tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34863903956445790222024-03-13T17:57:05.405+03:00Youthful Follies"La salvaguardia della libertà delle nazioni non è la filosofia nè la ragione, come ora si pretende che queste debbano rigenerare le cose pubbliche, ma le virtù, le illusioni, l’entusiasmo, in somma la natura, dalla quale siamo lontanissimi." Giacomo Leopardi (1820).vacuus viatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07511253135488142808noreply@blogger.comBlogger224125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-12985957480166780922019-09-08T01:31:00.005+03:002019-09-08T01:31:59.408+03:00Moving on!For any who may still watch this space. I have left this blog behind to continue elsewhere: <<a href="http://caninalittera.blogspot.com/">caninalittera.blogspot.com</a>>. Cheers! --JGM.vacuus viatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07511253135488142808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-68618466667408165702018-10-04T18:04:00.005+03:002018-10-04T18:37:07.921+03:00Reflections on IdentityI have reflected much in recent years on what it means to work as an academic, to be a teacher. I think the most useful things I teach are not particularly or uniquely mine (languages, some great old poetry and culture that existed before me and will most likely endure after), and I don't want or need to be honored a great deal for them. A good historian, a good storyteller, has some place in decent society, I think, but trying to turn that place into a Distinguished Chair of Royal Astrology with free food for life and junkets around the world is not really ethical.<br />
<br />
Academics could use more humility, as a species. I am fortunate--or not, depending on your point of view--in that my own mediocrity and historical circumstance (coming up in a time when too many qualified teachers exist) combine to make humility necessary, and relatively easy, for me. I can enjoy delving as deep as I can into culture that I find fascinating, without the burden of climbing a career ladder that does not exist for me (chasing tenure via publishing and service work, i.e. too many meetings whose greatest accomplishment is to waste time).<br />
<br />
Some people seek a kind of personal identity from their career, an identity that tied their life up with being a certain kind of person. I started out in this manner, too, and naively thought that I could be a Mormon academic, i.e. that this identity was not only possible for me, but that it was good. Experience has shown me that I don't really want to be either a Mormon or an academic. If that is all that I am, if I get to the end of my life and can say only that I complied with some basic institutional protocols and had all my paperwork in order, then I will be profoundly sad. <br />
<br />
A good friend died recently, and I attended his funeral in a Mormon church (where he was an active member). While I really enjoyed learning more about his very interesting life (cut short too soon by a sudden heart attack), I found the bishop's sermon at the end quite disappointing--an empty series of cliches whose bearing on lived experience was so little that the meeting would have been better served had he chosen to remain silent (as indeed he threatened to do at the beginning of his remarks). This experience confirmed what the past has taught: I cannot go back to being a good Mormon. It just won't happen. I lack the ability to force myself into a headspace where I need to hear remarks like those uttered by this well-meaning bishop without rolling my eyes.<br />
<br />
When I first realized that I could not be a good Mormon, I thought perhaps to salvage my usefulness to society by being a good academic. My last decade working in the university has cooled me to that prospect. Most of the jobs I applied to fresh out of grad school are now jobs I would not want. Thank goodness I did not get most of them! While I really enjoy teaching, I have no illusions about being the gatekeeper to any knowledge required for human survival or thriving. Tuition is too expensive. The academic publishing industry is mostly a waste (to which I am grateful not to have contributed much as yet: when and if I do make something, it will never be required reading and I will never be offended that you haven't heard of it). The petty squabbles, the endless bureaucracy, the trading of favors, the snubbing and backbiting, the pretentious institutional claims to omniscience, etc.--all remind me vividly of the worst things I encountered in Mormon churches! I like sharing time with students looking at interesting culture. That we live in a moment wherein this activity affords me a small living is miraculous, a miracle that could always end at any time, and I would retire grateful, not shattered. <br />
<br />
So, where do I find my identity? I could look in many places, but the ones that suggest themselves to me are all smaller than established American institutions seem to want. I have no interest in becoming identified with a race or a political party or any other giant mob of people belching smoke about how great they are in some vast process whose workings are inscrutable unless you are Hegel or P. T. Barnum. I love my wife. That is something I identify with, consistently. I love my kids. I love my family--the people I grew up with, and those I have become related to over the years by marriage and other accidents. I love my friends, especially the friends I have who aren't forced to be with me because we work in the same industry or found ourselves enrolled on the records of the same megachurch. The people I have studied jiu-jitsu with are some of my closest adult friends, as many of my closest childhood friends were fellow students of taekwondo. A few Buddhists, too, and the occasional Mormon (in or out of the institutional church) have also shown me personal kindness and interest that I still appreciate. These people are all over every ideological spectrum anyone might construct. They have no single commitment to any one idea or institution that joins us. What I love is their character, as individuals, something that cannot be abstracted away into skill-sets (let alone replaced effectively by mere intelligence, artificial or otherwise). I want to help these people, to spend my life with them, to get better at the things we do together; beyond that, I have no interest. Saving the nation with my vote is as futile to me as saving political science with publication, or saving my soul with an appropriately stodgy ritual. As long as I can have people I trust around me, I don't mind so much how we live. The right people make living in tents--or shoddy, overpriced cardboard boxes like the one I am in right now--just fine. Constant access to electricity and water is nice, but we can even find ways to work around that (especially if we know our local history!). <br />
<br />
The real secret to life, I am starting to think, is finding good people and then doing what needs to be done to commit yourself to them, to become a member of some group you can respect that remains intimate enough to respect you back. Eventually, that respect turns to love. Wisdom teaches that I cannot reach the entire world with these goods: they require the kind of intimate, personal investment that will not be mass-produced, globally distributed, profitably monetized. Whatever nonsense the world at large is up to--in the courts, in the churches, in the universities, so many domains of petty gods who imagine they aren't the devil--it will never amount to anything I can love, ever again.kaleko txakurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13688107010682024374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-86662934187871860742015-06-08T19:01:00.000+03:002015-06-08T19:02:29.426+03:00Wilderness Inspiration<i>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). </i> <br />
<br />
"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. <i>Strom. </i>4.151).<br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
"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).<br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
"<span class="text Matt-8-19" id="en-KJV-23365">And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.</span><span class="text Matt-8-20" id="en-KJV-23366"><sup> </sup>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).</span><br />
<br />
"<span class="text Luke-17-20" id="en-KJV-25672">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:</span><span class="text Luke-17-21" id="en-KJV-25673"><sup> </sup>Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-21 KJV).<br /><br />"<span class="text John-18-36" id="en-KJV-26822">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).</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="text Luke-17-21" id="en-KJV-25673"><span class="text John-18-36" id="en-KJV-26822">"To be like the immortals / you need a mind as hard as iron" (Meng Chiao). </span></span><br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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. <i>Dharma</i> 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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"Pole your three-winged galleons / ride your thousand-mile stallions / you still won't reach my home / it's called <i>the darkest wild</i>
/ 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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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."<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).<br />
<br />
"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).kaleko txakurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13688107010682024374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-67384753874754525062015-05-14T21:00:00.002+03:002015-05-14T21:00:59.079+03:00Letter to a Loser<i>Salve! </i> 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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?"<br />
<br />
"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 <i>personae </i>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."<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Where am I to go?</i> 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 <i>persona</i>. 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 <i>success</i>).<br />
<br />
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).<br />
<br />
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. <i>Vale.</i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-41835675032416260772015-04-30T18:56:00.000+03:002015-04-30T19:14:39.383+03:00The Opium of the People<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_6733">
<i>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.</i></div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_6733">
<i> </i> </div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_6733">
To me the title of this book--<i>Opium or Truth?</i>--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. </div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_6906">
<br /></div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_8980">
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. <br />
<br />
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. </div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_11775">
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). </div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_6735">
<br /></div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_13873">
<span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_13872">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). </span></div>
<div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_17747">
<span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_13872"><br /></span></div>
<span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1430406625677_13872">If
I were to identify myself as a practising Christian, a thing which
could happen, I would not make the Bible central to my Christianity.
What appeals to me in Christianity is not the Bible, but the
renunciation of attachment--to the world and its ideas, including all
the worldly ideas in the Bible (which is a very worldly book, in my
experience, one that includes reading many books). I could see myself
becoming some kind of Orthodox (probably not Catholic) hermit, monk, or
recluse--retiring from life to pray, sing, and grow a nice garden
someplace remote, with a cave or cell I might inhabit peacefully (with
or without a Bible: I don't particularly care). At this point in my
life, this option is not really a good one. I have a family to look
after, and the Christian traditions that surround me are not really
friendly to contemplative approaches that eschew theology. Instead,
everyone wants to debate the Bible, to establish orthodoxy, to get the
sacraments right, to make the kingdom of heaven come down to earth so
that we can all see it the same way, in the same things. I really
dislike this vision of religion, of Christianity. It is not my
religion. It really never was, not even when I was a good Mormon. I
did not want to impose faith on people; I was not interested in
convincing or converting folks against their will. I just wanted to
understand myself better, myself and the mystery I know as God. That is
all I have ever wanted. I am still pursuing my quest; I have just left
behind the conviction that it must lead me to active affiliation with
religion that is not mine--with life whose integrity I cannot know and
embody for myself. <br /><br />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.</span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-25866092425084801542015-03-23T20:18:00.000+02:002015-03-23T20:20:02.079+02:00Commentary on Sex<i>A friend pointed me to <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/03/23/the_orgy_prude_how_i_finally_admitted_i_dont_like_meaningless_porn_star_sex/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow" target="_blank">this article</a>, which inspired a small rant on sex.</i><br />
<br />
<div data-contents="true" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0">
<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="c5qg6-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$c5qg6">
<span data-offset-key="c5qg6-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$c5qg6.0:$c5qg6-0-0"><span data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$c5qg6.0:$c5qg6-0-0.0">Good
grief. I simply don't understand the "sex is violence" meme. That is
not how I see it--and I find those experiences, all vicarious for me
since I have never been party to violent sex, the opposite of inspiring.
Unless the point was to make me want to avoid intercourse (and maybe
fight someone, or least punch something).</span></span></div>
<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="7cd68-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$7cd68">
<span data-offset-key="7cd68-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$7cd68.0:$7cd68-0-0"><br data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$7cd68.0:$7cd68-0-0.0" /></span></div>
<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="5mi3m-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$5mi3m">
<span data-offset-key="5mi3m-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$5mi3m.0:$5mi3m-0-0"><span data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$5mi3m.0:$5mi3m-0-0.0">The
idea that one could have sex without any emotional hang-ups is
similarly ludicrous to me. I just don't get it. There is no way I find
myself in the position of not caring what happens to someone I know
that way. So I don't understand the "sex is meaningless fun" meme,
either. I do not think of myself as particularly prudish (though I
certainly was that way at one point in my life). Even when I was a
prude, that prudishness was something I aspired to apply primarily to
myself (sometimes pretty harshly) rather than to others (whom it was
never my place to judge). Getting married was very helpful when it came
to defeating the negative aspects of this prudishness where these
existed (primarily as reflections of self-loathing on my part); but that
did not make sex meaningless for me, something that didn't particularly
matter or connect me with other people (as people). More like the
opposite: I became more acutely aware that people matter, that one
cannot relate effectively to caricatures or stereotypes, that real
love-making is about building people rather than breaking them. </span></span></div>
<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="dpkms-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$dpkms">
<span data-offset-key="dpkms-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$dpkms.0:$dpkms-0-0"><br data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$dpkms.0:$dpkms-0-0.0" /></span></div>
<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="35lpm-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$35lpm">
<span data-offset-key="35lpm-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$35lpm.0:$35lpm-0-0"><span data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$35lpm.0:$35lpm-0-0.0">Breaking
people isn't even fun, from my perspective. If I were offered the
chance to have sex without natural consequences, without emotions--I
would not want it. The same way I wouldn't want to eat 'food products'
deprived of all their nutritious value. The prospect of being allowed
to eat meals of empty foodstuffs constantly (or ingest endless rounds of
cheap alcohol or another 'fun' drug) would not make me happy. I would not choose it. In the
same way, I would not choose to have sex without any emotional
consequences, without any kind of relationship existing outside the
particular expression of love that sex is. Eating one breakfast means
not eating another one, at some point. Making love with one person
means not making love to someone else. We cannot relate equally to all
human beings. We cannot love all alike (unless we deliberately isolate
ourselves from the kind of particular relationships that are familial,
becoming monks and nuns, who are often celibate--not because they are
prudes, but because they recognize the consequences of sex and seek to
avoid them, to cultivate goods that sex obviates or negates). I think
there are people for whom non-monogamy works better than it will work
for others. But even these folks must recognize some limits, some
boundaries beyond which they do not pass--unless they want to dissolve
their relationships (and that will be hard, often really devastating,
even if the relationship in question is a bad one).</span></span></div>
<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="be7d4-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$be7d4">
<span data-offset-key="be7d4-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$be7d4.0:$be7d4-0-0"><br data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$be7d4.0:$be7d4-0-0.0" /></span></div>
<div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="f0qbk-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$f0qbk">
<span data-offset-key="f0qbk-0-0" data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$f0qbk.0:$f0qbk-0-0"><span data-reactid=".2.1:3:1:$comment821219107957436_821246967954650:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$f0qbk.0:$f0qbk-0-0.0">We
used to advise people to "think of the children" when letting their
romantic fancies roam. We might also advise them to think of their
spouse(s), who will always have (strong) feelings about the integrity of
their relationship. We might even advise them to think of themselves,
as beings incapable of transcending the need for human companionship
that is more than momentary, that has more than sex to sustain it. To
me it seems that the fetishization of sex, its reduction to the most
important activity in romantic relationships, has impaired our ability
(collectively anyway) to recognize that other things are at least as
important, that sex without those things is not really worth much.</span></span></div>
</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-79306850816204730402015-03-05T21:36:00.000+02:002015-03-05T21:38:11.829+02:00Why Do Wealth and Peace Exist?<i>A friend asked this question, and I wrote an answer.</i><br />
<br />
<span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">Wealth
exists because we invented agriculture, which gave us year-round access
to stores of food from which some people can exclude others. This is
why poverty exists, too, incidentally. I see wealth and poverty as two
aspects of the same thing: scar</span></span><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">city.
Foraging societies (like the Hadza in Africa) don't have the
artificial scarcity that we civilized folk have, because every
individual (including even fairly small children) knows how to go out
into the bush and get food, shelter, and friendship (the basics we all
need for survival: they don't call this wealth; it is simply life).</span><br data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808381759249680:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0">Peace
exists when depopulation (from disease, famine, or war) gives
agricultural societies breathing space to grow their wealth without
having to protect it from other people. I see peace and war as
fundamentally the same thing, complementary expressions of agricultural
demographics. When foraging societies settle down to live in villages
and cities, they become more fertile (producing more people in less
time: this is peace--e.g. the Ara Pacis in ancient Rome, with pictures
of motherhood on it). More humans (the outcome of greater fertility)
means we need more stuff (wealth). Since we are sedentary and can only
get wealth by access to land that we own (fence and work
extensively)--we have to go out of our native habitat (overcrowded and
overworked as it is) and occupy other land (virgin land). Eventually,
we encounter other people--and the outcome of that meeting becomes war
(not just the feuds of individual hunters and clans, which transcend
agricultural society, but the organized genocide that is civilized war:
we don't want mere revenge or justice or whatever; we want your land,
and its wealth).</span></span></span></span></span></span><i> </i><br />
<br />
<span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">Mercantilism
and colonialism (or in their latest guise, globalization) allow us to
enjoy peace and war, poverty and wealth, simultaneously. I send troops
to Peter's land to take it or its wealth for me, and then sell that
wealth on a "free" market to </span></span><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">Paul,
who has no idea that his diamonds come from the death of child-soldiers
abroad. Poverty and war are outsourced to the frontier of
civilization, so that the rich urban center can enjoy wealth and peace. </span><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808385045916018:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0">To
quote one of my favorite historians on the essence of peace: <i>Auferre,
trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem
faciunt, pacem appellant.</i></span></span></span></span></span></span><i> </i><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2d.1:3:1:$comment808289222592267_808387522582437:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">In sum: wealth and peace exist because somewhere someone died
(often miserably and involuntarily, sometimes voluntarily or otherwise
nobly).</span></span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-47766304979955578502015-01-29T21:43:00.000+02:002015-01-29T21:52:27.360+02:00Back to Nature<i>Why do so many body-builders and strength athletes die relatively young? In response to this question, whose empirical validity I am not concerned to question right now (but witness <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8450727" target="_blank">this</a>), I offer the following meditation.</i><span data-offset-key="alk71-0-0" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0.0"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="alk71-0-0" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0.0">Keith
Norris has written eloquently somewhere about the empirical reality that
survival and performance become increasingly separate and even opposite
goals as you reach the limits of human capacity for exertion. At some
point, exerting more now means trading in longevity. I cannot go full-blast all the time, or most of the time, without burning my
chronological candle down faster than I would otherwise. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="alk71-0-0" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0.0">Part of the problem, I suspect, is that civilization teaches us to
avoid "down time" in the name of achieving more. The elite athlete
aims not to live long and happy, as an athlete, but to achieve
something extraordinary with his (or her) body. There is no such thing
as "resting on one's laurels" (as always happens in foraging
societies: a big kill or brush with death is followed by a lot of
napping and doing nothing, except maybe eating). The result of
civilization's lack of contentment with survival is that we approach
athleticism (especially the elite kind) as work, as a job. We seek
short-term profits (big achievements) at the expense of longevity.
When we go, we go full-bore (and burn really bright before going out
early). When we stop (retiring with some career-ending injury or
accumulation of injuries), we quit entirely. The forager works hard,
yes, but he also rests hard. He cannot stop, unless he wants to die,
and his life-rhythm is very different from the "all or nothing, win or
lose" pace set by elite athletes. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="alk71-0-0" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0.0">Civilization seems to represent a kind of ongoing fragmentation in
humanity whereby accidental strengths--and their concomitant
weaknesses--are allowed an exaggerated expression. If I am predisposed
to be very quick and strong, then civilization offers me the leisure
to become an extreme phenotype. If I am predisposed to be mentally
agile, then civilization offers me the leisure to become an extreme
phenotype. The viability of extreme phenotypes is always less in
nature than in civilization, and even in the latter we observe that
extremity is often associated with early mortality (and other material
handicaps: I am thinking in particular of purebred dogs here, as well
as humans; one could also think of domestic sheep and cattle, which
offer their human masters more milk, flesh, and wool at the expense of
being too stupid and fat to survive without supervision). </span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="alk71-0-0" data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0"><span data-reactid=".e.1:3:1:$comment10153556565692598_10153557980192598:0.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.$alk71.0:$alk71-0-0.0">'Uncivilisation' as a corrective to the extremities that civilization
increasingly pushes requires some 'return to the mean' where physical
and mental activity is concerned. If humans want to avoid dying early
and prematurely crippled in some facet of their phenotype, they need to
return to a life more like that of their ancestors--a life that offers
them unstructured time for recuperation from strenuous labor. We need
strenuous labor. But we also need rest. And we need both, the labor
and the rest, to take place in environments less structured than the
boxes constructed by civilization (the job site, the gym, the
university). We need to return to nature, to learn again how to work
and rest under the sun, moon, and stars. We need to learn the rhythms
of nature outside in addition to the rhythms of our own internal
humanity.</span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-4041482946709988382015-01-20T21:32:00.000+02:002015-01-20T21:36:10.066+02:00Real Education<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">The
power of degrees to draw salaries wanes as more people obtain degrees:
this is one viable lesson that they still teach in economics, though
many PhDs seem to have missed it (or to think that creative mathematics
can make it disappear, more or less the same way astrology used to
correct character flaws).</span><br data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">What
matters more than "education" is the right kind of education (i.e.
training in a viable, sustainable method of living). Given our current
circumstances, this sort of education is really unpopular: it does not
put money or influence or raw power into the hands of established
interests (who consequently found few institutions to teach it, endow
few scholarships or professorships to facilitate it, and use whatever
political and social clout they possess generally to mock and undermine
it). The right kind of education requires a student able to imagine
living a life unlike that of his parents (or the rich people of his
parents' generation, whose mores he is constantly bombarded with as
desirable insofar as they make him easier for established interests to
manipulate--via debts, social obligations, and desire for "nice things"
made in a sweatshop somewhere). It requires radical freedom of
thought--not the kind of regimented bean-counting that stops short of
articulating any idea remotely threatening to established interests (who
understandably position themselves as pillars of social and political
and economic stability, even as history reveals that they are built upon
sand that is shifting as we speak).</span><br data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".8y.1:3:1:$replies10155152849210173_10155152873845173:0.1:2:$comment10155152849210173_10155155692510173:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$8:0">Real
education involves living, not just thinking. It cannot come from a
classroom, not even when that classroom has been outfitted with all the
best technology that a committee of experts can imagine and acquire.
Real education teaches us how to adapt and survive along an entire
lifetime--and beyond. (One utility of studying history is that it reminds you of a time when people didn't think in terms of single generations, let alone market and election cycles measured in terms of a few months or years.) Real education does not teach us how to get and maintain jobs in a narrow
market defined by scarcity and fragility. It teaches us how to
maximize independence rather than servility. It costs a lot in terms of
effort, and little in terms of cash (the reverse of many degrees
offered by modern universities). It incentivizes process over
completion, independence over employment, integrity over profit, and
virtuous failure over depraved success.</span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-38461408337731374782015-01-10T19:45:00.003+02:002015-01-10T20:02:12.245+02:00The Coming Age of Bust<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".4.1:3:1:$comment389240904594118_389695131215362:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".4.1:3:1:$comment389240904594118_389695131215362:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".4.1:3:1:$comment389240904594118_389695131215362:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">If
capitalism is the pursuit of monopoly, then I must be anti-capitalist.
The question is how to do this. How to offer meaningful opposition to
something so ubiquitous as the pursuit of zero-sum games in which
winners embrace unlimited growth. This is not easy. I suspect it
involves re-imagining what constitutes wealth (in ways that people who
think like Peter Thiel will find ludicrous, perhaps dangerously ludicrous as
they realize that my intent is to become less involved and less
susceptible to involvement in business that will make them richer, on
their own terms). The current, integrated economy needs to shrink, so
that smaller, decentralized economies can become larger (but not too large, never again as large as the system we have now). The immediate
outcome of this will be economic depression and conventional poverty
("austerity"), but I think the long-term prognosis is better for people
who know how to live well with less than for people who think the
solution to all economic woes is more of Keynesian stimulus
(administered by public or private powers that be, via "free markets"
rigged by monopolists on the Right or "fair markets" rigged by
monopolists on the Left).</span><br data-reactid=".4.1:3:1:$comment389240904594118_389695131215362:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".4.1:3:1:$comment389240904594118_389695131215362:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".4.1:3:1:$comment389240904594118_389695131215362:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">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.</span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-12720715448028498712015-01-10T18:27:00.000+02:002015-01-10T18:30:06.761+02:00Holy Mirth<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><i>Some thoughts inspired by the recent slaughter of French cartoonists responsible for the comic Charlie Hebdo, a slaughter perpetuated by Muslim extremists angered by the comic's crude mockery of Islam.</i></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">When
I put myself in the public sphere, with an agenda that I want you to
accept (or at least grapple with in some way), then I become fair game
for ridicule. </span><br data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">When
I was younger, I served an LDS (Mormon) mission to northern Spain. As a
result of being out and about talking to people regarding religion,
their own and mine (which I was available to offer those who wanted it),
I was fair game for ridicule--and I was ridiculed. While this
experience was not always pleasant, I think it was valuable--and I did
my best (succeeding for the most part, I hope) to "roll with the
punches" (which I knew that my position invited, and even required). I
learned that people often use humor to facilitate friendly relations
with outsiders whom they might otherwise hate (and perhaps physically
injure, even to the point of death). I would much rather be mocked than
beaten (let alone killed). But we do not all tolerate mockery the same
way. I think we learn to deal with it better, as a population, when we
must endure it without the means of an escalating retaliation: as a
Mormon missionary, I had neither the friends, the time, nor the
resources to plan a violent strike against the people who mocked me
(some kindly, some viciously, all with some kind of moral justification
that I respected and still respect). I might go home and cry, or get
mad on the street and make some aggressive gestures, but there was no
such thing as declaring war on society. (There really isn't for the
jihadis, either. As a result of their activity in Paris, most of them
are dead--right?--and more people will die. Even if society falls
apart, the people of France are not going to rise up and convert to
Islam en masse. Even if they did, they would promptly divide into
separate Muslim factions--such as exist already in <i>dar al-Islam</i>--and
commence hostilities with one another. If they were lucky, these
hostilities would involve lots of mockery and little actual violence.
If not, France becomes another Syria or Iraq.)</span><br data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".2k.1:3:1:$comment10153503161297598_10153503474017598:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$8:0">I
think mockery is actually an important human art, a liberal art that
people generally need more practice giving and receiving. The art of
laughing at others without losing sight of one's own absurdity is really
one of the most civilized--and civilizing--arts available to us. Too
many people study how to laugh at others without learning to laugh at
themselves. Too few among us are brave enough to face our own absurdity
and laugh (instead of crying or becoming very angry and wanting to make
someone else suffer because we appear weak, foolish, or stupid at some
point--as we all do). Thus, when I teach humanities today in the
classroom and tell my students, in a jesting tone, that I see my role as
that of a professional clown, I am actually being serious. Seriously
silly. I am teaching humanity to laugh, at itself and the world--to
laugh and let the little things (a cartoon here, an insult there) go,
without rancor.</span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-6405471156455084712015-01-09T19:56:00.000+02:002015-01-09T19:57:11.666+02:00Writing Books and Making Art<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><i>Some random thoughts inspired by this observation from Nassim Taleb (NNT): "</i></span></span></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><i>For a book to survive at least decade, it should not be summarizable,
and if summarized, no two independent summaries should be alike"</i> <i>(posted to Facebook on 9 January 2015).</i> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">The
quality of longevity is one that tends to belong (it seems to me) to
books whose relevance to society exists outside the realm of summaries.
People don't write summaries of romance novels, especially not of
romance novels that they really like. They re-read them (for the
experience, not the "information" that Jane was hot and Dick lived up to
his name). People often compose summaries of books that they wish they
did not have to read (e.g. many of the summaries I wrote for my
dissertation)--so that they can refer to an argument without having to
care or know too much about it. This kind of summary exists to
facilitate lack of experience or engagement (with an idea that one does
not really want). Another kind of summary exists to help synthesize
what one knows about a book one loves (and this kind of summary is
typically idiosyncratic, in keeping with NNT's heuristic: my retelling
of the Iliad is not yours).</span><br data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">The
deadest dead-wood literature out there is academic books like one I am
currently reading on Herakles. It contains much valuable information,
presented in such a fashion as to erase any valuable idiosyncratic
perspective from the author (who speaks not for herself but for "the
field" and writes not a monograph but an extended encyclopedia entry
that might as well have been composed by a machine--as maybe one day it
will). She writes summaries of her argument at the end of each chapter
(like a bad dissertation), and makes each sentence with as little care
as needed to convey the essential information (which is the only thing
keeping my nose in the book, long enough to write my own summary and
return it with hope that I never need to check it out again--not because
the author is not a fascinating person, but because she barely exists
as a meaningful voice in this book).</span><br data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$8:0">Why
does an author write such a book as this? I don't know. I suspect
that the academic culture ("one must write a book to get tenure ...
and/or other nice things like reputation") is to blame. Of course we
need people writing books (and making music, painting, building,
designing, dreaming, etc.). But not all art is created equal. Most of
it, in fact, is shit. </span><br data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$9:0" /><br data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$11:0" /><span data-reactid=".13.1:3:1:$replies10152747544328375_10152747554503375:0.1:2:$comment10152747544328375_10152747881388375:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$12:0">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, <i>zum Beispiel</i>). 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).</span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-34593195454288686692014-12-29T18:23:00.000+02:002014-12-29T18:23:59.039+02:00Modern Economics: A Quick Look<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640959026014424:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640959026014424:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640959026014424:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">The
reduction of economics to science has destroyed the ability of people
to see value that is not monetized, to the gross impoverishment of
society (even when material profits have never been higher). People who
cheerfully tout the superiority of "modern" to "ancient" society are
dealing mostly in caricatures, which they turn into facts by
manipulating mathematics. Also, I observe that many of them assume a
view of "modern" that is incredibly narrow (excluding the 19th century,
for instance, and even much of the 20th): "modern" society thus becomes
the latest vision of a "return to Eden" that has yet to occur.</span></span></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">People
who want to make money these days in the US become, by and large,
administrators (with degrees in economics, business, political science,
communications, and various related fields that are all aptly euphemized
under the title "marketing"). Administrative work consists largely in
creating opportunities to squeeze money from people and institutions for
spurious value (no "value added" to justify the expense that
administration requires).</span><br data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">Why
does college tuition continue to rise into the stratosphere?
Administration. The people taking the money are not your professors,
your instructors (who will soon outnumber the professoriate), nor your
janitors and groundskeepers. They are deans, sub-deans, vice assistants
to the provost, etc. Why do banks and car manufacturers require public
money? Administration. The people taking the money are not your
line-men, your mechanics, your bank-tellers. They are mostly middle
management (with CEOs and CFOs and their like representing the flower of
the cancer, not its root). Why are healthcare costs so large? Doctors
and other providers are not hell-bent on making large sums: many of
them work appalling hours for less money than the people who trained
them (and the trend is to pay less and less to the providers, who are
increasingly forced to avoid private practice and become the mercenaries
of large corporations). Again, the people raking in the dough are
middle managers, who sit at desks and fill out forms and pass absurdly
high bills back and forth (from the middle manager in the hospital to
the middle manager in your insurance company to you, and your jaw hits
the floor when you realize that your ER visit cost $7000, and you must
pay it all out of pocket).</span><br data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$8:0">When
you investigate closely what it is that this middle management does to
justify its increasing (and in my view unsustainable) expense to
society, you find that it is engaged in a kind of legal piracy. Where
it used to be "economical" to deal directly with the people you wanted
something from (e.g. with a professor, a doctor, or a local banker--even
a local politician), you must now call upon some middle manager (or a
call center run by middle managers), take a number, and wait for a bill
that will always cost as much as possible (and will cost more over time:
next year, it will more expensive). You become used to this
phenomenon; indeed, some of you are so used to it that you don't bother
to wonder why it is that aspirin, tuition, cars, houses, justice, and
basic healthcare cost so much more all the time. You don't stop to look
at the deals other people (including some "poor" and "Third World"
people) get from their providers (largely by having no time or
infrastructure to impose the costly regime of middle management upon a
public understandably eager to avoid paying a pirate for the right to
live their lives). You accept the regime of extortion as "the way
things are" even when you go to "fix things" (usually by voting for a
change in the identity of your extortioner, as though swapping one face
for another were the crux of the problem: it isn't).</span><br data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$9:0" /><br data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$11:0" /><span data-reactid=".6n.1:3:1:$comment640190579424602_640976669345993:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$12:0">The
solution is both simple (to understand) and difficult (to apply in a
practical fashion). Simply put, you must avoid doing business with
middle management. Don't waste time talking with them, paying them,
reforming them, voting for them, etc. Instead, you must build
alternatives to them. Recreate relationships with service providers who
exist without middle management. This will not be easy (or even
"cheap" in the short-term; in the long-term, however, it will be much
cheaper than any scheme that involves paying the pirates their
protection money). You must put away the notion of being a consumer.
There are no passive customers in a real market: instead you have to
offer something to get something. You have to be trustworthy yourself,
and have the acumen to recognize for yourself when someone is trying to
take you for a ride. No "consumer protection" agency is going to help
you (unless you give them real money, and even then, I would not trust
them--whether they were public or private). You have to realize that
abstractions are meaningless without some kind of concrete environmental
referent. I don't care what the GDP is doing: it is a meaningless
thing, since its rise might just indicate the proliferation of piracy
rather than the creation of something really good (real value). Growth
is ambiguous that way. I care what is growing, how it grows, more than
that some growth occur. Middle management is eager to sell you growth,
without drawing your attention to the fact that it wants to grow at your
(and the world's) expense, via a process of piracy whose moral ethic
is, "Make more money, no matter what: more is always better, no matter
what the fallout is." If you like that ethic, then buy into it with
your eyes open, instead of falling for the commercials that repackage it
as something less brutal or short-sighted (like Adam Smith's capitalism
or Karl Marx's humanism).</span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-31390641526339166412014-11-28T21:58:00.000+02:002014-11-28T22:03:49.907+02:00Job Security and Lack Thereof<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">To
me it seems that we often ignore solutions to institutional
indifference or hostility that involve breaking away rather than moving
in. </span><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$4:0">If I am already a playing member of some institution--dea</span></span><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">con
in a church, shareholder in a business, official in a government,
tenured faculty in a university--then it makes sense to push for reform,
as an insider, where I see it as useful or helpful ("the right thing to
do"). I can campaign from a position of relative strength as an
insider, using social and political capital that I already have to fix
problems I see. As an outsider, I don't have that capital, the capital
for reform. I cannot make a meaningful dent on insider culture, really,
except insofar as I avoid participating in it where I find it
obnoxious. </span><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956256482875:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0">If
I am a shareholder in a business, then I have a meaningful voice when
it comes to decisions that business makes. If I am not, if I am merely
one of several million faceless consumers (passive beneficiaries of
business I don't make), then my most meaningful decision is often simply
to take my investment elsewhere. If I were tenured faculty, then my
outlook on academic culture would be different than it is. I would
advocate more for political solutions involving existing powers. As matters stand, my advice is that nobody should bet too much on the success of an
academic career (with "too much" loosely defined as "debt sufficient to
procure a middle-class life like that of my parents, who owned homes and
had pensions and vacations and whatnot"). I am open to publishing work
in alternative venues (e.g. using Amazon to self-publish rather than
submitting to journals or academic presses). I am open to distance
learning, with or without the umbrella of institutional support. I am
open to the reality that many of us do many different things over the
course of variegated lives: there is no such thing, not even in my
relatively small coterie of academic friends, as "the academic
lifestyle" or even "the academic career" that moves predictably from
grad school to tenure. If a student asks me about making a career in
academia, you had better believe I will mention all of this stuff. I
will mention that it is wise to have back-up plans, and a working
partner, and reasonable expectations of the rewards available. It does
not make sense to care more for institutions than they can care for you.
Feel free to make professional inroads into business outside the
tenure track, for strait is that gate, and narrow the way, and few
there be that find it.</span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">My own situation is not wholly without hope, though I appear to be headed down an employment rabbit-hole that swallows some people whole (<a href="https://chroniclevitae.com/news/818-suicide-is-my-retirement-plan" target="_blank">adjuncting</a> as a career). I
am hoping that having really low expectations and being frugal will
help us as we come closer to death of natural causes. I really like the
tiny house movement, myself, and will never have a mortgage if I can
help it. Maybe we can move into a shed or an RV (or a yurt!) when the
kids grow up and move out. We definitely won't be paying their college
tuition, if they go to college (which I am not going to push as a
necessity, not least because there is no way in hell we could afford
it). </span><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0">Healthcare
is a problem that persists, thanks in large part to the really stupid
system we Americans have jerry-rigged in which the only way to see a
doctor is to pay some bureaucrat (with a private or public company of
dubious value to anybody except career bureaucrats). But for now my
wife has benefits, even if I don't, and we are young enough to aim for
good health as a long-term option. I suppose I may have to invoke
sudden death if I get a really nasty disease that nobody can pay to
cure--but honestly, those diseases are often death sentences even with
the best care that money can buy. My great-grandfather fell on a
pitchfork (the blunt end, not the tines) while working in a barn-loft.
He spent a few weeks in agony, and then was dead. He was not even 30
years old. Life happens. Sometimes all we get to do is clean up the
mess, bury the dead, mourn, and move on. It isn't Obama's fault (or
Boehner's).</span><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$8:0">Cars
are an expensive nuisance, as are computers, but so far we have been
fortunate with used machines and good deals. I think there is hope that
we may make it all the way to death without needing more than a
serviceable jalopy and a few relatively cheap machines that are not
phones that can handle word-processing and other activities our
employers require. Beyond that, all we need are clothes and food--and
time to spend together. </span><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$9:0" /><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$11:0" /><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$12:0">At
some point, which I seem to reach sooner than many, I would rather
forgo extra income and spend another hour with my family. I know that
my academic employers do not value me as a human being: I don't expect
them to do so. They have a need for services that I happen to be able
to provide, for the moment--impersonal services that they can afford to
hire for a relatively small sum. I know that they care more about the
services than about me. That is the way of institutions, which
necessarily value data over anecdotes, process over people. Seeing this
truth as I do, I make a point of limiting my exposure to the
institution. I want a relatively low ceiling on the amount of distress
that the university is capable of causing in my life. When the dean
hauls me into her office, swears at me, and tells me that I am a loser
who should go fuck himself and die, I would prefer to smile, tear up my
performance review, and walk out--rather than sweat and weep and wail
and gnash my teeth. It is easier to be impervious to ill fortune that
we expect, I think--so I make a point of expecting indifference and
occasional hostility from the university, seeing that it often rewards
my colleagues with such things (and I am not magically different or
special or superhuman).</span><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$13:0" /><br data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$15:0" /><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$16:0">My
family care about me as the university does not and cannot, even if it
were to offer me tenure. I would be willing to care more about its
future, and so its institutional decisions in the present, if I had a
real stake in them (such as the prospect of tenure would raise), but
even then I would not love it as my family. And I would not expect it
to love me this way. As an adjunct, my principal loyalty is to
students, and to the integrity of my work (as a teacher and a really
independent scholar, free to read and write and publish what I want on
my own schedule, without giving a damn for whatever intellectual fad is
currently hot with tenured faculty whose collective attitude towards me
is largely one of indifference or disgust). I value those professional
people I know personally--the friends I have made at work--and I
endeavor to be worth something to them as another human being, no matter
where they may be professionally. I like many academics, including
some with tenure, and naturally I hope that they like me back. But this
is hardly the same thing as liking the university. I like teaching, if
you want to know the truth, and thinking and writing, so for the
present I put up with the university. I don't really like it, and I
know better than to expect it to like me.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956067038139:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$16:0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">In
brief, when buying something really expensive (a house, professional
training that lasts a decade or costs decades of work to pay off),
consider the worst-case scenario rather than the best. If the worst is
more than you can bear, then don't buy it</span></span><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".3d.1:3:1:$comment10204955522024514_10204956291523751:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">
(no matter how nice the best looks). I would advise the aspiring grad
student to look elsewhere if she cannot bear vows of material poverty
and intellectual humiliation--for such is the lot of many academics
(probably all of them, at one time or another).</span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-56635568542366925612014-11-09T22:20:00.002+02:002014-11-09T22:20:47.781+02:00Hope and ChangeI do not have hope that the oligarchs who run Washington will decide to burn bridges with their masters on Wall Street--to save me, or people like me (small statistics who don't matter, until we become part of a large mob demanding Coke or Pepsi).<br /><br />I do not have hope that it makes a great difference whether the oligarchs identify as Democrat or Republican.<br /><br />I do not believe that America is the hope of the world. (If it is, then I suspect that is at least as much a curse as a blessing. We might legitimately hope to kill or bankrupt the world, given our past, but how can we hope to replace its hopes with our own? How is this not the worst kind of arrogance, even supposing--as some do not--that we are in some sense envied by the entire world?)<br /><br />I do have hope that individual people can make a positive difference in the communities where they reside. I believe in doing good that we can see and respect, among people we know (or might know--as people rather than "constituents" or "customers"). I believe in the community I reside in. I believe in my neighbors, my friends, my family. I might even believe in local politicians. But that is the limit of my belief. I cannot believe in what I cannot know (America), in ideals pretending to serve a population or populations so vast that they become incoherent to the point of being practically meaningless. "We the People" of the USA are 300 million souls, give or take, scattered over a geography and ecology (political, economic, religious, social) so vast and diverse as to be utterly incapable of sharing much besides ignorance and hostility--in my considered judgement (that anyone is welcome to question, to dispute, to reject, etc.).<br /><br />Too often, when stewardship of others is invoked--by Left or Right--it is in a context of somebody else doing something for me, in my place, without my having to lift a finger or take any responsibility. I am asked to punish people I never met, to give money to people I never met, to hope against hope that people who don't know me from Adam know better than I how to reward and punish. I am supposed to cede moral agency to "representatives" who act in my name, waging war and granting charity for reasons I am never supposed to learn. All I am required to do is listen attentively to the latest commercials, put my hand on my heart when the music plays, and burst into tears as I affirm with emotional conviction that Coke or Pepsi, Democrats or Republicans, is certain to save the world. I find this vision of my activity as a citizen of a free republic rather confining--since I have no love for Coke or Pepsi, no private inclination to prefer either as I make my diet of water, coffee, tea, and milk. It would be easy to brand me as somebody with no hope--a desperate cynic with no commitment to the ideals that made this country great, blah blah--but what does this really mean? I was born in the United States. I have lived the greater part of my life here. I pay taxes. I even vote--though I confess my motivation is not hope for change that my sober judgement views as impossible. I work (for money when I can, for the comfort and security of those I care about when monetary employment is lacking). I observe the laws as carefully and conscientiously as I can. I am polite.<br /><br />I don't expect people to live like me, to like me, to "join my cause" and make it into the kind of nationwide farce that is Coke, Pepsi, the Democratic Party, or the GOP. Whatever hope I have for humanity existing in relative peace comes from my trust that individuals like me tend to love their family and friends, and the community around them--without losing sight of the reality that this love is fragile and historically inclined to become hateful (when the interests of my family bring me into conflict with yours). I can give you space to make a family that is not mine, but I cannot bear it when we must all become part of the same gigantic, dysfunctional family. "One nation" of 300 million people is a disaster, from my perspective, when we must all have the same moral values--the same diet, the same healthcare, the same marriages, the same education, the same careers, the same uncritical devotion to factional politics that makes us pawns.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-3947180733172194542014-10-25T18:47:00.000+03:002014-10-26T16:57:34.714+02:00Religion and Violence<span data-reactid=".5e.1:3:1:$comment10152810275799931_10152810985454931:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".5e.1:3:1:$comment10152810275799931_10152810985454931:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".5e.1:3:1:$comment10152810275799931_10152810985454931:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".5e.1:3:1:$comment10152810275799931_10152810985454931:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Part
of the problem with "the real reason" for human violence, I suspect,
is that it simply does not exist. My kids, for example, fight like
puppies (not always fairly or kindly), and when asked, "Why are you
punching your brother, after I explicitly asked you not to?" often look
up with genuinely blank faces (and even on occasion answer honestly, "I
don't know"). I suspect many people genuinely don't know why they are
violent (in ways that historically prove helpful--look up the benefits
of play-fighting with kids--or not, e.g. jihad). They just are, and so
inevitably their mind works to create justification(s) (<i>Deus vult! national security!</i> etc.) for a prior existing condition (<i>must punch
someone!</i>).</span><br data-reactid=".5e.1:3:1:$comment10152810275799931_10152810985454931:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".5e.1:3:1:$comment10152810275799931_10152810985454931:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".5e.1:3:1:$comment10152810275799931_10152810985454931:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">The
really intractable problem here is that it is genuinely wrong (bad
practice) to arrest people for thought crimes, but that is essentially
what I see us having (in many cases). By thought crime here I don't
mean "carefully planned, conscious crime" but pre-rational determination
toward violence (without any pre-determined method or justification).</span></span></span><br />
<br />
Rather than take an approach like<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-fields-of-blood-by-karen-armstrong/2014/10/23/a098e374-4d90-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html" target="_blank"> Karen Armstrong</a>, who seems to suggest that religion is never to blame (as a legitimate rationalization of violence: I don't believe this), I prefer to observe that religion is simply one of many tools available to foster and culture (the old word would be <i>civilize</i>) human violence (which is simply there in humanity, an unavoidable part of our biological heritage). Sometimes, we use our tools to express violence well (in ways that improve quality of life); other times, we don't. Religion, like all our tools, is in itself neutral. It is neither evil nor good. How we use it determines what it is in individual circumstances (its immediate valence for good and for evil).<br />
<br />
When people talk about transcending religion, leaving it behind, etc., what they are really advocating, it seems to me, is leaving behind some aspect of humanity whose momentary expression (as violence or superstition or whatever) they don't particularly like (indeed, they might hate it--with righteous indignation). To seize upon some momentary justification for genocide (or some other awful crime in recent human history) as itself the cause for all genocide, to proceed in the righteous struggle against genocide on the assumption that (for example) de-converting people from Islam en masse will radically alter our species' expression of violence--to me this seems fundamentally wrong (ineffective, resting on a misprision of the reality that we are a genocidal species--we commit crimes of violence, historically, including the crime known as genocide, and we invent stories to illustrate, explain, and facilitate this aspect of our character). If we got rid of Islam today, then tomorrow would bring us another myth equally obnoxious. If we got rid of all Abrahamic religions, the same thing would happen. If we got rid of every traditional religion, we would simply re-invent them (and tell ourselves, as many Nazis and communists did in the last century, that our crimes against one another were justified by some modern and progressive myth--clothing our genocide, etc., in the trappings of science). <br />
<br />
This is why I roll my eyes when people talk of abandoning religion for something better. There is nothing better. People really are that stupid (and violent, and whatever it is that you don't like that you are calling 'religious'). What we can do, what we should do, is learn to confront the evil we carry inside ourselves (Christianity gets this part right with its doctrine of Original Sin). This evil is not something separate or separable from us (Christianity gets this wrong: Grace and Salvation are bullshit, at least as commonly taught among most believers; I don't mean that nothing good can ever come from believing in them, only that most people seem to derive more lie than truth from them). We must learn to live with ourselves as we are--with tendencies toward crime that are inseparable from our other tendencies, which as often as not are those same tendencies, in different (and better) circumstances. We have an instinct to love: this instinct carries implicit an imperative to hate. We have an instinct to protect what (and whom) we love: this instinct carries implicit an imperative to destroy what (and whom) we hate. Religion, and other forms of collective and individual culture, can help us prune these tendencies. It can direct us toward better or worse ways of expressing ourselves in whatever circumstances we might be. But it cannot remove these tendencies entirely, not even when we make the mistake of externalizing our evil and assigning it to religion that we dislike (for any reason). Leaving my childhood religion behind might help me become a better person, empirically speaking, but there is no guarantee that this must happen. I will still be a human being, no matter what I do. I will still carry with me all the causes and conditions for superstition and violence and other potentially criminal behavior that comes coded into humanity (my own and everyone else's).<br />
<br />
This is why Greek tragedy is so gripping. It is about looking oneself in the face, honestly, and seeing everything there. Katharsis is not a matter of expressing or indulging rage (as many modern readers of Aristotle seem to think); it is looking deep into the recesses of one's own humanity, and seeing there the little baby emotions that might become rage (homicidal and suicidal), envy, lust, etc. It is seeing the strength and the weakness of our species, and realizing that they are the same thing. The same qualities that make Oedipus king and savior also make him criminal and outcast. Until we see this reality and accept it, we are fundamentally separate from ourselves--broken, lacking integrity, unable to help others or ourselves without running an unacceptable risk of causing harm (because we think we can love without hating, serve without ruling, help without harming). We are like children who imagine themselves able to fly because they have wings patched together with feathers and wax. Such fantasies are cute until we walk to the edge of a real cliff and jump. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-18138127692015254742014-10-21T19:49:00.000+03:002014-10-21T20:48:07.110+03:00Lessons from Abroad<i>The following essay comes from a discussion about the nature of healthcare policy in the United States. I started out wanting to talk about healthcare, and wound up addressing the entire Spanish economy as an illustration of problems we deal with in healthcare, education, employment, and government--i.e. economic and politics generally.</i><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$0:0"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$0:0">My
personal feeling is that the USA is simply too large to have a coherent, consistent public
health agenda that extends nationwide. Europe benefits from smaller
administrative regions, with more homogeneous culture(s). </span></span></span>In my experience, Europe is a gated community built to
exclude outsiders (who respond by seeking to replace rather than
assimilate: immigrants from the Third World do not become French, or
Spanish, or Scandinavian, by and large). America is the opposite
(though we keep trying to repent and become more European;
unfortunately, we need cheap labor, too). </span><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$4:0">When
I was living in Spain, there were serious political movements in every
place I stayed whose central goal was complete autonomy. I did not meet
a single population in northern Spain (over two years, I lived in these
provinces: Castilla y Leon, Galicia, Vizcaya) without a significant
minority who wanted nothing to do with Spain or Madrid. Some parties
even wanted autonomy for smaller regions (there was a party that wanted
to get Castilla out of Leon). People grew up in small regions, in
neighborhoods where they could point to the house their
great-grandparents occupied (which often as not was a cottage predating
modern civilization). There was a very strong trend to shut the world
out, to suspect "growth" and "progress" as cloaking devices for "rape"
and "pillage," and to distrust outsiders permanently (because they are
not from here, they do not know this place, they will take our stuff and
make good with it somewhere else, somewhere we cannot follow). In
America, I can move thousands of miles to a neighborhood where people
have never seen me before, and the common reaction is, "Hello! Welcome
to the block!" In Europe (Spain anyway), this reaction is still there
(particularly if I am talking to foreigners or people who live in the
city), but it is supplemented by another: "You're not from around here?
Fuck you! Go back where you came from. We don't need foreign shit.
It is hard enough to deal with all our own."</span><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$8:0">Everything
is different (healthcare, economics, religion) in areas where people
have deep-seated distrust of the novel, the foreign, the unusual.
America thrives on imagining the novel optimistically: "This new
treatment could work wonders for me! I might survive this illness and
even come out stronger than before!" In my experience, Europeans
imagine it pessimistically: "This new treatment is probably going to
make me die even faster than I was already, smoking two packs a day.
Fuck it, and the white horse it rode in on." My experience is colored
by the reality that I have never lived in the "really cool Europe" that
American Leftists like to gush over. While I met plenty of German,
Dutch, and Scandinavian tourists (who were invariably tall, healthy, and
very articulate in English), the local populations I met were Iberian
(short, not so healthy sometimes, and incomprehensible in English). I
know that Spain is not Germany, or Holland, or Sweden (or Finland: man, I
love that place, though it does have a rather high suicide rate for
being so awesome in so many other ways). If there is anything I learn
from my limited experience with Europe, it is that poor people (in
particular) do better trusting authority and novelty less. The less we
aim at "wealth" (move to a big city, get a nice job and a fancy-ass
house, settle down) and the more we aim at "competence" (move to a quiet
place, acquire skills that make any particular job unnecessary, and
live in the cheapest hovel you can afford)--the happier we will be.</span><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$9:0" /><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$11:0" /><span data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$12:0">Happy
Spaniards knew their neighborhoods (their grocer, their doctor, their
teachers), and were busy building those neighborhoods themselves--they
did not trust you to come in and fix them. Even when your motives were
entirely pure and you had no evil track record, they wanted you out of
the way so that they could keep planting and building what they wanted,
not what you wanted to give them. My purpose living in Spain, as readers of this blog know, was offering folks a chance to become Mormons. Needless to say,
that did not go over very well. But I learned a lot--including two
really important things about myself: I am a terrible salesman, and I
hate sales. I did not sell the Spanish on Mormonism, but they certainly
sold me on hating sales. That visceral distrust and dislike of
advertising is something I think Americans could stand to learn. </span><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$13:0" /><br data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$15:0" /><span data-reactid=".6a.1:3:1:$comment731526003601923_732833273471196:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$16:0">To
end this interminable comment en pointe: the official policies coming
from Madrid make Spain sound like utopia (or at least, like France):
free healthcare, job security, political democracy, etc. But the
reality on the ground is rather different. You see, making this utopia
real requires more economic strength than the nation has (leading some
of the least economically depressed regions, e.g. Catalunya and Vizcaya,
to produce large numbers of citizens who openly, loudly, and even
militantly desire to secede from Spain). This is because there is a
high ceiling for legal employment (meaning that employers and the state
together have to be able to guarantee healthcare, wages, votes, and
acceptable living conditions to legally employed persons, such as I was
during my stay). But crap jobs still need to be done, so as we do in
America, the Spanish hire foreign slaves (Africans and South Americans,
and some Eastern Europeans)--who are willing and able to work for
pennies that people have as opposed to the euros that dreamers
(officials, humanitarians, managers, EU bureaucrats, Spanish
bureaucrats) want to give them. There is this perverse dynamic at play
whereby native Spanish youth have nothing to do (employing them would be
exploitation, i.e. illegal and punishable as a criminal offense), so
they must sit around on the street and in their parents' basements
collecting pensions from the state (mostly; it occasionally cannot pay!)
while Africans, Arabs, native Americans (many from Ecuador and
Colombia), Bulgarians, and Albanians keep everything running for wages.
The Spanish folk in my age bracket, while I was there (as a
19-, 20-, and 21-year-old) spent most of their time walking around town, smoking,
making out in street-corners, getting drunk, playing video games or
watching TV, and harassing people like me. Were they better off than I,
health-wise, job-wise, education-wise (tuition was cheap)?<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/to-hell-and-back-spains-grotesque-recession-and-its-surprising-new-economy/280678/" target="_blank"> In some ways, yes. In others, no</a>. </span></span></span><i><br /></i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-63724821589695105792014-10-20T19:17:00.001+03:002014-10-20T19:17:28.529+03:00Semper Fidelis<span data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">I
am increasingly of the opinion that modern Western police (many police, maybe not all)
exist to clean up after crimes, to beat suspicious people up
(especially if they are poor and otherwise defenseless: worst-case
scenario, the cop just goes nuts and starts dropping bodies), and to
collect a nice pension.</span><br data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">Crime
prevention isn't really part of the picture (unless you think those
press conferences mean something useful: I suppose there might also be
real utility from classes that some officers give, e.g. explaining to
youngsters what they see in terms of crime in any given community and
how they would advise avoiding it). One problem I consistently have is
that I feel some of the onus (for preventing crime) should be on me,
rather than police. I feel that modern police have too much
responsibility (protect and serve me, officer! I am too helpless to do
anything in the way of protecting myself) and too little liability
(saving that grown-up baby's bacon required killing a few lowlifes? no
prob! back on the job tomorrow, with a raise!). </span><br data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$8:0">Communities
that work, it seems to me, are communities in which we all take turns
shouldering the real burden of "serving and protecting"
ourselves--rather than passing the buck to professional mercenaries (who
may or may not be assholes: in my mind, that is a different problem; I
suspect many of these are honorable, and many are not). People
(especially people in positions of authority or aspiring to such
positions) need to spend some time "in the trenches" with soldiers and
police, it seems to me. One of the great problems of our time is that
we have leaders and citizenry utterly blind (in practical terms) to the
realities of human violence. Professors, politicians, and clergy cannot
really offer a useful, practical perspective on violence if they are
never confronted with it--if they never have to deal with it in real
time, with life and limb on the line. </span><br data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$9:0" /><br data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$11:0" /><span data-reactid=".fr.1:3:1:$comment889824174370647_890082681011463:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$12:0">I
like the old Swiss model (every able-bodied citizen spends some time in
the military / police), precisely because it involves ordinary citizens
learning to provide protection and service to themselves, at a
realistic cost (to themselves and the whole community). The Left would
probably hate me if I became mayor (or anybody with political clout),
because I would want to resurrect the militia (local military and
police) as something to which every able-bodied voter must contribute.
You put in your time--not necessarily in the line of fire, but close
enough to see it--or you forfeit your right to vote on anything that
involves public defense (because you are not qualified to have an
opinion: the shepherd does not take a vote from the sheep when deciding
how to fend off wolves). I think this model is the only way to create
police and military forces that does not ultimately incentivize
corruption. Of course I remain open to counter-argument, but for now
that is where I stand.</span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-70372766293060489542014-10-14T20:49:00.002+03:002014-10-14T20:49:56.395+03:00Building My Identity<div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">
<a href="http://www.dhakatribune.com/op-ed/2014/oct/12/will-real-muslim-please-stand" target="_blank">This article</a> touches the fundamental problem with identity politics: the real Muslim (the
real Christian, the real feminist, the real white man, etc.) does not
actually exist. The identities we construct for ourselves are at some
point uniquely personal, an expression of the particular self whose
idiosyncrasy rejects (and breaks) every universal mould. Identity
politics as an exercise require me to identify myself wrongly with
people who look like me in some fashion, and then to go out and apply
this mischaracterization to other people, as well. Identity politics,
even when they are most factual (dealing practically with people who for
whatever reason appear to act en masse), ask us to behave as pawns (the
agents of some collective to which we must belong, to which we owe our
identity). It is unfortunately true that I will owe many of my life's
goods to groups that include people and things I find immoral, but that
seems to me like something to limit wherever possible, rather than to
celebrate. I would not choose to enumerate at great length the ways in
which I am and must be the helpless agent of some larger identity
(religious, political, cultural) that controls me against my own better
judgement. I would prefer to dwell on the ways I can break these
moulds, can defeat the mandate that I pick a faceless tribe and then
stand with them no matter what.<br />
<br />
It seems to me that the best way
to defeat identity politics (which I regard as evil) or the evils of
identity politics (for those who think that identity politics are good)
is to quietly refuse to conform to the agenda of your "tribes" (the
groups who seek to claim you as their pawn because you practice a
certain religion, dress a certain way, come from a certain ethnic
background, etc.). My identity is a temporary thing, fraught with many
limits such that it inevitably becomes evil, to me and to other people,
at some point. In light of this reality, I seek to make that ego as
little active as possible in the world around me. I don't lend my
weight to causes waged by "my tribes" against others merely because
"everybody who looks like you is doing it." I do not know what all
academics, all males, all white people (etc.) are up to, as a group. I
don't want to put myself in a position where I have to know, where I
make myself liable for some kind of gang activity that pretends
(inevitably falsely) to speak for "our kind." We have no kind: you are
one self, and I am another. Superficial likeness might conceal vast
oceans of difference, so vast in my experience that I always assume we
are more unlike than like until I see you acting, until I know you--as a
person, not a stereotype.<br />
<br />
The tribe that I want around me is not
a nation, not a race, not an ethnos, nor a worldwide religion. I want
real family and friends, people I know personally from historical
interaction. If I am to go to war, to make bets with my life, to take
risks with uncertain causes and conditions in a troubled world, then I
am going to do it not for an imaginary identity or camaraderie
(nationalism, racism, chauvinism, capitalism, Christianity, etc.). I am
going to do it for friends and family I love, because I see immediately
how their survival demands it. I do not care that my friends and
family look like me in some superficial way (i.e. that they have
language like mine, skin like mine, ethnic background like mine, or
religion like mine). I care that they show me moral integrity I can
respect, especially where it differs from my own. The more I embrace
this integrity, and the people who come with it into my life (from all
kinds of odd places), the less I identify myself with the "tribes" that
sociology textbooks want to put me in. My friends and family can come from any religious background (I am on intimate terms with many different kinds of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists). They can be any number of races (and they are).
They can come from many different countries (and they do). I want to
make my identity from them, from their small diversity, rather than take
the large monotony of society's tribes as my heritage. I want my ego
to reflect the people I love and care about, more than the people who
look like me superficially. </div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-51691618617530288972014-10-11T18:31:00.001+03:002014-10-14T18:35:39.043+03:00The Politics of DivergenceIt seems to me that there are some communities too large to function
democratically (the USA and the EU among them: Massachusetts does not
want to live like Texas, and Germans don't want to live like Greeks).
Sometimes, the best long-term solution is not "<a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ecb-philosophical-debates-and-economic-recovery-by-harold-james-2014-10" target="_blank">to enable agreement on a generally accepted solution</a>" (or otherwise validate the idea that we all
have the same interest where it is clear that we do not and
cannot)--but to facilitate diversity, divergence and experimentation,
admitting up front that there is no such thing (existent or creatable)
as a single policy for all Americans or Europeans. I think the idea of
"one policy to rule them all" (whether all the states in the USA or in
the EU) is always going to break down catastrophically at some point
(even in the domains where it works best, e.g. military alliances).<br />
<br />
The use of irreconcilable differences in philosophy to discuss the
limits of human ability to suppress divergence is not wrong, of course.
Philosophy is one symptom of this human trait. But it is hardly the
only such symptom (others would be the observation that people don't
visit the same stores on the same schedule, or buy the same things in
those stores; we don't all study the same subjects in school; if we do,
we don't study them the same way; we don't do the same jobs; if we do, we
don't do them the same way; etc.). It is wrong to think that this
intractability between you and me boils down to nothing more than a
vapid difference of philosophical opinion or expression--that there is
nothing serious or intractable behind it. Historically, there is
something there. A resistance to monotony and conformity that is always
in the end stronger than any force we can bring to bear to make
monotony and conformity universal and permanent. We have brought some
really powerful forces to bear (e.g. the world wars in the last century,
the Civil War in the United States before that) without achieving our
object. Some of us see this and conclude that the object is one that we
should not waste any more time pursuing, but others are still eager for
the scheme of one policy to rule them all.<br />
<br />
I have a significant
philosophical problem with the existence of a central bank. This is not precisely
the same thing as my problem with the existence of
authorities with claim to rule the most intimate decisions of my life.
At some point in the negotiations (between me and the central
authorities who want to control me the way farmers control cattle), I am
going to break away--either to run from the policy I don't like or to
fight it (with whatever arms seem likeliest to avail). In today's
climate, these arms are probably not militant, since the central bank
has more firepower than I could ever hope to have--more than I would
regard it as safe to use. So probably I will end up advocating for some
kind of civil disobedience, in the tradition of Gandhi and Thoreau--and
our own Martin Luther King, who did so much to fix problems the Civil
War could only bring to a boiling head.<br />
<br />
We cannot all live the same life. At some point, your life would kill me in ways that I don't like, and vice versa. I must give you room to live as yourself, without me, and you must reciprocate. If we cannot do this, if we must choose one of our lives as "the one true life" and force it upon the other willy-nilly, then we are deciding to kill someone. Are you willing to kill me now? Maybe so. There are acceptable reasons to want me dead. But I would hope that these are only invoked when absolutely necessary, when peace between us is really impossible. I would rather have another Great Depression than kill off half of society (even if that meant avoiding said depression). Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-34679704053667336122014-10-08T17:57:00.001+03:002014-10-08T17:57:23.648+03:00Defending the Family<i>Another rant about gay marriage, and the religious Right in America. This one comes on the eve of the 9th Circuit ruling against the right of states to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman, and the vow of certain state governors to fight this decision.</i><br />
<br />
<i><span data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"></span></i><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">It
seems to me that the surest way to destroy authority (and tradition) is
to invoke it in ways that are patently absurd (and in this case,
unjust). </span><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">The
greatest enemy to heterosexual marriage and family, in any traditional
sense, right now, in the United States, is the political movement that
wants to strengthen these by attacking things outside them. Burning
your garden down does not make mine grow better: in fact, if you look
closely, you will see that while I have been wasting time and energy
trying to kill yours (in vain), mine has become a neglected sea of weeds
and garbage. "It's the gays' fault!" No, morons. It is your fault
for wasting time attacking the gays instead of minding your own garden,
your own business, your own family, your own tradition.</span><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$8:0">If
I want a good garden, I have to go out and work--not find somebody else
to blame. If I want to make myself strong, I have to go out and
work--not punish you for going to a gym I don't like. If I want a good
education, I have to go out and work--not punish you for studying
something I wouldn't study. If I want to wear a burkha, I put one on: I
don't come to your house and make you wear it against your will, no
matter what the majority of people in our area believe about anything.</span><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$9:0" /><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$11:0" /><span data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$12:0">The
worst thing about this political putsch from the Right is that it is so
blatantly anti-American (in the old sense: it ignores the separation
between church and state and makes "religious freedom" a piece of
specious rhetoric). Essentially, these people want to enact their own
brand of sharia in the US, and call this "religious freedom" (<i>it is my
religious freedom to make you wear a burkha, because if you don't, Satan
wins; if you dispute this, it is because Satan owns you, and you cannot
be trusted--you must be burned at the stake as a heretic</i>). Hello,
Inquisition! Hello, fascism! This is simply absurd (without rational standing) and dangerous (likely to break society more than defend it).</span><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$13:0" /><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$15:0" /><span data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$16:0">My
final word on this nonsense from the Right is that even if letting gays
marry did create opportunity for really bad things to happen (somehow,
in ways I have yet to perceive), I would be for it. The same way I am
for allowing heterosexual, traditional marriages that end in crime (or
just divorce, pain, and suffering). You don't ban things simply because
somebody somewhere might conceivably get hurt doing them. Eating is
dangerous, but we all have to eat--and we don't all have to eat the same
thing, the same way, at the same time: that would be bad. Kind of like
we don't all have to marry the same way. That would be really bad, for
everyone--straights included. But who is going to protect us from
that? Who will defend us when one of Jesus' American mullahs receives a
revelation commanding us to participate in the one true order of
marriage or be damned--in this life and the next? I will take any
defense I can get from this dangerous bullshit, including defense from
"activist" judges (who in my view are simply doing what we created them
to do, i.e. rule on problems within the historical legal framework that
constitutes the official life of our society).</span><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$17:0" /><br data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$19:0" /><span data-reactid=".3r.1:3:1:$comment10152774013361585_10152774238826585:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$20:0">Here's
a thought. Maybe, just maybe, people will have the moral fortitude to
live decent lives on their own, without the mullahs--without a bunch of
external "defense" (that seems not to do anything besides grind on the
face of those unfortunate enough to appear untraditional from some
narrow, hypercritical vantage-point). Maybe my marriage needs to live
on its own, without taking yours (or a celebrity's) as some kind of
fixed reference point (which it never was anyway). Maybe the best way
to strengthen my marriage is to make it owe as little as possible to the
kind of culture that values tearing others down more than allowing them
the chance to make something beautiful of their lives--something that
they choose and do for themselves (with success or failure: the outcome
is irrelevant; what matters is that they have the option, the choice,
the capacity to try something they want to try).</span></span></span><i> </i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-37004877708664363172014-09-25T17:13:00.000+03:002014-09-25T17:13:05.387+03:00On the Ennui of Civilized Man<span data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">One
of the great problems of our times is how to deal with the angst of
civilization. We used to be happy to survive, back when food and
shelter were our main concerns. Then, we invented ways of
mass-producing necessities, and discovered "free time" (time that could
be spent doing something other than looking for food, looking for
shelter, or recovering from that search). Free time allowed us to play
around more--to do things like build, trade, and make war.</span><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$4:0">The
ancestral economy makes sense to us. Assuming you survive, it is not
hard to live and be relatively happy while you are looking for food
(that you expect to find), looking for shelter (that you expect to
find), and recovering. Primitive, uncivilized people we can observe are
often happier than their civilized counterparts, particularly as you
look toward the bottom of civilized social hierarchies. </span><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$5:0" /><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$7:0" /><span data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$8:0">Civilized
"free time" provides many benefits, of course, but these come at the
expense of significant social and psychological turmoil. I don't know
how to get my own food. I must rely on someone else to get it for me. I
don't know how to get my own shelter. I need someone else to provide
it for me. If I am living in a cultural backwater like the Middle East
(or Africa or many parts of Eurasia and the Americas), then I am keenly
aware that everyone really close to me lives subject to the whims of
people we never meet. People with power. People who inherit a long
tradition of free time, complete with awesome ways of making food,
shelter, and war. I have three choices: abject worship ("please, god on
earth, don't kill me! you want these shiny things? please, take
them!"), avoidance ("better to avoid dealing with gods altogether: I
think I will take up residence in a mountain cave and chant with some
beads"), or revolt ("death to the evil gods who run my life without my
consent!"). The choice between fight and flight is one that each person
must make for herself, and we all make it differently. But some of us
always choose to fight. Fighting is part of human nature.</span><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$9:0" /><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$11:0" /><span data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$12:0">For
me, the really interesting question becomes one of finding ways to
manage the fight-response to civilization. Can I take the urge to
revolt, to burn civilization down for its crimes (which would be a
crime, of course, but that did not stop the Mongols, and I am guessing
that it will not stop the terrorists today), and turn it into something
good? Can I build a cure for civilization into the death-wish that it
spawns in certain people? We are always trying. (Politics and
economics historically involve warfare: they struggle to contain and
suppress and redirect it towards less destructive outlets, so that
instead of burning your house down with fire I do it with bankruptcy in a
court of law. It is easier to recover from bankruptcy than from war,
on the one hand; on the other, going bankrupt too often will eventually
drive people to war.)</span><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$13:0" /><br data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$15:0" /><span data-reactid=".cm.1:3:1:$comment718298034924720_718317514922772:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$16:0">The
angst of civilization ultimately comes from lack of control over one's
own life. The more you can convince people that they make decisions
that really matter to their individual lives (and deaths), the less
eager they are to blow themselves up (and seek another life beyond the
grave, whether as glorified Homeric heroes or mujahideen copulating with
crowds of virgins). The more invested people become in civilizations'
games as active players, the less they want to burn every game to the
ground (and start over, building new games--new ways of occupying
people's "free time" that always resemble the old ways in time). When I
hear people calling for more education (as a solution to problems of
civilization), I think this is really what they are aiming to do: they
want to show the desperadoes--the outlaws, rebels, and terrorists--that
there is a productive place for them in existing civil games, that
society has a nice place for them right here, if they would just put
down their arms and play cool instead of fighting. Part of the problem
with this idea, however, is that civilization is dynamic. People always
lose its games; you have to lose (sometimes, something) in order to
win. There is no such thing as a civilization that endures unchanging
and perfect ("with liberty and justice for all," blah blah). If you
play civil games (the market), you will get burned. Eventually, you
will die. Confronting that reality is too hard for many of us (not just
the poor or the outlaws), and some people cannot see it without going
berserk. I don't have any easy answers for this problem. All I can do
is observe it closely, and then take what measures are available to
insulate myself maximally from its harmful effects (as I observe them in
myself and the people around me).</span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-53781745868296275402014-09-24T18:52:00.000+03:002014-09-24T18:52:25.427+03:00On ProphetsA prophet is simply a spokesperson (προφήτης). Historically, spokesmen for divinity divide pragmatically into two predictable groups: (1) the divine spokesperson who speaks for some human establishment or institution (the Sanhedrin, the Synod, Senatus populusque Romanus, the LDS church, Harvard); (2) the divine spokesperson who speaks for him- or herself, and for humanity outside any particular establishment or institution (Amos, Jesus, Cato, self-appointed Mormon apologists, rogue academics). The two kinds of prophet have a history of fighting one another tooth and nail, with the establishment predictably winning battles (Jesus is killed) only to lose wars (when the response to their crackdown is the foundation of a new establishment dedicated to preserve the memory of a martyred prophet). The new establishment relatively quickly becomes everything it claims to loathe in the old establishment (read Mormon writings on the Great Apostasy and then compare the modern Mormon establishment with Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox establishments: from the metaphorical 30,000-foot view, they are virtually the same in terms of how they relate to outsiders and insiders via bureaucratic process). The original sin of fallen prophets or their followers, it would seem, is that they found a church to entrain, contain, and disseminate in some controlled fashion that which is fundamentally unstable, unentrainable, uncontainable, and beyond institutional human control.<br /><br />We need communities, of course. But these communities will not be managed (not for long at least) by visionaries who speak meaningfully for interests outside the community. To lead a community is, historically, to shut oneself off to the world, to commit oneself to a position that cannot be changed easily, to become fragile (and make others fragile as a means of protecting the fragility one has discovered by incorporating as a community with explicit procedures for life). Caiaphas is the leader of your community, <i>semper et ubique</i>. He is not always a bad dude, viciously or maliciously punishing people who shouldn't be punished. He is legitimately a prophet. He is a punitive prophet, a conservative stick-in-the-mud who pulls society back from the wild ideas of anti-establishment prophets (who are also dangerous, though not the same way he is).<br /><br />Outside the community or on its fringes, we get another kind of prophet. Jesus does not write books. He does not live by protocol (until he visits the temple or the city, where he makes a good show of paying tithes and taxes--and occasionally busts some heads, when he finds the establishment cheating flagrantly at its own game). He does not have a church. He does not aim to exist in history, but in eternity: the atemporal present wherein individuals become aware of themselves confronting a unique and personal mystery--that I exist, inexplicably, and there is something else out there around and with and through me, something larger than I am that has the power to mould my life in interesting ways. Communities, history, taxes, bureaucratic process: Jesus dispenses with these things (necessary and helpful as they are, for the down-to-earth inhabitants of this world). "My kingdom is not of this world," he says, deliberately abandoning church, country, and even the family to live naked before his Father in the wilderness (fasting and praying and being generally useless or even detrimental to the community, from Caiaphas' perspective). <br /><br />When too many people follow Jesus into the wilderness, bad things can happen: society might collapse entirely, or (what more often happens) the check Jesus provides on community values (traditional values) may be lost--as Caiaphas moves into the desert without leaving the world behind. "We can build heaven on earth here with you, Jesus. We can make it an external, communal experience. We can deliver it to groups through an organized, efficient process of education that I will oversee carefully." Wrong. There is no church of Christ. Paul, the Christian missionary to the West, was just another Caiaphas. He was building community, not running away into the wilderness to commune with God and then speak to friends. The paradox of Jesus is that the gospel must be preached without ever being established. You cannot put new wine in old bottles, and even when you put new wine in new bottles, it ages (and becomes old, i.e. other than it was). As Caiaphas runs the risk of being a vindictive, reactive stick-in-the-mud, so Jesus runs the risk of being a cheerful onlooker to the collapse of human civilization (which requires rules and procedures and tradition that is communal and so at some point antithetical to the prophetic gospel he embodies).<br /><br />At the end of the day, all prophets are dangerous--for they are human beings, and carry within themselves the seeds of mortality. We are all going to die at some point. We are all going to do things on the way to death. At some point, all of us will embrace or avoid tradition in ways that are dangerous. There is no way to "fix" this, no way to make death go away (or become innocuous). Integrity is something we seek as we embrace mortality, our own and that of the species (collectively). No individual is made to last, just as no community is. Integrity exists as we seek and discover the means to negotiate this reality with dignity and respect that looks both inward (to ourselves and the mystery of life as we perceive it) and outward (to other people and the mystery of life as it appears to communities). We need Jesus and Caiaphas, and both are prophets. But neither one will save us from death: nobody and nothing can do that. The only way to deal with death is to die. Die well, my friends! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-39932970557422110582014-09-11T17:49:00.000+03:002014-09-11T17:49:36.451+03:00Intellectual Property<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">One
thing that has persistently fascinated me is the manner in which ideas
refuse to be owned, despite our attempts to claim them (e.g. Newton and
Leibniz fighting over calculus, Darwin and Wallace over natural
selection). </span></span><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">
My own research consistently discovers people saying utterly ridiculous
things about individual responsibility (e.g. "Plato is largely
responsible" for some trope that runs thick through culture before and
after him). It seems to me that ideas find people: a really powerful
idea will find more than one person (over and over, as people bump into
the circumstances that enable it).</span><br data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0">I
once tried to express this insight to a fellow student (in grad
school), and his response was to worry that I would steal his
research--and claim it for myself--as though my assertion that I could
never really own an idea amounted to an excuse to lie (about ideas that
might not even have occurred to me). I was surprised by this (and a
little saddened, honestly, that I presented myself so poorly to this
person that he came away from our encounter taking me for a thief). For
me, the reality that I don't really own ideas is one that invites
honesty and openness rather than the reverse. I don't care if you steal
my ideas: I relinquish them as assets that I control. I cultivate
ideas not because they make me rich or famous or respected (famous in
the right places), but because I enjoy thinking--and want to do it
mindfully. If there were no external fame and glory in my work as a
thinker, I would still do it--and have "a real job" on the side, as so
many other thinkers (more skilled than I) have in the past. To live by
one's wits is fundamentally, for me, to be an honest charlatan. I see
that I claim a kind of superiority over my own thoughts that I don't
really possess. I see that thoughts possess me at least as much as I
possess them. I see that it is silly to worship me when I am possessed
by a thought that society judges to be cool (for whatever reason: the
judgement of society, even learned society, is always at some point
absurd). I feel this very deeply. I hope I can learn to express it
without coming off as some kind of sleazeball (the academic version of
an empty suit).</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">Every
good idea I have, including the one for which I get credit (and tenure
and κλέος ἄφθιτον), is one that someone else has probably also had (or
will have, with as much claim to originality as I). Seeing this
reality, I cannot take too much credit </span></span><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">for
my ideas. This does not predispose me to take credit for your ideas,
but to take less credit, and give less, for the mere possession and
expression of an idea. Ideas are valuable. People are valuable.
People are not valuable to me because of their ideas, but because of
their character (the way they use those ideas). </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480737468768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480746878768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480758548768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480758548768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480758548768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480758548768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">This means
that I am very comfortable sharing ideas with people whose character I
would never adopt. I can think with Hitler, or Lenin, or
Osama bin Laden, or anyone, really. I can see their ideas with the
realiz</span></span><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480758548768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480758548768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".gx.1:3:1:$comment10152480353228768_10152480758548768:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">ation
that these are present, powerful, and real to them--and perhaps to me.
But I cannot then act as they do. I must keep my actions, my responses
to ideas, filtered by character.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486390395644579022.post-74597218123978850632014-09-08T21:24:00.000+03:002014-09-09T21:37:09.772+03:00Musings on Market Share<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><i>I hear <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0HsqQjxr98&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">people</a> talk about there being an 'asset bubble' in the Western education</i> <i>market, similar to the one in the US housing market that popped around the turn of the century. I agree that there is probably a bubble in education, and here are some thoughts I had about it, and about asset bubbles (or "economic growth") in general. In sum, I do not believe in progress without regress, life without death, up without down, etc.</i></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Every
commodity can be over-valued. I think many people pay far too much for
education right now--largely because they confuse education with
institutional affiliation, as though learning or professional
vocation were somehow inextricably dependent on possessing the
imprimatur of a particular institution. The more the latter becomes
true, the closer to collapse the market is. The more institutions
corner the market on education, the more they invite the kind of
corruption and abuse that sow seeds for a regime change that will
severely depreciate the social value of their imprimatur (which may go
extinct as a valid way of offering credentials, the way Bear Stearns is
extinct as a means of managing finances).</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">Why
do I oppose Monsanto? Not because I don't believe in science (or
evolution, or agriculture). I don't believe in putting all eggs in one
basket. I don't believe in cornering markets. I would like to find the
smallest margin of profit I can maint</span></span><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">ain
without going under (as an individual or institution), and then seek to
maintain that (as long as the environment supports it)--not grow it to
the point where I dominate (and invite the lightning-bolt of Zeus).</span><br data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$1:0" /><br data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$3:0" /><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875714732438684:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$4:0">I
oppose Monsanto because I see them doing to agriculture what
universities aspire to do to education, what GoldmanSachs aspires to do
with banks (and the nations that rely on banks), etc. To control all
shots is dangerous, semper et ubique. I want minimal control (enough
that I don't die), not too much (so much that I become "too big to fail"
and wind up dragging entire communities down with my inevitable
failure). Whatever we build must eventually fall down. I want to
engineer institutions with this reality in mind--with the mortality of
all companies clearly present in the mind of those creating them and
working for them. We should aim not to live forever (nobody has
achieved this, and you are not smarter than the guys who built Rome),
but to die with minimal harm to those in and around us. We want to
minimize corrosion, not maximize utility (or profit or advantage or
brand or control or market-share or whatever anyone wants to call it).
Losing well, over a history of multiple market-cycles, is more important
than winning in any individual cycle (and there is no such thing as
winning over all cycles).</span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.4"></span><span data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.3.$metadata:0"><a class="uiLinkSubtle" data-ft="{"tn":"N"}" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.3.$metadata:0.$timestamp-message" href="https://www.facebook.com/sergej.popov.98/posts/875163629160461?comment_id=875711019105722&offset=0&total_comments=9"><abbr class="livetimestamp" data-reactid=".s.1:3:1:$comment875163629160461_875711019105722:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.3.$metadata:0.$timestamp-message.0" data-shorten="true" data-utime="1410199718" title="Monday, September 8, 2014 at 12:08pm"></abbr></a></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0