It's A Wonderful Life and Conservatism

Generally I try to stay away from politics on this blog, but with events going the way they are, political philosophy is a lot on my mind these days. Blogging is a way for me to sort out my thoughts, as I've found trying to write them in a coherent form is a surefire way to expose holes and inconsistencies. I considered starting another blog to keep the political off here, but it became clear that the political and the philosophical isn't really separable for me (as, in retrospect, I never should have expected it to be.) So when I think I have something worthwhile on politics to offer, I'll post it here.

I've posted before on It's A Wonderful Life regarding George Bailey's relationship to Kiekegaard's stages of existence. Here I would like to discuss the film as a deeply conservative movie. (Not everything I write here is original; but the ideas have been in the back of my head for so long that I can't remember where they all came from).

It's A Wonderful Life is conservative, of course, in the obvious sense that it celebrates the centrality of family and religion in life (or, at least, prayer). It is God who ultimately saves George Bailey, working through Clarence the angel and in answer to the prayers of George's family. But my primary reason for thinking the film conservative does not involve family and religion, or any particular set of "values", but the character of the dramatic battle between George and villain Henry F. Potter.

Potter is the richest man in town, the owner of the largest bank as well as much of the property in town. He is a real estate developer who enjoys sticking it to the little guy; he leverages his near monopoly in finance to drive hard bargains with lower middle class folks trying to find a place to live. Potter is the archetypical villainous "one percenter" imagined by the contemporary Occupy movement. The one institution standing in Potter's way of total domination of the town is the Bailey Building and Loan, started by George Bailey's father and taken over reluctantly by George on his father's passing. George, about to leave town to seek his fortune, is pressed into service by the Building and Loan's Board of Directors as the only man capable of running it and withstanding Potter's plan to crush it, and with it any hope ordinary folks have of escaping Potter's financial domination.

What makes the drama of the conflict conservative is that George opposes Potter's villainy not by appealing to government, but by opposing him with a competing private institution. He uses the opportunities liberty provides him to provide an alternative to Potter for the "little guy." This makes all the difference in the world as far as the conservative is concerned. George's relationship to the little guy is different from that of both Potter and what it would have been had George tried to help the little guy through expansive government. Potter has no respect for the ordinary man, whom he dismisses as "garlic eaters"; in perhaps the most stirring scene of the movie, George dresses him down for this attitude:

George wants the Building and Loan to continue so that "people will have some place to come without having to crawl to Potter." Notice he doesn't say people should be prevented from going to Potter, or that Potter should be forced by law to change his practices (although Potter has no problem acting unethically to secure his position - e.g. by not returning $5000 that Uncle Billy inadvertently left in his office - there is no indication in the film that he acts unlawfully.) George isn't about dictating to the ordinary man what is good for him, or dictating to Potter how he must change, notwithstanding George giving Potter a piece of his mind. George's respect for the ordinary man is shown by his desire to give the ordinary man a choice, and his faith that the ordinary man can take care of himself if only given the opportunity to do so. George then proves himself a conservative hero by not only advocating for the Building and Loan, but putting his own personal plans on hold when the Board dragoons him into running the institution.

Were George to go the liberal-big-government route (i.e. by running for office and advocating increasing banking regulation, an accompanying bureaucracy, and taxes to pay for it), his relationship with the ordinary man would end up being essentially no different than that of Potter. He would end up dictating what the ordinary man will do rather than empowering the ordinary man to pursue his own betterment as he sees fit. The problem with Potter was that there was no escape from him; the same problem would exist with the hypothetical Banking Bureau with George Bailey at the top.

Why should this be a problem with someone like George Bailey running it? After all, George is genuinely "for" the little guy. For one thing, it isn't clear in the film that everyone in town supports George Bailey. Potter stays in business, after all, so there must be people getting mortgages from him. And there is a crucial moment in the film, during the Crash of 1929, when a run on the Building and Loan seems about to get started. George, in typical fashion, puts his personal plans on hold (in this case, his honeymoon) to deal with the situation. He pleads with the depositors gathered in the building to only withdraw a limited amount sufficient to tide them over for awhile. The first man at the window refuses and withdraws his entire balance despite George's exhortations. Now we might think this man is selfish, but do we really know his circumstances? He might have very good reasons for needing the entire balance; and in the end, it is his money to do with what he will. George's frustration is palpable, but he gives the man his money and, fortunately, the people later in the line listen to his counsel and only withdraw a small amount. Were George not the man he is, he might dream of being the head of the Banking Bureau, when he could simply order everyone's accounts frozen. But George has far more respect for ordinary people than this; he understands that individual circumstances are different and that there is no "right answer" for everyone that can be dictated from on high. A bureaucracy inevitably treats people "like cattle" just as much as Potter does.

There is also the possibility that George Bailey doesn't remain George Bailey. He could be corrupted; in the film, he nearly is. Potter offers him a job with a huge salary increase that George finds tempting. As I pointed out in my earlier post, Potter has keen psychological insight and plays on the knowledge that both he and George have that, in many ways, George is a better man than are the people for whom he is sacrificing his future. He tempts George to adopt the same contempt for the ordinary man that he has. George barely but successfully avoids the temptation; my point here is, suppose George were successfully corrupted. In that case, it would be bad enough were he the head of the Building and Loan. It would be far worse were he the head of the Banking Bureau. The conservative insight here is that there are no "right people." There is no one with the wisdom and virtue to be trusted with centralized power. And even if there were such a person, once the power is centralized, it won't be long before someone less altruistic grabs it; and once he's got it, there is no getting it away from him short of a revolution. George Washington understood this in refusing to become the King of America.

And that is the eventuality that will likely occur. Henry Potter is the most powerful man in Bedford Falls. Were a Banking Bureau established, should we doubt that he would use all his power in a campaign to capture it? And once he's got control of the Banking Bureau, then the people of Bedford Falls are truly doomed, for Potter could use its power through audits, regulations and general bureaucratic fog, to prevent any rivals like the Bailey Building and Loan from even getting started. Any legal space that was previously available to free citizens would be squeezed out. This is the reason, contrary to liberal mythology, that big business actually favors government regulation rather than opposes it. Big corporations have the money and muscle to influence government bureaucracies in their favor; the increased regulations are just overhead for them but represent barriers for any potential rivals. It isn't big business vs government, but big business and big government versus the rest of us. And the only answer is conservative heroes like George Bailey.

Interestingly, the comments on the YouTube clip I linked to above seem to miss the point about George Bailey. Some of the commenters see him as a kind of forerunner to the Occupy movement since he takes on a banker. But George shows in contrast just what conservatives find lacking in the Occupy movement. The Occupiers literally sit around in a park demanding that someone else (specifically government) make their lives better. George Bailey doesn't sit around and complain, but overcomes the evil banker by becoming a banker himself.

Ironically, it seems to me a modern George Bailey-type conservative hero is Joe Kennedy, RFK's son. He's not a hero with respect to his years in Congress, where he was standard issue Democrat, but in his starting and continuing to run the private non-profit company Citizen's Energy, dedicated to providing low-cost energy to the poor. One often hears complaints of price-gouging by oil companies. If that is so, why not start your own oil company and sell at a cheaper price? You should be able to drive them out of business. That is the conservative answer and I admire Kennedy for his efforts in this regard. Instead of complaining about oilmen from Washington, he became an oilman to do it right. (One of the recurrent complaints against Kennedy is that he has a deal with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela for cheap oil, so his cheap oil comes at the price of supporting a ruthless tyranny. That may be so, and I make no argument for or against Citizen's Energy, but one mark of a conservative hero is that he is willing to make the difficult tradeoffs that real solutions demand. A politician ducks these choices and the responsibility they entail - when has Obama ever accepted responsibility for anything? - but the conservative hero is willing to take these decisions on board and face the consequences.)

The Church and Fallibility

Imagine someone hearing of Christ and his claims to be the Son of God, and goes to listen to him. Later, a friend asks him what he thinks, and he says:

"Well, I am convinced he is truly the Son of God, but I can only accept 99% of what he ways. 1% of it I find morally repugnant."

This is essentially what people are saying when they say "I'm Catholic but I think the Church is wrong about X." The Catholic Church holds itself to be authorized by Christ Himself to speak with His voice, guided by the Holy Spirit. If you think it can be mistaken on a matter of faith and morals, then it means you either think God can be mistaken about such things, or that the Catholic Church doesn't really speak with His voice. Either way, your difference with the Church's understanding of itself is not trivial but fundamental. It doesn't matter whether you disagree with 1%, 10% or 100% of the teaching; the logic follows no matter the percentage.

Do it Yourself Philosophy

David Brooks wrote an excellent column on what amounts to "do it yourself" philosophy. The money quote is:

For generations people have been told: Think for yourself; come up with your own independent worldview. Unless your name is Nietzsche, that’s probably a bad idea. Very few people have the genius or time to come up with a comprehensive and rigorous worldview. 

It probably wasn't even a good idea for Nietzsche, who ended up in the madhouse. And I would go further than Brooks: No one has the genius to come up with a worldview purely of his own invention. In fact, it could be argued that philosophy truly began when one man - Socrates - gave up trying to construct his own worldview and decided to adopt one from someone wiser than himself.  So he went around to all those "supposed to be wise", searching for the true man of wisdom from whom he could learn. It turned out, of course, that none could withstand Socrates' cross-examination, and he came to the conclusion that no one was wise, but he at least had the advantage of not thinking himself wise when he was not. Thus did Socrates establish the communal, cultural and traditional nature of philosophy: The wise man doesn't attempt to master wisdom from scratch; he inserts himself into the ongoing cultural project of philosophy. Philosophy is a dialog, not a monologue.

Steyn, Chesterton and Monsters

Mark Steyn may be my favorite contemporary pundit, not least because I find him so "Chestertonian." Like Chesterton, he writes in an original, humorous style (not in the style of Chesterton, of course, because then he would not be original!) that clearly comes naturally to him. Also like Chesterton, he never makes a joke (or in Chesterton's case, proposes a paradox) merely for the sake of effect. And, most significantly, the lightness of his style conceals a depth of philosophical insight that is easily overlooked. Chesterton and Steyn both believe that it is culture that is most significant, and are penetrating in tracing economic or political problems back to their cultural roots. Get the culture right, and the politics and economics will take care of themselves; get the culture wrong, and the politics and economics will eventually degenerate whatever policy decisions are made. (Chesterton and Steyn are joined by JPII in this assessment)

I don't know if Steyn has ever read Chesterton; he's never referenced him to my knowledge and GKC does not appear on Steyn's list of influences. Yet occasionally Steyn seems more than merely Chestertonian; he makes a point that was earlier explicitly made by Chesterton. This happened at least once on the in-depth BookTV interview that was aired on CSPAN2 this past weekend. Steyn mentioned in passing Sesame Street and the "de-monsterization" of early childhood. Sesame Street is full of monsters but the monsters turn out to be funny and friendly or, at worst, grouchy. There are no monsters that give any hint of terror. But the world actually is replete with monsters, if by monsters we mean dangerous realities that we must respect and of which we should be "afraid, very afraid" in the old movie cliche. Presenting the appearance of danger, then undermining that appearance by revealing the monster to always be in the end harmless, is to teach a very unfortunate lesson. It is to teach that there are no genuine evils out there in the world, and that evil is always superficial.

GKC somewhere (I have not been able to dig up the quote) makes a similar point. There is no point to removing monsters from childhood stories, GKC says, because children are already aware of monsters - and that is a good thing. They are afraid of the undefined presence in the closet or under the bed before they have been told any stories. What the stories do is put a name and a shape to the menace, and show that even though the monster is genuinely evil, terrifying and apparently unstoppable, there are yet forces in the world that are good, strong, brave and dedicated to protecting the child. The stories only achieve their cathartic effect if they answer to the genuine terror the child feels; the terror in the story must be as real as the terror the child feels when he is alone in the dark, for only then can he say, yes that is the monster I dread. The child wants to see that terror faced; and a good story will leave him with both the healthy fear of the monstrous and the hope that comes from knowing that there are forces of good just as powerful, and that are on his side.

I'm not sure GKC ever anticipated the modern trend of not merely avoiding the monstrous, but of positively undermining the symbolic meaning of the monstrous. The modern idea is not to educate the young child to face the reality of the dangerous and evil, but to numb his sensibility to it by consistently undermining its symbolic manifestations. I hope GKC would be as appalled as I am by things like the Shrek series of films, which takes the ogre, a traditional symbol of dumb, brute evil, and turns him into a misunderstood outcast suffering from low self-esteem. My unrequited hope watching that film was that some real ogres from the traditional tales would show up and kick Shrek's ass on general principles.

Our natural reaction to the monstrous is to be repelled by it; as much as contemporary sensibilities don't like this, it is a healthy reaction. The monstrous is, in the strict sense, that which exists in defiance of the natural order; Frankenstein's monster is a monster because he was generated in an artificial rather than natural means, by cobbling together pieces of bodies followed by reanimation through electric shock. Now the contemporary view is correct in the sense that not everything that appears monstrous is in fact a monster (that is, evil and dangerous).  Some things that appear monstrous (e.g. the Elephant Man) are actually things that are good and deserve our kindness and compassion. And it is also true that some monsters do not appear monstrous at all, as in the apparently normal family man who is actually a serial killer (e.g. the Green River Killer). But these points may be called "advanced lessons" that can be learned only once the basic reality of the monstrous is learned; and by learned I mean conditioned into one's being so that it becomes a natural reaction. The fundamental lesson of the monster is that there are realities that are evil and dangerous and about which one must be constantly on guard; the great mistake with respect to a monster is not recognizing him before it is too late. This truth is told in devastating manner in the original Boris Karloff Frankenstein film, when a little girl befriends the monster and picks flowers with him; she meets her end in a manner not shown on camera and all the more horrifying for that.

Steyn, like Chesterton, prefers the old, robust traditional tales to modern fluff. Steyn, in fact, mentioned on BookTV that he is planning to publish an anthology of his favorite traditional tales. I look forward to it, and I hope GKC sleeps a little easier knowing someone is carrying the torch.

Coyne and the nature of philosophy

I've been trying to get around to commenting on the this Jerry Coyne article on free will from USA Today. Rather than one large blogpost - which I don't seem to be able to get the time to do - maybe I can attack it with a series of smaller ones. For this one, I'll comment on Coyne's passing remark about the significance of the question of free will:

"The issue of whether we have of[sic] free will is not an arcane academic debate about philosophy, but a critical question whose answer affects us in many ways: how we assign moral responsibility, how we punish criminals, how we feel about our religion, and, most important, how we see ourselves — as autonomous or automatons."

What's interesting about this passage is what it says about Coyne's view of the nature of philosophy, which is a view of it that started in the Enlightenment and is still common. Philosophy, for Coyne, includes "arcane academic debates" that aren't about anything that "affects" us. When we do begin talking about things that affect us, like how we assign moral responsibility or how we punish criminals, we've moved beyond philosophy or, at least, the arcane debates that comprise academic philosophy.

Now the classical philosopher would say that Coyne has it exactly backwards. To the extent that philosophy discusses anything that won't "affect" us, it isn't really philosophy at all. The philosopher is a lover of wisdom, which means living an "examined life." Everything the philosopher discusses, from the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas to the ethics of Aristotle, must be in service to the primary goal of living an examined life - or the philosopher isn't really a philosopher at all. To use my favorite example, Socrates in the Crito is offered the chance to escape from his death sentence in Athens so he may continue pursuing philosophy in a different city. Socrates refuses the opportunity because he does not, after philosophical reflection, think there would be justice in an attempt to escape his sentence. To escape his sentence would then be to betray his philosophical vocation, which isn't about merely discussing "philosophy", but leading a life examined by reason and faithful to it. Such a life is what philosophy is; it is not a series of academic debates, arcane or otherwise.

The degeneration of philosophy from the Socratic ideal to a series of academic debates about nothing that "affects" us started in the Enlightenment. We can point to Descartes idea in his Discourse on Method that he would accept nothing until it had survived the most critical form of doubt. What then of his ongoing daily life and the myriad decisions life requires, including mundane ethical decisions? Daily life demands regular decisions from us whether we have prepared those decisions through a Method or not. Descartes solved this problem by living according to a "provisional morality", pending the development of a truly rational,  real morality that would be worked out in due course through the Method. While under development this true morality, of course, had nothing to do with how Descartes was actually living (which was the province of the provisional morality); it wasn't about anything that "affected" him. In truth, whatever ethics might be developed through the Method isn't really an ethics at all, since the subject of ethics is precisely the existing man facing the problems of life as they come, problems for which he can't take a "timeout" pending the development of a truly rational ethics. Socrates facing the problem of escaping from Athens is a subject of ethics; man considered in timeless abstraction through something like the Method is not.

What is interesting about the "provisional morality" is that it isn't open to rational criticism. True reason is only available through the method; since the provisional morality is just that which we live by while the method works out the true morality, the provisional morality is by definition not open to reason. And, in truth, the true morality never does get worked out. This was Kierkegaard's point in emphasizing that abstract reason cannot put an end to itself; in other words, abstract reason cannot of itself issue in a decision, because decisions are demanded by the concrete circumstances of life that are just what reason abstracts from. Socrates did not refrain from escaping from the Athenian prison because he had worked out a logical ethics to completion; he refrained because, as his philosophical reflection told him at the moment, there was no justice in an attempt at escape.

The thing about allegedly arcane philosophical debates, like the one over Descartes and his method, is that they eventually trickle down and spread through the common culture. Descartes' "provisional morality" is, it seems to me, the de facto ethical view of the average American. The average person may believe that you can think about ethical questions, but he doesn't think such thought counts as "real thought" in the sense of abstract methods like math or physics. It's all kind of "iffy." And it certainly doesn't apply to what he himself will do in the moment. That is a matter of "personal choice"; and by that we mean not only that it is up to us as individuals to make a decision, but that the process by which we come to that concrete decision isn't finally open to rational scrutiny. Descartes "provisional morality" has become our permanent morality.

When we do bring what we think is "true reason" to bear on subjects like ethics, then it means approaching them through science in the manner of Coyne. But Coyne's approach isn't, in the end, any more sound that Descartes'. Any system of thought, philosophical or otherwise, that doesn't start with man in his subjective, concrete existence, and stay there, can't have ethics in the true sense as its subject; it can't ever be about the things that "affect" us. Thus the "free will" discussed by Coyne isn't the subjectively experienced free will you are aware of every moment you make a decision. It is "free will" as a scientific abstraction, which isn't really free will at all and is, in fact, incoherent in terms of scientific abstraction.

Rosenberg on Intentionality

Edward Feser has been reviewing Alex Rosenberg's book The Atheist's Guide to Reality in parts over on his blog. I checked the book out from the library and have been reading it as well. Rosenberg's Ch. 8, "The Brain Does Everything Without Thinking About Anything At All", is Rosenberg's defense of eliminative materialism with respect to intentionality. (Intentionality, as a philosopher's term, refers to the way in which something can be "about" something else, like a finger pointing at the moon is about the moon.) Hardcore materialists, of which Rosenberg certainly is one, hold that intentionality is an illusion. Nothing is really "about" anything else, since the only thing things that are truly real are the elements of physics, and an electron or gravitational field isn't about anything at all. It just is.

What interests me here is the analogy Rosenberg uses to get across his view of how the brain might produce the illusion of intentionality without there really being any intentionality at all. I think Rosenberg's analogy is actually a good way to show why intentionality can't be completely an illusion. Here is the analogy:

A single still photograph doesn't convey movement the way a motion picture does. Watching a sequence of slightly different photos one photo per hour, or per minute, or even one every 6 seconds won't do it either. But looking at the right sequence of still pictures succeeding each other every one-twentieth of a second produces the illusion that the images in each still photo are moving. Increasing the rate enhances the illusion, though beyond a certain rate the illusion gets no better for creatures like us. But it's still an illusion. There is noting to it but the succession of still pictures. That's how movies perpetrate their illusion. The large set of still pictures is organized together in a way that produces in creatures like us the illusion that the images are moving. In creatures with different brains and eyes, ones that work faster, the trick might not work. In ones that work slower, changing the still pictures at the rate of one every hour (as in time-lapse photography) could work. But there is no movement of any of the images in any of the pictures, nor does anything move from one photo onto the next. Of course, the projector is moving, and the photons are moving, and the actors were moving. But all the movement that the movie watcher detects is in the eye of the beholder. That is why the movement is illusory.

The notion that thoughts are about stuff is illusory in roughly the same way. Think of each input/output neural circuit as a single still photo. Now, put together a huge number of input/output circuits in the right way. None of them is about anything; each is just an input/output circuit firing or not. But when they act together, they "project" the illusion that there are thoughts about stuff. They do that through the behavior and the conscious experience (if any) that they produce.

The sentence "Of course, the projector is moving, and the photons are moving..." is written in passing put it points out a consideration fatal to the analogy. Without the actual motion of the projector and the photons, there wouldn't be any illusory motion through the film. The projector stops, the illusion stops. So the illusory motion in the film, far from providing evidence that there is no actual motion, is conclusive proof that there is actual motion in the world. Yes, the viewer may be mistaken as to the actual nature of the motion, but Rosenberg's point with the analogy is that there is no intentionality at all in the world. For the analogy to support such a conclusion, it must support the analogous conclusion that all motion is an illusion. It does just the opposite.

The standard fallback here is to say that all analogies are limited. True, they are, but in a good analogy, those limitations arise only when the analogy is pushed beyond the limited point it is designed to make. The fact that in Rosenberg's analogy the illusory motion of a film proves rather than refutes the actual reality of motion is not an irrelevant point, but is the point. And it is not an accident. There is no way to design an analogy showing the illusion of motion without also establishing the actuality of motion.

The deeper point is that we can't be mistaken about fundamental categories like motion (or change). 
This is Aristotle's answer to Parmenides.  Change is an undeniable metaphysical reality, for if there were no such thing as motion, then we couldn't possibly know it, since thought itself is a kind of motion. (And if you say that thought is an illusion, and the underlying matter is unchanging, then you need to explain how a non-moving projector can produce the illusion of movement in a film). We may be mistaken about the content of change, but the fact of change is literally self-evident.

Neither can we be mistaken about the fact of intentionality. It is really as simple as saying that if there were no intentionality in the world, there wouldn't be any intentionality, and we wouldn't experience any. For the illusory intentionality must have a source in some real intentionality, just as illusory motion must have a source in real motion. If there weren't some real intentionality somewhere, neither would there be any illusory intentionality anywhere. "Intentionality" would be something that simply didn't exist in the world even as an idea. The discovery of counterfeit money is not proof that there is no real money, but that there must be real money, for there is no sense in counterfeiting something that doesn't exist. Are you in any danger of falling for a counterfeit Martian dollar?


From the subjective side, we are only subject to the illusion of motion in the film because it mimics actual motion in the world. If there were no actual motion in the world, just what would illusory motion in the film mean to us? We are receptive to the illusion of motion in the film because it appeals to a part of our nature that is receptive to actual motion. Animals who live for generations in the darkness of a cave or the depths of the sea gradually lose their sight as it is of no use to them. Eventually they are unable to detect light at all. It disappears for them. At this point, they are in no danger of falling for "fake light" (whatever that might be) because they can't detect any light at all. The creature loses his ability to fall for the illusion as he loses his ability to detect the reality. The fact that we experience intentionality at all is proof enough that there is something "intentional-like" in reality.

On the Commercialization of Christmas

This is about the time of year we begin to hear laments about the "commercialization of Christmas." Christmas, it seems, has become nothing more than a materialistic bacchanalia celebrating the worst aspects of our greed, all for the purposes of corporate exploitation. It has always struck me as odd that a holiday dedicated to buying things for other people should be denounced in these terms. The guy who otherwise spends his money on a new BMW and fancy clothes for himself, instead spends it on gifts for his relatives and friends. This is a bad thing? Money represents buying power and nothing else. The question is ultimately not whether it should be spent, but on what it will be spent. An annual celebration that involves a cultural tradition of spending your money on others seems like it should be far down our list of social sins.

Perhaps it is the whiff of excess that fuels the scolds. Christmas isn't just about buying a gift or two, but about buying a lot of stuff for a lot of people. But it is this element of excess that distinctively reflects its Christian origins. A distinguishing principle of Christianity is the notion of unmerited reward. Christ becomes Incarnate to save sinners who don't deserve to be saved. And not only that; Christ offers the greatest of all possible rewards, friendship and union with God Himself. I remember as child anticipating the cornucopia that would greet me Christmas morning. It wasn't just one or two things that would be under the tree for me, but a whole bunch of stuff. And although Santa supposedly knew who was naughty and nice, it didn't seem to make any difference as far as the amount of booty inevitably found under the tree. This is strictly in line with Christian principles: Christ grants the greatest of rewards to saints and sinners alike, so long as they simply believe in his willingness to do so. As I have remarked in the past, it doesn't really matter that you ultimately discover that the Santa in the red suit who lives at the North Pole is a myth, for someone was providing that unmerited reward, and the mere fact of its provision proves that a will capable of doing so exists in the world. This is part of what G.K. Chesterton describes as the education of the imagination that occurs when we are very young. In the innocence of youth, we are open to the association of seemingly contradictory ideas that we not only accept, but that form our perception of the world to the extent that they seem perfectly natural.  Anyone who grew up with the story of the the Nativity, for example,will forever have the association of infinite power with perfect vulnerability in his imagination. Our early experience with Santa stamps us with the idea of an infinite reward that is unmerited - a distinctively Christian fusion of seemingly contradictory ideas (isn't a reward a reward for something?)

What about those businessmen who cynically exploit Christmas for commercial gain? In this fallen world, there will always be people looking for a way to make a buck. The question is how that energy is channeled. The sort of guy who is looking to make the quick buck could be spending his time in far more destructive activities than trying to dream up the toy that every kid will beg his parents for next Christmas. This is one example of the famous compliment that vice pays to virtue. Because Christmas is about gift-giving, the businessman can't appeal to the consumer's own temptations or selfish desires; he's got to convince him that what he is selling is what someone else might like. In other words, the businessman, in order to make a profit, has got to get the consumer thinking about other people than himself.

What's really behind the complaints of the commercialization of Christmas has something to do with the psychology of a Judas, I think. Not Judas insofar as he was a betrayer, but insofar as he objected to expensive perfume being used to anoint Christ (John 12:4-6). Judas's pride prevented him from sharing in the mystery of Christ's redemptive act as did Mary. What follows is envy and the will to destroy the good of another. So he objects that the oil could better have been used for the poor. Similarly, some see the joy of Christmas expressed in others and are unable or unwilling to share it themselves. So they must find a reason to poison the fruit, and the method at hand is the condemnation of Christmas as too commercial.