Immoral vs. Amoral

This is a revisit to the earlier "good vs. evil" blog entry. It occurred to me that "evil" is somewhat simplistic in describing the behavior, and more importantly, the ethical motivations, of those who fall into that category.

 The "immoral" are those who have moral standards and ethics, probably fairly close to the "moral", but who, for whatever reason, choose to ignore them. Most likely the reason is because morals get in the way of getting them what they want: money, power, sex, etc. They either cannot achieve these goals morally, or simply find it easier and more convenient to do so immorally. If people get hurt, too bad for them. That’s life. If the "easy" thing and the "right" thing were always the same, we would always be angels and there would be no problem (at least from those who might otherwise be immoral). The issues and problems arise when the "easy" way is not the right way. That’s when moral choices have to be made, and which choices are made determines our moral guilt or innocence.

 The "amoral" are those without any moral standards at all. They do not know right from wrong. Left to their own devices, they do as they please without any hesitation, guilt, or shame. The only thing stopping them from committing crimes is concern over "retribution from authority figures" (to paraphrase Beldar, the Conehead father). The extreme example is the Mob assassin who cold-bloodedly kills his target and then goes off to lunch without so much as a second thought. Not all amoral people are this dangerous, but they are certainly more dangerous and less trustworthy than the immoral, since they have no internal standards to control their behavior.

 The major difference is shame and guilt. While the amoral are immune to this and cannot be shamed into behaving "good" – criminal laws and vengeance from their victims are the only restraint they obey – the immoral can sometimes be affected. Criticize an immoral person and the likely result – assuming they intend to continue their behavior anyway – is resentment. Do so to an amoral person and they will simply ignore you. Any "guilt" or "remorse" they display is insincere, designed only to placate those unexplicably bound and motivated by these alien ideas called "morals."

 Which is not to say that the "moral" are perfect. Ultimately the temptations we face in our lives overcome our resistance and get the best of us – some more than others. But our guilt affects us and drives us to resist, to some extent, and ideally take full responsibility for our mistakes and failings. We will sin, we will fail, despite our best efforts, but the end result will inevitably be far better, for us and all concerned, than if we made no effort at all or worse – as the amoral do – never even cared in the first place.

 There may be hope for the immoral. They may tire of their ways, grow wracked with guilt, or otherwise choose to abandon immorality. They have some frame of reference, some moral state of grace to which to return, that they recognize as good, however far from it they may have strayed over the years – which is the whole point of the parable of the prodigal son.

 I’m less sure there is hope for the amoral. They simply have not developed moral standards, and I don’t see what would cause them to suddenly develop morals and a conscience at any point in their lives. It’s not there inside them to return to...it simply doesn’t exist, it wasn’t created at the time it was supposed to be established inside them. "Right" and "wrong" are vague terms with little meaning, concepts which other people understand and care about, but not them.

Early Years of Proletarian Struggle

Years before I became the high-powered divorce lawyer (ha!) that I am now, I put up with a bunch of silly summer jobs as a teenager. These are long gone from my resume, so I’ll recap them here for everyone’s quiet amusement.

 Busboy – Ambassador’s Residence, US Embassy Paris – Summer 1985. My first job – EVER. I was 16 years old. Just one day of picking up plates and dishes and taking them into the kitchen. It was hot out and we had to go outside. The food was fancy dishes and there were lots of important people, but I only recognized the Ambassador himself. At the end of the day they gave us our paychecks.

 Foreign Commercial Service – US Embassy – Summer 1985. The very next day, I started this job. The FCS helps US firms find French distributors and wholesalers for their products in France. The actual work hardly kept the permanent staff busy – so they were bored and it was very low-key. On the very first day I ran out of work within one hour – and told my father I’d be going home. His response: "no way. You stay until 6 p.m." "But there’s no work here! There is nothing to do!" "I don’t care. FIND something to do. Ask them to give you work. But you are not leaving there until 6 p.m." Somehow I managed to keep busy. Looking for work was more work than actually working. The hours dragged by. If they gave me a task stuffing envelopes I was ecstatic. However, it did impress them that I was eager to work and looking for something – to keep busy and make the time go faster. The boss, Mr. Flannery, signed letters of recommendation. The job was certainly a learning experience.

 Office of American Services – US Embassy – Winter 1985. I took this job for two weeks to earn money to buy a guitar. This office mainly makes tourist passports for US citizens in Paris who have lost theirs. I even helped make them – typing in the name with the special font ball on the typewriter, gluing the picture to the passport, and then stamping it. Given that passports are valid for 10 years, none of the passports I made are still valid. Moreover the new ones are scannable. Anyhow. I also put old ones in the shredder, and few things are as cool as shredding. My "boss" was Bernard, a shy French guy who loved rock music. He turned me on to Hawkwind and Motorhead. And the beauty of it was, after I made the money I did go out and buy a guitar – a cherry sunburst copy of a Fender Stratocaster.

 Visa Section – US Embassy – Summer 1987. This was the complete opposite of the FCS. The Visa Section is swamped with French tourists during the summer; the line goes around the block. This was one job where we were all overworked and busy from 9 to 6, even the full-time permanent staff. From 9 to 3, I stayed outside in a little booth handing back passports with tourist visas to the various French people who had applied for them. The typical turnaround was 24 hours. If the application was rejected, it was usually because someone didn’t answer all the questions – like "are you a communist?", "are you a terrorist?", "are you a criminal?", "are you a drug addict?", "did you collaborate with the Nazis during WWII?" (which kept Kurt Waldheim out of the US). The reason these questions weren’t answered was because the applicant was a 5 year old child being sponsored by their parents. Oddly, being a communist wouldn’t disqualify you if you were honest and admitted it. It was LYING on the application that nailed you. [FYI – if you ever lie on a visa application and you are caught, the INS will ban you for LIFE. Tony Montana from "Scarface:" "Donnnn FOK with me!!"]

 From 3 to 6, I came inside to the air conditioned office and entered applications into the system, and they would eventually be reviewed against a State Dept database back in Washington. This is the database that could tell the Consular Officers if a particular applicant wasn’t being completely truthful. Sure enough, many applicants would be denied, yet come back day after day to apply again and again. The officers would tell them, "we rejected it yesterday, we rejected it today, and we will reject it tomorrow if you come again. Get a clue and leave." If they gave any problems, the Marine guards were usually menacing and intimidating enough to do the rest.

 Anyhow, this was the first job where they depended on me and found that they could. The hours went by quickly and before I knew it the summer was over.

 Paris Air Show – June 1989. Two years later, my summer began with this. 12 days straight – no weekends off. Up to catch a bus at 7 a.m. at Place de la Concorde, out to Le Bourget Airport (the rinky-dink obsolete airport that Lindburgh flew into in 1927) for the Air Show. We worked at the US Pavilion, either working the front desk, in an airconditioned booth entering data into a database, or at the back entrance telling people either "goodbye! Hope you enjoyed it!" or "no, this is just an exit, come in through the main entrance." They had 30 kids there working, doing work for about 10, so we were encouraged to take breaks and walk around the air show and see whatever we liked. Talk about no pressure. The SR-71 had just been retired, so that was the highlight of the show. The pilots came through our pavilion and handed out lots of cool badges. And of course, no show would be complete without a Russian fighter jet crashing – and the pilot (luckily enough) managed to eject and survive (no one else was injured aside from Russian pride). The only downside to this job was that it was nonstop for those days and we wouldn’t get back home until 8 or so – only to have to get up at 6 a.m. the next morning. Well, it was only for 12 days. Incidentally, my brother met the girl, Danielle, who was to become his wife, at this show.

 Regional Administrative Management Center – US Embassy – Summer 1989. A day after the Air Show, I started working here. Back to regular hours! This was somewhere between the FCS and Visa Section in terms of how busy and hectic it was. The staff took it easy and we had work to do, but there was no intense pressure. This place handles the finances for all the US Embassies in Africa and Europe. My section handled Africa. At this point I can’t remember what I did, only that it was boring but kept me busy. My buddy Phil came to visit us in Paris on the way back from India, so in August I shortened my hours somewhat.

 The highlight of this job was Heather, a blonde girl a few years younger than me who was stationed in a slightly different section. We had breaks together and lunch together practically every day. Of course, we got to know each other fairly well. She was kind of petulant and had an abrasive personality. I suppose there were sparks, in the "two people rub each other the wrong way so SOMETHING must be going on" way. We went into town a few times with my buddy Phil, my brother Matt, another girl Dianne, and Heather’s boyfriend Eric who was visiting. But nothing came of it. Her younger sister Courtney eventually ended up going to high school (ASP) with my sister Sarah. Heather herself ended up at Virginia Tech. I met up with her briefly in July 1990 when I returned to Paris one last time, but I lost track of her when I went to law school. (Heather, if you’re reading this, I got over you sometime in October 1990!).

 That’s it for my pre-legal career. If anyone wants my resume, just let me know.

King Kong (1976 Model Year)

I caught the new Peter Jackson "King Kong" film when it came out in the theaters, then purchased the original 1933 film on DVD a few months ago. And recently I bought the 1976 version on DVD. This one seems to get a bad rap. Here are a few thoughts.

1. World Trade Center. After 9/11, it’s not there anymore. So far as I understand, if they are going to build anything to replace it, it won’t be a twin tower replica (though if it were up to me - !!! – I’d say rebuild them just as they were as a big FUCK YOU to Al Qaeda). So this movie is a good way to see it, albeit at night with a big ape, a beautiful woman, a screaming guy in a beard, the National Guard, and a few Vulcan-equipped attack helicopters. Just the way I remember it.

2. Dinosaurs. Where are the dinosaurs? Just Kong, a big snake, and that’s it. No fake brontosaurus, no fake stegosaurus, no fake T Rexes, no fake pterodactyl. No one gets gruesomely eaten by a monster, just chucked off the log into a ravine – not even any giant spiders. That was kind of a letdown.

3. Jessica Lange vs. Fay Wray vs. Naomi Watts. Fay Wray was extremely average. ZZZZ. Naomi Watts is certainly much prettier, but of the three, Jessica Lange was by far the hottest and most interesting. Her backtalk to Kong was hilarious. Even Kong couldn’t resist playing with her boobs. Her acting and "presence" alone give this movie a big plus vs. both the others, each of whom serve as barely competent "woman" for the role, as if they were temps filling a part-time secretary position. Lange adds something special, beyond simply being pretty and screaming.

4. PETROX!! Charles Grodin’s Fred Wilson character was also a laugh. That may have been his best performance in any movie - especially since he usually plays dull, quiet unassertive nonentities. The stiffs in 1933 were cast to type and incredibly dull. Jack Black was fairly good as Denham in the Peter Jackson remake, and Adrien Brody is spectacularly miscast as a heroic adventurer - of all of these, the overambitious Petrox dude steals the show.

5. Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges). Although he came off as a snotty know-it-all sometimes, I still liked his character. He was certainly more interesting than Bruce Cabot (1933) or Adrien Brody (2005). Coupled with Lange and Grodin, it's as if the absence of dinosaurs was offset by much more livelier and interesting human characters.

6. Another Odo Sighting. Rene Auberjonois, aka "Clayton" on "Benson", Father Mulcahy in the film version of "M*A*S*H", and many other places, was Petrox’s witty geologist. Just who the Federation needed on Deep Space Nine.

7. Media Circus. In each movie, Kong was perfectly quiet and cooperative in his "escape-proof steel cage" until the bastards of the press started causing trouble. If they had left well enough alone there probably wouldn’t have been any unpleasantness later on. Kong could have continued his country-wide tour, earned lots of bananas, and lived happily ever after. Maybe he could have written a book (ghost-written, I imagine). Now we’ll never know. I blame the media.

8. VHS. In 1980 we bought our first VCR. After deciding the "Beta vs. VHS????" question in favor of VHS (didn’t everybody?), we went up to the PX at S.H.A.P.E., Belgium, and bought an RCA VCR, something HUGE – twice the size of a current machine and 50 lb.; we ended up calling it the "Dinosaur" years later. And the first tape we bought: KING KONG (1976). We still have it – both the tape and the VCR. Come visit our museum of obsolete equipment, also featuring an Apple //e (with its massive 128k memory capacity).

9. Dino de Laurentiis. Not only did he produce this version, he also produced "Serpico" (mentioned earlier in my blog) and "Conan the Barbarian" (also mentioned earlier in my blog), as well as "Flash Gordon" (1980), "Dune" (the 1984 version with Kyle McLachlan as Paul Atreides and Sting as Feyd-Rautha), and "Maximum Overdrive" (1986), the Steven King film with an AC/DC soundtrack.

So there’s more than meets the eye even with an otherwise mundane remake.

ASS-imiliation!

I orginally posted this entry on Myspace – several months before the demonstrations in Kalee-fornia. Here is it again.

 There seems to be an issue here in the US with immigration, mostly Mexican and other hispanic immigrants (Brazilians and Portuguese are not overwhelming us). We also have lots of Vietnamese in my area.

 The liberals bend over backwards to placate the newcomers and put Mexican up - sorry, Spanish - up everywhere. The conservatives would rather throw everyone back, even though 99% are whites - meaning that THEIR ancestors came from Europe at some point. The reality has to be somewhere in between.

 Fleeing persecution seems like a good reason to come to the US, even illegally. But what is "persecution"? Threatened to be killed or torture? Hmm, OK. What about "if I return to my home country, I won't have a job!" Hmm... that doesn't fly, but my immigration lawyer friends told me that they've heard that argument made with a straight face (not from them, though). But seeking a better life? I'm not sure that's a bad thing, per se. That's why most of our ancestors came here.

 The larger issue is what they do when they get here - regardless of why they came here. Do they adopt the language and culture, and assimilate? Or refuse to speak English, to pay taxes, and otherwise maintain a separate culture ...even to look down on American culture. I've seen Viets here long enough to be naturalized (!) who don't speak English; and many who view taxes as something us stupid white Americans should have to pay but not them, or who view American culture as inferior to their own. Clearly the amigos feel they've reached a critical mass where trading their Spanish in for English is no longer deemed necessary - certainly if enough Americans are going to cave in and post everything in Spanish too. It's sad and disturbing, that there are people living in foreign countries who have never even been to the US or UK who speak better English than some people who actually live here.

 If you're just here visiting - a tourist or diplomat - fine. But if you moved here to live permanently, you should learn the native language - and that's English, not Spanish or Vietnamese. If I wasn't inclined to learn any foreign language, my immigration choices would be limited to Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. If I move to Brazil, damn well I'll polish up my Portuguese and watch the novelas like everyone else, and follow the Brasileirão (national futebol championships) as well as the Seleção and the campeonatos estaduais (well, I do that anyway here in the US). That many Brazilians speak English helps, but it would be my job to learn Portuguese, not theirs to learn English.

 Germans are famous for busting their bundas off to learn the local language if they move overseas - their most popular immgration targets, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, being the US and Brazil (as well as 1945, but that’s a different story...)

 Maybe American tourists are clueless and only speak English, but expatriates - permanent residents - pride themselves on learning the local language and adopting the native culture, even to the point of looking down at their own culture (!).

 The sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein ("Stranger in a Strange Land", "Starship Troopers") argued that when a segment of the population leaves the mother country to establish a colony, the colonists are the top tier of intelligence and ambition and the ones who stayed back in the mother country are the lazy idiots. Certainly the US outstripped the UK, and Brazil is a far stronger and larger nation than Portugal, now a backwater. Sociologists decry the "brain drain" syndrome, that the best and brightest abroad are the ones coming to the US, which would appear to support Heinlein's thesis. Some do return to their own countries, though many other choose to stay. Even among the ones from Mexico and Central America, certainly as unskilled as you can imagine, they are taking low-paying menial jobs (day laboring, lawnmowing, maid work) which the rest of us don't want to do anyway. Under this, if you thought the Mexicans here now were lazy, at least they got off their asses and got themselves here somehow; imagine how lazy the ones still in Mexico are.

 Again, much of the opposition on this topic is not to immigration or immigrants per se, it’s against immigrants who refuse to assimilate to our culture.

 Imagine a house: several Americans live there together and get along with each other. One day some guy, Pedro, moves in. He doesn’t pay rent, doesn’t speak English, watches Mexican league soccer and not football, baseball or hockey; leaves the water running during showers or the lights or A/C on, and doesn’t pay for his share of the utilities; eats the food in the kitchen and fridge and never contributes any; and racks up phone bills calling Mexico or wherever the hell he’s from. He doesn’t talk to the other housemates and keeps to himself. You can imagine Pedro would NOT be very popular in this house.

 Now change the scenario: he pays his share of the rent and utilities; he stocks up the fridge; he speaks English; and he watches games with his housemates, high-fiving them and basically fitting in. NOW Pedro is probably much more welcome in the house. Nobody really had a problem with him so long as he made an effort to fit in and pay his fair share. And the analogy works whether Pedro is Mexican, Vietnamese, Iraqi, or any other nationality.

 Perhaps they need a reality TV show set in the desert of New Mexico or Arizona - an obstacle course of hostile Minutemen, rattlesnakes and scorpions, and the challenge of thirst and heat. Something like "Survivor" - "Who Wants to Be a US Citizen?" The lucky winners get green cards, the losers deported. Hell, they already have an immigration "lottery". This would actually be more merit-based, though it seems to reflect reality now anyway (which is what we should expect from a "reality show"). Or more George Carlinesque: dig trenches from Texas to Tijuana, complete with barbed wire, sandbags, machine gun nests, etc. – WWI style. Man the trenches with WWI re-enactors, British, French, German (complete with pickelhaubes) with the appropriate weapons, including machine guns and poison gas. This would probably be more effective (assuming you could find enough men to man the trenches) but would probably also cause an outcry (you think???).

 The way to sum it up is this: if I encounter an amigo at the 7-11 who speaks English and wears an Oakland Raiders jersey, I'm more relieved and impressed that he speaks English and is following US sports, than upset that he probably came here illegally.