There are a variety of reasonable responses to the problem of evil and they all — more or less — undercut the notion that God really is all-loving, all-knowing, or all-powerful. Evil exists, it is argued, because, contrary to our expectations, God can’t eliminate evil or he doesn’t want to eliminate it.

Thanks to our wealth and technology, I think, the problem of evil is now a problem for all of us and not just a certain breed of theist.

While I readily admit we are not all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful beings, I think, nevertheless, we are today sufficiently loving, knowing, and powerful to identify and eliminate most evil, especially when we work in concert with others.

And yet evil exists.

It may exist simply because we are not yet able to live up to our full potential as loving, knowing, powerful beings. Alternatively, evil may exist because we are insufficiently loving to regard all members of the species as worthy of our concern. Either evil exists because we haven’t quite figured out that is now within our grasp to eliminate it or it exists because we don’t want to eliminate it. I hope it is the former but, these days, I am more inclined than ever to think it is the latter.

What do you think? Why does evil exist? Do you think it will always exist?

In six months, my funding would run out and I was expected to submit my PhD thesis. One problem: I had no thesis to submit.

Let me be clear: I was not FUCKED! because I had left everything to the last minute.

On the contrary. I had done a ridiculous amount of research, thinking, and writing. Unfortunately, after all that research, thinking, and writing, I was forced to conclude that contemporary political philosophy had gone down a blind alley.

John Rawls, a philosopher whose work I still admire, is credited with renewing an interest in political philosophy as a branch of moral philosophy. By the time I started studying political philosophy seriously, he had already begun to rethink that part of his work I would say is distinctively moral. By the time I was done thinking and writing about his rethinking, I realized that the moral part of his work was fundamentally flawed and so was the idea of a distinctively moral political philosophy.

To put it as simply as possible: if we don’t think it’s appropriate or effective to use the one true religious morality to organize society, why would it be appropriate or effective to employ any other kind of one true morality? Fortunately and unfortunately, I managed to make my point in a single chapter that would eventually become a peer reviewed article.

And I still had the damn thesis to write.

I thought very seriously about calling it quits then and there. Clearly, my philosophical journey had come to an end and, unfortunately, I hadn’t yet managed to produce a thesis. Mix into my malaise a whole lot of discontent about the university system and it didn’t seem to me like there was much point in finishing the thesis.

But then, for some reason, I thought about all the people who had supported me over the years with their encouragement and letters of recommendation and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I owed it to them to do my best to finish a thesis and submit it. Fuck.

So, I went to work, refashioning what I had produced up to that point. I had learned, during my extended tarry in university, that the tenor, tone, and point of a paper — and thus presumably a thesis — could be completely changed with only a few key revisions. After some gnashing of teeth, some pounding of head against wall, and several false starts, I stumbled upon my first good — and, in retrospect, totally obvious — idea.

The Government of Canada had provided me with fists full of cash to undertake my research and, thoughtfully, they had forced me to write down what I intended to do with that money in order to get it. I thought, “hey, I might as well produce the work I promised to produce five years ago”. I dug up my one page outline and it looked feasible. At least, I now had a plan of action.

Then, I had my second good idea. If I was correct to think that contemporary political philosophy had gone down a blind alley and if I was correct to think that I didn’t really want to become a part of the university system, I had absolutely nothing to lose by thinking big. If I was going to fail, I might as well go down in flames.

So, I rearranged the work I had done in such a way that it allowed me to do some good old fashioned first philosophy. That’s right, I decided to get all Rene Descartes up in here. I would assume nothing, start from scratch, and reason my way to the best approach to society’s organization.

Then, I had my third good idea. No more hobby horses! If you are going to start fresh, I said to myself, start fresh!

Because I had arrived at political philosophy via my fretting about the the existence of God and via my fretting about the nature of truth, I was predisposed to look askance at anyone who talked about truth, knowledge, and certainty. As a result, I had more or less ignored a vein of work in contemporary philosophy that had reexamined Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, which [take a breath!] demonstrates mathematically that a majority decision based on the independent judgments of a sufficiently large number of sufficiently competent persons is the best estimation of which of two or more proposed courses of action is the best available, and [breathe!] it was this theorem that would eventually be the keystone of my thesis.

I can’t say when I realized the theorem was the keystone of my thesis because I was coming to understand the theorem — and the new work on it — as I worked on the whole of the thesis. Six months of almost non-stop work later and contrary to my own expectations, I managed to submit a thesis. I even managed to submit the damn thing a few days early.

All in all, I was pretty satisfied with the thesis I submitted, however, I had included a lot of material simply because it was a thesis being submitted for a degree. There are certain expectations of what a PhD thesis is meant to look like and I dutifully met them. Then, to get my thesis past my examining committee, I dutifully added even more material. As a result, the document that was eventually accepted, bound, and deposited as my thesis, from my perspective, was unnecessarily bloated. I resolved to cut it down to a size that accords with my philosophical aesthetic rather than the one dominant in academic culture.

And, finally, after many fits and starts, I did!

And here it is, if you care to read it, distributed round about the sixth anniversary of when I first submitted it — the end of January 2006. Holy fuck! Has it really been six years?

After reading and rereading the text over these last few weeks, there are for me two lingering concerns.

First, the writing is a bit tortured and is, I think, characteristic of someone who spent far too much of his life earning “A’s” to pay the bills. If I had more patience, I would rewrite it word for word but, ultimately, my goal has been to create a text that is more like the version I would have submitted if I hadn’t had to meet the expectations of the academic community and, unfortunately for the courageous reader, that’s just the way I wrote back then. And still do sometimes, I will admit.

Second, and more importantly, in the years since completing the thesis, I’ve come to take much more seriously the idea that we human primates have a hard time thinking and acting independently. I still think that the level of independent thinking required for Condorcet’s theorem is possible and even feasible, but I now recognize that it is pretty tough for most people to think, judge, and act independently most of the time. We are, after all, tribal primates and it is, I think, the struggle between independent judgement and tribal groupthink that — for both good and for evil — is the engine of human history.

If you have the time and inclination to read The Competency of the Majority: Our Best Chance for the Best Society, I welcome all questions and comments. I should also say, if you read only the fairly short introduction and conclusion, you will pretty much get the gist of it.

Download The Competency of the Majority: Our Best Chance for the Best Society

Someone was flying a kite and, as I lay on my back in the grass, I decided that it was very generous of him or her to provide such a wonderful sparkling charm to look at against the vast blue of the sky.

I sat up on my elbows, with my shoulders in my ears, trying to see who was flying the kite, but I couldn’t trace the line to its source. So, I watched the different people and pets, living, playing and enjoying. I smiled and felt good.

All of a sudden, I wondered about the bones of the very many murdered and brutalized that lay beneath this broad field of grass and in the topsoil of the history that had brought us to this beautiful day in this beautiful park under this beautiful sky.

I wondered what they would expect of us, comfortably cocooned in our unique moment in history, in our unique place on the planet, when all around us, both in time and in geography, tsunamis of suffering buffet the dikes of the imperialism that preserve our well being.

The sun was still bright, the sky was still vast, the day was still beautiful, but blood stained all of it and everything and no one seemed to notice or care.

I decided, if all those who had suffered and suffer had the opportunity to choose, they would prefer peaceful days in the sun and the park and the sky very much like this day.

I wondered, then, would they want us to pursue justice, if it meant grinding more bones in the mortar of unrest. Would they want us to enjoy the peace of the day, if it meant ignoring the ever expanding and always unmarked mass graves that fertilize our peace.

Do we owe it to them to enjoy that which they never enjoyed and would have surely cherished as well and as good as we cherish it or do we owe it to them to disturb the peace and safety of the few until there is peace and safety for the all?

And it is a question I now often ask myself, even in the sun and in the sky and in the peace and in the short toll of new year’s turn.

Accordingly, I made the final push on Cheshire and Kat: Lovers In A Dangerous Time.  As I worked on the last few scenes, I discovered that I was depressing myself  as I wrote. I was forced to wonder why I had decided to write a play that is — for lack of a better expression — so dark.

The short answer, if you find yourself asking that question as you read, is that I had watched one too many documentaries about humans heaping misery upon other humans for no sensible reason. I think I needed to test my answer to the question, “Why bother?”

The elevator pitch: Bonnie and Clyde meets Heart of Darkness with a dash of Highlander.

WARNING: INCLUDES SCENES OF EXTREME VIOLENCE, INCLUDING SEXUAL VIOLENCE. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN.

Download Cheshire and Kat, Lovers In A Dangerous Time

It’s been a long time since anyone asked me that question, and my first response didn’t seem right.

So, I thought about it some more.

Fortunately, some time earlier, the same friend had asked me to define what I meant by “parent.”

I define “parent,” as a person for whom a child is the most important consideration in his or her life. A parent, in this definition, is a person who gives ultimate weight to the well being of a child when making decisions about life.

By reflecting on that definition, it became clear to me why I don’t want to be a parent.

I don’t want to be a parent because I am not prepared to give a child that level of consideration in my life’s decisions. Moreover, I’m not prepared to sire and/or raise a child, unless I am willing to give him or her that level of consideration.

I should say, my observation is personal and not general.

I think it’s possible for parents to live very fulfilling and productive lives, however, I’m not convinced that I could live the life I want to live, while giving a child’s well being ultimate consideration.

How do you define “parent?”

Are you a parent? Why did you become a parent?

Not a parent? Why do you want to become a parent, or why don’t you want to become a parent?

Song for the Lost Girls.

Oh now baby,
Your beauty blinds the stars.
I guess that’s why
You don’t know where you are.

Oh now baby,
Why’d you run so far?
I guess that’s why
You don’t know who you are.

Oh now baby,
I’m the light to guide you home.
And when you’re home,
There’ll be no reason to roam.

Oh now baby,
Where you getting to?
I guess getting to
Is something you need to do.
I guess my light will never do.

Oh now baby,
Why’d you runs so far?
I guess you’ll run
until you know who you are
until you know where you are
until there is no far.

This year, because I don’t have any holiday appropriate material ready for the blog and because I don’t really do Christmas cards, I thought this might be fun to share.

Enjoy !?

Had I asked this question twenty, fifteen, or even ten years ago, I might have been tempted to answer, “the unique and special task of the writer is to imbue space and geography with story and meaning and, in so doing, create a city and/or country. Think of James Joyce and Ulysses.

Today, thanks to new technologies, it is much more obvious that all of us — as has always been the case — imbue spaces and geographies with story and meaning, transforming them into cities and countries only when our very many meanings and stories meet, mingle, and — sometimes — converge, creating paths, lanes, and meridians in, within, and across our shared spaces. A city and/or country is not created from a single master narrative delivered from on high and, fortunately, today, it is much more difficult for the prophets of the press to pretend that they speak for all of us and that they write our cities and countries into being.

Derivation of Love aspires to be a Canadian story, without trying to tell the story of Canada. It omits Quebec and Toronto, struggles with official bilingualism, never makes it as far as Vancouver and — almost accidentally — mirrors the nation’s new political order. It is a story of a Canadian, of Canada, but not of all Canadians or all of Canada.

Derivation is also an urban book. It begins in the suburbs of Ottawa, documents a public transit journey across the historical divide between the east of Ottawa and the rest of Ottawa, French and English Ottawa, working class and middle class Ottawa. It loses all sense of place in the fever pitch of sex and love, only to reemerge at the outskirts of Calgary, before once again heading way downtown. Inside the bedrooms, bathrooms, and living rooms of this tale of adolescent love, the Canadian wilderness is a trope studied in high school English classes and long forgotten in the asphalt hum and service station salvations of the Trans Canada Highway.

Derivation aspires to be a story that is both familiar and unique, that casts new light on old spaces and geographies, and that recharts the paths, lanes, and meridians of our cities and country.

What role is played by story in the spaces and geographies of your life?

P.s. I’m raising the price of the Derivation download some time this week, if you don’t want to pay the higher price, download it now — or, at least, sooner rather than later.

Download my ebook, A Derivation of Love.

For much of my life, I have had the same attitude about my creative work. If I was asked about the meaning of one of my texts, I’d refer the person to the text and say, “that’s what it means” or “try harder.” I’d answer any question about the text, so long as it wasn’t, “what does it mean definitively according to you?”

At some point, my attitude changed, in part, because I realized that the author’s interpretation of his own text is only one of many possible interpretations and, if someone wants to give my interpretation more weight in their assessment of the text, what difference should it make to me — especially when my own interpretation of the text evolves over time.

I think living overseas also helped to change my attitude. From that experience, I realized that we all speak our own micro-languages. Even the most banal turns of phrase can mean very different things to different people, depending on how their families and peers use the expression. I’m not sure many people understand this and, as a result, I think many people think they are communicating, when they are not.

I should be clear: I’m not claiming we can’t communicate. I’m claiming only that we can’t take communication for granted simply because we often utter the same kinds of sounds around each other. We need to probe, question, and learn each other’s languages.

This experience of talking but not communicating happens again and again in my novel, A Derivation of Love. Over and over, the characters think they are communicating, when in fact they are not. There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding because no one takes the time to probe, question, and learn — Desmond most of all.

It seems to me that this “presumption of understanding” is an important source of very many of the problems between boy and girls and boys and boys and girls and girls. It’s a problem for all the different kinds of relationships we might have with each other but it seems particularly relevant to our sexual / romantic relationships. For some reason, many people seem to think that sex, love, and romance requires a wordless understanding on the part of all those involved.

The Hintonburg Drinking Club and Debating Society came up with an idea at our last late night session that I am still thinking about: silence preserves the status quo and the preservation of the status quo always safeguards the power of whomever happens to have it.

With this idea in mind, my question is this:

Do we expect love to involve wordless understanding because each of us thinks we have the power in the relationship and we want to preserve it, or do we expect love to involve wordless understanding because we think the other — our beloved — has the power and that’s exactly where we want it to lie, or do we expect love to involve wordless understanding because it originates in a part of our brain that evolved long before we developed the capacity for language?

What do you think?

Download my ebook, A Derivation of Love.

At this stage in the novel, which has been described recently by one friendly reader as “sex drenched, yet bleak,” it’s fairly obvious that the author of Derivation has taken to heart the idea that sex sells.

For me, this less-than-sly self-reference is also a key moment in the narrative. It’s here that the author’s story and Desmond’s merge.

In writing the book, the author learns what Desmond can’t yet know — e.g. what the book is about — but it is because of what he learns that the author can finish the book. The meta-joke, then, is a gnostic deus ex machina.

Desmond’s story continues for two more short chapters and the book concludes with a characterization of Desmond’s experience which he himself can not yet offer. So, the author intrudes once more and the “why” of Desmond’s experience is explained in the last paragraph — really, in the very last sentence.

Desmond’s bleak emotional solipsism is, for him, beautiful and, I think, many of us are similarly constrained by our own immutable aesthetic, however different it may be from Desmond’s.

What do you think?

Are the problems between boys and girls (and girls and girls and boys and boys) best explained by an unwillingness to revise the story we’ve written for ourselves when another person enters into it?

P.s.

The gnostic meta-joke also references Chapter 5, one of the more sexually explicit chapters of the book.

A young Desmond, tired of struggling with George Orwell’s 1984, discards the book, masturbates, and his fantasy is described in vivid detail. Desmond, we have learned, is reading 1984 only because he mistakenly thought it would be a sexually explicit book, after stumbling across the only sexualized scene of the novel.

The “almost finished” version of Derivation has been online for a couple of years now and Chapter 5 is the second most popular post on my blog, second only to “Brazil Nuts and the Sexual Politics of Hair”. Needless to say, the tag “student-teacher fantasy” has drawn more than it’s fair share of page views.

It amuses me to think of some titillated reader — like Desmond — scouring the rest of my blog, looking for similarly salacious content, with no success.

Download my ebook, A Derivation of Love.