Ethics of abortion and in-vitro fertilization

I hold what many consider an unpopular opinion: abortion should be legal, while IVF should be banned. (IVF = In-Vitro Fertilization) The ethics of this stance is based on the assertion of sovereign authority of the parents (especially the mother) over creation of new life and informed by the view of parenthood as an eminently sexual life function.

Since a woman's body is the host of the initial development of human life, she is granted the prerogative to decide how and if she becomes a mother. In my view, her sovereignty and authority extends from the moment of conception until the point a fetus transitions from a potential human being into an actual one. The deciding agent is the mother -- not a judge or a doctor -- who declares whether new life has begun within her womb.

The woman exercises control through her choice to allow or disallow pregnancy, whether through contraception or abortion and, of course, selection of her male partner. If she chooses to reject her pregnancy, she must do so with the full gravitas of the matter and within reasonable time after conception, recognizing that she is terminating a potential human life rather than removing a "meaningless piece of flesh." Under this ethics, abortion can be justified as a subjective claim of self-defense, as protection against an invading body. We have seen such subjective claims made by police shooting threatening persons. Once a woman accepts her pregnancy, the new life becomes actual and termination of pregnancy can be permitted only under extraordinary circumstances.

Consistent with my support for woman's authority over natural pregnancy, I believe IVF methods should be banned because they insert artifice into sexual reproduction. IVF separates fertilization from the sexual encounter, allowing embryos to be formed in laboratories rather than through a human connection. Under IVF creation of new life is no longer sexual but technological. While it may appear that IVF is an advantage and even achievement of humanity, eliminating burdensome sexuality from initiation of new life, we are not fully able to grasp what is being lost. At the very least, the male partner is effectively eliminated and generation of new life is surrendered to technology. Under IVF the process of acceptance of new life, from conception to early pregnancy, eliminates parental authority and replaces it with the authority of technical experts.

In near future, technology may replace the mother's womb entirely. Scientists are already working on an artificial womb and have "greater ambitions". They see

a future in which a machine like “Mother” will be able to fully gestate a human, all the way from embryo to newborn. It could offer a new path to parenthood for people who don’t have a uterus, for example, or who are not able to get pregnant for other reasons Ref: National Review article

This raises a terrifying possibility: human life generated entirely artificially, born without a human mother in a process that may resemble production of intelligent robots. If, or rather when, this is allowed, will such individuals be seen as equals to naturally conceived people, or will they be viewed as disposable, reproducible "machines" similar to sentient AI? Or will they be superior products -- an achievement of technology and finance? Will they be able to confront their "maker" with the anxiety of their existence?

Our current reproductive ethics lost sight of the centrality of the child and its interests in favor of aspirations of adults to parenthood. In my view, life should be a gift lovingly given by parents to a child. I could even say: A child has a human right to be naturally conceived within a loving parental bond. Ethical parenthood requires dedication and sacrifice, beginning the moment a mother accepts a pregnancy into her womb following a coupling with a partner.

In the context of IVF, the crucial connection between conception and parenthood is severed. By banning these methods and supporting a woman's right to choose within the scope of natural conception, we enshrine the human factor in the creation of life. We ought to support a reproductive ethic that protects the right of every child to be conceived naturally and lovingly.

Year 2025 in rearview

After 2025 ends with the most ridiculous press conf with Trump and Zelensky it is hard to be optimistic about the coming year.

The year 2025 could have been very successful for the world and for the US. People were very anxious about the accession of Donald Trump to presidential power in the US. They were justifiably worried about an authoritarian turn. I was not that worried -- counting on the institutions of the US republic to hold against abuse of executive power. I was wrong -- I did not appreciate the destructive power of stupidity of Trump and his supporters.

It is the bombastic stupidity of the Donald that has destroyed many opportunities of 2025.

Why start a trade war with the entire world by imposing tariffs on friendly partner countries while the problem country is China? Disturbing a system of delicate dependencies on foreign trade is not only imprudent, but stupid.

The bombastic renaming of geographical entities and long-standing institutions -- Gulf of America, Department of War, Trump-Kennedy Center!

Serving Russia's interests in Ukraine, while Russia is clearly the aggressor country, while shamelessly advocating for peace. But what is peace without justice? Trump is forcing Ukraine into submission to Russia and multiplying the danger of Russian aggression against Europe. Trump thinks that business deals with corrupt and belligerent Russia are a better way to go than achieving a just peace in Ukraine and security in Europe. The opportunity to defeat Russia in Ukraine and allow Russia to reform internally is plainly squandered.

US is revealing itself as an unreliable ally -- to Ukraine, which received US and European security guarantees in 1994, and to NATO allies -- by siding with Russia in the matter of war in Ukraine.
European NATO allies are hesitant making a tougher stand against Russian aggression while the core NATO ally is siding with the enemy. US is placing a big question mark about the system of alliances securing our world in relative peace! There is a danger Europe might go its own way about its security and US will be left alone, without allies.

And American internal politics! The left wing wokeness is not dead! Quite the contrary. It now developed new ventures into pro-Palestinian anti-Semitism and pro-Islamism. If DEI is a bit passé there will be new trends in multi-culti thanks to the likes of Mamdani or Ilhan Omar entrenched in the left-wing of the Democratic party. The right-wing developed its own brand of wokeness. American nationalism and the "Heritage American" are now its answer and mirror to the left-wing Person-Of-Color (POC).

War against drug trafficking has reached a new dimension -- a criminal dimension. The drug boats and crews are not terrorists -- they are workers delivering illegal merchandise -- and as such subject to arrest -- not execution.

And the ICE raids all over the country are revealing the utter incompetence of the government tripping up on its own procedures -- either applying them or bypassing.

Why do we have an idiot president? Because the smart and honest people (like Charlie Kirk) are not speaking the truth. While the idiots are shouting lies from the rooftops.

Maybe the only good thing Trump has done this year is starting the new White House Ballroom. What to look forward to in 2026? Shift of power away from Trump may open new possibilities.

Reading the Liberal Manifesto

Reading and commenting on the Liberal Manifesto - May 2025

Project Liberal has proclaimed the Liberal Manifesto as a major reference point of its ideology. Noted here that I am generally an enthusiastic supporter of the movement. Nevertheless, here I come with substantial critique.

Much of the manifesto is great. It clarifies the meaning of "liberal" and is doing a great job delineating the current political confrontation between liberalism and authoritarianism.

However, on first or second reading, I disagree with one section, titled: TRUTH EXISTS AND IT MATTERS, - especially on "one unifying truth" - where I see danger of committing liberalism to the philosophy of natural law. Also there are certain glaring omissions in the whole text.

The section in question reads:

We reject the vicious lie told by pseudo-intellectuals and
the conspiracy-deranged that academics, scientists, and
journalists are the enemy. We know well that our true foe
lies not in those dedicated to the pursuit of truth but
rather in those who seek to contort reality to further their
own agenda. We also strongly oppose the relativistic
notion that the world is not bound together by facts and
that all things are merely "matters of opinion." We believe
in one unifying truth and commit ourselves to its impartial
and rigorous pursuit, even when its nuances clash with our
preconceived notions.

This should be the place in the manifesto to relate the liberalism ideology to philosophy, but without committing it to any particular philosophical outlook. The manifesto seems to place the roots of liberalism in John Locke and Adam Smith (in separate quotes) - and their ideas about natural law with whom many can disagree - but JS Mill and his utilitarianism remain unmentioned.

There is no place where the phrase "free speech" is uttered - the quote from Frederick Douglass comes close. Free speech is actually championed by JS Mill (in 19th century) who would be defending expression of opinions that are not aimed at truth. His defense is based on consequentialist principles of good outcomes of human actions rather than on quest for "one unifying truth."

It is not that I want to use JS Mill's (or Bentham's) utilitarian philosophy as the basis of liberalism, but I want to defend the freedom of speech of the  knowledge workers - academics, scientists, journalists - and also filmmakers, artists, philosophers, spiritual leaders, etc - whose work serves us all in clarifying the mystery of our existence.

I do not oppose the "relativistic notion" mentioned above - but only the application in political undertakings of ideas not based on objective knowledge. That is so because I wish that the liberal system will also protect the many things that are "merely matters of opinion" - that is - principally leave them outside the reach of the state. Conversely, these flimsy "matters of opinion" should be disabled of direct impact on politics.

As it stands, the Liberal Manifesto seems to embrace the doctrine of natural law and even anathemize the many potential adherents who would disagree with the quest for the "one unifying truth." That would include the fans of JS Mill and Ludwig von Mises.

I would rewrite this section as:

Objective outlook and freedom of speech matter.

Liberal politics requires that we have an objective view of facts of the world and objective understanding of the rules and laws governing them. The liberal state will cultivate and prioritize pursuit of knowledge based on the rigors of science and engineering, business, economics, as well as objective studies in humanities - of the law, religion, history, literature and art. In other words, the liberal state prioritizes evidence-based knowledge and permits its application in political decision making. However, the liberal state should protect the "freedom of speech" - which also includes expression of ideas which do not require objectivity and do not demand direct political influence. Such protection applies even when such ideas exert substantial cultural influence or meet with widespread public disapproval because freedom of speech and expression is part of the general individual liberty.

Further omissions include the lack of mention of these important concepts:

• tolerance
• limited government

The support for tolerance for differing views and lifestyle choices should be strongly spoken for in the manifesto. This is the core of the liberalism of JS Mill.

Limited government should be mentioned as it is well within the natural law conception of the sources of individual freedom as well as part of the libertarian political outlook, closely related to liberalism. JS Mill's work also covers this idea being inspired by "continental" (!) work of Wilhelm von Humboldt on limits of state power. The liberal belief is that most problems human beings confront are best solved by their own initiative and without use of the coercive powers of the government.

At some point reading and re-reading I felt the need to protest the section titled - ALL PEOPLE ARE CREATED EQUAL. In my view it should be rewritten under the title - ALL PEOPLE HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS. And so I was led to conclude that the whole manifesto should be modernized - making it a presumed beginning of Modern Liberalism.

A modernized Liberal Manifesto should include notions such as these:

• equality - people are not created equal - they are born and they are born unequal. But all humans have equal human rights - among them rights to life, property, action and thought - the "three liberties"
• human rights come from the dignity that human being possesses on account of his courage in confronting the world while being aware of his finite existence - this is existentialist rather than "natural law" perspective and is independent of religious belief
• all just (ethical) politics (and especially liberal politics) must defend and protect human rights.
• individual human rights are the foundation of ethical politics - along with their derivatives such as rights of human collectives.
• human rights derive from the dignity based on subjectivity: our self-awareness of the finitude of existence. Equality is based on our equal prospect of death and the courage of each individual to face the life given to him.
• tolerance for nonconforming ideas and conduct - JS Mill, Popper, Bergson??
• tolerance for nonconforming noetic activities (knowledge production): science, religion, art and media
• limited government of doing no harm, deferring to individual choice, - JS Mill and W von Humboldt, von Mises?
• status of truth: the goal of politics is NOT truth. The purpose - (τέλος - télos) - of politics is justice and peace
• the basis of positive political action (policy) is objective knowledge (aka truth)
• the basis of negative political action (resistance, protest) is subjective knowledge (aka desire)

I understand that the American success with forging a nation largely reflecting the liberal principles is making it difficult to depart from the founding ideas of the 17th and 18th centuries. That is why liberals tend to see themselves as classic liberals.

However, much has taken place in human ideas since the time of American founding and classic liberalism is insufficient or inappropriate. It would be hard to defend liberal ideology in debate with other competing America ideologies like Christian conservatism or left-wing liberalism where there is either an awkward shared archaic foundation or a missing element of modern thinking.

In my view, many newer ideas should be incorporated into the Modern Liberalism - as indicated briefly above. It is time to move liberalism into modernity.

Trump changing sides

Situation has changed since my last "Trump calm" post before his inauguration.
 

I am outraged and embarrassed by the conduct of the US foreign policy under President Trump - mainly in regard to alliance with European countries and war in Ukraine. Here is my letter to Alaska Republican senators who might inject some reason into the White House process.

Honorable Senator,
I am extremely disturbed by the twists and turns recently taken by President Trump in the direction of US foreign policy. He is leading our country toward very horrible and dishonorable outcomes where we forsake long-term friends and allies with whom we share ideological liberal outlook for alliances with unsavory dictatorships bent on increasing the radius of their domination and bullying.

The disturbing events started rolling out of the White House the weekend of the Munich Security Conference. While I agreed with JD Vance's frank criticism of European repressive handling of freedom of speech, I could not stomach the repudiation of benefits of the NATO alliance that started emanating from White House and Trumpist events (CPAC) afterwards. While Europeans have their problems, they share the liberal outlook that is foundational to the US political freedom and they can process criticisms and address their problems in the way we, Americans, would.

Europe understands the danger of Russian imperialism well because of its history of imposing itself on Western Europe since the times of Napoleon. Russia was stopped briefly during the Crimean war in 1850s by Britain and France acting jointly. The door to further Russian expansion in Europe was thrown open once again by decisions of US President Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta in 1945 by allowing for the Soviet Russia sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Now, Europe is much more united than at the time of WWII and has created the European Union - a political alliance of liberal countries.
Russia has the ambition of dismembering the EU and dominating major portions of it, just like the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe. Russia is an illiberal monster of political entity that is a threat to Europe - and to America too, although to lesser degree. Europe must act now to deal with this threat. The opportunity is that Russia blundered into the invasion of Ukraine and can be defeated by increasing the support to the invaded country. This is both ethical and politically effective. Russia can be brought to negotiations as a defeated power.

At this point the US president undercuts the effort of Europe and Ukraine by siding with Russia and throwing them a lifeline. Unconscionably, the US President makes excuses for Russian aggression. This is deeply unethical and drives the US away from its NATO partners and toward a treacherous political cooperation with Russia - bordering on an alliance. This may lead not only to disintegration of NATO, which means losing the loyalty and support of Europeans, but even toward a perception of the US as the adversary to Europe. This is all appalling and dangerous.

I ask you, Senators, to take necessary action in US Congress to prevent President Trump from following through with his pro-Russian folly. This is a course of action which was not implied, or discussed, in his campaign and is not well thought through as a strategic geopolitical change of course for America. Even if such change were somehow advantageous to the US, we would have to grapple with the ethical ramifications of allying with a deformed version of imperial Russia against liberal Europe.

I am a resident of the state of Washington, but wish to appeal to Republican lawmakers who might have more influence on President Trump. Especially, the Alaska congressional delegation might be sensitive to the issue of US stance vis-à-vis Russia. Being a native to Poland, and naturalized American, this issue touches me deeply.

Trump Comes Back

Thesis: Trump's second ascension to US presidency, and even Trump's persona, all seem quite reasonable after the excesses of the Biden administration.

After the election in 2020, we all thought that we have seen the end to the anomalous Trump presidency. Especially, after the lawsuits and the failed "coup" or "insurrection" of January 6. On January 20 2021, Trump walked out of the White House quite unceremoniously and was gone.

Now we have a surprising come back - and it feels surprisingly normal and sane. Why?

The first Trump elevation to the office of president was met with hysterical protests from the left. The Women's march using the pink "pussy hat" as its main token reminiscent of the revolutionary bonnets of the French Revolution was the opening salvo of the "resistance." The opposition Democratic party had then unfurled its Leftist phalanx as its main force. Their vocabulary included accusations of fascism, nazism, misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, transphobia, etc. Trump administration was accused by them of damaging democracy in America and its constitutional order. The inconsistency there was that Leftism is actually desirous of specifically that - of dismantling and destroying the free-market capitalism supported by the liberal order.

The four years of Trump - 2017-2020 - were the years of media lies about Trump. To be sure, Trump did lie too - and he broke the law almost every day. The Trump watch during his presidency was an entertaining discussion of the constitutionality and legality of Trump's daily actions. Nevertheless, the main stream media were on a mission of framing anything said or done by Trump or his presumed supporters in a negative, biased and contorted way. The chief example is the clip where Trump utters the words "very fine people" in a press conference. He took pains to explain that he did not consider Nazis to be "very fine people" whereas the media took all measures to proclaim that he asserted the abhorrent opposite. This media lie originated in August 2017 and was still used in attacks on Trump before his election last year - by none other than Barack Obama.

Similar media support extended to the Leftist ideologies - now embraced by the Democratic party - which are a long list of novel social ideas such as equity, antiracism, social justice, trans ideology, defunding the police, - and to new social grievances such as white supremacy, toxic masculinity, relitigating legacy of slavery, etc.

The 2020 election of replacements for Trump was encumbered with additional two big problems which became fodder for the anti-Trump media. One was the Covid-19 pandemic that required genuinely authoritative actions from all levels of government. The other was the death of an arrestee in police custody that was framed by the media as racist police brutality and effectively murder. Trump's administration could hardly avoid being criticized for any decisions regarding Covid - including travel restrictions, restrictions on public gatherings and business - which were made with limited knowledge. Much was left to be decided by local authorities - mostly on the basis of guidance coming in from the CDC which is a federal agency staffed with career medical technologists hired long before Trump's first term. Any ideas about dealing with Covid coming from other sources than the CDC were ridiculed in the media - to remind you of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine which became toxic words even when recommended by doctors actually treating patients. Also any talk about methods of boosting autoimmune system using standard vitamin supplements and sharing experience treating Covid patients became toxic. The so-called "murder" of a black man in police custody in Minneapolis gave impulse to protests and riots boosting the BLM "Black Lives Matter" movement. Due to Leftist media activism and framing BLM became a world-wide movement.

The Biden administration emerged in the fog of 2020. Many constitutionalist anti-Trumpers, myself included, reluctantly preferred a second Trump term. I thought that Trump would be needed to stem the tide of Leftism that gained support with the Democratic party during 4-year anti-Trump campaign - especially in the last year burdened with the pandemic and BLM riots. But then I could not articulate how that would happen. How would Trump be a bulwark against Leftism if all they see in him is just the antithesis of all their insane ideas? Now I understand that back in 2020 Trump, elected for second term, would only enrage the Left. Biden sedated them.

Now I think the other anti-Trumpers were right back in 2020 that the Democrats taking the helm of power in the US would stem the tide of Leftism. Unexpectedly to me, they had a sedative effect on the Left. The Leftists got the message that the adults were in control and they could return to their typical cheering for the government or nonsensical protests for "climate justice." The old man was at the wheel of the car and the children could safely sleep in the back seat. Not surprisingly "patriarchy" has a calming effect. It was not immediate, it was not about damming the tide but draining it gradually. By the end of 2024 the Leftist energy is drained as much as is Biden's life energy. The Left handcuffed itself to the arm of an expiring man and went down with the blessings of an unremarkable woman who could only champion "abortion access" as the only surviving item of their agenda.

Trump's strength is in his popular support and his ability to commandeer the Republican party but his return is prepared by his opponents who proved to be feeble after all. The politically motivated lawsuits, the media portrayals of "convicted felon", "literally Hitler", "democracy is on the ballot" - all to no avail. He even "resisted" assassination attempts.

In the election of 2024 I thought we had two very bad candidates. Both Trump and Kamala Harris were not the caliber of person who should be the chief executive of the US. Kamala Harris seemed to be in her place as an accidental politician. Her career is one of advancing upwards opportunistically. Trump is a businessman seeking deals and profits - not a material for a politician who should care to support the country's institutions. My pals at ProjectLiberal were rooting for Kamala while preparing to strongly criticize her eventual presidency for any expected anti-liberal (typically Leftist) policies and decisions. Now they ought to go back to anti-Trumpism - and check Trump for illiberal policies. Not an easy switch.

I am finding myself relieved that Trump will take the helm. I do not fear for the integrity of US institutions under Trump. I think we will see a very active executive, operating within constitutional limits but venturing into new terrain. We have seen a preview in the foreign policy area - with proposals of territorial expansion of the US toward the Arctic. This, the looming use of tariffs in international trade, immigration policy, are definitely prerogatives of the presidency, but ones which can have a big impact on the country.

There is calm on Left - the Biden sedative still in effect. I suppose also the sense of Trump being the inevitability.

Political Theory - Main Concepts

Concepts, characterizations, ethical judgments

1. Individual rights are foundational - the chief one is liberty

2. Individuals create communities of purpose:
- sexual: families - to control procreation and other sexual bonds
- economic: corporations - aim to control material production and consumption
- political: nations - aim to establish the law and its enforcement - the State
- noetic: science, religion, art, media - aim to control systems of knowledge production

3. Communities have rights derived from individual rights - and can come into mutual conflict

3a. The purpose - (τέλος - télos) - of politics is justice and peace

3b. The method - (μέθοδος - méthodos) or (τέχνη - tékhnē) - of politics is to exercise the law and authority

4. The purpose of the law is to arbitrate between the rights of communities and individuals

5. Libertarianism wishes that only individual rights exists

6. Liberalism aims to arbitrate all of the rights at all levels

7. Totalitarianism aims to fuse all communities of purpose into one

8. Authoritarians wish to subjugate the economic, sexual and noetic to the political authority

8a. Socialists wish to subordinate individual rights to the rights of the community

9. Fascism subordinates individual rights to the political authority

10. Wokeness postulates additional rights based on degree of oppression and sets them above individual rights

11. Any political ethics must protect rights at all levels

12. Methods of politics - who gets to exercise power - ie to rule:
- mob rule - leaders of a popular movement
- democracy - officials elected by the people
- aristocracy - the best of character, the nobles - possibly emerging in a public process
- technocracy - scientists, technologists and business people
- oligarchy - the richest
- nomenklatura - officials appointed by officials

13. Forms of government - ie the relationship of the rulers to the governed, status of the rulers
- republic - officials, office holders
- feudal lordship - lords, mafia dons, party bosses
- monarchy - king, the chief protector

Barbies and Kens - a Spoiler

The movie "Barbie" is a disquisition on gender, which is the semantic layer of sexuality, especially, on the mystery of feminine gender.

On the biological level there is the obvious sexual difference in the bodies being variedly adapted to producing and exchanging sperm and egg. There is a biological male and female. However, as beings that have evolved language we produce a difference on the semantic level where we signal our sexuality, by emitting and receiving signifiers, to and from other subjects. That semantic level of sex is called gender.

It appears there could be more variety in gender than in biological sex, constrained to a binary structure by nature. Since the gender signaling is motivated by prospects of sexual success then the structure of gender roughly reproduces the biological binary. Yet gender tends to multiply beyond that because it is the semantic part that we enjoy while sex is a goalpost planted somewhere in reality - beyond the reach of signifiers. Without language we would just produce and act on simple provocations - like animal female in heat calling to all males.

Barbie and her Barbieland presents a version of the world where gender is detached from its sexual moorings and floats freely in the semantic space. So it is gender in its pure state. Ken wants to stay over in Barbie house but is not sure what they would do. Barbie has no vagina and Ken has only an unsightly bulge.

Barbies in Barbieland have unlimited access to power. They can be anything - lawyers, pilots, presidents, construction workers. It is not important how or by whom that power is provided, but it matters that Barbies can easily avail themselves of it. In the center of Barbie life is a home - that specially is in the scope of life of the stereotypical Barbie.

Ken's realm in Barbieland is the beach. Ken and Kens approach the Barbies with admiration and solicitation - trying to get closer to them with vague attempts at intimacy - vague because the sex part has been taken out. Kens are anxious about their purpose in Barbieland.

On a trip to the real world (only so real as a typical city center filled with corporate buildings) Ken and Barbie discover new things. Barbie finds her manufactured gender and Ken - the patriarchy, which he immediately imports into Barbieland. Barbie stays on in the real world a little longer to better inform herself about the mystery of femininity. When she returns to Barbieland she finds it replaced by the patriarchy of "Kendom" where anxious Barbies serve the needs of Kens who have become their pimps.

But Barbie, the stereotypical Barbie traveling the real world, has now found out some new secrets about the patriarchy and its deeper motivations. She will start a revolution to abolish the Kendom with the help of the already institutionalized but sidelined Barbies: the lawyer, president, engineer, etc. Barbies are united in their feminist activism which also aims at getting the Kens to fight among themselves. Peace, and justice presumably, returns to Barbieland and to what relief for the intervening Mattel Board of Directors which is the real world patriarchy! Another intervention comes from the female inventor of Barbie -- an old woman hidden in the bowels of Mattel corporate headquarters. Her insights, shared with the stereotypical Barbie, allow us to hang out the chief question of feminine gender, expressed by the haunting musical theme: "What was I made for?" All the while when Ken has no such question since he is not yet made - he has to make himself.

To Russian Friends

Around 200 years ago, Russia experienced an uprising against despotism. Less an uprising than a gentle protest, a request for the kind of freedoms that Europe has been clamoring for in the aftermath of the Age of Enlightenment. The leaders were harshly punished — some with death, some with humiliating forced labor in remote Siberia. The Decemberist uprising of 1825 was one of the few times when voices were raised in Russia calling for a Russia respectful of human rights and aspirations rather than Russia despotic and brutally crushing any threat to its security. It is the Decemberists who inspired the idea of freedom as a shared pursuit — "For our freedom and yours" — later embraced by the Polish insurrection of November 1830.

 

By Unknown from Poland - Image taken by User:Mathiasrex Maciej Szczepańczyk, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1864374

This moment is one of the few in history that allow us to admire Russian greatness. Russians living with us in the West love to revel in a much broader narrative of Russian greatness, referring to massive outpouring of creativity in the arts, literature and music starting at the beginning of the 1800s. The fact of the Russian creativity is undeniable and remarkable — yet still it occurs against a backdrop of political system of aggressive despotism begun way before Enlightenment and spanning multiple ideologies from the idea of the Tsardom of All Russia, through the Russian Empire morphing into the Soviet Union, to the present Putinist dictatorship. With few exceptional moments in history, Russia has always been a despotic, soul crushing, brutally aggressive, autocracy, since its beginning, as the principality of Muscovy, in the late 1400s.

Those who are of Russia and wish to praise and take pride in its greatness need to stop and consider its despotic and murderous legacy. Why is it that so many Russian greats resident in the country have taken to apologies for despotism while so many prominent emigrés became aloof cosmopolitans? Perhaps because they all think the despotic system is unreformable? Perhaps because they understand that the Russian mentality cannot be shifted away from the habit of bending to despotic authority?
And finally understand that the greatness is likewise a product of the despotic system.

The world stands still in admiration of Russian greatness — and is muted in expressing it. Of course, this is due to the appalling aggression in Ukraine. I am, as many in the West, revolted to hear about Russian greatness — even from well-meaning Russian friends. Russian people, Russian elites, need to re-earn their standing in the world, similarly to Germans after World War II. I urge you to begin — and begin with humility.

I am writing this missive thinking about the poetic address by Mickiewicz in 1832 — "To my Muscovy friends  (Do przyjaciół Moskali)" — mourning his former friends who had taken the side of the Tsarist regime or had been punished by it. Being an emigré Pole, I know that on foreign ground in the US we are friendly and actually like each other as people. We connect by the common experience of the underground culture opposed to Communist oppression, like Vysotsky and Okudzhava. It is a sort of Decemberist connection which aims at shared aspiration to freedom — but abhors Imperial Russia.

 

Libertarianism and its problems

Four years ago I wrote about how to apply the libertarian principles to appeal to both left and right wing ideologies and bring them together in a sort of Americanist centrism.

http://venedi.blogspot.com/2017/08/libertarianism-as-centrist-ideology.html

My view has changed.

The libertarian ideology should be rather seen as what it is: it is a fantasy of a political system based on freely interacting property-owning individuals. It can be contrasted with the other fringe: socialism (or communism) - which is a fantasy of a system where individuals are constrained by communal property and communal goals.

This can be wonderfully shown on a 2x2 diagram where I overlaid some markup on a pertinent internet meme:

This view obviously represents the intersection of two scales - each of them ranging between two extremes. The vertical axis represents the answer to the question "who controls who you are" or "who controls your identity". The answer ranges from top=community to bottom=individual. Community can answer the question of identity in various ways: American, Protestant, atheist, white, Irish, gay. The individual answers this sort of question in a manner related to what they do: businessman, writer, podcaster, - or in a private, subjective and spiritual mode of expression. The horizontal axis is the representation of agency in the real world - it answers "who has the authority to control the material world" and the answer is again ranging from left=community to right=individual. So on the left, community is typically the authority to create and set goals for an enterprise and subordinate the activities and resources of the individuals to those goals. In socialist and fascist state the community tends to a hierarchy and the state becomes the ultimate community.  On the right end of the horizontal axis we have the individual entrepreneur bringing their product to the market as well as setting up enterprises with voluntary participation of others.

Libertarianism, being placed at the extreme of individual determination, looks very much right-wing, however, the real right and left wings of American politics, and politics in other Western liberal countries, are between the left and right liberal who alternately want to assign the control of agency and identity to the community.

The last two years contain the development of the COVID pandemic and the convulsive end of the Trump presidency in the US.

These events took place against the backdrop of an immense growth of authoritarian sentiment among the citizens of the free world. People are begging to be ruled. Begging the governments to curb economic growth to deal with climate change, begging to control people's behavior to deal with the pandemic, begging to censor speech in order to stamp out lies and misinformation in the media, begging to enforce conformity in order to be safe from racism, sexism and other varieties of perceived vice. The list goes on.

Moreover, this is happening the historic peak of unprecedented success of majority of the population of the globe where 80% of people basically live in prosperity as compared to 90% living in poverty 200 years ago. The context of historic success accentuates the enormity of the authoritarian appetite - the desire to be ruled over. This is very disturbing. It appears that about 70-75% of any given population - also of the US population in the "the land of the free and the home of the brave" - is authoritarian. That means they prefer to be ruled in most aspects of their life by a sort of external authority - in most situations, a role readily filled by government.

The pursuit of liberty has a problem in a democracy: the authoritarian majority will not support liberty-minded policies. In this situation the goal of liberty-minded people is not to convert authoritarians into libertarians but to persuade them into supporting liberty-minded policies.

Libertarians should stop painting a picture of a stateless utopia of self-governing individuals, but produce examples and methods where application of libertarian principles leads to just and socially desirable outcomes. They should demonstrate how authority organically arises among individuals.

Another approach is necessary to such "winning hearts and minds" - it is the cultural angle.

Libertarianism needs to make itself attractive, needs to humor, and even trick and seduce authoritarians into supporting liberty-minded solutions not only because they are good and moral - but because they are attractive. For example, the left-liberal single-payer health care system is presented as attractive because you don't have to pay. Libertarianism should present "being able to pay" in a market system as a more attractive goal.

Beyond economics, on the cultural front, libertarianism is hopelessly lost.

The "don't tread on me" slogan promotes - in addition to the laudable principle of individual liberty - an unwillingness to show any sort of face to the fellow human being and just points to the fence designating "my" property - fence instead of face. The property will often harbor a family and an intense intimate life within it - but the libertarian does not make that life present socially in a significant way. Libertarian guards the private from escaping into the social sphere whereas the leftist famously makes the private into political.

Libertarianism must solve its cultural problem.

One way to engage authoritarians is to enter and inhabit what many of them desire - civilization. While liberty gives you the right to bear arms for your own protection, civilization is being safe without bearing arms. Civilization is the foundational safe space. America has a strong impulse for liberty but its civilization is young and rather immature. That is why it appears to so many that the only way to civilization is through a state authority.

Libertarians ought to show publicly and socially how an internally cultivated authority is a civilizing influence.

The internal authority does not have to be a national or religious identity, which comes from external sources, - but an authority of significant personal and subjective experience - revealed in personal relations and works of art.

An important cultural front would be to socialize (but not politicize) the personal. Libertarians should be comfortable to talk openly about their personal lives, which contain many quirks and oddities, and assert the freedom from government intrusion in their lives which might be otherwise laid open. This would include talking about sexual and drug practices - which might be currently illegal or highly socially objectionable. It would lead to a certain reckoning among the libertarians as well as authoritarians who would all be made to look in the mirror.

In principle, the process of socializing the personal is made safe by civilization which allows vulnerable individuals to reveal themselves in public - as is the case with artists and free thinkers. The current punitive influence of "cancel culture" on public life would require heroic courage for such overtures.

I am not optimistic.

Contact improvisation is a consensual space

The space of contact improvisation is intrinsically a space of consent - not unlike any social space that expects certain norms of conduct of its participants.

The participants consent to the conduct and the social space enforces it - typically in a gentle, civilized manner.

In a space like a symphony concert the norm is for the audience to take seats and be quiet when the music begins - and offer applause afterwards.

What is different and unusual of the CI space is what the expected norm is. Here, the norm is the dance of physical contact.

Normalization of physical contact is the main feature of contact improvisation.

When we say that CI normalizes physical contact it means that within CI we can and should determine what normal physical contact is. I propose these answers:

1. Point of contact

Contact anywhere, where the pressure of the body can be felt, - up to the weight due to gravity - is normal. This excludes certain places - such as mouth and eyes - because they lack musculature and cannot take pressure. During contact we avoid genitals and sensitive joints such as ankles. This is based on the principle of ability to take pressure rather than on social norms extraneous to CI. The whole body is basically available.

I am not using the term "touch" as it conveys the idea of variety of sensation to be explored. Of course, sensation due to touch and proximity will occur but CI sees that experience as one of many outcomes of the practice occurring between dancing bodies. Likewise, whether pleasure or pain occurs is left outside the effort of normalization.

2. Non-insistence of contact

Contact is not insistent - it can be stopped or changed at any moment. The dancer-participant can, at any moment, desist from the type of contact, or any activity, happening. The dancer is not trying to achieve a goal. The exception here may occur when engaging in protective activity.

3. Non-inquisitiveness of contact

Contact is not inquisitive, not an examination aimed at knowledge of the other body as an object. Participant is not to engage in the functions of doctor or physical therapist who is finding out about the structure of another's body (or one's own). The body is treated as a body of movement and an integral faculty of physical contact and not as an anatomical or technical puzzle.

4. Protectiveness

Contact is protective - of one's own body and of the body of the other. It is not a fight. Contact dance is about helping and facilitating one's own and the other's movement. As much as we can we protect one another - also, and particularly, against the insistent force of gravity. Protectiveness makes the CI space safe.

Let me point out that contact that is non-inquisitive and non-insistent minimizes or even rules out sexual conduct or erotic interest from being brought into the space of normal CI. This principle also applies to extreme acrobatics. Non-inquisitiveness makes CI genderless.

It is moving outside the norm that requires specific consent negotiation, whereas normal CI practice, within the guidelines above, would enable consent through normalization of physical contact.

What is the goal of the dance of CI? The goal is the revelation of one's body in the presence of another and using the other body - through physical contact, as much as the other body consensually permits, - to facilitate that revelation. The main mental problem of human being is the awareness of not being able to see oneself. This problem is counteracted in the practice of CI which makes it a healing practice.

I am writing this out of concern that the CI movement is trying to go beyond the healing that it is naturally capable of addressing and to burden itself with socio-political issues of social justice. To me, it is beyond the scope of what can be addressed within a practice of dance. If CI tries to go that way it will probably fail and that failure may destroy its future.

Of course, we recognize that individuals join the CI practice while bringing concerns of sociopolitical and personal nature. In my view, they should try not to inject their extraneous concerns into the practice of the dance, but rather benefit from the gift of the practice as a healing gift.

Borat 2 is a vile bad joke

As Borat 1 in 2006 was a "stealthy caricature" of American as an "ethnic specimen" - Borat 2 is focused on the American conservatives. Its political bias is the chief premise of the pseudo-documentary film. Therefore it become a catalog of leftist prejudices about the conservatives. And it manages to add to the prejudice by portraying poor hapless white people from Central Asia and Eastern Europe as the arch-origin of American conservatism with its white supremacist core.
Whereas Borat 1 was a bad joke about Americanism, Borat 2 is a vile joke about American conservatism reflecting leftist prejudice.

Police brutality and popular cruelty

Is the police brutality in the US a result of the racism of many of its members and due to systemic reasons? The question is reopened owing to the riots following a death of a suspect in police custody in Minneapolis last week. For myself I reopen the topic revisiting my notes from January 2015.

I do not think racism is implicated in the killing of innocent, non-violent, frequently unarmed, persons - black or not. The reason is that Americans expect the police to act with intransigent cruelty in carrying out their duties to the letter of the law. The public thanks them for admirably  doing their "difficult" job and deems anybody who makes their job a tad more difficult to be justifiably punished.

Americans are not a kind folk - they are cruel and brutal to the fellow human being. To hide that ugly trait they outsource, so to speak, the cruelty to the agency of the government who carries it out under the mandate of the law. So the cruel human being does not have to punish and discipline his/her fellow human directly - but may smile and wave hello while moving away to facilitate police action.

The law is constructed as a trap that allows a human being to be controlled and punished for any sort of infraction - harmful or not.

• Law functions as a rule. If I drive 59 mph on a road with speed limit of 60 I am fine but when I 61, 65 or 70 a policeman can stop me and subject me to a gauntlet of orders which can show me as a criminal, beaten into submission or dead.
• Law censures citizens for non-violent conduct: such as possession of drugs, firearms or items indicating that a crime may be committed.
• A person violating a law or an order by police suspecting a crime can be punished to any degree of cruelty. This includes jaywalking, shoplifting or illegally crossing the border.

Minneapolis police building on fire - May 2020

Now we are adding to it the outrage culture. This has been developing since 2012 - with impulse to it given by the killing of Trayvon Martin. The elements of outrage started with racism - as the society accused itself of "systemic racism". Racism has been joined by the society self-accusing of sexism - which systematically discriminates against women. While racism and sexism are the pillars of our society being outraged with itself, other and more specific elements of the societal self-hatred have been developing. We are seeing a proliferation of phobias and accusations of phobias being liberally applied to individuals: transphobia, islamophobia, homophobia, etc. Ultimately the accusation of hatred as motivating force in individuals and government is thrown at will.

Outrage culture is society hating itself rather than probing its problems and devising solutions.

The clash against protesters and the law enforcement is very incendiary because it is an unconscious confrontation with the core problems of this society (cruelty) via an emotional (outrage) outburst rather than rational conversation.

Authoritarianism vs Liberalism

Under two posts in August 2017 I wrote about the growing space between the politically strident Left and Right formations which might be an opening for a new Centrism: Libertarianism as Centrist ideology I also discussed a certain principle of convergence between the Alt-Left and Alt-Right which I characterized as "maternal politics" where the state is to take care of the righteous and pure ones: Left and Right and their maternal politics

Maybe this indicates that the political categories of Left and Right are becoming obsolete, but more accurately it is the case that they both fit neatly under a new Authoritarian formation. I think our current political factions are: Authoritarian and Liberal.

• Authoritarianism = leftists (intersectional victimology) + rightists(ethno-nationalist victimology)

• Liberalism = libertarians + statist liberals(*) + conservatives

Yes - indeed it seems that the old label of "liberal" should fit very well now. No need to call us centrists. The current problem in USA and many other Western countries is that the Liberals are unwilling to exercise power and defer political struggle to the various noisy Authoritarians. The weakness of the Authoritarian power is that it is divided and fighting internally - as for example the Trumpist Republicans with Clintonian Democrats, or Bernie supporters fighting with the sex-genderist victimologists. The danger is that a reaction to Authoritarian infighting and excesses could be unifying and lead to actual Fascism.

Why is it that the Liberal formation has trouble asserting itself in the current political climate? One reason is that it is a composition of ideologies that had not functioned together for a long time or perhaps never. Libertarians trust in individual freedom and in the right of individuals to act to solve their own and the society's problems. The statist liberals believe that the government has a significant organizing role in the economic and social life of the nation and a special mission to protect the weakest. Conservatives think that individuals deserve freedom only when they conform to norms of conduct (often enacted as legal limits) that have been historically proven to be beneficial to society. Classical liberals? -- I think they distribute themselves among all those groups.

How do we unify the Liberals - and that, in my view, also includes the conservatives and libertarians.
Let us note that the seeming strength of the Authoritarians is based on emotional arguments, which promote and create fragmenting forces and opens them to rational criticism. On the other hand, the Liberals can begin with rational arguments based on factual observations and objective judgment of the situation.

The way to achieve the unification of the Liberals is to blacklist certain issues - although dear to the Authoritarians - and assert that they are not worth fighting for - with rational justification why it is so. So Liberals should reject issues on this list:

• patriarchy  - because not only men wield power
• racism - because it is vestigial
• sexism/gender - women and men are equally free under the law
• anti-immigrant xenophobia - because US is a country of immigrants who want to become Americans (also its opposite pro-immigrant xenophilia)
• oppression of groups of specific identity - see under racism
• oppression by capitalist system - it is a system of voluntary participation in the economy

What issues should be deemed important?

• US federal debt
• incarceration levels and other criminal justice issues
• drug war and criminalization of non-violent conduct
• US foreign policy - with many issues of US and world security
• federal interference with States' rights
• regulation of free speech and surveillance by corporations on behalf of law enforcement  (relates to criminalization of non-violent conduct)

Special consideration needs to be given to the issue of climate change - which is a pet issue on the Left - in the authoritarian camp and in the liberal one as well. It is a valid issue - and there are problems with how it is currently raised. Climate change issue is not listed above as important because it does not rise to the level of catastrophic threat. The issues of US foreign policy and the mountain of debt present a more urgent threat.

(*) the term "statist liberals" sounds a bit unsavory to me, but, well, maybe it has to

In defense of sexual freedom

Motto: Sexual relation is non-existent.

We are creatures of language. Unlike anything else in nature we depend on language to exist as a species and to survive as an individual. Most interestingly, we also depend on language to procreate.

We exist and survive as a species because of language.

How have we become so dependent on language? And why? Why do we always look at ourselves as the only viewpoint into the nature and never outwardly toward the possible? There are only partial answers as to why and how.

We live in language, we emit and receive signifiers. We are surrounded by signifiers. We use signifiers to get what we want and the signifiers tell us what we want.

As creatures of language we forget the limits of life. Language is immortal but we are not. Language tells us about our limit and that is why we use language to approach the limit.

There are two clear expressions of the limit of life: death and sex.

Approaching the limit is the jouissance, a Lacanian psychoanalytic concept meaning pleasure beyond pleasure, - and it aims beyond life and its destruction. It aims at what we desire and would die for. We would die for sex - but strangely enough - sex is usually a healthily survived trauma. Sex is like death - except in case of death no life follows. Sex is the rehearsal of death.

Both are approached with appropriate language. Without language they don't really exist - even death does not exist if undocumented by language. The signifiers designate its location in the space of human activity but do not determine its content.

Lacan says that sexual relation is non-existent. This is his perhaps facetious way of presenting the idea that our ordinary world is populated by signifiers - while the field of sex does not contain any. The field of sex is void of signifiers. And same thing goes for the actual death.

The main attraction of sex (as well as of suicide) is that we are giving ourselves to something that exhausts the world of signifiers, that makes the production of signifiers stop, that places us in the void. Our roads, paved with signifiers, end there. We go through the forest to the edge of a placid lake where monsters lurk. This is how sex is an experience of the limit.

Because in the sexual act the signifiers expire, the field of sex is left without any intrinsic defenses in the world where political powers can rise up to restrict it or otherwise encroach on it. The defense of sexual freedom is a very important and indeed a very delicate matter in the political world. Sexuality, as it were, cannot speak for itself - but can only be spoken for by its neighbors, who amply practice techniques of its approach, such as: hedonists, polyamorists, sex workers, sadomasochists. As such characters are hardly respectable in the circles of power, the defense of sexual freedom is a difficult balancing act. And since sex cannot really speak for itself these neighbor allies all speak about it in quite different language.

Quite often a justification of sexuality is attempted through a recourse to love by asserting that sex is an expression of love which is a higher feeling. This argument was used to shore up support for gay marriage. Yet it is weak and unsupported by deeper insight into either love or sex it sounds outright false to me. In my opinion love is not so much a higher feeling, but a force to be reckoned with while sexuality a mysterious enclave of human life that we desperately need to protect from -- and paradoxically -- by the power of the signifier.

I am quite aware to be discussing the topic of sex and the defense of its freedom without referencing the concept of gender. The latter is a social construction, the brick road of signifiers subjectively seen as leading to the fulfillment of sexual aspirations. Similarly, the concept of biological sex and sexual dimorphism of humans is out of scope. Here I am talking about how and where and why the road of signifiers ends.

"Grievance studies" hoax - a postmodern act of defiance

Many have presumably heard about the "grievance studies" hoax that came into public knowledge in the late 2018. A trio of intellectuals have submitted a number of research papers to peer-reviewed academic journals with philosophical bend. Often these journals are dedicated to studies of modern society viewed as a system of oppression aimed at minorities, racial and gender-nonconforming, women, outsiders such as immigrants, - and so on. Much of the materials in those journals sees knowledge, promulgated by science as well as by societal norms, as one of the mechanisms of maintaining power of the dominant social group. Typical contributors thrive in departments of gender and women's studies in major universities and their work is trying to reverse the dominant direction of knowledge in order to accrue power to the oppressed. Thus the term "grievance studies".

The grievance studies hoaxers actually pretended to conduct their research within the grievance/oppression studies parameters expected by their presumed peers and reviewers. Many of their papers were accepted for publication, published and actually praised as excellent contributions to knowledge. Subsequently, the fact that the academic journals could not distinguish between knowledge and garbage was exposed. It was the acceptance of bogus research that was needed to unmask academia as a terribly bad guardian of knowledge.

In the aftermath, one member of the trio -- a professor at Portland State University, Peter Boghossian, will apparently suffer professional consequences, now being called in for review of the professionalism and integrity of his research work. I sympathize with him very much - but also hope that he was prepared for this outcome. The research produced was generated in bad faith. He will be vilified by academia as an infiltrator but has performed a valuable service for us all. The other two co-conspirators, James Lindsey and Helen Pluckrose, are not academics (or no longer so) and thus are safe from the institutional opprobrium - further demonstrating that academia is no place for creation and critique of knowledge. I commend them all for their well-aimed work and courage.

Before the "grievance studies" hoax went public I had a brief exchange with James Lindsey on Twitter. I suggested that he should attempt to fight the ideas of intersectional feminism and postmodern nonsense, as he would call it, not from classical liberal positions but from the positions of the adversary - that are presumably rooted in 20th century postmodern thought. He replied somewhat mysteriously - "working on it", "wait and you'll see" - which I now understand as the hoax being in the works.

In December 2018 James Lindsey published a great essay in Areo magazine - Postmodern Religion and the Faith of Social Justice - elaborating on the condition of the US Social Justice movement as a result of "applied postmodernism", which he decries as a cynical application of postmodern nihilistic ideology. There is much to agree with in his insightful work comparing Social Justice to religion. Additionally, and more interestingly, he makes a great statement on postmodernism (in its pre-applied form):

"In postmodernism, philosophers including Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard looked upon the wreckage of the great wars of the twentieth century and the failures of our modernistic, positivistic technological progress to cure the ills of humanity and saw that the Deceiver of Man is Man."

This is accurate. However, I begin to disagree when he speaks, a few lines further down, about the "cynical" motivation of "applied" postmodernism as foundational to today's morass of identitarianism and intersectionality. I think the motivation is not cynical - it is wrong-headed because the "applied" course is trying to repair what has been found to be broken beyond repair. In effect it is a case of Man (or mostly woman) being the deceiver of Man (also practically woman in most individual cases). It is an act of fighting fictions with other fictions, often undertaken as acts of self-deception, fighting to which we have been condemned since the death of God has been announced. And since there is no "objective truth" - the mythical ground of Enlightenment epistemology - we are left with fictions.

Fictions is what the "grievance studies" hoaxers produced. The research studies submitted to the journals were fictional productions aimed to oppose power based on another set of fictions. This is very much in line with our postmodern condition, where we cannot gain a firm epistemological ground without relating it to the human project. (see Kołakowski's Presence of Myth - work also quoted in James Lindsey's essay)

So, the "grievance studies" hoaxers, by fighting fictions with other fictions, went to battle postmodernism on postmodernist terrain - just as I had hoped! I am really happy about that and congratulate them heartily. I would gladly welcome them into the non-cynical wing of postmodernism, but they are not ready. For now we let them return in their shiny armor to Fortress Enlightenment.

The norms of contact improvisation dance

Every social environment puts some limits on human conduct and expects consent to certain type of conduct. The limits can concern matters ranging from sexual conduct and bodily functions, which are so internalized that they get hardly ever spoken about, to expectations of being quiet as part of a concert audience. Expected (implied) consent may be to being in presence of people consuming alcohol or to hearing vulgar language in a bar. It might be said that in imposing the limits and implying consent a given social environment is coercive.

At any rate, a social environment defines a norm - a normal behavior and conduct. We know the standard concert hall ceremony when the orchestra comes in first, takes the seats, and then stands up when the conductor comes in while the audience claps until the conductor turns to the orchestra and raises the baton - then the audience falls silent and music can begin. This is normal conduct for a concert and the details are not important. People in their individual roles are to behave normally in order for the expected function of the gathering to be accomplished - in this example it is that of making music.

Physical contact is the norm in CI

I would submit that in contact improvisation (CI) we normalize physical contact. This is in contrast to most other social interactions where physical contact is very much avoided. Forms of dance other than CI allow physical contact but there it exists in service to some other goal: constructing the form of the dance or delivering an expressive experience. The examples of tango and butoh come to mind from my own experience. In CI physical contact is the main goal.

When I say that CI normalizes physical contact it means that within CI we can answer the question what normal physical contact is. Thus:

• contact anywhere the pressure of the body is felt - including weight due to gravity
• contact is not insistent - it can be stopped or changed at any moment
• contact is not inquisitive, not an examination aimed at knowledge of the other body as an object
• contact is protective - of one's own body and of the body of the other

Many would agree that this is a very broad and liberal definition of normal conduct.

The question of consent.

The form of the group dance involves expression of wishes and limits (boundaries) about actions and situations that a participant can get into or not. These are best handled non-verbally. Wishes are less than demands whereas limits are more than dislikes. It is the responsibility of the individual participant to step out of activities they dont want to be in. It is an art of its own to express one's wish in a group in such a manner that it becomes fulfilled. The art develops with practice. Between the wish and limit there is a place of discomfort - while frustrating for the beginner, with experience it becomes an ideal place of departure into a new activity.

Departure from normal CI behavior

Participants who wish to conduct themselves outside of the normal physical contact - for example to perform acrobatics - should certainly negotiate their mutual consent. Their nonconforming conduct would ideally not disturb the normal conduct of others. Those who have not negotiated participation in nonconforming conduct should stay away. It is perhaps needless to say that if too many participants opt for nonconforming behavior then we will see a breakdown of the form.

L'affaire Kavanaugh and the Left

The fight for confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as Justice on the Supreme Court has aroused  passions which will stay with us and hurt us all for decades.

As he is a nominee of the Trumpist Right, with many perceived right-wing judicial propensities, it is natural that the Left would oppose this nomination. There would be others, myself included, who would oppose him on juridical grounds. Any such opposition, however, should be carried out in a civilized manner in a civilized nation and bring up matters mainly of jurisprudence and ultimately of politics. Politics will always enter the stage as it is the motivating force for the members of the examining body. Only in case of most egregious and unusual matters the personal life of the man should be under the microscope.

Yet the Left chose to bring up an uncorroborated charge of sexual assault supported by testimony of the accuser only. The accused man denies the charge vehemently.

It shows that the Left resorts to a smear campaign that destroys a man's reputation and career in order to achieve political goals. This is Stalinist, this is "by any means necessary,", this is disgusting. By the way, the Left is not just the Democratic party but a large part of society that cheers that effort. These people are the American authoritarian revolutionaries.

Of course, they claim the need for "resistance" to the Trumpist Right. I agree with the need - but by what means?!! There are people on anti-Trump Right who were discussing, and practically campaigning for, voting "blue" in the mid-term election so they prevail in Congress and curb the power of the clown president. I was thinking about voting for the Dems - but now I am too disgusted. Has the Left helped to bolster that initiative?

Quite the opposite. And the Left will also doom the feminist movement. The charge brought against Brett Kavanaugh shows that a woman's unsupported charge can bring down a man's life and career. This charge along with the effects of the #meToo and "believe women" movement shows that women have acquired power that they use to bypass due process and bring down individual men. This has happened already on the Left - a lot! Do the feminists understand what a horrific pit of misogyny is being dug?

There is a medieval quality in the Kavanaugh proceedings. A tenor of a trial by ordeal. On the emotional level, which reaches quite visceral depths, the accuser must strike the registers of truthfulness and the accused comply with the expected signs of innocence in order to be exonerated. Trial by ordeal happening in the chambers of US Senate. Many will not forget that it was at the behest of the Left and of feminism.

PS. ACLU is spending a lot of money on a campaign against the Kavanaugh nomination. Showing that it is just a leftist organization. After 13 years of support I am leaving ACLU as a member.

Words and Violence

A question asked on social media sought to find out what we think is really at stake in insisting on the proposition that words are not violence. The idea that words are possibly violent is typically quickly dismissed by insisting, after most English-language dictionaries, that violence involves physical force and words are not physical force. However, we need to acknowledge that there are expressions such as "violent argument" and there are harsh insults that lead to violent aggression. Therefore the idea of violence has wider range than its dictionary definition.

While I completely support freedom of speech, including offensive (and violent) speech, I want to call on the classical liberal, being one of them myself, to justify freedom of speech while acknowledging that words and violence are entangled together.

The term "words" is used here as roughly covering the meaning of the Logos which includes: reason, logic, ideas, norms, rules and laws. It is the standard operating area of rational human beings.

The separation between words and violence, speech and act, is a legal construction supported through the history of human thought in order to carve out domains of free activity from controlling tyrants. To question that legal fiction, even in the name of truth, dangerously weakens this long standing effort. Unfortunately, protecting it prevents us from truly considering our relationship to violence.

The proposition about the separation of words and violence is a sort of wishful thinking that ignores the depths of our mental life, which is filled with symbolic and imaginary, yet logically incoherent, structures. They constitute our unconscious, which, according to Lacan, is structured like a language.
Before we are thinking beings we are speaking beings. And we often speak out of the unconscious, incoherent and illogical knowledge. Speech, conscious and not, arises because we are evicted from the immediacy of real life and condemned to inhabit civilization. Therefore, speech, with its symbols and norms, strives more for power than for truth, more for civilization than for satisfaction of instincts. Civilization shapes forces into powers, forces of nature that have no semantics, but our words and language are all about semantics. Words forge forces into powers. Yet since words are frequently not an expression of rationality, powers become irrational.

What is the place of immediacy of life, our seemingly lost home? Lacan would call the lost place the Real. It manifests itself to our inner life as Desire. For Freud it was the object once lost and to be found again - the place of "id", the origin repressed and deformed into the "ego" by civilized life. Rilke speaks about it in his Eighth Duino Elegy (translation my own):

With its whole eyes looks the creation
Into the open. But we have our eyes
Turned around to bar, like set traps,
Its escape and free exit.
What is out there we know only
From the animal's eyes
(...)
This is our fate: to be in relation to It,
Never It, but always in relation. 
(...)
We are spectators, always, everywhere,
Looking at but never outward...
It overwhelms. And we organize. It breaks down.
We fix again. And then decline and die.

Instead of the immediacy of being we are in relation to being and owing to this insufficiency we seek power. We seek power as a technology to master physical forces and as societal norms to master the physical, visceral reality of our bodies. These norms tell us, sometimes whispering imperceptibly, under what conditions we can sit on the floor or take off our shirt or pants. When these norms, and they are basically words that have ascended to the status of power, are transgressed, offense results. Words regulate our bodies.

What is really at stake in saying the words "fuck you" or, for that matter, what is at stake in saying "love you"?(*) Why is it impolite to speak to a newlywed bride words of one's sexual passion and love in front of her new husband and wedding guests? Impolite because it points to a violent content of a certain layer of life that we access only through the proper form. For all the honey flowing from the lips of lovers and potential lovers they are road posts of desire pointing toward the violent content of our life. The melodrama genre is full of that sort of thing and it is brutal.

The melodrama of "fuck you/love you" shows how our words, speech as well as legal and societal norms, are logical and address other words - but some of them are turned toward that from which we have been evicted, from what we have lost and seemingly have to do without. Some of them are aimed directly at the intimacies which we would rather keep as secrets secured by rationalized formalities. They aim at violence.

Look at the boisterous business and sports banter! Team sports, such as American football, are tremendously aggressive and involve actual violence. It is common and accepted to use expressions that refer to aggression on the body - such as "kick ass" - as well as describing the opposing team or competition as "pussies" which invokes both bodily weakness and sexual acts. Words may not be violence but they speak of it and long for it.

What about the interest of the public in violent fantasy - as is amply demonstrated by the action-adventure genre as well as the mystery murder and crime drama? It is not only popular culture films, but critically-acclaimed literature such as JRR Tolkien's epics such as "The Lord of the Rings", that produce words and images conjuring up versions of reality supporting levels and modes of violence that seem hardly possible to enact - yet they captivate the imagination of masses of people.

The power of words, the law that they constantly proclaim, shapes our access to reality. We will only get so much of it as the words permit us to have. The force of reality is channeled by the semantics of the language. Freud calls these channels - drives. Such regulation of access to our violent reality conceals the fact that we actually desire it. Men and women desire sex, and women additionally desire motherhood and violent childbirth. Men dream of violent struggle and dangerous exploits. As thinking and speaking beings we empower and normalize our path toward reality, toward desire that can consume our life and bring death. By doing that we become desiring beings. Our speech addressing the desire is where words engage with violence.

Words are both means of our eviction from the violent reality of life as well as means of our return to it. The free speech defenders have to be prepared to fight on much more squishy and unstable ground, prowled by the monsters of the unconscious assaulting the pure ghosts of logic.

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(*) note how much people avoid investing the grammatical "I" in the expression "fuck you" or "love you" - because the "I" would make it a more breath-taking leap into the violent reality.

Gender difference - a social construct?

The question is often asked if gender is a 100% social construct.

My answer is yes. Gender is a social construction created, however, in response to our biology of sexual reproduction. The function of gender is to prescribe the social conduct required for sexual interactions. While biology determines the sexual apparatus of the body and embeds in us procreative instincts, gender is a set of forms and behaviors that we adopt being strongly induced to, inducted into indeed, by our early environment and mostly by parents who more or less apply the norms prescribed by society for a biological boy or girl.

Gender becomes strongly embedded in the body as it relates to the sexual aspirations and wishes. That means gender is about how we will realize our sexuality, about how we will couple, not just relate, with others. Just because it is a social construct does not mean that it is easy or painless to change it or go against it. Therefore it is not purely performative as a social role.

Gender is the way we present our sexual aspirations to ourselves. Such presentation in principle should admit a huge variability. This option is eagerly embraced by the proponents of a "gender spectrum" or continuity denying the validity of masculine and feminine gender expressions. For them the cultural standard should be really a choice of the proper ratio of the masculine and feminine.

So why would we have two genders? Just because there are two biological sexes?

Partly yes, but since we are speaking beings that interpret everything and try to apply and extract meaning to and from each and every fact and act of our lives, the gender expression is due to the semantics of sex rather than to its reality. In other words, because we speak we express sex through gender - that is, we make it complicated. Alenka Zupančič takes it further: because we have sex, she says, we need to develop language to handle it.

In the 1990s, Joan Copjec, a feminist, wrote an article deriving gender difference from the antinomies of Kant. According to her paper, man is the dynamic failure, meaning that he does not rise to the occasion, while woman is an existential (or mathematical) failure, meaning that she does not exist. The latter statement is, of course, scandalous, and of Lacanian provenience.

Let me recount Copjec's argument in the form of anecdote.
There we have It - the elusive and obscure signifier of desire. Hidden in the unconscious and totally inaccessible. Lacan calls it the Phallus.
The man has It yet knows he is not It but because he has It he is sure he will become It.
The woman is sure she is It yet she does not have It but is sure that somehow she will obtain It.

This is really a Lacanian version of Freudian "penis envy" - now distributed between the genders, albeit asymmetrically, owing to the split between the modalities of having and being.

In explicit and yet very elucidating sexual terms we can say this:
The man has it (the penis) but does not have the erection. So he is not It.
The woman is It (she is the erection) - but she does not have it.

Now the failure, the lack, is distributed - not equally but so that each gender can complete the other. Just like it was explained by Aristophanes in old Plato's account.

Speaking more closely to Copjec's terminology, man's dynamic failure is the failure to master the delivery of power - as he presumes to have what it takes but is challenged to make it work, cannot make it It. Woman is It but does not believe it - she has to have somebody prove it to her. Man can do it as he directs the power he creates toward her. The proof is seen as love. Love proves that she is It.

Casting this discussion in terms of power - and I consider power a transmission of energy or force in a semantically organized manner - seems to me a more socially acceptable simplification. That is why I sometimes say that gender difference is founded on the relationship to power. Man is the creator and generator of power while the woman is its recipient and beneficiary - and thus its judge.

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References:
Copjec:  "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason" - in "Supposing the Subject" - Verso 1994
Zupančič: "What is sex?" - MIT 2017. page 43

Christianity is Humanism

What is religion? Religion is a way for individuals to deal with the void in their soul - their existential anxiety. We are not going to do away with its individual dimension but we must somehow deal with institutional power built on human religious impulse. Here I think that Christianity has a certain advantage.

Let us start with a simplified bullet point list of major world religions:

• Judaism - we are God's chosen people and we communicate and negotiate our existence with God
• Judeo-Christianity - we are promoted from chosen people to children of God
• Islam - we are God's slaves or at best tenants and have to submit to the Supreme being
• Buddhism - God is the void and we are happy to join the void
• Hinduism - God is the system of the world

The story goes like this - in comic-book grand narrative style:
Abraham sees a burning bush and realizes that the void in his soul is the only void. The void is unique. The sole and universal God speaks to him. From this event Judaism has developed as a practice of the chosen people to enter into dialogue with the Absolute.

Jesus comes along as an activist for existence and claims that he is the Christ, totally human and totally divine - and designated to die and be resurrected to prove all that. So starts the development of Christianity and it starts with Christ as the first existentialist activist. He claims that by accepting death we become children and heirs of God and God has become one of us. He is not a teacher, not a sage - but an activist like we have them nowadays. The actions of Jesus as Christ, the death and resurrection are presaging the "postmodernism" of Nietzsche and company.

Judeo-Christianity splits off the Orthodox East and the ancient original rites and develops into Catholicism and Protestantism in the West. They all become institutions. Judeo-Christians think themselves to be children of God and so having to behave like them.

Islam enters the stage - prior to Protestantism of course - and, while acknowledging the Abrahamic priority, reveals a teaching harsher than the Abrahamic one. Namely, we are not God's heirs and children - we are his slaves, or tenants at best, - and ought to live in submission. God is no longer the void but the whole of being and we are merely supplicants rather than participants.

Islam and Judeo-Christianity resemble each other in the judgment of human obligation as subordinates to God but differ very much in the concept of the status of human beings with respect to God.

The Asian developments of Hinduism and Buddhism, having taken place before Christ, resemble the split between Catholicism and Protestantism in Christendom. Hinduism is a religion of a God that is the system of the world. As far as I understand, human beings are not really important to this type of God. Perhaps for this reason, Buddhism basically asserts that human existence would be best served by its own denial and devolution into the divine void.

In my view Christ (born: Jesus) is still the guiding figure in the development of our modern religious sensibility.

The religion of Christ, if it existed, and which is not to be confused with the current forms of Christianity, would be profoundly humanistic. Christ does not care if God's existence can be proven - we, humans, have trouble proving our own existence to ourselves. That proof is otherwise known as Love - the elusive state of the soul that everybody is seeking. The main ethic of Christ's religion is not faith but a deep respect and awe for the courage of human existence. Or, to paraphrase Tillich, it is the faith that arises after God has died.

Here is a story by a Polish writer, Witold Gombrowicz, told in his autobiographical novel - "Trans-Atlantic." He gets stranded in Buenos Aires in 1939 and cannot go back to Poland because the Germans started WWII. He stays in BsAs (he really lived there for 20 years or so) and observes his kin folk, arrived on the ship with him, immersed in the life of the locals. One of those people is an older Polish military officer who has a young adult son. The officer upholds high Polish moral standards for himself and his son and really wishes they could fight somehow against the enemy. Unbelievably, with his acquiescence, his son succumbs to the seduction of a rich, vaguely homosexual, Argentinian. The novel ends in a surreal party or orgy where the protagonists proclaim that the idea of sonship should take precedence over that of fatherhood. Or in splendid and clever French translation - "filistrie" over "patrie". The moral is that we will no longer serve the fatherland but forge ahead creating a "sonland." Or Christ taking over from the Father.

The religion of Christ really does not exist. What we have is a seed of the idea embedded in Judeo-Christianity as a sort of contraband. Not sure what to do with it presently, I suspect that in the right moment it will supply strength and a source of meaning to Western civilization.

Gombro's "Trans-Atlantic" shows that the religion of Christ can open its seed in our time, even when vaguely clamoring for various sorts of liberation, through such a thing as an LGBTQ moment.

Modern atheism is not helping because it covers up the existential void with a scientific void. Neither is the exhortation to return to Enlightenment values because they exclude anything beyond the rational and objective. Existentialism, psychoanalysis (Jung invoked Christ's model directly) and other modern and postmodern directions are aiming better. Somehow paradoxically, they stand with Christ taking the position of profound respect for the courage of existence which will allow us, in due time, surpass Judeo-Christianity as well as Enlightenment.