Why I Dislike the Oxford Comma

The reason I dislike the Oxford comma is that it is unnecessary. Yes, it is often argued that the Oxford comma helps clear up possibly confusing or ambiguous phrases. That is fine, but is it necessary to use the comma to do that? Or are there other ways? I contend that there are other ways that are more clear and decisive.

One example is that an Oxford comma will clear up whether a phrase is a non-restrictive clause with two parts connected by a conjunction or it is the last two items in a list of three. For example if you were to write: I went to the store with my brother, a friend and fellow classmate.

It is unclear whether you are going to the store with your brother or with your brother and two other people. Is your brother a friend and classmate? In this case what comes after the comma is not the continuation of a list but a non-restrictive clause further describing your brother. Or, did you go to the store with your brother and two other people, a friend and classmate?

In the first case, you can easily add a couple of words to the sentence to clear up the possible confusion: I went to the store with my brother, who is a friend and fellow classmate. Or you can always use a colon to introduce the additional information about your brother. That would look like the next sentence. I went to the store with my brother: a friend and fellow classmate. These are very easy ways to clean up the meaning without having to add a comma.

In the second case, you shouldn't have to add anything. If we stick to the rule that there should not be a comma before the conjunction, it is clear what the meaning is. The conjunction connects the last two items in the list and a second connector, a comma, is not necessary. If you really want to make it clear, you can rephrase like this:  I went to the store with my brother as well as a friend and a fellow classmate. We can also rearrange the items in the list to make it clear:  I went to the store with a friend, a fellow classmate and my brother. In fact, if an Oxford comma was added to the last version of the sentence it would open the possibility of another misunderstanding. The following could mean that you are simply explaining that the friend is also a classmate: I went to the store with a friend, a fellow classmate, and my brother. Putting two commas around something is one way to signal that it is a non-restrictive clause. In these cases, using the Oxford comma can create just as much confusion as it is supposed to avoid.

There is another reason I resist adding a comma to connect items in a list when there is already a conjunction there. I do it because the comma followed by a conjunction is a convenient way to signal that you are connecting more than just items in a list. The comma with conjunction combination is used to connect two independent clauses; it signals the shift from one set of subjects and predicates to another. You should know when you see a comma and conjunction that you are moving from one independent clause to the next. This is a very useful thing to signal when writing with longer and complex sentences that try to express more complex ideas and the relationships between them. 

A second common reason given for the necessity of the Oxford comma is to help clarify complex lists or lists with items that contain a conjunction. I understand that lists can get complex and confusing sometimes, but we already have a punctuation mark that is supposed to be used in those cases: the semicolon. While the comma has many different uses (at least 5 different categories of use), the semicolon has three, maybe four. One of them is specifically to reduce confusion in complex lists.

The following may be confusing: I packed my lunch box with an apple, some yogurt and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or it may be phrased like this: I packed an apple, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some yogurt for lunch. In my opinion the best way this can be clarified is by using a semicolon: I packed an apple; a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; and some yogurt for lunch. I know people will say that that looks intimidating, but it is only so because we have never done a good job teaching people what semicolons are for. I think this is exactly the kind of thing they are for, and they should be used in this situation instead of dragging the comma in to play yet another role.

To me, the Oxford comma is like using a screwdriver to pry things open or cut things when we have a wedge, crowbar, chisel and small saw in the tool box already. It may work well enough, but that is not what the comma was really made for and there are other things made just to do those things already. We should teach and encourage people to recognize and use the right tools, not expand the use of one that is already overused.

There are options to clearing up possible confusion and ambiguity without the use of the Oxford comma. We can add words to the sentence to clarify the meaning. We can use a colon or semicolon to clarify the meaning. We can re-arrange the sentence to make it clear. I see no reason why we need to add another use to the comma, which is already used in so many different ways.

Common Sense and Truth (The Incompatible)

"Common sense has its own necessity; it asserts its rights with the weapon peculiarly suitable to it, namely, appeal to the 'obviousness' of its claims and considerations. However, philosophy can never refute common sense, for the latter is deaf to the language of philosophy. Nor may it even wish to do so, since common sense is blind to what philosophy sets before its essential vision."
--Martin Heidegger from On the Essence of Truth

Common sense is concerned with what is obvious and what is today. Both of these get in the way of any sort of philosophical discussion and of finding what is true. The truth is by nature below the surface and the result of many conflicting influences and forces. Truth takes time and a stepping back in order to be discovered. When looking for what is common and obvious, you avoid what is below the surface, what is complex and things that take time or perspective to understand.

Something that is presented as obviously true should be taken with suspicion. That it presents itself as obvious means that it is likely only superficial and/or simple, and the true is never superficial and seldom simple. The correct maybe superficial, but the true should not be. The correct may point towards the true, but going from the correct to the true means leaving behind the obvious and the simple.

An 'obvious truth' is the product of common sense; it may be correct, but there is a world of difference between the correct and the true.

Respect for the Anthem and Respect for Each Other

Trump says that the NFL anthem row is not about race. For him it isn't. For him, it seems, no matter your race, as long as you are an American, you should stand with other Americans in respect when the anthem is played. For him the anthem and respect for it is not about race and shouldn't be made about race. Other people made it about race and he refuses to assent to that.

I tend to agree with that and wish more people would. We should not make the anthem something political or controversial. We should all stand and respect it. After that we can use that as common ground for holding a respectful discussion about our differences. At that point hopefully we can all recognize and respect that we are all Americans that respect our country despite our differences and complaints. Because we have that in common, we should be able to give each other respect as we discuss our differences. For me it isn't about the military, the history or anything like that. It is about finding common ground to start from. I wish more people would see it that way, but they don't.

I think what Colin Kaepernick did was disrespectful. It was disrespectful to the promise and hope of what America tries to be even if it fails to achieve it. It was disrespectful to the thing that holds America together as a country: that promise and idealism expressed in our founding documents. These are more important in the US than many other countries because we don't have a common ethnic or national background. The nation--the common ethnic, cultural or national background that the people share--is the foundation of many modern countries. The modern idea of a country is based largely on the idea of the nation/state. America doesn't have a nation in that sense; we have the political ideals expressed in our documents and traditions (even if we have yet to fully live up to them) and we have common economic interests. Those are really the things that have held us together as a country. The anthem and the flag are symbols of those things, or that is how I have always understood them.

If Colin Kaepernick felt he had to do sit or kneel during the anthem to get attention so people would listen to his opinion on race, that is too bad. There should be a better way. Maybe there isn't; that is water under the bridge now. The fact is, he did it. Instead of taking the respectful route after that, both sides just started flinging insults and accusations. What would have been the respectful route? Asking him to sit down and talk about his concerns so he felt he was being heard, so he didn't feel like he had to do it again. That also means that he would have to be respectful and patience in expecting action and change before he would go on upsetting people again. Instead of taking a respectful path at any point between then and now, we have pretty consistently done the opposite, or just held our tongues. The bigger problem is that too many people these days just revel in getting offended and offending others. It is a pastime now and a very vicious one at that.

Gems from Benjamin and Camus

Over the past year there was much talk of Orwell's 1984 and the importance of reading it again to be aware of Big Brother, totalitarianism, newspeak, doublespeak, etc. There was also a lot of talk about being on the right side of history. While these are interesting, I think they are pretty superficial ways to approach what is going on these days: reactionary, over reactions and polemics. 

I have been going back to Camus's The Plague and Benjamin's Theses On History. Neither are easy texts to understand: neither the texts themselves nor the ideas they bring up. But I think that is why they are more relevant these days than 1984 or appeals to 'the right side of history.

Here are a couple gems I have pulled from each of them that I keep running over in my head.

“There has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism.”

“The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the 20th century are ‘still’ possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it would be the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable.”

-- Walter Benjamin from Theses on History

“But though a war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.”

“None the less, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers…. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years… and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

-- Albert Camus from The Plague

McCain's Washing Post Op-Ed

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-mccain-its-time-congress-returns-to-regular-order/2017/08/31/f62a3e0c-8cfb-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html?utm_term=.0b4490bb0796

John McCain wrote a pretty good op-ed for the Washington Post. I read it and appreciate what he had to say. What I find amusing and even upsetting are the headlines that it generated.

CNN's headline was something like, 'McCain Calls Trump Poorly Informed and Impulsive.' McCain did say that, with qualifiers ("often" and "can be" respectively), and it is pretty true. I don't see it as a bombshell. In fact, I think that more and more everyday people are "often poorly informed and can be impulsive," so it doesn't seem odd to me to have someone like that in the White House. McCain is right that it is Congresses responsibility to try to balance that out.  I think that message can be widened to apply to almost everyone. We need to work to balance each other out, not beat each other. Congress with the President and people with each other.

Another headline called it a "fiery op-ed." Maybe I am tone def, but it didn't seem fiery to me. And if it was, the tone would go against the message. The message was one of working together and compromising because we need each other to make things work. Being fiery in tone would not exactly help that take place. But, the media does need to sensationalize things these days to get out attention. It is what they do now; they have moved beyond the naive and mundane vocation of informing people and making them think. If Congress did what McCain called for and the media covered it accurately, they wouldn't keep our attention: neither the politicians or the media.

The power to return to "regular order" in Congress is ultimately in the hands of those in Congress. The President and the media can do much to disrupt that or spin it, but the ultimate responsibility lies with them. And in everyday life the real power to return to regular order lies with each of us, not with the politicians or the media. Politicians, the government, the media, etc. can help if they take the right tone.  They can, and more often than not these days do, take a tone that makes it more difficult. However, they do not have the ultimate power in the matter; we as everyday people in our everyday lives and choices do. 

The Missing Ought and How It Leaves Things Empty

Because science and data are descriptive (and because they currently rule the world of truth and try to do so for meaning as well), we have forgotten the importance of the prescriptive. We look at what things are (how they appear to us especially through our experiments) and deal with them that way. Sometimes, especially in business, we take what is and try to make it into what we want (this is advertising and PR), but for the most part we are concerned with what is and what will come to be directly out of that. (Well, we do try to change things with science as well because after all that is what technology is for the most part.) Yet most of our time is spent being concerned with description: what is, the surfaces of things and actions. What we have lost sight of is what ought to be.

Now, ought is much bigger than want, especially what I want. This is why it is different from the making we do in business and with technology. We want something so we manipulate the surfaces to get them to appear and act as we want them. Ought has to do with the big picture and with what is good for more than just myself. It is more akin to values and meaning than to want and can.

We look at things through data and science and pay attention to what they are in that light and how we act in relationship to them and they to us.  We see things through the filter of simple cause and effect. We take that as the norm and proceed as if it were natural. The problem is that nothing is really natural, except maybe chaos. (More on that below.) Order, cause and effect, facts and data appear as natural because of the way we look at the world. Something akin to them is there to be found, but it will only be found if we look for it. The same is true for the ought; we will only see it if we look for it. That does not mean it is something we completely make up and force on the world, it isn't. It is however something we won't find unless we look for it. It is the same reason why no one found Newton's Laws of Motion before him; no one was looking carefully enough for them. The early discoveries of science (when it was still natural philosophy) were likely made when they were, and not earlier, because people before that were not looking almost exclusively at the surfaces of things and actions. People were looking mostly at the inside (essences really) at the outside was more incidental or accidental.

These days things easily look like they have no deeper meaning or purpose aside from the facts and the way they fit into the theories because that is often all we look for; it is the lens we look through. We need to also have an idea of what things ought to be: how should they be treated and thought of so as to achieve a greater good. This will not come from, but may be informed by, a description of things that comes from data or science. And the two don't have to be and shouldn't be mutually exclusive or fundamentally at odds with each other. We can develop oughts that fit with descriptions and if we value those oughts we will also find descriptions that fit with them without giving up accuracy of description. There is a tension, a give and take, but that does not mean it need be adversarial, polemic or seen as a winner takes all competition.

When I say that nothing is really natural but chaos, I am not being negative or pessimistic. Any order that the world may inherently have is not necessarily going to be in line with what we want it to be or what we think it ought to be, and it may not even be comprehensible to us. This is less of an assumption, and more of a realistic place to start from than saying things are naturally one way or another. If we start from a position that does not assume the world is, or even can be, ordered in a way we want it or can understand it, we are more open to the give and take that is necessary to strike balances between the descriptive and prescriptive. What we think ought to be becomes a goal that we try to achieve but are not sure we can. We need to see any order as an ought, a goal we have created, and not as something that is already there that we must find and follow. Saying something is natural is saying that it is and can't be changed, or changing it would be a perversion. That makes the natural the only valid goal. Seeing the ought as something we are responsible for avoids that almost fundamentalist mind set and approach. It is a bit like Sisyphus or even like trying to be a good Christian and being like Christ. It is unattainable (and not necessarily because it is not in line with what is natural, but because nothing is natural at all) but not unworthy of being worked towards.

What is and what will be according to some mechanical progression of what is, is not what ought to be. Those are dead statements of what appears and what will appear that leave the depths and possibilities unexplored.  Those are descriptions. What we want or what we can do according to those descriptions are merely surfaces: surfaces of things, actions and feelings. Ought is something that deals with what is under the surface. The difference is between description and prescription and it is a big difference. Without prescription things are left empty: missing meaning and value. At the same time, without description our values and meaning can become detached from the very real surfaces and become delusions. The key is to try and strike a balance at any time.