July 2018

All Them Books I Didn’t Read, They Just Sat There on My Shelf Looking Much Smarter Than Me (XV)

By in books, so many books, so little time No Comments

Tom Gerken:

While the two words may have similar meanings, there is one key difference: Bibliomania describes the intention to create a book collection, tsundoku describes the intention to read books and their eventual, accidental collection.

I used to fret over my increasing inability to achieve “bookshelf zero”, but I’m slowly resigning myself to the fact that having forty to fifty books in the “want to read” column is just becoming my new baseline, given my constant exposure to temptation. A friend recently said she prefers having unread books lying around because of the potential they represent. Likewise, I’d rather maintain the feeling of childlike excitement in finding a new book I want to read, even if it keeps me chained to my Sisyphean task.

Only Happy When You Hurt. Only Deadly In a Swarm. Only Happy In the Dirt

By in socmed, world football No Comments

ESPN:

“Look, I think my smartest decision in life was not to use social media,” Klopp said. “I don’t read it if people criticize me on social media. They can write whatever they want and it never would faze me because I don’t know it. I don’t read it, so I don’t feel it.

“I never really thought it right if you listen to people, they don’t show you their face — if you want to tell me you’re not happy with me, tell me now, but don’t go out and write it on your smartphone and put it on Facebook, Instagram, whatever.

…”Obviously, in their rooms when they write, they don’t care about the person. Not only Loris — [they care] about nobody. They don’t care. It’s like they have a lot of power in that moment and they use it, but power is two things. When one has power, the other one who feeds it and so I really would say it’s a good idea in life to really don’t get in these things.

“I’m not sure that it will happen, but maybe one time, we can start talking again and don’t write messages to each other.”

I’ve joked before that I could compile a bunch of wise sayings into a book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Jürgen Klopp and Cesar Millan. Maybe I actually will, just for my own amusement and edification. But seriously, I love this man. He’s a Stoic sage for an emotionally-incontinent age that doesn’t deserve him. I’d vote for him in a heartbeat. Hell, forget voting; he could seize power in a coup and I’d just shrug and say, “Eh, democracy was always overrated anyway.” Good thing he’s just a football coach.

Oddball Draws His Water From Another Well

By in bonsai minimalism, santutthi, socmed, the statusphere No Comments

Self-loathing Twitter is a consistently popular genre. But this candid admission is why, despite all the perfunctory flagellation, I don’t really think the sporadic “back to the blog” mutterings we’ve heard in recent months will ultimately amount to more than another type of status-signaling, sort of like the Day of Unplugging. People who want to be in the conversation but not of it will continue to use Twitter self-deprecatingly, allowing them to have it both ways, pretending to be above the attention and adulation they wallow in.

Dan Cohen says “ambient humanity” is what keeps people yoked to the giant platforms; I prefer to reiterate that people are always eager to avoid effort and agency, happy to drift down to the lowest common denominator while ironically lamenting their weakness. Quality, not quantity, right? I’m far more flattered by the fact that a few people silently show up here every day to see what I’ve written than I would be by thousands of likes, retweets and attaboys from people who just see me as one more ephemeral content provider to help them kill time at work. The satisfaction of a post well-written is its own reward, regardless of how much attention it gets. I always thought this was self-evident, but it turns out I’m just odd. Thank God for that.

Left Hand Path

By in extraordinary popular delusions, political philosophy, the geist of the zeit, the statusphere No Comments

Damon Linker:

On the other hand, the policy agenda favored by nearly everyone on the American left resembles more than anything else the political, social, and economic arrangements that prevail in northern Europe, and especially in Denmark. Is Denmark a socialist country? If it is, then there is no meaningful distinction between socialism and liberal democracy — at least when the liberal democracy has a generous welfare state and a modestly regulated, mixed market economy. Given the political history of the United States, doesn’t it make more sense for the left to understand itself, and to explain itself to voters, by making connections with the Democratic Party’s own record of advocating for just such an expansive form of liberalism (rather than “socialism”)?

What the left really seems to want is a return to the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — a New Deal 2.0 for the 21st century.

Well, yes. To the extent that the American left can be said to have any serious ideas and proposals for achieving their objectives, as opposed to a vague collection of postures and grievances, it seems clear that they’re motivated by nostalgia for the decades between the New Deal and the Great Society. Of course, those golden years produced a generation of spoiled brats who were convinced that they had grown up in a tyrannical dystopia that needed to be burnt to the ground, so, given that human nature hasn’t dramatically changed in the meantime, I’m not sure why people think we’d be any more likely to appreciate a reinvigorated welfare state this time around. Still, though, it’s true that most of the inane chatter about “socialism” is either fear-mongering or status-signaling. The invasive managerial state grows in tandem with technological sophistication toward a Brave New World future regardless of which party is in power. Like generals fighting the last war, political junkies rehash century-old arguments over socialism and laissez-faire as if it’s relevant. Even the wispy fantasy of a Danish-style social democracy dissipates on contact with cultural and demographic realities.

Yet, as Kristian Niemietz has observed on his side of the ocean, people who used to claim to only want to see their society become a little more like Scandinavia or Germany have held a finger to the prevailing cultural winds and started signaling their affinity for something more extreme. (Thankfully, we seem to be behind the trend over here.) Sure, Owen Jones and most of his fellow Guardianistas have always been fatuous fools. And sure, despite the fact that it would be impossible to imagine teen and ladies‘ fashion outlets fawning over anyone who proudly proclaimed herself on TV to be a national socialist (“I’m literally a Nazi, you idiot!”), it’s also clear that Sarkar is embarrassingly ignorant about what she’s actually saying; she’s only bright enough to recognize a high-status opinion that will win her praise from her peers. But slippery slopes have to start somewhere, and the bromides that pass for received wisdom among cultural elites seems like as good a place as any. Why are we, especially those of us who don’t believe in any sort of Whiggish progression to history, supposed to rest assured that experiments with extreme leftism could never happen again?

Which brings us to the real point — as Jordan Peterson was recently wondering, what is the limiting principle of the left? How far is too far in pursuit of equality? Why do so many people still believe in some Platonic ideal of “true” socialism, existing outside of space and time, independent of all the failed attempts made on Earth to realize it? Why are we supposed to believe that a New Deal 2.0 would be enough, and not a springboard for a renewed drive to eliminate all inequalities? Regardless of how overblown the rhetoric surrounding socialism may be in our political environment, one can still be wary of the unreconstructed left-wing longing for utopia. Too bad our fellow travelers never had to go through the equivalent of denazification after the fall of the USSR.

The Medium Is the Sewage

By in socmed, technology No Comments

Cathy Young:

Twitter can give us the means both to deepen the polarization and to counter it. To paraphrase Shakespeare: The fault, fellow Americans, lies not in our social media, but in ourselves.

Well, to paraphrase a bumper sticker about guns, social media doesn’t create toxic behavior; it just makes it really easy to indulge in. As for Twitter specifically, Derek Powazek noted years ago that you couldn’t have designed a more effective argument generator if you tried. I can’t help but notice with amusement that the suggestions he offered to improve it — some of which have been implemented, more or less, and which Young praises for having made Twitter more tolerable — tend to make Twitter more like the blogs it superseded, which raises the obvious question of why frivolous twits were in such a hurry to bury blogs in the first place. Well, who am I to criticize people for trading in old products and buying them back again in new packaging. If you want to create unpaid content on a tech giant’s platform rather than hosting your own site where you can exercise the sort of editorial control that people are demanding of Twitter, whatever.

Not all possibilities are equally probable. Sure, Twitter can be used for more elevated purposes than trading hostile sentence fragments with strangers, but it’s not likely to happen. New technologies are born into a world already in motion, which is to say a platform like Twitter joins an already-existing pattern of proclivities and incentives among its users. Perhaps there is, say, a “quilting Twitter” where hobbyists converse amiably and helpfully with each other, but in the pop culture/current events section of Twitter, we’ve seen the results, and however different this or that individual’s experiences have been, it seems safe to say that the overall effect on public discourse has been corrosive and intellectually enfeebling.

Relying on pure, heroic willpower to overcome temptation may be satisfying to our egos, but if it’s virtuous online behavior you want, it’s better to practice good habits — like, say, refusing to participate in the dumbing-down and attention-scattering tendencies of social media.

The Echo That Is Love

By in marriage, the big sleep No Comments

It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we’ll get forty years together
But one day I’ll be gone
Or one day you’ll be gone
If we were vampires and death was a joke
We’d go out on the sidewalk and smoke
And laugh at all the lovers and their plans
I wouldn’t feel the need to hold your hand
Maybe time running out is a gift
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift
And give you every second I can find
And hope it isn’t me who’s left behind

— Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, “If We Were Vampires”

I heard this song a few months ago while out driving. The melody did nothing for me, but the lyrics struck me immediately, especially the poignancy in the realization that a “mere” forty years can seem paltry to a couple in love. There’s also the endearingly honest weakness in the line about hoping to not be the one left alive to mourn. The next time I stopped, I looked the lyrics up on my phone, then texted the Lady of the House about them, saying that they made me think of her.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he added a reincarnation romance to the familiar story, with Gary Oldman’s Vlad Dracula furiously renouncing God after the tragic death of his wife. After 400 years of undeath, he encounters his beloved again in Victorian England and sets out to reclaim her. Later, he refrains from allowing her to join him in his vampiric state, saying that he loves her too much to condemn her. As Isbell’s lyrics recognize, the price of invulnerability is too high; it kills the very sentiment it’s meant to prolong. Cut loose from the tether of mortality, we float off into meaninglessness rather than freedom. Fantasies of afterlives or reincarnations, however understandable, are just another means of avoiding that painful reckoning.

My greatest fear, without question, is the possibility of having to survive her. Statistically, at least, that’s unlikely. But the threat of accidents and disease weighs more heavily on the mind than actuarial tables, and whatever selfish comfort I could take from the reassurances of probability is offset by the feeling that I love her too much to condemn her to years of aching grief. Would I stoically endure for her sake if I had to? I can only hope to have that much courage. I can only hope to never be called upon to demonstrate it.

Noteworthies (40)

By in noteworthies No Comments

• Daniel H. Cole and Aurelian Craiutu, “The Many Deaths of Liberalism”

• Sara Henary, “What Would Tocqueville Do?”

• B.D. McClay, “Virtue Signaling”

• J.P. O’Malley interviews John Gray, “Making Silly People Uncomfortable”

• Gene Callahan, “The (Mis)Measure of Man”

• Jeffrey Bilbro, “Listening to the Iliad While Raking Leaves”

• Matthew Crawford, “Privilege”

• Libby Emmons, “The Transhumanism Revolution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation” (see also, Bill McKibben)

Obiter Scripta, no. 45

By in books, obiter scripta No Comments

Although the Hutterites fear evil in the outside world, they must struggle daily with the greed that surfaces within. Just because possessions must be left at the colony’s door does not mean the ark remains free from contamination. A Hutterite leader noted already in 1650: “Men hang on to property like caterpillars to a cabbage leaf.” The same elder charged that Christians who cling to possessions are like “moles and foxes that undermine the communal plantation.” The lure of property has continued over the generations. Despite persistent teaching, colony leaders must be on the lookout for “caterpillars” and “moles” in their midst who are tempted to trade colony property for a personal treasure — a camera, a radio, or even a Playboy magazine. Contraband of one sort or another can be found in the hidden crevices of most colonies.

— Donald Kraybill and Carl Bowman, On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish and Brethren

Agrarian religious communes or industrial communism; caterpillars and moles or wreckers and saboteurs; the same old story in radically different settings; private property always barring the way to utopia. It tickles me to imagine a Hutterite version of Soviet-style propaganda posters denouncing the cosmopolitan insects and capitalist varmints who undermine the colony from within.

Obiter Scripta, no. 44

By in books, obiter scripta No Comments

There had always been a strange mindset when it came to extremes of weather. On the one hand, cold was regarded with deadly seriousness. From the beginning of civilized time, the poorest peasant had tried to keep a fire burning in his hut. Buildings with stoves or central heating, innovations that caught on in the early 19th century, blasted forth hot air without restraint; when Charles Dickens visited the United States, he complained bitterly about the intense, dry heat “whose breath would blight the purest air under Heaven.” Come winter, the average person’s clothing, already heavy, was fortified with an array of still- heavier outer garments. “Draughts” were terrifying things, strongly believed to be carriers of disease, and the slightest threat of “catching a chill” sent most people racing for medical help. An essay of the period illustrated most people’s fears in the bleakness of its title: “Winter an Emblem of Death.” Heat, on the other hand, seemed to be merely a nuisance, something to be ignored — or greeted with giddy humor.

…If people felt that they were shielded from winter’s cold by the amount of clothing they wore, during the summer they might be justified in feeling trapped inside a cocoon of cloth. No matter the temperature, women were tightly corseted, multiply-petticoated, long-sleeved, gloved and hatted. They were allowed no concessions other than lighter colors and fabrics — there was even a category of accessories known as Summer Furs. Men had an equally tough time of it. Winter or broiling summer, no sane man would be seen in public without a “sober” dark wool frock coat, as well as waist coat, hat, and gloves, and no matter how hot the day he was never allowed to remove a stitch of it. Excessive perspiration was seen not as a sign of impending dehydration but as a social gaffe; ruling over all hot-weather activity was the dictum that horses-sweat—men-perspire—ladies-glow. (Gentlemen were taught to use their handkerchiefs without attracting attention. As no one wanted to acknowledge that ladies actually perspired, etiquette dictated that they merely fan themselves, dabbing only when absolutely necessary. A lady who might find herself fading away in public was expected to carry her own smelling salts, most of which were a combination of ammonia-plus-perfume, to jolt herself back from the edge.)

Even in less drastic cases, plenty of medical advice was based on theory and superstition, and carefully following Doctor’s Orders could finish off an overheated person. Woolen and flannel undergarments were strongly recommended for the summertime, and the health profession advised perspiration-drenched people never to remedy the situation by removing any clothing: “internal congestion of the abdominal organs” and other evils might result. It was touted that “the best way to endure heat is to drink as little as possible,” that “overindulgence in liquids” and “a too-free use of cold water” were dangerous practices during hot weather.

— Salvatore Basile, Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything

In these sweltering times, when hellfire slowly singes the earth, there’s nothing like a rousing sermon to fortify the soul and remind us of the promised land awaiting us beyond the autumnal equinox. Blessedly, we have two days of low-70s temperatures to enjoy this weekend, but when we are forced again to walk through the valley of scorching heat and suffocating humidity, we shall fear no evil, for Willis Carrier is with us; his air washer and his centrifugal compressor, they comfort us. Ignore the temptations of Satan and give thanks that such a man ever walked among us.

On Being Adopted By Cats

By in animals No Comments

The two tamest birds come boldly onto the porch now; not only into Cat’s territory, but also to eat his food. I think they’ve learned to come when I’m here, since I won’t let him attack. He sits on my lap and watches them only a couple of feet away. He does twitch now and again, but mostly remains still. If he wants to hunt somewhere else that’s fine, but not in front of me.

— Robert Kull, Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes

To my surprise, I apparently have two cats. Well, what I mean is, there are two cats who hang around my house every day, and I put out food, water and shelter for them and give them flea/tick prevention once a month. They never come inside, and I don’t fuss over them like pets, but I have to admit that they’re part of the household.

Kitteh has been here since I moved in in the fall of 2007, so she’s at least eleven years old now. I suppose the previous owners left her behind. She’s mostly grey, long-haired, with streaks of orange and white. For the first couple of years, I did my best to ignore her and shoo her away whenever I saw her, especially since I had seven dogs at the time, most of whom were not kindly disposed toward cats. But she persisted in hanging around, and eventually I felt that her loyalty, or stubbornness, deserved recognition. I got a styrofoam container and put it on its side, wrapped and filled with blankets, on my porch, so she’d have somewhere warm to sleep during winter, and got her canned food at the local pet store. I addressed her as “Kitteh” merely out of convention, not because I saw the point of naming an animal who never comes when you call it. However, as is often the case, familiarity morphed her name so that it was always pronounced KIT—tehhhh, and she quickly came to recognize and respond to it. It’s very important that you pronounce it just like that — a sharp KIT, followed by a brief pause, and then an exhaled tehhhh. She replies with her omnipresent “meh,” although slightly more nasally. Almost like “mah,” really. She’s very talkative.

Earlier this year, during the winter, another cat, a young orange tabby with the tip of his left ear docked, started hanging around. I felt sorry for him, sneaking scraps out of our compost pile, looking terrified, especially during below-freezing temperatures, so I started leaving him a bowl of kibble under the back deck. It didn’t take him long to learn that the sound of the back screen door opening and shutting heralded the arrival of food, so he would dash a safe distance away and wait until I went back inside before running over and gobbling the food.

After a couple weeks of regular meals, he began to get comfortable enough to think about more than his next meal. One day, we looked out of the office window and saw him sitting under the bird feeder in the front yard, eyeing the chickadees and cardinals. Sure enough, he launched himself upward, but only managed to crown himself with the underside of the squirrel guard, much to our amusement. What a jerk, I said. Give him food, and he repays us by harassing our birds. An orange jerk. Naturally, we started calling him Trump.

Kitteh, being older and much more domesticated by routine, had long since stopped showing any interest in being a typical cat. She would follow us around the yard whenever we were out in it, heeling as faithfully as any dog, but was otherwise content to lie on top of her styrofoam house, like a feline Snoopy, just watching the day pass. (This also allows her to turn and gaze through the window into the great room, shaming anyone heartless enough to sit there without feeding her.) The birds had long since gotten bold enough to raid her bowl — she had eventually started turning her nose up at wet food, even tuna, but she loves kibble with tender centers. The birds do too, apparently. We laughed one day to see a tufted titmouse land on the porch railing, scold Kitteh for her unwanted presence with a few harsh chirps, before swooping in regardless to snatch some food, while Kitteh observed from atop her house a foot away, unmoving, nonplussed by the audacity of this feathered intruder.

I had kept their feeding stations separate, not wanting Trump to harass Kitteh, but it wasn’t long before he was bolting his own food before creeping onto the front porch while she ate, hoping to sneak some of hers. She seemed to be able to scare him off with flattened ears and hisses, though, until she would finally get bored and wander off, leaving him to finish the scraps. Eventually, I started feeding them both out front, and they get along fine. Occasionally Kitteh has to cuff him around the head for his clumsiness and lack of manners, but he accepts his subservient position without complaint. He climbs into the Adirondack chair next to her perch to hang out — when he’s not “sleeping” underneath the hummingbird feeder, that is. Both of them are afraid of another bigger, older, and meaner orange tom who lives nearby and occasionally wanders over here to mark territory and steal food. I named him Tommy the Cat, after the Primus song. He looks like he should have a cigarette dangling off his lower lip, he’s such a grizzled old cuss. I’ve caught him beating Trump up a couple of times, but he hasn’t been around in a while. We run him off whenever we see him.

I hadn’t realized how much I appreciated Kitteh’s laid-back, very un-cat-like demeanor until Trump moved in. Not just for his relentless harassment of the birds and chipmunks (I’ve made him drop two that he was carrying in his mouth), but for his affectionate nature. I know, it sounds churlish to complain about an animal being affectionate, but he’s so needy about it. Kitteh might hop onto the railing while I was out on the porch and accept a few strokes and skritches, but she’s mostly content to just be in the vicinity of her people. Trump, though, is a tangerine frotteur, a creamsicle Pepé Le Pew. Like a magnet, he’s obsessively rubbing against my legs as soon as I walk out the door, even after I’ve filled his bowl. When I try to take a step away or around him, there he is again, forcing me to shuffle along without lifting my feet, lest I trip and fall. After a few minutes, he often gets overexcited and nips my leg, which is especially annoying when I’m wearing shorts. The Lady of the House, a long-time cat person, thinks he’s so sweet and adorable. I notice she leaves me the responsibility of getting cat hair on my calves and socks, though.

I’m pretty sure I have a mild allergy to cat hair, so I’ll never have house cats. I’m fine with maintaining this sort of arm’s-length relationship with them. But it’s nice to have them around. Hopefully, before Kitteh shuffles off her mortal coil, she can teach Trump to behave himself around the birds.

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