James E Hartley

A Conversation Between Friends

“[There] is a certain kind of activity (not yet extinct) which can be engaged in only in virtue of a disposition to be conservative, namely, activities where what is sought is present enjoyment and not a profit, a reward, a prize or a result in addition to the experience itself.”

Michael Oakeshott wrote that in “On Being Conservative.” (The essay is in the book pictured to the right.)

I was reading this essay for a conference I recently attended on the definition of conservatism. (The conference was great, but nothing which follows is in any way related to the conference.) There I was merrily reading along, thinking about politics and culture and the conservative sensibility, when that sentence caused my brain to come to a screeching halt. Epiphany!

Over the years (now, I suppose that should be “decades”), I have had many students stop by to argue about politics. There is a certain type of student who wants to talk about politics, both theoretical and practical, with someone who disagrees with her. (Alas, not all students are like this.) At Mount Holyoke, it is not easy to find people with different political views. Lots of groupthink at Mount Holyoke.

Now I have a rather curious two-fold reputation on campus: 1) I am a conservative, and 2) I am an iconoclast, so I am happy to while away many hours defending the opposite of any position someone wants to stake out. So, students who want to debate some political idea or other stop by.

There is one part of this, though, that has always puzzled me. More often than I can count, students will hit the end of the discussion thinking about who won or lost the debate. At first, I thought the students were joking, but over the years, I have realized they aren’t. They really do think about who won or lost.

I have never been able to figure out what to make of this winning or losing. I didn’t even know we were in a debate. I just thought we were having an enjoyable conversation. There are no winners and losers in a conversation; there is just a pleasant trying out of ideas and wandering all over the intellectual landscape.

That is why the passage above from Oakeshott halted me in my tracks. He is perfectly describing my life as a professor. I talk with students in my office because of the enjoyment of the conversation itself. The conversation is the aim. If you want an education, then the best way to get one is to simply pause and enjoy discovering whatever turns up in the wandering, serendipitous act of conversation. Learning is its own reward.

This is also exactly why I am constantly assigning books in classes other than the textbook and why I run reading groups and independent studies all the time. Reading books is another form of conversation; you are talking with an author, wandering along a new way of thinking and pausing to consider whether the argument is insightful or not. Reading is its own reward.

I had never before connected this idea that being a teacher means having conversations in my office about every topic under the sun with the idea that I have a conservative sensibility. When students discover I am a conservative, they always think first about national politics, but truth be told, I am not nearly as invested in national politics as I was when I was young. It’s vastly more enjoyable simply to have a conversation with a student for nothing other than the goal of having a conversation.

So, I paused at Oakeshott’s sentence above, realizing that my whole approach to being a teacher may be the product of my conservative sensibilities. If so, this explained another long-standing puzzle: why don’t all the other faculty on campus enjoy endless meandering conversations with students?

After pleasantly ruminating a bit, I got back to the essay, and suddenly, in the next couple of pages, I had another jarring sensation.

But there are relationships of another kind in which no result is sought and which are engaged in for their own sake and enjoyed for what they are and not for what they provide. This is so of friendship. Here, attachment springs from an intimation of familiarity and subsists in a mutual sharing of personalities.

That was a really interesting definition of friendship. But even more so, one page later: a friend “is somebody who engages the imagination, who excites contemplation, who provokes interest, sympathy, delight and loyalty simply on account of the relationship entered into.”

And there, in Oakeshotts’ definition of “friendship,” I discovered the most perfect description of the relationship I have with all those students who stop by to have those marvelous conversations.

Many students have asked me why I spend so much time talking with them. They wonder what I am possibly getting out of the conversation. They never believe me when I tell them that I enjoy the conversation. They never seem to understand that I really am happy to talk with them about anything at all, about politics or science or poetry or their own personal struggles in life. It makes no difference to me whether the conversation is hysterically funny and lively or deeply serious. This conversation between friends is its own reward.

Explaining Christianity to Christians

Some books have the wrong title.

This creates two problems. The more obvious problem: people who buy the book because of the title will be disappointed. The bigger problem: people who would really enjoy the book will never buy it because they have no idea it is a book written for them.

The case in point: James Emery White’s Christianity for People Who Aren’t Christians: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions.

The first sentence sets the tone: “I hope you begin this book with a healthy amount of doubt.” White then proceeds to explore a wide array of aspects of Christian theology. It is quite the collection of topics: Existence of God, Nature of God, Nature of Christ, and the basics of Christian Theology, the Bible, and the Church. Some quibbles aside (more about that anon), it is a solid book.

However, and it is a very important “However,” this is not a book I would hand to any non-Christian I have ever known and say, “Here is a book you should read.” On the other hand, I have known a lot of Christians to whom I would happily recommend this book. For reasons explained below, a more accurate title for the book is Christianity for Christians who Have a Lot of Questions about the Nature of What They Say They Believe.

Then consider the subtitle of the book: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions. With that subtitle, I naturally enough read the book waiting for the moments when White ventured out past the edge with an uncommon answer, either providing uncommon insight or wandering into the fringes of heresy. Instead, at no point in the entire book was there a single answer to a common question which was anything other than a quite common answer. I can’t even imagine where White believes any of his answers are uncommon. He keeps insisting through the whole book that his answers are simply run-of-the-mill Christian answers. I could suggest the subtitle should be Common Answers to Common Questions, but that is a pretty lame subtitle.

I would be fascinated to know if the title of this book was White’s own idea. The title reads like someone at the publisher spent too much time dreaming up titles which would have a big market, put them in a drawer waiting for a book to show up, saw this book, and slapped the title onto it.

So, what is the difference between a book explaining Christianity to non-Christians and one explaining it to Christians? The difference can be seen in thinking about an example from this book. The first substantive chapter sets out to prove the existence of God. The evidence White uses is the nature of the universe. It is, as he says, a universe which is “freakishly suited for human life.” It is a universe which, according to the most common view, is not eternal but originated in a Big Bang, yet there is no scientific explanation for the origin of the thing that went Bang. It is a universe in which things evolve which are so complex that the probability that they evolved due purely to random chance is smaller than infinitesimally small.

All those things about this universe are true. Do they prove there is a God? Of course not. Indeed, it would be a very dangerous argument to insist that these things are the proof of God. Scientific knowledge advances. Physicists are now exploring the idea that the Universe did not originate with Big Bang; instead it expands to its outer limit and then contracts back down and then expands again and then contracts again; it is a sort of bouncing universe. Biologists are exploring ways that evolutionary mechanisms might work which do not involve random genetic mutations. If anything like either of these theories ever becomes the best scientific explanation of the universe, there would still be no conflict with Christianity. So why would Christians want to tie their theology to the current state of scientific knowledge?

In other words, White’s argument here for the existence of God will persuade nobody who reads it with the doubt he encouraged in the first sentence of the book. But, imagine a Christian, who does believe in God. This chapter is an enormously useful overview of how a belief in God is easily reconciled with modern scientific understandings of the Universe.

In other words, what White has done is shown how Christianity is not in contradiction to scientific knowledge, not that scientific knowledge proves the existence of God.

To take another example, White recycles the C.S. Lewis bit about how we are faced with believing that Jesus is necessarily Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. In the gospel of John, for example, Jesus makes an explicit claim to be God. So, when people say they like the teachings of Jesus, but reject the divinity of Christ, the Lewis argument is a very nice thing for Christians to consider. If you accept the authority of the gospel of John, then indeed, you either have to believe that Jesus is God or that he was a liar or a lunatic.

But, what if you are not a Christian and you don’t accept the authority of the gospel of John? Then, it turns out there is a very easy solution to the problem. You can easily like the teachings of Jesus recorded elsewhere, but think John was not telling the truth at the part of the narrative in in which he wrote that Jesus claimed to be God.

There are very many examples along these lines. In case after case, it was easy to imagine Christians I have known who would learn a lot from this book, but difficult to imagine non-Christians I have known who would find this book persuasive at all.

However, and it is another very important “However,” the real title of the book is not even Christianity for Christians who Have a Lot of Questions About the Nature of What They Say They Believe. It should be Christianity for American Evangelical Christians who Have a Lot of Questions About the Nature of What They Say They Believe.

(Quick aside: the term “Evangelical Christian” has morphed in the last three years, and no longer means what it meant a decade ago. (More about this in a future blog post.) Unfortunately, there isn’t a new title for the Evangelicals of a decade ago. So, in the face of that problem, we have to stick with the word that no longer really means what it used to mean.)

There is no better example of this limitation of the book than this:

Did Jesus have brothers and sisters? As you read just a minute ago, yes, he had brothers. Christians believe his brothers were half-brothers through Mary…

Uh…Christians believe that? All Christians? It is an article of faith in the Roman Catholic Church that Mary was a perpetual virgin…so, is White saying Roman Catholics are not Christians? He certainly is saying that right here. Fortunately, later in the book, in explaining why there are so many denominations, he includes the Roman Catholics in the category of Christian.

This is just an example of the massive blind spot that runs throughout White’s book. When White talks about Christians, he means Christians like him. Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and the mainline Protestant denominations don’t really enter into White’s conception of Christianity. This is terribly surprising given White’s clear reliance on and love of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. While I suspect White thought he was writing an update of Lewis’ book, he missed the memo on making sure the Christianity being described is the things Christians universally believe.

Similar blind spots are also undoubtedly related to the many quibbles I had in parts of the book. To take one example, White addresses the common complaint that there are contradictions in the Bible. He is entirely right in noting that none of the so-called contradictions really give us any reason to doubt the accuracy and internal coherence of the text. To show this, he picks the well-known problem of the cock crowing before Peter’s denial of Christ. Matthew’s gospel says Jesus said that Peter would deny Christ three time before the cock crowed. Mark’s gospel says that Jesus said that Peter would deny Christ three time before the cock crowed twice. These are obviously not the same statements. White explains: “Again, that’s not a contradiction. Peter would deny Jesus before the cock crowed, but Mark simply supplies an added detail—that the cock wouldn’t crow just once, but twice. Not exactly a scandal.”

What is a scandal is that White does not seem to have read the gospel of Mark before writing those sentences. White is clearly saying that the chain of events is Peter denies Christ three times and then the cock crows twice. If that is what happened, then Matthew and Mark are, as White says, in no way contradictory. But, if you actually read the gospel of Mark, the cock crows the first time after Peter’s first denial, but before his second and third denials. This is not even a hidden detail: it is quite explicit in text. In other words, White’s attempt to brush away the contradiction is not only wrong, but actually wrong in a way that unfortunately would cast suspicion on his whole method of argument if one started as the doubter White encouraged in the first sentence of the book. One might wonder: If White can’t be trusted to be accurate in describing the stories in the Bible, then is he accurate anywhere else?

Why did this happen? I have no idea. But, the simple truth is that there was no reason for White to make this sort of claim in the first place. The difference between the two accounts in easily explained if you think even briefly about the nature of biography in the first century. These sorts of details are not the point of the story; Matthew and Mark are writing moral biographies (akin to Plutarch), not “what happened at 3:36 pm on June 24^th” biographies.

The larger problem to which these sorts of problem point is White’s obvious desire to wrap up all the theological questions into nice little packages. He wants to answer, really answer, all the questions. He makes the extraordinary claim that “99 percent of the Bible does not take any heavy lifting in regard to interpretation.” That is simply absurd and, while White does not mean it this way, it utterly trivializes the Bible.

The Bible is a Great Book. It is worthy of attention from both Christians and non-Christians and will repay rereading and deep study. It requires thought, much thought, to divine all of its secrets. Yes, there are many lessons which can be learned in the first reading, many lessons which can be understood by anyone. But, to trivialize two thousand years of theological debate as arguing over a mere 1% of the text is beneath White. Some question are simply hard to answer.

All that being said, I’ll return to what I noted at the outset. Problems aside (all books have problems after all), this is a very good book for an American Evangelical Christian who is wondering about how to think about the faith. If you are someone like that or know someone like that, this is a rather good book. But, I would not even think about getting the book for your non-Christian friends.

Nietzsche and the Apostle Paul

Nietzsche doesn’t get invited to many Christmas parties.

Something about declaring “God is dead” has made him persona non grata at gatherings of Christians.

But, before dismissing him, let us first note that his most famous aphorism was, in fact, correct.

By the late 19^th century, in European intellectual circles, God was, indeed, dead. It wasn’t always so; look back at the writings of earlier generations and you find a plethora of Christian intellectuals. Even the non-Christian intellectuals made nods in the direction of God. But, by the 1870s, all that God-talk had largely vanished. God, who sed to be the center of European intellectual discourse, was no longer there are all. God, the idea and relevance of God to the intellectual arguments of the late 19^th century, was indeed quite dead.

Nietzsche looked out at the godless landscape, and what did he see? A true curiosity. While nobody wanted to talk about God anymore, everyone still had all these moral codes which looked a whole lot like the Christian moral code. “Why?,” Nietzsche asks.

That is a really good question. It is the sort of question both Christians and non-Christians ought to be asking. If there is no God, why exactly should I love my neighbor? If I am strong enough, why shouldn’t I kill my neighbor and take all his stuff?

When I ask students this, they inevitably immediately reply, “Well, you don’t want someone to kill you, do you?” They announce this proudly, like it is the ultimate answer. But, it is, of course, just a sign of their weakness. If I am strong enough, why would I worry that others will kill me? Only weak people worry about that. So, again, why shouldn’t I kill my neighbor?

If there was a God who did not want me to murder my neighbor, then that gives me an answer. But, if there is no God? Why not then? Here Nietzsche comes in with an answer. His answer sprawls among a great many books, but the easiest place to start is The Genealogy of Morals.

Once upon a time, the strong could kill their neighbors. Those were the good old days. In those days, there was only the strong and the weak. The strong were good; the weak were not good. The weak did not like being preyed upon by the strong, so they banded together to create a moral code which would constrain the strong. Don’t be strong, said the weak. Be weak like us.

That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb—would he not be good?” there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: “we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.”
To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength

Thus began the slave revolt in morality. Henceforth all expressions of strength will be called “evil.” All expressions of weakness will be called “good.” The Church arises to impose this new moral code on everyone, constraining the strong and elevating the weak. These new Priests of Weakness, the tarantulas, have gradually poisoned everyone to the point where nobody can see the truth any more.

A predominance of mandarins always means something is wrong; so do the advent of democracy, international courts in place of war, equal rights for women, the religion of pity, and whatever other symptoms of declining life there are.

Even Science has led us further down the same path. Once upon a time, Humans were the Masters of the Universe, ruling the World. Now, we are mere animals, pathetic little creatures acting like a virus on a small planet which is no longer the center of anything at all.

Has the self-belittlement of man, his will to self-belittlement, not progressed irresistibly since Copernicus? Alas, the faith in the dignity and uniqueness of man, in his irreplaceability in the great chain of being, is a thing of the past—he has become an animal, literally and without reservation or qualification, he who was, according to his old faith, almost God (“child of God,” “God-man”).

All this was the history of the world when Nietzsche wrote. But, he warned, it was about to get worse, much worse.

What happens when people become aware that the moral codes they have been using are not actually True? What happens when Truth itself gets called into question?

As the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness—there can be no doubt of that—morality will gradually perish now: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe—the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all spectacles.

The great spectacle: world wars, genocide, mass killings…all in the name of power. If the 20^th century has shown us anything, this Will to Power in the absence of any Truth is a very ugly thing. Nietzsche was right.

Should that surprise us? Well, not if we have read the Apostle Paul.

Nietzsche may be the most perceptive commentator on the writings of Paul which the world has ever produced. Paul and Nietzsche completely agree on one thing: in a world without God, there is no moral code, and people behave abominably.

In the absence of God, Paul and Nietzsche fully agree that there is no check upon the wickedness of man. In the absence of God, there is no reason that strength should not express itself as strength. In the absence of God, the Christian Church is just imposing a moral code in an attempt to restrain these natural inclinations we all have. Paul notes the wickedness at the heart of all humans; Nietzsche explains the implications of Paul’s observation about human nature.

If there is no God, then we do in fact live in that the Nietzschean world. Prepare yourself for another century of horror. Get used to the Will to Power being the only Rule of Law. If you want to dream, then dream with Nietzsche that maybe the Overman, the Superman, will arise to lead us out of this dark pit.

How do we escape the Nietzschean horror? Easy. If the premise is wrong, then the conclusion is wrong. If there is a God, then weakness and love are indeed good.

Paul and Nietzsche lead to the same place. Both look forward to a redemptive moment in the future to save us from our plight. And both agree on this: if we assume the absence of God, Nietzsche is entirely correct. There is no moral code; there is only power. And if you don’t think that conclusion is True, then maybe it is the assumption that needs modification.

Choose Your Friends Wisely

Yes, your friends are more popular than you.

They are also having more fun than you. And people care more about what your friends think than about what you think. They are also more likely to dress like your friends and act like your friends.

But don’t despair. There is nothing you can do about it.

Matthew Jackson explains why in The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors. The book is an explanation of network theory—how things relate to one another. Curiously, the same sort of models can explain not just the relationships you have with your friends, but how disease spreads and how financial panics occur. It’s all about the network.

Start with why your friends are more popular than you. Draw a picture with a circle representing each person. Draw a line connecting your circle to every one of your friends. Then imagine doing this for everyone else—a line for every friendship. (It’s a messy picture.)

Now the obvious statement: popular people have more connecting lines. That is the definition of “popular” after all.

But, it has an additional implication that is not so obvious. Suppose you have a dozen friends, and your popular friend has four dozen friends. That means there are 11 other people who have you as a friend, but 47 other people have your popular friend as a friend. It is, in other words, way more likely that someone else is friends with your popular friend than they are with you. In fact, it is also way more likely that your 11 other friends are people who have lots of friends, so they are also more popular than you. It is highly unlikely, for example, that one of your 11 other friends only has one friend who happens to be you. So, on average, your friends really are more popular than you.

The ripple effect of this observation is incredible. Consider a college student. How much time do the friends of the college student spend socializing? How much time do the friends spend studying? It turns out students overestimate the amount of time the average student spends socializing and underestimate the time spent studying.

Why? Socializing is a public act which generates more friend connections. So, people who socialize a lot have more friends and are seen socializing. Studying on the other hand is a private activity. You don’t see people studying as much. And people who are studying a lot make fewer friends.

So, our hypothetical student will have more friends who socialize a lot and will see them socializing a lot, so will think college students must socialize a lot. Our hypothetical student will have fewer friends who study a lot and will not see them studying, so will think college students don’t study that much.

Now add in the phenomenon of homophily—liking people who are the same as you. People like people who are like them. Even if this is only a slight preference, it has dramatic effects. You want friends who are like you means that you want to be like your friends. You see your friends socializing more than you see them studying for the reasons above. So, you change your behavior to spend more time socializing than you otherwise would or even more than you would if you knew the actual average amount of time the average person spends socializing.

Fads come about for the same reason. Suppose two relatively popular people for some reason or another decide to wear purple tennis shoes. Then, since these first two purple tennis shoe wearers are popular, many people are friends with both and thus will think that wearing purple tennis shoes is a good idea and adopt the style. Now there are more people doing this, so even more people conform. Next thing you know, everyone is wearing purple tennis shoes solely because of an unrelated decision to do so by a very small number of popular people.

(This is the same model as health epidemics. A few sick people with lots of connections can infect a disproportionate number of other people, who in turn have a relatively disproportionate number of other people who will also be infected and so on.)

Now replace “wear purple tennis shoes” with “have a particular political belief.” And now add in a technology that allows people to announce their political beliefs to their friends. (Yeah, stretch your mind to imagine what such a technological innovation could possibly be.)

A relatively small number of relatively popular people announcing a particular political view will ripple through the friend network until everyone in the friend network is announcing the same political view. It doesn’t take any nefarious outside influencers. It doesn’t even take particularly influential popularizers. It just takes the fact that some people have more friend connections than others and everyone has at least a small degree of desire to be like their friends. The simple power of network connections along with homophily is all you need.

Now really stretch your mind and imagine that two separate groups emerge. Suddenly nobody knows very many people, and maybe even anybody at all, with different opinions, despite the fact that half the population has a different opinion. No brainwashing is necessary. News organizations devoted to one or the other set of views may even emerge as an effect, not a cause, of the spread of views in a network.

Of course this is all hypothetical.

The Pleasures of Noir

Today’s theme: Noir.

And therein lies a puzzle. What exactly is Noir?

Start with Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man, which is included in the Library of America’s volume: Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930’s and 1940’s. If it is in a volume like that, it must be Noir.

Then consider the Loeb/Sale collaborations: Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory. The preface to the first volume says that the book was born when an editor met with Loeb and said, “I always liked what you two did with gangsters. Ever thought about doing a kind of film noir tale?”

So, what is it that connect these books?

The Woolrich story is good. A penniless (technically, nearly penniless) pregnant women is in a train crash which kills a newly wedded couple, and (for absurd reasons) is mistaken for the dead wife, brought into the home of the dead husband’s rather wealthy family, falls in love with the dead husband’s brother, and is all set for a wonderful future when her deception catches up with her ending in a terribly ambiguous ending about the prospects for happiness for one and all.

Not a lot of mystery here—the central mystery foreshadowed in the introductory chapter means there is either an unreliable narrator or the brother did it—and there is no way to tell from the story which and it doesn’t really matter which for the purposes of the story. This is clearly a book designed to evoke a mood, not tell a tightly constructed story. In both regards it does a pretty good job.

The Loeb/Sale Batman books are one part the continuation of the story begin in Frank Miller’s Batman: Year 1, and one part giant murder mystery (or technically since we are talking about two books, two different murder mysteries, which are linked, so in a technical sense it is two books, but it is really just one long story with a natural break point)

Endless references to The Godfather (parts 1 and 2—thankfully, Loeb and Sale also seem perfectly willing pretend part 3 never happened). [The Godfather references are sometimes pretty funny—some of them are fairly overt, but a lot of them are just something in the picture.]

I read these books years ago and I thought they were OK. Rereading them, I thought they were fantastic. I have no idea why I was less impressed the first time I read them, but after this rereading, they are definitely some of the best of Batman. The art is really good and the story is well done.

The link? What makes them both Noirish? Google “Noir” and you get a lot of gobbledygook (that’s a technical phrase). Noir is, as far as I can tell, one of those things you know when you see it. Except I am not sure I do. Obviously Noir is dark (I think Comedic Noir is an oxymoron) and has a crime of some sort. Gritty? That might be part of it.

The OED defines it thus: “A genre of crime film or detective fiction characterized by cynicism, sleaziness, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.” That certainly sounds Noirish, but I Married a Dead Man isn’t terribly cynical or sleazy—there is one character who is both, but the story as a whole is neither. The Loeb/Sale Batman comics have zero moral ambiguity, and not much fatalism. And when I think over the other novels in the Library of America volume containing the Woolrich tale, I am not sure any of them—all of which have the LOA stamp (and is there a Higher Authority on such things?) saying they are authoritatively Noir—fit that description perfectly.

Oddly, my ability to come up with anything resembling a definition does not seem to faze me much. If I was asked if I like Noir as a genre, I wouldn’t hesitate to say I did. Why? There I get stuck because in order to explain why I like a genre, I would necessarily need to define the genre and I have a hard time doing that. But, I do like it. I really enjoyed all three of these books.

Is it a moral failing to enjoy reading tales suffused with moral ambiguity about cynical, sleazy, fatalistic characters? I don’t think so.

But why not? If human depravity is a bad thing (which I hope is not a controversial proposition), then why shouldn’t reading a tale about human depravity also be a bad thing? Undoubtedly there are many who would argue they are equivalent. However, understanding humanity is surely a good thing (also non-controversial), and thus shouldn’t reading a tale which teaches us something about the human condition also be a good thing? Raising the question like this really feels like sophomoric rambling—probably because it is sophomoric rambling.

Yet, I am, in fact, mildly troubled by the fact that I am not in the least bit troubled about enjoying reading Noir—it doesn’t bother me, and I am not really bothered that I am not bothered, but I am a bit bothered by the fact that I am not bothered than I am not bothered. Yeah, I know that sounds like I just have too much time on my hands, but nonetheless, it is real.

Recommending these books—well, assuming your conscience is not bothered—the Woolrich book was a nice end to the LOA volume, and I would highly recommend the LOA volume. Good stories throughout. The Batman books I would also highly, very highly, recommend if you liked Miller’s Year 1. (Don’t bother reading them if you haven’t read the Miller volume, which is easily one of the most important Batman comics, so if you haven’t read that book yet, you should certainly do so.)

Chesterton and the Elves

Are elves real?

(Yes, I hear your groan. Bear with me a second.)

Are you sure about your answer? Why are you so sure?

G. K. Chesterton raises this question in Orthodoxy. (There is even a chapter entitled “The Ethics of Elfland”!) This tells you everything you need to know about what a curious book Orthodoxy is.

At one level, the book looks like it is an attempt to prove the truth of Christianity. Chesterton certainly spends a lot of time explaining why he thinks Christianity is true. But when you look closely at what he is actually arguing, he is not doing anything at all to convince you, the Reader, that his beliefs are right.

Instead, he is doing something more radical. He is trying to convince you, the Reader, that his views are not necessarily wrong, that there is nothing about the Christian faith that is unreasonable or inconsistent with either the external world or its own internal logic. He also has a merry time showing the internal and external failings of alternatives to Christianity.

The set of people who come in for the greatest mockery are those who insist that they are being rational and reasonable and that they will only accept things which have been proven to be true by reason. These people reject Christianity because it is not reasonable, or because there is no proof of the existence of God, or because accepting anything at all on faith is inherently silly.

Enter the elves. Why do you reject the existence of elves? I read this book with a reading group and asked that question, which has resulted in even more conversations since then as other students have heard about this odd professor who seems perfectly willing to posit the existence of elves. I have thus heard an array of answers to the Elf Question.

First and foremost is the retort, “There is absolutely no reason to think elves are real.” Ah, but there is. We have a massive number of historical records reporting the existence of elves. People throughout time and around the world have reported the existence of elves. Indeed, it is unquestionably true that more people in this world have said they have seen elves than have said they have seen Socrates or Julius Caesar. Moreover, the people who say they saw Socrates or Julius Caesar were all located in a single location at a single period of time. People who have seen elves have come from all over the world throughout time. Is it more believable that a small number of people in the same location at the same time could be mistaken or that people from all over the world and at every time have been mistaken? So, why do you believe the first set of people, but not the second?

In other words, if your proof of existence is reports of eyewitnesses, we have an incredible amount of evidence that elves exist.

“Ah, but if there are elves, wouldn’t there be some tangible evidence of their existence? Elf bodies or elf bones or abandoned elf buildings?” That question has made a fundamental mistake about the nature of elves. Elves are magic. Their corpses and structures vanish upon the demise of the elf. So, of course there is no physical evidence; there can’t be physical evidence.

“Ah, but there is no such things as magic.” Really? How do you know that? Are there no unexplained phenomenon in the world? ‘Well sure, there are things we have not explained yet. But they are explainable using perfectly normal physical laws.” And do you know all those physical laws? Why isn’t it possible that one of the physical laws is that elf bodies disappear, they turn into pure energy, when the elf dies? Do you even have the ability to test that theory? So, why do you reject it?

Anyway, you get the point. It is a very merry conversation. The conclusion? Chesterton describes it perfectly when discussing whether miracles can occur.

But my belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism— the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence—it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.

Why does this matter? It points to a conclusion which is so obvious that it is stunning that it is so widely rejected. Every philosophical or theological system, every world view, ultimately rests on faith. The Christian has faith that Jesus Christ is God and died on a cross to provide redemption for the world. The believer in elves has faith that there are magical creatures in the woods. The believer in materialism has faith that nothing immaterial exists. The believer in Reason has faith that Reason reveals true things about the world, that it is a trustworthy tool to uncovering Truth.

I have faith in the first and last of the propositions in the previous paragraph. Others have faith in the third. Still others have faith in the second. But in the end, we all have faith. There is no proof that any of these things in which we have faith are true or false. You can no more prove the existence of elves than you can prove that we exist in a real world and not a dream state or that Americans really did land on the moon. You have faith that there are no elves, that the world is real, and that the moon-landing actually happened. I share your faith. But, good luck trying to prove any of these things to someone who believes differently. Good luck trying to prove to a believer in elves that they don’t exist, to a believer that we are brains in a vat that the world is real, or to a conspiracy theorist that the moon-landing was not an elaborate hoax. You will fail to prove it to the thoughtful person with faith. And similarly, they will fail to prove the opposite conclusions to you.

Faith, in other words, is the starting place for our views on the world. This is true for everyone whether they believe it or not.

So, what is conversation between people with different faith systems? Well, it would look a lot like Orthodoxy, a rather fun book where you get to think along with Chesterton about what it would be like to have a belief system like Chesterton’s. You learn something reading a book like this whether you agree with Chesterton or not. Indeed, a book like this is a perfect example of what a good conversation is like. You not only learn things, but you get to think about why you believe the things you believe. Indeed, there is no better way to figure out what you actually believe than to read books with which you disagree and constantly ask, “Why do I think this argument is wrong?”

Maybe after reading enough about elves, you will decide your faith in their nonexistence was wrong. At a minimum, reading Chesterton will give you a good excuse to talk with other people about elves. What could be more fun that talking about whether elves are real? Well, how about figuring out if Santa is real?