“There exists in our society a widespread fear of judging … [B]ehind the unwillingness to judge lurks the suspicion that no one is a free agent, and hence the doubt that anyone is responsible or could be expected to answer for what he has done… . Who am I to judge? actually means We’re all alike, equally bad, and those who try, or pretend that they try, to remain halfway decent are either saints or hypocrites, and in either case should leave us alone. Hence the huge outcry the moment anyone fixes specific blame on some particular person.”

Arendt argues we shouldn’t be afraid to judge. That to judge is to tell good from bad. That it prevents us from falling in the trap of “thoughtlessness”. That to judge is a moral responsibility. And in order to judge responsibly, that we owe it to ourselves to train our imagination to go visiting, to see all sides of a problem as if they were our own.

Is imagination merely a talent, such as a good singing voice, the ability to “make things up: or “think things up” or “get ideas”? Or is it, like science, a way of knowing things that can be known in no other way? We have much reason to think that it is a way of knowing things not otherwise knowable. As the word itself suggests, it is the power to make us see, and to see, moreover, things that without it would be unseeable. In one of its aspects it is the power by which we sympathize. By its means we may see what it was to be Odysseus or Penelope, or David or Ruth, or what it is to be one’s neighbor or one’s enemy. By it, we may “see ourselves as others see us.” It is also the power by which we see the place, the predicament, or the story we are in.”

– From Wendell Berry, “God Science, and Imagination” in Imagination in Place.

Simply terrific.

It might be silly, but I am fascinated with reading about top athletes, and what they make of themselves over the course of their career. Kobe Bryant is of course an inspiring example, someone who not only has so much potential, but also works *so* hard at pushing himself towards excellence. What we often forget is that this comes at a price, something that perhaps became really clear during Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame induction speech.

The anti-Kobe might be someone who has as much potential, but did not put in the same amount of work, every day, relentlessly. That person might have a decent or even a good career, but not the stellar career we all thought he had in him. This person, is Chris Webber.

So what, I hear you think? Does it matter that Chris Webber never reached the level of Kobe or KG? After all, he has 5 All Star appearances, led the League in Rebounds in one year, and made it to the All-NBA first team. But I also remember the absolute hype when he first appeared on the scene: his talent was unprecedented, a big man with the skills of a guard. He was LeBron before there was LeBron. But you can argue that LeBron at this point in his career already made more out of his potential than Webber ever did.

Whether at the end of the road, you can look back on your life, and are happy or not with the life you have led, is a personal choice. Whether you have been relentless in the pursuit of excellence and often sacrifice everything for your career, or whether you decided to have a more balanced life, is a decision made by you. There is an excellent, excellent book I am reading that perhaps sums it up the best: The Book of Basketball, written by “the Sports Guy” Bill Simmons. His book is chuck full of awesome stories, and perhaps the best part are the footnotes. Here’s the footnote on Chris Webber:

Considering Webber earned nearly $200 million, can you call him disappointing? He ended up being no. 72 instead of no. 28 … is that the worst thing in the world? I think it comes down to one issue: You know when you go to a car wash and they offer you the “everything” package? Only a few NBA players are chosen every generation for the “everything” package. If they fuck it up even a little, it’s disappointing. So yeah, Webber finished no. 72. But he still goes to sleep every night knowing he could have been forty or fifty spots higher. And if he doesn’t think about it, then that explains everything.

And if he doesn’t think about it, then that explains everything. That’s pretty damning. It’s easy to be critical about top athletes, because we expect them to be competitive. But what about your own life? Are you living up to your potential? Are you thinking about it? But it can be quite lonely up there. And be careful: Fly too high, and the sun might burn you..

The place to which you feel the strongest attachment isn’t necessarily the country you’re tied to by blood or birth: it’s the place that allows you to become yourself. This place, she quietly indicates, may not lie on any map.

Murakami’s protagonists are often transformed by exquisitely tender physical meetings with unusual, beautiful and often confused or mysterious women. He describes love with delicate wonder, and his hero is driven by passionate need once the woman of his life is revealed. “I have to talk to you,” Toru Watanabe tells the emotionally troubled Naoko in Norwegian Wood. “I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”

One of the great blessings I count as essential in my life is encountering Murakami Haruki as a young adult. Just like seeing Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express when I was sixteen, these are life-changing encounters, forever leaving memories etched in a soul during a time that is particularly impressionable. Memories to last a lifetime, and so unmistakeably part of who I am, what I write and where I want to be.

We’re more than halfway through 9/11/06 and I’m feeling like we’ve fetishized it.Thousands of innocent citizens were murdered, and they deserve remembrance. But listening to the public voices chattering without pause, today seems to have become about something else: Justifying the sacrifice of American ideals and values in the name of our fear.

On 9/10/01, if someone had told you that in response to a terrorist attack, a majority of Americans would back preemptive war and torture, would you have believed it?

For five minutes forget whether or not we’re safer now, five years after the attacks. The question I wish they’d talk about is: Are you proud of how our country has responded? I’m not. Our soldiers are brave and our fire fighters are heroes. We’ve done some things right. But, overall I’m not proud. And if the authorities weren’t out whipping up fear, I think most Americans would answer the same way.

One cannot view an event in a vacuum, out of context of the actions that have been undertaking in its very name. The uglier the actions (torture, illegitimate war, the loss of civil liberties through the Patriot Act etc), the more the need to increase the polarization between what is Good (us) and Bad (them), hence the timely appearance of a movie like World Trade Center (which I admittedly haven’t seen, except for the trailer).

“Saddam was the John Mark Karr of despots—an odious, nasty dude with a wicked history, and totally innocent of the current crimes he himself professed to commit. We’ve got a bad track record following such men down the trails they want us to go, and we need to be sure we’re not making the same mistake again.”

If you don’t know who John Mark Karr is, Wikipedia helps out. As overheard recently in an episode of Ghost in The Shell: Stand Alone Complex that I was watching: this guy looks so guilty he cannot possibly be guilty.

Highlights:

What is a blog? Is it something that you write for yourself? I know that other people can go and read it, but I cannot believe that anyone would do that. There are several billion people in the world. Whose blog shall I go and look at? So I think that most people just write for themselves.

Alright, so only nobodies blog. So which one of them do you want me to read? In the end, there is nothing good to read and so we must write for ourselves.

You can write for yourself, but you should not complain that nobody is reading what you wrote, right? I am just curious. Does anyone read that stuff?

Seems to me that the perfect compromise that might resolve the stem cell controversy is for the scientific community to agree to do research only on embryos that could possibly mature into terrorists. After all, our president who so emphasizes morality believes there is nothing immoral about torturing persons who are suspected of being terrorists, even in the absence of any legal procedure that even confirms the suspicions are reasonable (much less a legal procedure which convicts them of any crime). Our president who so emphasizes morality also finds nothing immoral about killing innocent civilians and children in military missions that also kill a certain number of terrorists. If we can torture and kill people suspected of terrorism or people who live near people suspected of terrorism, then surely we ought to be allowed to experiment on embryos that we suspect might have become terrorists.

Ouch.

The internet is not a truck, but a series of tubes? Senator Stevens has by now a famous explanation of the internet, a meme exploding all over the blogosphere. It even made it to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show as evident by the video clip. And who started it all? My friend and colleague, Billy Herman, whom I blog together with on Shouting Loudly. *tips hat to Bill. While you are reading this anyway, please consider learning about the internet and net neutrality (besides the fact that it is not a truck) and visit save the internet: fighting for freedom.