Have a Cigar March 30, 2005
Posted by admin in : Irrelevant, Uncategorized , add a commentJust had pizza for lunch, and then Pink Floyd’s Have a Cigar comes on the radio. This combination of a mouthfull of pizza and the sound of Pink Floyd takes me straight back to Pizza Inn, Long Beach, ca. 1978.
Fallacies March 27, 2005
Posted by admin in : Irrelevant, Uncategorized , add a commentAll Creation Involves Destruction. March 17, 2005
Posted by admin in : Discourse, Political/Editorial , add a commentBarney:
All creation involves destruction.
Ted:
Yeah, man, for real!
Barney:
Art is therefore violent by definition. Art means making, and making means creating, which requires destruction, which is also the same as violence.
Ted:
Oh my god I never thought of that! Wow!
Barney:
Artists take risks, the best ones do anyways. And sometimes these risks fail. But what is at stake? The artist’s work, the painting or opera or whatever. The artist’s reputation. Lives rarely hang in the balance.
Ted:
Yeah, Um. Ok.
Barney:
Politicians also take risks. Whole governments are created by the political acts of men, and these are often the products of visionaries. They are like artists, and to create they must destroy. Revolutionaries are by definition violent, so they are like artists. They are in fact artists.
Ted.
Maybe.
Barney:
But so much more is at stake. Lives hang in the balance.
Ted:
Uh-oh.
Barney:
You don’t want these guys fooling around. You want them to be sure about what they are doing. You want facts and figures to back up their policies. You want politics to be pragmatic, scientific. You don’t want to think of it as iffy and tentative as art.
Ted:
I know I do. Don’t.
Barney:
But the reality is that politics is as much an art as a science, and no painting was ever made based on facts and figures. We have to take risks, and be prepared for failure. But failure is expensive. To have political conviction requires courage, and ego. It requires sacrifice. It requires being willing to find out you are a monster, a fascist.
Ted:
I guess that’s true.
Barney:
Artists, conversely, may be construed as revolutionaries, some more successful than others, and some more violent than others. But they are actively trying to change our world. And the world that results may be a better world or a worse one. Though lives may not hang in the balance, the difference is really a matter of what’s at stake.
Ted:
Hitler was an artist, they say. A failed one.
Barney:
Thanks, Ted, that’s helpful. Exactly, in fact. You fool around in one arena and you’re a failed artist, but in this other arena, a monster. Would Picasso have been as good a political leader as he was an artist if he applied his originality, vision, ego, and violence to the political world? He was political in that thru his art, and in his life he expressed strongly held and influential political opinions, but he was not a political man, not a politician, a leader.
Would Hitler’s evil nature have expressed itself, or even emerged in any form, had he remained an artist, and become a successful one?
Ted:
Guernica.
Barney:
Right.
Ted:
So are you saying that one can somehow judge an artist in political terms by imagining how they might perform politically?
Barney:
I am trying to expose the politics inherent in the act of creation of anything – art, ideas, and political innovations.
Ted:
So because I erase the chalkboard before I draw a caricature of the study hall teacher I am some kind of bloodthirsty revolutionary? Is every act of “destruction” really like every other? That difference being “what’s at stake” is not small, it’s not trivial – it makes for a qualitatively different kind of thing. If I hit a bad note while I try to strum “Stairway to heaven” am I really making the world a worse place?
What Works Depends Upon Conditions that Must Change March 16, 2005
Posted by admin in : Discourse, Psycho/Spirit , add a commentFred:
What works depends upon conditions that must change, therefore progress requires disruption of what works.
Progress is inherently anarchic, and anarchy is inherently progressive.
By “must” I mean both “should” for social/ethical/moral reasons, and also “will” in the sense that change is inevitable ultimately. Ethics can be seen both as a projection or imposition of social will, or as a disinterested perspective which seeks nothing more than harmony with natural forces. If result X is inevitable, acknowledgement of this fact is a good thing, and obfuscation of or denial of this fact is a bad thing. Regardless what the result is per se.
Conservative constraints on change are the enemy of this perspective. So are rational progressive forces, which seek to cause specific results. In either case, from the anarchic ethical perspective, the actors are obstructing the flow of history towards its inevitable fulfillment.
Al:
But why grant moral supremacy to so-called “natural” forces? Nature will seek its inexorable fulfillment without any help or hindrance from you or me. It’s neither ethical nor unethical to interfere, because said interference is just another pebble in the stream, really, just so much granite to wear down. And the interplay between man and nature merely produces a set of particularities characteristic of each historical moment. It need not be valued or lamented. It is what it is. Also, is it not natural and indeed moral for any system constituency to act according to its nature, as for an organism to seek to prolong its life in spite of the inevitable fact of its eventual death?
Fred:
Yes it is by definition natural for an organism to act according to its nature. Only acting against its nature qualifies as a repressive, obstinacy which hinders progress.
Al:
Is that even possible? And what is progress?
Fred:
Progress is the emergence of novelty in a system.
Al:
From what does it derive value? What’s so valuable about novelty?
Fred:
True, value is an assignment, not an intrinsic quality, so novelty is amoral, and so is progress.
Al:
No, progress is a value placed on novelty, by some system constituency which is favored by the novelty. Novelty can just as easily be lamented as valued. So while we might agree something is novel, we might not agree that something is progress. And if the novelty is favorable, then great, it’s progress. And if the novelty is favorable and therefore progress, how could you say that the previous conditions were “working”? From this point of view, change was necessary because something wasn’t working. But if it’s not favorable, then it’s not progress. Resisting that is reasonable. From this point of view, things are working, and novelty disrupts the order. How do you link progress as a beneficial form of novelty to the disruption of a satisfactory order, i.e. “what works”?
Fred:
“What works” is order, and order is just a state which may favor some and not others. Novelty disrupts this order, and yes, it’s true, the disruption is then more likely to favor those previously suffering from the prior order than those that order favored.
Al:
Why should this be the case? Is it not possible that some members of the state, let’s call them citizens, who are suffering from the current order, could suffer even more from the disorder some amoral novelty introduces? Couldn’t a catastrophe cause suffering across the board?
Fred:
Well yeah. But the disruption of the oppressive order is certain to create an opportunity for progressive change and reform.
Al:
And an opportunity for things to get much, much worse. Or not worse, just different. So different maybe that those who were either up or down previously are all fallen away, and new subjects inhabit the new order, complete with its unequal distribution of fortune.
Fred:
Do you really see no historical strands which connect such developments through time? History is always the backdrop for comprehending and evaluating the state of things. If things were just different, as though disconnected from their heritage, then sure, the idea of “value” is factored from the equation. Things don’t get better or worse, they just change. But this can never be the case. Any being with memory, with a social identity, can never experience a social order apart from a system of values.
Who Gives A Shit About Sports? March 14, 2005
Posted by admin in : Irrelevant, Uncategorized , add a commentWho gives a shit about sports?
I for one definitely do not give a shit about sports.
I will sometimes allow myself to pretend to give a shit about sports, but in fact I do not give a shit about sports.
It’s March Madness time, but I do not give a shit about that.
The Boston Red Sox won the World Series, defeating the hated New York Yankees. Except for how I do not give a shit.
Next year is the World Cup in Germany. I always watch when Italy plays, but I truly do not give a shit.
Don’t get me started on NFL football, and how I do not give a shit about that. I could post a whole blog entry just on how I do not give a shit about NFL football. I sometimes pretend I give a shit about the New Orleans Saints, but really I do not.
To sum up, who gives a shit about sports? I, for one, do not.
Fear of Anything Was Fear of Death March 13, 2005
Posted by admin in : Discourse, Psycho/Spirit , add a commentI used to go around saying that fear of anything was fear of death, ultimately. Not many people listened to me. The few who did argued with me, saying things like “But some people are afraid of life.”
I don’t know if I still think that fear of anything is fear of death. But I am starting to think that fear of death is really a kind of harsh judgment about life. If you have lived a happy, fulfilling life, what is to fear or dread about death? It’s natural, after all, it gets us all eventually. Each person has to face death – it can be a terror or a kind of acceptance. It can be anything, who knows? But I think people who are preoccupied w/ death, fearing death, avoiding risks, obsessing about health or disease, or obsessing about terrorism or violence in the world, must have some kind of idea that if they die for any of the reasons they fear most it will be a “tragic” thing, an unjust thing, a condition to be raged against.
I also used to point out that the meaning of the word “tragic” has almost completely reversed from its original, Greek, literary meaning. In Greek tragedy, the death of the hero was tragic when it was overloaded with narrative or philosophical significance. Today we use tragic to mean meaningless –as when a child is killed by a stray bullet –the exact opposite of the literary meaning of the word.
Nobody listened to me then either.
But anyway.
So this raging against the unjustness of one’s death or the potential of that, speaks volumes about the person’s feelings about their life. I believe that is says that they feel their life will have been not worth living if they die now. If you feel your life has been worth living up to now, then every extra day is lagniappe, something to be thankful for. It may be hard to say that to someone dying in some horrible way, I admit. But that may have more to do with the manner of death than the fact of it. I’m sure, for example, that even the happiest soul most content and satisfied with their life would still fight to keep on living, given half a chance. Sometimes death is tragic, “tragic” when that effort is in vain. But even then there has to be a point at which that person realizes, “OK, this is it.” At that point are you at peace or are you raging?
Well, forget about what you might feel right then, because you don’t have to actually be facing it at the moment of death to face the inevitable fact of your mortality. That you can face now. Go ahead, think about it. Now does it make you feel outraged or sad, or do you just shrug it off? If you’re a shrugger, you’re either not trying hard enough, or you are one of those rare people who are content, satisfied, and believe that their life has been worth living. If you rage, you must feel on some level screwed, disappointed, miserable in life. This feeling then is not really even about death. It’s about your life.
To improve things, you could stand to work on your life. It’s not enough to live in a manner which dodges death – you have to live richly, fully, so that you can look back and love what you have lived. It may be that the more you dodge death, the less fully you have lived, which will amplify that feeling of injustice, making you dread death all the more, because you have lived so much less for fear of death.
Dialog March 13, 2005
Posted by admin in : Discourse, Political/Editorial , add a commentJack:
I’m opposed to abortion.
Sue:
What? Don’t you think a woman has a right to decide for herself? Keep your laws off my body!
Jack:
Of course a woman should decide for herself. Who said anything about rights, or denying anyone’s rights?
Sue:
You said you were opposed to abortion.
Jack:
I am opposed to abortion.
Sue:
Oh, and I suppose you know better than a woman does what’s best for her own body?
Jack:
Of course not. No one knows that better than she.
Sue:
Why do you favor oppressive laws?
Jack:
What laws?
Sue:
Laws restricting abortion.
Jack:
Who supports such laws?
Sue:
People like you!
Jack:
I never said I think abortion should be illegal. I oppose the having of abortions in the same way I oppose overeating, or smoking of menthol cigarettes, or driving SUVs.
Sue:
Fascist.
Jack:
I oppose people doing bad things generally, and I consider having an abortion a bad thing. It’s something people usually feel bad about, something that makes you sad, or have arguments or divides families, and so forth. As a bad thing, it should be avoided. If you disagree, that’s ok; maybe you think it’s a good thing. I don’t wish to argue about that. I respect your opinion, please respect mine.
Sue:
I can’t respect someone who would turn back the hands of time to the stone ages.
Jack:
Turn back the what of what? I said I oppose the doing of bad things, but I don’t believe in making bad things illegal. I support legalization of people doing bad things, mostly. Like smoking marijuana. It’s a bad thing, in my opinion, yet also a good thing, and certainly not a thing to put people in jail for. I oppose abortion, but I don’t believe every opinion requires a law.
Other People’s Opinions March 12, 2005
Posted by admin in : Discourse, Irrelevant , add a commentI hate other people’s opinions.
Just knowing where someone stands on an issue is not especially interesting for any reason. Polling populations to get statistical information on where people stand is perfectly interesting.
Hearing where someone stands whom you know and care about and respect can be interesting if they explain themselves.
But hearing the opinions of people you don’t know, care about or respect is meaningless. This is why I hate fark.com, and the stupid Reader’s Opinion section of the NYT web site, or any other mostly unmonitored forum where some dick wants us to know where he stands on something.
What I value are whole thoughts, complete, coherent and internally consistent thoughts. I don’t even care that much if the thought is persuasive particularly. I just enjoy experiencing how people reason, how they argue, how they manage to convey some thought in words. Thats is cool and interesting.
Which is what I love about EctoBlog so much. And other good blogs, which contain actual thoughts by humans, rather than reactive forces bouncing off of half-conscious, mean-spirited half-humans.
One Thing I Don’t Hate March 11, 2005
Posted by admin in : Irrelevant , add a commentI don’t hate that other people talk on cell phones. It’s this famously, notoriously irritaing faux pas or something, but I don’t really understand the problem people have with it.
I hate a lot of things, I’m as grouchy and kermudgeonly as the next crank. I hate the neighbor’s dog, the high-pitched whine of the leaf-blower, the overly intense bass thump from the car next to me, etc. I hate all that, too. But what’s so wrong with people talking on their cell phones?
I guess I’ll make some distinctions, since that the name of the gripe game.
Of course, some people can be obnoxious when using their cell phones. Cell phones ringing during movies, or people talking during movies, sure. Talking loudly, or saying stupid things, yes that is obnoxious. But whether they are doing that on a cell phone or a land line or with a real person right next to them makes no difference. Obnoxiousness is obnoxious, but what’s the cell phone got to do with it? If a person is talking like a normal human being on a cell phone, even at a restaurant, so what? Why should that ruin your meal? People talking on cell phones on airplanes — it’s stupid maybe, but not offensive. It’s stupid because they are still confined to the airplane, saying “Yeah, I’ve just landed..” makes little difference to the person they are talking to. Whether you’re on the ground or not, you’re not there, dude. But offensive?
Talking on cell phones while driving, fine, I’m against that. There should be laws about that, because it’s dangerous. Not because it’s obnoxious or offensive.
I remember for a while in the early 90’s the complaint was that people talking on their cell phones were self-important, the conversation couldn’t wait for them, they had to have it now. But that complaint is really quaint these days. Everyone has cell phones, even kids and grandmas, and everyone has discovered a reason for them that makes sense to them. So talking on your cell phone in a public place (which is the whole reason for cell phones in the first place) no longer signifies self-importance or extravagance or anything like that.
So what’s left to complain about? That we have to hear each other? How is that new?
I guess I choose my gripes, and this isn’t one of mine.
Curb Your Enthusiasm March 11, 2005
Posted by admin in : Irrelevant, Uncategorized , add a commentWhenever we watch Curb, my girlfriend gets mad at me. She likes the show. We laugh, we have a good ol’ time, but at the end she gets mad at me, every single time.