WHATEVER COMES CANNOT BE CONTROLLED

Eihei Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, translated by Robert Aitken, Reb Anderson, Ed Brown, Norman Fischer, Arnold Kotler, Daniel Leighton, Lew Richmond, David Schneider, Kazuaki Tanahashi, Katherine Thanas, Brian Unger Mel Weitsman, Dan Welch, and Philip Whalen (New York: North Point Press/Farrar, Straus & Girouz, 1985).

From "Only Buddha and Buddha": "Long ago a monk asked an old master, 'When hundreds, thousands, or myriads of objects come all at once, what should be done?' The master replied, 'Don't try to control them.' What he means is that in whatever way objects come, do not try to change them. Whatever comes is the buddha-dharma, not objects at all. Do not understand the master's reply as merely a brilliant admonition, but realize that it s the truth. Even if you try to control what comes, it cannot be controlled." Id. at 161, 164.

"THE LIFE OF THE MIND, AND . . . THE MINDFUL LIFE"

Tony Judt (with Timothy Snyder), Thinking the Twentieth Century (New York: The Penguin Press, 2012) (From the Snyder's "Foreword": "There is one truth that seeks us rather than the other way around, one truth that has no complement: that each of us comes to an end. The other truths orbit around this one like stars around a black hole, brighter, newer, less weighty. This final truth helped me to give this book its final shape. This book could not have arisen without a certain effort at a certain time, little more than a companionable gesture on my side, but an enormous physical campaign in Tony's. But it is not a book about struggle. It is a book about the life of the mind, and about the mindful life." Id. at xvii. "As it happens, I don't think neglecting the past is our greatest risk; the characteristic mistake of the present is to cite it in ignorance. Condoleezza Rice, who holds a PhD in political science and was the provost of Stanford University, invoked the American occupation of postwar Germany to justify the Iraq War. How much historical illiteracy can you identify in that one analogy? Given that we are bound to exploit the past in order to justify present public behavior, the case for actually knowing history is unanswerable. A better-informed citizenry is less likely to be bamboozled into abusive exploitations of the past for present errors." "It's terribly important for an open society to be familiar with its past. It was a common feature of the closed societies of the twentieth century, whether of Left or Right, that they manipulated history. Rigging the past is the oldest form of knowledge control: if you have power over the interpretation of what went before (or can simply lie about it), the present and the future are at your disposal. So it is simple democratic prudence to ensure that the citizenry are historically informed." Id. at 265. Also see Francis Fukuyama, "One Man's History," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/5/2012.).

FOUR PERSPECTIVES ON THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: BIOGRAPHICAL, TEXTUAL/HISTORICAL, POLITICAL and ECONOMICAL

Nadine Cohodas, Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone (New York: Pantheon, 2010) ("Don'tcha know that no one alive can always be an angel?").

Andrew S. Curran, The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2011) ("The Anatomy of Blackness has three overlapping narratives The first relates how eighteenth-century naturalists and philosophes drew from travel literature to discuss the perceived problem of human blackness within the nascent human sciences. The second describes how a number of now-forgotten anatomists revolutionized the era's understanding of the black African by emphasizing both the supposed liabilities of this group and the corresponding 'advantages' of whiteness. The third charts the shift of the slavery debate itself, from the moral, mercantile, and theological realms toward that of the black body itself." "Not unexpectedly, such an approach reveals more about European (and secondary construction of themselves) than it does about real Africans. Readers should bear in mind that this is not a book about black African agency, or about how Africans grappled with the realities of European aggression and mercantile exploitation in Africa. Nor is it a book about how men and women of African descent undertook their own revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, appropriating and deploying a series of republican ideals that certainly had not been imagined with them in mind. In a word, this study focuses on the textualization of the black African." Id. at ix. "[B]y freeing Enlightenment-era thinkers from what is often portrayed as a monolithic thought system, I hope to recover the eighteenth-century individual's ability not only to be a passive participant in Africanist discourse, but to absorb, react, and contribute to the overall representation of the African. In my opinion, this method has several advantages over more rigid genealogies or single-legacy histories. By examining the representation of Africans on the level of individual thinkers or groups of thinkers, one can more effectively chart the ambiguous relationships among Enlightenment universalism, the equally strong constrains of the era's proto-ethnography, and the economic imperatives of slavery. In contrast, by envisioning the writings of the philosophes--not to mention the most offensive pro-slavery thinkers--as nothing more than a linear and overdetermined set of ideas, we not only underestimate the intellectual autonomy of these writers or philosophers but mitigate the responsibility of the so-called Enlightenment-era mind While it may seem paradoxical, moving away from full-scale indictments of the era and focusing on the 'exquisite sophistication of the eighteenth-century writing' may actually be the best way of illuminating the obscure aspects of an era whose primary metaphor was one of light." Id. at xi.).

Michael C. Dawson, Not In Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2011) ("In one sense, the majority of whites are victims--victims of the same rapacious economic system that has ravaged particularly black and Latino communities for well over a decade. Instead, as would be rational, turning on an economic system that has abandoned them, many have taken the historic easy way out and have directed their anger at communities of color, including Muslim communities, and the state that is allegedly the ally of the colored undeserving. The economic crisis has produced feelings of fear, anger, displacement, and of no longer being in control, particularly among the white middle classes and the more advantages sectors of the white working class. These feelings when combined with Tea Party sentiments of xenophobia hysteria, a moral panic, that is the stuff out of which fascist movements have been built in the past, and out of which fascism could be built again." Id. at 183. My favor passage is the the first two sentences of the first paragraph of Dawson's "Prologue", as I could have written those lines to describe myself. "I am a barbarian, albeit an educated one. I have been aware of this status of mine for a very long time. But it was brought back to me with particular force during a class I was teaching when I came across a passage by the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. 'Becoming 'white' and 'Anglo-conformity,' ' wrote Huntington approvingly, 'were the ways in which immigrants, blacks and others made themselves Americans.' " Id. at vii. (italics and color added) From the bookjacket: "In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, polls revealed that only 20 percent of African Americans believed that racial equality for blacks would be achieved in their lifetime. But following the election of Barack Obama, that number leaped to more than half. Did that dramatic shift in opinion really reflect a change in the vitality of black politics--and hope for improvement in the lives of African Americans? Or was it a onetime surge brought on by the euphoria of an extraordinary election?" "With Not in Our Lifetime, Michael C. Dawson shows definitely that it is the latter: for all the talk about a new post-racial America, the fundamental realities of American racism--and the difficulty of the problems facing black political movements--have not changed, He lays out a nuanced analysis of the persistence or racial inequality and structural disadvantages, and the ways that whites and black continue to see the same problems--the disastrous response to Katrina being a prime example--through completely different, race-inflected lenses. In fact, argues Dawson, the new era heralded by Obama;s election is in fact more racially complicated, as the widening class gap among African Americans and the hot-button issue of immigration have the potential to create a new fissures for conservatives and race-based exploitation. Bringing his account up to the present with a thoughtful account of the rise of the Tea Party movement and the largely successful 'blackening' of the president, Dawson ultimately argues that black politics remains weak--and that achieving the dream of racial and economic equality will require the sort of coalition-building and reaching across racial divides that have always marked successful political movements.").

Walter E. Williams, Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination (Sanford, CA: Hoover Institute Press, 2011) (From the bookjacket: "The black experience in America naturally [?] gives rise to thinking of today's black experience in terms of racism and oppression. But the most [?] difficult problems black Americans face, particularly those who are poor, cannot adequately ["not adequately" or 'not completely'?; there is a difference] be explained by current racial discrimination. In Race and Economics, Walter Williams argues that many problems are a result of policies, regulations, and restrictions emanating from federal, state, and local governments. It is not free markets and the profit motives that have reduced opportunities, the author asserts; instead, it is the power of vested groups, as a means of greater wealth, to use the coercive power of government to stifle market competition." "William debunks many common labor market myths and reveals how the minimum-wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the most disadvantaged members of our society. He explains that the real problem is people are not so much underpaid as underskilled and that the real task is to help unskilled people become skilled. [And, I suppose, do this while we at the same time defund public education?] The author also reveals how licensing and regulation reduce economic opportunity for people, especially those who might be described as discriminated against and having little political clout. Using the example of the trucking industry before and after deregulation he illustrates how government regulation closes entry and reinforces economic handicaps, whereas deregulation not only has helped minorities enter an industry in greater numbers by also has benefited the consumer." "People will not engage in activities, including racial discrimination, says Williams, if it cost is too high. [DAH!!!!!; but what is "too high"?] In markets, because transactions are mostly an individual affair, it is unnecessary to win the approval or permission of others; the costs and benefits are a private matter. But in the political arena, each citizen has only one vote, meaning that, unlike the free market, a minority cannot register the intensity of his preferences. Further, increased concentration of political power at the national level handicaps minorities in the sense that their votes become diluted. The author ultimately shows that free-market allocation, not political allocations, is what is truly in the best interest of minorities." [No he does not!!] At the end of reading this polemic, those who already agreed with Williams when they opened the book will agree with him when they finish reading and put it down. On the other hand, those who were disposed to disagree with him when they pick up the book will be not only unpersuaded, but, I think, even more entrenched in their prior convictions. Williams has preached to his choir, and missed the larger audience.).

TRYING ANOTHER WAY

Thubten Chodron, Buddhism for Beginners (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications 2001) ("Romantic love is generally plagued with attachment, which is why many marriages end in divorce. When people fall in love with an image they created of the person, instead of with the actual human being, false expectations proliferate. For example, many people in the West unrealistically expect their partner to meet all their emotional needs. . . . [W]e should avoid having such unrealistic expectations of our partners." "Each person has a variety of interests and emotional needs, Therefore, we need a variety of friends and relatives to share and communicate with. Nowadays, because people move so often, we may need to work harder to develop several stable, long-tern friendships, but doing so strengthens our primary relationship." Id. at 129).


Jean Smith, The Beginner's Guide to Zen Buddhism (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000) ("9. Not Being Angry[;] This is an important precept for Americans because we are told that we need to express our anger, but we're also told not to express our anger as we grow up. It's a confusing and difficult precept for many people--perhaps the most confusing. It's important to acknowledge feelings of anger and to be really present to them. The aim is not to eliminate anger when it arises but rather to accommodate it, to create a space for it. In a very paradoxical Zen way, we say, 'Not being angry is being angry.' Not being angry is to allow what is occurring to be there but not to hold on to it or fan it. If you push anger down and deny it, it seethes underneath. Awareness of your state of mind, of anger, is important. Not being angry is being aware of what you're feeeling--and thus transforming the anger into wisdom." Id. at 119.).


Thich Nhat Hanh & Lillian Cheung, Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life (New York: HarperOne, 2010).

THE UNITED STATES'S SUPPORT OF STATE TERROR IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, updated edition,with a new Preface by Greg Grandin and an interview with Naomi Klein (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2004, 2011) ( From "Preface to the Updated Edition: A New Enlightenment": "What explains Latin America's seemingly inescapable reversion to violence? How to account for the weakness of its democratic culture? For over a half century, attempts to answer these questions have defined much of the writing produced in the United States on Latin America, as social scientists and intellectual historians have created an entire scholarly subfield dedicated to gently guiding--or, if gradualism failed, abruptly inducing through 'shock therapy'--the region's post-Cold War 'transition to democracy.' But these questions are exactly backward. The real challenge is not to answer why Latin American democracy is so fragile but to explain its inextinguishable strength." Id. at xi. From "Preface to the First Edition": "In Latin America, in country after country, the mass peasant and working-class movements that gained ground in the middle of the twentieth century were absolutely indispensable to the advancement of democracy. To the degree that Latin America today may be considered democratic, it was the left, including the Marxist left, that made it so. Empire, rather than fortifying democracy, weakened it. Launched first by domestic elites in the years after World War II and then quickly by the United States, the savage crusade, justified under the guise of the Cold War, against Latin American democratic movements had devastating human and political costs. In some countries, such as Uruguay, Brazil, and Chile, national security states carried out a focused, surgically precise repression. Other states, such as Argentina, El Salvador, and Guatemala, let loose a more scattershot horror. In all cases, terror had the effect of, first, radicalizing society to produce febrile political polarization and, second, destroying the more capacious, social understandings of democracy that prevailed in the years around World War II. One important consequence of the terror was the severance of the link between individual dignity and social solidarity, a combination that . . . was the wellspring of the old left's strength. During the transition to constitutional rule that occurred throughout Central and South America following the Cold War, democracy came to be defined strictly in the astringent terms of personal freedom rather than social security. This redefinition served as the qualification for the free market ideologies and policies that now reign throughout the continent and indeed most of the world. In other words, to make the point as crudely as possible, the conception of democracy now being prescribed as the most effective weapon in the war on terrorism is itself largely, at least in Latin America, a product of terror." Id. at xxii-xxiii. From the bookcover: "After decades of bloodshed and political terror, many lament the rise of the left in Latin America. Politicians and historians have long accused the left there of rejecting democracy, embracing totalitarianism, and prompting both revolutionary violence and a right-wing backlash. Through unprecedented archival researcch and grippiing personal testimonies, Greg Grandin mounts a powerful challenge to thise views in this classic work. In do so, he uncovers the hidden hiistory of the latin American Cld War: of hid-bound reactionaries hiolding on to their power and privilege; of Mayan Marxists blending indigenous notions of justice with universal id3as of equality; and of a United States supporting new stuyles of state terror throughout the region.").

UNREGULATED CAPITALISM IS NOT PRETTY. WE SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING.

Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy (New York: HarperCollins, 1999) (From the bookjacket: "In this incisive critical analysis of today's free-market capitalism, Edward Luttwak shows how it is vastly different from the controlled capitalism that flourished so successfully from the 1945 to the 1980s. Turbo-capitalism is private enterprise liberated from government regulation, unchecked by effective trade unions, unfettered by concerns for employeees or investment restrictions, and unhindered by taxation. It promises a dynamic, expanding economy and new wealth." "The winners--the architects and acrobats of techno-organizational change--become much richer; the loser, the majority, become relatively or absolutely poorer and are forced by downsizing to take the traditional jobs of the underclass, more and more of whom end up in prison. Edward Luttwak challenges the conventional wisdom that jobs lost in old industries will be replaced by jobs in new ones. If General Motors fires you, Microsoft will not hire you; instead you'll be working in 'services,' often poorly paid." "Led by the United States, closely followed by Britain, turbo-capitalism is spreading fast throughout Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world (only in France and Japan is there any resistance) without the two great forces that check its enormous power in the United States: a powerful legal system and the rules of American calvinism. Acknowledging the great efficiency of turbo-capitalism, Luttwak provides no solutions but describes in powerful detail the major societal upheavals and inequities it causes and the broad dissatisfaction and anxiety that may result. He suggests this is a high price to pay for this great dilemma of our times." In short, the global economic collapse that seemed to begin in 2008 (or late 2007), had been building for decades.).

GROUPTHINK

Mark Schafer & Scott Critchlow, Groupthink vs. High-Quality Decision Making in International Relations (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2010) ("Moving on in Janis's causal chain, the symptoms of groupthink include possessing an illusion of invulnerability, a belief in the group's inherent morality, the use of collective rationalizations, stereotyping the out-group, self-censorship, illusions of unanimity, directly pressuring dissenters, and the presence of self-appointed mind-guards. The symptoms of defective decision making include gross omissions in surveying objectives; gross omissions in the survey of alternatives; conducting a poor information search; processing information in a biased manner; failing to reconsider rejected alternatives; failing to examine the costs and risks of the preferred choice; and failing to work out detailed implementation, monitoring , and contingency plans. These behaviors increase the probability of low-quality decisions and outcomes ." Id. at 23-24 (citations omitted) Schafer and Crichlow go beyond Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decision and Fiascoes (1972). From the backcover: "Analyzing thirty-nine foreign-policy cases across nine administrations and incorporating both statistical analyses and case studies, including a detailed examination of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, the authors pinpoint the factors that are likely to lead to successful or failed decision making and suggest ways to improve the process. Schafer and Crichlow show how the staffing of key offices and the structure of central decision-making bodies determine the path of an administration even before the topics are introduced. Additionally, they link the psychological characteristics of leaders to the quality of their decision processing. There is no greater work available on understanding and improving the dynamics of contemporary decision making." I found this book quite helpful as I try to assess and understand the entropy in legal education. The key: With a few exceptions at elite law schools, legal academia is locked into a dynamic of groupthinking. The result: A continued and steady race to the bottom.).