— On Assholes

This smart review in the New York Times Book Review suggests that my use of Sartre’s play No Exit in the Chapter called “Society” isn’t entirely convincing.  That may have been just the obligatory criticism, but, looking back, I think the point could have used more fanfare.

As important as mutual recognition is to us, Sartre thinks we never really achieve it.  Surfers certainly understand the problem.  In the line up for waves, surfers often find themselves in a struggle to be seen.  The fraught arguments about right of way, about who burned or snaked whom, and who is going to get their ass kicked, are really about exacting respect, about being recognized as an equal.  Surfers even have a name for what Sartre called The Look: “stink eye,” so to register a complaint, and maybe invite an argument.   For surfers, “hell is other people” rings true, even in the most beautiful of surroundings.

But then maybe the waves start pumping after a tide change.  And that thing we fought about before, whatever it was, now doesn’t matter so much.  It’s all good, when

A new book by yours truly (from Doubleday, here at Penguin/Random House).

An excerpt from the Introduction is at lithub, here.

Or try this excerpt, at Outerknown, on the sublime, the gnarly, and the beautiful.

Or this bit, at UCI, on the seven EZ steps to surfer success.

In a review for the Sierra Club Jonathan Hahn nicely brings out the theme of disconnection:

“There is an entrenched and dangerous malady of disconnection that defines our contemporary moment, James wants to contest. Disconnection—or to put it more precisely, lack of attunement—defines modern life, whether it is a disconnect between work life and leisure life, between industrial societies and the environment those societies are exploiting, between computer screens and the world those screens are supposedly making more accessible. We are out of tune with nature, with leisure, with each other. Climate change ends up being as much a symptom of the 40-hour workweek as the blind greed of ecological exploitation. “The old-style capitalism put us out of attunement with the world’s available resources,” he writes.

Enter: surfer-being.

A theory of attunement is exactly what James—an avid surfer—is after here, and the surfer serves as a heroic foil against which all that is wrong with our beleaguered modern moment can be compared.”

Read the full review of _Surfing with Sartre_ here.

A short excerpt from a new book:

“Is there a self-help guide to surfer success? Perhaps, in these seven steps:

First, take it easy. Enjoy the fine weather. Watch the waves. Maybe go for a paddle if the waves aren’t doing it today. Chillax. For those of a nonaquatic lifestyle, take ample time in leisure, and don’t try to do too much. Leave time for becoming attuned to your books or your music, your garden, or the birds in your neighborhood.

Second, accept. Accept your present circumstances. Because nothing interrupts attuned adaption to this coming moment like resisting the fact that one is, for now, where one is. Seek reconciliation. Check feelings of entitlement. Cultivate grace and gratitude. … (the rest is here).”

_Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump_ , by yours truly (cover photo here)

Zach Dorfman offers a lovely discussion, sounding themes of dignity, in the LA Review of Books, here.  Here’s the first bit:

YOU KNOW HIM, I PROMISE. He is difficult to avoid — especially, it seems, in our great urban centers. Curiously, the tonier the ZIP code, the more he seems to multiply like some droning, infuriating ungulate. He is the person who weaves through three lanes of traffic suddenly, without signaling. He is the person who sits near you at a movie theater and proceeds to take a phone call in the middle of the feature. He is

One of two Italian archetypes, according to Tim Parks (discussed here).  The “furbo,” or clever person, bends the rules, in contrast with the “pignolo,” who is law-abiding stickler.  At a train station, for instance:

“When a “furbo” cuts in line, “there is a slow, simmering resentment, as if the people who have behaved properly are grimly pleased to get confirmation that good citizenship is always futile, a kind of

Yes, it is entirely possible.  Spain recently tried it, or started to try it, when Zapatero the socialist adopted republicanism in the style of Princeton philosopher Phillip Pettit.  Zapatero fell from grace after the 2008 crisis, but mainly because *the left* rejected his market-friendly response.  His republicanism apparently wasn’t socialistic enough.  The fascinating story is told in this book.

On Pettit-style republicanism, see this previous post.

A sympathetic understanding of “republican” thought requires us to raise taxes.

Here’s the sympathetic understanding: in society, our chief concern is and should be that everyone is assured against subjection to the arbitrary will of others.  In being so assured, we can look at our fellow citizens in the eye, as equals.