April 2011

Le Bon David

By in foolosophy, philosophy No Comments

Morgan Meis:

David Hume was — at least on the matter of death and dying — a Socratic man. Even in his most canonical works, A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume was largely preoccupied with establishing limits. The way Hume saw it, our brief lives, crowned by unavoidable death, are unlikely to put us in touch with any grand absolutes. On the other hand, the human mind is an indubitably powerful tool and its powers of reasoning have penetrated many an enigma. Hume was as amazed by human knowledge as the next guy. He simply wanted us to be honest about its failings and limitations. Most of the things we know come from observing what happens around us and making the reasonable inference that what happens one day will continue to happen the next. The sun will rise, dropped objects will fall, harsh words will bite, etc. We don’t know the greater “why” of such things, suggested Hume, and there is no reason to think we ever will.
Hume always found himself astraddle those two great pleasures, study and society. When he spent too much time studying, the mechanisms of human reason would take flight, leading him into seemingly logical conclusions that defied his actual experience of the world. Thinking hard in his study, Hume would reach the conclusion, for instance, that there is no such thing as causality. Then he would step outside and go about the business of daily life in the full assurance that cause and effect operates just as we’ve always experienced it. Everyday experience would do its work, grounding him again in reality. That contrast between reason and experience never failed to amuse, trouble, and delight Hume.
I always loved that about Hume, the way he could follow his reason and intellectual conscience to the absolute starkest conclusions, but still know when to shrug and go enjoy a game of backgammon. When one of the most relentlessly reasonable mofos that ever strode the earth tells you that “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” you might want to sit up and take heed. You don’t have to grasp after metaphysical delusions in the absence of rational, philosophical justifications for life, you just have to trust that ordinary life has a rhythm and pattern of its own that will carry you along when you need it to. When you can’t figure out why or how to live, just do it anyway, without worrying overmuch about perfect intellectual consistency, and something will likely come along to alter your perspective soon enough.

Triptych

By in aphorisms, nietzsche No Comments

Arthur sent me an inspirational quotation from Oscar Wilde to encourage me as I go through this turbulent period of my life:

“Nothing that actually happens is of the slightest importance.”
Yes, indeed. If I may, let me supplement that with two others that I often turn to when I need a clear perspective:
“What do we matter? Our whole lives are experiments; let us also want to be them!”
– Nietzsche
“We’re all scared. You hid in that ditch because you think there’s still hope. But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead.”
– Ronald Speirs (from Band of Brothers)

Unsung

By in world football No Comments

FSC:

Liverpool midfielder Lucas Leiva believes this season has proved he has the quality to be a long-term success at Anfield.
The Brazil international was a much-derided figure among fans during his first three years after signing from Gremio in July 2007.
However, following the departure in successive summers of Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano the 24-year-old has grasped the challenge of added responsibility and is enjoying the best form of his Reds career.
In previous campaigns he was criticised by supporters for being a favourite of former manager Rafael Benitez but this term has fully justified the belief the Spaniard had in him when others had their doubts.
I admit it. I have crow feathers sticking out of my teeth. I was one of those who groaned every time I saw Lucas in the starting lineup. Up until this season, he was the Liverpool player I loved to hate. I often wondered how Liverpool managed to find the one Brazilian who didn’t seem to be preternaturally gifted with a soccer ball at his feet. I watched through my fingers every time I saw him bearing down on an opponent anywhere near Liverpool’s own goal box, dreading the sound of the referee’s whistle and the crowd roar signifying another penalty kick being awarded. His passes didn’t show any creativity on attack, and his reckless tackling was a liability on defense. He used to constantly give away free kicks in dangerous areas and accumulate yellow and red cards like they were prizes. Oh, how I wished he would be sold to another team, post-haste, but there he was, week after week, seemingly immune to the injuries that sidelined so many top players.
But taking on the task of being the sole defensive midfielder after the departure of Mascherano seems to have coincided with him settling down and assuming a more confident role. His defensive work has been stellar and his energy boundless. During last weekend’s demolition of Birmingham, I recall one play where Liverpool’s 17 year-old left back, Jack Robinson, drafted into a starting role out of desperation following a spate of injuries to several experienced players, was shepherding an attacker toward the corner flag by himself, when Lucas joined in to help him out. Just as I was thinking it myself, the commentators noted what a great help he’d been all game long to Robinson and John Flanagan, the teenage right back, playing under similar circumstances, making sure they were never left alone where their inexperience could be exploited. After they’d successfully won a throw-in from their efforts, Robinson was trotting away, and as the camera lingered on them for a moment, I saw Lucas call out to him, and when Robinson turned back, he slapped his hand in encouragement and congratulations. It was a nice little snapshot of what a mature team leader he’s turned into.

That Which Was

By in foolosophy, identity No Comments

I was talking to my dad the other day about business and the job search. It’s strange, noticing how our relationship is in the process of changing in such a short period of time.
I’ve never minded working for the family business, never felt confined or desperate to prove anything completely independent of them. I’ve done all the things a supposedly mature adult is expected to do as a productive member of society, and I’m still young enough to look forward to being a little more selfish now that some of those obligations and responsibilities are passing. No complaints.
It wasn’t always easy, especially when I was a kid. My dad is such an intense, domineering presence. Hot-tempered and sharply opinionated, not to mention highly intelligent, driven and successful, it was very easy to always feel intimidated, like I was being judged and found wanting, even though he’s never been belittling. It was just something I’d sense, in the way he’d listen to something I’d say and pause for a moment before responding while staring deeply at me, as if waiting in vain for me to come up with a little something extra to truly impress him. He just exuded such a forceful, impatient persona that you felt compelled to step up or quickly scurry out of the way. Whatever I was doing never felt good enough; he would always have an idea to slightly improve anything I was doing, from schoolwork to personal choices. Trying to develop my own personality as an adolescent, especially one that directly contravened many of his values, often felt like trying to walk against a ferocious headwind. I now appreciate that it tempered me and forced me to be more sure of myself, but there were many times I didn’t believe I’d ever feel confident enough to stand in front of him without feeling a compulsion to stammer or make excuses for my thoughts or actions.
My parents are taking an early retirement now. Listening to him the other day was unlike any other conversation I’ve had with him. Disappointed and slightly stunned at how quickly the bottom fell out of the business, he’s been worrying himself sick over how he’ll be able to help my brother and I if we should need it, with no regular income of his own now. He even admits that flat-out, which makes me realize that I don’t ever recall seeing him act unsure or anxious about anything. Even when I reached the age where you no longer blithely assume that your parents know everything and have all the answers, even when I began to consciously disagree with him, it always seemed like he believed he had all the answers. No more. Now he just seems like any other borderline-elderly man, unsure of his bearings, who did his best and worries it wasn’t good enough. I told him not to worry anymore, that he’d done fine, I appreciated it all and that I’d be okay, and I meant it. It felt like the last little bit of growing up I had to do.
Rilke:
• His caring is a nightmare to us,
and his voice a stone.
We would like to heed his words, but we only half hear them.
The big drama between us
makes too much noise
for us to understand each other.
We watch his lips moving, shaping sounds that die away.
We feel endlessly distant,
though we are endlessly bound by love.
• Does anyone love a father?
Doesn’t one leave a father’s worn-out words
to old books that are seldom read?
Is his heart not a watershed
from which one flows away,
toward passion and suffering?
Isn’t the father always that which was?
Used-up years with their odd ways of thinking,
outmoded gestures, old-fashioned dress,
pale hands and ashen hair.
And while in his time he may have been a hero,
he is a leaf that, when we grow, falls away.

BFF No More

By in history, jests japes jokes jollies, nietzsche No Comments

Nietzsche was famously close to Richard Wagner for a time before splitting from him and subsequently heaping much scorn upon him. Most accounts of their relationship have focused on things like Wagner being a disciple of Schopenhauer, as Nietzsche was early in his life, thus making their split inevitable when Nietzsche became disenchanted with Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Or they mention that Wagner was the same age as Nietzsche’s father, who died when he was only five, thus making Wagner the father-figure that Nietzsche had to rebel against for his own intellectual independence. You get the picture. Serious issues of philosophy and psychology here.

But as it turns out, uh… oh, let’s let Peter Watson tell it:
Only nine days after the composer’s death in 1883, Nietzsche confided in a letter to a friend, “Wagner was by far the fullest human being I have known.” However, he went on, “Something like a deadly offence came between us; and something terrible could have happened if he had lived longer.”
Details about this “deadly offence” emerged only in 1956, when correspondence first came to light between Wagner and a doctor who had examined Nietzsche. It related to a consultation Nietzsche had in Switzerland in 1877. The doctor, a passionate Wagnerian, examined Nietzsche and found his health poor—indeed Nietzsche was at risk of going blind. This was when Nietzsche and Wagner were still friends and so, following the examination, Nietzsche wrote to Wagner, reporting the diagnosis, but also enclosing an essay on The Ring, which the doctor had written and given to Nietzsche, on the understanding that it would be passed on. Wagner replied to the doctor, thanking him for the essay, but also raising the matter of Nietzsche’s health, apparently referring to the belief, common at the time, that blindness was caused by masturbation. The doctor, in his reply to Wagner, behaved extremely unprofessionally, confiding that, during his examination, Nietzsche told him he had visited prostitutes in Italy “on medical advice.” (This was sometimes recommended then as treatment for chronic masturbation.)
Even at this distance, the set of events is shocking; how much worse it must have been then. It is now known that the details of this exchange circulated during the Bayreuth Festival of 1882, coming to Nietzsche’s own notice later that same year. He confessed in a letter that an “abysmal treachery” had got back to him. More than one observer has concluded that this episode helped to unbalance Nietzsche.
It is a story that diminishes two great men.
Diminishes? Not at all! I find it amusing and deeply humanizing to realize that even two towering cultural figures like this could be brought low by the same pettiness that plagues high schools everywhere. (I haven’t read Julian Young’s biography of Nietzsche yet, but I understand that in his account, there may have also been implications of homosexuality in that letter.) I can totally see Nietzsche lying in bed on his back, feet up against the wall, arm across his eyes, a phone pressed to his ear: “…and then he told everyone at the party!! I know, right?! And after I totally dedicated my first book to him and his crappy music! God, I was so stupid, stupid, stupid! Why was I even born?!” Meanwhile, a Coldplay playlist repeats itself on iTunes. Nearby, we see a yearbook open to Wagner’s picture, now sporting devil horns, blacked-out teeth, lightning bolts above his head, and disembodied penises hovering in and about his mouth and ears.

I Wanna Idealize You Like an Animal

By in augean stables, science No Comments

This is a loooong essay by Raymond Tallis, and I fully admit up front that I don’t have the time to give it the careful attention and engagement it deserves, but at the same time, when an argument starts off with such weak points, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of it or make me inclined to want to spend much more time on it:

The failure to distinguish consciousness from neural activity corrodes our self-understanding in two significant ways. If we are just our brains, and our brains are just evolved organs designed to optimize our odds of survival — or, more precisely, to maximize the replicative potential of the genetic material for which we are the vehicle — then we are merely beasts like any other, equally beholden as apes and centipedes to biological drives. Similarly, if we are just our brains, and our brains are just material objects, then we, and our lives, are merely way stations in the great causal net that is the universe, stretching from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.

Hmm. I don’t know; maybe we can only get the full effect if he tells it around the campfire with a flashlight under his chin. As it is, I’m sorry, but repeating a viewpoint in an incredulous tone with a disbelieving look on your face does not count as a rebuttal. Affronts to your vanity or conception of human dignity are not automatically disqualified. Does this really need to be reiterated anymore?

Most of those who subscribe to such “neuroevolutionary” accounts of humanity don’t recognize these consequences. Or, if they do recognize them, then they don’t subscribe to these accounts sincerely. When John Gray appeals, in his 2002 book Straw Dogs, to a belief that human beings are merely animals and so “human life has no more meaning than the life of slime mold,” he doesn’t really believe that the life of John Gray, erstwhile School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, has no more meaning than that of a slime mold — else why would he have aspired to the life of a distinguished professor rather than something closer to that of a slime mold?

Because he is a distinguished professor and not a slime mold. He’s not claiming there is no difference at all between the two, he’s claiming there is no more inherent biological worth to one over the other. I’m not sure what the implication is here. What is he supposed to do upon realizing that humanity is an extremely clever ape that may nonetheless be undone by its own cleverness? Run off to the woods to subsist on grubs and berries, communicating through clicks, hoots and grunts? Commit suicide? What?
Was it Stephen Jay Gould who basically said that humanity exists at the discretion of bacteria and viruses, the real rulers of the planet? One random mutation is all it would take to quickly eliminate tens or even hundreds of millions of oh-so-special humans. And all of our wonderful cultural achievements aren’t going to grant us any exemptions from the consequences of environmental destruction or of any meteors streaking toward an impact with Earth. Our kind of consciousness is obviously a wonderful thing to experience. But it doesn’t imply anything about us somehow being independent of our biological origins or promise us a glorious future.

Tathāgata

By in foolosophy, language, mythology, psychology No Comments

Shanna and I were talking about myths and archetypes, tarot, horoscopes and other woo-woo recently, especially about the use and abuse thereof. How far can we go in framing reality to suit our personal perspective while still maintaining intellectual integrity?
Anyway, when you started talking about the world being all mystical it made me think of Jungian archetypes, which you don’t approve of. So I’m wondering why you draw the line of artistry at constructing a narrative. It’s alright to admire, to compose paeans and songs, but not stories? Why? I’ve always felt you don’t approve of the stories people tell themselves, as if constructing a narrative in order to self-soothe was somehow an act of weakness. But what I see here is simply a variation of degree, not of type.
Given that most people cannot resist (nor want to) their own pattern-making capabilities, I think my approach is most useful for those people who don’t desire the rigour of Zennish ascetism.
That’s always been my beef with Buddhism. I don’t need the capital-R real, capital-T truth. I don’t actually think it exists, and even if it did, I honestly don’t think it’s useful, in a pragmatic, day-to-day reality. It’s kind of like pure science. I acknowledge that it’s useful, perhaps even necessary, but applied science is really where that action (and my interest) is.
In brief, I responded that art, poetry and music was to me a way of celebrating that sort of mystical joy we’re occasionally lucky enough to find, that sense of having a cosmic place for everything, and everything in its cosmic place, ourselves included, without clinging to it. Relating to archetypes, though, talking about your life in terms of mythic generalities, makes it too easy to overlook the particulars of your life that don’t conform to the hero’s journey or the hermit’s quest. I said that some Buddhist writer I can’t recall (Brad Warner? Stephen Batchelor?) used the analogy of a pretty outdoors scene painted on a window pane. Why not just wipe the pane clean and see the one that’s already out there?
I thought of all that again while reading this fascinating post from Julia Galef. Seriously, I love this stuff:
We instinctively graft abstract concepts like “time,” “theories,” and “humor” onto more concrete concepts that are easier to visualize. For example, we talk about time as if it were a physical space we’re traveling through (“We’re approaching the end of the year”), a moving entity (“Time flies”) or as a quantity of some physical good (“We’re running out of time”). Theories get visualized as structures — we talk about building a case, about supporting evidence, and about the foundations of a theory. And one of my favorite metaphors is the one that conceives of humor in terms of physical violence. A funny person “kills” us or “slays” us, witty humor is “sharp,” and what’s the name for the last line of a joke? The “punch” line.
Interestingly, a lot of recent research suggests that these metaphors operate below the level of conscious thought.
Associating the future with the forward direction and the past with the backwards direction seems pretty harmless. But cases like “morality equals cleanliness” start to suggest how dangerous metaphorical thinking can be. If people conflate dirtiness with immorality, then the feeling of “Ugh, that’s disgusting” becomes synonymous with the judgment, “That’s immoral.” Which is likely a reason why so many people insist that homosexuality is wrong, even though they can’t come up with any explanation of why it’s harmful — any non-contrived explanation, at least. As the research of cognitive psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown, people asked to defend their purity-based moral judgments reach for logical explanations, but if they’re forced to admit that their explanation has holes, they’ll grope for an alternative one, rather than retracting their initial moral judgment. Logic is merely a fig leaf; disgust is doing all the work.
So far I’ve been discussing implicit metaphors, but explicit metaphors can also lead us astray without us realizing it. We use one thing to metaphorically stand in for another because they share some important property, but then we assume that additional properties of the first thing must also be shared by the second thing.
Since our ancestors’ genetic fitness depended on their sensitivity to each other’s mental states, it feels very natural for us to speak about plants or inanimate objects as if they were agents with desires, wills, and intentions. That’s the kind of thinking we’re built for. In fact, even the phrase “built for” relies on the implication of a conscious agent doing the building, rather than the unconscious process of evolution. Metaphors are so deeply embedded in our language that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to think without them. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as we keep a firm grasp — metaphorically speaking — on what they really mean.
There’s nothing wrong with framing your life’s experience as a story with a progression, either. There’s a sense of reassuring continuity to think that whatever the individual details, you’re on some sort of path that countless others before and after you have been on. But that same feeling of treading a well-worn path to a preordained goal can help you switch off your conscious attention to everything that’s happening right now that doesn’t fit a neat storyline. And I say this as someone who loves words. Absolutely loves ’em. I spend more time than almost anyone I know wallowing in words and other abstract representations of reality. Pattern-seeking creatures that we are, I doubt it’s possible or even desirable to exist in a permanent state of non-abstract thinking.
But for me, on the occasions when I manage to set aside all the intermediaries between me and direct perception, it’s intense and overwhelming in a (good) way that metaphors can never capture. I only humbly suggest: don’t spend too much time talking about what your life is like. Just experience it for what it is. Your life isn’t valuable or meaningful because of how similar it is to countless ones that have come before, it’s because of the fact that you occupy a unique, unrepeatable moment in space/time. Stop reaching for words every so often and just twirl a flower.

…That, When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again

By in foolosophy, psychology No Comments

Most of the time, I don’t have the sort of dreams that make the slightest bit of sense or relate to anything going on in my life at the time. But last night, I dreamed about one of my dogs. It was like I walked into a room, and all of my dogs jumped down off the bed to greet me, and when they did, I saw he had been lying behind them, hidden in the covers. I whispered hoarsely, “Hey, big bear (one of his dozens of nicknames), where have you been? Come here, buddy.” He laid his ears back like he did when he was happy, mouth wide in a dog-smile, wagging and starting to get up. Then I was suddenly awake in the dark, heart jackhammering in my chest, breath hitching in my throat, eyes brimming with tears.

What is it about dreams that make them feel so much more real than any other kind of abstract thought? How do they connect so much more strongly with emotions? I’ve thought about him countless times since he died, but there’s always been a slight awareness of the difference between memories and immediate experience that acts as a barrier, keeping me from feeling completely overwhelmed with sensations. As upsetting as it can be to spend time reflecting, I’m always aware that I am reflecting; it never resonates as if I’m literally seeing him in front of me again. I’ve thought about him enough since then that I can usually cover all that ground again without getting too upset, but this still haunts me and leaves me with that gut-punched feeling all over again.
Dreams cast such a shadow over your mind in a way that conscious thought doesn’t. It’s even stranger, given how fragmented and surreal they often are. What’s going on in the brain when we’re asleep that accounts for the difference? What is it exactly that consciousness does to keep all those intense emotions under a tight lid when we’re awake? I’ve never read much of anything about it before, so I’m just wondering.

I’ve Eaten the Sun So My Tongue Has Been Burned of the Taste

By in waiting for the barbarians, writing No Comments

A thought occurred to me earlier, so I went back and checked, and I was right: I’ve barely written about politics at all in the past few months. Why, I’m quite proud of that fact.

When I first started reading blogs, I pretty much thought they were synonymous with politics. I was reading Tom Tomorrow’s site at the turn of the millennium, and he kept mentioning this “blog” of his, which I figured was a different site he maintained somewhere else on the web. I thought I was just reading a website that was updated regularly. Then he started linking to other sites like Eschaton, and I started following more links like that, and eventually I figured out the concept. I guess I always had an inkling that there were people who used blogs to write from a more personal perspective, but I was wary of wasting too much time on what would seem like reading a bunch of strangers’ diaries. With an insular network of bloggers only linking to others who share their opinions and write about the same topics, it can be hard to find anything new and interesting without feeling like you’re looking for a needle in a haystack the size of the entire Midwest. It’s taken the better part of a decade, but I think I’ve found a good roster of interesting writers that touch on much more interesting stuff, and I hardly even glance at the political blogs anymore.
I was listening to my brother, a perpetual aggrievement machine, venting his bottomless spleen as usual this morning about Obama Obama liberals Obama snarl spit blargh, and as has been the case for some time, I just didn’t even care to listen or try to fruitlessly argue with him. Laugh if you must at the spectacle of me talking like a hippie, but the sheer caustic negativity that he and the rest of my family give off in their monomaniacal obsession with politics just wears me out and disgusts me. Like, mucho bad vibes, dude! When he tried to bait me into it, I told him he was one of the most miserable, bitter pissants I’ve ever known, he talked like someone three times his age, and why didn’t he just talk about sports or prostitutes or alcohol or whatever else he enjoys for a change? We live in a one-corporate-party imperial state that will eventually collapse under the weight of its own effluvia, but try to enjoy life anyway.

Then I Went Down Into the Basement Where My Friend, the Maniac, Busies Himself with His Electronic Graffiti

By in foolosophy, writing No Comments

J.E.H. Smith:

But here is the thought that makes death formidable again: it is the moment after which I will never post to my blog again, after which I will never write another Facebook status update, I will never again tweet. My soul cries out: “But I can’t live without doing these things!” And death answers back: “No. But you can die.”
This is to say that my life is wrapped up with an activity from which I will have to leave off at death. But it is also the activity, I am increasingly coming to think, of actively constructing my self, and this activity, when it leaves off in death, will leave an accurate and vivid trace of a life. My online activity is, as I already put it, both mask and gravestone at once.
This may not be an entirely different experience than the one Robert Burton had when he brought out the fourth and fifth and sixth editions of The Anatomy of Melancholy. But the immediacy of blogging, and its lack of finality, make it much more like life itself than a book ever could be, with the backlogged publishers who promise it and the slow-churning presses that produce it. There is no publisher to blame if my blog is not sufficiently far along in its perfection at the moment of my death, no editorial wrangling or grinding production process. There is only me, and what I hope might be a mirror of me, diffused then through the Web of my culture by means I don’t understand: a mirror of me mirroring the world by sitting in a chair and looking at a screen and, every now and again, out the window.
Blogging as self-creation rather than the more typical sense of self-expression; that’s a pretty cool way to think about it. I’ve said before that I feel much more complete as a person since I started systematically writing my thoughts down like this. My brain feels more alive, my ideas feel more substantial. At times when kismet arranges for an abundance of stress and work to align with a paucity of time and inspiration for writing, as was the case earlier this week, I can feel seriously low and empty (as the angelic Shanna, who graciously takes on the thankless task of trying to cheer me up, can attest). This has done more to shape and sculpt different aspects of my personality than anything I’ve done in my adult life, I think. It’s what mainly provides a sense of dynamism and prevents me from feeling stagnant. I wonder what kind of person I’d be if I had started doing this as a teenager?
My mom was trying to give me helpful advice about fleshing out my résumé the other day, telling me to add in anything extracurricular that might be interesting. “What about writing? Do you do any? You know, so-and-so always said you had real talent…”
No, I said, I don’t do any writing. There’s only a few people who know that about me, and I have incriminating photos of all of them to ensure their silence. This is one of the absolute most important activities in my life, and I prefer to keep it a secret and do it just for fun. Maybe that’s what defines me as a hermit more than anything.
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