Daily Archives: June 29, 2017

Another day, another massacre, and another string of euphemistic eulogies. Arent we all tired of this yet? Even in his recent speech in Riyadh, President Trump felt compelled to define terrorists primarily as nihilists, whose actions insult people of all faiths.

This is disappointing and condescending, and hearkens to the tone-deafness of the Obama era. The basic idea is that as long as you believe in anything, you cant possibly believe in that. The truth, though, seems to be that quite a number of people do in fact believe in that.

Western secularism is derived from Christianity, and is still subconsciously influenced by Christianity in myriad ways. From this perspective, it is difficult to understand that other cultures may think positively of violence and oppression.

Most of us, for example, would affirm that the Westboro Baptist Church is monstrous and has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. This leads us, by analogy, to suggest that ISIS is monstrous and couldnt have anything to do with the real Islamic faith. This is a fallacy born of sentimentality. But lets start by talking about what nihilism is, so that we can see why ISIS and its ilk are not nihilistic at all.

The genesis of nihilism could be traced back to the collapse of both the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Enlightenment thinkers suggested there is an objective meaning of life that can be known through reason, whereas the Romantics suggested there is a subjective meaning of life that can be known through passion. Nihilism begins with despair over both of these projects, and confronts the possibility that life just has no meaning at all. The sense is captured by Fyodor Dostoevskys dark question in his novel The Idiot: what if the crucified Christ turned out to be nothing but a rotting corpse?

The foremost philosopher of nihilism is Friedrich Nietzsche. He distinguished between two modes of nihilism: the passive and the active. Passive nihilism is characterized by a sense of emptiness and a lack of faith in any and all values; it is a sort of depression where nothing seems worth doing. Active nihilism, on the other hand, refers to affirmatively trying to destroy existing values that are seen as arbitrary or false, so that new, perhaps truer values will be able to emerge. Nietzsche tended to think of himself as an active nihilist, and the subtitle of one of his books is, How To Philosophize with a Hammer.

We can also speak of a nihilism of means, where the basic problem is that you will do anything to get what you want. In that sense, ISIS surely is nihilistic. But so is the current president, and much of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It is a nihilism of means to say awful things just to get a rise out of your fans at a rally, and to shut down free speech with riots, or turn into a sycophant for your own team. Nihilism of this kind always happens when a man sacrifices his truth at the altar of power, and it seems to be more the norm than the exception. The opposite of such nihilism is only ever personal honor.

A true nihilist of ends would be a sort of paradox. The closest example I can think of is Heath Ledgers Joker from The Dark Knight: a man who wants to return all of creation back to primal chaos, for its own sake, with no further ends in mind. You could say that itself is an end, except he doesnt care about that, eitherhence the looping paradox.

Nihilism may also sometimes be a matter of perspective. ISIS looks like nihilism from the perspective of America, because ISIS is positively trying to destroy the values of America. Likewise, from a conservative perspective, progressives seem like nihilists, because they are trying to undermine the constitutional values that sustain America. But such progressives think of themselves as dwelling on the right side of History. It is thus important to avoid slapping the label of nihilism on an ideology just because we disagree with or fail to understand it.

The phrase Islam is peace reeks of Orwellian Newspeak. Every time I hear it, I just want to ask: What makes you say that? Is there any foundation for it beyond wishful thinking? It should be a commonplace among both Muslims and all other sentient people that Muhammed was not a peaceful man. Nor can the Quran be plausibly interpreted as a peaceful text.

Are we just repeating the phrase over and over again, like some demented mantra, due to the political convenience of doing so? In that case, we would be the ones engaged in a nihilism of means, sacrificing principle for sheer efficacy.

Muhammed was a military conqueror, and numerous passages in the Quran call for the literal death of unbelievers. These are objective facts. When Muhammed speaks of the sword, reason suggests that this is not the same as Jesus saying that he came to bring not peace, but a sword. Jesus is speaking of spiritual struggle; in the only passage involving Jesus and a literal sword, he told his disciple to put it away.

Some Muslims like to think this is also what Muhammed really meant. Its an implausible interpretation, however, given that Muhammed spread Islam with a literal sword, and many of the surahs of the Quran are set within this context of literal conquest.

There are 13 countries in the world, all Islamic, in which apostasy (i.e., leaving Islam) is a capital offense. The subjugation of women is an integral, not peripheral, element of sharia law. We are not talking about extremists, here; we are talking about what almost everyone would agree to call mainstream Islamic nations, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Is this what peace looks like, or are these nations not really Islamic either? A more pressing question emerges here: is the difference between mainstream Islam and its jihadist variants really a matter of kind, or does it rather resolve itself into one of mere degree?

It is heartening that many Muslims want to believe that Islam is a religion of peace. Good on them, obviously. But in an important sense, this evades the critical problem. Do these countless Muslims the world over also believe that Muhammed, as portrayed in the Quran and Hadith, is an exemplary man?

If Muhammed is reported to have committed violence or even atrocities, then how do peaceful Muslims square this knowledge with their own values, religious or otherwise? Are there points at which they believe it is acceptable to disagree with Muhammed, and for a Muslim to conduct his own life in a different manner, while still remaining a Muslim?

Nihilism and evil are not the same thing, even if they may overlap in the popular imagination.

I imagine many people, including many Muslims, are sick of hearing that ISIS is not really Islamic. This is just plain false. Graeme Wood has put it best, in an in-depth article that should be considered required reading for anyone who wants to talk about radical Islam: The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Please note: it is not nihilism, or an absence of values; it is a positive system of values that most decent people are inclined to call evil. (Nihilism and evil are not the same thing, even if they may overlap in the popular imagination.) When the Quran repeatedly calls for devout Muslims to kill the infidels, how is it un-Islamic when terrorists, well, go and kill the infidels? A reasonable interpretation would be not that the terrorists believe in nothing, but rather that they believe, deeply and radically, in the affirmative commands of the Quran.

At a certain point, it is not charity but rather idiocy to ignore what these people keep affirming about themselves. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali says: When a murderer quotes the Quran in justification of his crimes, we should at least discuss the possibility that he means what he says. This would seem obvious enough, except in a culture and intellectual climate warped by Orwellian euphemism.

It should go without saying, of course, that I have nothing against the countless Muslims around the world who want to practice their faith in peace and follow an ethos of live and let live. My only question: is Islam, as an ideology, compatible with that? This is a critical reckoning in which the global community of Muslims must engage.

If ISIS is in fact justified by scripture, then what does this say about scripture, and interpretive methods related to scripture? And if ISIS is not justified, then why not? In short, there is need for a genuine reformation within Islam, marked by free critical inquiry and a refusal to turn away from the truth.

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Islamic Terrorists Aren't Nihilists, They're Firm Believers In Evil - The Federalist

Vince Staples is the hip-hop equivalent of a great character actor moonlighting as a prestige leading man. This is not a slight on the rapper, but an observation: Despite his current rep as a wisecracking TV personality and celebrated everyman emcee, Staples, the 23-year-old from Long Beach, is hard to pin down. He entered the public sphere via the coattails of Odd Future's early shock-raps; he dabbled in Earl Sweatshirts dim aesthetic around the time of his Shyne Coldchain series of mixtapes, in the first half of this decade; he graduated to high-def gangsta rap with his late-2014 EP Hell Can Wait; and he was then cast as a Kanye-esque visionary with the double-disc creation myth Summertime '06, his universally acclaimed 2015 full-length debut.

His nimble voice allows him to slide in the pocket of most beats, a Trojan horse tactic that sneaks his straightforward and poignant songwriting onto all kinds of songs. (His 2016 EP, Prima Donna, existed mostly as a rapping exercise, rifling through as many styles as Staples could muster). More recently, he floated atop a dramatic Clams Casino beat on the producer's 2016 LP, 32 Levels, and on Gorillaz song earlier this year and was equally impressive on both.

Given how familiar fans are with Staples' versatility by now, it's no small feat that Big Fish Theory, his second full-length album, surprises as much as it does. Here, the Vince Staples experience is condensed and sharpened to startling cohesion 12 tracks that span just over 36 minutes, including a smattering of interludes and set to a new kind of backdrop, one filled with mutating trip-hop and house-inspired beats.

In a recent Reddit AMA, Staples said, "Hip-hop is electronic. Go listen to 'Planet Rock,'" a truth that nonetheless doesn't quite prepare you for the album's jarring, Tricky-esque opener "Crabs in a Bucket." Staples is right hip-hop isn't all break beats and soul samples. But the gulf between the type of music that Staples has made for most of his career thus far and the wide, jittery electronic canvases that make up Big Fish Theory is striking. The new direction almost recalls Danny Brown's Old, the 2013 record that followed the Detroit rapper's career-defining breakout, 2011's XXX. With Old, Brown attempted to unite the two modes that then dominated him as an artist: the psyche-baring lyricist and the hedonistic, festival-crowd-pleasing emcee who wants to dabble in EDM. Big Fish Theory isn't as cynical as that record Vince isn't making pill-popping party music but the wildly divergent sounds on this album can leave fans feeling detached from the guy who wrote tightly woven, comparatively traditional hip-hop songs like "Blue Suede" and "Norf Norf."

Still, Staples remains a confident, engaging rapper. The record's almost-title track, "Big Fish," is a minimal, disembodied banger with a Juicy J hook that feels dropped in from another song, emphasizing an alienation and dread that flows throughout the entire album. "I was going crazy not too long ago/ Women problems every morning like the Maury show/ Swimming upstream while I'm trying to keep the bread from the sharks/ Made me want to put the hammer to my head," he raps, presumably a call-back to the headspace he occupied on 2016's paranoid Prima Donna. On the jumpy, Rick Ross-interpolating "Homage," Staples free-associates to a head-turning degree: "Won't no label have me in limbo/ Too much tempo, in Richard Prince mode/ Robert Longo, black as the Congo/ Pay me pronto or it's no convo."

There are other moments where everything snaps into stunning clarity: "745" is one, the album's most straightforward slice of swagger-rap, in which producer Jimmy Edgar's burping electronic beat emulates G-funk with crayons which is to say it's a worthy imitation, but you can sense something's off. "Yeah Right," the eyebrow-raising collaboration with art-pop auteur Sophie and Kendrick Lamar, mostly sounds how you think it would: Sophie's cartoonishly boisterous beat vaporizes the track, while Kendrick is on autopilot mode, raising goosebumps before getting out of the way.

After growing accustomed to the album's amorphous textures, the impression that lingers most is just how sharp Staples sounds on every track. But lyrically, this effort doesn't feel as memorable as his earlier work. "Samo," a Basquiat reference and another Sophie production, is trap music fit for the uncanny valley age, and it's among my favorite songs because Staples is able to create a compelling argument for the enduring allure of the goofy PC Music aesthetic, which Sophie helped establish. On most of the album, a beat's dynamism overwhelms how nuanced a writer Staples is. R&B crooner and longtime collaborator Kilo Kish takes up a large amount of real estate as the album's co-star, appearing on a number of outros and saving Staples from completely dissolving into Big Fish Theory's gumbo of sounds. Appearances from Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, Damon Albarn and A$AP Rocky are largely unrecognizable.

Vince's current ambitious muse is commendable, yet Big Fish Theory's short runtime suggests that is something like a purge. This sort of feels like it's Vince getting out from underneath the long-gestating hype for a proper follow-up to Summertime '06 like how Kendrick fired off this year's streamlined Damn. a scant two years after 2015's massive To Pimp a Butterfly.

The late Amy Winehouse is quoted in the intro to "Alyssa Interlude," from an interview featured in the 2015 documentary Amy: "Sometimes you have to get all the crap out the way before you hit the good stuff, then you're like, OK, I'm getting good stuff now." Whatever led him to this dizzying, defiant new direction, Big Fish Theory is mostly good stuff that leaves you awaiting better stuff to come.

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Vince Staples burns through nihilism and house beats on 'Big Fish ... - Mic

Much analysis of Yuval Harari's brilliant new book "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" focuses on the harrowing dystopia he anticipates. In this vision, a small, geeky elite gains the ability to use biological and cyborg engineering to become something beyond human. It may "upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process, until our descendants will look back and realize that they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible [or] built the Great Wall of China." This would necessarily involve the concentration of data, wealth and power, creating "unprecedented social inequality."

"In the early 21st century," argues Harari, "the train of progress is again pulling out of the station -- and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called Homo sapiens."

Few of us Homo sapiens are anxious to take such a trip, apart from some "dataists" who pant for the apocalypse. But, as Harari repeatedly insists, the prophet's job is really an impossible one. Someone living in the 12th century would know most of what the 13th century might have to offer. Given the pace of change in our time, the 22nd century is almost unimaginable.

Yet the predictions are not the most interesting bits of the book. It is important primarily for what it says about the present. For the last few hundred years, in Harari's telling, there has been a successful alliance between scientific thought and humanism -- a philosophy placing human feelings, happiness and choice at the center of the ethical universe. With the death of God and the denial of transcendent rules, some predicted social chaos and collapse. Instead, science and humanism (with an assist from capitalism) delivered unprecedented health and comfort. And now they promise immortality and bliss.

This progress has involved an implicit agreement, "In exchange for power," says Harari, "the modern deal expects us to give up meaning." Many (at least in the West) have been willing to choose antibiotics and flat-screen TVs over the mysticism and morality behind door No. 2.

It is Harari's thesis, however, that the alliance of science and humanism is breaking down, with the former consuming the latter. The reason is reductionism in various forms. Science, argues Harari, revealed humans as animals on the mental spectrum, then as biochemical processes, and now as outdated organic algorithms. We have "opened up the Sapiens black box" and "discovered there neither soul, nor free will, nor 'self' -- but only genes, hormones and neurons."

This rather depressing argument is well presented, with a few caveats. Harari's breezy style is sometimes in tension with his utter nihilism. Here is a moral rule: You can either be cheery or you can describe the universe as an empty, echoing void where human beings have no inherent value. But you can't do both.

And Harari's treatment of religion is, charitably put, superficial. He seems to think that the absence of an immortal soul can be proved by dissection. Scientists have "looked into every nook in our hearts and every cranny in our brains. But they have so far discovered no magic spark." For future reference, religious believers don't generally view the liver or the pineal gland as the seat of the soul. And when Harari claims that religion is "no longer a source of creativity" and "makes little difference," it is tempting to shout "Martin Luther King Jr." at your Kindle.

But Harari has one great virtue: intellectual honesty. Unlike some of the new atheists, he recognizes that science is incapable of providing values, including the humanistic values of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson. "Even Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and the other champions of the new scientific worldview refuse to abandon liberalism," Harari observes. "After dedicating hundreds of erudite pages to deconstructing the self and the freedom of will, they perform breathtaking intellectual somersaults that miraculously land them back in the 18th century."

Harari relentlessly follows the logic of reductionism as it sweeps away individualism, equality, justice, democracy and human rights -- even human imagination. "Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is the product of biochemical algorithms."

This is the paradox and trial of modernity. As humans reach for godhood, they are devaluing what is human. "Omnipotence is in front of us, almost within our reach," Harari says, "but below us yawns the abyss of complete nothingness." A humane future will require someone to offer a bridge across the chasm.

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A brave new world none of us can see - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier