tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16519081626070912922024-03-13T21:25:17.852-07:00SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONISskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger376125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-46223786945007864052023-12-07T13:40:00.000-08:002023-12-24T19:36:08.793-08:00Sometimes it happens<span style="font-size: 130%;"><p> <br clear="all" /></p><div><span style="font-size: large;">As months pass without a post, the labor of
breaking silence becomes more and more onerous because of the weight
that would implicitly be placed on whatever the post is that breaks it.
This post will not be the one -- if there is one -- to shoulder the
(imaginary and yet felt) burden of justifying either itself or the
preceding silence. It is just a vignette about what I do. But this
really is about <i>what I do</i>. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">A huge
portion of my work is about showing and calling attention to the
unceasing, always-available capillary breathing between the mundane and
the supposedly "deep," i.e., "the next level" of reflection; as I
sometimes say, between the questions "where should we eat lunch?" and
"how must we live?" In a recent installment <a href="https://lessfoolish.substack.com/p/all-philosophers-are-charlatans" target="_blank">from Peter Limberg</a>, he remarks that among those who have recently discovered philosophy that there is usually a stage at which they seize upon "<span face="Spectral, serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"">any conversational opening to turn 'shallow' conversations into 'deep' ones,</span>"
usually to the consternation and annoyance of friends and family.
Though I do not at all endorse Limberg's account of these "stages," nor
the moral he ostensibly draws, I suppose I could be thought of as more
or less plateauing in this condition, at least internally; I do not
force the turn upon my loved ones nearly as often as I might, but my own
mind is working like this without a break -- not because I am
looking for such "openings," but because these mental habits are so
second-nature that the openings simply are the path of least
resistance. Nor would I say I try to "model" this kind of turn. I
simply try to be who I am, always in response to those with whom I find
myself, and this "who I am" inevitably entails a bent towards this
ostensible "depth," though not without a good deal of humor (ironic,
silly, or crass as the case may be), and whatever the day's exhaustions.
God knows this "being who I am" is difficult enough, given my
insecurities, mistakes in understanding, and various other besetting
temptations. Still, it is what I aspire to, and when I manage it I
suppose those around me are pretty much continually being subjected to
the razor's edge that separates any other question from the triumvirate
of "Why?," "So, What if...," and "But -- Really?" <br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">One might well compare Limberg's worries to the hesitation of Plato, who remarks in a letter that too-early or too slapdash an introduction to philosophy can make students think they have got hold of some tool for aggrandizing themselves at the expense of their peers (or, as Aristophanes satirized, their elders). I take Plato seriously -- far too seriously to take him literally -- and I have honed my pedagogy accordingly. I teach no "doctrines" and no method either except what I see being used in conversation already. But I do go -- with students -- where the <i>logos </i>leads. I'm following them; they are following the <i>logos</i>. I'm just showing them how to follow. It's by following them that I show them.<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">The
other night, after my philosophy class had ended, I stood out on the
curb with a couple of students as they awaited their ride. We called
goodbye to one of their classmates, who called back goodbye by name to
the two of them, but (naturally enough) not to me -- I am the teacher,
not their peer. (These are middle school students, remember.) My student S. remarked upon it, and I joked, "Yes -- now
there is an imbalance, and extra <i>goodbye</i> out there in the world." S. paused for just a moment, that beautiful electrical telltale moment when I <i>know</i> something is about to happen in a conversation, and then said: </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">"Well -- probably the real imbalance is the other way, don't you think? because we say way more <i>Hello's</i> than we do <i>Goodbye's, </i>don't we? I mean, just like walking down the sidewalk, people say <i>Hi</i> to each other, even to people they don't know, but it would be weird to say <i>Bye</i> to random people, right?" </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">This
struck me, and still does strike me, as rather a novel observation (to me, at any rate), and moreover, as it turned out, a fruitful one: it
led on to a fifteen-minute improvisation among the three of us,
imagining counterfactual social mores (and trying a few of them out as
people passed us on the sidewalk), and thinking about the meaning of
greeting and parting, about opposition (hello and goodbye), convention,
and what it means to know another person; and finally reflecting on the
fact that this whole conversation had followed upon a moment of levity
that followed from a simple social interaction. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Is
it obvious that this is a "deeper" direction in which the conversation
had been "taken"? Would it have been "shallow" had it not gone there? I
am not convinced that the spatial metaphor is the most apt. What does
seem clear is that it is an instance of <i>logos</i> turning upon <i>nomos</i>, asking after the <i>reason for</i> the nomos; there is an assumption operative here that there <i>is</i> some reason why greeting and farewell work as they do; that we can get enough distance to see both <i>how</i> they operate and to make surmises about <i>why.</i> The
most important thing about this step is not the specific question that
gets asked or answered (however speculatively or inadequately), but that
it <i>happens</i>. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">And once it has happened,
no matter the apparent triviality of its occasion, it can happen again.
Sometimes the triviality is actually an aid, because reflection on a
weightier matter can seem like just more of the weightiness. It is far
easier to slip into counterfactuals and "what if we didn't?" and actual
suspension of presuppositions about saying Hello and Goodbye, than about
sacred cows like voting, or vague "values" like equality, or supposedly
edgy things like the freedom to be offensive, or technical questions
like artificial intelligence, the nature (if any) of dark matter, or
what counts as evidence in general when it comes to vaccines,
epidemiology, or the efficacy, wisdom, and motives of governmental
oversight. We can <i>think</i> we are asking the bold questions about
all of these, when really we are operating well within established nomic
boundaries. We do this -- slip into thinking we are being far more
revolutionary than we are -- precisely because the stakes are high; we
don't notice what we don't question because we <i>can't</i> (at that moment) possibly
question it. But when the conversation is just about some low-stakes
throwaway moment, we can let ourselves go there; and if we get into the
habit of going there, it gets easier and easier. It is not "automatic"
(and would it be a good thing if it were?); but one comes to sense the
openings more readily, and tell the true ones from the false.<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">I
felt a great warmth of pride and affection swell in my heart as I
watched this fourteen-year-old boy stretching his mind, finding <i>his</i>
way into the space of reasons, his smile growing as he felt it open up
before him and he sensed his footing was secure -- at least for the
moment -- using the only orienting tools that have ever been available:
the willingness to ask Why, So What If, and But Really?; to let himself
take this playfulness seriously,
with the confidence that it is a space <i>of reasons</i> and not of arbitrariness; above all to notice that it is always <i>right here</i>, that every moment sings with a thousand invitations to enter. I feel it each time, and I felt it then. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">This is why I teach. This is what I do. But -- <i>what is it</i>, this teaching, this doing?<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">It
was a small moment. In talking about it </span><span style="font-size: large;">this way, </span><span style="font-size: large;">have I overblown it? Who do I think I am, Obi-Wan Kenobi? "You've taken your first step into a
larger world." Well, in a word: Huh, interesting question. Is that one word, two, or three? I'm not above laughing at myself to
deflate some of the excess gravitas, but make no mistake, this laughing
is itself part of the way. The examined life is <i>the life worth living</i>,
and for holding this, I do not, cannot, apologize. Whether S., or any student
will go on to "be a philosopher" I don't care to speculate; I certainly
don't care a whit whether they will go on to "major in philosophy,"
unless it would be to urge them to be <i>very sure</i> they want to. But
I do know that when a student can "go there" in those moments, I feel
met -- on that even ground whereon, before the perennial questions, we
are all equal. I recognize the light that comes into their eyes, an
eros; I recognize it because I feel it (and by virtue of feeling it) in my own. It's a look of two silent realizations arising fast on one
another's heels -- a thrill: <i>I can do this!</i> ; and then, a different thrill, or an adumbration of the same: <i>What </i>is<i> this I'm doing? </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The spark leaps. But must there be a "direction" in which it leaps? </span> <br /></p></span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-74416155040535502212022-12-04T18:16:00.009-08:002022-12-08T09:34:15.214-08:00A florilegium in lieu of an explanation of a year's silence. <p><span style="font-size: 130%;">
<i></i></span></p><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>Everybody's shouting: Which side are you on?</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row" </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>Whoever does not take sides in a civil war is struck with infamy, and loses all right to politics. </i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Solon, Athenian Constitution
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p> </p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>And if there were a devil it would not be one who decided against God, but one who, in eternity, came to no decision.</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Martin Buber, <i>Good and Evil</i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i>
<i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i>-- Joshua 5:13-14
</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> Whitman can sing difference but cannot differentiate himself without compromising his labor -- which is part of why his labor has to be a kind of leisure, a profession that transcends the professions; Whitman can't take sides. In this regard his work as a Civil War nurse seems significant: He can tend the sick, recognize the humanity of the soldiers (from the North, but also the South), and love these historical persons as they are sacrificed for the future union. But he cannot fight. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>-- </i>Ben Lerner, <i>Hatred of Poetry</i>
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>The god whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign. </i></span></p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>-- </i>Heraclitus<i><br /></i></span></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i><div><i>The abortive revolution of 1905 placed Rozanov in a quandary; he
admired the vigor of the revolutionaries while detesting their violence.
He regarded the Tsarist government as tired, outworn, incapable of
ruling except as a faceless bureaucracy; and at the same time he
rejoiced in the stability of the monarchy, at least as an ideal. Without
the least cynicism he found himself cheering both sides in the conflict
-- he acclaimed the established order in the conservative </i>New Times<i>,
and in liberal periodicals, writing under the pseudonym "Varvarin," he
celebrated the revolutionaries. It was a completely untenable situation,
and inevitably he was accused of the crassest cynicism. When a young
revolutionary reminded him that Russia was in a terrible state and
something had to be done, Rozanov answered, "I'll tell you what has to
be done. If it is summer, pick berries and make jam. If it is winter,
drink tea sweetened with jam."</i></div></span></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Robert Payne, introduction to Vasily Rozanov, <i>The Apocalypse of Our Time & other writings</i></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"> </span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. </i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Desmond Tutu
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p> </p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> <b> </b>We should keep a perfect indifference for all
opinions, not wish any of them true or try to make them appear so, but,
being indifferent, receive and embrace them according as evidence and
that alone gives the attestation of truth. </i></span></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- John Locke, <i>Of the Conduct of the Understanding</i> 34<br /></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"> </span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain't no neutral ground.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i>-- Bob Dylan, "Precious Angel"
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>An attractive theory ... for pedantic poseurs, 'haunted by profound, unresolved doubts.' ... what it all comes down to is, "on the one hand we cannot but admit," and, "on the other it must be confessed"!</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i>-- Rakitin in Dostoevsky, <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> part 1 book 2, ch 7
</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Matthew 12:30 </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>You had some very bad people ... but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i>-- Donald J. Trump, August 15 2017</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"> <i>I don’t know about </i>sides<i>. I go my own way; but your way may go along with mine for a while. … I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me. ...there are some things, of course, whose side I am altogether not on; I am against them altogether.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i>-- Treebeard in J.R.R. Tolkien, <i>The Two Towers</i>
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span><i> <br /></i></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><blockquote><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>The intellectual must take sides, with this group of violent men, since he has only the choice between their triumph or that of the others</i></span><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>. He will give them his signature; perhaps his life. But he will retain the right to judge them. </i></span></div></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Julien Benda, <i>a propos</i> the Spanish Civil War<br /></span></div></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>Dialectics ... does not reason on the "on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand" principle, but always points out the determining aspect, that element in the unity of opposites.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>--</i>Evald Ilyenkov, <i>Dialectics of Abstract & Concrete</i>, ch 2
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.
And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Luke 9:49-50
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>Action and speech are so closely related because the primordial and specifically human act must at the same time contain the answer to the questions asked of every newcomer: “Who are you?” .... The revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore when people are </i>with<i> others and neither for nor against them — that is, in sheer human togetherness.</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Hannah Arendt, <i>The Human Condition</i> ch. V, sec. 24
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>There's not even room enough to be anywhere.</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">-- Bob Dylan, "Not Dark Yet"
<i> </i></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>My standpoint is armed neutrality.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i> </i>-- Søren Kierkegaard
</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-15592108603748421682021-11-27T19:57:00.001-08:002021-11-28T13:51:00.822-08:00A Simulating Conversation(This is a portion of a longer work in progress. Despite appearances, it is not primarily about whether the world "really is" a simulation.)
<p><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"> <b><i>Adam, Ursula, & Yorick arriving; Emilia, Iachimo, Orsino, already in conversation. </i></b><br /><br />Adam: Sorry we’re late. <br /><br />Emilia: What held you up? <br /><br />Ursula: We got into a dispute. “<i>La querelle des anciens et des modernes</i>.” <br /><br />Adam: I don’t even speak French.<br /><br />Yorick: And, importantly! We stopped to get food. <br /><br />Emilia: Ice cream! Fries! <br /><br />Yorick: The sweet and the savory. <br /><br />Ursula: We remembered you like to dip the one in the other.<br /><br />Adam: <i>De gustibus non est disputandum</i>.<br /><br />Orsino: A dispute? Who won?<br /><br />Ursula: <i>De gustibus non est disputandum</i>.<br /><br />Adam: Yorick had to moderate.<br /><br />Yorick: It’s not that kind of argument.<br /><br />Adam: What Yorick means is, “Whereof one cannot speak…”<br /><br />Iachimo:
It’s the same dispute as always. I can tell you and I wasn’t even
there. Adam started quoting the <i>Republic</i>, which as usual he’s toting
around, along with Kierkegaard I see; and Ursula rejoined with Lacan, or
Zizek, or Judith Butler, or Contrapoints, or whatever flavor of the
week it is. Each endlessly outflanking the other, Plato with priority,
Lacan with meta-games. It’s a Turing machine computing an undecidable
algorithm. If you ask Adam, it’s an endlessly debatable argument which
if it could, <i>per impossible</i>, be concluded would yield the victory to
Adam (of course), but the outcome is at the vanishing point -- the
impossible final station of an infinitely long train of thought. If you
ask Ursula, it’s an endless debate premised on the fact that victory<i> per
se</i> is impossible but posited as real; it’s the elusive “object of
desire” or whatnot. A MacGuffin.<br /><br />Emilia: Uh huh. The difference being...?<br /><br />Iachimo: Exactly.<br /><br />Adam: You say potato, I say <i>pomme de terre</i>. <br /><br />Ursula: Actually, I say <i>freedom fries</i>. <br /><br />Orsino: Garbage in, garbage out.<br /><br />Emilia: Also, what did you say it was? A McWhat?<br /><br />Iachimo:
MacGuffin. It’s an Ursula thing, I picked it up from her. Like, a
placeholder for an actual thing, a thing the attention is focused upon,
but whose whole function is just to hold the attention. Or -- <br /><br />Ursula:
It’s from Lacan, via Hitchcock. Secret plans, the Ring of Power, the
Body of Christ. Hey, who’s reading <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>?<br /><br />Emilia: I just finished. Re-reading it, actually. Third or fourth time. <br /><br />Ursula: I’m reading a very strange novel, <i>The Invention of Morel</i> by Bioy Casares. <br /><br />Yorick: An intriguing book. And Orwell is indispensable. <br /><br />Adam: “Slavery is Freedom.” So I guess “Freedom fries” is…. <br /><br />Orsino: <i>Are</i>. <br /><br />Emilia:
Beer in the fridge; wine on the counter. Coffee on the stove. The
kettle should still be hot; there’s lots of tea in the drawer there.<br /><br />Yorick: The sour and the bitter! What were you talking about?<br /><br />Emilia: Ooh, you’ll like this. <i>They </i>think we’re living in The Matrix. <br /><br />Iachimo: I didn’t say that. I said, <i>if </i>simulation is possible, it’s overwhelmingly likely that we’re living in one.<br /><br />Emilia: Speak for yourself.<br /><br />Ursula: A simulation. Like the holodeck?<br /><br />Adam: We have come too late. Obviously the moderns have won the quarrel before we arrived. <br /><br />Orsino: The holodeck, right.<br /><br />Yorick: And what makes you say that?<br /><br />Orsino: And what makes you so sure we’re not?<br /><br />Emilia: I didn’t <i>say </i>that.<br /><br />Orsino: It was something about your eye-rolling.<br /><br />Iachimo:
Because: if simulation is possible at all, the inhabitants of
simulations must vastly, astronomically, outnumber the inhabitants of
the real world. Assume that computing power and rendering technology
sufficient to simulate something like our world exists. If simulation is
put into effect at all, it can presumably be implemented any number of
times. There’s only one real world, but there could be an arbitrarily
large number of simulations -- potentially billions. <br /><br />Adam: Oh ye gods. Out of the modern encyclopedia, into the postmodern paper shredder.<br /><br />Ursula: If you can’t beat ’em --<br /><br />Adam:
Fine, I’ll simulate your game. First of all, strictly speaking,
“billions” is extremely modest compared to what “arbitrarily large”
could mean.<br /><br />Emilia: I was saying that, in at least one way -- a
really simple way -- “simulation” is obviously possible: I can draw a
picture. Here: a stick figure. And it’s recognizable <i>as </i>a picture, which
means that in a way it simulates whatever it shows. <br /><br />Iachimo: Not very high-resolution. <br /><br />Emilia: I admit. Not the point.<br /><br />Orsino:
But “simulation” is not the same as representation; it’s actually
important that simulation be potentially <i>not </i>recognizable “as a
picture.” In a simulation -- at least, as we’re using the term -- the
“picture” is supposed to be <i>indistinguishable </i>from the “real thing.” <br /><br />Adam:
Or at a minimum, I take it, indistinguishable below some (arbitrary)
degree of scrutiny. The birds came and pecked at Zeuxis’ grapes, but
they didn’t actually get fed. <br /><br />Emilia: What grapes? Whose?<br /></span></p><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam:
Zeuxis’ -- famous in antiquity for his skill as a painter; Pliny gives
a story that his painting of grapes fooled even the birds --</span></div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br />Ursula: And <i>he </i>was fooled by this other artist --<br /><br />Adam: Parrhasius.<br /><br />Ursula:
-- who painted a curtain on the wall of his room. Zeuxis goes to see
Parrhasius’ new painting; Parrhasius points to the wall. Zeuxis says,
“fine, pull the curtain, let’s see what you got.” Zizek has a whole
thing about it: Zeuxis’ illusion makes you mistake the painting for the
real thing; but Parrhasius’ illusion makes you think that what you see
conceals a reality. <br /><br />Emilia: Subtle.<br /><br />Orsino: Your eye-rolling is not subtle.<br /><br />Emilia: That’s what you think.<br /><br />Orsino: You’re simulating subtlety, then. Not very high-resolution.<br /><br />Emilia:
Look, I’m a painter, and the way I see it is: two ancient painters
create convincing pictures; one paints fruit. Another paints drapery.
I’m pretty sure it’s your friend Zizek who’s simulating here, if he’s
pretending this is some deep point.<br /><br />Orsino: It wasn’t me, it was Ursula!<br /><br />Ursula:
The point is not that one painting is more tricky than another. The
point is that there is an illusion of concealment when in fact there is
nothing to be concealed. <br /><br />Adam: Well, now: This would constitute
one sort of “reality test.” If Zeuxis had been <i>able </i>to draw aside the
painted curtain, or if the birds who pecked at his painted grapes had
gone away nourished, now <i>that </i>would have been a simulation. <br /><br />Emilia: Birds that eat paint? Anyway, that’s not the holodeck, that’s a replicator.<br /><br />Adam:
You were acknowledging that your stick-figure is low resolution. It
doesn’t resemble a human figure except schematically; you can tell what
it “stands for,” but anyone mistaking it for an actual human being
(even, say, seen from a great distance) would be, to put it mildly, an
outlier. Zeuxis’ grapes, on the other hand, are extremely realistic; but
even their realism has a limit. They don’t, for instance, taste good;
or you can’t smell them. There’s a limit of scrutiny -- <i>some </i>test that
would make the difference discernible. <br /><br />Yorick: There is also
the comparison to sculpture and perspective. Adam will recall a
discussion of large statuary -- from the ground , everything appears
correctly proportioned; but in fact the head -- much farther away from
the viewer on the ground than the feet -- is oversized. The closeness of
simulation, if this is the appropriate word, rests in part upon the
closeness of the viewer. <br /><br />Adam: Yes. That’s in Plato, in the <i>Sophist</i>. <br /><br />Yorick:
In the context of which the question arises: how to distinguish
between these arts that are bound to falsify in some manner, and the art
that is simply that of showing how things are. <br /><br />Adam: Now in Zeuxis’ case, we can turn the painting around & see the back of the canvas --<br /><br />Emilia: It would have been a board, or pottery or something, if it was ancient Greek.<br /><br />Adam: -- or we try to pick a grape, or we notice that the birds get sick or stay hungry.<br /><br />Iachimo: Sure. What you mean is, it’s falsifiable, in theory.<br /><br />Ursula:
But: discernible by whom, is the question. To us, who can see that the
birds go away hungry, Zeuxis’ painting does not simulate grapes. But if
the birds don’t notice at the time, or don’t register this because they
just peck and nibble because that’s what they do, maybe it does.<br /><br />Orsino: Birds are actually way smarter than that.<br /><br />Emilia:
Too smart for Hathaway. She’s always trying to catch them. She would
<i>love </i>me to paint something that would lure the birds in like that.<br /><br />Adam: Where is Hathaway, anyhow?<br /><br /><div>Orsino: Curled up on Emilia’s bed, I think. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Ursula: She usually comes and greets Yorick.<br /></div><br />Yorick:
But it seems to me you mean something further. If Zeuxis had painted
birds as well, and the painted birds had pecked at the painted
grapes.... <br /><br /><div>Emilia: Then Hathaway would pounce on them.</div><br />Orsino:
I think I see. If Emilia’s stick figure could come to life and move
about in the plane of the paper, it would not know it was only in a
drawing -- or so says the simulation scenario. The stick figure would have no way of
conceiving anything beyond, and so it couldn’t tell the difference
between its paper “world” and the real one. It couldn’t even notice the
difference. Neither would the birds.<br /><br />Emilia: Why should the birds -- the painted birds -- “notice” anything at all? Why can’t they just be an animation? <br /><br />Adam: Aside from the fact that an animation would not really satisfy Hathaway’s appetite.<br /><br />Orsino:
In that case it’s not any different from a drawing -- I mean, really;
an animation just is lots of drawings, right? -- arranged in an order
and the order moved through quickly. But we’re imagining some sort of
different art form. It might involve a sort of animation, but it’s
obviously not just more powerful, but different in kind, because we’re
stipulating that it simulates experience from the inside. The birds are
(we’re saying) going to behave like real birds, all other things being
equal, within the plane of the painting. <br /><br />Iachimo: Actually,
whether it is “different in kind” or just in degree from animation
remains to be seen. Thought itself might be a kind of animation.<br /><br />Adam:
Animate means “ensoul.” To think about things is to put soul into
them. Aristotle says “soul is in some manner all things.”<br /><br />Iachimo: Well, that’s not what I meant, exactly --<br /><br />Yorick:
The real question -- well, let’s say a further question -- is: even
if we imagine the birds as having “come to life” within the painting --
whatever account we give of experience -- why should we think that they
would be “unable to distinguish” painted from real grapes, except in the
sense that they cannot actually encounter real grapes at all -- and so
cannot possibly try to distinguish them? It’s not that the painted
grapes fool the birds; the birds have no standard by which to be fooled
or not. The issue seems to have no occasion to arise. <br /><br />Orsino:
We are stipulating that (in some importantly relevant sense) the
painted grapes are to the painted birds what real grapes are to real
birds; and that the paper world is to the stick figure what our world is
to us. <br /><br />Yorick: So the reasoning rests on there being an analogy
between the painted world and the real one; certain relationships
remaining constant?<br /><br />Orsino: I’m not sure about “constant,” but
yes there’s an analogy. Sort of like there’s an analogy between Flatland
and Spaceland. <br /><br />Iachimo: And a disanalogy. In fact, more than one of each. <br /><br />Adam:
But a stipulation is just what it is. I may not be able to visualize
four or more dimensions, but I can follow the analogy, and the
mathematics can be made rigorous: there’s a well-defined meaning to
adding another variable in a systematic way, the way you do when you add
a new axis to a grid system. But no one knows <i>how </i>many new axes are
being added when you try to </span><span style="font-size: 130%;">add digestion to painted birds. You’re
starting from an imagined effect, and then imagining working backwards,
assuming you can get there from here by some rigorous process that you
aren’t specifying.<br /><br />Iachimo: “Digestion” actually assumes too
much. It might be one of the <i>dis</i>analogies, something that is not
preserved if you do the transformation operation (assuming of course
that the issue<i> is</i> analogous to adding a dimension or two, or twelve, or a
hundred). After all, certain properties get lost in higher
number systems; you can’t assume that (a x b) = (b x a) with
quaternions, for instance; with octonions you can’t assume that (a x b) x
c = a x (b x c), either. <br /><br />Yorick: But in both cases, there is
<i>something </i>that it means to multiply; that is, the term <i>multiply </i>has a meaning, and (a x b) is a real operation. In the
case of the imagined painting, all that we can stipulate as being
(hypothetically) preserved is the formal relation: <i>grapes </i>are to <i>birds
</i>as <i>painted grapes</i> are to <i>painted birds</i>. The content of any one half of
the relation (“grapes:birds” meaning “birds digest grapes”) may not
translate. <br /><br />Emilia: You are losing me.<br /><br />Yorick: We may say
that the real birds pecked at Zeuxis’ painted grapes in order to eat them, or to
digest them; but this “in order to” seems ambiguous; does it mean the
same thing in both cases?<br /><br />Iachimo: Their digesting the grapes is
<i> entailed </i>by their eating them (if they can eat them), but is that their
<i> intention </i>-- to the extent that they have intentions? <br /><br />Emilia: Well, if Zeuxis had added birds, he would have painted them eating grapes, not digesting them. <br /><br />Adam:
I think that Emilia is right to wonder what the difference here is
from mere animation. “If a stick figure were to come alive,” is as much
to say, “if by magic….” And to imagine, by analogy with the stick
figure, that <i>we</i> might somehow be “in a simulation” is precisely the same
thing: you’re suggesting that we are “drawn.” It only works by
stipulating a degree of “artistry” we do not actually have any
experience of and cannot really imagine. <br /><br />Ursula: “Any sufficiently advanced technology…”<br /><br />Emilia: Arthur C. Clarke, right?<br /><br />Orsino:
We’re projecting a technology, yes. But it’s not an unreasonable
projection. If you showed anyone in the Middle Ages, or the 19th century
even, any common example of technology today, they would be amazed.<br /><br />Adam:
Yes, yes, I know the argument: We extrapolate from one set of
circumstances (ours) and speculatively fast-forward: “well, since we can
do <i>this</i>, why couldn’t a “greater technology” do <i>that</i>?” This gives us
license to imagine anything we like, and call it technology. It’s fine
for science fiction -- though even there it’s pretty thin if that’s all
there is -- but it’s hardly science. And when someone says, that’s
magical thinking, you just invoke Clarke’s (ahem) “Law” and say it’s
bound to look like magic if it’s “advanced” enough. This sort of
argument is irrefutable on its own turf.<br /><br />Iachimo: But there are
plenty of good reasons for it. Prognostication, reasoning by analogy,
and so on are legitimate ways of reasoning. We do try to guess what will
come by forecasting “if current trends continue.” Why? Because a lot of
the time, trends have continued. That’s what a trend <i>is</i>! <br /><br />Ursula:
But you are also projecting something radically different. The
holodeck, or whatever, is orders of magnitude beyond current videogames,
even in VR. Let alone painting. And the notion that we are in a
simulation -- without knowing it, no less -- is further still. You’re
really talking about something like a technological singularity, some (imagined)
moment when AI makes this great leap forward, leaves us in the dust, and
then decides to spin a little world on a hard drive somewhere, that
includes things like us -- for some reason --? ...<br /><br />Orsino: There
<i> have </i>been such things as radical breaks in culture and technology, and
they do, in retrospect, make one historical epoch seem utterly different
from another. Why not the singularity? <br /><br />Ursula: I’m simply
saying there seems to be a tension between arguing that you can
extrapolate from current trends and saying “one day things could be so
different you can’t possibly imagine.”<br /><br />Emilia: Let alone saying that this day has actually already come, and we just don’t know it. <br /><br />Ursula:
Though now that I think of it -- hearing you say that, Emilia -- Nietzsche more or less said something
like this already. The death of God lifts everything that comes
thereafter to a higher plane than all history hitherto. And the ones to
whom the death of God is announced can’t grasp it, even though they are
living in the aftermath and even though “they have done it themselves.”<br /><br />Adam:
Actually, something pretty similar was announced by Jesus: the advent
of the kingdom of God. Nietzsche is -- as so often -- parodying
something. <br /><br />Iachimo: First of all: There may be “tension,” but
that’s completely subjective. The radical break <i>follows from</i> the
projection of trends, and there’s nothing absurd or even inconsistent
about it -- even the degree to which it could be said to be surprising
is purely a matter of the expectations you are prepared to countenance.
You start to fill up a basin with water. “If current trends continue,
this basin -- currently pretty much empty -- will be completely full in x
number of minutes.” There’s absolutely zero “tension” here in anything
but your perspective. Second: we may or may not be talking about the
singularity. The AI after a singularity may decide to run simulations;
but so could an advanced human or alien civilization. The notion of the
simulated universe is completely separable from the singularity.<br /><br />Ursula: I only meant that the technological break is effectively unimaginable. <br /><br />Adam: And “subjective” is not a slur.<br /><br />Orsino: I don’t think you mean “slur.” You just mean “bad thing.”<br /><br />Yorick:
You know, I’m not at all sure that it’s true that a Scholastic
philosopher or a statesman from the Alexandrian empire or a Vedic seer
would be “unable to imagine” contemporary technology, or understand it
if it were described to them. <br /><br />Orsino: They might be impressed, no doubt. <br /><br />Adam: But -- positively?<br /><br />Yorick: Perhaps they would be amused.<br /><br />Iachimo: It would at least take some work to get them up to speed. To put it mildly.<br /><br />Yorick:
But finding it inconceivable is a very different thing. In fact,
Clarke’s “Law”, to even be meaningful, <i>depends </i>upon the effects of
technology being conceivable: precisely <i>as magic</i>. As for ordinary
prognostication and so on; if science and even everyday planning deploy
such premises, philosophy obviously can do so. But philosophy also needs
to be able to turn around and critique its premises. We can stipulate
whatever we like; we also need to ask, “what makes this stipulation at
all plausible?” Or even, “What are we doing when we stipulate?” Clarke’s
Law is a way -- <i>one </i>way -- of doing this. <br /><br />Adam: I think it does involve a
degree of hand-waving, and in a sense relies upon the very “magic” it
invokes; it <i>stipulates </i>that there could be some way to produce X effect,
which we then agree to call “technology” instead, so that we are not
violating certain rules of -- what? Methodological naturalism, or
something.<br /><br />Yorick: But in itself that’s all right -- stipulation
is a perfectly legitimate move. It’s even a kind of enchantment. It
needn’t bind us irrevocably -- that would be a darker magic, a sort with
which, to be sure, some forms of argument do flirt. But arguments about
the possibility of the singularity, or whether we are simulated, or
that our experience might be totally modelable, predictable,
controllable -- even without our knowledge -- are all admissible. Plato,
as you know, used myths. We can reasonably stipulate any of these
scenarios; we just should admit that this is what we are doing. And
then, of course, we see where we can go from there.<br /><br />Ursula: In any case, ruling them out requires more work than I have ever seen done. <br /><br />Adam:
But confidently predicting them or assuming their inevitability also
requires a great deal more than “Well, who’s to say that someday there
won’t be….?”<br /><br />Iachimo: Again, the singularity is distinct from
the simulation scenario. And both of those are distinct from the idea
that our mental processes are totally modelable, let alone controllable.<br /><br />Orsino:
Actually I don’t know about that. The very idea of having conscious
inhabitants of a simulation implies <i>either </i>that they are put there from
the outside -- either willingly, like holodeck gamers, or unwittingly,
like Matrix inhabitants -- <i>or</i> that they are themselves programs, which
would imply that <i>some </i>forms of consciousness can be modeled. I mean, if
we are simulated, then by definition, our mental processes are the
running of algorithms or something. They’re <i>nothing but </i>the model.<br /><br />Adam:
Well, a model might conceivably be irreducibly probabilistic, for
instance. But I take it that part of what you mean, Iachimo, is -- first
-- that you can have modelability without controllability, and second,
that you can have both of those without simulation. <br /><br />Iachimo:
But also: simulation without <i>perfect </i>modelability, except in the sense
that the entire simulation might be the model. That’s one reason to run a
simulation, after all: to see what happens. You see what the model
predicts by seeing what it does with certain inputs and parameters.
Because its whole output <i>is</i> a prediction: not about the simulation, but
about the real world, <i>if</i> -- on the assumption that -- the world is as
simulated.<br /><br />Orsino: Here’s a thought: the notion of our universe
being simulated is an end-run around Fermi’s question about
extraterrestrial life -- you know, “where is everyone?” -- but in a
different way than the so-called “great filter”. Rather than assume that
there is some probable technological moment that most civilizations
don’t survive -- the singularity in some arguments is one such
bottleneck -- thus making it overwhelmingly likely that they never reach
the point of interstellar communication (or travel), this argument
assumes that probably billions of civilizations have arrived at
extraordinary technology “indistinguishable from magic”, and that we are
indeed “in contact” with one of them, because we are its creature.<br /><br />Emilia:
Seems fine as an explanation, except of course it leaves everything
completely the same. Which is the same problem with all these scenarios.
What is the practical upshot?<br /><br />Ursula: Not only does the
simulation scenario have no practical upshot, it <i>cannot</i>. It’s exactly
the brain-in-a-vat scenario, to which there is an objection so obvious
to me that I am baffled to find that it is so rarely noted. The degree
of skepticism required here undermines too much to then ground the
suggestion it wants to make. It doesn’t just undermine our confidence in
whether we are sitting in a room or taking a walk in the sunshine. Why
should there be such things as “brains,” or “vats,” and why would our
experience depend even partially upon anything remotely analogous to a
brain? <i>Every </i>reason you think that “having experience” requires a
“brain,” whatever <i>that </i>would be, is undermined, along with every reason
for thinking anything else, if you suppose that you could be wrong about
everything and be getting your experience “fed” to you. So OK, suppose
we are “simulated;” in that case, what makes us believe there “really
are” such things as computers, or programming, or simulations -- things
we only “have evidence for” in our <i>experience</i>? This objection comes in
well before we even begin to speculate on what would constrain such a
simulation -- i.e., whether the simulation would need to be a “good”
one, “really” emulating the real world. The scenario undermines itself. <br /><br />Adam:
Hilary Putnam actually does address this objection, in a way. He
argues that in the brain-in-vat scenario, the words “brain” and “vat”
and so on cannot mean the same in “envatted” language as in
non-envatted. He too argues that the scenario undermines itself.<br /><br />Ursula:
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think the scenario is meaningless. Its
lack of testability notwithstanding -- or rather, precisely by virtue of
this -- it is a mark of today’s form of anxiety.<br /><br />Orsino: Well,
not every version of the scenario is as radically skeptical as that.
The simulation argument was made very popular by Nick Bostrom, and
Bostrom explicitly extrapolates from current technology to a future
technology capable of arbitrarily-precise simulation, because he is not
positing an imaginary abstract “civilization,” but our own -- or at
least one like our own -- in the future. <i>This </i>argument speculates upon
the possibility of our own descendants running simulations of their own
past. So there’s no need to explain the existence of computers or
programming or the notion of simulation <i>in</i> the simulation -- this is
itself <i>part of</i> the explanation. <br /><br />Iachimo: Bostrom also does not
argue <i>that </i>we are in a simulation; he concludes that <i>either </i>(post)-human
civilization will not reach technical capability for such simulation,
or will have no interest in it, <i>or </i>we are overwhelmingly likely to
inhabit a simulation, since if such simulations are done at all, their
“inhabitants” will vastly outnumber “real” people. Which is pretty much
what I was saying earlier. <br /><br />Emilia: Wait… Bostrom argues that
our descendants will probably simulate us, so probably they already
have, so probably we are simulated. Why does this feel like a
time-travel story? </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br />Iachimo: The difference between this and
time-travel is that no one is going back in time to father their own
grandfather. Or kill them. They are simulating a past era-- which may or
may not include simulations of actual historical figures from their own
real past.<br /><br /></span></p><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">Orsino: Or, rather: if they can, then they will; so: either they will, so they did; or they couldn’t, so they didn’t. </span></div><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Emilia: Yeah. So again, the upshot? How would we ever decide?<br /><br />Iachimo:
Actually there are physicists who also consider the simulation
hypothesis and think there could be tests. We might look for telltale
glitches --<br /><br />Orsino: Although a “glitch” is a very our-world way of thinking of it.<br /><br />Iachimo:
-- or it could simply be that the simulation scenario accounts for
what we observe about the physical universe in the most parsimonious
way. <br /><br />Adam: “Physical!”<br /><br />Ursula: It is hard to see how inserting a whole extra layer between us and reality should be considered parsimonious. <br /><br />Yorick:
In a certain sense, explanation itself is unparsimonious. Were the
phenomena not doing just fine by themselves? Why are they in need of an
“explanation”? <i>Because the question has arisen</i>. That’s all. Is it <i>things
</i>that need the explanation, or <i>us</i>? And what is this “need?” What is this
“arising” of the question?<br /><br />Orsino: If information really is the
fundamental thing -- like John Wheeler thought, for instance -- then
everything is effectively describable in zeros and ones. Now that’s
parsimony.<br /><br />Adam: Parsimony is the inverse of Clarke’s Law.
Clarke’s Law says you can have whatever assumption you want if it says
the password “technology.” Ockham says, you are entitled only to those
conclusions that can pass through the checkpoint and pronounce the
shibboleth “parsimony.” <br /><br />Yorick: Just as with stipulations and
assumptions, philosophy can employ any number of filters. Parsimony is a
time-honored one. And it too can be suspended. <br /><br />Adam: Ockham
deployed it against “universals,” which are, in some measure, the
medieval scholastic analogue of the Platonic Forms -- I’m hedging here
because it’s complicated -- but the Forms obviously play a role (to put
it mildly) in the parable of the Cave, which is one of the earliest
“simulation” scenarios we know.<br /><br />Emilia: I know the parable -- it’s a story of deception, but is it a simulation?<br /><br />Ursula: Don’t get Adam started.<br /><br />Adam: Listen: <i>Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern....</i><br /><br />Ursula: Too late.<br /><br />Adam:
<i>... having their legs and necks fettered… able to look forward only,
and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture the light
of a fire burning behind them…. See also, then, men carrying implements
of all kinds, human images, and shapes of animals as well…. Would these
prisoners have seen anything, except the shadows cast from the fire on
the wall of the cave in front of them?</i><br /><br />Iachimo: What is the
relevance here? I understand that there’s an antiquarian interest, but
is there any actual applicability to the simulation scenario as framed
under contemporary understanding?<br /><br />Adam: The point is, that the
prisoners don’t just get “fooled” by the shadow-puppeteers. They inhabit
a world completely constructed in order to make <i>utterly opaque</i> the
nature of their actual world. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Yorick: Say, perhaps, maximally opaque. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: But Plato isn’t giving us a political
parable -- at least not in any simple way; there’s no key to the
allegory given for who the prisoners are, who the jailers, and so on. If
one of the prisoners is freed, they might ascend up past the fire, make
their way above ground, and have to very slowly acclimate their eyes to
the daylight. They would see actual things and know for the first time
the difference between things and shadows, and realize how insubstantial
had been their previous experience. And they would be just as
disoriented if they return down into the cave, at least at first -- and
at a loss to communicate what they had come to know.<br /><br />Orsino: Just like the Square in <i>Flatland </i>who cannot explain Space to his fellow 2-d shapes.<br /><br />Emilia: How does the prisoner get free?<br /><br />Adam:
Plato doesn’t say here. Again, it’s not a close allegory; it’s not as
if someone breaks in and unlocks the chains. He just imagines, “if one
of these prisoners was to be freed…” Though later he does say that the
freed prisoner might return and try to liberate others -- probably to no
avail. But in other places Plato does say that one way we ascend from
our illusions to better and more apt contemplation is via <i>eros </i>-- love.
At first, we love what we can see -- beautiful bodies, mostly -- but
eventually we come to love beauty <i>per se</i> -- or at least, we <i>can</i>.<br /><br />Ursula: And “Beauty itself” is somehow “more real” than, you know, these awkward flesh-and-blood bodies. <br /><br />Adam: That’s a caricature. <br /><br />Ursula:
Of course. The real point of the parable is that the deception is not
carried out with technology at all. It’s just the soup of ideology you
are soaking in all the time. Groupthink, the laws, the media -- <br /><br />Emilia: And who’s responsible for <i>that</i>? Everyone.<br /><br />Ursula: Capitalism.<br /><br />Iachimo: I mean, taken literally, the simulation scenario does say that information is more real than meat-space. <br /><br />Orsino: But that's also a caricature. And also, presumably the simulation is playing on computers in <i>someone’s</i> real space.<br /><br />Iachimo:
I’m trying to redirect our conversation back to the genuine, real
hypothesis that this is actually the case -- not some metaphorical
illustration of a metaphysical point, but an actual example of actual
metaphysics. You would think that philosophers would be, you know,
interested.<br /><br />Emilia: Yes but in this example we can’t really
think <i>what </i>the inventors of the simulation are like -- unless we just
fondly imagine they’re our great-great-great-grandchildren -- because
who knows what the post-singularity AI is trying to do --<br /><br />Iachimo: Again, the singularity is a <i>separate </i>question --<br /><br />Ursula:
And <i>again </i>again, the simulation scenario is so completely acidic in
its skepticism that it not only is without consequence, it actively
undercuts its own premises.<br /><br />Yorick: Actually -- with corrigible
and moderate parsimony and judiciously revisable assumptions, we can
perhaps get further than this easy refutation of self-undermining. It
would be intriguing and perhaps worthwhile to try. A contradiction like
that is sometimes the sign of something interesting waiting to be seen. <br /><br />Iachimo: Right. <i>OK.</i> So, well, to start with, for instance: a simulation, if it exists, exists to some purpose. <br /><br />Emilia:
Why do we get to assume this? I mean unless we are using Bostrom’s
argument that it’s probably our descendants, we were saying that we
can’t know anything outside the simulation. So why should we assume
there’s a reason for it? <br /><br />Yorick: Isn’t any simulation an artifice, and any artifice (by definition), <i>made</i>? <br /><br />Iachimo:
Right. It doesn’t happen by accident, but because someone brings it
about. So there are (or would be, <i>per hypothesis</i>) makers -- entities of
some kind, we know nothing about them except that they are entities --
who construct the simulation. <br /><br />Adam: Yes. I see where you are
going. The structure of what you are calling “entities” by itself allows
us to say something further.<br /><br />Emilia: Like what?<br /><br />Iachimo: They have will, motives, intention. Or something analogous. <br /><br />Emilia: Why? If you’re saying that’s somehow inherent in being a mind or something, Buddhism might disagree with you.<br /><br />Iachimo:
It doesn’t have to do with being an entity; it has to do with the
nature of the artificial. Because we said the simulation is an artifice,
and no one makes an artifice <i>for no reason</i>. <br /><br />Orsino: I think the
line is blurry here. A beaver dam is made; a bower bird nest is made; a
spider web is made; a honeycomb is made; a chrysalis is made. And I’m
not sure whether “intention” functions here. <br /><br />Iachimo: There’s some end that is being sought in all these cases though. <br /><br />Adam: Iachimo, have I misjudged you? Are you really a teleologist?<br /><br />Iachimo:
Not in any way. I mean, I’m not saying the caterpillar or the bees are
thinking. I’m just saying that the behavior is one of expenditure of
energy, and this means it’s got a reason; otherwise it would have been
selected against.<br /><br />Adam: Ah. For one, golden instant… <br /><br />Orsino: So, the makers of the simulation could I suppose be just “doing what comes naturally,” like a beaver. <br /><br />Iachimo: Just like <i>us</i>.<br /><br />Yorick:
We could suspend this question (for the moment); but a different one
arises: What about other cases -- say, a reflection? A reflection
“simulates” in a sense, and (presumably) utterly without intention. I
don’t mean the special case in which someone places a mirror in order to
reflect, but the general case of any reflection (or indeed any
imagistic duplication) at all. An echo, a reflection, a chance <i>camera
obscura</i>. Even a shadow...<br /><br />Adam: But in that case, every feature
of the reflection has some original, with a one-to-one correspondence.
So if (and wow am I ever stipulating) there was some intention in the
reflection, there would be some in the real world, and if not, not. What
I mean is: we are claiming that a simulation happens with intention.
Your counter-example of the mirror seems to contradict this -- here’s a
naturally occurring simulation, that “just happens.” But in that case
there is no seeming. The lake reflects the mountain but neither the
mountain nor the lake knows it. And without seeming there can’t be
simulation. <br /><br />Yorick: Yes -- so it seems. Are we saying then that seeming and intention -- purpose -- are related?<br /><br />Emilia: Sometimes I just make designs on the paper for no reason. Just bored.<br /><br />Iachimo: But that’s all we need. Even a distracted doodle does have a reason, even if it is “killing time.” <br /><br />Ursula: Kant: art as purposeful purposelessness.<br /><br />Iachimo:
Obviously this doesn’t mean the reason for the simulation must be to
model the world. But the mere fact of the simulation having been made
for reasons has ramifications. <br /><br />Yorick: Yes. We had been saying
that we cannot assume anything about the “real world” from a simulation;
but no matter how far removed from us, how unlike us, the “real world”
or “base reality” is from our simulation, the structure of reasons
remains. <br /><br />Adam: At least as an assumption. We could deny it; but
if we do, we really do undercut our capacity to reason about the
simulation-scenario. And about anything else, too.<br /><br />Iachimo: So,
if you have “reasons for” doing anything, motives, then you have
<i>projects</i>, or <i>aims</i>. There’s something you are<i> trying to do</i>. <br /><br />Orsino: Again, I’m not sure the caterpillar is “trying” to make a cocoon. Or to change into a butterfly.<br /><br />Yorick: Let’s go methodically here. What is involved or implied in having an aim? <br /><br />Ursula:
Want, or desire. There must be a state of affairs that obtains, and
another state of affairs that can be imagined or foreseen that does not
obtain. <br /><br />Orsino: Situations in possibility-space.<br /><br />Adam: Desire, yes. Again, Plato would say: <i>eros</i>. <br /><br />Iachimo:
We’re on a very abstract level; we don’t know anything about what the
aims of our “entities” are, but we can say that as aims, they have a
structure: Some such non-actual state is construed as possible, and
following from such-and-such steps or process: there is a path from here
(the state that obtains) to there (the state that doesn’t, at least not
yet). <br /><br />Adam: Which means --<br /><br />Orsino: To be in <i>time</i>.<br /><br />Yorick: Precisely. <br /><br />Orsino:
But -- even setting aside my reservations about what counts as an
“intention” -- obviously time within the simulation may bear no
resemblance to time outside it. <br /><br />Adam: We can make no
assumptions about the way what we are calling “time” works beyond the
cave, pardon me, the simulation. But the structure of an <i>aim</i> implies a
distance between point m and point n in what you called “possibility
space.” That distance has to be traversed -- that traversal <i>is</i> the
carrying out of the project, if successful (and if not successful, it’s
the traversal to some other point). So there is always some gap. <br /><br />Iachimo:
Right. And crossing that gap, however we describe it, requires an
effort, an expenditure. Which is also the case in any of the situations
you mentioned, Orsino -- the beaver dam or the wasps’ nest or whatever. <br /><br />Emilia:
But why say it is <i>always </i>the case? Why can’t the accomplishment, this
“crossing the gap” you are talking about, just happen? <br /><br />Adam: Do you mean “immediately”?<br /><br />Orsino: Because an aim that was “automatically” attained, immediately, wouldn’t be an <i>aim</i>. <br /><br />Ursula: Right. It would just be a, what, a manifestation or something. <br /><br />Adam: I mean, really we can’t even think what it “would be.” It would be an event without a temporal structure, outside time. <br /><br />Emilia: I don’t see that.<br /><br />Adam: Imagine you could do anything. What would you do?<br /><br />Emilia:
Anything. I’d… I don’t know. For the sake of your argument, which I
assume is leading somewhere, OK, I’ll draw a stick figure and have it
come to life.<br /><br />Adam: But why <i>draw </i>him?<br /><br />Emilia: Them. Because -- Oh I think I see. Why not just “make them appear.” <br /><br />Adam: Because remember, you can do <i>anything</i>. Moreover -- why do you want this stick figure to come to life?<br /><br />Emilia: Because it would be cool!<br /><br />Ursula:
Yes, but -- assuming you have broken down and analyzed what you mean
by “cool” here -- you mean it would give you such-&-such
satisfactions, and so on -- it would be delightful to have the little
creature dance on the paper, whatever. But then those aspirations are
<i>what you want</i>, and since you are able to do <i>anything</i>, in Adam’s thought
experiment, you can just <i>have </i>that delight -- that exact satisfaction
-- without the dancing stick ballerina.<br /><br />Emilia: They do tango.
But OK, I get it: even drawing them means I’m “trying to do something,”
in your language. So I have to work against some resistance, not just
with paper and pencil but with the very fact that they’re not there and I
want to bring them about. OK., go on.<br /><br />Iachimo: So to act and
accomplish -- or even attempt -- an end, means to make effort. To
expend. Which implies that there is something to expend, something akin
to power, energy -- <br /><br />Adam: <i>Dunamis</i>, in Aristotle. Among others. <br /><br />Iachimo:
And that energy has to be finite. Again, because if you have infinite
energy to accomplish your aim, you make no actual expenditure. <br /><br />Adam:
I think that, more precisely, we must say that there is energy, on the
expenditure of which there are constraints. The constraints could be
quantitative, or circumstantial, or both: i.e., there could be only a
finite amount of energy available at all; or, there could be practical
and/or theoretical restrictions on the way energy (even if potentially
infinite) can be deployed: thus, a finite amount available at any
moment. <br /><br />Iachimo: All right, yes. But it’s the finitude itself,
the limitation, that’s important: otherwise, there would be no projects,
because whatever was “wished for” would be instantaneously realizable,
which is again effectively the same as having no ends at all. <br /><br />Adam:
In other words: the constructors of the simulation are <i>not omnipotent</i>.
Anymore than Emilia is in drawing the stick dancer.<br /><br />Ursula: Careful! Adam is maneuvering us into existentialism-territory. The pathos of finitude.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: Actually, I was thinking of the demiurge. Not the one in Plato -- the one in the gnostic writings. Ialdabaoth -- </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Orsino: Sounds like a Lovecraftian cousin of Yog Sothoth. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: -- who <i>thinks </i>he is omnipotent but is mistaken. He is a bit Lovecraftian, at that.<br /><br />Emilia: OK, but I thought we already knew we are talking about an advanced civilization, and not gods.<br /><br />Yorick:
Not “gods” -- God. The gods of the Greeks, for instance, are not
omnipotent. Nor is Loveraft's Cthulhu. No matter how “beyond comprehension” they
might be. <br /><br />Iachimo: So theorizing energy or power, and the
limits on how it can be channeled, establishes one analogy between us
and any real-world maker of simulations. Which undercuts the “how do we
know anything” objection that Ursula was raising. <br /><br />Orsino:
Right. Not having infinite energy available would be a problem any
theory of simulation has to deal with. No matter how much technological
progress has been made. It’s a limit on how much progress <i>can </i>be made.
Obviously, to completely render a simulation of the universe requires
exactly as much information as the entire universe. So there are always
going to be limits to what can be rendered, and the granularity of the
rendering.<br /><br />Iachimo: A lot of those limits can be dealt with by
selective rendering; you only show what you need. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Orsino: Right. So the tea in the
drawer isn’t shown until you open the drawer.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Iachimo: Or the taste of the tea, until you sip it -- <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: You are
redescribing Berkeley for the 21st century. You find that the tree /
don’t continue to be, / unless you’re about in the quad. <br /><br />Iachimo:
-- which saves a huge amount of computation and memory, because you
don’t have to keep all the objects in the drawer -- or the tree in the
quad -- when no one is looking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Ursula: It is not just Berkeley -- the entire account of secondary qualities would say this. The tea <i>has </i>no taste, until you sip it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Iachimo: Yes, yes, and the tree falling unheard in the forest makes so sound. Look, this isn't an epistemological puzzle, it's an experimentally and probabilistically grounded metaphysical speculation.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Ursula: Are you sure you can tell the difference? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: Can <i>you</i>? Because I doubt if there is one, under modern philosophical assumptions.<br /><br />Orsino: Well, <i>something </i>has to be
kept in memory when no one is looking, because otherwise the simulation
doesn’t know what to render when the drawer gets opened -- tea boxes, or silverware, or painted birds, or <i>what</i>. <br /><br />Emilia:
If I’m following, you could just give me the subjective impression that
everything “is the same” as last time I looked, even if it wasn’t. Or
make it not matter that everything is not the same. Does the question of
whether it’s “really the same” even arise then?<br /><br />Yorick: That is a beautiful question, at this juncture. <br /><br />Adam:
It “mattering” is just another way of saying that there are limits on
what counts as <i>this </i>artifice. If being “the same” doesn’t matter at all,
then there is no reason to enact the project at all, because not doing
it matters just as much as doing it: not at all.<br /><br />Emilia: In <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>, there’s a way of dealing with that -- doublethink. <br /><br />Ursula:
In <i>The Invention of Morel</i>, this novel I’m reading now, the narrator
winds up trying to insert himself into the record of the past -- a sort
of projected recording of holograms. An imagined technology, but very
specific. The falsification of history is sort of the opposite from what
it is in Orwell -- the protagonist longs for it. But it is also a kind
of doublethink.<br /><br />Emilia: Under doublethink, the past is both consistent with what I remember, and not -- because I revise my own memories. <br /><br />Ursula:
Yes. Everyone in Oceania internalizes the simulation. It’s extremely
Lacanian -- even before we get to the surveillance of the Big Other.
What might Orwell have done with modern technology? It would have been
better than <i>The Matrix</i>, by far. <br /><br />Iachimo: As for giving you a
subjective impression; that might be one way of doing it, but possibly
not the most efficient way. If consistency is important enough to
simulate the subjective feeling of it, it might be simpler just to give
you consistency (depending on the energy costs ) -- unless there’s some
overriding reason not to. That would get into trying to fathom the
motives of the entities, which we can’t do. <br /><br />Yorick: Perhaps not the concrete motives -- but must not motive <i>per se</i> be oriented towards the Good -- ?<br /><br />Iachimo:
But to Orsino’s point, storing the memory of what to show you when you
open the drawer is still way cheaper than rendering it when no one is
looking.<br /><br />Adam: Cheaper, yes, but <i>finitely </i>cheaper -- there is
still a cost. Which I thought was part of Orsino’s point too. It takes
some amount of energy or effort to simulate the tree or the tea boxes or the silverware -- or its taste --
and that’s energy that is then not available to do something else.
Because there is not an infinite amount of energy.<br /><br />Orsino: Right, yes.<br /><br />Adam:
But infinity is a very strange concept here. A simulation, per
hypothesis, is the manifestation of some deployment of (what we are
calling) “energy” -- the energy of <i>the real world</i>. We have a capacity
to intuit infinity in some fashion: the decimal sequence of an
irrational number, for instance, we say will be an infinite string of
digits with no discernible order. Many such numbers (in fact, an
infinite number of them), all different, can be produced by well-defined
mathematical procedures. Of course, we cannot produce even one such
string -- by definition, its calculation would consume the available
energy of the universe and still be no closer to being “finished.” But
we can see that somehow the structure of these quantities is implicit in
the order of things: in the proportion of the diagonal of the square to
its side, for instance, or the diameter of a circle to its
circumference. A simulation as we have described, with finite
(available) energy, cannot render such an infinity either. But then how
is it we have deduced the notion of the infinite?<br /><br />Ursula: All
right, now I <i>know </i>Adam is setting a trap. This is, as Adam knows very
well, the same line of thought that Descartes follows when he deduces
the existence of God. “Nothing in our experience shows us infinity, but
we have this idea, so it must have been put there.” Are you trying to
seduce everyone down the Cartesian path? <br /><br />Adam: Hardly. You’re the modern, not <i>moi</i>. <br /><br />Ursula: Obviously I’m not a Cartesian.<br /><br />Adam: That’s what you think.<br /><br />Iachimo: Like I said, an uncomputable Turing machine problem. They’ll oscillate like this forever.<br /><br />Adam: Seriously: where do we get this notion of <i>forever</i>? <br /><br />Orsino: Some would claim we don’t. We have a notion of “do this again,” or of “if x do y.” <br /><br />Emilia: “Some would claim” is a phrase known, I believe, as “weasel words.” <br /><br />Adam: I’m sorry -- are you saying we <i>don’t</i> have a notion of “forever”?<br /><br />Orsino:
I’m not, but the weasels are. Not a coherent one. Again, we can say
the word. But we can’t actually express what it would mean. It’s like
the decimal expression of pi, or the square root of two, as you were
saying. We know that if we keep calculating, we keep generating digits.
And we can make rules for dealing consistently, mathematically, with
certain uses of infinity, which is the more abstract version of
“forever,” if you like. But even those rules break down sometimes -- you
get paradoxes like being able to carve a sphere up and rearrange the
pieces into two spheres of each the same volume as the original sphere
-- which is one reason the weasels -- some weasels -- deny that infinity
really works. <br /><br />Yorick: Poor Euclid. His beautiful proof of the infinity of primes, shredded by an enchantment of weasels.<br /><br />Orsino: I think they’re just called a pack.<br /><br />Emilia: I like “enchantment” better.<br /><br />Ursula: Do the weasels deny infinity, or do the weasels just <i>say</i> that “some would deny it”?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: Or do some weasels say that some weasels say....? We are courting an -- <i>ahem </i>-- infinite regress.<br /><br />Orsino: It sounds as if the weasel-language is a kind of stipulation.<br /><br />Iachimo:
Weasel words are the <i>opposite </i>of stipulation. They supply the
wiggle-room needed for, you know, weaseling out of anything once the
implications have become too uncomfortable. <br /><br />Orsino: I’ve no
doubt that there are abuses of rhetoric and plausible denial. But -- <i>ahem</i> --
some would call this an unfair attack on nuance. <br /><br />Yorick: I
imagine the weasels might. Despite my love of Euclid -- who can of
course fend for himself -- and despite, yes, an abhorrence of bad
argument, my sympathy in this case is with the rear-guard of vagueness.
Do we suppose that everything can be put into words? <br /><br />Adam: Well
in this case it seems that if we can deny that we have a notion of
infinity, we can <i>also </i>affirm it -- in words both times -- and we are
back to Iachimo’s Turing machine trying to calculate whether or not a
question has an answer. And I claim, at least, that you can step aside
and <i>see </i>that while the machine will not ever get an answer, you can see
that there <i>is </i>no answer on the terms provided, which is effectively to
<i>answer </i>the question. <br /><br />Emilia: Um…<br /><br />Adam: And this matters
because it means you can see something that is excluded by the rigorous
step-by-step logic; you are seeing -- it seems to me -- something that
is not yielded by the algorithm. And therefore not simulated. <br /><br />Emilia: Yeah you definitely lost me.<br /><br />Orsino:
I think Adam’s argument here is that a computer running on binary
(zeroes and ones) has to go in discrete steps, which can sometimes just
yield indecision (because it oscillates). But if you look at the
algorithm, you can see that it oscillates.<br /><br />Adam: Which the algorithm itself cannot see. <br /><br />Iachimo:
If I am not mistaken you are working here with some kind of sloppy
amalgam of Godel’s theorem and Turing, and trying to show, what, that
consciousness cannot be an algorithm itself. Or that AI is impossible.
It’s a completely misguided argument.<br /><br />Adam: Spoken in an admirably un-weasely dialect! <br /><br />Iachimo:
It’s been pretty thoroughly taken apart. You can’t prove that AI is
impossible that way, and you can’t prove that human consciousness is
unmodelable that way either.<br /><br />Adam: You may have mistaken my
point. I’m not trying to prove that artificial intelligence is
impossible. Certainly not that it cannot pass the Turing test, which is
in any case an empirical question, the significance of which can be
disputed whether or not it ever comes to pass. The point, rather, is
that whether or not -- and to what extent -- human consciousness can be <i>modeled </i>by algorithms is different from whether it is an algorithm or a
collection thereof. And this is not just a nyah-nyah, am-not
counter-assertion, because it gets corroborative evidence -- not
conclusive proof but corroboration -- from the fact that the mind can
always see that there is a true but indemonstrable or unprovable
assertion in whatever system of algorithms the machine runs on -- or
rather, that the machine <i>is</i>. <br /><br />Iachimo: But in fact, the mind
<i>can’t</i> “always see” such a statement. To actually construct such an
unprovable (or undisprovable) statement gets very difficult very fast.
You may be able to do it for a few iterations, but the complexity of the
systems you are trying to outflank grows, and eventually -- pretty
quickly -- you come to a point where you can’t. And at that point, the
AI is effectively capable of everything the human mind is capable of. <br /><br />Adam:
The question at issue is different. Remember Zeuxis’ grapes. We said
that there is always some test that shows that the grapes are not real.
You can turn the painting around to see the back. If you try to pluck a
grape from the vine, you fail. You can’t press them into wine, or pair
them with cheese. But suppose you could. Suppose that whatever you tried
to do with Zeuxis’ grapes, that you can do with our grapes, you could.
You could even take a seed from one, plant it in “painted” earth, and
grow a painted vine. In that case, Zeuxis’ grapes would be effectively
the same as grapes <i>per se</i> -- as long as you were in that world. Or say
the seeds would grow vines even in our natural earth. In this case, the
<i>only </i>thing distinguishing Zeuxis’ grapes from <i>grapes</i>, would be that they
had been originally “painted,” by whatever technology. And if we picked
them and put them side by side with real grapes, there would be no
litmus test we could perform. That, at least, is the hypothesis. But of
course, we will have only ever performed some limited number of tests,
so we can’t predict with confidence that there is <i>no</i> way that would
discriminate, <i>no</i> test that Zeuxis’ grapes would fail for grapeness. What
Godel’s theorem, and the extension via Turing machines, shows, is that
for algorithms running on formal languages, there is <i>always </i>such a test.
It doesn’t matter if you can find one or not; it is formally proven
that one exists. And <i>that</i>, that proof, is what can be seen, even though
the computer cannot act upon that knowledge.<br /><br />Iachimo: Again, no.
There is a limit to any algorithmic systematization, yes. But that
doesn’t demonstrate a difference between a human mind and a computer.
You are <i>presuming </i>that difference. The situation isn’t one of a
difference between two grapes, which we know in principle we could
distinguish even if we have not and maybe never will discover the test
-- which would be significant enough. The difference is between two
grapes that <i>may or may not be distinguishable</i> in principle, have <i>never
been distinguished</i> practically, and probably never will be. <br /><br />Emilia: Can someone please explain to me why we are going on about grapes again?<br /><br />Ursula: Because birds eat grapes, and weasels eat birds. And presumably painted weasels eat painted birds.<br /><br />Yorick: Yes, and apparently painted minds can conceive only of a painted infinite. <br /><br />Orsino: Because, “some say,” there is no other. Or no other worth conceiving. <br /><br />Ursula: Sour grapes.<br /><br />Adam: Is it I who am assuming that the mind is not like a program, or you who are assuming it is like one?<br /><br />Orsino:
I think the question is important, Emilia, because if the mind is an
algorithm -- or more reasonably, a self-modifying suite of algorithms --
then it can be simulated. <br /><br />Yorick: It is even more than that. If
the mind is not distinguishable from a suite of algorithms, then in
principle it cannot be shown that the mind is not a simulation -- in the
sense we’ve been talking about here. <br /><br />Iachimo: Yes, that’s it exactly. Though I’m surprised to hear you say it.<br /><br />Adam: That makes two of us.<br /><br />Emilia: One of you is merely simulating.<br /><br />Yorick: Conversely, <i>if</i> it could be <i>shown </i>that the mind is <i>not </i>algorithmic --<br /><br />Ursula:
It is undecidable. In this, at least, I completely agree with Iachimo,
that there is no way to definitely show the mind is not an algorithm.
Even the mind’s anxiety that it could be an algorithm is possibly
simulated. Sure. <br /><br />Yorick: And yet. It is agreed, in principle,
there is always something that any given set of algorithms cannot do.
This is usually rendered by some analogue of “this proposition is
undecidable, or unaffirmable, via algorithm-suite such-&-such.”
Whatever the ins and outs of constructing any specific such statement
for any specific set of algorithms or formal language, it is not
controversial that in principle such a statement -- a string of symbols,
self-referential and indemonstrable in a given language -- is always
constructable. <br />This means -- it seems to me -- that there is
actually a sort of “test,” between the artificial or simulated “minds”
that would be suites of algorithms, and mind per se -- what the Greeks
called <i>nous </i>-- whether or not such a test can be “practically”
performed; it is <i>precisely </i>describable. And it might be worth mentioning
that the Greeks themselves had the word <i>noesis </i>for the contemplation
engaged in by <i>nous</i>, but also a word -- a different word -- for the
faculty that does algorithmic reasoning, discursive argument, and so on.
The latter is called <i>dianoia</i>.<br /><br />Emilia: But the Greeks didn’t know about computer science or --<br /><br />Orsino: Or <i>did </i>they? Maybe they’d been taught by the <i>Atlanteans </i>--<br /><br />Yorick:
No, Emilia, certainly not in those terms. Nonetheless, they knew to
distinguish between these two sorts of faculties. Which is interesting,
yes? <br /><br />Adam: Aristotle divides dianoia into <i>tekhne </i>and <i>phronesis </i>-- technique and practical know-how -- <br /><br />Yorick:
Which distinction is itself a rather dianoetic move. I am certainly
simplifying; the details are not unimportant (though I always forget --
is it God, or the devil, who is in the details?), but the details should
not bar the way. Of course, Adam might also point out (not incorrectly)
some other nuance missing in what I am saying. There is a sense in
which almost everything we have been doing this evening, as we have been
talking, would have been described as dianoia, whether it was technical
or informal. Dianoia can <i>describe </i>the test that distinguishes it from
noesis. Can it discover it in every case? No. But the discernment <i>per se</i>
is both possible and real. <br /><br />Iachimo: It seems pretty hand-wavy to me.<br /><br />Yorick:
We have been saying that there is no infinite <i>dunamis </i>available -- or,
as Adam rightly specified, rather that energy is available under finite
<i> conditions</i>. The stick dancer Emilia draws cannot be brought to life
instantly, but must precisely be <i>drawn </i>first. There is always a
momentary gap, however slender, between vision and accomplishment -- to
will is not the same as to immediately bring about. <br /><br />Orsino: Right.<br /><br />Adam:
In the Book of Genesis, when God declares “Let there be…,” and
everything follows, it’s structured narratively as -- well, as
following; but the Rabbis and the Church Fathers alike are very clear
that the divine intention and the coming-into-being are identical. The
Biblical God creates from outside of time. Well, this is not explicit in
the Biblical text, but --<br /><br />Yorick: Though when Genesis says,
“there was evening, there was morning: the first day,” it seems to be
using the language of temporality to imply the beginning of temporality.
Obviously we are here up against one sort of limit of thinking. <br /><br />Iachimo: Seriously, when people say “limits of thinking,” they are starting to sound desperate. <br /><br />Adam: You say “desperate.” I say -- <br /><br />Yorick:
Perhaps “urgent”? In any case it is premature to despair; but a tight
corner can be the occasion for a certain resourcefulness. We have
frequently had recourse to <i>stipulation </i>during our talk tonight. It bears
notice that to stipulate is very like what it would mean to do
something <i>at will</i>. -- in just the way you were pointing out Emilia
cannot do, even with the magic pencil. In a sense, it is as close to
God’s “Let there be…” as we come. <br /><br />Iachimo: It’s not immediate,
it’s not “without effort.” At most, it’s a move in a complex
“technology” that is so practiced and routine that it can <i>look </i>without
effort. <br /><br />Orsino: There are, you know, neurological and physiological expenditures to everything, even just saying “Let x equal....”<br /><br />Adam: What the bones and sinews and neurons do and what the mind does are not necessarily analogues. <br /><br />Yorick:
We’ve also said that time is indicated by the fact that any project
has an aim; Emilia must draw the dancer one limb at a time, and Zeuxis
must mix his paint first, and the paint must dry. But there is also a
kind of reasoning we have been depending upon -- and the mathematics
underlying computer code employs it formally -- which does seem to route
itself outside of time.<br /><br />Emilia: What do you mean? <br /><br />Yorick:
When we were thinking carefully about what is involved in the notion
of a project, for example, we said that a project is undertaken for
reasons, and this led us to say that anyone who undertakes a project is
structured by time. How did we conclude this?<br /><br />Emilia: We said
that there must be two “states,” one that is actually occurring and one
that we imagine, and we have an aim, we’re trying to get from one to
another. And since we’re trying, the states don’t completely coincide,
so they must be separate. <br /><br />Iachimo: It’s just what a project
<i>means</i>. There’s not something magical here. The notion of time is
<i>entailed </i>in the idea of an aim. It’s just a matter of valid reasoning --<br /><br />Adam: And what do you mean by valid?<br /><br />Iachimo:
Look -- if we’re really going to question whether there can be valid
reasoning, then obviously we can’t have a conversation at all. We have
to be able to <i>start</i>. I’m perfectly willing to go full-on skeptic with
you, but that’s not a very interesting conversation, and besides it’s a
cop-out. Especially from you.<br /><br />Adam: No, no -- I’m not playing the skeptic here. I literally just mean: what counts as a valid conclusion?<br /><br />Iachimo: What follows from your definitions and the rules of your system.<br /><br />Adam: Which is exactly what a formal language and an algorithm is. And we’ve already said that no such formal system --<br /><br />Iachimo: Oh God, just turn off the simulation already.<br /><br />Yorick:
The more interesting question is one step earlier -- at least. What do
we mean by “following from”? You said -- quite rightly -- that what is
valid is what <i>follows from</i> ones definitions and rules. And of course it
is well known that reasoning may be perfectly valid and still give rise
to erroneous conclusions, if the premises are false -- <br /><br />Orsino: Garbage in ....<br /><br />Yorick:
-- which is one reason, perhaps, to not be satisfied with dianoia. But
whether or not <i>p</i> or <i>q</i> is true, it is certainly true that <i>if</i>, if p then
q, <i>and </i>p, then: q.<br /><br />Emilia: Sorry. I’m trying to, um, <i>follow</i>. <br /><br />Ursula:
You don’t have a magic pencil that will make your stick figure live, so
long as you use your left hand, and draw it with a top hat. And maybe
you never would draw a stick figure in a top hat -- maybe you find them
offensively phallic -- or maybe you are so bad with your left hand that
you would give up. But <i>if </i>you had such a magic pencil, <i>and</i>, using your
left hand, you drew a stick figure with a top hat, <i>then </i>it would come
alive.<br /><br />Adam: Well improvised. I am impressed.<br /><br />Emilia: I’m left-handed, so I’m satisfied. But could it be a beret?<br /><br />Yorick:
The crucial thing to notice is this word “then.” It sounds like a
temporal word, a word about time. But q -- “the stick figure lives” --
follows <i>immediately </i>from the combination of “if I use this magic pencil
with my left hand to draw a figure with a top hat, then the figure will
live” plus “I draw said figure with this pencil this way.” It is, as was
said, <i>entailed </i>by it. But this entailment is a remarkable thing. We
spent so much time saying that nothing follows immediately, without any
gap at all -- how is it possible for something to follow <i>instantaneously
</i>and without question, so long as our chain of “if”s is lined up in
order?<br /><br />Iachimo: I don’t think you can take time out of the rational deductive process like that. Do you know the hat puzzle?<br /><br />Ursula: Top hats, or berets?<br /><br />Iachimo:
There are lots of variations but one of the simplest forms is: You
have three people, shown three hats: we’ll say, two blue ones and a red
one. <br /><br />Orsino: They <i>could </i>be berets and a top hat!<br /><br />Iachimo:
It’d be distracting -- the point is there’s no way to differentiate
them except by sight, so they can’t feel different to wear, and you
can’t be able to tell by feeling them.<br /><br />Ursula: We will stipulate: the difference is indiscernible except by sight.<br /><br />Iachimo
OK, fine. So, there are berets and top hats. Any number of each. There
are three people -- usually they’re like prisoners, and the stakes are
someone gets to go free or someone gets executed, but that’s just flavor
-- and the overseer says: I’m going to put a hat on each of you, either
kind, you don’t know which. When your blindfold comes off, you must
raise your hand if and only if you see a top hat on someone else -- no
other communication allowed. Then guess your own -- or rather, don’t
guess. Deduce. (That’s why the stakes are important -- to eliminate
guessing.)<br /><br />Emilia: OK.<br /><br />Iachimo: So the blindfolds come
off. All three raise their hands. For a long pause no one speaks, but
finally one of them says: Top hat. How do they know? And -- for you who
are not in the room but only hearing about it afterwards -- what are all
three of the hats?<br /><br />Orsino: Um… wait… Yes. All three of the hats must be top hats. <br /><br />Emilia: Why? <br /><br />Orsino:
Because think: if no one raises their hand, everyone at once knows
there are no top hats, so the answer is berets all around. And this also
applies to one or two berets. If there are two berets, then the top hat
wearer doesn’t raise his hand but the others do, so the top hat wearer
knows immediately. Similarly: if it’s you, me, and Yorick, and I see
you wearing a top hat and Yorick wearing a beret and you each raise your
hands, then I know you aren’t raising your hand because of Yorick so it
must be because of me. And you can know the same thing -- I’m raising
my hand because I see your top hat. That means both you and I can guess
“top hat” immediately. But this isn’t what happens in the story --
there’s this long pause. So this means that no one is able to guess
immediately, which means <i>no one</i> sees a beret. And the first one who
figures out what the long pause means announces.<br /><br />Adam: You know,
I like a brain teaser too, but this is just another algorithm. We may
as well be doing sudoku. It’s diverting, but it’s not serious.<br /><br />Yorick: No, there is actually a deeper point here. <br /><br />Adam: What?<br /><br />Iachimo:
There are rational processes of entailment that inherently involve
time. The if-then chains of premise-conclusion unfold as a temporal
sequence.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Yorick: At least some, and at least seemingly. And, if the instance Iachimo just showed us is indicative, they involve not just inference, but inference of, and about, what is known <i>in common</i>. Not simply what can be deduced, but what is deduced based upon, or regarding, what other people have deduced, and deduced about what <i>I </i>have deduced. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Orsino: <i>Some </i>weasels know that some weasels know that some weasels.... </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: It really is an infinite regress.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Iachimo: But it's <i>not</i>. A conclusion <i>does </i>get drawn, because you can <i>see </i>--<br /><br />Ursula: You know -- I hate to dismay you with your own
strange bedfellows. I know how you regard psychoanalysis -- an
unscientific melange of self-validating pseudo-evidence --<br /><br />Iachimo: What can I say? Sometimes weasel shit is just bullshit.<br /><br />Emilia: And some would say, <i>quelquefois une pomme de terre n’est pas un pipe</i>.<br /><br />Orsino: Now that’s <i>too </i>subtle. <br /><br />Ursula:
-- what I was going to say is, pretty much this very same example is
used by Lacan. It’s not hats, but that’s the gist. In fact Lacan goes
even further in noting that there are a couple of moments of hesitation
-- he imagines all three of the, um, contestants? hesitating and then
answering simultaneously, and there’s a rhythm as they see each others’
hesitation and realization. So there’s a feedback loop, and taking note
of the regard of the other, and so on, all of which makes the same point
you are making: sometimes logic has to unfold <i>in time.</i><br /><br />Orsino:
But does this really complicate the point about entailment? Another way
of thinking might just say: the hesitation is empirical data upon which
the rational reflection goes to work. So yes there’s a feedback loop as
the reflection itself turns into more data -- this seems really not
unlike a programmer saying, Oh! You constructed an unsolvable sentence
for program X, clever you, now I must make program X-prime. Whatever is
actually entailed still follows.<br /><br />Adam: Just to be <i>advocatus
diaboli</i> for a moment: in Descartes’ correspondence with Mersenne, it is
said that it’s needful to go over a valid chain of reasoning very
quickly, so that it all passes in a single glance. This is the
importance of geometrical-style proofs. So they do seem to conflate
rapidity with instantaneousness. <br /><br />Iachimo: Like an animation! <br /><br />Ursula: I warned you Adam was leading up to Descartes.<br /><br />Orsino:
Lewis Carroll has a dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise, in
which the Tortoise makes Achilles insert sub-premise after sub-premise,
so the field constantly expands before the expected but never-arising
conclusion. So the argument gets longer and longer.<br /><br />Iachimo: Can you summarize?<br /><br />Orsino:
The shtick is simple: he gives two premises A & B and a conclusion
Z; and the conclusion does follow validly. But the tortoise insists
upon needing a further premise C, to wit: “from premises A & B,
conclusion Z follows”. Then he refuses to accept it, so we get a new
premise, “D,” “from premises A, B, & C, conclusion Z follows,” and
so on.<br /><br />Yorick: Yes, it’s a bit of fun with our esteemed Euclid.
But the point Carroll illustrates -- or, let us say, at least one point,
it’s best to be prudent with Carroll -- is that one <i>can </i>see that what
follows; the whole point of the joke is that once you have suspended
that, the infinite regress follows, and there’s no getting out of it. <br /><br />Adam:
Or, as was said a moment ago by Iachimo, if you reject certain
assumptions about what counts as reasoning, then a conversation becomes
impossible -- even if it looks like it still goes on (as Achilles and
the Tortoise look like they are conversing, but really after the third
iteration they are just oscillating, as was said earlier about Ursula
and me). <br /><br />Yorick: But then -- what is this <i>seeing-that- </i>?<br /><br />Iachimo: You have a lot of faith in intuition, it seems. <br /><br />Orsino:
OK, so I said whatever is entailed still follows. But really, is
entailment just <i>immediacy</i>? It looks to me like just an aspect of
definition, or rules. It’s <i>not</i> that the answer “four” immediately
<i>follows from </i>2+2. Four is just another way of <i>saying </i>“2+2.”<br /><br />Ursula:
Actually, it wouldn’t “just follow” from “2+2”. You need also to
include an account of what 2 is, what addition is, and so on. Which
would amount to a description of all the rules of “saying,” so that
then, yes, in those rules, “2+2” and “4” could be different ways of
saying the same thing.<br /><br />Adam: First of all: the proof that 1+1=2 famously occurs on page 362 of <i>Principia Mathematica</i> by Russell and Whitehead.<br /><br />Emilia: You just looked that up.<br /><br />Adam:
I happen to have memorized it, for just such an occasion as this. I used a mnemonic: 360 -- the number of degrees in a circle -- plus two, the sum which is in question. The
point being, there’s quite a lot of required description of rules if you
want to claim that “2” is “just another way of saying” “1+1” under
<i>these rules</i>. More importantly, <i>No</i>. It’s <i>not</i>. “2” is a finite cardinal
number, 4 is a finite cardinal number, 2+2, or any addition, is an
<i>operation with</i> finite cardinal numbers. It’s like claiming -- this is
inexact, but -- that “Sing the song they play at the beginning of the
world series” is the same as “O say can you see--?”<br /><br />Ursula: Not only are you mixing your Use and your Mention, you are mixing your Use/Mention with your Input/Output.<br /><br />Iachimo: “Vice” in quotes, versa out. Or is it the other way around?<br /><br />Adam: You say <i>ref</i>use, I say re<i>fuse</i>.<br /><br />Orsino: Frege is oscillating in his grave.<br /><br />Emilia:
I think the 2+2 example is right. In <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>, Winston
writes in his diary something like, <i>Freedom is the freedom to say that
2+2=4, grant that and everything else follows</i>.<br /><br />Iachimo: I get very wary when people get their philosophy from novels. <br /><br />Yorick: Go on.<br /><br />Emilia: Well, Winston feels like he can just see that 2+2=4. That it’s immediately obvious. <br /><br />Iachimo: As Adam has just pointed out, it’s actually not obvious. Three hundred and sixty pages worth of not-obvious. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Adam: Three-sixty-two.<br /><br />Ursula: In <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>, O’Brien also claims it is not obvious. <br /><br />Iachimo: That herring is red-by-association.<br /><br />Ursula:
A weasel’s favorite kind. The point is that Emilia is right, Winston
does think that 2+2=4 is a clear instance of reality, a thing he can
depend on and point to no matter what. We might be inclined to think
that the truths of mathematics are the same inside or outside a
simulation. Descartes at least initially denies this. Orwell is trying
to imagine the consequences of being able to to <i>consistently </i>deny it.<br /><br />Emilia:
Well -- no, not consistently. Because doublethink doesn’t care about
consistency. In <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>, the Party has this ambition of
making reality into this completely mutable thing. Or of talking as if
it is -- which for them is the same thing. So they construct Newspeak,
this language of fewer and fewer words with every new edition of the dictionary, that can only phrase “orthodox”
thoughts; and they make a point of “controlling the past” -- it’s really
like the simulation, in a way.<br /><br />Adam: Or a parody of it. <br /><br />Emilia: It's like in the simulation, there’s no need to “remember” anything because, as we was saying, the
program can just give me the <i>sense </i>of “remembering” -- <br /><br />Orsino: In
fact, there is a good deal of research into memory, false memory,
so-called “recovered” memory, that indicates such things could be done. <br /><br />Emilia:
-- and any, I guess you would say glitches, are manageable by
doublethink. It really is like the simulation without all the hardware
--<br /><br />Iachimo: -- hmmm. With just software, as it were. <br /><br />Ursula: A reboot stamping on a human face, forever.<br /><br />Emilia: I’m not sure if I can even find that funny.<br /><br />Adam: Again, I ask: this “forever” of which you speak …<br /><br />Iachimo: <i>Ugh</i>. Or that.<br /><br />Adam: It’s not meant to be.<br /><br />Orsino: Use doublethink. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Yorick:
Our friend Emilia is onto something important. The analogy is actually
closer. When O’Brien explains to Winston the truth of the Party’s
vision of the future, and famously tells him to picture “a boot stamping
on a human face, forever” -- why does it have to be “forever?” Because
this is the gratification of desire the Party imagines for itself. It’s
important because the Party will not be satisfied just to have everyone
think Ingsoc. There must be resistance -- heretics.<br /><br />Iachimo: Sure. Dictatorships need scapegoats.<br /><br />Emilia:
No, it’s more than that. O’Brien says: the object of power is power,
and power is the taking apart of human minds and putting them back
together again in forms of one’s own choosing; it’s an incredibly
frightening part of the book. It’s as though the whole point of setting
up the dystopia is just to <i>be </i>a dystopia. <br /><br />Yorick: Yes. The
heretics are there, in Oceania, not to distract from the failures of the
Party, or to be blamed for them; the heretics must be there to be
perpetually <i>overcome</i>. <br /><br />Adam: Now that I think of it, it’s actually a parody of Nietzsche. “Man is something to be overcome.”<br /><br />Yorick:
Does this contradict what we have been saying thus far? The Party runs
its simulation (as we can call it) for the sake of this perpetual
brutalization, the human face forever stamped on by the boot. It is not
good; but is it an <i>end</i>, an aim, in the sense we’ve been using the term? <br /><br />Emilia: O’Brien calls it an endless “pressing on the nerve of power.” <br /><br />Adam: It’s as if Orwell was trying to write an account of the tyrant that made it possible to imagine them as satisfied.<br /><br />Orsino: Um… <i>yeah</i>. Why wouldn’t they be?<br /><br />Ursula: Adam is itching to mention that Plato in the <i>Republic </i>says that the life of the tyrant is clearly and inherently unsatisfactory. <br /><br />Yorick: But Orwell’s account leaves something out, or -- to read more carefully or more generously -- just implicit. <br /><br />Iachimo: We are quite a way from the simulation argument here though.<br /><br />Yorick:
Less distant than you may think. There is certainly a resonance -- Emilia is
correct -- between the indefinitely malleable world of Party orthodoxy
and the simulation. And we have hit upon it in the place where some
awareness of the non-negotiable structure of the world impinges on this
alleged malleability. O’Brien tells Winston that “Goldstein’s lies” --
the inspiration for the “Brotherhood,” the alleged secret society who
may or may not really be trying to defeat the Party -- will always be
there to be refuted. Remember how we said that a simulation is made for a
purpose. In Orwell’s Oceania, this purpose is “power,” as previously
described. This purpose makes us recoil -- it is clearly not good. But
in the science-fiction scenarios of the simulation, does anything
entitle us to assume that the aims of a simulation would be what we
would recognize as “good”?<br /><br />Iachimo: Presumably they would be
what the designers consider good, but I don’t see why those would
coincide with ours in any way.<br /><br />Orsino: Certainly not in the case
of the singularity. The whole point of the notion of the singularity is
that we cannot relate <i>at all</i> to the AI.<br /><br />Adam: Again, these are just transpositions of Nietzsche’s transposition of Christianity. A revaluation of all values. <br /><br />Ursula: Or -- closer to Orwell’s thinking -- of Marx.<br /><br />Yorick:
Nonetheless, inherent in the notion of <i>any </i>aim, <i>any </i>project, <i>any</i>
purpose at all, there is some shadow of the Good. The desirable as such.
<br /><br />Orsino: Now <i>there’s</i> a MacGuffin. <br /><br />Iachimo: Why should we think there is any such thing?<br /><br />Adam: Well, it is not a <i>thing</i>, so you need not. <br /><br />Yorick:
Nonetheless, you were willing at least provisionally to credit the
notion that the grammar of an artefact <i>per se </i>entails aim, temporality,
energy, and finitude. And -- though we never said this expressly until
later -- this exercise itself rested upon entailment itself, clearly. <br /><br />Adam: This wish <i>to know</i>, in Aristotle, is treated as a basic motive; so too, the desire for happiness. <br /><br />Ursula: Nietzsche mocks both of these premises. <br /><br />Yorick:
Yes, and to interesting effect. But he cannot convincingly replace
them wholesale. He can show how sometimes the drive for knowledge is
routed through other projects; he can ask “why not, rather, untruth?”
But presumably to this question he wants an <i>answer</i>. And in Nietzsche,
<i>eudaimonia </i>is modulated into the “joy” that “wants eternity -- deep
eternity.” <br /><br />Ursula: But this is also, for Nietzsche, the will to power, “and nothing else besides.”<br /><br />Yorick:
Indeed. In fact Orwell, as we have already said, shows us a world in
which Nietzsche’s will to power is expressly ascendant. <br /><br />Emilia:
Orwell has O’Brien say clearly that the Party must have its crimethink
to punish, and it always will; the boot coming down on the human face
forever -- O’Brien makes sure to emphasize: “it <i>is</i> forever.”<br /><br />Ursula:
I can see how one would think this expressly Nietzschean, but it is a
mistake. The notion of Nietzsche as an idolater of strength is a crass
caricature.<br /><br />Adam: Certainly; but the authentic Nietzsche does insist that strength <i>qua</i> strength <i>wants </i>resistance for itself to overcome.<br /><br />Ursula:
The torture chambers of the Ministry of Love are a monstrosity:
irresistible “strength” (of a sort) against weakness. Nietzsche would
have had nothing but disdain for this. For him, strength seeks to match
itself against <i>strength</i>.<br /><br />Yorick: Of course the form in which it
is presented is starkly satirical (though one would not say, funny); but
this is where Orwell shows that he understands even as he exaggerates.
This is also where Winston’s insistence that 2+2=4 is crucial. If the
freedom to speak the truth is granted, everything else follows. But this
depends on there being a truth, a way things are. One needs, for the
sake of this horrible unmaking-and-remaking, an endless supply of minds
that can initially tell the difference between truth and lies, in order
to destroy this capacity. <br /><br />Iachimo: Seems inherently unstable;
but again, it’s a work of fiction, so -- I’m not sure why we should
derive philosophical conclusions from it.<br /><br />Ursula: A work of fiction is itself a simulation; one <i>stipulates </i>certain premises -- that is what <i>setting </i>is, for instance. <br /><br />Emilia: And there’s just as much point as considering a completely unverifiable thought-experiment.<br /><br />Adam:
But it’s true that the instability is a real implication, and is often
unremarked. The tyrant really is, underneath it all, miserable --
though unaware.<br /><br />Emilia: Winston actually tries to say to O’Brien
that it’s impossible, that something in human nature won’t let it
happen; but O’Brien denies that there is any such thing as human nature.
And whether the Party will be forever satisfied by stamping its boot
down isn’t really addressed.<br /><br />Yorick: It is true that there is
something potentially unstable here -- even if it were possible to
imagine that this vision of Hell remains indefinitely diverting to the
members of the inner Party, there needs to be <i>enough </i>contact with
reality that the torturers can break their victims, <i>and </i>enough that
there are victims to break. This is why the Party needs the myth of
Goldstein -- to lure real people, real victims. Orwell’s nightmare
hinges on the possibility, or at least the conceit, of parlaying this
minimal contact with the truth into the occasion for destroying the mind
and soul by destroying that contact. But at least in Winston’s case --
which is paradigmatic -- it cannot do so without also <i>increasing </i>this
contact.<br /><br />Adam: How so?<br /><br />Yorick: Winston’s torture is a
kind of parody of initiation, into the horrible mysteries of the
Ministry of Love; his destruction involves breaking him, but breaking
him with something like the truth. Even as his capacity to think clearly
about it is dismantled, Winston has to be slowly shown the actual
mechanism of the Party. O’Brien’s revelations to him are not all
fictions. The speech declaring that “the object of power is power” is
accurate as a description of the Party’s self-understanding. As a
program, of course, we were just saying it is unstable -- we might go
further and call it nonsense, which is just what O’Brien says of
Goldstein’s book <i>Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism</i>. But
Winston’s destruction is only compelling to the reader because we share
Winston’s capacity to perceive truth -- <br /><br />Emilia: Winston <i>doesn’t
</i>always see the truth. He is sure he will never give in; he thinks
O’Brien is <i>on his side</i>, he “knows” it --<br /><br />Yorick: Yes. Orwell is a
far subtler artist than he is sometimes given credit for. Perhaps we
are to understand that doublethink has already got hold of Winston from
the very beginning. Or mere garden-variety capacity for error or
self-deception -- which is arguably what doublethink takes to a parodic
extreme. But Winston’s fall can only move us, and serve as a warning, if
we think that his acceptance of 2+2=5 is a catastrophe; and if we are
appalled, alongside him, at the account of the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of
systematic sadism that O’Brien reveals. It gets its force from being a
genuine revelation.<br /><br />Iachimo: It seems to me you are making a
great deal out of this boot-on-the-face speech. It’s obvious that it has
a purely functional role. It’s exactly like a mustache-twirling
supervillain explaining his evil plan to the trapped James-Bondish hero
dangling over a pit of molten metal. The villain chortles, “You’ll never
stop me now!” <br /><br />Emilia: Winston is nothing like James Bond. And O’Brien is not at all like Goldfinger or Dr. No. or whoever. <br /><br />Ursula: More to the point, not every victim will have to be unmade like Winston. <br /><br />Yorick:
In the world of the novel, that is certainly true. We do not see
Julia’s “treatment,” though O’Brien tells Winston it was “perfect” and
later Julia acknowledges to Winston that she betrayed him. Doubtless
every victim’s torture is tailor-made for them, to dreadful specificity.
O’Brien even refers to this at certain points. But that is the very
point. As O’Brien is addressing Winston, Orwell is addressing the
reader. Winston Smith is Winston; but he is also Everyman. This is why
his initiation has to also be an <i>exposition</i>. It is as if Winston is led
out from the cave -- but in order to make more horribly excruciating his
compelled return. Others might be tortured in other ways; but they must
be ensnared in ways that bear some resemblance to each other: some
connection to truth.<br /><br />Adam: Why, though? Aristotle points out
that there are falsehoods which are incompatible not just with truth but
with each other. One might be a heretic in the Party’s eyes and still
be woefully wrong. Presumably previous servants of the revolution were
devotees of the Party at some point before they were denounced and
condemned in show trials.<br /><br />Orsino: If nothing else, their
confessions must be wrenched from them -- they first know themselves to
be innocent, and then guilty.<br /><br />Emilia: Actually, another
character who’s been arrested, who Winston encounters in the Ministry of
Love denies this. Winston asks him if he is innocent, and he says “Of
course not! They arrested me!” It is already unthinkable for him that
the Thought Police could make a mistake -- the arrest fully demonstrates
the guilt. But it isn’t just that Winston has to believe and obey Big
Brother; to satisfy the Party, he has to love him. It’s the worst scene
in the book -- the betrayal.<br /><br />Yorick: Yes, and here we come to
the other essential link between all we were saying earlier, and the
parallel Emilia indicated, between the reality-warping of doublethink
and the simulation scenario. Any project, we said, is motivated by some
kind of desire. And, as Adam pointed out, in Plato this desire is
expressly named: <i>eros</i>. <br /><br />Orsino: But we also said, explicitly: we
cannot say anything about the <i>content</i> of the aims that motivate the
makers of the simulation. <br /><br />Ursula: Orwell’s novel points out
that this is already clear in 1948, when the book was published. What
could be less relatable than the apotheosis of sadism? Except of course
that this looks, in another way, <i>all too</i> familiar. A kind of shadow or
negative image of our usual assumptions. <br /><br />Emilia: Which is obviously why Orwell wrote it at all. <br /><br />Adam:
In fact, as was alluded to earlier, it was clear to Descartes, whose
entire thought-experiment -- a kind of auto-initiation, its own ascent
from the Cave -- depends upon a crucial moment when it must be seriously
considered not merely that he is mistaken about everything but that he
is actively and maliciously deceived. What could <i>motivate </i>Descartes’
evil genius? If we pause for a moment on this question we will see that
this is simply the inversion of the God Descartes later discovers --
Ursula was adverting to this a bit ago, or suspecting me of doing so -- a
God Who is infinite and therefore cannot be deduced, and Who is good,
and therefore would not deceive.<br /><br />Iachimo: Talk about bad arguments.<br /><br />Yorick:
It is remarkable, how bad are the arguments that do not persuade us. I
sometimes think that the philosopher is, at minimum, one who is
unpersuaded by arguments she thinks to be quite good. <br /><br />Emilia: Descartes is the <i>"I think therefore I am"</i> guy, right? <br /><br />Orsino: That’s right.<br /><br />Emilia:
So there’s this moment in <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> that seems obviously a
response to, or an inversion of, that. Winston asks if Big Brother
exists; O’Brien says, of course he does. But Winston wants to know
specifically: “Does he exist the way I exist?” And O’Brien says: “You do
not exist.” <br /><br />Ursula: But of course Winston doesn’t exist! He’s
a fictional character! Which is, actually, the deep anxiety that the
simulation scenario provokes. Reading fiction itself is an exercise in
doublethink. <br /><br />Yorick: Orwell is of course not making a clever
metafictional move, but you are probably more right than you know. When
people have strongly numinous or strangely supernatural experiences, we
often say things like, “it was as if I was in a story.” <br /><br />Iachimo: Mm-hmm. When people are amused, or sad, or scared, they make strange noises too. <br /><br />Ursula: Not to mention in orgasm.<br /><br />Adam: Talk about bad arguments.<br /><br />Yorick:
It’s actually all quite relevant. Emilia highlighted for us that the
climax of Winston’s undoing is not when O’Brien effectively bullies him
into uncertainty about whether 2+2=4; it is when he betrays Julia. In
this scene -- possibly the most memorable in the novel, or the most
chilling -- Winston is confronted with something he cannot withstand; in
his case it is rats. It is often unappreciated that Orwell has laid the
preparations for this scene with extreme patience chapters before.
Winston is irrationally afraid of rats, though in fact the rats he is
confronted with are quite frightening -- starved and ravenous as they
are -- even for those readers who are not thus phobic. <br /><br />Ursula:
This scene has always struck me as the eruption of the Real -- the
indigestible kernel, the thing that cannot be assimilated. <br /><br />Adam: It’s not Lacanian at all. It’s too contrived -- the whole institution of the Ministry, the torture apparatus --<br /><br />Ursula: The Real isn’t the same as the natural.<br /><br />Yorick:
Emilia said that O’Brien’s rejoinder to Winston -- “You do not exist”
-- is an inversion of Descartes. It seems to me that the scene with the
rats -- I do not know whether Orwell intended it so consciously -- is a
point-for-point recreation and inversion of Plato’s parable of the Cave.
Orwell even specifies that Winston can tell he is in a room far
underground, “as deep down as it was possible to go.” This comes at the
very end of Winston’s imprisonment. He and his lover Julia were arrested
months before; he has not seen her since. Bit by bit he has accepted
everything in Party doctrine, which ultimately amounts to nothing beyond
the absolute omnipotence of the Party. Absolute: down to (explicitly)
2+2=5 -- if they say so. <br /><br />Ursula: It’s like -- Adam was saying it a bit ago -- the same as Berkelean idealism. <br /><br />Emilia: The Party says, “Everything exists in the mind, so control the mind and you control everything.”<br /><br />Yorick:
It is a parody of Berkeley, to be sure. Winston has to train himself
in believing this. Orwell gives a telling description: Winston
cultivates an agile capacity to dance between logical acuity and
effective obliviousness to error. “Stupidity was as necessary as
intelligence, and as difficult to attain.” <br /><br />Adam: More than Berkeley, it’s really a sort of parody of Socratic ignorance.<br /><br />Yorick:
But all of that is intellectual -- dianoetic. What comes next is more
fundamental. Winston is strapped, completely immobile. Here: “<i>upright in
a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A
sort of pad gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight
in front.</i>” You will recall from Adam’s reading of Plato earlier that
this is precisely the condition of the Cave’s prisoners. But in
Winston’s case, he is compelled to see not an image, but something --
yes, as Ursula was saying -- very <i>real</i>. The contraption O’Brien reveals
is horrible -- a cage holding starved and vicious rats, connected by a
tunnel to a mask fitted to Winston’s face. All that separates him from
them is a small door which O’Brien can open with one finger. The rats
fill up his vision -- O’Brien casually remarks that they may in fact
devour Winston’s eyes.<br /><br />Ursula: It really is the most awful moment in the whole book. <br /><br />Emilia: But what makes it awful isn’t the rats, it’s what they make Winston say --<br /><br />Yorick:
Yes. Winston is of course reduced to, bargaining, begging, screaming
-- filled with an animal terror, as any of us would be. He is
desperately trying to understand what O’Brien wants from him -- and then
he realizes. There is something he must do, must say -- and as he says
it, he <i>wants </i>it, because it <i>must not</i> happen to him, so it <i>must </i>happen to
someone else, someone specific.<br /><br />Emilia: “Do it to Julia.” <br /><br />Orsino: Why? Why does he have to mean it?<br /><br />Iachimo: It’s just desperation. Totally human.<br /><br />Adam:
If you have ever been bullied or threatened you understand. There’s
such a relief if attention turns elsewhere, and any chance to turn it
elsewhere, you seize on -- <br /><br />Ursula: And you might even do
anything to feel momentarily aligned with the one who is wielding the
threat. To switch the frame.<br /><br />Yorick: It is of course a ghastly
moment of betrayal. It is one of the moments in the novel that no one
ever forgets; terrible, heartbreaking -- as close to Sophocles as
anything I know. <br /><br />Adam: Pity, and terror. <br /><br />Yorick: And
why? Because Orwell has invoked a very primitive impulse in us -- the
sacrificial. Winston interposes Julia between himself and the rats. It
is very explicit, that he must put her <i>body </i>there. <br /><br />Iachimo: But she’s not even there! You just said, Winston hasn’t seen her since --<br /><br />Yorick:
Correct. And this is the fascinating thing about the inversion of the
cave. Between himself and the real rats, Winston puts the <i>absent </i>Julia,
the <i>idea</i> of Julia; but he <i>puts </i>her there, by his own terror-motivated desire. And he does escape; not only is O’Brien satisfied,
but in Winston’s delirium he experiences himself falling backwards,
through the earth, the oceans, into outer space, light-years away. <br /><br />Adam: “Away from all suns… through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?”<br /><br />Yorick:
Yes, Nietzsche again. Again, I cannot say whether Orwell intended the
resonance consciously. But it is worth noting that until the very end,
he intended the book to be named <i>The Last Man In Europe</i>. <br /><br />Iachimo: Why is that relevant?<br /><br />Adam: In <i>Zarathustra</i>, there’s this character, the last man -- men, actually -- <br /><br />Ursula:
I see what you are driving at. Winston’s escape from the cave is a
<i>fall</i> not an ascent, and it happens by disfiguring eros instead of
following it. Instead of going from the body of the beloved to beauty
itself to immortality and the Good, ever more real, the Party drives
Winston mad by making him betray -- making him blaspheme, as it were -- <br /><br />Yorick:
We initially said that we do not know anything about the motives of
the (hypothetical) makers of the simulation. Then we said that there
must remain some structural analogue between us and them. Motive <i>as such</i>
remains knowable -- but the <i>content </i>of motive, any particular motive, might be unknown or
unknowable. This, too, turns out to have been not so new a notion. Not
only Orwell imagines this negative image of the Good; we could point to
many other instances -- Milton, for instance --<br /><br />Adam: “Evil, be thou my good.” <br /><br />Iachimo: And on and on, sure. Are we doing literary criticism or are we doing philosophy here? <br /><br />Ursula: What’s the difference?<br /><br />Iachimo:
Are you serious? You’re serious. Look, we’ve been talking about a book
published in the ’40s, a book that is OK but, frankly, vastly
overrated. It’s reputation as important is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I
know that students are still assigned it -- I had to read it in high
school too -- but so what? It’s just <i>not that good</i>. And it’s certainly
been a poor predictor of political trends, and even the one thing that
everyone remembers about the book -- the telescreen -- this surveillance
technology would be amazingly inefficient. What it has to do with the
simulation hypothesis, or even the singularity (which is at least
related), I challenge you to explain. <br /><br />Orsino: It’s true that Orwell’s vision can be relevantly contrasted with Huxley’s in <i>Brave New World</i> --<br /><br />Adam: Which is itself a quaint and dated exercise -- not Huxley, but the project of comparing them. <br /><br />Emilia:
I don’t even understand how you would say this. We’re so clearly
living under surveillance <i>all the time</i> -- every single move tracked.
Edward Snowden --<br /><br />Orsino: Actually, Huxley aside, Emilia is
right. I mean, this is something I do know something about. There’s no
question but that the data you generate is kept and trawled for all
kinds of purposes. <br /><br />Ursula: Commercial purposes. <br /><br />Orsino: That, but not solely. At no time did any of us consent to this. And there are plenty of reasons to be concerned --<br /><br />Iachimo:
Which raises the question, again, of energy and storage and
duplication. Obviously not all of the information taken in is of
interest for any given purpose. Most of it, in fact, is useless. So it’s
a question of the plausibility and efficiency of keeping -- and
analyzing -- all this data. Otherwise you just wind up with a
duplication of everything, which, again, is energetically impossible: it
takes exactly as much information as there is in the universe to
duplicate the universe perfectly, so you have to decide what to keep and
what to throw out. There’s Orsino’s kitchen drawer again. <br /><br />Adam:
In fact Orwell’s vision has been criticized for just the reason
Iachimmo mentions; as surveillance goes it would be exceedingly
inefficient. <br /><br />Orsino: Well, unless you used software -- something Orwell did not foresee --<br /><br />Ursula:
Not the point, at all. Read your Bentham; read your Foucault for God’s
sake. You don’t need to actually scrutinize every little action. You
just need to disperse everywhere the sense that every action is
scrutinizable. That’s what the Panoption does.<br /><br />Iachimo: In any
case, whatever might be the literary merits of Orwell, or Huxley -- or
Milton -- there’s obviously a difference between this sort of artistic
appreciation and interpretation, and asking the actual questions about
the nature of reality.<br /><br />Emilia: But these books <i>aren’t</i> just entertainments. They’re explorations of the same questions. <br /><br />Yorick:
It is worth noting that Plato never presents the sort of
straightforward investigation of “the actual questions” such as you
describe. The only things we have from Plato’s hand -- aside from some
letters whose authenticity is disputed -- are dialogues, dramatic works
of fiction. Some of them are more historically plausible than others --
there is disagreement about this as well, of course -- but in none of
these does Plato ever tell us straightforwardly “here is the question,
and here is what I think about it.” In this respect, philosophy as the
famous series of footnotes is much closer to literary criticism than,
say, parliamentary debate or scientific investigation.<br /><br />Orsino:
But obviously one can talk about the quality of Plato’s writing rather
than the ideas discussed (whether they are Plato’s own or not). Or
about how well the writing serves the argument. <br /><br />Adam: Yes --
but only corrigibly, only tentatively. Because to speak about this with
absolute confidence would presuppose that we know what Plato’s argument
is. <br /><br />Ursula: What makes us so sure <i>Plato </i>knew “what his argument
was”? If Freud or Nietzsche show us anything, they show us that people
are not always the best judges of their own intentions.<br /><br />Orsino: Marx, too.<br /><br />Iachimo: Or they just make mistakes. Even “great philosophers” can argue <i>really badly</i> sometimes. <br /><br />Ursula: In any case, the point is that reading Orwell or Milton is not different in kind.<br /><br />Yorick:
Orwell’s book is a long excursus on certain possible outcomes of
certain ideas. It is put forward as a narrative; and there may be
insights that can only be arrived at narratively, presented in ways that
<i> show </i>matters -- “conclusions,” to speak analogically -- without
expressly arguing for (or against) them. As Emilia intuited in bringing
up the novel in the first place, this excursus winds up inevitably
touching upon -- recapitulating, rediscovering, or anticipating --
themes as old as Plato, or as current as artificial intelligence.
Philosophy is so inexhaustible, it is bound to look, in a certain sense,
extremely redundant. Themes like trust, freedom, knowledge, nature,
illusion, power, love.<br /><br />Adam: In the <i>Symposium</i>, Diotima says --
Socrates says that Diotima says -- that the only people who are rightly
called lovers are those who love the good and want it forever. Even
though we usually say that those who love other human beings, especially
their bodies, are lovers. So according to Plato, our ordinary
experience of motive is in fact inadequate -- what we <i>call </i>“eros” is
mis-named.<br /><br />Yorick: According to Diotima according to Socrates
according to Plato. I try usually not to be pedantic, but I just
insisted that the author of dialogue does not argue anything in his own
voice. <br /><br />Iachimo: Fine; then how <i>would </i>you ever know what the point of the dialogue is?<br /><br />Emilia: Maybe it’s just to put ideas in play against each other. For the sake of the art.<br /><br />Orsino:
Maybe it’s a way of weighing them without overcommitting. The author
is themself finding out what they think in the process of writing it.<br /><br />Iachimo: Or maybe it’s all an act of narcissism. “Look how many hats I can wear!”<br /><br />Emilia: Berets! Top hats! Weasel fur!<br /><br />Ursula: “I contain multitudes.”<br /><br />Adam:
There are usually clues. Arguments that seem to go nowhere but have
some obvious conclusion that doesn’t get said. Or a mistake that’s
clearly made, but not commented upon.<br /><br />Ursula: It doesn’t matter.
The dialogues are here, they’re part of the conversation. We have to
critique them. To find their blind spots in order to know -- at least
partly -- our own.<br /><br />Yorick: The illustration you gave of how
logical implication unfolds in time -- we did not really resolve whether
this is inevitably compromising to the question of entailment as being
immediate or not. I will confine myself to noting that here too Plato
has preceded us. The <i>Timaeus </i>speaks of the cosmos as a moving image of
eternity; but one could also say this of a dialogue, even such as our
own. <br /><br />Ursula: Hegel might say this about history itself.<br /><br />Yorick:
In any case: Plato did not write treatises, but even less did he write
proofs. Whatever an argument or a syllogism might be, a <i>conversation
</i>unfolds in time. The order in which things occur matters; a conversation
is neither commutative nor associative. And in such a context, there is
undeniable feedback; each observation is also an intervention. <br /><br />Adam: Hegel, and Heisenberg!<br /><br />Yorick:
And so as one thing leads to another, everything , whether logical or
haphazard, has its rationale. It may be an ironclad if-then, or “mere”
rhetoric, or seemingly irrelevant -- along the lines of “that reminds
me...;” but it connects. Heeding this is called <i>following the argument
wherever it leads</i>. <br /><br />Iachimo: But then what distinguishes “following the argument” from changing, or avoiding, the subject?<br /><br />Adam: Good faith. <br /><br />Yorick: Friendship amongst us; and purity of heart in each of us.<br /><br />Ursula: “The starry heavens above me, the moral law within…”<br /><br />Emilia: I’m surprised you didn’t say the grace of God.<br /><br />Yorick: “Whereof one cannot speak…”<br /><br />Orsino: “Purity of heart.” Some would say there’s no such thing.<br /><br />Adam: Again -- it’s not a <i>thing</i>, so the weasels need not worry.<br /><br />Ursula: A heart pure of <i>what</i>, is the question. <br /><br />Emilia: Or how to purify it.<br /><br />Adam: The <i>how </i>part is easy: “Will one thing!”<br /><br />Emilia: “Easy!”<br /><br />Ursula: Now we’re on to Kierkegaard, buckle yourselves in.<br /><br />Adam:
Listen: “<i>The eternal, with its “Obey at once!”, must not be a sudden
shock that merely confuses the temporal; it should be of assistance to
the temporal.</i>” <br /><br />Iachimo: What does that even mean?<br /><br />Adam:
Kierkegaard’s saying that there is something urgent that always demands
attention. You could say it’s the same question as Socrates’ -- how
should I live?<br /><br />Ursula: Lenin: “What is to be done?”<br /><br />Adam:
A matter that has to be pursued regardless of how one answers the
simulation question, for instance. In fact we could even say that the
simulation has no bearing whatsoever upon it.<br /><br />Iachimo: It seems strange to say that the reality-status of our entire universe would be of no interest.<br /><br />Adam: The universe’s status is not in question at all. A simulation runs, if at all, <i>in</i> the universe.<br /><br />Iachimo: Fine. Everything we can access.<br /><br />Ursula:
Again, you’ve proven too much. If the claim affects “everything we can
access,” then you just put a minus sign in front of everything. The
practical upshot is precisely nil. Except of course that this <i>nihil
</i>itself is unsettling -- is, indeed, the Unsettling itself -- <i>das
Unheimliche</i>.<br /><br />Orsino: But we just went through and said we can reach certain conclusions --<br /><br />Iachimo: -- in which case, there is some access, some point of contact -- at least a rational one --<br /><br />Yorick:
This disjuncture between the so-called “practical upshot” and the
ostensibly theoretical is of great significance. Ursula is not mistaken
here, though doubtless we could and should press the question of
emphasis. For one thing, “practically,” no amount of good faith can
guarantee -- as your prophets of suspicion (Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, and
so on, but also Jeremiah for instance) would insist, no amount of “good
faith” will guarantee that we do not deceive ourselves, and so that we
do not avoid the argument rather than follow it. And so, “practically,”
we must be willing -- this is friendship -- not only to assume good
faith, but to be called on a perceived lapse. Now, what is this little
gap? What would suffice to bridge it? Or again, what is this “point of
contact”? Is it in fact a <i>point</i>, in as it were the mathematical sense --
infinitesimal, tangential, all but unreal and yet indispensable? This
question is rediscovered over and over again: Kierkegaard’s instant.
Descartes’ <i>cogito</i>. Socratic ignorance. The Upanishads’ <i>tat tvam asi</i>.<br /><br />Iachimo: Which means --?<br /><br />Adam: “That art thou.” It’s an identification of the self with the absolute reality.<br /><br />Ursula: “You’re it!” <br /><br />Emilia: As in -- “tag!” --?<br /><br />Iachimo: Huh. “Wherever you go, there you are.”<br /><br />Orsino: Is it like turn-taking in a conversation? The way the function of “speaker” moves around?<br /><br />Ursula:
Michel Serres has a whole thing about pseudo-objects. Like the soccer
ball -- it’s an attractor of always-shifting focus, a sort of furtive
figure-ground interface. Passed from player to player.<br /><br />Emilia: Like the Macintosh you were mentioning earlier. A center of attention.<br /><br />Iachimo: MacGuffin. <br /><br />Emilia: You know, when Hathaway stares out the window, I would swear she’s seeing something, but I can never see what it is.<br /><br />Orsino: Speaking of whom -- <br /><br />Yorick: Hello, little one. <br /><br />Hathaway: (meows)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Ursula: I think this gap you speak of functions in humor too. When Emilia said earlier, she was not sure she could find a joke funny, there was half-smile on her face.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Emilia: You're right. A pained one. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Ursula: Because there is a kind of funny that depends upon not finding something almost-not-funny. </span><br /><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br />Adam:
And of course turn-taking, like everything in dialogue, depends upon
certain informal rules -- aesthetic norms, social norms; partly
communicating content, partly signalling in context. Telling the truth;
not taking up too much time; arguing in good faith; digging in or
agreeing to disagree…. <br /><br />Emilia: Speaking of time -- <br /><br />Yorick: We should go. The body’s call for sleep -- is that changing the subject, or following the <i>logos</i>? <br /><br />Adam: Dreams. The original simulation.<br /><br />Ursula “Original!”<br /><br />Orsino: Let’s meet again next week? <br /><br />Emilia: There are so many things to chase down. <br /><br />Orsino: Don’t worry. I took notes. <br /><br />Ursula: I would really like to talk about this other novel I’ve been reading -- <i>The Invention of Morel</i>. <br /><br />Adam:
I’d like to think a bit about the way infinity works in Descartes and
Levinas. Also, this whole notion of “what we can access” -- this just
reeks of Heidegger. Which might surprise you, Iachimo.<br /><br />Iachimo:
I want to ask whether you are saying that all of these mean the same
thing -- Kierkegaard, the Upanishads, and whatever --? <br /><br />Yorick: “Some would say,” obviously not. Others would ask: in what sense, “the same”? That seems to be an open question. <br /><br />Iachimo: Also, there’s some other work ’ve been doing in the lab that might be interesting.<br /><br />Orsino: Isn’t there a demonstration next week?<br /><br />Emilia: There is -- I’m going. But come afterwards. If I’m not here, I’ve been arrested; come find me.<br /><br />Ursula: Stay out of the Ministry of Love.<br /><br />Emilia:
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Feel free to bring fries & ice
cream again. Unless I’m in jail, drinks will be provided. <br /><br />Adam: Then <i>please </i>don’t get arrested.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 130%;">Yorick: Savory, sweet, sour and bitter. All the points of the compass
will be accounted for -- insofar as this is possible. Till then! <br /></span></p><p></p>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-39101914877331489392021-01-02T16:55:00.001-08:002021-01-02T16:55:00.168-08:00Reticence<span style="font-size: 130%;">
I have been very gratified by the responses to my previous post -- thank you, and by all means keep them coming if there is more where that came from. (Comment section or email is fine.) It is extremely helpful to have specific occasions for work, with specific interlocutors in mind. I don't know who other people imagine as their "implied reader," but I am almost always wrong. It may be dangerous to write something for just one person and then post it for all and sundry, but it is almost certainly less dangerous (for me) than writing it for "all and no one."</span><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">Most of the long questions have come via email, and of these, a surprising number -- perhaps a good third of them -- have asked about Christianity, or about religion. I admit I was surprised. More than one said that my writing on this blog (which, let us just admit, precipitously dropped off in general last year -- of which, more anon) has seemed to avoid the matter. It does not surprise me that people have real questions about these things, but I was surprised that this would stand out so. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">It is true that I do feel the need not say too much. Auden was right:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>love, or truth in any serious sense, </i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><i>Like orthodoxy, is a reticence.</i></span></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">The symbols of faith, when "taken literally," are prone to breaking; the history of the Church is full of heresies which arose because questions arose due to over-statement. But of course this does not mean that once a question has arisen, it can be adequately dealt with by avoidance. (The Emperor Constans II tried to forbid discussion of the monothelitist dispute; it was too late.) </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">Still, I am not dispositionally a controversialist in matters of faith. </span><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">It is not that I am allergic to "evangelism." It's partly that I genuinely believe that religion is ordinary, that </span><i style="font-size: 20.8px;">homo adorans</i><span style="font-size: 20.8px;"> is </span><i style="font-size: 20.8px;">homo sapiens </i><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">(and vice-versa), and that acting like this is the case is the best way of demonstrating it. So I tend to neither trumpet nor conceal my religion, such as it is (and my Christianity is quite garden-variety, I hope), because I fancy that the best way to "normalize" it is to treat it as normal -- i.e., as not calling for special comment. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">It is also that I have a great wariness of parading my piety -- and not a little impatience with those who display theirs. While I know full well that my sins are as scarlet, they are also trivial, unspectacular, </span><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">cringeworthy</span><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">-- thank God, or I would risk being proud of them (indeed, describing them as I have is also a function of pride -- why, oh why, could I not have </span><i style="font-size: 20.8px;">better sins</i><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">?) At the same time, there's really no way of discussing thee questions without raising the category of sin, which invites either solemn moralizing, or shameless confessionalism. It'll take considerable intentionality for me to skirt those. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">Finally, theology is prayer (and vice-versa). Talking about God in the third person is of course possible -- as I can also speak of my spouse, my child, my friend, my colleague, my enemy in the third person -- but unlike all of these, God cannot be spoken of <i>in absentia</i>. It would be a strange practice to speak of a person who was present but never to them. Indeed, if I refer to my friend in the third person while she is present, I am <i>also</i> speaking to her -- or, if I am not, there's something seriously wrong. </span><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">(There is of course a mode of philosophizing </span><i style="font-size: 20.8px;">etsi Deus non daretur</i><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">, "as if God did not exist," which may or may not involve some absurdities, but this is a separate matter.)</span><span style="font-size: 20.8px;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">Only pretend-theology (<i>flatus vocis</i>, if ever there was an apt use of the phrase), or at best history-of-ideas theologology, wears itself out pretending to talk "about" God rather than <i>with</i> God. Conversation with fellow believers can become an extension of prayer. This is much harder when talk is between believers and non-believers, not because there is no shared orientation, but because the temptations to misconstrue or over-construe this shared orientation are many. (In truth, the same thing can occur between those of "shared" faith, but the ways of catching this, and the remedies, are different.)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">All of this raises questions of/about pluralism, conditions (ideal or otherwise) of discourse, and so on. I'll try to think about some of this "aloud" in the coming weeks. </span></div>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-65828204816377554782020-12-20T12:07:00.007-08:002020-12-28T22:45:03.516-08:00Non-specific wishlist<span><base target="_blank"></base><br /><span style="font-size: 130%;">
This is a modified form of a general letter I sent to a number of friends. I've received several responses already and decided to put this version here, casting my net a little wider. </span></span><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: 130%;">Some SCT readers have occasionally posed a question or three to me because I said something that seemed puzzling, or totally wrongheaded, or <strike>really wise</strike> possibly clever. This post is an express solicitation of a few (say, between one and three) questions -- of whatever length, depth, and detail you like -- to serve as starting-places for me. The aim here is to generate a document with something not unlike a medieval <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-literary/#DisQuaQuoQue" target="_blank">quodlibet</a> or <i>quaestio-responsio</i> format -- a form that can, at its best, make a virtue of the asystematicity to which my thinking is prone in any case.
</span><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">
In posting this I am aware of opening myself to questions from any number of positions; my aspiration is to generating some connections, or contrasts, between perspectives, and pressing myself towards a further degree of coherence, or else letting a thousand incoherences bloom.
</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">This latter point -- the embrace (or at least acceptance) of a degree of a margin of irreducible "inconsistency" -- is, to a degree, at odds with the medieval model. The great masters of <i>quaestio-responsio</i>, (say, Aquinas or Maximus the Confessor) are sometimes thought of as preeminently systematic thinkers. </span><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">I suppose it depends on what one means by "systematic" -- I believe it was Ralph McInerny who remarked someplace that he could not understand why anyone would think this of Aquinas, and (if I am remembering rightly), that he considered it a giveaway that they had not really read St. Thomas.)</span><span style="font-size: 130%;"> Maximus clearly used the form to respond to questions arising in particular contexts, and seems never tried to arrange his thinking under general headings with anything like an "outline" structure; his <i>Ambiguae</i> can read like a miscellany, unless you are trying to go deep enough to fathom what kind of mind just comes up with responses like these. </span><span style="font-size: 20.8px;">I suppose that to forestall misunderstandings -- but feel free to ask about this, too -- I should mention that I do not think of myself as adopting <i>precisely</i> the same approaches as the Byzantines or Scholastics, let alone of comparing myself with such thinkers as Maximus or Thomas by any criteria except aspiring to know and love truth -- or at least, aspiring to so aspire (and, at the right moment, to let go of aspiration altogether). </span><span style="font-size: 130%;">My project is a different application of a </span><i style="font-size: 130%;">similar</i><span style="font-size: 130%;"> form -- the final document may more resemble a hybrid of interview, epistolary exchange, open comment thread, and dissertation defense. We will see. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">
Readers are invited to use whatever approach you like with question(s). Regard it as providing a writing prompt for a friend, or as a philosophical Ask-Me-Anything; if you've been reading me a while (but there's no requirement that this be so), you may put the hard question you think I'm always avoiding, or ask me AGAIN to please, for real this time, address your real arguments; or you could just pose something that you've been thinking about on your own if you are wanting to get a different perspective on it. Ask about something that's always puzzled (or bothered!) you about SCT, or share something about yourself, or challenge me to think about some(body's) other point of view or experience. Go deep or shallow, political or metaphysical, historical or contemporary, prosaic or poetical, as biographical or as abstract as you like; pull your punches or try to knock my teeth out; or just muse.
</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">
You may send me responses directly (the email address is indicated in the sidebar up at the top, under "About Me") or in the comments.
Some of these responses will be excerpted on SCT during the coming year; others will only be included in the complete document. I'll group or string issues, and perhaps combine questions, as they seem to me to be linked, possibly thematically, possibly by questioner, possibly via some other criteria -- there will be poetic license involved, and I will not use anyone's name. Naturally, I do not promise to please anyone with my answers -- you may be left unsatisfied, or irritated -- but (barring the unlikely case of being overwhelmed by responses) I will try to respond to every serious question in the project.</span></div>
<div><span><br /></span></div><div><span>
</span></div></span></div>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-19595052097913063232020-11-03T10:47:00.007-08:002020-11-03T22:57:54.646-08:00"Teach us to care and not to care" *<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank"></base><br />
<div>A recurring festival of great solemnity is once more observed. As I remarked last time we went through this, the main result of the election of 2016 was the dramatic increase in intensity in fervor and consensus regarding the alleged significance of elections. And surely now is the moment that confirms this popular piety in every respect! From every corner of the land pour in reports of "record ballot returns," already exceeding the count of four years ago, "the highest turn-out since..." That can't be a bad thing, can it? I mean, people <i>care</i>! </div><div><br /></div><div>But there is care and care, and my concern is that this turnout is far more symptom than cure. This is because our national case of DTs is itself -- DT is, himself -- a symptom. To be sure, a symptom can be fatal -- but it might also be a way to a sort of cure (a fever, for instance, could be either). </div><div><br /></div><div>In our case, "people care" means -- well, we've had four years of "caring," and I am open to persuasion that it's better than indifference, but it will take some persuading. People "care" in sports events and knife fights and network-<strike>sponsored</strike> mediated humanitarian crises; people have a certain detachment in watching even <i>Antigone</i> or <i>King Lear</i>, and quite a number of humanitarian crises have occasioned hardly a yawn. Neither fascination nor apathy <i>per se</i> are salutary or pernicious. (I work with young people, and I have had occasion to note that there is little that educators fear as much as they fear children's boredom; and as for engagement -- education and politics alike are repackaged as bread and circuses.)</div><div><br /></div><div>No matter what transpires on (and in the aftermath of) Election Night USA 2020, the task before us as human beings remains the same: to be present, conscious, curious, kind. Does this entail voting? Does it entail <i>for whom?</i> </div><div><br /></div><div>By all means, vote -- I did -- if you answer Yes; if your conscience demands it; if you live in a "swing state;" if it makes you feel better. But do not put your faith in an "engaged citizenry," <i>especially</i> if you are a part of it, unless you know what is making them (and yourself) engaged, and in what spirit. </div><div><br /></div></span>
* from T.S. Eliot, "<a href="http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/t__s__eliot/poems/15133">Ash Wednesday</a>," in case you were wondering.skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-548979023166686882020-07-30T14:12:00.006-07:002020-08-21T07:03:30.779-07:00...the nth time as satire; the nth+1 time as...<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank"></base><br />
First they came for the Klan, and of course I fucking <i>cheered</i>, because <i>No</i> I wasn't in the Klan, those guys were <i>assholes</i>. I shed <i>zero</i> tears for them. Then they came for the run-of-the-mill blue-collar Republicans in flyover country, good ol' boys mainly, and you know, evangelicals and country-music fans and snake handlers, and I didn't say anything because it really wasn't so bad what they did to them, they just made them the punchline in a lot of T.V., and most of flyover country was laughing too as far as I could tell from the coast, and besides I can't relate to those people at all. Then they came for the old guard, the establishment, and I didn't say anything because not only was I not in the old guard but I was pretty fucking frustrated by their men's-club too, and besides some of them were also creeps, and although it was mostly just entertainers and stuff, not real power, it seemed like we might be actually aiming at real class dynamics at least indirectly. Then they came for the white liberal educated classes, and I admit I started to wonder, but I didn't say much because really, people <i>had</i> been trying act like just voting Democrat and driving a hybrid was enough to make you a good person, which was pathetic. Then they came for the beleaguered leftists, and I was definitely uncomfortable but I didn't say anything because I was trying not to be noticed and of course it was also true that no matter how many rallies I'd attended or how much money I'd donated or whether I'd stopped voting out of protest or only ate dumpster-dived food or whatever, the world was still going to Hell in a handbasket, and sure -- maybe they will make it better, they can't make it <i>worse</i>, right? Then they came for the allies who'd fucked up in some way and damn straight I didn't say shit, well OK aside from the nervous joke about the circular firing squad, which I hoped would dispel the tension, but I quickly shut up, because they were <i>serious</i>, and I was still catching my breath as a beleaguered leftist who had somehow been missed, but I admit I felt bad for some of them, and others I thought, Well what the hell did they expect? And then they came for the nuts-and-bolts of it all, this was "structural change" this time, yes the police, but also teachers, and nurses, and researchers, and political analysts, and poets, and pretty much anyone who might be in some way <i>perpetuating structural injustice</i>, or <i>causing harm</i>, "harm" defined as, as, as what??? and I didn't say anything because you know it was moving really fast actually and half the time you thought well they're right about <i>this</i>, even if <i>that</i> seems a bit extreme, but by the time you got finished thinking this, somebody had already been fired from their job or was at least forcibly attending some kind of anti-something training; and besides the push-back from the other side was such that you really didn't want to be taken for, you know, an ally that fucked up, or one of the old guard,or a good old boy from flyover country, or the goddam Klan..... And all this time I kept thinking, too, Who's going to be next? And where will this end? And then I realized -- shit! Will they come for the people who say nothing, because "silence is violence," or for the people asking, <i>Where will this end?</i> Either way I've already said not enough, or too much --</span><div><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 130%;">
-- but the truth is, no one knows, <i>They</i> don't even know, because it's not even the same They who is coming. The ones who came for the Klan? It's not them anymore, it hasn't been them for years. They didn't exactly come for <i>them</i>, they just quietly waited them out, long ago. And it's hard to shake the question: how much of what's left is the sneaky remainders of the Klan, the good ol' boys, the old guard, the white liberal educated class, the fucking-up allies, the beleaguered leftists -- or what if all that's left now, or will be soon, is just the pattern of <i>coming-for</i>?
</span></div>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-37941481010037421232020-06-30T19:38:00.000-07:002020-07-15T16:42:17.971-07:00please ask the New York Times to not risk ruining someone's life in exchange for five minutes' worth of "scoop"<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
I was deeply sorry and not a little alarmed to find <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/">Slate Star Codex</a> entirely subtracted from the internet, with the exception of a post explaining why, to wit: that the New York Times was planning on blowing Scott Alexander's cover by publishing his full name.<br />
<br />
Scott has real and very non-trivial reasons for wanting this not to happen, some of which I sympathize with deeply and personally; some of which I just think are obviously good reasons. He's a psychiatrist, and he doesn't want his patients to be able to look up his blog. He has enemies, and he doesn't want them looking up his <i>name and address</i>. Whatever the NYT thinks it has to gain in a little momentary journalistic <i>frisson</i> will be tremendously outweighed by the disastrous effects on Scott. I can't come up with any guess about what part of the public good they think is being damaged by Scott's pseudonymity, and I suspect they can't either. Scott, on the other hand, has a very good idea of what would be damaged by making him easily identifiable. <br />
<br />
The delphic imperative is <i>Know Thyself</i>, not <i>Make Thyself Known</i>. I don't know that Scott thinks of himself as a philosopher, but his work -- exemplary in eschewing easy answers and asking for rationale and evidence while remaining in touch with human suffering -- is fraught with implications for those who do philosophy, and his blog's disappearance is a brutal blow to the overall intelligence quotient of the web. Seriously, the entire internet is several points more stupid with the deletion of SSC. If there is a kindness quotient, or a fairness quotient, or a sense-of-humor-in-the-face-of-grim-reality quotient the same is true of them. I have explained somewhat <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2013/07/brief-blog-reviews-vii-slate-star-codex.html">more about why</a> I would think this elsewhere, before. Scott's fostering of an online community in which decency and capacity to listen to each other charitably across (substantive and deeply-felt) disagreement has not been perfect (otherwise there would be no enemies with whom he prefers to remain pseudonymous), but it has been <i>amazing</i>, and far more successful than, I'd conservatively say, 70-90% of the rest of social media. <br />
<br />
Please go sign the petition <a href="https://www.dontdoxscottalexander.com/">asking the NYT to do the right thing</a>. <br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-31745287043952919572020-04-30T13:48:00.000-07:002020-05-21T16:12:11.598-07:00an argument for esotericism<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
<b>Them:</b> Go Red.<br />
<b>Other Them:</b> No, Blue. <i>Obviously</i>.<br />
<b>Me:</b> Well, there's a distinction to be made --<br />
<b>Other Them:</b> What? What do you mean? <br />
<b>Me:</b> For example, Plato says -- if we read carefully --<br />
<b>Them:</b> Red!<br />
<b>Other Them:</b> See?! Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!<br />
<b>Me:</b> And by liberty you mean --? <br />
<b>Other Them:</b> Why are you defending them?!<br />
<b>Me:</b> I'm not, just --<br />
<b>Other Them:</b> You're on their side!<br />
<b>Me:</b> Forget it. Just forget I said anything.<br />
<b>Them:</b> Heh, those Blue guys -- Am I right?! Free speech! <br />
<b>Me:</b> Shut up. <br />
<b>Other them:</b> I'm <i>watching</i> you.<br />
<b>Me:</b> Yeah, you do that.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-49266406069542638092020-01-18T10:34:00.000-08:002020-01-19T09:48:31.122-08:00Prize and consolation<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
<blockquote><i>Just as, when I pay someone a visit, I don't just want to make him have feelings of such-and-such a sort; what I mainly want is to visit him, though of course I should like to be well-received too.</i><br />
-- Wittgengetin, <i>Culture & Value</i>, p 58</blockquote>My friend Kawingbird <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2019/12/many-sentences-on-one-sentence-on-no.html?showComment=1579186757916#c7690505098612336310">agreed with / objected to</a> my last post, in which I hold that<i> philosophy works by not-working</i>, whereby <br />
<blockquote><i>intense and difficult precision ... yields, at the right moment, to the graceful blur of letting-go, even if that means falling over backwards</i>.</blockquote>Quoth the Kawingbird:<br />
<blockquote><i>No doubt this experience is one of the things philosophy does quite well and one of the things we love it for. But is it the *main thing* philosophy does? Is it *why* we engage in philosophical inquiry? I'll leave aside the first, more general question and answer the personal one for myself. No. I love this experience of "the perfect, broken unfinishable whole" emerging into view out of the inevitable (partial) failure of my inquiries. But it is the equally partial successes that keep me going....I want answers! Yes, every answer turns out to be another question. But that doesn't mean it's not also an answer. ...What you describe seems to be to be like the runner's endorphin rush, which gives us that beautiful and redemptive sense of connection to the ineffable, which makes even our failures and weaknesses look noble. A lovely compensation prize -- and probably necessary for weak and ignorant beings like us. But I still want to get to the top of that next fucking hill.</i></blockquote>If we only wanted the endorphin rush, we could run on treadmills. Some do. Maybe Analytic Philosophy departments are the Gold's Gym of philosophy. In any case, most of us do actually want to go <i>there</i>, then <i>there</i>, and so on. I do maintain that philosophy "works" by not-working, but I think it <i>works</i>. One cannot get even the consolation prize if one doesn't learn to try again, fail again, fail better. The non-success (or, better, the suspension of success) of philosophy cannot happen without the partial successes of which K speaks. <br />
<br />
As to which is the "main thing" philosophy does, and which the side-effect, I think one has to be willing or able to think two contradictory things at once. Supposedly it is "better to travel than to arrive," or so I have been told; but without a destination, no one in fact "travels." One of the few lessons I can actually point to having internalized from my days in Mormonism is the lesson that humility is a side-effect; it cannot be made into the primary goal without short-circuiting the whole process. And yet, there is something decisive about humility that really <i>is</i> the "goal" of ascesis. My wager is that philosophy works this way too.<br />
<br />
I'll illustrate this via a philosopher for whom I take K to have a wary and diffident regard: Zizek. In Janet Malcolm's essay <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Journalist_and_the_Murderer/JgnV6F79U98C?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover"><i>The Journalist and the Murderer</i></a>, she writes:<br />
<blockquote><i>Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement whereby we are given leave to bend the rules of the strictest morality, provided we do so quietly and discreetly. </i></blockquote>If I had to summarize Zizek's essential point in his entire project -- his "one sentence," as Badiou / Canguilhem would say -- I would put it as a radicalization of Malcolm's account: the "unspoken agreement" does not function alongside the "strict" rules; the rules are a function of the unspoken agreement. Keep the law or "break" the law, if your concern is with <i>the Law</i>, you are not free. Zizek is a master at continually pointing out those ways in which what looks like "transgression" is a covertly-sanctioned way of <i>performing</i> "transgression." (This exegetical point, including the this-is-Zizek's-basic-core-contention claim, was made very convincingly -- albeit with some ramifications I don't concur with -- by Christian Thorne in <a href="https://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/three-short-essays-on-zizek/">a series</a> of three essays on Zizek a few years ago.) This is why Zizek is frequently seen as an ambivalent figure for the Left; he's all for you having your fun, but he wants you to ask yourself <i>where you are getting the idea of fun</i>, and he's all too willing to point out that not just any "fun" is actually liberatory. <br />
<br />
Stage zero in this exegesis is just the terms of the "naive" argument: there is the law, there is breaking the law. Stage one would be: hold together both the law and the "breaking" of the law. The law <i>works</i> by being "broken." Then the further step, stage two, would be to say: well, then: true freedom is to become <i>indifferent</i> to the law. Only then am I truly free of the Master. <br />
<br />
But if we risk the mockery of Kierkegaard (who spared no eye-rolling at those who tried to "go further"), we might dare ask, beyond Zizek: suppose we hold <i>these</i> two things together. If the real Law turns out to be the Law that always calculates with one hand what it forbids with the other, and "real" transgression, which is of course non-transgression because it is not concerned with whether it "transgresses," is just doing what you do without regard to the Law, is it possible to stand athwart <i>this</i> binary? If "transgression" can also point to a liberty beyond mere disobedience, so too perhaps the law, and even the capital-L "Law" of the Superego, might also point to a way beyond mere legal or moral rectitude -- to <i>the</i> Way, the Tao. Suppose, after all, that the law were <i>not</i> just some arbitrary, projected, Big Other's power trip. Is it possible to actually <i>keep</i> the Law -- <i>freely?</i><br />
<br />
For a differently-balanced semi-analogy, take kawingbird's metaphor of the consolation-prize: this is a dynamic I observe frequently, watching middle-school basketball competitions, and the way this strange rite of passage continues to play out against the wider "conversation" of child-rearing practices, telling youth what "really matters", with the distant pantomime of professional sports projected on the screen of culture. One stance would have it: one plays to win. Another would have it: your only competition is with yourself; the most valuable prize is the one for "participation." Bah, says the first; hand out prizes for everyone and what is the point of a "prize"? And here begins the dialectic: there is a secret truth to this "Bah," which the giver of participation-prizes admits with guilty reluctance, because on some level we "all want to win;" but then, deeper still, the "what is the point of prizes?" question can be turned on the impatient "Bah"-er: Yes, what <i>is</i> the point? Are you so sure there is one? And then, the further question that turns around on this: but then, why hand out participation "prizes" at all? And beneath it all is the endless and unspoken question, what <i>is</i> the point of playing? What is a game?<br />
<br />
My approach with regard to "problems" and "solutions" -- mechanistic or teleological nature, what commends or counts against democracy or aristocracy, whether "free will" is a mere <i>façon de parler</i> or a deep self-determination, whether one can coherently (claim to) think (of) "Nothing," and so on -- is analogous to this going-beyond. Like all analogies, these are imperfect, and my aim in jamming two analogies together here is precisely to highlight the slippage as well as the correspondence. In these analogies, the problem-and-answer dynamic is the Law, is "competition"; mere skepticism is transgression, is "everyone gets a prize"; and the dialectic unfolds from there. Philosophy has to hold together not only problems and solution, but problems and "unsolvable", and so on. But there is a moment in which one has to ask: if letting go of "solutions" is the "real" solution, can one let go of <i>this</i>, too? <br />
<br />
All of this can look, at a certain point, like so much hand-waving, which is why Kierkegaard had an easy target; it's what Timothy Morton likes to shrug off as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qu5zDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT140&lpg=PT140&dq=timothy+morton+%22going+meta%22">"going meta-"</a> -- a changing-the-subject maneuver, or worse, a kind of one-upmanship. There is an angle, or more than one, from which it just looks <i>silly</i> -- a slap-the-hand game, or children saying "to infinity no take-backs!" At this point the whole Rube Goldberg device stands revealed (and broken too) as, well, what a Rube Goldberg device <i>is</i> -- an apparatus of pointless detour; and one finds oneself still facing the ordinary tasks: how to cook the fish (don't overdo it). In moments like that, it can be hard to remember that <i>something</i>, after all, gave rise to the question in the first place. Where is the gap between that golden germ, the <i>hiraṇyagarbha</i>, and the flurry of confusion that was the dialectic eventually flowering into haywireity? <br />
<br />
It is absolutely not enough -- it <i>can</i> be exactly the wrong thing -- to "go meta." One must go meta <i>at the right moment</i>. Which may of course mean, not at all. Or rather, not yet, not yet, not yet... one step at a time... till you catch your breath and say, Wow, check out the view. The landscape will go meta on you all by itself.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-79163851773568601182019-12-31T17:19:00.001-08:002020-11-19T14:38:56.513-08:00Many sentences on one sentence on no sentences at all.<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank"></base><br />
Speculum Criticum is a decade old this month. Posting has fluctuated but obviously the trend of late has been towards more and more rarely. This isn’t because I am thinking or writing less; it’s because I have discovered that my habits of writing, which were laid down long before I took up the keyboard, proved less adaptable to typing – and especially to the continual instant-revisability afforded by the computer – than I had anticipated. McLuhan was not mistaken about the ways technologies shape, not just the form, but the content and process of our thought. I think as I write, and I write better with a pen in my hand. Transferring such scrawl into typed copy with HTML tags involves a number of extra steps, my time for which has been scant. <br />
<br />
But I wanted to mark the occasion with something, and as I watched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF9Xhj0agjs">this lecture</a> by Badiou, it came to me. In his tribute to Georges Canguilhem (chapter one of his <i>Pocket Pantheon</i>), Badiou calls him “the philosophical master of my generation.” In his lecture on The Immanence of Truths, which can serve as a short preface or advertisment to his book of the same title – volume III of <i>Being and Event</i>, due out in English sometime eventually – Badiou cites a remark by Canguilhem: “the great philosopher is the philosopher we know only by one sentence," and he adds: “if you have many sentences, its not a great philosopher.”<br />
<br />
Well, doubtless I have many sentences. E.g., philosophy as the cool handling of hot matters. Or: <i>Sapere aude, Laudare cura </i>(dare to know; care to praise). Not to mention paragraphs, pages, whole essays unwinding into suspended inconclusion. But if I had to commit to some single sentence, to serve as a calling card, a palm-of-the-hand discourse, to be known by as one recognizes Pascal by the wager, Descartes by the cogito, Bergson by time as duration; Buber by “I and Thou,” Socrates by avowal of ignorance, and Nietzsche by yea-saying; Wittgenstein by “Whereof one cannot speak…” (yes, even “late” Wittgenstein), Kant by the Copernican experiment, and Anselm by <i>fides quaerens intellectum</i>, I would hazard this: <i>Philosophy works by not-working</i>. Everything I work on comes back to this intuition of philosophy as chiasm between the intentional (even the inevitable) and the <i>ad hoc</i>. <br />
<br />
But there is “not working” and “not-working”, as it were. It would doubtless be a bit of preciosity to turn a little hyphen into the mark of a whole doctrine, but let us say, there is a difference between indolence and <i>wu wei</i>; between sloppiness and the light touch. Or, as I have said before, between acedia and apatheia. In fact, the not-working by which philosophy works is a matter of intense and difficult precision that yields, at the right moment, to the graceful blur of letting-go, even if that means falling over backwards. It is a radical discipline of whatever-you-can-get-away-with, the honor one may find among thieves, and <i>only</i> among thieves. Philosophy is a bricolage, a Rube Goldberg device that begins with that smallest and most indispensable of things, a mustard seed of <i>one genuine question</i>, culminates with the wallop of the zen master’s stick that cracks the whole thing from top to bottom, and only then – if at all – unfolds into the <i>wabi-sabi</i> realization of the perfect, broken, unfinishable whole.<br />
<br />
Of course, for every great philosopher with their “one sentence,” one finds a shadow-sentence, and another and another. Pascal’s wager is dogged by “the silence of those infinite spaces…”; Descartes chose for his motto not “I think therefore I am,” but the line from Ovid, <i>Bene vixit, bene qui latuit</i> -- “he lives well, who lives well hidden.” One could multiply these B-sides. Moreover, one makes a mistake if one thinks that one has as it were “boiled down” a philosopher to the essential once one has decided, or hit upon, the “one sentence” so that one need not concern oneself with “all the rest;” this at least is or ought to be <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2019/10/mikras-endeixeos.html">the lesson</a> from Hillel’s <i>”the rest is commentary – go learn.”</i> There is no royal road to philosophy, and this means also no Bartlett’s anthology of quotations that will unlock “the” meaning of any thinker. Canguilhem may have been right that a great philosopher is known by a single sentence. But philosophy is not comprehended by <i>sentences</i> at all. It can take a great many sentences – and then, suddenly, none -- to make that clear.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-29667966132247289952019-11-02T18:13:00.000-07:002019-12-27T20:17:47.525-08:00Three addenda to mikras endeixeos<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
These are more or less just notes to myself, but since they are occasioned by the previous post, they may as well be posted too.<br />
<br />
I had <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2019/10/mikras-endeixeos.html">written</a>: <br />
<blockquote><i>Hillel’s lesson is not that “the rest” is negligible.</i></blockquote>Hmmm. It is difficult to think of Hillel or Shammai and the English word "rest" without thinking of the Sabbath. Of course it's "just" a pun, and a cross-language one at that. Nothing serious there, right?<br />
<br />
George Herbert:<br />
<blockquote><b>The Pulley</b><br />
<br />
<i>When God at first made man,<br />
Having a glass of blessings standing by,<br />
“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.<br />
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,<br />
Contract into a span.”<br />
<br />
So strength first made a way;<br />
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.<br />
When almost all was out, God made a stay,<br />
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,<br />
Rest in the bottom lay.<br />
<br />
“For if I should,” said he,<br />
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,<br />
He would adore my gifts instead of me,<br />
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;<br />
So both should losers be.<br />
<br />
“Yet let him keep the rest,<br />
But keep them with repining restlessness;<br />
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,<br />
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness<br />
May toss him to my breast.”</i></blockquote>“Rich and weary;” one could do much worse than this for a close approximation to how Joseph Soloveitchik, possibly the greatest rabbinical thinker of the 20th century, reads Genesis 1 and 2 in his little classic <i>The Lonely Man of Faith</i>. According to Soloveitchik, the fact that Genesis 2 seems to start over after Genesis 1 is not an accident of redaction. The Bible tells two different creation stories, with two versions of man, because the human being is as it were divided, or, better to say simply, is two: the “majestic man” of Genesis 1 (“rich”), and the “covenental man” of Genesis 2, of whom it is said it is “not good” that man be alone, who is to tend the garden and not just to have lordship and dominion over the creatures of the Earth (“weary”). <br />
<br />
Herbert in this poem deploys the English “rest” with painstaking and overt equivocation, using the slippage of meaning as a feature. “Rest” as residue, remainder? Or “rest” as peace, stillness, rejuvenation? “Rest” in the latter sense is withheld by God, in this reversal of the story of Pandora, and “the rest” of His gifts -- except rest -- are bestowed in order to assure that the tension between richness and weariness may assure that man will seek out God and not “rest” content with creation. <br />
<br />
One would want to think this through with special regard to the Sabbath. I am thinking especially of the titular essay in Desmond’s collection <i>Is There a Sabbath for Thought?</i> Is perhaps the ostensible “quietism” of Wittgenstein more a sabbatarianism? A promise of or an aspiration for, not silence, but rest? And might this rest perhaps punctuate, structure, and order the “work” of philosophy, rather than provide its culmination? <br />
<br />
Regarding this --<br />
<blockquote><i>μικρᾶς ἐνδείξεως – the “little teaching.” The word “teaching” here might be better given as “indication” (the root is the same as “index,” or pointing)</i></blockquote>The place of the indexical in Wittgenstein is fraught – early on, he seems to say that the indexical is the basis of all thinking (atomic terms “pick out” features of the world, e.g. redness, such that the relation between terms and feature is simply indexical – a kind of “thisness” or haecceity). Later, Wittgenstein famously gave the imperative: “don’t think; look!” (<i>Investigations </i>66), which hinges upon the indexical in a different way. <br />
<br />
These meditations on the “little teaching,” trace, hint, indication, sign, all belong among the almost endless commentary that has been generated by the Hasidic story passed on from Scholem to Benjamin, from Benjamin to Bloch, and picked up by Agamben to become a source of continual academic speculation:<br />
<blockquote><i>The Hasidim tell a story about the world to come that says everything there will be just as it is here. Just as our room is now, so it will be in the world to come; where our baby sleeps now, there too it will sleep in the other world. And the clothes we wear in this world, those too we will wear there. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different</i></blockquote>And because pairing Zen with the Rabbis is something <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2019/05/andor.html">I like to do</a> -- though obviously the resemblance here could be meta-critiqued til the world to come -- I'll end with a nod to the <i>Compendium of the Five Lamps</i>, via D.T. Suzuki:<br />
<blockquote><i>Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after he gets an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, mountains to him are not mountains and waters are not waters; but after this, when he really attains to the abode of rest, mountains are once more mountains and waters are waters.</i> (<i>Essays in Zen Buddhism</i>, First Series, p. 24)</blockquote></span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-985432029192548312019-10-12T17:17:00.000-07:002019-12-27T17:44:20.923-08:00mikras endeixeos<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
Plato: <blockquote><i>I do not think it a good thing for men that there should be a disquisition, as it is called, on this topic--except for some few, who are able with a little teaching to find it out for themselves. As for the rest, it would fill some of them quite illogically with a mistaken feeling of contempt, and others with lofty and vain-glorious expectations, as though they had learnt something high and mighty.</i> (Seventh Letter, 341 c-e)</blockquote>A famous episode in the Gemara: a gentile approached the great teachers Shammai and Hillel, and asked for a summary of their teaching brief enough to be delivered while standing on one foot. The exacting Shammai, whose interpretation of halakah was stringent and uncompromising, was provoked by the question’s impertinence: a builder by trade, he took his cubit-length measuring rod and drove away the inquirer. Hillel took a different approach. Famous for his patience, Hillel said:<br />
<blockquote><i>What is hateful to you, do not do to another. The rest is commentary; go and learn.</i> (Shabbat 31a)</blockquote>In Aramaic, the sentence rendered “the rest is commentary; go learn” is grammatically a single unit (someone may correct me here; I am trespassing on ground in which I am, to put it gently, inexpert). The declaration does not break into two parts at a semicolon, and trying to so break it would render it meaningless. That is: “go learn” is <i>inseparable</i> from “the rest is commentary.” Hillel’s lesson is not that “the rest” is negligible. It is inherent and inescapable; incumbent upon one the moment one accepts the summary. To prescind from the learning of the commentary would be to reject the summary.<br />
<br />
In both the Seventh Letter and in the <i>Epinomis</i> (which reiterates the Letter’s claims about how the substance of philosophy cannot be committed to writing), Plato underlines again and again the difficulty of the philosophical life, and why it takes so much effort. It is only “after much converse about the matter, and a life lived together,” Plato writes, that the “spark” leaps from soul to soul. <br />
This “much converse” and life lived together, then, must be related to the “little” teaching. The teaching “itself” is little, but the life and the converse are much. <br />
<br />
Wiitgenstein, <i>Philosophical Investigations</i> 124: Philosophy is descriptive; it “leaves everything as it is.” Wittgenstein is writing about language, but his point still feels very apposite to Marx’s famous claim in the <i>Theses on Feuerbach</i>: philosophers have always offered various redescriptions of the world, but the point is “to change it.” Wittgenstein’s attitude vis-à-vis revolution is not obvious. Sympathetic enough to the call of Marxism to seriously consider relocating to the Soviet Union, he was also deeply elitist in bent. He had given away his fortune, gone to work as a village schoolteacher, and loved ordinary lower-class entertainment, but he knew himself to be an aristocrat of the spirit. (This tension is another reason I love him.) <br />
<br />
Between this turning the world upside-down and leaving it just as it is, is the μικρᾶς ἐνδείξεως – the “little teaching.” The word “teaching” here might be better given as “indication” (the root is the same as “index,” or pointing) . It is not necessarily a doctrine; it is a clue, a hint, something ambiguous that must yet be interpreted but also that can be interpreted. It is irreducibly a hint; it cannot be explicated or paraphrased; but it can be <i>read</i>. Philosophy is inherently a hermeneutics. Of what Levinas might call the trace. <br />
<br />
Heraclitus: The god at Delphi “neither speaks nor is silent, but gives a sign”: οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει ἀλλὰ σημαίνει.) (Fragment 93)<br />
<br />
What is the relation between the “little” indication and the “much” converse, between the teaching and the commentary and learning? Is this relation part of the teaching, or part of the commentary? <br />
<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-64499768562293964252019-07-14T16:35:00.000-07:002020-05-01T08:33:40.423-07:00Mou Zongsan on the stakes of transmission<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
One of Mou Zongsan’s controversial claims in his <a href="https://nineteenlectures.wordpress.com/">Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy</a> is that neither Wang Yangming nor Zhu Xi represented the “true” spirit of Confucianism in their time, but that this rather was preserved and passed on by Hu Hong and Liu Jishan. What immediately strikes the western reader is not the question of whether Mou is right or wrong about this; it is that Mou thought it was an <i>issue</i> – that it mattered and was a worthy and reasonable matter to dispute and deliberate, upon which one could hold one position or another, because it had consequences. <br />
<br />
Despite quarrels and debates, the rise and fall of scholars’ reputations, the conceptual overhaul of whole schools, a frequent question in Chinese intellectual history is that of fidelity of transmission. It would be easy (and a bit of stereotyping) to call this a sort of “conservativism” of Chinese philosophy, or of Confucianism at least, and it is true that it is concerned with maintenance of a tradition and thereby with that of culture as a whole. If cultural forms become stagnant and mired in convention, the whole civilization suffers; but so, too, if all forms turn to flux, or – more likely – are merely neglected. This concern is part of where Chinese philosophy derives its essential urgency (and without such urgency, philosophy degenerates into what its critics love to lampoon, “armchair” reasoning) – there are social <i>stakes</i>. <br />
<br />
Mou however would not accept the term “conservative” unqualifiedly. Citing the Analects (2.23), he quotes: <br />
<blockquote><i>Following the times, rite can be contracted or expanded; this was done in the Three Dynasties: ‘The Yin following the Xia ritual; what they subtracted or added can be known. The Zhou following the Yin ritual, what they subtracted or added can be known. As to the successors of the Zhou, even after a hundred generations, it can be known.’ … Thus Confucians were not diehard conservatives, ‘clinging to the remains and guarding the tatters’ of Zhou ritual. Zhou ritual was not impractical in itself, for if you yourself had real life, it would be practicable. The most important thing was to revive men’s lives.</i> <br />
Nineteen Lectures, 3</blockquote></span><br />
skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-6126371612979088652019-06-24T18:34:00.000-07:002019-06-26T16:03:43.117-07:00Deleuze, Wittgenstein, history, and madness<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
I have been re-reading Deleuze, <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=iqKGldo7A2gC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Dialogues</a></i> (w/ Claire Parnet). The book again confirms my impression that I can't go along with him substantively -- I don't reject Transcendence; indeed I reject this rejection (which is not to say I "defend" Transcendence, I simply think in light of it) -- but I am coming to think I am closer to him (in some ways) in spirit than nearly all his exegetes & fans. I relate strongly to his improvisation. I can't quite love him -- because I can't quite trust him. But I might have, had I known him. In this, he is almost the opposite of Wittgenstein, who I fell in love with, but perhaps would have been driven mad by in person. <br />
<br />
Interestingly, the fault in both Wittgenstein and Deleuze is the same: an indifference, indeed almost a hostility, to history. One cannot really picture either of them talking with Leo Strauss and having the conversation go well. But this manifests in different ways: Wittgenstein simply goes his own dogged way -- one can imagine him saying, after Luther, "I can do no other." (In Derek Jarman's eponymous <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108583/">1993 film</a> -- not <i>always</i> to be trusted, but accurate enough, in spirit, on this score -- there's a moment where Wittgenstein asks, "Aristotle? Why would I want to read Aristotle?") Deleuze, on the other hand, is brusque and suspicious. This is what I don't love / trust -- his suspicion calls forth my own. But I do "get" it -- his refusal to prostrate himself before the August Authorities. (I have <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-limits-of-just-give-me-arguments.html">tried before</a> to say something of what this gets right and gets wrong.) It is as if, for almost any reference to the tradition, the onus is on the referrer to prove that they are not making some power-play. Deleuze is quite explicit: <br />
<blockquote><i>The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It has played the represser's role: how can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, and so-&-so's book about them? A formidable school of intimidation which manufactures specialists in thought -- but which also makes those who stay outside conform all the more to this specialism which they despise.</i> (p13)</blockquote>As a teacher pf philosophy to the very young (my classes start as young as 8 years old -- and I know those who are brave enough to start with age 5) -- I am extremely careful to avoid swathing philosophy in a glossy coat of proper names, or pre-existing arguments. This is not just because of pedagogical concerns -- a desire not to intimidate. Philosophy is <i>new</i> every time. <br />
<br />
I have heard, all too often, outsiders' surprise (with sometimes a hint of indignation): but don't you get exhausted with hearing the same old points? Some undergraduate rediscovers a quasi-Cartesian "Maybe it's all a dream" or a relativistic "who are you to say...?," or a righteous indignation at slavery or Stonewall; doesn't it get just a <i>little</i> tiresome? Don't you want to just say, Let me spare you the trouble -- these things have been thought about before? <br />
<br />
Pointing students to their predecessors can be done with a light touch, if (and perhaps only if) one sees oneself as a student as well. This has nothing to do with false humility. One has a familiarity with the texts -- maybe with Greek or Chinese, even -- and some experience in thinking about the questions, including a sense of the lay of the land -- places where, or ways that, one is likely to go wrong. But those lessons are lessons in cleverness. It is easy to lose patience with cleverness (even Plato warns against it), but in my experience, the best way to make it irrelevant is to <i>keep doing philosophy</i> -- the examined life (life right now, not past-won laurels) and knowledge of ignorance.<br />
<br />
I think Deleuze (wrongly) thought -- at least he implies -- that erudition is almost always cleverness. But he is not wrong that cleverness is, strictly speaking, irrelevant. Indeed, he is himself possessed of an overabundance of cleverness, and indeed of erudition; and although he is cheeky to a fault, I like arguing with him. Wittgenstein's cheek, on the other hand, is a sort of intense seriousness and curious impatience with pseudo-problems -- by which I think he means -- if one pushes ever so gently -- the sort of problems that philosophers themselves <i>do not</i> take seriously, but pretend to. (Again, I believe there is effectively <i>no</i> difference in fundamental concern between the "early" Wittgenstein (who famously refused to acknowledge to Russell that there could not be a rhinoceros in the room) and the "late" Wittgenstein, who wants to critique "pseudo-problems." Both are concerned with the limits of theory and of articulability. No 180-degree reorientation; but there is a <i>relationship</i>: The late Wittgensetin wants to ask: what shall we do with the early Wittgenstein? What would it meant to really take him, or someone like him, seriously? Wittgenstein's greatest impatience is reserved for those who pretend to consider the problem on a theoretical plane, without ever asking what would happen in practice.) <br />
<br />
Unlike Wittgenstein (who was a late-, untimely-born Ancient, bereft of history), Deleuze was, despite his quasi-animism, a Modern -- a conflicted (like all moderns) heir to the Enlightenment (in somewhat the way Nietzsche is as well). Alternatively, one might also construe Deleuze as an untimely-born <i>early</i> Modern; one who willingly accepts the challenge of modernity to <i>start anew</i>, and by this very token refuses to be bound by the supposed game-changing new regime of the three <i>Critiques</i>. Deleuze the self-described metaphysician is, on this reading, a sort of pre-Kantian -- as opposed to Wittgenstein's (arguably Kantian) critique of metaphysics-as-mistake, and his equally Kantian insistence on staying with what "can be said."<br />
<br />
Perhaps I could not have gotten close enough to Deleuze to have good conversation, but I cannot shake the sense that <i>if</i> I could have, some real sparks might have lit. Deleuze famously dismissed Wittgenstein's legacy as destructive (despite Wittgenstein's own wholesale disavowal of any intention or indeed capacity to "found a school"); I would unhesitatingly say the same of roughly 80-90 percent of the Deleuzoscholastic flood which shows no sign of abating. But Deleuze himself is a different matter. He is (I am bound to say) wrong, but he has a kind of <i>madness</i> to him -- the more obvious but not necessarily most telling indices of which are the neologisms, the strange conflations of material and ideal terms, the methodic and methodological experimentalism (the authorship with Guattari, to say nothing of his engagement (alone and with Guattari) with schizophrenia and other guises of madness itself as a matter of inquiry. It's this madness (divine madness, as Socrates describes philosophy) that marks him as touched by the real philosophical fire, and which indeed is perhaps the most crucial way in which he resembles Wittgenstein -- and differs from (nearly) every "Deleuzian." <br />
<br />
To be sure, Deleuze's madness is itself also modern -- it <i>is</i> philosophical, but it cannot conceive itself as <i>divine</i>. <br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-54807082747908233992019-05-30T23:30:00.000-07:002019-07-16T09:11:28.058-07:00And/Or<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
I deeply dislike the question “What do you really want?” – a demand to name your desire. It has always seemed to me to have an impatience to it, a cut-to-the-chase subtext. And yet, if one cannot offer a reason for the hope that is within you, as the Epistle of Peter urges, something is clearly lacking. In short, the demand for demands may be motivated by all sorts of suspicious agendas, but it is not in itself an illegitimate query. What are the <i>stakes</i>?<br />
<br />
I was asked it the other day. What is it you want out of philosophy? It wasn’t so difficult to answer – indeed, had I been a little more careful I would have realized the answer came <i>too</i> easily: I really do want to <i>know</i>. What is the biggest context-of-all-contexts, and how does that work, all-the-way-down? I want the truth.<br />
<br />
And – I want to know how, and to dare, to act rightly. To “be a good person,” I believe is the way this is usually put. <br />
<br />
The true, the good …. Belatedly, I recognized the terms I was using. I decided to embrace the obvious. Yes, the beautiful: I want to <i>make</i> something, something conducive to this only-life-worth-living, some kind of apt image of the whole. A work. A beautiful work. Maybe that would just be the examined life itself. Or maybe, an artefact. What have I been doing with all these notebooks all these years if not laboring at <i>art</i>? <br />
<br />
Alas, I’m not really the sort of person who can leave something alone, when it looks as neat and pat as a made-to-order trinity. A host of reservations flooded in. The truth? Really? This was not just my inner Nietzschean sniggering at me, nor the Darwinian shaking his head: “That’s not really what we’re made for…” <i>Of course</i> I flinch at the truth. Suppose that it <i>is</i> terrible? As for the Good: Leaving aside the fact that I am, as far as I can tell, no further along the path than when I started, the fact is, being ethical costs me, and I balk at that cost about as often as I notice it at all. The balking costs me something too – that is what it means for this to be a question of the Good – but still, I balk. “The evil I would not do, that I do, and the good I would do, I do not.” Leave aside the questions of why this might be the case or how seemly (or not) it is to discuss (for myself I suspect that the less said outside the confessional, the better), but I am pretty much persuaded, by experience as well as by thought, that Father Stephen Freeman is right: I am not, in fact, improving, and moral improvement <a href="https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2014/12/05/youre-not-better/">is not the point</a> of Christianity, at least. (Perhaps it is the point of philosophy. Maybe that’s one difference. Maybe…) <br />
<br />
And the beautiful? I want to make a beautiful work, do I? Closer to the truth would be: I want to <i>have made</i> one. Writing – to say nothing of thinking – is a chore, a tedium, is <i>hard</i>. I would far, far rather sit back with friends and a drink at my elbow having spent the day actively and productively writing, than <i>actually</i> spend the day writing. Most days in which I “write” are spent looking out of windows, staring into the middle-distance, frowning at notebooks, rifling through papers, pacing the stacks in the bookstore or library, moving between café counter and restroom. <br />
<br />
In short, there’s nothing simple about these desires. They are more a form of conflict than a driving, life-filling passion. Or, maybe better: the way they motivate my life is <i>by way of this</i> conflict. <br />
<br />
Moreover, this seems right to me. Insofar as thinking itself, thinking <i>per se</i>, involves a sort of esotericism, it seems to mean a prescinding from every easy shortcut to resolution. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested that it was perfectly plausible that certain goods might be incommensurable. Strauss names some questions “perennial problems;” they have perhaps a limited family of possible “solutions” but no solution has ever been able to persuasively hold the field in perpetuity. Perhaps then there are some conflicts which need to be maintained as such, precisely as <i>agon</i>. Moreover, these terms foreground something that a word like “problem” or “question” does not: there is something difficult, something struggling, about conflict; and this, too, is why there is such a strong impetus – even an ethical impetus – to <i>solve</i> the conflict. Does pursuit of the good entail that we might have to put ourselves in harm’s way or to relinquish something upon which we had set our heart? Suppose the true does turn out to be terrible – <i>why</i> should I let the abyss stare into me? Is there a “best” form of social order – and what if it meant we must forego – or submit to – something less than best? Can a work of poetry or music or painting reveal to us <i>die sachen selbst</i>, or are we left only with a play of images that construe us as much as we them?<br />
<br />
To leave these as mere “questions” would be to curate a number of possible answers, hold each curious sample up and turn it so it catches the light, always without that crucial quality the existentialists insisted upon: engagement. Or, for that matter, the Marxists and the conservatives alike: taking sides. The ivory tower armchair is a foolish and reductionist cliché, but it gets at something right: without commitment, philosophy becomes not a game, but not even a game; something idle, frivolous, with no stakes at all. “It is never enough to split the difference,” a friend said to me; “somehow we have to both answer and not.” Or as Michael Stipe put it: “I’ve said too much; I haven’t said enough.”<br />
<br />
The whole tangle reminds me of nothing so much as the fourteenth case from the <i>Mumokoan</i>: <br />
<blockquote><i>Nansen saw the monks of the eastern and western halls disputing over which hall would keep a cat. Seizing the cat, he told the monks: “If any of you can say a word, you will save the cat.” No one answered. Nansen cut the cat in two. That evening Joshu returned to the monastery and Nansen told him what had happened. Joshu removed his sandals, placed them on his head, and walked out. Nansen said: “If you had been there, you would have saved the cat.”</i></blockquote>Mumon comments: <br />
<blockquote><i>Why did Joshu put his sandals on his head? If you can answer this, you will understand why Nansen’s deed was not in vain. If not, beware!<br />
<br />
Had Joshu been there<br />
He would have taken charge.<br />
Joshu snatches the sword<br />
And Nansen begs for his life.<br />
</i></blockquote>This story has always called to my mind – for what seem to me obvious reasons – two others: the judgment of Solomon, and Schrodinger’s parable of the cat. As is well known, Schrodinger intended his thought experiment not as an illustration but a reductio ad absurdum of the Copenhagen interpretation; he was trying to call Copenhagen’s bluff. Since then, Copenhagen has called his. <br />
<br />
In I Kings ch 3, the famous story goes, two women – “harlots,” says the KJV – are brought, along with an infant, before King Solomon. One of them has lost a child. Each one claims that the living child is her own. Solomon declares the child shall be divided between them; one woman acquiesces, and the other begs the king to give the child unharmed to the other; whereupon Solomon, discerning true motherly kindness, awards the child to the woman who begged for the child’s life. The story – and its many parallels from China to Pompeii, from the Jataka stories to Brecht (and even elsewhere within the Bible itself) – is again one about calling a bluff, indeed about more than one bluff-calling. (In the course of writing this post, I have read a number of feminist engagements with the Biblical story which seek to call its bluff. Some of them seem to me to manifest the worse characteristics of bad deconstructive readings, but it seems to me only fair to note that there are minority reports out there which want to contest the king’s wisdom, or the narrator’s.)<br />
<br />
Overlay these stories on each other in a kind of narrative superimposition, and you find something interesting. The necessity of choice becomes a way of making a <i>different</i> choice. <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/quick-who-can-save-this-cat/">One contemporary commentary</a> I discovered, which to my amusement also refers to the Biblical story (confirming my acumen, of course), imagined the “true” mother in the Biblical story scolding Nansen: Oh, you will kill the cat, will you?! You call yourself a monk! You ought to be ashamed! You know very well your vows do not permit you to take a life, <i>any</i> life. Nansen might have responded: break the vow, or break the cat; the vow remains, the cat escapes. In fact, the <i>Blue Cliff Record</i>, which also preserves the story, says that Nansen did not kill the cat; so too the Babylonian Talmud (Makkot 23b) actually ascribes the declaration “she is the mother” not to Solomon but to a voice from heaven. Textual tradition is always self-revisionary. There is saying, and saying. <br />
<br />
Schrodinger wanted to insist: the refusal to choose works only so far, and no further. Bohr might have responded: the choice gets made willy-nilly. All you need is a Geiger counter. Nansen might have said: the cat is already dead-and-alive. So are you. <br />
<br />
The either/or of the dilemma is supposed to press us to a moment where we cannot not speak. “Say a word,” Nansen commands the monks – <i>dotoku</i>, “express.” (It is also the name of <a href="http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Shobogenzo/038dotoku.pdf">a chapter</a> from Dogen’s <i>Shobogenzo</i>). “Speak a word to me,” the disciples are always asking the elders in the <i>Apophthegmata</i> of the Desert Fathers. It is not just any utterance that is intended; it is a word meant for them; the request is also an act of obeisance. <br />
<br />
Dogen also says: <br />
<blockquote><i>when you use words to express what you have realized, you will leave unsaid whatever is inexpressible through words. Even if you can see that you have indeed expressed what you have realized, if you have not realized that not all things can be verbally expressed, then you will lack the look of the Buddhas and Ancestors, and you will lack the Bones and Marrow of the Buddhas and Ancestors.</i></blockquote>C.S. Lewis opens his introduction to <i>The Great Divorce</i> with a clarification of his intention, self-consciously answering Blake’s <i>Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i>:<br />
<blockquote><i>[T]his is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable "either-or"; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found.</i></blockquote>The great dilemma is not between Either and Or, whatever those may be. It is between <i>And</i> and Or; between no-dilemma and dilemma, between absolute reconciliation and insistence on discrimination. I know of almost no thinker who has embraced the former, though Erich Unger comes close here:<br />
<blockquote><i> The genuine, and for a long time to come, the main activity of the mind consists in doing the exact opposite of what is commonly supposed. It is not to criticize or find out what is faulty, but to find out that which is true in any and every philosophical view that is put forward, or at least every view of historical repute. This means refusing to accept as ‘final’ any contradiction between conflicting views, since final contradictions properly belong to the <u>end</u> of philosophical enquiry. Consistency can never be achieved through an analytical or a merely critical procedure; consistency or systematicallity is the joint product of two faculties, differentiation and imagination. </i> (“<a href="http://www.erich-unger.org/Do_Philosophers_Disagree/">Do Philosophers Disagree</a>?”)</blockquote>It might seem that Hegel is the ultimate reconciler in the history of philosophy, at least in the West, and indeed, in his claim to have not philosophy but wisdom, he does seem to stake a claim to be beyond conflict. But the figure I know of who goes furthest in this direction is <a href="https://divinity.uchicago.edu/brook-ziporyn">Brook Ziporyn</a>, whose neo-Tiantai stance claims to offer grounds for asserting any claim whatsoever; a remarkable attempt to make Dadaism rigorous, or rigor Dadaistic... In Ziporyn's words, <br />
<blockquote><i>“the differentiations between things, their conventional designations, as well as any cockamamie philosophical or religious theory or personal illusion about them, are just as ultimately true and untrue as their Emptiness … both of these aspects are just as ultimate as the fact that these two aspects are simply aspects of one another.”</i>(<i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=dq66CgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Being and Ambiguity</a></i> p 16)</blockquote>To put things in a very rough-and-ready way, And/Or can be posed in terms of content or in terms of form. <br />
<br />
And/Or is a choice between conflict and reconciliation, tension and synthesis. To choose reconciliation, (“And”) would thus not be to choose both sides, but only one side -- the side of “not choosing” -- but because one has <i>chosen</i>, one has willy-nilly chosen “Or”. And yet: if to insist upon decision (“Or”) is to claim that there is an irresolvable conflict or tension, responsive to no synthesis, this suggests that the other side (“And”) is never refuted. It has a strange status as a perpetually possible illusion, known to be an illusion and yet never able to be dispelled. Choosing one side implies choosing the other side. This is why And/Or <i>remains</i> a dilemma. The cat escapes. Which is doubtless what it really wanted; but it seems to escape by being split. <br />
<br />
This game is not a game. <br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-53355508516112509052019-04-22T13:10:00.000-07:002019-04-22T13:10:43.195-07:00R.I.P. Robert Firmage, 1944-2019<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
Robert Firmage, who I <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-reality-that-is-not-amenable-to.html">interviewed</a> on <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2017/05/i-try-to-make-elegant-and-meaningful.html">this blog</a> two years ago, <a href="http://www.memorialutah.com/obituary/holladay-cottonwood/robert-firmage/">has died</a>. Robert called himself a Platonist, a Taoist, and a Christian, not always in that order; I knew him as a philosopher; but he wanted above all to give his service to poetry and to that end he labored on translations from German, French, and Latin, from the Augustan era, the Middle Ages, the 19th and 20th centuries. <br />
<br />
Robert's service to poetry and to philosophy were two aspects of a single devotion, to a world that always exceeds our capacity to say it, but which by that very token calls forth gesture after gesture, because we are called to love it, and love does not expend itself in its expression. Robert underscored this: "Only if we approach it with love can we understand the world," he insisted, in direct opposition to the scientistic demand for disengagement. This privileging of love, grounded in Plato and in the New Testament, and above all in experience, may sound cliché, but for Robert it was exacting and unsentimental. He worked on his translations with utmost attention to nuance; his philosophy, informed by Einstein, Heidegger, and the <i>I Ching</i>, was attuned to a dispassion as scrupulous any laboratory protocol. But he was also kind and grateful (for all his apparent gruffness); he was devoted to his wife Gertrud -- during every conversation I had on the phone with him, he would mention some care she had shown him, or some detail of their life together which incidentally illustrated his other thinking. And whenever we got together, it was in a cafe where he knew everyone behind the counter by name. <br />
<br />
Poetry and philosophy: the praise of life and the study of how to die. I have no doubt that the attention Robert brought to this throughout his life stood him in good stead through the end. I am very grateful for the chance I had to share in his self-effacement and good-humor. <br />
<br />
Memory eternal.<br />
<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-34242852199452897392019-03-30T10:51:00.000-07:002019-04-01T11:01:32.299-07:00Drunken Philosophy in the Seattle Times<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
No long post this month -- between other commitments, writing, and a shoulder in a sling after tripping on some basement stairs, I have found lots of typing to be beyond me. <br />
<br />
Here though is a <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/pick-a-table-pick-a-topic-pick-a-cocktail-its-time-to-pick-peoples-minds-civilly-at-drunken-philosophy/">brief write-up</a> from the <i>Seattle Times</i> of the Seattle chapter of Drunken Philosophy, founded by Michael Shepherd, a conversation with whom I posted in <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2017/02/whatever-your-questions-are-answers.html">two</a> different <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2017/02/philosophy-should-complete-process-that.html">parts</a> a couple of years ago. <br />
<br />
It's been a while since I was a regular at these, but I still go occasionally, and the article seems to get things about right: conversations are broad-ranging, engaging, civil, and yes, deep, at least sometimes. The story does not mention that the group is still among the largest philosophy meetup groups in the country (when I interviewed Shepherd, it was second. Not sure if things have changed since then.) The detail about tending millennial and male is accurate too, though I have never gone to a DP event and not met someone who was neither. I'd say the same about "white," too, although the photo(s), seem to show a number of white guys, and some of the twitter comments I've seen remark -- a bit dismissively, though not inaccurately -- upon this. <br />
<br />
The real issue, though, is depth. I'm not persuaded that one can do much genuine philosophizing with folks you just met; this takes time and a longer arc of friendship. But if you want to encounter people who might become such friends, this is a good spot in the agora to hang out in.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-19394598417829539702019-02-22T13:08:00.001-08:002020-04-02T08:34:51.421-07:00Let no one enter here who has not studied Conspiracy Theory<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
I am a conspiracy theorist, of the common-sense variety: I "theorize" that shared interests make for alliances; and if those interests are served by secrecy, then secrecy there will be. The larger the stakes, the greater the interests, and so too the greater the need for secrecy. Because high stakes tend to be available only to players who are already powerful, they will also tend to have greater <i>opportunities</i> for secrecy. But conversely: the greater the stakes, so too the greater the likelihood of alliances breaking, and greater the <i>difficulty</i> of secrecy.<br />
<br />
Those could be a sort of rough-and-ready set of axioms of any Conspiracy Theory 101. They aptly sum up both why it is reasonable to expect conspiracies, why they are likely to succeed in the short- to medium-run, likely to be unstable in the long run, and why they are likely to eventually come to light. And they do come to light: everyone knows what the Mafia is, and everyone knows what the Illuminati is too. The fact that most people believe in the one and few people believe in the other is incidental. <br />
<br />
Conspiracy theory is fun to malign, until you need it. The notion that Democratic Party officials were complicit in a child-sex-trade cartel under a pizza restaurant seemed a little too good/horrible to be true, but the notion that <i>Russian trolls</i> have conspired with certain renegade wannabe movers-&-shakers on the political right, abetted by a cartoon frog, to place a New York pretend-billionaire in the Oval Office has become the bread and butter of the 24-hour news cycle. As I type, rumors are again rife that this-week-for-sure, we'll see the long-promised Mueller Report. I have no doubt that when it finally drops, the report will be full of Important Findings; those who have the patience and the obsession will be kept busy for a long time filling in the gaps. But while all of this has happened, it has remained sufficient to call someone a conspiracy theorist to discredit them -- as though nothing else need be said. What we believe in are <i>collusion</i>, and <i>cover-ups</i>, and maybe, when pressed, <i>conspiracy</i>. What we disdain is <i>conspiracy theory</i>.<br />
<br />
I started reading conspiracy theory in the late 1980's and early '90s, before the X-Files, and before the internet dialed all this stuff up to eleven. I am entertained by it, but not dogmatic about it. Among my friends, at various times, have been a bitcoin-buying anarchist who refused to talk with me while my cellphone lay on the table; a former intelligence operative who has assured me that threatening messages had reached him via little details in the daily press; and fellow who looked me in the eye with an if-you-have-to-ask-you'll-never-know sigh, and told me, from his own personal experience, that once you have seen <i>proof</i> of extraterrestrial intelligence, it <i>changes your life</i>. Well <i>that</i>, at least, I could well believe. <br />
<br />
I also was once invited along to drop off Richard Hoagland, author of <i>The Monuments of Mars</i>, at the airport after a presentation he'd given. Hoagland had not expected me, however, and when my friend who was driving took an unexpected detour, Hoagland became notably alarmed. "Wait -- what? -- where are we going?" There followed an awkward moment when it was suddenly very clear that he found it completely plausible that my friend and I might intend to murder him. How we moved past that uncomfortable impasse I don't remember; we wound up having a very interesting conversation about Bode's law, Copernicus' cosmology (all those nested platonic solids) and what it would take for Hoagland to acknowledge that his hypothesis of ancient Martian civilization had, Karl Popper-style, been falsified. (I was relieved to discover that there was indeed an answer to this -- he assured me that a complete absence of "lawn furniture"-sized artifacts on the Martian surface would convince him he'd been wrong). <br />
<br />
Hoagland's scare underscores something, though. After all, one rises to prominence in the world of conspiracy theory by fostering suspicion and paranoia. This means that the higher one's profile, arguably the more paranoid you are; and the more warily you must regard everyone else, including -- perhaps especially -- your compatriots in the conspiracy-theory subculture. These, in turn, must of course regard you with the same arm's-length wariness. Thus Alex Jones, Jim Keith, David Icke, Robert Anton Wilson, Jim Marrs, Mae Brussel, Miles Mathis, Whitley Strieber, Art Bell, and on and on, have each been publicly suspected (not infrequently by one another) of being a psy-ops provocateur. (Mathis has voiced this suspicion of pretty much everyone). In a milieu in which paranoia is the modus operandi, atomization is a natural side effect. After all, if THEY are so powerful, then the higher your profile, the more you must be useful to THEM. Otherwise, why are they letting you make so much noise? Why haven't they offed you yet? The only real street-cred legitimization is -- death; not just any death, but the bullet-with-your-name-on-it kind. Don't trust anyone above the ground. Thus William Cooper, author of <i>Behold a Pale Horse</i>, gunned down by the Feds in true you'll-never-take-me-alive style, and Danny Casolaro, found with his wrists slashed ten times each when hot upon the trail of the sprawling conspiracy he called The Octopus, are among the only near-untouchables in this subculture. (Even they have not been immune.)<br />
<br />
Well, then: Call no man reliable until he is dead.<br />
<br />
That's one side of the paradox. The other side is more liberating. Like all theory, conspiracy theory aspires to explain; its explanatory mechanism, however, also conceals. A conspiracy must act in secret. The more powerful the (postulated) conspiracy, the greater the explanatory power; but also the greater its (hypothetical) capacity to deceive. And thus, the more your conspiracy theory explains, the less you can know; and a conspiracy powerful enough to control <i>everything</i> would undermine your capacity to trust <i>anything</i>, including the rationale that leads you to believe in the conspiracy. <br />
<br />
The low-hanging fruit here would be: conspiracy theory is nonsense. This critique is easily parried: conspiracies are not regarded as all-powerful (indeed, narratively speaking, their allure partly depends upon the critics being scrappy, indefatigable heroes who could win; the meddling kids to the Illuminati's woulda-gotten-away-with-it); but the deeper point, beyond the betcha-never-though-of-that, is further-reaching, a kind of immanent critique: go deep enough into paranoia, and you cannot help but come out the other side. Ultimately, fear can contain the seeds of its own dissolution. <br />
<br />
I thought of all this, again, in the wake of the death of Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche is a splendid cautionary figure for political philosophy, and maybe for philosophy as a whole, and if this claim is puzzling it is because philosophy has become too tame. Whatever his (sometime) weirdness and blame-mongering, LaRouche clearly aspired to be taken for a genuine intellectual. Look through the publications of his foundation, the Schiller Institute. That's <i>Friedrich Schiller</i>, my friends, not Adam Smith or Edmund Burke or any of a dozen likelier candidates for patron saint if you were aiming for a respectable-sounding political movement. What first strikes you when you flip through any copy of <i>Fidelio</i> (the Institute's glossy magazine) isn't the politics; it's the undeniable breadth of topics: Lincoln's presidency, the Newton-Leibniz dispute, cold fusion, Bach's compositions. This breadth is a sign of far more than middlebrows aspiring to high culture; there are good guys and bad guys in LaRouche's account of history, and those who are not for us are against us. Nothing is neutral. Euler's mathematics is evil, Riemann's is good. Bach's music is not just uplifting, it's a force for truth; Russell's philosophy is the opposite. And remarking upon any of it is, obviously, relevant to the cause. The same is clear from the dozens of essays produced by Miles Mathis: the ruin of culture since modernism turns out to be part and parcel of how everything you know from science and math is wrong (pi=4, for instance), and that almost nothing you read in the national news actually happened. That is: everything is connected. <br />
<br />
I was first discovering this stuff at the same time as Derrida was crossing my radar, and I couldn't help but see the way Derrida would turn a stray comment from Rousseau into the lynchpin of a whole essay that seemed to show that everything you thought you knew was subtly undermined. Later I read Agamben, and there it was again: an obscure figure in Roman law becomes the thread that when pulled turns out to drag the entirety of European civilization behind it, from Byzantine theology to the architecture of Auschwitz. But you didn't have to be a cool European thinker that got cited in all the right grad programs; the same point had been made by Freud, after all (to say nothing of Jung and his eye for synchronicity): everything could turn on the most inoffensive-looking little detail. Or, as Richard Weaver (who was certainly not getting cited in all the right grad programs) had already said: ideas have consequences. But because history never proceeds in a straight line, tracing those consequences always looks a little ... paranoid. <a href="http://guidopreparata.com/">Guido Preparata</a> is right to say: conspiracy theory is too important to be left to conspiracy theorists. The only thing that differentiates paranoia from the Socratic following the <i>logos</i> wherever it leads, is that Socrates is not afraid.<br />
<br />
"Everything is connected" is both a banal bit of pseudo-profundity, and a truth the full weight of which no one really feels in their soul unless they are in the throes of a bout of enlightenment. It is, to be sure, not just easy to roll your eyes at; it practically elicits this response just by being said aloud. At least one reason for this reaction is not the pseudo-profundity but the fact that when acted upon, this truth winds up creating a lot of paranoid effects. <br />
<br />
I don't presume to know whether LaRouche ever got within spitting distance of satori; that's certainly not my claim here. All I want to emphasize is that philosophy can <i>look crazy</i> from the outside. (Indeed, Socrates would say, it <i>is</i> crazy; but madness -- the right kind of madness -- is the greatest of all gifts.) It looks crazy because it's trying to do <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2015/11/philosophy-standard-and-nonstandard.html">the <i>impossible</i></a>: to think the Whole. The more you attempt this, the more you get tangled in epicycles, which are not a bug but a feature of the very notion of system. Philosophy deploys system against systematicity. Most paranoia, alas, stops with the tangle. <br />
<br />
Besides paranoia, the other extreme of fear is panic. Right away this name is a clue: panic is the all-encompassing, paralyzing or dissolving, fear in the face of <i>Pan</i>, the All. Of course. The All <i>overwhelms</i>. <br />
<br />
Paranoia, the "<i>it's-all-connected,-man</i>" urge, is the attempt to hold panic at bay, to tame the threat by mapping it. To be sure, one can decide it was all a waste of energy, and return to a healthy agnosticism or one of the more standard-issue forms of paranoia peddled by the brand-name "Major Parties" ("Yay Republicans;" "Yay Democrats;" "Yay CNN;" "Yay FOX;" "Yay Science;" "Yay Family Values;" "Yay, Jihad;" "Yay Jesus;" "Yay [insert pop idol];" and so on). But if you want to really get out of paranoia, you have to go <i>through</i>, and that means it gets worse before it gets better.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-62199547668788147492019-01-31T15:48:00.000-08:002019-06-25T15:31:29.611-07:00privilege<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
This year SCT will be one decade old. It is likely to be a year of scant posting here, but I am not closing shop. My aim is to finalize plans for a (small) book and to have made a significant beginning on the material therein. I will occasionally post some drafts that will perhaps be more rough than my usual work here. <br />
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Daniel Dennett says, I think in an interview, that he resents every moment he must devote to politics because it is time stolen from projects he'd rather be working on -- presumably the philosophy of consciousness. A friend who is pretty solidly rooted in the Straussian tradition held up this remark as a sort of smoking gun for the apparent bankruptcy (my words, not his) of the analytic scientism (ditto) he sees in Dennett. "Politics <i>has</i> to be where we start," he said. My own stance is far closer to my friend's than to Dennett's, but I have to say I see Dennett's point. The last several posts I wrote here feel far removed from my own immediate concerns; they are my way of trying to ward off the siren-call that "everybody's shouting," now <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUvcWXTIjcU">as in 1965</a> when Dylan sang about it: "Which side are you on?" I will of course have more to say on this -- it is not so easily exorcised -- but I truly hope to spend more time on the questions that the crises of the day distract from. This is not to say that they are not crises. And if any one wants to say that it is from a "position of privilege" that one may put one's attention elsewhere, well, how could I demur? I am not in a refugee camp or fleeing from civil war or criminal cartels, and (so far) I am spared the worst effects of ecological catastrophe and the Ponzi scheme we call the national (or global) economy. But I take with absolute seriousness the claim of philosophy, the examined life, to be <i>the</i> life worth living.<br />
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We are told in Philostratus' <i>Life of Apollonius of Tyana</i>, that when Musonius Rufus was sentenced under the Emperor Nero to hard labor, digging a canal across the isthmus of Corinth, he was met by Demetrius, a fellow philosopher, who was dismayed to see him in such a state. Musonius responded to him: <br />
<blockquote><i>"You are distraught, Demetrius, to find me digging across the isthmus for Greece? But what, I wonder, would you have thought, if you saw me playing the cithara like Nero?"</i></blockquote>Or, if one wants a testimony from some less remote era:<br />
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When Jacques Lusseyran was imprisoned at Buchenwald, he discovered that reciting poetry kept him and his fellow inmates alive. In his essay Poetry in Buchenwald, Lusseyran is emphatic that "this is not just a manner of speaking;" <br />
<blockquote><i>for us these were sensations ... poetry was completely lived by us, and not simply evaluated[.] We didn’t say, “It’s beautiful,” an expression which only has meaning for those who are happy, the sated. We said, “You see how much good it does!”<br />
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I hear skeptics growling, “He’s not going to tell us that they were </i>fed<i> by poetry.” Of course not. We were nourished by a watery soup and a bitter bread. And by hope. Let skeptics not forget this! It was precisely in this matter of hope that poetry acted upon us. And it was in the thick of these most completely physical, material circumstances which I endured even to the point of suffocation, that I understood how utterly tangible are these things without weight which we call hope, poetry, life. ... To nourish the desire to live, to make it burn: only this counted. Because it was this that deportation threatened with death. It was essential to keep reminding oneself that it is always the soul which dies first – even if its departure goes unnoticed – and it always carries the body along with it. It was the soul which first had to be nourished. Morality was powerless. All moralities. As if they had been created by artificial conditions of existence: provisional peace, provisional social equilibrium. Ideas, knowledge, could do nothing either: they left despair intact. Only religion nourished. And next to it, the sensation of human warmth, the physical presence of other human beings. And poetry.</i></blockquote>It is incidental that Lusseyran does not name "philosophy" here, though the secret ongoing trysts between Poetry and Philosophy in the course of their ancient lovers' quarrel are beyond the scope of this post. (Part of what esotericism means is playing liaison between them.) The crucial thing is to note that the life worth living can be lived in a prison as well as in a gated community. Maybe -- though one should not say such things breezily -- even better.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-87674181537894492472018-12-21T17:13:00.003-08:002020-04-09T13:11:38.608-07:00The fetishism of positions<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
“OK, but what do <i>you</i> believe? Do <i>you</i> think abortion should be illegal?” <br />
“Do you think a trans person is the gender they say they are?” <br />
“Do you think Israel should get out of the West Bank and Gaza?” <br />
“Should pro athletes be able to kneel during the national anthem?” <br />
“Doesn’t everyone have a right to health care?”<br />
“Of course immigration should be done legally or not at all, right?”<br />
“Do you or don’t you agree that there is such a thing as White Privilege?” <br />
“Should public school curriculum be multicultural?” <br />
“So what <i>are</i> the limits on free speech?” <br />
“Come on, what would <i>you</i> do with a terrorist in a ticking time-bomb scenario?” <br />
“Are you a Marxist? A Libertarian? Do you even care?” <br />
“Wait – who are you going to vote for? -- You're <i>voting,</i> right?” <br />
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Policy questions, foundational questions, questions of the moment, “purely theoretical” questions…. But always the insistence: OK, but after all the weighing-the-options, what do <i>you</i> think? <i>“What is your position on ----?” </i> <br />
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Of course anyone can be the target of such interrogation, but I am going to consider the case of the philosopher. There are at least three (or four) ways that this question, this making-it-personal, arises. There’s an aggressive mode, an “OK, wise guy, if you’re so smart, <i>you</i> tell us how it oughta be done. What do you even <i>want</i>, anyway?” At worst, this is a mode of <i>revenge</i> for making us think off of our own beaten track. It’s an attempt to change the subject, or even to turn the tables; to impose a shift from the <i>implicit</i> questioning that happens in thinking-out-loud, to an <i>explicit</i> demand for some kind of “actionable proposal.” It really means “put up or shut up,” or sometimes just “shut up.” It’s a shaming mode: you and your armchair, your ivory tower. Get your hands dirty! It can also be a demand to “stop hiding,” quite dancing around behind “suppose” and “what-if;” in other words: <i>Come out and fight if you dare</i>.<br />
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There is also an abdicating mode; a mode that says, OK, Yes, I understand the options, but what has your imprimatur? Yes, there’s this way or this way to think about it, you can be a utilitarian or a communitarian, you can say some things are right or wrong no matter what; you can think there are tragic choices or that the idea of tragedy always serves the status quo. And on the ground, you can show how question after question can be asked in multiple ways. But after all of this “teaching the controversy,” aren’t you afraid you’ve legitimated the wrong thing with implying a false equivalence? Mightn’t you be dignifying some options just by giving them airplay at all? Don’t let me make the wrong choice! In other words, <i>Tell me what to think</i>; or even, <i>what to want</i>. <br />
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Sometimes there's an unstable hybrid mode that says: <i>Please tell me you don't think this wrong thing</i>. <br />
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These modes <i>fetishize</i> positions. They are not, of course, usually put forward in the stark and, admittedly, caricaturized forms I have sketched. Moreover, each of them is right about something, whether it knows it or not. The aggressive mode senses that philosophy is indeed “hedging,” in a sense. It thinks that by naming this “elephant in the room,” it can render the philosopher nonplussed – a breach of decorum! – and that this will save it, or at least buy some time. Sometimes, as rhetoric goes, it works. <br />
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The abdicating mode, too, sees something true: there is a real risk involved. One may well be, as Levinas says in the very first sentence of <i>Totality and Infinity</i>, "duped by morality." <br />
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The aggressive mode casts the philosopher as having no skin in the game, or as playing for hidden stakes – a different sort of “skin,” and not the kind everyone else has in the game. On the other hand, the abdicating mode sees “stakes” very clearly, and is panicked by them. <br />
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I say that these wrong modes fetishize position because they imagine that if the philosopher will just “state clearly” their position on such-and-such, <i>something will have happened</i> And they know what will have happened: the philosopher will be knocked off their high-horse; or the student will have been given a hand up. In the case of the hybrid, the fear may be that the student will be pulled down, though usually the conscious worry is that they "won't be able to respect" the philosopher any more. <br />
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The philosopher, <i>qua</i> philosopher cannot (say I) answer any of these modes, because the philosopher knows that <i>nothing</i> will have happened if they answer. (Of course, plenty of teachers, and plenty of thinkers, do answer; they too can be prone to alienation and fetishizing. None of us is immune to to this.) Or, perhaps, they can and do answer, <i>and</i> they know that nothing has happened – because under the circumstances imposed by the assumption, nothing <i>can</i> happen. OK, you know that there are many, many people, doubtless very intelligent, who think such-&-such, as well as many others, equally intelligent, who think the opposite, and half a hundred shades in between. I have now told you my own intelligent opinion; now you have one more grain of <i>doxa</i> to add to one pile or another on the various scales. Or again: You are quite right: I have a different game to play in addition to the game about policy or about foundational principles. You challenge me to make a move about policy, or foundational principles. Here is my move. Now, what does that tell you about this other game?<br />
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There is one last mode of asking this question, and this last mode is <i>personal</i>. It just wants to know the philosopher as a fellow, as a comrade. It is not worried about getting the answer “right,” though it may well think there is or could be a right answer, and that this rightness is not a point of indifference. But what it is after is something like intimacy, or shall we say, encounter. Beyond all critiquable motives, beyond all “conservatism” or following-the-question-wherever, there remains the naïve and pre-legitimate (pre- because it comes before any criteria of legitimation) desire to know, <i>Who are you? </i> (<i>Are</i> you indeed “just asking questions?” Are you enjoying some subtle frisson that comes with provocation – and doing so under cover? Do you have a wish, a hope, of your own?) And this question arises in part because one is finding ones <i>own</i> way, and wants – hopes for – what? Guidance? Collaboration? Provocation? Company? <br />
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This mode sees the philosopher as pretty much the opposite of a troll. A troll is someone who is just fucking with you; they have no interest in you, only in your reactions; but in order to get your reactions, they must seem to have an interest in the subject at hand. In a certain sense (and put perhaps hyperbolically), the philosopher has an interest solely in you; the subject at hand is always the medium. And this in turn means that this third mode, this personal mode, itself begins already to take on this anti-trolling stance, by which one cares provisionally about the questions as they come up, but really these are all occasions for <i>hanging out</i>. This, by the way, is called friendship. It is not as casual as it sounds. <br />
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In the previous two posts I laid out a long double <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2018/12/why-i-am-not-progressive.html">list</a> of “<a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2018/12/and-no-not-conservative-either.html">positions</a>.” They really have very little philosophical interest in themselves; they are meant only to be a lot of cumulative evidence for why I do not feel well-placed as either a “Progressive” or a “Conservative,” and that, after all, is a matter that really need only concern me – if anyone. But since I am not really all that atypical, I assume that there must be dozens, nay thousands, of ways in which someone could realistically be a halfway-thoughtful, semi-engaged political participant and not fit with the "political binary" of contemporary American lingua franca.<br />
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More or less missing from all of those lists was any extensive rationale. What I was presenting wasn’t a political theory; it was just a jumbled pile of stances, more or less raw, more or less without justification. This was partly from necessity -- I needed to provide a big-enough panorama to make the point I wanted to make: to wit, that it is possible (because it is a <i>fait accompli</i>) to maintain a number of positions that are at least prima facie at odds with the left-right spectrum. This is not a very revolutionary claim, of course. But it does press us towards an interesting question. Why, if someone like me is obviously possible, and on the assumption that I am not a freakish outlier (hmmm...), is the popular account of the "political spectrum" so pervasive? Has "the wisdom of crowds" just found the optimal way of sorting positions into a two-big-baskets setup? Or are there perhaps other interests that are served by the system that leaves so many other permutations out of consideration?<br />
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In the first edition of <i>Capital</i>, Marx uses a phrase which Zizek later appropriates as a brief definition of ideology: <i>They do not know it, but they are doing it</i>. True to form, Zizek cannot help but reverse this into “They know it very well, yet they do it.” Marx does not actually use the word <i>ideology</i> here – a word that by now has arguably become so overdetermined as to be useless, if only there was another (because those overdeterminations are part of the use), but the phrase is still a good brief pointer to this tangle of overdeterminations. In any case, in later editions, Marx considerably revised this chapter, but he kept the phrase – more or less. It is now, “We are unaware of this, but we do it,” and he is referring to the way we allow human relationships to be mediated by things. Soon thereafter comes the famous discussion of the fetishizing of commodities. I’m going to allow myself a gloss from the unlikely source Wallace Shawn, whose play <i>The Fever</i> I <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2017/09/notes-on-wallace-shawns-fever.html">staged</a> a bit over a year ago: <br />
<blockquote><i>People say, about every thing, that it has a certain value. This is worth that. This coat, this sweater, this cup of coffee: each thing worth some quantity of money, or some number of other things—one coat, worth three sweaters, or so much money—as if that coat, suddenly appearing on the earth, contained somewhere inside itself an amount of value, like an inner soul, as if the coat were a fetish, a physical object that contains a living spirit. But what really determines the value of a coat? The coat’s price comes from its history, the history of all the people involved in making it and selling it and all the particular relationships they had. And if we buy the coat, we, too, form relationships with all those people, and yet we hide those relationships from our own awareness by pretending we live in a world where coats have no history but just fall down from heaven with prices marked inside. “I like this coat,” we say, “It’s not expensive,” as if that were a fact about the coat and not the end of a story about all the people who made it and sold it.</i></blockquote>Because the interpretation of Marx is fraught with difficulty, Shawn may not get Marx right in every respect; but I think he grasps the essence, which is brought out in a footnote Marx appends to the very phrase I mentioned before: We do not know it, but we do it. The footnote is to Galiani’s treatise On Money, and says:<br />
<blockquote><i>When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons – </i>“La Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone,” – <i>he ought to have added: a relation between persons expressed as a relation between things.</i></blockquote>Positions get lumped into more or less ready-made ensembles precisely because positions are <i>fetishized</i>; in exactly the way Marx spoke of the fetishism of commodities. It is not a coincidence; this fetishizing of positions occurs because “positions” come to us <i>as</i> commodities. A pre-given position is a relation between persons expressed as a relation between things <i>expressed as a relation between persons.</i> It looks like two people having a conversation, and so it is, or would be, but the conversation cannot happen, because the people involved have given over their interaction to the mediation of <i>things</i>: readymade notional ensembles. <br />
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A dozen objections arise at this point. What? am I imagining some unfiltered, unimpeded "encounter" that would happen if only those pesky "positions" didn't interfere? Where is this golden age supposed to have occurred? How naive! Didn't I ever read Derrida? Wittgenstein? Nietzsche? <br />
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As it happens, I do think philosophy involves a sort of naïveté; but let's come back to that. It could also be objected: I said earlier that philosophy was interested in “you,” and that every “subject matter” was just an occasion or even a medium; what, then, is the difference between this, and the ideological deformation I am criticizing now? Part of the difference is in that phrase of Marx’s – they do not know it but they are doing it; for Socrates is to be taken at his word when he says that the difference between him and his fellow Athenians is that <i>he knows that he does not know</i>. Zizek’s inversion of Marx (“they know very well, and yet…”) rightly heightens the tension, because under late capitalism, irony – made into a mode of style and in some sense collapsed into style itself – has become a commodity like all others, and indeed the very mark of the self-knowing commodity – because in this setting, the ultimate commodity, the ur-commodity, <i>is</i> style. <br />
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But irony is only necessary, not sufficient, for philosophy. There is also a kind of earnestness, or what I referred to above as naïveté. "In all their actions men do in fact aim at what they think good," Aristotle says at the beginning of the <i>Politics</i>, and this <i>what they think</i> is where they – and we – start, though we may have grounds to revise this later. Philosophy is saved from meta- and hyper-ironism by this naïveté, which however is different from the insistence of either the aggressive or the abdicatory demand for “positions” because that demand wants those positions as an end, an answer, whereas philosophy starts there – and that is where the labor of building a position finds its raw material.<br />
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If the fetishizing of the commodity is a forgetting of and repression of the labor involved in making it, we forget, too, the labor involved in the making of a position. Philosophy reminds us and says: you want to understand? Roll up your sleeves. But the point is not to "make" a position. Positions have their meaning in the context of life. The examined life entails an examined politics (which means, also: law, civics, economics, education, culture...); and there is of course no politics without policies. Whether, in any given context, there are particular policies <i>entailed</i> by philosophy <i>per se</i>, is – like so many issues – another question. But I am dubious – if you really want to know what <i>I</i> think.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-32958664994582745192018-12-07T16:07:00.001-08:002021-08-25T18:26:48.422-07:00And No, Not a "Conservative" either<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
Well, if anyone cared enough to read the whole of<a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2018/12/why-i-am-not-progressive.html"> last post</a> about Why I Am Not A (capital-P) "Progressive," the first thing I have to say is.... Why? Why would some one guy's "positions" be of the remotest interest? Sure, if you know me IRL, as the kids (used to) say, perhaps this kind of matters (and those are the ones I initially drafted this for, before I started getting all writer-y with it); but what could possibly be the fascination otherwise?<br />
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Here's one guess (though even here, "fascination" will be a strong word). Maybe you, too, are "not a Progressive" -- but, too, are not put off by my obvious hedging. If so, you too might <i>also</i> be "not a Conservative," and want to think a bit about how these things, or not-things, fit together. I will be of almost no assistance on the theoretical level, but maybe just enumerating examples will help -- ways in which positions don't match up with either "side" of this shadow-boxing match. We can extrapolate from the examples later, maybe.<br />
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I'm leaving completely out of account for the moment the "immediate context" of American politics -- our national case of the DTs. Going after the low-hanging fruit of the latest presidential tweet is impoverishing what was left of the smart liberal free press; we don't need more of that. That the current White House is a new low -- which is saying quite a lot -- is a point that I think needs no demonstration. That it has mouthed a number of points that were popular on the left within waking memory (especially in anti-globalist quarters) is less frequently mentioned, but I don't think this demonstrates anything beyond the administration's semi-incoherence and the way much of the left is a weathervane. In any case, I have been known to show up at demonstrations, sign petitions, and even strategically vote for Democrats lately -- all purely tactical decisions, which may be correct or mistaken or meaningless; but for the purposes of this post, I'm leaving the Narcissist-in-Chief off to one side. I hope he will soon be relegated there for everybody. (If and when that happens, we will see more clearly how much of a distraction from the real issues DT has been -- and how important this distraction will turn out to have been.) If the best the Left had to offer was "We're not D.T.," we would be in deep, deep trouble. Of course, we are in deep trouble anyway, but....<br />
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This is (a little) more brief than the last post, partly because that was a low bar, and partly because my critiques of the Left are internal critiques; these are made from without. I was raised in a conservative household in a conservative state (Utah), so I cannot take seriously the demonization of ordinary-folks conservatism (even the much-maligned "DT Supporter", though I was <i>so</i> proud of my home state for the lost-cause candidacy of Evan McMullin), and I still have a fondness for red-white-&-blue bunting, and small towns with lots of front porches; but I left the Republican Party behind even longer ago than I left the Democrats. If anything, I am more "small-c conservative" (<i>not</i> "further right") than most of the GOP; but I'm definitely "further left" (<i>not</i> "more liberal") than <i>nearly</i> every Democrat I know. <br />
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OK, then. If I'm not a Progressive, why not, the other thing, whatever that is? (Again, even more than last post, these positions here are not presented as full-blown arguments. They are, at most, indices. Or maybe symptoms. Note, too, the frequent recurrence of variations on the phrase "....but that is a different issue.") <br />
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1. I am an artist -- mostly a musician, but I do graphic art and, if you haven't noticed, a lot of writing too -- and sometimes art offends the shit out of people, with bad taste, irreverence, whatever. Oh well. I'm not saying the artist shouldn't care about codes, mores, standards, consequences, norms, canons, and so on; nor that being offended is somehow morally salutary or snaps a person out of their little cozy close-mindedness. I too have been turned off, offended, and repulsed by someone's "art." I'm just saying I would prefer that the <i>law</i> should pretty much stay the Hell out of this. <br />
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2. I have yet to see an account of social conflict that has persuaded me that the lion's share doesn't come down to class. (The closest has been Stan Goff, who argues that gender is even more basic, and <a href="http://chasinjesus.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-left-lost-women.html">sometimes</a> he almost tips me over to his side.) This all by itself makes me a Marxist, in some senses. Though of course, aristocrats also know it comes down to class. <br />
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3. Speaking of Marx: Late-capitalist economics is clearly a pyramid scheme. I believe that human beings are free, and therefore we can decide to behave better; that we are not fated to be determined by the "laws" of the market. (This doesn't mean I think markets cannot be treated as an object of a <i>kind</i> of science).<br />
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4. I am a localist; I believe in community -- its value, its indispensibility, for the good life. You might think this makes me a likely conservative -- and in small-c terms, this is close enough to true; but by the same token, I am therefore in a certain sense <i>not</i> an "individualist," in the sense of the individual posited (or constructed) by Lockeanism, and thus the whole modern small-"l" liberal idea of modern society or can-do, go-it-alone pull-yrself-up-by-yr-bootstraps nonsense which underlies a certain sort of conservative critique of social safety nets. (I am not sure I want my safety nets to be administered by the state, but that's a separate question.) <br />
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5. I am deeply suspicious of profit motives, and the venality of power. As far as I am concerned, beyond a certain threshold, The Bigger, The Worse.<br />
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6. I am persuaded by the critiques that show how comfort here is too often underwritten by misery elsewhere; and I think that we are under spiritual obligation to change this. How we live with (<a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2017/09/notes-on-wallace-shawns-fever.html">engaging or evading</a>) this responsibility isn't simple, but there is a difference between engagement and evasion. <br />
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7. Despite my remarks about Identity Politics, I am deeply sympathetic to critiques of racism on large scales and small, and I am disgusted by it whether it is overt or covert. I am likewise moved by complaints of women who have to deal with guys being jerks, and systemic arrangements that enable and abet this. And likewise by the obvious ick-recoil that gays and lesbians had to deal with in my youth. I supported marriage equality in civil terms because I believe (on more or less libertarian grounds) that mutually-consenting people can do what they want with each other. (Should they? is another question, but it isn't one that I want decided by legislation.) This is not the same as endorsing religious marriages as a sacrament for same-sex couples; if you believe in sacraments at all, you have a whole different set of considerations to include in such a query. (I.e., that's <i>another</i> other question.) <br />
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I do not idolize "Diversity" for its own sake, nor Equality either, but in my encounters with other people individually and other groups, I genuinely try to lead with my curiosity and openness and not with defensiveness. There is a place for defense; it's not up in front. In short, while I may have all sorts of criticisms about specific behaviors of minorities and marginalized groups, about the tactics of activism within / on behalf of those groups, and indeed about the theoretical ramifications of thinking in terms of "marginalized groups" as the go-to first and last theoretical stop -- reservations about all sorts of aspects of the typical Social Justice itinerary and its theoretical underpinnings -- I <i>do</i> want to ask myself hard questions, catch myself at residual prejudices, and cultivate empathy for people who have a different and difficult row to hoe. And those empathizing efforts make me want to cultivate kindness -- which is painfully lacking when you listen to the defensive postures (and derisive snorts) on the right (I'm thinking of what is known as "the comments section" here). (That the left, to be sure, has its own cruelty, I neither deny nor condone; and -- because I am arguably "on" the left and unarguably surrounded by it here in my coastal city -- I fear that cruelty more; but that is (as usual) a different question.)<br />
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I am quite sure that "kindness" sounds to others, at times, either like a laughably/woefully inadequate response, or just the wrong word entirely for how I articulate my stances. That's a different matter; but I take it seriously. The biggest example these days seems to be so-called gender-nonconformity. Is it really necessary to underscore that people no matter how they comport themselves (i.e., how they "present") should be treated with dignity? It is true that <i>not agreeing</i> -- however tentatively -- with someone can itself be construed (wrongly, I hold, of course) as an affront to their dignity; can, indeed, be (mis!)characterized as <i>questioning their right to exist</i>. That is, however, no reason to throw the game and just forget about kindness and respect. If my stance is not accepted as respectful, I may not be able to control this; but I'm certainly not going to act disrespectfully by <i>my</i> lights.<br />
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8. I loathe trolls. (Lowest-grade Dada. Ugh.) Trolling I define (leaving aside, for now, the problematic question of actual propagandists or <i>agents provocateurs</i>) as willfully provoking the emotions of another for no reason other than to provoke; what is known as "fucking with people." (There can be such provocation that <i>does</i> have other, or further, rationale, and here the line can blur, but it does not vanish.) The troll is akin to the bullshitter -- they do not care about the correctness of their position; being right, or persuading someone, is not the point. But while the bullshitter is invested in seeming as if they are saying "something", and producing an effect of confusion or a vague impression that the bullshitter has said Something Important, the troll is invested in getting a rise out of the other side. This makes trolling (and this is not news) very much like bullying, and it brings out an icy fire of cold wrath in me. My severest judgment is reserved for cruelty and humiliation. I know humiliation from the other side; and I also know the temptation to it.<br />
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I see <i>far</i> more trolling on the "right" than on the "left." (I am speaking, for the most part, of the common citizenry here -- again, of "the comments section," where the real depressing outline of <i>hoi polloi</i> comes out in stark relief. As the internet has changed the public square, the distinction between the peanut gallery and the stage has gotten blurry, however. There are now plenty of low- and mid-level "official" commentators and policy-makers who seem to me to flirt with trolling or at least with the sort of pseudo-trolling that comes from preaching to the choir -- and that serves to "legitimize" trolling proper when the choir is sent out into the comments-sections.) Since the troll <i>qua</i> troll does not care about the issue, it's an interesting question why one side of the binary attracts them more, and I think a prima facie case can be made for the argument that the Left, bleeding-heart that is is, makes itself an easy target. But n.b., since the troll doesn't care about the issue (the troll simply enjoys the spectacle of anti-racist righteous indignation; they are not making a principled case for the right to wear blackface), the troll can be accidentally associated with a an argument that has, in itself, some abstract plausibility. Conversely, certain moves in serious argument (or in serious art -- see (1) above) can <i>look like</i> trolling, because sometimes an emotional effect -- even offense -- can be part of a set of argumentative (or artistic) moves. They cannot be the <i>point</I> of the argument, however. (The case of art can be interestingly different, but -- though this is a longer argument -- even here offense as the primary end undermines the integrity of art <i>qua</i> art, I think.)<br />
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9. I don't have a scientific degree, but I value the (loosely so-called) scientific method, and I am a scientific optimist in the sense that I think science is good. Technology... well, we can have that conversation. And the one about how to tell the difference or separate them. Anyway, what this means is that I don't foreclose (though I may be dubious about) the possibility of real solutions coming out of research; and I don't believe in "forbidden questions." (This can also set me apart from the left, of course, depending on which question we're talking about.)<br />
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10. I am, as mentioned, ambivalent about the military. I'm just dispositionally not a hawk, and lots on the right are -- unless they are isolationist, which I'm not either. <br />
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11. I'm genuinely unsure what to do about the oncoming ecological ruin that we have wrought, but I'm absolutely sure that the rapaciousness of industry and capital own the lion's share of the blame for the damage we could have seen (and indeed did see) coming. There may be plenty more blame to go around as well, but in this at least, we could have used for the last century some <i>actual</i> conservatism -- with, you know, some real conservation in it. And yes, desperate times make for desperate measures, and at this point I'd be happy to give the EPA <i>carte blanche</i> within certain to-be-determined (but broad) parameters.<br />
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12. I started out my explanation of Not Being a Progressive with an account of how and why I value <i>existing</i> goods over possible but imaginary ones; and I mentioned there that this can make me look like an apologist for the status quo. I'm not. And far less am I merely in the grip of nostalgia. I am religious, yes; I am a "traditionalist", yes (tradition refers to something <i>real</i>); but I'm neither a triumphalist nor a fundamentalist, for the very good reason that they are not traditional (that "real" that tradition is about is not "literal", it is <i>more than</i> literal -- though if pressed, I will take the humble submission of "literal" over the arrogant subtlety of "you know, <i>spiritual</i>" any day). I love culture, but culture, like everything human -- like everything created -- is temporary and passing. I understand nostalgia, and I do not think it is either stupid or inevitably "reactionary;" but I understand that it is nostalgia. As Ivan Illich said when facing similar charges of crypto-conservativism, "I'm not endorsing the past. It's <i>past</i>; it's <i>gone</i>. Even less am I endorsing the present." One should be able to speak well of the past without being accused of "wanting to turn the clock back," or some such foolishness. I can name, and mourn, what is being lost, try to salvage what can be salvaged, or even "stand athwart history yelling 'Stop!'", without trying to use the force of the state (as if there was anything "conservative" about <i>that</i>) to enforce a <i>delusion</i>. <br />
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13. I am not eager for, but I <i>do expect</i>, the Revolution. Probably too late.<br />
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The proper attitude to take towards that, however, is another post.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-16178564583530715582018-12-04T12:00:00.001-08:002021-08-24T18:48:16.741-07:00Why I am not a "Progressive"<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank"></base><br />
Last post but one, I offered a <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-alienated-b-confused-c-honest-d.html">kind of apologia</a> for a <s>weaselly</s> apolitical politics, of a sort. Partly because it could have been mis-read as a defense of political indifference, I concluded with a promise to mention "some things to which I am <i>not</i> indifferent." The interest of such a list of positions is certainly limited, but my hope is to indicate some of my pre-existing biases or instincts which are supposedly more-or-less correlated with "Progressive" <i>and</i> "Conservative" labels in the current American political scene, and which (cumulatively) serve to dis-align me with either such wing. Why such correlations even happen is partly understandable, and partly at least explicable; but it is also partly opaque. After all, why should a general hawkish military stance be aligned with lip-service to balanced budgets ("fiscal responsibility"), an enthusiasm for charter schools, or a desire to repeal Roe v. Wade? Why should a high degree of comfort with proposals of bureaucratic "oversight" go along with championing gay marriage, or (supposed) anti-gerrymandering? I understand how these things have made common cause from time to time; what I don't grasp is why they are held to be deeply, philosophically aligned. I still don't have a full-blown theory of political coherence, descriptive or prescriptive. About five years ago, Scott Alexander over at Slate Star Codex offered a sketch, on a roughly sociological level, of <a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/">such a rationale</a>, and I think it's fairly good as such accounts go; it's purely descriptive but you gotta start somewhere. I'm not going to argue for or against Alexander's theory here, or offer an alternative, but I commend it as the beginning of a conversation. What I am going to do, in this post and the next, is toss out some positions -- some of them are close to what you'd call "policy" positions, others are much higher-altitude (or foundational, depending on your point of view). All they really have in common is that they are mine. These two posts are not an attempt at a coherent platform. They are just a sort of pile of pieces of an incomplete mosaic of some of my socio-political concerns. To show that the mosaic is even completable would be a further project, worthwhile (for me, anyway) but of far larger ambition. The "pieces" here are just picked up and described one by one. They are indices (not causes) of whatever it is that makes me feel alienated from, not at home with, and (sometimes) unable to talk with, those who call themselves Progressives (this post), or (next post) Conservatives. We'll see if anyone is still reading by then. <br />
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Well then: Why am I not a Progressive? <br />
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First off, what <i>is</i> it I'm claiming Not to be? Well, it's kinda vague, actually, since there's no one place where you go to see what "The" Progressive Platform is, but I have in mind here a cloud of attitudes, styles, and default positions, which quite possibly no single self-described Progressive actually maintains, but all of which I encounter routinely here in Blue-Bubble Seattle. Some of these positions are actually further left than mainstream Progressivism, but they're all more or less in the left-liberal or left-radical zeitgeist. If anyone wants to argue that I've got this wrong, I'm interested.<br />
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The following numbered points are not intended as single-sentence theses with some subsidiary commentary. Each one is, rather, a little cluster of concerns that are related (and sometimes also related among each other) but don't always reduce to a neat summary. The fact that I have called them "biases" above does not mean they are unconsidered, or held merely out of stubbornness or inertia. I've thought a lot, and continue to think, about each of them. But it will be obvious that no item below is presented here as a full-blown argument. Each is, at most, a statement of position from which an argument would be mounted, or for which an argument is called. Usually (and with some of the items more than others) I have included some of the pieces of what such an argument would be, and any one of them could be expanded into a full post, or more than one. <br />
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1: I value <i>existing good</i>s -- things and situations that are real, concrete, and working for people, even if imperfect; and so I always tend to ask: what are the costs to the imagined reform / innovation / shiny new thing you are proposing? Because the imaginary new thing -- no matter how "necessary" it is by someone's lights -- is not going to be as good, in some ways for sure and maybe in all ways, as the thing we actually have that is good. <br />
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This is essentially what is at play in people's concerns over (say) "gentrification" of a beloved old neighborhood; or in the "development" of a piece of "empty" land; or the replacement of one set of practices with another. I think liberals and further-left folk alike are often pretty cavalier, if not in outright denial, of those costs, though of course they are also ready to marshal a long list of such costs when it suits them. ("Gentrification" is sometimes one such.) Sometimes those costs are worth it; sometimes they are revealed to have been worth it in retrospect. It is rarely absolutely clear. <br />
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These questions arise in all sorts of situations. Should we build a mass-transit system? Seattle decided No, back in the 1960s, and arguably is now paying the price. The San Francisco Bay area decided Yes, and has a different set of problems. Should we ban salmon fishing to save Orca whales (another current question in my corner of the US) -- a question that has profound and immediate ramifications for the viability of native tribal culture? Should lobster fishing, or coal mining, or logging be banned? I don't say there can be no right answer about this, given the competing costs; I'm saying costs are real in any event. <br />
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In worrying about what gets lost, I am aware that this can look like status-quo'ism, or "privilege", from the outside. I take seriously the possibility that I could be missing something relevant -- this is just what is entailed by humility -- and that one reason I could be missing it is a degree of comfort. But that possibility is not the end of the conversation, and I do not like the frequent attempt to weaponize it.<br />
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This love of existing goods means that I am less ready to jump aboard with ideas that sound great, or even ideal. I believe in the inevitability of many, many unforeseen consequences of the best-laid-plans. Therefore, while I expect the Revolution, and not with dread, neither am I eager for it.<br />
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2. Related to the foregoing: I think Progressivism can be extremely casual about discarding cultural forms, in the name of (ostensible) justice or equity. I am an ecological conservationist (at least), and my ecological concerns go hand in hand with my cultural ones. <br />
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A good example of this is gender: after a lot of (still ongoing) reading, I just <i>do not believe</i> that most of the arguments against the so-called "gender binary" hold water (in fact, I often don't think they are even intended to hold water); but more than this, I think it is extremely perilous to try to eject a feature of cultural discourse -- the cultural ecology, if you will -- that has structured our experience since there was culture at all; and arguably since before we attained consciousness. A similar argument may be made (more limited in historical scope) about "marriage equality." The denial of the American left (liberal and radical), a few years ago, that this involved a "redefinition of marriage" was astounding to me. That's <i>exactly</i> what it was, and if people cannot see it, or do not have the courage to admit it, this merely bespeaks how gravely marooned we are from our own past, or how in thrall we are to rhetorical tactics that are indifferent to truth. Say that marriage has been redefined before; say that the past is well lost, if you like; but don't deny that it is real, and really different. <br />
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Now, on the off-chance that it might surprise you (having just read the above paragraph) to learn that I voted for same-sex legal marriages in the state of Washington, I want to respectfully submit that it is a mistake to extrapolate from high-altitude considerations to on-the-ground tactics -- or vice-versa. Alternatively, you may take it as a case study in how weaselly or vexing or "hard-to-pin-down" my "politics" is. Again, though, I swear this is not because I'm <i>just that</i> subtle and interesting -- or that I delight in being perverse. It's that the link between "theory" and "practice" is itself not straightforward.<br />
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The two foregoing examples (the "gender binary" and gay marriage) might imply that this critique about being casual with cultural forms has mainly to do with sex and gender. This is not the case; these examples (I have written <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2018/04/social-constructs-is-social-construct.html">somewhat about gender</a>, at least indirectly, earlier this year) just happen to get so much attention that they are hard to ignore. (The reasons for this attention are doubtless interesting in their own right.) In fact, this critique of being cavalier about received cultural forms pertains (in my opinion) across all kinds of categories: art; commerce; property; class; etc. The short version of this is: Progressivism, probably as a function of its apparent prizing of egalitarianism above all, strikes me as being fundamentally (though often unconsciously) opposed to hierarchy. I am not so opposed. In fact I think this opposition is incoherent and impossible. (If I was developing arguments, here would be the place to venture into the very problematic distinction sometimes offered on the right between equality "of opportunity" and "of outcome," a distinction I think is too rough-and-ready to be of much help after the opening moves.)<br />
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3. Among these cultural forms is, above all, religion. I see a crucial place, an irreducible, central and non-negotiable place, for religion in human affairs, which when vacated leaves something like a cross between an amputee's stump and a black hole. This place is not the individual place of "worshiping according to one's conscience," though that is an acceptable if limping liberal modern shorthand if no other language is at hand. Because of this, I am fundamentally at odds with modernity, and therefore with progressivism which is in some sense its logical conclusion. I have often noticed that when you scratch a progressive you will find a fundamentalist -- usually an anti-fundamentalist fundamentalist. Even my good irreligious friends who acknowledge the over-the-top disdain and bile in the (no longer so "new") New Atheists ("Oh sure, Dawkins and Dennett are really abrasive about this," or even just "People don't need to be so fucking arrogant") do not really seem to me to grasp what I mean when I talk about faith. Doubtless most of the responsibility for this conversational impasse lies with me, if it is a question of responsibility.<br />
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I am a believer in -- not a fetishizer of -- tradition. Things that have been around for multiple generations probably are embedded in a cultural ecosystem in ways that escape immediate notice, especially when the ones who are doing (or not doing) the noticing are enamored of the latest loud fashion. This doesn't mean that traditions should enjoy some immune-to-critique status (hard-to-discern effects are part of why critique is important); but I think it is very short-sighted to carry out such critique cavalierly or <i>by reflex</i>. This is because, for all this embeddedness, traditions are also, in a crucial sense, <i>fragile</i>. They can be broken in a single generation, and once they are gone, they are gone -- maybe rebootable (and this is not nothing), but no longer organically connected. <br />
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There's a practical, policy-impacting aspect to this orientation of mine: very often, in a contest between "religious values" and other interests, I'm going to side with the former. Of course such legal "victories" as these contests afford are Pyrrhic ("... according to one's conscience"), or, at best, temporary stays against defeat. But they may count for the individual.<br />
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4. For the better part of a decade I have found the excesses of "Identity Politics" frustrating, and increasingly impossible to engage -- hence, increasingly dangerous. (And please, see above (1) under remarks on "privilege".) I am deeply turned off by rebellion for its own sake, and I see this a lot -- under the just-enough excuse of righteous indignation. It's like going after low-hanging fruit by burning down the orchard -- the stupidest of both worlds. That these excesses are often turned against fellow, but not-woke-enough leftists, increasingly raises concerns that the Left is devouring itself; but they are also (of course) aimed against conservatives of whatever stripe, who are really looked upon as an <i>enemy</i>. We need to think about this. I think there is room for the idea of enmity, but this is the wrong place to look for it. Snark, tone-deafness, self-righteousness, disdain, and contempt are all at play in such characterizations, and it ought not take me pointing it out to see that they are <i>wrong</i>.<br />
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5. Here's an opportunity for some to exercise, or exorcise, your choice, some of that aforementioned self-righteousness. I do not condone the availability of abortion on demand, and I see the left as fairly incoherent on this matter. I am <i>not</i> exactly "pro-Life" (though I have used this as a self-description, it's really a placeholder, sort of like "worshipping according to one's conscience" (see above under (3)) -- in other words, not very good). As I read the history of this question, the notion of "Life" as it is deployed here is of very recent mint, and I am pretty persuaded by the genealogy Ivan Illich <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/542c2af8e4b00b7cfca08972/t/58ffc15986e6c0ef872c49b3/1493156189509/Life+as+Idol.pdf">has traced</a> for it; it is a kind of secular feel-good word, and possibly a kind of idol. In any case, my position here stems not from a high-level desire to honor Life, but from garden-variety a distaste for killing people. If there is any high-falutin' philosophical principle at work here it is a commitment to the irreducibility of personhood, a stance I found in kindergarten well summarized by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_Hears_a_Who!">Horton the elephant</a>: A person's a person, no matter how small. There are, however, other small things besides small persons. Conveniently, Stan Goff has <a href="http://chasinjesus.blogspot.com/2018/11/some-years-ago-i-became-familiar-with.html">written recently</a> on this, noting that in Christian and specifically Roman Catholic theology,<br />
<blockquote><i>more than a thousand years after the Pentecost, the modern “fetus” had not yet been invented. The unborn were seen in two phases: pre-ensoulment and post-ensoulment. Ensoulment was signaled by the quickening, the sensation of the baby’s movement in the womb, something that happens as early as fifteen weeks into a pregnancy, and as late as twenty weeks. Abortion was not considered murder until after ensoulment, or the quickening.</i> </blockquote>That <i>at some point</i> abortion is the killing of a person I consider not up for debate -- at least, I really cannot imagine what would make me entertain such a debate. But the insistence that this point was the moment of conception is a very late development (see Goff's post for some orienting landmarks here), and I think it bears questioning whether the whole rationale for it is the "progress of science." <br />
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I am not a Roman Catholic and I do not take my thinking orders from the Magisterium; but I would understand if anyone suspected this. I am opposed to the death penalty, opposed to torture, deeply ambivalent about the "permissability" of suicide under any circumstances. (My stance on this pre-dates my brother's <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-i-said-for-my-brothers-funeral.html">suicide</a>, but of course there are all sorts of debates to be had on this question -- because, among other reasons, suicide is not just one thing.) I am undecided about the coherence of just-war theory, but in any case support only defensive -- or at most extremely surgical offensive, guerrilla-style -- strikes. My belief regarding combat (not just armed combat but yes, especially this) is that it ought to be like T'ai chi ch'üan -- you give your opponent the dance they need to trip themselves up and lay themselves flat. Sometimes that requires making contact, sometimes even making contact first, but you know the difference between doing this judiciously and doing it viciously. In my own life, while I may go back to being vegetarian, at present I eat because animals are killed; and even were I to go back to vegetarianism, given our economic and ecological realities, there is no end of the violence upon which I am indirectly implicated. Nonetheless, I cannot square my stance on violence with abortion on demand. I grant that in this fallen world sometimes the least-bad way forward -- at least by our lights -- is still violent. I would settle for the Clintonian line of abortion being "cheap, legal, and rare," but show me a Progressive who really means this (that's a serious request, I may have overlooked someone), and backs policy to realize the <i>rare</i> part. Because of tactical concerns (see (1) on "privilege") I tend to let the pro-life women do the talking on this one (a lot of words got cut out of this entry on the list before I posted), but the tactical question has not very much to do with the issue itself. I do not dispute that abortion has been historically, and especially recently, bound up with a hell of a lot of sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny, because it <i>obviously has</i>. I'm also aware that this stance ought to commit me to other positions about women's health, childcare, and so on, and I'm down for those. And, because this issue is such dry tinder, I will add that I do not regard abortion as quite the same thing as "murder" (which in this case is a legal term, not a moral one); it may occupy its own position in the logical space that pertains to the killing of human beings. I know and love people who have had abortions or been party to them. I am deeply opposed to and repulsed by the shaming of anyone who has had an abortion, as I would be opposed to shaming military veterans (or, for that matter, convicted murderers.) This does not mean I am on board with recent name-it-claim-it-wear-it-on-a-T-shirt fashion; but people should be able to tell the truth without being derided. <br />
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6. Speaking of combat: I think Progressivism is a bit casual and blasé about Islamic terrorism, starting with a squirmy discomfort with calling it "Islamic terrorism," which needless to say is not a synonym for Islam. I'm not saying the Right, in whichever stance, has got this right either, but Progressives seem to me to lack much theoretical ground to stand on. Part of the reason is that the Left is just a little bit incapacitated when thinking about religion (see above under (3)), so it tries to change the subject to something else (this is happening right now in the minds of some readers of these very words). I don't think those other subjects are irrelevant. But leaving religion out (and for conflicting reasons at that) reveals a kind of bankruptcy. <br />
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7. On a related note, Progressives are also, in my experience, at best conflicted when it comes to the military. This is a conflictedness I happen to share, so I don't claim to have worked out a consistent stance here (let alone a "workable" one), but I think most Progressives shove this down into the memory hole with a pretense that they'll "deal with that later". <br />
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8. I think the far Left (Marxist and Anarchist alike) is often far too casual about the actual processes of production -- about what is involved in creating prosperity and thriving. I don't have a full-fledged account of this either, and I certainly share the critique of capitalist rapaciousness, but I'm unpersuaded by the positive accounts of economic growth or technological innovation offered on the further left, which suffer from a kind of reductionism that is just inevitable when you think culture is all a symptom of, well, blind material forces. On the nearer-left, among most "Progressives" who reject anarchism or Marxism, you find the opposite problem -- an under-theorizing of business as usual, a satisfaction with band-aids or an unreasonable hope in oversight and intervention, which all amount to kicking-the-can.<br />
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9. I am deeply turned off by collectivist superstructures. I'm enough of an individualist (despite what I said above about religion) to chafe at being told how to think -- or to act. When faced by need, I do not want my help (which I will sometimes willingly give) to be coerced. This means I'm less friendly to the idea of tax-funded and bureaucratically-managed social services than many progressives. I am, moreover, very skeptical of human over-reach, which has occasioned many of our current woes -- especially in other parts of the world where our best intentions led us to stage numerous interventions that fucked things up. (The establishment of obligatory charity and manifest-destiny noblesse oblige has been a moral catastrophe. <a href="http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm">See</a>, on this point, Ivan Illich, who argues that such doing-good-in-the-third-world makes things worse pretty much every time, and more recently Anand Giridharadas who <a href="https://medium.com/@AnandWrites/the-thriving-world-the-wilting-world-and-you-209ffc24ab90">suggests</a> that it's actually pretty self-serving.) This obviously does not entail turning a blind eye to suffering; it need not even mean doing less; it may well mean doing more. It certainly means doing this very, very differently than almost all contemporary interventionist "charity."<br />
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10. I believe in the relevance of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number">Dunbar's number</a>. I'm a localist. Which means I don't buy the tenability of large-scale "solutions". I also (for similar reasons) believe that certain utopian promises ("Universal Health Care") are likely to have promised way too much; others ("Universal Basic Income" -- though it seems better than many alternatives) are likely to create as many problems as they solve. That doesn't mean we can't dream big -- but we are mortal, and we need to 'fess up to this. <br />
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11. I find groupthink distasteful, and overweening confidence abetted by groupthink downright creepy. I don't always succeed, but I try hard to eschew the usual vocabulary for social and political questions; too often it serves as a substitute for thought. It conceals prejudices -- or wears them on its sleeve (which is worse). And, like <i>all</i> default settings, it is subject to <i>parody</i>; and when you live in a parodic age, it is best not to make oneself a target. (The young people I work with sense this parodic potential instinctively. They dutifully attend to the lessons in microaggression or the gender-spectrum that are placed before them by well-meaning adults who are trying to raise them to be on the right side of history; but in their off-hours, which I get to see as an after-school "supervisor," they veer towards parody, employing terms like "racist" or "oppressive" or "stereotype" or "identifies as ___" in as over-the-top a manner as they can. They <i>also</i> instinctively sense, and avoid, the border between this parody and mean-spiritedness.) <br />
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When the right parodies the left, when (say) the language of wokeness gets turned for comedic effect into a joke, it shows that the users of the language have not thought about the weak points. (Sometimes. Other times, it's just a bad joke.) Just because the take-down was of a straw man, does not mean you don't have a lot of straw yourself. That straw is the padding provided by shared assumptions, by having recourse to terms accepted by the like-minded; if your reaction to having those terms disregarded is simply "that's not funny," you may be right, but that rightness may still be getting in your way. I am genuinely <i>perplexed</i> about politics, in a way that (to judge by their "it's-just-<i>obvious</i>" tone) many Progressives are not. I am often persuaded by Nietzschean or Platonic critiques of democracy. But you don't have to be a name-dropping philosopher to be kind of sickened by the in- and out-grouping social dynamics of political tribalism, and to want to listen to the other side(s).<br />
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12. I am largely convinced that the story told by Progressivism about history is incoherent and in many ways in bad faith. To put things very baldly: Progressivism tells a Whig version of history -- what has happened was bound to happen, because Progress! -- which nevertheless casts itself as embattled and heroically striving against the Powers That Be. Each of these aspects of the tale seems to me extremely unlikely to be true without exception; together, they almost cancel each other out. It is clear to me that the "direction" called "progress" is often accidental, and not at all always progress towards what I call Good. On the other hand, for the last hundred and fifty or so years (at least in the so-called First World), "Progressivism" has in fact, as I read the record, been <i>ascendant</i>, and gradually consolidating its position, in a feedback loop between academia, government, media/entertainment, industry, and the military, with a little inter-caste warfare keeping things interesting. <br />
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That is not an argument, only the outline of an intuition (call it a prejudice if you like, I won't argue.) It would take a long excursus to spell out the whole critique, which would be complicated, and possibly (given the state of my thinking at present) involve contradictions or aporiae. That's politics for you. <br />
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*<br />
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OK, so there you have it, a sketch of where I see my significant divergences from Progressivism, with some addenda about other left-liberal and outright genuine Left positions thrown in for good measure. <br />
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These are critiques <i>from within</i>. I am not a capital-P Progressive, but if we are still using the Left-Right distinction (I don't see why we have to, but that's another argument), I am a man of the Left (OK, sure, I'm a "centrist," but a radical one). And, since I am not the smartest person on the Left, of course there are many other folks, who may well call themselves progressives, who share some variety of these criticisms. The worries about identity politics are becoming widespread; the critique of "callout culture" and the righteous indignation of various movements is gathering force. I know left-wingers who are pro-life, who are for genuinely responsible gun ownership, who are "fiscal conservatives," and so on. <br />
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So it's only fair to give some counter-point: Why am I not, then, that other thing, whatever it is, on the right?<br />
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Well... if you are still with me, stay tuned.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-48789826706208336052018-12-02T12:25:00.000-08:002019-03-11T21:01:23.577-07:00What happened<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
I had been going to post two long lists of points on which I diverge from political "progressives" or "conservatives," but before I do that, I realized that today brings us the first Sunday of Advent, and tonight brings the first night of Hanukkah. This coinciding* of the youngest of the great Jewish festivals with the beginning of the Christian year made me consider again the relationship between the faiths. <br />
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Hanukkah commemorates the re-dedication of the second Temple after its desecration by the Seleucids. It was the last great miracle story (though as I noted <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2015/12/grammar-of-miracle.html">earlier</a>, the story of the miraculous oil seems to first enter the documented tradition in the Talmud; it does not figure in the text of I or II Macabees) that would have been the heritage of the various sects of Judaism in the era of Jesus. This is important because Christianity and rabbinical Judaism are not really in the relation of daughter and mother, but rather of sister and sister. They are both descendants of the Temple cult and the ferment of Judaism in late antiquity which Josephus, for instance, describes as a congeries of competing groups (Zealots, Essenes, Sadducces, Pharisees, not to mention the Samaritans). The decisive parting of ways between Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism can be traced to the crisis that befell the Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem, and especially the Temple, in 70 A.D. Until that catastrophe, Christians could reasonably be understood as a minority Jewish sect among others -- a sect who believed, and proclaimed across the ethnic divide, that the Anointed One had come and that this was of universal significance. Afterwards, their belief that the Messiah had come made them respond in a fundamentally different way to the loss of the cultic site than did the compilers of the Mishna. The latter are often interpreted as conservatives who were doing everything they could to salvage the practicability of tradition in a new, decentered context, while Christians blithely went out into the Empire and beyond freed from the shackles of a moribund legalism. But Margaret Barker <a href="http://www.margaretbarker.com/index.html">has argued</a> (suggestively and persuasively, to my mind) that Christianity was in a certain sense "more traditional" than its sister, and <i>at least</i> as closely linked to the Temple; in the liturgy, theology, and mysticism of the early church, Barker has traced the cosmological and ascetic grammar of Jerusalem Temple ritual. I have written almost nothing here on Barker (yet...) but she is one of a divergent handful of recent scholars whose work recuperates the importance of unwritten traditions in this seemingly most familiar of Western religions, Christianity. To be sure, not everyone in a academia is convinced by Barker -- she is, after all, proposing/enacting something of a revolution -- but for a fellow like me, who is an avowed Platonist with an eye to esotericism, this sort of thing is... interesting.<br />
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Even among early Christians, we may deduce that there were multiple possibilities, because several early Church Fathers write against "judaizers" like the Ebionites -- a group that seems to have held on to a number of ritual observances not unlike the Galatians whose regard for "the Law" so vexed St. Paul. This tendency resurfaces under different circumstances every so often, and it is of more than merely academic interest. In Jacob Taubes' lectures collected in <i>The Political Theology of Paul</i> he cites Guy Stroumsa on the same subject:<br />
<blockquote><i>Guy Stroumsa from Jerusalem...is studying the sermons of Cyril of Jerusalem and came upon the fact that Cyril says 'Jews' when in fact he means 'Jewish Christians'. This is fourth century..... Today we have attestations of Jewish Christians going up to the 10th century in Arabic manuscripts. Which...revolutionizes the prehistory of Islam, because Mohammed didn't throw Jewish and Christian traditions together in his own head...but he very precisely soaked in Jewish Christian tradition....</i> (<i>The Political Theology of Paul</i>, p 42. The reference to Stroumsa is Gedaliahu Guy Stroumsa, " 'Vetus Israel'; les Juifs dans la litterature hierosolymitaine d'epoque byzantine," chapt 6 of <i>Savoir et salut</i> (Paris; Cerf 1992)) </blockquote>The crypto-Jews in late Renaissance/early modern Spain and elsewhere (sometimes called Marranos) wound up sometimes with a curious hybridized observances, some of which have lasted to the present day. But more recently, in the mid-19th century and then again in the mid- and late-20th some Christians went the other way. Sometimes disaffected Western Protestants with an attraction to Judaism, sometimes ethnic Jewish converts who understandably felt the tug of their heritage, they come to identify as Jewish but also proclaims the messiahship of Jesus. Sometimes they are insistent that they are not <i>notzrim</i> but <i>yehudim</i>, even if their practice looks (as it might) like standard evangelical Christianity. As with Jews generally, there are different degrees of halakhic observance, and plenty of other diversity. <br />
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Not long ago, in the wake of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, I thought about wearing, in solidarity with Jews but as a Christian, a little medallion -- a <i>magen David</i> with the cross in the center. Don't do it, said my wife; it's a symbol that comes out of messianic Judaism, and it won't read to Jews as a sign of solidarity, but as one of appropriation, or worse. <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiSjsxsJpceyOGVaUgkap-y0aCV57qHI7kPvr2pHPuyeqUBogWpYlTT6mtf4-x1Ktj7sjyoNXcM2yBSZxNvUJ0quhflex0YmIVC_pzUxuBsgoLi1gYH5iBmV6Qc0Ggvzt1S1JHqCRVCT0/s1600/cross+in+star.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiSjsxsJpceyOGVaUgkap-y0aCV57qHI7kPvr2pHPuyeqUBogWpYlTT6mtf4-x1Ktj7sjyoNXcM2yBSZxNvUJ0quhflex0YmIVC_pzUxuBsgoLi1gYH5iBmV6Qc0Ggvzt1S1JHqCRVCT0/s200/cross+in+star.jpg" width="177" height="200" data-original-width="170" data-original-height="192" /></a><br />
Oddly, an origin in messianic Judaism had not occurred to me -- I'd always regarded this cross-in-the-star to be effectively a Christian/Jewish version of the "Coexist" bumper sticker. (As it turns out, the sign has passed out of currency among messianic Jews -- the most usual one lately is a melding of the seven-branched candlestick and the ichthys, which is either found on some first-century artifacts, or forged to look like it is.) <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DnLEIIexsinUWYahPTRbLkziy-QfCGJ3Qr9fFss-_1JZBlvSg48qBofNB98F_fOusN4ph0fwX3A-L2VUQz8vKCib_J7zI1TwQ73-9kNWi12zGpLJCkETACSn7IJ_oEoigZ69UvJRRW0/s1600/ancient+seal+maybe.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DnLEIIexsinUWYahPTRbLkziy-QfCGJ3Qr9fFss-_1JZBlvSg48qBofNB98F_fOusN4ph0fwX3A-L2VUQz8vKCib_J7zI1TwQ73-9kNWi12zGpLJCkETACSn7IJ_oEoigZ69UvJRRW0/s200/ancient+seal+maybe.jpg" width="109" height="200" data-original-width="171" data-original-height="315" /></a><br />
As for the cross-in-the-star, although I'd hoped it would communicate my assertion of standing with Jews <i>as</i> a Christian and <i>because I am</i> a Christian, it's true that it does look, or can be read as, a symbol of religious colonization. My wife insisted, and I, of course, yielded in the face of her objections (she after all is the Jew I was most concerned to not offend!); but as I thought about it, I realized that my initial theological hesitancy had been borne out. Of course, one could raise any number of questions about messianic Judaism. Some adherents distinguish it very sharply from Christianity with what I assume is sincerity; others regard it as a doomed mash-up of competing orthodoxies, or as a trojan-horse missionary ploy, or as a weird religiously mediated political liaison between American zionism and evangelicalism. It may be all these in different cases. In others, it's clearly an effort akin to radical protestantism -- a back-to-roots effort to rediscover and re-identify with the earliest church (construing the "early church" along the lines of the Ebionites, more or less). My friend <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2013/01/rip-duane-l-christensen.html">Duane Christensen</a> was a thinker somewhat of along these lines. <br />
<i></i><br />
Even were one to grant that messianic Judaism is an unambiguous affront to all Jews, it would clearly be a further step to regard the the cross-in-Star-of-David as an <i>antisemitic</i> sign. But it remains, I think, problematic, on purely Christian grounds. After all, what does it <i>mean</i>, exactly? I had been trying to say that Christianity only makes sense in the context of Judaism; that in a crucial sense you <i>can't be</i> a Christian without "being a Jew" first. Although I am sure many would quarrel with such a formulation, I certainly believe this -- but the sign with the cross inside the star does not quite communicate it. The cross is not, after all, an abstract glyph of Christianity; it is the <i>picture</i> of the instrument of the death of Jesus, the instrument by which (says the prayer during the Stations of the Cross) He has redeemed the world. But Jesus hangs on the cross under the superscription <i>The King of the Jews</i>. <br />
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In 1941 the Russian Orthodox priest Dmitri Klepinin was living in occupied France. As the persecution of Jews gained momentum, and what it meant became clear to any who had eyes, father Dimitri decided what to do. He was already involved, with Mother Maria Skobtsova, in an underground network for refugees and resistance figures, centered at the house for the poor run by Mother Maria. He began making out forged Christening certificates, enabling many Jews to escape. In February 1943 the Gestapo arrested him, Mother Maria, her son Yuri, and another worker, Elia Fondaminski. Part of the transcript of Fr, Ditiri's interrogation has been preserved:<br />
<blockquote>Interrogator: <i>And if we release you, will you promise never again to aid Jews?</i><br />
Father Dimitri: <i>I can say no such thing. I am a Christian, and must act as I must. </i><br />
Interrogator, striking the priest across the face: <i>Jew lover! How dare you talk of those pigs as being a Christian duty! </i><br />
Father Dmitri, holding up the Cross on the chain around his neck: <i>Do you recognize</i> this <i>Jew?</i></blockquote>Father Dmitiri died a year later, in the Dora work camp. He and his three co-prisoners are commemorated in the Orthodox Church on July 20. Maria Skobtsova and Dmitiri Klepenin are named among the Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem. <br />
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It is sadly and scandalously true that the history of the Church and the Jews is stained by antisemitism; anyone who denies this is either in bad faith or woefully unaware. How then to express theologically the right sort of relationship, symbolically?<br />
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Strictly speaking, the sign that makes theological sense (Christianly speaking) would not be the Cross within the Star. What, then, about the Star -- or shield, which is what <i>magen</i> means -- upon the Cross?<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV_oPpUy9hzf22_m_pI7h6JkneeBVgL0YY7r_iGf4vVDQfYYt4JhzQ8F7BEf8f6_leVBp4MQu_4zHfT0866x_nwYDfrlC4tjXSgrgCT2OWdwF9opmxKP-a-9FOmt7-eYy3siJVgxs4Ofo/s1600/star+on+cross.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV_oPpUy9hzf22_m_pI7h6JkneeBVgL0YY7r_iGf4vVDQfYYt4JhzQ8F7BEf8f6_leVBp4MQu_4zHfT0866x_nwYDfrlC4tjXSgrgCT2OWdwF9opmxKP-a-9FOmt7-eYy3siJVgxs4Ofo/s200/star+on+cross.jpg" width="97" height="200" data-original-width="192" data-original-height="394" /></a><br />
This sign might well also be imperfect. It could still be seen as an offensive appropriation, or as a jarring syncretism. There may be other worries. Given the fraughtness of politics it seems unlikely that any symbol is going to be unproblematic. But -- assuming the right understanding is in place -- this sign has one clear advantage, which a friend of mine put succinctly: "After all, that's <i>what happened</i>."<br />
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*Strictly speaking, it is a <i>near</i>-coinciding, since the Jewish day begins at sundown.skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-70506375834260604022018-11-26T15:19:00.000-08:002018-11-26T15:19:54.591-08:00(a) Alienated, (b) Confused, (c) Honest, (d) Shifty, (e) All of the Above<span style="font-size: 130%;"><base target="_blank" /><br />
This is the first of three posts which I originally began shaping not for the general public but for friends and family members who are understandably perplexed and occasionally vexed by my difficult-to-pin-down politics, which some have described as "weaselly," "shifty," and "hard-to-pin-down." Oh yeah, wait, that last one was me just now. But really, they could all be me, because I've changed my mind before, sometimes as many as six times before breakfast, and I usually skip breakfast. See what I mean? Shifty.<br />
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In short, I too am vexed by my politics; and it is important to note that my politics is not vexing because it is especially subtle or clever; it is vexing because it stems from certain basic predispositions which are not all in accord with each other, and because among these is the predisposition to ask, <i>Yes, but on the other hand</i>... This post and the two that follow are a sort of interim report on some of those predispositions, a snapshot of their current state in what is a continual, ongoing, semi-reflected-upon flux: semi-, because I <i>always</i> start with what I <i>already</i> believe, value, love; reflected-upon, because I know that my starting point is not magically right about everything, and besides, reflection is also one of the things I believe in, value, and love. I have posted this, rather than just circulate it among a few concerned-for-my-health loved ones, because it charts a degree of continuity with previous installments here, in a way that I think adds some context and where-the-metaphor-meets-the-bone urgency. <br />
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I am a philosopher <i>first</i>, and so when the rivalry between politics and philosophy comes to a head -- and politics and philosophy are <i>always</i> going to be rivals -- I am going to look for how philosophy can endure. Politics is just the art of finding (and trying to enact) the least bad solution. When least bad is kinda OK, really, philosophy will remind you not to get too comfy, and when least bad is still pretty fucking atrocious, philosophy will see you through, the way it did Confucius, or Boethius, or Miki Kiyoshi, or Alexandru Dragomir. (You can be an Emperor or a slave, but there is more kinship between Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus than between Marcus and Heliogabalus.) <br />
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Moreover, I have seen just how depressingly irritated people get when they are preoccupied by politics -- a fate I didn't want for myself. Both of these facts -- my first loyalty being to philosophy itself, and my observation of just how miserable politics could make people -- led me to put most of my attention elsewhere. In retrospect I can see that the cost of this attending-elsewhere was arguably lower for me than it might be for many; at the time, though, it was just what I was doing. I had positions, and preferences, and I (sometimes) voted, but I kept my distance from the ads and the campaigns.<br />
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But for a long time there was another side, a less philosophical side, to this distancing as well; I was alienated. I perceived that I was effectively powerless in the system as it is set up, and I chose to stay aloof -- and growingly cynical -- because this was less unpleasant than facing up to the reality of this disenfranchisement. My confrontation with this -- and auto-therapy for it -- is ongoing. What it does not and cannot involve, however, is refuge in imaginary scenarios about how "Voting Matters," or how "protesting makes a difference." (Voting <i>can</i> matter, and a protest <i>may</i> make a tactical difference in some cases; but fetishizing either of them just distracts.) <br />
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If I could -- and I still might, if God calls me -- I would organize an enormous Don't-Vote campaign which would involve showing up to the polls, markng your ballots on whatever small, local measures count, and then leaving the Presidential question BLANK. If a million -- or even a hundred thousand -- such ballots were turned in (along with an effective media campaign) -- this could (potentially, not inevitably) highlight the need for election reform much more pressingly than another Democratic win. It would surely put whoever "won" on notice that they had the <i>opposite</i> of a mandate.<br />
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What -- an anti-vote argument <i>now?!</i> Now, when we've <i>seen</i> how disastrous an election-gone-wrong can be, and when the midterms show just how crucial every single voter is?! <br />
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Answer: As I <a href="https://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2016/08/politics-above-politics-beyond-endgame.html">predicted</a> during the 2016 U.S. presidential race, the one sure and certain result of that election has been the inflated sense of the consequences of elections. This has been borne out by the midterms' record voter turn-out. Here's the thing, friends: this national case of the DTs was <i>decades</i> in the making, little pressure-points being aggravated, and pressure building up slowly, slowly over time ... and yes, then the fault slipped. But the dramatic nature of the break when the camel finally collapses shouldn't blind anyone to the chronic and pervasive straw-piling that was going on, no matter who was "in control" of Congress or in the Oval Office. Yes, I am (in this) a pragmatist, and for certain purposes something of a seeming-centrist, so I believe in carefully and intelligently deploying the tools at ones disposal, including the vote if it looks plausible that it can be effective. But I also think that the vote could be Oh, So So So effective if it actually, like, worked. At all. As a voice of the people instead of a pretense to move some powerful people from one office into another office. (I know there are not theoretically perfect electoral models, but the first-past-the-post system is truly awful and more or less guarantees the worst of all worlds. I beg you to look into, and advocate for, range voting, ranked voting, or really, almost anything besides first-past-the-post. <a href="https://electology.org/">Start here</a>, for example.) In any case -- do I think that <i>right now</i> is the perfect moment for an assault on defensive voting and the sham of "two"-party politics? I don't know. Do I think it is <i>obvious</i> that right now is the Worst. Time. Ever., for such an intervention? I don't. Maybe you could convince me. <br />
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I continue to read reports of Russian Trolls infesting the American electoral process. Aside from the beautiful surrealism of it all -- please, just pause for a moment to consider the phrase <i>Russian Troll Farm</i>, this title of a straight-to-video horror film, and the sheer bizarreness of seeing it in big black-and-white on the front page of the New York Times -- there's something a little mote-in-thy-brother's-eye about the whole ongoing story. Every time I hear about some social media giant being called on the carpet to answer for "not taking seriously" the threats to American democracy, I think, how about the online Plague of Bile that preceded this debacle by two decades? And when I hear of hackers who from St Petersburg or Volograd or Moscow sent out Fake News to "fan the flames of American incivility," I wonder to myself: are we saying that the problem of American incivility is... <i>Russia</i>?<br />
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From the always-intelligent Scott Alexander <a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/">I cull</a> ("cherry-pick," I am sure someone is saying) a single representative statistic <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-3-political-polarization-and-personal-life/">from Pew research</a>:<br />
<blockquote><i>One of the best-known examples of racism is the “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” scenario where parents are scandalized about their child marrying someone of a different race. Pew has done <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-3-political-polarization-and-personal-life/">some good work</a> on this and found that only 23% of conservatives and 1% (!) of liberals admit they would be upset in this situation. But Pew also asked how parents would feel about their child marrying someone of a different </i>political party<i>. Now 30% of [consistent] conservatives and 23% of [consistent] liberals would get upset. Average them out, and you go from 12% upsetness rate for race to 27% upsetness rate for party – more than double.</i></blockquote>Alienation is indeed painful, but I think I would rather be alienated than enlist in unending trench warfare on a seesaw. Or rather: this unending seesaw is the form of our alienation. If you want to deal with it, get off the seesaw.<br />
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Which does not mean, try to feign indifference; it means, stop thinking that any given position -- each thing you care about -- requires one to hop on one side or the other. The next two posts will mention some things to which I am not indifferent. But remember that above all, I am not indifferent to the ability to ask, <i>"but on the other hand..."</i> And this, <i>Not</i> out of perversity or perpetual indecision, but because this question <i>naturally occurs</i> to me. If there's anything more alienating than the seesaw, it's being told that your natural disposition makes you a traitor to both sides.<br />
</span>skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.com0