Inessentials

I’ve been watching The Vampire Diaries recently, which is a really entertaining, surprisingly capable show that scratches my itch for marathon-able genre television. It reminded me, though, of something that I’ve seen repeated in a lot of other vampire mythologies. Well, okay, I’m really only familiar with The Vampire Diaries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I’m pretty sure it’s not in all vampire stories, but it seems to have become one of the key points that all vampire stories need to accept or deny. I want to know: why do vampires respect property laws?

Vampires, the stories go, are not allowed to enter a house where a human being lives. Once that person dies, they can enter. Otherwise, they must get an invitation (usually, an invitation from the human habitant) in order to enter. Some myths allow the vampire to later be expelled, others don’t. The point is, vampires are bound – physically prevented somehow – from entering a human residence.

Perhaps this says something strange about me, but I find it much easier to go along with a story about vampires than I do to go along with a story that assumes (1) that property rights are natural and (2) that property-ownership is a non-vague metaphysical relation. Allow me to elaborate.

Some folks think that I stand in an ownership-relation to my body. I own my body. By extension, when I work the common land that belongs to everyone or no one, I make that thing mine by mixing my labor with it. (Yes, it’s called the labor-mixing argument. It’s in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government if you want the history of the idea. Homework: How did Marx exploit this principle?) I then have a natural right to whatever I’ve labored on. Slowly, by extension, and in ways that are not always clear, we extend ownership to many things that I didn’t mix my labor with. Usually, I paid for it and that makes it mine. Using arguments like these, some people see the right to own property as a natural right, one that applies to all human beings just because they are human beings. This is distinct from a legal right which is a right that applies only because the laws of the place I live say so. (More homework: Are civil right different from these two or identical to one or the other? What about human rights?)

Property rights as legal rights make a lot of sense to me. Property rights as natural rights don’t seem that plausible to me. The way to make them plausible, I think, is to say that they are natural in virtue of some aspect of human beings (or, more generally, rational agents), particularly something about the way they naturally congregate into societies.

What seems like a really bad way to argue that property rights are natural rights is to find support in either (1) the physical constition of the universe (that is in nomological law) or (2) in some broadly logical principle about objects and their relations (a metaphysical law). Nothing about my physical make-up as a member of homo sapiens logically requires that I be able to own property. And nothing about me as a physical being or as a rational agent seems to require it either (although some will disagree at this point).

All this means that it strikes me as extremely unlikely that the universe as it exists or as it would exist if there were vampires would be one that makes it a truth of the world that vampires must respect property lines. (I’m assuming a very plausible principle here: fictional worlds are like are own in every way not specifically marked as different. E.g., The world of The Vampire Diaries has gravity like ours and New York City has the same layout, but there is a place called Mystic Falls, there are vamipres, and so on.)

And while we’re at it, why the doorstop? Why not the curb? Property lines are ambiguous. And furthermore, whether or not someone lives at a place is vague (there are cases where it is not clear that I live there or I do not live there). I mean, have you ever tried to file taxes in two states? It’s a nightmare. How likely is it that there is some property principle in the universe (like gravity,or two objects can’t coexist at the same place at the same time) that is non-ambiguous and non-vague?

Vampires? I can roll with that. Ownership as a nomological or metaphysical law? That’s what bugs me.

UPDATE: I just watched TVD s1 e20, where Damon makes the following statement about threshholds, “Hotels and short-term leases are a gray area. Play it by ear.”

UPDATE 2: And to clarify, my objection is not that there can’t be vague objects in nature. (There’s no sharp border between a mountain and a valley, for instance.) It’s that even if property rights were somehow natural (which I don’t think they are), there’s no non-arbitrary reason for there to be a sharp cut-off (the doorstep/window) for something ambiguous and vague like where property lines end.

Here is a passage I came across during my day job as a scholar of early modern philosophy. It is taken from Francis Hutcheson, the influential eighteenth century thinker. He briefly discusses the nature and usefulness of the sense of humor. It’s from his lecture notes, which were later published as a textbook. (Translated from the Latin by Michael Silverthorne. Full text available here.)

By the aid of these senses, then, some of the things that happen to us appear delightful, fitting, glorious, and honorable to us, while others seem vile and contemptible, and we may discern yet another reflexive sense: a sense of things that are ridiculous or apt to cause laughter, that is, when a thing arouses contrary sensations at one and the same time. In the case of men’s intentions and actions, bad behavior that does not cause grievous sorrow or death gives rise to laughter, because there is some dignity in the very name of man because we have a certain opinion of his prudence and intelligence, whereas bad behavior that leads to serious pain or death rather excites pity. In the case of other things, we are moved to laughter by those which exhibit some splendid spectacle at the same time as a contradictory image of something cheap, lowly, and contemptible. This sense is very beneficial, whether in increasing the pleasure of conversation or in correcting men’s morals.

Much of what he says here about the ridiculous and contradictory is a fairly standard theory of humor that dates back to Aristotle. What I find intriguing is that last sentence.

We can all agree that having a sense of humor is beneficial because it increases the pleasure of conversation. But how exactly does a sense of humor “correct men’s morals”? I suspect he is referring back to his earlier point that we laugh at bad behavior (short of death or “grievous sorrow”), which serves as a corrective to bad behavior. Basically, when we laugh at louts, they are shamed into acting better.

Going beyond the text, this passage got me thinking about the role that a sense of humor has in living a good life. I’ve long thought that a sense of humor (both the ability to laugh when appropriate and to make others laugh) is an important character trait. But it is not a virtue that is developed on its own. As Hutcheson reminds us, our sense of humor influences our other character traits. For instance, being able to laugh at our foibles gives us a healthy distance that can encourage us to improve them.

But I’m still wondering if a sense of humor improves us in other ways. How does being able to laugh and make others laugh improve our other character traits? Is a kind person made more kind by having a sense of humor? Is an intelligent person made more intelligent or better demonstrate that intelligence when they have a sense of humor?

For the last three months or so, I’ve been dealing with an eye condition that makes my right eye blurry, very sensitive to light, and occasionally painful. The treatment for it includes (temporarily) making the eye even blurrier and keeping it dilated all the time. It’s a condition I have had before, and one that I will probably have periodically for the rest of my life. The treatment takes months, but it quickly becomes such a regular part of my routine that I hardly think about it. Because one of eyes is always dilated and out of focus, it changes the way that I interact with technology, so I thought it might be worth sharing some of these altered interactions.

I wrote all this for two reasons. One, I wanted to chronicle (for my own benefit) what it is like when I have this problem, so I can deal with it better in the future. Second, I thought it would be helpful to point out the ways in which I experienced technology differently because of a relatively small difference in my physical condition from most of the technology-consuming public. As ever, I am trying to reflect on who I am and how I engage with the world around me, although this time I’m less interested in the content of what I view than the physical conditions in which I view it. So bear with this unusual (and probably boring) post.

Tom Cruise in shades, from Top Gun

There are basically three things I have changed to deal with the problematic eye.

1. I avoid bright lights. This doesn’t just mean not going outdoors when it’s sunny. It also means keeping the lights off at home, even at night (where the glow of the TV is often the only light source).
2. When I am near bright lights, I wear sunglasses. This includes almost situations when I am outside the house.
3. I wear an eyepatch. Yes, an eyepatch. Even in low light settings, it can be a strain on my eye to be near any light (even the backlit glow of a computer screen). Add to this the fact that my problem eye is always out of focus, and suddenly using an eyepatch can be a very helpful way of seeing things more clearly.

These three changes have an impact on how I engage with various technologies that depend heavily on eyesight. I don’t have a smart phone and I don’t use my iPod for watching video, so I’ll leave those aside.

1. Movie theaters. I simply refused to stop seeing films at the theater because of my eye. So I typically wear sunglass through the previews, when the house lights are still on, then switch to the eyepatch for some or all of the main show. Being in a dark theater isn’t too bad, depending on the brightness of the film. Since I’m especially sensitive to light, I’m particularly aware of the difference in how films are lit. Big Hollywood studio films like Knight & Day, for instance, are considerably brighter than moody indie flicks like Winter’s Bone. Not only is there a difference in lighting techniques (not least Winter Bone‘s greater reliance on natural light), but these choices result in how much light comes through the film strips themselves and therefore how much light reflects off the large white screen and back toward the viewer. Winter’s Bone is more consistent in its color palette and brightness (from outdoor to indoor and from daytime to nighttime scenes) than Knight & Day is from car chase to warehouse gun fight. Other than noticing this, my unequal eyes don’t make a great deal of difference when watching a movie at a theater. It is a bit harder to focus when not wearing the eyepatch, and I do have less depth perception when wearing the eyepatch. But, surprisingly, if I am sitting from the middle to back of the theater, having zero depth perception hasn’t made much of a difference in how I see the film. The closer I move to the front of the theater, though, the greater an impact it makes. In watching Inception, I sat near the front of a crowded theater, and I was losing too much by wearing the eyepatch. It may be that Inception keeps its background in focus more often, or I was more often drawn to the details of the dreamscapes, and thus I need both eyes to take in what is happening, but I suspect that most of the problem stemmed from sitting closer to the screen, where it is more difficult to take in the whole screen with one good eye.
2. 

   How 3-D glasses work from 3dglassesonline.com

   3-D movies. 3-D is completely lost on me because I can’t focus with one eye. So among the many reasons to be skeptical of this “new” technology is that it is (like many “advances”) going to leave some people unable to participate. Since my eye started acting up, I saw only one 3-D film in theaters, How to Train Your Dragon. Watching with only one eye focusing through the 3-D glasses and one not focusing very well is very comparable to watching without the 3-D glasses (based on my mid-movie experiment). Watching with an eyepatch under the 3-D glasses makes 3-D even flatter than traditional film. (I think this is often true of 3-D even with both eyes working, but it is always true if you’ve got one eye covered.) My wife hates 3-D because it gives her headaches to wear the 3-D glasses over her regular glasses, and I avoid it because it so rarely improves a film. (I gave Avatar a “B” when I saw it in theaters, but I suspect it would be no more than a “C” if viewed on other formats. But that is the exception.) (And, yes, I do believe it is legitimate to grade films differently based on the medium employed.) But trying to watch 3-D with one good eye reminds me of how technologies affect people differently depending on their bodily circumstances.

3. Live theater. Going to watch a play is nearly impossible, since I can’t see the stage from the cheap seats (the only ones I can afford). Distance viewing is very difficult, and it is extremely frustrating to be unable to see what is happening on stage. Even if I can handle the lights, which is already a strain, the frustration over watching blurry shapes move around leads me to avoid traditionally staged plays. There is a small black-box theater that I love, that perhaps I could handle because I would be close enough to the action, but I haven’t tried it.


Daryl Hannah, sporting the eyepatch

4. Computers. I keep my laptop’s brightness as low as it can go while still being brighter than the ambient lighting. And, frankly, my MacBook just doesn’t get dim enough for my comfort. I still usually wear an eyepatch, since looking at a computer screen through dark sunglasses is nearly impossible. That increases the strain on my good eye, so I need to relax it more often (close it or focus on something far away for a short while). The one thing that is really noticeable, though, is how difficult it is to watch embedded videos. Nearly all video websites, from Hulu to Youtube to almost every blog on the planet, has a white (or similarly light-colored) background. Videos, however, are typically dark, or at least darker than their surroundings when viewed on a computer. Watching streaming videos on-line is thus one of the most difficult things for me to do. I can lose a lot of quality by taking (some) videos to full-screen; otherwise, it’s a game of trade-offs between making the video bright enough to see and making the surrounding page too bright.
5. Television. My very accommodating wife lets me keep the lights off in our house when we are watching TV, and (with that adjustment) television is the easiest technology for me to engage in right now (at least for the size of our television and its distance away). Apart from the difficulty I have reading subtitles with my poor distance vision right now, television is the most accessible technology for me, in part because it is the most easily adaptable. I have control over the ambient lighting (unlike a movie theater or the area surrounding an on-line video), I have control over the brightness of the television set (unlike a movie theater), and I have control over starting and stopping it so as to give me eyes a rest.
6. Books. Books are perhaps the most difficult to parse. The eyepatch makes it very possible to read a book, but focusing at a reasonable distance puts a large strain on my one good eye, so it is difficult to read for any length of time. This is especially true as day turns to night, and my eye has been worked hard all day. So while reading is quite easy to do (an advantage over almost every other viewable technology), it is very difficult to read for long periods of time. Speaking of which, back to the dissertation…

The dilated eye

I am becoming increasingly bothered about the Rise of the Vampyre.

I have nothing against vampire stories, and all the metaphorical richness that soulless, blood-sucking creatures of the night provide. What’s bothered me recently is the idea of dreamboat manliness that is contained in idealizing male vampires. The most popular recent vampires are male, with devoted female fans. Edward Cullen. That dude from True Blood. Vampire Diaries. About a dozen other cheap knock-offs.

"Don't hurt the ones you love. Don't hurt the ones you love. Don't..."

Edward Cullen and his pasty white ilk, when treated as ideals of sexual desire, suggest that the ideal man has the following qualities: distant, cold, pushes you away, feels deeply but can’t express those feelings, prone to bouts of horrific violence (but of course would never harm you). Women, these are not the qualities you should be idealizing. These are the qualities of an abusive boyfriend/husband. When this is the (imaginary) ideal toward which you feel the deepest of longings, the (real) men you choose will be judged on this scale. And frankly, this scale is a little frightening, because it provides excuses for all the wrongs sorts of behavior. Perhaps when movie vampires are in love its true that they won’t hurt the ones they love, but when extremely violent, emotionally stunted real-life men are in love, they still can hurt the ones the love, emotionally and physically.

"What is it about emotionally unavailable men?"

While there is nothing wrong with having a crush on your dreamiest fictional vampire, and you may be one of the people who can easily separate what makes a man a good partner and what makes an actor a good pin-up, there is still something deeply disturbing about a society in which the character most deeply affected middle school girls and their mothers is a barely restrained, violent monster who promises to never hurt you. (And this is coming from someone on Team Edward.)

You heard it here first: Dan Brown is a comedic genius. It is just that simple.

His latest novel, the eagerly awaited sequel to the brilliant social commentaries Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, arrived in stores on Tuesday and sold one million copies on the first day. The Lost Symbol continues Brown’s attempt to stage a public spectacle grander than any designed by Cristo and more ridiculous than any attempted by Andy Kaufman. Brown has managed to pass his literary satire and social commentary off without anyone noticing that he is mocking the very people consuming his books.

His comedy rests on two simple premises: (1) the seamless interweaving of fact and lie in such a way as to dissolve the barrier between fiction and non-fiction; (2) a gorgeous reimagining of literature into prose so awful only a fool could love it, knowing all the while that Americans will devour it and critics hate it. What seems like populism is really a skewering of public literacy.

Some critics of Brown have focused on his apparent ignorance of very basic, widely available information. His dates are wrong, his locations are misplaced, his histories are fanciful. But this misses Brown’s underlying motivation: to thumb his nose at the very care that scholars take in making sure they get things right before they publish anything. If this was ever in doubt, the opening page of The Last Symbol should put that to rest. How else can we explain the bold “FACT:” that is followed by a series of decreasingly plausible claims. Only a satirist as brilliant as Brown would think that by screaming the world “fact” at the reader would he be able to compel submission. Like being interviewed by a cable news talking head, you will feel foolish and humiliated for daring to have briefly considered disagreeing. I sleep well at night knowing that when I finally page through the rest of this glorious novel, I can be treated to a carnival ride of truths and untruths so expertly constructed that I’ll emerge as if from a whirly-gig, spun about, holding back my gag reflex, but desperate for the next thrill.

Some people have taken pleasure in pointing out Brown’s sub-literate prose. This too is part of Brown’s genius. What seems like the obtuse, incompetent ramblings of a high school dropout are really devastating statements on the nature of popular literature in the United States of America. People don’t like to feel stupid when they read books. They like to know that the author is at least as stupid and crazy as them. Dan Brown knows this, and presents a book that fulfills the desire to feel superior by being let in on the secret, held by hoi polloi, and the desire to feel superior by knowing that the secret is no secret at all, held by the literate. Like the great vocal skill it takes to sing just barely off-key, language this dreadful could only be the mark of a brilliant author breaking down sentences to the point where they make no literal sense but still manage to convey information, without conveying any nuance whatsoever. This flat-footedness is Brown’s greatest achievement. The hero Robert Langdon’s droll pronouncements that everyone who knows anything about subject X knows Y reinforces Brown’s goal of speaking down to his audience in a way that the popular mind thinks all scholars must do.

Exposing America’s anti-intelletualism by staging a massive performance art piece posing as a mystery novel is easily the greatest moment in comedy of the newly born twenty-first century. It will be a great century indeed if we have minds like Brown leading us.