Review: Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

The Origin of Intolerance: Fear of Different Individuals, Groups or Nations

It is usually normal for an organization, religion or government to be united in its purposes and ideals. However, uniformity (rather than unity) can be psychologically unhealthy, even dangerous, because it breeds intolerance, even fear, of those who are different. For example, in Germany during World War II, the Nazis demanded uniformity in their concept of German nationalism, racial superiority and political policies of extermination of inferior races. In other words, the Nazis did not tolerate dissent and opposition from Jewish and Polish people, even from Germans themselves.

In the Foreword of one of Viktor Frankl’s books, Swanee Hunt, formerly the United States Ambassador to Austria, said that the Nazi concentration camps were “created to annihilate those who were different.”1 Frankl suffered in the concentration camps, because he was different. His father, mother, brother and wife died, because they, too, were different.

False Tolerance: To Tolerate the Intolerable

[Paraphrased from Viktor Frankl’s View of Tolerance]

Tolerance, jealousy, benevolence, hate, decency. What will be ultimate in our lives? As Viktor Frankl would remind us, the choice is ours.

Swanee Hunt

United States Ambassador to Austria

Logotherapy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logothe...
Noology
Ontology
Facticity

Pill god romanticism

Speaking of population explosion, I would like to touch on the Pill. It is not only counteracting the population explosion but, as I see it, rendering an even greater service. If it is true that it is love that makes sex human, the Pill allows for a truly human sexual life, one in which, freed from its automatic connection with procreation, sex can realize its highest potential as one of the most direct and meaningful expressions of love. Sex is human if it is experienced as a vehicle of love, and to make it into a mere means to an end contradicts the humanness of sex, regardless of whether the pleasure principle dictates the end or the procreation instinct does so. As to the latter, sex has been emancipated, thanks to the Pill, and has thereby become capable of achieving its potential status as a human phenomenon.

Today the will to meaning is often frustrated. In logo-therapy one speaks of existential frustration. We psychiatrists are confronted more than ever before with patients who are complaining of a feeling of futility that at present plays at least as important a role as did the feeling of inferiority in Alfred Adler's time. Let me just quote from a letter I recently received from a young American student: "I am a 22-year-old with degree, car, security and the availability of more sex and power than I need. Now I have only to ex-plain to myself what it all means." However, such people are complaining not only of a sense of meaninglessness but also of emptiness, and that is why I have described this condition in terms of the "existential vacuum."

There is no doubt that the existential vacuum is in-creasing and spreading...

Existential panic that seems classic, timeless w/conformism

If asked for a brief explanation, I would say that the existential vacuum derives from the following conditions. Unlike an animal, man is not told by drives and instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do-which is conformism-or he does what other people wish him to do which is totalitarianism.

In addition to these two effects of the existential vacuum, there is a third, namely, neuroticism. The existential vacuum per se is not a neurosis, at least not in the strictly clinical sense. If it is a neurosis at all it would have to be diagnosed as a sociogenic neurosis. However, there are also

Sacred

If we respect the spiritual and existential character of unconscious religiousness-rather than allotting it to the realm of psychological facticity—it also becomes impossible to regard it as something innate. Since it is not tied up with heredity in the biological sense, it cannot be inherited either. This is not to deny that all religiousness al-ways proceeds within certain preestablished paths and patterns of development. These, however, are not innate, inherited archetypes but given cultural molds into which personal religiousness is poured. These molds are not transmitted in a biological way, but are passed down through the world of traditional symbols indigenous to a given culture. This world of symbols is not inborn in us, but we are born into it.

Post Freud

psychoanalysis had already lost much of its territory to a sound and sober trend in the field of psychotherapy, namely, behavior therapy. As early as 1960, H. J. Eysenck deplored "the lack of experimental or clinical evidence in favor of psychoanalysis." The theories of psychoanalysis are "beliefs" with which "psychiatrists in training are now frequently indoctrinated." However, Eysenck argues not only in general that "Freudian theories are outside the realm of science" but also in particular that "so-called symptomatic cures can be achieved which are long-lasting and do not produce alternative symptoms." This fact "argues strongly against the Freudian hypothesis." In contrast to the Freudian "belief," Eysenck thinks that abolition of the symptoms does not at all "leave behind some mysterious complex seeking outlet in alternative symptoms. "

Long before this, logotherapy also had offered evi-dence that neuroses need not in each and every case be traced to the Oedipal situation or other types of conflicts and complexes but may derive from feedback mecha-nisms such as the circle formation built up by anticipato-ry anxiety. 43 And as early as 1947 I myself attempted to interpret neurosis in reflexological terms ...

It is my contention that behavior therapy has made a valuable contribution to the evolution of psychotherapy in that it has shown how to demythologize neurosis. This formulation is not too far-fetched when one considers the fact that Sigmund Freud himself described his instinct theory as a "mythology" and the instincts as "mythical" entities.

To sum up, Freud has unmasked the neurotic; Rogers has de-ideologized psychotherapy; and Eysenck, Wolpe, and others have demythologized neurosis; and yet a discontent remains. Even to such a declared materialist as Christa Kohler, who runs the department of psychotherapy at Karl Marx University in Leipzig, "the behavioristically oriented psychotherapists Wolpe and Eysenck" are, to her mind, excessively "sliding into a biologistic and mechanistic position."45 She may be right. Particularly in an era such as ours, one of meaningless-ness, depersonalization, and dehumanization, it is not possible to cope with the ills of the age unless the human dimension, the dimension of human phenomena, is included in the concept of man, which indispensably underlies every sort of psychotherapy, be it on the conscious or unconscious level

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Review: We Hold These "Truths": How to Spot the Myths that are Holding America Back

We Hold These "Truths": How to Spot the Myths that are Holding America Back by Casey Burgat
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Subtitled "How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back", this book has been called "This book is the crash course in civics that America needs." Largely educational and even enlightening from insider account of how government really does work, there is also some revelations on behind the scenes realities of some events in our recent dramatic and turbulent times. Alyssa Farah Griffin was the White House Director of Strategic Communications during Trump's first term and recalls bleach etc. remarks by Trump in a press briefing:

POTUS walked right past me without breaking stride, ignoring or missing my attempts to catch his attention. I followed him to the briefing room, and its big blue sliding door closed. I opted to watch from a stone's throw away in Upper Press, where my office and the White House press secretary's office were located. Then I watched as President Trump did far more damage than I ever could have fathomed.

"There's been a rumor that-you know, a very nice rumor-that you go outside in the sun or you have heat and it does have an effect on other viruses," Trump said from the world's most famous podium. He then turned to Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx and directed her to "speak to the medical doctors to see if there's any way that [she] can apply light and heat to cure" the virus.2 Dr. Birx sheepishly nodded, afraid to contradict the president in front of the world. I worked closely with Dr. Birx and hold her in the highest regard. She served her country in uniform as an army doctor, then dedicated her life to fighting infectious diseases, including HIV and AIDS. I'll never fault her for not jumping to the podium to correct the president of the United States, for honoring the chain of command, though I don't envy the position it put her in.

And here's where the wheels fell off.

(Trump, who doesn't kid,
said he was being sarcastic.)

Back to the lessons in government, we are seeing as I type what feels like a crest of peak EO churn as executive orders seem Trump's tool for quickly reshaping government. So, it is helpful to learn of the history and development of this tool in the president's toolbox.

The impermanence of executive orders not only has created a land-scape of instability but has also become a powerful tool for presidential candidates looking to make immediate impacts. The promise to reverse a predecessor's executive orders has become a rallying cry on the campaign trail, with candidates often pledging swift action in their first 100 days in office. This tactic allows them to quickly chalk up wins by undoing the policies of the previous administration, appealing directly to their political base eager for change.

So while the early months of an administration are often marked by a flurry of executive action, much of that action involves undoing the work of the previous administration. For modern presidents, their first 100 days have transitioned into playing a game of Whac-A-Mole with the other guy's executive orders-just as fast as one policy pops up, it's smacked back down, and the clock is turned back. And the cycle continues.

Interestingly, The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, that took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan when his policies were taken from Heritage Foundation studies. They offer their own EO analysis in "The Use and Abuse of Executive Orders and Other Presidential Directives".

More from Griffin:

Lincoln did not call his Emancipation Proclamation an "executive order," but it was. In fact, it was the most famous and impactful example of the president of the United States bypassing Congress and changing federal law with the stroke of a pen. But from where did Lincoln's power to issue such a proclamation originate? Despite their frequent use and significant impact, the term "executive order" (or any of its variations) is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Instead, the authority for what's often called the "power of the pen" originates from the Constitution's "vesting clause." This clause simply vests in the president "executive power," a deliberately vague term that has evolved over time to encompass the wide array of administrative actions involved in managing the government's day-to-day affairs.

This vagueness has produced an eternal debate about the scope of executive power, how the Founders intended it to be used, and what it means for modern presidencies. Constitutional experts generally agree that executive actions are legal as long as they fall within the president's policy jurisdiction (read: matters for which there is a relevant federal department) and within a reasonable interpretation of existing court rulings. (Note that things the president cannot do within those bounds include lower gas prices, cut mortgage rates, reverse inflation, fix Social Security, protect abortion access nationwide, or many other moves that some constituents expect him to do.)

These actions-whether they're called orders, directives, or memoranda are official, legally binding mandates...

Speaking of things that seem to add more grandstanding than good government IMHO, there is here an analysis of the evolution of the now ubiquitous filibuster by Adam Jentleson, contributor to this anthology of essays. Jentleson is former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman and deputy chief of staff to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. Jentleson is the author of Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy and a regular contributor to various publications. He recalls "the golden age of the Senate, running through the first half of the 19th century, was a majority-rule institution where the filibuster did not exist." That was until Sen. John C. Calhoun

... envisioned a numerical minority empowered to counter the dominance of an unsympathetic majority. Whereas Madison wanted the minority to have a platform to air their views and delay the legislative process to make themselves heard, Calhoun believed the minority was entitled to a veto. Importantly, Calhoun had a specific minority in mind: slaveholders, for whom he was the nation’s leading advocate.

...[Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette's 1917 filibuster against arming American ships against German attacks] triggered a massive public uproar against the Senate-as Wilson described them, a "little group of willful men" and widespread calls for the chamber to reform its rules.

For a moment, it looked like the end of the filibuster. The Senate quickly reconvened and formed a committee to rein it in... But the committee made one change that would prove enormously and unintentionally-consequential. Instead of setting the threshold for cutting off debate at a majority, as in the original rule, they recommended setting it at a supermajority. ...Senate Rule 22, otherwise known as the "cloture" rule... is what sets the de facto threshold for passage at 60 votes...

For half a century after Rule 22, filibusters remained rare. From its inception in 1917 until 1970, the Senate averaged less than one cloture vote per year.16 During this time, those looking to stall a bill would talk for as long as they wished, and the majority would let them. But then and this is the key part once the minority ran out of words, they stopped talking. They voiced their opposition, and then

Rep. Steve Israel (D) who served in Congress from 2001 to 2017 offers insights into the realities of fundraising.

I learned early that there is only one area of instant bipartisan agreement: raise money.

Far from the resplendent white marble of the Capitol, I soon found myself shuttled into a "call room." Since it's illegal to fundraise within Capitol walls, members do their financial dirty work a few blocks away in a less auspicious building. Gray fabric cubicles. Flickering fluorescent lights. Members of the US Congress reduced to glorified telemarketers. For 10 to 15 hours every week, I would cold-call donors, delivering my well-honed 60-second pitch to raise the money required to stay afloat in politics and address the pressing issues I sought to tackle as a legislator.

I'd envisioned long hours spent on the House floor in great debates with partisan foes, hashing out hard-fought compromises and passing legislation that would improve the lives of my constituents. The reality was a financial arms race that would lead me to spend over 4,200 hours dialing up donors during my 16 years in Congress. That's almost half a year of my life.

Stephen I. Vladeck, an expert in constitutional law who has argued over a dozen cases before the US Supreme Court, has a prescription for SCOTUS:

...the indictment that SCOTUS has become too political rests on an assumption that rarely gets questioned. It assumes that, in some bygone kumbaya era, things were different. The court was better and could be trusted because justices of yesteryear were above (or, at least, aloof from) politics. They kept their personal views quiet and considered cases with cold judicial neutrality. In other words, they stayed in their lane, which is to just "call balls and strikes," as Chief Justice John Roberts famously described his would-be job at his 2005 confirmation hearing.

That idea certainly does sound nice. Only one minor snag: It's completely false. The belief in an apolitical judiciary is a myth-and a dangerous one. The Supreme Court has never been above politics. Even more to the point, the Supreme Court shouldn't be above politics. And if anything, the view that the court is supposed to be above politics has helped precipitate the true crisis facing the Supreme Court today.

That true crisis is not the one we think of whenever the press reports another divisive SCOTUS decision. It is that, to an extent that we have never seen in American history, the justices are not accountable to the other branches of government, especially Congress (or really, to anyone). Nor do they believe they should be. Justice Samuel Alito said this quiet part out loud in a July 2023 interview with The Wall Street Journal, asserting that "no provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court-period."

Alito is wrong as a matter of text (Article III of the Constitution expressly authorizes Congress and only Congress among other things, to make "regulations" of the Supreme Court's caseload). He's wrong as a matter of history (he himself holds a seat created by Congress in 1837). And he's wrong as a matter of common sense (without congressional approval, the court would have no money, no building, no staff, and no ability to do much of anything).

Congress ceding power to executive branch, specifically the president. Lack of comity

...bill to the floor that would give Congress more time. It passed overwhelmingly, though 90 Republicans opposed it. And just a few days later, McCarthy was booted from the Speakership by his own party. His crime? Compromising with Democrats.

Did compromise die along with McCarthy's leading role? No. Mike Johnson (R-LA) eventually emerged as the new leader, promising to fight for his party's goals. But a change in leadership could not change the underlying dynamics at play. Republicans were still divided and held a narrow majority. The parties were still miles apart on spending policy. There was no way forward except to cut a bipartisan deal.

The final spending package, agreed to in March 2024, largely resembled the deal cut between Kevin McCarthy and the White House in May 2023. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers. Conservative Republicans, who would have liked to go it alone, didn't like it. But the American system of government didn't really give them a choice.

A similar pattern has repeated over and over again in recent his-tory. Lawmakers on one side or the other want to do big, bold things to deliver on their campaign promises. They don't want to com-promise. But they discover, eventually, that to achieve anything at all-to move the ball forward on any of the issues that are important to Americans-they must.

cooperation required

...the majority rarely succeeds without the minority's support. Most times it's either teamwork or stalemate.

Are there exceptions? A few. Across the 295 party agenda items, we found just 13 (4 percent) that ended with one party achieving a clear policy victory over the sustained opposition of the other. These rare, partisan laws loom large in our political consciousness: Obamacare, the Republicans' 2017 tax law, some of the Bush tax cuts. But they are unusual.

This last point is key. It's not that Democrats and Republicans work together all the time. It's that if a majority party wants to actually come through on its promises, it needs the minority to help do it.

Border bill gerrymandering gridlock

Congressman Pascrell represented New Jersey in Congress from 1997 to 2024. He served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight in the 117th Congress. Pascrell was a member of the New Jersey State Assembly from 1988 to 1997 and mayor of Paterson, New Jersey, from 1990 to 1997. Prior to serving in office, Pascrell received his BA and MA from Fordham University. He was a longtime public school teacher and is a veteran of the US Army and US Army Reserves. Congressman Pascrell was a lifelong resident of Paterson. This essay was completed shortly before his passing in late 2024.

On February 4, 2024, a trio of US senators made a momentous announcement. James Lankford (R-OK), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) unveiled a legislative deal to address America's southern border crisis and frayed asylum system.²

The package was the product of months of painstaking behind-the-scenes negotiation among the senators on one of America's most pressing issues. The effort had been declared dead by reporters and congressional insiders more times than you've accidentally been on

Matt fuller

What I can tell you from working in both types of settings is this: People want drama. They crave it. When Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Lauren Boebert a "little bitch" on the House floor, that's the story that gets clicks. It's juicy; it's immediate; it's got all the elements of a good old-fashioned political brawl. Readers are far less interested-and I've got the numbers to prove it-in my 6,000-word story on why Republicans turned on funding a war in Ukraine. (It's a great piece and you should read it!)

...

The truth is, the power to change the media starts with us-and it always has. If we want a more balanced, less sensationalized media environment, it's up to us to stop rewarding the content that perpetuates division and start demanding something better.

Part of the difficulty is, many of the people in power don't want us to.

The author's website offer more content along these lines including his substack for a "crash course in civics".

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Review: Once There Was a War

Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

During WWII these four "girls" (why not "women"?) generated black propaganda, which is disinformation, lies, and rumors calculated to sap morale and encourage surrendering:

...defined as any leaflet, poster, radio broadcast, or other public or private media that appeared to come from within the enemy country, either from a resistance movement or from disgruntled soldiers and civilians. In essence, black propaganda was a series of believable lies...

* Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

[I was gratefully provided with a copy of this engaging book in exchange for an honest review.]]

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Review: Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Intro:

Along the way, I found myself in the basement working the wine-press for my father, or on the front porch Independence night helping my Uncle Bion load and fire his homemade brass cannon.

Thus I fell into surprise. No one told me to sur-prise myself, I might add. I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experi-ment and was startled when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot. I blundered into creativity as blindly as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true.

So, I turned myself into a boy running to bring a dipper of clear rainwater out of that barrel by the side of the house. And, of course, the more water you dip out the more flows in. The flow has never ceased. Once I learned to keep going back and back again to those times, I had plenty of memories and sense impressions to play with, not work with, no, play with. Dandelion Wine is nothing if it is not the boy-hid-in-the-man playing in the fields of the Lord on the green grass of other Augusts in the midst of starting to grow up, grow old, and sense darkness waiting under the trees to seed the blood.

movies Stand By Me, River's Edge

"Dad," said Douglas, "it's hard to explain."

Somehow the people who made tennis shoes knew what boys needed and wanted. They put marshmallows and coiled springs in the soles and they wove the rest out of grasses bleached and fired in the wilderness. Somewhere deep in the soft loam of the shoes the thin hard sinews of the buck deer were hidden. The people that made the shoes must have watched a lot of winds blow the trees and a lot of rivers going down to the lakes. Whatever it was, it was in the shoes, and it was summer.

Douglas tried to get all this in words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_L...
In May 1980, Carl Skenes performed a bullet catch for the That's Incredible! television show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DkiV...
but... https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how...

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Review: War

War by Bob Woodward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Philosophical Writings of Peirce

Philosophical Writings of Peirce by Charles Sanders Peirce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Verifiable

What... is the end of an explanatory hypothesis? Its end is,

through subjection to the test of experiment, to lead to the avoidance of all surprise and to the establishment of a habit of positive expectation that shall not be disappointed. Any hypothesis, therefore, may be admissible, in the absence of any special reasons to the contrary, provided it be capable of experimental verification, and only in so far as it is capable of such verification. This is approximately the doctrine of pragmatism. But just here a broad question opens out before us. What are we to understand by experimental verification?

Falibilism

All this is true of direct experience at its first presentation. But when it comes up to be criticized it is past, itself, and is represented by memory. Now the deceptions and inexactitude of memory are proverbial.

On the whole, then, we cannot in any way reach perfect certitude nor exactitude. We never can be absolutely sure of any-thing, nor can we with any probability ascertain the exact value of any measure or general ratio.

This is my conclusion, after many years study of the logic of science; and it is the conclusion which others, of very different cast of mind, have come to, likewise. I believe I may say there is no tenable opinion regarding human knowledge which does not legitimately lead to this corollary. Certainly there is nothing new in it; and many of the greatest minds of all time have held it for true.

Indeed, most everybody will admit it until he begins to see what is involved in the admission-and then most people will draw back. It will not be admitted by persons utterly incapable of philosophical reflection. It will not be fully admitted by masterful minds developed exclusively in the direction of action and accustomed to claim practical infallibility in matters of business. These men will admit the incurable fallibility of all opinions readily enough; only, they will always make exception of their own. The doctrine of fallibilism will also be denied by those who fear its consequences for science, for religion, and for morality

Descartes

DESCARTES is the father of modern philosophy, and the spirit of Cartesianism-that which principally distinguishes it from the scholasticism which it displaced-may be compendiously stated as follows:

1. It teaches that philosophy must begin with universal doubt; whereas scholasticism had never questioned fundamentals.

2. It teaches that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individual consciousness; whereas scholasticism had rested on the testimony of sages and of the Catholic Church.

3. The multiform argumentation of the middle ages is replaced by a single thread of inference depending often upon inconspicuous premisses.

4. Scholasticism had its mysteries of faith, but undertook to explain all created things. But there are many facts which Cartesianism not only does not explain, but renders absolutely in-explicable, unless to say that "God makes them so" is to be regarded as an explanation.

In some, or all of these respects, most modern philosophers have been, in effect, Cartesians. Now without wishing to return to scholasticism, it seems to me that modern science and modern logic require us to stand upon a very different platform from this.

1. We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial scepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia...
Illusions And Delusions Of The Supernatural And The Occult

fatigued by an enigma, his common-sense will sometimes desert him; but it seems to me that the Palladino has simply been too clever for him, as no doubt she would be for me. The theory that there is anything "supernormal," or super anything but superchérie in the case, seems to me as needless as any theory I ever came across.

That is to say, granted that it is not yet proved that women who deceive for gain receive aid from the spiritual world, I think it more plausible that there are tricks that can deceive Mr. Carrington than that the Palladino woman has received such aid. By Plausible, I mean that a theory that has not yet been subjected to any test, although more or less surprising phenomena have occurred which it would explain if it were true, is in itself of such a character as to recommend it for further examination or, if it be highly plausible, justify us in seriously inclining toward belief in it, as long as the phenomena be inexplicable otherwise.

Abduction Bayesian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abducti...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaneron

Though infallibility in scientific matters seems to me irresistibly comical, I should be in a sad way if I could not retain a high respect for those who lay claim to it, for they comprise the greater part of the people who have any conversation at all. When I say they lay claim to it, I mean they assume the functions of it quite naturally and unconsciously. The full meaning of the adage Humanum est errare, they have never waked up to. In those sciences of measurement which are the least subject to error-metrology, geodesy, and metrical astronomy-no man of self-respect ever now states his result, without affixing to it its probable error; and if this practice is not followed in other sciences it is because in those the probable errors are too vast to be estimated.

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Review: Angel of Darkness: The True Story of Randy Kraft and the Most Heinous Murder Spree of the Century

Angel of Darkness: The True Story of Randy Kraft and the Most Heinous Murder Spree of the Century by Dennis McDougal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Learning to Be Rotuman: Enculturation in the South Pacific

Learning to Be Rotuman: Enculturation in the South Pacific by Alan Howard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received the 2nd edition of this book as a donation for my Little free library and am leaving this review voluntarily.

Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance.

Why then have we permitted the dominance of economic systems that commoditize everything? That create scarcity instead of abundance, that promote accumulation rather than sharing? We’ve surrendered our values to an economic system that actively harms what we love. Our metrics of economic value like GDP count only monetary value in the marketplace, of that which can be bought and sold. There is no room in these equations for the economic value of clean air and carbon sequestration and the ineffable riches of a forest filled with birdsong. Where is the value of a butterfly whose species has prospered for millennia and lives nowhere else on the planet? There is no formula complex enough to hold the birthplace of stories. It pains me to know that an old-growth forest is “worth” far more as lumber than as the lungs of the Earth. And yet I am harnessed to this economy, in ways large and small, yoked to pervasive extraction. I’m wondering how we fix that. And I’m not alone.

Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands

Trosper tells the story of how making relationships led to the historic intertribal agreements with the U.S. government to protect the cultural landscape of the Bears Ears as the first tribally focused national monument. Five different tribes nurtured relationships with the federal government to forever protect an earthly gift to be held in common. This was a transformative step toward healing a long history of colonial taking. That hopeful model of Indigenous economics was abruptly curtailed when Donald Trump reversed the decision and instead conveyed rights to those sacred lands to a private uranium-mining company. It took an election to reverse it.

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Review: The Story of Tatiana

The Story of Tatiana by Jacques Baynac
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism

The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism by Paul D. Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is a bit refreshing to listen in on this internal debate among modern Christians about the Trump & MAGA specifically and fascistic Christian nationalism generally. I mean that it is good to know, some Christian thinkers are disseminating second-thoughts on that whole trend. Millers sees nationalism as Conflating "nation" (which is ephemeral, cultural, ill-defined) with "state", which is formally and legally defined as well as enforced. Apparently a lot that resonates with me is here distilled from Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. See a detailed review of that book here.

A summary of the arguments:

Whitehead and Perry found evidence of illiberal views associated with Christian nationalism in the polling data. They found that Christian nationalists are more likely to believe immigrants increase crime (they don’t) and undermine American culture. They tend to believe that it is important to have been born in the United States and to have American ancestry to be accounted fully American, rejecting naturalized citizens and recent immigrants as coequal citizens. They are the most likely to admit they would feel uncomfortable if their daughter married an African American, to believe that the police treat Blacks and Whites equally, and to blame police shootings of African Americans on the victim rather than the police. They are most likely to perceive Muslims and atheists as a threat. The strongest supporters of Christian nationalism support prayer in schools and the display of religious symbols in public life and believe that being a Christian is important to being truly American. None of these beliefs have any logical connection to Christianity or to Christian republicanism, and many of them are directly opposed to it.

... the movement has some troubling attitudes toward race and identity. ...Whitehead and Perry conclude the worst:

Christian nationalism gives divine sanction to ethnocentrism and nativism. Recall that prominent Ambassadors rationalized stronger borders on the grounds that God himself uses walls to protect and preserve his people . . . it is likely that biblical justifications are simply masking ethno-racial understandings of “us” and “them.” In effect, Christian nationalism lets them neutralize disputed assumptions about American identity and who belongs by cloaking their views in religious symbolism.

...Christian nationalism has provided the unifying myths, traditions, narratives, and value systems that have historically been deployed to preserve the interests of those who wish to halt or turn back changes occurring within American society...

Christian nationalism idealizes a mythic society in which real Americans—White, native- born, mostly Protestants—maintain control over access to society’s social, cultural, and political institutions, and “others” remain in their proper place. It therefore seeks strong boundaries to separate “us” from “them,” preserving privilege for its rightful recipients while equating racial and religious outsiders with criminality, violence, and inferiority.

...Christian nationalism is, therefore, ultimately about privilege. It co-opts Christian language and iconography in order to cloak particular political or social ends in moral and religious symbolism.

[I read the unabridged audiobook published by christianaudio.com narrated by [author:Mike Lenz|17900958].]


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Review: Sharing Good Times

Sharing Good Times by Jimmy Carter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

candor on Sexism, racism

I was startled and angry, considering her dismissive response a personal insult. But having no alternative, I was forced to accept the result of this exchange, and during the following days I was able to consider our relationship more objectively. It was obvious that my wife also considered this a seminal change, and from then on we carved out an unprecedented concept of equality and mutual respect.

Our family teamwork in the campaign paid surprisingly rich dividends. By election day, we had shaken hands with several hundred thousand people, and I was elected governor. Since then, there has been no facet of our business, personal, or political lives that we haven't shared on a relatively equal basis. I have to admit, though, that on occasion, I long for the earlier days.

Late '50s jazz clubs

One of our most memorable visits was to New Orleans, where I remember that our total bankroll was six hundred dol- lars. We found inexpensive hotel accommodations and spent most of our nights in the Bourbon Street and Royal Street nightclubs that had the best jazz performers. In one of them, we formed a special friendship with Billy Eckstine, and we later invited him to visit us in the White House. We had coffee and sweet rolls in the French Market early every morning before

going to bed to sleep until early afternoon. During two of our days, we obtained permission from the New Orleans Symphony manager to sit in the theater during their practice sessions, and on the other days we went to horse races and toured the cemeteries, waterfront, and other tourist attractions. We decided that we would splurge one night and have supper at Antoine's Restaurant, where we enjoyed pompano cooked in a paper bag (seven dollars) with potato slices that swelled up like small balloons. We then went to dance in the Blue Room above the Fairmont Hotel, and subsequently we would call long-distance from Plains to make special requests for our favorite songs.

In 1958 we drove to Miami, where Louis Armstrong was performing in the Fontainebleau Hotel, and we remember our astonishment when the stage rose from below the dance floor with him and his orchestra playing their initial song. While on the beach the next day, we made a spontaneous decision to go to Cuba and were soon on the way. We stayed in Havana for two days, casually noticing that the palace of the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, was surrounded by soldiers and stacked sand- bags and that many people were talking about a revolutionary lawyer named Fidel Castro, who was hiding in the hills. Since we had hotel rooms for only the first night, we spent the next one carousing in Havana and then flew without sleep to Miami the following day and drove back home.

The next year we went to Baltimore, primarily to hear performances by Sarah Vaughan. One evening happened to be especially memorable because the nightclub's sound system failed, and the audience sat in almost absolute silence for two hours, except for sustained applause each time she finished a song.

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Review: Broken Pieces

Broken Pieces by Reedy Gibbs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: Forgiving the Dead Man Walking

Forgiving the Dead Man Walking by Debbie Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Write If You Get Work : The Best of Bob and Ray

Write If You Get Work : The Best of Bob and Ray by Bob Elliott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: Book Of Spelling Rules

Book Of Spelling Rules by G. Terry Page
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When not to use an apostrophe

Possessive pronouns never take an apostrophe. 'It's' can only mean 'it is'; this apostrophe can never be used to indicate possession or the genitive case with 'it'. Thus you cannot write 'it's weight' when you mean 'the weight of it'; the correct spelling is 'its weight'.

Similarly, apostrophes should not be used with other pronouns like his, hers, ours, yours, theirs.

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Review: Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States

Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States by Helen Prejean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sister Prejean if somewhat reluctably, was part of the 60s and 70s Catholic singing nun and social justice outreach approaches

I came to St. Thomas as part of a reform movement in the Catholic Church, seeking to harness religious faith to social justice. In 1971, the worldwide synod of bishops had declared justice a "constitutive" part of the Christian gospel. When you dig way back into Church teachings, you find that this focus on justice has been tucked in there all along in "social encyclicals." Not exactly coffee- table literature. The documents have been called the best-kept secret of the Catholic Church. And with good reason. The mandate to practice social justice is unsettling because taking on the struggles of the poor invariably means challenging the wealthy and those who serve their interests. "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" - that's what Dorothy Day, a Catholic social activist said is the heart of the Christian gospel.

Sister Helen Prejean (@helenprejean)
This gives Millard a chance to give a brief history of the kind of legal representation Pat has had and how, if he and his team had taken his case from the beginning, this man would never have gone to death row. Marsellus nods.
...

online: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...

Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer

Fighting patriarchy:

[Bill Quigley] tells me that prisoners have a constitutional right to the spiritual adviser of their choice. It's a good thing to know, because it soon becomes evident that the prison wants to block women from serving as spiritual advisers to death-row inmates. Sister Lilianne Flavin, my friend and coworker, has recently been denied her request to counsel a death-row inmate. I find out that the two Catholic priest chaplains at Angola are the ones seeking to block me and other women from death-row prisoners. One of them has reportedly said that I was so "naive" and "emotionally involved" with Sonnier that I was "blind" to the fact that Pat may have "lost his soul" because he had not received the last rites of the Church during the final hours of his life. Women, they are saying, are just too "emotional" to relate to death-row inmates.

Scam

...
He then explains to me the workings of the bribes-for-pardons scheme that went on until the time of his arrest.

He says that when the Pardon Board met, there would usually be several applicants' files marked "Expedite," which meant a "deal" had been cut. The payments varied, Howard Marsellus says, - "sometimes a few thousand, sometimes way up at $100,000 or more."

I ask who got the money, and Marsellus says, "Lawyers, state legislators. You figure it out. Only the governor can grant a pardon. Who do you think got the money?"

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/09/...

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Review: Me: Stories of My Life

Me: Stories of My Life by Katharine Hepburn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The tone of this memoir is very conversational, reading like the transcript of one side of an interview. Most of the time this works very well. Occasionally, it feels like pointless rambling. The addition of an unproduced script by Hepburn about an actress picking up a car based on experience she had with writer William Rose feels like padding. Much better are here memories of and opinions on specific films she was in, even if they are often very brief. For instance, this opinion of Toyah Willcox who took a film role opposite Katharine Hepburn in the made-for-television film The Corn Is Green, directed by George Cukor:

We got the girl too. A girl walked in by the name of Toyah Wilcox. Five feet tall. Tiny waist. Big bosom. Skin like the inside of a shell. Eyes...

Oh-did I tell you about the boy's teeth? They are TEETH. He should pull them all out and sell them to the Arabs. Gorgeous! Anyway, Toyah's eyes are wide apart. And full of thoughts. Wicked thoughts. Suggesting so much. And so much fun too. Loves life and ... well, she read the part with me. George and I howled.

...and this portrait of John Wayne:

Rooster Cogburn

John Wayne is the hero of the thirties and forties and most of the fifties. Before the creeps came creeping in. Before, in the sixties, the male hero slid right down into the valley of the weak and the misunderstood. Before the women began drop- ping any pretense to virginity into the gutter. With a dis- regard for truth which is indeed pathetic. And unisex was born. The hair grew long and the pride grew short. And we were off to the anti-hero and -heroine.

John Wayne has survived all this. Even into the seventies. He is so tall a tree that the sun must shine on him whatever the tangle in the jungle below.

From head to toe he is all of a piece. Big head. Wide blue eyes. Sandy hair. Rugged skin-lined by living and fun and character. Not by just rotting away. A nose not too big, not too small. Good teeth. A face alive with humor. Good humor I should say, and a sharp wit. Dangerous when roused. His shoulders are broad-very. His chest massive- very. When I leaned against him (which I did as often as possible, I must confess I am reduced to such innocent pleasures), thrilling. It was like leaning against a great tree. His hands so big. Mine, which are big too, seemed to disappear. Good legs. No seat. A real man's body.

And the base of this incredible creation. A pair of small sensitive feet. Carrying his huge frame as though it were a feather. Light of tread. Springy. Dancing. Pretty feet.

Very observing. Very aware. Listens. Concentrates. Witty slant. Ready to laugh. To be laughed at. To answer. To stick his neck out. Funny. Outrageous. Spoiled. Self-indulgent. Tough. Full of charm. Knows it. Uses it. Disregards it. With an alarming accuracy. Not much gets past him.
...

Politically he is a reactionary. He suffers from a point of view based entirely on his own experience. He was sur- rounded in his early years in the motion picture business by people like himself. Self-made. Hard-working. Independent. Of the style of man who blazed the trails across our country. Reached out into the unknown. People who were willing to live or die entirely on their own independent judgment. Jack Ford, the man who first brought Wayne into the movies, was cut from the same block of wood. Fiercely independent.

They seem to have no patience and no understanding of the more timid and dependent type of person. Pull your own freight. This is their slogan. Sometimes I don't think that they realize that their own load was attached to a very powerful engine. They don't need or want protection. Total personal responsibility. They dish it out. They take it. Life has dealt Wayne some severe blows. He can take them. He has shown it. He doesn't lack self-discipline. He dares to walk by himself. Run. Dance. Skip. Walk. Crawl through life. He has done it all. Don't pity me, please.

The shorter recollections are more focused. The longer ones tend to drift off into inane trivialities, IMO. These drifts seems to be concentrated in the last quarter of the book which makes me feel the manuscript missed the care and attention of a good editor. The resulting hodge-podge is a potpourri of pithy to charming observations soaked with discursive maundering.

Sincere love recalling here about her Spencer Tracy. 'Tis a bit sad how one-sided it may have been:

I loved Spencer Tracy. He and his interests and his demands came first.

This was not easy for me because I was definitely a me me me person.

It was a unique feeling that I had for S.T. I would have done anything for him. My feelings-how can you describe them?-the door between us was always open. There were no reservations of any kind.

...

I have no idea how Spence felt about me. I can only say I think that if he hadn't liked me he wouldn't have hung around. As simple as that. He wouldn't talk about it and I didn't talk about it. We just passed twenty-seven years together in what was to me absolute bliss.

It is called LOVE.

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Review: Angel of Death: Uncover The Darkness of Nightmare Nurse, Jane Toppan

Angel of Death: Uncover The Darkness of Nightmare Nurse, Jane Toppan by Ryan Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Green gives a tour of the dysfunctional family roots and the killings amounting to may be a hundred or more of the innovator of the angel of mercy (or angel of death) type of serial killer.

How many patients need to die under a nurse’s care to raise suspicions?

In 1895, elderly patients were quietly dying one by one, yet no one sounded the alarm – until an entirely family passed away. All had been in the care of nurse Jane Toppan and suspicions hit the roof.

Dilated pupils, feverish bodies, and erratic rambling left doctors baffled, but these weren’t the signs of illness. They were the marks of something far more sinister. Toppan manipulated her patients' dosages, watching them drift between life and death. For her, each fatal dose was not a crime, but a twisted act of mercy—a dark salvation from suffering.

Compelled by her own dark impulses, she transformed from a healer into a merciless killer, deeply relishing the power she wielded over life and death. Angel of Death is a chilling account of Jane Toppan, who is one of America's most notorious female serial killers. This riveting narrative draws listeners into the terrifying reality faced by her victims and unravels the chilling psychology behind her horrific choices.

It is interesting because she had the opportunity to perpetrated her crimes at a time when medical institutions were just forming the shape we know to have now and a period where true, helpful pioneers were taking up roles as detailed in The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever.

Toppan found the field not merely an opportunity for slaying, but this nurse nurtured and developed a unique paraphilia as she admitted during her murder trial that she was sexually aroused by her helpless victims. She would administer a drugs like Atropine to patients and lie in bed with them and hold them close to her body as they died. We know this as Hearst luridly published all the detals to sell newspapers. This motive of such excitation is some type of factitious disorder.

Abandoned by her parents to become an indentured servant, it seems to me she had some deep-seated, organic malfunction as she was given surprising opportunity considering how she devolved into homicide. Here poisoning spree began in 1895 by killing her landlord, Israel Dunham, and his wife.[2] In 1899 she killed her foster sister Elizabeth with a dose of strychnine.[2] In 1901, Toppan moved in with the elderly Alden Davis and his family in Cataumet to take care of him after the death of his wife, Mattie (whom Toppan had murdered).[2] Within weeks, she killed Davis,[6] his sister Edna, and two of his daughters, Minnie and Genevieve.[2]


The surviving members of the Davis family ordered a toxicology e

exhumation

[I enjoyed this title as the Unabridged Audiobook well-narrated by
Steve White.]

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Review: The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math from One to Infinity

The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math from One to Infinity by Steven H. Strogatz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: Full Moon

Full Moon by Ellen Weisberg and Ken Yoffe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: On Freedom

On Freedom by Timothy Snyder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On a sunny day in August 1978, Havel eluded the secret police, made for the Czechoslovak-Polish border, and hiked to the top of a mountain. There he and other Czechoslovak dissidents met Michnik and other Polish ones. They built a fire, ate, and drank vodka. In the photographs, they look happy. Michnik asked Havel to write. Three months later, an underground courier delivered Havel's manuscript to Michnik in Warsaw. From a moment of contact at a border on a mountaintop arose Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless," a profound meditation on freedom.

In the essay, Havel translated the experience of "normalized" Czechoslovakia into general political lessons. "Normalization" meant adaptation to the party line, even though no one believed it expressed anything beyond the convenience of the powerful. Normality in this sense of "normalization" has no substance, only form. It is the habit of saying (and then thinking) what seems necessary, while agreeing implicitly (and then explicitly) that nothing really matters. Life becomes an echo chamber of all the things we never dare to say.

timothy snyder "negative freedom"

predicted Trump's coup attempt

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Review: A History of Philosophy, Volume II: Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modern

A History of Philosophy, Volume II: Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modern by Wilhelm Windelband
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensualism

Hobbes

Painful separation from magicoreligious superstition

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Review: Dusty: Reflections of an American Dream

Dusty: Reflections of an American Dream by Dusty Rhodes
My rating: 0 of 5 stars




I read the Audible Studios Unabridged Audiobook narrated by Kerry Woodrow.

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Review: Bang Your Head: The Real Story of The Missing Link

Bang Your Head: The Real Story of The Missing Link by Dewey Robertson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a complete autobiography of one of wrestling’s more colorful “heels”, a grappler with the character of a “bad guy.” Bang Your Head is complete in the sense that it covers the arc from Dewey’s childhood to wrestling introduction in Canada to even meeting his co-writer and his current post-career activities. Beginning with an interest in body building and the art of wrestling, a young Dewey Robertson became more and more a 24/7 actor playing the role of The Missing Link, a mysterious and unpredictable actor on a colorful and ostentatious stage.

Anyone interested in making sense of the alphabet soup of wrestling federations and how the WWF/WWE rose from the din can benefit from Robertson’s travels between the federations and insider’s insight. Dewey spent more time out of the WWF/WWE than in it. In comparing the regional and organization differences to the various wrestling organizations there emerges a complete picture of the growth and development of theatrical, “predetermined” wrestling into a popular pastime.

Just as enlightening is Dewey’s frank discussion of his descent into substance and steroid abuse. Robertson does a fine balance in the telling and this becomes neither a tawdry tell-all or a preachy lesson. In so doing, the juicy bits come out in sufficient detail and the moral is clear. What is not clear, and would be a story worth telling is how it looked from the outside. Insights from his children (both sons would go into wrestling) and wife would be especially telling. Mrs. Peterson, especially, emerges as an unknown but pivotal elemental of this colorful life. As The Missing Link took his family from high living to low, from state to state, from home ownership to renting at nudist colonies, the matriarch kept everything together with or without money, with or without a present husband.

In the final summation of it, this is a tale of survival. Surviving self-destructive behavior and gaining self-knowledge, Dewey Robertson appears to be one of the lucky ones and his story takes us down a trail littered with the dead, the broken and the forgotten.

[My review that ran, among other places, on ink19.com]

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Review: The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia

The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

North Korean literature -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_K....

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Review: Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies

Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies by Julia Cherry Spruill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences by Michel Foucault
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Foucault argues that knowledge is not made through a gradual, continuous accumulation of truths, nor is it solely the product of individual geniuses. Instead, he proposes that knowledge is constructed through epistemes, which are underlying, unconscious structures of thought that shape what can be known and how it can be known in a particular historical period:

* Epistemes are historical and discontinuous: Foucault argues that different historical periods have distinct epistemes, and the shift from one to another is not a smooth progression but a radical break.
* Epistemes are unconscious and foundational: They are not explicitly articulated or even consciously recognized by those who live within them. Instead, they function as a deep, underlying framework.
* Knowledge is organized by specific discursive formations: Within each episteme, knowledge is organized into distinct "discursive formations." These are sets of rules and practices that govern how we talk about, categorize, and understand.
* The subject is not the origin of knowledge: Foucault challenges the traditional idea that knowledge originates from a rational, autonomous subject (like the Cartesian "I"). Instead, he argues that the subject itself is a product of the episteme. The very concept of "man" as a knower and an object of knowledge is, for Foucault, a specific invention of the modern episteme.
* Power is intertwined with knowledge: He suggests that the organization of knowledge through epistemes and discursive formations is not neutral or objective but is related to power relations in society. Certain ways of knowing become dominant and others are marginalized, shaping what is considered legitimate knowledge.
* Archaeology is the method for uncovering epistemes: Foucault proposes "archaeology" as a method for excavating the underlying structures of thought in different historical periods. This involves examining the "archive" of a period (its texts, practices, and institutions) to uncover the rules that govern the production of knowledge.

Foucault argues that knowledge is not discovered but constructed within specific historical frameworks that dictate its possibilities and limitations. This challenges us to question neutrality and universality of knowledge and to recognize the historical contingency of our own ways of knowing. Foucault argues that the way knowledge arises from comparison shifts fundamentally across different historical periods (epistemes). The principles and frameworks underlying comparison and its relationship to other forms of knowing change dramatically:

1. The Renaissance Episteme (circa 1500s):

Comparison is based on resemblance and similitude. Knowledge is built by finding resemblances, affinities, sympathies, and signatures between things in the world. Everything is connected through a web of interconnectedness based on how things look, or how they are signified. For example, the world (macrocosm) is reflected in the human (microcosm). Knowledge was gained by seeing these reflections and deciphering the signatures God had placed in the world.

The Four Similitudes: Primary forms of resemblance that structured knowledge in the Renaissance:
* Convenientia (adjacency, gradual shading of one thing into another)
* Aemulatio (reflection, mirroring without direct contact)
* Analogy (wider, more complex relationships of resemblance)
* Sympathy (drawing together or repelling of things)

Language is part of the world interwoven with the things it signifies. Words themselves carry resemblances and signatures.

2. The Classical Episteme (circa 17th, 18th centuries):

During this portion of the book, there are two fascinating deep dives into the Diego Velazquez 1656 painting "Las Meninas" (The Maids of Honour) and Don Quixote.

Comparison is based on identity and difference, leading to order and measurement. The emphasis shifts from a sprawling web of resemblances to a structured system of classification based on clear distinctions and measurable differences. Representation takes center stage. Language becomes a transparent tool for representing the world, aiming to create a perfect, ordered system of signs that accurately mirrors the structure of reality. Knowledge is organized through a general science of order based on:
Mathesis: The quantitative analysis of measurable differences, exemplified by algebra.
Taxinomia: The qualitative analysis of identities and differences, leading to systems of classification like Linnaeus's taxonomy.

Tables and grids replace webs. The world is no longer a network of similitudes but a table where things are placed according to their similarities and differences, creating a structured and ordered understanding. General grammar, natural history, and the analysis of wealth all exemplify this tabular approach of knowledge through analysis and decomposition. To understand something is to break it down into its constituent parts and see how it fits into the larger order.

Foucault argues that in the Classical age, similitude/resemblance is demoted. It's no longer seen as a fundamental principle of how the world works, as it was in the Renaissance. Instead, it becomes a basic, unrefined, almost primitive way of perceiving things – a starting point for knowledge, but not knowledge itself. True knowledge, in the Classical view, comes from establishing precise relationships of equality, order, and difference through analysis and measurement. However, Foucault also points out that resemblance remains an indispensable border of knowledge. It's the initial trigger that prompts us to compare things and start the process of analysis, even if it's ultimately superseded by more rigorous methods. In other words, it is the fundamental building block to knowledge, even if it is not knowledge.

Imagine you're sorting a big pile of LEGOs.

Renaissance view: The Renaissance thinkers would see the fact that two red bricks resemble each other as a fundamental truth about the world, a clue to a hidden connection or meaning. They believed resemblance revealed the underlying order.
Classical view: Classical thinkers would say, "Okay, those two red bricks look alike, but that's just a superficial observation. To truly understand them, we need to measure their size, count their studs, determine their exact shade of red, and see how they fit with other bricks. We need to analyze and classify them, not just say they look similar."
However, Foucault is also saying that you wouldn't even bother to analyze the bricks if they didn't look somewhat alike in the first place. Resemblance is what gets you to notice them and start asking questions. It's like the messy, intuitive feeling that things are related, before you figure out precisely how they're related through careful analysis.

The way we think about knowledge fundamentally changed between the Renaissance and the Classical age. Resemblance went from being a key to understanding the universe to a preliminary step in the process of acquiring knowledge through analysis and systematic ordering.

As for similitude, it is now a spent force, outside the realm of knowledge. It is merely empiricism in its most unrefined form; like Hobbes, one can no longer ‘regard it as being a part of philosophy’, unless it has first been erased in its inexact form of resemblance and transformed by knowledge into a relationship of equality or order. And yet similitude is still an indispensable border of knowledge. For no equality or relation of order can be established the order of things between two things unless their resemblance has at least occasioned their comparison. Hume placed the relation of identity among those ‘philosophical’ relations that presuppose reflection; whereas, for him, resemblance belonged to natural relations, to those that constrain our minds by means of an inevitable but ‘calm force’.

....

Let the philosopher pride himself on his precision as much as he will . . . I nevertheless dare defy him to make a single step in his progress without the aid of resemblance. Throw but one glance upon the metaphysical aspect of the sciences, even the least abstract of them, and then tell me whether the general inductions that are derived from particular facts, or rather the kinds themselves, the species and all abstract notions, can be formed otherwise than by means of resemblance.

At the border of knowledge, similitude is that barely sketched form, that rudimentary relation which knowledge must overlay to its full extent, but which continues, indefinitely, to reside below knowledge in the manner of a mute and ineffaceable necessity. As in the sixteenth century, resemblance and sign respond inevitably to one another, but in a new way. Whereas similitude once required a mark in order for its secret to be uncovered, it is now the undifferentiated, shifting, unstable base upon which knowledge can establish its relations, its measurements, and its identities. This results in a double reversal: first, because it is the sign – and with it the whole of discursive knowledge – that requires a basis of similitude, and, second, because it is no longer a question of making a previous content manifest to knowledge but of providing a content that will be able to offer a ground upon which forms of knowledge can be applied. Whereas in the sixteenth century resemblance was the fundamental relation of being to itself, and the hinge of the whole world, in the Classical age it is the simplest form in which what is to be known, and what is furthest from knowledge itself, appears. It is through resemblance that representation can be known, that is, compared with other representations that may be similar to it, analysed into elements (elements common to it and other representations), combined with those representations that may present partial identities, and finally laid out into an ordered table.

I recall Francis Bacon's "Idols of the Tribe" being biases and limitations inherent to human nature as a whole, while "Idols of the Market" represent errors in understanding that arise from the misuse of language and communication, particularly within social interactions and the "marketplace" of ideas; essentially, the limitations of language itself can distort our perception of reality.

The essential problem of Classical thought lay in the relations between name and order: how to discover a nomenclature that would be a taxonomy, or again, how to establish a system of signs that would be transparent to the continuity of being. What modem thought is to throw fundamentally into question is the relation of meaning with the form of truth and the form of being: in the firmament of our reflection there reigns a discourse - a perhaps inaccessible discourse - which would at the same time be an ontology and a semantics. Structural- ism is not a new method; it is the awakened and troubled consciousness of modern thought.

3. The Modern Episteme (beginning around the 19th century):

Comparison is complicated by historicity and the emergence of depth models. The idea of a static order gives way to an understanding of things as evolving and having a hidden internal structure that develops over time. Representation is questioned. Language is no longer seen as a transparent tool but as something with its own limitations and distortions. Foucault argues that "Man" as a unified subject of knowledge and object of study emerges in this period, becoming both the one who knows and the one who is known. This creates a circularity that makes knowledge problematic.
New fields of study arise: Biology (the internal organization of organisms and their evolution), philology (the historical development of languages), and economics (production and accumulation of wealth) exemplify the new focus on depth, history, and hidden structures.

Ever since discovering the Dewey Decimal System I have loved ideas of classification of knowledge and in general. That drew me to this book, which like all the Foucault I have ready is drenched in a largely impenetrable (to me) net of ideas and terms:

Let us call the totality of the learning and skills that enable one to make the signs speak and to discover their meaning, hermeneutics; let us call the totality of the learning and skills that enable one to distinguish the location of the signs, to define what constitutes them as signs, and to know how and by what laws they are linked, semiology: the sixteenth century superimposed hermeneutics and semiology in the form of similitude. To search for a meaning is to bring to light a resemblance. To search for the law governing signs is to discover the things that are alike. The grammar of beings is an exegesis of these things. And what the language they speak has to tell us is quite simply what the syntax is that binds them together. The nature of things, their coexistence, the way in which they are linked together and communicate is nothing other than their resemblance. And that resemblance is visible only in the network of signs that crosses the world from one end to the other. ‘Nature’ is trapped in the thin layer that holds semiology and hermeneutics one above the other; it is neither mysterious nor veiled, it offers itself to our cognition, which it sometimes leads astray, only in so far as this superimposition necessarily includes a slight degree of non-coincidence between the resemblances. As a result, the grid is less easy to see through; its transparency is clouded over from the very first. A dark space appears which must be made progressively clearer. That space is where ‘nature’ resides, and it is what one must attempt to know. Everything would be manifest and immediately knowable if the hermeneutics of resemblance and the semiology of signatures coincided without the slightest parallax. But because the similitudes that form the graphics of the world are one ‘cog’ out of alignment with those that form its discourse, knowledge and the infinite labour it involves find here the space that is proper to them: it is their task to weave their way across this distance, pursuing an endless zigzag course from resemblance to what resembles it.

Sometimes Foucault offers some plain and direct observation I am impressed by:

The two functions of money, as a common measure between commodities and as a substitute in the mechanism of exchange, are based upon its material reality.

However to fully grok the Modern Episteme aspect of formal economics exploration, I am expected to come into this with a base understanding of Ricardo versus Smith economic theory. Of course, I could put this down and get up to speed on that, but I plough on and pick up what I can with the knowledge I have. For this, I am rewarded by cameos of Nietzsche, seen as a key catalyst:

What is essential is that at the beginning of the nineteenth century a new arrangement of knowledge was constituted, which accommodated simultaneously the historicity of economics (in relation to the forms of production), the finitude of human existence (in relation to scarcity and labour), and the fulfilment of an end to History - whether in the form of an indefinite deceleration or in that of a radical reversal. History, anthropology, and the suspension of development are all linked together in accordance with a figure that defines one of the major networks of nineteenth-century thought.

...Nietzsche, at the end of the nineteenth century, made it glow into brightness again for the last time by setting fire to it.

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