Day: November 20, 2011

Caveat: the sound of running water

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I don’t know the origin of this idea, but I find it singularly fascinating. A commenter at the LanguageLog blog by the handle of “Mark F.” writes (in a comment to a recent entry):

I have read that beavers can’t bear the sound of running water, so much so that they will cover speakers playing that sound with mud, sticks, and rocks until they can’t hear them any more; and that this is what induces them to build dams.

pictureThe implication is that what appears, objectively, to be evolved instinctive behavior is, in fact, subjectively experienced as a profound, even unbearable discomfort with some environmental condition – e.g. the sound of running water. Somehow this jibes quite well with my own subjective experiences with some aspects of my humanness – that things that are really evolved adaptive behaviors are only with immense difficulty perceived as such, because inside the own individual’s mind, they resonate more as various sorts of discomforts or dislikes.

Hmm. Thinking.

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Caveat: Occupy Someone Else’s Space

Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

“Occupation is more exhilarating and instantly gratifying than the hard slog of advancing political and social change” – Wendy Kaminer, at The Atlantic, November 18. This really was the first criticism of the Occupy Blah-Blah movement that really clearly summarizes my own discomfort with it.

Kaminer goes on to suggest (in different words – I’m extrapolating) the idea that the Occupiers are hypocrites, because they are setting themselves up as an “elite” of their own sort – an elite who are somehow more politically aware than the remaining 99% who remain clueless, conforming sheep. And that’s the point – the remaining 99% aren’t clueless – they know just as well (if not better) than the Occupiers what’s going on, and how things work. But they prefer to attempt to advance social and political change using other methods – less confrontational, in-your-face methods.

The main thing I like about the Occupy Whatchamacallit movement is mostly that they provide a kind of loony, far-left counterweight to the loony, far-right idiocies of the Teapartiers. I keep hoping the two groups will somehow accidentally reach a political critical mass while passing each other on the streets, one day, and then suddenly cancel out, like so much matter/anti-matter, in an explosion of useful political change.

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