Insight Spring 2021 by lvilleinsight

Insight

Spring 2021

Insight Religion & Philosophy

Masthead Editorial Board Cherie Fernandes ’21 Matthew Kutam ’22 Sid Ramachandran ’21 Mia Bocian ’23 Anthony Gadzi ’22 Kyle Park ’23 Grant Shueh ’23

Faculty Advisor Dr. Jason VonWachenfeldt

Foreword in·sight /ˈinˌsīt/ Oxford English Dictionary 1. Internal sight, mental vision or perception, discernment; in early use sometimes, Understanding, intelligence, wisdom. 2. The fact of penetrating with the eyes of the understanding into the inner character or hidden nature of things; a glimpse or view beneath the surface; the faculty or power of thus seeing.

Mission Statement The student-run journal Insight, founded by the Department of Religion & Philosophy in 2015, aims to enhance the spiritual and intellectual experience at Lawrenceville by: Cultivating a deeper appreciation and interest among students for religious life, Exposing the student body to a range of philosophical and religious work, Offering an open forum for the exchange and consideration of diverse beliefs, Showcasing the foremost written work of the Department’s students. Contribution to Insight is open to the entire community, including students, alumni, and faculty.

Letter From the Editors The first Insight board created Insight with the goal of allowing students to share their work in religion and philosophy with the rest of the community in a way that had been impossible before. After a brief hiatus, the second Insight board revived this mission, and the third and fourth Insight boards continued using Insight to give voice to student ideas and foster student involvement in religion and philosophy, creating a tradition of written engagement with religion and philosophy on campus. Now, as the fifth board of Insight, we aim to continue reaching toward these goals. With the help of Dr. VonWachenfeldt, we seek to serve as an outlet on campus for students’ passions and ideas by publishing the best religion and philosophy papers produced this year. The ideas expressed within this year’s Insight are divided into two sections: papers addressing questions in philosophy and papers exploring world religions. Lawrenceville students, harking from all regions around the world, engage with religious matters and questions from many varying perspectives. They have taken the initiative to learn about religious studies in order to better understand the context and culture of religious life. Students have taken the opportunity to explore the similarities and the differences between religions, examining the intersection between various religions and their application in our real world. This section contains of an analysis of allusions to Taoism in Japanese novels, as well as how the study of religion itself aligns with one writers’ passion for dance. In philosophy classes at Lawrenceville, students grapple with both ancient, fundamental questions about the human condition and pressing, modern problems. The philosophy papers in this year’s Insight tackle topics from the applicability and limits on Darwin’s theory to the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer. Each paper contains an original philosophical argument, using logic and knowledge of philosophical systems to analyze and provide solutions to real-world problems. In writing these papers, students draw on the works of thinkers from Marx to Kierkegaard to apply a range of theories to some of the most important issues we face today. We would like to close this letter by extending our gratitude to Dr. VonWachenfeldt, for all his guidance and support in the creation of this year’s Insight and for inspiring Lawrenceville students to solve real-world problems; to 6

the entire religion and philosophy department for working tirelessly to share its knowledge with the student body and generate a love for deep, critical thought; and, of course, for everyone who submitted to Insight this year. We received many more high-quality papers than we could publish, and we deeply appreciate all the thought and hard work that went into them. One final reminder: if you have written a thoughtful paper addressing topics in religion or philosophy, whether written for a class or not, please reach out to either mkutam22@lawrenceville.org or agadzi22@lawrenceville.org. We welcome all insightful ideas.

Sincerely, The 5th Insight Editorial Board

Table of Contents Religion Esha Akhtar ’21…The Limits and Successes of Transnational Feminism and Palestinian Solidarity

Kyle Park ’23…Yoga: A Legitimate Part of Hinduism?

Mia Bocian ’23…Contrasting Viewpoints of Power in The Fire Next Time

Emma Kim ’23…Reflections on The Bell Jar

Caroline Park ’23…Figure Skates: The Key to Unlocking My Sacred World

Philosophy Jasper Zhu ’21…Darwin’s Case for Legalizing Abortion

Samuel Tang ’22…Fearless and Not Trembling

Cherie Fernandes ’21…Musashi Scene Analysis: An Ascent into Self-Realization

Anthony Gadzi ’22…Utopia is Dystopian: Why Social Darwinism Defeats Communism

Cherie Fernandes ’21…The Trappings of Love and Literature

Mac Dilatush ’21…Darwin Isn't an Empiricist, But That’s O.K.

RELIGION

The Limits and Success of Transnational Feminism and Palestinian Solidarity Esha Akhtar ’21 Edward Said’s Orientalism provides a theoretical framework for the tendency of the West, or the Occidental, to “speak over ‘’ the East, or the Orient (2). Said argues that historically, the “West,” countries like England, France, and America, have centered their biases and stereotypes in their depictions of the East. Therefore, the image of the East that is popularized in the West is not an accurate representation. Rather, it is a result of “an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness” (6). Indeed, with the rise of transnational solidarity and global feminist movements, the power dynamic between Western women and Third World Women has fallen into Orientalist traps. In the context of Western feminism and the Middle East, particularly the struggle for Palestinian justice, there is such a tendency for Western feminists to “speak over” the voices of grassroots Middle Eastern organizers. Transnational feminism has, in fact, failed to create meaningful resistance in the Middle East because white feminists’ universal feminism is rooted in Western, Islamophobic narratives. However, Black feminists in America have shown, particularly through Palestinian organizing efforts, that by recognizing and working within differences, instead of rejecting them, it is possible to create effective transnational feminist solidarity. For many white, Western feminists, universal feminism is rooted in a culture of neoliberalism and Islamophobia. Many white feminists are unable to fully recognize the complexities of the barriers for women in the Middle East, and as a result, they blame broad ideas of Islam as the primary reason behind their oppression. In her book Freedom is a Constant Struggle, long-time activist Angela Davis describes neoliberalism and how it “drives us to focus on individuals, ourselves, individual victims, individual perpetrators” (137). She then poses the rhetorical question, in the context of global racism: “how is it possible to solve the massive problem of racist state violence by calling upon individual police officers to bear the burden of that history and to assume that by prosecuting them, by exacting our revenge on them, we would have somehow made progress in eradicating racism?” (137). Similarly, global feminism often critiques women’s oppression in the Third World without a sufficient consideration of the systems 11

that lead to their oppression. Ignorance stems from the assumption that there is a “universal” feminist experience where gender and sexuality is the primary axis of mistreatment in women’s lives. However, such an idea is an incredibly misguided and privileged understanding as one Saudi Arabian artist and activist, Ms. Safaa, has talked about at length. Ms. Safaa describes the social media hashtag, #StopEnslavingSaudiWomen, which portrayed Saudi women as “enslaved and helpless individuals,” as an example of Western feminism’s limited ability to show solidarity to women of the Global South (Abdelhy). Ms. Safaa expresses that “sometimes it’s patronizing and condescending, the way I, as a Saudi woman, have been spoken for and about. Don’t say Saudi women don’t have a voice. We have a voice. You just haven’t been paying attention” (Abdelhy). This type of global feminism does not recognize the role women in the Global South have played as agents of their own liberation, and it ultimately renders them voiceless to the world. In the early 1970s, Angela Davis visited Egypt, and while she was there, she noticed similar tendencies in the way the West viewed Egyptian women. At a conference, Davis was asked to speak about the tradition of female genital mutilation in Egypt, and she immediately recognized it as a form of subliminal racism. She reflects how, “As an Afro-American woman familiar with the sometimes hidden dynamics of racism, I had previously questioned the myopic concentration on female circumcision in US feminist literature on African women. This insinuation seems frequently to be made that the women…where this outmoded and dangerous practice occurs would magically ascend to a state of equality once they managed to throw off the fetters of genital mutilation — or rather, once white Western feminists (whose appeals often suggest that this is the contemporary “white women’s burden”) accomplished this for them” (Salem 251). By drawing this parallel, Davis shows how her experiences as a Black woman in America make her more aware of the ways in which well-meaning “feminist crusades” to save Third world women from oppression are often rooted in patronizing attitudes. Her language, “accomplishes this for them” points to the tendency for these outsiders to speak over the oppressed. A power dynamic hence exists in transnational feminist movements — Western feminism speaking over the Third World and determining what is good for them based on their Western understandings of the world. Dr. Shehida Elbaz, a scholar that accompanied Davis on her visit to Egypt, remarked how “Women in the West should know that we reject their patronizing attitude. It is connected with built-in mechanisms of colonialism and their 12

Race, Religion, and Social Justice sense of superiority. They decide what problems we have, how we should face them, without even possessing the tools to know our problems” (257). More specifically, this racism is a form of Islamophobia that suggests that the single barrier to Middle Eastern women’s freedom is their sexual subjugation in Islam. Dr. Shehida Elbaz continues to elaborate how at the conference, there were two separate talks. The one on England was “Women and Politics,” while the one in Egypt was “Women and Sex”. This distinction suggests that the organizers of the conference, who were Western feminists, regarded British women’s participation in politics as more important than Egyptian women’s participation. Again, the nuances of Egyptian women’s struggles are chalked up to mere sexual oppression. Scholar Simona Sharoni describes this as “an exclusionary feminism that privileges gender as the only axis of inequality” (664). These women do not recognize that factors like imperialism and colonialism, products of neoliberal thinking patterns popularized in the West, also play significant roles in the material experiences of Egyptian women. There simply is no universal sisterhood based on just gender and sex. Neoliberalism perpetuates a “lack of structural analysis,” a focus on “diversity” instead of “difference,” and thus, devalues the recognition of the complex factors like imperialism and colonialism as significant factors in shaping the material experiences of Egyptian women (Davis 79). This oversimplification of Middle Eastern women’s oppression as a result of their religious faith is the same Islamophobia that Israel has weaponized in Palestine. One Israeli billboard depicts Gaza as a hypersexualized woman wearing a Burqa, a traditional Muslim garment. The woman’s legs are exposed, she is wearing high heels, and the caption, written in Hebrew, reads “Bibi, next time finish inside! Signed, citizens in favor of a ground assault” (@davidsheen). Seeing that “Bibi” is a nickname for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but also the Hebrew word for “finish”, the Israeli poster is nothing more than double-entendre that both advocates for finishing the drone strike and hypersexualizes a covered Muslim woman (Sharoni et. al. 656). Ironically, this billboard created by the state, Israel, who is actively oppressing Palestinians, closely mirrors the reductive thinking by global feminists that Islam is the primary force of oppression for Middle Eastern women. Global feminists and the Israelis, the very oppressors of the Middle Eastern women these feminists claim to be saving, thus function from similar ideologies. In Palestine, these neo-liberal thinking patterns have manifested in the rise of “professionalized feminists NGOs,” which have shifted the focus of 13

local, grassroots organizing in Palestine to a global stage that overlooks and neglects the specific needs of Palestinian women. Jad, a Palestinian feminist organizer, comments how “the discourse of ‘peace negotiation as the only option’ [that has been popularized by global NGOs] marginalizes… what can be called ‘a home homegrown feminism.’ [This hegemonic discourse] is driven by new liberal and universal discourse on women’s rights.” These global NGOs narrowly view women “in isolation from their context,” whereas grassroots “militant” Palestinian feminist organizing seeks to “liberate the country and women [at] the same time” (Mohanty 984). By disregarding the actual desires of Palestinian feminists, global feminism has appropriated, distorted, and to use Said’s terminology once more, “spoken over” the struggles of these women to the point that its solidarity has become somewhat ingenuine. However, Black feminists in America have been able to show effective transnational solidarity because they know how to work within differences and critique the same structures of oppression as Third World women. They do not assume that the differences amongst Black women and Third World women “did not exist, or were not potentially divisive” (Salem 247). In an essay titled “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”, the radical Black, lesbian feminist Audre Lorde expands on this dynamic that guided Angela Davis’ experiences in Egypt. Lorde explains that “advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. For difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic” (111). Unlike most Western feminists, Black feminists, who have been “forged in the crucibles of difference” as a result of their subjugation in America, recognize the multilayered systems of oppression that impact the experiences of women in the Third World (112). Their own experiences have taught them that there a universal feminist solidarity cannot exist without an acknowledgement of the different ways women experience oppression. These differences then serve as, in Lorde’s words, the impetus “from which our creativity can spark like a dialect”. Differences deepen, not impede the women’s work. In their manifesto, The Combahee River Collective, a group of Black lesbian feminists in the1970s in Boston, express that “we realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. …We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to 14

Race, Religion, and Social Justice end somebody else’s oppression” (Combahee River Collective). This rhetoric closely resembles what Middle Eastern activists have said about global feminists’ involvement with their struggles. Thus, these groups stand in natural solidarity with one another. One photograph depicts the founding women of the Combahee River Collective, Margo Okazawa-Rey and Barbara Smith, along with other activists, protesting the Roxbury murders of 11 Black women with a sign that reads “Third World Women. We Cannot Live Without Our Lives” (Combahee River Collective). This statement implies that the Combahee River Collective’s inclusive politics comes from the organization’s recognition that Black women and Third World Women are often subject to similar forms of intersectional oppression on the simultaneous basises of religion, race, sex, and class (Combahee River Collective). Similarly, an anti-War poster created by INCITE!, a network of radical feminists of color, depicts a woman wearing a hijab, presumably a Muslim woman, and her children with a US military tank. The poster reads: “Invading armies have never liberated women of color and Third World Women… Only we can liberate ourselves” (Road). The invading armies can be read as a symbol for external feminists who encroach upon the Third World with their white-saviour complexes. Indeed, US military intervention often uses the excuse of “liberating” the Third World from economic and social dictatorship to cover its imperial pursuits, suggesting US and Western feminism functions in a similar way. It is not about truly saving these Third World women, but rather, exerting power and control. Similar to the Combahee River Collective’s message of self-sufficiency, this poster suggests a recognition that although not all feminists consider themselves “liberators,” those that do often ignore the best interests of the people whom they are liberating. Aside from just standing in solidarity due to a mutual recognition of the myth of “universal sisterhood,” Angela Davis has pointed to the current Black Lives Matter movement as the culmination of decades of Black women standing in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice. Davis pushes for a “‘radical, working class, anti-racism, anti-colonial feminism,” which acknowledges the differences in women’s experiences by taking their political and social contexts into consideration (Csengeri 6). Davis identifies the parallels between the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, a tool of resistance Palestinians employ to economically target Israeli products and companies, and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1960, both which were inspired by the South-African anti-Apartheid movement. In particular, she speaks to the similar gendered effects of BDS and the Mont15

gomery Bus Boycotts: Because black women domestic workers employed in the homes of white women relied on public transportation, the boycott created much tension and havoc in those white homes. Thus, married white women implored their husbands to bring an end to bus segregation so that black domestic workers could get to work and ‘normalcy’ could be restored to white women’s homes. We can see similar power relations in the Palestinian-Israeli context. As a strategy, BDS allows Palestinian women to develop an effective and compelling response to Israel’s human rights violations, largely because women around the world make most of the consumer decisions for their homes. (Sharoni et. al. 660) Davis’ connection shows how not only how is BDS a feminist act of disruption, but also that it is rooted in a legacy of successful transnational solidarity. More recently, younger Palestinian activists have organized “Palestinian Freedom Rides” by boarding segregated buses in Palestine, getting arrested just as Black and white Civil Rights protestors did in the 60s (Davis 114). By understanding that religion is not the singular axis of oppression for these Palestinian women, Black feminists in America have stood in meaningful solidarity with Palestinian feminists as they recognize the intersectionality of their struggles on more global themes like imperialism and colonialism. The basis of transnational solidarity must be a spirit of resistance to the actual problems at hand, not “the integration of individual women into existing power structures as a privileged mode of progressive social change” (Sharoni et. al. 985). For global feminists, namely those rooted in the tradition of white, Western feminism, a deep reflection on whiteness, class, and privilege is necessary in order for these women to understand how they contribute to hegemonic structures of oppression. Only then can they be more in tune to the actual struggles of the Third World women and stand in true solidarity with whom for so long, they did not understand.

Works Cited @davidsheen. “Israelis sharing a misogynistic meme: ‘Bibi, finish inside this time! Signed, citizens in favor of a ground assault.’”Twitter, 17 Jul. 2014, 7:08 a.m., https://twitter.com/davidsheen/. Abdelhy, Hadeel. “On Transnational Feminist Solidarity.” https://sites. duke.edu/dukemuse/on-transnational-feminist-solidarity/. Combahee River Collective. (1977). The Combahee River Collective Statement. Combahee River Collective. 3rd World Women: We Cannot Live Without Our Lives: We Will Fight Back! 1979. Photograph. https://www.loc. gov/pictures/item/2016648553/. Cristy C. Road. Anti-war Flyer from INCITE!. https://modelviewculture. com/pieces/no-ivawa. Csengeri, Natalie. “’Radical, working class, anti-racist, anti-colonial feminism.’” Socialist Lawyer 72 (February 2016). https://doi. org/10.13169/socialistlawyer.72.0016. Davis, Angela. Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Haymarket Books, 2016. Lavie, Smadar. “Mizrahi Feminism and the Question of Palestine.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2011). https://doi. org/10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.7.2.56. Lober, Brooke. “Conflict and Alliance in the Struggle: Feminist Anti-imperialism, Palestine Solidarity, and the Jewish Feminist Movement of the Late 20th Century.” Abstract. PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2016. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1849508402. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Transnational Feminist Crossings: On Neoliberalism and Radical Critique.” Signs 38, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 967-91. https://doi.org/10.1086/669576. Salem, Sara. “On Transnational Feminist Solidarity: The Case of Angela Davis in Egypt.” Signs 43, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 245-67. https://doi. org/10.1086/693535. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books, 1979. Sharoni, Simona, Rabab Abdulhadi, Nadje Al-Ali, Felicia Eaves, Ronit Lentin, and Dina Siddiqi. “Transnational Feminist Solidarity in Times of Crisis: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement and Justice In/For Palestine.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17, no. 4 (2015): 654-70. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742. 17

Yoga: A Legitimate Part of Hinduism? Kyle Park ’23 Dating back to the pre-Vedic period, yoga originates from the Indus Sarasvati Valley Civilization and remains a key component of Indian culture. Found in the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra, two major texts of Hinduism, yoga is deeply connected to religious practices about “realizing god” (Vivekananda). Nonetheless, throughout the last decade, yoga has become a popular “exercise cult with expensive accessories” in the Western world; Westerners have benefited from yoga’s mental and physical perks (Bardach). While the West’s portrayal focuses on yoga’s physical advantages and cultural fluidity, yoga is not only a physical practice but one that promotes religious and spiritual upliftment of humanity: the truth that is often neglected due to Edward Said and Sophia Arjana’s notion of “Muddled Orientalism”––the “[adoption] of Eastern practices [...] while retaining the power” of the West (Arjana 96). “Yoga is a deeply beneficial and life-changing habit. I’ve seen people use yoga to drag themselves out of eating disorders, depression, marital issues, PTSD, and illness” (Cassandra). Following Indian monk Swami Vivekananda’s introduction of yoga to the West, Western yoga has naturally centered around the Asana, the third path of the Eightfold Path, which focuses on the physical practice of poses; each path in Pantanjali’s yoga system leads to the final goal of the God-realization (“Invitation to World”). To face and overcome the aforementioned problems in life, Western individuals rely on Asana and incorporate the various tenets of yogic spirituality into their lives. Hence, is the Western cultural appropriation of yoga beneficial? Indeed, as it provides thousands of practitioners an opportunity to embark on a journey based on rituals: “a patterned behavior designed to bring about a specific objective”––in this case, the goal of overcoming life obstacles (Nattier 7). Moreover, there were only 14 yoga Asanas initially, yet with the growth of hatha yoga, there are now over 100 unique Asanas: an example showcasing the flexibility of culture and religion (Basavaraddi). The outcome of yoga’s worldwide expansion is a testament to how “culture is fluid,” and that fluidity is what allows yoga to change its shape to fit the needs of different communities (Cassandra). Nevertheless, one must not forget the utmost importance of “[recognizing] the roots of yoga” to understand the cases when Orientalism and 18

Introduction to Religious Studies cultural appropriation become toxic (Ratchford). Although Asana is an imperative part of a collection of Indian sutras explaining the value behind the yoga system, it is only one path, one perspective, one part of the entire story. Merely depending on Asana to characterize yoga would be insufficient; in fact, such thinking is an example of “thin description” as Asana alone fails to unravel the “intentions behind what people do” and disregards the “overarching significance” of yoga (Geertz 267). More importantly, it perfectly represents the West viewing the East through the Orientalist lens. As the West is deemed “superior” and the East “inferior,” Orientalism justifies the West “borrowing”, or rather culturally appropriating, Indian culture and suppressing the Orient (Arjana 101). Likewise, some Westerners only focus on Bikram, a specific type of yoga exercise, or Ashtanga, a sequence of yoga stretches; these individuals are also problematic as they have the potential to become extremists who “miss key aspects of practice,” such as mindfulness and kindness (Ratchford). Without exploring the entirety of yoga’s history, philosophy, and roots, Orientalism will continue to advance as not a system of knowledge but a system facilitating power dynamics — in essence, religion has the ability of “[masking] and [legitimizing] inequality” (Nye 59). Thus, yogis must start with the Bhagavad Gita, a collection of religious works displaying Arjuna and Krishna’s conversation vis-à-vis the “purpose of one’s life” and the threefold path of yoga (“Invitation to World”). Toronto yoga teacher Julia Gibran did just that: she read the Bhagavad Gita with her grandfather (Gibran’s first yoga teacher), “learned about Hindu tradition, cultural history, and the deities and their symbolism,” instead of starting with Asanas (Ratchford). By acknowledging all paths, rather than one, a practitioner can appreciate countless concepts ranging from morality to religious observances, purification of the body to controlling human impulses, and breathwork to promoting collective humanity: actions negating Said’s definition of Orientalism as “a desire to control, subjugate, and police the subject” (Arjana 102). Moreover, yoga is inaccurately commercialized in Western contexts today as it fails to go beyond the limits of physical exertions. New Age religions continue to “borrow”, or in truth capitalize, from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam through material products and mystical tourism –– an issue that is glaringly apparent in the yoga industry. The yoga market in the United States is worth approximately $11 billion, and an average yogi is estimated to spend $62,640 on classes, clothing, and accessories over their lifetime (Wellness Creative). Hence, as the yoga industry generates a large amount 19

of revenue, the West is inclined to keep yoga as it is and continue to capitalize regardless of ethics: another crucial branch of practices that serves as a “guideline for human behavior” (Nattier 7). For yoga to truly be a “practice,” one must consider the validity of Western yoga and assess whether the end result of Western yoga is muddled. Western yoga still opens the door though for more cultural awareness and unity in today’s world. Considering the physical, mental, and spiritual rewards, practicing yoga should be for everyone, regardless of race, gender, nationality, and religious background. In fact, exchanging cultures — without erasing the origins of the “borrowed” culture — among different communities is an essential part of how we learn about the world around us. Orientalism and the notion of stereotyping the East are sensitive topics where it can be challenging to arrive at a “correct” answer; this challenge is vital as it highlights the amount of work society must do. While we may not know the “correct” answer, we know the first steps we can take to eventually get to the final destination: “[acknowledging] the greater reason for why yoga was created” and realizing that yoga is much more than “an imitation of postures” (Ratchford). As I have faith in humanity, I believe that nobody deliberately takes part in yoga to perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes and encourage cultural appropriation. As a society, we instead must simply understand that yoga is not just a workout, yet a method to find harmony between the heart and soul to one day reach divine enlightenment; in essence, “our whole life is the practice” (Ratchford). We all should practice yoga, give credit where credit is due, and unite as one humanity.

Works Cited Bardach, Ann Louise. “How Yoga Won the West.” The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/howyoga-won-the-west.html?_r=2. Basavaraddi, Ishwar V. “Yoga: Its Origin, History and Development.” Ministry of External Affairs (Government of India), 23 Apr. 2015, www. mea.gov.in/in-focus-article.htm?25096/Yoga+Its+Origin+History+a nd+Development. Cassandra. “Yoga – Offensive Cultural Appropriation?” her name was cassandra, 8 Oct. 2013, hernamewascassandra.wordpress. com/2013/10/08/yoga-offensive-cultural-appropriation/. Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as Cultural System: Clifford Geertz.” Eight Theories of Religion, edited by Daniel L. Pals, 2nd ed., New York, Oxford UP, 2006, pp. 266-73. “Invitation to World Literature: Bhagavad Gita (WGBH/PBS).” Vimeo, 2011, vimeo.com/16756028. Nattier, Jan. “What is ‘Religion’?”. Introduction to Religious Studies Reader. Nye, Malory. “Texts.” Religion: The Basics, Taylor & Francis, 2008, pp. 152-61. Ratchford, Sarah. “Is Western Yoga Cultural Appropriation? Yes, but That Doesn’t Mean White People Can’t Practice It.” VICE, 26 Nov. 2015, www.vice.com/en/article/jmakbx/is-western-yoga-cultural-appropriation-obviously-but-that-doesnt-mean-you-cant-practice-it. Wellness Creative. “Yoga Industry Growth, Market Trends & Analysis 2021.” https://www.wellnesscreatives.com/yoga-industry-trends/.

Contrasting Viewpoints of Power in The Fire Next Time Mia Bocian ’23 James Baldwin’s vivid descriptions of his life in Harlem in The Fire Next Time reflect the constant, tangible presence of power in both racial and religious contexts. An examination of these experiences through the critical lens of power, informed by the contrasting theories of Marx and Foucault, initiates discussion of the complexity of this concept and how it is intertwined throughout society. The text represents a touching coming of age story in which Baldwin confronts power in different forms, both negative and positive, as characterized by Prothero in his analysis as “toxic” and “tonic” (Prothero 9-10). He struggles with racist societal forces and a skewed power dynamic. Despite Baldwin’s attempts to evade the rigid power imbalance between races as described by Marx, he instead encounters a different sort of authoritative dynamic in the Christian church, reflected in the ideas of Foucault, ultimately attesting to the impossibility of truly escaping the confines of power. In discussing power, Marx suggests an absolute division between two societal entities: the oppressor and the oppressed. He asserts that religion is a means to maintain and extend this existing construct of inequity. Malory Nye states that, according to Marx, religion “gives legitimacy to a set of power relations, and makes the rule by one group over another appear ‘natural’ and unquestionable” (Nye 59). His analysis reflects a rigid opposition between two groups, which parallels Baldwin’s discussion of both race and religion in The Fire Next Time. To start, Baldwin bluntly summarizes the racial power dynamic in Harlem, writing that “this world is white and they are black. White people hold the power, which means that they are superior to blacks” (25). Such a jarring statement is universally accepted as the status quo, and defying any aspect of these societal norms would disrupt the stark imbalance between races, with harmful and dangerous consequences for the black population. In fear of this reality, Baldwin flees to the church in order to escape the suffocating constraints of race yet ironically encounters a similar power hierarchy. Both Baldwin and Marx examine religion’s justification of this profound inequality. Baldwin recognizes the role of Christianity in validating this racial hierarchy through his claim that “God decreed it so” (25). In this way, religion endorses the unjust 22

Introduction to Religious Studies power dynamic through acceptance. In reference to the ideas of Marx, religion “[masks] the harsh… realities of life with a warmer, more comfortable glow” (Nye 59). Baldwin attempts to evade these difficult truths, searching for refuge in the church, only to find another power dynamic camouflaged by an inclusive facade. In sharp contrast to Marx’s emphasis upon a definite partition, Foucault defines power to extend beyond a simple portrayal of one group as superior over another. Instead, he presents a different perspective, regarding power as a “multiplicity of force relations” that permeates throughout society (Foucault 71). His diction suggests a much wider lens in his examination of the construct of power. In support of this idea, Foucault discusses the concept of surveillance, a means of controlling behavior by influencing self-regulation through the awareness that one is constantly monitored. Nye states that this method of exerting power leads individuals to “internalise the surveillance of their actions, and become their own jailers” (72). Baldwin’s experiences in the Christian church mirror this premise and support Foucault’s broader, more nuanced interpretation of power. Central to his religion is the notion of an all-knowing God, who watches over all individuals, which in turn promotes intense fear of committing a sin. Over time, Baldwin becomes aware of this “toxic” aspect of an omniscient presence, defined by Prothero as a negative element of religion (Prothero 9). Baldwin chronicles his reluctance to accept this “blackmail” of the church, which he describes as an internal conflict in which people “love[d] the Lord… because they were afraid of going to Hell,” rather than “lov[ing] the Lord because they loved Him” (35). His concerns represent an adverse consequence of this ever-present God, as individuals begin to no longer engage in religion on a personal basis, instead only practicing out of fear. Furthermore, the power of this scrutiny is exemplified on another level in Baldwin’s church through the watchful eye of community members, in addition to God. Nye emphasizes this different role of power, pointing to “the church community and elders [who] constantly [scrutinise] each other and [maintain] order” by utilizing the concept of surveillance (73). He thus presents yet another layer, evincing a variety of forces that exist within religion. Similarly, Baldwin references the girls of Harlem who “must act as God’s decoys, saving the souls of the boys for Jesus,” again illuminating this additional dimension of authority (18). In this way, constant surveillance by various entities reinforces the tactics of fear used to ensure strict adherence to Christianity. The toxicity of these aspects of religion serves as a catalyst for Baldwin’s 23

continued skepticism throughout The Fire Next Time. He questions the inherent definition of a good person, controlled by the Christian church through fear and achieved only through conformance with select religious beliefs. Baldwin considers a Jewish friend, whose moral existence is immediately debunked by Christianity: “I wonder if I was expected to be glad that a friend of mine, or anyone, was to be tormented forever in Hell” (37). This continuation of the notion of fear presents yet another facet of power, one based on difference. Interestingly, interspersed amongst his doubts, Baldwin manages to unearth a positive aspect of authority within religion, defined by Prothero as “tonic” (Prothero 9-10). Clearly, he has a complex and conflicted relationship with the church, and while he often criticizes power, there are occasions where he instead welcomes it. Baldwin elucidates that “the power and the glory that [he] sometimes felt when in the middle of a sermon,” continues to be unmatched in his future experiences (33). His authority as a minister serves as a driving force throughout his youth, and these accompanying emotions carry him along his religious journey. Therefore, Baldwin’s personal experiences with Christianity’s multifaceted power dynamic include both toxic and tonic elements, ultimately reinforcing Foucault’s claim of complexity. Adopting Foucault’s critical lens reveals the nuanced, widespread, and often contradictory nature of power, as opposed to Marx’s more simplistic definition of the dominance of one class over another. A close examination of The Fire Next Time reveals varying levels of power throughout society and religion. This premise emerges as Baldwin initially attempts to escape the authority of society, but upon self-reflection and questioning through his experiences, an anagnorisis occurs, as he realizes that this is an impossible task. This multidimensional and inescapable concept is perhaps best encapsulated in Foucault’s statement: “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Nye 71). He demonstrates the tendency of power to surround its prey, yet also raises a fascinating question: despite power’s negative connotation, does it always have to be detrimental? Baldwin’s experiences, as well as Prothero’s analysis of toxic and tonic, suggest that perhaps this construct can at times have a positive impact. However, The Fire Next Time mainly exemplifies the true oppressive nature of authority on a multitude of levels, in accordance with Foucault’s viewpoint. Baldwin ultimately fails to truly evade the profound inequalities that forge his world, as he instead unearths multi-faceted power dynamics in his place of refuge. 24

Works Cited Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Vintage, 1993. Nye, Malory. “Power.” Religion: The Basics, Routledge, 2003, pp. 57–77. Prothero, Stephen R. God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World . HarperOne, 2011.

Reflections on The Bell Jar Emma Kim ’23 When I first read The Bell Jar, by the late poet Sylvia Plath, I felt seen and heard in a way I had never before. It was as if my innermost thoughts were poured out onto a page and written for everyone to see. Watching Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of the novel, slowly break down and unravel was like watching someone else go through my own, unique experiences; the feeling similar to that of floating above my sleeping body in a dream. I too prided myself in my accomplishments — my ability to win awards and even to attend a prestigious school such as Lawrenceville — but I often felt lost and misguided. That feeling of stupor permeated my waking moments and I would spend hours lounging on my bed doing nothing but wanting to do everything, scrolling through social media with no goal and feeling disgusted with myself. The Bell Jar, however, is not sacred to me in the way that the Bible might be to Christians or a Torah might be to Jews, but more like a diary is to the loner protagonist in a coming of age movie. “In order for a book to have a [meaning], a book has to have someone reading it, interpreting it, applying it to their world” and that is exactly the case with Plath’s novel. It’s changed the way I’ve thought about women, success, and even mental health (Fuerst and Goodwin). When I was struggling with dark thoughts and pushing away my emotions, I always thought I was so alone in my strife. But being able to read the story of a young woman who went through my experiences and made it safely to the other side helped me to realize I wasn’t alone. The Bell Jar has also had a large effect on society in general and has become a symbol of feminism, women, and depression, which slightly misconstrues Plath’s actual, darker material. To further understand the text, “we must also learn to read how those texts are reproduced and woven into other cultural outlets” (Nye 155). Identifying how Plath’s book is represented in other media can lend to our understanding and interpretation of it. For example, a copy of The Bell Jar is found next to Heather Chandler’s dead body after she presumably commits suicide in Heathers, and next to Mallory Knox from Natural Born Killers as she is sleeping, a scene that predates the murder of her sexually abusive father and neglectful mother by her and her boyfriend. In this context, Plath’s The Bell Jar can be seen as a symbol 26

Introduction to Religious Studies of a female’s mental instability and isolation from society. It has also been used as a prop for feminist female characters that go against the grain; Kat Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You, Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons, and even serves as a symbol of post-breakup depression for Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, to name a few. This interpretation may be due to Esther’s mindset of not wanting to get married and have children, along with her desire to defy society and lose her virginity before marriage. In this way, The Bell Jar has become a staple text in today’s culture, used to describe angst-filled, depressed women. Although I disagree with this interpretation, as I find the novel to be about a woman who grows into herself and pulls herself out of a dark place, it is worth noting that “because the world is changing, books are always changing” (Fuerst and Goodwin). “All those who embark upon reading the Quran — Muslims and nonMuslims, religious and secular people — can learn something about the world and about themselves through engagement with it,” says Ingrid Mattson in an article titled “How to Read the Quran” (1587). I would argue the same for Plath’s The Bell Jar since the discoveries I made within myself have quite literally changed my life and my view of the world. I used to always think that growing up and “coming of age” meant discovering who you were and what you wanted to do in life — transforming from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Everyone else was flying around with their new, beautiful wings, and I was still stuck in my cocoon. “All I could see were question marks” when everyone else around me felt “sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead,” (Plath 257). But through Esther Greenwood, Plath showed me that it’s alright to not know the answer to everything. Through this text, I learned that finding yourself isn’t like those scenes in coming of age movies where inspiring music is playing and the character is dancing in slow motion, but rather the scenes that you don’t see, the ones where the character is crying in the hallway alone but pulls herself back together and continues on. Another interesting aspect of The Bell Jar is how Esther, the protagonist, goes from seeing herself through thin description and starts to see herself through thick description. This discovery has led me to believe that most of society analyzes itself using thin description instead of thick, with myself being complicit as well. In the beginning, Esther measures her self-worth through “winning scholarships and prizes” and “studying and reading and writing and working like mad,” (Plath 33, 81). She leads a life of envy, filled with “promises of full scholarships all the way [while being]... apprenticed to the best editor of an intellectual fashion magazine,” (Plath 33). Towards 27

the end, however, she begins to see past herself until she truly begins to see her soul. For instance, at the asylum, Esther doesn’t even recognize herself in one of the fashion magazines, something she would’ve proudly displayed previously, demonstrating her emotional and mental growth. Although the process is grueling and takes a large mental and physical toll, she emerges “patched, retreaded, and approved for the road,” (Plath 257). Similar to how Esther previously judged herself solely through her accomplishments, Malcolm X prematurely thought of the “‘white man’ [as]... complexion only secondarily [and as] primarily [describing] attitudes and actions… toward all other non-white men,” (383). He undergoes a radical change in mindset after Mecca and later sees white men not as white men but as examples of “sincere and truth brotherhood,” (391). In this same way Esther saw herself as more of her exterior, and subsequently taught me as well: No one knows what someone else is going through at any given moment. How could we judge someone for not getting married by a certain age when they had to care for their ailing parents? Or for not getting a job when they just got dumped by their partner? We are more than the sum of our parts, and we need to stop judging ourselves and others by what they’ve materialistically achieved and rather value them as a person. Although The Bell Jar covers many dark topics, from depression to grief to rape to sexism, I maintain that it is a “tonic” text, at least in my interpretation. This book has helped me get through extremely difficult times and let me know that I am never alone. Esther paved the way for women-inmaking like me, teaching us that we are our own person, unburdened by children or marriage, and are fully capable of becoming anything we want to be, while at the same time reminding us that we don’t have to have shiny medals and trophies to be worth it. At the end of the novel, Esther realizes that it’s okay to not know the answers to everything as long as you are confident in yourself. Despite everything she has endured, she persevered. She taught me that I am strong enough to be broken down, and still build myself up again, for I am worth it, I am stronger than I know, I can love myself. “I am, I am, I am.”

Works Cited Elias, Naomi. “How ‘The Bell Jar’ Became Pop Culture’s Code For Female Sadness.” Nylon, 26 Oct. 2017, www.nylon.com/articles/bell-jar-female-sadness. Fuerst, Ilyse Morgenstein, and Megan Goodwin. “What the Heck Is Religion, and What the Heck Is This Podcast? - Keeping It 101: A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion.” Buzzsprout, keepingit101. buzzsprout.com/810974/2466752-what-the-heck-is-religion-andwhat-the-heck-is-this-podcast. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. The Study Quran: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary. HarperOne, an Imprint of Collins Publishers, 2015. Nye, Malory. Religion: The Basics. Routledge, 2003. Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Faber, 1999. X, Malcolm, et al. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Ballantine Books, 1992.

Figure Skates: The Key to Unlocking My Sacred World Caroline Park ’23 In his book Religion: The Basics, Malory Nye defines a text as “a study that encourages us to widen our sense of ‘text’ beyond the specifically written… [so] that we can understand important issues of culture, and by extension of religion” (154-155). With this definition, one can interpret figure skates as a sacred text. While they may not be a written text, my figure skates have unlocked the door to the world of figure skating. This sacred world, which can be compared to the sacredness of religion, has helped me better understand how to face adversities in the real world. The values figure skating instilled in me tremendously influence every decision I make, both consciously and subconsciously, even four years after retiring prematurely due to extensive injuries. To me, figure skating is far more than just a sport, since the lessons I have learned from it pertain to all aspects of my life, connecting my skates to the idea of thick description. In Clifford Geertz’s essay about "thick" and "thin" description, he describes thick description as the significance of physical motion, where it has the ability “to discern meanings, to discover the intentions behind what people do, to detect the overarching significance they attribute to their rituals, institutions, and beliefs” (267). When looking into the greater significance skating has had on my life, I think of the several lessons I grasped from the ice that I would not have been able to master if I had never skated. Some of these lessons include learning how to get up after each fall, regardless of how difficult it may be, having patience with myself, finding joy in the bad days whilst remaining humble to the good days, and most importantly how to love myself and something else so profoundly, which has certainly made me a better person. Since I learned these lessons when I was young, they became some of the key characteristics that have made me the person I am today. Skating developed my resilience, physical and mental strength, grit, perseverance, and perfectionism and became beneficial to me even outside of the rink. These lessons have tremendously helped me navigate through my recent medically challenging years, and I highly doubt that I would even be alive today if it were not for the acquisition of these lessons that were exclusively obtainable from figure skating. 30

Introduction to Religious Studies While my skates are certainly sacred to me, as discussed in class, sacred is not necessarily synonymous with ‘good,’ and this lack of ‘goodness’ presents itself through the toxicity of skating culture. Behind skating’s beautiful visage of effortless elegance lies a dark, unspoken truth all competitive skaters inevitably face: pain. A competitive figure skater’s reality entails constant external pressure from coaches, judges, and even fans to look a certain way, and the burden of keeping up with the sport’s seemingly endless physical and mental demands from its athletes. In the book God is Not One, Steven Prothero writes about how “religion is one of the greatest forces for evil in world history”, and these “good” and “evil” forces manifest themselves through religion’s tonicity and toxicity (9). Such “forces for evil” directly apply to skating culture; although skating appears to be tonic at first, once a skater furthers their athletic journey and becomes more exposed to the reality of figure skating, they begin to learn the intense cruelty intertwined with its culture. As a result, when skating culture is interpreted in a way that emphasizes its toxicity, skaters can feel like they are never worthy enough, which I personally know can still have a negative impact even several years after quitting. Regardless of the adverse effects figure skating’s toxic culture had on me, I would still do anything to return to the ice, a yearning that feels thematically in-line with James Baldwin’s relationship with the church growing up. Looking to escape the many adversities he had faced throughout his childhood, young James Baldwin sought solace through religion and turned to the Pentecostal Church for comfort. As Baldwin became more involved with the church as he aged, he increasingly realized the hypocrisies and contradictions embedded within the backbone of Christian faith (34). This idea relates to my relationship with figure skating. Similar to Baldwin’s connection to the church, figure skating is far more than just a sport to me; the ice is my home, and my skates unlock a world of freedom, the same way the Holy Bible was the key to unlock Baldwin’s sacred world. However, as I became more competitive, the hypocrisies of skating, such as crossing the line where a sport becomes unhealthy and athletes become unhappy, started revealing themselves to my naive self. Therefore, while the ice may serve as a space of comfort, there is an underlying reality that not everything is perfect in this sacred world, and once these contradictions begin to surface, it becomes too late to turn back. Despite skating culture’s toxic aspects, skating has also taught me unconditional joy and love through its tonicity. Referring back to God is Not One, Prothero also states that “Religion is also one of the greatest forces for 31

good” (9). These “greatest forces for good” present themselves through the unforgettable thrill and small moments of pure happiness and liberation I was blessed enough to have experienced during my short time as a skater, and I still replay these moments in my mind and reflect upon them today. Skating curbed my anxiety when I was younger, and the lessons I mentioned earlier continue to influence every choice I make while making me a better member of society. When interpreted in a positive light, I genuinely believe that figure skating’s teachings can be personally beneficial for the body and the mind while improving one’s contributions to the greater community, making the world a better place for all of its inhabitants. Viewing my skates as a religious text has helped me deepen the understanding of my relationship with figure skating. It enables me to understand how lessons I learned from the sport continue to influence all aspects of my life in a meaningful way, even after quitting four years ago. Regardless of some rough patches I faced along the way, I would not have wanted my childhood to happen any other way. Figure skating and the morals I derived from it are definitely defining traits of the Caroline Park I am proud to be today. Works Cited Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Vintage International, 1993. Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as Cultural System.” Eight Theories of Religion, edited by Daniel L. Pals, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2006. Nye, Malory. “Texts.” Religion: The Basics, Taylor & Francis, 2008, pp. 152-61. Prothero, Steven. “Toxic and Tonic.” God is Not One, 1st ed., Harper-Collins Publishers, 2010.

PHILOSOPHY

Darwin’s Case for Legalizing Abortion Jasper Zhu ’21 On May 28th, 2019, the Supreme Court ruled to strike down a portion of the Indiana State legislature prohibiting the practice of abortions on the grounds of the race, sex, and mental status of the fetus in the case Box v. Planned Parenthood. In response to the ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas filed an opinion detailing his disagreement with this ruling grounded in an explanation of the history of eugenics (Farley). Particularly, he characterized abortion as a tool to “achieve eugenic goals” (Supreme Court of the US). Regardless of the accuracy or validity of his analysis of eugenics, his argument took on a distinctively Darwinist tone; by critiquing Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of Planned Parenthood, and her view that the lack of birth control caused the “spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all,” Thomas grounds his argument in a discussion of diversity in the human species and abortion’s harm towards that diversity (Sanger). This view seems to suggest that the practice of abortions harms a species’s overall survivability under a Darwinist paradigm. However, Darwin’s nuanced interpretation of species invalidates the argument proposed by Thomas and actually constructs a defense for the legality of abortions from the perspective of the individual. Darwin rejects the idea that the human species is one united front with common goals for the whole population and characterizes the use of taxonomical labels as a means of tracing the lineage of certain individual genes. Darwin never provides an explicit definition for a species and instead admits to the inability to come to an agreement on the meaning of that term in the scientific community (Darwin 106). Regardless, he asserts that each species originates as a variety first and then at some arbitrary moment becomes a species. The vague delineation between these two classifications allowed Darwin to conclude that “no line of demarcation can be drawn between species” (116). Thus, in Darwin’s opinion, no matter what definition of species is used, it still is not a natural phenomenon; taxonomical labels are categorically artificially created. This rejection of the natural formation of species seems contradictory to the extensive usage of this term by Darwin in his writing. However, Kevin Padian from UC Berkeley explains that although the idea is artificial, it still serves a purpose in Darwin’s biological investigation. The latter uses genealogical groupings as a means of tracing 35

the different organisms to a common lineage or a common ancestor (Padian 362). In other words, under Darwin’s paradigm, not only are species not a natural demarcation and therefore the members within it should not have an allegiance to one another, its existence actually helps scientists trace genetic material back to a certain individual organism. Therefore, when Darwin mentions that “the more diversified in structure the descendants from any one species can be rendered, the… more their modified progeny will increase,” it would be more accurate to interpret that as the diversity of the offspring of one original organism rather than the diversity of the group as a whole (77). Though Thomas’s critique on abortion and its influence on diversity has some grounding in Darwinist literature, it fails to take account for Darwin’s nuanced usage of species. Rather than suggesting that species as a whole should work together to preserve their own genetic diversity and strive for survival, Darwin believed that species themselves are not natural phenomena and thus do not have collective objectives. Not only are humans not one united front, but they also actively rival each other for survival under the idea of competition within the theory of evolution. When defining the idea of a “struggle for existence” in The Origin of Species, Darwin brings up several examples. In one instance, he describes two dogs on the verge of starvation as truly having to “struggle with each other which shall get food and live” (50). In another example, Darwin brings up the mistletoe growing on a tree having to compete with each other because “if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it languishes and dies” (50). A shared characteristic between these two examples of struggling for existence is that the competition occurs between beings of the same species, suggesting that Darwin’s paradigm for the conflict in the natural world is often between similar, not different organisms. Particularly in the example of the mistletoe, he specifies that the parasites can only in a “far-fetched sense be said to struggle with [the] trees” (50). Darwin rejects the idea that competition is something that occurs between drastically different organisms, claiming it is rather something that happens between species. Therefore, it would be misguided to claim that humans are competing with other animals to maintain their survival as the competition in effect exists between the humans themselves. Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz specifically points out that the idea of a struggle for existence being one between different species is a common misconception (Lorenz 20). Lorenz explains that conflicts seen between species are a result of self-defense rather than a natural process (21). As the examples provided by Darwin illustrated, conflicts and competitions actually impact how evolution occurs 36

Makers of the Modern Mind between similar species. Lorenz goes a step further and explains how interspecies conflict actually “fulfils a species-preserving function” (21). Thus, even if Thomas’s understanding of species were correct, competition and struggle between different people still would stand as the most desirable outcome. Darwin’s analysis on evolution demonstrates that regardless of what interpretation of species used, struggle and conflict between people, rather than unity, remains the most desirable and natural outcome. In the competition for survival, overpopulation operates as a selective pressure, suggesting that mechanisms for population control would be evolutionarily beneficial. Thomas Malthus first proposed the idea that food could be the limiting factor in human development. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus points out that “population when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio” while food and “subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio” (qtd. in Darwin 39). He attributes the greater speed of population growth to the reason as to why there will be a cap on the development of human beings. Darwin’s idea of natural selection is the result of Malthus’s theory being “applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms” (Darwin 97). Since more individuals are produced than the number that could survive, there “must in every case be a struggle for existence” between different animals of the same species (51). Darwin’s thinking suggests that the greater rate of birth compared to the production of food will inevitably cause overpopulation among humans, forcing them to compete for subsidence in an effort to survive. Darwin then elaborates how the “geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction” (52). Therefore, from the perspective of the individual, any mechanism that could function as a source of destruction would be beneficial to their chances of living. Given the constant looming danger of overpopulation, people should desire measures of population control as it maximizes the person’s survivability. One methodology for limiting population growth comes in the form of abortions. In the 1950s, China attempted to promote the use of birth control and abortions through “the injection of…Malthusian threat into public discussions” to preserve the “interest of the nation as a whole,” laying out a clear relationship between abortion and Malthusian and Darwinist theories (Tien 39). From a purely intuitive standpoint, legal abortions represent the opportunity for someone to eliminate potential children. For the people not related to the person who got the abortion, they now do not need to worry about the competition between their own offspring and the would-be child. Indeed, in a paper that studied the fertility rate, a measure37

ment that took into account families that had an abortion but proceeded to give birth to a child later on, in the United States in the early 1970s, the researcher found that the rate dropped by about 0.15 births in a two year period (Tietze 124). This characteristic is not unique just to the United States or the West. A separate study examining the role of abortions in Japan and China noted that abortions were effective in reducing the birthrate in Japan from 1947 to 1961, and concluded that “if attempted on a nation-wide basis, it would be likely to offer China relief from population pressure” as well (Tien 43). In retrospect, such a conclusion can clearly be validated with the imposition of China’s one-child policy, which resulted in a sharp decline of birthrates in the country. These studies validate the intuitive reasoning that legalizing of abortions can alleviate the selective pressure of overpopulation. In fact, an observational study on the experience of 116 countries even went as far as concluding that abortions should be legalized and widely practiced if a country wished to reach a growth rate of less than 1% (Mumford). The abortions play a significant part in alleviating overpopulation, and as a consequence, its role as a selective pressure. Thus, each person could increase their chance for survival if they pushed for abortions and its legalization. Darwin’s interpretation of species and his theory of survival of the fittest justify the legalization of abortion from the perspective of the individual. Although Justice Thomas intended to use the possible damage abortions have on diversity — and by extension evolutionary viability — to oppose its legality, he failed to recognize the nuanced usage of species by Darwin as a tool to trace back to an individual genealogy rather than a united group of organisms. The focus on individuality refuted Thomas’s argument as the role of diversity serves to strengthen each person’s survivability, something not impacted by legal abortions since individuals can choose to not undergo the operation. Not only is there not a united species identity, but Darwin’s thinking also suggests that similar organisms are actually rivals with each other in the fight for survival. Coupled with the threat of overpopulation, legalizing abortions clearly is an evolutionarily advantageous decision for an individual operating under a Darwinist framework. Ultimately, by trying to appeal to the vague references a human species, Justice Thomas laid the groundwork for another argument defending abortions and serves as a reminder that noble efforts to advance human-kind may just be further misguided generalizations.

Works Cited Darwin, Charles. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman. 3rd ed., New York, Norton, 2001. Farley, Audrey. “We Still Don’t Know How to Navigate the Cultural Legacy of Eugenics.” Longreads, June 2019, longreads.com/2019/06/19/ we-still-dont-know-how-to-navigate-the-cultural-legacy-of-eugenics/. Lorenz, Konrad. On Aggression. Translated by Marjorie Kerr Wilson, London, Routledge, 2002. Mumford, S D, and E Kessel. “Role of abortion in control of global population growth.” Clinics in obstetrics and gynaecology, vol. 13,1 (1986): 19-31. Padian, Kevin. “Charles Darwin’s Views of Classification in Theory and Practice.” Systematic Biology, vol. 48, no. 2, june 1999, pp. 352-64, https://doi.org/10.1080/106351599260337. Sanger, Margaret. The Pivot of Civilization. Project Gutenberg, 2008.www. gutenberg.org/files/1689/1689-h/1689-h.htm. Tien, H. Yuan. “Induced Abortion and Population Control in Mainland China.” Marriage and Family Living, vol. 25, no. 1, 1963, pp. 35–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/349006. Tietze, Christopher. “The Effect of Legalization of Abortion on Population Growth and Public Health.” Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 7, no. 3, 1975, pp. 123–127. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2133730. United States, U.S. Supreme Court (U.S.). Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc. Docket no. 18-483, 28 May 2019. Casetext, casetext.com/case/box-v-planned-parenthood-of-indiana-andkentucky-inc.

Fearless and Not Trembling Samuel Tang ’22 A streak of lightning cuts through the sky, followed by the deafening roar of thunder. “YOUR KIERKEGAARD PAPERS ARE DUE THURSDAY, NO NEGOTIATION.” Dr. Vong loudly declares to his pupils. Everyone starts to pack their belongings, each begrudgingly accepting the burden. Suddenly, a loud smack on the table snaps everyone to attention. It is him: Tang, the most brilliant, most handsome, most likable student in the class. Tang stands firmly without a wisp of fear in his eyes. In a mighty voice, he declares: “Dr. Vong, I refuse to write this paper.” Has Tang gone mad? Over the years, Tang never once questioned Dr. Vong’s authority or instructions. His papers often scored the highest in the class and demonstrated impressive magnitudes of genius. “You may give me a bad grade. Write me a harsh memo. Do what you want. I accept the outcome.” With this, Tang exits the room. The other students tremble in fear, shaken by Tang’s outrageous behavior. One by one, they cry out for Dr. Vong to do something about Tang’s shameful display. “He’s a bad student! How disrespectful!” Another student cries out: “Who does he think he is?! He probably just didn’t do the reading!” Within the universal mindset of a classroom, it is easy to condemn Tang for his blatant disrespect for the teacher and the assignment. But before you join the crusade against Tang, stop and consider whether or not writing a paper about Fear and Trembling respects the spirit of the book itself? By refusing to write the essay, Tang demonstrates his understanding of Fear and Trembling far more effectively than those who do write a paper, since Tang takes the steps of a knight of faith and rejects the aesthetic power of grades and social judgement, which limit the freedom of philosophical exploration. In his refusal to write the paper, Tang refrained from using logic to conceptualize faith. Instead, he was inspired by the reading and did his best to grasp faith by rising above the universal of the classroom. In the book Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio speaks about faith in terms of embracing the absurd and making the difficult move of rising above the universal that is grounded in the ethical and logical. For this reason, almost “nobody will stop with faith; they all go further,” mistaking it as a “skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks” (Kierkegaard 42). In many ways, the concept of “faith” is comparable to “philosophical enlightenment.” Both 40

Makers of the Modern Mind are difficult to reach, difficult to communicate through words, and relative to each person. Johannes highlighted the sad truth that an author “who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can be comfortably leafed through”, since “passion has been done away with for the sake of science” (43). Much like the world of Johannes, Tang’s world is the classroom, where a student who wants a good grade must write in clear and concise manners that suits the taste of a teacher. Tang and his fellow peers have no limits in terms of creative and interesting ideas that they feel passionate about, but each time an assignment is given, they cherry-pick through their garden of ideas until they find one that best conforms to the logic-based rubric. For Johannes, the ethical is not a channel that one can use to grasp faith, for “it uses pure categories and it doesn’t appeal to experience” (113). One who views the world through the universal ethical scope does not truly experience or embody the philosophies that they study. The whole point of studying philosophy is not to be able to carry out a logical argument that carries no weight in relation to your personal life, just like how faith is not supposed to be an attempt to see everything as logical and coherent or abide by a system defined by someone else. As Kierkegaard said, “to have faith is precisely to lose one’s mind so as to win God’’ (“PHILOSOPHY - Soren Kierkegaard”). In his refusal to write the paper, Tang surrenders his mind to the absurd, completely disconnecting himself from the temptations of the universal. Other students are still bound by their desires for a grade, but not Tang. Tang is above that. Tang has found faith in his own understanding and sees no need for Dr. Vong to critique his thoughts. Maybe someone else might need to write a paper to discover their own philosophical revelations, but that is their path. As Johannes said, “faith itself cannot be mediated into the universal, for in that case it would be cancelled” since “the single individual is quite unable to make himself intelligible to anyone” (Kierkegaard 99). In his quest for philosophical revelation, Tang simply cannot express his deepest thoughts in terms of the universal. Any attempt to do so would ultimately be futile, just like how it is impossible for the average ethical man to understand a knight of faith. That is not to say that Tang is the only knight of faith, because others in the class can be just as faithful to their philosophical pursuit, except their relation to their absolute is different from that of Tang’s. With this being said, how can we be sure that Tang is not simply a lazy student with poor habits? Well for starters, we are talking about Tang here, the good looking, hardest working student in the class. But even more importantly, a simply lazy 41

student is ultimately bound to the universal and he will immediately break down when he returns to his room. Tang, however, is a knight of faith who accepts his fate for what it is, resolutely keeping to his faith in his philosophical enlightenment. When Abraham was tested by God’s request for the sacrifice of Isaac, “his faith was not that he should be happy sometime in the hereafter, but that he should find blessed happiness here in this world. God could give him a new Isaac, bring the sacrificial offer back to life. He believed in the strength of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since been suspended” (65). Unlike Abraham, the lazy student would lament over the fact that he is losing an opportunity to obtain a grade. He does not trust that the value he loses over this paper will ever be reconciled through his faith to his philosophical pursuit. To him, the class is only a way to get easy As. If that aesthetic condition is not afforded to him, the whole endeavor becomes a pointless one. Furthermore, the lazy student would have gone on a much longer speech than Tang. Instead of making a swift rejection of the paper, the lazy student would try his best to build up his own image and express his supposed faith in philosophy to the rest of the class. To Johannes, the lazy student is someone who “wants to express his absolute duty in the universal” and “becomes conscious of the latter,” thus entering a “state of temptation” (98). To truly be a knight of faith, one must be free from temptation by expressing their absolute duty outside of the universal instead of under its influence. Perhaps in this regard, Tang can do even more to distance himself from the universal of the classroom by straight up dropping out and cutting all ties between his pursuit of philosophy and the academic duty of the classroom. But alas, doing so does not really bring Tang to a more secure relation with his faith in philosophy. A knight of faith does not always need to reject the ethical to stay true to faith. Sometimes they can overlap. For Tang, he simply has to distance his thoughts and revelations from the temptation of molding his ideas to get a good grade. Staying in the class encourages him to share his ideas and hear new ones. But then one must ask the question, why should Tang have to refuse to write a paper? Is there really a conflict between faith and the ethical? If Tang has a strong and steadfast faith in his philosophical beliefs, he can still fulfill his ethical duties as a student and write a paper that simply speaks in prose. In fact, a stronger rejection of the universal would be deliberately writing a paper that does not conform to rubrics and expectations. When Abraham received God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, he had no choice but to teleologically suspend the ethical to follow through with 42

Makers of the Modern Mind the command. This is what draws a distinction between Tang and Abraham. Abraham faces a conflict in duty, Tang does not. While the ethical expression would condemn Abraham’s actions as murder, the religious expression “is that he was willing to sacrifice Isaac,” forming a “contradiction” without which “Abraham is not the one he is” (60). Essentially, the only reason Abraham can be praised for his suspension of the ethical is because he works for the teleological. In the face of the contradiction, Abraham rose above the universal authority of the ethical and suspended it to pursue his faith in what constitutes as a leap faith because Abraham gains nothing from the suspension of the ethical. He loves Isaac with all his heart. Abraham’s love for Isaac is important because “if he did not love Isaac, all thought of offering Isaac would be a temptation” (61). Sacrificing your child is not a convenient or desirable act in any way. We can be sure that in no way was Abraham attempting to appeal to the ethical, because the idea that someone is willing to kill their son in the name of faith is absolutely absurd. In the face of a person like Abraham, we would fear and tremble, which is how we know he is a knight of faith. Tang, on the other hand, borrows from the ethical when he refuses to write the paper. He is merely avoiding work that he does not want to do. He can still be a knight of faith to his own philosophical revelations if he writes the paper. Abraham had to suspend the ethical, Tang did not. Tang is lucky that his relation to the absolute allows him to be somewhat ethical, yet here he is squandering that privilege of being able to write and still refusing to do so. One can even argue that Tang needs to write the paper in order to prove his faith in a trial. He is tempted to get a good grade and therefore contort his paper in a way that achieves this. But if he still resists this, he proves his faith to be even stronger and truer. If he passes up this opportunity, what other reason can there be except that he is lazy and incompetent? While Tang is able to write a paper without casting his faith in philosophical enlightenment back into the universal, writing one would ultimately risk Tang becoming a tragic hero by inadvertently explaining his trial. In the context of Abraham, “what would explain everything, that it is a trial, one in which the ethical is the temptation - is something he cannot say” (139). If Abraham explained to everyone that he was undergoing a trial of God, people would start feeling sympathetic or even admire him for his tragic journey. This immediately follows his path to be understood and belittled by the universal. His faith becomes nothing more but a tool for gaining pity points and respect. However, Abraham avoided becoming a tragic hero by making “the infinite movement of resignation and giv[ing] 43

up his claim to Isaac, something no one can understand because it is a private undertaking” (139). To ensure the sanctity of his trial, Abraham fully surrendered his most beloved person in the world. This man could be called a true man of faith because he made sure to wipe out any traces which might turn him into a tragic hero. In a way, he almost had to intentionally go against the ethical just to turn himself into someone completely incomprehensible and absurd to the observer. Tang perfectly follows after Abraham by straight-up refusing to write the paper. Sure, it is a test to write a paper and still be true to your faith, but then you are still giving power to the universal when you do not need to give any power to it at all. It is an even greater test to completely reject the universal. It hurts much more to know that you will not get a grade at all and perhaps fail the class as opposed to hastily writing the paper and getting a B. A complete rejection ensures that Tang can never be viewed as a tragic hero. He does reap the benefit of not having to write a paper, but this is a desirable outcome because it only compounds his identity as a knight of faith. For a knight of faith, it is far better to be scorned and misunderstood by others than to have their pity and condolences. When Tang embarked on the path of the knight of faith, he chose the “narrow path of faith [which] no one can advise, no one understands” (95). He wants to be true to his pursuit of philosophy and allow it to be more than just a means for an end grade. But as soon as people know what his true intentions are, they will praise and admire him for his courage and faith in his philosophical enlightenment. To be faithful, Tang can only endure the crushing burden of not taking on the burden of writing the paper. At the end of the day, the contention that Tang’s refusal to write a paper is justifiable from the knight of faith perspective contradicts itself in its existence. I do not expect this to be taken as rule or as fact. Dr. Vong and the other students can think what they think. Like Johannes de Silentio, I do not claim to know the system, or even that there is the existence of it. But this paper is an expression of my understanding and experience of faith through the tale of Tang. I take my leap of faith that you, the reader, shall remain faithful to your philosophical pursuits and hopefully find a way of thinking that best helps you reconcile with the absurdity of our shared existence.

Works Cited Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric by Johannes De Silentio. Translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin, 2003. “PHILOSOPHY - Soren Kierkegaard.” YouTube, uploaded by The School of Life, 26 June 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9JCwkx558o.

Musashi Scene Analysis: An Ascent into Self-Realization Cherie Fernandes ’21 An epic novel featuring the eponymous legendary swordsman, Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi is packed with interwoven stories of growth and developing spiritual connections. As the protagonist fights to master the art of war, a lesson that proves particularly concordant with both Zen and the Art of War is at the center of Book 3’s “Eagle Mountain”. Although much of the chapter follows Musashi seeking an external battle with Shishido Baiken, the climax of the chapter — in which he successfully reaches the mountain’s summit — is instead an internal battle. This arc is illustrative of several specific teachings from the Art of War about fortifying oneself before turning to opponents and Musashi’s broader narrative surrounding how the physical and spiritual growth of the titular character go hand-in-hand. The course of the story in Eagle Mountain marks a turning point for Musashi, who begins the chapter neglecting key principles of the Art of War and the Way in his dogged quest to fight chain-ball-sickle expert Shishido Baiken. In the "Art of War", Master Sun discusses the importance of understanding “Emptiness and Fullness” in battle strategy. His first principle states, “good warriors,” who understand the “art of emptying others and filling yourself,” will cause “others to come to them, and do not go to others” (Yoshikawa 77). Takuan exemplified this in his successful capture of Musashi early in the story, setting a trap and allowing his “prey” to come to him. By contrast, Musashi insists on hounding the man he wishes to fight, from Shishido Baiken’s home to Yamada, all the while disregarding an injured foot. He ignores his own injury in his pursuit, growing increasingly frustrated — and thus emptying himself further — as he does so. Thus, Musashi also breaks a key principle of “Formation”: Master Sun notes that “...skillful warriors first made themselves invincible, and then watched for vulnerability in their opponents:” in essence, taking care to fortify their own ranks before chasing opponents (Sun-Tzu 55). Musashi completely neglects his own injury and deteriorating state of mind in favor of a quest that is not within reach. In short, he is overly concerned with the external when he is meant to be considering his own state. This preoccupation with others extends into his conception of the Way. The Japanese shoshin, or Beginner’s Mind, emphasizes that a focus on achievement — attainment 46

The Karma of Words of expertise and growth that can be measured along a yardstick against others’ journeys — is poisonous because it causes one to “lose the rich, selfsufficient mind” that allows for “an original mind… that is limitless [and] open to everything” (1). In bemoaning “how much farther along the path to enlightenment and true humanity Takuan was than he,” Musashi inadvertently defines himself and his own path in achievement-oriented relation to others, a fundamental misunderstanding of how one ought to seek enlightenment (294). Furthermore, this irritation includes contempt for Takuan, who he knows would disparage Musashi’s notion of the Way of the Sword, to the point where “whenever Musashi thought of Takuan, a certain physical pain spread from his wrists through. It was a strange feeling, a physiological memory of the time when he had been bound fast to the cryptomeria branch” (293). Musashi’s strength of emotion towards Takuan and his own inadequacy is enough to manifest in the form of physical pain. This relation is key, because the moment establishes that the physical and emotional are closely connected in Musashi’s experience of the world, to the point where the latter can induce the former — mind over matter. The healing of Musashi’s physical injury, the foot, then goes hand-inhand with the redirection to, and victory of, his internal battle. The point of growth in the chapter begins when Musashi recognizes that he has to focus on the fact that a minor injury has gotten the best of him and takes steps to self-fortify — granted, his methods involve a freezing lake, but to each his own. His bath in the lake is described as an act of “purifying himself,” as “To Musashi, the icy plunge into the sacred stream was necessary” (300). Words like “purify,” “sacred,” and “cleanse” emphasize that the action serves as a ritual that prepares him for better self-awareness as he moves to ascend Eagle Mountain — once again, the state of Musashi’s body and his mental state are linked. The climb up the mountain then becomes a story of Musashi’s quest to make his “mind and spirit truly one” as he makes the perilous journey (299). Although his human enemies are mentioned, their identities meld into this agglomerate of rock that represents adversity, in a general sense, that Musashi seeks to conquer. In the reference to his face, “red as a demon’s,” the text highlights the resurgence of his urge to “stifle the demon inside him [sitting on his haunches, which] was painful, excruciatingly so,” demonstrating that this is largely an internal battle, more about his own identity and spirituality than a specific opponent (301). The reader is treated to very visceral descriptions of him fighting against nature, the “weeds, trees and ice enemies trying to keep him back” and mountain personified as an entity that “snarled and spit out regular avalanches of 47

gravel and sand” (301). Upon reaching the summit, however, the mountain gifts him with a view of dawn through a sea of white clouds, and “at the border between heaven and earth,” he feels “united with the surface of the mountain,” indicating a transition to hard-won spiritual growth (302). This scene is notably accompanied by the “bucketful of yellowish pus streaming from his foot,” indicative of healing. As Musashi fights this internal battle, leading to self-purification and profound connection with his spirituality, his physical reality reflects the progress. Musashi’s progress in “Eagle Mountain” — one of many arches in his journey throughout the epic — is thus a refocusing toward an internal battle. He initially neglects his own formation and emptiness, as defined by Master Sun, and is preoccupied with external comparisons, yet grows to prioritize self-purification and spiritual growth. Mirrored in his physical reality, scenes from cleansing in the lake to the healing of his foot, highlight the link between spirituality and sensory experience that permeates the novel. Works Cited Yoshikawa, Eiji, et al. Musashi. Pocket Books, 1989.

Utopia is Dystopian: Social Darwinism Defeats Communism Anthony Gadzi ’22 Karl Marx is widely considered the “Father of Communism”. As renowned historian Robert C. Tucker argues, “[n]o other intellectual influence has so powerfully shaped the mind of modern left-wing radicalism,” and as Marx put it himself, the duty of philosophers was not only to “interpret the world,” but to “change it” (Tucker ix; Marx and Engels 145). Born in Prussia on May 5, 1818, Karl Marx became a pioneering scholar and philosopher, and he published many critiques of modern capitalism and its effects on society, including his famous Capital. In these critiques, Marx exposed how capitalism, a system that exploits the productive forces of labourers, is inherently unfair to the majority. In 1842, he met fellow philosopher and future collaborator Frederick Engels, who would prove to be a key contributor to the majority of Marx’s best works, including his solution to capitalism in The Communist Manifesto and the second and third volumes of his Capital (Tucker xv-xviii). Though Herbert Spencer, self-educated English philosopher and biologist, agreed with Marx in that “the great aim of education is not knowledge but action”, he was the embodied opposition to the ideologies of Marx and Engels (“Herbert Spencer Quotes”). Spencer’s theories instead centred around his transfusion of Darwinian principles of Evolution into social theories, aptly named Social Darwinism, that he applied to humankind. Contrary to Marx’s criticisms of capitalism, Spencer viewed the exploitation of members of society as a necessary and beneficial expression of human nature that would lead to our evolution as a species and society, and would propagate the “survival of the fittest” as he coined it. Marxist and Spencerian logic thus represent the peaks of two contending and towering ideologies, and naturally neither is a perfect model for society to follow. Ultimately, although Marx and Spencer similarly recognized the inequalities within modern society, Spencerian logic better explains the necessity of inequity and exploitation than Marxist logic can refute them, lending Social Darwinism superior utility in shaping our future when compared to Marxist Communism. While their ideologies contradict each other, the Marxist and Spencerian views of modern society are mostly analogous. It is well understood that 49

Marx criticised modern capitalism while Spencer wished to build upon its powers, indicating that both philosophers view capitalism as the foundation of modern civilisation. Their works were often attempts to debate the dialogue about modern capitalism, Spencer as a supporter of the massive industrial expansion, and Marx as a disputer of the entire system. Additionally, though Spencer was ideologically a conservative, he never held back his critique of government. For example, both thinkers were highly critical of modern charity. As the philosopher Oscar Wilde explains, Marxist thinking denies the idea of charity, because "[i]t is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought” (Zizek), and charity merely inhibits society’s ability to find optimal solutions to the suffering of others. Spencer also opposed charity, as he believed those individuals in need of charity are “unfit, and should be eliminated” (Hofstadter 392). As a result of acknowledging capitalism as the prevailing global system, both thinkers also had to accept the idea of "survival of the fittest". Spencer was a large proponent of this concept, and the "fitter" individuals in society, namely the bourgeoisie, welcomed “the expansive evolutionary optimism of the Spencerian system” (Hofstadter 393). Marx, while seeing it as a burden on society rather than a benefactor, also viewed the increased survival and livelihood of the bourgeoisie as the defining element of capitalism. He believed that the current socio-economic system is based on "capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this daily exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians” (Marx and Engels 487). While one sees great promise in the future following our current trajectory, and the other doubts the viability of capitalism, both philosophers largely agree on the current state of exploitation and inequity within our modern society. Despite their similar understandings of standing socio-economic and political structures, their ideologies directly oppose each other in nearly all other facets. As alluded to prior, though they both criticise charity, it is from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Spencer dissented with the idea of charity or any aim to establish relative equity, as he wished for only those who can “prove their worth” to be able to survive and be survived by an abundant lineage (Hofstadter 392). He believed in establishing a laissezfaire marketplace as an extension of Darwinism, as both thinkers believed that the power of natural selection will more often than not grant those with favourable traits the ability to propagate their genes throughout their species. Social Darwinism wishes to let this process occur within human 50

Makers of the Modern Mind societies, with minimal governmental interference, and thus inequity is necessary to establish a pecking order among the civilised, and inequality is a natural result of society wishing to keep those at the top of the order on top. Marx, on the other hand, opposed charity because he viewed it as practically incapable of doing enough to counteract the inequalities presented by the current system of capitalism. He viewed the relation between the bourgeoisie and proletariat as akin to that between “[f ]reeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,” and that the only true means to an end would be “a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or the common ruin of contending classes” (Marx and Engels 473-474). As aforementioned, charity is sympathy with the suffering of members of the proletariat, and through a Marxist lens, charity is merely a prolongation of suffering, and true positive change can only be achieved through that "revolutionary reconstitution". The natural extension of this logic, which Spencer opposes, is that "[t]he necessary consequence [of capitalism] was political centralisation,” and that strong governmental regulations are needed in order to restrict the exploitative powers of capitalism (Marx and Engels 477). Marx did not subscribe to the ideology of "survival of the fittest", because he instead agreed with a separate Darwinian principle, and that is the belief in challenging standing systems in favour of more logical ones. In The Communist Manifesto, Engels believed that communism was “destined to do for history what Darwin’s theory has done for biology” (Marx and Engels 6). This statement perfectly captures the radical ideology and intent of Marx & Engels, and their desire to tear down all the existing systems Spencer wished to build upon in society. Through their ideologies, Marx and Spencer envisioned two opposing futures, though Spencerian Social Darwinism has more inherent beneficiary components than Marxist Communism. Though a biologist and not a philosopher, Darwin still recognized the influence of diversified conditions in civilised nations, where members of society hold ranks and fill different occupational roles, observing that these conditions produced on average a greater range of characters than uncivilised nations did (Darwin 196). He also asserted that genius tends to be inherited (196). Building upon these observations by Darwin, Spencer envisioned a society where the fittest individuals will naturally reach a level of superiority over the rest of the population to where they can successfully propagate the spread of their genetics over all other classes of society, and this dominance will continue until a fitter group emerges from that group ant prevails. In an ideal expression of 51

Social Darwinism, this system would continue, and humanity would benefit overall from this competitive evolution, while the weaker or those born into unfortunate situations would be exploited and left behind. Spencer viewed this system as the right of the bourgeoisie to control, as he claimed, “[t]he growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest,” and that free individual enterprise without governmental interference is simply an expression of “the constitutional ban upon interference with liberty and property without due process of law” (Hofstadter 394). The American Revolution was fought by Americans in large part to gain the freedom to control their own capitalist future, Columbus set out to explore not based solely on curiosity, but in hopes of Multiplying Investments (Harari 353). As Yuval Harari puts it in Sapiens, “to understand modern economic history, you need to understand just a single word. The word is growth” (341). Spencer’s ultimate goal for society was growth: growth of the economy, growth of our social and political ideologies, growth of our innate capabilities through natural selection. Marx wished to essentially return to the trading and bartering system that stagnated global progression for centuries. Due to his opposition to exploitation, Marx by default opposes the majority of growth-economics: since all the available labour in a communist system will have to be traded for its exact worth, the aggregation of wealth and labour power that results in capitalism becomes impossible. In capitalism, this aggregation of wealth by the capitalist is coupled with labourers selling their labour power, and the capitalist can exploit this labour power to an extent impossible in communism, to an extent that catalyses economic growth in the society, as production outpaces labour force, and revenue generated outgrows the cost of wages. In communism, such an imbalance is prohibited, and so the labourer producing a certain amount of labour receives the same overall wage value in return, and so each member of society serves no larger purpose but to sustain the system with their productive power. Although largely an immobile state of living economically, Marx’s utopia aims not for economic satisfaction, but for every individual to have equal opportunities in life and to abolish the widespread inequalities and inequity between classes that accompanies capitalism. Some of the ten demands he views as necessary to achieve this include: 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 52

Makers of the Modern Mind 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (Marx and Engels 490) Naturally, neither extreme philosophy is a perfect set of ideals to live by, and each presents impracticalities that hinder their actualisation. The main philosophical danger of Marxism is the threat of absolute equality and equity, which is an almost guaranteed result of actualising communism. Marxism supports the “[c]onfiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels [to the communist system]” (Marx and Engels 490), and so it becomes clear that his vision of equality does not equate to freedom for all. As Kurt Vonnegut satirically observes, in order for true equality to be reached, the government would have to utilize “mental handicappers” to prevent smarter individuals from “taking advantage of their brains” (Vonnegut 1). None of us are born equal, and so to fight for equality that leads to relative equity is to fight with human nature, human rights, and natural selection itself, which is a battle man will always lose. One needs but to look to the former Soviet Union and to the Chinese Communist party to see some of these flaws present themselves in the real world. Soviet Russia tried to confiscate private property and institute a system where individuals work for the government, in order to level the playing field, but by the 1980’s nearly every citizen had lost favor with that mode of life, and it was overthrown. The difference between the USSR and China was that “China placed an emphasis on the economy rather than on political reform” to the point where it became one of the global leaders in industrial production, and operates in a socialist system more akin to restricted capitalism than to communism ("Why Did Communism Survive in China"). To call China a success would not be wrong, but the reason they succeeded is because they embraced industry and exploitation, and avoided the Marxist principles that fail in practical application. “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS” read the one constitutional right remaining of a former list of seven (Orwell 40). There are many flaws present within Marxist communism, and the novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell, brings light to the most pressing concern: greed and corruption. Though the story is centered around barnyard animals, the principle remains the same: in a system such as communism where class antagonisms disappear, 53

and everyone feels they have reached the perfect state of equality, the members of society will believe they are working in a perfect system for the people and by the people. Thus, society will become complacent, and lose the incentive to question the government, and those who do discover corruption will be disbelieved until corruption has returned to a visible extent. Consider the following examples: one driving on a newly tarred road will seldom look out for potholes, those blind from birth are content without sight, the uneducated cannot question what they do not know. Even if not for the first hundred years in a communist system, cunning individuals will eventually corrupt society. Feudalism and Capitalism dictate as much about the innate human desire to live above and control others. By establishing a society where everyone is a member of the proletariat, more power is simply consolidated in the hands of the government, and the chances of an oligarchy forming are much higher than the chances that the leaders abandon government once ‘true communism’ is reached. The relative lack of free will in this system, as previously highlighted, brings about the concern of who takes action and/or moral responsibility when the system fails, or grows past containment. In a system where everyone lives in equality, and thus where the full expression of every productive individual’s labour power would result in relative equity, there is little incentive to work beyond sustenance, and so the individuals who are too disabled to contribute to society will heavily burden those who can work, and force them to (likely unwillingly) shoulder their labour cost. According to Malthusian principles, the society will also reach a point where the population exceeds the amount of sustainable resources. While this is an accepted truth and occasional occurrence in capitalist society, it cripples communist systems, such as the famines that lead to revolt in both the USSR and Maoist China. Due to the aforementioned principle of society operating as one, resource scarcity would lead to the collective detriment of a truly communist world. While not nearly as problematic, there are still a few major issues with Social Darwinism, and these concerns center around the fairness of the system. These issues arise from the level of absolute capitalism that Spencer insisted upon, which would allow for inequalities within society to eventually grow stronger than capability even the strongest genetics would have to overcome the environmental setbacks of being born into the proletariat. As a rule of genetics, fitter individuals are not always born to the fitter families, due to the complexity of genetic crossing, and as exemplified by the classic rags to riches "nouveau riche" who find ways to climb the ranks, 54

Makers of the Modern Mind sometimes even withoutaid from the higher class. In a complete laissezfaire system, there would be no regulation on the monopolization of businesses, or the collusion against labourers in their plight for more capital, and thus the labourers would no longer be able to protect themselves and their labour power (Harari 368). No more nouveau riche breakthroughs, save the few allowed here and there to appease the proletariat masses. There is also the threat, in an unregulated market, of “thieves and charlatans” using their natural cunning to cheat their way to the top of society, thus breaking the trust in the credit system that allows capitalism to expand at the rate it does (Harari 367). Therefore, a somewhat fluid model of economics must be instituted that allows individuals born into lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder to prove their worth and make it up, until natural selection can consistently produce fitter individuals from fitter families. Ultimately, the flaws in Social Darwinism, though critical enough to be problematic, can be resolved through utilising Marxist logic to achieve relative equality while maintaining inequity. Adam Smith, the "Father of Economics", coined the phrase “Egoism is Altruism” to describe the potential for the dominance of the few in a capitalist system to lead to the collective benefit of the many (Harari 348). The line of thinking is that as long as a capitalist is expanding their capital in search of more wealth, while they may decrease the complexity of labour tasks in search of efficiency, the overall expansion of capital and production outweighs the downsides to labour. As more labour power needs to be recruited by the capitalist in order to sustain their growth, both the capitalist and the proletariat get richer. Social Darwinism, if maintained properly, can help not only support the proletariat class, but can prove to be a system superior to charity by its greater motivation to make those who can work work, and prevent those who cannot from suffering for multiple generations. As harsh as it may sound, it is the utilitarian truth that society is better off conserving only those who contribute to society. The most important adjustments to be made to Social Darwinism are those that, surprisingly enough, find their homes in Marxist ideology. The Spencerian mode of capitalism can be adjusted by introducing systems as proposed by Marx to enable movement between classes, and enabling anyone regardless of birth situation to grow, while concurrently maintaining class separations and exploitation overall. These systems can include introducing scholarship and internship opportunities into areas with mean incomes lower than the median income in the nation, which can be achieved by increasing taxes, but not to the extent where equity is approached. An55

other alternative is to raise the standard of public education, while not doing away with private educational institutions. A generally laissez-faire government can be instituted to allow the evolution of society and of humans to take its natural course, while basic regulations to protect the mental and physical health of workers, and prevent basic human rights abuses can simultaneously be maintained. This balance can be achieved through sustaining the legality of Workers Unions, while also making it legal for workers to suffer the consequences of union-related insurrections, in order to maintain a good balance between group benefit and individual preservation within the proletariat class. Through sufficient development, Spencer’s theory of Social Darwinism can grow from Marxist ideology until it becomes a viable system for global use. “Exploration is gathering information, and exploitation is using the information you have to get a known good result” (Christian and Griffiths 31). Marxist ideology searches for a new mode of socio-economic operation, while history has demonstrated that the most optimal known way is capitalism: an exploitation of the majority of society rather than an exploration of every member’s ability. Individuals, including Marx, tend to over-explore — to favour the new disproportionately over the best, which hinders their ability to optimize existing systems (Christian and Griffiths 52). It would additionally be best to take action to unify economic regulations on capitalism sooner rather than later. When facing socialist conditions that are unfavourable for their capitalist expeditions, the wealthy bourgeoisie, such as Elon Musk, simply leave the region and take their capital with them (Chang and Chakrabarti). This exodus widens the GDP per capita between communities, and creates economic imbalances that lead to the detriment of communities who cannot attract businesses and their entrepreneurs into their society. Finally, there is evidence that genetic evolutionary change based on socio-economic status is around the corner. Studies have shown that families with high generational material wealth demonstrate genotypic and phenotypic variance from the average individual, such presenting lower infant mortality rates (Mulder). There are many factors as to why we should place our faith as a species into Natural Selection, and if we do so by embracing Social Darwinism, then our growth as a species will be nigh endless.

Works Cited Chang, Jonathan, and Meghna Chakrabarti. “‘California Exodus’: Why Are So Many People Leaving The Golden State? | On Point.” WBUR. Org, 11 Feb. 2021, www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/02/11/whats-driving-californias-exodus. Christian, Brian, and Tom Griffiths. Algorithms to Live by: The Computer Science of Human Decisions. 2016. Darwin, Charles. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman. 3rd ed., New York, Norton, 2001. Harari, Yuval N. Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind. New York :Harper, 2015. “Herbert Spencer Quotes.” BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2021. 15 March 2021. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/herbert_spencer_109568. Hofstadter, Richard. -”The Vogue of Spencer.” 1955. Rpt. in Darwin. 3rd ed., W. W. Norton & Company Inc, 2001, pp. 389-395. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. International Publishers Corporation, 1948. ———. The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 1978. Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff, and Bret A Beheim. “Understanding the Nature of Wealth and Its Effects on Human Fitness.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 12 Feb. 2011, www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3013473/. Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Harlow: Longman, 1989. Tucker, Robert C. Preface. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Tucker, WW. Norton & Company, 1984. Vonnegut, Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron.” 1961. https://www.bpi.edu/ourpages/auto/2017/10/14/55813476/Harrison%20Bergeron.pdf "Why Did Communism Survive in China but Not in the USSR?” E-International Relations, 17 Nov. 2010, www.e-ir.info/2010/11/17/whydid-communism-survive-in-china-but-not-in-the-ussr. Žižek, Slavoj. “RSA ANIMATE: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.” YouTube, uploaded by RSA, 28 July 2010, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g.

The Trappings of Love and Literature Cherie Fernandes ’21 In Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky pulls the reader into mid-1800s St. Petersburg, a world colored by a bitter, misanthropic smog courtesy of the book’s anonymous narrator heretofore referred to as “the Underground Man.” Among other oddities, the Underground Man is preoccupied with Romantic literature, and such ideals ultimately hinder his ability to meaningfully connect with other people. Although this obsession is overtly a manifestation of his desire to feel acknowledged by other characters, it also illustrates a need to control, or in other words, polish, his reality, a self-contradicting tendency towards inauthenticity that becomes a source of tension between the Underground Man’s behavior and the message Dostoyevsky communicates. Among the biggest obstacles to the Underground Man’s experience of friendship and love is his inability to separate reality from fiction of his own design. The tendency is first played for comedy through his earnest account of provoking an officer via a much-labored-over exposé that was not published, as such works were “well out of fashion” (Dostoyevsky 32). The bizarre lengths to which he goes, only to come off as dated and a little pathetic, highlight the extent to which the Underground Man’s fascination with Romantic literature has left him disconnected from society. Similarly, he challenges Ferfichkin to an honest-to-god duel — much to the others’ amusement — once again conflating staples of literature with the way one ought to behave in reality. After the encounter with Zverkov, he conjures up an elaborate revenge fantasy, complete with dialogue, only to recognize that he “was actually about to cry, even though [he] knew for a fact at that very moment that all this was straight out of Silvio and Lermontov’s Masquerade” (59). The Underground Man wants to be perceived as a bold individual worthy of attention, and he insists on accomplishing it via offbeat ideas that, while compelling to him, do not align with reality. His obsession with grand acts in literature is indeed a manifestation of his desire to be acknowledged and empowered by others — case in point, the masochistic desire to be pummeled in a bar fight — but it also shows that he is only open to such a thing when it occurs on his own terms. This tendency is best exemplified in his interactions with Liza, toward whom he shows both care and horrible cruelty in turns. 58

Makers of the Modern Mind His first attempt at personal engagement with Liza is something straight out of an archetypal “redeemed prostitute” story-arc — complete with florid speeches about purity and offers to save her — except Liza does not do him the favor of deferring to the script. She instead recognizes this tendency of his, musing, “You somehow… it sounds just like a book” (69). The Underground Man had been pouring genuine emotion into his speech, “blushing” and “speaking with considerable feeling,” but the second she does not react in the way he expects, he closes off and begins verbally tearing into her, leaving her in tears. As he does so, he bitterly recognizes, “I knew that I was speaking clumsily, artificially, even bookishly; in short, I didn’t know how to speak except ‘like a book,’” once again demonstrating the extent to which his obsession alienates him from reality (71). After the event, he regrets giving Liza his address and is outright “tormented” by the prospect of her arrival, but later begins to “daydream sweetly” about how the visit might go. He describes tenderly telling Liza he is aware of her love for him and “dares not be first to make a claim on [her] heart because [he] had such influence over her [and]. . . didn’t want that because it would be . . . despotism,” a striking contrast to his previous and subsequent cruelty, where he insists that his conception of love is limited to control of others (78). The speech is also, of course, marked by his usual florid style, and he describes “launching on some European, George Sandian, inexplicably lofty subtleties” as he speaks to this mental picture of Liza (78). It is telling that the Underground Man only resumes his fantasies days after the interaction, when he is “reassured” that there is no danger of Liza actually showing up. Such behavior is illustrative of the disconnect between his delusions about people — both Liza and himself — and how they act in reality. He can lose himself in fantasizing about literature, but dreads having the real Liza’s arrival shatter the picture he has conjured. Regardless of what the Underground Man would prefer to tell himself, his is not so much the story of a misunderstood intellectual as it is one of a romantic who cannot tear himself away from the comfort of his delusions. He craves the idea of a healthy relationship with Liza, but only in an idealized world where he can dictate the setting and script: a world that only exists in his mind. Indeed, the second he no longer has control over the situation as he does his daydreams, he is a mess. His actual interaction with her begins with his “crushing humiliation and abominable shame” at being caught in a state of poverty and emotional neediness — this particular show of vulnerability was hardly in his plans — and so he reverts back to cruelty and subjugation (82). He refuses to engage with the discomfort 59

and unpredictability the real world offers, instead attempting to control it and the actions of others. In the Underground Man’s own words, “we’ve all agreed in private that [life] is better in books,” and thus, Dostoyevsky shows us, he remains ultimately disconnected from — and even fearful of — reality itself (91). This message is thematically in line with Dostoyevsky’s other works, such as The Brothers Karamazov’s “The Grand Inquisitor,” in which the eponymous religious leader explains that glorifying unattainable purity and perfection is, at best, ineffectual, and at worst, damaging. Even Notes from Underground settles around this theme, particularly through the Underground Man’s discussion of a hypothetical “Crystal Palace” in Part 1 (20). The palace represents a utopian society constructed on the much-extolled principles of modernity, and the Underground Man is less than impressed; he feels that such a thing would be reductive, and instead champions the “irrationality” and “free will” that allow humans to live outside of restrictive structure. It would not be possible to “stick out your tongue furtively nor make a rude gesture” when beholding such a thing, because its existence leaves no room for the gritty, indelicate truths of human nature (22). Furthermore, these truths cannot be overruled — a state of unsullied perfection and contentment simply cannot exist, says the Underground Man, because human nature will not allow it. Oddly, our protagonist is capable of eloquent criticism of these ideals while at the same time turning around to disguise the qualities he perceives as unattractive and superimpose this “better” grand Romantic literature over his every interaction. Perhaps this tension between author and protagonist represents a limitation on the Underground Man’s understanding of imperfection; he himself derives a perverse sort of joy from acting spitefully and irrationally, exemplifying imperfection, but he fails to embrace the “imperfection” inherent to the world he inhabits. He refuses to appreciate a social interaction without orchestrating it first, to take unpredictable events in stride, or even to spare as neutral an object as a clock from his derision. Instead, he insists on fruitlessly shaping the world to his grand literary fantasies, imposing a sort of restrictive structure of his own on those in his relationships — himself included. Thus, through the Underground Man’s failings in his relationships with others, Dostoyevsky communicates the importance of accepting the imperfect realities of life. The final page of the text seems to address this question more explicitly: the Underground Man states that this is not truly a novel, as his reader has been denied a hero to root for while “all the traits of an anti-hero have been assembled deliberately” (91). It is difficult to deter60

Makers of the Modern Mind mine whether this line is a display of self-awareness on the Underground Man’s part, a hint of meta messaging from Dostoyevsky, or a mix of both, but the lesson is clear: Notes from Underground is about as far from “real” literature as a story can be. It is gritty and unsatisfying, but those very same qualities render it compelling and veristic. So too is the truth of deep personal connections that Dostoyevsky shows us. Love is seldom capital-R Romantic; rather, it is messy, human, and real. Works Cited Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes From Underground. W W Norton, 2021.

Darwin Isn’t an Empiricist, But That’s O.K. Mac Dilatush ’21 Darwin ranks among the fathers of modernity. His theory of natural selection, espoused in the landmark Origin of Species and later The Descent of Man, advanced science significantly and helped facilitate a shift away from religious fundamentalism by challenging prior evolutionary theories concerning intelligent design and the role of a higher power, or creator. However, some more recent thinkers have challenged Darwin’s credentials as an empiricist, defined as a thinker who believes that knowledge derives from sensory experience and scientific evidence alone. Michael Behe, in his fittingly titled Darwin’s Black Box, asserts that Darwin and other supporters of natural selection “interfere with the theory that flows naturally from observable scientific data”and fail to recognize “the conclusion of intelligent design” that derives “from the data itself ” (Behe 600, 598). The debate between intelligent design and natural selection aside, Behe is correct — to an extent — that Darwin isn’t totally empiricist. Darwin sometimes re sorts to prognosticating, and he credits philosophers in his footnotes. Still, Behe’s charge fails to diminish Darwin’s general theory of natural selection and standing as a modern thinker, because current modern thinkers aren’t necessarily more empiricist than Darwin. In fact, analyzing modern standards of empiricism relative to Darwin reveals the importance of pairing and guiding data with philosophical inquiry. Darwin often bases his conclusions on observations, asserting that “reason ought to conquer… imagination,” but he develops some of his claims through assumptions and theory instead of evidence (145). The most glaring example involves the geological record. Darwin acknowledges that his theory has been challenged to answer “why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life?” (160). He admits that he “meet[s] with no such evidence” to refute the argument against his theory and that he “can answer these... objections only on the supposition that the geological record is far more imperfect than most geologists believe” (160). Darwin’s response reflects a failure to adhere to complete empiricism. He relies on an assumption to counter concerns about his evidence, or lack thereof. Similarly, Darwin contends that “although [he] do[es] not doubt that isolation is of considerable importance in the production of species, on the whole [he is] inclined 62

Makers of the Modern Mind to believe that largeness of area is of more importance,” but fails to provide any supporting anecdotal or empirical evidence (122). Rather, he launches into a page long discussion of the logic, or theory, behind why that might be true despite a lack of hard evidence. The weak word choice he uses to articulate his claim belies the lack of evidence. His use of both “inclined” and “believe” instead of more certain statements such as “is,” indicate that he recognizes his uncertain, in empiricist terms anyway, standing (122). Both incidents suggest that Darwin isn’t strictly empiricist. In other words, he doesn’t always utilize evidence or data to bolster his arguments and sometimes admits that he doesn’t currently possess convincing evidence for each of his convictions. Darwin’s failure to adhere to a rigid notion of empiricism doesn’t make him less modern, though, because many modern thinkers and institutions are similarly untethered to all-encompassing empiricism. The “Grievance Studies” debacle made headlines in 2018. Three “left-leaning,” in the political sense, American college professors submitted a number of hoax papers to academic journals (Melchior). One of the articles purported to detail the results of “spen[ding] a year observing canine sexual misconduct” and was published in academic journal Gender, Place, & Culture (Melchior). According to the article’s author, math doctorate James Lindsay, the data presented was “was constructed to look outlandish on purpose. So asking us for the data would not have been out of sorts. It would have been appropriate, and we would have been exposed immediately” (Melchior). The journal, like some others implicated in the scandal, never inquired about the data reported by the hoax submissions, reflecting a lack of commitment — or perhaps failed commitment — to empiricism. Labeling the grievance incident failed empiricism suggests that just accepting any data as evidence, regardless of its quality, isn’t empiricism. By that standard, newspapers have also failed to use data in accordance with empiricism. Also in 2018, British newspapers proclaimed that “London’s monthly murder rate had exceeded New York’s” (Shaywitz). While the newspapers’ report was technically true, it ignored vital context in its display of facts; the homicide rate in each city had declined to a roughly similar level. Moreover, The New York Times was duped into publishing the false account of a Canadian man calling himself “Abu Huzafyfah” as a 12-part narrative titled “Caliphate.” The Canadian presented himself as “a member of the Islamic State who had taken part in killings in Syria” (New York Times Editorial Board). The paper discovered several discrepancies between his account and supposed facts, but chose to press ahead with the narrative. Two years later, the man 63

was arrested for perpetrating a terrorist scam. The New York Times devoted one episode to exploring the factual contradictions of the account, but otherwise dwelled little on its potential errors and failed to highlight them in other episodes, leading the paper to admit “It is… clear that elements of the original fact-checking process were not sufficiently rigorous” (New York Times Editorial Board). The New York Times, then, also illustrates a case of modern thinkers falling short of empiricism. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn echoes the view that current thinkers are not necessarily more empiricist than Darwin and others: Historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the “scientific” component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors had readily labeled “error” and “superstition.” The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more that product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. (2) Translation: While scientists’ current methods of verification and epistemology may be more accurate (maybe!) than their predecessors, their methods are not therefore more “scientific” or more a product of odd human quirks or more empiricist in their commitment to data. Rather, the amount and type of evidence — and means of collecting it — has changed. Some modern academics are pushing for a stronger commitment to data and empiricism, though, but due to the relationship between evidence and theory, their commitment to data as opposed to theory doesn’t inherently make them more effective. In a research paper titled “The Binding Force of Economics,” four economists share that “[e]conomics as a discipline has become increasingly defined by its common techniques of analysis, rather than its common theory or approach” while another paper labeled “Hamermesh (2013)... finds a similar decline in theory and rise in empirical analysis from the 1960s to 2010s” (Salter). Alexander William Salter, an associate professor of economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University, construes the findings: “For years, economics has been getting less theoretical and more empirical. Economists are spending less time building and thinking through simple models, and more time collecting and analyzing data” (Salter). According to Salter, this is not good news: “better empirical work should certainly be applauded. But it came at a cost: an entire cohort of economists with serious theoretical blind spots” (Salter). The mantra of some of the economists less focused on theory is to “just let the data speak for itself ” (Salter). That sounds great! Except, well, data 64

Makers of the Modern Mind cannot speak for itself. As Tim Harford writes in The Data Detective, data does not arrive through “divine providence from the numerical heavens” (Harford). David Shaywitz, a lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, elaborates that “a data set begins with ‘somebody deciding to collect the numbers.’ It behooves us to grasp how this was done: what data were collected, who was asked — and who wasn’t” (Shaywitz). The initial questions researchers ask, which are often based on philosophical presumptions or non-empiricist intuitions, partially define the kind of data researchers will produce. Thus, forgoing theory for data can be a self-defeating premise; failing to understand theory and craft the proper question could influence data, potentially skewing results. Moreover, how data is measured depends on theory. For example, take James Lindsay’s faux study on dog parks or, as he called them, “petri dishes for canine rape culture” (Melchior). If Lindsay had actually performed the study, his results would depend on how he defined “canine sexual misconduct” (Melchior). If Lindsay defined dogs mounting each other as such, he would record each incident of mounting as an incident of canine sexual misconduct. However, Lindsay might not define mounting as sexual misconduct, because “veterinarians who specialize in canine behavior say it often is done for other reasons as well,” and he would not count such incidents as misconduct, leading him to report very different data — with less incidents of canine sexual misconduct — than he would have if his theory and its definition of terms led him to conclude that mounting constituted canine sexual misconduct (Eckstein). Ultimately, theory and data are dependent on one another. Theory determines what kind of data and evidence will be produced, and data and evidence determine what theories can be supported and to what extent. Total empiricism, then, isn’t ideal. It could impede the kind of thinking, philosophical and otherwise, necessary to ask the right questions which yield the most crucial data. Darwin, despite his mild failings in empiricism, should still be considered a modern thinker. He heralded a scientific revolution around natural selection and attributed most of his theory to numerous facts and observations. Empiricism is not necessarily more modern, anyways — plenty of modern thinkers eschew total empiricism, and they may have good reason to; it is not always beneficial. Models and data are only as good as the assumptions they are built on.

Works Cited Behe, Michael J. The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New ed., Free Press, 2006. Darwin, Charles. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman. 3rd ed., New York, Norton, 2001. Eckstein, Sandy. “Humping: Why Do Dogs Do It?” WebMD, pets.webmd. com/dogs/features/humping-why-do-dogs-do-it#1. Harford, Tim. The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. New York, Riverhead Books, 2021. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 4th ed., Chicago, University of Chicago, 2015. Melchior, Jillian Kay. “Fake News Comes to Academia.” Wall Street Journal, 5 Oct. 2018, Opinion sec., www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-comesto-academia-1538520950. New York Times Editorial Board. "An Examination of 'Caliphate'". New York Times, 18 Dec. 2020. Salter, Alexander William. “How Economics Lost Itself in Data.” Wall Street Journal, 27 Jan. 2020, Opinion sec., www.wsj.com/articles/howeconomics-lost-itself-in-data-11611775849?mod=searchresults_ pos11&page=2. Shaywitz, David A. “’The Data Detective’ Review: Broadly Informed, Easily Misled.” Wall Street Journal, 28 Jan. 2021, Opinion sec., www. wsj.com/articles/the-data-detective-review-broadly-informed-easilymisled-11611875753?mod=searchresults_pos14&page=1.

Insight Spring 2021

Articles inside

Mac Dilatush '21 — Darwin Isn’t an Empiricist, But That’s O.K.

Cherie Fernandes '21 — The Trappings of Love and Literature

Anthony Gadzi '22 — Utopia is Dystopian: Social Darwinism Defeats Communism

Cherie Fernandes '21 — Musashi Scene Analysis: An Ascent into Self-Realization

Samuel Tang '22 — Fearless and Not Trembling

Jasper Zhu '21 — Darwin's Case for Legalizing Abortion

Caroline Park '23 — Figure Skates: The Key to Unlocking My Sacred World

Emma Kim '23 — Reflections on The Bell Jar

Mia Bocian '23 — Contrasting Viewpoints of Power in The Fire Next Time

Kyle Park '23 — Yoga: A Legitimate Part of Hinduism?

Esha Akhtar '21 — The Limits and Success of Transnational Feminism and Palestinian Solidarity