The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves by Alexandra HudsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Review: The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves
The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves by Alexandra HudsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Monday, December 23, 2024
Friday, December 20, 2024
Review: Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships
Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel GolemanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I like books that explore understanding the brain as an organ (neurology) connecting to our understanding of the mind (psychology).
While I do not recall the phrase "micro expressions", I am fascinated by the idea that human evolution has longer relied on facial expressions than language. Now, we live in an age when the expressions still transmit, but the understanding is largely unconscious.
Edgar Allan Poe had an intuitive grasp of this principle. He wrote: "When I wish to find out how good or how wicked anyone is, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my own mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression."
Things like this rate the book an entry in the My philosophy list. Because, concepts like Primal empathy, Attunement, and Empathic accuracy directly correspond to foundations of my personal philosophy such as The Golden Rule and seeing the other's P.O.V., called here "Mindsight".
Social awareness refers to a spectrum that runs from instantaneously sensing another's inner state, to understanding her feelings and thoughts, to "getting" complicated social situations. It includes:
• Primal empathy: Feeling with others; sensing non- verbal emotional signals.
• Attunement: Listening with full receptivity; attuning to a person.
• Empathic accuracy: Understanding another person's thoughts, feelings, and intentions. Social cognition: Knowing how the social world works.
Social Facility
Simply sensing how another feels, or knowing what they think or intend, does not guarantee fruitful interactions. Social facility builds on social awareness to allow smooth, effective interactions. The spectrum of social facility includes:
• Synchrony: Interacting smoothly at the nonverbal level.
• Self-presentation: Presenting ourselves effectively. • Influence: Shaping the outcome of social interactions.
• Concern: Caring about others' needs and acting accordingly.
...
This ability to apprehend what seems to be going through someone else's mind is one of our most invaluable human skills. Neuroscientists call it "mindsight."
Mindsight amounts to peering into the mind of a person to sense their feelings and deduce their thoughts-the fundamental ability of empathic accuracy. While we can't actually read another person's mind, we do pick up enough clues from their face, voice, and eyes-reading between the lines of what they say and do-to make remarkably accurate inferences.
I was fascinated by the review of the work of John C. Crabbe. This gets into the environmental effects. This is interesting in the nature vs. nurture argument and to me the fascinating topic of epigenetics.
Crabbe was now a behavior geneticist at the Oregon Health and Science University and the Portland VA Medical Center—and of all things, renowned for his studies of alcoholic rodents. He has for years done research on mice from a strain called C57BL/6J, who are unique in their voracious appetite for alcohol. Studying them holds the promise of clues to the causes and, one hopes, cures for alcoholism in humans.
This strain of alcohol-loving mice is one of a hundred or so that are useful for medical research, such as a susceptibility to diabetes or heart disease. Each mouse in a given inbred strain is, in effect, a clone of every other such mouse; they share their genes like identical twins. One virtue of these strains for scientific researchers is their stability; a mouse of a given strain tested in various labs around the world should react like every other such mouse. But this very assumption of stability was questioned by Crabbe, in a now famous, simple experiment.
“We asked just how stable is ‘stable,’” Crabbe told me when I called. “We did the identical tests in three different laboratories, trying to make every aspect of their environment identical, from the brand of mouse feed they ate—Purina—and their age, to their shipping history. We had them tested at the same hour on the same day with identical apparatus.”
So at the identical point—April 20, 1998, between 8:30 and 9:00 A.M. local time—all the mice from eight different inbred strains, including C57BL/6J, were tested. One test simply offered them a choice of drinking regular water or an alcohol solution. True to form, the liquor-lovers chose the rodent martini far more often than did other mouse strains.
Next was a standard test for mouse anxiety. A mouse is placed at the crossroads of two runways, elevated three feet off the ground. Two arms of the crossroads have walls while the other two are open, which can be scary. Anxious mice cower next to the walls, while more adventurous ones explore the open runways.
To the great surprise of those who believe that genes alone determine behavior, however, within a given strain some decided differences on the anxiety test were found from lab to lab. For example, one strain, BALB/cByJ, was very anxious in Portland but quite adventurous in Albany.
As Crabbe noted, “If genes were all, you’d expect to find no differences whatever.” What could have caused the differences? Certain variables were beyond control from lab to lab, like the humidity and the water the mice drank—and perhaps most important, the people who handled them. One research assistant, for example, was allergic to mice and wore a respirator while holding them.
“Some people are confident and skilled at handling mice, while others are anxious or too rough,” Crabbe told me. “My bet is that mice can ‘read’ the emotional state of the person handling them, and that state in turn has an impact on the mouse’s behavior.” His study, featured in the prestigious journal Science, aroused a storm of debate among neuroscientists. They had to grapple with the disturbing news that minor differences from one laboratory to another, such as how the mice were handled, created disparities in how the mice behaved—which implied a difference in how the identical genes acted.
Crabbe’s experiment, together with similar findings from other labs, suggests that genes are more dynamic than most people—and science for more than a century—have assumed. It’s not just which genes we are born with, but their expression, that matters.
To understand how our genes operate, we must appreciate the difference between possessing a
given gene and the degree to which that gene expresses its signature proteins. In gene expression, essentially, a bit of DNA makes RNA, which in turn creates a protein that makes something happen in our biology. Of the thirty thousand or so genes in the human body, some are expressed only during embryonic development, then shut off forever. Others turn on and off constantly. Some express themselves only in the liver, others only in the brain.
Crabbe’s finding stands as a landmark in “epigenetics,” the study of ways the experiences we undergo change how our genes operate—without altering our DNA sequence an iota. Only when a gene directs the synthesis of RNA does it actually make a practical difference in the body. Epigenetics shows how our environment, translated into the immediate chemical surround of a given cell, programs our genes in ways that determine just how active they will be.
Research in epigenetics has identified many of the biological mechanisms that control gene expression. One of them, involving the methyl molecule, not only turns genes on or off but also tones down or speeds up their activity. Methyl activity likewise helps determine where in the brain the more than 100 billion neurons end up, and which other neurons their ten thousand connections will link to. The methyl molecule sculpts the body, including the brain.
Such insights put to rest the century-old debate on nature versus nurture: do our genes or our
experiences determine who we become? That debate turns out to be pointless, based on the fallacy that our genes and our environment are independent of each other; it’s like arguing over which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, the length or the width.
Back to the neurological/physiological underpinnings of human nature, the "OFC" is the orbitofrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in decision making and other cognitive functions. This is a channel to take input to the amygdala leading to unruly, impulsive behavior.
The OFC also goes awry this way in those war veterans who, on seeing a battle scene on the evening news or hearing a truck back- fire, are flooded with traumatic memories from their own wartime nightmares. The culprit is an overactive amygdala, one that sends surges of panic in mistaken reaction to cues vaguely reminiscent of the original trauma. Ordinarily the OFC would evaluate such primal feelings of fear and clarify that it's just a television show or a truck we're hearing rather than enemy guns.
While it is kept in line by high-road systems, the amygdala cannot play the brain's bad boy. The OFC contains one of the array of neurons that can inhibit those amygdala-driven surges, that can just say no to limbic impulses. As low-road circuitry sends up primitive emotional impulses (I feel like yelling, or She's making me so nervous I want to get out of here), the OFC evaluates them in terms of a more sophisticated understanding of the moment (This is a library, or It's only our first date) and modulates them accordingly, acting as an emotional brake.
When those brakes falter, we act inappropriately. Consider the results from a study where college students who did not know each other came to a lab and were "virtually" put together in pairs in an online chat room to get acquainted. 28 About one in five of these Internet con- versations quickly became startlingly sexual, with explicit terms, graphic discussions of sex acts, and outright solicitation of sex.
But when the experimenter who conducted these sessions later read the transcripts, he was astounded. As far as he had seen while escorting the students in and out of the cubicles, they all had been low key, unassuming, and invariably polite-completely out of keeping with their uninhibited licentiousness online.
Presumably none would have dared plunge into such blatantly sexual talk had they instead been having a live, face-to-face conversation with someone they had met only minutes before. That is just the point: during in-person interactions we loop, getting an ongoing flow of feedback, mainly from the person's facial expressions and tone of voice, which instantly tell us when we are on track and off.
Something like the out-of-place sex talk in the lab has been documented ever since the earliest years of the Internet: "flaming," in which adults make childishly offensive comments online.
More biology affecting how we act, such as the methyl molecule during development phases leading to lifelong effects, stress leading to disease and cortisol's impact on learning -
We know that low levels of vitamin C, smoking, and sleeping poorly all increase the likelihood of infection. The question is, can a stressful relationship be added to that list? Cohen's answer: definitely.
Cohen assigns precise numerical values to the factors that make one person come down with a cold while another stays healthy. Those with an ongoing personal conflict were 2.5 times as likely as the others to get a cold, putting rocky relationships in the same causal range as vitamin C deficiency and poor sleep. (Smoking, the most damaging unhealthy habit, made people three times more likely to succumb.) Conflicts that lasted a month or longer boosted susceptibility, but an occasional argument presented no health hazard.
While perpetual arguments are bad for our health, isolating our- selves is worse. Compared to those with a rich web of social connections, those with the fewest close relationships were 4.2 times more likely to come down with the cold, making loneliness riskier than smoking.
The more we socialize, the less susceptible to colds we become. This idea seems counterintuitive: don’t we increase the likelihood of being exposed to a cold virus the more people we interact with?
Sure. But vibrant social connections boost our good moods and limit our negative ones, suppressing cortisol and enhancing immune function under stress.
...
In a simulation of the impact of cortisol on learning, college students volunteered to get injections that raised their cortisol levels, then to memorize a series of words and images. The result reflected the inverted U: in mild to moderate ranges, the cortisol helped the students remember what they had studied when tested on it two days later. But at extreme levels, the cortisol impaired their recall, apparently because it inhibited the crucial role of the hippocampus." This has profound implications for the kind of classroom atmosphere that fosters learning. The social environment, remember, affects the rate and fate of newly created brain cells. New cells take a month to mature and four more to fully link to other neurons; during this window the environment determines in part the final shape and function of the cell. The new cells that facilitate memory during the course of a semester will encode in their links what has been learned during that time-and the more conducive the atmosphere for learning, the better that encoding will be.
Distress kills learning. One classic finding dates back almost half a century to 1960, when Richard Alpert, then at Stanford, showed experimentally what every student already knew: high anxiety cripples test-taking ability." A more recent study of college students taking math exams found that when they were told the test was a practice, they scored 10 percent better than when they thought they were part of a team that depended on their score to win a cash prize-under social stress their working memory was hampered. Intriguingly, the deficit in this most basic cognitive ability was greatest for the smartest students.
A group of sixteen-year-olds scored in the top 5 percent on a national test of potential in math. Some were doing extremely well in their math class, but others did poorly despite their aptitude for the subject. The crucial difference was that the high-achieving students experienced focused pleasure about 40 percent of the time they were immersed in their studies-more often than they felt anxious (about 30 percent). By contrast, while studying math the low achievers experienced such optimal states only 16 percent of the time and great anxiety 55 percent.
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Thursday, December 19, 2024
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Review: Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life of Mac Miller
Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life of Mac Miller by Paul CantorMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Malcolm James McCormick was born on January 19, 1992. He began making music at a young age and by 15 was already releasing mixtapes. One of the first true viral superstars, his early records earned him a rabid legion of die-hard fans—as well as a few noteworthy detractors. But despite his undeniable success, Miller was plagued by struggles with substance abuse and depression, both of which fueled his raw and genre-defying music, yet ultimately led to his demise.
Through detailed reporting and interviews with dozens of Miller's confidants, Paul Cantor brings you to leafy Pittsburgh, seductive Los Angeles, and frenzied New York, where you will meet Miller's collaborators, producers, business partners, best friends, and even his roommates. Traveling deep into...
... what was going on in the crowd paled in comparison to what was happening behind the scenes. Malcolm had a real problem. He was fully addicted to lean.
...Malcolm and Donald Trump were only loosely acquainted. Malcolm had the song named after him, and Trump liked that. Trump wasn’t sitting around listening to rap music, but by slapping his name on anything that could be built or sold—from steaks to buildings to suits—he had turned narcissism into an extreme sport. He reveled in anything that seemed to make his name more valuable.
Malcolm wasn’t exactly a Trump fan. He didn’t know much about him. “There was a phase that kind of happened where I liked making songs named after people,” he said. “Like, I did one called ‘Bruce Wayne.’ The idea of the song—it’s not like it’s a song about Donald Trump. But the aura of the song is, kind of.”
“This is a time where people were making a lot of name songs,” producer SAP said. “[Future’s] ‘Tony Montana,’ all of that.”
And Malcolm just knew of Trump the way most people knew of him, as a rich guy symbolically linked to American excess, the crass commercialism and alpha male posturing that was the lifeblood of many a great hip-hop song. Trump himself had been name-dropped by countless artists, from the Beastie Boys and Prince to Rick Ross and Lil Wayne.
“Donald Trump” was a hit. But in the years that had passed since the song’s release, a different Donald Trump had emerged.
No longer a playful and fun guy, Trump had spent the better part of a year arguing that Barack Obama hadn’t been born in the United States and was thus ineligible to be president. “Show us your birth certificate,” he demanded. It was the early days of the birtherism movement. He was toying with running for president himself.
All the while, he was endearing himself to an angry and aggrieved faction of the right-wing political establishment. These were the furthest things from his mind when Malcolm made the song.
“I think [Trump’s] a dick,” he told Marc Ecko when he was given the Fisker Karma. “When he started running for president I was like, ‘Oh, fuck—this is horrible, I have a fucking song with this dude’s name and now he’s being such a douchebag.’”
To add insult to injury, Trump felt he was responsible for the song’s success. And that bothered Malcolm. He could have named it after Bill Gates; except, well, he didn’t. And Trump was . . . Trump. He was a lightning rod for controversy, and Complex smelled drama.
“We had a policy at Complex when we would promote an article on Twitter. If it was something negative, we would never @ the artist,” said Ahmed. “But when we were doing a tweet for that video, I was like, ‘We have to @ Donald Trump because that guy’s gonna respond, he’s got thin skin.’ And Donald Trump responded like fifteen minutes later.”
Trump was livid, and on January 31, 2013, he wrote in a series of tweets: “Little @macmiller, you illegally used my name for your song ‘Donald Trump’ which now has over 75 million hits! Little @macmiller, I want the money not the plaque you gave me! Little @macmiller, I’m now going to teach you a big boy lesson about lawsuits and finance. You ungrateful dog!”
It made for great headlines. But it stressed Malcolm out. He had just settled his lawsuit with Lord Finesse. Now this. “I was with him that day when he saw the tweets,” said Statik Selektah. “He was like, ‘Dude, this guy’s fuckin’ coming at me, he was just telling me he loves me.’”
And yet for all his tough talk, Trump never appeared to do anything. There are no public records of a lawsuit.
“He was just trolling,” said the song’s producer, SAP. “Just being a dickhead.”
Malcolm soon took it all in stride. “I realized, who does Donald Trump beef with?” he said. “Me and Obama. So like, hey.”
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Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Review: The Anatomy of Fascism
The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. PaxtonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
[I read the Audible.com edition.]
Fascists quickly profited from the inability of centrists and conservatives to keep control of a mass electorate. Whereas the notable dinosaurs disdained mass politics, fascists showed how to use it for nationalism and against the Left. They promised access to the crowd through exciting political spectacle and clever publicity techniques; ways to discipline that crowd through paramilitary organization and charismatic leadership; and the replacement of chancy elections by yes-no plebiscites.72 Whereas citizens in a parliamentary democracy voted to choose a few fellow citizens to serve as their representatives, fascists expressed their citizenship directly by participating in ceremonies of mass assent. The propagandistic manipulation of public opinion replaced debate about complicated issues among a small group of legislators who (according to liberal ideals) were supposed to be better informed than the mass of the citizenry. Fascism could well seem to offer to the opponents of the Left efficacious new techniques for controlling, managing, and channeling the “nationalization of the masses," at a moment when the Left threatened to enlist a majority of the population around two nonnational poles: class and international pacifism.
One may also perceive the crisis of liberalism after 1918 in a second way, as a “crisis of transition," a rough passage along the journey into industrialization and modernity. It seems clear that nations that industrialized late faced more social strains than did Britain, the first to industrialize. For one thing, the pace was faster for the latecomers; for another, labor was by then much more powerfully organized. One does not have to be a Marxist to perceive the crisis of the liberal state in terms of a stressful transition to industrialization, unless one injects inevitability into the explanatory model. Marxists, until fairly recently, saw this crisis as an ineluctable stage in capitalist development, where the economic system can no longer function without reinforced discipline of the working class and/or a forceful conquest of external resources and markets. One can argue, much less sweepingly, that the latecomers simply faced higher levels of social turmoil which required new forms of control.
A third way of looking at the crisis of the liberal state envisions the same problem of late industrialization in social terms. Certain liberal states, according to this version, were unable to deal with either the “nationalization of the masses" or the “transition to industrial society" because their social structure was too heterogeneous, divided between pre-industrial groups that had not yet disappeared—artisans, great landowners, rentiers—alongside new industrial managerial and working classes. Where the pre-industrial middle class was particularly powerful, according to this reading of the crisis of the liberal state, it could block peaceful settlement of industrial issues, and could provide manpower to fascism in order to save the privileges and prestige of the old social order.73
Yet another “take" on the crisis of the liberal order focuses on stressful transitions to modernity in cultural terms. According to this reading, universal literacy, cheap mass media, and invasive alien cultures (from within as well as from without) made it harder as the twentieth century opened for the liberal intelligentsia to perpetuate the traditional intellectual and cultural order.74 Fascism offered the defenders of a cultural canon new propaganda skills along with a new shamelessness about using them.
It may not be absolutely necessary to choose only one among these various diagnoses of the difficulties faced by the liberal regimes of Europe after the end of World War I. Italy and Germany do indeed seem to fit all four. They were among the last major states in Europe to learn to live with a mass electorate: Italy in 1912, Germany only fully in 1919. Russia, another newcomer to mass politics, fell to the Left as befitted an even less developed society where even the middle class was not yet fully enfranchised. Industrially, Italy, as “the least of the Great Powers,"75 had been engaged in an energetic catching-up sprint since the 1890s. Germany, to be sure, was already a highly industrial nation in 1914, but it had been the last of the Great Powers to industrialize, after the 1860s, and then, after the defeat of 1918, desperately needed repair and reconstruction. In social structure, both Italy and Germany contained large pre-industrial sectors (though so did France and even England).76 Cultural conservatives in both countries felt intensely threatened by artistic experiment and popular culture; Weimar Germany was indeed at the very epicenter of postwar cultural experimentalism.77
One needs to interject a warning at this point against inevitability. Identifying the crisis of liberal regimes as crucial to the success of fascism suggests that some kind of environmental determinism is at work. If the setting is conducive, according to this way of thinking, one gets fascism. I prefer to leave space for national differences and for human choices in our explanation.
....
At issue was not merely a few meters of urban “turf." The Nazis sought to portray themselves as the most vigorous and effective force against the communists—and, at the same time, to portray the liberal state as incapable of preserving public security. The communists, at the same time, were showing that the Social Democrats were unequipped to deal with an incipient revolutionary situation that needed a fighting vanguard. Polarization was in the interest of both.
Fascist violence was neither random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well-calculated set of coded messages: that communist violence was rising, that the democratic state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the fascists were tough enough to save the nation from antinational terrorists. An essential step in the fascist march to acceptance and power was to persuade law-and-order conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist violence as a harsh necessity in the face of Left provocation.84 It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared fascist violence against themselves, because they were reassured that it was reserved for national enemies and “terrorists" who deserved it.85
Fascists encouraged a distinction between members of the nation who merited protection and outsiders who deserved rough handling. One of the most sensational cases of Nazi violence before power was the murder of a communist laborer of Polish descent in the town of Potempa, in Silesia, by five SA men in August 1932. It became sensational when the killers’ death sentences were commuted, under Nazi pressure, to life imprisonment. Party theorist Alfred Rosenberg took the occasion to underscore the difference between “bourgeois justice," according to which “one Polish Communist has the same weighting as five Germans, front-soldiers," and National Socialist ideology, according to which “one soul does not equal another soul, one person not another." Indeed, Rosenberg went on, for National Socialism, “there is no ‘law as such.’ "86 The legitimation of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of fascism.
Like The Mass Psychology of Fascism mystic
Fascism rested not upon the truth of its doctrine but upon the leader’s mystical union with the historic destiny of his people, a notion related to romanticist ideas of national historic flowering and of individual artistic or spiritual genius, though fascism otherwise denied romanticism’s exaltation of unfettered personal creativity.71 The fascist leader wanted to bring his people into a higher realm of politics that they would experience sensually: the warmth of belonging to a race now fully aware of its identity, historic destiny, and power; the excitement of participating in a vast collective enterprise; the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings, and of sacrificing one’s petty concerns for the group’s good; and the thrill of domination. Fascism’s deliberate replacement of reasoned debate with immediate sensual experience transformed politics, as the exiled German cultural critic Walter Benjamin was the first to point out, into aesthetics. And the ultimate fascist aesthetic experience, Benjamin warned in 1936, was war.
...
...fascist leaders enjoyed a kind of supremacy that was not quite like leadership in other kinds of regime. The Führer and the Duce could claim legitimacy neither by election nor conquest. It rested on charisma,42 a mysterious direct communication with the Volk or razza that needs no mediation by priests or party chieftains. Their charisma resembled media-era celebrity “stardom," raised to a higher power by its say over war and death. It rested on a claim to a unique and mystical status as the incarnation of the people’s will and the bearer of the people’s destiny. A whiff of charisma is not unknown among traditional dictators, of course, and even some democratically elected leaders, such as Churchill, de Gaulle, and the two Roosevelts, had it. Stalin surely had charisma, as the public hysteria at his funeral showed. But Stalin shared his role as the bearer of historical destiny with the Communist Party, which made succession possible even if palace intrigues and murders multiplied before the successor could emerge. But fascist rule is more nakedly dependent on charisma than any other kind, which may help explain why no fascist regime has so far managed to pass power to a successor. Both Hitler and Mussolini had charisma, though Mussolini’s declining vitality in middle age and his tawdry end made most people forget the magnetism he had once exerted, even outside Italy.
Charisma helps us understand several curious features of fascist leadership. The notorious indolence of Hitler, far from making Nazism more tepid, freed his subordinates to compete in driving the regime toward ever more extreme radicalization. A charismatic leader is also immune from the surprisingly widespread grumbling against the administration that quickly arose in both Germany and Italy. At the same time, charismatic leadership is brittle. It promises to the Volk or the razza, as Adrian Lyttelton once noted, “a privileged relation with history."47 Having raised expectations so high, a fascist leader unable to deliver the promised triumphs risks losing his magic...
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Saturday, December 7, 2024
Sunday, December 1, 2024
Review: Trump in Exile
Trump in Exile by Meridith McGrawMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
[I read the Audible version narrated by [author:Beth Hicks|11679934].]
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Friday, November 29, 2024
Review: More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns by Charles BukowskiMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
1) Why is your phone unlisted?
Simple. Two years ago, that is before I quit my job, I didn’t have as much laying around time as I do now. The little free time I had then was needed toward creation. A ringing phone is a hazard. People have a way of inviting themselves over. At one time I didn’t answer the door, the phone or the mail. I feel that I was justified. I feel that what I created during that time proves it. Now I murder my own time. But I feel that what I create now also justifies that.
2) Have you ever written, or thought about writing, a film scenario?
Excuse me, what is a film scenario? Does it have anything to do with movies? Then the answer is no. I have never seen a movie that didn’t make me a bit sick. I don’t want to make anybody sick.
3) Do you have anything like an aesthetic theory?
What does “aesthetic” mean? I don’t have any theories. I simply DO. Or is that a theory, uh? Uh.
4) How about a philosophy of history?
I don’t like history. History is a terrible weight which proves nothing except the treachery of man and I am aware of that by walking down the street NOW. History is dull and doubtful and I don’t know how much of it is true. History is the memory of victory and defeat, and I’ve got enough on my mind now.
5) How about the common belief that all poems are political?
No, I think that most poems are cows with big sagging empty tits. I presume that by “political” you mean poems that move something toward the ultimate betterment of Man and the Government of Man. That’s all too perfect and coy. A poem is often something that is only necessary toward one man—the writer. It’s often a perfect form of selfishness. Let’s not credit ourselves with too much. Garage mechanics are more human than we are.
6) Have you written music?
Uhuh. I never liked those notes and lines and things they tried to teach me in school, I hated the teacher, so I deliberately didn’t learn the notes. Now it seems too late and too silly. Music affects me much more than writing or painting, though, and I seem to be listening to it continually—classical, rock, jazz, anything. It’s awfully good shit.
7) Other writers you admire (besides Jeffers and Aiken—I’m thinking of Anthony Burgess, for example, whose
Enderby
is somewhat Bukowskian . . . & as a matter of fact, Burgess used to be a composer)?
Never heard of Burgess, which doesn’t mean he isn’t any good. I don’t read much anymore. I like Artaud, Céline, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and the STYLE of the early Saroyan without the content. Then maybe Eugene O’Neill or somebody like that. Most writers simply don’t have it and never will. There’s hardly any looking around, up, down, before and before that. A pack of shameful fakes. If I ever go to hell there will be all writers down there. There could be nothing worse.
8) Several times during our “interview” you said, sardonically, “I’m immortal”; now I’m no depth psychologist or mystic-of-the-word . . . but the thought occurs to me that maybe you sometimes brood on what sort of trace you’ll leave as an artist, a writer . . . and also on human perishability. (There’s a question somewhere in that preceding sentence.)
There is? Well, about the “immortal,” I hope I said it “sardonically.” The only good thing about writing is the writing itself—that is, to bring me closer to what is necessary NOW and to keep me from becoming anything like the first face I pass on a sidewalk on any given day. When I die they can take my work and wipe a cat’s ass with it. It will be of no earthly use to me. The only trace I want to leave, after death, is upon myself, and that isn’t important to you. Incidentally, one of the best things I like about humans is that they do perish.
9) Anything in astrology or Zen or any of the popular cults you believe in?
I don’t have time for cults. That business is for the large gang of people who need toe-tickling. For them, it’s all right. It might even be helpful. But I build the IDEA of myself from myself and my experience. I will have my blind sides, true. And I might have much to learn from other men. But, basically, I am not a learner from other men. I am headstrong and prejudiced but it’s good to live without too much instruction from other men. I’ve found the most learned men to be bores and the dumbest seem to be the most profound and uncluttered. Who wants to be many voices when there is only one voice trying to get out?
10) You told me you stopped writing when you were 24 (incidentally, have you written an account of this episode with your father? If you haven’t we’d like to see it for THE ____REVIEW—we pay something like $50.00 for stories and essays) . . . but you didn’t tell me when you started writing before that, and why you started writing.
I’d much rather you paid me $50 for answering these questions. I’m not sure that thing I told you about my father is quite true, although there is a partial truth. Sometimes when I’m talking I improve on things to make them better. Some people might call it lying; I call it an art-form, and, uh uh, no, I didn’t tell you when I started writing or why, but I was drinking, wasn’t I? And also, you didn’t ask. And also, I’m glad you didn’t ask.
11) Is there anything, other than booze and women (I presume), that stimulates you creative lust? (Smell of horses, faces in the crowd at the track?) (You sort of answered this, but I’d like to hear more if you’d like to say it.)
Everything, of course, stimulates my creative lust. Faces in the crowd do it plenty. I can look at faces and become disgusted and terrorized and sickened. Others can find beauty in them like large fields of flowers. I guess I ain’t much of a man for that. I am narrow. I can’t see the horizons or the reasons or the excuses or the glories. The average face to me is a total nightmare.
Well, shit, I guess I don’t look so good to others either. I’ve been told I’m a very ugly man by more than one. So there’s your joke. Let’s get off these faces. I know that I haven’t answered your question properly, but I got into a passion and started yelling. Sorry.
12) What do you think of “confessional” poetry? How do you see your own work fitting and resisting that label?
Confessional poetry, of course, depends upon who does it. I think that most brag too much on themselves or don’t know how to laugh properly. Does that sound bitchy? Well, I mean, examine it and see. Even Whitman.
I really do think that most of my confessional stuff relieves itself as a form of entertainment. Meaning, look, I lost my balls or my love, ha ha ha. So forth. But the ha ha ha must be fairly relevant and real, I mean no Bob Hope stuff, so forth.
I find that when the pain gets bad enough there are only three things to do—get drunk, kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and laugh.
Yeh. I don’t always do the confessional stuff but I suppose I am hooked on it, it comes easy because much has happened, I almost MAKE much happen—as if to create a life to create an art. I don’t think this is the true way to do things, it is probably a weakness, but I am a dreamer and maybe a dramatist and I like more things to happen than happen—so I push them a bit. I suppose it’s not right. I don’t claim to be.
13) What do you think of college kids reading poetry? Why do they do it? Do they read you? Do they read poetry for what you consider valid reasons? (That last verges on being an asinine question, but you might be able to redeem it with a clever answer.)
Now you know I don’t think of college kids reading poetry. I don’t know if they do or if they read me. There’s no clever way to answer this without making up something I don’t know and which I can’t get away with, so I’m being more clever this way.
14) What’s so great about living in L.A.?
I’m here to begin with and then you build around that. Or I build around it. I’ve lived most of my life here and I’ve simply gotten used to the place. I can’t even get lost, sober. And just the other day I found out where the L.A. Zoo was. And the women here seem to love old men. I’ve never seen women like that. At the same time, I’m suicidal and there’s the smog to help me out. So, what do you got in *****Ohio?
15) What are you reading now? What are your reading habits?
I’m not reading anything. Well, I write my own things and I read them. I suppose that’s a habit.
16) If you were suddenly to become wealthy, how would your life change?
I would become wiser, more profound and more lovely.
17) Do you have any children?
I have a girl aged 7. She’s all right.
View all my reviews
Review: The Mass Psychology Of Fascism
The Mass Psychology Of Fascism by Wilhelm ReichMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was drawn to read this book as one of my efforts to understand the MAGA movement. I feel the focus should be on the supporting GOP and its electorate, more so on Trump the individual, to understand and react. Reich analyzed and documented the rise of Hitler, the Nazi party, and it's voting supporters and emphasizes a similar point of view. From the section heading "FUHRER AND MASS STRUCTURE":
If, at some future date, the history of social processes would allow the reactionary historian time to indulge in speculations on Germany’s past, he would be sure to perceive in Hitler’s success in the years between 1928 and 1933 the proof that a great man makes history only inasmuch as he inflames the masses with ‘his idea’. In fact, National Socialist propaganda was built upon this ‘fuhrer ideology’. To the same limited extent to which the propagandists of National Socialism understood the mechanics of their success, they were able to comprehend the historical basis of the National Socialist movement. This is very well illustrated by an article published at that time entitled ‘Christianity and National Socialism’, written by the National Socialist Wilhelm Stapel. He stated: ‘For the very reason that National Socialism i s an elementary movement, it cannot be gotten at with “arguments”. Arguments would be effective only if the movement had gained its power by argumentation.’
In keeping with this peculiarity the rally speeches of the National Socialists were very conspicuous for their skillfulness in operating upon the emotions of the individuals in the masses and of avoiding relevant arguments as much as possible. In various passages in his book Mein Kampf Hitler stresses that true mass psychological tactics dispense with argumentation and keep the masses’ attention fixed on the ‘great final goal’ at all times.
Since it seems like we have opted to go with an authoritarian, fascistic approach to governance, I have been reading relevant on the growth of fascism generally and specific trends in America. I just ignore Reich's orgone ideas as wacky, along with his Freud-like reduction of so much to a sexuality cause. However with the moral panic on the right about transgender and homosexual rights, I am not so sure. Certainly the binding to a traditional 'family values' model is something Reich saw as key to societal control in the rise of fascism:
More than the economic dependency of the wife and children on the husband and father is needed to preserve the institution of the authoritarian family. For the suppressed classes, this dependency is endurable only on condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is suspended as completely as possible in women and in children. The wife must not figure as a sexual being, but solely as a child-bearer. Essentially, the idealization and deification of motherhood, which are so flagrantly at variance with the brutality with which the mothers of the toiling masses are actually treated, serve as means of preventing women from gaining a sexual consciousness, of preventing the imposed sexual repression from breaking through and of preventing sexual anxiety and sexual guilt- feelings from losing their hold. Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology. Conservative sexual reform has always made the mistake of merely making a slogan of "the right of woman to her own body," and not clearly and unmistakably regarding and defending woman as a sexual being, at least as much as it regards and defends her as a mother. Furthermore, conservative sexual re- form based its sexual policies predominantly on the function of procreation, instead of undermining the reactionary view that...
What even is "fascism"? Reich sees it as a mental disorder of society. Reich witnessed and analyzed from the inside the full arc of fascism's rise and fall.
It is generally clear today that "fascism" is not the act of a Hitler or a Mussolini, but that it is the expression of the irrational structure of mass man.
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The structure of fascism is characterized by metaphysical thinking, unorthodox faith, obsession with abstract ethical ideals, and belief in the divine predestination of the führer. These basic features are linked with a deeper layer, which is characterized by a strong authoritarian tie to the führer-ideal or the nation. The belief in a "master race" became the principal mainspring of the tie to the "führer" on the part of the National Socialist masses, as well as the foundation of their voluntary acceptance of slavish submission. In addition to this, however, the intensive identification with the führer had a decisive effect, for it concealed one's real status as an insignificant member of the masses. Notwithstanding his vassalage, every National Socialist felt himself to be a "little Hitler." Now, however, we want to turn our attention to the characterological basis of these attitudes. We must seek out the dynamic functions that, while they themselves are determined by education and the social atmosphere as a whole, remold human structures to such an extent that tendencies of a reactionary-irrational nature are capable of taking shape in them; to such an extent that, completely enveloped in their identification with the "führer," the masses are immune to the insult heaped upon them by the label "inferior."
Reich saw the successful rise of fascism inside a democratic society as arising from the fears and concerns of the "Working class" and the appeal of natioanlism:
If an industrialist and large estate owner champions a rightist party, this is easily understood in terms of his immediate economic interests. In his case a leftist orientation would be at variance with his social situation and would, for that reason, point to irrational motives. If an industrial worker has a leftist orientation, this too is by all means rationally consistent-it derives from his economic and social position in industry. If, however, a worker, an employee, or an official has a rightest orientation, this must be ascribed to a lack of political clarity, i.e., he is ignorant of his social position. The more a man who belongs to the broad working masses is nonpolitical, the more susceptible he is to the ideology of political reaction. To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of social responsibility. The analysis of this defense against consciousness of one's social responsibility yields clear in- sights into a number of dark questions concerning the behavior of the broad nonpolitical strata. In the case of the average intellectual "who wants nothing to do with politics," it can easily be shown that immediate economic interests and fears related to his social position, which is dependent upon public opinion, lie at the basis of his noninvolvement. These fears cause him to make the most grotesque sacrifices with respect to his knowledge and convictions. Those people who are engaged in the production process in one way or another and are nonetheless socially irresponsible can be divided into two major groups. In the case of the one group the concept of politics is unconsciously associated with the idea of violence and physical danger, i.e., with an intense fear, which prevents them from facing life realistically. In the case of the other group, which undoubtedly constitutes the majority, social irresponsibility is based on personal conflicts and anxieties, of which the sexual anxiety is the predominant one.
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It was clear to a large number of scientists, journalists, and workers' functionaries that it was a regression to "nationalism." It was not clear whether it was nationalism patterned after fascism.
The word fascism is not a word of abuse any more than the word capitalism is. It is a concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian, one-party system, hence totalitarian, a system in which power takes priority over objective interests, and facts are distorted for political purposes. Hence, there are "fascist Jews," just as there are "fascist Democrats."
Reich identifies a mystical, 'magical thinking' that must be identified and combatted.
Nationalistic and familial sentiments are intimately interlaced with religious feelings, which are vague and mystical to a lesser or greater extent. There is no end to the literature on this subject. A detailed academic critique of this field is out of the question-for the time being at least. We want to pick up the thread of our main problem. If fascism relies so successfully on the mystical thinking and sentiments of the masses, then a fight against it can be effective only if mysticism is comprehended and if the mystical contagion of the masses is tackled through education and hygiene. It is not enough that the scientific view of the world gains ground, for it moves much too slowly to keep pace with the rapid spread of mystical contagion. The reason for this can lie only in our incomplete comprehension of mysticism itself. Scientific enlightenment of the masses was mainly concerned with the exposing of the corrupt practices of church dignitaries and church officials. The overwhelming majority of the masses was left in the dark. Scientific elucidation appealed only to the intellect of the masses-not to their feelings. If, however, a man has mystical feelings, he is impervious to the unmasking of a church dignitary, no matter how artfully done. He is no more impressed by the detailed exposure of how the state uses the workers' pennies to support the church than he is by Marx's and Engels' historical analysis of religion...
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Organized Mysticism
... Loyalty and responsibility toward the people and the father- land are most deeply anchored in Christian faith. For this reason it will always be my special duty to safeguard the right and free development of the Christian school and the Christian fundamentals of all education.
What is the source of this glorification of the strength of mystical belief? That is what we want to know now. Political reaction is absolutely correct in asserting that the teaching of "loyalty to the state" derives its strongest inner power from the "truths of Christianity." Before we give proof of this, however, we must briefly summarize the differences existing within the political reactionary camp regarding the conception of Christianity.
...let us briefly designate as scientific that man who performs some kind of vitally necessary work that requires the comprehension of facts. In this sense of the word a lathe operator in a factory is scientific, for his product is based on the fruits of his own work and research as well as the work and research of others. Now let us contrast this scientific man with the mystic, including the political ideologist.As we see rise of 'techno-libertarian' technology billionaire elite and a general feeling of a return of the "Robber baron" successful industrialists and a new Gilded Age, it is interesting to see a similarity to Hitler's rise, and even Putin's oligarchs"
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The powerful capitalists who emerged from the bourgeois revolution in Europe had a great deal of social power in their hands. They had the influence to determine who should govern. Basically, they acted in a short-sighted and self-damaging way. With the help of their power and their means, they could have spurred human society to unprecedented social achievements. I am not referring to the building of palaces, churches, museums, and theaters. I mean the practical realization of their concept of culture. Instead, they completely alienated themselves from those who had but one commodity to sell, their working power. In their hearts they held "the people" in contempt. They were petty, limited, cynical, contemptuous, avaricious, and very often unscrupulous. In Germany they helped Hitler to obtain power. They proved themselves to be completely unworthy of the role society had relegated to them. They abused their role, instead of using it to guide and educate the masses of people. They were not even capable of checking the dangers that threatened their own cultural system. As a social class they deteriorated more and more. Insofar as they themselves were familiar with the processes of work and achievement, they under- stood the democratic freedom movements. But they did nothing to help them. It was ostentation and not knowledge that they encouraged. The encouragement of the arts and sciences was once in the hands of the feudal lords, whom the bourgeoisie later dethroned. But the bourgeois capitalists had far less of an objective interest in art and science than the leading aristocracy had had. While in 1848 the sons of the bourgeois capitalists bled to death at the barricades, fighting for democratic ideals, the sons of the bourgeois capitalists between 1920 and 1930 used the university platforms to deride democratic demonstrations. Later, they were the elite troops of fascist chauvinism. To be sure, they had fulfilled their function of opening up the world economically, but they stifled their own accomplishment with the institution of tariffs and they had not the least notion of what to do with the internationalism that originated from their economic accomplishment. They aged rapidly, and as a social class they became senile.
This assessment of the so-called economic magnates does not derive from an ideology. I come from these circles and know them well. I am happy to have rid myself of their influence.
Fascism grew out of the conservatism of the Social Democrats on the one hand and the narrow-mindedness and senility of the capitalists on the other hand. It did not embody those ideals that had been advocated by its predecessors in a practical way, but solely in an ideological way (and this was the only thing that mattered to the masses of people whose psychic structures were ridden with illusions). It included the most brutal political reaction, the same political reaction that had devastated human life and property in the Middle Ages. It paid tribute to so-called native tradition in a mystical and brutal way, which had nothing to do with a genuine feeling for one's native country and attachment to the soil. By calling itself "socialist" and "revolutionary," it took over the unfulfilled functions of the socialists. By dominating industrial magnates, it took over capitalism. From now on, the achievement of "social- ism" was entrusted to an all-powerful führer who had been sent by God. The powerlessness and helplessness of the masses of people gave impetus to this führer ideology, which had been implanted in man's structure by the authoritarian school and nourished by the church and compulsive family. The "salvation of the nation" by an all-powerful führer who had been sent by God was in complete accord with the intense desire of the masses for salvation. Incapable of conceiving of themselves as having a different nature, their subservient structure eagerly imbibed the idea of man's immutability and of the "natural division of humanity into the few who lead and the many who are led." Now the responsibility rested in the hands of a strong man. In fascism or wherever else it is encountered, this fascist führer ideology rests upon the mystical hereditary idea..
After all his experiences, Reich seems hope through what he calls Work-democracy
It is ridiculous to conceive of freedom to mean that a lie has the same right as a truth before a court of law. A genuine work-democracy will not accord mystical irrationality the same right as truth; nor will it allow the suppression of children the same scope as it allows their freedom. It is ridiculous to argue with a murderer about his right to murder. But this ridiculous mistake is made again and again in dealing with fascists. Fascism is not comprehended as state- organized irrationality and meanness; it is regarded as a "state form" having equal rights. The reason for this is that everyone bears fascism in himself. Naturally, even fascism is right "sometimes." The same is true of the mental patient. The trouble is that he doesn't know when he is right.I don't fully understand this concept, but it seems to be like promoting the idea of Technocrats. That is, like Plato in The Republic, Reich sees a need for qualified leadership. This reminds me of how Sagan decried the danger of poorly trained therapists given free reign to monkey with pysches in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Reich elaborates:
Viewed in this way, freedom becomes a simple, easily comprehensible and easily manageable fact. Freedom does not have to be achieved-it is spontaneously present in every life function. It is the elimination of all obstacles to freedom that has to be achieved.
The man who performs practical work in any field whatever, whether he comes from a rich or poor family, has to go through a definite schooling. He is not elected by "the people." Experienced workers whose skills have been tested over a long period must determine in a more or less thorough way whether the apprentice in their field is qualified to perform his or her job professionally. This is the demand, even if it often runs ahead of the facts. It gives the direction in any event. In America, this demand has been carried to such an extreme that a salesgirl in a department store has to have a university education. As exaggerated and as socially unjust as this demand may be, it shows clearly just how much social pressure is exerted on the simplest work. Every shoemaker, cabinet-maker, turner, mechanic, electrician, stone mason, construction worker, etc., has to fulfill strict requirements.View all my reviews
A politician, on the other hand, is free of any such demands. One need merely possess a good dose of cunning, neurotic ambition and will to power, coupled with brutality, in order to take over the highest positions of human society when suitable chaotic social conditions arise. In the past 25 years we have witnessed how a mediocre journalist was capable of brutalizing the fifty million strong Italian nation and finally reducing it to a state of misery. For twenty-two years there was a great fuss about nothing, coupled with much blood and thunder, until one day the hubbub faded out without a flourish. And one was overcome by the feeling: And all to no avail! What remained of this great tumult, which had made the world hold its breath and had torn many nations out of their accustomed life? Nothing-not a single, permanent thought; not a single useful institution; not even a fond memory. Facts such as this show more clearly than anything else the social irrationalism that periodically brings our life to the brink of the abyss.
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Review: How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy (Volume 15)
How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy (Volume 15) by Thomas E. PattersonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
[I read Audilble version with narrator Peter Lerman.]
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Review: Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty
Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty by Morris KlineMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
From the standpoint of the search for truths, it is noteworthy that Ptolemy, like Eudoxus, fully realized that his theory was just a convenient mathematical description which fit the observations and was not necessarily the true design of nature. For some planets he had a choice of alternative schemes and he chose the mathematically simpler one. Ptolemy says in Book XIII of his Almagest that in astronomy one ought to seek as simple a mathematical model as possible. But Ptolemy's mathematical model was received as the truth by the Christian world.
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There are mathematicians who believe that the differing views on what can be accepted as sound mathematics will some day be reconciled. Prominent among these is a group of leading French mathematicians who write under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bourbaki:Since the earliest times, all critical revisions of the principles of mathematics as a whole, or of any branch of it, have almost invariably followed periods of uncertainty, where contradictions did appear and had to be resolved.. There are now twenty-five centuries during which the mathematicians have had the practice of correcting their errors and thereby seeing their science enriched, not impoverished; this gives them the right to view the future with serenity.
However, many more mathematicians are pessimistic. Hermann Weyl, one of the greatest mathematicians of this century, said in 1944:The question of the foundations and the ultimate meaning of mathematics remains open; we do not know in what direction it will find its final solution or even whether a final objective answer can be expected at all. "Mathematizing" may well be a creative activity of man, like language or music, of primary originality, whose historical decisions defy complete objective rationalization.
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Faith
fact that these theorems use the axioms. However, they must be used to derive a large part of classical mathematics. In the second edi. tion of his Principles (1937), Russell backtracked still more. He said that "The whole question of what are logical principles becomes to a very considerable extent arbitrary." The axioms of infinity and choice "can only be proved or disproved by empirical evidence." Nevertheless, he insisted that logic and mathematics are a unity.
However, the critics could not be stilled. In his Philosophy of Mathemat- ics and Natural Science (1949), Hermann Weyl said the Principia based mathematics
not on logic alone, but on a sort of logician's paradise, a universe en- dowed with an "ultimate furniture" of rather complex structure. Would any realistically-minded man dare say he believes in this tran- scendental world?... This complex structure taxes the strength of our faith hardly less than the doctrines of the early Fathers of the Church or of the Scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages.
Still another criticism has been directed against logicism. Though ge- ometry was not developed in the three volumes of the Principia, it seemed clear, as previously noted, that by using analytic geometry, one
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Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Review: Ultimate Lost and Philosophy: Think Together, Die Alone - Library Edition
Ultimate Lost and Philosophy: Think Together, Die Alone - Library Edition by Sharon M. KayeMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
[I read Audilble version with narrator John McCormick.]
eternalism vs presentism - Google Search
https://www.google.com/search?q=etern...
Branching
Many-worlds interpretation
Many-worlds is also called the relative state formulation or the Everett interpretation, after physicist Hugh Everett, who first proposed it in 1957.
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Monday, November 11, 2024
Saturday, November 9, 2024
Review: Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood
Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen RyanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
"“We devolve to the individual so often because the structural and
systemic feels so daunting, and how are we going to actually shift
and change that? Also, because it feels so good to enact vengeance
on people who’ve harmed us."
Kyra Jones is, among other things, a prison abolitionist. Jones, a filmmaker who has acted on The Chi and has written for shows like Queens and Woke, told me she does not believe calling the police and putting people in prison meaningfully alters communities experiencing harm and violence for the better. For that reason, after she was raped, she agreed to go through a process called restorative justice (or transformative justice); it was led by author and activist Mariame Kaba, the author of We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice.
Whatever you think of prison abolition, Kaba’s work and writings on this and related topics are thought-provoking. She and other activists have explored ways to rethink and rebuild systems of
justice, violence prevention, and community care, all areas of American life that are certainly in need of enlightened change. And her work is relevant because Hollywood, like many communities in the United States, would often rather focus on the “one bad apple” theory of wrongdoing instead of get to the bottom of the whole troubling barrel.
In a 2021 interview, when discussing the trial of Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Kaba said, “We devolve to the individual so often because the structural and
systemic feels so daunting, and how are we going to actually shift and change that? Also, because it feels so good to enact vengeance on people who’ve harmed us. Part of the conversation we don’t have is just how much liminal pleasure people get out of vengeance, which is a big part of why it’s so hard to uproot that feeling and that desire within us as human beings.”
During my years of hearing about the actions of people in the entertainment industry who have harmed others—and I know of far more instances of abuse, damage, and violence than I’ve been able to publicly write about—I’ve felt those emotions. I have fantasized about going John Wick on a few individuals. I never would do that, of course (damn you, Buddhist nonviolence). But I’ve felt rage when I hear about what survivors have endured at the hands of nightmare people whose reigns of terror were barely a secret. On top of all that, Hollywood itself has trained many of us to think we’re entitled to vengeance, under the right circumstances. Or under almost any circumstances, really. The final act of every superhero or action film is, after all, usually just a whole bunch of punching, shooting, and killing.
But there is a difference between vengeance and justice, and there’s a big difference between exposing the abuse of one person and changing an entire social, cultural, and corporate apparatus for the better. I care about both, but I’m writing this book because I (and others) desperately long for the latter.
View all my reviews
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Saturday, November 2, 2024
Review: The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Review: These Truths: A History of the United States
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill LeporeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
POPULISM ENTERED AMERICAN politics at the end of the nineteenth century, and it never left. It pitted “the people,” meaning everyone but the rich, against corporations, which fought back in the courts by defining themselves as “persons”; and it pitted “the people,” meaning white people, against nonwhite people who were fighting for citizenship and whose ability to fight back in the courts was far more limited, since those fights require well-paid lawyers.
Populism also pitted the people against the state. During populism’s first rise, the state as a political entity became an object of formal academic study through political science, one of a new breed of academic fields known as the social sciences. Before the Civil War, most American colleges were evangelical; college presidents were ministers, and every branch of scholarship was guided by religion. After 1859, and the Origin of Species, the rise of Darwinism contributed to the secularization of the university, as did the influence of the German educational model, in which universities were divided into disciplines and departments, each with a claim to secular, and especially scientific, expertise. These social sciences—political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology—used the methods of science, and especially of quantification, to study history, government, the economy, society, and culture.96
Columbia University opened a School of Political Science in 1880, the University of Michigan in 1881, Johns Hopkins in 1882. Woodrow Wilson completed a PhD in political science at Johns Hopkins in 1886. He planned to write a “history of government in all the civilized States in the world,” to be called The Philosophy of Politics. In 1889, he published a preliminary study called, simply, The State.97
For Wilson’s generation of political scientists, the study of the state replaced the study of the people. The erection of the state became, in their view, the greatest achievement of civilization. The state also provided a bulwark against populism.
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Congress debated Rubinow’s bill, which was also put forward in sixteen states. “Germany showed the way in 1883,” Fisher liked to say, pointing to the policy’s origins. “Her wonderful industrial progress since that time, her comparative freedom from poverty . . . and the physical preparedness of her soldiery, are presumably due, in considerable measure, to health insurance.” But after the United States declared war with Germany in 1917, critics described national health insurance as “made in Germany” and likely to result in the “Prussianization of America.” In California, the legislature passed a constitutional amendment providing for universal health insurance. But when it was put on the ballot for ratification, a federation of insurance companies took out an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle warning that it “would spell social ruin in the United States.” Every voter in the state received in the mail a pamphlet with a picture of the kaiser and the words “Born in Germany. Do you want it in California?” The measure was defeated. Opponents called universal health insurance “UnAmerican, Unsafe, Uneconomic, Unscientific, Unfair and Unscrupulous.”
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Gallup said, remembering his days at the University of Iowa in the 1920s, but “in my day I couldn’t get a degree in journalism, so I got my degree in psychology.” He graduated in 1923, entered a graduate program in a new field, Applied Psychology, where everyone was talking about Walter Lippmann’s 1922 book, Public Opinion, and Gallup got interested in the problem of measuring it. His first idea was to use the sample survey to understand how people read the news. In 1928, in a dissertation called “An Objective Method for Determining Reader Interest in the Content of a Newspaper,” he argued that “at one time the press was depended upon as the chief agency for instructing and informing the mass of people,” but that the growth of public schools meant that newspapers no longer filled that role and instead ought to meet “a greater need for entertainment.” He had therefore devised a method to measure “reader interest,” a way to know what parts of the paper readers found entertaining. He called it the “Iowa method”: “It consists chiefly of going through a newspaper, column by column, with a reader of the paper.” The interviewer would then mark up the newspaper to show what parts the reader had enjoyed. “The Iowa method offers the newspaper editor a scientific means for fitting his paper to his community,” Gallup wrote: he could hire an expert in measurement to conduct a study to find out what features and writers his readers like best, and then stop printing the boring stuff.
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But perhaps the most influential of the new conservative intellectuals was Richard M. Weaver, a southerner who taught at the University of
Chicago and whose complaint about modernity was that “facts” had replaced “truth.” Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences (1948) rejected the idea of machine-driven progress—a point of view he labeled “hysterical optimism”—and argued that Western civilization had been in decline for centuries. Weaver dated the beginning of the decline to the fourteenth century and the denial that there exists a universal truth, a truth higher than man. “The denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience,” Weaver wrote. “The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably—though ways are found to hedge on this—the denial of truth.” The only way to answer the question “Are things getting better or are they getting worse?” is to discover whether modern man knows more or is wiser than his ancestors, Weaver argued. And his answer to this question was no. With the scientific revolution, “facts”—particular explanations for how the world works—had replaced “truth”—a general understanding of the meaning of its existence. More people could read, Weaver stipulated, but “in a society where expression is free and popularity is rewarded they read mostly that which debauches them and they are continuously exposed to manipulation by controllers of the printing machine.” Machines were for Weaver no measure of progress but instead “a splendid efflorescence of decay.” In place of distinction and hierarchy, Americans vaunted equality, a poor substitute.79
If Weaver was conservatism’s most serious thinker, nothing better marked the rising popular tide of the movement than the publication, in 1951, of William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom,” in which Buckley expressed regret over the liberalism of the American university. Faculty, he said, preached anticapitalism, secularism, and collectivism. Buckley, the sixth of ten children, raised in a devout Catholic family, became a national celebrity, not least because of his extraordinary intellectual poise.
Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind appeared in 1953. Kirk, an intellectual historian from Michigan, provided a manifesto for an emerging movement: a story of its origins. The Conservative Mind described itself as “a prolonged essay in definition,” an attempt at explaining the ideas that have “sustained men of conservative impulse in their resistance against radical theories and social transformation ever since the beginning of the
French Revolution.” The liberal, Kirk argued, sees “a world that damns tradition, exalts equality, and welcomes changes”; liberalism produces a “world smudged by industrialism; standardized by the masses; consolidated by government.” Taking his inspiration from Edmund Burke, Kirk urged those who disagreed with liberalism’s fundamental tenets to call themselves “conservatives” (rather than “classical liberals,” in the nineteenth-century laissez-faire sense). The conservative, he argued, knows that “civilized society requires orders and classes, believes that man has an evil nature and therefore must control his will and appetite” and that “tradition provides a check on man’s anarchic impulse.”
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Monday, October 28, 2024
Review: Man and the Universe: The Philosophers of Science
Man and the Universe: The Philosophers of Science by Saxe ComminsMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
This is a fascinating anthology of influential writing in the philosophical development of science.
Starting in antiquity, Lucretius moves the conversation away from gulliility by challenging religious fairy tales.
... Centaurs never have existed, and at no time can there exist things of twofold nature and double body formed into one frame out of limbs of alien kinds, such that the faculties and powers of this and that portion cannot be sufficiently like.
This however dull of understanding you may learn from what follows:
To begin, a horse when three years have gone round is in the prime of his vigor, far different the boy: often even at that age he will call in his sleep for the milk of the breast.
Afterwards when in advanced age his lusty strength and limbs now faint with ebbing life fail the horse, then and not till then youth in the flower of age commences for that boy and clothes his cheeks in soft down; that you may not haply believe that out of a man and the burden-carrying seed of horses Centaurs can be formed and have being; or that Scyllas with bodies half those of fishes girdled round with raving dogs can exist, and all other things of the kind, whose limbs we see cannot harmonize together; as they neither come to their flower at the same time nor reach the fulness of their bodily strength nor lose it in advanced old age, nor burn with similar passions nor have compatible manners, nor feel the same things give pleasure throughout their frames....
Copernicus similarly sought to convince based on logic and experience that the earth is a sphere in his heliocentric theory.
The Earth Is Spherical Too
The Earth is globe-shaped too, since on every side it rests upon its centre. But it is not perceived straightway to be a perfect sphere, on account of the great height of its mountains and the lowness of its valleys though they modify its universal roundness to only a very small extent. That is made clear in this way. For when people journey northward from anywhere, the northern vertex of the axis of daily revolution gradually moves, overhead, and the other moves downward to the same extent; and many stars situated to the north are seen not to set, and many to the south are seen not to rise any more. So Italy does not see Canopus, which is visible to Egypt. And Italy sees the last star of Fluvius, which is not visible to this region situated in a more frigid zone. Conversely, for people who travel southward, the second group of stars becomes higher in the sky; while those become lower which for us are high up.
Moreover, the inclinations of the poles have everywhere the same ratio with places at equal distances from the poles of the Earth and that happens in no other figure except the spherical. Whence it is manifest that the Earth itself is contained between the vertices and is therefore a globe. Add to this the fact that the inhabitants of the East do not perceive the evening eclipses of the sun and moon; nor the inhabitants of the West, the morning eclipses; while of those who live in the middle region--some see them earlier and some later.
Furthermore, voyagers perceive that the waters too are fixed within this figure; for example, when land is not visible from the deck of a ship, it may be seen from the top of the mast, and conversely, if something shining is attached to the top of the mast, it appears to those remaining on the shore to come down gradually, as the ship moves from the land, until finally it becomes hidden, as if setting. Moreover, it is admitted that water, which by its nature flows, always seeks lower places--the same way as earth--and does not climb up the shore any farther than the convexity of the shore allows. That is why the land is so much higher where it rises up from the ocean.
A generation later in Novum Organum, Francis Bacon used the metaphor of various "Idols" to explain how false assumptions get picked up, much like modern writers explain logical fallacies and cognitive biases.
But the Idols of the Theater are not innate, nor do they steal into the understanding secretly, but are plainly impressed and received into the mind from the play-books of philosophical systems and the perverted rules of demonstration. To attempt refutations in this case would be merely inconsistent with what I have already said: for since we agree neither upon principles nor upon demonstrations, there is no place for argument. And this is so far well, inasmuch as it leaves the honor of the ancients untouched. For they are no wise disparaged—the question between them and me being only as to the way. For as the saying is, the lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one. Nay, it is obvious that when a man runs the wrong way, the more active and swift he is the further he will go astray.
29 But the course I propose for the discovery of sciences is such as leaves but little to the acuteness and strength of wits, but places all wits and understandings nearly on a level. For as in the drawing of a straight line or perfect circle, much depends on the steadiness and practice of the hand, if it be done by aim of hand only, but if with the aid of rule or compass, little or nothing; so is it exactly with my plan. But though particular confutations would be of no avail, yet touching the sects and general divisions of such systems I must say something; something also touching the external signs which show that they are unsound; and finally something touching the causes of such great infelicity and of such lasting and general agreement in error; that so the access to truth may be made less difficult, and the human understanding may the more willingly submit to its purgation and dismiss its idols.
30 Idols of the Theater, or of systems, are many, and there can be and perhaps will be yet many more. For were it not that now for many ages men’s minds have been busied with religion and theology; and were it not that civil governments, especially monarchies, have been averse to such novelties, even in matters speculative; so that men labor therein to the peril and harming of their fortunes — not only unrewarded, but exposed also to contempt and envy; doubtless there would have arisen many other philosophical sects like to those which in great variety flourished once among the Greeks. For as on the phenomena of the heavens many hypotheses may be constructed, so likewise (and more also) many various dogmas may be set up and established on the phenomena of philosophy. And in the plays of this philosophical theater you may observe the same thing which is found in the theater of the poets, that stories invented for the stage are more compact and elegant, and more as one would wish them to be, than true stories out of history.
31 In general, however, there is taken for the material of philosophy either a great deal out of a few things, or a very little out of many things; so that on both sides philosophy is based on too narrow a foundation of experiment and natural history, and decides on the authority of too few cases. For the rational school of philosophers snatches from experience a variety of common instances, neither duly ascertained nor diligently examined and weighed, and leaves all the rest to meditation and agitation of wit.
I especially like how he zeroes in on superstitious religious as antithetical to the scientific philosophy even then being born:
LXXXIX
Neither is it to be forgotten that in every age natural philosophy has had a troublesome adversary and hard to deal with; namely, superstition, and the blind and immoderate zeal of religion. For we see among the Greeks that those who first proposed to men's then uninitiated ears the natural causes for thunder and for storms, were thereupon found guilty of impiety. Nor was much more forbearance shown by some of the ancient fathers of the Christian church to those who on most convincing grounds (such as no one in his senses would now think of contradicting) maintained that the earth was round, and of consequence asserted the existence of the antipodes.
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Descartes to comte
Our real business is to analyze accurately the circumstances of phenomena, and to connect them by the natural relations of succession and resemblance.".
Explanation: This passage is from Auguste Comte's "Positive Philosophy," where he argues that the primary focus of scientific inquiry should be on observing and describing observable phenomena, connecting them through patterns of sequence and similarity, rather than speculating about unobservable "causes" or ultimate origins.
Key points:
Rejection of metaphysical speculation:
Comte believes that searching for "first causes" or "final purposes" is futile and unproductive.
Emphasis on empirical observation:
The focus should be on analyzing the observable characteristics of phenomena and identifying consistent patterns between them.
Scientific laws as the goal:
The aim is to discover invariable natural laws that govern all phenomena, reducing them to the smallest possible number.
Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer
As we have seen, the first characteristic of the Positive Philosophy is that it regards all phenomena as subjected to invariable natural Laws. Our business is,-seeing how vain is any research into what are called Causes, whether first or final, to pursue an accurate discovery of these Laws, with a view to reducing them to the smallest possible number. By speculating upon causes, we could solve no difficulty about origin and purpose. Our real business is to analyse accurately the circumstances of phenomena, and to connect them by the
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Eddington 1927: The Real and the Concrete The Nature of the Physical World
The modern scientific theories have broken away from the common standpoint which identifies the real with the concrete. I think we might go so far as to say that time is more typical of physical reality than matter...
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