules about hospitality invoked the gods: you had to be nice to guests because they might be gods and might be able to take their own revenge.

Today, though, not everything is deserved or undeserved. When we refer to something as an "act of God," half the time we're using the term to figure out whether our insurance is willing to cover it, not how we brought the misfortune on ourselves through lack of sacrifice. We have a better understanding of random chance and of guilt that is difficult or impossible to locate, that is shared socially or that can't really be chalked up to a single person even when the facts point that way. Not many people really think the CEO of BP is personally responsible for the Gulf oil spill. He might have let it happen, even encouraged practices that made it likely to happen, but he didn't want it to happen and didn't choose to make it happen. He's culpable, but not guilty. Do we feel indignant at Tony Hayward? What about Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, the freshmen who leaked video of their roommate Tyler Clementi and inadvertently brought about his suicide?

Obviously, many people do feel indignant at these people -- commenters on news, GLBTQ, feminist, and even celebrity gossip blogs were engaged in battles for weeks after the incident, arguing about the appropriate punishments for Ravi and Wei. Thousands of people did personally attack Tony Hayward, especially after his YouTube video circulated and he was judged not to feel sorry enough. Emotions do dissipate with distance from an event, and by now, as I'm looking at a Molly Wei update on Celebitchy.com, I'm seeing comment wars over whether or not she, and to a lesser extent Ravi, were guilty even though they were culpable or causative. Many people point to the fact that Wei let Ravi borrow her computer and might not necessarily have been directly involved, and some commenters even say that what Ravi did was reprehensible, and what happened to Tyler was terrible, but that it's still a stretch to equate a suicide after a bullying incident with murder.

What does it mean to offer bodies to the crowd for judgment, especially now that we can no longer hope for an absolute decision, even at a final judgment? Obviously the great unwashed were always a sounding board for popular morality, but now that we can't rely on religious pardons or condemnations to give us the final word, how do we deal with the social responsibility of public morality?

Bad Sign

A little black-brown-gray-purple lump is huddled at the bottom of my sink, gently curled in on itself like a dead pillbug. When I turn on the faucet it starts to erode, but I catch a glimpse of a little black particle before it disappears down the drain and recognition turns my stomach. I breathe into my hands: hot morning mouth and, yes, there it is, the stale yellow smell of Parliament Lights.

I think about the lump of cigarette ash mouldering in my lungs for those ten long hours, seeping arsenic and tar into my mucus membranes. I run the water in the sink and brush my teeth until the gray film lifts off my tongue, and I try to hold onto the hypochondriac image of metastasizing tumors dancing through my head. I focus on that for almost an hour as I stumble around my house, preparing myself for the wave of need I know is coming as soon as I step outside and the cold air hits me and the open morning stretches out, full of fifteen-minute breaks and sheltered overhangs between classes, a path I know as intimately as the one from my apartment to the Texaco station.

I shrug on my jacket and lock the door behind me as a wall of frozen nitrogen rushes in, and my hand curls instinctively, lovingly, around the pack in my pocket. For a second I feel the inertia of deep habit pulling me forward, left foot out to take a step and right hand reaching for the back pocket of my jeans, for the red Bic lighter and the brief, beautiful tang of butane before I can really wake up. Slowly, methodically, and without letting go of the pack (so fresh it's still in plastic, twenty perfect little clean white filters), I tell myself about psychological addictions and breaking neural links, chewing gum and counting to five hundred, the unsatisfying trickle of Nicorette or the patch, the thin tastelessness of the water vapor cigarette, and how much like a breath of fresh air that first drag feels.

I need to quit smoking.

--- ORIGINAL ---

I can feel the clear space in the back of my esophagus as soon as the whatever-it-is dislodges, oxygen scraping down the exposed lining of my throat as I try to wheeze air back into my lungs. My diaphragm pushes up into my chest and my breath comes in stutters, and I can see my face distended in the mirror, eyes squinting, mascara streaming, cheeks puffy and red in blotches, the way I imagine the mugshot on my E: True Hollywood Story would look after they arrested me for a fourth DUI. Joaquin Phoenix terrible.

That's when I see it.

A little black-brown-gray-purple lump is huddled at the bottom of my sink, gently curled in on itself like a dead pillbug. For a second I wonder if you can cough up a tumor. My breath is coming easier now; the white spots behind my eyes are clearing out, and I push myself away from the sink, catching a charming glimpse of my seven a.m. face in the mirror, eyes open at different degrees and cheeks burning from a round of athletic coughing. When I turn on the faucet the lump starts to erode, but I catch a glimpse of a little black particle before it disappears down the drain and recognition turns my stomach. I breathe into my hands: hot morning mouth and, yes, there it is, the stale yellow smell of Parliament Lights.

I think about the lump of cigarette ash mouldering in my lungs for those ten long hours, leaking arsenic and tar into my mucus membranes. I run the water in the sink and brush my teeth until the gray film lifts off my tongue, and by this point my eyes aren't fighting the outside world anymore, and I pop a vitamin and try to hold onto the hypochondriac image of metastasizing tumors dancing through my head. I focus on that for almost an hour as I stumble around my house, drinking three cups of tea and scrawling on my eyeliner, preparing myself for the wave of need I know is coming as soon as I step outside and the cold air hits me.

And then it's 8:40, and the open morning stretches out smugly, full of fifteen-minute breaks and sheltered overhangs between classes, a path I know as intimately as the one from my apartment to the Texaco station. I shrug on my jacket and lock the door behind me as a wall of frozen nitrogen rushes in, stinging my cheeks and making me gasp. My hand curls instinctively, lovingly, around the pack in my pocket. For a second I feel the inertia of deep habit pulling me forward, left foot out to take a step and right hand reaching for the inner pocket of my jeans, for the red Bic lighter and the brief, beautiful tang of butane before I can really wake up. Slowly, methodically, and without letting go of the pack (so fresh it's still in plastic, twenty perfect little clean white filters), I tell myself about psychological addictions and breaking neural links, chewing gum and counting to five hundred, the unsatisfying trickle of Nicorette or the patch, the thin tastelessness of the water vapor cigarette.

I need to quit smoking.

Hello, world!