TV (the Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time by Alan Sepinwall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Of course with any book like this you are going to disagree, sometimes heartily. And I do. But, overall, I enjoyed reading it and engaging the perspective of these critics, who have an amazing breadth of knowledge and experience.

I particularly recommend the essays on Roots and the Cosby Show. The latter is a deep examination of the legacy of the show in light of Cosby's later reputation. They ultimately decide that the series, for all of its importance at the time, has become unwatchable, and not just because of his reputation, but because with retrospect some of the situations and storylines seem to be Cosby making light of his sexual predation (read the essay for the details).

I was further moved by the fact that the Cosby Show essay was followed by one on the Andy Griffith Show, which they laud for holding up over time and recommend continue to be watched for its moral lessons.

My biggest complaint about a ranking was how low they put Six Feet Under, which I think among the very best shows I've ever watched.

Another strange facet is how many of the shows I haven't seen. Back in 1999 when all the list-making was going for the 20th century, I had seen at least some of almost every show that would have appeared on a list like this, precisely because most of them appeared on broadcast with the old ones in reruns (I did make my own list at the time, lost to the pre-blogging era). But for much of the golden age of cable TV shows, I have not had cable, and so many of the highly regarded shows of the last two decades, I have not seen.

But a further point on that. In 2015 I began watching The Wire, which ranks third on their list. I admired the quality of it, but eventually quit watching somewhere in the third season because I decided that I simply didn't want to watch such violence--I didn't want the negativity in my life.

High on their list are the series of cable shows in recent decades which have been about antiheroes or violent situations--The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc. But often such shows hold little appeal for me. I really don't feel the need to repeatedly encounter the darker sides of the human experience.

Now, in my twenties, I would have criticized my mother for saying something similar. I guess I've changed as I've aged and become a parent.

But one thing I noticed in their criteria of ranking is that nowhere were they considering whether the story was a good story. And by good I don't mean high quality in the writing or directing, I mean morally good, a story that helps to convey virtue, excellence, well-being. I frankly don't think that all of the shows high on their list will be stories told over the ages, because they aren't those types of stories.

You see, I appreciate highly shows like Little House on the Prairie and the Waltons. I also greatly admire Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is a good story, in the way I mean it. I long believed M*A*S*H to be the greatest show in the history of TV. Six Feet Under is good story, in the way I mean it (something they seem to miss in their review of it, mentioning primarily matters of technique).

The select The Simpsons as the greatest show. I probably agree. The Simpsons is a good story.



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What justifies our claim that all humans are entitled to certain rights?  Especially, in a secular culture, what justifies that claim?  Religious folk might say God does, but that isn't a workable answer for a secular, pluralistic culture.  Yet, if the basis is just human convention, then we have a deep problem--rights are merely constructs and could be eliminated if society was overcome by new attitudes of fear and exclusion.  These are the dangers.

This article from Aeon discusses the issue. For example:

But is it enough to rely on the supposed fact that human rights are embedded in a liberal democratic culture? Or do we need to be able to step back from that culture and offer an objective justification for the principles embedded in it, as the philosophers have long supposed? The problem is that social expectations and cultural assumptions not only vary significantly across societies, but that they are fragile: various forces ranging from globalisation to propaganda can cause them to change dramatically or even wither away. Would rights against gender or racial discrimination disappear if sexist or racist attitudes come to predominate?

The author believes that rights must rest on something other than a human construct.  His view is

that human rights are rooted in the universal interests of human beings, each and every one of whom possesses an equal moral status arising from their common humanity. In other words, in defending human rights, we will need to appeal to the inherent value of being a member of the human species and, in addition, the interests shared by all human beings in things like friendship, knowledge, achievement, play, and so on.

Human rights in American thought derived from a mix of New England Congregationalism (with roots in Reformed theology), Enlightenment reason, and Romanticism.  Kant derived them from his view of autonomy.  Neera Badhwar, in the book I recently read, Well-Being, discusses autonomy within a ne0-Aristotlean perspective which could be helpful in deriving a justification for rights.  

Consider this earlier post on the role of William James in the religion of democracy.

"It’s surprising to think of racial bias as not just a state or habit of mind, nor even a widespread cultural norm, but as a process that’s also part of the ebbs and flows of the body’s physiology." This startling article from Aeon reveals how racial prejudice is connected to biological functions, and thus is more difficult to overcome than our Enlightenment-based rational hopes imagined.  

Please read the article.  Here is the conclusion:

On the one hand, this is a reason for optimism: if we can better understand the neurological mechanisms behind racial bias, then perhaps we’ll be in a better position to correct it. But there is a grim side to the analysis, too. The structures of oppression that shape who we are also shape our bodies, and perhaps our most fundamental perceptions. Maybe we do not ‘misread’ the phone as a gun; we might we actually see a gun, rather than a phone. Racism might not be something that societies can simply overcome with fresh narratives and progressive political messages. It might require a more radical form of physiological retraining, to bring our embodied realities into line with our stated beliefs.

This raises an important question in political liberalism.  Mill believed that society should not be overly involved in the effort to morally shape people, instead allowing them the liberty to develop on their own.  His initial radical left-wing idea now sounds closer to libertarianism.  It also sounds naiive, as we've learned that issues like racial justice cannot be solved by simple education of the reason.  

So I think about a variety of inputs--Michael Sandel's arguments in Justice that society must discuss the purpose of what it means to be human, Jonathan Haidt's research into the psychological impulses behind our political views, or Martha Nussbaum's book on how a democratic society must engage in moral education of its citizens by using the emotions.  These ideas run up against the ideas of Mill, which initially sound lovely, but flounder on the rock of reality.

See this earlier post on the liberal paradox.

Catching upon blogging, I want to share this interesting article from the NY Times on the evangelical roots of the post-truth society.  If anything, I think this article needs to be longer, with more in-depth exploration of the topic.

The author discusses how conservative and fundamentalist evangelical Christians embrace a worldview of biblical inerrancy which compels them to reject aspects of science, philosophy, and history which they find incompatible.  They are taught to view those things and their purveyors as false or fake.

This was something of my experience, growing up, though I grew up in an era when the fundamentalists did not have complete control of my denomination, but this sort of talk was gaining ground.  In some ways it emerged out of conservative Christian rejection of some aspects of popular culture and the culture wars of my parent's generation.  I do remember being raised on the evils of rock music, for example.  So as those sectarian ideas developed over time, they led to a rejection of even more of mainstream culture and thought.

The Texas textbook fights are good examples. The debate wasn't just about rejecting science books that discussed evolution, health textbooks couldn't discuss condoms in the sex ed section and, later, history textbooks downplayed ideas like the separation of church and state.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

We all cling to our own unquestioned assumptions. But in the quest to advance knowledge and broker peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic world, the worldview based on biblical inerrancy gets tangled up in the contradiction between its claims on universalist science and insistence on an exclusive faith.

By contrast, the worldview that has propelled mainstream Western intellectual life and made modern civilization possible is a kind of pragmatism. It is an empirical outlook that continually — if imperfectly — revises its conclusions based on evidence available to everyone, regardless of their beliefs about the supernatural. This worldview clashes with the conservative evangelical war on facts . . .

So, it's easy to see how this brainwashing might lead to people without the critical thinking skills and personal autonomy to judge Donald Trump accurately.  Yet, I remain puzzled with how supposed promoters of traditional values could embrace this moral reprobate.

Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life by Neera Kapur Badhwar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well-Being is a deeply admirable book. I feel better for having read it. The philosophical arguments are strong. The writing is engaging. The conclusions are profound and common-sensical, cutting through the bullshit.

I learned virtue theory from Neera, in her graduate seminar twenty years ago. I also served as her TA for an undergraduate ethics class where we read the great classic works. Reading the book I realize how questions and conversations she was having two decades ago were working themselves into this comprehensive view of the good life.

I plan to adopt the book for my ethics class at Creighton University this autumn.

On a side note: reading this book confirms my moral judgments of Donald Trump and further puzzles me as to the moral failure of the electorate.

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A fascinating look at the science of racism.  Two excerpts:

It’s surprising to think of racial bias as not just a state or habit of mind, nor even a widespread cultural norm, but as a process that’s also part of the ebbs and flows of the body’s physiology.

***

Racism might not be something that societies can simply overcome with fresh narratives and progressive political messages. It might require a more radical form of physiological retraining, to bring our embodied realities into line with our stated beliefs.

What's New?

Romans 6:1-14

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

First Central Congregational UCC

16 April 2017

 

 

    In sixth grade I discovered The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, and suddenly a new and wider world of the imagination was opened to me. These weren't just great stories, they were also richly theological stories, helping to shape my ethics and my concepts of God and salvation.

    I vividly remember the first time I read the final novel, The Last Battle. I read the chapter "Further Up and Further In" just before recess one day. In that chapter the characters, filled with joy and overwhelmed by beauty and wonder, run through the newly created world that has replaced the now destroyed Narnia. That was the best recess of my life, as I too spent the hour running with the same zest as the story I'd just read.

    One passage from The Last Battle, which has remained with me over the last thirty years, is the closing paragraph.

 

[The] things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them down. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.