owlette's reviews
262 reviews

What a charming work of philosophy. I knew the synopsis of The Symposium from Philosophy Tube's video and it's exactly the way Abby describes in the video. Like, even Sonic the hedge hog part is there, all except for the name Sonic the hedge hog.

Finally, a book that I can hold up to the world to show how much of a nerd I am.

Sobbing over here because this hen has deeper inner life than I do. IMHO better than Orwell's [b:Animal Farm|170448|Animal Farm|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1325861570l/170448._SY75_.jpg|2207778].

(I read chapters 1, 4, and 6, skimmed chapter 2, and skipped 3 and 5.)

In the field of Political Development, there's a(n) (in)famous paper nicknamed "Bowling with Hitler" which argues that not only did the Weimar Republic have a vibrant civil society but that it was that very civic associations that catalyzed the Nazi's takeover of the government. It made a splash in the field because it overturned the unconscious image that civil society was this warm and fuzzy thing, vital for a robust democracy. The classic theory on civil society originated from de Tocqueville's [b:Democracy in America|16619|Democracy in America|Alexis de Tocqueville|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388206188l/16619._SY75_.jpg|90454] and was modernized by Robert D. Putnam's works ([b:Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy|26069|Making Democracy Work Civic Traditions in Modern Italy|Robert D. Putnam|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388326653l/26069._SY75_.jpg|26779] and [b:Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community|478|Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival of American Community|Robert D. Putnam|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1424632781l/478._SY75_.jpg|4743]). Sheri Berman, the author of the paper, pointed out that civil society does not exist in isolation from political context and the kinds of political institutions with which the associations and citizens are exposed to. She couldn’t have had a more damning evidence to the classic Tocquevillian theory than the fall of Weimar Republic.

Jamal's work follows Berman's footstep. Like Berman, she makes a powerful case, for her evidence comes from Palestine, the very site into which international organizations, Western governments, and NGO's are pumping money into society by following the Neo-Tocquevillian theory. Specifically, Jamal argues that in the context of state-centralized clientelism, civic associations will either be acquiescent and embedded in a client-patron relationship or critical and ostracized from such profitable networks. The association's alliance and proximity with the authoritarian state characterizes citizen's level of social trust (i.e. one's expectation of fellow citizens willingness to help and one's own sense of duty to help others), allegiance to the current regime, and support for democratic institutions, all of which runs counter to the classical theory's prediction that civic associations will necessarily foster social trust and practices of civic engagement that will make democracy work from bottom-up.

The part that struck me as finicky about Jamal’s empirical evidence was the operationalization of social trust. A person's level of social trust is measured by their response to two survey questions, the first asking about their expectation that others will help them and the second asking about one's sense of duty to help (see Appendix B of the book). I would assume that one's social trust is high if one responded with "high" for both questions and low if they answered "low" for both.

Jamal claims that in her survey data interpersonal trust was low among respondents belonging to civic associations critical of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) but high among member of civic associations supportive of the regime. The first part I can buy, but the second part I'm not so sure. Jamal's explanation is that the latter group doesn't need the cooperation of other citizens, so they can trust other citizens as much as they want (“the luxury to see others as trustworthy”). The crux of this interpretation is that trust need not mean the lack of distrust, and I'm not sure if I buy that argument. The Chi-square test of her empirical evidence (Table 4.4) merely implies that level of trust (as measured by the survey) is not independent of support for PNA, but it doesn't mean that support for PNA means high level of trust. It could mean that only the lack of support for PNA is strongly correlated with social trust, in which case she has no empirical evidence to support her claim.

But with it without sound evidence, I think her overall argument is persuasive. It makes sense that civil society is not some innocuous layer inoculated from the political institutions of the society. I'm curious to see if there are any work that use any case study of the United States (e.g. Ku Klux Klan and Q-Anon as anti-democratic civic associations).

Underwhelmed.

It might be because I just didn’t enjoy the choice of selections. The classics—“Politics and the English Language” and “Shooting an Elephant”—are timeless and deserve to be included. I quite liked the pairing of “Such, Such Were the Joys” and “Charles Dickens.” But “Charles Dickens” is the only literary review piece of the three in this collection that I read because of my familiarity with the titular author's work. I never have and probably never will read Henry Miller or Rudyard Kipling. And then there were pieces like “The Art of Donald McGill” whose topics are too contemporaneous to be enjoyed by modern readers.

I saw a performance of Heroes of the Fourth Turning last night at SpeakEasy Stage in Boston. It has enough similarities The Inheritance written by Matthew Lopez, which I saw this summer, that the differences are interesting. Both plays feature adult Millennials living in the late 2010's, some of whom are happily assured of where they are in life while others are still meandering; both plays have well-read characters for some reason; they are confronted with generational gap with their elders on their side of politics; the characters display feelings ranging from enmity to friendship founded on common loss and suffering towards those on the other side of the aisle.

I think what worked with me about Heroes that kinda didn't with The Inheritance is the emotional connection with the characters. It's kind of hard for your emotion to be heightened when you already agree politically with the characters. But when Teresa quietly says, "I'm just scared that my wedding isn't going to be beautiful," you recognize that she just wants a wedding with love in the air instead of hate, even if she herself partakes in stoking the flame. Or when Kevin recounts a dream he had about a figure descending a mountain holding the missing Commandments, you can almost understand his painful longing for that missing something even if you were never spiritual in your life. The moments of vulnerability are compelling because the audience disagrees with the politics of these characters.

I bookmarked the part about Sherman's Thomas Edison photos.

I'm throwing in the last star for all the good company (read: everyone else's 1-2 star reviews).