Purpose of Hunting

Bristol Palin has given birth to a son called Tripp. The boy's father, Levi Johnston, is reportedly keen to take their child hunting [BBC News, 30 December 2008].

What's that all about? Bonding with the in-laws or tragic accident?

From the Brothers Grimm ...

The Queen was shocked ... and pride grew higher and higher in her heart like a weed, so that she had no peace day or night. She called a huntsman, and said, "Take the child away into the forest; I will no longer have [him] in my sight. Kill [him], and bring me back [his] heart as a token."

"It's safe to go home now," the hunter told Little Red Riding Hood. "The big bad wolf is dead and gone, and there is no danger on the path.

The captain was put in prison and then torn in four pieces; but the King's daughter was married to the huntsman.

Vice Presidents and Hunting Accidents ("You can actually see Russia")

After US Vice President Dick Cheney shot one of his friends in a hunting accident, he was mocked by Russian president Vladimir Putin. With great diplomatic presence-of-mind, President Bush declared that Putin's remark was funny. [White House via Educational Whisper. See also Jonathan Turley.]

What Purpose Does Hunting Serve in a Modern Society?

The huntsman is an important character in fiction, especially folk tales. Hunting is a popular, sometimes expensive and often controversial pastime, which confers a symbolic grandure on its followers. It doesn't contribute significantly to the food supply, although adherents may claim that it helps protect agriculture from wild animals. Hunting is a focal practice, which people (and especially politicians such as Putin and Palin) use as a way of defining their individual and group identity.

So good luck to Trapper Tripp. I think he is going to need it.

Papa Ratzi 7

Only a theological hypothesis ...

explained Cardinal Ratzinger when opposing the concept of limbo in 1984.

After the Cardinal was elevated to the Papacy, it was not long before the concept of limbo was officially dropped as Catholic doctrine [Times, November 2005].

The New Scientist asked what other doctrines might be dismissed as mere theological hypotheses.

"[Are] ... the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Kingdom of Heaven, and, indeed, the very notion of the soul ... more than theological hypotheses? How can they be?"

Now that limbo has been consigned to limbo, does this mean that no other doctrine can now be consigned to limbo? If only Bertrand Russell were alive today!

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Discussing the nature of hypotheses in the Ratzinger Report, published in 1988, the Cardinal wrote:

"Faith has become enclosed in the glass case of an intellectual world which has built itself up and, in the same way, can fall to pieces." [Cardinal Ratzinger: Defender of the Faith (Andrew Greenwich)]

Quite so. So what then is the purpose of a theological hypothesis?

Papa Ratzi 6

There is some scientific evidence to support the popular view that outward hostility to homosexuality is sometimes a form of overcompensation. [Cornell University, August 2005. See also News Medical Net and Science NetLinks.]

However, even if this is not true, it is a belief commonly enough held that those who take strong positions against homosexuality may expect questions to be asked to their sexuality.

So consider the case of an unmarried elderly man who wears red Gucci shoes [Associated Press] and has a very good-looking male secretary [Daily Dish]. When this elderly man takes a strong position on homosexuality [BBC News, New Scientist], gossips around the world are not slow to see a possible connection [Olly's Onions].

Over and over again we have observed public figures taking up positions that turn out later to be jinxed. Politicians who rashly boast of their happy family lives, or celebrities who invoke the Curse of Hello [DailyMail, Guardian, Independent]. It sometimes seems as if they are unconsciously inviting attention to their secret vulnerabilities.

So shall we assume that all public statements have a secondary purpose?

Banking as Conceptual Art

From the life-imitating-art department

The BBC is currently running a dramatization of Little Dorrit, which contains perhaps the most vile portrayal in literature of a corrupt and corrupting banker: Mr Merdle. News arrives from America of an outrageous fraud by a modern Mr Merdle: one Bernard Madoff who (as it now turns out) had been running his hedge fund as some kind of Ponzi scheme [BBC News, 16 December 2008].

Emperor's new clothes

Born into a wealthy Japanese banking family, Yoko Ono moved to New York to become a conceptual artist, with the help of LeMonte Young and John Cage. In one of her best-known early performances, she sat on a stage while members of the audience cut away pieces of her clothing until she was naked. This can be seen as a prophetic metaphor for the current banking crisis.

Use your illusions

In an article for the London Review of Books (November 2008), Slavoj Žižek compares the perceived urgency of the banking crisis with the talk-and-no-trousers of our dear leaders in the face of other crises (saving endangered species, saving the planet from global warming, finding a cure for Aids, saving the starving children, . . .)

"The sublimely enormous sum of money was spent not for some clear ‘real’ task, but in order to ‘restore confidence’ in the markets – i.e. for reasons of belief. Do we need any more proof that Capital is the Real of our lives, the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing demands of our social and natural reality?"

When Žižek talks about the Real, he presumably uses this term in the Lacanian sense. [See Slavoj Žižek Key Ideas. For further comment see Jodi Dean. and Long Sunday.]


Spending all that money as a symbolic act, in order to prop up some non-existent wealth? I am sure Lacan says something somewhere about the ritual destruction of assets. Is that what they call a potlatch?

Mosquito Bites Again

A device called a Mosquito is now on sale, which produces a high-pitched irritating sound, audible only to young people. The idea is to make public spaces such as shopping malls uncomfortable for young people, and therefore discourage them from loitering.

After outraged protest from various interest groups, the manufacturers have now modified the device. It is now capable of producing a range of noises audible to (and therefore irritating to) all ages. The user (in other words, the shopping mall manager) can adjust the pitch according to the people he or she wants to get rid of.

Oh right. I wonder how many of these devices will be set to anything other than the "Young People" setting. Or is the sole purpose of this extra control to deflect criticism? "Oh, it's not our fault if people choose to use this device to harass young people." No, of course not, how could we have thought such a thing?

Source: Now Crime Gadget Can Annoy Us All (BBC News, 2 December 2008)

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As a general point here, devices such as cars and consumer electronics, as well as office software, often have fancy controls that are hardly ever used. These controls appear to give more choice and flexibility to the user; but if these controls are never actually used then their real purpose is something else - perhaps to construct some illusion of power. "Look at me, I've got so many knobs and buttons on my dashboard I could be an airline pilot or something."

In the case of the Mosquito, however, the additional control setting could be regarded as a cynical exercise in avoiding responsibility. I'm just hoping that someone accidentally tunes the device to a setting that attracts large numbers of love-sick bats and stray dogs. Or better still rats, like a neat reversal of the Pied Piper story.