Last month, Douthat argued that “the European experience suggests that at least some abortion restrictions are compatible with equality and female advancement.” Katha Pollitt fired back:
Abortion is complicated, like everything that has to do with sex. Germany’s abortion rate is much lower than ours, but Sweden’s is almost the same. The Netherlands is almost as low as Germany, despite permitting abortion much later. In much of Italy, it’s hard to find an abortion because so many doctors refuse to perform them—and yet Italy, like Germany, has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. One thing seems pretty clear, though: all these countries have plenty of abortions. But in the Western European countries with time limits, there is less need for second trimester abortion because there is far better access to abortion earlier.
I somehow don’t think that is a trade-off conservative pundits are willing to make.
[I]t is an oversimplification to suggest that France or Germany are somehow obviously more “pro-life” overall than the United States, given the multiplicity of differences between our system and theirs. But it’s also an oversimplification to say that the U.S. is unique among developed nations in having significant variations in abortion access, or robust political debate on the issue. And the reason to look at the European experience is not because the continent is somehow an exemplar of exactly the policies that pro-life American conservatives are pushing now, or would put in place if given constitutional license. Rather, it’s because it provides examples of many different approaches to the issue — stringently pro-life with a stronger welfare state (Ireland), expansively pro-choice with a much stronger welfare state (Sweden), more pro-life in law but relatively pro-choice in practice (Spain, until recently), relatively pro-choice in law but more culturally pro-life (Italy, arguably), and so on — that don’t necessarily map on to America’s right vs. left debate at all.
This variation, in turn, gives us more data on the original question that my column asked: What happens to a modern society when abortion is restricted?
Dana Stevens givesElysium – not to be confused with the brilliant PSB album – low marks:
Like District 9, Elysium takes on contemporary problems of economic and social injustice—this time not racial prejudice but the vast worldwide gulf between haves and have-nots. But after taking some pains to imagine and present a mid-22nd-century world that’s a plausibly grim extrapolation of the one we live in, Blomkamp proceeds to spend the last two-thirds of his film crashing spaceships into lawns, or staging high-tech fistfights between Elysium’s stolid hero and his even duller arch-nemesis. It’s a waste of a perfectly good dystopia.
Blomkamp is a talented, loosely visionary director, but, after two movies, it appears to be a limited vision. He’s stuck between real rebellion and real marketability.
So the new movie is a mess of violence and parental devotional, but rarely at the same time. Depending on the audience, one is meant to make the other palatable. And Damon is here to make Elysium palatable to everyone.
Blomkamp is a holder of strong political convictions (in interviews, he has said of his film, “This isn’t science fiction. This is today. This is now.”) and as his issue horizon has expanded from apartheid to immigration, health-care access, and the general divide between haves and have-nots, his narrative focus seems to have gotten hazier.
There’s still much to recommend Elysium. Damon gives a characteristically appealing performance. Blomkamp generously spares us the kind of tedious exposition—how Elysium works, why its atmosphere doesn’t float away, etc.—that so often clogs up science-fiction fare. And the visuals are terrific enough to merit the price of a ticket all on their own. For a while, they enable Blomkamp to create a world so physically persuasive as to keep disbelief suspended. But eventually the accumulation of illogic is too heavy, and Elysium crashes back to Earth.
Update from a reader:
Why are you bashing a filmmaker who is trying to create something different within the confines of Hollywood? Read my other favorite Andrew (O’Hehir) on Elysium, or at least offer a link to him.
Eyal Press suggests that Americans are unlikely to rally behind whistleblowers risking their lives and livelihoods:
In view of America’s deep tradition of individual liberty and distrust of government, one might suspect that whistleblowers like Snowden are more likely to win sympathy in the US than in other countries. But the evidence suggests the opposite. In answer to the question of whether “people should support their country even if the country is in the wrong,” more Americans said yes than citizens of eight European countries, the International Social Survey Programme found in 2003. Asked whether “right or wrong should be a matter of personal conscience,” Americans came in next-to-last. According to the sociologist Claude Fischer, comparative surveys in subsequent years have consistently shown that US citizens are “much more likely than Europeans to say that employees should follow a boss’s orders even if the boss is wrong”; more likely “to defer to church leaders and to insist on abiding by the law”; and more likely “to believe that individuals should go along and get along.”
The inhabitants of Bucharest are tired of tourists confusing their city with the Hungarian capital:
Following a trend started back in 1992 by Michael Jackson, so many musicians playing Romania’s capital have mistaken it for Hungary’s and come on stage shouting “how are you doing, Budapest?” that locals have moved on from amused indulgence to being seriously pissed off. …
To fight back, Romania’s capital has launched a “Bucharest not Budapest” campaign this summer, to encourage visitors to learn the difference between the two cities. Bankrolled by a Romanian chocolate manufacturer, the campaign features videos, T-shirts, airport billboards and a newly customized airport shuttle – the campaign has even installed a “Welcome to Not Bucharest” sign at Budapest airport.
It’s not hard to see why Bucharestians find the confusion irksome. Their city is the European Union’s 6th largest, a national capital with over 2 million inhabitants, a fine cultural scene and a remarkable if mixed-up cityscape of historic buildings. While it doesn’t come close to matching Budapest’s grand opulence or tourist numbers, Bucharest is a fascinating place that doesn’t deserve to play second fiddle to its distant neighbor just because its name is similar.
Douthat complains about Pinker’s “impressively swift march from allowing, grudgingly, that scientific discoveries do not ‘dictate’ values to asserting that they ‘militate’ very strongly in favor of … why, of Steven Pinker’s very own moral worldview!”:
His argument seems vaguely plausible only if you regard the paradigmatic shaped-by-science era as the post-Cold War Pax Americana rather than, say, the chaos of 1914-45, when instead of a humanist consensus the scientifically-advanced West featured radically-incommensurate moral worldviews basically settling their differences by force of arms.
Like Sam Harris, who wrote an entire book claiming that “science” somehow vindicates his preferred form of philosophical utilitarianism (when what he really meant was that if you assume utilitarian goals, science can help you pursue them), Pinker seems to have trouble imagining any reasoning person disagreeing about either the moral necessity of “maximizing human flourishing” or the content of what “flourishing” actually means — even though recent history furnishes plenty of examples and a decent imagination can furnish many more.
Like his whiggish antecedents, he mistakes a real-but-complicated historical relationship between science and humanism for a necessary intellectual line in which the latter vindicates the former, or at least militates strongly in its favor. And his invocation of “the scientific facts” to justify what is, at bottom, a philosophical preference for Mill over Nietzsche is the pretty much the essence of what critics mean by scientism: Empirically overconfident, intellectually unsubtle, and deeply incurious about the ways in which human beings can rationally disagree.
Noah Millman takes both Pinker and Douthat to task. From his conclusion:
Modern science is an extraordinary achievement of human civilization. I am even willing to agree that the knowledge science is capable of producing is genuinely of a different kind from all other forms of knowledge, and that it is the only method that can reliably build suspension bridges of reason across the vast voids of ignorance. It does not follow, therefore, that we can’t learn anything useful any other way. And it certainly doesn’t follow that people following a strictly scientific approach will necessarily learn usefully-applicable things more swiftly than those following other, more traditional or more humanistic approaches. That’s all critics of scientism really need to argue.
Zealot author Reza Aslan shares the passage from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov that shaped his understanding of religion:
It’s from the section in the book that’s sometimes referred to as “The Grand Inquisitor.” Ivan, the atheist brother, tells Alyosha, the believer, a story about Jesus coming back to earth during the time of the Inquisition. Jesus begins performing miracles, and people recognize him for who he is—and he’s arrested, of course, by the Inquisitors, who sentence him to be burned to death.
The night before his sentence, the Grand Inquisitor visits Jesus in his cell. Jesus doesn’t speak, but the Grand Inquisitor speaks to him at length about how the church doesn’t really need Jesus anymore. And that, frankly, his return at this point is just disruptive to the overall meaning of the church. In other words, the Grand Inquisitor says that the church’s mission in preaching Jesus has become more important than Jesus himself. And the great line, the quote that I really gravitated towards is this one here:
“Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him.”
What I love about the story is that it’s become a kind of atheist manifesto, if you will. Many non-believers cite this passage as the reason why they do not believe—forgetting, by the way, that Dostoevsky himself was quite a fervent believer. But they also forget the end of the story: what happens after the Grand Inquisitor makes this huge statement, and lambastes Jesus for not speaking up for himself. Jesus simply stands up, walks up to the Grand Inquisitor, and gives him a kiss.
Recent Dish on Aslan’s new book on Jesus here, here, and here. Update from a reader:
I am well into Part III of the book, and it discusses what happened after Jesus died and goes into why his message caught on so well, so you should definitely read the book. Paul took Jesus’ message and detached it from its very Jewish foundations. I am sure that one could argue about that, but the book really does put the time before Jesus’ birth, during his life, and after his death and resurrection into a historical context that I was completely unaware of. Devout evangelical or fundamentalist Christians will find the book troubling, but someone like you might get quite a lot out of it unless you are much better versed in 1st century history than I was.
Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres worry about the lack of kids in urban areas:
Increasingly, our great American cities, from New York and Chicago to Los Angeles and Seattle, are evolving into playgrounds for the rich, traps for the poor, and way stations for the ambitious young en route eventually to less congested places. The middle-class family has been pushed to the margins, breaking dramatically with urban history. The development raises at least two important questions: Are cities without children sustainable? And are they desirable?
The trend they find troubling:
Over the past two decades, the percentage of families that have children has fallen in most of the country, but nowhere more dramatically than in our largest, densest urban areas. In cities with populations greater than 500,000, the population of children aged 14 and younger actually declined between 2000 and 2010, according to U.S. Census data, with New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit experiencing the largest numerical drop. Many urban school districts—such as Chicago, which has 145,000 fewer school-age children than it had a decade ago—have seen enrollments plummet and are busily closing schools. The 14-and-younger population increased in only about one-third of all census-designated places, with the greatest rate of growth occurring in smaller urban areas with fewer than 250,000 residents.
Reyan Ali defends Kidz Bop, the CD series featuring bowdlerized Top-40 hits:
Loads of frivolous, materialistic pop songs have no beneficial messages, and rewriting their lyrics while keeping the tune doesn’t deprive young listeners of a worthwhile experience. The Kidz Bop version of “Thrift Shop” retains the track’s closest thing to a positive thesis (i.e. be thrifty and engage in a smarter kind of conspicuous consumption) while extracting references that have little to no effect on that song’s message. Are the rewritten results corny? Certainly, but they’re also there to be consumed by children who’ll accept, laugh at, or entirely overlook the new turns of phrase.
But not all the songs are so benign:
In 2011, Rich Albertoni a writer at the Madison, Wisconsin, alternative weekly Isthmus, pointed out that the Kidz Bop version of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” excluded the song’s key verses about inclusivity.
The passages, “No matter gay, straight or bi/Lesbian, transgendered life/I’m on the right track, baby/I was born to survive” and “No matter black, white or beige/Chola or Orient/I’m on the right track, baby/I was born to be brave” had both been axed in their entirety entirely. “Funny,” he wrote, “because for this parent, that’s one of the few meaningful lines this collection of pop songs might have had to offer.”
Removing those verses deprives listeners of one of the best elements found in pop music: its ability to create positive cultural change. As an LGBT anthem that nonetheless makes it a point to champion all sorts of subcultures, “Born This Way” carries a message that shouldn’t be discarded out of the fear that overzealous parents might be offended by mentions to any of these groups. And if such parents are offended, then a message of love and understanding is the sort that’s worth offending them over.
“The chapter which attempts to account for the time of plants – their specific hetero-temporality – brilliantly guides the reader through the various seasonal rhythms of vegetal life, which unfolds within the continuity of nourishment and the discontinuity of germination. Agro-business is figured here as the commodification of the plant’s other-directed time and radical passivity, a blithe betrayal of the headless heeding of pure potential: ‘the plant, with its non-conscious affirmation of repetition, prefigures the affirmative movement of the Nietzschean eternal return, with its acceptance of the perpetual recommencement of life,’” – Dominic Pettman, reviewing Michael Marder’s Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. Dish debate on Marder’s plant ethics here and here. Update from a dissenting reader:
I posted a somewhat hostile view of your Poseur Alert posts over at my blog, Critical Animal, inspired recently by your calling of Dominic Pettman a poseur. I just thought I would let you know. I generally like your blog, and I enjoy the inclusion of various intellectual pursuits in your blogging. But calling people I like and respect poseurs really wears on me.
The express bus lines in York Region, Ontario (north of Toronto) uses the system suggested by Yglesias. Transit Enforcement officers usually board the bus right before the doors closes or two-three stops down the line to inspect tickets and see if they’re valid. Drivers have nothing to do with tickets and don’t even inspect. The fine is $155 for not having a valid ticket or monthly/weekly pass. From a report last year, the enforcement and security manager said about the system: “‘Now, we’re ingrained in transit,’ he said. ‘People call us now. They take great offense to those who would try to abuse our system.'”
In Vancouver, the subway (Skyline) has a similar system – no gates, just validation stations. Then, once you’re in the waiting area, an officer comes up to you asking to see your ticket. The fine is $173 and if you don’t pay, they can stop renewing your driver’s license. My experience is that it’s faster and better, but I’ve seen people who obviously didn’t pay (didn’t validate ticket at stop and just boarded the bus) and I’ve seen people getting caught.
Several more readers weigh in with examples:
Finally a subject on which I am an expert. I work at an international research center on Bus Rapid Transit in Santiago, Chile, but am currently in India looking at their examples.
The problem with getting rail level capacity out of bus systems instead the engineering (that we can do), it is the political will. Bogota didn’t start BRT, but developed a model system due to the leadership of its mayor Enrique Peñalosa. He famously said, “An advanced city is not a place where the poor move about in cars, rather it’s where even the rich use public transportation.”
It is politically difficult because it usually requires taking space away from car users and giving it to bus users. Even in a city like Delhi (where I am now) where the majority of the population don’t have cars, this has proven to be politically unpopular. Now imagine in a US city where even a bicycle lane can prompt accusations of a “war on cars.” Since there is a set amount of space for surface mobility conflict over whose needs should be met or prioritized is inevitable. Clearly historically in the US the needs of car users have been prioritized. But if we think about it democratically priority for buses is not only fair, but make sense in terms of efficient use of limited resources.
The funny thing about the Delhi BRT corridor is that while there is congestion on all the major streets people complain about it more there because they can look over and see the buses moving faster… and that makes it unfair. The trick is making it make them want to take a bus.
Another:
“Worst of all, even though a bus is a much more efficient use of crowded space than a private car, it ends up stuck in the same traffic jam as everyone else.” I’m sure there are other examples (I think the idea came from Bogota), but in Mexico City, the buses have their own lane in the centre of the road, and there are regular bus stops which basically work like train stations. This makes the buses much faster than in other cities. I read somewhere that setting up a subway-like system that uses public roads instead of building an underground network costs less than 5% of what an underground, train-based equivalent would, and I can attest to the fact that the system is very popular and works well.
Another:
Saw this post and thought of Chicago’s plan for 16 miles of Ashland Ave, a major north-south corridor. Due to the setup of Chicago’s “L” trains, my boyfriend has to take a train into downtown and then another out to get to UIC, where he works. The idea is almost exactly as Yglesias recommended: remove a lane of car traffic and use it exclusively for bus travel, removing the traffic component that my drives my boyfriend into such a rage (seriously, don’t even mention buses to him if you don’t want an earful).
Since Chicago is nowhere near able to afford more above-ground train lines, which may not be feasible anyway due to a shrinking population, this seems like a wonderful (and MUCH cheaper) alternative. I even caught my boyfriend, who told me about the plan, mentioning it as an alternate way for him to get to work. Here’s the link to an overview of the project.
Update from another:
I’m surprised no one has emailed yet about the Bus Rapid Transit system in Curitiba. It was the first large-scale system with buses in separated rights-of-way (1974) and is still a model across the world. The system was designed by architect Jaime Lerner, who would go on to be the mayor. Here’s a great TED Talk he gave. It’s cheaper than a subway, with decent capacity. Not as high as a subway, but if designed correctly similar to many light rail at a fraction of the cost. The issue is with design: the places where a bus needs rights-of-way most – in narrow, congested sections – are the places where it’s most costly to place them. So a lot of systems wind up with bus lanes where there isn’t traffic, and mixed lanes (slow) where there is.
The Dish 