This article was updated 2 minutes ago according to the National News website.
"SXSW crash claims 3rd life"
Texas — A third person died Monday from injuries sustained in last week's tragedy in which a drunk driver plowed through a crowd outside a nightclub at the South By Southwest music festival.A car hit the victim, Sandy Le, on Thursday outside The Mohawk nightclub, according to the Travis County Medical Examiner's Office.Le was an Austin resident but was a native of Pass Christian, Miss., according to her family.Jamie West, 27, of Austin; and Steven Craenmehr, 35, of Amsterdam, were killed. Twenty-two others were injured. Seven people remain hospitalized.Rashad Owens, 21, of Killeen, Texas, has been charged with capital murder and aggravated assault with a motor vehicle. He's accused of driving drunk, fleeing from police and intentionally driving into a crowd of festival-goers.Police say Craenmehr was on a bicycle, and West was on a moped with her husband. West's husband remains in the hospital.SXSW ended its 28th year early Sunday.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/17/sxsw-accident-third-death/6523431/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/17/sxsw-accident-third-death/6523431/
Proximity-
This article has to do with proximity because it is referring to Austin schools.
"Austin schools tally 1,000 students who intentionally hurt themselves"
This article was taken from the front page of the Statesman.
Prominence-
This article represents this category because this is a big conflict and topic in the news now and for the past few days.
"India Suspends Its Search for Flight 370"
PORT BLAIR, India — After scouring more than 24,000 nautical square miles, India on Sunday suspended its search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the waters around the isolated Andaman and Nicobar Islands chain while officials in Kuala Lumpur consider where else to search.“We’re taking a temporary pause,” said a senior Indian military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to discuss the search publicly. “We are conserving our resources so that we can renew the hunt with great vigor.”Four Indian military ships and six aircraft have spent most of the past four days scanning huge expanses of ocean on both sides of the Andamans, of which Port Blair is the capital. Malaysian officials believe that Flight 370 was deliberately flown off course, and one theory has been that it was headed toward the island chain.But the Andamans are not on either of the two vast corridors of territory where the Malaysian authorities now believe the plane ended up, based on its last transmission to a satellite at 8:11 a.m. on March 8.There are hundreds of deserted tropical islands in this area, and nighttime radar coverage of the skies is not always robust, military officials said. So it is possible that a Boeing 777 could have flown over the area and perhaps crashed on or near an uninhabited island without being noticed, officials said. But India’s military has done such a thorough search of the region since Wednesday that such a scenario, always unlikely, has become almost impossible to believe, officials said.Still, they are eager to demonstrate their willingness to continue searching until all hope fades. Holi, one of India’s most important religious holidays, is on Monday, but military officials said their men will not celebrate it this year.“Holi or no Holi, we will search when the task comes,” the senior military official said. “The families of those missing come first.” Since the ships would need 10 or more hours to return to port, officials have instructed captains to remain in the search area while the Malaysian government reconsiders where to send them.On Friday, officials here had some brief hope of a break in the case when pilots spotted smoke rising from the Sentinel Islands, a set of small islands with nearly impenetrable jungle and an aboriginal population that largely shuns the outside world.But a helicopter flew over the smoldering area and determined that the fire was probably set by local residents for agricultural purposes. The helicopter came back with photos of yellow flames and two nearly naked men on a pristine white beach, brandishing spears.“The islands there are tribal, and the policy is to leave them alone,” said V. Anbarasan, the commandant of the Indian Coast Guard in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. “There’s no wreckage there.”India has been eager to demonstrate its ability to police these waters, as they include busy shipping lanes and China has become increasingly assertive in the nearby South China Sea.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/india-flight-370-missing-airplane.html?ref=world
Impact-
The explosion in Harlem had an impact on many and the world was mourning with the families of the lost loved ones.
"New Yorkers mourn victims of explosion"
This article was found on the second page of the Statesman.
Conflict-
This article represents conflict because it is giving their side to the story and has the opposing view present. The story is also about a controversy between two forces.
"Shield reporters' sources: Our view"
The exploits of Edward Snowden — from his asylum-seeking tours of China and Russia to his self-aggrandizing interviews — make it look as if leakers are a bunch of publicity hounds.Quite the contrary: Almost all confidential sources who talk to reporters want to remain just that, confidential. And reporters promise to keep them that way.OPPOSING VIEW: USA doesn't need shield lawThe tradition of keeping confidences has brought many local and national stories to public attention. It allowed The Washington Post to reveal the shameful treatment of wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. Photos obtained confidentially brought to light the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Leaks have exposed warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.Simply put, many things the government wants to hide come out only because honest insiders, reporting wrongdoing or ineptitude, know that journalists will protect their identities.Now that tradition is under attack on several fronts, which could intimidate potential sources and help to hide all manner of secrets. The Obama administration has prosecuted six former or current officials for leaks — twice as many as all previous administrations combined.Last spring came reports that federal prosecutors had seized two months of records from 20 Associated Press phone lines in another leak investigation — giving the government access to the identities of anyone who talked to certain AP reporters during that time.Now, the Justice Department is hounding New York Times reporter James Risen about the source of his report, in a 2006 book, of an inept CIA attempt to disrupt Iran's nuclear weapons program. Prosecutors want him to testify against a former CIA official accused of leaking the information. Unless the Supreme Court agrees to review a 2-to-1 appellate ruling against Risen, he may end up in jail. Which would be a loss to all journalists and ultimately to the public.One solution is a proposed "shield law" to protect reporters' ability to keep promises to sources. The bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, but it needs to move forward.The principle at stake is at least as important to the public as similar laws that allow lawyers, social workers and other professionals to keep clients' confidences. Almost every state recognizes a similar privilege for reporters.Critics argue that the Senate measure would set loose a flood of leaks of classified secrets. That's doubtful, and in any case, letting the government operate in secret, unaccountable to the public, is a more vivid risk.Nor does the Senate proposal offer blanket protection. In terrorism and national security cases, the burden on reporters who seek to shield sources would be high, and judges would decide when identities could be shielded — and when they must be revealed.For all its actions to intimidate reporters and leakers, the Obama administration has backed this proposal. It is not, as some critics argue, a special interest law for reporters. It's a law that supports one of the pillars of democracy, the public's right to know things that the government would rather keep hidden.USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/03/16/federal-shield-law-james-risen-editorials-debates/6499771/
Human Interest-
This is human interest because she was a well known celebrity who is now dead.
"Fashion designer L'Wren Scott found dead"
Fashion designerL'Wren Scott has been found dead of an apparent suicide, reports ABC News and the New York Daily News.Scott's body was found hanging from a scarf on a doorknob by her assistant at her New York apartment around 10 a.m. today, reports the Daily News. The medical examiner's office will determine the cause of death.Scott had been in a relationship with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger for more than a decade.Jagger is currently on tour with his band and recently arrived in Australia.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/03/17/reports-lwren-scott-found-dead/6525343/
Novelty-
I chose this because it is an unusual topic that pulled me in because it made me curious.
"What Would Plato Tweet?"
I didn’t know what a Klout score was, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have one. And yes, under his raised-eyebrow questioning, it was revealed that since I didn’t use Facebook or Twitter or any of the other social media by which a website called Klout calculates your online influence, my score was probably low to nonexistent.On either side of us, diners were pointing their cellphones at their plates, taking pictures to be posted on their Facebook pages or Instagram accounts. I knew that’s what they were doing. People have taken to putting themselves out there in all kinds of ways, producing — in words, pictures, videos — the shared stories of their lives as they are transpiring. They disseminate their thoughts and deeds, large and small (sometimes very small), in what can seem like a perpetual plea for attention. I wasn’t that out of touch that I didn’t know about the large cultural changes that had overtaken our society while my attention was directed elsewhere.The elsewhere was ancient Greece. For the past few years I’d been obsessed with trying to figure out what lay behind the spectacular achievements that had occurred there. In a mere couple of centuries, Greek speakers went from anomie and illiteracy, lacking even an alphabet, to Aeschylus and Aristotle. They invented not only the discipline of philosophy, but also science, mathematics, the study of history (as opposed to mere chronicles) and that special form of government they called democracy — literally rule of the people (though it goes without saying that “the people” didn’t include women and slaves). They also produced timeless art, architecture, poetry and drama. What lay behind the explosive ambition and achievement? I’d always planned eventually to catch up on the changes that were going on all around me — once I’d gotten the ancient Greeks out of my system.It began when a writer friend asked me what my Klout score was. We were sitting at the sushi bar of a Japanese restaurant, the master chef assembling edible origami of torched fish and foam. My husband and I used to patronize this neighborhood place quite a lot, until a restaurant critic ruined it for us by his unrestrained rave, so that now you have to make reservations months in advance. But my friend had magically procured us two seats just like that, and when I asked him for the secret of his influence he responded by asking me about my Klout score. Only now did it occur to me that I might be able to arrive at some contemporary perspective precisely because I hadn’t gotten the Greeks out of my system. Parallels between their extraordinary time and our extraordinary time were suddenly making themselves felt. For starters, the Klout on which my friend prided himself struck me as markedly similar to what the Greeks had called kleos. The word comes from the old Homeric word for “I hear,” and it meant a kind of auditory renown. Vulgarly speaking, it was fame. But it also could mean the glorious deed that merited the fame, as well as the poem that sang of the deed and so produced the fame. The medium, the message, and the impact: all merged into one shining concept. Perhaps studying the ancient Greeks might give me perspective on today’s social-media obsession.And like so many of us now, they approached this question secularly. Despite their culture’s being saturated with religious rituals, they didn’t turn to their notoriously unreliable immortals for assurance that they mattered. They didn’t really want immortal attention. Something terrible usually happened when they attracted a divine eye. That’s what all those rituals were trying toprevent. Rather, what they wanted was the attention of other mortals. All that we can do to enlarge our lives, they concluded, is to strive to make of them things worth the telling, the stuff of stories that will make an impact on other mortal minds, so that, being replicated there, our lives will take on moreness. The more outstanding you were, the more mental replication of you there would be, and the more replication, the more you mattered.Kleos lay very near the core of the Greek value system. Their value system was at least partly motivated, as perhaps all value systems are partly motivated, by the human need to feel as if our lives matter. A little perspective, which the Greeks certainly had, reveals what brief and feeble things our lives are. As the old Jewish joke has it, the food here is terrible — and such small portions! What can we do to give our lives a moreness that will help withstand the eons of time that will soon cover us over, blotting out the fact that we ever existed at all? Really, why did we bother to show up for our existence in the first place? The Greek speakers were as obsessed with this question as we are. Like us, the Greeks wanted to make their lives matter. And like a Twitter user, they did so by courting the attention of other mortals. Not everybody back then was approaching this question of mattering in mortal terms. Contemporaneous with the Greeks, and right across the Mediterranean from them, was a still obscure tribe that called themselves the Ivrim, the Hebrews, apparently from their word for “over,” since they were over on the other side of the Jordan. And over there they worked out their notion of a covenantal relationship with one of their tribal gods whom they eventually elevated to the position of the one and only God, the Master of the Universe, providing the foundation for both the physical world without and the moral world within. From his position of remotest transcendence, this god nevertheless maintains a rapt interest in human concerns, harboring many intentions directed at us, his creations, who embody nothing less than his reasons for going to the trouble of creating the world ex nihilo. He takes us (almost) as seriously as we take us. Having your life replicated in his all-seeing, all-judging mind, terrifying as the thought might be, would certainly confer a significant quantity of moreness.And then there was a third approach to the problem of mattering, which also emerged in ancient Greece. It, too, was secular, approaching the problem in strictly mortal terms. I’m speaking about Greek philosophy, which was Greek enough to buy into thekleos-like assumption that none of us are born into mattering but rather have to achieve it (“the unexamined life is not worth living”) and that the achievement does indeed demand outsize ambition and effort, requiring you to make of yourself something extraordinary. But Greek philosophy also represented a departure from its own culture. Mattering wasn’t acquired by gatheringattention of any kind, mortal or immortal. Acquiring mattering was something people had to do for themselves, cultivating such virtuous qualities of character as justice and wisdom. They had to put their own souls in order. This demands hard work, since simply to understand the nature of justice and wisdom, which is the first order of business, taxes our limits, not to speak of then acting on our conclusions. And the effort may not win us any kleos.Socrates got himself a cupful of hemlock. He drank it calmly, unperturbed by his low ratings. The divergent Greek and Hebrew approaches went into the mix that is Western culture, often clashing but sometimes also tempering one another. Over the centuries, philosophy, perhaps aided by religion, learned to abandon entirely the flawed Greek presumption that only extraordinary lives matter. This was progress of the philosophical variety, subtler than the dazzling triumphs of science, but nevertheless real. Philosophy has laboriously put forth arguments that have ever widened the sphere of mattering. It was natural for the Greeks to exclude their women and slaves, not to mention non-Greeks, whom they dubbed barbarians. Such exclusions are unthinkable to us now. Being inertial creatures, we required rigorous and oft-repeated arguments that spearheaded social movements that resulted, at long last, in the once quixotic declaration of human rights. We’ve come a long way from the kleos of Greeks, with its unexamined presumption that mattering is inequitably distributed among us, with the multireplicated among us mattering more. Only sometimes it feels as if we haven’t. Our need to feel as if our lives matter is, as always, unabating. But the variations on the theistic approach no longer satisfy on the scale they once did, while cultivating justice and wisdom is as difficult as it has always been. Our new technologies have stepped in just when we most need them. Kleos — or Klout — is only a tweet away. It’s stunning that our culture has, with the dwindling of theism, returned to the answer to the problem of mattering that Socrates and Plato judged woefully inadequate. Perhaps their opposition is even more valid today. How satisfying, in the end, is a culture of social-media obsession? The multireplication so readily available is as short-lived and insubstantial as the many instances of our lives they replicate. If the inadequacies of kleos were what initially precipitated the emergence of philosophy, then maybe it’s time for philosophy to take on Klout. It has the resources. It’s far more developed now than in the day when Socrates wandered the agora trying to prick holes in people’s kleos-inflated attitudes. It can start by demonstrating, just as clearly and forcefully as it knows how, that we all matter. Mattering — none of us more than the other — is our birthright, and we should all be treated accordingly, granted the resources that allow for our flourishing. Appreciating this ethical truth might help calm the frenzy surrounding our own personal mattering, allowing us to direct more energy toward cultivating justice and wisdom. In fact, fully appreciating this ethical truth, in all its implications for both thought and deed, would itself constitute a significant step toward the cultivation of justice and wisdom.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/what-would-plato-tweet/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=opinion&_r=0
PORT BLAIR, India — After scouring more than 24,000 nautical square miles, India on Sunday suspended its search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the waters around the isolated Andaman and Nicobar Islands chain while officials in Kuala Lumpur consider where else to search.“We’re taking a temporary pause,” said a senior Indian military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to discuss the search publicly. “We are conserving our resources so that we can renew the hunt with great vigor.”Four Indian military ships and six aircraft have spent most of the past four days scanning huge expanses of ocean on both sides of the Andamans, of which Port Blair is the capital. Malaysian officials believe that Flight 370 was deliberately flown off course, and one theory has been that it was headed toward the island chain.But the Andamans are not on either of the two vast corridors of territory where the Malaysian authorities now believe the plane ended up, based on its last transmission to a satellite at 8:11 a.m. on March 8.There are hundreds of deserted tropical islands in this area, and nighttime radar coverage of the skies is not always robust, military officials said. So it is possible that a Boeing 777 could have flown over the area and perhaps crashed on or near an uninhabited island without being noticed, officials said. But India’s military has done such a thorough search of the region since Wednesday that such a scenario, always unlikely, has become almost impossible to believe, officials said.Still, they are eager to demonstrate their willingness to continue searching until all hope fades. Holi, one of India’s most important religious holidays, is on Monday, but military officials said their men will not celebrate it this year.“Holi or no Holi, we will search when the task comes,” the senior military official said. “The families of those missing come first.” Since the ships would need 10 or more hours to return to port, officials have instructed captains to remain in the search area while the Malaysian government reconsiders where to send them.On Friday, officials here had some brief hope of a break in the case when pilots spotted smoke rising from the Sentinel Islands, a set of small islands with nearly impenetrable jungle and an aboriginal population that largely shuns the outside world.But a helicopter flew over the smoldering area and determined that the fire was probably set by local residents for agricultural purposes. The helicopter came back with photos of yellow flames and two nearly naked men on a pristine white beach, brandishing spears.“The islands there are tribal, and the policy is to leave them alone,” said V. Anbarasan, the commandant of the Indian Coast Guard in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. “There’s no wreckage there.”India has been eager to demonstrate its ability to police these waters, as they include busy shipping lanes and China has become increasingly assertive in the nearby South China Sea.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/india-flight-370-missing-airplane.html?ref=world
Impact-
The explosion in Harlem had an impact on many and the world was mourning with the families of the lost loved ones.
"New Yorkers mourn victims of explosion"
This article was found on the second page of the Statesman.
Conflict-
This article represents conflict because it is giving their side to the story and has the opposing view present. The story is also about a controversy between two forces.
"Shield reporters' sources: Our view"
The exploits of Edward Snowden — from his asylum-seeking tours of China and Russia to his self-aggrandizing interviews — make it look as if leakers are a bunch of publicity hounds.Quite the contrary: Almost all confidential sources who talk to reporters want to remain just that, confidential. And reporters promise to keep them that way.OPPOSING VIEW: USA doesn't need shield lawThe tradition of keeping confidences has brought many local and national stories to public attention. It allowed The Washington Post to reveal the shameful treatment of wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. Photos obtained confidentially brought to light the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Leaks have exposed warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.Simply put, many things the government wants to hide come out only because honest insiders, reporting wrongdoing or ineptitude, know that journalists will protect their identities.Now that tradition is under attack on several fronts, which could intimidate potential sources and help to hide all manner of secrets. The Obama administration has prosecuted six former or current officials for leaks — twice as many as all previous administrations combined.Last spring came reports that federal prosecutors had seized two months of records from 20 Associated Press phone lines in another leak investigation — giving the government access to the identities of anyone who talked to certain AP reporters during that time.Now, the Justice Department is hounding New York Times reporter James Risen about the source of his report, in a 2006 book, of an inept CIA attempt to disrupt Iran's nuclear weapons program. Prosecutors want him to testify against a former CIA official accused of leaking the information. Unless the Supreme Court agrees to review a 2-to-1 appellate ruling against Risen, he may end up in jail. Which would be a loss to all journalists and ultimately to the public.One solution is a proposed "shield law" to protect reporters' ability to keep promises to sources. The bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, but it needs to move forward.The principle at stake is at least as important to the public as similar laws that allow lawyers, social workers and other professionals to keep clients' confidences. Almost every state recognizes a similar privilege for reporters.Critics argue that the Senate measure would set loose a flood of leaks of classified secrets. That's doubtful, and in any case, letting the government operate in secret, unaccountable to the public, is a more vivid risk.Nor does the Senate proposal offer blanket protection. In terrorism and national security cases, the burden on reporters who seek to shield sources would be high, and judges would decide when identities could be shielded — and when they must be revealed.For all its actions to intimidate reporters and leakers, the Obama administration has backed this proposal. It is not, as some critics argue, a special interest law for reporters. It's a law that supports one of the pillars of democracy, the public's right to know things that the government would rather keep hidden.USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/03/16/federal-shield-law-james-risen-editorials-debates/6499771/
Human Interest-
This is human interest because she was a well known celebrity who is now dead.
"Fashion designer L'Wren Scott found dead"
Fashion designer
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/03/17/reports-lwren-scott-found-dead/6525343/
Novelty-
I chose this because it is an unusual topic that pulled me in because it made me curious.
"What Would Plato Tweet?"
I didn’t know what a Klout score was, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have one. And yes, under his raised-eyebrow questioning, it was revealed that since I didn’t use Facebook or Twitter or any of the other social media by which a website called Klout calculates your online influence, my score was probably low to nonexistent.On either side of us, diners were pointing their cellphones at their plates, taking pictures to be posted on their Facebook pages or Instagram accounts. I knew that’s what they were doing. People have taken to putting themselves out there in all kinds of ways, producing — in words, pictures, videos — the shared stories of their lives as they are transpiring. They disseminate their thoughts and deeds, large and small (sometimes very small), in what can seem like a perpetual plea for attention. I wasn’t that out of touch that I didn’t know about the large cultural changes that had overtaken our society while my attention was directed elsewhere.The elsewhere was ancient Greece. For the past few years I’d been obsessed with trying to figure out what lay behind the spectacular achievements that had occurred there. In a mere couple of centuries, Greek speakers went from anomie and illiteracy, lacking even an alphabet, to Aeschylus and Aristotle. They invented not only the discipline of philosophy, but also science, mathematics, the study of history (as opposed to mere chronicles) and that special form of government they called democracy — literally rule of the people (though it goes without saying that “the people” didn’t include women and slaves). They also produced timeless art, architecture, poetry and drama. What lay behind the explosive ambition and achievement? I’d always planned eventually to catch up on the changes that were going on all around me — once I’d gotten the ancient Greeks out of my system.It began when a writer friend asked me what my Klout score was. We were sitting at the sushi bar of a Japanese restaurant, the master chef assembling edible origami of torched fish and foam. My husband and I used to patronize this neighborhood place quite a lot, until a restaurant critic ruined it for us by his unrestrained rave, so that now you have to make reservations months in advance. But my friend had magically procured us two seats just like that, and when I asked him for the secret of his influence he responded by asking me about my Klout score. Only now did it occur to me that I might be able to arrive at some contemporary perspective precisely because I hadn’t gotten the Greeks out of my system. Parallels between their extraordinary time and our extraordinary time were suddenly making themselves felt. For starters, the Klout on which my friend prided himself struck me as markedly similar to what the Greeks had called kleos. The word comes from the old Homeric word for “I hear,” and it meant a kind of auditory renown. Vulgarly speaking, it was fame. But it also could mean the glorious deed that merited the fame, as well as the poem that sang of the deed and so produced the fame. The medium, the message, and the impact: all merged into one shining concept. Perhaps studying the ancient Greeks might give me perspective on today’s social-media obsession.And like so many of us now, they approached this question secularly. Despite their culture’s being saturated with religious rituals, they didn’t turn to their notoriously unreliable immortals for assurance that they mattered. They didn’t really want immortal attention. Something terrible usually happened when they attracted a divine eye. That’s what all those rituals were trying toprevent. Rather, what they wanted was the attention of other mortals. All that we can do to enlarge our lives, they concluded, is to strive to make of them things worth the telling, the stuff of stories that will make an impact on other mortal minds, so that, being replicated there, our lives will take on moreness. The more outstanding you were, the more mental replication of you there would be, and the more replication, the more you mattered.Kleos lay very near the core of the Greek value system. Their value system was at least partly motivated, as perhaps all value systems are partly motivated, by the human need to feel as if our lives matter. A little perspective, which the Greeks certainly had, reveals what brief and feeble things our lives are. As the old Jewish joke has it, the food here is terrible — and such small portions! What can we do to give our lives a moreness that will help withstand the eons of time that will soon cover us over, blotting out the fact that we ever existed at all? Really, why did we bother to show up for our existence in the first place? The Greek speakers were as obsessed with this question as we are. Like us, the Greeks wanted to make their lives matter. And like a Twitter user, they did so by courting the attention of other mortals. Not everybody back then was approaching this question of mattering in mortal terms. Contemporaneous with the Greeks, and right across the Mediterranean from them, was a still obscure tribe that called themselves the Ivrim, the Hebrews, apparently from their word for “over,” since they were over on the other side of the Jordan. And over there they worked out their notion of a covenantal relationship with one of their tribal gods whom they eventually elevated to the position of the one and only God, the Master of the Universe, providing the foundation for both the physical world without and the moral world within. From his position of remotest transcendence, this god nevertheless maintains a rapt interest in human concerns, harboring many intentions directed at us, his creations, who embody nothing less than his reasons for going to the trouble of creating the world ex nihilo. He takes us (almost) as seriously as we take us. Having your life replicated in his all-seeing, all-judging mind, terrifying as the thought might be, would certainly confer a significant quantity of moreness.And then there was a third approach to the problem of mattering, which also emerged in ancient Greece. It, too, was secular, approaching the problem in strictly mortal terms. I’m speaking about Greek philosophy, which was Greek enough to buy into thekleos-like assumption that none of us are born into mattering but rather have to achieve it (“the unexamined life is not worth living”) and that the achievement does indeed demand outsize ambition and effort, requiring you to make of yourself something extraordinary. But Greek philosophy also represented a departure from its own culture. Mattering wasn’t acquired by gatheringattention of any kind, mortal or immortal. Acquiring mattering was something people had to do for themselves, cultivating such virtuous qualities of character as justice and wisdom. They had to put their own souls in order. This demands hard work, since simply to understand the nature of justice and wisdom, which is the first order of business, taxes our limits, not to speak of then acting on our conclusions. And the effort may not win us any kleos.Socrates got himself a cupful of hemlock. He drank it calmly, unperturbed by his low ratings. The divergent Greek and Hebrew approaches went into the mix that is Western culture, often clashing but sometimes also tempering one another. Over the centuries, philosophy, perhaps aided by religion, learned to abandon entirely the flawed Greek presumption that only extraordinary lives matter. This was progress of the philosophical variety, subtler than the dazzling triumphs of science, but nevertheless real. Philosophy has laboriously put forth arguments that have ever widened the sphere of mattering. It was natural for the Greeks to exclude their women and slaves, not to mention non-Greeks, whom they dubbed barbarians. Such exclusions are unthinkable to us now. Being inertial creatures, we required rigorous and oft-repeated arguments that spearheaded social movements that resulted, at long last, in the once quixotic declaration of human rights. We’ve come a long way from the kleos of Greeks, with its unexamined presumption that mattering is inequitably distributed among us, with the multireplicated among us mattering more. Only sometimes it feels as if we haven’t. Our need to feel as if our lives matter is, as always, unabating. But the variations on the theistic approach no longer satisfy on the scale they once did, while cultivating justice and wisdom is as difficult as it has always been. Our new technologies have stepped in just when we most need them. Kleos — or Klout — is only a tweet away. It’s stunning that our culture has, with the dwindling of theism, returned to the answer to the problem of mattering that Socrates and Plato judged woefully inadequate. Perhaps their opposition is even more valid today. How satisfying, in the end, is a culture of social-media obsession? The multireplication so readily available is as short-lived and insubstantial as the many instances of our lives they replicate. If the inadequacies of kleos were what initially precipitated the emergence of philosophy, then maybe it’s time for philosophy to take on Klout. It has the resources. It’s far more developed now than in the day when Socrates wandered the agora trying to prick holes in people’s kleos-inflated attitudes. It can start by demonstrating, just as clearly and forcefully as it knows how, that we all matter. Mattering — none of us more than the other — is our birthright, and we should all be treated accordingly, granted the resources that allow for our flourishing. Appreciating this ethical truth might help calm the frenzy surrounding our own personal mattering, allowing us to direct more energy toward cultivating justice and wisdom. In fact, fully appreciating this ethical truth, in all its implications for both thought and deed, would itself constitute a significant step toward the cultivation of justice and wisdom.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/what-would-plato-tweet/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=opinion&_r=0
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