I wrote this exactly one year ago, as a possible blog entry. I never published it in my blog. I’m not sure why – it feels kind of important. I guess I didn’t feel it was “finished” and subsequently forgot about it. Now that I’m scraping the bottom of my barrel-o’-blog-ideas, I’ll go ahead and throw it down here.
Walking home last night [i.e. January 12, 2016], I was thinking about pain and my old, neglected aphorism, “Live each day as if you would live forever.” That aphorism worked for me at a time when the only limit to my youthful immortality was my own undying death wish. Essentially, it served as a way to subvert that death wish. But now that there are more threats to my survival coming from outside my mind (i.e. mostly coming from my own treacherous, aging body), I find it hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief necessary to live by that aphorism. Thinking about pain, my thought has always been: if I knew, confidently, that I was immortal, I should think I would find any pain bearable, over the long run. The reason pain is unbearable is because it is a kind of ur-premonition of our mortality. This idea is related to why I always found descriptions of the traditional Christian hell unpersuasive – I always thought, well, if you’re there, suffering for an eternity, wouldn’t you gradually get used to it? Eventually, after the first few thousand years at the worst, you might even grow to need it – it’d be part of the routine. At worst, you’d develop a kind of asceticism toward it, a kind of zen-like “let it pass through me.” To be honest, I would find the idea of actual, permanent death for sinners and eternal life for the saved much more compelling. This is known as the doctrine of conditional mortality – currently held by Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other such peripheral Christian groups.
I was experiencing a great deal of pain last January, related to the necrosis and tooth problem which reached a kind of resolution yesterday, as the doctor pronounced my “tooth extraction point” more-or-less healed, despite the necrosis in the jaw. So this seems a very appropriate point to revisit that pain, at its nadir.
A nation which makes greatness its polestar can never be free; beneath national greatness sink individual greatness, honor, wealth and freedom. But though history, experience and reasoning confirm these ideas; yet all-powerful delusion has been able to make the people of every nation lend a helping hand in putting on their own fetters and rivetting their own chains, and in this service delusion always employs men too great to speak the truth, and yet too powerful to be doubted. Their statements are believed – their projects adopted – their ends answered and the deluded subjects of all this artifice are left to passive obedience through life, and to entail a condition of unqualified non-resistance to a ruined posterity. [emphasis added] – Abraham Bishop.
Bishop was an American Jeffersonian politician (called "Republican" in that Era), abolitionist and orator, who lived 1763-1844. He apparently advocated for gender equality, too. Oddly, the wikithing lacks an article about Bishop, but I found this with some biographical information.
I saw this image, left, written up at Language Log blog. The Arabic product name is "Chinese Astrology." Which just adds more dissonance. I think if you can figure out how all the pieces in this image fit together, you will have solved the mysteries of the 21st century.
I have blogged before about trolley problems. They intrigue me.
I ran across this humorous take.
Let’s see how this plays out. I wonder what the new Space Emperor would say, if he received this kind of call? [daily log: walking, 7km]
"I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned."
In a candy shop in Oldtown Pasadena about 9 days ago, where we had stepped in because my nephew Dylan had a sweet-tooth, I ran across the above joke, inscribed on a fridge magnet, for sale for the ghastlily exorbitant price of $6.50.
I laughed very hard. So did my dad. My sister just made a face – the kind that says, "I can see why you would find that funny but I don't plan to laugh."
I bought two of them, but the phrase was already inscribed on my brain. Curt, who'd witnessed all this, was unable to understand the humor. Of course, there are lot of cultural touchstones that make it inaccessible to those not grounded in US culture.
I have been trying to think about how best to explain to Curt why this joke made me laugh so hard. I think the first step is to begin to fill in some missing cultural components, with a disquisition on the ancient "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke genre.
So, let's begin. There is a question-and-answer joke, that asks, "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
The oldest, most time-tested answer is, "To get to the other side."
There exists an infinite number of alternate versions, with questions and answers. Many of the versions rely on the "build up" of previous versions (e.g. #10, below). I researched a few that I found most humorous.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side Why did the chicken cross the basketball court? He heard the referee calling fowls Why did the turkey cross the road? To prove he wasn't chicken Why did the chicken cross the road, roll in the mud and cross the road again? Because he was a dirty double-crosser Why didn't the chicken skeleton cross the road? Because he didn't have enough guts Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide Why did the dinosaur cross the road? Because chickens hadn't evolved yet Why did the turtle cross the road? To get to the shell station Why did the horse cross the road? Because the chicken needed a day off
The next step is to recognize the new joke's nod to another genre altogether: the "I dream of a world where. . . "
Somehow, my feeling is that this is rooted in the Langston Hughes poem. Or, if not rooted there, then nevertheless Hughes' poem is an early peak of a meme.
I Dream a World
I dream a world where man No other man will scorn, Where love will bless the earth And peace its paths adorn I dream a world where all Will know sweet freedom's way, Where greed no longer saps the soul Nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the earth And every man is free, Where wretchedness will hang its head And joy, like a pearl, Attends the needs of all mankind- Of such I dream, my world!
So another aspect of the joke's appeal, at least to me, is that it takes the silly chicken joke meme and combines it with the high-register "I dream" meme.
Finally, the last part of the joke, which renders it especially appropriate for me, is the bit of psychobable at the end: ". . . without having their motives questioned."
This is a type of language popularized during my parents' generation, and echoes the whole "I'm OK, You're OK" meme of that era.
There's a lot going on in that joke. I have placed it on the sidebar of my blog.
As many of you know, by birth I am a Quaker (or half a Quaker, or maybe three quarters of one). I was not raised as an active Quaker, however – both due to my parents having fairly secular attitudes as well as because in my small childhood town in rural northern California, there was no local meetinghouse.
I was probably mostly aware of my Quaker heritage during the many visits to Southern California, where my paternal grandparents were. I remember attending meeting for worship a few times with my grandmother in the late 70s and early 80s.
One of the oldest and most influential meetings on the west coast is the Orange Grove Meeting in Pasadena. My father was born into that meeting, and my grandfather was active there even while also being part of the Temple City meeting which was adjunct to his farm-cum-school in Temple City.
My own strong association with Orange Grove was indirect, arising out of my employment by the Mexico City Meeting in 1986-87. Mexico City Friends and Orange Grove Friends were (and continue to be) tightly connected through historical, financial and spiritual ties. In fact, my uncle Allen (my father’s older brother) had worked for/with the Mexico City Meeting in the late 1950s.
Mexico City is the only time I was an official member of a meeting. The only other time I was a regular attender of a meeting was also in the context of working for a Quaker institution, when I was teaching high school Spanish and Social Studies at Moorestown Friends School in Moorestown, New Jersey. That was in 1996-97.
I did attend Orange Grove Meeting itself a few times in the early 2000s, but by then I was pretty sure I wasn’t a very good Quaker. I think I have a largely Quaker value system, but I have come to feel that being a typical “values but no doctrine” Quaker has too much of a whiff of hypocrisy for me to be comfortable in that role. The idea of a “church” where lip service is paid to a bible which is not really taken seriously (or even much read) can work fine for many people, but not for me. As I’ve written before, I appreciate Buddhism – at least the variety I have interacted with in Korea – because its adherents explicitly make clear that there is no need to believe anything, unlike Quakers who tend to sweep such discrepancies under the rug. As a committed antitranscendentalist (i.e. no miracles, no magic, period), that is the only kind of religion where I could possibly fit in.
Setting aside such digressions, I attended Quaker Meeting this morning at Orange Grove Friends Meeting. This is because my father has become an attender since he has taken on the role of on-site caretaker there (a role curiously similar to what my role had been at the Mexico City Meeting).
I have enough background with it to feel comfortable – even somewhat nostalgic. Curt and Mr Jin came too, and I’m sure it was several layers of culture shock for them, being not only alien religiously but populated almost exclusively by that weird, heterogeneous tribe of hippieish, dogmatically tolerant, political radicals such as commonly inhabit Quaker meetings. No amount of exposure to heterodox American culture as consumed outside the US could possibly prepare one for this type of American.
Their cultural discomfort afterward was strongly ameliorated by a very pleasant Korean-American Quaker lady named Kwang-hui, whose company I enjoyed and who served as a nice liaison between Koreanism and Quakerism. I was particularly pleased to find that her spoken Korean was much easier to comprehend for me than most varieties. I think that it is often the case that Koreans resident abroad adopt a somewhat simplified variety of Korean, with reduced usage of the many complex verbal periphrases and less “수능 [suneung]” vocabulary (what we would call “SAT vocab” in English, meaning “high-falutin” educated words, typically of Chinese etymology in Korean).
After the meeting we went to an allegedly Mexican restaurant across the street. North Pasadena in recent decades has evolved into largely hispanic neighborhood, so although the place was undeniably Mexican culturally, the cuisine is what I would term “LA generic fast food” – mostly burgers, sandwiches, tacos and burritos, with a few vegetarian entries as a nod to Pasadena’s vaguely upscale, granola-liberal character.
Despite that, being a family-run business meant the barbacoa tacos were pretty authentic, at least to Californio standards. I had one of those, and then a fish taco. These latter only exist where gringos do, when speaking of Mexico proper, but in Southern California they come close to being truly authentic local cuisine. Of course for the Koreans along, it was more immersion in the aspect of my own country that I love and miss most – its sheer perverse diversity. And that was the point. I am working hard to expose Curt and Jin to as much different stuff as possible given the narrow timeframe.
Overall, a nice morning. Then we drove down to the airport and here I am, writing this offline while sardined into another aluminum ovoid tube somewhere over Utah. I will post it once I am online again.
Tomorrow, I will go to Minnesota DMV and then the infamous storage unit. I not sure I will actually undertake the project to move and consolidate my stuff – it feels very overwhelming and frankly I’d rather be a tour guide to my friends. [daily log: walking, ~2km]
I recently read a review of a book (The Kingdom of Speech, by Tom Wolfe) I was already uninterested in, based on other mentions of it on various linguistics-oriented blogs. The book has received a huge amount of attention in the mainstream media as one of those books on "linguistics for non-linguists," and apparently contains an attack on Chomsky's approach to linguistic universals, and challenges the importance of his contributions. It also, incidentally, attacks Darwin. So there's that.
I'm no huge fan of Chomsky, but it's not his theoretical work that has annoyed me so much over the years, but rather his "armchair anarchism," and the seeming hypocritical disconnect between his anti-authoritarian politics and his somewhat dogmatic (i.e. authoritarianish) and unquestionably totalizing approach to his field of specialization (syntax). How does a self-avowed anarchist not see the irony in dogmatically propagating a theory with the a Foucauldian title like "government and binding"?
Nevertheless, and setting aside his academic dogmatism, Chomsky's insights to the field of syntax were revolutionary, and even if they are increasingly being called into question by other linguists, he deserves his reputation. His work has been foundational.
Therefore the review is right on target. It rightly defends Chomsky's intellectual legacy, which regardless of the weaknesses of his forays outside of syntax, should be secure.
I recently ran across the concept of "epistemic vice." In the first instant, I found the approach appealing, but it quickly lost its luster as I examined it more critically.
Like other "virtue/vice" systems, it has a weakness, which is that it sets up a moral judgment on something that should be approached objectively, at least in accordance with my own ethical intuitions. In fact, there's a particular problem with the concepts of epistemic virtue and epistemic vice, which is that, if you look at things at a more "meta" level, the paired concepts themselves ought to be condemned as instances of epistemic vice, under the latter's definition: it is an act of leaping to a judgment of a person's behavior (specifically, the holding of epistemic beliefs, which is a sort of behavior) without considering alternatives. To say "close-mindedness is a vice and not a virtue" is itself a kind of dogmatism, and the act of a closed mind. The whole thing swallows its own tail, ouroboros style, and thus fails.
The mind is finite. Therefore there exists some finite number of possible states of mind – a large number, surely, but definitely not infinite.
That being the case, and taking a deterministic view, there will be some number of series of states of mind that entail closed loops of various sizes. So imagine a certain state of mind that inevitably leads back to itself in a fairly short amount of time – i.e., within a single human lifetime. Is it possible someone has ever experienced this? Entering a state of mind that, after some amount of time, repeats. Is this what the mental experience of "deja vu" is?
Is a true repetition impossible, due to outside inputs? What if the person were in some kind of sensory deprivation tank? What of people who are "locked in" due to various neurological conditions? Perhaps in that kind of situation, what if it turned out that the mind looped fairly regularly?
That’s the extremely interesting thing: Everything is interesting. Potentially. Sometimes it may not seem so. You may think a certain thing is completely without interest. You may think, or I may think, eh, dull, boring, heck with it, let’s move on. But there is someone on this planet who can find something interesting in that particular thing. And it’s often good to try. You have to poke at a thing, sometimes, and find out where it squeaks. Any seemingly dull thing is made up of subsidiary things. It’s a composite — of smaller events or decisions. Or of atoms and molecules and prejudices and hunches that are fireflying around in unexpected and impossible trajectories. Everything is interesting because everything is not what it is, but is something on the way to being something else. Everything has a history and a secret stash of fascination. – Nicholson Baker (American novelist, b 1957)
This is a fascinating article: a German historian has demonstrated incontrovertibly that Hitler was a serious drug addict. I actually had never heard about this before, but it looks like it has been one of those "open secrets" among historians.
I find it very compelling. The idea that Hitler was a coke-head junkie in his last years has a lot of explanatory power. And not just Hitler – the whole damn Nazi military apparatus was apparently high on meth and coke, with the pushers being the government. A bad trip, indeed.
What other 20th century insanities might be better understood as drug-related issues?
I don't actually currently have with me either of the books, The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Yet over the years, I have found myself recalling both books frequently in my meditations on philosophy and the nature of human societies, although until just now, never really at the same time.
I had a very weird epiphany, the other day, however. In my mind, anyway, these books are actually in the same category. Most thinkers would be alarmed by this suggestion, I imagine. LeGuin and Rand are hardly philosophical comrades-in-arms.
Both books, thematically, are about utopias. In fact, both are about flawed utopias, though the flawed utopia of each one is the dystopia (anti-utopia) of the other. Yet both tread the ground of the conflict between the two topias. Both authors influenced me hugely in my own thinking about utopias and intentional communities of all kinds.
My epiphany is "incomplete" – I need to work through how these books connect. They may even be in a kind of accidental dialogue.
Interestingly, my curiosity prompted a quick googlesearch, which revealed to me that LeGuin has explicitly claimed she was NOT influenced by Atlas Shrugged. This is almost humorous, in light of my epiphany. It makes me want to try to prove otherwise. If LeGuin read Atlas Shrugged, as she admits, then it suddenly becomes inevitable, in my way of thinking, that there must be some influence, if only that LeGuin is writing against Rand. I am recalled to mind of critic Harold Bloom's influential work, The Anxiety of Influence.
If I had the texts in front of me, I would be tempted to re-read them in parallel and find out what relations might exist. Maybe I'll purchase copies on my next trip to the bookstore – I heard there's a new Kyobo Mungo store at 백석, a much closer trip than heading into Seoul – the Kyobo Mungo outlets there form my main source for English-language books.
A few weeks ago I finished that book my friend Peter loaned me – Hendrick Hamel's Journal. Essentially, I read it in one sitting – it's not a long book. Peter guessed correctly that the parts I found most interesting were the appendices and footnotes. In general, however, it reads pretty well – it is a remarkable gateway to a truly alien world: a 17th century Dutchman stranded in an even more alien 17th century Korea. Yet I was impressed his remarkable equanimity and his refusal to categorically condemn his captors (indeed they made him a slave, which was the typical fate of foreigners landing in Korea in the period).
I recommend this book even to those without a specific interest in Korea. In some ways, the narrative most resembles those "stuck on an alien planet" tropes common to certain types of science fiction. That, in itself, makes it quite fascinating.
I have often joked that in my long-term residence in Korea, I have "emigrated" to one of those alien planets that so fascinated me when I was younger. This book captures the same idea. Korea of the present day is hardly alien at all, compared to the Korea of that era.
Recently, the term "neoliberalism" seems to be undergoing a kind of evolution. In the past half century (i.e. during my lifetime), "neoliberalism" seems to have been a negative term used by people, mostly on the left, to define an opposition they don't like. Lately, however, some people have been trying to "reclaim" the term as defining their own position. Interestingly, I find this redefinition somewhat appealing. It seems to be a kind of "liberalism with libertarian tendencies" and/or "libertarianism with liberal tendencies" which actually hoves somewhat to where I am, politically, myself.
One recent self-identified "neoliberal" that I ran across is Sam Bowman (I don't really know who that is – some economist maybe?). For the most part I am close to that defintion. Interestingly, I think Hillary Clinton is, too. Many Bernie Sandersites have called Clinton "neoliberal" despectively, but in fact, she might call herself neoliberal if identifying with Bowman's definition.
I think what Bowman leaves out entirely, but which is critical to my understanding of both the historical conception of "neoliberalism" as well as why I think I don't quite match the concept, is on the issue of militarism and/or interventionism. I am not a pacifist, but I am not really in favor of militarism, even the "trying to save the failed-state-du-jour" variety common nowadays.
My biggest disappointment with Obama and biggest ambivalence about Hillary Clinton is in this realm. I think that this lacuna with respect to militarism in historical neoliberalism is its overlap with what was called "neocolonialism" when I was vaguely marxist, in college. And just as then, when it comes to such things, I am very much anti-interventionist.
If I stick only with Bowman's defnition, I could be a neoliberal. But I refuse the term because of that unmentioned neocolonial affiliation. Both traditional liberals and traditional libertarians would also be unconfortable with it, I think.
"From Wakan Tanka there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things – the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals–and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred and brought together by the same Great Mystery . . . . Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle . . . . The animal had rights – the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, the right to man's indebtedness – and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved the animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing . . . . Everything was possessed of personality, only differing with us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns and that was to feel beauty." – Luther Standing Bear (Lakota author, 1868-1939)
When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, "Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can. Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie, Contract into a span."
So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure. When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, Rest in the bottom lay.
"For if I should," said he, "Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature; So both should losers be.
"Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast." – George Herbert (Welsh-English poet, 1593-1633)
Although I like the poetry, and in some ways I can appreciate the concept, too, I find this portrait of God deeply unsympathetic. Of course, as CS Lewis has observed, we're not supposed to like God, are we? That's not really the point. In a similar vein, I have always found the gnostic portrait of the creator God (i.e. of the Pentateuch) as an enemy of humanity compelling – a view which perhaps was more integral (implicitly rather than explicitly) to pre-modern Christian views of God, as suggested by the above poem. Anyway my own view remains that I appreciate all these stories as strong metaphors, but I remain militantly anti-transcendentalist.
Jimmy Driftwood, "The Battle of New Orleans." Driftwood was a history teacher who made this song in 1959 to get his students interested in history. I remember hearing the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band version in the mid 70's, and I admit, it got me interested in history. I'm not sure about the over all accuracy – especially the issue of how the American soldiers used the alligators. But anyway it's actually a pretty funny song, and from the start I was fascinated by the unusual language in it, as well – perhaps it also got me interested in dialectology.
Lyrics – I found them online, but the sung lyrics differed somewhat, so I have made some alterations based on what I hear, to match the actual non-standard language being used, e.g. the published lyrics have "they begun a running" but the singer clearly says "they beginned a-running."
Well, in 18 and 14, we took a little trip Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Missisip We took a little bacon and we took a little beans And we met the bloody British in the town of New Orleans
Chorus:
We fired our guns and the British kept a comin' There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago We fired once more and they beginned a-runnin' On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Well, I seed Mars Jackson a-walkin' down the street And a-talkin' to a pirate by the name of Jean Lafitte; He gave Jean a drink that he brung from Tennessee, And the pirate said he'd help us drive the British in the sea.
Well the French told Andrew, "You had better run For Packenham's a-comin' with a bullet in his gun." Old Hickory said he didn't give a damn He's a-gonna whip the britches off of Colonel Packenham.
Chorus
Well, we looked down the river and we seed the British come And there must have been a hundred of them beating on the drum They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring While we stood behind our cotton bales and didn't say a thing
Old Hick'ry said we could take em by surprise If we didn't fire a musket till we looked em in the eyes We held our fire till we seed their face well Then we opened up our squirrel guns and really gave 'em hell.
Chorus
Well they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Well we fired our cannons till the barrels melted down So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round We filled his head with minie balls and powdered his behind And when we touched the powder off, the 'gator lost his mind
They lost their pants and their pretty shiny coats And their tails was all a-showin' like a bunch of billy goats. They ran down the river with their tongues a-hangin' out And they said they got a lickin', which there wasn't any doubt.
Chorus
Well we marched back to town in our dirty ragged pants And we danced all night with the pretty girls from France; We couldn't understand 'em, but they had the sweetest charms And we understood 'em better when we got 'em in our arms.
Chorus
Well, the guide who brung the British from the sea Come a-limpin' into camp just as sick as he could be, He said the dying words of Colonel Packenham Was, "You better quit your foolin' with your cousin Uncle Sam."
Chorus
Well, we'll march back home, but we'll never be content Till we make Old Hick'ry the people's president. And every time we think about the bacon and the beans We'll think about the fun we had way down in New Orleans.
I found this definition of the verbalized form of the idiom (i.e. 뇌봉전별하다):
(비유적으로) 잠깐 만났다가 곧 헤어지다. 천둥같이 만났다가 번개같이 헤어진다는 뜻에서 나온 말이다.
I tried to makes sense of this definition, but I’m not very happy with my effort.:
“(Figuratively) Although a moment is met, it soon divides. The saying comes out meaning that although thunder meets, lightning divides up.”
I guess this would refer to the philosophical conundrum of the ephemerality of the “present.”
“Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles.” – Aristotle. Physics VI [daily log: walking, 6km]
I spent a major portion of my morning reading most of the entire series of comics posted at the site existentialcomics.com. I don't know who the author is or much about why this comic exists. But I found it all quite entertaining, and I laughed many times. This kind of humor is not accessible to everyone, I know.
The title for this blog post comes from a comic about the philosopher David Hume, serving as captain of the Starship Enterprise. He meets his nemesis, Kant. This doesn't go well, as we can predict from the original story.
At Diagoras cum Samothracam venisset, atheus ille qui dicitur, atque ei quidam amicus: "Tu, qui deos putas humana neglegere, nonne animadvertis ex tot tabulis pictis, quam multi votis vim tempestatis effugerint in portumque salvi pervenerint?"
"Ita fit," inquit, "illi enim nusquam picti sunt, qui naufragia fecerunt in marique perierunt."
— Cicero, De Natura Deorum
Diagoras, who is called the atheist, being at Samothrace, one of his friends showed him several pictures of people who had endured very dangerous storms; "See," says he, "you who deny a providence, how many have been saved by their prayers to the Gods."
"Ay," says Diagoras, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked and perished?"
— Cicero (106 BCE – 43 BCE), On the Nature of the Gods
This, in fact, addresses what is sometimes called the "survivorship fallacy," a logical fallacy that frequently arises in even high-level formal research in economics and the social sciences.
I have been reading (re-reading? I may have read it long ago) Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution. Bergson is a somewhat underrated philosopher, in my opinion. I was led to him by Deleuze. I was struck by this quote (I have transcribed, at length – typos are thus my own):
Human intelligence, as we represent it, is not at all what Plato taught in the allegory of the cave. Its function is not to look at passing shadows nor yet to turn itself round and contemplate the glaring sun. It has something else to do. Harnessed, like yoked oxen, to a heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles and joints, the weight of the plow and the resistance of the soil. To act and to know that we are acting, to come into touch with reality and even to live it, but only in the measure in which it concerns the work that is being accomplished and the furrow that is being plowed, such is the function of human intelligence. Yet a beneficent fluid bathes us, whence we draw the very force to labor and to live. From this ocean of life, in which we are immersed, we are continually drawing something, and we feel that our being, or at least the intellect that guides it, has been formed therein by a kind of local concentration. Philosophy can only be an effort to disolve again into the Whole. Intelligence, reabsorbed into its principle, may thus live back again its own genesis. But the enterprise cannot be achieved in one stroke; it is necessarily collective and progressive. It consists in an interchange of impressions which, correcting and adding to each other, will end by expanding the humanity in us and making us even transcend it. [pp. 191-192 in my Dover edition]
To the extent that it is a coherent refutation of Plato's allegory, I like it a lot. To the extent it seems to embrace an almost naive pantheism, I don't, though I understand the impulse.
I was surfing some of the blogs I read, and found this blog post with a rather novel approach to defining capitalism. I'm not sure I find it entirely compelling, but I like the effort to break with philosophical and economic tradition. It takes a rather abstract, game-theoretic approach informed by information theory.
This article, however, led me in turn to this rather humorous bit at the New Yorker, about a "Libertarian Police Department" – which is a kind of oxymoron, of course.
Many years ago, I made [broken link! FIXME]some posts on this blog (in its earliest, pre-Life-in-Korea incarnation) about the issue of open borders and migration as a human right. I still basically believe this, although it's not something that I consider particularly urgent, and certainly, living as a de facto immigrant in one of the world's less immigrant-friendly regions presents some ironies to this.
Recently, in a post on the crookedtimber blog, I ran across what I would consider one of the best counter-arguments to the idea that borders should be thrown open. Actually, it was a comment below the main post that raised the issue (by a commenter named "Merkwürdigliebe" – whoever that might be), but I think it's possibly the best rebuttal to open borders I have run across.
The idea is that when you have open borders, a government (or a people, in the form of a mass movement) could "weaponize" migration. Many conspiracy-theorists (especially on the right) already believe there is intentionality behind mass migrations of e.g. Mexicans into the US, and, with respect to certain fringe groups (such as the Aztlan revanchist movement) there is actually some validity.
The commenter raised the idea of, say, the Russian government using putative open European borders to flood former East Bloc countries such as the Baltics with direct Russian migration, until those countries were rendered majority Russian and thus captured into the Russian orbit.
In fact, there are plenty of examples from history of successful "weaponized" migration – everything from the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire to the movement of settlers from the British Isles into North America to the Argentinian leverage of Welsh nationalism to subdue the Patagonian natives, to the entire Zionist project from conception to its current manifestations in the West Bank settlements.
These historical examples themselves constitute the essential counter-rebuttal to the argument, however: all of these historical examples of "weaponized" migration were successful despite active resistance on the part of the people being "migrated against." Thus, whether or not there are "open borders" seems structurally irrelevant. If a given people or movement or government make a concerted effort at weaponized migration, the presence or absence of border controls seems not to matter a whit. As the borg pointed out, as it effortlessly zoomed across Federation border controls, "resistance is futile."
Nevertheless, it is a cogent and intelligent argument, and would need to be addressed in the context of a debate in favor of open borders.
This was interesting, especially the way the story kept "branching" out from the original effort to explain the Zipf phenomenon. This is the the kind of thing I like to think about, "for fun."
I liked the Emerson quote near the end, but, I am unsure if it is truly his. Wikiquote says it's "unsourced," whatever that means.
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I ran across this joke, unattributed, posted at speculativegrammarian blog under the feature "Non-Gricean Humor":
"What has 34 legs in the morning, 69 at midday and 136 in the evening? A man who collects legs."
I have no idea why I found it so funny. If you know why I found it so funny, let me know – it may provide deep insight into my dysfunctions.
Actually, on further reflection, I think the fact that it was under the specific heading that it was under influenced my reaction – which it to say, the heading "Non-Gricean" primed my mind for the subsequent punchline, which would not have had the same "punch" if it had not been primed by the heading. Of course, that means finding the joke funny relies in part on knowing something about Grice's work in linguistic pragmatics.
Relatedly, but at a deeper level, I recently was granted an insight into the nature of humor while reading a kind of throwaway article at The Register (an IT-based humor-plus-news website) by Tim Worstall (who deserves credit). He was writing about some kind of google-translate-related disaster at a Moravian tourism website. But he said, in an aside, "I might even advance a theory of linguistics where our delight in such puns is in itself a reinforcement mechanism to make us think about those multiple meanings possible."
I liked this idea, finding it much more entertaining than the problems Moravians have been having with automated translation algorithms, and would reformulate and extend it as follows:
Our delight in puns and jokes is an evolutionary adaptation which is rooted in a feedback-based reinforcement of the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to cope with polysemy, which in turn is at the basis of abstract thought, metaphor and hypothesizing.
Some criticism has been leveled at Barack Obama, over the years, for being a perhaps excessively cerebral president. I understand such criticism, but I cannot wrap my head around the vernacular American resistance to the idea of an intelligent president – this is a problem that has puzzled me since my youth.
Anyway, it looks like this tendency is being taken to a new level by Republican candidate Scott Walker, who recently said, in response to a question about how he might handle the Syrian refugee crisis if he were president:
"Everybody wants to talk about hypotheticals; there is no such thing as a hypothetical"
Let me present a hypothetical: are we now ready for a president who is not only anti-intellectual (a la Reagan) but who a priori denies a capacity for abstract thought?
We like to think of the “drug epidemic” is something that emerged in 1970s and 1980s. We like to think there aren’t deep and complex cultural roots to the relationship between drugs and violence and disadvantaged social classes, and that those roots antedate the “War on Drugs” by many decades.
I wonder to what extent the “War on Drugs” wasn’t a kind of “redirection” of repressive energies vis-a-vis the civil rights movement. The former ramped up alongside the latter, and served as a kind of coded means to continue social control while paying lip service to the ideals of equality.
What I’m listening to right now.
Luke Jordan, “Cocaine Blues.” 1927. Really – this recording is older than my dad’s car.
Lyrics.
Now, go on, gal, don’t you take me for no fool
I’m not gonna quit you, pretty mama, whilst the weather’s cool
Around your back door, says, honey, I’m gonna creep
As long’s you make me those two and a half a week
Now I’ve got a girl, she works in the white folks yard
She brings me meal, I can swear, she brings me lard
She brings me meal, she brings me lard
She brings me everything, I swear, that she can steal
Now, Barnum Bailey’s Circus came to town
They had the dancers looking good and brown
They didn’t know it was against the law
For the monk’ to stop at a fine drug store
Just around the corner just a minute too late
Another one standin’ at the big back gate
I’m simply wild about my good cocaine
I call my Cora, hey, hey
She come on sniffin’ with her nose all sore
The doctor swore ain’t gonna sell no more
Sayin’, run, doctor, ring the bell
The women in the alley
Am simply wild about my good cocaine
Now, the furniture man came to my house
It was last Sunday morn
He asked me was my wife at home
And I told she had long gone
He backed his wagon up to my door
Took everything I had
He carried it back to the furniture store
And I swear I did feel sad
What in the world has anyone got
Dealin’ with the furniture man?
If you got no dough
To stand up for show
He certainly will back you back
He will take everything from an ugly plant
From a skillet to a frying pan
If it ever was a devil born without any horns
It must have been the furniture man
I call my Cora, hey, hey
She come on sniffin’ with her nose all sore
Doctor swore ain’t gonna sell her more
Sayin’ coke for horses, not women or men
The doctor says it’ll kill you but he didn’t say when
I’m simply wild about my good cocaine
Now, the babies in the cradle in New Orleans
They kept a-whiffin’ ’til they got so mean
They kept a-whiffin’ had to fix it so
The judge wouldn’t ‘low to sell no more
Sayin’, run, doctor, ring the bell
The women in the alley
Am simply wild about my good cocaine
I call my Cora, hey, hey
She come on sniffin’ with her nose all sore
The doctor swore, “I ain’t gonna sell her more.”
Sayin’ run, doctor, ring the bell
The women in the alley
Am simply wild about my good cocaine
Another song.
Luke Jordan, “Pick Poor Robin Clean.” 1927.
Lyrics.
REFRAIN: You better pick poor robin clean, pick poor robin clean
I picked his head, I picked his feet, I picked his body but it wasn’t fit to eat
You better pick poor robin clean, poor robin clean
So I’ll be satisfied, havin’ your family
Get off my money and don’t get funny
‘Cause I’m a nigger, don’t cut no figure
Gamblin’ for Sadie, she is my lady
I’m a hustling coon, that’s just what I am
REFRAIN: You better pick poor robin clean, poor robin clean
I picked his head, I picked his feet, would-a picked his body but it wasn’t fit to eat
You better pick poor robin clean, pick poor robin clean
Says, I’ll be satisfied, havin’ your family
Oh, didn’t that jaybird laugh when he picked poor robin clean?
Picked poor robin clean, poor robin clean
Oh, didn’t that jaybird laugh when he picked poor robin clean?
Says I’ll be satisfied, havin’ the family
REFRAIN: You better pick poor robin clean, poor robin clean
I picked his head, I picked his feet, would-a picked his body but it wasn’t fit to eat
You better pick poor robin clean, pick poor robin clean
Says, I’ll be satisfied, havin’ your family
Now if you have that gal o’ mine, I’m gonna have your ma
Your sister, too, your auntie, three
If your great-grandmammy do the shivaree I’m gonna have her, four
I be satisfied, havin’ the family
REFRAIN: You better pick poor robin clean, pick poor robin clean
I picked his head, I picked his feet, I would-a picked his body but it wasn’t fit to eat
You better pick poor robin clean, poor robin clean
Says, I’ll be satisfied, havin’ your family
I was led to this "document 9" (formally "Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere") of China's party leadership by a comment thread on an entry at Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution blog.
A commenter basically said, "Why do we spend so much time trying to figure out the China Leadership's intentions? Why not take what they say at face value?" with a link to this document. Frankly, this is a very good point. I don't think that anyone with even a limited background in the history of Marxism, Maoism and China could fail to see that the Party leadership isn't really hiding anything here.
Whether one agrees with it or not, an exposure to Marxist thought on questions of ideology, dialectics and theories of history seems like the sine qua non as regards commenting intelligently on the China question. I think the Chinese leadership take a very long view of history, from a still unrepentantly marxian position, and their embrace of "capitalism" is merely a means to an end. The preamble to the last section of the document reads:
Historical experience has proven that failures in the economic sphere can result in major disorder, and failure in the ideological sphere can result in major disorders as well. Confronting the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out Westernization, splitting, and “Color Revolutions,” and facing the severe challenge of today’s ideological sphere, all levels of Party and Government, especially key leaders, must pay close attention to their work in the ideological sphere and firmly seize their leadership authority and dominance.
They intend to dance with the devil and step on his toes and force him out of the dance competition.
The Australian economist John Quiggin, who writes at a blog called Crooked Timber which I often peruse, had a slightly oblique discussion of a text by Thucydides (the Melian dialogue) which I very vaguely recall once reading (or attempting to read). His summary is interesting, vis-a-vis drawing an eerie (and ironic) kind of parallel between the situation in Classical Greece, with Athens as hegemon within the Delian League, and the situation in modern Europe, with Germany as hegemon within the European Union.
He concludes with the quote I have used as my title on this post, which I guess is a kind of anonymous Greek proverb which was first recorded in Sophocles' Antigone (one of my favorite classical plays, I guess, though I most prefer Jean Anouilh's modern adaption, which neverthless stays quite loyal to the thematics… and speaking of Germans behaving hegemonically).
Tiny Cowboy (AKA Oasis), “Meatloaf.”
This song is embedded in an episode of the the almost Cervantine cartoon Phineas and Ferb. The group “Tiny Cowboy” seems to be a fictionalization of the real brit alt rock group Oasis.
The sophisticated and multi-layered writing on this Disney children’s cartoon, which [broken link! FIXME]I mentioned before, continues to amaze me as I occasionally sample episodes during my free time. Either that, or my senility is advancing too rapidly, and I’m perfectly content to just sit and watch cartoons.
A deconstruction of Star Wars:
