These are some quotations that I found particularly thought-provoking as I participated in and reflected upon my experience with the Boulder Outdoor Survival School in southern Utah (24 May-6 June 2015, field course J106).
"Nature and instruction are closely related. For instruction
remodels man [changes his rhythm or shape], and having remodeled him, it
creates his nature" (Democritus, ap. Clem. Strom. 4.151).
"The
civilization of nations consists in tempering nature with reason, where
nature has the greater part. Consider all the nations of the ancient
world, the Persians at the time of Cyrus, the Greeks, the Romans. The
Romans were never such philosophers as they were when they bowed to
barbarism, that is in the time of tyranny. And likewise, in the
preceding years, the Romans had made great progress in philosophy and
general knowledge, which was something new for them. We can draw another
conclusion from this, which is that the safeguards of a nation's
freedom are neither philosophy nor reason, which are now expected to
regenerate public affairs, but virtue, illusions, and enthusiasm, in
other words nature, from which we are very far removed. A nation of
philosophers would be the most small-minded and cowardly in the world.
Thus, our regeneration will depend on what might be called an
ultra-philosophy, which, through a complete and intimate knowledge of
things, brings us close again to nature. And this should be the outcome
of the extraordinary enlightenment of this century" (Giacomo Leopardi,
Zibaldone 114-5, ed. Caesar et al).
"And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And
Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air
have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Matthew
8:19-20 KJV).
"And
when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should
come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-21 KJV).
"My
kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then
would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but
now is my kingdom not from hence" (John 18:36 KJV).
"To be like the immortals / you need a mind as hard as iron" (Meng Chiao).
"Advancing
or retiring, grasping or letting go / people all have their own ways /
Heaven and Earth let me be lazy / profit and fame put others to work /
gulls sleep on piers with their backs to the sun / swallows build nests
above house beams / misled by passion distracted by things / they remain
unaware of the Master of Emptiness" (Stonehouse 74). Bill Porter's
comment: "The Master of Emptiness refers to the Buddha, who taught that
since all things depend on other things for their existence, they are
themselves empty of self-existence, and thus not ultimately real" (78).
"Live
without making visits / die neither kind nor just / words include limbs
and leaves / thoughts contain lies and betrayals / people who clear a
small path / thereby give rise to great deceit / claiming to build a
ladder to the clouds / they whittle it into splinters" (Cold Mountain
189).
"The whole Buddhist canon is worthless old paper / seventeen
hundred tangled vines / who can see through the mess / one thought is
still too many" (Stonehouse 132).
"Letting go means letting
everything go / buddhahood has to go too / each thought becomes a demon /
each word invites more trouble / survive instead on what karma brings /
pass your days in freedom / make the Dharma your practice / lead your
ox to the mill" (Stonehouse 181). Bill Porter's comment: "Buddhists
recognize an infinite number of demons, or maras, one for every thought,
word, and deed. The purpose of these demons is to obstruct us from
understanding the true nature of reality. Dharma is the
Buddhist word for what is held to be real, especially the Buddha's
teaching. As early as the T'ang and Sung dynasties, Chinese monks used
the ox as a metaphor for the untamed mind" (196).
"People ask the
way to Cold Mountain / but roads don't reach Cold Mountain / in summer
the ice doesn't melt / and the morning fog is too dense / how did
someone like me arrive / our minds are not the same / if they were the
same / you would be here" (Cold Mountain 16).
"Before the cliffs I
sat alone / the moon shone in the sky / but where a thousand shapes
appeared / its lantern cast no light / the unobstructed spirit is clear /
the empty cave is a mystery / a finger showed me the moon / the moon is
the hub of the mind" (Cold Mountain 10).
"Born thirty years ago /
I've traveled countless miles / along rivers where the green rushes
swayed / to the frontier where the red dust swirled / I've made elixirs
and tried to become immortal / I've read the classics and written odes /
and now I've retired to Cold Mountain to lie in a stream and wash out
my ears" (Cold Mountain 131).
"I have a single cave / a cave with
nothing inside / spacious and devoid of dust / full of light that always
shines / a meal of plants feeds a frail body / a cloth robe masks a
mirage / let your thousand sages appear / I have the primordial Buddha"
(Cold Mountain 163).
"Pole your three-winged galleons / ride your thousand-mile stallions / you still won't reach my home / it's called the darkest wild
/ my cave is on a distant ridge / clouds and thunder last all day / I'm
not Master Confucius / I have nothing to convey [var: teach]" (Cold
Mountain 29).
"The Dharma realized and taught by the Tathagatha is
incomprehensible and inexpressible. It is neither a dharma, nor is it
not a dharma" (Diamond Sutra 7).
"Parrots live in western lands /
hunters bring them back in nets / courtesans tease them dawn to dusk /
somewhere behind palace curtains / they're given a golden cage / but
locked away their plumage fades / not like the wild geese and swans /
flying up in the clouds" (Cold Mountain 19).
"People search for
cloud roads / but cloud roads can't be found / the peaks are high and
sheer / the streams are wide and dark / ridges rise in front and back /
clouds stretch east and west / I'll tell you where cloud roads are /
Cloud roads are in space" (Cold Mountain 255).
"I longed to visit
the eastern cliff / countless years until today / I finally grabbed a
vine and climbed / but halfway there met mist and wind / the trail was
too narrow for clothes / the moss too slick for shoes / I stopped
beneath this cinnamon tree / and slept with a cloud for a pillow" (Cold
Mountain 9).
"One bottle is cast in gold / another is moulded from
clay / take a look at these two / which is bound to endure / knowing
these bottles differ / surely you know that karma does too / examine the
seeds of rebirth / cultivation begins today" (Cold Mountain 190).
"I
saw some trees by the river / more weathered than I can describe / a
couple of trunks remained / with thousands of ax-blade scars / their dry
yellow leaves had been stripped by the frost / their rotten hearts
battered by waves / but this is how habitats are / why blame Heaven and
Earth" (Cold Mountain 198).
"Heaven and Earth are heartless /
treating creatures like straw dogs / sages are heartless too / they
treat people like straw dogs / between Heaven and Earth / how like a
bellows / empty but inexhaustible / each stroke produces more / talking
only wastes it / better to protect what's inside" (Lao-tzu 5). Su Ch'e:
"Heaven and Earth aren't partial. They don't kill living things out of
cruelty or give birth to them out of kindness. We do the same when we
make straw dogs to use in sacrifices. We dress them up and put them on
the altar, but not because we love them. And when the ceremony is
over, we throw them into the street, but not because we hate them. This
is how sages treat the people."
"A state relies on people / just
as a tree depends on soil / if the soil is deep it thrives / if the soil
is thin it withers / and if its roots are exposed / its limbs produce
no fruit / draining a pond to catch fish / gains only a short-term
profit" (Cold Mountain 222).
"True emptiness is clear and always
present / masked by delusions for reasons we don't know / how could what
is real and what is fake exist apart / flowers bloom and flowers fall
when the spring wind blows" (Stonehouse 92).
"Calligraphy
unrestrained / physique robust enough / alive a body with limits / dead a
ghost with no name / it's been like this since ancient times / what
else can you do / join me inside the clouds / I'll teach you magic
mushroom songs" (Cold Mountain 25).
Monday, June 8, 2015
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Letter to a Loser
Salve! Hearing of your recent misfortune (the job you lost,
the class you failed, the savings you burned in a hedge fund, etc.), I
decided to be kind and compose this letter. Rather than commiserate
with you in the usual maudlin fashion (which certainly has its place), I
am going to be frank--for we are very good friends, and I honor our
friendship.
I am very happy that Fortune has denied your bid to check out on life. Over the last few years, I have watched you slowly disintegrate, breaking yourself into pieces (public and private, polished and rough, good and bad) and hawking those pieces in the marketplace. Up until this moment, you always found a buyer for something, and so you kept excavating--kept digging that hole in your heart a little deeper, searching desperately among your entrails for shiny things to polish and feed to the market. You felt very nervous about this process, clearly, and there were times when you thought about cashing out--taking a break, doing something else, finding a way to exist that didn't involve betting your livelihood on people's finicky taste for whatever shit you could scrounge to offer them. You said you would take that break if Opportunity knocked. Well, she is knocking now--very loudly.
Listen to what she says. "Look, buddy, I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to cut through all the bullshit everyone else in this marketplace will give you--about how you're a wonderful person with some impressive skills and you just have to try harder next time, blah blah--and tell you the truth. Being a prostitute is no good if you have to beg for clientele. Trust me on this one: the clients you want are the ones who come begging to you, not the other way round. Never give your soul to any of the vultures here. Don't go into a job interview you must ace. Don't take a class you cannot fail. Don't bet any money you cannot lose on a hedge fund. That divine fire that people rave about? Those 'impressive skills' you spend so much time honing? At some point these gifts turn against you, becoming the weapons the market uses to destroy you rather than the tools you use to better yourself. Have you reached that point yet?"
"People are weak, and the Market makes some of you weaker. It pretends to love you, to want you, to need you, to value you, and so on. The wise among you know that it is lying, that what it really wants is something impersonal (some quality or value that exists independent of individual personae such as you). The Market is secretly very happy when there are too many people vying for its limited favors (that will always be limited, by nature): the issue of a room full of eager prostitutes is that the Market always gets well laid, but it cannot sleep with everyone. It cannot love everyone. It cannot make everyone its special one-and-only. What it can do is lie. The wise are not hurt by its lies, because they have learned not to make their livelihood at the Market. They are available to take the Market's favors, but they do not require them (as you do). They are not dependent on the Market (as you are, right now). The Market is only really good for people who do not need to be there. Become one of those people. Until then, stay away from the Market: it will always break you more than it makes you."
Where am I to go? is naturally your next question. You need a larger perspective than the one you have right now--the close-minded perspective of the narrow Market you have been courting in vain. Your Market was too little for you, too small and specialized. You have to find a larger Market (one that allows you access to more clients, more needs, more opportunities to put yourself together without pulling yourself apart). You have to re-assess your persona. What do you really need to survive? Food? Clothing? Shelter? A community to which you can contribute something meaningful? There are many ways to have these things. Many poor people have them. Many losers. Be the loser you already are: just enjoy it more, and waste less time wishing you could find some other way to lose (e.g. the kind of loss that your petty little Market calls success).
Is it really true that there is no such thing as life without loss? I think this is true, for we are all mortal. That means everything we do leads eventually to death (at least as a way-station: even those who embrace immortality do so by making death a gateway gods must pass). You must learn to love loss, to love yourself as a loser. You must see that losing contains valuable information, particularly when it is mitigated loss (rather than the total loss you have encountered recently). Success is a dream, a lie, a fairy-tale that unscrupulous Markets sell to prostitutes that they want to have on the cheap. It weakens those who pursue it, because they fail to learn from their own loss, and it weakens those who gain it, because they fail to learn from others' loss (and see a false security instead of the volatility that Nature makes).
Since you must lose, make yours a beautiful loss. Don't lose someone else's game. Don't let the Market define your loss. Lose your own way, doing something you believe in. Instead of cutting yourself apart in desperate hope that someone else will love your guts, cut yourself apart because you already love them. The best loser is the one who loses his own game, on terms that he has made purposely for himself. Be that loser. Vale.
I am very happy that Fortune has denied your bid to check out on life. Over the last few years, I have watched you slowly disintegrate, breaking yourself into pieces (public and private, polished and rough, good and bad) and hawking those pieces in the marketplace. Up until this moment, you always found a buyer for something, and so you kept excavating--kept digging that hole in your heart a little deeper, searching desperately among your entrails for shiny things to polish and feed to the market. You felt very nervous about this process, clearly, and there were times when you thought about cashing out--taking a break, doing something else, finding a way to exist that didn't involve betting your livelihood on people's finicky taste for whatever shit you could scrounge to offer them. You said you would take that break if Opportunity knocked. Well, she is knocking now--very loudly.
Listen to what she says. "Look, buddy, I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to cut through all the bullshit everyone else in this marketplace will give you--about how you're a wonderful person with some impressive skills and you just have to try harder next time, blah blah--and tell you the truth. Being a prostitute is no good if you have to beg for clientele. Trust me on this one: the clients you want are the ones who come begging to you, not the other way round. Never give your soul to any of the vultures here. Don't go into a job interview you must ace. Don't take a class you cannot fail. Don't bet any money you cannot lose on a hedge fund. That divine fire that people rave about? Those 'impressive skills' you spend so much time honing? At some point these gifts turn against you, becoming the weapons the market uses to destroy you rather than the tools you use to better yourself. Have you reached that point yet?"
"People are weak, and the Market makes some of you weaker. It pretends to love you, to want you, to need you, to value you, and so on. The wise among you know that it is lying, that what it really wants is something impersonal (some quality or value that exists independent of individual personae such as you). The Market is secretly very happy when there are too many people vying for its limited favors (that will always be limited, by nature): the issue of a room full of eager prostitutes is that the Market always gets well laid, but it cannot sleep with everyone. It cannot love everyone. It cannot make everyone its special one-and-only. What it can do is lie. The wise are not hurt by its lies, because they have learned not to make their livelihood at the Market. They are available to take the Market's favors, but they do not require them (as you do). They are not dependent on the Market (as you are, right now). The Market is only really good for people who do not need to be there. Become one of those people. Until then, stay away from the Market: it will always break you more than it makes you."
Where am I to go? is naturally your next question. You need a larger perspective than the one you have right now--the close-minded perspective of the narrow Market you have been courting in vain. Your Market was too little for you, too small and specialized. You have to find a larger Market (one that allows you access to more clients, more needs, more opportunities to put yourself together without pulling yourself apart). You have to re-assess your persona. What do you really need to survive? Food? Clothing? Shelter? A community to which you can contribute something meaningful? There are many ways to have these things. Many poor people have them. Many losers. Be the loser you already are: just enjoy it more, and waste less time wishing you could find some other way to lose (e.g. the kind of loss that your petty little Market calls success).
Is it really true that there is no such thing as life without loss? I think this is true, for we are all mortal. That means everything we do leads eventually to death (at least as a way-station: even those who embrace immortality do so by making death a gateway gods must pass). You must learn to love loss, to love yourself as a loser. You must see that losing contains valuable information, particularly when it is mitigated loss (rather than the total loss you have encountered recently). Success is a dream, a lie, a fairy-tale that unscrupulous Markets sell to prostitutes that they want to have on the cheap. It weakens those who pursue it, because they fail to learn from their own loss, and it weakens those who gain it, because they fail to learn from others' loss (and see a false security instead of the volatility that Nature makes).
Since you must lose, make yours a beautiful loss. Don't lose someone else's game. Don't let the Market define your loss. Lose your own way, doing something you believe in. Instead of cutting yourself apart in desperate hope that someone else will love your guts, cut yourself apart because you already love them. The best loser is the one who loses his own game, on terms that he has made purposely for himself. Be that loser. Vale.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
The Opium of the People
A missionary-minded friend sent me a link to an evangelical Christian book discussing the Marxist dictum: "Religion is the sob of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world ... the opium of the people." I cracked the book and had some ideas of my own.
To me the title of this book--Opium or Truth?--begs an important question. In
what way is opium not truth? Regarding Marxism, I agree with Karl
Popper, who called it a modern humanitarian religion (which the
Bolsheviks and their ilk practised the way the Holy Inquisition
practised Christianity). So Marxism is just another kind of opium,
subject to the same accidents and afflictions that attend the brands it
aims to displace in the marketplace of ideas.
I
think the Daodejing is a better book for understanding the world, from
the perspective that Life (or God) has given me, than is the Bible.
That does not mean that I resent people reading the Bible (or similar
books), only that I don't personally find in it the deep meaning that
they do. I thought I found that meaning, for many years, but I kept
searching the world and experiencing new things--and at some point I
realized that the Bible is not the only or even the best guide for my
life.
My religion is not primarily about books or beliefs, in the end. Books and beliefs for me are just tools, means to enable a kind of existence that is bigger than they are, that includes more things. I need some connection to people, people who don't live on the other side of the world (or in an office building I can never visit in Salt Lake City). I need some connection to the non-human environment around me that I can believe in (as I cannot believe in the gods I meet in the Old and New Testaments, the way these are commonly interpreted). I need friends, nature, and service.
My religion is not primarily about books or beliefs, in the end. Books and beliefs for me are just tools, means to enable a kind of existence that is bigger than they are, that includes more things. I need some connection to people, people who don't live on the other side of the world (or in an office building I can never visit in Salt Lake City). I need some connection to the non-human environment around me that I can believe in (as I cannot believe in the gods I meet in the Old and New Testaments, the way these are commonly interpreted). I need friends, nature, and service.
The
Bible does not offer me any of that. In fact, it seems to take that
away, when churches founded around it want to spend all their time
talking about the Bible, instead of living what I see as a holy life. I
understand Jesus differently today than I once did. I think his
message was likely a bit different from what many people seem to think.
He did not write anything. He did not command people to write. He
came to fulfil the Law: so why are we still reading it? The Old
Testament is done, gone, a curio--no different to Christ, in my mind,
than the Epic of Gilgamesh. The New Testament is not really much
better: somewhere in the midst of miracle tales, sectarian rants, and
pseudo-philosophical speculation (not to mention the straight-up
insanity known as the Book of Revelation: that is some strong opium
there, maybe LSD), the basic Christian message of universal love and
political renunciation ("my kingdom is not of this world") gets buried
and lost, so lost that hardly anyone finds it (especially not the people
who spend their entire lives bloviating about the secret meaning of the
impossible riddles we find in Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, or the Book of
Revelation).
I
know you love the Bible. It allows you to build a coherent life, one
in which you get some kind of regular access to whatever it is that you
need to be a good person (relating well to God, to yourself, and to the
rest of us). That is great. Not all of us can have that the same way.
I don't want to take your life away and replace it with mine. I am not
sure that reading the Daodejing would improve your life. I don't know
precisely what it is that you need to live well. I leave the
negotiation of that problem to you and God (without any definitive idea
myself of what that means: deity is a mystery for me, a mystery that
people don't understand--especially not when they think it is clearly
visible in some book like the Bible). I rejoice when you are happy in
your religion. I am sad when you are sad. I am here to help you in any
way I can. But I cannot share your faith anymore than I can share your
mind or body. We are not the same--similar though we might be, much as
we might share (in terms of inheritance, of culture, of history and
experience).
We don't all react the same way to the same opium. When the truth sets us free, we don't all use our freedom the same way, to do the same things. This too is part of the mystery we call God.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Commentary on Sex
A friend pointed me to this article, which inspired a small rant on sex.
Good
grief. I simply don't understand the "sex is violence" meme. That is
not how I see it--and I find those experiences, all vicarious for me
since I have never been party to violent sex, the opposite of inspiring.
Unless the point was to make me want to avoid intercourse (and maybe
fight someone, or least punch something).
The
idea that one could have sex without any emotional hang-ups is
similarly ludicrous to me. I just don't get it. There is no way I find
myself in the position of not caring what happens to someone I know
that way. So I don't understand the "sex is meaningless fun" meme,
either. I do not think of myself as particularly prudish (though I
certainly was that way at one point in my life). Even when I was a
prude, that prudishness was something I aspired to apply primarily to
myself (sometimes pretty harshly) rather than to others (whom it was
never my place to judge). Getting married was very helpful when it came
to defeating the negative aspects of this prudishness where these
existed (primarily as reflections of self-loathing on my part); but that
did not make sex meaningless for me, something that didn't particularly
matter or connect me with other people (as people). More like the
opposite: I became more acutely aware that people matter, that one
cannot relate effectively to caricatures or stereotypes, that real
love-making is about building people rather than breaking them.
Breaking
people isn't even fun, from my perspective. If I were offered the
chance to have sex without natural consequences, without emotions--I
would not want it. The same way I wouldn't want to eat 'food products'
deprived of all their nutritious value. The prospect of being allowed
to eat meals of empty foodstuffs constantly (or ingest endless rounds of
cheap alcohol or another 'fun' drug) would not make me happy. I would not choose it. In the
same way, I would not choose to have sex without any emotional
consequences, without any kind of relationship existing outside the
particular expression of love that sex is. Eating one breakfast means
not eating another one, at some point. Making love with one person
means not making love to someone else. We cannot relate equally to all
human beings. We cannot love all alike (unless we deliberately isolate
ourselves from the kind of particular relationships that are familial,
becoming monks and nuns, who are often celibate--not because they are
prudes, but because they recognize the consequences of sex and seek to
avoid them, to cultivate goods that sex obviates or negates). I think
there are people for whom non-monogamy works better than it will work
for others. But even these folks must recognize some limits, some
boundaries beyond which they do not pass--unless they want to dissolve
their relationships (and that will be hard, often really devastating,
even if the relationship in question is a bad one).
We
used to advise people to "think of the children" when letting their
romantic fancies roam. We might also advise them to think of their
spouse(s), who will always have (strong) feelings about the integrity of
their relationship. We might even advise them to think of themselves,
as beings incapable of transcending the need for human companionship
that is more than momentary, that has more than sex to sustain it. To
me it seems that the fetishization of sex, its reduction to the most
important activity in romantic relationships, has impaired our ability
(collectively anyway) to recognize that other things are at least as
important, that sex without those things is not really worth much.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Why Do Wealth and Peace Exist?
A friend asked this question, and I wrote an answer.
Wealth exists because we invented agriculture, which gave us year-round access to stores of food from which some people can exclude others. This is why poverty exists, too, incidentally. I see wealth and poverty as two aspects of the same thing: scarcity. Foraging societies (like the Hadza in Africa) don't have the artificial scarcity that we civilized folk have, because every individual (including even fairly small children) knows how to go out into the bush and get food, shelter, and friendship (the basics we all need for survival: they don't call this wealth; it is simply life).
Peace exists when depopulation (from disease, famine, or war) gives agricultural societies breathing space to grow their wealth without having to protect it from other people. I see peace and war as fundamentally the same thing, complementary expressions of agricultural demographics. When foraging societies settle down to live in villages and cities, they become more fertile (producing more people in less time: this is peace--e.g. the Ara Pacis in ancient Rome, with pictures of motherhood on it). More humans (the outcome of greater fertility) means we need more stuff (wealth). Since we are sedentary and can only get wealth by access to land that we own (fence and work extensively)--we have to go out of our native habitat (overcrowded and overworked as it is) and occupy other land (virgin land). Eventually, we encounter other people--and the outcome of that meeting becomes war (not just the feuds of individual hunters and clans, which transcend agricultural society, but the organized genocide that is civilized war: we don't want mere revenge or justice or whatever; we want your land, and its wealth).
Mercantilism and colonialism (or in their latest guise, globalization) allow us to enjoy peace and war, poverty and wealth, simultaneously. I send troops to Peter's land to take it or its wealth for me, and then sell that wealth on a "free" market to Paul, who has no idea that his diamonds come from the death of child-soldiers abroad. Poverty and war are outsourced to the frontier of civilization, so that the rich urban center can enjoy wealth and peace. To quote one of my favorite historians on the essence of peace: Auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
In sum: wealth and peace exist because somewhere someone died (often miserably and involuntarily, sometimes voluntarily or otherwise nobly).
Wealth exists because we invented agriculture, which gave us year-round access to stores of food from which some people can exclude others. This is why poverty exists, too, incidentally. I see wealth and poverty as two aspects of the same thing: scarcity. Foraging societies (like the Hadza in Africa) don't have the artificial scarcity that we civilized folk have, because every individual (including even fairly small children) knows how to go out into the bush and get food, shelter, and friendship (the basics we all need for survival: they don't call this wealth; it is simply life).
Peace exists when depopulation (from disease, famine, or war) gives agricultural societies breathing space to grow their wealth without having to protect it from other people. I see peace and war as fundamentally the same thing, complementary expressions of agricultural demographics. When foraging societies settle down to live in villages and cities, they become more fertile (producing more people in less time: this is peace--e.g. the Ara Pacis in ancient Rome, with pictures of motherhood on it). More humans (the outcome of greater fertility) means we need more stuff (wealth). Since we are sedentary and can only get wealth by access to land that we own (fence and work extensively)--we have to go out of our native habitat (overcrowded and overworked as it is) and occupy other land (virgin land). Eventually, we encounter other people--and the outcome of that meeting becomes war (not just the feuds of individual hunters and clans, which transcend agricultural society, but the organized genocide that is civilized war: we don't want mere revenge or justice or whatever; we want your land, and its wealth).
Mercantilism and colonialism (or in their latest guise, globalization) allow us to enjoy peace and war, poverty and wealth, simultaneously. I send troops to Peter's land to take it or its wealth for me, and then sell that wealth on a "free" market to Paul, who has no idea that his diamonds come from the death of child-soldiers abroad. Poverty and war are outsourced to the frontier of civilization, so that the rich urban center can enjoy wealth and peace. To quote one of my favorite historians on the essence of peace: Auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
In sum: wealth and peace exist because somewhere someone died (often miserably and involuntarily, sometimes voluntarily or otherwise nobly).
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Back to Nature
Why do so many body-builders and strength athletes die relatively young? In response to this question, whose empirical validity I am not concerned to question right now (but witness this), I offer the following meditation.
Keith Norris has written eloquently somewhere about the empirical reality that survival and performance become increasingly separate and even opposite goals as you reach the limits of human capacity for exertion. At some point, exerting more now means trading in longevity. I cannot go full-blast all the time, or most of the time, without burning my chronological candle down faster than I would otherwise.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that civilization teaches us to avoid "down time" in the name of achieving more. The elite athlete aims not to live long and happy, as an athlete, but to achieve something extraordinary with his (or her) body. There is no such thing as "resting on one's laurels" (as always happens in foraging societies: a big kill or brush with death is followed by a lot of napping and doing nothing, except maybe eating). The result of civilization's lack of contentment with survival is that we approach athleticism (especially the elite kind) as work, as a job. We seek short-term profits (big achievements) at the expense of longevity. When we go, we go full-bore (and burn really bright before going out early). When we stop (retiring with some career-ending injury or accumulation of injuries), we quit entirely. The forager works hard, yes, but he also rests hard. He cannot stop, unless he wants to die, and his life-rhythm is very different from the "all or nothing, win or lose" pace set by elite athletes.
Civilization seems to represent a kind of ongoing fragmentation in humanity whereby accidental strengths--and their concomitant weaknesses--are allowed an exaggerated expression. If I am predisposed to be very quick and strong, then civilization offers me the leisure to become an extreme phenotype. If I am predisposed to be mentally agile, then civilization offers me the leisure to become an extreme phenotype. The viability of extreme phenotypes is always less in nature than in civilization, and even in the latter we observe that extremity is often associated with early mortality (and other material handicaps: I am thinking in particular of purebred dogs here, as well as humans; one could also think of domestic sheep and cattle, which offer their human masters more milk, flesh, and wool at the expense of being too stupid and fat to survive without supervision).
'Uncivilisation' as a corrective to the extremities that civilization increasingly pushes requires some 'return to the mean' where physical and mental activity is concerned. If humans want to avoid dying early and prematurely crippled in some facet of their phenotype, they need to return to a life more like that of their ancestors--a life that offers them unstructured time for recuperation from strenuous labor. We need strenuous labor. But we also need rest. And we need both, the labor and the rest, to take place in environments less structured than the boxes constructed by civilization (the job site, the gym, the university). We need to return to nature, to learn again how to work and rest under the sun, moon, and stars. We need to learn the rhythms of nature outside in addition to the rhythms of our own internal humanity.
Keith Norris has written eloquently somewhere about the empirical reality that survival and performance become increasingly separate and even opposite goals as you reach the limits of human capacity for exertion. At some point, exerting more now means trading in longevity. I cannot go full-blast all the time, or most of the time, without burning my chronological candle down faster than I would otherwise.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that civilization teaches us to avoid "down time" in the name of achieving more. The elite athlete aims not to live long and happy, as an athlete, but to achieve something extraordinary with his (or her) body. There is no such thing as "resting on one's laurels" (as always happens in foraging societies: a big kill or brush with death is followed by a lot of napping and doing nothing, except maybe eating). The result of civilization's lack of contentment with survival is that we approach athleticism (especially the elite kind) as work, as a job. We seek short-term profits (big achievements) at the expense of longevity. When we go, we go full-bore (and burn really bright before going out early). When we stop (retiring with some career-ending injury or accumulation of injuries), we quit entirely. The forager works hard, yes, but he also rests hard. He cannot stop, unless he wants to die, and his life-rhythm is very different from the "all or nothing, win or lose" pace set by elite athletes.
Civilization seems to represent a kind of ongoing fragmentation in humanity whereby accidental strengths--and their concomitant weaknesses--are allowed an exaggerated expression. If I am predisposed to be very quick and strong, then civilization offers me the leisure to become an extreme phenotype. If I am predisposed to be mentally agile, then civilization offers me the leisure to become an extreme phenotype. The viability of extreme phenotypes is always less in nature than in civilization, and even in the latter we observe that extremity is often associated with early mortality (and other material handicaps: I am thinking in particular of purebred dogs here, as well as humans; one could also think of domestic sheep and cattle, which offer their human masters more milk, flesh, and wool at the expense of being too stupid and fat to survive without supervision).
'Uncivilisation' as a corrective to the extremities that civilization increasingly pushes requires some 'return to the mean' where physical and mental activity is concerned. If humans want to avoid dying early and prematurely crippled in some facet of their phenotype, they need to return to a life more like that of their ancestors--a life that offers them unstructured time for recuperation from strenuous labor. We need strenuous labor. But we also need rest. And we need both, the labor and the rest, to take place in environments less structured than the boxes constructed by civilization (the job site, the gym, the university). We need to return to nature, to learn again how to work and rest under the sun, moon, and stars. We need to learn the rhythms of nature outside in addition to the rhythms of our own internal humanity.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Real Education
The
power of degrees to draw salaries wanes as more people obtain degrees:
this is one viable lesson that they still teach in economics, though
many PhDs seem to have missed it (or to think that creative mathematics
can make it disappear, more or less the same way astrology used to
correct character flaws).
What matters more than "education" is the right kind of education (i.e. training in a viable, sustainable method of living). Given our current circumstances, this sort of education is really unpopular: it does not put money or influence or raw power into the hands of established interests (who consequently found few institutions to teach it, endow few scholarships or professorships to facilitate it, and use whatever political and social clout they possess generally to mock and undermine it). The right kind of education requires a student able to imagine living a life unlike that of his parents (or the rich people of his parents' generation, whose mores he is constantly bombarded with as desirable insofar as they make him easier for established interests to manipulate--via debts, social obligations, and desire for "nice things" made in a sweatshop somewhere). It requires radical freedom of thought--not the kind of regimented bean-counting that stops short of articulating any idea remotely threatening to established interests (who understandably position themselves as pillars of social and political and economic stability, even as history reveals that they are built upon sand that is shifting as we speak).
Real education involves living, not just thinking. It cannot come from a classroom, not even when that classroom has been outfitted with all the best technology that a committee of experts can imagine and acquire. Real education teaches us how to adapt and survive along an entire lifetime--and beyond. (One utility of studying history is that it reminds you of a time when people didn't think in terms of single generations, let alone market and election cycles measured in terms of a few months or years.) Real education does not teach us how to get and maintain jobs in a narrow market defined by scarcity and fragility. It teaches us how to maximize independence rather than servility. It costs a lot in terms of effort, and little in terms of cash (the reverse of many degrees offered by modern universities). It incentivizes process over completion, independence over employment, integrity over profit, and virtuous failure over depraved success.
What matters more than "education" is the right kind of education (i.e. training in a viable, sustainable method of living). Given our current circumstances, this sort of education is really unpopular: it does not put money or influence or raw power into the hands of established interests (who consequently found few institutions to teach it, endow few scholarships or professorships to facilitate it, and use whatever political and social clout they possess generally to mock and undermine it). The right kind of education requires a student able to imagine living a life unlike that of his parents (or the rich people of his parents' generation, whose mores he is constantly bombarded with as desirable insofar as they make him easier for established interests to manipulate--via debts, social obligations, and desire for "nice things" made in a sweatshop somewhere). It requires radical freedom of thought--not the kind of regimented bean-counting that stops short of articulating any idea remotely threatening to established interests (who understandably position themselves as pillars of social and political and economic stability, even as history reveals that they are built upon sand that is shifting as we speak).
Real education involves living, not just thinking. It cannot come from a classroom, not even when that classroom has been outfitted with all the best technology that a committee of experts can imagine and acquire. Real education teaches us how to adapt and survive along an entire lifetime--and beyond. (One utility of studying history is that it reminds you of a time when people didn't think in terms of single generations, let alone market and election cycles measured in terms of a few months or years.) Real education does not teach us how to get and maintain jobs in a narrow market defined by scarcity and fragility. It teaches us how to maximize independence rather than servility. It costs a lot in terms of effort, and little in terms of cash (the reverse of many degrees offered by modern universities). It incentivizes process over completion, independence over employment, integrity over profit, and virtuous failure over depraved success.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
The Coming Age of Bust
If
capitalism is the pursuit of monopoly, then I must be anti-capitalist.
The question is how to do this. How to offer meaningful opposition to
something so ubiquitous as the pursuit of zero-sum games in which
winners embrace unlimited growth. This is not easy. I suspect it
involves re-imagining what constitutes wealth (in ways that people who
think like Peter Thiel will find ludicrous, perhaps dangerously ludicrous as
they realize that my intent is to become less involved and less
susceptible to involvement in business that will make them richer, on
their own terms). The current, integrated economy needs to shrink, so
that smaller, decentralized economies can become larger (but not too large, never again as large as the system we have now). The immediate
outcome of this will be economic depression and conventional poverty
("austerity"), but I think the long-term prognosis is better for people
who know how to live well with less than for people who think the
solution to all economic woes is more of Keynesian stimulus
(administered by public or private powers that be, via "free markets"
rigged by monopolists on the Right or "fair markets" rigged by
monopolists on the Left).
I do not think that there is such a thing as reforming Wall Street or Washington, if by that we mean making them serve their current populations in such a way that our conventional wealth increases without limits. I think the current system is running pretty close to optimal (as close to perfect as it gets without crashing prematurely), and that it is over-taxed (set to blow, with the real question being one of how to manage fallout rather than how to avoid crashing). Life exists, it seems to me, as a series of boom and bust, with the volatility occurring in less devastating fashion as society depends less on any one market (or regime) to serve its needs. We need more markets, not better versions of the ones we already have. We need more businesses, not better monopolies than the ones we already have. We need more (and smaller) governments, not a bigger or better version of the one we already have. In light of the economic depression that is clear on our horizon, we also need plans for living well with less (less wealth in the conventional sense: less growth, lower wages, fewer luxuries, weaker businesses, less taxes, weaker governments, etc.). The boom is over; now is the time of bust. If we manage the bust correctly, it might be a good time for us. We might come out on the other side alive, with a better appreciation for what it means to be wealthy in really straitened economic circumstances. We might have more control over our own destinies (in material terms) than our richer grandparents (who were able to out-source production to social conglomerates whose existence we can no longer support). Or we might be like those people on the side of the road out of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That is not what I want. I do not want to hang about as the hurricane approaches, praying that the crumbling levee holds. I want to build a boat ahead of the storm, or pack whatever vehicle I have, and move out--with the idea of making new worlds, new societies with mores and expectations that match our new human environment.
I do not think that there is such a thing as reforming Wall Street or Washington, if by that we mean making them serve their current populations in such a way that our conventional wealth increases without limits. I think the current system is running pretty close to optimal (as close to perfect as it gets without crashing prematurely), and that it is over-taxed (set to blow, with the real question being one of how to manage fallout rather than how to avoid crashing). Life exists, it seems to me, as a series of boom and bust, with the volatility occurring in less devastating fashion as society depends less on any one market (or regime) to serve its needs. We need more markets, not better versions of the ones we already have. We need more businesses, not better monopolies than the ones we already have. We need more (and smaller) governments, not a bigger or better version of the one we already have. In light of the economic depression that is clear on our horizon, we also need plans for living well with less (less wealth in the conventional sense: less growth, lower wages, fewer luxuries, weaker businesses, less taxes, weaker governments, etc.). The boom is over; now is the time of bust. If we manage the bust correctly, it might be a good time for us. We might come out on the other side alive, with a better appreciation for what it means to be wealthy in really straitened economic circumstances. We might have more control over our own destinies (in material terms) than our richer grandparents (who were able to out-source production to social conglomerates whose existence we can no longer support). Or we might be like those people on the side of the road out of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That is not what I want. I do not want to hang about as the hurricane approaches, praying that the crumbling levee holds. I want to build a boat ahead of the storm, or pack whatever vehicle I have, and move out--with the idea of making new worlds, new societies with mores and expectations that match our new human environment.
Holy Mirth
Some thoughts inspired by the recent slaughter of French cartoonists responsible for the comic Charlie Hebdo, a slaughter perpetuated by Muslim extremists angered by the comic's crude mockery of Islam.
When I put myself in the public sphere, with an agenda that I want you to accept (or at least grapple with in some way), then I become fair game for ridicule.
When I was younger, I served an LDS (Mormon) mission to northern Spain. As a result of being out and about talking to people regarding religion, their own and mine (which I was available to offer those who wanted it), I was fair game for ridicule--and I was ridiculed. While this experience was not always pleasant, I think it was valuable--and I did my best (succeeding for the most part, I hope) to "roll with the punches" (which I knew that my position invited, and even required). I learned that people often use humor to facilitate friendly relations with outsiders whom they might otherwise hate (and perhaps physically injure, even to the point of death). I would much rather be mocked than beaten (let alone killed). But we do not all tolerate mockery the same way. I think we learn to deal with it better, as a population, when we must endure it without the means of an escalating retaliation: as a Mormon missionary, I had neither the friends, the time, nor the resources to plan a violent strike against the people who mocked me (some kindly, some viciously, all with some kind of moral justification that I respected and still respect). I might go home and cry, or get mad on the street and make some aggressive gestures, but there was no such thing as declaring war on society. (There really isn't for the jihadis, either. As a result of their activity in Paris, most of them are dead--right?--and more people will die. Even if society falls apart, the people of France are not going to rise up and convert to Islam en masse. Even if they did, they would promptly divide into separate Muslim factions--such as exist already in dar al-Islam--and commence hostilities with one another. If they were lucky, these hostilities would involve lots of mockery and little actual violence. If not, France becomes another Syria or Iraq.)
I think mockery is actually an important human art, a liberal art that people generally need more practice giving and receiving. The art of laughing at others without losing sight of one's own absurdity is really one of the most civilized--and civilizing--arts available to us. Too many people study how to laugh at others without learning to laugh at themselves. Too few among us are brave enough to face our own absurdity and laugh (instead of crying or becoming very angry and wanting to make someone else suffer because we appear weak, foolish, or stupid at some point--as we all do). Thus, when I teach humanities today in the classroom and tell my students, in a jesting tone, that I see my role as that of a professional clown, I am actually being serious. Seriously silly. I am teaching humanity to laugh, at itself and the world--to laugh and let the little things (a cartoon here, an insult there) go, without rancor.
When I put myself in the public sphere, with an agenda that I want you to accept (or at least grapple with in some way), then I become fair game for ridicule.
When I was younger, I served an LDS (Mormon) mission to northern Spain. As a result of being out and about talking to people regarding religion, their own and mine (which I was available to offer those who wanted it), I was fair game for ridicule--and I was ridiculed. While this experience was not always pleasant, I think it was valuable--and I did my best (succeeding for the most part, I hope) to "roll with the punches" (which I knew that my position invited, and even required). I learned that people often use humor to facilitate friendly relations with outsiders whom they might otherwise hate (and perhaps physically injure, even to the point of death). I would much rather be mocked than beaten (let alone killed). But we do not all tolerate mockery the same way. I think we learn to deal with it better, as a population, when we must endure it without the means of an escalating retaliation: as a Mormon missionary, I had neither the friends, the time, nor the resources to plan a violent strike against the people who mocked me (some kindly, some viciously, all with some kind of moral justification that I respected and still respect). I might go home and cry, or get mad on the street and make some aggressive gestures, but there was no such thing as declaring war on society. (There really isn't for the jihadis, either. As a result of their activity in Paris, most of them are dead--right?--and more people will die. Even if society falls apart, the people of France are not going to rise up and convert to Islam en masse. Even if they did, they would promptly divide into separate Muslim factions--such as exist already in dar al-Islam--and commence hostilities with one another. If they were lucky, these hostilities would involve lots of mockery and little actual violence. If not, France becomes another Syria or Iraq.)
I think mockery is actually an important human art, a liberal art that people generally need more practice giving and receiving. The art of laughing at others without losing sight of one's own absurdity is really one of the most civilized--and civilizing--arts available to us. Too many people study how to laugh at others without learning to laugh at themselves. Too few among us are brave enough to face our own absurdity and laugh (instead of crying or becoming very angry and wanting to make someone else suffer because we appear weak, foolish, or stupid at some point--as we all do). Thus, when I teach humanities today in the classroom and tell my students, in a jesting tone, that I see my role as that of a professional clown, I am actually being serious. Seriously silly. I am teaching humanity to laugh, at itself and the world--to laugh and let the little things (a cartoon here, an insult there) go, without rancor.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Writing Books and Making Art
Some random thoughts inspired by this observation from Nassim Taleb (NNT): "For a book to survive at least decade, it should not be summarizable,
and if summarized, no two independent summaries should be alike" (posted to Facebook on 9 January 2015).
The quality of longevity is one that tends to belong (it seems to me) to books whose relevance to society exists outside the realm of summaries. People don't write summaries of romance novels, especially not of romance novels that they really like. They re-read them (for the experience, not the "information" that Jane was hot and Dick lived up to his name). People often compose summaries of books that they wish they did not have to read (e.g. many of the summaries I wrote for my dissertation)--so that they can refer to an argument without having to care or know too much about it. This kind of summary exists to facilitate lack of experience or engagement (with an idea that one does not really want). Another kind of summary exists to help synthesize what one knows about a book one loves (and this kind of summary is typically idiosyncratic, in keeping with NNT's heuristic: my retelling of the Iliad is not yours).
The deadest dead-wood literature out there is academic books like one I am currently reading on Herakles. It contains much valuable information, presented in such a fashion as to erase any valuable idiosyncratic perspective from the author (who speaks not for herself but for "the field" and writes not a monograph but an extended encyclopedia entry that might as well have been composed by a machine--as maybe one day it will). She writes summaries of her argument at the end of each chapter (like a bad dissertation), and makes each sentence with as little care as needed to convey the essential information (which is the only thing keeping my nose in the book, long enough to write my own summary and return it with hope that I never need to check it out again--not because the author is not a fascinating person, but because she barely exists as a meaningful voice in this book).
Why does an author write such a book as this? I don't know. I suspect that the academic culture ("one must write a book to get tenure ... and/or other nice things like reputation") is to blame. Of course we need people writing books (and making music, painting, building, designing, dreaming, etc.). But not all art is created equal. Most of it, in fact, is shit.
The really great art does more than merely convey information: it conveys what pseudo-Longinus (delightfully anonymous, as most literary critics should be) calls "the sublime" (an insight into the human condition that is at once universal, recognizable to a large population, and particular, arising from conscious awareness of human particularity, the individual perspective of a thoughtful author). Few works of art achieve this, and that is well: if it were easy, we would all do it, all the time. The pernicious aspect of cultures like the academic is their tendency to over-value production for its own sake, as though we might atone for failing to become the next Mozart by writing a bunch of shitty cantatas (or whatever) instead of taking whatever time we need to produce the best work of which we, particularly, are capable. I do not write music to become Mozart. I do not write books to become Nietzsche (though that is much more likely for me than becoming Mozart). I do not wrestle to become Cael Sanderson (or Alexander Karelin). I do not paint to become Picasso. I do what I do, I make whatever art I make, to express who I am--a quality and experience unique to me. If I never develop that quality, if I am so busy accumulating a curriculum vitae to impress tenure committees that I neglect my muse, then my work will only ever be shit. The only people who read academic shit, in my experience, are academics, and we mostly do it holding our noses (especially if we love literature). We grit our teeth and "shit out another book every year" (as one of my best profs in grad school said of a prolific scholar in my field) because that is how one obtains academic laurels--but these pitiful rewards (such as they are) are not really κλέος ἄφθιτον, not even when history conspires to make them endure for centuries (as the garrulous farrago of disjointed thought composed by Athenaeus of Naucratis, zum Beispiel). They are means to some end, not any end in themselves. Their significance to human experience is remote, and a better work might easily replace them (if only by offering a really good summary--one that keeps all the information artists want and omits the shitty facade).
The quality of longevity is one that tends to belong (it seems to me) to books whose relevance to society exists outside the realm of summaries. People don't write summaries of romance novels, especially not of romance novels that they really like. They re-read them (for the experience, not the "information" that Jane was hot and Dick lived up to his name). People often compose summaries of books that they wish they did not have to read (e.g. many of the summaries I wrote for my dissertation)--so that they can refer to an argument without having to care or know too much about it. This kind of summary exists to facilitate lack of experience or engagement (with an idea that one does not really want). Another kind of summary exists to help synthesize what one knows about a book one loves (and this kind of summary is typically idiosyncratic, in keeping with NNT's heuristic: my retelling of the Iliad is not yours).
The deadest dead-wood literature out there is academic books like one I am currently reading on Herakles. It contains much valuable information, presented in such a fashion as to erase any valuable idiosyncratic perspective from the author (who speaks not for herself but for "the field" and writes not a monograph but an extended encyclopedia entry that might as well have been composed by a machine--as maybe one day it will). She writes summaries of her argument at the end of each chapter (like a bad dissertation), and makes each sentence with as little care as needed to convey the essential information (which is the only thing keeping my nose in the book, long enough to write my own summary and return it with hope that I never need to check it out again--not because the author is not a fascinating person, but because she barely exists as a meaningful voice in this book).
Why does an author write such a book as this? I don't know. I suspect that the academic culture ("one must write a book to get tenure ... and/or other nice things like reputation") is to blame. Of course we need people writing books (and making music, painting, building, designing, dreaming, etc.). But not all art is created equal. Most of it, in fact, is shit.
The really great art does more than merely convey information: it conveys what pseudo-Longinus (delightfully anonymous, as most literary critics should be) calls "the sublime" (an insight into the human condition that is at once universal, recognizable to a large population, and particular, arising from conscious awareness of human particularity, the individual perspective of a thoughtful author). Few works of art achieve this, and that is well: if it were easy, we would all do it, all the time. The pernicious aspect of cultures like the academic is their tendency to over-value production for its own sake, as though we might atone for failing to become the next Mozart by writing a bunch of shitty cantatas (or whatever) instead of taking whatever time we need to produce the best work of which we, particularly, are capable. I do not write music to become Mozart. I do not write books to become Nietzsche (though that is much more likely for me than becoming Mozart). I do not wrestle to become Cael Sanderson (or Alexander Karelin). I do not paint to become Picasso. I do what I do, I make whatever art I make, to express who I am--a quality and experience unique to me. If I never develop that quality, if I am so busy accumulating a curriculum vitae to impress tenure committees that I neglect my muse, then my work will only ever be shit. The only people who read academic shit, in my experience, are academics, and we mostly do it holding our noses (especially if we love literature). We grit our teeth and "shit out another book every year" (as one of my best profs in grad school said of a prolific scholar in my field) because that is how one obtains academic laurels--but these pitiful rewards (such as they are) are not really κλέος ἄφθιτον, not even when history conspires to make them endure for centuries (as the garrulous farrago of disjointed thought composed by Athenaeus of Naucratis, zum Beispiel). They are means to some end, not any end in themselves. Their significance to human experience is remote, and a better work might easily replace them (if only by offering a really good summary--one that keeps all the information artists want and omits the shitty facade).
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