Of "Trigger Warnings" and "Safe Spaces"

The University of Chicago has made the news because it has sent to incoming freshman a letter (how quaint!) notifying them that it doesn't favor so-called "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces."  I've heard these phrases before, and have seen them in certain forums I frequent, I think in connection with the now more or less ubiquitous references condemning "political correctness" in colleges and universities in particular.

Apparently, a "trigger warning" is a notice of some kind to students that material or speech they might find offensive, or which would make them uncomfortable or even traumatize them, is about to be considered, discussed, written of...taught?  A "safe space" it seems is some place in which they may shelter from that regarding which a trigger warning would be given.  I'm delighted to read in one of the news stories that Brown University provided a safe space during some dispute or debate regarding sexual assault in which Play-do and bubbles were provided to those seeking safety, among other things.  The story doesn't indicate whether these items were made available as an ironic or sarcastic gesture.  How I wish I had Play-do to comfort me, right now.

Campuses have been subject to protests by various and sundry for quite some time.  Since the '60s, at least.  Students have been offended by any number of things for quite some time as well.  As far as I know, however, it's not until recently that institutions of what is sometimes laughingly called "higher learning" have found it necessary or appropriate to issue trigger warnings and/or create safe spaces.

Are we lawyers responsible for this?  Have we counseled colleges to do these things in order to avoid liability to the traumatized, the offended, the uncomfortable?  I hope not, but the United States is a litigious society.  I can conceive of circumstances where an incendiary speaker could induce an environment where physical harm to people or property might result and in those circumstances a lawyer could be inclined to advise against indulging the speaker by allowing him to speak.  I find it harder to conceive that a lawyer would recommend trigger warnings or safe spaces as a matter of policy, though.

Have we become too fearful of offending people, or of exposing them to what they might think offensive?  I'm not one who finds "political correctness" to be a matter of great concern.  Generally, I think those who are not politically correct or refuse to be politically correct are in most cases simply inclined to be rude and stupid.  It's not laudable to not be politically correct if being politically correct is simply to avoid being deliberately insulting or insensitive.  But I don't think institutions like colleges and universities need concern themselves with sifting material to determine what might disturb someone and to notify others that material may be considered, let alone provide them with a haven if it is.

State institutions or state funded institutions may be required to invite proponents of various points of view, some of them offensive, if they invite others or could be considered a forum for the expression of speech protected by the First Amendment.  However, it's not clear to me that a college must otherwise invite or allow anyone to propound anything to their students or faculty, regardless of whether or not it's offensive, unless it be part of a curriculum--in which case it would presumably be for the students' benefit; or for their education, which I suppose may or may not be considered by them to be beneficial.

It's the possibility that trigger warnings and safe spaces be given or provided as a matter of policy regarding material communicated in courses that causes me the most concern.  History, and what takes place in the present, is filled with offensive words, thoughts and conduct.  How would it be possible for a college to function effectively if trigger warnings would have to be given before Nazi Germany could be studied, or South African apartheid, for example?  Would objecting students be allowed to go to a safe space while this takes place?  What about technology some find offensive, courses of study which might encourage the use of nuclear power which some object to, or who knows what else?  Would warning have to be given, and students allowed to shelter in some space where they might gaze upon comforting photographs of Heidegger or some other technophobe?

It's also necessary to consider the fact that students, or most of them, will some dreadful day leave college and find themselves exposed to a world in which trigger warnings are few or nonexistent, and safe spaces, if there can be such things, must be of their own device.  In what way could college prepare them for that world if college becomes a place of trigger warnings and safe spaces?

I know, of course, that I've written before in some post or other that I consider the college years to be a kind of sojourn to a wonderful place unconnected with what we'll encounter for the rest of our lives; for most of us, at least.  Those who stay there may be able to ignore much of the world others cannot.  I also think that once we leave it, college becomes less and less important to us.  So it may be that no permanent harm will result if students are bombarded with trigger warnings and become used to running for the Play-do when disturbed.

But it seems to me that this will render higher education less of a benefit than it could be.  It also seems to me that students would be well advised to school themselves to not be unreasonably disturbed by why others say and think and do (except, of course, in cases such as sexual assault and active harm or oppression).  In fact, now that I think of it, Stoicism should be taught in college.  It's study should be mandated.  Compulsory training, Stoic exercises.  Perhaps there's such a thing as "Radical Stoicism"?

Tolstoy and Sanctimony

Donald Bartheleme wrote a most amusing story titled At the Tolstoy Museum. It begins with the sentence "At the Tolstoy Museum we sat and wept."  The museum is said to display thousands of pictures of Tolstoy.  In the story, museum staff carry with them buckets filled with handkerchiefs for the use of weeping visitors.  The story contains illustrations.  One displays a colossal figure of Tolstoy next to a tiny Napoleon.  Another shows Tolstoy "tiger hunting in Siberia" a la Hemingway.

The museum is said to have, I think, three levels, each being larger than the one below, so it appears to be falling on its visitors.  This is to impress upon them the weight of Tolstoy's vast moral authority.

It seems there are many Tolstoy museums, and I wonder if there really is one similar to the one in the story.   I rather hope there is such a place.

Tolstoy is considered by many to be the greatest writer in history, or to have written the greatest novel.  That's the gargantuan War and Peace, as one might guess.  That happens to be the only work of Tolstoy I've read from start to finish.  If it's the greatest novel ever written, I'm sad.  I don't think it's a novel, really; I think it's a kind of treatise in which the author uses characters, some historical and some not, to express a theory of history and opine somewhat ponderously, I think, on various human characteristics and philosophical issues.  Sometimes he doesn't even bother with characters.

The work is pervaded by a sense of rightness; or, perhaps more accurately, a sense of righteousness.  Tolstoy is throughout busy making moral points with varying degrees of subtlety, but it's difficult for someone convinced they know better--so much better--than others to be subtle in their expressions regarding what they know to be true.  So, Tolstoy is not particularly subtle in this novel, and I suspect he's not in his other works.  Nor would I expect him to be witty in them.  Holy men aren't known for their wit.

Tolstoy allowed himself to be drawn and photographed to an extraordinary extent.  This of course is indicative of the extent of his popularity, and the reverence in which he was held; a reverence in which he's still held, as spoofed by Bartheleme.  In many of them he's portrayed as farming, or praying, or generally looking wise and even holy.  He kept meticulous diaries recording his movements and thoughts.   He was a vegetarian, a pacifist, a sort of anarchist, and a Christian of the kind who know what Jesus really meant.  He was an exponent of non-violent protest and inspired Gandhi and others.  He became a kind of cult figure, and it seems was devoted to the nurturing of his cult.

George Orwell lambasted Tolstoy for his opinion of Shakespeare.  Tolstoy wrote that he couldn't understand the fame of Shakespeare or why Shakespeare was thought of so highly.   Tolstoy claimed he was repulsed by Shakespeare.  Shakespeare was not moral, he didn't address questions of real importance, he lacked the dignity required of a great artist.  As Orwell noted, Tolstoy was repulsed by Shakespeare because Shakespeare was a humanist, and Tolstoy's views were religious, for all his contempt for clergy.  Tolstoy, according to Orwell, wasn't a saint but tried very hard to become one.  I would go so far as to say he believed himself to be one, in any case.

Tolstoy was admirable in many ways, but was self-consciously good, and this I think is the problem with him and his work.  He knew himself to be good, and expected others to know that as well.  He made great efforts to show himself to be good, by his renunciation of his lands and title, for example (he was a Count).  He was a kind of exhibitionist when it came to his morality.

It's not clear to me that someone who considers himself to be uniquely moral, who is convinced that he knows what is right and what is wrong, is capable of being a great writer of fiction.  I think such a person would be too compelled to proclaim what is good and true, to lecture, to at best create morality tales and declamations in the guise of fiction.  The temptation to pontificate would be irresistible to such a person.  It would be particularly irresistible to a writer, as opposed to other artists such as a painter, composer or musician.  One might successfully create a painting or music which expressed what one thinks to be the truth without seeming to preach, but when we try to communicate by words, by prose at least, we can't avoid being obvious, even leaden, in our righteousness.  Perhaps a poet could be convinced of his/her holiness and still write great poetry, but Tolstoy was certainly not a poet.

I'm not repulsed by Tolstoy as he was repulsed by Shakespeare, but I think his sanctimony limited him in his art.  His work is overwhelming and hectoring.  He's more a moralist than a novelist.

The Other Man of Steel

"Stalin" was a name chosen in the days before the so-called October Revolution; so-called as it actually took place in November according to the modern calendar subsequently adopted.  It means "steel", as all or most now know.  I suppose that makes him the first Man of Steel.  The other one, a/k/a "Superman", was created in 1933 according to the invaluable Wikipedia--by high school students in Cleveland.

Stalin was, once, something like a high school student himself.  He was once other things as well, before he became Stalin.   He wrote romantic poetry in his native Georgian about his native Georgia, which it seems was considered rather good (the poetry, I mean).  A romantic boy he may have been. He was not a romantic man, however.  He was once a Georgian patriot, and came to be against Georgian nationalism, indeed nationalism of all kinds which endangered the unity of the Soviet Union. In fact, he came to extol Russians over the members of other nationalities subsumed by the Soviet Union.  He was a seminarian who came to believe in God, if he did believe in God, as something no seminarian would recognize as God.

Whatever he was, he came to be a monster, though not a mere monster as sometimes maintained.  He was often underestimated by Lenin, by Trotsky and others in the party and out of it, it seems to their regret.  He survived them all.  Sometimes he survived them by being responsible for their deaths, sometimes their imprisonment in the Gulag, sometimes he simply rendered them harmless or made them puppets of his will.  He never forgot a sleight and rejoiced in destroying those who thought him a lesser man or lesser intellect. 

Lenin was a special case.  Stalin wouldn't hesitate to disagree with him even while he was alive.  Lenin even criticized Stalin and warned that he was inclined to accumulate power, but he criticized Stalin's great rival and enemy, Trotsky as well.  It seems Stalin admired and respected Lenin in some ways, but in any case knew that he had become a totem of Marxism, the Revolution and  Bolshevism and in that respect could not be challenged.  Lenin also conveniently died in the 1920s, while Stalin was on the rise but not yet claiming the summit of power.

All  evidence indicates that Stalin was a highly intelligent man, and I think we underestimate him still by thinking him to be "only" evil.  We tend to attribute evil to the Devil, or upbringing and environment, or psychological deficiencies.  But people do evil things not just because they're bad, or immoral, due to some inherent defect or by being influenced by a malevolent supernatural power. 

Stalin was even cultured, in his own peculiar way and patronized certain writers, again in his own peculiar way, rebuking them when he thought appropriate.  He was not known as a great political thinker, but he read extensively.  He worked very hard.  He was a very able negotiator, as became known to the Western powers during and after the Second World War.

It's an amusing exercise to compare great tyrants and despots.  Napoleon had his own romantic youth, and was an ardent Corsican patriot, but turned away from such childish things.  Corsica became as unimportant to him as Georgia became to Stalin.  Napoleon had no artistic pretensions, so far as I know, though like Stalin he had his favorite artists.  He was an enormously hard worker and read constantly.  He had a vast memory and formidable intellect.  Goethe famously said Napoleon was as intelligent as a man could be without wisdom, and as great as a man can be without virtue. 

Hitler was a failed artist, but it seems he differed from Stalin and Napoleon in various respects.  He wasn't a hard worker, and may be called lazy in comparison.  His intellect doesn't seem to have been impressive.  And yet he's credited by such as B.H. Liddell-Hart with insight into military tactics and as being behind the Blitzkrieg and an astute proponent of the "indirect approach" to strategy, for a time, at least.  Before his descent into madness or drug-induced irrationality and mania.

All three men were alike in their ruthlessness, though, in pursuit of their goals.  That much seems clear.  The ruthlessness of Stalin and Hitler is particularly striking and horrifying because in pursuing their goals they sanctioned the deliberate and coldly planned death of millions.  Napoleon's wars caused a great deal of death and suffering as well, but Stalin and Hitler inflicted death not merely in war, but even more in the pursuit of ideological ends.

There is a difference, I think, between war and the planned annihilation of millions apart from war to achieve ideological or other ends.  Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions through starvation and by other means in the effort to modernize industry and collectivize agricultural production in the Soviet Union.  He was responsible for the deaths, incarceration, persecution of peasants, kulaks, Cossacks, professionals and intelligentsia, all of which he deemed necessary under Marxist-Leninist theory.  It seems evident that he sincerely believed what he did was required in order to make the Soviet Union a great power and in the pursuit of the goals of the October Revolution.  While he was a vengeful man, it's not the case that he killed only because of personal hate or animosity or to achieve absolute power.

The fanatical pursuit of ideological goals regardless of consequences to others is far more destructive than hate or ambition, particularly where fanaticism is combined with ability.  Stalin was a fanatic and a talented one.  There's no doubt that he hated many within the party and wanted absolute power over it and the Soviet Union itself but he is truly monstrous because he was a true believer, and as such he thought that those who didn't believe as he did should be destroyed.

Lex Lavacrum

Lex Lavacrum is my best effort to translate into Latin the words "Bathroom Law" or perhaps more appropriately "The Law of the Bathroom."  What seems silly in English acquires a certain majesty when translated into Latin, however loosely.  I confess that the idea of bathroom law as a kind of specialty practice has a certain appeal to me.  I rejoice in the silly.  But the fact is that someday soon there may be (if there are not already) courses, seminars, certifications in bathroom law thanks to the efforts of those who seek to regulate human excretion, or at least decree which humans may excrete in certain places.  Public bathrooms and who may use them now consume us, or some of us, there being little else worthy of our concern it seems.

Lex Lavacrum, Lex Dei seems to be the premise on which the laws we see cropping up these days are based, ultimately.  The law of the bathroom is the law of God, and God being concerned most of all with sex commands that only those with appropriate genitals may use public bathrooms.  If you lack the proper genitals, you may not use bathrooms designated for men or women regardless of whether you consider yourself to be a man or woman.  Regardless, in other words, of how you "identify" in the current usage of that word.

What, though, of those of us who identify as neither man nor woman?  There are those who identify themselves as cats or dogs or other creatures, presumably.  Will they demand the right to use our cats' litter boxes or squat on our lawns?  What would God have to say about that?  As noted, I rejoice in the silly.  But this would be a species identity issue, not a gender identity one, and I think we may assume--for the time being at least--that species identity doesn't create legal issues applicable to the Lex Lavacrum.

To be fair (if it's possible to speak of fairness in bathroom law), divine command isn't the sole basis on which bathroom laws are adopted or urged.  There are said to be privacy and safety concerns. 

Now whether and to what extent privacy can reasonably be expected in a public bathroom presents an interesting question.  Whether it should be a concern of the law presents an interesting question as well.  Most men urinate brazenly standing next to other men with considerable frequency.  A man demanding that he be allowed under the law to do so alone in a public bathroom for privacy reasons would probably not get far in court or in a legislature.  But it's likely that the law would recognize that there are privacy concerns at issue in some circumstances.

I'm now at an age when my need to urinate is sometimes of such urgency that urinate I will even if surrounded by nuns or while standing alone in the middle of a crowded arena.  But I admit that I'd feel somewhat uncomfortable doing so, though primarily relieved.  But are privacy concerns in a public bathroom something which demands the adoption of a law to be enforced?  Should the law protect us from embarrassment in these circumstances?

As to safety concerns, I have trouble understanding why they exist.  If it's maintained that people who identify as women or men but lack the requisite genitalia are more likely to assault other people than are others, it's not unreasonable to demand that be established before a law is adopted, and as far as I know there's been no effort to establish that's the case.  In the absence of any evidence to that effect, it would seem as likely that a man could enter a public bathroom and commit assault regardless of whether he identified as a man instead of a woman.

For my part, I see no need for such laws, and think laws should be adopted for good reason.  As Cicero wrote, "The more laws, the less justice" (Summum ius, summa iniura--sounds even better, doesn't it?).

Of course, if the use of public bathrooms isn't such a concern as to demand adoption of special laws governing their use, then may it not also be claimed that the legal system should not be used to enforce the "right" of transgender people to use any particular bathroom? That doesn't work though.  The use of the legal system in that case is to address a prohibition which already exists in the law.  There should be good reason for the prohibition.  If there is none, it should be subject to challenge.

It seems religion is the go-to basis for legal claims that people should or may be excluded from certain places or refused certain services these days.  Ingeniously if disingenuously, the argument is made that it's discrimination to prevent discrimination if the discrimination is based on some sincerely held religious belief.  But this is to maintain that the law should protect and sanction religious conduct and beliefs, though of course only of a particular kind.  The Constitutional prohibition against adopting laws prohibiting the exercise of religion is, like all other Constitutional provisions (except the Second Amendment, according to some) subject to reasonable interpretation.  If it's necessary to unreasonably limit the legal rights of others in order to exercise a religion, the exercise of that religion may be prohibited in that respect.

Regardless of these profound legal issues, though, Ciceronianus won't practice bathroom law if he can help it.