December 2010

Is You Is or Is You Ain’t?

By in atheism, foolosophy, religion, spiritual-not-religious

“I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere — childish analogies. We have to admire in humility and beautiful harmony of the structure of this world — as far as we can grasp it. And that is all.”
Four years later, in 1949, Raner wrote Einstein again, asking for clarification: “Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., ‘one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being?’” Einstein responded on September 28, 1949:
“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”
I agree, and would also add what Noam Chomsky said when asked the same question: what do you even mean by “God” or a “Supreme Being” in the first place? At least the believers in an anthropomorphic personal god have something specific in mind that we can dismiss as a fantasy, but the attempts of sophisticated theists to be more nuanced about it quickly devolve into, uh, poetry (if you’re feeling generous), or gibberish (if you’re not).
I also pretty much agree with his characterization of the “professional atheist”. I personally identify as an atheist because, like he said about the Jesuit priest, I am one as far as the vast majority of my society is concerned. Also, given how much actual, dangerous oppression faces those in many countries who refuse to conform, I think it’s important to not take for granted our luxury to be open about our lack of belief, to help destigmatize it. But I don’t think religion ever will be totally eradicated, and my suspicion of human nature is such that I can’t get truly enthusiastic about what a wonderful world it will be if only it could be. And while I certainly understand the impulse, I can’t help but shudder a little to see the sort of tribal mentality that wants to highlight all the examples of those on “our side” — atheist musicians, actors, and other public figures. I know it can be comforting to be reminded that one isn’t alone in holding an unpopular belief, but as is so often the case with politics, it’s easy to develop a monomaniacal fixation on such a distinction. Roy Edroso has long been keenly critical of conservatives who subordinate art to propaganda for the party line, disowning entertainers who express heretical opinions, but I’ve seen quite a few liberals as well who care more about the political beliefs of an artist than the art itself.
So I feel like my atheism is more positional than ideological. I am not on anyone’s “side”. I have no desire to convince other people to agree with me; I only want to retain enough personal space in which to be free from excessive pressure to agree with them. But I’ll also assert myself against those who seem to feel that Einstein’s “attitude of humility” is somehow incongruous with open expressions of atheism. I’ve said before, and I’ll say again: in my eyes, agnosticism is a statement about the boundaries of knowledge. Atheism is a statement about the credibility of belief. We can fully admit that we don’t know absolutely everything, that we can’t see everything from a – ahem – God’s-eye perspective, while feeling confident enough to say that we see no reason to believe that our imperfect knowledge leaves a loophole for any metaphysical fantasy we can dream up.

It Seems Your Ring Is Sliding Off My Hand

By in education, marriage, work

We could call them the lower-middle class or the upper-working class, but the better term is the moderately educated middle. They do not have BAs, MBAs, or PhDs. But they are not high-school dropouts either. They might have even achieved some college or training beyond high school. They are not upscale, but they are not poor. They don’t occupy any of the margins, yet they are often overlooked, even though they make up the largest share of the American middle class. In many respects, these high-school graduates are quite similar to their college-educated peers. They work. They pay taxes. They raise children. They take family vacations. But there is one thing that today’s moderately educated men and women, unlike today’s college graduates or yesterday’s high-school graduates, are increasingly less likely to do: get and stay happily married.

As they note later on, this same group has seen their wages diminish and employment opportunities vanish over the last few decades. If nobody can afford to own anything but the clothes on their back, what’s the point in joining an institution centered on the orderly transfer of property? What are they going to bequeath to their children, a mountain of credit card debt?
I was just talking to a friend last week who told me about her recent engagement. She said they were going to spend the next year saving up for the wedding, which struck me funny. Maybe a more realistic approach would be to skimp on the wedding and save your money for the divorce attorneys.

Saturday Shuffle

By in music, saturday shuffle

  1. Robbie Robertson — Mahk Jchi
  2. Primal Scream — Exterminator
  3. The Dresden Dolls — Night Reconnaissance
  4. Andreas Kisser — Virgulândia
  5. Tomahawk — Antelope Ceremony
  6. The Wildhearts — Tim Smith
  7. Faith No More — Stripsearch
  8. Erik Mongrain — Fusions
  9. Black Mountain — The Hair Song
  10. Eisbrecher — Kuss
  11. The Obsessed — Touch of Everything
  12. Sigur Rós — Ágætis Byrjun
  13. Yawning Man — Sonny Bono Memorial Freeway
  14. Dead Can Dance — The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
  15. Nine Inch Nails — My Violent Heart
  16. Primus — Here Come the Bastards
  17. Rob Zombie — Virgin Witch
  18. Type O Negative — Haunted
  19. The Beta Band — Alleged
  20. Grandaddy — Collective Dreamwish of Upperclass Elegance

The Ghost in the Machine

By in philosophy, science

io9:

Fruit flies and other simple organisms might seem like they’re creatures of instinct, governed by a set of basically predictable stimuli and responses. But fruit flies actually have free will. Depending on what your definition of free will is.
Leaving philosophy aside, we know humans have free will because we’re able to evaluate a set of different options and make a conscious decision as to which of them we’re going to choose. But for animals, we can’t ask them how they go about making decisions, so figuring out whether they possess free will in a biological sense is much trickier.
I don’t know about you, but I think I could present at least some examples of people who appear to be “creatures of instinct, governed by a set of basically predictable stimuli and responses.”
But yeah, I’ve always thought the supposed distinction between free will and determinism is such a misleading way to frame the issue. We humans are able to visualize a set of options (within certain constraints) and choose between them because the type of brain we have allows for that sort of abstract thought. Other mammals have that ability to lesser degrees, so I’m not surprised that other animals might also have some ability to intelligently react to new situations. It’s a difference more of degree than kind.

Mythinformation

By in extraordinary popular delusions, history, jests japes jokes jollies, jesus tie-dyed for your sins, religion

DougJ:

I realize I should just accept that Generalisimo Jeebus Galt—who wants to starve the poor, punish retailers who don’t celebrate his birthday loudly enough, invade random countries, and hate teh gay—has nothing in common with the hippie Jesus described in the New Testament.

I’ve written before about the absurdity of trying to project twenty-first century political and social ideals backward over two millennia onto a possibly-fictional guy whose foremost concern was, uh, gleefully anticipating the, um, imminent end of the world, not the creation of an ideal, long-lasting society. But the other thing that strikes me as so funny about this tendency of both liberals and conservatives to politicize Jesus is summed up by Bart Ehrman:
Each of these authors—as two of them actually tell us— inherited his stories from earlier written sources. Each of these sources had its own perspective as well. And before anyone bothered to write stories about Jesus, they had been circulated by word of mouth for years and years, among Christians who recounted them for a variety of reasons: to magnify the importance of Jesus, to convince others to believe in him, to instruct them concerning his relationship with God, to show how he understood the Hebrew Scriptures, to encourage his followers with the hope that his words could bring, and so forth. As the stories circulated orally, they were changed to suit the purposes at hand. And they were modified yet further when they were written down in such lost documents as Q and further still when rewritten by the authors of our Gospels.
It is important to recall that this view is not based simply on scholarly imagination. We have evidence for it, some of which I have laid out in earlier chapters.
Precisely because these documents were of such importance to people who believed in Jesus as the Son of God, their concerns, to put it somewhat simplistically, were less historical than religious. They were not interested in providing the brute facts of history for impartial observers, but in proclaiming their faith in Jesus as the Son of God. This was “Good News” for the believer. But it is not necessarily good news for historians, who are invested in getting behind the perspectives of the authors of the Gospels, and those of their sources, to reconstruct what Jesus really said, did, and experienced. How can “faith documents” such as the Gospels—writings produced by believers for believers to promote belief—be used as historical sources?
Sometimes, I like to try to look at this afresh, because it’s really amazing when you stop to think about it. Serious people in the twenty-first century still appeal to the authority of a book of pure mythology and propaganda for support in arguments over how this aforementioned, possibly-fictional, platitude-spouting apocalyptic zealot, this olio of various Fertile Crescent savior-gods, would vote today. I don’t think it could be any more surreally amusing to me if serious people in positions of power started having impassioned debates over the true message of some comic book character.

Interactive Blogging Exercise

By in animals, ohferfucksake

Eagles quarterback Michael Vick, who spent time in prison for his involvement in dog fighting, said Tuesday having a dog as a pet would help in his rehabilitation.
In an interview with NBC News and TheGrio.com, Vick said, “I would love to get another dog in the future. I think it would be a big step for me in the rehabilitation process.”
Since I’m all sweetness and light at this magical time of year, I’ll refrain from openly commenting on this and instead, ask you, the reader, to simply imagine what I might have written. Then triple the amount of venomous loathing and add a heaping helping of curse words, inventing new ones if necessary. Scream. Break something.

Yet sustained outrage benefits no one. And while the unrepentant and the demonstrably unreformable don’t deserve second or third chances, society has to allow for the possibility of redemption. If Michael Vick is always going to be that dogfighting guy, what’s his incentive to not be? What was the point of his jail term and current volunteer work? If we forever treat people like the person they were at their lowest, most despicable moments, how can we expect them not to believe that’s who they are, and behave accordingly? As Pacelle wrote, “We must be open to the possibility that rehabilitation is possible, and faithful to our hope that people can change.” And if we believe in and support the abundant goodness of businesses that include “humane” in their names, we have to believe that word is as applicable to people, even people like Michael Vick, as it is to animals.

Oh, shut the fuck up, you goddamned fucking moron. Where do I even begin with this?
If Michael Vick is always going to be that dogfighting guy, what’s his incentive to not be?
Gee, I dunno, maybe not wanting to ruin his career by returning to prison? The knowledge that there’s no way he could get away with doing it again?
If we forever treat people like the person they were at their lowest, most despicable moments, how can we expect them not to believe that’s who they are, and behave accordingly?
So, it’s not enough that he got to return to being a multimillionaire athlete with more than enough fans who wouldn’t care if he raped a convent full of nuns as long as he keeps throwing touchdown passes? He has to be publicly forgiven by PETA and the HSUS and people like me, who have spent countless time, energy and money trying to heal the damage that worthless scumbags like Vick have done, or else he might as well go right back to his old ways? If we don’t pamper his fee-fees, he’s going to haz a sad? Well, here’s a proposition for you, you stupid fuck: if he can bear our slings and arrows with grace and understanding, accepting that he has no right to expect any differently, maybe that would be a sign that he has become a better person. Nonetheless, we are not fucking obliged to provide him with more dogs to prove it. He can show what a difference Jesus has made in his heart in plenty of other ways.
And maybe I’m cynical, or maybe I’m just simply not naïve, but I don’t believe for a fucking second that a grown man who got his jollies watching dogs maul each other for his own entertainment, who then tortured and murdered them with his own bare hands, who gave no indication that he would have ever stopped had he not run afoul of the law, has suddenly developed a conscience and an abhorrence for such behavior. If you believe that, you’re probably the kind of dipshit who was impressed by that “come to Jesus” moment his lawyer scripted for him when the news first broke. Like all criminals, he’s sorry he got caught and had to be punished, which is not the same fucking thing.
And if we believe in and support the abundant goodness of businesses that include “humane” in their names, we have to believe that word is as applicable to people, even people like Michael Vick, as it is to animals.
What the fuck does this inane word salad even mean? Didn’t this have to go through an editor at any point? So the “humane” thing to do would be to give him a dog? I take it, then, that the logical implication is that denying him a dog would be inhumane? You really think he’s unfairly suffering here? Can you truly be stupid enough to believe that? Oh, and as for that stunning non-sequitur: we don’t “have to believe” any such thing.
Jesus, what an imbecile. You know, I knew after he returned to football that it would only be a matter of time before someone went there. If there’s one thing this idiot nation absolutely loves, it’s a sappy fucking redemption story with a happy ending.

All That Twitters Isn’t Gold

By in socmed, writing

Phil Davidson:

It wasn’t that long ago, you’ll recall, that Twitter was derided as an exercise in vanity for famous people to feed their comically-obsessed fans a glimpse of the celebrity lifestyle, no matter how mundane the details. (“No way. Kelly Ripa likes pear slices in her salad? So do I!”)

But in the last two years or so, the comedy industry’s opinion of Twitter did a complete 180. There’s been a wave of comedians, writers, performers and producers joining the early adopters and utilizing Twitter as a platform to tell 140-character jokes and reach new fans.

It’s easy to see why. Twitter is in a way a virtual writer’s room where, at your leisure, you can have an immediate audience with comedy legends, professionals and the occasional undiscovered talent as they deliver jokes, witty observations and other miscellany. And it’s free. You won’t have much luck asking Lebron James to come over and entertain you with some free basketball, but on any given day you can observe the next comedy superstar test out a joke on Twitter before making it part of his act.

Yeah, that’s great and all, and I’m sure it’s been a boon to haiku poets as well. (Was it really all that difficult to find bon mots, witticisms, zingers and one-liners before? Anyway.) But for the non-early adopters among us, those who dropped Twitter off in a basket on the front steps of the orphanage in the first place, whether or not it has any useful function at all is a peripheral issue.

When people complain about the cold, impersonal nature of online communication, I feel that what they’re mainly reacting to is the fact that most people are, quite simply, shitty writers. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid; it just means that they find it difficult to turn their thoughts into nuanced sentences that do a good job of capturing enough of the full flavor of their personality. It’s all they can do to convey basic information without burying it under a mound of misspellings, typos and bad grammar. I know enough people who are smart and capable of intelligent conversation, but their emails (or handwritten letters) are brief and utilitarian to a fault.

Now, you may find this hard to believe, but I was not always the finely honed, chiseled, sculpted wordsmith you see before you, no indeed! When I first started writing online oh-so-many years ago, I was undisciplined and unformed. My pacing had no stamina and was easily winded, my metaphors were flabby and sagging, my ideas themselves were paunchy, and my overall coherence and paragraph structure was pockmarked with quirks and irregularities like dimples of cellulite. My ability to spew hot air was more like a hairdryer on medium setting than a blast furnace.

I did not spring onto the Internet fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s forehead, is what I’m saying. I reeked (and I trust you’ll politely overlook my repeated use of the past tense here), but I learned by constantly being exposed to better writers, especially once I discovered blogs. I read so many people who said what I wanted to say, only more clearly and concisely, and I shaped my own writing accordingly to reflect their styles. And as I’ve said before, the more I did it, the more fun it became.

So for me, the biggest problem with the inexorable trend toward social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook postings and the ubiquity of texting as opposed to email is that it solidifies online writing around the absolute lowest common denominator. Instead of challenging themselves to exploit the potential of a largely text-based medium like the Internet, people are reshaping the medium to suit their limitations. Instead of trying to become better at expressing themselves through writing, they’re settling for banding together around mediocrity, where the goal is to express yourself with as little effort as possible. Fine, Twitter is great for delivering stand-alone lines and simplistic expressions of agreement or disagreement. But trying to follow an actual debate or back-and-forth conversation one or two sparse sentences at a time is utterly maddening, and as I keep complaining about, that unfortunately seems to be the only type of conversation a lot of people want to have anymore.

…right on cue.

Drop Your Funyuns and Grab Your Guns

By in germans supported their troops too, history, moralizing

Thanks to Brian for passing this tidbit along to me:

“Military leaders … tell us that when more than one in four young people are unqualified for military service because of their weight,” the first lady says in the prepared remarks, “childhood obesity isn’t just a public health threat, it’s not just an economic threat, it’s a national security threat as well.”

You know, I still have an old certificate from high school tucked away in storage proving that I had earned the Presidential Physical Fitness Award, “in recognition of outstanding physical achievement and exceptional dedication to the ideal of a sound mind in a strong body,” with the Gipper himself congratulating me on this accomplishment. Yet even in those glory days of missile defense shields and Red Dawn, I can’t say I recall any of my gym teachers, in between mouthfuls of Diet Pepsi and glazed pastries, urging us on to tally more sit-ups, more pull-ups and faster fifty-yard dashes in the name of being ready to beat back the commies from our sacred shores. What was it Jennifer Hecht said about this strange fetish for physical fitness…?
Through studying history, I came to believe that gyms are occupying precisely the role they did in Ancient Sparta and in Fascist Germany. Being obsessed with bodies is actually a pretty rare thing in human history and we’re in lousy company.
…So what is the real story with gyms and gym bodies? What does the cult of exercise really mean?
Whenever it pops up in history it means the same thing. It always means: We are strong even though the peons do all the real work for us. We have special arenas marked as leisure where we get muscled at play.
…When we see this behavior in Ancient Sparta (where the population of Helot slaves outnumbered the Spartans) and in Fascist Germany, and we see the art of those two cultures focusing on the beauty of the toned but clean and uncallused body, we know what we are looking at. It’s more than shallow, it is military, it is deluded, it is oppressive, and a bit grotesque.

Tower of Babble

By in fresh hell, jests japes jokes jollies, language, race, sex-you-all, tribalism

On the basis of having been reading his blog for years (and even trading a couple emails), I feel safe in asserting that Jon Schwarz is one of the most level-headed and fair-minded people in the political blogosphere. A genuine nice guy, and if not, a genuinely gifted actor, then. His blog is named after a line from Orwell that says, “Every joke is a tiny revolution,” a clue that humor is a very important aspect of his political worldview. Politics shouldn’t be taken that seriously in the end.

So when I see many of the reactions to a post that seemed to me to be a clear enough joke, a basic truth exaggerated for comic effect, I’m truly amazed. So often, we see and hear only what we want to see and hear, we immediately get as stern, uptight and defensive as possible, and we don’t hesitate to impute the most base motives to someone for saying something we don’t approve of or agree with, especially when sex, biology and race are the topics. Given the rorschach nature of our communications, it’s amazing we can ever agree on anything at all.
On the humorous side, this all reminded me of a classic old anarchist pamphlet called Laughter is Bourgeois.

Halcyon Daze

By in jests japes jokes jollies, music

I’ve been enjoying Steven Hyden’s multi-part retrospective on the ’90s alt-rock takeover of popular music, even though it must mean I’m officially getting old if it’s time for these Gen-X reminiscences. This week’s installment was kind of funny in a bittersweet way:

Even more than Sixteen Stone, Jagged Little Pill demonstrated that mainstream pop had assimilated the sound and feel of alt-rock and could now turn out artists that fit the mold without all that troublesome baggage of BS punk-rock credibility. Jagged Little Pill made edgy gestures—lead single “You Oughta Know” thrust an aggressive finger in the chest of the tired Carly Simon-style singer-songwriter template just enough to make it feel alive again—while turning out a steady stream of ear-pleasing pop tunes that toed the line with trends that were now firmly in place. Listeners were so wrapped up in the “controversy” over who exactly Alanis was supposed to be blowing in a movie theater in “You Oughta Know” that they never stopped to ask, “You know, who really gives a shit?”

Gather around, childrens, and let Grandpa Damian spin you a tale. ‘Twas the early fall of 1995; I remember it well. I came home one day and told my then-girlfriend that I had heard the most unbelievably wretched song on the radio while out on the road that morning. I said it was some girl who sounded like every drunk you’ve ever heard on a karaoke machine yowling her way through some stupid song about having one hand in her pocket while the other hand is doing this, that and the other. Seriously, the lyrics were insanely stupid and she sounded like she was affecting an annoying, whiny drawl on purpose, like you might do if you were sarcastically singing along to a song you hate. I figured it was one of those weird things that might get played once or twice on alternative radio, and then quickly – mercifully – disappear into obscurity.
Well, as you can guess, that was Alanis Morissette with her song “Hand in My Pocket”, one of the singles from a record that, if I recall correctly, went on to be the number one top-selling record by a female artist ever, period, full stop. I still laugh, imagining what it would have been like if I had been the A&R representative sent to a club to check out the buzz on this Alanis girl and see about possibly signing her to a contract. I would have reported back, “Forget it, boss. Ain’t no way in hell anyone’s going to pay money to listen to that shit!” I’m sure I would have been canned shortly thereafter.
Her inexplicable success, along with seeing blatantly derivative bands like Bush, Silverchair and countless other bastard children of Eddie Vedder and Layne Staley embraced by the same people who, a mere two years earlier, had greeted Stone Temple Pilots with unbridled, ferocious loathing more appropriate for serial rapists and war criminals over STP’s much less serious crimes against originality, driving singer Scott Weiland into the consoling arms of heroin addiction in the process, is what finally made crystal-clear to me that I no longer had my finger on the pulse of popular culture. I’ve felt like an outcast ever since, unable to comprehend why people like what they do.

Joe Blows

By in history, nietzsche, religion, waiting for the barbarians

Alas, I cast my net into their seas and wanted to catch good fish; but I always pulled up the head of some old god.
– Nietzsche

Guess who?

If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as: How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked? Much of the world, including plenty of Americans, asks that question as they watch U.S. culture go down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.
One explanation might be the effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp, and 44 ounce Big Gulp soft drinks. Another might be pop culture, which is not culture at all of course, but marketing. Or we could blame it on digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? That wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?
…Two hundred years ago no one would have thought sheer volume of available facts in the digital information age would produce informed Americans (Given the following context, I assume he meant to say “would fail to produce” – TVS). Founders of the republic, steeped in the Enlightenment as they were, and believers in an informed citizenry being vital to freedom and democracy, would be delirious with joy at the prospect. Imagine Jefferson and Franklin high on Google.
The fatal assumption was that Americans would choose to think and learn, instead of cherry picking the blogs and TV channels to reinforce their particular branded choice cultural ignorance, consumer, scientific or political, but especially political. Tom and Ben could never have guessed we would chase prepackaged spectacle, junk science, and titillating rumor such as death panels, Obama as a socialist Muslim and Biblical proof that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs around Eden. In a nation that equates democracy with everyman’s right to an opinion, no matter how ridiculous, this was probably inevitable. After all, dumb people choose dumb stuff. That’s why they are called dumb.
But throw in sixty years of television’s mind puddling effects, and you end up with 24 million Americans watching Bristol Palin thrashing around on Dancing with the Stars, then watch her being interviewed with all seriousness on the networks as major news.
Yada, blah, etc. Yes, it’s another ventose jeremiad from Bageant about Myrrhkin misology, indistinguishable from every other one he’s ever written. I do like how he references “Babbitry” at one point, but seems to forget that H.L Mencken, who coined this particular variation of the term from Sinclair Lewis’s novel, was railing against the “booboisie” long before television existed to puddle their minds. But anyway. We all complain like this at times, of course, but not all of us are fortunate enough to parlay it into a writing career. The profits of doom, indeed.
Complaining about specific instances of idiocy and the destructive results that follow is one thing, but the type of whinging that he and others like Morris Berman have made their stock-in-trade is more generic, more in line with the ancient Hebrew prophetic tradition of excoriating the chosen people for failing to uphold their covenant with God and warning of the apocalyptic results to come. Apparently they feel that we modern Americans made a similar covenant with Reason and Enlightenment that we’ve been steadily betraying ever since, which would probably have been surprising news to the majority of the population that didn’t consist of highly educated, aristocratic intellectuals. But since we’re talking about the idealism of certain eighteenth-century Founders here, let’s also mention that others like John Jay and James Madison felt that those who owned the country ought to govern it, and that the Senate was designed to be more deliberative than the House in order to stave off mob rule. And it’s right there in the Declaration, isn’t it? “Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.” Nothing about an imperative to live the examined life in there that I can see. So how about we quit with the lamentations and rending of garments and lay the prophetic voice down to molder alongside the other rotting bones of monotheism?

These Are the Things I Can Do Without

By in bonsai minimalism, books, foolosophy, santutthi, Ω

I liked these passages from the chapter on Taoism in Stephen Prothero’s book God Is Not One:

In the face of a society that championed usefulness, the Zhuangzi championed uselessness, singing the praises of a tree so bent and unkempt that it can’t be used for anything other than shade for an afternoon nap. Zhuangzi didn’t want the Dao to be useful for politics, or even philosophy. He wanted it to be good for nothing. The same goes for each of us. Instead of making yourselves useful, he advised, make yourselves useless. Then everyone will leave you alone.
In one of the Zhuangzi’s oft-told tales, a ruler sends his officials to convince Zhuangzi to accept a prestigious government appointment. But Zhuangzi, who is fishing, doesn’t even give them a glance. As he continues his casting, he speaks of the dry bones of an ancient tortoise kept by the ruler in a temple and trotted out on special ritual occasions. “What would you say that the tortoise would have preferred: to die and leave its shell to be venerated or to live and keep on dragging its tail over the mud?” Zhuangzi asks. “It would have preferred to live and drag its tail over the mud,” the officials answer. “Go your ways,” Zhuangzi says, “I will keep dragging my tail over the mud.”
As in the Daodejing, the exemplary human being in the Zhuangzi is the sage, described here as a “genuine person.” The Zhuangzi also includes a tantalizing glimpse into a figure that will become central in later Daoism: the immortal who is indifferent to politics, uninterested in fame, unmoved by profit or loss, and unafraid of death.

Gaudium Certaminis

By in art, music, ohferfucksake

I suppose most of us have relatives or acquaintances who forward us those corny inspirational emails from time to time. I usually do read mine, you know. I figure, given my solitarian nature, it’s a good way of keeping at least in sporadic touch with the zeitgeist, of being reminded what it is my fellow Myrrhkins find profound and important. Most of them make me feel like I’m eating rainbows and washing them down with syrup chugged straight from the bottle, but still, gastric distress aside, they’re mostly anodyne collections of banal pleasantries (and pictures of fuzzy animals). Harmless and easily forgotten, very few of them rise to the level of being truly off-pissing, reddening my cheeks and whitening my knuckles with rage.
This was one of them.
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM BEETHOVEN’S TRIALS
To what purpose, then was his gift? For what reason was he granted incredible talents, if only for them to be denied before their fullest triumph? Is the story of the Heiligenstadt Testament an isolated incident of a man and a mission separated by misfortune? Names such as Joan of Arc, Lincoln, and Churchill seem to indicate that this is not the case.
This story of Beethoven may remind us that our greatest strengths are not our own. It could be a lesson that our most important gifts defy time and circumstance, are never completely innate, and sometimes require tragedy for triumph. But a serious inquirer might be taught something more. The story of Heiligenstadt does not end there.
Beethoven returned to society. He still grappled with the loss of his hearing. He often quarreled with family and friends. His failures, after all, were as real as his success. But after the immediacy of his loss had worn away, he began to recall a dream born years before. As a youth he had read the words of Ode to Joy, a poem by Frederich von Schiller. The first time he heard those words, the lines inspired an intense desire, a hope for untouched joy and perfect peace. He determined then to set those words to music. But it was not until after Heiligenstadt and all that followed, not until after over 200 attempts to embody those words in musical form that he gave life to the idea that joy is not elusive, but our destiny.
Okay, maybe I exaggerate a bit for effect, but still. It’s not even the barely-concealed religious message, talking of joyous destiny, a “gift” that was “granted” and strength not our own, that irks me. It’s the mentality expressed in the title itself, so philistine, so acquisitive. The reduction of great artists and their work to lesson plans in the Great Big Book of Bourgeois Self-Improvement. How Beethoven’s formula for greatness can maximize efficiency and productivity in the workplace! How listening to Mozart in the womb can give your rugrat an advantage when it comes time to compete for a place in the best preschool!
Of course, one can’t help but admire the heroism of a man who goes on to compose masterpieces after losing his hearing, the romantic image of a tragic figure defiantly shaking his fist at fate. But the best art temporarily releases us from our narrow, egocentric concerns. This obsession with finding teachable moments everywhere is all about reinforcing them. What’s in it for me? How can I make this relate to my everyday life? As if Beethoven existed just to encourage you to become all the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing in the Tri-County Region you can be.
Just a couple posts ago, I chided Paul Murray for talking about Nietzsche in similar terms, although I’m pretty sure Murray was only guilty of using an infelicitous phrase or two out of laziness, not out of any heartfelt conviction that “Nietzsche Is Pietzsche“. But I’ve heard many other people use Beethoven as an example of the sort of “never give up” attitude more typically found on inspirational office posters for cubicle drones; a friend once remarked during a conversation about his music that “He certainly was a wise teacher.” Really? How so? On parenting advice? As a cautionary tale about drinking your wine from lead goblets? If the man weren’t safely separated from us by the romantic veil of a couple centuries, people like this would be too aghast at his dissolute, erratic, unseemly behavior to find anything redeeming in his music.
Lots of art is pretty. Catchy melodies. Pictures of sunsets and mountains (and fuzzy animals). But art that is truly beautiful usually grapples with tragedy. The irresolvable conflict between the way things are and the way we want them to be. The transience of the things we love. The realization that not all questions have satisfactory answers, not everyone gets what they deserve, and not everything turns out for the best. The jarring fact that a man can be both a phenomenal composer and a lousy human being. This is what’s so anathema to a mindset that only sees negatives and setbacks as temporary obstacles, subordinate to and redeemed by the glorious final result. It understands nothing about the kind of joy that doesn’t depend on winning and achieving. Beautiful art doesn’t exist for anything else. It is its own “purpose”.

Apophenia and Pareidolia

By in augean stables, foolosophy, spiritual-not-religious

Nicholas Humphrey:

Now, if someone tells us they have witnessed an apparently paranormal phenomenon, the situation is similar. We know their testimony could have originated from either an objective fact about the world that was genuinely paranormal or from a propensity on the observer’s part to make up a story. That is, it could have come from, as it were, either the “Objective Fact bag”, OF, or from the “Human Invention” bag, HI. In many cases we do not actually know which. We know however that the probability of finding a paranormal phenomenon in bag OF is very low indeed: otherwise the phenomena would not be considered paranormal — indeed, years have gone by and the chances are that we ourselves have seldom if ever come across clear examples of paranormal phenomena in our own experience. We also know that the probability of finding such a phenomena in bag HI is relatively high: otherwise human observers would have to be paragons of honesty and reliability, which we know they are not — indeed, every day of the week we have come across examples of people lying, exaggerating, misperceiving, misremembering, saying things for effect, and so on, and no doubt we have done it ourselves on some occasion. Hence, Hume argued, when we are required to choose one or the other hypothesis about where the testimony has come from, we ought always to assume bag HI.
It is true, Hume acknowledged, that in some circumstances we might be very unwilling to draw this conclusion. We might find it hard to believe that this person in this case could be capable of such invention. But even when the person involved is a close friend or even ourself, our understandable astonishment at this evidence for human folly ought to be much less than our astonishment at what would otherwise be evidence for natural laws being overturned.
I had cause to think of this passage recently when I heard that a guy I used to work with, a buddy of mine, had gotten a column at one of the local alt-weeklies — the one that happens to be full-on, unfiltered, Age of Aquarius-style lunacy, everything from Alien Abductions to Zodiac Signs. Put it this way: on the page opposite his column, there was a discussion of a couple books written by women who claim to be having regular conversations with Jesus His Own Self, à la Neale Donald Walsch. Fetch me my GOT-damn hip waders, Maw, it’s gonna get deep in here.
So, yeah, I picked up a copy out of camaraderie and read about the powerful mystical experience that put him on his current path of self-exploration. It was replete with all the usual SNR clichés, of course, but there were a couple unusual bits, too. For one, he claims to occasionally hear a disembodied voice calling his name. I don’t recall him saying whether or not The Voice (he capitalizes it like that) actually speaks in sentences to him, but he apparently takes guidance from it. This truly makes me worry about him a bit.
Anyway, his story followed a typical arc to a mid-life crisis, where he found himself divorced and despondent, enough so that, in desperation, he asked the universe for a sign of where to go and what to do next. His “answer” came in the form of a series of mundane coincidences, culminating in a Road-to-Damascus moment in traffic, where he took a “No Fear” license plate frame as an inspirational message from the Universe. Yes, the hillbilly who bought that frame at AutoZone because he thought it would look cool on his jacked-up 4×4, right next to the TruckNutz and the naked lady mud flaps, was actually an emissary from Beyond unwittingly delivering a spiritual pep talk. Since then, his journey of growth has proceeded apace, with people entering his life at just the right time to fulfill their role in his self-discovery, and everything happening for a reason.
I can’t help but be a little mocking in my tone, because the predictability of the script and the narcissistic absorption are just too silly. But I do think of him as a friend and a good guy, so what I really feel most of all is a little sad at yet another example of how easily people project their own power “out there”, rather than own up to it directly. It’s obvious that he wanted to receive an uplifting message specifically like that even as he professed to be open to anything; a goofy brand logo just happened to be the first thing he saw that could plausibly fit the bill. He probably saw dozens of other things that day that could have just as easily been interpreted as a divine message had he been so inclined, but he automatically filtered them out of his consciousness because they didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. What if, after asking for a sign, you picked up a newspaper and saw a story about a man who jumped off a bridge? How many people would shrug and accept that the Universe obviously wanted them to hurry up and kill themselves already? What if he had seen a car with a bumper sticker that read, “I’m Not Gay But My Girlfriend Is”? Would that be a sign to go get a sex change and become a lesbian? The possibilities are endless when you’re really open and creative. Try it and see! Make a game of it if you’re bored one day — ask for a sign, and then try to interpret the first significant thing you hear or see as a message. You’ll be surprised at what the Universe wants you to do!
He knew all along what he wanted to do and how to go about it, but he didn’t have the courage to admit it, so he had to go through this convoluted process of pretending to submit to some greater wisdom from another source. Horoscopes, tarot cards, palm readers, gurus, etc. all “work” on the same principle — telling you what you already know.

Thoughts are the Shadows of Our Feelings

By in foolosophy, nietzsche, philosophy, psychology

You may have noticed that I like to make a game of seeing how often I can apply a quotation from Nietzsche to whatever topic I’m writing about. Honestly, when I started this blog with that amusing idea in mind, I thought it might be a little more of a challenge! But evidently, he had something to say about damn near everything, and lately, the Internet just keeps teeing up one opportunity after another. Well, who am I to refuse these gifts?

It used to be thought for the longest time, going back for thousands of years of philosophical investigation, that people think of why a certain behavior might be wrong. They think of all the rational reasons, all the things they can come up with, they go through all the pros and cons, and then arrive at the judgment, and say, “Behavior X is either wrong, or very wrong, or not so wrong, it’s fine”, and so on. So it used to be thought that people think long and hard, and then figure out the answer.
Now it turns out that actually this does not seem to be the case because first of all, people don’t always think that much, and many thought processes are not really conscious, but rather, they happen outside of consciousness. Many thoughts just happen incidentally, and people aren’t even aware of them. Therefore, instead of all these sophisticated thoughts and reasons, accidental factors enter the picture such as feelings and intuitions, for example, a sense of, “Well, I just have an intuition that this is the case”, and such factors can be much more powerful than rational thought. For morality this idea first became popular in 2001 when Jonathan Haidt published his paper on the social intuitionist model, which has been a really influential idea.
First became popular in 2001? Would you believe 1881-1888?
• They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic (as opposed to the mystics of every rank, who are more honest and doltish – and talk of “inspiration”); while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed, a kind of “inspiration” – most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract – that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact. They are all advocates who resent that name, and for the most part even wily spokesmen for their prejudices which they baptize “truths” – and very far from having the courage of conscience that admits this, precisely this, to itself; very far from having the good taste of the courage which also lets this be known, whether to warn an enemy or friend, or, from exuberance, to mock itself.
• Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier, and simpler.
• …so “being conscious” is not in any decisive sense the opposite of what is instinctive: most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts.
• ‘Once I have said I will do a thing, I do it’ – this mode of thinking counts a sign of possessing character. How many actions have been done, not because they were chosen as the most rational, but because when they occurred to us, they in some way tickled our vanity and ambition, so that we stuck with them and blindly carried them out! In this way they increase our belief in our own character and our good conscience, and thus in general our strength; while the choice of the most rational course keeps alive skepticism towards us and to this extent a feeling of weakness.

This Pride of the Elect Knowledge

By in nietzsche, philosophy

Hey, it’s always nice to discover a fellow enthusiast!

While accessible compared to Deleuze’s other work, I suspected it wouldn’t be a walk in the park, so before attempting it I checked out a few of Nietzsche’s own books. I had read or at least carried around a couple of these as a teenager but forgotten most of them, and was astonished on revisiting him to discover just how radical a thinker he is. With a linguistic elan that as a former student I can confirm is exceedingly rare in philosophy books, he attacks every form of received opinion of his day. Religion, morality, science, the pursuit of truth, the concept of the self, German nationalism, British cooking – it’s striking just how ahead of his time he was. What’s even more astonishing is how potent many of the regressive, repressive forces he identifies remain today.

No argument there. Argument here, though:

Nietzsche wanted people to think for themselves, to take control of their own destinies, and most importantly of all, to love life…Instead, Nietzsche wants us to think, to feel, to laugh, to go to the limit of our potential.

Ack! Settle down there, buddy; you’re starting to make him sound like an inspirational magnet on Oprah’s refrigerator! Look, it’s just a simple fact that he was most definitely not writing books for everyone. He says so explicitly at times. He was not a democrat or a socialist; he had no faith in the perfectibility of humankind, and he was ferociously against any sort of leveling effect, anything that would make us the same. He was not urging any sort of program of self-improvement on a mass scale; he felt that true individuals should always seek to maintain contrast between themselves and others, not attempt to make everyone move in the same direction at the same time.

Whatever kind of bizarre ideal one may follow, one should not demand that it be the ideal, for one therewith takes from it its privileged character. One should have it in order to distinguish oneself, not in order to level oneself.

He thought that maybe around the year 2000, people would start to understand what he was all about. And while some of that could be chalked up to the predictable consolations of any artist who goes unacknowledged and unappreciated in his own day, looking to posterity to bring him his due recognition, he wasn’t wrong to think that his thoughts were moving in patterns incomprehensible to most of his contemporaries. And he’s pretty clear in saying that his philosophy is something you shouldn’t try at home:

• Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life brings with it in any case, not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing one like that comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize. And he cannot go back any longer. Nor can he go back to the pity of men.

• The spiritual haughtiness and nausea of every man who has suffered profoundly – it almost determines the order of rank how profoundly human beings can suffer – his shuddering certainty, which permeates and colors him through and through, that by virtue of his suffering, he knows more than the cleverest and wisest could possibly know, and that he knows his way and has at once been “at home” in many distant, terrifying worlds of which “you know nothing” – this spiritual and silent haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect knowledge, of the “initiated”, of the almost sacrificed, finds all kinds of disguises necessary to protect itself against contact with obtrusive and pitying hands and altogether against everything that is not equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.

• If, however, a person should regard even the affects of hatred, envy, covetousness, and the lust to rule as conditions of life, as factors which, fundamentally and essentially, must be present in the general economy of life (and must, therefore, be further enhanced if life is to be further enhanced), he will suffer from such a view of things as from seasickness….and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why everyone should keep away from it who – can.

1 2 3