is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Just because I�m hungry, doesn�t mean I�ll steal your cookie.
Just because I�m hungry, doesn�t mean I�ll steal your cookie.
Today on the airplane (again on an airplane, this time to Salt Lake City) I was getting work done while occasionally looking up to watch a tiny silent Batman Begins on the airplane monitor, when I realized something else good about the movie Batman Begins. (I liked that movie!) This new good thing: the movie makes an argument that counters Machiavelli and Hobbes on fear and resembles instead a point made by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition.
In Batman Begins the bad guys have this substance that makes people experience fear while also hallucinating themselves into experiences much more frightful than what they actually face. They actually scare themselves to death. Ha. So Mrs. Tom Cruise sees a guy with a horrific burlap bag head and maggots growing out of his mouth and eyes instead of seeing a smallish dude with a bad mask on. Etc. Machiavelli and Hobbes both contend that when people fear you it makes them obey you because they want to preserve themselves from harm. Fear is the strongest passion for Hobbes because self-preservation is our most basic undeniable instinct: we can�t choose not to obey our fear, according to Hobbes. Fear is the most useful passion for Machiavelli because fear is something you can force someone to feel whereas love (along with other like passions) is not.
However, Hannah Arendt reminds us that even though there are certain inescapable aspects to the human condition (like the fact that we live and die, and fear and love, and must figure out how to live with each other in human plurality), these inescapable things do not determine our behavior absolutely. What this means is: fear may be inescapable, but our reactions to and judgments about fear are not determined. So it is possible for Mrs. Tom Cruise to feel fear and yet still protect a child, and then use her taser on an evil-horse-lord instead of cowering or melting in a quivery fearplosion. She resists! She acts heroically! And yet she is afraid. None of the things that are inescapable about being human determine our behavior in any predictable way. And that is why human beings are characterized by possibility as well as limitation.
Yes, that�s right. Batman Begins. It�s the natality of Batman!
Since last Friday (night of non-sleeping sadsick) I have gotten very little sleep. Saturday night I slept very little because I stayed up talking to Stephen and Marco and then had to wake to go to the airport at 4:15. Sunday night I got in late, readied myself for a morning lecture, and then woke up to teach. Monday night I slept a glorious ELEVEN hours. Tuesday night I was working on my paper for the conference in Salt Lake City. Wednesday night I was finalizing the paper, packing, and then waking up at 4:45 to go to the airport. ME TIRED. Me want cookie. And I never get any sleep at SPEP because I see so many people there whom I only see once a year, with whom I end up staying up late and drinking adult beverages. Often this means I�ll sleep through a morning session or two. But I have to wake up for both morning sessions this time because Gayle presents at 9 on Friday and I present at 9 on Saturday. WHEN WILL I SLEEP? I ask you.
Gayle and I go to SPEP together every year. (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. No, I am not kidding.) It�s fun. This is our tradition and we�ve been doing it for five years now, I think. (You know I�m not so good with time! And this is funny because my paper is about how to reconcile the competing temporalities within Nietzsche�s and Levinas� philosophies. (Perhaps you remember that my paper is about cruelty. Cruelty is related to the demands made by these temporalities, OK?) Both of my favorite philosophers ask us to suspend our ideas about linear temporality. Have they turned me into someone who can no longer gauge the passing of time in the same way most people do? Maybe Lou needs to teach me something about internal time consciousness. I�ll be she could make that into a good pick-up line, too!)
You may remember that last year I reported that I would be submitting a SPEP web diary to McSweeney�s. I never got the thing into a version that both Dave and I could agree on. I could have gone one more round and probably got it right, but I had very little time due to my many commitments, and I let it drop. I should go back and look at the document and just post it here, because parts of it were very funny. Note to self: deal.
Anyway, last night Gayle called so we could synchronize watches and figure out where to meet. I took down her flight number and said I�d meet her at her gate so we could rent a car. Then, this morning as I sat glassy-eyed waiting for my flight, she sat down next to me. Turns out we were ON THE SAME FLIGHT. She is currently a Fellow at Princeton. I assumed she�d be flying out of Newark instead of Philadelphia. I had not noticed that her flight number was mine. We laughed. Then we sat there silently wishing we were sleeping.
3:48 p.m. - October 20, 2005
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