Bruce’s Thoughts

For all of my readers who don’t hail from New England, I should explain that we have a local holiday treasured only second to Christmas and the Red Sox opening day. It’s called “Patriots’ Day”, and is traditionally celebrated on April 19th, the anniversary of the Battle at Old North Bridge, the first recorded engagement of the Revolutionary War.

We provincial Massachusans celebrate it as the glorious triumph of the small but scrappy Minutemen against the Hessian mercenaries of King George, but bear with my while I indulge in some revisionist history. The Battle at Old North Bridge was anything but glorious, and not even a victory. It was a sorry, squalid affair that could have been averted at several points. Let me tell it from the British point of view.

British intelligence confirmed that the colonists had been importing and stockpiling powder, shot, and arms; and the commander in Boston decided to mount a campaign of surprise inspections to find and destroy these arms caches. So around 750 British troops (neither Hessian nor mercenary) set off on the 18-mile road march from Boston to Concord.

As they approached the town of Lexington, they were tired, hungry, hot, and footsore. On the farther outskirts of Lexington some local militia with muskets lined the road and started shouting abuse at the redcoats (”lobsters” as the were known locally). Major John Pitcairn followed standard British army discipline, and formed his men into a firing line, further aggravating the locals. Someone’s gun went off, there was a general exchange of fire, and men of both sides lay on the ground.

At this point, either Pitcairn lost control of his men or ordered them to sack Lexington in reprisal. (In the 18th century, the rather casual Rules of War sanctioned the plunder of a town if it resisted occupation). In any case, the British went on a short-lived rampage in Lexington center, burning one building and plundering several homes. By the time Pitcairn could get them under control, word of the “Lexington Massacre” had been exaggerated, and spread far and wide.

The British continued, and had to pass the Concord River via the North Bridge on the way to Concord center. Following army procedure, Pitcairn left a rear-guard to protect the bridge to ensure his retreat route. It was this small squad that confronted 400 angry Minutemen at less than a football field’s distance. The British retreated over the bridge and removed several planks to stop the Minutmen’s advance.

Meanwhile, the main British force had reached Concord center and discovered and burned several gun carriages. (In fact, arms and power had been stored in Concord, but were moved earlier in the day). The Minutemen saw the smoke and assumed that the British were burning the town as a reprisal - a reprise of the Lexington Massacre - and began to advance on the British. When the forces were within pistol shot (around 100 feet) someone’s gun went off, and that started a skirmish of several volley that left all the British officers, most of the British troops, and several Minutmen dead or wounded. At this point, the Minutemen declined to follow up their advantage and retreated up Punkatasset Hill to Barret’s Farm.

Now the nightmare began in earnest for the British troops. The main body returned to the squad at the North Bridge, gathered the wounded, and began the return march to Boston. But the Minutemen had dispersed to line the stone walls and trees on either side of the road and began picking off the redcoats, starting with the officers. Some of the redcoats broke and ran, but the rest maintained army discipline, threw out flankers, and continued the long march back to Boston.

So, from the British point of view,

• they were on a legitimate counter-insurgency mission,
• they encountered armed, hostile terrorists, and were fired upon,
• at every point, they followed British army procedure, and remained a disciplined, professional force.
• the brief sack of Lexington was (by the 18th century Rules of War) justified,
• at North Bridge, a vastly superior force of terrorists slaughtered a squad of their comrades,
• the terrorists violated the Rules of War (of the 18th century) by aiming at the officers and refusing open combat.
• the British retreated under fire in good military order, and succeeded in reaching their base.

See, it’s not so straightforward when you reframe the day’s events from the British point of view. If it’s still not clear enough, try replacing “British troops” with “GI’s” and “Minutemen” with “Viet Cong” and see how you feel about the recital.

Patriot’s Day is something to learn from, but not to celebrate.

I’m just starting to read Book 10 of The Laws by Plato, in which he defends (1) the existence of the gods, (2) their beneficence toward Man, and (3) the correctness of the Athenian laws mandating belief in (1) and (2). Before I get to my argument with Plato, I have to report one great quote. The Athenian Stranger (Socrates?) is talking to a youthful atheist:

“Neither you alone nor your friends are the first to have held this opinion about the gods, rather that people who have this disease - many or few - are always appearing. And I, who have come across many of them, can tell you this: no one embraced from youth this opinion about the gods - that they don’t exist - and continued into old age, steadfast in this way of thinking.”

But that’s not what I wanted to write about today - I wanted to write about the essential unfairness of the Socratic method of debate. In theory, the Socratic method arrives at the truth through a question and answer dialog that leads one of the parties to see the error of his views and to embrace the obviously correct views of the questioner. That’s the theory, at any rate.

In fact, the Socratic method is a sort of academic bullying, when a stronger debater dominates a weaker, and bludgeons him into submission through tricks and hidden assumptions. As I read The Laws, I keep wanting to say, “Wait a minute, the Athenian Stranger hasn’t proved anything - he’s just diverted everyone’s attention into the argument he wants them to take, the only one that leads to his conclusion. If I had been there I’d have been all over him, bringing back to earlier assumptions and generally fighting back.”

At one point, the Athenian Stranger says, in essence, “The argument I’m about to make is pretty complicated, and I’m not sure that you two are up to it, so why don’t I take both parts - questioner and answerer for a while.” Under that dubious scheme, he proves that Soul precedes either Nature or the Arts, because the nature of Soul is that it can move other things, and the nature of the other two is that they are moved. Well, this is just the primum mobile argument of Thomas Aquinas tarted up a little, and it’s not hard to refute: the existence and the nature of the Soul are just assumptions on the Stranger’s part, and are open to challenge. If you deny those assumptions, then the whole argument falls apart completely - and Plato does but assert the primacy of the Soul as if everyone believed it.

So I’m becoming disenchanted with the Socratic method of debate as a way of finding the Truth. Does it make an effective teaching technique? Possibly, if your goal as a teacher is to lead your students to a way of thinking without overtly lecturing them into it. But if you’re trying collectively to discover the truth, then it’s not the right way to go about it.

When I was a youngster, the boys in the neighborhood used to play “GIs and Japs,” and we killed imaginary Japanese soldiers by the thousands. As it happened, my father had fought against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Phillipines, and had served in the occupation of Japan; and had formed a great respect for the Japanese as warriors and as a people. He let me know gently but firmly that I had stepped over a line, and that this game was now outlawed.

So we changed the game to “GI’s and Nazis,” until another father, who had fought in the Ardennes Forest and seen the ruins of Berlin, put a stop to the game for similar reasons.

Then we changed it to “Cops and Robbers,” which was never banned, but wasn’t much fun, because the “robbers” weren’t real enough. So these sorts of war games died out, and we move on to other imaginary games, and I’m pleased that we did.

Today, I am embarassed about all of this, and can only plead that I was young and didn’t know any better, though I should have. (I’m pleased to say that we never played “Cowboys and Indians,” or I would still be expiating my guilt.) But it finally dawned on me that there is no such thing as “the bad guys:” people whom we could kill without feeling guilt - an important lesson for a kid.

And now, as an adult, I watch the film and television industries scrambling to keep alive the same sorts of propaganda. It was okay to portray the sinister Russians during the Cold War, but that fell apart when we found out how the Russian people were suffering during the last throes of the Soviet Union. Then, Hollywood turned to fanatic Arabs for their stock bad guys, and we’re encouraged to cheer as Jack Bauer tortures and kills them to foil their twisted (and improbable) plots. But as we learn more about the people of North Africa and the MidEast, it is pretty hard to cast them in the role of villains - they’re having a hard enough time surviving to be a real menace. It should finally be clear that:

There is no such thing as “the bad guys.”

Every time that we try to imagine a villain that we can hate without guilt, we learn more about them as a people, and find that they are more like us than not. What they want most is to feed and clothe their families, to see their kids grow up well, and to make an honest living. When you think about our similarities, it’s ridiculous to think of them as “the axis of evil.”

So, reader, learn the lesson that I did from my father - fight back against the propaganda that turns our brothers and sisters into the enemy, and develop the reflex of asking, “Who is this person that we’re supposed to fight, and how are we alike?”

Who knows - we might have to go back to “Cops and Robbers.”

There’s something evil that has come to live in my computer. It steals cycles from the processor and it keeps me from getting anything at all done.

No, I’m not talking about the Conficker worm, it’s a nasty little game called “Snood.” My son brought it back from college, and I innocently thought that I’d give it a try - and now I’m well and truly addicted. It’s like eating potato chips. You can say to yourself, “This is the very last one, I promise!” but it’s so easy to click “New Game” that before you know it, it’s midnight and you have no idea where the time went.

Here’s a screen snap of a partial game. It doesn’t look all that exciting, does it? It’s not a shoot-’em-up, it doesn’t require lightning reflexes, and it takes only moderate aiming skill and strategy; but that doesn’t matter, it’s a killer and you should stay away from it.

By the way, what’s your high score?