Canadians are such a mild-mannered people that, if you bump into us, we will likely apologize. Not for ‘being in your way’ per se but simply because civility obliges us to. Indeed, we value courteous social relations to the point where we might not ‘say what needs to be said’ if it’s likely to cause even a smidgen of tension. You may call us conflict-avoidant. I prefer to say ‘Peace-Loving’ — but I recognize that ‘being polite’ might not be the ‘winning’ attitude when worldviews collide. Therefore, when our nation gets embroiled in any conflict, it shocks us to our very core.
Parlour games
There is a terrific essay from 1941 in Harper’s magazine, “Who Goes Nazi?”, by one Dorothy Thompson, that has been making the rounds recently. The idea is pretty simple and simply brilliant: Ms. Thompson assembles a hypothetical party in Manhattan and surveys the crowd and asks the titular question. The people are caricatures – my guess is if any of them were too carefully drawn there would be a libel suit – but you get the picture. It’s making the rounds these days because of the facile anti-Trump conflation of Trump and Hitler, which is a bit strong but anyway, it’s still a brilliant essay, especially when one thinks about the moment of publication – August 1941, Lend-Lease in full swing, isolationism dominating the American political landscape, Pearl Harbor still months ahead. As a historian, I prefer to see it in that light, as a whimsical thought piece with a dark twist. It’s how I like my fiction, for that matter, so as an experimental non-fiction piece, it’s natural that I’d be attracted to it.
My Philosophy: On what there is
In the European tradition, philosophy begins not with an agreed object of study, but with the introduction of a distinct method of thinking. In the poems of Homer and Hesiod, the standard causal explanation for any important event involves some reference to interference in human affairs by one or other divinity. Understanding the moods and methods of the gods was central to providing an explanation of why history unfolded in the way it did, and why the natural world was arranged in the way it was. What set the earliest philosophers apart from their predecessors was their desire to explain why things had happened and how they were currently arranged without recourse to the gods. To be a philosopher was to think differently: to study history and science (and other subjects) for alternate sources of explanation to the mythological tales that were prevalent in society.
Testimony of a Forfeiter
In An Educated Guess, Peter explores the ubiquity of the ‘Life as Game’ metaphor and the quasi-sacred importance accorded to ‘winning’. “We live to win!” & “The winner takes all!” — So everyone seems to say! We are generally fine with those maxims for the simple reason that we get to participate in the ‘game’ (even if it is rigged against the vast majority of individuals). Indeed, the ‘game metaphor’ feeds on our hope that we might one day achieve a ‘win’. We are taught — from the cradle to the grave, really — that ‘winning’ matters; that it makes us better, more important in the eyes of others… So of course, we try to ‘win’ without even considering the costs of ‘giving it all’ to the game.
The philosopher as asset manager
I really enjoy playing the Game of Life with my son. I’m speaking, of course, of the Milton Bradley board game version, not the four score and then some journey we actually live and which does not appear to be a game at all. We have a recent version of the game which I actually don’t enjoy – it’s all millenial, with multiple career choices and lots of overpriced real estate – but when we’re in Maine together, we play the version I played when I was a kid. I don’t remember precisely when we got it, but the box has a 1978 copyright and the clothing worn by the family enjoying themselves around the game looks solidly Carter administration. My sister and I played endlessly and now my son and I, one generation later, are doing the same.