David
Glenn Greenwald on Journalism and Values

Glenn Greenwald is a great journalist. Why? Because his view of journalism; that it’s firstly meant to act as a check to power, is a good one. Without journalists informing the public about what their elected officials are doing; there are closed doors and an environment which is conductive to abuse. The role of journalism as the fourth estate is that it tempers that power by making actions made in its name public and thus open to being held to account.

But it’s not just his view of journalism as a check on power which is good. He also understands, in line with the Metaphysics of Quality, that it’s impossible for anyone to hold an objective, value free viewpoint. As Pirsig writes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care! This is an ability about which formal traditional scientific method has nothing to say. It’s long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those who make so much of these facts after they are ‘observed.'”

In fact, Glenn articulates that it’s this value free viewpoint that modern day journalists cling to as a defense whenever they saddle up next to those in power and stenographically transcribe what they say. They claim that they’re being ‘objective’ but really they’re just transcribing what the powerful wants us to hear rather than doing their job and looking out for those things which are valuable for the public to know regardless of what those in power say.

Along these lines, recently Greenwald had a fascinating exchange with the New York Times Bill Keller in which he summarised his view on modern journalism and the role of the NYT thus:

“My view of journalism absolutely requires both fairness and rigorous adherence to facts. But I think those values are promoted by being honest about one’s perspectives and subjective assumptions rather than donning a voice-of-god, view-from-nowhere tone that falsely implies that journalists reside above the normal viewpoints and faction-loyalties that plague the non-journalist and the dreaded “activist.”

Embedded in The New York Times’s institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less “activist,” subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns.”

The discussion is centred around the new media venture of which Greenwald is starting with Pierre Omidyar. It should be interesting to see what form it takes. But I recommend the whole exchange as it’s a great intellectual discussion between a prominent modern day journalist in that of Keller and one of the more adversarial journalists of our times in Greenwald.

intellectual-morality
David

If you’re doing not much else on a lazy Sunday afternoon, you could do worse than watch Gattaca.

Gattaca is a great film for a number of reasons; but first and foremost is the sentiment of the underlying tagline that “There is no gene for the human spirit”. The Metaphysics of Quality agrees with this sentiment and the film is nothing but a wholehearted expression of the idea that there is a more powerful thing beyond the physical genes which dictate how our bodies work. However the term ‘spirit’ is perhaps not the best choice for a word to represent that which is beyond the physical. I mean, a few hundred years ago folks were burned at the stake for their evil ‘spirits’ and so there are negative connotations with it which another word does not have. Of course, that word is ‘Quality’. There is indeed no gene for the human quality and I’d struggle to create a better movie than Gattaca to represent this idea.

Other great things about the movie :

The Probable Science Fiction Future – It would be hard to find another science fiction film which represents the ‘Not too distant future’ better than this. While it has made one predictive error since it was created in 1997 (Laser eye surgery exists now – instead of either an eye transplant or contact lenses as claimed). Designer babies, prevalent solar power, electric cars and ubiquitous space travel are all becoming more probable than less as the years roll by. Furthermore, only the best Science Fiction gives cautionary moral tales about possible futures knowing that as a result of watching them we are made wiser and can hopefully avoid these unpleasant scenarios in the future.
The Heroes Journey – The film follows Joseph Campbell’s universal heroes journey narrative very closely.
The Cinematography – Beautifully crafted shots which feature a pristine palate reflecting, perhaps, the artificial world in which the ‘Godchild’ Vincent inhabits.
The Sets– Featuring the ‘Marin County Civic Center’ by Frank Lloyd Wright. Plenty of circles which are pleasant to the human eye too..
The Soundtrack – Beautifully crafted piano pieces by Michael Nymann.

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David

> “[In this film] there’s nothing but the elements. Nothing but the weather, a man, a boat – that’s it.” > **Robert Redford**

In a new J.C. Chandor film Robert Redford ‘plays an unnamed solo sailor woken by a collision with a drifting shipping container that rips a hole in his 11-metre yacht. Taking on water, and with his navigation equipment and radio broken, he is stranded in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with a violent storm approaching.’

In Lila, Robert Redford made a cameo appearance as the person to romance the sailing narrator before he sold the rights to his previous book – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Interestingly, in the book the narrator mentioned Redford’s value of the Victorians:

“Those Victorians seemed to light Redford up too. He’d made a lot of films about that era. Something about them probably interested him as it does many other people. The Victorians represented the last really static social pattern we’ve had. And maybe someone who feels his life is too chaotic, too fluid, might look back at them enviously. Something about their rigid convictions about what was right and what was wrong might appeal to anyone brought up in laid-back Southern California of the forties and fifties. Redford seemed to be a rather Victorian person himself: restrained, well mannered, gracious. Maybe that’s why he lives here in New York. He likes the Victorian graciousness that still exists here in places.”

And in the press conference Redford also talked about the losing of values:

“As I can look back now.. I can see America in kind of a series of sections where change happened as America moved from one place to the next. As it moved from one place to the next, certain things got lost, got dropped. Our belief system began to have holes punched in it.. But I was raised at a time when a belief system was what you lived on.”

celebrity cultural-values dhyana _video intellectual-morality
David

Jeni Cross who is a sociology professor at Colorado State University, talks about the three Myths of Behavior change. In these notes below I’ve ignored the SOM jargon and instead written about how the research applies to values. I could find five main takeaways from the 3 Myths.

MYTH 1. Information is enough to change behavior.

  1. If we speak to what folks value by making things tangible, personalized and interactive this is far more likely to change their mind than simply supplying them facts.

  2. Also, because folks are also loss averse, that is, they don’t want to lose value they already have, they are far more likely to change their behavior if it means they won’t lose value.

MYTH 2. Changing attitudes changes behavior.

  1. You can actually set qualitative behavioral expectations to change behavior and attitudes.

  2. You can also change behavior by speaking to what folks already value.

MYTH 3. Folks know their values.

  1. Social norms influence behavior far more than folks give credit for. If you speak to folks value of social norms, then you’re far more likely to change their behavior than they give credit for.
cultural-values _video youtube intellectual-morality
David
Intellectual Discussion and Dialectic.

Finding Agreement, Quality and Beauty in the World.

When two people discuss a concept intellectually – naturally there will be disagreement.  What then?

In the two and a half thousand years since Socrates and the Ancient Greeks what two people aim for has been the truth. Disagreement has immediately implied that what one person thinks is false and therefore wrong, while what the other person thinks is true and therefore right.  The way to determine this right and wrong has been to logically argue about what is true and what is false.  Each participant in this dialectical discussion – using the rules of logic – determines the truth by watching for things like contradiction and consistency from their interlocutor.   If someone is inconsistent, or shows contradiction, then what they are saying is false and thus the person demonstrating the contradiction is right.  Quality, Values and Morals in these discussions are unimportant.  Truth and logical consistency is the focus, not Quality or Values or Morals.

But of course – this isn’t how things are.  Quality, Values and Morals do exist and *are *very important.  Values actually create our ideas and opinions. And so if we are to ever reach agreement, we will not find it simply with the aid of logical consistency (although it helps).  If we only keep our eyes on logical consistency we will be forever stuck in muddy water at the bottom of a waterfall – not in the clean water at the top.   Unless we explain, beautifully, the values, the morals which form the quality of our opinions we won’t get anywhere but be stuck with a bunch of meaningless, valueless, truths.

This is true not just of one or two discussion – but of all discussions  – everywhere.  Why do people value the things that they do? Why do some people call one thing moral, while another group call something else moral?  Of course, in these discussions there will be disagreement.  But unless there is an openness to this disagreement, an openness to see something better, an openness to even try the values of another, an openness to be honest with yourself about your own values – then things will stay the same and not get any better.

cultural-values intellectual-morality