Here's a book I want to read: The Atheist's Guide to Reality, by Alex Rosenberg. In a review at 3AM Magazine, Richard Marshall summarizes,
Rosenberg is a fearless naturalist, whose ‘nice nihilism’ doesn’t imply that we can become nihilists. He disturbs the comfy domestication of the naturalistic world view. Evolutionism and physics gives us a nihilist universe, purposeless, meaningless, ultimately devoid of everything we think is important. But it has constructed us as having evolutionary reflexes that grant us illusions of freewill and purpose we cannot but believe.
Even the review makes for very dense reading. I haven't been doing very well at dense reading, lately – but I hope I can find Rosenberg's book at Kyobo or somewhere like that.
I’ve been reading Wallace Stevens – one of the greatest poets, in my opinion. He has a poem called “Description Without Place” – it’s quite long – and there’s a part about Nietzsche and Lenin that fascinates me. Here is a frequently quoted part about Lenin:
Lenin on a bench beside a lake disturbed
The swans. He was not the man for swans.
The slouch of his body and his look were not
In suavest keeping. The shoes, the clothes, the hat
Suited the decadence of those silences,
In which he sat. All chariots were drowned. The swans
Moved on the buried water where they lay.
Lenin took bread from his pocket, scattered it–
The swans fled outward to remoter reaches,
As if they knew of distant beaches; and were
Dissolved. The distances of space and time
Were one and swans far off were swans to come.
The eye of Lenin kept the far-off shapes.
His mind raised up, down-drowned, the chariots.
And reaches, beaches, tomorrow’s regions became
One thinking of apocalyptic legions.
So what are the swans? Utopian dreams? Revolution?
A blogger named doctorzamalek who runs a blog called Object Oriented Philosophy (yes, I'm a bit of an avocational philosophy nerd) writes on the current US political scene, in a way that I feel like quoting (and leading to several layers of embedded quotes, as he cites NYT who cites Romney).
Romney may be saying this just for campaigning purposes, but it’s still worth talking about it:
“It is a moral imperative for America to stop spending more money than we take in,” Mr. Romney says in the ad, which will be running when he arrives in Iowa on Tuesday for a bus tour and an orchestrated blitz of appearances by surrogates leading up to the caucuses on Jan. 3.
No. There is nothing “immoral” about spending more than you take in. This practice has a name: investment. Did I spend more than I took in while studying for my various degrees? Of course I did. And it might actually have been “immoral” not to do that, since my entire future depended on it.
There is a really interesting article about Finnish education at The Atlantic. I wrote before about the possibility that standardized testing neither helps nor harms quality of education, and speculated that the fact that countries as divergent in education policy as South Korea and Finland both score so high on comparative level-of-education surveys must have cultural roots.
The article, by a Finn working in the US, gives me a clue as to what that cultural aspect might be. I’ve always though it has to do with some qualitative valuation of education by, e.g. parents or educators, but the author points out a different possibility: collectivism and/or cooperation-based social models.
Korea, for all its competitiveness and inequality, shares with Finland a cultural valuation of cooperation and social cohesion over explicit dog-eat-dog social Darwinism. It seems that when Finns set out to reform their education system, they thought about how to encourage less of the latter in favor of the former.
Korea may have a lot of competition, but what I saw in the public school where I worked was constant reference back to cultural values of teamwork and collective achievement of goals. This means that even as Koreans are winnowing out low achievers with their never-ending tests, they are inculcating everyone with the importance of a kind of “everyone’s in this together” social philosophy. It’s cognitively dissonant, but it might point to a kind of counterbalance to the competition that ensures that scores rise across the board.
I’m not sure I have a point to make. But I highly recommend the article if you’re interested in education, “education reform,” and such issues. One stunning take-away: Finland achieves highest-in-the-world education rankings with no private schools. None. Wow.
Let’s not forget that the Soviets, and Cuba even today, achieve remarkable education standards with extremely low investment through focus on equity and equal access, too. I think the US would be wise to think about this. Market approaches will never raise achievement across the board – market approaches to education will do what markets do: there will be some winners and lots of losers. That drives inequality, not high standards across the board.
I have decided to coin a new word, “atheisticist,” for use to describe atheists who are offensive, in the same way that sullyblog uses the term Christianist (apparently he coined it) to describe Christians who are annoying because of their shallow hypocrisies, militancy and/or dogmatic ideological rigidities and intolerant attitudes. The term Christianist is meant to parallel Islamist. Similarly, I would conceive Atheisticist as the same sort of parallel.
Having thus coined a new word, I shall apply it posthaste to the recently deceased philosopher/gadfly/atheisticist, Christopher Hitchens. There’s some irony (or poetic justice?) in my imitating the sullyblog in this, since apparently sullyblog and the hitch were pals.
As is often the case in his bloggings on various current events, the blogger IOZ provides the sort of biting, dark and yet shiny, brilliant prose that best captures my own sentiments (almost exactly) RE the recently deceased man. He writes about his own perspective vis-a-vis Hitchens, “As an atheist, I found him as embarrassing as my loudest aunt’s impenetrable Pittsburghese, mortifying in polite company. If the universe were just, he would wake from his passage on Kolob, basking in the angelic light of billions of perfect, white, immortal Mormon smiles.”
This connects back to something I observed about a concept from Bertolt Brecht in this blog entry from a few weeks ago – one man’s heaven can be another’s hell. And nothing would be more hellish for an atheisticist of Hitchens’ ilk than a Mormon Kolob.
Perhaps releated, perhaps not (you decide): what I’m listening to right now.
This is from the DPRK. Don’t suffer under the illusion that only North Korea produces music like this. You can find very similar things on South Korean television, with merely different themes – it’s thought of as old-people’s music, rather like Sinatra, maybe, in the U.S.
“Enlightenment is the ideological firstborn of the bourgeoisie in its course of ascent. In its actual concreteness and specificity, Enlightenment serves the purposes of the bourgeois order that gave it birth as sedulously as the mediaeval Papacy served the feudal order.” – Michael J. Smith in an entry from last year to his blog, Stop Me Before I Vote Again.
Just so we’re clear: we’re talking European philosophical Enlightenment, not the Buddhist nirvanic type. It’s food for thought, though I’m not sure where to go with it. But it struck me as I read it – it was an aha moment.
Nezahualcóyotl era poeta y príncipe del estado azteca, de etnia Acolhua, del siglo 15 – murió antes de la invasión cortesiana, pero le conocemos por su poesía y las memorias de sus descendientes. Su pensamiento parece bastante espiritual.
Moyocoyatzin es un nombre (más bien un epiteto) de un “diós” o poder espiritual, que significa “el que se crea a sí mismo.”
Nezahualcóyotl
Romance de los Señores de la Nueva España
Zan nik kaki itopyo ipetlacayo
X. Ah in tepilwan: ma tiyoke timikini ti mazewaltin nawi nawi in timochi tonyazke timochi tonalkizke Owaya Owaya in tlaltikpak. XI. Ayak chalchiwitl ayak teokuitlatl mokuepaz in tlaltikpak tlatielo timochiotonyazke in canin ye yuhkan: ayak mokawaz zan zen tlapupuliwiz ti yawi ye yuhkan […] ichan Owaya Owaya. XII. Zan yahki tlakuilolli Aya ah tonpupuliwi Zan yuhki xochitl Aya in zan tonkuetlawi ya in tlaltikpak Owaya ya ketzalli ya zakuan xiuhkecholli itlakechwan tonpupuliwi tiyawi in […] ichan Owaya Owaya. XIII. Oaziko ye nikan ye ololo Ayyawe a in tlaokol Aya ye in itek on nemi ma men chkililo in kuauta ozelotl Owaya nikan zan tipopuliwizke ayak mokawaz Iyyo. XIV. Xik yokoyakan in antepilwan kuauht amozelo ma nel chalchiwitl ma nel teokuitlatl no ye ompa yazke onkan on Ximowa yewaya zan tipupuliwizke ayak mokawaz Iyyo.
X. Percibo su secreto, oh vosotros, príncipes: De igual modo somos, somos mortales, los hombres, cuatro a cuatro, […] todos nos iremos, todos moriremos en la tierra. XI. Nadie esmeralda nadie oro se volverá ni será en la tierra algo que se guarda: todos nos iremos hacia allá igualmente: nadie quedará, todos han de desaparecer: de modo igual iremos a su casa. XII. Como una pintura nos iremos borrando. Como flor hemos de secarnos sobre la tierra. Cual ropaje de plumas del quetzal, del zacuan, del azulejo, iremos pereciendo. Iremos a su casa. XIII. Llegó hasta acá, anda ondulando la tristeza de los que viven ya en el interior de ella… No se les llore en vano a águilas y tigres… ¡Aquí iremos desapareciendo: nadie ha de quedar! XIV. Príncipes, pensadlo, oh águilas y tigres: pudiera ser jade, pudiera ser oro también allá irán donde están los descorporizados. Iremos desapareciendo: nadie ha de quedar!
Me interesa mucho el idioma y cultura nahuatl, desde hace mucho. Ya que me he visto frustrado tanto en mis esfuerzos para aprender el coreano, he estado pasando tiempo estudiando otros idiomas (de forma no muy enfocada).
Issitoq is an Inuit deity of surveillance and stern warnings. He is a giant eye that makes sure you don’t break the rules, like some kind of proto-Foucauldianpanopticon-creature.
I was thinking about Issitoq as I drifted to sleep, the night before last. And so I had a short but vivid dream about Issitoq. It wasn’t really scary, but it was eerie. He was zooming down out of a stormy, sunsetty sky over a strangely colorful but desolate plain, like some kind of disneyfied Sauron.
I drew this picture yesterday, based on that dream.
I had homemade split pea soup (to which I added tons of carrots and some wasabi paste… very nice).
I’ve been reading Jameson on Marxism (in Valances of the Dialectic, previously mentioned). My question: so what’s with China? The implicit answer is obvious… in the 70’s, the central committee recognized that the revolution couldn’t be a truly Marxist one, because they weren’t an industrialized country. So… logically, they opted for capitalism. Not repudiating Marxism, but because they were true Marxists. Hmm. Just thinking. More on this later… maybe.
Below, from Bertolt Brecht's Hollywood Elegies. I particularly like the characterization of heaven, at the start. Who needs heaven and hell? You can make just one place, that's really nice for some of the people to be in, and horrible for the other people.
I The village of Hollywood was planned according to the notion People in these parts have of heaven. In these parts They have come to the conclusion that God Requiring a heaven and a hell, didn’t need to Plan two establishments but Just the one: heaven. It Serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful As hell.
II
By the sea stand the oil derricks. Up the canyons The gold prospectors’ bones lie bleaching. Their sons Built the dream factories of Hollywood. The four cities Are filled with the oily smell Of films.
III The city is named after the angels And you meet angels on every hand They smell of oil and wear golden pessaries And, with blue rings round their eyes Feed the writers in their swimming pools every morning.
IV Beneath the green pepper trees The musicians play the whore, two by two With the writers. Bach Has written a Strumpet Voluntary. Dante wriggles His shrivelled bottom.
V The angels of Los Angeles Are tired out with smiling. Desperately Behind the fruit stalls of an evening They buy little bottles Containing sex odours.
VI Above the four cities the fighter planes Of the Defense Department circle at a great height So that the stink of greed and poverty Shall not reach them
Hat tip, for the above, to Frederic Jameson, who cited this Brecht in his chapter on Utopia in his Valences of the Dialectic, which I am currently attempting (but mostly failing) to read. Also, as an erstwhile Angeleno of the ambivalent, love-hatey variety, I appreciate the dark vision of the place.
I say that in the deepest irony. The “pepper spraying cop” of the recent UC Davis incident has gone memic, with a tumblr dedicated to photoshopping him into just about everything imaginable, most images full of obscure cultural references and cruel satire. My personal favorite was his elevation to a new, 2011 version of Lady Liberty – see below.
It’s interesting watching all this from abroad – it gives some distance, some cultural perspective. It’s not like South Korea doesn’t have its own pepper spraying cops (or the rough equivalents) – in fact, I would almost say that it was South Korea that perfected the difficult arts of both public rioting and of the police repression of said rioting – these American occupiers and their pepper-spraying cop friends could learn a lot from a careful study of the last two decades of Korean history – they are rank amateurs in comparison.
Nevertheless (or perhaps, because of this), there is something disturbing, depressing, and, yes, ironic that South Korea seems so… settled and calm, these days, while other parts of world, including places not so far from where I was born and raised (such as UC Davis) are undergoing these social upheavals. I tend to want to start studying gini coefficients, and suchlike.
From a broad economic and/or politico-historical perspective, let’s just say… mistakes may have been made. I’m feeling depressed about the future of my passport-issuing polity (because I don’t like saying the word “nation” with a possessive pronoun like “my”).
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.
The 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.
Recently my debate classes completed a unit I put together on the topic of immigration. Despite the fact that I have admitted (on this blog) strong personal viewson the subject, I try very hard to hide those opinions during the class, because I really want to get the students to competently address both sides – that’s the spirit of a true debate class, and also because I hate the idea that I might be indoctrinating them somehow (they get enough of that from their Korean teachers).
For their final written test, they have to write a “speech” for either the Pro or Con side of a proposition similar to (but not exactly the same as) one we have done in class, without using notes – although I typically allow them to use their dictionaries.
I had two students to whom I gave perfect scores. Below are their essays – I’ve typed them up “as is” from their test papers, retaining the spelling and grammar exactly as written (really, not that bad considering these are two Korean eighth graders who have never lived outside of Korea) with only minor adjustments to punctuation.
The proposition was: “Immigration to South Korea should be encouraged.” I really feel quite proud of their work, and the reasonable clarity of their arguments.
Hyeonguk wrote for the Pro team:
Hello? I’m Ted from Pro team. Our team absolutely think we should allow and encourage immigration to Korea. We have three strong ideas. After you hear my speech, you’ll also think encouraging immigration is good and why it is good for Korea and you.
First of all, immigration is a right. Immigration is a right that we can’t stop and restrict. Immigration is a right like liberty. If we restrict immigration, it’ll be not only like slavery, but also like restricting their freedom. So I absolutely think we should allow immigration because it is a right.
My second reason is, it will help our economy to grow. We need more consumers and workers to grow our economy. And immigrants can solve and improve this problem. Immigrants can be a strong promotion to increase our economy. So I think we should encourage immigration because they can help our economy to grow.
My third reason is about aging problem – so-called old people problem. And I think it is the strongest idea that our Pro team has. We’ll go through aging problem soon. Then, we need more young people to work. However, Korea’s child birth rate is low now, but there is a way that we can solve it. It is immigration! So our Pro team think we should allow immigration.
Untill now, I’m talking about why we need immigration. Those are about right, economy, and aging problem. It can be hard for a few years after we allow immigration. However, after we bear it, we can get a lot of benefits. “After a storm, comes a calm.” We should remember this and we should allow immigration to Korea.
Haeun wrote for the Con team:
Hello! I’m Candy from the CON team. Our proposition is “Immigration is good for South Korea” and I disagree with this idea. Nowadays, many people are coming to Korea as immigrants. For example, many Vietnamese and Filipinos are coming to Korea to marry with the farmers or the old man. Also, many Chinese are coming to work in the factory. Like these, immigrations are increasing in South Korea. I’ll tell you 3 reasons why I disagree with the proposition: immigration will lead Korea to have much more unemployment, will cause conflict between Koreans and immigrants, and Korea’s tradition like culture and language should stay pure.
First, I think immigration will cause increase of unemployment. Nowadays, many Chinese are coming to Korea to work in facotry and because the have the low pay, many factory owners like them and it will lead koreans to lose jobs. Also, because most immigrants who come to earn money came to Korea illegally, the owners can threaten them to work more. And it’s a profit to the owners, so they won’t employ the Koreans.
Second, I think immigration will cause conflict between Koreans and the immigrants. It’s a fact that most Koreans are conservative and don’t like the foreigners, especially people from South East Asia. For example, there was a woman who wanted to go to a bathhouse who came from Southeast Asia. However, the owner of a bathhouse didn’t allow her to go in because she thought many people odn’t like the foreigners. And it caused many of foreigners (immigrants) to feel bad. Like these, immigration will cause a conflict and if it gets bigger, it will lead to a social problem.
Lastly, I think Korea’s tradition like culture and language should stay pure. Unlike other countries, Korea’s culture is traditional and it’s a strong point in Korean culture. If you look at America, you can see many culture and languages existing in one country because most of the immigrants have a tendency to keep their culture. And it leads a country to be confused because each of them speaks differently and has different cultures.
These are all of my 3 reasons why I think immigration is not good for South Korea. First, immigration will cause increase of unemployment. Second, it will cause a conflict between Koreans and immigrants. Third, Korea’s tradition should stay pure. I hope the immigration to South Korea won’t increase any more and want not to have the problems between immigrants and Koreans.
I also made a video of the debate speeches (which were somewhat distinct from the topic for the written test), but because the sound quality is poor and because they are not accustomed to public speaking, it’s not quite so impressive as their writing. Nevertheless, I’ll try to post that sometime.
How strange is it, to be quizzed by a group of sixth graders about the idea of lucid dreaming? They didn’t remember the terminology, so the first several minutes of discussion required them explaining it to me, with their imperfect English. In and of itself, that was interesting, too – a lucid-dreaming-style sort of coming-to-awareness of the fact that the topic that we were attempting to discuss was, in fact, lucid dreaming. Hmm… I’m making it sound a little bit eerie, and it wasn’t.
It was just an interesting and engaging discussion such as rarely happens with my students, but that is deeply pleasing when it does.
And then I came home and I somewhat spontaneously (but perhaps prompted at some subconscious level?) decided to watch a movie I saw when it first came out, and that I’d recently re-downloaded: “Waking Life.” Which is all about lucid dreaming. Among other existential and vaguely gnostic themes. And don’t forget Pedro Páramo.
“We are asleep. Our life is a dream. But we wake up, sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”- Ludwig Wittgenstein
There is a meme (perhaps started at xkcd) that says that following the first (non parenthetical) link on a wikipedia article, recursively, always leads to the article entitled “Philosophy.” Someone built a widget online to test this. You can try out random wikipedia articles, and see them leading to Philosophy – it draws a tree. Here’s a tree I made with some random articles using the “random” button.
There are some caveats (naturally) to how this works – explained here (read the comments thread). I like the example of a circular set of articles (try “Exogeny” in the widget).
We had a sort of game in my debate class the other day, where students had to make strange or funny or outrageous propositions for mini-speeches. On one of the cards, I found the following written, verbatim:
Steve Jobs is alive b/c he's living in my house. he takes my Halloween chocolate But, he gave me iphone + [plus] teach English to me He's good friend
"The world is not just mad. It is mad and rational as well." – sociologist Theodor Adorno (in a 1956 conversation, presumably translated from German).
"Ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste." – Karl Marx (in original French, to Lafargue) [If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist].
I'm not necessarily deeply impressed by the social movements currently happening, that are going by monikers prefixed with the word "Occupy" – e.g. Occupy Wall Street. Rather than be critical of the lack of a clear program or set of demands, however, I'd rather be critical of the evident lack of clearheaded, genuine, scientific-spirited analysis. This is not just lacking on the left, though. It's just as lacking in anything on the right, of course. If not more so. Apparently no one has a monopoly on muddleheadedness.
Here is an interesting fact I found recently. I saw a pointer to a review of a recent book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. I read the review and was impresed. At some point, I may work to acquire the book – perhaps I'll see it out on a table at Kyobo Mungo or another Korean bookstore with a good English book section. This happened with another book I recently started, called 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, by Cambridge University heterodox economist (and coincidental Korean) Ha-joon Chang.
The above mentioned review led me to a list on the wikithing about something called the Wealth Gini. Roughly speaking, the wealth Gini is a ranking of countries in the world by the "fairness" (equality) of their relative distribution of weatlh (not GDP or income, which I find less compelling). Saliently, South Korea is fourth from the top (Japan is the top), while the USA is fifth from the bottom (Namibia is the bottom).
What do these facts mean?
Eloquent blogic ranter "Who is IOZ" captures some of my feelings (eloquently, of course) with a recent post entitled Costaguana.
I am really enjoying the United States these days. It has come more and more to resemble the sort of tawdry, ramshackle, sweaty, tumbledown, corrupt Greeneland that it was always destined to be–or that it always was but managed to hide behind a mountain of dollar-menu burger patties and tip-hazard SUVs. Well, it sort of sucks to live in a decrepit police state, but at least it finally feels a little more like a real country: demonstrators, work stoppages, tent cities, felonious oligarchs helicoptering to-and-fro, private security firms, a hapless and yet still terrifying apparatus of state repression. A fat cop on the edge of cardiac arrest swinging a knightstick fruitlessly at a dirty kid. Forever.
here are some students who know so much more than we give them credit for.
Some of the teachers were sitting around earlier, in the staff room, and Curt and JJ and I were trying to puzzle out why it was that a certain student had quit the hagwon – her mother had apparently said that she was most dissatisfied with the debate class. My debate class … that is my hugest, most innovative undertaking, so far, at Karma Academy. Well, we didn’t really reach a conclusion – but I didn’t feel on the defensive about somehow having been the one to “cause” her to leave the program. It wasn’t that sort of conversation – it was just wondering what might have left the student in question unhappy with it.
Anyway, some time later one of my students from that same class came into the staff room. She was clearly bored, and on the prowl for some kind of distraction. I was on a free period, and her cohort hadn’t started yet, so she was killing time. These students from the debate class are pretty advanced, and we can have interesting and wide-ranging conversations. She told me that lately she was doing more homework.
“I do homework when my life is boring,” she explained. “Then when my life is interesting, I don’t study. So my grades go up and down.” She made a rocking wave motion with her hand.
This struck me as a brilliant bit of self-analysis. She’s a very insightful student, I thought. Somewhat in passing, I mentioned the student who had left the program that we’d been talking about earlier.
She said it was obvious why the other girl didn’t like the debate class: “She was a little bit too proud of herself. She saw in that class that she couldn’t be the top student, so she didn’t like it.” I was stunned with how succinct and perceptive (and brutally honest) this was, as it jibed well with my much less clear hunches as to what had left her unhappy with the class.
There is a certain type of perfectionism that brooks no true competition – I can speak of this with some depth of understanding, as I have perhaps been guilty of it myself, as some points in my life.
“Buddha. I bow and pray to think positively in everything.”
This is #96 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).
I would read this ninety-sixth affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray to think positively in everything.”
This affirmation is quite important. It is perhaps one of the affirmations that I have in fact been practicing, on and off, for a very long time. It brings to mind the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, writing on Spinoza: “ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation.” I’ve mentioned that quote before, on this blog – it’s one of my favorite and most meaningful, so I come back to it a lot. I found the silly image of Baruch de Spinoza in a random online search. Philosophical powers, indeed!
At hagwon, yesterday, we returned to the regular schedule (post-시험대비, so to speak), but many of the middle-schoolers didn’t bother to show up – out recovering from their mid-terms, I suspect. So we ended up showing them a movie: Green Lantern. One of the other teachers thought it could be justified “educationally” by having me ask some “comprehension” questions afterward, so I got to watch it too – during which I took notes and imagined I was going to have to write some kind of review. My semiotician’s trope-detector kicked into overdrive, entertainingly.
We didn’t finish the movie, but in the last few minutes of class, I asked the kids what they would do if the alien had chosen to give one of them the green lantern and magic green ring (with it’s seemingly infinite, vaguely Nietzschean powers).
One girl said, confidently, “I will sell it.” I laughed. Money is better than infinite powers of Will. Of course. So… Man. Superman. Billionaire.
I recently ran across a Time magazine article about South Korea’s hagwon industry (“Kids, stop studying so hard!”). It even mentions my city of Ilsan by name.
In some ways, it’s a pretty good introduction to the hagwon industry. It makes several points and observations that have been echoing around my skull in other contexts – most notably, it points out that other countries near the top of the achievement list in education, such as Finland, manage to do so without testing their children into submission.
But that connects to another point the article makes – that the hagwon system is, in fact, much older than Korea’s modernization – there were private “cram schools” in a Confucian mold even in medieval Korea, to help the kids of low- and mid-level aristocrats enter the civil service.
But that connects to a point I’ve been thinking about that the article doesn’t mention: in a Foucauldian sense, the hagwon system might be viewed as a sophisticated and highly successful means of social control (this blog post’s title references the philospher’s work that I obliquely have in mind). Perhaps forcing high proportions of the country’s youth into perpetual states of anxiety and sleep deprivation not only achieves those remarkable and famous South Korean suicide rates, but also guarantees a sort of social quietude that is the envy of many other countries. I’m speaking a little bit tongue-in-cheek, of course.
The world isn’t really that bad. Steven Pinker made some observations recently in the Wall Street Journal that I found confirmed some intuitions I’ve had about historical trends, especially with respect to violence. The fact is that in terms of overall trend, violence is steadily decreasing in the world, despite increasing population. This graph, in particular, shows his point very clearly.
If someone would like to try to refute the point being made by the article and emphasized by the graph above, I’m open to argument – but I really think that all the doom-and-gloom people have got it so very wrong about the world, about history, about where we’re at and where our world is going.
The title of this post comes from Abraham Lincoln, whom Pinker quotes in his article.
Four thousand, three hundred and forty-five years ago, in early October, the gates of Heaven opened over the White-Headed Mountain.
A Heavenly Regent (Hwanung) had asked that his father, the Lord of Heaven (Hwanin), grant him a beautiful peninsula to rule over, because he had seen that the people in that land had become badly behaved and he felt sorry for the place. At the holy White-Headed Mountain (Baekdusan) in the north of the peninsula, near a holy sandalwood tree, the Heavenly Regent established a heavenly city with his three chancellors, named Wind, Rain and Cloud, and 3000 followers.
There were a tiger and a bear living together in a cave on the mountain, and they saw the Heavenly Regent’s city and were desiring to become human, and so they would pray each day at the sandalwood tree. Finally, the Heavenly Regent called the bear and tiger into audience with him, and told them that if they would do as he said, they could become human.
He gave them garlic and weeds (like daisies and mugwort) to eat, and told them to take only these items deep into their cave and wait 100 days, and they could become human. The tiger and bear went into the cave, but the tiger quickly grew tired of only eating garlic and weeds, and gave up his hope to be human and fled the cave. The bear persevered, however, and after 101 days, she awoke to discover she’d become a beautiful woman. She emerged from the cave and returned to the sandalwood tree.
Now that she’d become human, she wished to have a child, but her husband the tiger had abandoned her due to his lack of patience. So, again she would pray at the sandalwood tree, and after a time, the Heavenly Regent took her as a wife and she became pregnant and bore a child, who was named Sandalwood (Dangun), which also means Altar Prince.
The Prince Sandalwood moved to the Flat Land (Pyeongyang) and founded a city he named Morning City (Asadal). The kingdom was named the Morning Calm (Choseon).
More than four thousand years later, on October 3rd each year, the people of Morning Calm, who are the descendants of Prince Sandalwood, and who also call themselves the Great Nation (Han or Khan), memorialize the opening of Heaven by taking a day off from work.
A blogger named Christopher Carr (at a site called League of Ordinary Gentlemen – a blog name that I somewhat dislike, by the way, because citing it makes me feel like I’m on a street corner handing out ads for a strip club) is refuting some ideas he ran across on another blog by someone named Dr Helen. The level of writing and the way he manages the ideas is spectacular.
He uses the term “scrooge mcduckery” to describe the sort of wannabe-John-Galtism that seems to underlie some portion of the teapartiers. Here’s a great extended quote from the specific blog entry:
Going through the comments over there at Dr. Helen’s and measuring the levels of entitlement, uncompromising self-righteousness, baseless notions of victimhood, and B-team Scrooge McDuckery might be an appropriate exercise for Introduction to Physics students. As if the baby boomers haven’t already been doing this in spirit for years, advocates of going Galt suggest the appropriate response to the democratic government not doing exactly what you-the-one-citizen-among-many like is to sit back and be pampered, as if the baby boomers haven’t already been doing this in spirit for years.
Actually it’s all a sort of prologue to a paean to Victor Hugo and Les Miserables, and, having never been much of a fan of Hugo, myself, I stopped reading it. But the introductory part really captures quite well a lot of what’s caused me, in recent years, to turn rather leftward from my earlier infatuation with Ayn Randian ideations.
Even five years ago I still happily described myself as having strong libertarian tendencies, but I’ve become so uncomfortable with these tendencies in recent times that I cannot in good conscience use the word libertarian any more – at least about myself, anyway. Perhaps these years in communitarian Korea, where even the hard-right conservatives still believe in things like universal healthcare and massive government-funded infrastructure projects, has colored my worldview.
I’m not really going anywhere with this, but I so loved Carr’s use of the term “scrooge mcduckery” (and by the way, I loved Scrooge McDuck comics when I a kid – why?). So I had to post this comment.
Theory of Truth
(Reference to The Women at Point Sur)
I stand near Soberanes Creek, on the knoll over the sea, west of
the road. I remember
This is the very place where Arthur Barclay, a priest in revolt,
proposed three questions to himself:
First, is there a God and of what nature? Second, whether there's
anything after we die but worm's meat?
Third, how should men live? Large time-worn questions no
doubt; yet he touched his answers, they are not unattainable;
But presently lost them again in the glimmer of insanity.
How
many minds have worn these questions; old coins
Rubbed faceless, dateless. The most have despaired and accepted
doctrine; the greatest have achieved answers, but always
With aching strands of insanity in them.
I think of Lao-tze; and the dear beauty of the Jew whom they
crucified but he lived, he was greater than Rome;
And godless Buddha under the boh-tree, straining through his
mind the delusions and miseries of human life.
Why does insanity always twist the great answers?
Because only
tormented persons want truth.
Man is an animal like other animals, wants food and success and
women, not truth. Only if the mind
Tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness:
then it hates its life-cage and seeks further,
And finds, if it is powerful enough. But instantly the private
agony that made the search
Muddles the finding.
Here was a man who envied the chiefs of
the provinces of China their power and pride,
And envied Confucius his fame for wisdom. Tortured by hardly
conscious envy he hunted the truth of things,
Caught it, and stained it through with his private impurity. He
praised inaction, silence, vacancy: why?
Because the princes and officers were full of business, and wise
Confucius of words.
Here was a man who was born a bastard, and among the people
That more than any in the world valued race-purity, chastity, the
prophetic splendors of the race of David.
Oh intolerable wound, dimly perceived. Too loving to curse his
mother, desert-driven, devil-haunted,
The beautiful young poet found truth in the desert, but found also
Fantastic solution of hopeless anguish. The carpenter was not his
father? Because God was his father,
Not a man sinning, but the pure holiness and power of God.
His personal anguish and insane solution
Have stained an age; nearly two thousand years are one vast poem
drunk with the wine of his blood.
And here was another Saviour, a prince in India,
A man who loved and pitied with such intense comprehension of
pain that he was willing to annihilate
Nature and the earth and stars, life and mankind, to annul the
suffering. He also sought and found truth,
And mixed it with his private impurity, the pity, the denials.
Then
search for truth is foredoomed and frustrate?
Only stained fragments?
Until the mind has turned its love from
itself and man, from parts to the whole.
- Robinson Jeffers, 1937.
The greatest American poet, IMHO.
I took the picture above in November, 2009, not far from Point Sur, California.
This is #87 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).
I would read this eighty-seventh affirmation as: “Buddha. I bow and pray not to be envious.”
…Speaking of economics.
But actually, I experienced a moment of envy, this morning, upon learning that my closest friend from graduate school has published a book. It’s an “edition,” such as academics do – in this case, an edition of Balbuena’s “Grandeza mexicana” from 1604.
Envy, I guess, because it was once the sort of future I ambitiously imagined for myself… it seems that I’ve traveled a different road. Regardless, congratulations to my friend, and at some point look forward to reading what she wrote.
The problem with envy is that it’s pernicious – it doesn’t always really feel like a “negative” emotion. How is it different than, say, aspiration? Or is aspiration something to be avoided, too? That’s a possible implication. Desire as the source of suffering, and all that.
I keep returning to thinking about issues of sustainability, economics, the “stable recession” in Japan, my own interest in things like carrying capacity and density. I ran across a book review in the Guardian of a book I’d like to get ahold of eventually. The review seemed to summarize some of the ideas that have been bouncing around my own mind for a couple years now.
One thing I didn’t really see addressed in the review, however, is the idea that there is a class of goods that don’t rely, quite as directly, on consumption of finite resources: I’m thinking of art and intellectual production. To the extent that we transition to a “knowledge-based economy” (though I hate using such a buzzword), we can continue economic “growth” (in the abstract sense of increasing the amount of money sloshing around, i guess) without necessarily using up “stuff.” Call it an immaterial economics.
What I’m listening to right now.
Joan Baez, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
Originally this song was by Bob Dylan, and I love Bob Dylan, but it’s Baez’s version that is embedded in my memory from my childhood. Yeah, growing up hippy, and all that. The lyrics.
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall Lyrics
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son ? And where have you been my darling young one ? I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son ? And what did you see, my darling young one ? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’ I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’ I saw a white ladder all covered with water I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son ? And what did you hear, my darling young one ? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’ I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’ I heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’ I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’ Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, who did you meet my blue-eyed son ? Who did you meet, my darling young one ? I met a young child beside a dead pony I met a white man who walked a black dog I met a young woman whose body was burning I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow I met one man who was wounded in love I met another man who was wounded in hatred And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son ? And what’ll you do now my darling young one ? I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’ I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten Where black is the color, where none is the number And I’ll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’ But I’ll know my songs well before I start singin’ And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Yo sueño con los ojos Abiertos, y de día Y noche siempre sueño. Y sobre las espumas Del ancho mar revuelto, Y por entre las crespas Arenas del desierto Y del león pujante, Monarca de mi pecho, Montado alegremente Sobre el sumiso cuello, Un niño que me llama Flotando siempre veo!
– José Martí, en Ismaelillo (Nueva York, 1882)
A veces llevo la misma impresión que me ofrece ese poema: la de existir en una clase de sueño despierto por las rutinas de la vida diaria. Anoche leía a Coleridge, y hoy en la mañana a Martí.
Son cuerpos de obra poética algo relacionados por lo temático onírico. Pero aunque me encantan los rítmos de e.g. “Cristabel” de Coleridge, su contenido proto-romántico – digamos místico – me es difícil. Prefiero el contendio martiano, tal vez igualmente místico pero ya plenamente proto-modernista. Además, los poemas de Ismaelillo, por su fundación en la vida real del poeta – inspirados por su hijo – celebran algo del mundo real. Es un onirismo cotidiano y realista – una vida de padre amoroso inmigrante en Brooklyn – en lugar de un onirismo evasivo y anti-realista, opiático.
Hace mucho tiempo que me dedico a leer tanta poesía como en estos días. Tal vez es una forma de tratar a mi propia vacuidad creativa.
I found a website (named “Project Implicit,” by something called IAT Corp, hosted at Harvard) that makes some claim to evaluate the kind of unconscious mental associations between categories like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and other semantic fields (like good vs. bad, American vs. not-American, etc.).
You do these rapid response categorization tests and then the test tells you how you tend to lean in your alleged “automatic preferences.” I harbor all kinds of skepticism about this sort of test, on multiple counts. I might discuss some of these skepticisms later, but for now, I’ll present my personal results on two of the tests (in the spirit of disclosure and for those curious).
The first test I took was with regard to the African-American category (Black) vis-a-vis the European-American category (White). Impressionistically, the alternation between labeling as Black vs. African-American on the one hand and White vs. European-American on the other hand struck me as inconsistent or random, although I can’t say for sure that wasn’t a designed inconsistency (e.g. something intentionally random as a built-in part of the test’s brain-probe, so to speak).
Below is the interpretation of your IAT performance, followed by questions about what you think it means. The next page explains the task and has more information such as a summary of what most people show on this IAT.
Your Result
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American.
The interpretation is described as ‘automatic preference for European American’ if you responded faster when European American faces and Good words were classified with the same key than when African American faces and Good words were classified with the same key. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic preference may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference’. Alternatively, you may have received feedback that ‘there were too many errors to determine a result’.
I quickly felt that I was aware of “how” the test worked – it’s hard to explain so I suggest you just try it for yourself. I admit that from the start, I felt wary (on guard, so to speak) with regard to my own possible prejudice, and once I felt I understood how the test worked, I perhaps attempted to compensate. Assuming that the underlying prejudice I presumed myself to be battling (as a White American raised in a 90%+ white community) was one of preference toward European-Americans, it appears (and I can only say “appears” as I hardly know what all was operating, both in the test and in my own brain) I compensated successfully.
I found the first test unpleasant. The business of matching Whites with “Good” words and Blacks with “Bad” words (and then subsequently vice-versa) left a bad taste in my mouth. It was like the underlying message was: “everyone’s a racist, we just want to see what kind you are.” It was an exercise in reinforcing stereotypes, whether positive ones or bad ones.
The second test wasn’t really unpleasant so much as downright ridiculous. It was supposed to look at the European-American/Native-American contrast vis-a-vis the American/un-American (Foreign) contrast. The visual images drew on stereotypes even worse than the first test (see screenshot below). Of course, stereotypes are the point, and therefore it’s utterly conceivable that they’re intentional. Still, it’s awkward for someone who tries to be analytical about these things.
The whole business of what words were “American” vs. “Foreign” struck me as silly – they were all place names – essentially, European place names versus American place-names of Native American etymology. What is this contrast supposed to show? That Americans know the names of American cities? What about the allegedly atrocious geographical knowledge of average Americans? Is this test trying to link bad geographical knowledge with some type of racial (or racist) stereotype or another? Or is it assuming good geographical knowledge? They’re aware that Miami is in Latin America, right? And that Seattle is in Canada? And Moscow is “Foreign” – but what about the guy sitting in Moscow, Idaho, taking the test? I’ve been there. It’s near the Nez Perce Reservation. Did they take that into account?
What does this test really mean? What is it looking at? What does it have to do with nativism, white-supremacism, pro- vs. anti-immigration stances, etc.? It’s obviously complex, but I felt immediately that the test designers had at least as much ideological baggage as I personally brought to the table, and they didn’t even do much work to conceal it. I certainly doubt they had made much effort to evaluate their own prejudices, in the design of the test (especially in light of the apparent socio-linguistic naivety on display in the onomastics).
I felt a strong impulse to try my best to “game” the test. I have no idea whether my effort to game the test worked, but it appears to have, since I got the result I intended: I got myself to show up as a nativist, roughly. But of course, the test designers could argue that I was merely “aiming for” the “automatic preference” I was already ideologically inclined toward. Here is my result.
Below is the interpretation of your IAT performance, followed by questions about what you think it means. The next page explains the task and has more information such as a summary of what most people show on this IAT.
Your Result
Your data suggest a moderate association of White Am. with Foreign and Native Am. with American compared to Native Am. with Foreign and White Am. with American.
The interpretation is described as ‘automatic association between White Am. and American’ if you responded faster when White Am. images and American were classified with the same key than when White Am. images and Foreign were classified with the same key. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic association may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference’. Alternatively, you may have received feedback that ‘there were too many errors to determine a result’.
So what does it all mean? I’m not sure. I might take some more tests and report back – they’re nothing if not interesting.
In an entirely implicit way, the video demonstrates the underlying organicity of cities. Plus, how cool is it, to imagine a city shaped like a flower? Samsung Engineering could build it – probably in some oil-statelets back yard.
Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. —through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.
Today is Liberation Day in South Korea. It’s the day that Japan surrendered to the Allies, and 35 years of subjugation to Japanese colonialism were brought to a close. What followed was the division of the peninsula by the victorious powers, and a bifurcated, two-sided neocolonial regime (Soviet and American) that, arguably, persists even today, 20 years after the end of the Cold War.
The North is the world’s only surviving even vaguely Stalinist regime, and the South, despite having shifted to a sort of neolibral democracy (such as it is, and, erm, perhaps not coincidental to the moment in history when the Soviet Union fell), remains the largest “peacetime” host of American troops on foreign soil (i.e. discounting the active war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq).
Despite my cynicism, I continue to believe that South Korea may be the sole genuine success story in America’s highly questionable exercises in “nation building.” I think that this is true, in part, because of the unique geopolitical moment that followed World War II and that the Korean War consolidated – a moment when “democracy” was happily represented around the world by repressive neo-fascist regimes (such as Syngman Rhee and subsequently Park Chung-Hee) – true – but where the lip-service concepts such as freedom were paid would eventually result in an evolution toward more inclusive (if never perfect) political systems.
I think that one reason why the current neoconservative efforts at nation-building (in e.g. Iraq) have been such utter failures is because of the historical myopia that is unable to recognize that “nation building” is, in fact, almost never a democratic enterprise. Democracy can take root in nations, undeniably, but nations are rarely constructed as a result of truly democratic impulses – because true democracies are full of people who are not, in fact, interested in being part of this or that nation.
And don’t try to sell me on some kind of American exceptionalism in this matter – the “American” nation was built by a very narrow demographic of middle-aged and elderly white, male landowners, over and against the objections of all kinds of embedded subjugated peoples (Native Americans, women, Catholic immigrant-laborers, Jewish small-scale merchants, etc.), who were only subsequently, through several centuries of struggle and brutal war (e.g. the Civil War), ideologically homogenized into some degree of inclusion. Never forget: even now, Obama talks white – and that’s how he got elected.
Nationalism is – as movements such as Nazism (not to mention Teapartism) should make obvious – all about the imposition of some totalizing ideological regime across an inevitably heterogeneous population. It’s only as a retroactive construct that such homogeneous nation-peoples (such as Koreans or Mexicans or even Americans) choose to perceive themselves as such.
All of which is my way of saying that I have, in fact, come to believe in a certain strain of South Korean exceptionalism, if only in that its relationship to the United States is utterly unique in the history of neocolonialism. There are lots of caveats attached to that, too.
There’s a perhaps-relevant quote, frequently misattributed to Sinclair Lewis (similar to something said by Halford E. Luccock, but probably invented in its misattributed form by journalist Harrison Salisbury). The recent proto-primarial antics of Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry set me to thinking about it: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
To which I will add: Yay, nationalism! Oh, and maybe, as a dash of seasoning, the old Samuel Johnson line: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Speaking of freedom… What I’m listening to right now.
Kris Kristofferson, “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Kris Kristofferson wrote the song, and this is an early demo version that is currently one of my favorite renditions. There’s a Willie Nelson cover I like, too. I never actually cared for the famous Janis Joplin version that topped the charts in the early 70’s, for example, and I suspect the version that I grew up on was probably one of the Greatful Dead’s covers of it – I couldn’t find anything that sounded exactly right in surfing around youtube, though.
Here is a view of Ilsan’s Jungang-no [Central Avenue], a block from my apartment at the Juyeop subway entrance. I took the photo earlier, shrouded in drizzle – there are a few limp South Korean flags hanging from light poles. I took a long walk today, but didn’t really do a lot. Trying to find inner peace.
