Am I the only one somehow unsatisfied with reactions to recent events and the surrounding conversations? Attacks and blame and defense and outrage—pleas and arguments to persuade people to adopt a belief or opinion (even backed by facts and studies). We believe that our desire for certainty (and science) has force; that if we find, or are made to see, reality or truth, it will convince everyone and solve everything (thank you, Plato). But Emerson says (and Heidegger) that the most unhandsome part of our human condition is that the harder we grasp, the more the world slips through our fingers; that character is higher than intellect. What are we missing? Wittgenstein emphasizes the need to see someone as having a soul, and he (and Freud) recognize that our need to maintain an idea of ourselves creates a certain blindness. Is this racism? Is it then a matter of whether we are a racist (“I’m not!”)? something inside of us? a good person or a “bad apple”? how can we know if you believe that Black lives matter? is the argument for it rhetorical? political? ideological? Cavell would say it’s not a matter of knowing someone’s pain, but of acknowledging its moral claim on us. And Wittgenstein would say that then our blindness becomes a choice. What are we to do?

Nietschze would say that what we are is beyond morality; Marx intimates we are produced by the structure of the world we surround ourselves with; and Arendt calls evil banal, commonplace. We are comprised, and complicit, and compromised ("fated" says Emerson) by what is amongst us. Who we are is our inter-(re)-action with the world (even if a lack of) at a moral moment. Wittgenstein and Austin point out that meaning isn’t whatever we want to believe (say, about ourselves or others); it is everything shared that has come before us—our (and not "our") history, our language, our teachings, our institutions, our culture. They collect our judgments, what we value (or don't), and are the reasons with which we make decisions and only within which we take an action (or fail to). The origin of any sin is imbedded into this contract we are born into with society; we can ignore, or remember, let degrade or give (new) life (those with a voice—entitled to? given? taking?) I guess I feel that to simply find individuals, groups, or opinions, damnable (or righteous), is to avoid the collective, never-ending claim on each of us to improve the character of our country; that it is less a matter of the right feeling, or opinion, or answer, than an answering, an answering for—that this is the burden and opportunity of democracy. What will be our America?