Category: Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Caveat: Unwarranted Faith

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

David Brooks, in the New York Times, writes about "The End of Philosophy."  He's talking about new approaches to morality that are less founded in rationality, and more based on what appears to be the concrete evidence of modern neurological research.  But he also defends "religion."  And attacks "new atheism" — whatever that is.  He writes,

The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality [meaning founded in, among other things, evolutionary psychology]… challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

Some of this, I agree with.  I am not comfortable with the idea that atheism is purely rational.  Indeed, I have often, only half-jokingly, referred to myself as a "faith-based atheist."  And I'm very skeptical about the "purity" of my reasoning.

But then he uses the phrase "unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason."  What, exactly, is "warranted" about other types of faith (as opposed to an atheistic faith)?  Isn't the definition of "faith" something akin to "unwarranted belief"?  This seems to force the whole argument to collapse in on itself, because instead of successfully defending religion against atheism using evidence from evolutionary psychology, he ends up merely supporting the irrationality of the whole edifice of both philosophy and religion.  I doubt that was his intention.

Caveat: 主體

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I had this weird dream the other day, right as I was waking up. The dream had this unidentified guru-like person, who was advising me to practice “Juche” as a means to personal growth and salvation. He was pointing to a page with the Chinese characters for it (see title-line).
But then Ken interrupted (Ken is the archetype interrupter, in Jared’s dreamland), and I lost dream-traction… vaguely.
“Juche” (주체) is the Korean name for the official ideology of North Korea, as formulated by Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il.  It’s 2 parts Stalinism, 2 parts fascism, 1 part maoism, and 1 part feudalism.  Well, that’s my own take on it.
Kim’s folly.  Literally, it means something like “corism,” as in, “the ideology of core” or “ideology of the main subject.”  But generally it’s translated as “self-reliance,” as it is strongly autarkic in character.
Interestingly, when I looked in the naver.com dictionary, I discovered that 주체 can also mean “indigestion caused by drinking” and also “a burden.”  Nice bit of homonymy. Courtesy naver.com:
주체(主體) the subject;the main body;【중심】the core;the nucleus;『법』 the main constituent
주체(酒滯) indigestion from[caused by] drinking
주체 a burden;a bother;a handful ―하다 cope with[take care of] one´s burden
It was strange that it was the Chinese hanja that were in the dream, since North Korea no longer uses Chinese characters – their banning was, in fact, part of the culturally self-reliant practice of Juche, as it was developed in the 60’s in reaction to the Sino-Soviet split.
Speaking of weapons of mass destruction (we were speaking of weapons of mass destruction?), check out this “fake 404” from the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It made me laugh.
Other notes from studying Korean:
시(時) o´clock;time;hour (I recognized the hanja for this on a sign, recently.  It was a cool feeling.)

Caveat: Incidental Meat

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Science & SciFi

I've been thinking about meat.  I read an article in Scientific American about the "carbon footprint" of eating beef, specifically.  It's quite stunning, and it has got me to thinking, once again, about whether or not I would ever seriously become some kind of vegetarian (maybe a chicken-and-fish-only type, or a real vegetarian, or even a vegan).  All those things have crossed my mind many times.  But I lack the self-discipline to stick to any of them, it seems like.

Only hours after reading the Scientific American article, I was ordering and eating bibimbap from Gimgane.  The amount of meat in it is negligible, I suppose – at most some flecks of meat that might equal something under a tablespoon.  I'm not even sure what species of meat it is.  But… I'm not the sort to be a hardcore "I don't eat such and such," it seems like.

Still, it seems the compelling reasons for avoiding various types of meat keep building.  There's health impact (unless you're an Atkinsian).  There's ethical impact (I have been reading a book by Douglas Hofstadter, I am a Strange Loop, wherein he offers in his first chapter a meditation on meat-eating vis-a-vis the question of the relative sizes of souls).  And now, particularly for beef, there's global environmental impact, too.  The basic point: if we ALL quit eating beef tomorrow, and let the beef industry die, we'd do more to prevent the continuing global warming trend than if we ALL stopped using cars tomorrow.  That's very plausible, if you examine the facts.

So, I'm wondering how I feel about it.  I've been developing a sort of approach that is kind of based on the distinction between "incidental meat" versus "intentional meat."  Intentional meat is when I go out and seek it.  When it's the "purpose" of a dining experience.  Incidental meat is where I'm eating meat because someone else has ordered it.  Or they're giving it to me.  Or it got added, unexpectedly, to something I ordered (like the bibimbap the other day).  Maybe something can be made of this distinction.

Caveat: Reflections on (of) Glass Houses. And the Future.

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Less Banal Than Usual / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Here are some disorganized reflections of mine on the subjects of facebook, the internet, the panopticon, and the glass houses. An extension to some initial thoughts I posted on February 6th, in reaction to an article in the guardian.

The web’s “transparency” has two aspects. There is the “taken” or “stolen” transparency (meaning that it grants organizations or individuals a power to spy – cf. a concept such as Foucault’s panopticon prison, which is carrying the problem to a philosophical extreme).  This is something that people fear. But there is also a “granted” or “given” transparency, which is fundamentally empowering, in my opinion – especially when viewed as an opportunity for those who hold power of any kind to “come clean” vis-a-vis those over whom they exercise power.  Or, at a more personal level, it is the power recognized from time immemorial in the liberating nature of confession.

In terms of potential, this power of revelation/confession trumps the power to monitor (panopticon). Governments and organizations are in glass houses, now. They try to throw up barriers and blinds, but it’s a losing battle, at best. There is a man in China who is in prison because some exec at Yahoo! (or group of execs, more likely – corporate ethical lapses are so often the consequence of groupthink) had an ethical lapse vis-a-vis the Chinese government, but, the truth remains… we KNOW about that man in prison. In past times, a similar man, in a similar prison, would have disappeared completely, and we’d only have known of his situation by extrapolation from the situation of others whom we’d heard about. Recall the many “disappeared” victims of past dictatorships. Such total “disappearances” are, erm, disappearing in this new internet-enabled world. Everything gets documented.

Bushcheneyian tyrants will always find ways to harass us, and they will be assholes, regardless of the technology available. Quakers, freethinkers and resisters were blacklisted by the CIA, the FBI, not to mention King George III, long before there were internet servers. Cheney and his secretive, Nixonian ilk are a fading breed… a failing adaptation. Or is this overly hopeful?
Perhaps if I believed in such a thing as divine providence, I’d be more inclined yearn for such a divine providence to be controlling our internet infrastructure, but there’s nothing divine: there’s only Al Gore – a deeply flawed human at best (and Al Gore’s not really controlling the internet, obviously, but he’s a good proxy for the human collectivities that ARE controlling it, and he’s an amusing proxy, too, since he “invented” it).

Broadly, my primary assertion is that the internet as a whole, and facebook in particular (mostly seen as a somewhat more intensely managed version of the internet as a whole), are AT WORST forces of an ethically neutral value, and AT BEST they offer the potential for radically transforming our human ethical space, mostly due to the eerie powers of grassroots transparency.

Partly, I’m thinking in terms of evolutionary psychology. Humans evolved an ethical space in which LYING and DECEPTION (including self-deception!) were easy strategies, and therefore those things were (and still ARE) also quite frequent. The direction in which technology is taking us has the potential to transform the social evolutionary pressures that led that way. Perhaps I’m guilty, here, of transhumanist (q.v.) thinking – which in general I find vaguely worrying. Be that as it may.

Writers like Tom Hodgkinson worry that facebook (and the internet in general) are primarily technologies that accentuate this potential of deception, and worse, that they can even facilitate oppression. That’s a very pessimistic view, and it will lead down the path toward luddism. Of course, all technologies present us with grave dangers: the warmongers and the kleptocrats will always be beating plowshares into swords, wherever and whenever they “need” them, and using campaigns of deception and spying to discover the weaknesses of their enemies.

My feeling is that the people who most fear the internet are the sorts of people who fear things in general, and that the people who extoll the internet are the sorts of people who extoll things in general – in other words, whether we fear the future or extoll it has more to do with our own inner selves than with aspects inherent in world-changing technologies.

There have always been future dystopians (once called millenarians, for example). There have always been pie-in-the-sky optimists regarding the future of the human condition. What’s true – or reasonable – must fall somewhere in between.
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Caveat: Obamiconography

Found Online / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

pictureI saw the photo of our Future Space Emperor at the Telegraph (.co.uk) website. It looks like some weird Orthodox Jesus icon, with the presidential seal behind him exactly just so…
Don’t get me wrong… I’m really not trying to be sarcastic when I call him Future Space Emperor. I think, first of all, that it just sounds funny. It captures the weird Obameschatology that grew up around his campaign. But also, what if he really does turn out to be Space Emperor, at some point?
Really!  It could happen!
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Caveat: Black or White or What?

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

In a recent article that appeared in The Atlantic magazine (January 2009) by Hua Hsu, "The End of White America?" the historian Matthew Frye Jacobson asks "Why is it that in the United States, a white woman can have black children but a black woman cannot have white children?"   This has always bothered me.  And it makes glaringly obvious the arbitrary nature of "race."

True post-racialism necessarily must lead to the elimination of such facile and artificial categories as black and white.  Ethnic difference will, of course, persist.  But that's not the same thing at all.

Caveat: Friends like these…

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Internet & Blogging / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

My facebook friend Kray pointed to an article in the guardian about the darker side of facebook in a recent post.  I wrote the following comments.  I'm going to be writing more, maybe this weekend.  I think it's important.

Kray, this is a fascinating article, and I agree that much of it is disturbing, the way that whole parts of the "new economy" are disturbing.  I think I will try for an in depth meditation on some of the issues raised, but meanwhile, two short observations:
xkcd 1) While I agree that if you're using facebook to connect to your local community, then you're clearly short circuiting what could be much more productive "real" social interactions.  But for me, it's been proving an amazing way to maintain and restore previously "disappeared" personal communities that span the entire planet because of my current location.  That's a "good thing."
2) Yes, we are very "exposed" on the net, and I agree that having all that personal information out there is scary.  But I've always been a huge fan of the concept of transparancy as a way to ensure ethics in things like government and business, and while there are big-brother aspects to something like facebook, isn't it possible that we could be hypocritical if we are unwilling to apply the same standards of transparency to our own lives?  I'd rather have my "dark secrets" online in a medium I at least in some ways can monitor and control (e.g. my blog, or facebook) than in spaces I cannot control (e.g. that file the FBI/CIA undoubtedly already have on me, somewhere in Washington, or the file my past doctors have of me in some database). 

Caveat: Love with no need to preempt grievance

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Elizabeth Alexander's poem that she read at the Space Emperor's inauguration has received some unkind reviews.  But I found the text of it, and despite its reception, I think I rather like it.  At the risk of annoying a copyright god somewhere, I will reproduce it.

Writing a poem for such an event, in an era when poetry, especially poetry for public reading, is largely moribund, and for such a diverse audience as "all of America"… well, this is no small challenge.  She could have done much worse.

"Praise song for the day."
by Elizabeth Alexander
[2009 Obama Inauguration]

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; we walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self." Others by "First do no harm," or "Take no more than you need."

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

 

Caveat: Industria del deseo

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Found Online / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Leía en Mileno.com una reseña de un nuevo libro por Joan Ferrés entitulado La educación como industria del deseo.   Los conceptos, tales como resumidos por el reseñador, me intriguían, aunque el valor de la reseña no me parecía mucho, porque no ofrecía ninguna opinión propia acerca de la obra.  Era más bien un resumen. 

Pero, siendo yo educador con tendencias posmodernas, cierto que me llamó la temática.  Tal vez intentaré conseguir el libro, aunque hacerlo desde acá en Corea no será muy conveniente.  Saldrá o caro o imposible. 

Caveat: Serial Non-serialist Ceases Seriality!

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Per my usual habits, I'm reading more than one book at once.  I tend to read non-fiction books non-serially, for the most part — by which I mean that I don't just start at the introduction and read chapter by chapter until I get to the end, but instead kind of browse my way through the book, eventually covering almost all of it, but in my own discovered order.  I have read non-fiction that way most of my life, but it occurred to me recently that mostly I read non-serially, serially.  Meaning I do it with one non-fiction book after another… since most books I have going at any given time are generally fiction, which is less forgiving of the non-serial approach.   Lately, though, I haven't been enjoying fiction as much.  So, it turns out, I'm not only reading non-serially, but I'm doing so simultaneously with multiple books.

Currently, those books are:  John Horgan's Rational Mysticism, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, Obama's Audacity of Hope, and Chomsky's Chomsky on Anarchism (which is actually a collection of essays, therefore exceptionally forgiving of the non-serial approach).  

Caveat: “헨젤과 그레텔” 영화를 촣아헸어요

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

pictureI watched a really good movie yesterday. A 2007 Korean release, titled 헨젤과 그레텔 (hen-jel-gwa geu-re-tel = Hansel and Gretel) is considered a horror film in genre terms, but it’s really a bit more (and less) than that.

Most of the amateur reviews of the movie (written in English, anyway) that I saw online seemed to harbor a fundamental misunderstanding of the film, stating either overtly or implicitly that it was an unfaithful adaptation of the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel.”

The fact is, it’s not an adaptation at all.  Rather, the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” might best be viewed as a protagonist (or antagonist) of the film.  The film doesn’t tell the story “Hansel and Gretel” but instead tells a story about the story “Hansel and Gretel.” That makes it a sort of metafairytale.  And everyone knows how I love all things meta. It’s not a reading of that story, but a completely new narrative about the reception of the text, in a postwar Korean cultural context.

I’ll leave plot summaries and all that to others. See imdb, for example. But I enjoyed the movie partly because it had me constantly wondering about to what extent the dreamlike (nightmarelike) events of the film could be read as a metaphor for some aspects of Korea’s relationship to the West and to its own history.

As an example, consider the fact that the physical book “Hansel and Gretel,” that wreaks such psychic havoc in the film, is brought to the children by a very western Santa Claus (santa haraboji) in the 1960’s, the era of the quasi-fascist westernizing dictatorship. He is clearly, in fact, just a Korean in a Santa suit. And decades later, the children, psychically wounded beyond belief when young (by the Korean War?  by the dictatorship?) are living in a sort of self-regenerating fantasyland of material plenty and affective vacuum. “Adults” come and go, but the kids simply can’t move on.

These are just some notes, not meant to be pat answers or allegorical readings of the movie. And there are some things I don’t like about it – I’d have preferred, personally, if the causative links between their childhood abuse and current situation (established with flashbacks) had retained more of the antirationalist (surreal) character of the first half of the film.  But perhaps that serves an important purpose, too.

Overall, it’s a coherent movie, perhaps a bit pat, psychologically, but full of the sort of small, spine-shuddering moments that good “scary movies” require but with very little gratuitous gore or meaningless jacks-in-the-boxes. The actors are amazing, especially the kids, and also that creepy born-again serial killer. Alleged serial killer, that is… he never gets to kill any serial in the movie – don’t worry, it’s not a slasher show.  Although… several adults do die, including the nasty abusing guy that gets shoved in the oven, and several dysfunctional mother-figures. And what’s that about, anyway?

The cinematography is spectacular.  All kinds of inanimate things become full participating characters: the forest, the house, the book, food, a television set. Like some novel full of oversignifiers by Gombrowicz.
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Caveat: 금연구역

Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

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The words on the small sign at the top are: 금연구역 = geum-yeon-gu-yeok = no smoking area. The picture is of my friend Curt at the noraebang last weekend, smoking under the sign that says “no smoking area.” This is a fairly typical Korean approach to things. I hardly intend any criticism by it – it’s just the way things are.
One thing that’s always puzzled me, is that in Korea, pedestrians meticulously obey traffic signals, but cars blatantly disregard them, whereas in the U.S., it’s the opposite, if anything: cars meticulously follow traffic signals, whereas pedestrians do as they please. I have been trying to figure this out, and walking to work today, I had a thought. It may or may not be accurate, but I was wondering if the difference has to do with “what’s transparent” and in front of whom it might be “transparent.”
In the U.S., drivers obey traffic laws because they are transparent in front of the authorities (i.e., the government), via their license plates. Meanwhile, pedestrians are anonymous with respect to the authorities, and therefore feel free to do as they please. In Korea, the behavior is the opposite because what matters isn’t what the authorities think (who cares what the authorities think?), but rather, what your neighbors looking at you might think: when you stand on the street corner, your neighbors can see you, but sitting in your car, you’re anonymous to your neighbors, and therefore you feel free to blatantly disregard society’s rules.
This line of reasoning doesn’t explain Curt in the noraebang, except that there, “that sort of rule” is irrelevant, maybe?
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Caveat: “self-inflicted ideological wounds in a largely ideological struggle”

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Michael Gerson, writing about the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” summarizes many of the difficulties with the phrase “self-inflicted ideological wounds in a largely ideological struggle.” I think this is an excellent description the Bush administration’s overall effect on U.S. global image and identity, too. But I also wonder how different it will be possible for the up-and-coming Space Emperor to be: with Gates and Clinton as his representatives, it’s clear he’s not straining for a radical change or departure from the status quo. If he manages change at all, it must be something he hopes to effect gradually. Is he planning to do so? Or is it all smoke and mirrors? Is there any germ of ideological commitment of any kind, amid all the packaging? I’m disturbed by the recent mess in the Illinois statehouse, involving Blogojevich attempting to “sell” Obama’s seat in the Senate. How could the future Space Emperor not have been aware of these shenanigans? If he wasn’t, that seems nearly as criminal, from the standpoint of negligence, as if he had been aware of them but wasn’t addressing them. I’m unhappy… not that I was ever really wholly drawn into the Obamania in the first place. I’ve had reservations that it was all packaging and fluff around something less pure than people seem to have been hoping. Yet I still feel uneasy to find that I’m seeing those reservations confirmed.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Government

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

Regarding the desirability of government:  "We have been through some hard times, but the worst was when we had a government." – Somali businessman Abdirizak Ido, as quoted on the National Geographic website.  A true libertarian disciple, wounja say?

Meanwhile, a columnist named Chris Haire, writing for the Charleston City Paper today, says of Bill Kristol (conservative commentator), "[h]is dreams of a Benevolent Global Hegemony turned out to be a malicious worldwide clusterfuck."  This comment made me laugh for a while.  Especially appearing in a fairly mainstream-seeming blog.  I went on to discover I don't agree with a lot Mr Haire has to say.  But I enjoyed the moment of humor, anyway.

Caveat: … so I will be happy forever.

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / The Wonders of Work

Jenny writes, "Being happy is the most important thing, so I will be happy forever." This may be a grammatical mistake, but it may be entirely accurate, and simply a demonstration of the extreme cultural gap I face here. But if it is accurate, it is also an appealing life-philosophy, especially compelling coming from a 5th grader. Essentially, the idea that the best reason to be happy is precisely because it is important to be happy. And nothing more than that. How could life be more simple?

Then again, Ryan writes, in answer to the same question, "My ideal job is going around the world and earn money with various job." I can definitely relate to that – and it's pretty rare for a Korean kid to come up with such a radical idea as being a vaguely bohemian world vagabond.

Caveat: My Korean Childhood

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I sat and watched Brandon being disciplined by Pi Seon-u (our principal). I felt dirty, watching it.  I always do.  It's not really that bad, I tell myself.  It's the way things are done here.  Mr Pi makes Brandon hold a ream of photocopy paper on his hands, outstretched.

What I'm seeing is identical to the sorts of hazing exercises that were so common in basic training, in the US Army.  You hold out your arms, palms downward, straight in front of you.  Your M16 sits on top.  It's not really that heavy, you tell yourself.  And it's not.  But holding it there for more than half a minute or so is incredibly difficult.  Try it sometime.  It takes discipline, and it hurts the outstretched muscles in the arms and in the back of your hands.

Brandon holds it.  Drops it.  Picks it up and holds it again. Mr Pi lectures him in soft tones. I don't understand what's being said, but it's easy to imagine. Behave. Self-discipline. Don't disappoint.  Work hard. What would your parents think? Do you want to end up a failure?

Brandon is such an intelligent and bright-spirited boy. A fifth-grader, I think… he was at LinguaForum, before coming to Hellbridge. But he's the kind of boy that gives the term "bouncing off the walls" literal resonance. In the US, he would be labeled ADHD and would be strung out on ritalin. Anyway… it's easy for me to imagine what he might have done to antagonize his teacher – I sent him out of my classroom more than once, myself, back when I had him at LF.

And I wonder. Is it possible to learn discipline, for me, at this late age in life? I had a singularly undisciplined childhood, and despite that, I still play the same sorts of lecture scripts in my head.  Not that they're successful.  Not that they impart any kind of self-discipline. But they're there.

Can I, now, learn discipline? I feel guilty that I don't have it, when I watch someone like Brandon being disciplined. Disciplined.

Discipline.

Can I look at it from a Foucauldian perspective, theoretically, and still continue to believe that it has value for the individual? Can I see the cruelty of it, with children, and still believe that it could have value, for me? It seems so.

I think it might be the case that I'm sticking it out at Hellbridge because of this burning quest for discipline.  Those piles of papers to correct… they impart discipline. I've enrolled myself in a new sort of psychic boot camp.

Discipline.

Korean culture approaches almost all collective cultural pursuits (schooling, work, even social gatherings) in a way that Americans reserve for boot camp:  social spaces provide a means to impart the collective discipline on the individual.  And the individual is there to soak it up. 

Falling down is common. And the response is supposed to be:  pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and soldier on. Push hard, fail hard, push some more.

Not everyone picks up and soldiers on.  And the shame of failing… of not picking up… is excruciating for the individual. The suicide rate is very high in Korea, especially among students. A 10-year-old boy was in the news, recently; he committed suicide over academic pressures. A 10-year-old! Kids like Brandon. 

Koreans shake their heads, feeling sadness and sympathy. Even empathy, I'm sure. But they never question the basic premise: the failure belongs to the individual, the success, to the collective. Not one Korean whom I overheard discussing it thought to question if the boy's parents might not have been doing a perfectly adequate job, in placing such pressures on him, or thought to wonder if the academic system here bears some responsibility. 

If Brandon turns up dead tomorrow, what will people say? What will they believe? What will I feel?Would I be complicit, because I've watched Mr Pi disciplining him from the corner of my eye, with a disturbing mixture of distaste and envy? Yes, envy: that I had such strength of spirit. To fall down, pick up, and soldier on.

Discipline.

Caveat: Mac n Cheese

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I got home and found myself craving macaroni and cheese. Like, the kind you make from a box, with that weird radioactive orange powder, that’s so delicious. Well, it’s impossible to buy that in Korea, I think.  But I was inspired to attempt to make it anyway. I boiled some macaroni pasta that I had on hand, and drained it and added milk, and then I melted some slices of orange presliced Korean american-style cheese into it.
It didn’t quite work out. It was edible, but it lacked that tangy flavor I associate with boxed mac n cheese. It was an effort, anyway.
pictureIn other news: can I commit myself to staying cheery and positive at work? I don’t know. I should try. If I can fool my students into thinking I’m always happy, surely it can’t be such a huge leap to make my coworkers think likewise? What do I get out of them thinking I’m a grouch and a humbug, after all?
One other recent insight: things like joy and sadness and anger are actually amazingly superficial. Right on the surface. They don’t define us, not even in the moment. The deep part, that defines us, doesn’t have those things.
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Caveat: Space Emperor Obama, Chasing Cars…

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Peggy Noonan (former Reagan staffer), writing for the Wall Street Journal (a decidedly right-leaning newspaper if ever there was one) about Barack Obama: “One wonders if in the presidency he’ll be like the dog that chased the car and caught it: What’s he supposed to do now?”
This actually very concisely sums up some of my own misgivings about Obama.  But… the alternative is worse.  I keep repeating that to myself, like a little mantra.   I believe that.  McCain is erratic, and he has no chance of (or seeming interest in) behaving moderately in the realm of foreign policy.   Further, his age and health combined with the Republican’s choice of Palin for the vice-presidency is utterly terrifying, and actually calls to mind Heinlein’s prediction that the U.S. would become a religious dictatorship sometime in the early 21st century.  Anybody willing to concede the possibility that a rapture-believing yet undeniably charismatic Christian fundamentalist Sarah Palin in the White House would work to accelerate America’s move toward an undemocratic, imperial presidency with an inflexible, Bible-prophecy-driven agenda?
Therefore, with Noonan’s caveat firmly in mind, I nevertheless reiterate my endorsement of Obama.  For what it’s worth.  So, at the risk of seeming vaguely partisan, here are some supporting quotes. Or… are they?
Jon Stewart, a few nights back (and this is totally a paraphrase, since I didn’t see the transcript): “Update from the Future:  Space Emperor Obama has now successfully spread communism to the Zykon Galaxy.”
And, in an interview Obama had with Stewart, after his infomercial on Wednesday night, Obama said, melancholically: “it’s not very funny:  cooperation.”  Why does Barack remind me of my father? He’s more my age, than my father’s.  But his manner, his cool affect (and/or eerie lack thereof) definitely remind me of my dad, sometimes.
Obama’s accent is my dad’s, too: generic Western American (as befits a man raised in Hawaii, right?). The very complex vowel clusters of westcoast English, but none of the southern and britishish diphthongs that make my mother’s accent so distinctive, for example, nor the upper midwestern level vowels that have tinged my own accent at least somewhat (although I still probably sound more western than midwestern). Obama can “talk black” if he needs to, kind of the way I can talk Minnesotan if I want to: years of immersion can give one a facility for switching accent-codes. But his fallback accent is very western and profoundly “white,” and that’s probably partly why this black man may soon be our next president.
pictureLastly, while cruising Second Life the other day, I found a political “lawn sign” that I thought was subtle and hilarious – see picture at right. It was attributed to Comedy Central (which is what sent me fishing around Comedy Central’s website in the first place and led me to the Jon Stewart quotes above), but a bit of googling yielded zero results for phrases like “vote fossil” or “dirt first.” So I will have to settle for a screenshot of the sign, since I can’t find/verify the source for a proper attribution.
It’s a funny moment, too, when Bill Kristol (editor of the very conservative Weekly Standard) channels Jesse Jackson (“Keep hope alive!”) in support of John McCain.  A bit earlier, Kristol said (again, I’m paraphrasing), “If you’re a liberal, vote for Obama. If you’re conservative, vote McCain. It’s not a psychodrama, it’s an election.” I would basically agree with that… except, does that make me a liberal?  Am I comfortable with that label? Seems like, only sometimes.
Speaking of the Comedy Central website, I also enjoyed the tiny informational message at the top of the page – see the center of the screenshot below:
picture
In unrelated news, I think this is very interesting. It is now possible to get the Chinese Internet Experience (i.e. censored) outside of China [UPDATE 2020-03-27: link does not work]. I’m not sure what this would be for, but it seems to fit with the tagline of one of the people who commented on the article: Hack the Planet. I like it, though I doubt I have any use for it whatsoever.
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Caveat: Job

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / The Wonders of Work

I awoke from a transparently symbolic yet overwhelmingly simple dream this morning.  Most everything in the dream was the same as in "real life," except that my name was Job, not Jared.   There were a few moments in the dream when I was reading an article on wikipedia about Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.  There was another moment when I stood in the classroom, and the students were asking me something, addressing me as "Job-teacher," with a long, pure, Minnesota-inflected /o/. 

Upon awakening, I looked up The Grapes of Wrath on wikipedia, but the article wasn't the same.  The novel wasn't even the same as in the dream–not that I remember quite how it was different, there.  Somehow the dream version of the novel was less Steinbeck, more Melville.  Waking up with echoes of Job left me with neurons firing associated Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom.   I looked those authors up as well, and then wondered if it were possible to be a gnostic atheist.  How would that work?  It seems like it would lead one down a path toward one or another of those crazed conspiracy theories. Bloom, in turn, lead me, via David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, back to Alasdair Gray, whom I've mentioned before, here, I think.

The pun that is central to the dream is embarrassingly obvious, given my unhappiness with my job.  I'm very glad that Freud is dead, as I'd not appreciate his making a case-study out of it.

Caveat: Commodities vs Knowledge Products

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Less Banal Than Usual / My Photos / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I was reading an editorial in the Fortune magazine dated September 15, written by Geoff Colvin, entitled “Brains vs. Brawn.” He was pointing out the way that raw materials and low-tech, mass-produced commodities (e.g. gold, petroleum, steel, food) have been massively outperforming knowledge-based, intensely engineered/designed/creative products (e.g. computer chips, luxury automobiles, movies) in terms of prices, over the last decade. He argues that despite this, he remains committed to an apparently earlier elaborated prediction that over the long-term, knowledge-based products are a much better investment prospect.
I’m not an economist. I’m an English teacher in Korea, with a training in linguistics and Spanish Golden Age literature. But I adamantly disagree. I think it should be obvious that over the real long term, commodities will always go up in price, but there is no such clear guarantee with respect to the prices of intellectual property (i.e. knowledge-based products). The reason is simple: we will not ever run out of the products of our intellects, collectively speaking. There is no underlying scarcity. You can keep making more ideas, art, designs, inventions, indefinitely. It’s historically cumulative. Meanwhile, commodities are physical things, and we are en route to running out, if not right away, eventually, for everything: gold, oil, iron, food.  Or whatever.
It seems elementary that the solution to reconciling the conflict between market capitalism’s requirement for never-ending growth and the world’s evident physical limits is to always increase the “knowledge” component of our economic activity, while limiting and creatively reducing our need for and consumption of physcial commodities of all kinds. The additional advantage of this process, which comes almost as a side-effect, is that people seem actually to prefer “knowledge-based” (i.e. creative) labor. This is the inevitable rise the creative classes.
But from a strictly “futures” – which is to say, investing – standpoint, it seems to me that the place to make bets is on those same commodities that I believe so strongly we should be working to limit the consumption of.  And, to reference that very much under-appreciated, 19th century, amateur economist, Henry George, all commodities and therefore all our society’s future wealth comes from the control of real estate (broadly interpreted to include oceans and even “outer space” in today’s day and age).  George used this to argue that land was the only thing the state should or could legitimately tax.  I’m not sure I agree–I don’t completely understand it.  But it makes a weird kind of sense.
The picture is of a waterfall near my mother’s home in Australia. A taxable waterfall?
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Caveat: Old-Style Liberalism

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable

"The essence of liberalism is an attempt to secure a social order not based on irrational dogma, and insuring stability without involving more restraints than are necessary for the preservation of the community.  Whether this attempt can succeed only the future can determine." – Bertrand Russell wrote that, about 100 years ago, as the concluding words to his "Introductory" to his The History of Western Philosophy.

I'm not sure we've yet reached that "future" he references.

Caveat: The Obsolete Code of the Higher Eclectica

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I was reading an editorial in the New York Times that, although clearly intended as satire and meant tongue-in-cheek, struck me as fundamentally accurate. And it made me feel outmoded, given the extent to which I buy into the "code of the Higher Eclectica" as Mr Brooks put it. I feel a certain scorn, combined with a distrust, of those who base their definitions of cultural coolness on media over underlying culture. But I think it's true. It's now the iPhone generation, and cultural content has become moot – all that matters is means of transmission. 

I begin to imagine a marxian-style analysis that encompasses historically and materially determined transitions in "modes of transmission" that goes above-and-beyond the classically marxist transitions in "modes of production."  Let's just call it the germ of an idea, for now.  Mientras tanto, digamos adios a la "Higher Eclectica" del Sr Brooks.

Which reminds me of a couple of lines in the latest Korean drama that I've been watching episodes of:  they mention the "386" generation as being those people in their 30's and early 40's (in Korea, but it applies just as well to U.S. culture I think)–people who's formative years included personal computers but for whom the internet and broadband cellphone connectivity seem just a tad "newfangled."

Anyway, the drama is called 달자의 봄 (Dalja's Spring), and it is consistently violating all the "rules of Korean drama" that I'd decided must exist up until now.  It deals with all kinds of unexpected and "taboo" subjects that every single drama I've watched up until now scrupulously avoided:  divorce, suicide, abortion, premarital sex, pregnancy outside of marriage, middle-aged career women, single mothers, irresponsible fathers.  And more than just blinkingly, although by U.S. standards it remains utterly G-rated.

Yet despite all that, it is a very light-hearted, even sappy romance, with a fundamentally conservative social message, just like all the Korean dramas I've watched.  This message strikes me as both compelling and unrealistic vis-a-vis human day-to-day realities in any culture.  And it continues to reinforce my earlier not-so-clearly-stated hypothesis that contemporary Korean culture (and perhaps East Asian culture more generally?) is undergoing a kind of Confucian counter-reformation within a modernist and/or post-modernist trajectory.

Yesterday I worked–I'd "volunteered" to help with a speech contest, and so I woke up early and went over to ElBeuRitJi's Baengma Campus, and served as a judge for lots of not-bad student speeches.  It was awesome to see some of my former RingGuAPoReom students (middle schoolers) who were participating, and one of my former students, shy-but-supremely-competent Irene, even managed to win a runner-up prize, which was quite an accomplishment in the context of ElBeuRitJi's much more intense academic standards, as well as a remarkable conquest of her own reticence.   I felt parentally proud, as teachers sometimes do, I suppose–Irene is one of the few students who I remember vividly from my first few days of teaching back last September, when I realized quickly that she was the quiet one feeding all the right answers to her loud and gregarious friend, Amy, who was sitting next to her. 

After work, I walked home in the steaming heat of mid afternoon, all the way down past Madu-yeok and Jeongbalsan, and when I got back to my apartment I felt terrible.  Tired and sickly.  Perhaps I had given myself mild heat stroke or something, I don't know.  But I basically passed out, feeling exhausted, and had an unpleasant night of restless sleep.

-Notes for Korean-
context:  달자의 봄
쿨하게 나가야지="act cool" (kulhage nagayaji = cool-DO-ADVERBIAL go-out-SOME-IMPERATIVE-VERB-ENDING-THAT-I-CAN'T-FIND-IN-A-BOOK)
note that 쿨 (kul) is apparently directly from English

지금 뭔가 야한 상상 하고 있었구만, 맞지?
"Now you're having some vulgar fantasy, right?"
야한=dirty, coarse, vulgar
상상=imagination

일어나다=to get up, wake up
so… 일어났어요?="you're up now?"

context: obsessing on unparseable Korean
According to the drama transcript on the KBS website, in episode 18, about 47 minutes in, grandma says:
고저 한번 잘해볼라다가 끝나는거 고거이 인생이라구 말이디.
I had tremendous difficulty trying to parse this, and I have failed.  Also, as I listened to it over and over, I don't think that's what she actually says.  The last words sound more like … 인생이라고 말이야, which, conveniently, I find slightly easier to parse–so I'm going to assume, with great hubris, that there's an error in the Korean written transcript, or else the transcript is meant to reflect some kind of dialectical variation and that the actress playing grandma chooses not to implement when she actually speaks.  Certainly, I've never heard of a verb ending -디 before.  Anyway… according to the subtitlers, the phrase is supposed to mean:  "The true meaning of life is to live well once through."  So, you can see why that caught my interest–a nice philosophical, aphoristic nugget.  But I really have been utterly unable to parse this successfully.
With my revisions to the transcript, the transliteration would be:
goseo hanbeon jalhaebolladaga kkeutnaneungeo gogeoi insaengirago maliya
=fluctuation once well-do-try-[INTRO-WARNING?(p231 in my grammar)]-[INTERRUPTED-PAST(but can this ending attach to the previous one?)] end-GERUND-[MYSTERY-ENDING-#1] [MYSTERY-WORD-#2] life-[COPULA]-[AUX VERB -고 말다?=finish up?]
words…
고저=fluctuation
한번=once<=한=one (ADJ form)+번=time (COUNTER)
끝나다=end, come to an end
고거이=?that?
인생=human life

Caveat: Sandinistas and Mad Scientist Girls

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / 아동 도서 (Children's Books) / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

pictureI found an unexpected treasure of a book yesterday.  A book I’d meant to buy, once, some time ago, but then upon coming to Korea, I  had postponed it indefinitely and forgotten.  In the several shelves of Spanish language books at Kyobo, yesterday, there was sitting the first volume of Ernesto Cardenal‘s autobiography, Vida Perdida.
I was profoundly affected by the work of another Nicaraguan author, 20-something years ago:  La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde, by Omar Cabezas.  One of my “top 50” books, I would guess – though that list is always changing, isn’t it?  That was an autobiographical bildungsroman, covering Cabezas’ life as a Sandinista rebel in the epoch before the Nicaraguan revolution of 79 and the overthrow of Somoza.
So…
I had always struggled to appreciate the poetry of Cardenal (the poet-politician-priest, who was also a Sandinista, and in fact was later a minister in Ortega’s revolutionary government), and I have thought I would get more out of his prose, but had never had the opportunity to read it.
And there it was, published in Mexico, waiting forlornly to be purchased for only 22,000 원, in a Seoul bookstore. So, of course, I bought it. Vida Perdida, por Ernesto Cardenal. And started reading it.  It begins, not chronologially, but instead with his departure for a Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, having decided to become a priest. I’d forgotten about that – he went off to the same monastery that hosted Thomas Merton for so long.  Such a divergent life from Merton’s, though, despite the latter’s mentorship.
pictureIn other news, I finished the drama Delightful Girl.
Check out the girl with purple hair. A kid sat next to me on the subway and was reading this book, 프래니 (peuraeni = Frannie), about a Mad Scientist Girl. I remembered the title, I and navered it when I got home – it’s a translation of an English-language children’s book by Jim Benton, but the illustrations looked so extremely wonderful and entertaining.  Perhaps next time I hit a bookstore, I should buy this book and use it to try to work on my Korean some more – a children’s book would be about the right level, right?
-Notes for Korean-
context: Now I’ve started watching another drama, called 풀하우스 (pulhauseu=full house).  I find the attribution of its “hanja” name (according to the English wikipedia article) confusing:
浪漫满屋…
lemme try to analyze this:
[1浪][2漫][3满][4屋]
=[1랑][2만][3not in naver’s online hanja dictionary, but I found it here:만][4옥]
=[1물결][2흩어질][3그득][4집]
=[1?wave][2?scatter][3full][4house]
Is this truly a “hanja”?  Or is it simply a Chinese name for the show?  The proper Korean name of the drama is a Konglish term, and Konglishemes don’t have matching hanja, do they?  I’ll be the first to admit, my comprehension of the niceties of the hanja system is next to nil.
context:  dictionaryland and websites.
목록(目錄)=catalog, inventory
구동사=phrasal verb
명사=noun
형용(形容)=form, shape, appearance, description, metaphor
형용사=adjective
미리보기=preview (lit advance example)
다시보기=(lit again example)=?review?
가르치다=teach (I should know this)
말씀=language, talk
context:  thinking about what’s best.
최고=superlative, best
짱=best (slang.  perhaps mostly used by children–but don’t forget what you saw Ella and Stacey writing on the wall at school, that time)  (…a site for korean slang info)
context:  reading the script for episode 3 of 풀하우스, I’m seeing all kinds of reduplication words, which seem common and are interesting.
쓱쓱=easily, smoothly…
툭툭 치고=tapping…
씩씩=?smiling at each other? not sure what this is
잘 있어=take care (jarisseo=be well)
수목=tree
알았지?=understood?  got it? (This was exciting for me to understand, as I parsed it simply upon hearing it, without having seen the form in writing before… and then I was able to type it in–correctly spelled–and confirm that I’d indeed understood it).
context:  other random curiosities
문어=octopus
문어=literary expression
…wow – nice pair of homophones.  far out!
고기=meat, fish (and could I forget this?  It’s one of the few words I thought I’d retained from my first time in Korea, in 1991)
글월=letter, note, epistle
동물=animal, brute, creature
낙지=common octopus
발=foot, paw, arm
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Caveat: Love is not that special

Banalities & Journaling / Less Banal Than Usual / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I finished watching the episodes of 1%의 어떤 것 toward the end of last week, and immediately began a new series, called 쾌걸 춘향 (translated as Delightful Girl Choon-hyang).  I'm trying to figure out why I've been enjoying these romantic/comedic dramas as much as I have – above and beyond the insights to Korean culture.  And I made a realization because of the rather weighty tradition behind this new one I've started.

Delightful Girl is based on a traditional Korean story called 춘향가 (chunhyangga), which is part of what's called the pansori storytelling tradition – in essence, a kind of epic/lyric oral literature.  The plot of the story, just like the 1% story I was watching last week, revolves around frustrated love and romance in the broader context of Asian/confucian social systems and values.  And I suddenly realized, I've been enjoying these stories for years – they are extraordinarily similar to the almost hundreds of "framed stories" found in the Cervantine corpus:  girl meets boy of different social class, or under some unusual circumstance; love gets frustrated by conflicts involving parents, in-laws, or social mores and taboos; weird coincidences happen that alternately encourage or frustrate the relationship; everything ends happily-ever-after.   And Cervantes was just echoing the likes of Petrarch and Boccacio and the vast content of the Spanish Golden Age drama.

My hypothesis:  culturally, Korea is experiencing the equivalent of Europe's renaissance and baroque, alongside modernity and postmodernity, all at the same time!  That may be too bold, but I taste the germ of a fascinating comparative cultures / comparative lit paper exploring the parallels between renaissance drama and literature and the contemporary Asian television drama.

And my profound quote of the day:  in the 2nd episode, the character Han Dan-hee says to her boyfriend Pang Ji-hyuk, over french fries, "They only need a moment.  Love is not that special.  Crush on an eye, on ears, and then you get the feeling.  That's love."

Caveat: Comunistas y Anarquistas

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable

Vicente Huidobro, el poeta chileno que, seguramente, he mencionado más de una vez, escribió, "Es incomprensible que un individuo que haya estudiado profundamente la sociedad actual no sea comunista. Es incomprensible que un individuo que haya estudiado profundamente el comunismo, no sea anarquista."  El hecho de que la cita ya lleva unos cuantos 70 u 80 años de edad no parece alterar su esencia verdadera fundamental. 

Pero… ¿y en quién se convierte él que haya estudiado el anarquismo?  Pienso en la situación de los llamados "estados fracasados," por ejemplo la de Somalia.  Porque eso sí es el anarquismo verdadero, ¿no?  Quisiera decir que él que estudiara el anarquismo se convertiría en libertario, pero no creo que sea la verdad, al menos en la mayoría de los casos.  Parece más probable que el anarquista frustrado se vuelva al lado autoritario, sea fascista o leninista.  Nos da un resultado deprimente, entonces.  Y circular.

Caveat: An Aimless Drive

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

"Life is an aimless drive that ya take alone.  Might as well enjoy the ride, take the long way home." This is the chorus from the Bloodhound Gang's song, "Take the Long Way Home."  I'm not sure that I have anything specific to say about this. But it's a good quote. And right now, I'm listening to the Beastie Boys.

On NPR, earlier, I heard a man named Tom Segev being interviewed.  He's a columnist for the newspaper Ha'aretz (Israel), and was talking about the whole question of to what degree the Israeli government interacts with groups such Hezbollah or Hamas.   He said (and, because this is overheard on the radio, I don't know that it's a perfect quote), "We claim never to be negotiating with terrorists.  In fact, we are always negotiating – every government in the world is always negotiating – with terrorists."

This struck me as profoundly and fundamentally true, and puts lie to the constantly enunciated position of most governments that "negotiating with terrorists" is neither appropriate nor ever pursued as a matter of policy – "so as not to encourage them" so to speak.

I would only like to add further to his observation, by wondering:  if this [i.e. "negotiation"] did not occur, with great regularity, mightn't terrorists eventually abandon their activities as fruitless?  Terrorists are successful with their generally ideological missions mostly to the extent to which the terror they sow can induce governments to react and change policies, cede resources, or capitulate.  This has always been true, and all war is, ultimately, terrorist in nature, and just an extension of politics by other means, as the aphorism has it.

And now I'm listening to Radiohead's "Backdrifts."

Caveat: Carbon Amortization

Less Banal Than Usual / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Science & SciFi

I was reading an article about Priuses in the New York Times (online) that caused me to think, once again, about something I find very troubling about all the discussion of reducing the carbon footprints of the automobiles we drive, about legislating improved mileage and/or offering incentives to buyers of lower-carbon-footprint cars.  And it is this:  what about the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process?  What about other environmental impacts of new cars?  Bear with me, while I try to think this through.
Suppose I have a Hummer.  It’s a nice, ecologically disastrous beast, with a very high carbon footprint, that I bought in a solipsistic moment some years back.  I don’t know enough to actually assign a meaningful number to its day-to-day carbon footprint, but lets say its daily value is “10.”  So, one morning, after a long talk with some friends, I wake up feeling guilty, and decide to buy a Prius.  So I buy the Prius – and lets say, for the sake of argument, that its daily carbon footprint is “2” – i.e. it puts out 20% of the ongoing emissions as the Hummer.
But what was the carbon footprint of manufacturing the Prius?  Is it unreasonable to imagine it might be some rather large number compared to the daily value?  I mean, just the delivery from manufacturer to dealer is going to be some largish multiple of the daily footprint, e.g. 20 or 50, right?  There’s steel, engine, tire manufacturing.  And farther back, there’s high-paid executives and designing engineers at Toyota and their contractors, sitting in air-conditioned offices over years, making the Prius a reality.  ALL of that is part of the vehicle’s carbon footprint.  Is it unreasonable to imagine that the carbon footprint of the creation of that new Prius might not be, say, in the 1000’s?  10,000’s?  What if I go out on a limb, and guess, say, 8000 “units”?
The consequence is as follows:  I’m reducing my personal carbon footprint, by switching from Hummer to Prius, by 8 units per day.  But the Prius’ manufacture entailed a footprint of 8000.  So, that means I will have to own the Prius for 1000 days before I “break even” in terms of carbon footprint.  That’s almost 3 years!  Wouldn’t it be better for the environment to urge people to KEEP their current cars longer, rather than switch out to lower-footprint vehicles?  This would be true regardless of the type of vehicle they currently own.
And I understand very well, I just pulled these numbers out of a hat, and the analysis could be extremely mistaken.  But what I wonder about, is why don’t you ever see anyone doing this kind of analysis, in the media?  And there are other issues – the Prius has a contingent of non-carbon-related environmental issues, around its high-tech manufacturing processes, and its massive array of batteries – these are not in any way resolved.   What about battery disposal?  What about the toxics involved in battery and plastics manufacture?
I cannot argue that in terms of real, long-term life-of-product carbon footprint, my father’s 1928 Ford Model A is lower than almost anything else on the road (or, er, in storage, at the moment), because of its under 20 mpg and “dirty” exhaust.  But it nevertheless represents maximizing the utility of the manufactured object vis-a-vis its intended purpose.  The carbon footprint of the car’s manufacture has amortized for 80 years now!  Meanwhile, that self-righteous bastard driving the 2008 Prius, which replaced his 2005 Corolla, which replaced his 2000 VW, which replaced his 1992 Chevy, etc., etc., has left a landscape strewn with massive-manufacturing-footprint disposed-of vehicles.  If he had kept each of his earlier vehicles for three or four years longer than he did, and avoided the Prius completely, he’d probably do more to reduce his carbon footprint than a lifetime’s worth of Prius driving.
I’m going to call this problem the problem of “carbon amortization.”
Below, is a picture of my mom, my sister, and me, with the family car, somewhere in Oregon, 1970.
picture
My father still has this car.  He hasn’t had it running in a few years, due to financial constraints, but I know he intends to drive it many more miles – as do I.
picture

Caveat: Perhaps Dubya is the real Kira?

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I have become substantially absorbed in the ongoing episodes of the manga series called Deathnote.  I bought volumes 9, 10, and 11 on Sunday and have ploughed through two of them in the last two days. 

These texts definitely have a lot going on in them, and I've decided it's quite a bit more than just a serialized graphic novel in the suspense/thriller genre.  The main characters are quite complex, and moral ambiguity is pandemic – no one is faultless, and you can't even decide who the good guys are – as opposed to the bad guys – although the authors do tend show some of them in a more sympathetic light than others.

The central protagonist is Light (Raito) Yagami, an academically gifted Japanese teenager who's father is a career policeman.  He gains the power to kill people by merely knowing their names and faces, and sets out to "make the world a better place."  I won't go into the details of the plot and character development here – If you're interested, you can start at wikipedia or any number of other places on the internet to find out more.

From what I've read in my own explorations online, the authors did not specifically intend for the series to be philosophically deep, nor did they set out to create a semiotic masterpiece.  The main writer (Ohba) explicitly states that he tried to avoid being "ideological" – whatever that means.

Nevertheless, the text is brimming with all kinds of tasty ideological morsels (and morasses) – to such an extent that I think it would be extremely fruitful and interesting to undertake an in-depth semiotic study of the text, perhaps something in line with Frederic Jameson's method, as he outlines in his seminal work, The Political Unconscious.

I can't help but be constantly aware of the geopolitical backdrop for the writing of the series – these times we inhabit, the first years of the 21st century.  It's set in a Japan still basically attached to the U.S. strategically, but increasingly unrooted culturally and economically.  The early books constantly had me flashing to the awkwardness of Japan's postwar identity, and also to the looming moral cypher that is represented by the United States' nuclear umbrella.

But in the most recent episodes I've been reading, I keep thinking about righteous hegemonies… about U.S. unilateralism, vis-a-vis the character of Kira (the machiavellian boy Light, who's become a demonic-powered avenger, Kira, but is also masquerading as one of his hunters, the character named "L").  In chapter 75 (book 9), Light says "If we catch Kira, then Kira is evil.  If Kira rules the world, then Kira is good."  To which Aizawa responds, "So the victor is righteous…"  Which is to say, righteousness has less to do with morality than with might and victory.  "Might is right."

And isn't that what's going on in Iraq, now?  Isn't that what happened in Japan 60 years ago, for that matter?  Yet there's a muddled moral imperative, however contrived, that drove both that old war and the one we are witnessing now.  Personally, I continue to be compelled to reject those revisionists who insist there's some qualitative moral difference between any given war and any other.  I have decided that Kira represents the exercise of inordinate power, whenever blinded by its own moralizing rationalizations.  Yet one finds oneself sympathizing, at least sometimes, with those rationalizations.  Because they're "rational," of course.  And because Light-Kira is the protagonist.

I like the way that the authors exploit the graphic format, also.  In book 11 there's this long, complex dialogic thing going on, involving a conversation between Light and Takada, who are speaking for the benefit of known eavesdroppers, but secretly supported and manipulated by notes being passed between them, and at the same time commented and subverted by the listeners, all in a chaotic progression of comic-book frames that becomes dizzingly non-linear.

Caveat: Californio

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

A speech by Pío de Jesús Pico, a mestizo businessman of Los Angeles who was the last governor of California when it was still part of Mexico: 

What are we to do then? Shall we remain supine, while these daring strangers are overrunning our fertile plains, and gradually outnumbering and displacing us? Shall these incursions go on unchecked, until we shall become strangers in our own land?

So he was what has been called a Californio – a pre-U.S.-annexation Californian of Spanish or mixed Native American and Spanish descent.  Pico actually had an African great grandmother, too, from what I understand.  I've always found the history of the Californios fascinating – it's a kind of forgotten group.

He took refuge in Baja California during the war, but afterward he returned to Los Angeles and made peace with the gringafication of the region, even running for city council at one point, and building a famous hotel.  But he died a pauper because of his extravagant lifestyle and gambling habits.

Caveat: Apophenism

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Wikipedia says: "Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data."  I think this is one of the most salient features of human psychology, and a defining characteristic of postmodernity as well.  Or perhaps I'm just seeing patterns in random data?

One of the most amazing novels, Pornographia, by Witold Gombrowicz (a Polish-Argentine writer), deals with this phenomenon.  The somewhat embarrassing-to-cite title is in fact misleading – and part of the apophenic game that goes on throughout the whole novel, as it leads the reader into making all kinds of efforts to see meaning where none is to be found.  The title's relation to the novel is in fact the first apophenic movement of the novel, which continues in the same mode throughout.

Actually, the thing that made me think of apophenia  might seem surprising.  I was thinking about macroeconomics, the relationship between command economies and truly market-based ones, and all those gray areas in between.  This was prompted by a recent short article in The Economist (May 31st, 2008) that was explaining the recent government-mandated "restructuring" of the massive and fast-growing Chinese telecoms industry.  To quote the line from the article that got me thinking:  "Each time the government has arranged things to mirror the outcome produced by market forces in the West."

First, I thought, "how clever."  They get the best of both worlds (from their point of view):  command economy as well as the presumed efficiencies of market capitalism.  It's like if the proposed God of the ID (intelligent design) people had a little (or not-so-little) Darwinist laboratory running somewhere "on the side" where He (yes, He – we're talking IDers, right?) that can give Him ideas, and then He imitates it and makes it even "better." 

But then I started thinking.  First – just how random and/or market-driven is what happens to e.g. telecoms markets in the West?  And second, is it really proven that the patterns that emerge in terms of how markets are structured represent some kind of best-rises-to-the-top principle?  We presume that market economics is Darwinist and necessarily leads to efficiencies, but why would it?  Maybe the patterns we see in truly unconstrained markets (to the extent they are, in fact, unconstrained) are just manifestations of apophenia?

I think I want to add the title of "Apophenist" to some of my others.  It's a neologism, although google makes clear it won't be mine, as it's already out there.

Caveat: Densities

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I just read an article that included the information that Los Angeles is now the most densely populated metropolitan area in the U.S.  This is so contrary to perception and conventional wisdom – to imagine that it is more densely populated than especially crowded-seeming east-coast cities like New York or Boston.  And I wonder especially at the criteria – there is a lot of "in between" space in Los Angeles – the Santa Monica mountains, or the little ranges of mountains between the airport and downtown, or the Arroyo up toward Pasadena.  How do these open spaces count in the calculation of densities?  Alternately, how do the open water spaces of a water-oriented city like New York get counted?  And what about "freeway space" – which abounds in LA and virtually doesn't exist in NYC – is it excluded in the calculations, too?  I just can't see that, on a comparison of built-up areas to built-up areas, that LA is higher density, given how high-rises so dominate places like Manhattan or the projects of the Bronx.

Then again, Mexico City manages to be one of the densest metropolises in the world with very few (relatively speaking) high rises.  I'm just not sure about all this.  Regardless, we also need to understand that higher population density doesn't necessarily imply lesser transportation dependence.  NYC may "seem" denser because of the very high level of public transportation usage in the city, compared to a place like LA. 

Caveat: Dodging Popperazzi

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I finished Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble With Physics.  I've been looking at some critical reviews, online, too.  Several people mention Susskind's use of a term "popperazzi" to refer to people who make a big deal of Karl Popper's ideas about the importance of "falsifiability" in developing scientific theories, and I think that it is probably accurate to say that Smolin's book is, at least in part, a popperian review of contemporary physics, especially string theory.

I'm not a physicist, nor a mathematician.  And I don't really have an opinion about string theory, either way, although I never found it as intuitively appealing as, say, general relativity or even quantum mechanics, to the extent that I understand them at all.  In that vein, I'll confess I find Smolin's earlier-enunciated, and currently somewhat academically marginalized, loop quantum gravity theory more intuitively appealing.

But I also would agree with Smolin's critics that his popperian view of string theory is overly combative and ends up coming across as academic sour grapes.  It's too polemical to be useful.  And I do think that Popper, to the extent I understand him, may not have been the last word on how science works.

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