Humanizing the Times: Praising Amateurism and Reaffirming the Dionysian in Ethics
Humanistic Notes from August 27, 2024 to October 15, 2024
Like many of you, my “to-do” list grows exponentially with each new morning. Twenty-four hours just isn’t enough to time to work for a living, maintain relationships with loved ones, care for children, and do the daily chores of life. As we working people know, it takes time to cook and clean and care for others! I’ve also just been made aware of the fact sleep is not an optional hobby for those of us with our twenties in the rearview. Even still, it was just the other day that I rebelliously stole time from sleep to peruse the growing archive of photos of my youngest daughter who just turned 16. It takes much less time to snap a picture than to linger in joyful reflection.
It's difficult to find time for creative work, reading, civic engagement, and staying abreast of current events. Since we can only steal so much time from sleep, I usually abandon some responsibility, like a household chore that can wait just a little longer, recklessly hurling myself into a seemingly timeless writing session where hours pass like minutes.
But even when this isn't possible, I make time to reflect and respond to events of the day here and there. As I sit in the driveway after dropping off kids at school, while the coffee steeps in the French press pot, or as I break for a brief standup lunch at the kitchen counter. I usually share these brief reflections or comments as short notes on Substack. The replies to these notes often inspire responses jotted down at lunch, while letting the dog out for his bathroom break, or as I make the second pot of French press coffee.
This post inaugurates a new feature of Humanities in Revolt that I'm calling, “Humanizing the Times.” The name is a nod to Henry David Thoreau’s 1863 essay “Life Without Principle.” In the essay, which began as an 1854 lecture titled, “What Shall it Profit?,” Thoreau wrote that we ought to be better guardians of our minds. We should nurture our spirits with eternal insights, he advised, rather than consuming ourselves with fleeting and often inconsequential news of the day:
“We should treat our minds…as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.”
I don't take Thoreau’s point to be that we ought to shut out the unpleasantries of reality from our minds. After all, Thoreau was a civically engaged thinker in his own time. Our task is to remain grounded in the deeper verities of humanity as we traverse the turbulent and ever-changing terrain of 21st-century life. “Humanizing the Times” is my effort to engage the news of the day, but filter it through a humanistic lens. For the humanities have never been more vital to our sanity and our survival. And so while we cannot risk apathy neither can we risk falling out of touch with the eternities.
Index of What’s in Store
In Praise of Amateurism
August 27, 2024
Responding to a thought-provoking post by
Many of us have learned to see music, dance, art, and even physical play and sport as the unique domain of “professionals” or the gifted. Our role in such activities is as a “viewer,” audience member, or a “fan.” (This is never clearer than when you go to a concert and the artist struggles to not only get the audience not to talk over the music but also to get people to stand up and dance!)
Our commodified consumer culture promotes a voyeuristic view of humanity that would rather have us watch, cheer on, or lip sync to someone else doing sports, dancing, and singing rather than doing it ourselves. We resign ourselves to passively observing or decoratively engaging with art; marveling at others’ passionate expression in reverential silence inside a museum. But art, dance, song, and sport are aspects of our humanity, part of our collective humanities.
Singing, dancing, playing games with our bodies, and making art are not primarily important as extrinsically valuable skills, but commodifiable talents. The only reason they are even commodifiable in the first place is because they are intrinsically valuable to us; which is to say they are important for their own sake. We experience joy when we do them.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying others doing these activities with a skill or aptitude that we may lack. But we lose touch with parts of our humanity by trying to live vicariously through other people “being” human.
We don't need to be the best athletes to play. We don't need to have the best singing voice to sing. We don't need great rhythm to move our bodies to the music. And we don't need natural talents to make art. There is enjoyment to be experienced even in mediocre participation. So long as the experience is our aim and we no longer look to a crowd or an invisible set of judges
Arguably a healthy society would ensure we all have the time, energy, and opportunity to do more singing, dancing, art, and athletic play. This would be a priority of a complete and respectable life. These leisurely endeavors would be recognized as civically as well as individually important.
Necrophilia’s Autograph
September 24, 2024
No man should smile as he autographs artillery shells, munitions that kill and destroy. Those who do leave us to wonder, are they writing to their beloved, love letters to war, to death—to necrophilia?
In The Heart of Man (1964), Erich Fromm explained necrophilia as a manner of living in which a person prizes things, control, and force over living beings, creativity, and reason.
“The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things. All living processes, feelings, and thoughts are transformed into things. Memory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what counts. The necrophilous person can relate to an object—a flower or a person—only if he possesses it….”
Those who fall in love with death cannot be trusted to birth or nurture peace. Our survival as a species requires a spiritual-ethical-economic transformation toward biophilia, a love of life, the living, creativity, and reason. So long as men profit from war and economies are made to rely upon manufacturing munitions instead of resources for life, we will be mired in the blood and moral waste of necrophilia.
Reaffirming the Dionysian in Ethics
September 30, 2024
A purely Apollonian ethics will leave us dispirited and lacking the moral feeling that lends itself to a fuller commitment to human dignity. We will also lose the motivation to act concretely in defense of dignity. We must also make space for the Dionysian, for the cries of agony and outrage; we must make space for Dionysian resistance to purely staid calculation. Ethics must be rooted in inviolable values, and we must not allow our conscience to be the plaything of technocrats. There are some moral boundaries we will not accommodate ourselves to. Some red lines deserve to be honored, come what may.
A complete conscience is, yes, rooted in reason; but also inspired and sustained by intuition and deeply felt (though non-dogmatic) conviction. A Dionysian approach to ethics refuses to allow every moral matter to be reduced to mere “cost-benefit” calculations based on likely outcomes. Some causes deserve our commitment regardless of their likely outcome. As concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl, told his comrades in the camp, “the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning.”
The purely Apollonian conscience does not understand these words. It overlooks human mortality and mistakenly conceives of life’s aim as “victory.” Such narrowly conceived moral calculation fails to recognize the inevitable “loss” inherent in life. An ethical vision founded solely on victory is doomed to fail.
It is the Dionysian spirit that allows for ethical vision and transformation. For it is the Dionysian spirit that reminds us that there is inherent good in honoring our most deeply felt values—our love of justice, and our care for human dignity. More than “victory” or “success,” the Dionysian ethical spirit calls us to exemplify—to be and do—that which we claim to love.
If only all those who love human dignity and justice were to authentically exemplify these proclaimed values, our popular culture and politics might be changed in ways thought impossible. Still, such a focus leads us once more to Apollonian utilitarianism, away from our beloved.
If our values are steeped in the Dionysian, we will need no company or guarantee to know we are right to respond, from the whole of our being, to proclaim the inviolability of human dignity and the wrongs of indiscriminate bombings. Our electoral choices, arguably, would also reflect such commitments. We would cease to choose the lesser evil and choose the truly good.
Pink Pony Independence of Thought
September 25, 2024
Pop sensation Chappell Roan reminds us that politicians are as entitled to endorsements as votes. Which is to say, they aren’t. (Or we might say, they're as entitled to both as random strangers are to photos with famous singers they happen to identify in passing.) Roan offers a rare example of a celebrity advocating independent critical thoughts rather than passive acquiescence to groupthink.
In a September 20 interview with The Guardian, Roan, best known for her hit, "Hot to Go!", said she objects to the way the U.S. government is handling multiple issues and felt no pressure to “endorse someone.” Roan insisted there are “problems on both sides" and said, “I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote – vote small, vote for what’s going on in your city.”
At least one media outlet mistakenly described her refusal to endorse a candidate as a “decision to abstain from politics." Roan's TikTok explainer makes it clear her decision isn't apolitical but born of the awareness that though her politics and values do not align with Donald Trump neither do they fully align with Kamala Harris.
While Harris has used Roan's song "Femininomenon" in a campaign video and created a Harris/Waltz campaign cap that appears to have been inspired by Roan's "Midwestern Princess" hat, Roan has taken issue with the Biden/Harris administration. In June she rejected an invitation to perform at a White House Pride event.
During the Governor's Ball festival, in New York, Roan, dressed as Lady Liberty, hinted at her reasons for declining the invite: “We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.” Her later comments to Rolling Stone indicated the administration's failure to honor the justice and freedom of Palestinians influenced her decision.
Roan said she considered attending the event to read “some poems from Palestinian women” before ultimately deciding to sit out the event. “I’m not going to the White House because I am not going to be a monkey for pride,” Roan told Rolling Stone. "I don’t have a side because I hate both sides, and I’m so embarrassed about everything going on right now.”
According to The Guardian profile, Roan is donating £1 of every UK tour ticket to the LGBTQ+ rights charity Kaleidoscope Trust. In Manchester, Roan's merch stand sold £100 signed risograph prints, with the proceeds going to a Palestinian charity. She told The Guardian that raising funds for Palestinians is “just my duty to help send resources to a community that is absolutely being destroyed.”
Rather than using her celebrity to endorse a candidate, Roan endorsed critical and independent thinking. “I have encouraged people to use critical thinking skills,” she said in a September 24th TikTok video addressing criticism of her refusal to endorse Harris, "learn about what they’re voting for, learn about who they’re voting for and ask questions."
Roan said she believes it is also important that she, too, embrace critical thinking in making her own judgments. “I think it's important for people to use critical thinking. I think it’s important for me to question authority and question world leaders and question myself, question my algorithm, question if some person that tweeted something about someone else is even true. It’s important to question because that’s how I think we move forward.”
Roan added that she wants “to be part of the generation that changes things for good” and she believes “actions speak louder than words.”
She concluded her September 24 video response by clarifying that she wouldn't be voting for Trump and that she refuses to passively accept the dictates of those in political power. “So hear it from my mouth, if you’re still wondering: No, I’m not voting for Trump, and yes, I will always question those in power and those making decisions over other people. And I will stand up for what’s right and what I believe in, and it’s always at the forefront of my project. And I’m sorry that you fell for the clickbait.”
In a video posted on September 25, Roan added further clarification on her refusal to endorse the Kamala Harris presidential bid. “Fuck Trump, for real,” said Roan. “But fuck some of the shit that has gone done with the Democratic Party that has failed people like me and you. And more so Palestine. And more so, every marginalized community in the world. So no, I'm not going to… settle for what the options are that are in front of me. And you're not gonna make me feel bad for that.” After stating she intends to vote for Harris as the better of two bad options, she told her audience “I hope you don't settle for what we have.”
Coincidentally, I saw Roan perform live in June at the 2024 Bonnaroo music festival, in Manchester, Tennessee. She was an ecstatic force captivating an adoring audience amidst record-breaking heat. You can watch her Bonnaroo performance below.
Condorcet Against War
October 3, 2024
The French philosophe, Condorcet held that the more enlightened people became, the more intolerant of war they would be. Condorcet, one of the first Western intellectuals to call for the complete enfranchisement of women (in the late 18th century), wrote that a truly enlightened future would be one in which nations realized war was self-destructive.
In Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794), written while hiding from his political persecutors, Condorcet wrote,
“Nations will learn that they cannot conquer other nations without losing their own liberty; that permanent confederations are their only means of preserving their independence and that they should seek not power but security.”
Incidentally, I wrote my master’s thesis on Condorcet’s contribution to feminism. I also explored how this 18th century freethinker defiantly worked against slavery and came to the aid of other marginalized groups of his day including unmarried pregnant women and those accused of “homosexuality. I also authored a few journal articles exploring his exemplification of what feminist theorist, bell hooks’ called “feminist masculinity.” I hope to find time to bring some of that work into Humanities in Revolt. We have much to learn from Condorcet. Men, in particular, have much to gain by following in some of his footsteps.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister: Nasrallah Agreed to a Ceasefire
October 3, 2024
What are we to conclude about those who would assassinate leaders at precisely the time they agree to interrupt violence?
Are we to condone a new international order that tolerates the bombing of orphanages filled with displaced families (Gaza, Oct 2) and the use of 80 bombs, including several U.S.-made 2k pound bombs, destroying multistory buildings with countless civilians within to kill a single “target” --one who allegedly agreed to a temporary ceasefire?
What wisdom in human history must we now turn to not only ethically assess these events but also plot a course to resist such madness? What guidance will allow us to stay sober from such sanguinary intoxication? To cultivate a garden of peace and uproot the non-native weeds of war?
Doctors’ Unanswered Pleas for Peace
October 11, 2024
Doctors continue to plea for help as they are targeted by the Israeli military. There is no emergency more deserving of our empathy and concern than these people suffering a slow-motion execution as they refuse to abandon the sick, immobilized, and otherwise vulnerable to preserve themselves. To continue diplomatic and material support for the Israeli government is to cosign these flagrant crimes. We the people of the United States must make our dissent robust and resounding. With Prometheus and Eve, we dissent!
Watch: Democracy Now, "Death Is Everywhere": Doctor Who Volunteered in Gaza & Lebanon Condemns Israeli Attack on Hospitals,” October 13, 2024
Imagine Voting Conscience No Matter Who
October 13, 2024
To my mind, nothing is more important than stopping an active military campaign decimating men, women, and children. Killing people in tents. Shooting children in the head. And all with the backing of the current Biden-Harris administration.
Vote for whomever your conscience calls you to vote for. But truth and justice should never be subordinated to partisan politics. And if that is what's required to get one’s favored candidate elected—the suppression of voices of conscience decrying massacres, then that candidate is likely unfit for election.
Just imagine the kind of world we'd live in if we “Voted Conscience No Matter Who;” if we prioritized principle above partisan political allegiances. Just imagine if we embraced humanistic ethics and a genuine commitment to moral equality, the notion that each and every human life is equal in its most basic intrinsic value.
We can do no better in clarifying this humanistic principle than the character, Tarrou in Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague:
“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it’s simple, but I know it’s true.”
A New and Valuable Voice to the Substack Community
October 14, 2024
’s voice will be an invaluable addition to the Substack community. I've been grateful for her unique intellectual rigor and integrity on everything from Gaza to third-party politics. I look forward to amplifying and engaging with her work.
Radar-style video posts would be a huge success in Substack. And they would provide a crucial counterweight to pundits like Mehdi Hasan who acted with “bad faith” in interviewing Green party candidates Jill Stein and Butch Ware. Hasan belligerently interrupted and talked over the candidates. He also used his proficient debate skills to fallaciously Strawman the case for third-party voting and oversimplify the impact of the Green Party vote on prior elections, something Gray has examined at length in the past.
I think Gray will find a healthy appetite in the Substack sphere for genuine critical discourse about electoral politics and the ethical limits of so-called “lesser evil” voting. Her commitment to genuine dialogue and careful listening exemplifies the kind of political communication thinkers like bell hooks eloquently described. We need to ask difficult questions as Hasan is so expert in doing. But we equally need the attention and patience to understand the answers to those questions rather than look for opportunities to score points.
As I try to highlight in my work, critical thinking as the philosophers had in mind isn't about “winning” (especially not through cheap rhetorical tricks); it's about a genuine appreciation for values like truth, love, and justice. If you share these values, I encourage you to subscribe to her Substack.
Why is the FBI at Ken’s House?
October 14, 2024
The FBI should be able to answer the basic question of why they are visiting a reporter at home to comment on their reporting.
According to
,“Last Friday, a young special agent from my local FBI office arrived at my Madison, Wisconsin home to read me a statement prepared in Washington. The Bureau told me that I had been the target of a foreign influence operation with regard to a news article I had written, a clear reference to my publication of the JD Vance Dossier.
“No subpoena, no search warrant, no prior announcement, no claim of illegality. America’s most powerful law enforcement agency wants me to know that it was displeased. It is delivering what many would consider a chilling message: we know where you live, we know what you’ve done, we are watching.”
The Humanities and Social Transformation
October 15, 2024
The humanities give us the existential perspective with which to not only gain self-knowledge but also generate social transformation.
The progress we, today, enjoy was bestowed on us by forbearers who often acted to honor eternal values even when they would not immediately experience the fruits of such labor. They rejected the shallow calculation of deciding what to do on the basis of generating immediate and pleasurable results.
Too many of us approach social change the way a corporation approaches profit: all that matters is the gains we make within a quarterly cycle. We lack the embrace of delayed gratification and a healthy resignation to the slow-yielding processes that are responsible for most of the justice we today rely upon.
There is wisdom in acting on behalf of our foremost values, even when doing so refuses to immediately produce all of the outcomes we desire. But it would be nothing but folly to think progress can be achieved by chasing the tail of the status quo, of prioritizing short-term gains that temporarily relieve or postpone pain over longer-term strategies for transformation.
The long, rough, and seemingly circuitous path to a just world is better than the short, direct, and pleasant path to self-destruction.
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Wonderful initiative Jeffrey; this is the kind of thinking and writing that can effect change. I also would add that in humanizing the times, we are also discussing humans who are not alienated from Nature, but also who are in communion or harmony with it. Thoreau would agree.
Re your article <<“I think it's important for people to use critical thinking. I think it’s important for me to question authority and question world leaders and question myself, >>. Sixty years ago as a 17 year old schoolboy our Jesuit headmaster told us in R.E. class that blind Faith on it's own was not enough and deserved no praise, as educated children it was our duty to work out for ourselves what we should or should not believe in, to always question what we are taught. A lesson that has guided my life, and on occasion got me in trouble.