High Morals Drifters (35)

“Nunk, I know it’s three in the morning, and I haven’t talked to you for three weeks. Been busy.”
“How’s it going?”
“I just got three minutes.”
“For what?”
“I’m in the Travis County Jail for assault and battery.”
“What?”
“The guards are laughing, but I’m in over my head.”
“What did you do?”
“Put three guys in the hospital.”
“How?”
“I guess I cleaned out a gay bar before they cleaned me.”
“You guess…?”
“Well...”
“I’ll call Ray Don.”
“Ok, Nunk. I’m not in a good place. And I owe two term papers, or I’m up the creek.”
“Never are, where you are; and yes, you damn sure are. Knew there was a snake eyes in there somewhere.”

High Morals Drifters (34.9)

“Where did you get the money to pay off the investors?”
“You always ask the tough questions; a lot from my Dad.”
“But I thought he ditched you.”
“He did. But he read about me in the Wall Street Journal. It didn’t just hit the Livestock Weekly. I was Mr. Black Hat with them phony black cattle. Folks used to clear when I went in for coffee, and I bathed more than on Saturday night.
“Round here, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I can imagine.”
“Anyway, when he saw the grief I was in, he pledged a large block of stock to the IRS to keep them from takin’ my herd. Then, when that was over, he gave me some to pay off some of the folks that were caught up in the gin. Most held on with me and were part of a retained ownership deal I do with that feeder in Friona. That worked pretty well. I also made some in the cattle futures market. Had a broker at the Merc from down here who was delighted to run my paper.”
“So…”
“There was a lot of money to pay back. There were back taxes and penalties, and there was the money stolen or otherwise spent for nothing. We got a chunk of that offshore and some from Georgia, but the IRS got that first. I had to come up with the rest. At one time I was down ten million. That sent me packing to the outhouse for a while. But everybody got well and then some.”
“Your Mom know about your Dad?”
“No; he did not want that, but now that she’s gone, the news is all yours; just keep it to yourself. This place will be yours someday, and you can remember him kindly for it.”

High Morals Drifters (34.8)

“Nunk. Hick told me about the Houston deal and the lady. She wasn’t the green eyed gal was she?”
“No. That one I let get away because she went to church. Went to Mass with her somewhere off Shepherd or Greenbriar, I can’t remember. She gave me that look when I stayed behind. And that’s where I stayed. Shit. Big mistake. Shoulda just gone to the rail; just let the Father bless me. But I’d forgot the Ancient Mariner.”
“No ‘shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man’, huh.?”
“There was a story I could not cough up at the time. The fight, the life, the blues, the weed. I guess I had to get indicted later to realize it was behind me. I had dropped the Weathergal, but I did not know what to do with this one. And then I almost cost myself the ranch with the one later.”
“So that’s why you like Lupe.”
“I like Lupe ‘cause she’s Lupe, but she does have Ms Green Eyes’ clarity about her. She won’t do you wrong. And you don’t need a lifetime to figure that out.”
===========
“St. Anne’s.”
“What?”
“Where I didn’t belly up to the rail.”

High Morals Drifters (34.7)

“Hick, tell me, and then I’m going to leave it alone. What is the deal with Nunk and Ray Don?”
“They’re best friends. Been through too much not to be. Those guys are a damn pair. I mean they don’t talk all that much, but when Ray Don shows it’s just like they pick up where they left off.”
“Does it bother you Ray’s gay?”
“Yeah, at first, but Ray’s different. He used to come out before he came out, if you get my meaning. He was a great guy. He’s just another Nunk in different clothes. So to hell with it, I just learned to live with it.”
“What was the deal with the indictment in Houston?”
“You know, I never asked for the whole story, but from bits and pieces, this gal and Nunk were tight, or so he thought. They were doing a kind of breedin’ stock deal, a tax shelter back in the late seventies. She got the lawyers and most of the accountants. She found the investors. Nunk thought it was on the level. She was using some of his bulls to make a special Angus for a foundation breed. They were crossing ‘em with I forget what, a Chianina, or something. But she had her own experts and vets. Nunk wasn’t keeping the records.”
“How come he trusted her?”
“She was breathless. She put her hand on my shoulder one time, and I thought I was going to faint. She had those interpretive fingertips.”
“Oh boy.”
“Well, Nunk went for her; she fooled him for quite a while. She’d come up here. They’d go places. He was pumped. His Namath knee even started to feel better.”
“OOOk…”
“The whole thing got unraveled at the live stock show in Houston. Something was wrong with the breeds. The numbers weren’t right. I don’t know how they found out. But the gal wasn’t really doing what she said.”
“Hmm.”
“There were false transactions. There were empty pastures where there were supposed to be cattle. She was supposedly backgroundin’ some in Colorado; but they weren’t there. There was feed missing. There were non-existent barns.”
“How’d did Nunk miss all of this?”
“Blind, I guess. Plus he was up here doing his own deal. She was in with a promoter whom she was also screwin’, and they really soaked some folks. The tax shelter got disallowed. The money went gone. Nunk had the Feds after him, along with the state. The investors sued him. It was brutal for about three years. His mother’s oil stayed clear of it all, and my Dad had built up his account over the years, and they could not levy it. So the lights got paid. I was in Water Valley with my lady of sheep and goats.”
“What happened?”
“We were pretty worried that the ranch, which was in his name, was going to be taken. The gal and her promoter also sued Nunk, alleging he was the mastermind, and they tried to burn his accounting firm in Amarillo in the balance. They were piggybacking off the indictments.”
“Umm.”
“But what was really bad was it was love’s labor lost for Nunk. Dad said he was worse than a flat tire for six months. He played and played to those hounds and was deep in the jug.”
“Whoa.”
“Ray Don got him down to Houston and dried him out, and they started going over documents and figured their way through it day by day. It turned out that one of the investors from Atlanta was in on the scam. He was skimming our straws and doing a deal on his own.”
“No way… “
“Well, the indictments got dropped, and then the tide turned. The IRS went away. The woman and the promoter did time. I think Nunk and Ray found some money in the Caymans. I don’t know what happened to the guy from Atlanta, but he had some money they recovered; he’d been in the trucking business. The innocents in the deal, well, Nunk somehow made them whole. By ’88 he was clear of the whole thing. You had come along, but he had already given up on the women. You just made it easier.”

High Morals Drifters (34.6)

“There’s Hick and the trailer.”
“I’m talked out. I’m going to sit here in peace. You all go take a hike, if you like. I’ll fix some grub a little later, if you get hungry.”
“Well, you sure missed a family history, Hick.”
“I ain’t missed no histories and may have got some new revisions.”
“What’s old Clio for, Hick?”

High Morals Drifters (34.5)

“So why do you just play to the dogs now?”
“They’re all that I can stand to have listen these days.”

High Morals Drifters (34.4)

“Nobody followed?”
“They were in disarray. It had rained on and off, and it had started up again, so we had that for cover. And I don’t think they ever saw the plates. It was an old ranch pickup, legal, but without much light on them. We rolled into a moonless night in which all cows are black.”
“But surely somebody knew who you were.”
“We hoped not. We had met the band back in Austin. They’d asked us to show down there for fifty bucks. We thought we’d have a little fun and pay the gas. But they did not know us. We played. They gave us our fifty and left. Our mistake was that we’d stayed for a cold one. It was late. Nobody knew us.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Well, I couldn’t work the clutch with my left leg, and Ray could barely see, but we somehow got to Trinity in heavy rain where he had a friend as a resident. He bandaged Ray’s eye up on the sly. Another guy looked at my leg, splinted the damn thing, and recommended specialists in Austin. We hid my truck and laid low with him for a day or two ‘til he got out of rotation. Then he took us back to Austin.”
“So how did you explain your injuries?”
“Waterskiing. It was damned lame, but they bought it.”
“And Ray’s doc buddy?”
“Still does expert work for Ray. Ray pays well.”
“So then…?”
“We stayed out of the lights. Didn’t play after that. That was pretty much it. If they were tryin’, they never caught up with us. I thought maybe they’d have some prints, but they could have got smudged in the fight. And Ray always wiped down the Stratocaster. Anyway, neither of us was in a database at the time; so nothin’ would have keyed to anything. Those high-powered databases came later. I knew they had nothing else when I went through the indictment in Houston, and it didn’t come up.”
“And then?”
“I came home that spring with my big M.A. Taught some English at the school. Went back to ranching. Ray went to South Texas Law in Houston, and we trucked on.”

High Morals Drifters (34.3)

“How ‘bout a Hungerbuster? Let’s turn in.”
“You takin’ your cane?”
“No, that one’s loaded. Give me the other. No, on second thought, order me one to go, and we’ll head out toward home. The hogs won’t come to the trough for another hour or so, but I don’t want to run into anyone right now. O Jesus, there’s Milton; I’m going to make like I’m nappin.’ Go with God, but don’t come back with Milton.”
==========================

“It’s safe; he went to the head. Here’s yours.”
“I’m outa here.”
==========================

“Shit, look at those cranes. Let’s just pull over and watch. Those things have always been too pretty to shoot.”
“We’ll run down in the draw.”
“Good a place as any.”
“What about the war? I never have been clear on that; if family revelations are in order, you can always be John the Revelator.”
“In the face of the holy bird. You’re pickin’ up too much of my humor, boy. And listenin’ to the Blues Brothers.”
“Well, what about it?”
“You know I got 1Y’d because of my knee, but that was after Ray got disabled in a bar room fight.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Well, the knee was that old football injury I’d had since I was a junior in high school. And it got wrecked worse in that brawl where Ray nearly lost his eye. He’s legally blind in it.”
“What set that off?”
“We were down playin’ a joint on the outskirts of San Antonio. Somebody took a notion to reworking Ray’s gay anatomy with a pool cue, when we were loading up. I gave the sumbitch an emphatic negative, which took him into some glass across the lot. But then his cavalry showed up. Let’s just say we got out, uncollared and alive. Lost Ray’s Fender and a couple of Jensens in the process. And my Shure mike. Playin’ kind of lost its sheen after that.”
“No cops?”
“Hell, one of ‘em was a cop. I took him and his radio out first. They had visions of really screwing with Ray and getting his Fender.”
“You took out a cop?”
“I didn’t kill him. I just flattened him. He was a bit of a doughboy. He’d have hyperventilated if I hadn’t done it. Anyway, it was him or Ray, and it wasn’t going to be Ray.”
“So then what happened?”
“I got hit hard with a pipe from behind. Took my leg out from under me. Turned me into a wild ox. They got the Fender. But I made ‘em pay. Got two of ‘em in the face with a mike stand. I was swingin’ it like your field hammer by the end. Took the last guy down with it. Ray got the truck started, and I dragged my leg in as we pulled away, him holdin’ his eye, skiddin’ all over the place.”

High Morals Drifters (34.2)

“What happened when Ray Don came out?”
“Nothin’ much. I was still livin’ with that leftist chick from hell. We kept playin' and workin' on our M.A.’s; Ray quit tryin' to pick up ladies. He met a guy who waited tables at the old Ruggles on Westheimer; so he went to Houston pretty often. Occasionally, I’d go down there and sit around Prufrock’s; there was a green-eyed gal I took a shine to from St Thomas; damn, she was Vogue quality pickins, but that is another story. She and I would wait for him there. She was quite a relief from the Weatherwoman.”
“Prufrock’s? St Thomas.?”
“Prufrock’s was a joint that was a half-assed homage to Eliot. Don’t know what old Possum would have thought of it. St Thomas is a little Catholic school down Montrose at Alabama. It was actually not a bad place. You might do ok going there. They had some genuine medievalists that knew what it was to be faithful to a text, among other things. I went to classes with Ms Green-Eyes a few times; they were decent. But that was a while ago. You’d have to check it out. Today everybody in these universities seems to have a hard-on for somethin,’ other than what they should be reading.’”
“What do you mean, exactly, other than my favorite Greek, Dick Parmenides?”
“Can you imagine that poor fella in the Symposium? Alcibiades would have busted his Hermes.”

http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/567831

“Heh.”
“I think in the humanities, it seems to have got awfully bad. I mean, I haven’t messed in your business, but your classes are real different from the ones I had.”
“How?”
“We read the stuff and got a coherent view of it before there was anything like a dismissal of it. Your guys all seem to be off the handle in some way, looking for a way to spin it before you even know it. So they don’t know it. Don’t have to. Just have to run their mouths. And then remember the papers of their colleagues who run theirs in print.”
“So it wasn’t this way when you were around.”
“It was startin' to be, but there were enough old birds like Arrowsmith to keep the place honest. I remember bein' in the stacks one night lookin' through some current journals, and I saw this philosophical paper, I think from the University of Buffalo, called somethin' like the ‘phenomenology of fucking.’
“Written by a grandson of one of Teddy’s rough riders?”
“You know, two years down in that sink hole has given you somethin', but watch it around Santos and Lupe. They deserve better.”
“They are already getting better.”

High Morals Drifters (34.1)

“I can’t get over your telling me all this, Nunk.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect; we all got drifts in our gitalong. You start seein’ em when you get grown, if you got half a workin’ brain.”
“So how long have you known Ray Don?”
“Since before he came out. Met him readin' Auden and Pound and Eliot, those guys. I guess we were sophomores. There were all these damn girls in the class. Couple of ‘em turned out to be esteemed writers later. But at the time they were a gaggle of Susie Derkinses. Ray and I got to visitin' by default on the Cantos, and we got to be good friends.”
“Yeah…”
“Anyway, we used to make the rounds in those days; Austin was crankin’ up the music, and Ray Don played a pretty fair Strat. He used to sit in at some of the clubs. Warmed up the crowd for the ‘Vators a few times. I was playing some mean-ass blues on my ten holer, and we got to blowin’ folks skirts up. So we go back to jammin’ before Stevie Ray was even around.”

http://www.littlestevensundergroundgarage.com/psychedelic/13thfloorelevators.html

High Morals Drifters (34)

“Is this guy a professor?”
“He’s a Ph.D. candidate. Graduate assistant. Grades the papers. You know that drill. Surely there were guys like that back when you were there.”
“No lie. You know Ray Don? He was one such grader.”
“You mean your old buddy who flies up every couple years to hunt from Houston?”
“Yeah. Him. He came out in his early twenties.”
“What? Had no idea.”
“Well, he doesn’t stick it in your face.”
“So what does he do?”
“Lives with a florist in the Montrose; been together for years.”
“But what does he do?”
“High powered criminal attorney now. Was in on one of those Henley-like cases down there in some way. Been on fire ever since.”
“I don’t get where you’re coming from, then, Nunk. Ray Don is a good friend.”
“Not just a good friend. When you were little, Ray Don bailed me out of a deal with a woman who might have ended up with the ranch.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story, Stet. I was one of his first big cases, I guess. I got in some trouble at the Houston Rodeo which I won’t much go into. But this gal and I were partners in a deal that went bad and it kind of flopped on me; she sort of helped it along that way, and Ray and his crew had to get to the bottom of it while I was under indictment for a lot of nefarious shit. I came out clean, but it was messy.”
“So Ray is better than a good friend.”
“He’s one of those guys you can trust your life and wife, I might add, with.”
“So why are you so all bent up with this paper grader?”
“Because I don’t trust a guy who puts his hobby horse first, I don’t care what it is. When it keeps him from thinking, it’s a real problem. It’s like a judge having a conflict he won’t tell you about because he can’t see straight with it.”
“Well, I see that.”
“And when it’s just sex, it will stunt virtually everything you do, because it’s so basic.”
“Well, he sure can’t get his Hegel straight.”
“And he won’t when he grades your term paper.”

High Morals Drifters (33)

“Santos and Lupe seemed real happy to see you.”
“Yeah.”
“You keep this up, and we’ll have Angus-Holstein crosses.”
“Any problem with that?”
“No; you can breed ‘em so they beef up pretty good. They make a kind of interesting, not quite, black white-face. Typically have a little white on the forehead. Knew a guy from Quebec who did that in the 70’s.”
“Did what?”
“Worked with beef and dairy crossbreeds.”
“Oh.”
“They just had dairies in those parts. Had to bring in the beef cattle. It’s like a chilly Wisconsin up there. Snow drifting twenty feet in the winter. Little old smoke stacks puffin’ away in those drifts. Get the right angle and you make out a roof top. You pretty much have to speak French in the eastern counties; cantons, they call ‘em.”
“Yeah…”
“Anyway, they were bringin’ in Charolais, Maine-Anjou, Simmental, Limousin; all those fancy, frog breeds. The Japs were nosin' around lookin' for beef. Still are. My guy tried Angus among them, looking for a good crossbreed.”
“Umm.”
“Of course, he was English and thought the French were lazy. Never mind he had the only Cat on the road with a blade in his neighborhood. Could not figure why the poor French would be snowed in and show up late.”
“Why’d he try Angus?”
“I guess he thought their bulls might be lazy, too. Just can’t have much insouciance in a bull.”
“No problem with brown white-faces?”
“Long as they ain’t Herefords, shit no. Santos is a good friend. Can’t do any better. It’s your call.”
“Well, I just might make that call, Nunk.”
“Just watch your step in those Austin showers so you do.”

High Morals Drifters (32)

“Where’s Hick?”
“He’s had two flats on the gooseneck. He’ll be along later. How much money have we gone through down there, Stet?”
“You set aside 25K for the first year. We went through that. Then another 25k for the second. We’re pretty much through it.”
“How many hours can you salvage?”
“Nine to twelve, this semester; maybe I can get ‘em all.”
“It’s a far cry from the old halls. This new pack of lightweights is enough to make you puke. The first emanation from the One is a wooker. The breeding stock of reality.”
“Ease up, man, you’re all I’ve got since Dad died. The guy is just confused. He does not mean any harm. You have to get used to these people. They’re all over the place.”
“Well, it shows you that you can start philosophy anywhere you like, as long as they’ll let you. Some guys get their first principle when they’re looking down in the shower.”
“Nunk, you always said, ‘it’s where the man starts that counts.’”
“Goddamn, shit. See where you are; we may have to go a bit east and get you into A&M, where I hope the core is a little cleaner.”
“Nunk, I am damn sorry.”
“I know you are; what’d you make on those boards your junior year?”
“1570.”
“What a waste, and with no prep school to prep you.”
“Just wanted to do a little thinkin’, like you, Nunk, before all the workin’ shit started.”
“We’ll have to do it between pregnancy tests and fishin’. Santos needs you over at his place. He’s gamblin’ on some pedigree Holsteins to increase his production. His brother’s in from Anthony. He wants to meet you.”
“Ok, when do we go?”
“Been writin’ Lupe?”
“Not for a week or two…”
“Better get on down there, so she won’t be all frowns.”
“Yeah, will you run me over?”
“You still got that long arm, boy?”
“Yeah. Let’s see how many new ones he’s got comin’.”
“On the other deal, pull it out any way you can. Well, not quite any way.”

High Morals Drifters (31)

“…I have read your commentary over and over, sir, in the light of what we talked about last time.”
“Good, Stet.”
“I don’t yet see how the artist gets wisdom or liberty in your paradigm, phenomenological case of carving a rather odd, but enormous stylus, then making a mold from it for this personalized steel structure.”
“Yes, it took me quite a semester for that. It’s currently being circulated to a number of publications. I see it as a chip off the Parmenidean One.”
“I wish you luck, sir. But I do not get the point of any of this.”
“Let me explain a bit. It all has to do with the dynamic of the stylus qua sign, a kind of natural or first sign. But, in a nutshell, the wisdom is what one gets from knowing that from which Rousseau’s first convention arises. The overcoming of that convention is the freedom, or liberty. It is the immediate point of swelling liberty.”
“And so the slave gets his freedom by using this implement as though it were the master’s?”
“Yes.”
“But what would the master do with it that would distinguish it from any other implement, like a plough? I was actually reading some Heidegger along side this on the “ready to hand.”
“What a wonderful theme for a term paper. You might want to tie this in with the Onan myth in the Old Testament, since you seem to be familiar with that text.”
“You think I have a chance of passing now?”
“You’re warming up to the task, I assure you.”
“Thank you, sir. I guess I'm getting to the eye of the needle.”
“You’re quite welcome, Stetter. And what a curious metaphor.”
"Good evening, sir."

High Morals Drifters (30)

“Good afternoon, sir. I am totally lost. I’ve read Hegel on Lordship and Bondage, and I have never seen anything so strangely written.”
“Yes, Hegel has some of his own difficulties.”
“I don’t see how I’ll ever pass this course.”
“Well…”
“Then I read the selection that you authored on the object of the bondsman’s work, and considered what Hegel interprets the Bible verse to mean which says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It’s amazing, considering Job.”
“The text about fearing the lord is fascinating. And your amazement. Tell me more.”
“Job fears the Lord, after everything has been taken from him; he has nothing to lose, in the most basic of senses, yet he still fears the Lord and gives Him the ultimate that he can give Him. He waits for Him despite all of what his friends tell him.”
“Ok, so…I haven’t really studied Job; to me it’s just a another myth.”
“Well, sir, Hegel’s bondman’s fear of his lord leads him to know himself through his work for his lord. Just as Job is restored by waiting for the Lord, so the bondsman comes to his own understanding by serving his lord.”
“Ok, so…
“But Hegel’s bondman’s understanding is provisional, yet Job’s is not. It is through the theory of work and spirit, that is yet to come in Hegel, that the bondsman’s understanding becomes complete. Job’s is complete at the end of his service in the Bible story. Job’s understanding is absolute.”
“Well, I don’t quite see the point of the parallel.”
“Well, suppose I stop with Job and shoot my birds and run my dogs and leave it there instead of going forward from Hegel’s bondsman; what’s the difference since Hegel gets to the Absolute a few hundred tortuous pages later?”
“Job is a dead end, the way you see him. You’ll just be killing wildlife and going to a rural church, praying to overlook the contradictions.”
“Gosh, it did not hit me that way, sir.”
“Think about it some more, big guy.”

High Morals Drifters (29)

“…yes, I see now, but I am still trying to figure out how this is supposed to work with Rousseau, and he does not say anything about this.”
“Well you need to see Rousseau only as a backdrop for dialectic.”
“I can accept Rousseau as a coherent point of view, but what you’re saying about him makes him incoherent.”
“Not at all. This will become very clear, I assure you.”
“Yes, but if you can blur the distinction of convention and nature, then it would seem that you can make slavery part of a political society with a social contract, which Rousseau expressly denies.”
“It does raise an interesting question, unless there can be freedom in slavery.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Well some of our next selections deal in the dialectic of bondage. You should find that quite intriguing. It’s based on the notion that one can choose his chains.”
“Sir, I don’t see how I am going to pass this course. I can’t seem to figure out what this is all about.”
“Well, some evening maybe we should get together and go over matters of…, or at greater length.”
“Maybe, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Again the senseless formality.”
“Pardon me sir?”
“See you next time, Stetter.”

High Morals Drifters (28)

“…look, we’re moving toward a view of this in which you posit the ideal as a series of moments in an unfolding totality. But that’s coming up.”
“I haven’t understood enough to get the point of that, sir; where does it take you?”
“To a reconciliation of all of the theories.”
“But sir, you don’t need to reconcile them if you don’t have them. Maybe you don’t need them in the first place.”
“The question of need itself is subsumed in this totality so it will need to be examined for you to argue this.”
“Well, sir, thank you. It looks like you’ve thought of everything. But I need to be off. I need to get some dinner.”
“Come anytime you need, Stet.”

High Morals Drifters (27)

“…if you disagree with Rousseau, Stet, what are you going to put in his place as a theory of a truly Democratic state? You can see how he has taken care of Locke and Hobbes and other social contract theorists.”
“Well, sir, I don’t know that I have seen this, since I don’t know exactly what Locke and Hobbes are doing with this idea of a social contract. I have read those selections, sir; all this about nature and convention seems so fuzzy to me."
"How can you say that?"
"I do not see how you get conventions from nature. The terms seem opposed the way Rousseau uses them. So it depends on how you define them.”
“But these positions are just stepping stones to a more complete analysis.”
“Yes sir, but you can show a Leviathan coming from nature as Hobbes seems to do, by basing it on mutual self preservation. Or you can assume moral conventions belong to man as man, as Locke does, and make a kind of natural right. Then base a society on that. In both cases, you run nature and convention together, so it is not clear what they are and how they differ. Or you can try to divide them more or less absolutely as Rousseau, and you get an ideal that is unachievable, something that is just purely theoretical which you can’t get to from here.”
“Again, these positions lead elsewhere.”
“How do they lead anywhere if they don’t make sense to begin with? I mean the county is going to fix the roads or not fix them no matter what you put.”
“Back to the county and its happy tillers.”
“Yes, sir, I am afraid so.”
“You have to “put” something; you cannot think clearly without some theoretical reconciliation of these positions.”
“Well, if you did not have the confusion called "the state of nature" in the first place, what would you need to reconcile?”
“You have these positions, or positions like them, as soon as you start thinking about civil society, Stet. You need to see how far they will take you and what their point is.”
“Sorry, I just never noticed them before. I have a hunting license, which is part of the civil society; so is the hunting season. But when I’m running my dogs, I just run my dogs and think about where they’re going next and if they see the bird and all of that. I don't need a theory of a state of nature to do this.”
“You don’t think about what the dog is going to do to the bird?”
“Well, the bird is usually dead, sir.”
“Dead?”
“I’ve usually shot him, unless somebody else has, sir.”
“Oh.”
“I have a sheep dog that will pick a grackle out of the air, if it comes too close; but we’d go hungry if we waited for that event.”
“Amazing. Are you aware of the embedded cruelty in your way of life?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, that is one of those theoretical notions that you need to reconcile.”
“With getting dinner?”
“Possibly, yes.”
“I’ll do my best to see the point of this, sir.”

High Morals Drifters (26.1)

“Are you asking to be a guest lecturer so as to rectify your concerns? I can speak to Herr Grosskase, if you wish.”
“Oh no, sir. I would never be up to that task. These texts and lectures are very difficult, sir.”
“Indeed, they are, Stet.”
“Yes, sir, but it seems to me that the conditions of a General Will are not attainable, and so we will always be in chains, if we accept Rousseau’s position.”
“Well, as they are an ideal which applies to political reflection, you and I may always be bound to some political bedpost.”
“But if you never can attain a General Will, how does it work?
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You have to have county commissioners and agents and such. What is the difference if it’s Rousseau, or Locke, or Hobbes riding shotgun, sir?”
“You’re fascinating. Such a basic man of the land. How’d you ever get here?”
“Drove down from the Panhandle.”
“Your family must be very proud for you to be here; you have to be the first to go this far.”
“No, sir. My uncle attended 40 years ago and got an M.A. from here.”
“He reads philosophy?”
“He’ll read anything.”
“How quaint. Most interesting. We’ll have to adjourn at this point and take these matters up after our next class.”
“Thank, you sir.”

High Morals Drifters (26)

“Back again, big fella?”
“Yes, sir. I’d like to ask something else.”
“Feel free.”
“Well sir, there have been many countries in history, and I don’t see how you could argue that any of them could have been free countries in Rousseau’s sense.”
“I think Rousseau would agree.”
“And I don’t understand, sir, what he means when he says we are born free.”
“Well, you are born free in nature.”
“Yes sir, but this freedom is immediately alienated to the father of the family, as Rousseau seems to see it, so it is not a freedom in the political sense. You’re only born free in the sense that the family is said to give you up when you become an adult.”
“Well, you are free to preserve yourself. That is your freedom in nature.”
“But why run this together with political freedom, sir? It seems to be very different in that it is conventional, not natural.”
“True, but suppose the conventional comes from the natural.”
“But Rousseau does not set any conditions of nature for the conventional freedom for which he is arguing. Otherwise, he would not say we are born free but everywhere in chains. He would show instead how in nature, freedom in the political state arises, as a kind of point of natural science, as Hobbes rather does, in his way. But he does not seem to do that, sir.”
“Well, maybe we need to look at something more basic that overcomes this problem. I think we will, as the course progresses.”
“Yes sir, but the lectures are clearly not going in that direction. At least it seems to me that way, sir, and that is why I am here, since Dr. Grosskase is so hard to find, sir.”
“How so?”
“Not to criticize his office hours, sir; but from six to seven I’m getting chow. And he has this theory of signification which is confusing me. I don’t understand what he means by ‘freedom in the sign of freedom’ and so on.”

High Morals Drifters (25)

“Hello Stet.”
“Hello, sir. I’ve read the entire book and commentary. I still don’t understand why Rousseau says that man is born free and yet everywhere we see him in chains.”
“What do you want to major in, Stet?”
“Maybe pre law.”
“Well, just suppose that he is saying that without a social contract, you’re not truly free. You are in an arrangement in which you have ceded your freedom. The theme of this course is freedom and ways to conceive it.”
“You mean freedom in a political arrangement, here?”
“Certainly it would be included, yes.”
“Well that’s what has got me confused; the commentary suggests other things as well.”
“Yes.”
“What else would be included? This seems to be a political book. I guess I don’t understand.”
“Well, Rousseau sees families as societies, as well, does he not?”
“ As natural societies, not political ones, I thought.”
“Well, we are looking at the politics of many kinds of arrangements.”
“But it is a first convention that makes the politics possible. I thought that was what Rousseau says. So it would be the politics of the social compact that would make possible the other politics you’re talking about.”
“One has to ask the question of what a convention is. We are going into the underlying conditions of conventions in this course.”
“Yes, sir, but I still do not get why Rousseau wrote what he did in the first place.”
“Keep reading and we’ll talk about it after next week’s classes.”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir.”
“No ‘sir’ is necessary. Social distance and familiarity being what they are, they function more as illusion.”
“What, sir?”
“A subject for a later date.”
“Yes, sir.”

High Morals Drifters (24)

“Name?”
“Howard, Stet.”
“Howard Stet?”
“No sir, ‘Stet Howard’.”
“Stet?”
“Yes, sir. Its short for ‘Stetson’.”
“So you’re Stetson Howard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What can I do for you, big guy?”
“Well, sir…”
“You had a question?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What would that be?”
“I don’t understand why Rousseau says that man is born free and yet everywhere we see him in chains.”
“How much of the book and commentary have you read?”
“A fair amount.”
“I cannot discuss this until you have read the material and the commentary; you’re not prepared to understand this question until you have done that and seen the broader context of this position.”
“Thank you, sir. I am sorry to have taken your time.”

Save the tale from teller?

A note to any 18th century, dear reader.

The first part of this dialogue begins somewhat philosophically on learning right from wrong. Philosophy does not interrupt this dialogue. I allow it to start with a philosophical question,

“Can you be blamed for something that you did not know you should not do or say?”

The question is taken up to see where it leads. It happens to lead where it led. A different philosophical approach might have led somewhere else. Had one of the talkers been a Kantian, he might have led the discussion straight to this question,

“Can you will that someone be blamed for something that he did not know he should not do or say, as a universal law of nature?”

Had it gone this way, there might have been a good deal of shifting about what it means to will something as a universal law of nature. Had both been Kantians of different stripes, the discussion might have become quite subtle. Had the second been a utilitarian, matters might have even become rancorous. Had I thrown in a Nietzschean Ubermensch, well…, it’s anyone’s guess.

But my guys are not theorists. They are a reflection of my earlier view that there is no philosophy. Not that there is no philosophy for a reason. It is not that there is no philosophy because one should be a Derridean, reconstituting writing into text. Nor because one should be an Austinian, saying that philosophy is a kind of conceptual confusion that results from misunderstanding ordinary language.

There is rather no philosophy because there is nothing to say. It is not that “there is nothing to say because…” That would mean that there is nothing to say because there is something to say.

So my guys talk, and when generality rears its head, it usually finds itself soon “six feet in the rubbing dust,” as the poet Thomas might say.

The point also is that nothing is stilted. For there is nothing to build on stilts. This dialogue is not a Hylas and Philonous of nothingness. It does not posit something to get nothing, such as when Berkeley posits sense to argue there is no material substance. Not to slight Berkeley for his time. The drift of the passage below could not be more salutary.

“I intirely agree with you, as to the ill Tendency of the affected Doubts of some Philosophers, and fantastical Conceits of others. I am even so far gone of late in this way of Thinking, that I have quitted several of the sublime Notions I had got in their Schools for vulgar Opinions. And I give it you on my Word, since this Revolt from Metaphysical Notions to the plain Dictates of Nature and common Sense, I find my Understanding strangely enlightened, so that I can now easily comprehend a great many Things which before were all Mystery and Riddle.”

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/Berkeley/Hylas/


Then, of course, to set up what is to come later and to have some general fun, I have had my men reflect about that which they usually know least: women. Hence about whom a good deal remains mystery and riddle.

High Morals Drifters (23)

“Well, I don’t know about that.”
“…and that little girl did the same thing Mavis did, only she bested her mother by a number of years.”
“Don’t look at me. We know who the father was.”
“Yes, we do. It was legit, so Mavis raised her right. Unfortunately, a tractor got him. It’s a shame; he was turning into a good hand. But you’re safe there, Hick. Far as I know, you’ve just got the ones down in Water Valley.”
“Thank God, they’re grown and their mother found a better man.”
“Amen.”
“So Mildred Ann’s boy is Mama’s boy. And you’ve been raising him for quite a spell.”
“You have, too, but he doesn’t know who you are.”
“Hmm. Who I may be.”
“Talk about an artless dodger.”

High Morals Drifters (22)

“…now, Hick, like it or not, back then, Mavis was one fine tart.”
“Don’t let’s get back to her.”
“And she could smoke those Luckies and pop that Schlitz with the best of ‘em.”
“Yeah…”
“Well, she had a little girl while she was living next to your trailer.”
“With Mavis, conception had to be immaculate.”
“‘Fraid not, then.”
“Now don’t look at me that way; I was only eleven.”
“We don’t know how it happened, but Mama forgave both of ‘em. Mavis started going to Bible Class and you all moved to the ranch, but about three miles down that ranch road.”
“Ok, I remember that, but are you telling me that all her Bible Belter Bluster is bullshit?”
“No, it saved her and your Dad’s ass from perdition; but she needs to revivify the spirit frequently at the expense of assorted children in the community.”

High Morals Drifters (21)

“You know, you never mention your old man.”
“Well, he was on the railroad side, some generations after all the work was done. Got too big for his britches and ran off with some Kansas City lady when I was thirteen. He took his railroad stock and some mineral interests. We got the rest. He pretty much rotted away in hotel suites, chasin’ dames and whiskey, when Lady Ginger wasn’t lookin’. Business trips, you know. I went up there to bury him.”
“Shit. You never told me that.”
“You never asked.”
“How did your mother and my Dad get together?”
“We don’t say that too loud. You all lived in town in that trailer, remember, next to Mama’s sister?”
“Yeah, don’t remind me.”
“One night he showed up with your ten year old ass and needed some work. He hired on. Anyway, Mama and I ran the spread with your Dad and some hands, and Dixie told us what to do with the breed.”
“Yeah?”
“We’d get these long letters about what do so, and your Dad and I would figure what she was saying. Occasionally there were some British expressions that messed us up pretty good. We spent some time trying to figure out what a bonnet on a tractor was.”
“You needed a British Ag Agent like we had down in Tom Green.”
“You were damn sorry with those sheep and goats, before you found your way back up here. Thank God, the sheep numbers went to hell. Those damn things are just looking for a place to die.”
“I won’t even get you going on goats; for you the Good Shepherd only saves Angus.”
“Let the inclusive church cover them all, I pray.”