I have been reading a lot more lately than I have been writing about, but I wanted to throw in a note about the collection By Richard Crouter and Julie Klassen that I just read.
As soon as Jews had some freedom in Germany during the Enlightenment, they started producing an abundance of scholars and men of letters. Each one staked out his own position on Jews and their relationship to the state. From Mendelssohn and on, they advocated for Jewish emancipation from the prejudicial and anti-Semitic laws of the German state. Mendelssohn argued (on philosophical grounds) for simple equality, and a sort of separation of Church and state. David Friedlander, after a long and what must have seemed like fruitless quest to try to improve the Jews and their situation in Germany, argued for mass fake conversion to Christianity.
What do I mean by "fake"? Well, he thought that Jews really didn't need the ceremonial laws, and he thought that no one would know if Jews didn't believe in Jesus when they converted to Christianity, so he asked the State, in an Open Letter, to accept the mass conversion of Jews who agree to stop outwardly practicing Judaism, and get baptized Protestant without actually believing in Jesus.
If you ask me, that misses the point from the perspective of both religions. And the important protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Abraham Teller both agreed. Both wrote responses to Friedlander's letter. Naturally they agreed that keeping the Jewish rituals was unnecessary, but they thought that a fake conversion was no conversion at all, and moreover has the potential to harm Christianity. Of course, in accordance with Enlightenment values, neither thought that being Jewish should be a bar to getting rights though.
For Jews, especially those of Mendelssohn's ilk, keeping the mitzvot is Judaism (though they definitely argued in favor of the existence of God). For Christians Belief in the divinity of Christ is Christianity.
Crouter and Klassen collect their three documents as well as anonymous satirical polemic asking for rights for Jews. The translation reads well, and it is a valuable set of documents for those interested in this period.
I wish they would have included more of the responses to Friedlander. There were many written in pamphlets and in the popular press. I would love to have seen some of them. Also, I should mention that there is an essay at the end that feels totally out of place. It is mostly a discussion about the situation of the Turks and their problems with emancipation in contemporary Germany. While it is interesting, it just really doesn't belong here. I am not sure who at Hackett publishers agreed to it. It's point is unclear and except in the sense that Turks and Jews are both not considered German and they both have had problems there, I am pretty sure the essay is unrelated to the others.
(Also, there is one minor error, which I am not sure whether I ought to attribute to Teller or to the translators, but on p 135 they use the term "yom Ha'aretz", which literally means "earth day". The word they meant to use was "am ha'aretz" - literally: people of the earth.)
Monday, January 28, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
It is about time
It is good to hear that New York is finally evaluating teachers on their performance. The unions were and still are afraid of any standard that might show how incompetent NYC public school teachers could be. There are some great ones (whom I know personally), but judging from my college students who are graduates of the NYC public school system, most of them must be pretty crappy. Many of my NY students graduate borderline literate. Seriously.
No wonder
No wonder
Randi Weingarten the union president, said she had grave reservations about the project, and would fight if the city tried to use the information for tenure or formal evaluations or even publicized it.The union's job is to protect the teachers, not the children from the teachers' incompetence. So who protects the children? I bet Randi Weingarten doesn't care.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
The Ghandis
Mahatma Gandhi once famously wrote of the Jews:
His more enlightened grandson Arun Gandhi offers no such advice today to those who are in the position to be harmed by Jews. Rather, the scorn, which the Gandhi family once reserved for Jews who had the audacity to attempt to resist Hitler, is now given to . . . Jews who think that their state's "survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs".
So a few members of the Gandhi family seem to have it in for the Jews.
Despite the fact that he has offered some sort of apology for what he said, he curiously failed to apologize for the thing that actually offended people. He originally said that Jews were following in the footsteps of the Nazis. Clearly one can see how this might offend Jews. He apologized for saying that all Jews were following in the footsteps of the Nazis, when what he meant was that it was only Israel who was following in the footsteps of the Nazis.
If I may return the insult, Arun Gandhi is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, and I assure the Indian people (who now posses a nuclear arsenal) that I would never accuse them of such a miserable thing.
Update: I just discovered that this article says pretty much the same thing.
The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the god fearing, death has no terror.In other words, if Hitler is killing you, you are better off sitting there and letting yourself be killed rather than fighting because his retarded god would love that more.
His more enlightened grandson Arun Gandhi offers no such advice today to those who are in the position to be harmed by Jews. Rather, the scorn, which the Gandhi family once reserved for Jews who had the audacity to attempt to resist Hitler, is now given to . . . Jews who think that their state's "survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs".
So a few members of the Gandhi family seem to have it in for the Jews.
Despite the fact that he has offered some sort of apology for what he said, he curiously failed to apologize for the thing that actually offended people. He originally said that Jews were following in the footsteps of the Nazis. Clearly one can see how this might offend Jews. He apologized for saying that all Jews were following in the footsteps of the Nazis, when what he meant was that it was only Israel who was following in the footsteps of the Nazis.
If I may return the insult, Arun Gandhi is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, and I assure the Indian people (who now posses a nuclear arsenal) that I would never accuse them of such a miserable thing.
Update: I just discovered that this article says pretty much the same thing.
Another argument against gun control
So this guy Ivaylo Ivanov, who lives right across the street from me, stockpiled six or seven pipe bombs, a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, two pellet rifles, a crossbow with arrows, silencers, ammunition, a bulletproof vest and a machete. We then find out that he confessed to the anti-Semitic graffiting of the synagogues in Brooklyn Heights in September. I wonder what he was plotting.
Also, call me cynical, and maybe I'm looking too deeply in to this, but while I can understand someone not being aware that their roommate is amassing a small arsenal, you cannot hide your really strong attitudes for too long no matter how infrequently you interact over a period of six years. That being said, it is no surprise that the roommate is a researcher affiliated with . . . Columbia University.
Update (/22): This just keeps getting stranger. Apparently this guy is Jewish and out on bail.
Update (1/23): Even more weirdness. First, while I might ignore the Rabbi's overemphasis on matrilineal descent (or the rather Christian concept of having a congregation pray for the spiritual wellbeing of someone?), I too am skeptical about this man's Jewishness. Second, who would believe that someone trained by the Mossad would clean their weapon with a round in the chamber, or be that mentally unstable in general. And finally, Ivanov seems to have taken a page right out of the Three Kings playbook. Seriously, explosive footballs? How unoriginal.
Also, call me cynical, and maybe I'm looking too deeply in to this, but while I can understand someone not being aware that their roommate is amassing a small arsenal, you cannot hide your really strong attitudes for too long no matter how infrequently you interact over a period of six years. That being said, it is no surprise that the roommate is a researcher affiliated with . . . Columbia University.
Update (/22): This just keeps getting stranger. Apparently this guy is Jewish and out on bail.
Update (1/23): Even more weirdness. First, while I might ignore the Rabbi's overemphasis on matrilineal descent (or the rather Christian concept of having a congregation pray for the spiritual wellbeing of someone?), I too am skeptical about this man's Jewishness. Second, who would believe that someone trained by the Mossad would clean their weapon with a round in the chamber, or be that mentally unstable in general. And finally, Ivanov seems to have taken a page right out of the Three Kings playbook. Seriously, explosive footballs? How unoriginal.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
An amateurish attempt at Hume scholarship
I'd like to say at the outset that I have not done much research or thinking about the following and it is based mostly on my own common-sense view of what the answer to this problem is. Perhaps more real scholarship should be done on this, but the question really does seem too trivial for anything more than a blog post.
In part 14 of David Hume's Natural History of Religion we find the following sentence
Beyond the fact that it is likely a book, Hume himself gives us no clues. But the two editions of the text I have each have footnotes to this word. They both assume that it refers to a Jewish book. It is clear that it refers to a religious book of some sort, and we have no reason other than the two editors I cite below that it is a Jewish one.
But let us assume that it is a Jewish book. Which Jewish book is it?
One footnote (I am not sure which editor inserted this, it is a footnote in an anthology by Christopher Hitchens, who is a bit careless with sources. Could it be C.H. himself?) says the following:
So which is it, the Seder Eliyyahu or the Siddur?
Are these our only options? I think not. There are likely four options I think we must consider. (1) The Seder Olam, (2) The Passover Seder, (3) The Seder Eliyyahu, and (4) The Siddur. There are many more books that have the word "Seder" in the title, but it is hard to imagine one that is as significant as the above four.
Our approach is as follows: What Jewish books would Hume likely have heard of, and given those, to which did he actually intend to refer? Let us examine the four options one at a time.
The first three options might seem plausible on lexicgraphical evidence. Hume spells the word he is refering to as "Sadder", which is plausibly pronounced (in Hume's time) "say-der" as opposed to "sih-dur". The double "dd" however, does make it plausible that Hume was thinking of a word that sounds like "sah-der". More likely Hume copied this spelling from some other source which is unknown to me (us). So spelling-evidence is so far, unhelpful.
(1) Could Hume have heard of the Seder Olam? The Seder Olam is a (actually two) purported chronology(ies) of the world from creation to the rise of Alexander the Great.
My guess is that Hume might have heard of this book. Remember, that although Hume today is known as an important philosopher, in his time, and in his own mind, he was a historian. He quotes heavily from the classical historians, and was well familiar with historical scholarship. It certainly seems plausible that he would have heard of the Seder Olam. What is less plausible is that he read it. It has not (to my knowledge) been translated to English, Latin, Greek, or French - the languages I believe Hume know well. It is also unlikely that Hume would tell us that the content of a history book contains something about precepts of morality, unless he had some reason for knowing that it was the case. The Seder Olam, to the best of my recollection, does not contain much morality. On that basis, I reject option (1) as a possibility.
(2) Could Hume have been talking about the Seder shel Pesach, or more likely the book about the Passover Seder, namely the Haggadah? The argument in favor of this is that the Haggadah is probably the most widely printed of all Jewish books, and it would not be surprising if Hume had come across one in all his time spent in scholarly pursuits. I do not know if Hume would have had access to an English, French, Latin, or Greek one, but it is certainly possible and I would bet that it existed in one of those languages in Hume's time, or at the very least, someone he read may have referred to it.
But again, why would Hume think it is full of morality precepts? Well, in some sense it is. There are plenty of morality references in the Haggadah. References to the good and wicked sons come to mind. But the references to them are not extensive. It is a collection of prayers, and it is the tale of the exodus, more than a morality play. Moreover, while it can plausibly be called the "seder" it is well known as the "Haggadah" or the "recitation". Also, though it is a prominent Jewish book, in the scheme of the Jewish year, it is read once (or twice) at night as part of the Passover feast, it is not a central document of faith on par with the Pentateuch that Hume cites.
(3) Could it be the Seder Eliyyahu? I seriously doubt it. While the book is not totally obscure, one would have to be fairly well steeped in Jewish midrashic (homiletical) texts to get to know this book. It was available in Hebrew by Hume's time, but not in any other language, and it was probably not a common book to have around. I would doubt Hume encountered it. Moreover, Seder Eliyyahu is actually two works: Seder Eliyyahu Rabbah and Seder Eliyyahu zuta which collectively are known as Tanna Devei Eliyahu. It is not important enough to be known solely as "The Seder". While the book does deal with morality, it is a much more sohisticated book. It is a midrash, and a sort of mystical-cosmography. It would be odd for Hume to have assumed that Jews give this work much credence, even if he had known of its existence. Jews take the book seriously, but only to an extent. To the extent Hume would have known about this book, he would know about the nature of midrashic exegesis. The only reason one would have to think this might be the book Hume meant is that it was names by this unknown editor. I do not know what evidence this editor came up with to get this book.
So that leaves us with (4) Siddur. The "Siddur" does get it's name from the word "seder". Hume would definitely have had access to a siddur. In 1738 someone, probably Abraham Meers, under the Pseudnym Gamaliel Ben Pedahzur wrote a translation of the Jewish prayer book and a lot of commentary, which apparently was directed at introducing the Jewish rituals to Christians. (See here here and here.) It is a work that the Jewish historian Cecil Roth described as a book that gives "exaggerated importance to the least attractive minutia of observance and by an undue insistence upon anything of a scrofulous nature". This sounds like the place Hume could have picked up some cynicism about Jewish Prayer. The sentence prior to the one we quoted with the word "Sadder" in it reads as follows: "It is certain, that, in every religion, however sublime the verbal definition which it gives of its divinity, many of the votaries, perhaps the greatest number, will still seek the divine favour, not by virtue and good morals, which alone can be acceptable to a perfect being, but either by frivolous observances, by intemperate zeal, by rapturous extasies, or by the belief of mysterious and absurd opinions." It would be useful if I had a copy of the Siddur in question to see if he spells it "Sadder" as that would clinch the argument that Hume was referring to the Siddur, and this one in particular. But sadly, I do not have access to a copy.
I think I will throw my hat in with Gaskin's footnote that Hume was referring to the Siddur. The Siddur is a book that Hume would have heard of. The first English edition we just mentioned was published in 1738, when Hume was about 27 years old. It was published in London, where Hume would have soon thereafter had access to it. It is likely that Hume came across this book in his studies on religion. It is a major Jewish text. It is the prayer book Jews use daily. It frequently mentions morality, as part of the prayers, and given the edition that Hume was likely familiar with, it seems it was tailored to reinforce the view that Hume already had of religion.
In part 14 of David Hume's Natural History of Religion we find the following sentence
The least part of the Sadder, as well as of the Pentateuch, consists in precepts of morality; and we may also be assured, that that part was always the least observed and regarded.The context is unimportant to us for the moment. The question I want to ask is what is this Sadder that Hume refers to?
Beyond the fact that it is likely a book, Hume himself gives us no clues. But the two editions of the text I have each have footnotes to this word. They both assume that it refers to a Jewish book. It is clear that it refers to a religious book of some sort, and we have no reason other than the two editors I cite below that it is a Jewish one.
But let us assume that it is a Jewish book. Which Jewish book is it?
One footnote (I am not sure which editor inserted this, it is a footnote in an anthology by Christopher Hitchens, who is a bit careless with sources. Could it be C.H. himself?) says the following:
Sadder refers to the Seder Eliyyahu, a Jewish book of homilies written between the third and thenth (sic) centuries C. E. The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Old Testament.Another editor, J. C. A Gaskin, who is well known as a scholar in Early Modern Philosophy, writes (in his 1992 edition) the following as a note on the same word:
almost certainly Hume's spelling for the Seder or Siddur, the Jewish book of prayer or worship.
So which is it, the Seder Eliyyahu or the Siddur?
Are these our only options? I think not. There are likely four options I think we must consider. (1) The Seder Olam, (2) The Passover Seder, (3) The Seder Eliyyahu, and (4) The Siddur. There are many more books that have the word "Seder" in the title, but it is hard to imagine one that is as significant as the above four.
Our approach is as follows: What Jewish books would Hume likely have heard of, and given those, to which did he actually intend to refer? Let us examine the four options one at a time.
The first three options might seem plausible on lexicgraphical evidence. Hume spells the word he is refering to as "Sadder", which is plausibly pronounced (in Hume's time) "say-der" as opposed to "sih-dur". The double "dd" however, does make it plausible that Hume was thinking of a word that sounds like "sah-der". More likely Hume copied this spelling from some other source which is unknown to me (us). So spelling-evidence is so far, unhelpful.
(1) Could Hume have heard of the Seder Olam? The Seder Olam is a (actually two) purported chronology(ies) of the world from creation to the rise of Alexander the Great.
My guess is that Hume might have heard of this book. Remember, that although Hume today is known as an important philosopher, in his time, and in his own mind, he was a historian. He quotes heavily from the classical historians, and was well familiar with historical scholarship. It certainly seems plausible that he would have heard of the Seder Olam. What is less plausible is that he read it. It has not (to my knowledge) been translated to English, Latin, Greek, or French - the languages I believe Hume know well. It is also unlikely that Hume would tell us that the content of a history book contains something about precepts of morality, unless he had some reason for knowing that it was the case. The Seder Olam, to the best of my recollection, does not contain much morality. On that basis, I reject option (1) as a possibility.
(2) Could Hume have been talking about the Seder shel Pesach, or more likely the book about the Passover Seder, namely the Haggadah? The argument in favor of this is that the Haggadah is probably the most widely printed of all Jewish books, and it would not be surprising if Hume had come across one in all his time spent in scholarly pursuits. I do not know if Hume would have had access to an English, French, Latin, or Greek one, but it is certainly possible and I would bet that it existed in one of those languages in Hume's time, or at the very least, someone he read may have referred to it.
But again, why would Hume think it is full of morality precepts? Well, in some sense it is. There are plenty of morality references in the Haggadah. References to the good and wicked sons come to mind. But the references to them are not extensive. It is a collection of prayers, and it is the tale of the exodus, more than a morality play. Moreover, while it can plausibly be called the "seder" it is well known as the "Haggadah" or the "recitation". Also, though it is a prominent Jewish book, in the scheme of the Jewish year, it is read once (or twice) at night as part of the Passover feast, it is not a central document of faith on par with the Pentateuch that Hume cites.
(3) Could it be the Seder Eliyyahu? I seriously doubt it. While the book is not totally obscure, one would have to be fairly well steeped in Jewish midrashic (homiletical) texts to get to know this book. It was available in Hebrew by Hume's time, but not in any other language, and it was probably not a common book to have around. I would doubt Hume encountered it. Moreover, Seder Eliyyahu is actually two works: Seder Eliyyahu Rabbah and Seder Eliyyahu zuta which collectively are known as Tanna Devei Eliyahu. It is not important enough to be known solely as "The Seder". While the book does deal with morality, it is a much more sohisticated book. It is a midrash, and a sort of mystical-cosmography. It would be odd for Hume to have assumed that Jews give this work much credence, even if he had known of its existence. Jews take the book seriously, but only to an extent. To the extent Hume would have known about this book, he would know about the nature of midrashic exegesis. The only reason one would have to think this might be the book Hume meant is that it was names by this unknown editor. I do not know what evidence this editor came up with to get this book.
So that leaves us with (4) Siddur. The "Siddur" does get it's name from the word "seder". Hume would definitely have had access to a siddur. In 1738 someone, probably Abraham Meers, under the Pseudnym Gamaliel Ben Pedahzur wrote a translation of the Jewish prayer book and a lot of commentary, which apparently was directed at introducing the Jewish rituals to Christians. (See here here and here.) It is a work that the Jewish historian Cecil Roth described as a book that gives "exaggerated importance to the least attractive minutia of observance and by an undue insistence upon anything of a scrofulous nature". This sounds like the place Hume could have picked up some cynicism about Jewish Prayer. The sentence prior to the one we quoted with the word "Sadder" in it reads as follows: "It is certain, that, in every religion, however sublime the verbal definition which it gives of its divinity, many of the votaries, perhaps the greatest number, will still seek the divine favour, not by virtue and good morals, which alone can be acceptable to a perfect being, but either by frivolous observances, by intemperate zeal, by rapturous extasies, or by the belief of mysterious and absurd opinions." It would be useful if I had a copy of the Siddur in question to see if he spells it "Sadder" as that would clinch the argument that Hume was referring to the Siddur, and this one in particular. But sadly, I do not have access to a copy.
I think I will throw my hat in with Gaskin's footnote that Hume was referring to the Siddur. The Siddur is a book that Hume would have heard of. The first English edition we just mentioned was published in 1738, when Hume was about 27 years old. It was published in London, where Hume would have soon thereafter had access to it. It is likely that Hume came across this book in his studies on religion. It is a major Jewish text. It is the prayer book Jews use daily. It frequently mentions morality, as part of the prayers, and given the edition that Hume was likely familiar with, it seems it was tailored to reinforce the view that Hume already had of religion.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Review of Taming Democracy
Harvey Yunis' Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Classical Athens is a thorough discussion of political rhetoric in Ancient Athens.
Political deliberation was an important feature of democratic Athens, and the methods and goals of that deliberation was obviously of great import. Different rhetors had different approaches to how and why one persuades an audience do adopt a particular suggestion.
Yunis addresses Thucydides' (and Pericles'), rhetoric implicit in the famous funeral oration, Plato's Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Laws, which displays the evolution of his thought on Rhetoric, and Demosthenes more practical approach to mass persuasion.
Thucydides, Plato, and Demostheses played radically different roles in classical Athens and their approaches to mass rhetoric, and also thereby, mass education are readily apparent. Yunis does a good job spelling it all out.
Political deliberation was an important feature of democratic Athens, and the methods and goals of that deliberation was obviously of great import. Different rhetors had different approaches to how and why one persuades an audience do adopt a particular suggestion.
Yunis addresses Thucydides' (and Pericles'), rhetoric implicit in the famous funeral oration, Plato's Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Laws, which displays the evolution of his thought on Rhetoric, and Demosthenes more practical approach to mass persuasion.
Thucydides, Plato, and Demostheses played radically different roles in classical Athens and their approaches to mass rhetoric, and also thereby, mass education are readily apparent. Yunis does a good job spelling it all out.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Engagement
On Wednesday night, right near the Manhattan Bridge, I asked "D" if she would marry me, and she said "of course". That makes us engaged.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Some philosophy
It was good to see a piece as sophisticated and clear as Keith Burgess-Jackson's recent piece on torture in the daily press. The world needs more of that. What Burgess-Jackson did for "torture", someone ought to do for "cult" too. While I am not crazy about Romney, or any of the political candidates, for that matter, Romney is plagued with the idea that he belongs to a cult, particularly Mormonism. Perhaps Burgess-Jackson himself would sort this out (he appears to be a fan). Mormonism has had that reputation for a while. Yesterday Romeny had to give a dull speech that seemed to me was designed to placate the right, rather than dispel any myths about his religion.
Discussing whether Mormonism is a cult is akin to discussing whether waterboarding is torture. It depends what you mean by "cult" and it depends on Mormon practices, and all of that is independent of whether or not there is something morally, spiritually, legally, or socially problematic about cults in the first place. A good philosopher would do well to sort this out for the right-wing public.
Look, I recently had a conversation with a (Catholic) friend, M, who was musing why anyone would believe in a religion that someone just made up. I remarked that his sentiment was exactly what my people were thinking when Christianity started.
I am not sure it changed his mind much. And now that I think about it, the inability to change one's mind about religious matters does seem to be the hallmark of cultish behavior. But I got to say, if he ever ran, he'd probably have my vote for president.
Discussing whether Mormonism is a cult is akin to discussing whether waterboarding is torture. It depends what you mean by "cult" and it depends on Mormon practices, and all of that is independent of whether or not there is something morally, spiritually, legally, or socially problematic about cults in the first place. A good philosopher would do well to sort this out for the right-wing public.
Look, I recently had a conversation with a (Catholic) friend, M, who was musing why anyone would believe in a religion that someone just made up. I remarked that his sentiment was exactly what my people were thinking when Christianity started.
I am not sure it changed his mind much. And now that I think about it, the inability to change one's mind about religious matters does seem to be the hallmark of cultish behavior. But I got to say, if he ever ran, he'd probably have my vote for president.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Real philosophy in the news
Keith Burgess-Jackson's piece in today's Wall Street Journal is quite refreshing. It is rare that one sees a competent piece of philosophical analysis in a daily newspaper. The article on torture actually gives no view on what torture is, but expresses the frustration that a lot of thinking people feel when confronted with questions like "is waterboarding torture". The answer, and he expresses it well, is a matter of one's definition of torture. Now, once we have that, we still want to know whether all torture is bad, and if it is always bad, and why. The question is also completely divorced from the legal question of whether this particular form of treatment is legal, and it is further divorced from the question of whether it ought to be legal.
It is nice to see that there is a market for real philosophical analysis out there, and that someone is taking the time to disseminate it.
It is nice to see that there is a market for real philosophical analysis out there, and that someone is taking the time to disseminate it.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
TBOLC - some misc. notes
I sporadically took some notes about what life was like in TBOLC. The experience was pretty annoying, and I guess the following reflects that. It mostly seemed like a waste of time, just like BOLC II. The notes were sporadically written, and since I have no interest in thinking about TBOLC again, I have not bothered to edit them. So here they are.
--I finished BOLC II. That means that I now start the final phase of training in my officer basic course. I'm now back in Fort Eustis, Virginia. I drove up here from Fort Benning Georgia.
I stopped off in Charlotte, NC where I met up with "D" and we drove to Virginia Beach. It was a fun trip.
-- I have been in my final phase of officer training. To be honest, it really sucks. I have been sort of hesitant to write about this, but the army wasted most of the past three months of my life. The army's training environment is designed to do something, but I am really unsure what. They more or less keep you here for a while and treat you like a fourth grader, and that somehow makes you an officer.
It sort of makes me lose respect for people who have been through too many of these. I suppose now when I meet a general I will wonder what it was like to go to Army school after Army school and get treated like a child when you are middle aged, or older. I am pretty amazed that there are people who see this as a normal way of life. These schools breed immaturity. Perhaps their function is to keep you in the Army by making it difficult for officers to interact with adult civilians.
--Some stuff you should know: Everyone here cares about football. Not sure why, but they do.
--A typical day is as follows: you wake up at around 0430 or so. Show up at PT at 0520. Salute the flag at 0530. Do PT till about 0630. Shower, eat or do some extra working out till 0750. 0750 show up in the classroom and sing a rather stupid song that was pretty creepy even when I sang it each day when I was here in Fort Eustis as an enlisted soldier. 0800 till about 1130 we stare at power point slides and listen to lecturers of various levels of competence talk about whatever is on the slide he is showing. (Disclaimer: some of the instructors are technically competent, though still boring.) 1130 till about 1300 is lunch, followed by another three to five hours of more boring powerpoint slides. Then we are free for the rest of the day.
(Added note: The song singing stopped after a week or so.)
The tests are pretty easy. Make sure that your notes and the notes they give you are in order. Look them over the night before while you put them in order. Most of the tests are open book, so you just have to make sure you know how to find everything. I'd recommend a good hilighter.
The history assignment is pretty easy, as is the letter/memo writing. The history assignment requires reading an 85 page book and answering some dumb questions. No sweat. The memo and letter writing assignment was designed to show us how to write an Army memo. Of course Army memos are written a thousand different ways, and the FMs are not exactly consistent or up-to-date. My memo was graded by someone who was both annoying and not very adept with the English language.
Whoever it was inserted lots of commas where they didn't belong, and then took off a point for every comma he inserted. What an idiot. The ethics paper (and accompanying brief) at the end of the course was kind of useless too. I happen to know a lot about ethics, and ethics teaching, and I can assure you that the Army does not.
--Lucky dip is one of those team-building exercises. It lasts a day, and is not bad. A bit annoying, but basically there is a bunch of walking, and you have to accomplish some stuff. When you hear an "IED" give medical aid. When you hear "gas gas gas" you put on your masks. . . (test yours the day before, we had someone pass out because her mask did not work right.) These events are all timed. The final obstacle course is actually a bit fun. (It involves some water.) It was weird how the cadre kept telling us how much we needed to be hydrated, and how it will challenge us and stuff. eh. The whole things was actually kinda fun, though the PT was annoying, and so was a lot of the walking around.
--We had a dining in. Personally I thought it sucked. I actually didn't really think this dining in sucked, I just think that dinings in suck in general. Ours seemed fairly tolerable. I thought that a dining in resembled what would pass as a frat dinner of about 100 years ago - an event I certainly would not have wanted to attend. It is just not my thing. I assume that there are a lot of people who enjoy that, but I am not one of them. We put on a skit. I was in it. People laughed. If you like this sort of thing, it wasn't all that bad.
--Everyone with any rank, or anyone that ever had any rank on Fort Eustis thinks they need to give the TBOLC class a speech. They all think they are doing us some big favor, so they get us to class an hour early and give us a speech on leadership or whatever they want to talk about it.
Each and every one of the dozen or so people who have each wasted an hour of our time gave us the identical speech with the same advice that anyone who has been in the army for more than 5 minutes or so already knows - like listen to your PS, and don't walk in to a unit and change everything your first day. . . It is all just a way of boosting the egos of the speakers, making them believe they have some wisdom to pass on to new 2LTs. They don't. They are all so full of it, and themselves.
--We had a few days of some exercise (DDEPEX) that involved planning out a marshalling yard. It was OK. We ended up having to brief an Australian exchange Major who is in charge of something or other here. I am not sure how worthwhile the exercise was, but it was almost fun to do, and the briefing part was fairly painless.
--We had to fill out a stupid survey yesterday. It was a climate survey, so that brass could pretend that they are concerned about what goes on. They made us wait around after class for about two hours so we can spend about 30 seconds filling out a form. For some reason the 1SGT
spent 20 minutes after formation the following day accusing us of not being polite enough when the SSG came in to administer the survey. Apparently we wasted too much of HIS time in that three minutes it took him to give out the survey itself.
I have discovered that here when someone perceives that they are somehow slighted, they cry to their superiors. If someone nods off in class the instructors take it personally. If someone talks out of turn, whoever is in front of the room cries to the 1SGT or the CPT or whomever. The instructors here are quite childish. They mostly have the mentality of six year-olds. It is disappointing to see soldiers who are so incapable of dealing with the world that every perceived slight is grounds for wasting an hour of class time and have a slew of people bitch and whine like little girls. Sad. The Army is training its officers to be less mature, rather than more.
I've taught for years. My students sleep, send text messages, pass notes or whatever. If they ever get disruptive, I ask them to stop. I have had very little trouble. I do not get offended. TRADOC somehow breeds this kind of juvenile behavior.
--We had a class on the MTS system. That is the system that the Army uses to keep track of a lot of their vehicles and stuff. It was a pretty good day and a half of classes. So far the guy who taught it was the best instructor yet. He was genuinely concerned to just teach the material and not waste our time or his. He made sure to teach us everything that was pertinent, and I now have a good idea of how to use all the associated MTS equipment. The class was partly powerpoint and partly hands-on. If only all the classes were this good. I think the course could have been more extensive and had a better segment on using the hand-held scanner.
--Some Chaplain gave us a 4 hour bloc of instruction on combat stress and suicide prevention. It made me give suicide a real thought. It was awful. I am absolutely no better off now than when I started. I have no idea what to do if I have a stressed out or suicidal soldier. I cannot really identify combat stress any better than I was able to before hand, and we got this generic advice like: refer the soldier to a chaplain, or a mental-health counselor. As if that is always possible! The stress management was even worse. We didn't even get generic advice about how to
help soldiers.
Wasting half of my day today was the Army's way of telling soldiers and the public that they are doing something to help soldiers without having to actually do anything. Combat stress, combat fatigue and suicide are real problems, especially now in Iraq. Why can't the Army hire a real psychologist to teach a course on this stuff in a way that will prepare us, someone who can perhaps give real advice? Maybe some role-playing supervised by someone knowledgeable. Maybe tell us a list of things not so say.
I actually do care about my soldiers. I have known some of them for years. I can't believe how cavalier the Army is being about preparing me to take care of their mental health.
--We had a counseling class. It seems like it was one of those things that should be in BOLC II. The point was basically that you should counsel your soldiers. That class could have been streamlined.
--We spent a week on boats. We went to one pier for half of one day and saw a large ship, then the next day we spent at another pier taking a tour of various military ships. Then a third half of a day was spent looking at a motorpool. There was a test at the end of the week. The whole thing was not too bad. Even a bit fun.
This is in direct contrast to the week after that. First someone wasted a whole day of our lives explaining what an OPORDER is. Anyone who does not know that by now, should not be as far as they are in the army. It was dreary and tiresome. The following day some of us had to present an OPORDER with a sand table. More dreariness, especially since we heard the same one four times.
The day after that was even more unbelievable. We had about four SAWs and 240Bs and enough M16A2s. We had a class on how to disassemble them. Wasting our day explaining the M16 to us was another big waste of time. That is three days in a row of torturous redundancy learning things that any private with more than two weeks in the army knows. (Some people actually have not had much practice on the SAW and the 240B, so they did find it a bit useful to get to take it apart. Our civilians were pretty lost though.) The week was wrapped up with dismount drills. We learned how to get off of a truck. Thankfully I missed part of the last day doing something else somewhat Army related, but I was back in time for a written test on the past two weeks worth of stuff. It was a test designed for morons. I assume that the mode grade was 100.
--Last week was spent on Monassas Run. This is a practical field convoy exercise. It was actually somewhat realistic. The people who ran the exercise were somewhat annoying, but it was interesting running a real convoy. The whole experience might have been more useful if we were taught convoy procedures as part of our training here. We were not. So we were left to run these convoys making stuff up as we went along. Some of us followed doctrine and others were . . . more creative.
It is bizarre. We hear the following four phrases about 100 times each day:
1) "Who here knows they are going to Iraq? You know you better learn this, because you'll be needing it soon"
2) "We are not training you to be an expert on this, we are just familiarizing you. You will not be an expert. At your unit, the'll teach you this."
3) "Train as you fight."
4) "We train according to doctrine. Doctrine is very different from the way things actually are."
First, if I am going to Iraq I damned well better be an expert on something. No, I damned well better be an expert on anything I am doing. If TBOLC cut out the crap and stopped wasting my time, I could be an expert on a lot of things. And if there are people leaving for Iraq and Afghanistan next month, which there are, when will they have time to learn this stuff? And reservists and guardsmen certainly will not have time to learn this - ever.
Second, why doesn't doctrine resemble what soldiers are doing in theater?
Just a note: I am still waiting to find someone in this branch of the Army who actually has logistics experience in the field. Almost everyone in charge of anything here tells me that they are really from some other branch - mostly infantry. Why have I not met a 1LT who has recently been in Iraq or Afghanistan who can tell me what things are like? We were promised some repeatedly, but they never showed.
This place is full of people who are full of it.
--Speaking of time wasting, we had three days of out-processing. Out-processing involved spending about 40 minutes running from building to building on post getting signatures from offices whose sole purpose is probably to sign people's out-processing forms. The rest of the time was spend doing our own thing.
I guess wasting time is good for the active duty Army people. After all, it is like a day off.
You do nothing, and you get paid. I too did nothing and I got paid for it, but the Army is not my job and not my life. I really do resent the Army forcing me to do nothing and get paid. The Army I signed up for - the Army Reserve - implicitly promised that it would call me when there is a military need for me to be called, and when there is training that needs to be done. When I am not in training and not in war I want to be back home with my own life and my own job and not in the Army. I don't want to get paid to sit around.
--Bull Run was the main field exercise for TBOLC. It was perhaps the only useful thing we've done so far. After that exercise everything that we learned made sense. That should totally be extended to about a week instead of the three days. Moreover, everyone should have the opportunity to be both an OIC and NCOIC at least once. I happened to have had both, and they were both very useful experiences.
--The final course AAR was kind of a joke. You fill out these forms with the standard dumb questions like "were the course objectives laid out clearly before the course?" I am not sure what the point of questions like that are - and that question in particular. Again, it is the Army's way of showing you that they pretend to care. They don't. No wonder people think this branch sucks.
--I finished BOLC II. That means that I now start the final phase of training in my officer basic course. I'm now back in Fort Eustis, Virginia. I drove up here from Fort Benning Georgia.
I stopped off in Charlotte, NC where I met up with "D" and we drove to Virginia Beach. It was a fun trip.
-- I have been in my final phase of officer training. To be honest, it really sucks. I have been sort of hesitant to write about this, but the army wasted most of the past three months of my life. The army's training environment is designed to do something, but I am really unsure what. They more or less keep you here for a while and treat you like a fourth grader, and that somehow makes you an officer.
It sort of makes me lose respect for people who have been through too many of these. I suppose now when I meet a general I will wonder what it was like to go to Army school after Army school and get treated like a child when you are middle aged, or older. I am pretty amazed that there are people who see this as a normal way of life. These schools breed immaturity. Perhaps their function is to keep you in the Army by making it difficult for officers to interact with adult civilians.
--Some stuff you should know: Everyone here cares about football. Not sure why, but they do.
--A typical day is as follows: you wake up at around 0430 or so. Show up at PT at 0520. Salute the flag at 0530. Do PT till about 0630. Shower, eat or do some extra working out till 0750. 0750 show up in the classroom and sing a rather stupid song that was pretty creepy even when I sang it each day when I was here in Fort Eustis as an enlisted soldier. 0800 till about 1130 we stare at power point slides and listen to lecturers of various levels of competence talk about whatever is on the slide he is showing. (Disclaimer: some of the instructors are technically competent, though still boring.) 1130 till about 1300 is lunch, followed by another three to five hours of more boring powerpoint slides. Then we are free for the rest of the day.
(Added note: The song singing stopped after a week or so.)
The tests are pretty easy. Make sure that your notes and the notes they give you are in order. Look them over the night before while you put them in order. Most of the tests are open book, so you just have to make sure you know how to find everything. I'd recommend a good hilighter.
The history assignment is pretty easy, as is the letter/memo writing. The history assignment requires reading an 85 page book and answering some dumb questions. No sweat. The memo and letter writing assignment was designed to show us how to write an Army memo. Of course Army memos are written a thousand different ways, and the FMs are not exactly consistent or up-to-date. My memo was graded by someone who was both annoying and not very adept with the English language.
Whoever it was inserted lots of commas where they didn't belong, and then took off a point for every comma he inserted. What an idiot. The ethics paper (and accompanying brief) at the end of the course was kind of useless too. I happen to know a lot about ethics, and ethics teaching, and I can assure you that the Army does not.
--Lucky dip is one of those team-building exercises. It lasts a day, and is not bad. A bit annoying, but basically there is a bunch of walking, and you have to accomplish some stuff. When you hear an "IED" give medical aid. When you hear "gas gas gas" you put on your masks. . . (test yours the day before, we had someone pass out because her mask did not work right.) These events are all timed. The final obstacle course is actually a bit fun. (It involves some water.) It was weird how the cadre kept telling us how much we needed to be hydrated, and how it will challenge us and stuff. eh. The whole things was actually kinda fun, though the PT was annoying, and so was a lot of the walking around.
--We had a dining in. Personally I thought it sucked. I actually didn't really think this dining in sucked, I just think that dinings in suck in general. Ours seemed fairly tolerable. I thought that a dining in resembled what would pass as a frat dinner of about 100 years ago - an event I certainly would not have wanted to attend. It is just not my thing. I assume that there are a lot of people who enjoy that, but I am not one of them. We put on a skit. I was in it. People laughed. If you like this sort of thing, it wasn't all that bad.
--Everyone with any rank, or anyone that ever had any rank on Fort Eustis thinks they need to give the TBOLC class a speech. They all think they are doing us some big favor, so they get us to class an hour early and give us a speech on leadership or whatever they want to talk about it.
Each and every one of the dozen or so people who have each wasted an hour of our time gave us the identical speech with the same advice that anyone who has been in the army for more than 5 minutes or so already knows - like listen to your PS, and don't walk in to a unit and change everything your first day. . . It is all just a way of boosting the egos of the speakers, making them believe they have some wisdom to pass on to new 2LTs. They don't. They are all so full of it, and themselves.
--We had a few days of some exercise (DDEPEX) that involved planning out a marshalling yard. It was OK. We ended up having to brief an Australian exchange Major who is in charge of something or other here. I am not sure how worthwhile the exercise was, but it was almost fun to do, and the briefing part was fairly painless.
--We had to fill out a stupid survey yesterday. It was a climate survey, so that brass could pretend that they are concerned about what goes on. They made us wait around after class for about two hours so we can spend about 30 seconds filling out a form. For some reason the 1SGT
spent 20 minutes after formation the following day accusing us of not being polite enough when the SSG came in to administer the survey. Apparently we wasted too much of HIS time in that three minutes it took him to give out the survey itself.
I have discovered that here when someone perceives that they are somehow slighted, they cry to their superiors. If someone nods off in class the instructors take it personally. If someone talks out of turn, whoever is in front of the room cries to the 1SGT or the CPT or whomever. The instructors here are quite childish. They mostly have the mentality of six year-olds. It is disappointing to see soldiers who are so incapable of dealing with the world that every perceived slight is grounds for wasting an hour of class time and have a slew of people bitch and whine like little girls. Sad. The Army is training its officers to be less mature, rather than more.
I've taught for years. My students sleep, send text messages, pass notes or whatever. If they ever get disruptive, I ask them to stop. I have had very little trouble. I do not get offended. TRADOC somehow breeds this kind of juvenile behavior.
--We had a class on the MTS system. That is the system that the Army uses to keep track of a lot of their vehicles and stuff. It was a pretty good day and a half of classes. So far the guy who taught it was the best instructor yet. He was genuinely concerned to just teach the material and not waste our time or his. He made sure to teach us everything that was pertinent, and I now have a good idea of how to use all the associated MTS equipment. The class was partly powerpoint and partly hands-on. If only all the classes were this good. I think the course could have been more extensive and had a better segment on using the hand-held scanner.
--Some Chaplain gave us a 4 hour bloc of instruction on combat stress and suicide prevention. It made me give suicide a real thought. It was awful. I am absolutely no better off now than when I started. I have no idea what to do if I have a stressed out or suicidal soldier. I cannot really identify combat stress any better than I was able to before hand, and we got this generic advice like: refer the soldier to a chaplain, or a mental-health counselor. As if that is always possible! The stress management was even worse. We didn't even get generic advice about how to
help soldiers.
Wasting half of my day today was the Army's way of telling soldiers and the public that they are doing something to help soldiers without having to actually do anything. Combat stress, combat fatigue and suicide are real problems, especially now in Iraq. Why can't the Army hire a real psychologist to teach a course on this stuff in a way that will prepare us, someone who can perhaps give real advice? Maybe some role-playing supervised by someone knowledgeable. Maybe tell us a list of things not so say.
I actually do care about my soldiers. I have known some of them for years. I can't believe how cavalier the Army is being about preparing me to take care of their mental health.
--We had a counseling class. It seems like it was one of those things that should be in BOLC II. The point was basically that you should counsel your soldiers. That class could have been streamlined.
--We spent a week on boats. We went to one pier for half of one day and saw a large ship, then the next day we spent at another pier taking a tour of various military ships. Then a third half of a day was spent looking at a motorpool. There was a test at the end of the week. The whole thing was not too bad. Even a bit fun.
This is in direct contrast to the week after that. First someone wasted a whole day of our lives explaining what an OPORDER is. Anyone who does not know that by now, should not be as far as they are in the army. It was dreary and tiresome. The following day some of us had to present an OPORDER with a sand table. More dreariness, especially since we heard the same one four times.
The day after that was even more unbelievable. We had about four SAWs and 240Bs and enough M16A2s. We had a class on how to disassemble them. Wasting our day explaining the M16 to us was another big waste of time. That is three days in a row of torturous redundancy learning things that any private with more than two weeks in the army knows. (Some people actually have not had much practice on the SAW and the 240B, so they did find it a bit useful to get to take it apart. Our civilians were pretty lost though.) The week was wrapped up with dismount drills. We learned how to get off of a truck. Thankfully I missed part of the last day doing something else somewhat Army related, but I was back in time for a written test on the past two weeks worth of stuff. It was a test designed for morons. I assume that the mode grade was 100.
--Last week was spent on Monassas Run. This is a practical field convoy exercise. It was actually somewhat realistic. The people who ran the exercise were somewhat annoying, but it was interesting running a real convoy. The whole experience might have been more useful if we were taught convoy procedures as part of our training here. We were not. So we were left to run these convoys making stuff up as we went along. Some of us followed doctrine and others were . . . more creative.
It is bizarre. We hear the following four phrases about 100 times each day:
1) "Who here knows they are going to Iraq? You know you better learn this, because you'll be needing it soon"
2) "We are not training you to be an expert on this, we are just familiarizing you. You will not be an expert. At your unit, the'll teach you this."
3) "Train as you fight."
4) "We train according to doctrine. Doctrine is very different from the way things actually are."
First, if I am going to Iraq I damned well better be an expert on something. No, I damned well better be an expert on anything I am doing. If TBOLC cut out the crap and stopped wasting my time, I could be an expert on a lot of things. And if there are people leaving for Iraq and Afghanistan next month, which there are, when will they have time to learn this stuff? And reservists and guardsmen certainly will not have time to learn this - ever.
Second, why doesn't doctrine resemble what soldiers are doing in theater?
Just a note: I am still waiting to find someone in this branch of the Army who actually has logistics experience in the field. Almost everyone in charge of anything here tells me that they are really from some other branch - mostly infantry. Why have I not met a 1LT who has recently been in Iraq or Afghanistan who can tell me what things are like? We were promised some repeatedly, but they never showed.
This place is full of people who are full of it.
--Speaking of time wasting, we had three days of out-processing. Out-processing involved spending about 40 minutes running from building to building on post getting signatures from offices whose sole purpose is probably to sign people's out-processing forms. The rest of the time was spend doing our own thing.
I guess wasting time is good for the active duty Army people. After all, it is like a day off.
You do nothing, and you get paid. I too did nothing and I got paid for it, but the Army is not my job and not my life. I really do resent the Army forcing me to do nothing and get paid. The Army I signed up for - the Army Reserve - implicitly promised that it would call me when there is a military need for me to be called, and when there is training that needs to be done. When I am not in training and not in war I want to be back home with my own life and my own job and not in the Army. I don't want to get paid to sit around.
--Bull Run was the main field exercise for TBOLC. It was perhaps the only useful thing we've done so far. After that exercise everything that we learned made sense. That should totally be extended to about a week instead of the three days. Moreover, everyone should have the opportunity to be both an OIC and NCOIC at least once. I happened to have had both, and they were both very useful experiences.
--The final course AAR was kind of a joke. You fill out these forms with the standard dumb questions like "were the course objectives laid out clearly before the course?" I am not sure what the point of questions like that are - and that question in particular. Again, it is the Army's way of showing you that they pretend to care. They don't. No wonder people think this branch sucks.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Graduation
I am finally done with TBOLC. My brief review is forthcoming. For now I will just say that I am pretty amazed I made it through. It was the worst pedagogical experience of my life.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Tests and a conference
Last Thursday I took the Army DLPT in Hebrew. I hope I did well. It was a long and tiring test. I rushed it so I could make it to another test in the T-school here at Fort Eustis.
Then I went to Indiana for the weekend. I never thought I would be in Indiana. I was at a conference in Notre Dame. It was a good conference. It was hard to adjust to being around philosophers again, after being in the Army this long. But before I got used to it I was back in the Army. I then spent the next week in the field. More about that another time.
Then I went to Indiana for the weekend. I never thought I would be in Indiana. I was at a conference in Notre Dame. It was a good conference. It was hard to adjust to being around philosophers again, after being in the Army this long. But before I got used to it I was back in the Army. I then spent the next week in the field. More about that another time.
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