On Platonic Guardians

Still my favourite scene in the whole show.

    What does it mean to serve as a protector of the state? In Game of Thrones, they may have referred to the "realm," but the essential meaning remains: the protectors of community are forever invested in the welfare of its constituents—but not for power, self-interest, or pride. If not established by this post's title, I am discussing "protectors of the realm": extra-state actors who rarely hold political office, but prioritize the polis: the police usually unrecognized by the state.

    As some of the folks familiar with this blog may know, I almost dropped out of high school in grade 11. I was fortunate that I discovered a bunch of philosophy books at Chapters that became the basis of much of my future interests, research, and writing. Particularly, I became obsessed with translations of Plato's Republic, reading and rereading sections until I was satisfied and confident in my understanding. I had heard of Platonic guardians prior to reading the Republic itself, but I did not appreciate their exhaustive importance to my context until reading (and rereading) Book VI. This section provided me with the knowledge that shaped much of my future aspirations, particularly to participate in governance when- and wherever possible.

    It's 2024, so the alleged guardians of Classical Athens don't hold as much relevance as they would to a relatively isolated city-state with a stable population. However, it's a critical idea for understanding the tension between any general populace and its persistent aristocracy. Plato's philosopher kings exist with and despite the aristocracy, even when the least educated of his contemporaries could be relegated to "Aristocrat, " a term traditionally referring to a typically wealthy member of a minority-elite in a given community, or its "best citizens" in 1500s French communities. In my experience, it's rarely used in 21st century contexts, but its traditional characteristics persist in neologisms of "elite," "privileged," or the "establishment."

    I was hesitant to write this post because I feel as though discussing this passage from the Republic has been overdone to clichéd parody.  However, it was critical to my own development and motivations.  Much of my decision-making after that tumultuous year could be attributed to my aspiration to service,  toward Platonic guardianship.  

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  Since that time, I have considered myself a civil servant first and an educator or student second.  Following the Socratic tradition, education was always a means to a stronger civil society, which follows from the description and purposes of Plato's "guardian class," AKA "philosopher kings."

    If you Google this passage, you will find innumerable blog posts referencing rough transliterations of the same essential meaning:

"the reason why truth forced us to admit, not without fear and hesitation, that neither cities nor States nor individuals will ever attain perfection until the small class of philosophers whom we termed useless but not corrupt are providentially compelled, whether they will or not, to take care of the State, and until a like necessity be laid on the State to obey them; or until kings, or if not kings, the sons of kings or princes, are divinely inspired ' d with a true love of true philosophy. That either or both of these alternatives are impossible, I see no reason to affirm: if they were so, we might indeed be justly ridiculed as dreamers and visionaries." (Republic, Book VI)

    This custodial role has continued everywhere from Warhammer 40k to Wikipedia Administrators. These often extra-state actors don't always hold political office or enforcement arms of nation-states, but they frequently gravitate to these roles in order to fulfill the broader purpose of "[taking] care of the State."

    Ironically, these would-be protectors often find themselves directly confronting the faces of the aristocracy, those who treat the state as a means and not an end in itself.  This classical conflict will persist long after we're gone; the aristocracy that exists for itself isn't going anywhere.   

    Yet, we must persist.  Anyone committed to the broader welfare of the state (however the "state" manifests in each respective epoch) must confront the excesses of aristocratic power.  Most of the folks predisposed to such advocacy tend to find themselves among the aristocracy, and therefore, they are usually best positioned to police it in each instance.

    Bertrand Russell no doubt encountered this same tension, especially given his obvious and self-consciously privileged origin.  But, we cannot let ourselves become so consumed with doubt that we cease to check the power of a self-serving elite; in keeping with Russell's critique, we need to challenge their certainty.

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    When Varys approached Eddard, he likely did so from the same justification he held to continue to serve as a eunuch for the state; he was merely continuing to act as a custodian for the realm the best way that he knew how under the circumstances. Although Varys's characterization included some deliberate faults of character, he is probably the closest GoT has to a member of Plato's guardian class. He illustrates many of the conflicts and paradoxes referenced earlier, of an advisor who also polices other aristocrats and of an aristocrat consumed with doubt despite their privilege and relative power.

    Hence, Varys's death signaled the final decline of his current system of governance. Once aristocrats who exist purely for the sake of the aristocracy seize power, these protectors of the realm are usually the last barrier to totalitarian control, and therefore the former's primary targets. You know many of their names throughout the ages, but these casualties of established power were all in part chasing the same aspiration. That of personal sacrifice and service.

Drafted, edited, and published live on stream in 2 hours on April 28th, 2024.

"The protagony of vice villainizes virtue."

Excerpted from a cease and desist letter.

I presented my dissertation research at a national academic conference in May.  I had anticipated that injection into the marketplace of ideas since I started (obsessively) reading Nietzsche and the surviving Socratic dialogues in high school.  It's likely that those texts were the only reason that I reached university; as my mother could still probably attest, I almost dropped out in grade 11.  As I remarked to my current class of Writing 11-12 students the other day, my grade 11 and 12 Law teacher typically conducted all class time and assessments, including the exams, through fill-in-the-blank exercises that reiterated the courses' textbooks verbatim (every. single. class.).  My classmates and I were keen enough to know that this was dubious even as teenagers.  This teacher continued to teach at my public high school for years after I left, protected by the OSSTF no less.

Clichéd clichés, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.  As a lower-middle class White male growing up with a single-parent mother in South-Western Ontario (with a genealogy of significant mental illness), I experienced oppression, but orders of magnitudes less than those of many of my current colleagues and friends.  This origin seems to have nurtured my empathy with those who have experienced or especially continue to experience absolute poverty—true desperation.  More than most of the people whom I've encountered in the academy, especially in its upper echelons, we often had to choose, deliberately and consistently from relatively young ages, to become the ways that we are now.  We didn't have the external pressures from our immediate communities (let alone families) to search for better lots in life; if anything, we faced opposite pressures.

However, I don't write this from self-pity.  This context is necessary to situate the subject of this post.

Why I—like those others—often confront the problem of protagony.  

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Sidebar.  I'm an English teacher.  Narrativization is an essential composite of both the learning and teaching processes of disciplinary English.  In some ways, we've never finished or transcended the Ancient Greeks' "agon".  The great contest continues unabated—among tragedians in fifth century BC Greece and among players of roles of all recreational, intellectual, and political stripes today.  However, arguably the self-consciousness of this role play and of the impulses to interpret, to retell, and to witness lived experiences through narrative has a history and developmental arc traceable to prehistory.  In other words, in some ways, the narrativization of these impulses to story can be traced to and reaffirming of the essentially human and therefore humanizing—ascriptions of prot-agon-y and antagony offering signs and signifiers of people attempting to interpret meaning from the human experience.  I don't know that we need Thomas King to confirm this, but he's still an awesome read.

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During a seminar at that academic conference, one of my department's professors contributed an interesting point regarding the liberation of inter-generationally oppressed peoples in systemically violent conflict zones.  The professor noted the importance of nurturing progatony among the oppressed.  On the surface, this object may seem rather benign and even benevolent.  However, like so many other tools of the human experience—empathy, charisma, sophistry, etc.—protagony is only as Good as the agent (self-)actualizing it.

I don't think I need to belabour societal obsession with heroes and heroism.  It's popcorn fare for the looking-glass self's validation.  These heroic narratives and narrativizations present elevated forms of protagony, appealing to their audiences' ideals.  As a gamer since toddlerhood, I grew up immersed in the protagonies of Japanese role-playing games.  It's terribly easy to inhabit these stories, since generally, people tend to find solace in the un(der)examined assumption that they may inhabit their own RPG.

But take two seconds to stare into the stars, and our collective cosmic insignificance is once again rendered obvious.  The universe probably doesn't care about us, falsifiably, and even if it did, we don't yet have the (observable) evidence necessary to validate thus.

Needless to say, we're probably not the heroes of our narratives; we might not even be Fifth Business.

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And yet, it's 2022, and people continue to heroize their choices and actions. But who among us are most predisposed to protagonization?  Our political leaders?  Sure.  Celebrities?  —I'm sure at least one or two people come to mind.  What do these folks have in common?  

Let me guess.  Do the germane characteristics validating their protagonistic candidacies involve (under-)philosophizing, a (lack of) truthfulness to their lived experiences, or a (repudiation of) the "conscientization" that this blog has alluded to since its inception?  Right.  As a virtue-ethicist, I make a point to avoid the skulljacking of virtue ethics, but the omnipresence of vice seeking validation (and most often exoneration) through protagonization has become comically conspicuous.  

Implicitly, an agent's protagonization of their actions requires an under-examination or self-deception.  Today, we endure the great irony that the people most inclined to narrativize themselves as protagonists tend to be the last to self-examine, if they ever bother to do so.  It's "those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness," as Sophie Scholl would say, who seem to be most predisposed to protagonize their actions and existences, if only as a last resort.

Crucially, this trend becomes especially worrisome among our intellectuals. After all, our "Doctors of Philosophy" have (allegedly) exhibited a threshold of love of wisdom, communicated a threshold of trustworthy truth value, and have (allegedly) habituated a threshold of consciousness and of conscientiousness critical of the former.  Intellectuals tend to be the most vulnerable to protagonizing their triumphs over adversity—as those among the most self-conscious of the gravity and magnitudes of their struggles and positionalities.

Make no mistake: A commitment to virtue can threaten the very existence of anyone protagonizing vice.  Those protagonizing vice will almost certainly experience harm in your presence, although necessarily self-inflicted. Virtue is the villainy of vice.  Moreover, the people aspiring to virtue tend to be the last people to self-identify as the protagonists of their own narratives.  Unadulterated self-examination tends to bar said individuals from the necessary myopia.

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When V for Vendetta reached theatrical release in Ontario, I paid to see it in theatres four times in just over a week (a substantial feat for a teenager pumping gas on weekends).  I knew nothing of the graphic novel at that time; I knew only that the Wachowski sisters had a hand in its production, and after ruminating over The Matrix for years, I knew that I needed to see this film—to attempt to understand it. After my first viewing, I would have rewatched it in its entirety on the spot.  The film's cultural legacy and co-opting aside, it still communicates the importance of fearlessness and of determination in the face of oppressors, of authoritarians, and of their contemporary iterations.

With few exceptions, we have almost no Disney-villain level antagonists today.  Most of the people who have been villainized have been ascribed such villainy for political purposes, usually through some collaborative gaslighting.  But this follows logically; if one has already protagonized vice, (let's call it an "hamartia" to keep my English colleagues satiated), the various varieties of prevarications tend to be one concentric circle deeper.

To conclude, the vile yet vociferous villains to virtue violate with vengeance the vocations of valor and veracity; yet, the virtuous vicars of vigorous vantage vacillate voicelessly, vetting varieties of ventures to venerably vanquish the vacuous villainy.  Voilà! The vanishing vanguard vie the vogue vignette: that the protagony of vice villainizes virtue.

Old thumbnail.

On courage

Gary Oldman deserves every accolade that he received for his portrayal of this role.

Reflecting on this post—from before I started writing it, through its major modifications while editing, to my final insights as I approached its publication—I honestly believe that this is one of the most important arguments that I've assembled in this blog to date, and it has some hot competition.  This post attempts to resolve and to delimit a broader philosophical system that I started writing about in high school as well as attempts to articulate one of the greatest existential crises posed to the academy, today.

This post lay inert, collecting digital dust in my drafts for months, labeled as "On cowardice."   As those who've consulted the terms and conditions of this blog—or lack thereof—might discern, I'm not monetizing this platform—nor do I have any intention of doing so in the future.  Hence, the writing process tends to embody Nietzschean becoming; given that I'm more or less All-But-Dissertation and that I recently discovered that my CSSE (Canadian Society for Study of Education) proposal to present my dissertation was approved, I need to false flag a justification to publish here.

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I was half way through this post when, by coincidence, I encountered what has become known as the Grievance Studies Affair, often labeled "Sokal Squared" by the academic press in reference to the more widely known Sokal Affair.  I remarked to some of my colleagues that it felt like fate that I found myself writing and editing a piece about courage just as I encountered this fearless defense of academic freedom and of the knowledge project.  

For those of you unaware of the circumstances and significances of this affair, three exceptional scholars—James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian—attempted to co-publish twenty hoax journal articles, successfully publishing seven of them.   Deliberately non-sensical, the articles included a piece re-interpreting anatomical male genitalia as socially constructed concepts.  They sought to expose problems that they perceived among pay-to-publish models of scholarship and, especially, the inadequacies among the standards of rigor, vetting, and methodology of academic journals associated with what they referred to as the academic "grievance disciplines": including gender studies, decolonizing studies, and other fields that tend to draw lineage from the post-modern philosophy and critical theory of the 1960s.

If you've read this far, I feel that I should assure you, the reader, that I believe that what they did was highly unethical.  I have no doubt about the unethical character of deliberately lying to editorial boards and to peer reviewers with ulterior motivation if one construes of ethics as an ideal system of actionable dos and don'ts.  Arguably, they could have achieved the same ends without undermining the scholarship of people researching and writing in so-called "grievance studies" because, as their critics rightly contended, their actions undermined the legitimacy and capacity of those working in these fields who respect traditional research standards of rigor, validity, and reliability.  The public perception of these "grievance" fields can directly impact their funding and therefore solvency & growth. Despite the ongoing ideological culture wars in many North American post-secondary institutions that some of these fields tend to legitimize, scholars working in, for example, gender studies and decolonizing studies have done a lot of Good in the service of the knowledge and the human projects.

However, I believe that what they did was moral.  Morality, traditionally, concerns the "whys" of action in lieu of ethics' traditional "whats" and "hows".  The morality of the academy rests on some basic assumptions with origins traceable to the Socratics.  For example, the knowledge project depended and continues to depend, in part, on the assumption of academic freedom, its associated rights and freedoms of speech and of association.  Although those scholars had adverse, if not arguably malicious, motivations—their actions could be justified as a form of counter-attack, or even a desperate defense, in the ideological culture wars that increasingly enthrall the academy.

"Empiricism" is currently under assault.  Verifiable sensory observation of phenomena no longer serves as the gold standard of evidence-based reasoning.  I don't mean to sound like an insurgent here, but academics increasingly find themselves in exile for defending what amount to experientially evidenced-based reasoned claims.  People outside of our academic institutions might find these allegations bizarre or even unfathomable, but I assure you, this is happening, and it is getting worse.  Moreover, the consequences could be existential to the future of the knowledge project.

I anticipate that I am too honest and too committed to traditional conceptions of truth to survive in the long-term in these institutions.  Although I would never engage in the shenanigans of Sokal Squared, increasingly, it'll take a lot less than those levels of professional transgression to get "cancelled" from the academy, or at least, that seems to be the general trans-disciplinary trajectory.  Predictably, this pathology terminates in (former) academics finding themselves with no other recourse than to argue that the public should defund universities.

And not to (re)tread that clichéd slippy slide, but academic freedom is probably next.

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As a teacher, I am constantly reflecting on what capacities, attitudes, and predispositions I should be attempting to foster among my students.  Recently, due in part to political shenanigans at the University of Toronto, I stumbled upon an insight regarding an ideal or vital characteristic that could logically supersede the value and function of every other bit of wisdom and virtue as conditions for human flourishing.

In some respects, this characteristic has been in front of me the entire time.  Despite my commitments to consistent self-reflection, I tend to take my own positionality and willingness to confront dishonesty and corruption for granted.  I am and will probably always be a social gadfly.  However, I only recently realized the true significance or condition of that designation.

Thought experiment: What potential human characteristic, when removed, would only compromise and/ or weaken all other human characteristics?

If you've read the title of this post, then I un-surreptitiously spoiled the surprise.  Virtue, wisdom, and and all other knowledges can be rendered inconsequential, incomprehensible, and ultimately immaterial if one lacks the courage to responsibly enact them.  Cowardice presents the ultimate source and consequence of the failure of the intellect; in fact, I would argue given my recent experiences that cowardice can render all intention and value vacuous.

But what is "courage"?  What is its essence?  What denotes it phenomenologically? I struggled with its definition significantly leading up to and while editing this post.  Though, I'm relatively confident in my identification of this last piece of the puzzle of human action or of "why [...] people do what they do."

If ascribed values constitute the sources of intention and action, the final threshold of action can be defined by this additional variable.  Undeniably Nietzschean, this willingness to enact the will presents the last barrier to enacted choice.  Following the aforementioned logic, without this willingness, the Will or volition constituted by an individual's intuitive and experientially situated values can be rendered void of meaning and of consequence.  Therefore, courage could be defined as the most valuable of values (of objects ascribed meaning by people) since it can render all other values valueless, practically.

Construed another way, inductively, what is the only human characteristic that cannot be supported by other human characteristics?  Or that can only support other human virtues?  Courage doesn't have a "source" along the same pathways of virtue, wisdom, and other empirical knowledge.  Courage cannot be traced to Kantian empirics.  Like Kant, we often interpret free will as a freedom of choice.  To enact courage is to choose to enact a choice.  In other words, our "Will"s cannot be free without it.

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I've been inspired by Winston Churchill ever since I first encountered him.  After all, he may have hated democracy almost as much as Socrates did.  But, Churchill knew that we could do worse—that we had done worse.

And I might be witnessing a precursor to one of his worst-case scenarios at the University of Toronto at the time of publication.

I've lost count of the number of people who I respect and trust who have told me that I should just give up on the University of Toronto Graduate Students' Union, including several of its former executives. Undoubtedly, my involvement has stretched my PhD studies by at least a year and a half. But, I stand by the same principle that compelled my involvement in the first place.  If UofT graduate students can't manage Good governance, what hope is there for our municipal, provincial, and federal governments in Canada?  Democracy dies in darkness.

And authoritarianism prevails where courage fails.  I've deliberately avoided drawing any contemporaneous macrocosmic comparisons publicly in my communities given that Twitter is already inundated with presentists grafting the flavour of the month onto their every myopic political concern.  But folks, this is how authoritarianism happens.

Despite my continued commitment to defending the Left as a liberal, and given the increasing authoritarian tendencies of other parties who also assume these labels, I might be destined to join Boghossian's camp.  But if only the spectrumed Right will defend cognitive liberty, where else does an academic courageously committed to truth and to the knowledge project find themselves in modern academia?

Moreover, these failures of courage in academic governance tend to osmose from the academy.  Everything I've ever taught or tried to teach my students could be rendered meaningless if my students lack the courage to stand by their senses of truth and justice.  I reflected recently that I care far less if my students understand how and why to consistently respect pronoun-antecedent agreement than if they would stand up for the people or ideas that they care about when it matters.

Ultimately, I would teach my own kids if I were ever to procreate that they should never compromise their integrity or sense of truth for the sake of preserving or shaping their reputations.  Because honestly, what is the ethical or moral character of increased clout with people who would prefer that we compromise our understanding of truth or integrity in order to achieve such ends?

This world doesn't know what to do with its intelligence.

You keep using that word...

Ponderous parables for pivotal paraboles

Once upon a time, there was a human child who wanted to know the Good.  Being the insufferably inquisitive and rather philosophically minded youth they were, they figured that the problem wasn't so much identifying the Good, (there were already lots of suggested candidates), but rather determining a method by which to validate the Good.  Well, the kid did find a sort of litmus test, a rather radical one at that.

You see, this kid was raised Christian, and so they were already quite familiar with the traditional parables.  In fact, this kid would ultimately go on to endure most of their Confirmation before dropping out at the last moment.   This kid wondered whether they needed religion in order to live and be just, whether the Good was predicated on traditions and consensual wisdom, or whether it had any contingencies at all as alluded by some of its progenitors.

On the way home from elementary school one day, this kid was contemplating hell. You know.  The bad one.  Where one would burn.  Forever.  The kid was already skeptical of the existence of hell, especially since they had already studied how allegorizing hell became a tool of church compliance and coercion from the 15th to the 20th centuries historically and even earlier pre-historically.  As this kid approached the turn in the sidewalk that redirected to their home street, they stopped walking as their reflection shifted to a consideration of Jesus's divine sacrifice, especially the willingness to sacrifice mortal existence.  Within this space of reflection, this kid noted that a morality becomes transcendental in character, relative to Christian systems, the moment the agent has identified a conviction for which they would be willing to sacrifice beyond their mortal existence, assuming the verity of a transcendental existence.  Hell was conceived, or at the very least <used>, as a method of enforcing compliance to an alleged transcendental morality.  However, this threat and its invoked fear are consequential only when one's moral system is subject to and therefore determined (at least in part) by the threat of hell.  The moment you believe in a moral code self-righteously such that you would bear that code in any and all eternities in any and all transcendental existences, this coercive form of Christianity no longer has any power over you.  

Furthermore, this conviction that authentically survived an existential threat of eternal damnation likely comprises or can be characterized by the Good, if we're conceiving the Good as its progenitors did: as a universal, unchanging, and all-encompassing form.  For how could the substance of that imperative be naught but Good for someone to willingly suffer eternally?  If it did not comprise the sum total value of everything they believed and/or assumed to be right or good, would the willingness to suffer eternally be naught but insanity?

In the words that the kid used to articulate this insight at the time, the moment you become "willing to burn in hell for all eternity for what you believe", you become liberated from all preceding and subsequent moral systems.  It's a different kind of freedom.

Although this kid grew up to be relatively agnostic, exercising a reasonable measure of doubt with regards to any kind of afterlife, since that moment, that kid has been relatively fearless.

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A word has been frequently floating in and out of my reflections as of late: "subsumption."  It seems that every action, resistance, and aspiration to significance supports or is eventually constitutive of a subsumption, a subsuming of the intents and character of the action, resistance, or aspiration into a more general category—notably, in democracies a category generally acquiescing of what people call the "middle class".  Historically, people called this latter process gentrification; i.e. the process of changing the nature of actions and contexts such that they further satisfy the gentry, the traditional middle and upper classes (think "gentlemen" and "gentlewomen").  

I've often attributed this trend to tribalistic exigencies and the dominant classes' exclusive rights to delineate the parameters of signification.  Self-identifying groups of people are naturally inclined to defend and further their common interests.  The middle class emerges as the bulk of the normal distribution of their collective needs and subsequent demands.  Notably, this collective reserves control over signification: the identification, renewal, and creation of significance.  For evidence of this control, look no further than the burgeoning demands and sequitur supplies of popularized formulaic T.V. shows and movies.  Especially in democracies, this dominant group generally dictates which meanings have the most power.

Subsumption, then, presents the means by which the middle class renews its power.  As both the product and producer of subsumptions, the middle class regulates meaning-making and the power (read: significance) of meanings.

I've commented on this Blog before about the cyclical nature of dominance and resistance, especially how both sets of aspirations eventually normalize; i.e., that the status quo/societal homeostasis necessitates their constant renewal.  These days, I would characterize these Sisyphean (r)evolutions as yet other forms of subsumption.

Why does this happen?

Simply, they're engaged in the classical pursuit of meaning and purpose.

On my own permutation of this quest, I infrequently engage in the following thought experiment: if we're trying to identify the most meaningful and significant values—the usual source of purpose—and actions, then start from the opposite.  What is the most meaningless thing a person can believe or do?  I usually turn to expressions like "all tautologies are tautologies."  But even the categorization of expressions of A = A has meaning and significance, especially since the meaningfulness of other expressions of relations hinges on the alleged meaninglessness of simpler expressions.  Maybe it's the void?  It's telling that vacuousness draws from the same etymology as "vacuum."

Or, maybe it's more useful to consider meaninglessness according to its (in)significance.  However, this merely politicizes the question of meaning by evaluating meaning according to its power, as what does "significance" signify?

Logically, if the most meaningless choices, values, and actions were dichotomized, then the most meaningful choices, values, and actions could be characterized as the most exhaustive, unique, and powerful.

Yet, in the endless pursuit of purpose and meaning, a staggering proportion of people find themselves "settling down to start families."  Inhabiting the aforementioned logic of this post, this domestication follows from a subsumption of intents and purposes under a set of generalizable traditions.  But I remain perplexed as to the following: is it not suspect that so many individuals' pursuits of purpose and meaning have been resolved in starting families?  That after millenia of human development, the consistent stopgap for the problem of living with meaning is to furnish the next generation of people who will undoubtedly have the same problem?

Potential vacuousness notwithstanding, even monogamy raises the specter of a failure of the imagination to do something with one's intelligence before or after the status quo.  "Welp, I have run out of ideas.  Might as well chase tail."  

I realize that the more nihilist-leaning among my readers might counter with the axiomatic assumption that existence has only the meaning that we ascribe to it; i.e., there is no guarantee to any inherent purpose or meaning in anything.  But can we not do better?  

Especially when faced with an existential threat?

Obviously the species needs to reproduce itself at some point, but there's a threshold after which existence is merely existed for the sake of existence.

What does it mean to succeed in the midst of global turmoil?  Does it mean the same to you now as it did in September, 2019?

People tend to define success in numbers.  Equity, valuations, and margins.  There are people who I've encountered that I pity every day because the system is so absolutely rigged against them.  I have yet to encounter a "successful" company or personality cult that doesn't have at least 1-2 bodies mortaring its foundations.  I promised myself in the earliest days of my social justice and peace studies course work that I would never slit a single throat, metaphorically or otherwise, to get ahead; I'm increasingly convinced that many of my classmates didn't share that conviction.  The global pandemic just aggravates these moral and integrous discrepancies.

This world doesn't know what to do with its intelligence.  Our public schooling systems in Ontario are about to crumble wholesale because our administrations, among the ministry, school boards, and unions lack the organizational and creative capacity to imagine and to implement a new vision of schooling necessitated by one of the greatest threats of our lifetimes.  Smarts won't save us; they might give us a better way to mitigate the effects and infectivity of this virus, but this is just one relatively benign pathogen.  I predicted at about the age of 16 that antibiotic resistance alone could bring this world to its knees; you don't need to search too deeply into Google to ascertain with relative certainty that this is only the beginning.  

We've survived this long because we've adapted.  The most maladaptive systems will degrade and degenerate as we're witnessing on the daily.  Classists hate change, yet I'm not calling for a "Marxist (r)evolution."  Our systems, starting with our schools, need to refocus and reconstitute their operations in accordance with their long-standing mandates.  

And this stuff aerosols.  For the love of reason, don't pack elementary school students into enclosed spaces with no exit or contingency plan.

I worry that the problem is less about whether we have the collective intellect to survive this, than about whether we have the moral convictions and courage to think laterally and take risks.

Otherwise, private industry is going to take over every failing public system; it was already happening among pre-college schooling in Ontario; this crisis has been an invitation for private schools (especially those structured and equipped for online learning) and for privatized health care to build and to consolidate empires in Canada.  My own school is restructuring in anticipation that publicly schooled students could fall behind their private and home schooled peers by almost a year as of September, 2021.  Theodore Sizer is/would be churning in his grave.

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"Civilization" is a derivative Anglicization of its root, "cīvis", a rough Latin equivalent to our current word "citizen."  It's legal definition succeeds its essential and primordial meaning of "city-dweller".  Citizen-ship, or the rights and responsibilities inherent to constituting a city, implies higher duties than simply participating in the governance and perpetuity of the polis; thriving usually requires more of us than surviving.  We can still thrive under these conditions, as we should; but we need to commit to this end.  I know it's hard.  My own commitment wavered after March, partly due to my experiences with the bad faith of certain members of the graduate student community of UofT.

But we cannot give up.  Doomscrolling is a deontological necessity, in moderation of course.  Our appreciations for and exhaustive grasping of the significance and consequence of the Good and the right depend in part on our lucidity of the darkness.

This world cannot abide the unwillingness to speak the honest, good faith truth of our experiences, courageously in adversity.  Wisdom cannot be wasted on the wise unwilling or too dispassionate to act Justly when we're on the brink.

On empathic projection

From the webcam of the laptop with which I edited most of this post when I should have been writing my comprehensive exam.  FYI, Einstein was defending Bertrand Russell.

What is social justice?  No. Seriously. What IS it?  Thousands of years of philosophizing and insightful reflection have yet to glean a satisfactory response to a simple yet eminently consequential question.

From the pre-Socratics to Socrates himself, the Western tradition passed down an, at best, provisional explication derivable from the first books of Plato's Republic.  Philosophers have long grappled with the gravity of the question and with the associated gravity of a proficient answer.

Lately, scholars of social justice have gravitated toward the discourses of empathic understanding when confronted with the question of the criteria and/or substance of social justice.  The problem in practice, as I've witnessed it, is that the respondents confronted with social injustices apply empathy undemocratically.  Under the guise of equity, these "social justice warriors" exercise a limited form of empathy that privileges empathizing with particular groups as opposed to a consciously and rigorously maintained, indiscriminate empathic disposition.  Almost daily, I encounter new politically selective applications of empathy that violate the presupposed humanistic ethics and morality of empathetic practice.

Just as Henry Giroux argued that a "democracy can never be democratic enough," empathy can never be empathized enough.  The schools of liberal democratic thought taken to their logical extremes necessitate a democratic empathy and an empathetic democracy in which people practice empathy as democratically and exhaustively as possible.

The idealized desire for the practice of democracy and empathy in their extremities echoes the philosopher's restless pursuit of timelessness and universality.  During a heated philosophical discussion that feels like yesterday but actually transpired about 8 years ago, a great friend and I were arguing about the possibility of objective morality: or in other words, a morality that could transcend time and space and that would be applicable for any human context.  The other discussant was a staunch Christian, while I was a less radically agnostic version of myself.  We couldn't agree on anything other than that if such morality were ascertainable, it could be determined only through an application of reason and empiricism and could only be validated through some leap of faith.

Upon that insight, I wrote one of the first Facebook notes that became one of the first posts in this blog; it attempted to begin elucidating a rationalistic morality.  My consistent contemplation of this construct anticipated my attempt to illustrate the highest moral imperative.  Only recently did I realize that these explorations betrayed a deeper goal of uncovering a (read: the) universal morality via what I now refer to as empathic projection.

In order to practice empathy as democratically and exhaustively as possible, arguably, one must embrace empathic projection.  The OED defines "projection" as "an estimate or forecast of a future situation based on a study of present trends" and as "a mental image viewed as reality."  Essentially, "empathic projection" depicts a practice of empathy through which one estimates or forecasts the situations of future human beings in order to generate a mental image of what might comprise these beings' lived realities.  This practice might enable one to "empathize with potentiality."

In other words, empathic projection can enable an inquiry approach with which one extends inferences beyond past and present circumstances.  An indiscriminately empathic democracy necessitates that the thoughts, wills, and actions of its citizens not only consider empathy with those whom exist and will exist within their lifelitimes but with those whom potentially will exist (to be as democratic, equitable, and non-egoistic as possible). It's a narrowly presentist assumption that one need only empathize with those whom exist in one's generation or with those of the immediately succeeding generation.

The most universal ethic would require that moral judgement be situated not only by empathizing with those whom exist and will exist soon, but with those whom will exist who will never interact with you directly: a morality of the substantive Other.  Caring about people exhaustively inevitably anticipates caring about the future because there are infinitely more potential people of the future than there could ever be living today.  Ask yourself what these timelessly succeeding Others would ask of their preceding Others; this abstraction's moral intimations could validate a trans-generational human morality.

At the very least, logically, these succeeding Others would desire the same degree of opportunity (potentiality) as those whom preceded them since anything less than at least that potentiality would constitute a perfect injustice.  Thinking historically, this justified continuancy of opportunity followed a timeless trend of taken-for-granted equivalency of potentiality which, until the past ~50 years, had remained more-or-less uncontested.

Thus, empathic projection might reveal semblances of an ultimate universal "moral high ground" through the application of empirical reasoning and logic.  If this form exists at all—a morality and/or value system that exists in spite of and simultaneously among and within us, timelessly—then it might be revealable through empathic projection.

In sum, if there is a social justice to be realized, then empathic projection could be pivotal.  These intellectual gymnastics might be essential to cobbling together the political will to do what is necessary to preserve the sentience and sapience of this planet.  Without it, we will undoubtedly continue to elect those antithetical to the future.

On the privilege of sacrifice

Earn this...

I suppose that it's inevitable that blogs contain autobiographical elements.
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Unbeknownst to most, I am actually a musician.  And I'm not just a musician but a song writer.  At least, I was.

Music still comprises the greater part of my life.  If I remember correctly, I was taking piano lessons when I was as young as 10 years old.  I didn't love it initially, but it grew on me.  I was extremely fortunate that my family could also put me through voice lessons.  By grade 11, I was writing songs monthly for the coffee houses held by the music program at my high school.  I always had to one-up myself, technically, melodically, rhythmically, and/or by refining my overall performance.  I became absolutely obsessed with writing music.  At one point in my life, I would spend over half of my waking hours trying to find underused chord formulas and rehashing traditional constructs.  I know that many people would kill to have my talent (at least that's what my mother always says).

And then I stopped.

It's a bit like ripping my own heart out, tossing it to the side, and knowing that it's still beating.

There has always been a part of me that just wanted to drop everything, join another band, write music, and perform live shows for the rest of my life.

But to this day, I have never regretted sacrificing that privilege.

The rest of this blog post will attempt to unpack that ^^^ statement.
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How was/is my capacity for music a privilege you might ask?

We usually talk about privilege in terms of skin colour, gender, class, wealth, and/or ability.  I'm referring to privilege in a much more wholistic and abstract sense.  I think that I would describe privilege as a certain kind of un/known capacity.

First, many, if not most, families cannot afford to put their kids through piano and voice lessons.  I am ever indebted to my parents for pushing me to attend lessons with an expert from the Royal Conservatory, let alone fund my classes.

Secondly, I know that I can contribute at least 10 fold more to others through schooling, research, and politics than I could ever contribute through a career in music.

Finally, and most importantly, it's possible that in sacrificing my capacity for music that I can bring myself closer to living a Good life.  Not everyone will have the chance to do that which Socrates and his pupils exalted within the Ancient Greek dialogues.

Although one of my greatest sacrifices, writing and playing music is now just one drop in the sacrificial bucket that has been my life.  And I'm not alone in this regard.  Some of my closest allies have forgone child bearing and even intimate relationships in order to treat others as they would have others treat them.  This lifestyle is not for everyone.  But I believe that for me, it is absolutely necessary.  Because my definition of "others" stretches off into the infinite.  My definition includes all potential sentient, feeling, life: all of those potential lives who might have acted differently if they were in my position with my known capacity.

If this capacity is privy to the agent wielding it,  then there are consequences.  For example, I have empirical evidence that I can work almost non-stop in the service of others; therefore, if I know that, then I have a responsibility to do it.  Put another way, someone in the future experiencing the brink of the total destruction of this planet would admonish me if he/she could.  It's a logical projection of our circumstances given the empirical evidence available.

Moreover, our individual responsibility for the future scales with our known capacity.  In this sense, known capacity refers to our knowledge of the causality that might impact the future combined with our knowledge of our ability to do something about it.

I don't expect everyone to adopt my moral universe and, to be honest, I never did.  I don't want my students to end up like me.  I don't want them to have to let go of parts of themselves in order to make this world decent.

But our context has no precedent in human history.  And if we empathize with potentiality, all of those potential lives, it's not an tremendous leap of faith to conclude that they would want, at least, the same chances that we had.  We have this responsibility as an extension of our awareness.  We have an obligation inherent in the universal values of the human species that have transcended time.

I'm only requesting that we try to be reasonable given the circumstances.  We have enormous power over the future of this planet.  And as the inevitable cliche suggests "With great power comes great responsibility."

Therefore, we can have the choice of whether to sacrifice our privileges for the sake of others.
I would earnestly request from my reader that, at the very least, we do that which we think would be reasonable.
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I didn't watch the entire movie, 'Saving Private Ryan,' until I was in China about a year ago.  The first time I watched the ending, I balled my eyes out.  I don't think I've ever cried that much in my entire life.  I want the people of the future to have Ryan's degree of appreciation for what we did.  (Un)fortunately, that means that we may need to sacrifice some of our privileges so that they might have, at least, the same opportunities that we had.
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My students once asked me "How do you define success?"  After some thought, I responded "If I can achieve a measure of decency, then that's enough.  If I can treat others the same way that I would have them treat me, then I've succeeded."

Do you really want to be popular?

In memory of those who said unpopular things.

Do YOU really want to be popular?

Well have I got the strategy for you!  It doesn't require money (although that would help), and physical beauty's not requisite.  All you need is the right approach.

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Storytime.  Last week I attended a Streetlight Manifesto concert with a good friend.  One of the opening acts involved a guy by the name of Dan P.  He's a well-known front-liner for Streetlight and he's great at warming up the crowd.  His strategy, which has occupied my mind since I attended the concert, involves pandering to the audience.  For the market of Toronto, his act involved telling us how nice we are.  People just ate it up.
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To say that we're terribly vain by nature probably doesn't surprise anyone anymore.  From advertising to live entertainment, people capitalize on this vanity constantly.  People have become so self-absorbed that bringing this to your attention might seem redundant.  But upon significant reflection, I've realized that the success reaped from pandering to people can involve much more than simply telling people what they like to hear.

If you really want to be popular, then give people exactly what they want to see, hear, think, and feel.  Moreover, give them what they need.

People have biases that can be traced to produced and to reproduced value orientations.  In my experience, our civilization is becoming ever more effective at satisfying your values.  To date, we've developed machine learning algorithms that shovel content to you in digital media for your consumption that has been tailored to your needs according to your exact digital footprint.  People are becoming ever more comfortable in their own skin, because companies capitalize on our desires for self-security.

Our world has become a bias confirmation engine with greater sophistication and efficiency every day.  I laughed when I saw this scene from Wall-E, but, the way things are going...

As I said in a caption for my last blog post, "I once told my entire school to never become comfortable."  The staff at my old school including myself were asked by our graduating class for some final advice.  Mine was that comfort sets a limit on your potential.

Growth, like change, is uncomfortable.  And when I say this, I'm not just concerned with the conservatives out there whom feel victimized.  I'm actually more concerned with the self-described radical leftists.  We are all capable of shutting people out if they don't satisfy our biases, whatever they may be.  I've lost friends on Facebook because of this reality in the past (ironically most of whom were social justice and peace studies students).

But I can't stress enough how important it is to maintain a level of uncomfort and the true danger of absolute self-satisfaction.  Absolute comfort creates an absolute stasis.  The internet and its current abuse has undoubtedly contributed to the normalizing of your thoughts and values.  And that's potentially dangerous, for everyone.

My spiritual mentor, one of the few people that I truly look up to, Socrates was famed for his self-affirmed "gadfly" approach to changing society.  He challenged people's conceptions by forcing them to think through their assumptions and beliefs.  He knew that moral education is uncomfortable.  As it should be; it concerns the most important aspects of our lives.  Moral education most often involves suffering ~ that's why we need to be careful as parents and teachers.  The things that we value most can destroy us, and so their deconstruction must be handled with the utmost care.

One of my favorite professors once said that we should "beware of the very notion of the popular teacher."  He had a pretty good argument considering that the most popular teachers tend to ask the least of their students and to do the most to make their students feel comfortable.

In sum, if you really want to be popular, then give people exactly that which satisfies their values.  Even if those values originate from or inculcate fear, hatred, ignorance, isolation, and/or insecurity.  It's that easy.

But considering this reality, and as a wannabe gadfly myself, I would ask you...

Do you REALLY want to be popular?

T2P Application for the Poland Trip: A Manifesto?

I just applied for a trip to Poland for my transition to practice (T2P).  From what I've read and been told, the trip is designed to evoke remembrance of the Holocaust and empathy for its victims through meetings with survivors, tours of museums, and a trek to Auschwitz.  Here's a description of the trip by the organization facilitating it.  We had to provide learning objectives for the application process.  Normally in these situations I'd simply employ ingratiating sophistry.  Instead, as usual, I took to being bluntly and uncompromisingly honest.  And then this happened.  Enjoy.

My first objective is to grow as a global citizen.  I've almost never left the province of Ontario (the only exceptions including a week in Cuba for my brother's destination wedding and crossing the border into Hull to see the Canadian Museum of Civilization).  I’ve declined every opportunity to “see the world” thus far and as a Social Justice and Peace Studies student from King’s who worked for [anonymous], that’s a lot of opportunities.  I always felt I knew most of what I could learn from the trips already.  Through the experiences of this trip, I want to prove myself wrong.  I always jump on vulnerable learning opportunities and this trip is an opportunity to make myself vulnerable to learn.  I want to become ever more cosmopolitan and, therefore, my first objective is to grow as a global citizen.

My second objective is to grow as a philosopher.   I’ve always thought myself a philosopher in the Ancient Greek interpretation of the term: a lover and pursuer of wisdom.  Much has been made by both philosophers and historians alike about the “lessons of the past.”  I’m of an appreciation of the paradox of our inability to value the knowledge from an experience before we’ve had it.  I see this trip as an opportunity to gain some insight, and maybe even some wisdom, about the human condition and our roles as the keepers and sustainers of memory.  I hope to draw ethics from my experiences on this trip, new perspectives and ways by which to live a good life.

My third objective is to grow as a historian.  History’s crux is primary sources and the interpretations of, and discourses around, those sources.  To go to Poland is to go to the primary sources, to the people and places touched by the people and places of the past.  Also, to go to Poland is to witness and potentially join another set of discourses of history.  As a future history teacher, through my experiences on this trip, I’ll have a wealth of primary sources and discussions to draw on when teaching about various concepts and topics in history such as Nazism, remembrance, and dehumanization.

My fourth objective is to grow as a learner.  We’re all learners before teachers.  I’m of the opinion that we should always listen more than we speak; we should always read more than we write.  As such, on this trip I plan on doing a lot of listening and reading.  I will use this trip as an opportunity to further foster my love of learning and intellectual curiosity.  Therefore, my fourth objective is to grow as a learner.

My fifth and final objective is to grow as a teacher.  I believe that knowledge and wisdom come with a responsibility to foster, to nurture, and to protect.  My personal motto is “take everything from the world but keep nothing for myself.”  I believe that as teachers, we take everything we can from the world, our experiences, understandings, and values, and share them with others to the best of our abilities.  Therefore, I will embrace this trip as an opportunity to experience, philosophize, and understand, as an opportunity to grow as a teacher to the benefit of my future students.

On Democracy

"At the earnest instigation of Plato and others of his friends [the judge] offered a fine which they would pay, but Socrates would give no undertaking to cease his 'corrupting' activities, on the grounds that to him they were more important than life itself" - W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle

As I find myself growing more and more political as of late, especially through my participation in democratic governance, I find myself growing more and more critical of democracy.

Basically anyone born in North America in the last half century has been raised as if democracy is the greatest, most benign and benevolent, political framework to ever have existed.  And many people accept it as such or lack the capacities and consciousness to even think otherwise.

For the TL;DR, the goodness of a democracy depends on the goodness of its majority.  Contrary to populist opinion, democracy is not rule by the people for the people.  It's actually rule by the majority of people for the people.

To illustrate, all motions in democratic governance delivered to deliberative assemblies are passed or rejected based on a majority of votes.  Sometimes a motion requires what's colloquially referred to in governance circles as a "simple majority."  A simple majority consists of 50% of the vote + 1.  In extraordinary circumstances, such as an addition to an agenda or a constitutional amendment, a motion may require a greater majority such as a 2/3s, 90%, or even unanimous consent.

Here's the problem.  The goodness of a decision of the deliberative body in the previous illustration depends entirely on the goodness of those who compose the majority of the vote.  In other words, if your majority is wrong, or worse: evil, you have a big problem.

Here's a couple examples of the former.  Hitler was elected.  Socrates's execution was determined by a democratic vote.  And this happened. 

Given the potential and actual problems of concentrating governmental power in the hands of the few, democracy is a kind of last best hope that the majority of a society will govern in the best interests of everyone.  There are many assumptions laid when one would argue that the majority of a society will govern well.  First, you're assuming the majority of that society is rational.  Secondly, you're assuming that the majority actually realizes what's in their best interest.  Finally, you're assuming that the majority has equal access to, and participation with, governance.

I don't know about you, but I've never in the whole history of humanity encountered a society in which the majority of people are rational, live good, and access and participate with governance equally and sufficiently.  Maybe that's too idealistic to ever become a reality.

Such was Plato's general opinion when he late in life wrote The Laws.  If you get the chance to wade through the book, you'll find an author completely disgusted and distrustful of democracy.  After all, his own democracy forced the suicide of his mentor and friend Socrates. 

Plato's solution to the potential problems of majority governance was the rule of law through a nearly unalterable set of laws shaped by the Nocturnal Council.  As the linked article demonstrates, there's a great deal of controversy surrounding the authority and actual function of the council.  However, it's almost certain that this council harbored the greatest quantities and qualities of wisdom.  They may not have been the philosopher kings of Plato's Republic, but they were to be the wisest: those with the greatest study and understanding of the good life.

In other words, Plato's solution to the potential threats of democratic rule was basically an oligarchy: rule by the few.  Lately I've become more and more attracted to this idea.

My attraction to oligarchy is based on the assumptions laid on the majority in a good democracy.  For an ideal, good, and effective democracy the majority needs to be rational.  Secondly, the majority has to have an informed understanding of what it means to live well; the qualities and virtues that compose a good life.  Finally, in order to have equal access to, and participation with, governance everyone must share and sustain procedural justice. 

In order to create such a majority of people in a society there needs to be systems in place that provide educations necessary to foster these qualities in its citizens.  North American societies today are well schooled, but hardly educated, especially when held to the standard of reason, goodness, and access to, and participation in, governance.

I'm of the opinion that the ultimate form of human governance is in fact a horizontal consensus democracy, vertically representative if only because of practical necessity.  Anarchists tend to forget that one of the main functions of the state is bureaucratic.  States first came into existence because there were a lot of people and a lot of resources to distribute.  Large groups of similar individuals came together to create institutions to handle large quantities of resources-both human and material.  Horizontal democracy is made a pipe dream by the practical realities of everyday life: the sheer number of people on the planet and the vast quantities of resources to distribute.

Although horizontal consensus governance remains the ideal form of human government, I believe oligarchy is a necessary, temporary, evil.  I believe that in order to create a sufficiently  educated, effective, good democracy, there needs to be a temporary rule by philosopher kings and queens.  A temporary oligarchy of philosophers because people can't grasp the value of an education that fosters reason, happiness, justice, and fairness, until they've actually got it. 

The question is, how could that ever possibly happen?

Oh wait... China.

(Admittedly China is not the ideal example but it's probably one of the best ones currently available)

"Unity is the way" Part 2

In honor of the readers of this post and, of course, the most ironic picture I could find.

I find myself saying it more and more every day.  I don't know where I "stole" it from.  I've even made deliberate efforts to determine its origins.

From my summary research on the quote, I've found many sources from which it could have originated.  For example, it has been proselytized by many faiths in the past.  It's also a reoccurring theme in  social movements.

I've alluded to the importance of unity in the past:  its importance to real change and revolution.

In Aristotelian fashion, in order to understand a whole concept, its often best to break it down into its many parts.  In order to grasp what I mean when I say "unity is the way," I must first explain both what I mean by "unity" and "the way."
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What is "unity"?

Unity has many near synonyms, such as togetherness, oneness, collectivism, etc.

Etymologically,  unity comes from the Greek "unus" which translates to English as "one."

"If its root meaning is "one", why not say "oneness"?"  Well, unity has an additional, critical, meaning.  Along with "oneness," unity also conveys a sense of harmony.  In addition to evoking the oneness of parts, it also depicts the harmony of those parts.

So in short, when I say I "unity is the way," I'm stating that "[the harmony of the parts that compose the whole] is the way."
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Next, what is "the way"?

"The way," has a more self-evident meaning than "unity," in that, by "the way" all I'm referring to is the best for humanity and the planet.  I.e. the way represents the good life for all.  "The way" refers to both the means to, and ends of, good lives.

So expanded, when I say "unity is the way," I'm succinctly saying "[the harmony of the parts that compose the whole] is [the means to, and ends of, good lives]."
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I know that explanation was long-winded, but I needed to share it in order to identify exactly what I mean by the phrase.  One needs to understand its exact meaning and subtleties in order to understand my justification for the statement because it ultimately represents a argument.
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Why is "unity the way"?

I've alluded in the past to how we have participated, and continue to participate, in a war for peoples' minds.  To my knowledge, unity remains the only method of group conscientization and empathy fostering that will end this war.

In order to understand the phrase, its best contextualized with an example:

In feminism - I've argued on many occasions in feminists' and feminist sympathizers' circles that "unity is the way" to a feminist society.  Feminists and feminist sympathizers, like everyone else, fight for their values: to proselytize and proliferate them.   Now, I could spend the next 4-5 posts trying to establish just what these "values" are, because self-identified feminists struggle to reach, let alone maintain, a consensus as to their substance.
But regardless of the exact nature of such a feminist society, in order to get there we must be united, i.e., the only way to a harmonious whole is the harmony of the parts.
Feminist and feminist sympathizers cease their contribution to such a society when they argue that feminism, women's rights, equality, and ending patriarchy, are exclusively women's issues.  Patriarchy, "rape culture," and inequality, affect everyone, and are perpetuated by everyone, to some degree.
When I argue that "unity is the way," in such contexts, I'm arguing that unity is not just the ends, but must also be the means.  I've heard countless examples of "feminist" initiatives that intentionally alienate and segregate groups of people.  Taking Back the Night with self-identified men standing at the side lines serving as a shining example - importantly, this is changing, but events like it still remain potential threats to unity as both a means to, and ends of, a feminist society.
Preemptively acknowledging the arguments I've ignited in feminists and feminist sympathizers reading this, I understand the rationale for the segregation.  However, think of it this way: if since the dawn of humanity women had oppressed men, and men had struggled for the same equal opportunity, how would you feel if men refused to let women be a part of initiatives for mutual empowerment and equality?  Further, would this segregation ever create a true unity, or is such a unity only possible when "unity is the way"?

All that to say, I argue that "unity is the way" because every time I've witnessed alienation and disunity, I've found despair.  We have to get there together in order to be there together.

I've only just scratched the surface of this topic and still have more to discuss; I had to rush to publish this post to serve as talking points.  Part 3 is coming.