Red Cedar

Individual suffering for the common (but not lowest common denominator) good.

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Megan

I have included the above video in these presentation notes for my class because I think that Zizek is advancing a Kierkegaardian argument about abstraction in “The Present Age” but with different conclusions. What follows is a discussion presentation I am giving on Wednesday. I have to admit that I found this reading difficult, and that attempting to characterize Soren Kierkegaard in simple terms is nearly impossible – so dense, complex and complete are his personal, philosophical and theological writings. Still and all I think I made a bit of a breakthrough in my own understanding by undergoing some reflection on this work, and ultimately am satisfied that at least in some small part I “get it” though I am not convinced this means anything for understanding more of Kierkegaard generally.

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Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who lived from 1813 until 1855, and is often referred to as the Grandfather of Existentialism.

I think it’s safe to say he was a complex personality who courted a certain kind of solitary and pious lifestyle throughout most of his existence. Although he came from a well-to-do family, I have always thought of Kierkegaard as an ascetic – though materially he lived like others of his class and social position – he was certainly an emotional ascetic. Not only did he break with his father (with whom he was very close and thus crushed when he discovered the hypocrisy of the premarital sex which begat Soren), he maintained few intimate friendships in his life. His one love affair – with Regine Olsen – resulted in a broken engagement which Kierkegaard was loathe to explain, even in his private journals. While he writes that he believed his “melancholy” made him unfit to be a husband, one wonders if he was motivated more by the belief that living a contemplative life required an unencumbered and uninterrupted home. Personally, I think that Regine really dodged a bullet on that one, as I doubt life with old Soren would have been much fun.

A frequent critic of his society, the church and with other idealist philosophers of his own day, Kierkegaard was a prolific writer who published under several pseudonyms in a dialectical relationship to one another. Some of his chosen names were ridiculous (Johannes de silent, Constantin Constantius, Hilarius Bookbinder, Anti-Climacus) which makes one suspect that he did not choose them in order to masquerade against his own authorship, but as various aspects of his own intellectual currents, to be set beside and against one another in public discourse.

Kierkegaard was mainly concerned with the question of existence, and specifically the ability to live an individual life of meaning drawn from experience. This individual experience extended into his theological work which explored the difference between objective and subjective arguments for Christianity, including the individual’s relationship to Jesus Christ and to God which could come only through faith. An incredibly pious individual, some of the most powerful writings I have read by Kierkegaard include his spiritual writings on faith – and I have to admit being shaped in my perspective on faith (even as a non-believer) by his writing.

Kierkegaard rejected the theological rationalism of Hegel which posited that one could know God through human reason, and explored the concept of the “leap” into faith which must be made in order to accept the paradoxes inherent in Christianity. It is through this leap that we can know the loving God, and accept the suffering the comes along with our human experience.

And with Kierkegaard, suffering is not only to be borne, but seen as an essential link between the individual and his ability to know God fully. To strive with God, as he puts it in his lament to Job in his work Repetition:

“Why were you silent for seven days and nights? What went on in your soul? When all existence collapsed upon you and lay like broken pottery around you, did you immediately have this superhuman self-possession, did you immediately have this interpretation of love, this cheerful boldness of trust and faith? Is your door then shut to the grief-stricken person, can he hope for no other relief from you than what miserable worldly wisdom poorly affords, lecturing on the perfection of life? Do you know nothing more to say than that? Do you dare to say no more than what professional comforters, measure out to the individual, what professional comforters, like formal masters of ceremonies, lay down for the individual, that in the hour of need it is appropriate to say: “The Lord gave, and the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord-no more, no less, just as they say “God bless you” when one sneezes! No, you who in your prime were the sword of the oppressed, the stave of the old, and the staff of the brokenhearted, you did not disappoint men when everything went to pieces-then you became the voice of the suffering, the cry of the grief-stricken, the shriek of the terrified, and a relief to all who bore their torment in silence, a faithful witness to all the affliction and laceration there can be in a heart, an unfailing spokesman who dared to lament “in bitterness of soul” and to strive with God.”

I include this here as a link to our earlier discussion on Job as I think it illuminates a certain kind of existential questioning in the Bible, not to mention picking up on the individualism which Kierkegaard priorizes in our work for this week (The Present Age). Here we see a condemnation of society pitted against the individual (“professional comforters, measure out to the individual”), and that individual becoming emblematic of the greater torment of human kind.

It is no wonder that elsewhere Kierkegaard wrote:

“If I had not Job! It is impossible to describe and to nuancer what significance he has for me, and how manifold his significance is. I do not read him as one reads another book with the eye, but I read this book as it were with my heart, with the eye of the heart I read it, understanding as in a state of clairvoyance every particular passage in the most various ways…. Every word of his is food and gladness to my ailing soul. Now one word rouses me from my lethargy, so that I awaken to new disquietude; now it quiets the fruitless fury within me and puts an end to the horrible feeling of mute nausea produced by passion. You surely have read Job? Read him, read him over and over again.”

Now, to our reading this week – The Present Age (1846) – which seems to start off as a very non-theological work, one concerned mainly with society. As mentioned in Kaufmann’s introduction, this was originally part of a longer essay which comprised a critique of the book Two Ages. The two ages being the French Revolution and Kierkegaard’s present.

I have to admit that I found this work, as brief as it is, quite challenging – both to my conception of Kierkegaard’s theological perspectives, as well as to my own assumptions about the self in relation to society.

The work characterizes the two ages thusly:

The Revolutionary Age: Action-oriented, individually satisfying, priorizing the individual, great leaders, experiential, concerned with emotion, decisive

The Present Age: Passionless, levelling (lowest common denominator), focused on reflection, leadership by committee, nihilistic, concerned with reason over experience, illusory ethics, full of abstraction (money, consumerism).

Essentially, although Kierkegaard acknowledges that his present age is one in which more knowledge is held than ever before – he says that the abstraction of it (intellectualism, money, etc) impedes us from acting in any decisive way. And thus we wallow in indecision and are imprisoned by the levelling effect of misdirected attempts at social equality. This is characterized in the particular image of skating on thin ice:

“If the jewel which every one desired to possess lay far out on a frozen lake where the ice was very thin, watched over by the danger of death, while, closer in, the ice was perfectly safe, then in a passionate age the crowds would applaud the courage of the man who ventured out, they would tremble for him and with him in the danger of his decisive action, they would grieve over him if he were drowned, they would make a god of him if he secured the prize. But in an age without passion, in a reflective age, it would be otherwise. People would think each other clever in agreeing that it was unreasonable and not even worth while to venture so far out. And in this way they would transform daring and enthusiasm into a feat of skill, so as to do something, for after all ‘something must be done.'”

Ultimately this fear of falling through the ice holds us back and prevents us from living in a fully-realized individual state and instead we are tempted into the abstractions of purchase – even to the degree that we “bargain buy” our salvation through a misunderstanding of what the individual sacrifice of Jesus Christ means and are thus impeded from discovering the notion of true suffering through experience.

What I think is important to recognize in this discussion is that while many of us (in this class and in our society generally) can agree with much of Kierkegaard’s assessment of his present age (and by extension our own present age) which amount to the following:

only through suffering can the individual be reawakened to a passionate awareness of his own existence
radical individualism is socially beneficial because the refusal of assistance to others helps them achieve their highest destiny
we need to return to the authority of leaders, those who are individually and exceptionally living their destiny to drive society forward. Ultimately this means God.

I think if we return briefly to the Book of Job we can see that these conclusions in The Present Age fit with the experience of Job in his suffering. Not only is Job awakened to his life through the terrible events which befall him, but he is maligned by his society while passing through his most tragic hours. Ultimately it is his faith in the authority of his God which restores him – and he is able to move away from the questioning of existence back into the activity of living.

Kierkegaard closes off with the following statement: “In our times, when so little is done, an extraordinary number of prophecies, apocalypses, glances at and studies of the future appear, and there is nothing to do but join in and be one with the rest. Yet I have the advantage over the many who bear a heavy responsibility when they prophesy and give warnings, because I can be perfectly certain that no one would think of believing me.” Which I think is a lovely nod to not taking oneself too seriously (though it seems that SK was a pretty serious guy), and certainly not pretending to prophecy God’s future.

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“Reflection is and remains the hardest creditor in existence; hitherto it has cunningly bought up all the possible views of life, but it cannot buy the essentially religious and eternal view of life; on the other hand, it can tempt people astray with its dazzling brilliance, and dishearten them by reminding them of all the past. But by leaping into the depths, one learns to help oneself, learns to love others as much as oneself, even though one is accused of arrogance and pride — because one will not accept help — or of selfishness, because one will not cunningly deceive people by helping them; ie by helping them to escape their highest destiny.” (32)

This is an interesting trick that Kierkegaard pulls here in essentially making a social argument for individualism. That is, to be individually concerned is to allow each person to achieve their destiny and thus live in a society of true equals – rather than one which is levelled (brought down to the lowest common denominator.

Design Notebook: Not my favourite dress…..

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Megan

The monster in us.

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Megan

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The last time I read Frankenstein was in high school and I don’t quite remember it being as wonderful as it is. In fact, I think I must have skimmed most of the book in an attempt to get through it as the narrative was barely familiar to me on this re-read. Such is the seventeen-year-old’s attention span.

What struck me upon this reading was the depth of the work. Although written quickly, in a sporting challenge with lover Percy Shelley and friend Lord Byron – Mary Shelley creates a work touching on many of life’s most fundamental, (if you will – existential) questions. In particular I am intrigued with the inquiry about what it means to be human, versus simply being possessed of life, or in contrast to the life of nature – questions which are obviously explored through the tortured existence of Frankenstein’s monster.

For Shelley creates a very “human” monster, but in whom the physical and emotional characteristics are magnified to the degree of becoming grotesque. This is a monster with whom we can sympathize – his desires and needs are familiar to us – while at the same time recoiling from their excesses. Everything about this monster is out of proportion, and yet whose fault is this? The creator in his lack of foresight and his incredible hubris, is more to blame than the created forced to roam the earth without companionship.

First of all – we have the physical countenance of the creature – which although Frankestein claims he had “selected his features as beautiful”, he acknowleges that “I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then….” Of course he couldn’t have know that “when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived….” and yet still one wonders at the lack of foresight with which Frankenstein animated this pastiche atrocity?

From this we derive our “larger-than-life” not-quite-human figure who features “…yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.” Not mentioned in Frankenstein’s narrative, but referenced at the start of the book is that the monster is also physically very large – “a being which had the shape of man, but apparently of gigantic stature” – and so the reader is brought to understand that not only is the creature ugly, but of a threatening size to his human cousin and creator.

Rather than taking responsibility for the horror, Frankenstein immediately departs the room and leaves his accomodation for the outside courtyard, passing the night there. When he returns to his rooms the next afternoon, he is “relieved” that the monster is gone rather than concerned for its wellbeing (or worried about the ramification of an animate but inhuman creature roaming the streets), and the onset of his subsequent psychic/physic illness renders him incapable of taking any further responsibility for his creation.

Of course, this is not the end of the story and the creature later returns to murder those loved by his creator, thus attempting to render Frankenstein as alone in the world as his creation. We are invited into the monster’s story when he confronts his creator in the mountains and tells his side of what has happened – and here we realize that not only is he physically large, but he also possesses an enlarged capacity for both intellect and emotion – for the monster is the most verbally eloquent character in the tale as well as the most ruthless when it comes to avenging his orphaned state. In this scene, articulates his struggles at making connections in a hostlie world and advances rational argument for the creation of a female counterpart, so as to solve his burden of solitude. While Frankenstein is emotionall moved by the plea of his creation, he is equally revulsed, and refuses to take any responsibility for the plight of his experiment and its outcomes.

It is clear that Frankenstein, doesn’t hold a candle to his creation on any front which is why he ultimately can’t contain what he has unleashed into the world. He carries not the intellect or the passion to truly see through killing the monster, no matter how many of Frankenstein’s loved ones perish (for the record this includes his brother, a family-friend and serving girl, his best friend, his wife on their wedding night). The monster manages to outwit his creator at every turn (Frankenstein misses even the most obvious clues), which demonstrates the superiority of the creation right into the end of the tale.

But as much as the creation is “greater-than-human” in many respects, his grotesque appearance keeps him from being able to bond with others. Not even Frankenstein will take him in as a friend, for that would require admitting to his own family of his mistaken arrogance (and connection to the muder of his young brother William). What the monster is thus denied in these rejections, is the ability to become fully human through society with others. While he is able to learn to speak, read, and about family relations through watching a poor cottage family over a one year period (thus attaining some knowledge of the world and notion of socialization), the fact that he is ultimately denied community is what turns the monster towards the murder of William (and revenge on his creator). Not only solitude, but the knowledge it will be never-ending, drive the creature to a madness in which his emotional responses are enlarged to encompass even acts he knows to be hideous (the killing of a child).

I believe that this need for companionship is in some part a need for a witness to his life – something reinforced by the structure of a narrative inside a narrative inside a narrative which Shelley employes in her tale. The story is told to Walton by Frankenstein, and the monster’s story is told to Frankstein who tells it to Walton, leaving the reader as the final witness in a chain of witnessing. This is what the monster is after – to be seen! For he can live alongside humans while concealing himself quite easily, but this is only half a life. To fully live, one must engage with others and must be seen to have lived.(As if to underscore this lack of identification, the monster is never even given a name).

Some other themes I think are worth exploring through Shelley’s Frankenstein (and would if I didn’t feel so poorly at the moment) include:

Frankenstein as a birth narrative (Mary Shelley’s birth killed her own mother)
The relationship between created and creator
Class relations in emergent industrial society
The monster as sympathetic (of us)
The essence of creation – what is natural? what is not natural? where do we draw the line in a world where the “creation of life” is a possibility?

Spring dreams – around the corner from green…..

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Megan

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lastyear — Remember the garden last June?

After three heavy reading posts in a row – it’s time for something dreamier, lighter, more inspiring don’t you think? That is, it’s almost the end of January and I’m thinking about the garden again.

Though it’s hard to imagine when I look at the yard right now – sodden, muddy and partially frozen mess that it is – in only a few short months the signs of spring will be upon it, followed by the abundance of summer. Winter gardening, I’m convinced, is not appropriate for my backyard since its north-facing – though I’m curious to see if my winter veggies – brussels sprouts and broccoli – in the front yard take shape in the spring before the leaves come back on the trees and shade it all in again. They are still alive at least, and the plants look relatively healthy. I also have a single broccoli in the back which *is* still alive.

Already my garlic are peeking through, little green shoots of promise that they are every winter….. though it’s a long way off before anything else is going to go in given the very wet winter we are still having!

A first priority this year is going to be to finish the front yard. I’m actually considering getting some hardscaping done in the form of a front-fence/gate just to give our yard a little structure, though leaving the sides open and landscaping them instead of installing fencing. We’ll see how afforadable (or not) that ends up being. Other than that we’re going to keep mulching the lawn and installing perennials (food and decorative) as the finances allow.

In the food garden out back, on the first dry-ish day that allows it, I will be heading out to get compost and mushroom manure for the boxes which all need a top-up. To lighten up the soil, I think coir will be my choice, and I’m going to put a load of sand into at least one of my boxes to make a good carrot bed for a change. Last year I made the mistake of skimping on re-nutrifying my boxes and that lead to less than stellar yields – especially in the greens box which doesn’t get a ton of sun to start with.

In planning for the upcoming year, I like to think of what my favourite things from the last growing season were. Fortunately, I take lots of photos of the garden in progress which makes it easy to remember most of what went on!

Best things about the last growing season:

The Bean Tunnel: At the edge of two boxes I erected bamboo poles and grew beans up them – which turned out an incredible crop and the tunnel (vs. the traditional teepee) was easy to get inside and pick from. I’ll be changing the location of the tunnel this year for crop rotation purposes, but otherwise pursuing the same strategy.
The Garlic: This is just the easiest thing in the world to grow and I had a stellar crop last year. Not ony did I get lots of scapes during the growing season, but I still have lots of bulbs in my larder from the July harvest.
The Cauliflower: I only put a couple of these babies in because of space considerations, but it turns out my yard has perfect cauliflower (and cabbage) conditions. I am going to eschew some other plants in favour of more cauliflower this year. And the same amoung of cabbage as last year.
Berries! Both the blueberries and raspberries produced prodigiously last summer (one of my raspberry plants produces right into November). I planted some more bushes at the end of the season along with two plum trees and am looking forward to more fruits from the garden this year.
Dahlias: Last year was my first dahlia year, and while I didn’t successfully save the tubers – I am prepared to re-invest in some this year and work harder at keeping them over the winter. I loved having such incredible flowers late in the summer and look forward to more this year.

Worst performers last season:

Tomatoes and tomatillos: Not only do I have a cool-ish backyard, by the end of August (when these things are ripening) there is a lot less daylight back there once the sun shifts. I’m going to stick to container gardening a couple of tomato plants this year and otherwise forget about the hot weather crops unless the spring makes for a promising summer. Last year was late and cold, and I could have used the space better.
Summer Squash: I get excellent summer squash yields but they tend to get powdery mildew and blossom end-rot which I suspect is from overcrowding. Perhaps this year I will only plant two summer squashes, far apart from each other and super-fertilize for better yield. Or I might find a climbing variety and a bush variety in order to rearrange my space use.
Potatoes: My potato yield hasn’t been great for all the work that goes into the bags (I grow them in burlap sacks). We’re not big potato eaters anyway, so I’m not sure if I’ll bother with them this year at all.

Things I would like to grow some or more of:

Snow peas: Every year I forget to buy snow peas for planting even though I have a trellis for peas. Not this year!
Fava beans: I know they aren’t a big producer and they get aphidy – but I love them anyway and I missed them last year when I didn’t plant any.
Winter squash: I skimped on planting location for these last year and got nothing as a result. But I *love* winter squash, so I’m thinking I might build a little box along the back fence this year in which to put a couple spaghetti squash plants and the scarlet runner beans.

All in all I’m planning for: snap peas, snow peas, carrots, beets, fennel bulb, cabbage, greens, pole beans, summer squash, winter squash, fava beans, scarlet runners, cauliflower, leeks, slicing cucumbers and radishes. The garlic, rhubarb and berries are already well in hand. Not to mention my plum trees which should at least come into leaf this spring.

Just writing this I feel the joy of spring coming on me and also forseeing the need to set some cash aside to pay for it all! But it’s all for the glory of having a productive and beautified outdoor space, and if I start now, I can spread the spending out over several months…..

The gradual road to nowhere.

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Megan

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Of Weber’s Vocation Lectures, we were asked to focus in on Politics as a Vocation for the purpose of our class, but having read that I am equally as interested to see what he has to say about science as a vocation so hopefully I’ll find some time to back and read that as well. One of the struggles I have in my course is that each reading opens up so many other potential readings and its hard to stay on track with what I have to get through before starting on anything else. On the other hand, picking up the occasional extra book really does supplement my ability to contextualize… so I hate to just eschew everything not on the course list for three months!

Delivered during the brief German revolution in 1918-19 (and right before the end of Weber’s life) Politics is an examination of political forms, personalities, history and ultimately winds up in a discussion of two kinds of political ethics. It is the ethics which I am going to talk about here because I was most moved by these passages and I think they get to the crux of the political paralysis that we face in North America nearly one hundred years later (and they also get to the heart of Kierkegaard’s argument in The Present Age not to mention the reason/passion divide more generally).

In Weber’s analysis, there are:

1) The ethics of conviction: Acting according to one’s beliefs regardless of the potential outcomes. Ie: Engaging in workplace sabotage may lead to an increase in workplace surveillance and potential firings, but someone who acts from an ethic conviction would argue that the response of the boss is not the fault of the saboteur. It’s a “shoot them all and let God sort them out” approach that gets things done in the immediate, but may have long-term consequences that are the opposite of the intended.

2) The ethics of responsibility: Taking responsibility for all forseeable outcomes or consequences of a given action which would (most likely) have a moderating influence on which actions are taken. Examples of this are found throughout the modern bureaucratic political order where (at least at the civil service level) all possible outcomes are mapped out extensively before a decision is taken. Analagous to the workplace sabotage example, a union leader practicing the ethics of responsibility would weigh out all potential outcomes before encouraging members of the union to take a strike vote, and then again before actually going on strike (and would never encourage random sabotage or wildcat action which could result in circumstances outside the leadership’s control).

What was interesting to me when reading the descriptions of each and Weber’s arguments which follow – was how swayed I was by the criticism of the former and the props Weber gives to the latter (for he is clearly one-sided on this, though he does attempt to resolve that at the end of the lecture). Swayed, that is until I considered what the ethics of responsibility looks like in practice and how deadening it can be to change.

Given my traverse between radical activism, trade union leadership and work in the government, I am intimately acquainted with both the ethics types which Weber describes.

“With an ethics of conviction, one feels “responsible” only for ensuring that the flame of pure conviction, for example, the flame of protest against the injustice of the social order should never be extinguished. To keep on reigniting it is the purpose of his actions.”

I can so relate to this statement, perhaps delivered somewhat derisively by Weber, but true to the overriding sense of purpose which drives many individuals into political activity. Coming out of a particular self-reinforcing activist community some years ago, I can only attest that I spent many years of my life feeling responsible for doing something, anything, to arrest the social and environmental travesties occurring around me. That a small group of people could take actions which would influence more and more people (until the masses rose up) was a religion I took to be my own, and that the job of the revolutionary in non-revolutionary times is to keep the flame of resistance burning is something that I still believe.

Of course the problem of conviction is that it puts us in a place of situational relativism where the ends most certainly justify whatever means are at our disposal. We may decry the use of violence in our opposition, but believe that one must “fight fire with fire” in order to be successful in our aims. As Weber points out, this relies on a particular kind of fundamentalism that is not out of place in the language of religion. “In the world of realities, or course, we see again and again how the representatives of an ethics of conviction suddenly become transformed into chiliastic prophets.” (By which Weber means individuals who argue that we must just use this use of force *one more time* to be transported into a future golden age without any violence). Not only that, but I have been witness to the conviction in radical friends that they are “special”, “chosen”, or “destined” in their path – which even among atheists – can be a powerfully romantic idea to carry into dangerous or potentially violent situations.

Because of my experience in conviction-oriented movements, I am now highly suspicious of the individuals involved in them – but at the same time I struggle with an ethics of responsibility that holds us back from taking most forms of action “in case” it causes one or another repercussion. The modern civil service under “risk-averse” governments is the worst example of this type of thinking. Weber was a big fan of gradualism, and promoted the civil servant as the professional best able to bring about social change without resorting to violence. And while it’s true that professional civil managers have the knowledge to make recommendations on policy and practical reforms within a system – it’s equally true that gradualism in any system eventually grinds to a halt under the weight of bureaucracy, over-consideration of risks, conservatism and internal negativity.

Take for example an issue like climate change. Inside the federal government – among the civil service – there is a fairly uniform view on 1) the reality of climate change and 2) the Canadian government should be participating in finding ways to stop or mitigate the effects of climate change. So for the last twenty years, many professional civil servants have traveled to international conferences and gatherings and research colloquiums to discuss, debate and sign onto various recommendations around this issue. Yay! Something I really do value about the government I work for is the number of intelligent, dedicated and well-researched people that I work with. But so what? Because we’ve spent probably over a billion dollars on climate change related activities and instead of listening to their own people, we have a political leadership who has pulled out of Kyoto and ramped up the Tar Sands. (It occurs to me as I write that what we might be seeing here is in fact a crisis between and ethics of responsibility and an ethics of conviction.)

Point being, that all this careful negotiating around an issue that has a time-sensitivity to it (like the polar ice caps are melting right now people) has actually allowed the opposition to change to take hold and slowly milk away what *small* gains had been made in the first place.

Canadian trade unions have been similarly guilty of practicing the ethic of responsibility to death since the eighties when the practice of fining unions large sums for work stoppages became de rigeur. Every potentially-spontaneous worker action is now drowned in fearful considerations about losing homes, being individually fined, or having the union go into receivership – not to mention a fear carried throughout the union movement that any worker action will reflect negatively on the NDP come election day. To the worst degree we find ourselves in the midst of a working class who seems to have forgotten that they can take action without a vote, without permission, and without being nice about it – simply by walking off the shop floor. Workers reported smelling gas at the Burns Lake Mill on Friday morning (several hours before it exploded), workers empowered by their rights (instead of afraid of job loss as the system is perpetually designed to make us) could have refused unsafe work and walked off the floor until the gas smell was investigated thoroughly. But in a culture which stresses the irresponsibility of leaving one’s work post vs. one of conviction around the right to a safe workplace – well we know the outcome in this situation. And it’s tragic.*

Ultimately, Weber tries to resolve what he originally has called two “mutually exclusive” modes by saying:

“… I find it immeasurably moving when a mature human being – whether young or old in actual years is immaterial – who feels the responsibility he bears for the consequences of his own actions with entire soul reaches the point where he says ‘Here, I stand, I can do no other’… In this sense an ethics of conviction and an ethics of responsibility are not absolute antitheses but are mutually complementary, and only when taken together do they constitute the authentic human being who is capable of having a ‘vocation for politics.'”

This is a tidy way out of having to account for history, which as we know has both gradualist and dynamic phases of change owing to stable governments and periods of peace (on the one hand) and revolution, war or catastrophe (on the other). It’s too bad that Weber doesn’t spend more time in exploring this dynamic of mature political thought because it’s here that I think the challenge for the political actor in society lies. How do we walk the line between conviction and responsibility, suspending our own egos long enough to engage in rational debate?

* I in no way mean this as an indictment of any worker action in this situation, but use this as an illustration to a larger social problem of inaction bred by too closely following the gradualist position.