Ward, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology

While pondering if I should post my musings on my readings about language on my anthnomics (clearly a rip of of economics) blog I remembered no one reads this anyway so who cares.

I’ve started this spectacular little book attempting to explaining both the historical debate over the language of theology as well as discussing the different philosophies of language. This topic—although it may seem confusing at first—is quite simple and necessary to understand. But first, we need to figure out what a ‘language of theology’ is.

It is easiest to wrap our heads around the philosophy or theology of language by understanding the debated topics. The main topic/question is; is language a human convention or is it something humans know because of inspiration from God? If it is simply human convention then how could we possibly communicate with God? How could God communicate with us while maintaining his divine otherness? How could we even speak of God? If it is fully from god how can we know and use language?

The topic has added significance in recent times. Initially there was the idealism that words directly corresponded to the real. When I talk about the Nile delta I’m talking about something concrete—something you could point to on a map—we could go there—we could know the Nile delta. But our language would confirm that we speak in metaphor—and our words don’t carry the ‘real’ as hoped. We would have to talk about the mouth of the river—but is it really a mouth? No this name is a metaphor that has been used and translated through different cultures and times. You and I have similar understanding of what the ‘mouth of the river’ means—but the phrase can’t carry the real meaning, it can only conjure shared knowledge. It is possible to imagine and find cultures and times where the words we use meant different things. Thus language became subjected to culture, time, and a host of other factors, not the carrier of the real concrete meaning. This is the crisis that language is in.

Aquinas—and subsequently Barth—developed an analogy of attribution which certain concepts like good, wise, and pure, reefer properly to God and reefer improperly to earthly things. We can talk about Wisdom—but it is only as a metaphor when used to describe anything other than God. But a theology of language must reach beyond these nouns and explain the rest of language.

Barth then continues to accept a theology of language that is ‘outside of human’—but ‘within our understanding’. A few problems arise—first, what words and concepts fit into this model and—perhaps more glaringly—how can something be extrinsece, outside of human power, and still within our understanding? How can something be known without being recognized? This is exactly the predicament that the crisis of language offers us, especially if we believe language can convey ideas about something outside human convention; if we believe we can have a conversation about God.

Awesome Video found on the Interwebs

AWESOME ECONOMIC VIDEO

ok i know no one reads this because i only update every 5 months. but none the less--dudes, check out this sweet video. Inspiring in the face the boring and popular economic theory which promotes nothing more than --try to be better calculators--. We're supposed to be better thinkers--not better calculators-and this guy is thinking!

Question for Capitalism

The following is an important quote to think about:

"The urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural population and since slum inhabitants will compose the majority of the urban populations we are in n o way dealing with a marginal phenomenon. We are thus witnessing the fast growth of a population living outside the law, in terrible need of minimal forms of self-organization. Although this population is composed of marginalized laborers, sacked civil servants and ex-peasants, they are not simply a redundant surplus: they are incorporated into the global economy in numerous ways, many of them working as informal wage workers or self-employed entrepreneurs, with no adequate health or social-security coverage...They are the true "symptom" of slogans such as "Development," "Modernization," and the "World Market": not an unfortunate accident, but a necessary product of the innermost logic of global capitalism." -Zizek


An interesting and important thought on the expanding slums in the world. Contrary--though similar in structure--to the arguments of Hernando De Soto that the problem of poverty can be entirely destroyed by parceling out rights/land and the access to capitol. What De Soto misses is that the global logic of capitalism is inherently marginalizing even though it does offer to some the power economic prosperity--even if those who are offered prosperity are the poor.

Article on Organic Food

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/attention_whole_foods_shoppers


Wow! What an interesting article—and by interesting I mean that it is interesting to see an author start with a simple premise, run it through a gamut of basic and logical arguments, and end with an absurd outcome.

First, he says, organic farming less environmentally friendly than previously assumed and organic food is no better for you than ‘conventionally’ grown food (isn’t the convention to use non-gmo & organic? When does new become conventional…) Ok, but this also means that ‘conventionally’ food is no better for you than organic food—and GMO’s do have potentially devastating side effects. (Scientists say there’s nothing to worry about just like engineers said offshore drilling is totally kool-aid)

Secondly, he says Africa and the hungry world doesn’t need more organic food—they’re doing slow, local and organic food right now and they’re hungry. However, high-powered, oil-based industrialized farming is not the solution. Even ‘hungry’ nations in SE Asia were EXPORTING agriculture and other products while at the same time there was large scale hunger in these countries, Cambodia, Indonesia, parts of Thailand, etc. Is there a better comparison of the poverty in the dictatorship of North Korea and the wealth in South Korea? North Koreans aren’t worse off because they are using organic farming, but because their dictator is an evil ruthless person who had destroyed any form of sustainability and sucked every last drop out of the people.

Paarlberg seems to avoid the question of dispersion, equity, politics and a host of other issues creating hunger and states, “Poverty -- caused by the low income productivity of farmers' labor…” Wrong. It’s rarely a productivity issue and usually a political issue. Poverty is created when ‘low productivity’ peasants loose their land or are kicked off by strife, are undercut by big GMO farms exporting food, or become victims of environmental problems (Dams, deforestation, climate change etc.). The problem with the low productivity farmer isn’t his productivity, but that we modern city slickers keep beating the heck out of him making it impossible for him to survive.

A side issue I have is that Paarlberg is totally straw-manning organic food. Some organic salesmen say it will help alleviate poverty, but does anyone who buys organic or local food really believe they are helping alleviate poverty in Africa? Even hippies aren’t that naïve.

But I have an even larger problem with Parrlbergs cost/benefit analysis of organic foods. Perhaps Parrlberg is correct when he says organic food isn’t as environmentally friendly as toted. But does he believe making all our decisions using an environmental cost/benefit gauge is the correct way to make decision? Well, it’s not. We have to make some impact and the smallest impact isn’t necessarily the best. We have to compromise by realizing that we live as part of the environment—not simply against the environment. Responsible use is key—not minimal impact.

The real reason to buy local and organic is because it is the right thing to do. ‘Right’ referring to a host of well reasoned and important environmental and social arguments which I think you already side with—reducing environmental impact, increased food safety, alienation from our food source and a ‘loss of humanity’, decrease in transportation costs, increased local participation in food production, a suburb boy like me catching a glimpse of a farm, and, gleaning from my brief interactions with farmers, it’s what farmers want to grow, etc.

But somehow—and this is the absurd part—Paarlbergs whole article suggests that purchasing local organic food prohibits agricultural aid to Africa. ‘The most effective ways of addressing hunger have fallen out of fashion” OK. Perhaps we don’t give enough aid but what does it have to do with my farmers market or by organic apples? Perhaps its because we found out that GMO’s have yet to prove any real increased crop yields in Africa but that’s just a guess... Snobs in Whole Foods do not evaluate foreign aid program effectiveness. He concludes by pointing out that food aid is less productive than agricultural aid. We’ve known this since ‘give a man a fish or teach him to fish’ …but, again, it has little to do with organic food.

Worst of all in his opening Paarlberg takes a cheap shot at recyclable cloth bags trying to save the environment. What the heck! Using plastic bags once then throwing them away is the height of stupidity and wastefulness! If you do this you are an irresponsible human being. RECYCLE YOUR BAGS!

So continue to research and enjoy the benefits of local and organic food—but don’t expect buying local apples it to solve many problems in Africa. And for the love of all rational things—recycle your bags.

Measuring Scarcity

Scarcity is a scary subject. Are we running out of the raw materials used to build our society? Will a society be able to function when some of the materials—oil etc. begin running out? How should we deal with the issue of running out of materials when it happens?

First we must take inventory—are we actually running out of stuff? There is no easy answer. Yes and no. The arguments on both sides are important.

First—yes—we are running out. We have a finite amount of raw materials in the ground—and with our constant rates of production growth it looks like we’re about to run out of many different raw materials in the near future (50 years or less on most industrial metals.) So if we continued to do the same thing we would reach the end of our rope by the middle of this century. This is the logic behind the peak oil theory. Simply put—we only have so many minerals in the ground we’re bound to run out.

Secondly—no—we’re not running out. The method used to calculate the above scarcity is flawed. It ignores the fact that methods of production and extraction continue to grow just as fast as consumption. We are developing better and more efficient ways to get minerals out of the ground. Using similar estimates to measure scarcity we could be facing serious scarcity problems in 100/200 years. Though obviously the calculations for scarcity rely on which will grow faster—our methods of extracting stuff out of the ground or our consumption of the stuff we pull out.

There is another way of approaching the problem that may help us get closer to a concrete answer—price. It is obvious that producers will charge a little bit more than it cost to pull the minerals out of the ground. If there are fewer and fewer sites for building mines or mines with worse quality, it will cost more to pull the stuff out of the ground. This higher cost would be reflected in price. When it becomes harder for companies to extract because of growing scarcity their costs—and the price will rise.

The issues with this are that many prices of minerals are more closely tied to existing market conditions rather than unique mineral scarcity. For instance, Oil was $140 a barrel until the stock market crashed in 2008. The price of oil dropped $100. It is obvious that this price movement had less to do with the scarcity of oil and more to do with the economic situation. Additionally minerals all have unique changes to economic change. Copper—used mostly for wiring and parts in new construction—fluctuates with the economic outlook. If people expect more growth—new homes etc.—the price will rise. Oil, on the other hand, is used mostly for transportation and heating. People need to go to work and live in a warm house regardless of the economic outlook. Moreover, analyzing trends is difficult. Good economists are on both sides of the question—is price of raw materials is increasing or decreasing.

So price didn’t get much closer to analyzing scarcity but perhaps costs can. If we could analyze how much all of the mine operators were paying to extract their goods perhaps we could see if their costs are rising or decreasing. With this information we could infer if the minerals they mine are becoming more or less scarce. But finding costs are difficult, as companies don’t publish costs of extraction. Costs are closely guarded secrets. This makes it difficult to analyze if costs are increasing or decreasing.

There is a fourth difficult in understanding scarcity. There is so a fixed amount of Iron, Copper etc, on the earth—regardless of what form they are in. If we mine every speck of copper out of the earths crust we will still have every speck of copper—it will just be on the earth’s surface. Instead of extracting it from the earth we will have to work recycling it from junkyards and trash heaps.

So we have only answered our question with more questions. These are the questions I hope to analyze in more depth the coming year on this blog.

Creation of Anthonomics

In the beginning Anthony created the Blog and the Writing... it has yet to be decided if it is good.