Author Archives: Jackson Harper

Kindling and Butane

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Professor Sloan’s talk about the trial of Galileo Galilei and whether it may be considered evidence for a conflict between religion and science may not have been the most groundbreaking look at the subject, but it was interesting nonetheless. Providing animations were quite helpful in demonstrating how retrograde movement was key to the debate between the geocentric and heliocentric theories.

But I was was pleasantly surprised to find that his opinions on the supposed religion-science divide mirrored my own. Yes, religion is typically conservative and dogmatic, but it acts more as fuel for the fire of social movements rather than the actual kindling at its heart. Rarely do believers follow all the precepts of a faith in its original form to the letter. Reinterpretation and selective attention are legion. And it is when new eyes look upon old material that a new species of logs are thrown in the hearth. The nature of the fire will be determined by these logs, yet without the lighter fluid of faith, the fire would never burn as passionately, persistently, or fiercely.

The Disillusioned, the Dreamer, and the Fool

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I went to Professor Case’s talk on the refugee crisis expecting to hear a narrative focusing on the xenophobia of a national government, the compassion of a select few volunteers, and the determination of crowds of people who have been touched by inhuman atrocity. And all of these were indeed components of the situation, but I was surprised to discover the involvement of other sentiments and perspectives.

One of the recurring characters, so to speak, was the Two-tailed Dog Party, a band of absurdists who mock the political status quo in Hungary. A recent campaign of theirs involved the creation of doppelgänger billboards that mocked the xenophobic fear-mongering of the ruling party’s original versions. As amusing as these stunts are, they also reflect a sense of impotence haunting those who oppose the regime of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. When a party that calls itself Politics Can Be Different fails to offer meaningful change, it is completely unsurprising that disillusionment sets it. And yet people still refuse to accept the status quo, leading to the organization of such groups such as the Two-tailed Dog Party, who are less about supporting positions than laughing at the maddening wrongness of the positions that have been offered.

Complimenting this sentiment are the results of a survey mentioned by Professor Case that found that more Hungarians were concerned with emigration than immigration. Such feelings can be represented by a man from a border town who expressed a fear that one day nobody will live there because they will all have moved somewhere else. Post-Cold War optimism has given way to years of disappointment. Perhaps the most surprising conflict between the waves of refugees and the Hungarian citizenry is one of optimism. While the refugees come with hopes for a better life, many a Hungarian seems to look sadly at these newcomers as tragically idealistic. I was expecting something sad, but not this brand of melancholy.

A Case Study in Worker’s Rights

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What better way to honor an institution’s anniversary than to stomp on the misguided words of its founding speech. In honor of its 70th anniversary, Cornell’s ILR School hosted a showing of The Hand That Feeds, a recent documentary about an effort to unionize a New York sandwich shop, which was led by its predominantly Hispanic employees. During the film’s introduction, one of the two ILR professors hosting the event reflected on the speech Governor Dewey (yes, that Dewey who most definitely defeated Harry S. Truman in the 1948 presidential election) delivered when the school was founded. It was essentially a thinly veiled diatribe against gains in worker’s rights. Sadly, Dewey would probably be rather content (or at least not irate) with the state of American labor as illustrated by the film.

The Hand That Feeds is ultimately an optimistic film. After months of struggle, the employees of the sandwich shop  succeed in forming a union with unprecedented bargaining powers.  The film and its subjects are jubilant with this result and are quite explicit with how remarkable it is. But then again, this result is exceptional. Lurking in the margins of the film are all of the similar movements and struggles that went nowhere or backfired spectacularly. To the film’s credit, it is completely aware of the need for more work to be done. The film actually closes with scenes of protests in favor of raising the minimum wage for fast food employees. But while the film’s final message is “It can be done”, pessimists may walk away with the addendum “…but it’s really, really hard”.

The Oceanic Menagerie

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From the right perspective, historical preservation is an absurd joke. Someone could write a splendiferous treatise on metaphysics, only for some detail to be declared a threat to the wellbeing of society, resulting in the annihilation of all copies. Or maybe some noblewoman’s diary has survived the ravages of time to the present, so now scholars are poring over a dead person’s private thoughts to figure out how people used to spend their free time in the distant past. The passage of time is unfair and arbitrary and unforgivingly irreversible. So it’s a good day when you find some high quality glass sculptures in salvageable condition.

What stood out to me the most during Professor Harvell’s presentation about the Blaschka family’s glass sculptures of various forms of aquatic life and contemporary efforts at coral reef preservation was the ironic contrast between the two. For years, these beautiful glass replicas of octopi, jellyfish, and other creatures of the deep have been languishing in the dark while their living counterparts experience more and more duress as their habitats are disturbed by human encroachment. That the fates of these two parties have converged once more is a testament to the fragility of existence. A strong push can knock almost anything out of being; we must remain aware of our surroundings, lest we allow them to slip into oblivion because they just seemed like they’d always be there.

If a Building Burns Down Near the Forest and Nobody’s Inside It, Is It an Act of Domestic Terrorism?

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Radical groups aren’t the easiest to portray on film. If the filmmaker is too critical, the movie feels like a feature length “tsk tsk”. Saying “they had the right idea, but I don’t approve of their methods” typically doesn’t serve well as a call to action; if anything it only supports the status quo by quelling enthusiasm for a cause. Of course, a highly sympathetic portrayal bereft of critique will likely alienate moderate audiences, who will be so repulsed by the illegal actions and/or harsh views of the subjects that they won’t even stop to consider whether a valid point is being made. Plus, some members of the audience could be inspired to emulate the subjects and go burn down a garage. Unless your goal is agitprop, this is not a good result.

So I was impressed by how well Marshall Curry was able to toe the line between condemnation and sympathy. Really, the Earth Liberation Front members themselves seem to say it best; after all, they’ve had first hand experience. Perhaps the most memorable moment was when Curry starts interviewing ex-ELF Suzanne Savoie: she says something to the effect of “Oh, you wanted to talk about that” with the same tone one would use when asked about a ridiculously embarrassing thing you did in high school. There’s shame, but not to a psychologically debilitating degree.

The ELF members interviewed take full responsibility for their actions. Sometimes they only seem to half-regret their involvement. The destruction of a horse slaughterhouse is talked of as a righteous action (Curry’s portrayal of said incident suggests agreement). But when they talk of a case where an innocent farm had property burned and defaced due to poor intel, members recognize that they may have gotten in over their heads. Looking back, Savoie says she can find no way to justify that episode. By taking testimony from the perpetrators themselves, Curry is able to both capture the enthusiasm and reasoning behind political radicalism without condoning it. That he includes less radical environmentalist acquaintances of ELF and the arson victims in his documentary is icing on the cake.

Carrots and Sticks and Oil

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At this week’s Rose Cafe event, three professors (Shanjun Li, Greg Poe, and David Wolfe) came to speak about contemporary environmental issues, offering an economist’s take on them. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Lake Source Cooling is an environmentally sustainable project that keeps West Campus chilled by using Lake Cayuga as a heat sink. I was also quite interested to learn about Cornell’s ties to environmental activism and the creation of technology for sustainability initiatives.

Yet what stood out to me was the emphasis on creating incentives to drive environmental change. This makes some sense to me as a psychology student; rewards are typically better at shaping behavior than punishment, as the latter only informs the subject of what they shouldn’t do, not what they should do. Spritzing a puppy with water because he made a mess on the kitchen floor will discourage further accidents in that room, but the little fur ball may just ruin your bedroom rug instead of learning to use the newspaper corner. The capitalist economic system we currently inhabit thrives on self-interest and typically looks scornfully on restraints that threaten its expansion. Environmental policy can thus be made more effective by giving regulations a new spin; instead of looking at them as punishing polluters, rework them so that they are seen as rewarding efforts to reduce pollution.

The importance of incentives also relates to the impact of the falling price of oil. Many recent projects once promoted by the fossil fuel industry have gone south simply because they were not profitable. The Keystone XL pipeline was seen as not worth the controversy when the oil it would transport became less valuable. Oil exploration in the Arctic has stalled due to the same phenomenon. While these recent developments do demonstrate how political resistance can block undesirable business deals, they also suggest that if something is valuable enough, people will be willing to deal with lots of flack in order to obtain it.

The Devil’s in the Details: Jens David Ohlin

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Professor Ohlin began his talk with a discussion of the recent airstrike against an Afghanistan hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) by the United States military. To me, and probably many other audience members, the attack seemed to fit the category of according to an intuitive understanding of the term. One nation attacked a target in another nation, resulting in the injury and death of civilians. Furthermore, that target was a hospital, something that is intuitively thought of as a safe zone (which it actually is under international law). But then Professor Ohlin began to complicate things. This would be a running theme for the next hour.

As Professor Ohlin introduced the matter of collateral damage and proportionality into the discussion, it became clear this incident was not open-and-shut, at least in practice. Even though it just seems like the US committed a war crime with the attack, international law complicates things. After all, people are expected to die during wartime, including civilians. Nobody’s perfect. So laws were made to determine what is an “acceptable” and “proportionate” amount of collateral damage. A shrewd nation can then twist those rules to elude punishment for its misdeeds.

Another common theme within the talk was the difficulty of prosecuting a war criminal. As the International Criminal Court only includes so many nation states amongst its members, it can only judge individuals from certain parts of the world. The UN can be of assistance, but the veto power of the Security Council lets individual nations block any efforts that run contradictory to their personal interests. The message here, as with the talk on proportionality, is that common sense judgments on war crimes and other atrocities are not easily realized and that international laws meant to promote justice too frequently fall short of actualizing it.

Rupturing the Just-World Hypothesis

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The just-world hypothesis is an unfortunately legion cognitive bias. Simply put, it is the tendency of people to assume that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Thus, bad things do not happen to good people. Yet this does not reflect reality as it is. Injustice and unfairness happen every day. Innocent people suffer immensely for the most inane and petty reasons. It’s simply much easier to assume the victim had it coming or just avert your eyes rather than confront the miserable truth.

During his discussion of the state of American Indian affairs, Professor Eric Cheyfitz mentioned that one of the most resilient myths about Native Americans is that they no longer exist. As he listed crime after crime committed by the United States and its precursors against its original inhabitants, it is in some ways surprising that a people could survive so many forms of genocide. Add in the relatively more recent atrocities, such as abducting children in order to educate them in the Western way or keeping reservations as “domestic dependent nations” rather than granting them proper sovereignty, and the United States’ desire to obscure the cultures, histories, and existences of the peoples it stole becomes frightfully apparent. So many atrocities are clearly unjust, so if you want to maintain your mistaken belief in a righteous world, why not sweep the evidence away into a corner. It’s hard to think about what you can’t see after all. Talks such as this hinder that scheme, hopefully keeping the just-world hypothesis six feet under.