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On the perils of ad hominism

I think one of the first Latin expressions I learned was ad hominem. I was 14 years old and, we were having a discussion about plays in our English literature class. Mr. Graham, our teacher and apparently a writer himself, had asked us what we thought of the first scene of Macbeth that we had been assigned to read as homework for the class.

Everybody shuffled in their seats, because only a few of us had actually read it. Gladis, of course, had. She always sat in the seat beside mine in the second row -I think it was an alphabetical thing to help Mr. Graham remember our names- and she was a fastidious student. She’d even made some notes the night before on what she considered the salient features of the opening scene of Macbeth. Naturally she put up her hand to attract his attention.

“It was kinda short, Mr. Graham -only 13 lines…”

Gladis always seemed to bristle me: why would she put her hand up for that? “You actually counted the lines, Gladis?” I said contemptuously -trying to shame her, I suppose.

I remember her looking at me, tensing her face, and then blinking. Slowly. “Some things are so obvious -if you read them, that is…” She shifted her gaze to Mr. Graham. “But there is a reason that Shakespeare made such a brief conversation into an entire scene,” she added sweetly.

Mr. Graham took it as a teaching point. “Anybody other than Gladis have an idea why Shakespeare made it into an entire scene?” There were no hands, unsurprisingly, so he stared at me. “What do you think, G?” Everybody used my nickname in those days.

It was entirely expected, though: I was the usual go-to seat when everybody else was quiet -probably because of my proximity to Gladis, but also maybe because I usually had my hand up. “Uhmm… Well, Shakespeare was probably trying to grab our attention at the start -you know, capture our interest right away so we’ll be curious about what follows.” I was going to stop there, but I noticed the sarcastic expression on Gladis’ face, so I kept going. “Isn’t that what you writers try to do, Mr. Graham: make the first paragraph so riveting everybody will want to read more?”

Gladis snuck a quick look at me, thought I was trying to curry Mr. Graham’s favour, and then decided to expand on her initial statement. “I think the scene set the mood for the whole play: ambition, paradox, and evil…” She smirked at me, and then continued. “I mean, ‘fair is foul, and foul is fair’ is really dark. You can just tell what you’re in for.”

She glared at me for a moment, and then smiled innocently at Mr. Graham: teacher’s pet.

I think he could see the dynamic developing, and thought he might use it to stimulate some discussion in the silent majority surrounding us.

“Anybody else?” he said, casting his eyes about the room. Nobody looked up from their notebooks. “What about ‘When the battle’s lost and won…?” What do you think that means?” His eyes settled on one of the quiet students who seldom volunteered an answer. “Kerry?”

Kerry looked up, totally surprised that he’d been singled out. “I… Uhmm… Well, I suppose there’s going to be a fight somewhere later in the play, and…”

Gladis turned and stared at him. “The first scene was so short, didn’t you even peek at the next scene?”

Kerry stared at her defiantly. “Mr. Graham just assigned the first scene, Gladis. I didn’t want to get confused with too much information, eh?” The class snickered in relieved agreement.

Gladis somersaulted her eyes and sent them rolling and tumbling towards Mr. Graham. “Anybody who was at all interested in plays would have read further, Kerry,” she said and sighed theatrically.

Kerry stared down at his desk in embarrassment.

But, if she thought that might have curried the teacher’s favour, she was sadly mistaken. Mr. Graham noticed Kerry’s distress, frowned briefly and then loosed his eyes on me again, for some reason. “G, do you know what an argument is called when you attack the person rather than their position?” Another teaching moment, I supposed.

I thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged.

“Anybody…?” he asked, once again hoping for a response from the class. “It’s called an ad hominem -Latin, meaning ‘to the person’. It’s a type of argument that is often very difficult to refute, because the individual who uses it usually does so in frustration because he or she cannot counter the argument itself and so attacks the person in an attempt to win that way.” He let his eyes rest on Gladis again -but only briefly.

“I mention it now because later in the play you’re going to realize that when Lady Macbeth argues with Macbeth about killing the king, she almost always uses ad hominem arguments… Just warning you,” he added, and winked at Gladis in a subtle rebuke that wasn’t lost on me. Very clever, I thought.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that resorting to an ad hominem offers only a kind of pyrrhic victory -if not a defeat- for the user. Still, I’ve I have to admit that there were occasions when I felt I’d be losing more than just face if I backed down. Of course, the tone of my voice, or the blush on my face, usually unmasked my efforts, and I’d end up apologizing, rather than wearing any ill-gotten gains.

But I ran across an interesting variation on that theme in an essay in Aeon by Moti Mizrahi, an associate professor of philosophy from the School of Arts and Communication at the Florida Institute of Technology: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-ad-hominem-arguments-can-demolish-appeals-to-authority

‘According to the Urban Dictionary site,’ she writes, ‘Ad hominems are used by immature and/or unintelligent people because they are unable to counter their opponent using logic and intelligence.’ But isn’t this definition itself an ad hominem attack on those who make ad hominem arguments?’ Food for thought. Although ‘… ad hominem arguments can be good arguments, especially when they are construed as rebuttals to appeals to authority.’

Seeking advice from experts is something which we all find ourselves doing from time to time -none of us can know everything. But suppose, as she posits, ‘children respond to their parents’ plea to refrain from smoking by saying: ‘You use tobacco, so why shouldn’t I? … Arguments against the person are attempts to undermine what someone says, not by engaging with what is said but by casting aspersions on the person who says it. For example, the child’s retort is directed at the parents, in light of their failure to set a positive example, not at their parents’ concerns about smoking.’

I like that example -it somehow proves to me that nothing is so sacred that it can’t be re-evaluated from a different perspective. You’re a fool if you don’t believe in evolution… Or are you not allowed to ad hominem yourself?

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Whisper music to my weary spirit

Is music just sounds -a series of notes bundled together, like words in a conversation, or shapes in a painting? Like them, is musical appreciation an attempt by the brain to assign meaning, relevance, and structure to differentiate it from the ambient sounds we encounter every day: the whistle of wind leaking through a partially opened window, the rustle of leaves in a forest, the chirrup of the first robin in a nearby tree at dawn?

Do we break music down like we do the grammar of sentences: subject, object, verb,  noun, adjective…? Is music, in other words, merely the phonetic equivalent of morphemes strung out, not into mere sentences, or even paragraphs, but into whole stories?

In a way, we can maybe see the similarity of a memorable story with that of a catchy tune, or perhaps a moving symphony; and yet, should we -can we- equate the information and emotional content of a novel, say, with that of a concerto, or maybe a choral requiem? There seems to be a qualitative difference -each may be stirring, but somehow in non-identical ways.

I have wondered about this ever since I was an admittedly nerdy child. What was the difference between a gorgeous sunset, and an inspiring story; between a Rachmaninoff prelude, and a poem by Robert Frost…? In those early, naive days, I suspect I was wont to conflate things that drew me into them -things that had the magic quality of dissolving whatever boundaries confined me inside my own thoughts. Music was a potent drug, and so many of the intervening years have been occupied with a search for more and more purveyors: dealers.

I have therefore been attracted to articles dealing with that hard to describe boundary between music and, well, the rest of reality. There was an article I found in Aeon that caught my eye: https://aeon.co/essays/music-is-in-your-brain-and-your-body-and-your-life

It was written by Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, director of the music cognition lab at the University of Arkansas. I suppose what initially intrigued me was her contention that ‘the past few decades of work in the cognitive sciences of music have demonstrated with increasing persuasiveness that the human capacity for music is not cordoned off from the rest of the mind. On the contrary, music perception is deeply interwoven with other perceptual systems, making music less a matter of notes, the province of theorists and professional musicians, and more a matter of fundamental human experience.’ In other words, that music is somehow different, something more than mere sounds piled one on top of each other -more than whatever order may be ascribed to the pattern emerging from a dropped deck of cards.

Indeed, ‘Brain imaging produces a particularly clear picture of this interconnectedness. When people listen to music, no single ‘music centre’ lights up. Instead, a widely distributed network activates, including areas devoted to vision, motor control, emotion, speech, memory and planning. Far from revealing an isolated, music-specific area, the most sophisticated technology we have available to peer inside the brain suggests that listening to music calls on a broad range of faculties, testifying to how deeply its perception is interwoven with other aspects of human experience. Beyond just what we hear, what we see, what we expect, how we move, and the sum of our life experiences all contribute to how we experience music.’

And as she writes, ‘Music, it seems, is a highly multimodal phenomenon. The movements that produce the sound contribute essentially, not just peripherally, to our experience of it – and the visual input can sometimes outweigh the influence of the sound itself. Visual information can convey not only information about a performance’s emotional content, but also about its basic structural characteristics.’

I was struck by the picture that begins her essay: a photograph of the late Janis Joplin performing at The Fillmore, San Francisco in 1968; she was a particular, and long-time, favourite of mine. Just seeing Janis, with her head tilted back, and eyes closed, I felt I could hear her again. Feel the energy… I could hardly stop my foot from tapping out the rhythm of Try (Just a little harder) and I was transported back to all the various other concerts of the 60ies I had attended. Amazing, eh? That a memory, a photograph, can bundle so much together. That music can knit the ravelled sleeve of care, and ‘paint an embodied picture of music-listening, where not just what you see, hear and know about the music shapes the experience, but also the way you physically interact with it matters as well. This is true in the more common participatory musical cultures around the world, where everyone tends to join in the music-making, but also in the less common presentational cultures, where circumstances seem to call for stationary, passive listening.’

‘Neuroimaging has revealed that passive music-listening can activate the motor system. This intertwining of music and movement is a deep and widespread phenomenon, prevalent in cultures throughout the world. Infants’ first musical experiences often involve being rocked as they’re sung to. The interconnection means not only that what we hear can influence how we move, but also that how we move can influence what we hear.’

I have always found music to be so much more than the sound or the rhythm, and I have to admit that although I have never felt compelled to dance, I have never been able to remain motionless -or for that matter, emotionless- in its presence. And, as with everything else in life, I am affected more by some songs, some genres, some performances than others, but these things, too, vary. Music isn’t static, any more than a particular recipe always tastes the same no matter the cook.

As the author, Margulis, writes, ‘Music cannot be conceptualised as a straightforwardly acoustic phenomenon. It is a deeply culturally embedded, multimodal experience. At a moment in history when neuroscience enjoys almost magical authority, it is instructive to be reminded that the path from sound to perception weaves through imagery, memories, stories, movement and words.’

The threads that music has woven through my years have not frayed; unlike the patchwork pattern of my life it has held together -indeed, held me together. I am reminded of a proverb I read somewhere: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. And sometimes, you know, that is really all you need…

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Does Beauty live with Kindness?

I don’t know how many times I’ve written about beauty, but it continues to intrigue me. Not so much about what it is -its constituent parts, its definitions, or even its historical and sociological roots- but more its ability to morph -mutate, if you will- from something that is to something that isn’t. How, in other words, can beauty -or its antonym, ugliness- change to its opposite without materially altering anything about its appearance?

To be sure, the duality has not gone unnoticed in historical philosophy (the appearance vs the charisma of Socrates), literature (think of the handsome Dorian Grey and his increasingly ugly portrait), or even in fairy tales (Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling), but its seeming capriciousness only adds to the mystique, I think.

For years, centuries, indeed millennia, we have sought to decipher beauty, and yet apart from vague generalizations like youthfulness, proportionality, or perhaps, symmetry, it has eluded our grasp, and slipped through our fingers like slowly moving mist. The most apt description for me, comes from Koine Greek, where beauty was associated with being of one’s hour -not trying to appear older or younger: authentic, I suppose. And yet even here, beauty remains a moving target, doesn’t it?

Amongst the many attempts to pigeonhole the concept, I am always on the lookout for seemingly unique approaches -although I fully recognize that over the centuries, pretty well every perspective has likely been canvassed. At any rate, I found myself drawn to an article in Aeon by the British philosopher Panos Paris: https://aeon.co/essays/how-virtue-morphs-into-beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder

His opening sentence certainly captured my interest: ‘Have you ever thought that someone is far from attractive – perhaps even ugly – only to later come to find that person beautiful?’ For sure this would not be a unique experience for any of us, and yet it made me wonder how such a perceptual change could happen -was it merely that we had come to know that person better and so ignored their outward appearance, or was there an actual phase-change somehow?

Paris links our perceptions to moral qualities: ‘[B]eauty and morality, and ugliness and immorality, are intrinsically linked. Specifically, the moral virtues – honesty, kindness, fairness, empathy, etc – are beautiful character traits, and the moral vices – their contraries – are ugly.’

That seemed a little too simplistic a view, but it was enough to make me read further. He qualifies it almost immediately: ‘Of course, the kind of beauty or ugliness in question is independent of physical appearances – it belongs to characters and actions.’ He calls it the ‘moral beauty’ view, and further qualifies it by saying ‘This view is rather unfashionable today. Contemporary philosophical and lay orthodoxy construes the realms of aesthetics and morality as distinct. It regards theories such as the moral-beauty view as signs of past conceptual immaturity that we have since thankfully shaken off our intellectual shoulders.’

But then he points to diverse historical languages and how many of these (admittedly cherry-picked examples) conflated beauty and morality. ‘In Ancient Greek, kalon meant both beautiful and good, while the [African] Yoruba word ewa normally translated as ‘beauty’, is primarily used to refer to human moral qualities.’ Or, more recently, ‘Adam Smith wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) that ‘benevolence bestows upon those actions which proceed from it, a beauty superior to all others, [while] the want of it, and much more the contrary inclination, communicates a peculiar deformity to whatever evidences such a disposition’.

And, Paris explains, this conflation was not because of linguistic poverty. ‘[T]he Enlightenment philosophers did have the terminology to distinguish not only between beauty and goodness, but also between natural and artistic beauty, inner and outer beauty, and so on. Thus, their acknowledgement of an aesthetic dimension in morality, far from evincing confusion, seems to me to have reflected ordinary experience.’ This seemed a bit of a stretch to me -a mistaking of metaphor for prose, perhaps- but I pressed on nevertheless.

‘[W]hen people encountered others who were morally virtuous or vicious in their everyday life or in art… they felt, respectively, the sort of pleasure and displeasure evoked by other beautiful and ugly objects, and this phenomenon found its way into their language and thought.’ But with time, this view of beauty began to fade, and various detractors criticized the old approach -people like ‘Edmund Burke, who in 1757 considered it a ‘loose and inaccurate manner of speaking, [that] misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals’.

So, ‘beauty was thought to be mostly a matter of pleasure in the form of an object, and ugliness of displeasure in deformity; and form was limited to the visible or aural properties of an object. By contrast, goodness, and traits such as honesty and kindness, or selfishness and cowardice, are not like that; they are imperceptible, psychological traits, the goodness or badness of which stems from adherence to or violation of rational principles… Moreover, while the good is, or should be, desirable for its own sake, the beautiful is desirable because it’s pleasurable. So linking beauty and goodness might lead to a corruption or degeneration of moral motivation by encouraging the pursuit of goodness for its beauty.’

I began to lose interest at this point in his sign-wave and ultimately reductionist type of historical approach to beauty. I mean, let us suppose that beauty is largely subjective whereas, morality, because of the duties and obligations associated with being moral, is more objective… What does that mean? Is it an important distinction…?

Or… are we merely throwing everything into the pot in our frantic need for definition? Are we so desperate for a word, for a concept, that describes the pleasurable sensation of encounter, and engagement, that we flounder in the stew ourselves? Could it be that all the while, beauty was simply a metaphor -a way of saying we are pleased, and that what we are really struggling with is a way of expressing this?

And could it be why the word metaphor is so apt? Not to over-emphasize the need of delving into etymological derivations whenever we are stuck for something to say, its component morphemes are instructive: phore meaning ‘bearer of’ and meta designating an analysis at a higher, more abstract level. Personally, I think the famous 18th century French writer, Stendhal defined beauty the best: he called it la promesse de bonheur (the promise of happiness).

Do we really need more than that…?

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To make an envious mountain on my back

The situation was awkward, I have to admit. I had my arms full of groceries as I attempted to make my way through a glass door in the little roadside mall where I’d parked my car. It seemed too heavy a door for the size of the corridor, and for some reason, it opened inward. Anyway, as I struggled to pull it open, trying not to squash some of the more delicate produce in my bags, I saw someone on the other side who looked puzzled at my dilemma.

“Here, let me help you,” I heard her say -or rather saw her lips say- through the thick glass. I suppose I would have been grateful for the help under any circumstances, but the offer came from a frail looking middle-aged woman in an electric wheelchair scooter -you know, the type you see travelling on sidewalks throughout the city, often with a little flag fluttering above them in the wind of their passage. Her legs were strapped carefully in place, in case they, too, might end up blowing off if she hit a bump. And, in case they did I suppose, she had strapped a fold-up walker onto a sturdy-looking rack behind her seat.

Without a blink, she skillfully maneuvered her little craft to the door, and pushed it open with a wheel then, after entering, held it open for me with her hand.

“But how will you get out again?” I asked, amazed at how easily she’d entered.

A smile suddenly appeared on her face as she pointed at the wall beside me. “You just have to touch that button,” she said, pointing to a waist-high metal plate that was painted a bright orange colour. “You learn to look around when you’re in one of these,” she added, patting her wheelchair as if it were a pet.

Perhaps it was the look of surprise on my face, or maybe I hesitated just a fraction too long before I moved towards the open door, but I could see a sudden twinkle in her eyes as she watched me. “What a turnabout, eh?” she said, with barely disguised mirth. “The disabled helping the abled… Who’da thought?”

I must have blushed at the fact she’d read my mind -or at least my body language. “I… I didn’t mean…” I mumbled rather clumsily. But even as I said it, I wondered if my reaction had been that obvious -that, well, rude.

The lady chuckled at my discomfort. “Sorry,” she interrupted, “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable or anything.” Her face relaxed into a broad grin. “You just looked so surprised…” Then, with a quick and practiced turn of her vehicle she backed it towards me. “Here, put some of those bags on top of my walker on the rack -they look heavy. I’ll help you to your car if you’d like.” And she turned in her seat and winked at me.

Funny, but ever since that time, I’ve begun to look at disability in a different way. It’s almost as if the members of one kingdom were looking over the border and seeing people doing the same things as them, only differently -the us and them version of society they’d been taught dissolving as they watched.

Maybe that episode was what attracted me to an article about disability in the Conversation a while back: https://theconversation.com/should-i-say-disabled-person-or-person-with-a-disability-113618  The author, Mary Ann McColl, a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and member of the Canadian Disability Policy Alliance, observed that ‘Disability is a sensitive topic. Fear of saying the wrong thing prevents people from saying anything at all, and makes us avoid having important conversations about disability.’

Her point, I gather, is that we should listen to how the person in question talks about their disability, both to understand how they envision it, and to help us address the issue in terms they find appropriate so we can avoid the cutesy language that is supposed to show we ‘understand’. As examples, McColl cites, ‘Language like “differently-abled” or “diverse-ability” suggests there is something wrong with talking honestly and candidly about disability. It might even suggest to some people that there is something shameful about disability; or that we can’t talk about it directly unless we make it cute or pretty or funny.’ Cute they’re not -they’re demeaning. And as  McColl writes, ‘Having a disability doesn’t make someone a hero, a saint, a victim, a burden or a soldier. This type of hyperbole gets in the way of having authentic relationships with people with disabilities. These words suggest one-dimensional characters.’

The lady in the mobility scooter certainly wasn’t one-dimensional, in fact, if anything, she seemed more engaged with the world than I usually am -more interested in helping than in being helped, I think. During that brief encounter with Doris, I realized that once the surprise of her -what, disability?- had worn off, I forgot that it even existed. She was just a woman helping a total stranger in a time of need. She even introduced me to a similarly scooter-bound friend who was waiting for her out in the parking lot. The friend had a lot more levers and buttons on her scooter than Doris, however, and one of her arms was folded, unmoving, on her lap.

“Wednesdays are our shopping days,” Doris explained. “So we usually meet for lunch and a few laughs.”

Stacy, her friend, giggled like a little girl and her eyes flew over to my face to welcome me. “That’s mostly on Wednesdays,” she added with a mischievous smile. “Normally we just go to the park, or to a show… You know, retired-person stuff…”

I couldn’t help but remember the two of them as I read some of McColl’s suggestions: ‘Is the disability a pertinent issue in the conversation you are having or the introduction you are making? We don’t specify a person’s gender, ethnicity, occupation or many other personal details when introducing them. Disability is a condition of life, like those others. It will be salient in some conversations and not in others.’

How right she is. In fact, I have joined both Stacy and Doris for lunch a few times since we first met, and not once did either of them introduce me to their friends as non-disabled. I’d like to think I fit right in…

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An Achilles Heel?

 

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the average person, even if they’re only vaguely aware of Homer’s poems The Iliad, or The Odyssey, even if they are mildly conversant with the story of the siege of Troy and the Trojan horse, even if they have sort of heard of the Grecian heroes Odysseus and Achilles or perhaps the Trojan hero Aeneas, and even if they could pretend they remember that the author -not to mention the stories and characters- may or may not have been reality based… even if this were the case, the colours of their skin and hair probably do not rank particularly high in the recollection. Frankly, I -certainly not a card-carrying member of any historical society- had not given it much thought. Well, none, actually -some things are just not that important, I guess.

And when I think of the way Homer was taught in my freshman class in university, I suppose I merely assumed that detailed descriptions were unnecessary -obviously, they would each look similar to how we have portrayed Christ in all the medieval religious art: vaguely Caucasian. And in my student days, the zeitgeist of academia as well as the rest of western society, seemed to be swimming in what we might now call white privilege. Of course the ancient Greeks were white -I mean, just look at the white marble statues they have bequeathed to us. The fact that they were originally brightly painted was not known -or at least not communicated to most of us in my day.

So, although the article in an edition of Aeon that questioned the skin colour of Achilles, did not shock me, it did make me think about the long held western conceit that the ancient Greeks, on whom we have modelled so many of our democratic ideas, were fair-skinned. Even as I put this assumption into words, I realize that, however unintended, it seems terribly racist. And yet, some things do need to be probed, clarified: https://aeon.co/essays/when-homer-envisioned-achilles-did-he-see-a-black-man

The essay, written by Tim Whitmarsh, a professor of Greek culture at the University of Cambridge, attempts to make sense of what little historical evidence exists from those almost pre-historical times. ‘The poems are rooted in ancient stories transmitted orally, but the decisive moment in stabilising them in their current form was the period from the 8th to the 7th centuries BCE. The siege of Troy, the central event in the mythical cycle to which the Homeric poems belong, might or might not be based on a real event that took place in the earlier Bronze Age, in the 13th or 12th century BCE. Historically speaking, the poems are an amalgam of different temporal layers: some elements are drawn from the contemporary world of the 8th century BCE, some are genuine memories of Bronze Age times… Achilles was not a historical personage; or, rather, the figure in the poem might or might not be distantly connected to a real figure, but that isn’t the point. Achilles, as we have him and as the Greeks had him, is a mythical figure and a poetic creation. So the question is not ‘What did Achilles look like?’ but ‘How does Homer portray him?’

Fragments of evidence exist, but many are fraught with translational discrepancies and contemporaneous social conventions that confuse the issue. For example, at the time, ‘females are praised for being ‘white-armed’, but men never are. This differentiation finds its way into the conventions of Greek (and indeed Egyptian) art too, where we find women often depicted as much lighter of skin than men. To call a Greek man ‘white’ was to call him ‘effeminate’.’

Also, ‘Achilles is said in the Iliad to have xanthos hair. This word is often translated as ‘blond’… [But] the Greek colour vocabulary simply doesn’t map directly onto that of modern English. Xanthos could be used for things that we would call ‘brown’, ‘ruddy’, ‘yellow’ or ‘golden’.’ And, ‘Weirdly, some early Greek terms for colour seem also to indicate intense movement… xanthos is etymologically connected to another word, xouthos, which indicates a rapid, vibrating movement. So, while xanthos certainly suggests hair in the ‘brown-to-fair’ range, the adjective also captures Achilles’ famous swift-footedness, and indeed his emotional volatility.’

‘So to ask whether Achilles and Odysseus are white or black is at one level to misread Homer. His colour terms aren’t designed to put people into racial categories, but to contribute to the characterisation of the individuals, using subtle poetic associations… Greeks simply didn’t think of the world as starkly divided along racial lines into black and white: that’s a strange aberration of the modern, Western world, a product of many different historical forces, but in particular the transatlantic slave trade and the cruder aspects of 19th-century racial theory. No one in Greece or Rome ever speaks of a white or a black genos (‘descent group’). Greeks certainly noticed different shades of pigmentation (of course), and they differentiated themselves from the darker peoples of Africa and India… but they also differentiated themselves from the paler peoples of the North.’ In other words, concludes, Whitmarsh, ‘Greeks did not, by and large, think of themselves as ‘white’.’

This information would be filed in the ho-hum section of our need-to-know list for most of us, I think, and yet, Whitmarsh, in his introduction points out that ‘in an article published in Forbes, the Classics scholar Sarah Bond at the University of Iowa caused a storm by pointing out that many of the Greek statues that seem white to us now were in antiquity painted in colour. This is an uncontroversial position, and demonstrably correct, but Bond received a shower of online abuse for daring to suggest that the reason why some like to think of their Greek statues as marble-white might just have something to do with their politics.’

That there are people out there who seem threatened by knowledge which doesn’t accord with their own confirmation biases is, to me, more deeply troubling than mere disagreement. After all, we can disagree with something without being threatened by it. Disagreement allows for discussion, and possible attempts at rebuttal, using other evidence. Or countering with other interpretations of the same facts. In the end, isn’t it all just a game? An academic exercise which, after the initial flurry of excitement and barrage of words, should end, like all closely fought games, with a glass of wine?

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The primrose path?

 

Every so often, I feel I have been blindsided -kept out of the loop either because I haven’t been diligent in my reading, or, more likely, haven’t thought things through adequately.

Philosophy concerns itself with the fundamental nature of reality, so I had always assumed there were few, if any, territories left untouched. In fact, I would have thought that the very nature of the discipline would have enticed its members to explore the more problematic subjects, if only to test the waters.

Of course, it’s one thing to continue to study the big topics -Beauty, Truth, and Knowledge and so on- but yet another to subject the more controversial, unpleasant issues like, say, Garbage, or Filth to critical philosophical analysis. At best one might argue it would be a waste of time commenting on their existential value. In fact, even suggesting that they might be worthy of philosophical consideration borders on the ridiculous, and the pointless -yet another example of a discipline grown dotty with age.

I have always felt that Plato was on to something in his insistence that what we experience are only particular and incomplete examples of what he called ideal Forms. We can all recognize a chair, for example, despite the fact that chairs can assume many forms, with innumerable shapes and sizes. And yet somehow, out of all the variations, even a child can recognize a chair: they can recognize the chairness of the object, if you will. So, it seems we can all understand the idea that any one particular example of a chair, or a triangle, say, is only a sample of the Forms of chairness, or triangleness… And because the Forms are only describable in the particular, we can never experience the true Forms except in our imagination. The Forms are, in effect, perfect and unchanging, unlike their earthly examples.

Where am I going with this? Well, although we might accept that this imaginary and essentially indescribable Form of what we’re calling chairness is ‘perfect’, could we say the same of other objects that make up our everyday reality -Garbage, for example? Is there an analogously ‘perfect’ Form for Garbage? Even thinking about that seems, well, valueless. Silly.

But, then again, uncharted waters have always attracted the brave -some may say, the unusual– among us. For my part, I was on my way elsewhere when I tripped over an article sticking out like a root on a forest trail. I suppose I should have known better than to start reading it. https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophy-should-care-about-the-filthy-excessive-and-unclean

‘[C]an the ‘unclean’ – dirt, mud, bodily wastes, the grime of existence – be relevant to the philosopher’s quest for wisdom and the truth?’ the author, Thomas White, asks. ‘Philosophers don’t often discuss filth and all its disgusting variations, but investigating the unclean turns out to be as useful an exercise as examining the highest ideals of justice, morality and metaphysics. In his dialogue Parmenides, Plato gives us an inkling of the significance of philosophising about the unclean, which he names ‘undignified objects’, such as hair, mud and dirt.’ When Parmenides questions Socrates about the issue, even Socrates is troubled and changes the subject. What hope is there, then, to include it as a legitimate topic for philosophical inquiry?

As White observes, ‘The unclean’s ‘undignified objects’ represent a kind of outer twilight zone – a metaphysical no-man’s land – that eludes overarching theories about the meaning of reality… The unclean’s raw existence is a great intractable that rudely interrupts a philosopher’s thinking when it fails to fit neatly into the theory of forms, thus forcing the philosopher to curb hasty, ambitious generalisations, and think even harder and more clearly.’ Of course, it has been suggested that ‘Plato attacked his own theory of Platonic ideas in order to know the truth, not to defend his own preconceived views.’ Indeed, maybe we need to be careful about insisting that any one particular philosophical model should be able explain everything. Even the discipline of physics admits that quantum theory and Newtonian theory seem to belong to separate Magisteria: each has its own domain -its own kingdom. Its own validity…

And yet for some reason, even in my dotage, I am reluctant to abandon Plato’s idea of Forms, no matter how societally objectionable the subject matter. Is there something to be said for, let’s say, filth -as in ‘not clean’- for which there may be a perfect Form? A ‘not-cleanness’ even a child could recognize?

When my children were young -so young that the world was fresh and new- they felt the need to explore: to climb whatever presented itself to their eyes, to look under things for what might be hidden there, and, of course, to taste whatever titillated their imaginations, or seduced their gaze.

As a parent, I have to admit that I assumed I should restrict their investigations to what I felt was safe and otherwise to what I found personably acceptable, but I couldn’t microscope them every second they were in my charge.

I remember one time, shortly after my daughter had learned to toddle around, I took her and her older brother out for a walk in a park near my house. The day was warm, and there was only one available park bench particularly appropriate as a base from which to watch the two of them wander around noisily within a little grassy clearing.

I must have dozed off in the sunlight, because when I opened my eyes the two of them seemed praeternaturally quiet and huddled over something they’d found in the grass. Curious to see what they’d found so interesting, I sauntered over to find my daughter contentedly munching away at something she’d found.

It didn’t look particularly edible, so I gently disentangled it from her mouth. I’m not sure what it was, and although parts of it were white, other parts where she had managed to break through the exterior, were brown and, frankly, disgusting.

“That’s not a good thing to eat, Cath,” I said, as her face contorted into a proto-wail.

“She thought it was popcorn,” my son explained, with a theatrical shrug.

I saw another similar white object on the grass nearby that promptly disintegrated as I picked it up. “That’s not popcorn, Michael,” I said as I brought it as close to my nose as I dared.

He shrugged again, as Catherine began to cry. “I didn’t think it was,” he explained. “And anyway, I didn’t try any…” he added, rather guiltily I thought.

I picked up my daughter to calm her and stared at Michael. “Then why did you let her eat it?” I asked, shaking my head disapprovingly.

His little eyes slid up my face with all the innocence of childhood. “She thought it was pretty…” he explained.

I looked at the aged piece of canine detritus with new eyes. It was kind of attractive, I had to admit…

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A snowball’s chance… where?

Remember when Goldilocks sampled the porridge in the three bear’s cottage? One was too hot, another too cold, but baby bear’s was just right. Well, when it comes right down to it, I think I am pretty well a just-right-baby-bear kind of person. In fact, until recently, I figured we all were… But, as it usually turns out when I declare my allegiance to one side or the other, I’ve just discovered I made the wrong choice. Again.

I mean, it just makes sense to split the difference, eh? Try to choose the middle of the Bell curve so you’ll have room to maneuver if -or in my case, when– you back the wrong horse. From the middle, you can always say you were actually leaning towards the winning side -which you can’t from across the room. I learned that as a child who was owned by a railroad family which moved every year or so to a different part of Canada.

When we lived in the Prairies, I tried to pretend I liked the cold, but apart from throwing snowballs at passing busses, or hurling myself down snowdrifts on a piece of cardboard, I actually hated winter -it was far too cold. And on each blizzard-filled journey to and from the neighbourhood school -we were expected to walk in those days, not be driven- I was bundled up in so many layers, and my face shrouded by a scarf wrapped around it a hundred times, I would sometimes trundle off in the wrong direction until my mother ran out to point me another way. I was quite young then, of course, and each time I hoped she was coming to tell me school had been cancelled; I soon realized that in Winnipeg, they only cancelled classes if one of the rivers flooded.

The summers were not much better there -but they were even worse in the parts of Ontario where we ended up on our next several migrations. Put simply, even if you discounted the mosquitoes, the black flies, and pollen, and were careful not to step on snakes, or wander through poison ivy, or for that matter, follow the dog through the bush and end up having your mother pull ticks off your arms and legs when you got home, it was far too hot. Far too muggy. We couldn’t have afforded an air conditioner in those days -even if they had been invented- so I had to fight my brother to sit directly in front of the household’s only fan; and never behind him, because, well, my brother smelled like a gym-bag when he perspired.

But, I had always felt there was a credible argument for compromise. And, let’s face it, with temperature, it’s probably easier to don a coat or a sweater if it’s a little chilly, than to start stripping down if it’s too hot. I mean, I know you can’t please everybody, but I always thought that my compromises could stand the rough and tumble of any contrarian opinion. Until, that is, I bumped into the article in the Smithsonian Magazine that reported on a study published in PLOS One by researchers Tom Chang and Agne Kajackaite: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chilly-rooms-may-cool-womens-productivity-180972279

Their work suggested that ‘cold temperatures can negatively impact women’s cognitive performance.’ It would seem that ‘Temperature systems in many modern offices follow a decades-old model based on the resting metabolic rate of an “average male,” which is typically faster than a woman’s metabolic rate. Faster metabolisms also generate more body heat, which in turn means that women are often left shivering in the workplace.’

Now, we’re not talking Antarctic conditions in the room, or anything, and the performance differences measured were not Trump-resigns-under-pressure headlines, for sure, but nevertheless differences there were: ‘An increase in temperature of just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit was associated with a 1.76 percent increase in the number of math questions that female participants answered correctly—which may not seem like a lot, but it is nearly half of the four percent performance gap that exists between male and female high school students on the math section of the SAT … Increasing the temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit also boosted women’s performance on the verbal task by around one percent. Men, on the other hand, performed more poorly on the math and verbal tests in warmer temperatures.’

But wait a minute here. ‘[W]omen’s enhanced cognitive performance in warmer environments seemed to be driven by the fact that they were answering more of the test questions; the dip in male cognitive performance, on the other hand, was linked to a decrease in the number of questions answered.’ Uhmm… Isn’t that a little like equating absence of evidence with evidence of absence? (I always enjoy using that aphorism whenever I can fit it in.)

Anyway, I have no reason question the results and I have to say I was further softened by one author’s explanation that ‘the students might simply have felt better, which in turn prompted them to exert more effort.’ Fair enough -that’s something a Winnipeg kid would understand -it’s hard to concentrate with a scarf wrapped around your face, or wherever.

There may be a little more work to do in resolving the so-called ‘battle of the thermostat’, however.  ‘[T]he pool of participants [543 students from universities in Berlin], though large, was made up solely of college students. The research is, in other words, not representative of the age and education level of the general population.’ Still, ‘the study suggests that dismantling the “thermostat patriarchy” is about more than fostering women’s comfort—it’s also a question of productivity.’

Too bad they couldn’t have done a study like that during a Winnipeg blizzard when I was young and wrapped. But then again, the sample studied -male or female- would have been horribly biased: only those of us who actually made it to school would have survived to take the test. And, who knows anything about those whose mother’s weren’t watching the direction their little tykes were pointed when they left the safety of the house? Could we use the ‘evidence of absence’ thing again…?

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Sapere audi

Sapere audi – ‘Dare to know’, as the Roman poet Horace wrote. It was later taken up by famous Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, and it seemed like a suitable rallying cry as I negotiated the years that led from youth to, well, Age. Who could argue that ignorance is preferable to knowledge? That understanding something, better facilitates an informed decision about whether to believe or reject? To welcome, or close the door?

Admittedly, knowledge can be a moving target, both in time and perhaps in temperament as well. Whatever ‘knowing’ is that determines the appeal of a particular political philosophy, say, is not immutable, not forever carved in marble like the letters in Trajan’s column. One could start off in one camp, and then wander into another as the years wear thin. Perhaps it is the gradual friction of experience rubbing on hope that effects the change- but however it works, exposure can alter what we believe. If nothing else, it speeds adaptation, and enables us to habituate to things that we might once have shunned. And it is precisely this ability to acclimatize that may prove worrisome.

An essay by the philosopher Daniel Callcut drew this to my attention a while ago: https://aeon.co/ideas/if-anyone-can-see-the-morally-unthinkable-online-what-then

‘There are at least two senses of ‘morally unthinkable’. The first, that of something you have no inkling of is perhaps the purest form of moral innocence. Not only can you not contemplate doing X: you don’t even know what X is. This is the innocence that parents worry their children will lose online… Then there is the worry that if something becomes thinkable in the imaginative sense, then it might eventually become thinkable in the practical sense too… If virtue depends in part on actions being unthinkable, then the internet doubtless has a tendency to make unvirtuous actions all too thinkable… The idea that being a decent person involves controlling the kinds of thoughts you allow yourself to think can easily be met with resistance. If virtue depends on limits to what is thinkable, and a certain free-thought ideal celebrates no limits, then the potential conflict between freethinking and virtue is obvious.’

Of course, one of the several elephants in the room is the pornographic one -the ‘public discussion of the internet’s potential to undermine virtue focuses on the vast amount of easily accessible pornography… Porn, the research suggests, has the tendency to encourage the prevalence of thoughts that shouldn’t be thought: that women enjoy rape, and that No doesn’t really mean No. More generally, it has the tendency to encourage what the British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in the 1970s dubbed the ‘male gaze’: men staring at women’s bodies in a way that bypasses concern for a woman’s consent.’ And, not only that, there was the intriguing suggestion that ‘Liberals, worried about potential censorship, can sometimes find themselves defending the implausible position that great art has great benefits but that junk culture never produces any harms.’

As Callcut writes, ‘What we imagine is not inert: what we think about changes the people we are, either quickly or over time – but it still changes us.’ So, ‘If the image you are looking at is disturbing,’ he asks, ‘is it because it is explicit and unfamiliar to you, or is it because it is wrong? When are you looking at a problem, and when is the problem you?’ There is a definite tension ‘between virtues that by their nature restrict thought and imagination and the prevailing spirit of the internet that encourages the idea that everything should be viewable and thinkable.’

In other words, is it better not to know something? Is Sapere audi anachronistic, inappropriate -dangerous, even?

I find myself drawn back in time to something that happened to me when I was around 13 or 14 years of age. There was no internet, in those days, of course, and word of mouth, or naughty whispers with subtle nudges were sometimes how we learned about adult things.

A somewhat duplicitous friend had lent me a book to read: The Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers, I think it was called. His parents had given it to him when they’d found his stash of overly-suggestive magazines hidden in a closet. I wasn’t sure what to make of the loan, but at that tender age, and in those pre-social media days, there was much about life that remained mysterious and hidden from me. I hadn’t yet given much thought to girls; it was still an innocent time.

I remember being embarrassed even handling the book -especially since it didn’t look as if it had even been opened. My first instinct was to hide it somewhere my mother wouldn’t find it. Obviously the closet hadn’t worked for my friend, so, since it was summer, I decided to put it at the bottom of my sock drawer where I kept the ones I only used in winter. She’d never need to burrow down that deeply.

But, oddly enough, a few days later, I discovered the book had acquired a folded piece of paper in the ‘How babies are made’, section. ‘Read this,’ the note said in my mother’s unmistakeable cursive.

The next morning at breakfast I could hardly look up from my plate, but to her credit, she acted as if it was just another summer’s day: the radio on the shelf was playing some music softly in the background, and my father was buried behind his newspaper.

But the discovery triggered an embarrassing walk with my father who had obviously been delegated by my mother to deliver the Talk, as my friends termed it in those days. And although it turned out well, I couldn’t help but think I had crossed a line in my life. And judging by the gravity with which he approached it, I had just been initiated into a hitherto forbidden club.

In this case, fortunately, the not-yet imagined realm was discussed sensitively and, with many blushes on both our faces, placed in a realistic context -and with what I would later realize was a sensible perspective…

Despite my age, and after all these years, I continue to be naïve about many things I suspect, and yet I still feel there is a need to defend the ‘Dare to know,’ exhortation. Virtue does not depend on actions never considered, nor on a drought of as-yet-unimagined things; decency does not simply require controlling what you allow yourself to think, any more than pulling the covers over your head at night protected you from the bogeyman in the room when you were a child.

Virtue -morality- isn’t the absence of temptation; there is, and probably will continue to be, an allure to what we do not know -to what is kept hidden from us. There will always be a struggle, I imagine, and the more you know about it -and about the world- the more you enable yourself to understand context. I still wonder what type of adulthood I might have wandered into had my mother not found that book and realized there was an opportunity.

Sapere audi, I almost wish she had written instead, in that note to her already nerdy child -I think I would have loved the Latin.

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Do you play crib?

I’m afraid I was a user, but long ago, you understand -before I really knew what I was doing. At that age, you have to depend on your parents, I suppose, but we all know what a lottery that is… At any rate, so the story goes, I escaped unscathed when the contraption I was using tipped over in the parental bed during the night.

It was a crib my father had built and carefully re-sanded so his youngest son would not suffer the same splinters his older child had gathered in his cheek from the same container. Even parental beds are inherently unstable and tippy -a property he felt would work in his favour to rock the baby and insure a modicum of sleep for my exhausted mother… and him, of course.

It was a clunky thing though, I’m told. It had high walls to prevent inadvertent crawl-out, but no breast-holes for ease of night-feeding. It also failed to position its center of gravity low enough to counter any endogenous, let alone exogenous activity, and apparently all three of us were, well, active in the depths of night. The result was predictable: the crib and I spent the rest of my useful infancy on the floor near -but not too near- the bed.

I was reminded of this autobiographical detail from my early life by a delightful article written by Christina Szalinski in the Smithsonian Magazine about novel ways of conquering the nocturnally insomnial tendencies of babies: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/history-cribs-other-brilliant-bizarre-inventions-getting-babies-to-sleep-180972138

‘Throughout history parents have invented places for their babies to rest—rockers, hammocks, swings, carriers, cribs and more… The original baby rockers were likely hammocks. Wooden cradles came later, and in the nineteenth century, metal became popular for hygienic reasons.’ But, of course, rocking required work -repetitive work- and a person would get tired, not to say bored after a while so ‘turn of the twentieth-century inventors added cogs, spring motors or hand cranks to cradles so they could rock, at least for a while, on their own.’ And, as technology and catchy labels evolved, new and improved models soon took over: ‘Now we have the Bluetooth-enabled 4moms mamaRoo 4 swing that “moves like you do,” the Graco Sense2Soothe swing with “Cry Detection Technology,” the SNOO Smart Sleeper bassinet with “calming sensations of the womb,” and Ford’s Max Motor Dreams crib that was made to mimic a car ride (however, this one was never sold to the public).’ No need for sanding -my father would have loved them.

But I can’t help but think he didn’t do much in the way of historical research into his project. As a matter of fact, for years the only books I remember in the bathroom library were Reader’s Digests. Szalinski tells us that ‘A half barrel with all but three slats removed, one on each side and one on top, was probably the world’s first device designed for nighttime sleep. Called an “arcuccio” or “arcutio,” Italian for “little arch,” this seventeenth-century creation was put on the mother’s bed with baby inside, allowing a mother to sleep and breastfeed throughout the night without the possibility of rolling onto her infant, or having her infant roll out of bed.’

But, in a way, I’m glad my father was who he was -a no-nonsense, practical inventor who was unswayed by neonatal fashionistas- because there was an American pediatrician Luther Emmett Holt who wrote a book called The Care and Feeding of Children. In it, he said he believed that ‘“fresh air is required to renew and purify the blood” and that “those who sleep out of doors are stronger children.”

We lived in Winnipeg in those halcyon days, and exposing me to the whims of a prairie winter would have been counterproductive (I was born in December); mind you, the summer recourse to which city dwellers apparently resorted was to ‘put baby in a cage suspended out the window, much like an air conditioning unit.’ Apparently, writes Szalinski, ‘Eleanor Roosevelt used one in their townhouse window for their daughter, Anna, until a neighbor threatened to report her for child cruelty.’ We only had a one-story house at the time, so my plight might have gone unnoticed for weeks… Okay, hours…

The crib that I found a bit creepy, though, was one invented in 1944 by the experimental psychologist B.F. Skinner (of Skinner Box fame, for studying animal behaviour using -amongst other things- operant conditioning ). His baby box, which he called the ‘air crib’ was ‘a completely enclosed crib with three solid walls and a ceiling, and a safety glass front, that allowed both temperature and humidity to be controlled for baby.’ He was apparently concerned that ‘being bundled up meant a child’s self-directed movement would be inhibited.’ But -surprise- what with his widely publicized animal experiments, the  crib seemed a little too familiar  and never caught on -especially amongst his lab associates.

Anyway, speaking of dealing with the very young and their undeniable penchant for rocking, Szalinski brings us up to the simple, why-didn’t-they-think-of-this-before, bi-gendered methodology of my own parental era: wearing them, of course. I mean, how hard is that?

And yet, ‘Babywearing fell out of favor in the mid- to late-nineteenth century in European and U.S. cities when roads were paved and strollers became a status symbol.’ Nevertheless, I can remember many a hike I took with my son comfortably strapped to my chest in a Snugli. I suppose I was lucky, though –first of all because, so far as I remember, neither my wife nor I tripped very much, and ‘because attachment theory shifted parenting attitudes in the 1970s and 80s. Warm, sensitive care and physical contact was no longer seen as a threat to a baby’s development of autonomy (like it was from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s)—you could hold your baby (again) without “spoiling” them.’

I’m trying to remember whether or not I was spoiled. I don’t recall ever being carried around, nor, except for the crib-episode in those proto-Anthropocene, Snugliless days, ever being dropped, so I guess it all worked out. My father never taught me any carpentry, though.

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Bad Samaritans?

I suspect this is an incredibly naïve, not to mention unpopular, opinion, but I suppose in these times of plague, I should be grateful we have borders -fences that keep them out, walls that keep us safe. But I’m not. I’ve always mistrusted borders: I’ve always been suspicious of boundaries that artificialize the denizens of one region -that privilege residents as opposed to non-residents, friends versus strangers, our needs compared to theirs.

Call me unworldly, but what makes me special, and you not so? It seems to me the italics I have used to mark differences, are as arbitrary as the differences they mark. We are all the same, and deserve the same consideration.

That said, we seem to be stuck with countries determined only to look after their own -even with the global crisis in which we find ourselves in these special, but frightening times. In a desperate attempt at historical recidivism, we are attempting a re-balkanization of the world.

But what is a country, anyway? And does it have a special providence -or provenance, for that matter? I happened upon an interesting essay by Charles Crawford, who once served as the UK Ambassador to Sarajevo and Belgrade discussing much the same thing: https://aeon.co/essays/who-gets-to-say-what-counts-as-a-country

As he writes -‘There are only two questions in politics: who decides? and who decides who decides? … Who gets to say what is or is not a country? For most of human history, nation states as we now recognise them did not exist. Territories were controlled by powerful local people, who in turn pledged allegiance to distant authorities, favouring whichever one their circumstances suited. In Europe, the tensions in this system eventually led to the Thirty Years’ War which… ended in 1648 with a thorough revision of the relationship between land, people and power. The resulting set of treaties, known as the Peace of Westphalia, introduced two novel ideas: sovereignty and territorial integrity. Kings and queens had ‘their’ people and associated territory; beyond their own borders, they should not meddle.’

Voila, the modern idea of states, with loyalties only to themselves. But embedded in the concept were at least two principles -two problems: ‘The first is self-determination: the idea that an identified ‘people’ has the right to run its own affairs within its own state. The other is territorial integrity: the notion that the borders of an existing state should be difficult to change.’ But borders soon spawned customs and attitudes that were different from those on the other side –theirs were different from ours, so they must be different from us. An oversimplification, to be sure, but nonetheless a helpful guide, perhaps.

Borders can change, of course, but not easily, and often not without considerable turmoil. Think of ‘the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 [which] claimed up to a million lives… Ambiguous ceasefires can drag on indefinitely. Taiwan and its 23 million inhabitants live in a curious twilight zone of international law, recognised by only 22 smaller countries and the Vatican.’ Examples of each, abound.

And not all borders were established to reconcile linguistic, ethnic, or religious differences. There are many examples, but perhaps the most egregious borders in modern times were those largely arbitrary ones in the Middle East drawn by two aristocrats Mark Sykes from Britain, and Francois Georges-Picot from France in 1916. As Wikipedia describes: ‘it was a secret agreement between Britain and France with assent from the Russian Empire and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.’

A famous quotation that encapsulates the attitude was that of Sykes: ‘At a meeting in Downing Street, Mark Sykes pointed to a map and told the prime minister: “I should like to draw a line from the “e” in Acre to the last “k” in Kirkuk.”’-a straight line, more or less.

Crawford’s essay was intended to explain the continuing tensions in the Balkans, but it raises a pertinent question for these times -namely, ‘Should nations stay within their historical boundaries, or change as their populations do?’ Or, put another way, should boundaries remain impermeable to needs outside what I would term their arbitrary limits?

With the current pandemic, there are, no doubt, many reasons that could be offered for being selective at borders: family-first ones, by and large. We need to close our borders to support our own economy, feed our own people; in the midst of a global epidemic, it is not the time to sacrifice our own needs by offering altruism to others. Actually, it seems to me that the underlying belief is that migration -legal or otherwise- is a large contributor to the spread of the infection. But once a communicable virus is in the country, its own citizens also become vectors -and they far outnumber the number of refugees or migrants.

Rather than being focussed on borders and exclusion, efforts would likely be more intelligently spent on things like temporary isolation of any who may have been in areas where the epidemic may have been less controlled, and enforced social separation (social-distancing) of everybody else. Consistent, and frequently publicized advice and updates about new developments to educate the public -all the public- is key to managing fear. And epidemics -they have a habit of evolving rapidly.

And testing, testing, testing. Unless and until, we know who might have the infection and be a risk to others, we are essentially blinkered. It’s not the strangers among us who pose the risk, it’s those who are infected and either have no symptoms or who are at the earliest stages of an infection that has not yet had time to declare itself.

The World Health Organization (and others) have pointed out that travel restrictions not only divert resources from the containment effort, they also have human costs. ‘Travel measures that significantly interfere with international traffic may only be justified at the beginning of an outbreak, as they may allow countries to gain time, even if only a few days, to rapidly implement effective preparedness measures. Such restrictions must be based on a careful risk assessment, be proportionate to the public health risk, be short in duration, and be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves. Travel bans to affected areas or denial of entry to passengers coming from affected areas are usually not effective in preventing the importation of cases but may have a significant economic and social impact.’ And, as all of us realize -and expect- by now: ‘Travellers returning from affected areas should self-monitor for symptoms for 14 days and follow national protocols of receiving countries.’ Amen.

Turning away migrants often has some desired political effects, however: diverting attention away from the receiving country’s possible lack of preparedness and foresight. It’s seldom about the Science and more about Nationalism -further stoking fears of the other.

I think that at the moment, we are forgetting, as was immortalized in that ancient Persian adage that, This, too, will pass. The pandemic will exhaust itself, and likely soon become both amenable to a vaccine and other medical therapy. And those affected will not soon forget -nor will those denied entry in their time of need. As our economies rebuild in its wake, we -and they- will need all the allies we can muster. Best to be remembered as a friend who helped, than someone who turned their back.

We really are all in this together. As one of my favourite poets, Kahlil Gibran writes, ‘You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so… They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.’