Years of Poems and Spirits

Just read an article about “HOA Rule Forbids Couple To Smoke In Their Own Home”

I am interested in this story because I wrote a paper on state, public and private sphere. My point is: in the West, traditionally, each is respected for its own “sovereignty”. But in China, state dominates the other two.

Of course, nothing is absolute. In the U.S., there is plenty of evidence of state interfering in private life (eminent domain came to mind, marriage laws, etc.) The story cited above is an example of public (or community) rule interferes with private functions. But the setting–a condo–makes it even more interesting: the close proximity gives communal authority so much legitimacy all of a sudden.

Similar smoking bans have been tried in Pennsylvania (no smoking in car while minors are present), Maryland (Montgomery county ordinance regarding townhomes). HOA has long been pain in the ass (a while ago, a NYT/WP article talked about HOA fined a home owner because he didn’t place his trash bins in the backyard). Now when those two issues come together, in a condo setting, something interesting gotta happen.

Both sides appealed to the state and the state ruled in community’s favor. Fun, fun, fun!

I watched a documentary last night with my wife: “Jesus Camp”. It was a really good film. The story was told in a really “close to hull” fashion: tight and speedy. It does raise a few interesting questions:
1. To what extent parents are entitled to “own” their children’s mind?
2. Is this (i.e. Jesus Camp) a good thing for democracy?

I always wanted to but never had the time to read Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He must have some insight as to the first question. Nevertheless, what is an “ideal” education model? Can there be one that fills children with the tools to develop their own thoughts, but not the thoughts themselves? For example, is there a type of education that can nourish children’s curiosity, but not embed solutions (regardless what kind) into their minds?

Logically, there is not. Here is how to prove it: curiosity comes with the means to answer the questions. Yet how to find solutions implies adopting an epistemology, which is seldom idealogically nutural. In other words, had the pastor told the kids, “Go ahead wondering about the world to your heart’s contend. But all the solutions are in the Bible”, it would be no different from outright preaching.

Parent’s claim to children’s education can also be looked at from the public-space/private-space angle: is education a private matter? Or the public has a claim too? In the end, it has the same logic and ramification as the recent debate on “eminent domain“–but a much explosive one for sure.

As for the second question: is “Jesus camp” a good thing for democracy? Well, the camp does teach civic “participation” but not enough “association”. Again, I am circling around Huntington’s therom. Nevertheless, my point is I’d rather the extremists participating than not participating. Of course, the next thing to do in order to co-opt them is to show them how to participate. Hopefully, this documentary and Mr. Ted Haggard can have a mirroring effect.

By the way, the documentary did make a splash: the camp was vandalized after the film was released. And the pastor decided to close the camp for a few years. See article here. I don’t know what to make of that.

Today is Veteran’s Day. On the radio, there is a program telling the stories of surviving WWI (First World War that is!) veterans. The reporter said as the story was produced, his interviewees died out one by one. But all had the wishes that their stories be remembered. And history not forgotten.

But whose history is it anyway? Are we really interested in their story? Can we relate to their story? If we can do a time-warp and travel back, with the veterans, to the exact moments in their past, do we see the same “history”? By and large, what is history anyway?

If history was just a collection of facts, it would not have had the kind of prominence in philosophy (for example, a collection of fact can never produce the kind of dialectic process which by definition is dynamic and progressional).

Does history even exist as a structual being? I am not sure. What is more likely, history is the current interpretation of the past. But the past is definitely not the history.

In the WWI veterans’ case, what history is in their mind is their interpretation of what happened. Even if we travel back with them, we have a totally different set of reference points from theirs. Although we are seeing the same events, we are sure to interpret them very differently. Subsequently, after we travel back to today, when we have to reconstruct history for a common audiences, the stories will come out very differently.

In that sense, history is now. Contrary to the impression that history belong to the past, it is actually more “ours” than “theirs”. In other words, when reference for the past always has the past embedded, one will never see the full-frontal, if you will, of the past.