July 2021

Unhappy Ever After In the Marketplace

By in education, eric hoffer, juxtapositions, work No Comments

Until I was forty I lived as a true bohemian, considered financial matters beneath me, and never really understood why I was always in debt. As with everything in my life, the shift from that phase was abrupt and total, and a sort of law of conservation of vice that governs my existence ensured that the overcoming of spendthriftness could only be bought by quick transition to an obsessive, all-consuming preoccupation with my ledger-books. I rush to add that I hate capitalism much more than I ever did in my bohemian phase. I hate it because it forced me, finally, to submit to it, though I always believed it never could. Capitalism broke me like a mustang cornered in a pen.

— J.E.H. Smith

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Capitalism’s greatest predicament is that several paradoxes of the human condition combine to turn capitalist successes into failures… Take mass education: it was the capitalists and not the intellectuals who initiated and promoted mass education. In capitalist America every mother’s son can go to college. Most capitalist societies are being swamped with educated people who disdain the triviality and hustle of the marketplace and pray for a new social order that will enable them to live meaningful, weighty lives. The education explosion is now a more immediate threat to capitalist societies than a population explosion.

— Eric Hoffer, Before the Sabbath

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Marx, a Victorian intellectual, predicted that capitalism would be undone by its immiseration of the proletariat. Actually, capitalism has done more to jeopardize itself by annoying intellectuals. Many of them look down their upturned noses at the marketplace, and therefore at those who thrive in it. The intellectuals’ disdain is a manifestation of resentment about the fact that markets generally function nicely without the supervision of intellectuals. Their disdain is, among other unattractive things, ingratitude. The vulgar (as the intellectuals see them) men and women of commerce who make markets productive also make the intellectual class possible. As George Stigler (University of Chicago; winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Economics) said, “Since intellectuals are not inexpensive, until the rise of the modern enterprise system, no society could afford many intellectuals.” So “we professors are much more beholden to Henry Ford than to the foundation which bears his name and spreads his assets.”

— George Will, The Conservative Sensibility

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Living – Is That Not Precisely Wanting to Be Other Than This Nature?

By in animals, battling personal entropy No Comments

Our natural state often meant dying from common injuries which are mere inconveniences to us now, so, as usual, talk of what we were “naturally” “meant” to be is meaningless. Chimpanzees are much stronger than humans, not because they have extra muscle fibers or a more “natural” existence, but because we have more specialized motor neurons which allow us to do things like knit, play piano, and perform laser surgery. The difference is in our brains, not our biceps. (My trainer would like to know who authorized that trade-off; he says he doesn’t need to play the trumpet anymore and would happily re-engineer some neurons in service to his squat strength.) Powerlifters are often stronger than bodybuilders, despite lacking the chiseled physiques of the latter, so functional strength isn’t even necessarily the same thing as being “ripped.” Hunter-gatherers, the most “natural” humans, are often of slight build. It’s not Blake’s grain of sand, but it’s still amazing that one tiny tweet can contain a whole world of mistaken assumptions and implications.

In a book I just read, Exercised, by Daniel Lieberman, he makes the familiar case that humans evolved to become endurance athletes above all. Most other animals are much faster than us in a sprint, but our relatively hairless bodies and abundance of sweat glands make a more efficient cooling system, allowing us to continue running after the faster animals have been forced to stop and rest to avoid overheating. Slow and steady wins the race, indeed. Perhaps even “work smarter, not harder” — we ran our prey to exhaustion rather than beat it to death.

Aesthetic musculature, like music, poetry, and reading for pleasure, is itself a “deviation” from the bare necessity of securing enough calories to survive long enough to reproduce. Thank all the gods for such deviations!

Conversation Piece

By in writing No Comments

Alex Tzelnic:

The interior nature of labour is such that it can only occur as a slow-time activity. One can intend to write a poem, but one cannot ignite the required creativity by sheer force of will. Instead, one must combine intention with leisure. One must take a step back, cultivate one’s skill with patience and lay the groundwork for inspiration to arrive. As Hyde explains, “For the slow labour of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the library, where life is not counted by the clock and where the talented may be sure they will be ignored until that time, if it ever comes, when their gifts are viable enough to be set free and survive in the world.”

Like Douglas, I’ve also had a case of the solar idiocy lately. Hot weather always does that to me. A long string of ninety-degree days doing physical work in a building without air conditioning leaves a fellow feeling pretty wiped out at the end of the day. I think there’s also an awkward age where you’re old enough to know that there’s nothing new to be said, but not old enough to have cheerfully forgotten that you’ve already said it all before. Most of all, as I’ve said before, we live in a politically fundamentalist culture right now which has drowned out general-interest conversation, or intimidated it into silence. A derivative scribbler like me relies on a vibrant online ecosystem for inspiration, and the current one more resembles a toxic waste dump.

These things come and go. I won’t always be overworked and brain-dead, and the culture won’t always be quite this stupid. But in the meantime, speaking of conversation, consider this something of an open thread for anyone inclined to step out of the shadows and say hello. Whenever I look at the site stats, I’m always surprised to see how many non-bots are here reading what I write. Some of you I’ve “met,” but most of you are ghostly presences. I appreciate your respectful silence, but I’m also curious. Where are you from? What do you like to read? What are your hobbies, besides reading second-rate blogs? Are you killing time at work, or do you hang around for the book recommendations? Which of the eighty-seven genders are you? The floor is yours.

Life, Simply

By in books, juxtapositions, montaigne, nietzsche No Comments

Montaigne promises that if we know how to attend to it properly, life simply — not the philosophic life or the holy life or the heroic life, but simply life — can be enough to satisfy the longings of the human heart.

— Benjamin and Jenna Storey, Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment

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Nietzsche’s pessimism advises each of us individually to cobble together a meaning for life out of lesser goals, to organize small portions of the world ourselves — but with the ultimate result that, when these are gathered together, “the world might be far more valuable than we used to believe.” Finding the will to live is not a problem that admits of a universal solution — but the individual solutions we each can arrive at may, in any case, be more credible for us than a set of prefabricated values we are instructed to reenact.

Nietzsche’s inspiration here, as in so many other matters, is the example of a certain kind of art. Of course, his is not the romantic idea that art puts us in touch with greater truths or the Schopenhauerian belief in the artist’s “objectivity.” Rather art represents that organization of a small portion of an otherwise meaningless world that gives purpose to an individual existence. Art is the attempt to impose a temporary form on the inevitable transformation of the world; since the world must acquire some particular forms in its metamorphoses, art is “repeating in miniature, as it were, the tendency of the whole” — only now by an effort of will.

— Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit

A Little of Everything With a Light Touch

By in books, foolosophy, juxtapositions, montaigne, nietzsche 1 Comment

As I filled up the truck, I found myself looking at the books with a certain hostility. There is a very real sense in which they ruined my life. At twenty-five I believed that by absorbing their contents —or, short of that, by hauling them around with me from place to place— they would somehow redeem me. At forty-five I found myself still unredeemed, worrying about money in a way I never imagined possible, angry at the false advertising by which mere learning is said to lead to happiness. These books destined me to an unbalanced life, like a poorly packed U-Haul that leans too far to one side; like a cheap Ikea particle-board bookshelf, bought only as a temporary and partial solution, sagging under the weight of its books.

— Justin E.H. Smith, “The End of Books”

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He said philosophers have been arguing about this for centuries, they haven’t come up with any consensus answers, and so we should just stop asking. That is, Montaigne makes the case that it is possible to live a good human life with a kind of indifference to the question of the highest good. And that that way of seeking happiness, is what we call the quest for imminent contentment. And the happiness Montaigne celebrates is a dabbling kind of happiness. That is, instead of asking is philosophy going to make me happy, or is religion going to make me happy, or is citizenship going to make me happy, Montaigne does a little of everything, but he does it all with a light touch. So for example, he reads, but he tells us that he doesn’t like the heavy stuff, Plato and Aristotle. He prefers lighter authors like Plutarch and Ovid (his version of light might be a little different than ours). He travels, but when he travels he doesn’t go with the ambitions of an explorer, or the aspirations, the piety, of a pilgrim, he’s just taking a look around. And Montaigne says this kind of nonchalant existence, in which we enjoy all the pleasures and pursuits available to us, but don’t make too much out of any of them, this is the true way to happiness.

— Benjamin Storey, podcast with Richard M. Reinsch, “Restless Amidst Prosperity and Freedom”

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We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and “know” everything. “Is it true that the good God is everywhere present? ” asked a little girl of her mother: “I think that is indecent”: a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the shame-facedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo, to speak in Greek?… Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial – from profundity!

—Nietzsche, The Gay Science

With Such a One Do Not Even Poop

By in fresh hell, the geist of the zeit, the great awokening 2 Comments

You laugh, and you should, but these are the theological issues of our age.

A woman we had doing some contract work told us that she attended the Women’s March a few years ago, and while she was there, nature texted, so she looked around and noticed that the porta-potties were owned by a company called “Don’s Johns,” or something to that effect. So, she did the totally normal thing that anyone would have done — she Googled the company to make sure it wasn’t owned by, you know, that Don, because “it’s the sort of thing he would do! He’s got his fingers in all sorts of pies!”

He would… make money off the people protesting against him? Well, I must admit, I’d have to respect that kind of hustle.

I’m afraid I don’t have the instincts of an investigative journalist. I didn’t think to ask her if she wore one of those pussy hats, for one thing, but more importantly, I didn’t think to follow up on the logic of what, exactly, it would have entailed if Trump had owned the company. Would you withhold your bodily waste in protest? Soil yourself? Or, conversely, would you be eager to relieve yourself in “his” toilets as some kind of insult or defilement? I don’t understand these religious purity rituals.

Smell the Rich Mahogany

By in education, jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

Intellectuals are the bureaucrats of thought.

— Theodore Dalrymple, Midnight Maxims

Two things: One, the good doctor has a new book out consisting of 365 maxims composed during a period of insomnia. I’ve enjoyed it, and you probably will too. And two, this witty quip reminded me of a tweet that I only vaguely remembered and feared I’d never see again, only to stumble upon a screenshot of it this very evening. Look at this. This should hang in the Louvre with Dalrymple’s maxim below it:

Look at Them and See What They Are Like

By in race, the geist of the zeit, tribalism No Comments

Christopher Rufo:

These authors may imagine themselves to be defending liberal-democratic freedoms against the threat of illiberalism. But in practice, they enable, and would leave American families defenseless against, the worst ideologies of the Left. They advance three specious arguments—that critical-race-theory restrictions violate free speech, that state legislatures should stay out of the marketplace of ideas, and that citizens should pursue civil rights litigation instead—that would serve to usher in the concrete tyrannies of critical race theory, which explicitly seeks to subvert the principles of individual rights and equal protection under the law. Despite the superficial differences among the four heterodox authors, they all serve a single function: to prevaricate, stall, and run interference for critical race theory’s blitz through American institutions.

I’ve been following this issue with interest. Rufo seems to be a one-man army in the fight against neoracism, and his efforts seem to be having a strong effect. For the first time that I can recall, the defenders of CRT are on the defensive, and their messaging is scattered and contradictory. CRT is an esoteric law school theory; no, wait, it’s just a common-sense explanation for the history of racism and slavery in this country; no, it’s not being taught in schools, but it would be a good thing if it were, and besides, the only people who oppose it are QAnon Trumpist blah blah blah. Rufo’s efforts have shaken things up, and not only among the left. The crux of the argument among people on the right is whether the laws recently passed by state legislatures banning CRT from being taught in schools are actually effective for that purpose, or whether they’re flawed in ways that their proponents will come to regret one day, and if so, whether they can be improved. As always, I have no particular knowledge or expertise, but I find the back-and-forth debates fascinating.

Look at them and see what they are like:

they move as though a wind were pushing them,
they rest as though a hand had stopped them.

In their eyes is the oncoming darkness
sweeping across summer’s fields before the storm.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours, III, 20 (trans. Barrows and Macy)

The Lady of the House has a geologist cousin working somewhere up in the Arctic Circle these days. She calls us every few weeks, and often asks us to help her make sense of goings-on down here. I find it very useful to attempt to explain American politics and society to a foreigner who only takes in various snippets through news reports. She’s vaguely “left” in a more European social-democratic way, so she’s especially interested in trying to make sense of what our right wing is all about. I’ve followed this issue with her in mind — how would I summarize it? I think I would probably say that in my opinion, most of the energy is on Rufo’s side of the argument. I sense — and obviously, I have nothing more substantial than a sense — that the classically-liberal wing of conservatism in America, often derided as “Conservative, Inc.” by the new generation, is looking enervated. Too many intellectuals, both centrist and conservative, want to respond to the CRT fight by doing what intellectuals do — endlessly analyzing, theorizing and quibbling over terminology, like this is all a seminar or an interesting debate-club topic. Some, like the authors of the NYT op-ed Rufo is arguing with here, seem concerned with maintaining an aesthetic independence which wouldn’t require them to do anything as tacky as join the fight on one side or the other.

I’m worried that that might not be an available luxury much longer. A substantial segment of the right seems to be fed up with “the long defeat” and are eager for someone, anyone, to start throwing punches in self-defense. A recent Twitter thread was very interesting, suggesting among other things that even the sorts of Tea Party conservatives who have long had faith in the America they learned about in civics class have begun to see the entire system as, well, rigged. I shudder to think what will come of it if those trends continue.

The Labor We Delight In

By in work No Comments

Simon Sarris:

This is not worship of employment, but a simpler observation: It seems that the more you ask of people, and the more you have them do, the more they are able to later do on their own. It is important to note that while we shouldn’t allow children to be bobbin boys, no one would describe Steve Job’s summer job at 13 as his exploitation. We should be thinking much harder about making sure children can make meaningful contributions to the world.

Seizing opportunity requires opportunity to exist at all. And I suspect the downplaying of agency in childhood not only creates fewer opportunities for great people, it must also create more marginal people. Ushering everyone into an endless default script is disastrous when underlying conditions or assumptions change. Even when they don’t, some people exit academia almost terrified to leave (to interact with the “real world”), a kind of Stockholm syndrome. How could we celebrate a higher learning that creates something so pathetic, the opposite of a readiness for life?

A couple who work for us brought their eleven-year-old niece along during her spring break this past April. It was her idea, something she was excited to do, and she seemed to really enjoy it. We gave her simple tasks like opening incoming parcels, but whenever she finished, she would repeatedly ask if there was anything else that she could do. At the end of each day, on her own initiative, she’d sweep the floor with the big push broom. By the end of the week, she was proud to have become competent, if not quite a master, at operating the pallet jack, although she was a little too small to maneuver it with a full load on it. It was interesting to see how eager she was to be given responsibilities. She saw it as getting to participate in something with her aunt and uncle, which just happened to be “work.” I have to admit, I don’t think I would have been nearly as motivated at that age; I would have preferred to wander off by myself to play or daydream. The Lady of the House often talks of wishing she had an army of teenage girls to carry out tasks for her. I remind her that when confessing to being the reincarnation of a robber baron, it’s best to use one’s inside voice.

I started work on my fifteenth birthday in my father’s newspaper distributorship. He had been talking about it for several weeks prior, telling me to be ready to wake up early one of these Sunday mornings and go in to the warehouse. A few weeks went by without anything coming of it. I went to bed the night before my birthday thinking, “Well, surely he won’t pick tomorrow to follow through on that…” Naturally, I found myself in a cold concrete room with hazy fluorescent lighting at three a.m. helping to assemble the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Back then, the Sunday paper came in about four or five different sections — the main, or front page section (“heads”), sports, and a couple others whose names escape me now. One person would insert these sections together and pass them down to a partner, who added the “combos,” the ads and such which gave the Sunday paper its heft, and passed them on to be tied in bundles of ten. I played the combo guy to Jesse’s inserter. That man was a machine. Frederick Winslow Taylor would have whimpered ecstatically in his sleep to dream of such a man on his assembly line. He assembled four sections together faster than I could add one. It was quite the unwelcome lesson in humility, especially with my dad barking at me to pick up the pace.

Nowadays, I’m grateful to my dad for instilling a strong work ethic in me. I still have no desire to manage a warehouse crew composed of teenage girls, though. They’ll have to find some other way to the joys of self-fulfillment through hard work.

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