G as in Good H as in Happy

Dilys Rouses, Peers Briefly Through the Woodlief Peephole

March 29, 2005

Sand in the Gears often helps in seeing the mind-boggling human variety of obsessions and practices in all times and at all places, here, with two small boys at a washbasin.  Parenthood seems instructive, when parents manage to escape the mixture of terror and boredom that must rule parts of it.

Dilys' lair is in reconstruction upheaval, The Vapors being suffered at most hours of the day and night.  Penance indeed. Greetings to all, little posting the next while (or the last while, for that matter.)

More Jane Austen

March 22, 2005

The 1995 film of Persuasion with Amanda Root and the magnificent, dashing, brave and dignified Ciarán Hinds hero underscores once again: the ordeal of every one of Austen's heroines could equally well be titled Patience.

A plausible metaphor for patience, especially as demonstrated in this performance, is the fierce lioness who sleeps, or works, or forages when she can do nothing else.  The motor idles, as if indefinitely, when there is no opportunity. Though she may die before that opportunity ventures into range, she can do nothing before time. Her energy coils economically while there is no meaningful meaty motion in the grass.

Anne is a motherless girl mis-advised by snobs to abandon her true love, and she is disdained by her oblivious, selfish, feckless fashionable aristocratic family. She lives quietly, dutifully, behind the scenes in terribly trying circumstances, declining and wasting away in sorrow and grief. But her lioness' heart leaps when the grass trembles at the step of Captain Wentworth. Anne Elliot sprints and springs when the opportunity is finally ripe. By the standards of her time, she throws herself at the suitor who had proposed, been rejected, and then gone away.

The penultimate scene, the end of grief, separation, and misadventure, is cinematic and eloquent.  A parade of carnival freaks and performers makes a cacophonous procession along a street in frivolous Bath.  Anne and Wentworth, in the resonant mostly-silent agreement reached after hope was almost gone, progress arm-in-arm along the sidewalk in the opposite direction from the carnival, toward a great empty beautiful Georgian crescent, sometimes regarded as the zenith of civilized architecture.

Whereas Pride and Prejudice brings the lovers together in a village church, toward a honeymoon and roles as respected gentry on a great and famous landed estate, Persuasion ends in the Seventh Arcanum of Tarot, where souls arrive at the hushed and hermetic field of irresistible destiny, leaving the wild clamor of the city far behind the gateless wall. Departure. Setting sail. Persuasion contemplates the future on another level, in another realm than the hearty mundane -- the warrior and his consort, absorbed in each other, conjoined outlines against the glowing horizon on the High Seas.

Jane Austen's favorite brother was a sailor. Her letters suggest she thought favorably of the pleasures enjoyed by wives of naval officers. The grass never parted meaningfully for her. There was no antelope for her cubs. But her sensibility patiently pauses, then springs, and its arc traces reverberating passion etched into the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour.

Her little effects shake the foundations at Chez Dilys. Multiply this times books and films and years and world-wide households, and you can hear the Lioness roaring in many volumes, enduring when lovers have become dusty skeletons.

Quine, Grammar, and Other Philosophy Wonk Reflections

March 21,2005

Right Reason is a kind of [capital-R] Right-thinking open pub table, where no punches are pulled, political correctness isn't even on the menu, and all the while so far the conversation is civil, if unbuttoned. A lot of the fun is in the comments, here, a Monty-Pythonesque minuet around a point of grammar/vocabulary in Beowulf, following on a discussion of the relative stability of the perceptual and theoretical and Quine's model of human knowledge.

Conversations at Chez Dilys sometimes circle nervously around the analytical philosopher W. V. O. Quine, fascinated in horror by his offhand doctrine regarding imaginary friends.

That they do not exist is the linchpin of his epistemology.  How to explain so Existocentric a monster here to our not-yet-extinct soft and suede-like Pink D. family...?

Is That Like Being Tired of London?

Journalists, if you're uncomfortable with the clamor on the Net, you're uncomfortable with democracy.

--Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate.

Via PressThink.

Brilliant, Positioned to Ask Hard and Basic Questions

Via Sunday's hop-skip-and-jump through Marginal Revolution...

We're in awe of what is revealed in the NYTimes profile of Roland Fryer, a sometime collaborator with Steven Levitt, and a fresh voice beyond the barren conceptual loopings that have bounded  America's coversations on race. Makes us proud of our attenuated antediluvian association with a great university, when it can keep its mind on its business.

He never wanted to score any sympathy points, nor did he want to give his colleagues the opportunity to dismiss him as a freak accident, an exception to the standard rules of academic success -- which might imply that Harvard is not a normative goal for a young black man in the first place. There is also the fact that Fryer's particular science places a high premium on avoiding the personal, the anecdotal. The data are what matter in economics, and the more ruthlessness that an economist can summon to make sense of the data, the more useful his findings will be.

May the principle of Veritas protect this young professor in his independence, honesty, enthusiasm, and breadth of feeling. Definitely not part of a problem.

Update: Stephen J. Dubner reports on the fallout

After I wrote about Roland Fryer, he was assailed by fellow black scholars for having underplayed the degree to which racism afflicts black Americans.

He says that he (Dubner) particularly enjoys writing about economists, since they like data at least as much as they like posturing.

Kenneth Minogue in The New Criterion

Excellent discussion late yesterday over at Jay Rosen's PressThink ("a weblog in an obscure corner of the publishing world." Heh.) on Journalism: Power without Responsibility, the article by Kenneth Minogue that is a liberal arts education on the attitudinal roots of modern journalism.

Jay's comments were clogged with 127 responses, so, well, our own lair is roomy, n'est ce pas?

So many intriguing comments, Robin's about entering the space of kairos at Eastern Orthodox services seems to tie in with Minogue's journalistic "culture of scepticism," one that exhibits a visible hatred of the readers' state of perhaps ignorant reverence, at least reverence for the conventional objects and subjects.  If the journalistic goal is to strip away the veil on the back story of hitherto admired subjects, perhaps subjects that are not evil, just imperfect or complex; and if that goal perceptibly informs the theory and policy, the result is experienced as systematic psychological humiliation. And yes, the audience that reveres, admires, or loves these things will be furious unless the vile truth is so horrible it must be exposed.

Paul L.'s comment about the relentless activism of press stories, the woven threads that "something must be done (or sustained)," and "on the national level" is also important. The purpose of those  exhortations is to deprive the reader of comfort, trust, and contentment, to stir him/her to action. This may seem a very good thing to the writer, who is already in motion and either cynically or sincerely agitated.  The reader not in fervent agreement with the journalist's POV may not welcome agitation on someone else's agenda,* unless, again, the stakes are high enough to justify his being poked with an insistent rhetorical stick. Many journalists feel they produce what readers "need to know." More readers read looking for what interests them or contributes to their needs hierarchy (Maslow). "Being informed" must, in that scheme, somehow contribute to physiology, safety, belonging, esteem, or -- at the rare peak -- self-actualization. But that study is another post.

We here loved the Minogue article, thought it described very well the sense and objections of readers for whom liberation into zipless coupling, drugs, rock&roll, and anti-conservative activism is not demonstrably the rainbow's end. Those not temperamentally inclined to sympathize can nonetheless mine it for its information at many levels, without having actually to talk to us at boring and infuriating [as I think our obduracy must be to you  : )  ] length.   

*We're reminded of a Ziggy cartoon, in which multiple rabbits are shaking our hero awake at dawn, shrieking in distress, "Get up RIGHT NOW! There are mealy bugs on the lettuce!"

That's how some of the activist demands sound to the opposite side of the aisle.

Update: Of course, we now remember, the culture of scepticism finds its flower in Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic of suspicion. The depth of the impact of the clash between the hermeneutic of suspicion, and the approach of trust and curiosity (which does not require gullibility) is explored in a particular context here. Method is not neutral.  It "tends;" it "leans;" it predisposes.

Rhetorically, these differences reflect the shifting of the burden of proof, a device intentionally imposed in the legal context, bleeding over under cover to mechanically determine the outcomes of discourse.

Update:  We notice Jay's association of Minogue with Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses, and suspect that the comparison is injudicious and perhaps unfair. We'd have to do some study, but don't want to swallow it whole.

Since Ortega said, As the masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence...this seems rather to tar Minogue with a serious anti-democratic brush, implying that the default attitude of suspicion is somehow more democratic than that of, perhaps, esteem for the processes of the polity.  No, preference for suspicion is the revolutionary mind-set, not the  stably democratic one, it is the perspective not of seamless change, but of overthrow and churn for its own sake.

Probably not a fair attribution, in our estimation, rather a lumping of "non-progressives" into a great disdainful mass.

Boots in the Shower

March 20, 2005

Contemporary cultural feast going on at Grant McCracken's Sage's Loggia (we sneak peeks on Sundays in Lent).

A sample meme is his fascination with the marketer's fascination with a sign from an old soccer clubhouse.

Perfect. “No boots in the shower” is going to appear on packaging. It may appear in advertising. It’s a phrase that captures the ambience of men’s sports: the hectoring tone of the club house, the sheer density of the male athlete, the inextinguishable need to spell out the obvious.

You could put 100 creatives in a room for a week and a half and not get something half as good, half as funny, half as unpredictable.

Plenitude, authenticity, mining atmospheric Real Life.  The less creepy side of Experience Marketing. Sounds like fun. No doubt it all will become ironically corrupted, but for the moment, it's a refreshing side trip against the Age's slide into Gnosticism.

If He Posted Every Day, Could It Be This Good?

Tony Woodlief is back on track, with a tale of fences, dogs, and small boys, one of whom, with Jack Benny timing, must ponder quite a while deciding whether he'd rather sacrifice a red ball, or Daddy, to a furry predator next door. Tony (his writing, we don't know him, but we think we do) is the purest example of Deep Real Feeling, funny without the tell-tale superior flourish.

His is not a cloistered virtue.

I read somewhere that most people are never more than eight feet from a spider. Spiders are ubiquitous and secretive. Suffering is like that, everywhere and hidden.

Sometimes we've been bitten, sometimes we're oblivious. It might be good, especially for Lent, to step carefully among the invisible spiders, offering gentle kindness to those who appear to be just fine.

I'm Afraid. Not.

March 19, 2005

We noticed last weekend in its coverage of the escaped prisoner in Atlanta that the New York Times originally glossed over the story of Ashley Smith, the Georgia woman who calmly prevailed as Brian Nichols held her hostage. Reflecting growing interest, articles appeared this week here, here, and here about the young widow who has fascinated the nation by her equanimity and confidence under such conditions. The Times likes to assign the power of the exchange to the sorrows of the past, or the book she was reading.

Charles Colson in The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) comments on her ordeal in somewhat more basic terms, and relates it to a similar story.

Twenty-three years ago, a young Texas woman whose story has dramatic parallels to Ashley Smith's, also learned the power of faith over fear when she entered into the suffering of a dangerous man. Margaret Mayfield was shopping at a San Antonio store when a gun-wielding man suddenly confronted her. "I'm the man who killed the woman at the restaurant last night," he announced, "and I'm going to kill you if you make one move."

Ms. Mayfield had just been abducted by mass murderer Stephen Peter Morin. Terrified, she began praying aloud. Instead of ordering her to drive away, Morin began to sob and talk about his unhappy childhood. Ms. Mayfield told him: "It's not coincidence you're here. God brought you to this car. You think the hell you're going through is bad; it's nothing compared to the hell you're going to. Even though you have committed some horrible things, God still loves you."

Morin forced Ms. Mayfield to start driving, and as she drove, she continued telling him about the love of Christ and began playing evangelistic tapes. Morin pulled off the road and began to pray. "Jesus, I am sorry for everything I have ever done. Please save me." Morin then picked up his pistol, opened the chamber and dumped the bullets into Ms. Mayfield's hands. "I knew I was witnessing a miracle," Ms. Mayfield would later say.

Morin decided to go to Fort Worth to meet with evangelist Kenneth Copeland, whose tapes Ms. Mayfield had played. When police picked him up hours later, Morin surrendered quietly. "This morning I would have got up and shot the gun," he told the officers. "But I met this lady today, and now I'm different."

During Morin's incarceration in Bexar County Jail, a Prison Fellowship volunteer picked up where Ms. Mayfield left off, witnessing to Morin until he was transferred elsewhere. Years later, as Morin was about to be executed for his crimes, his last words were: "Heavenly Father, I give thanks for...the time that we have been together....Allow your holy spirit to flow as I know your love has been showered upon me....Lord Jesus, I commit my soul to you, I praise you, and I thank you."

The Biblical injunction to "fear not"  is often taken to be part of, ho-hum, yeah, yeah, we know, there is cosmic good news and we don't need to be afraid. We brush it off, we think we know. Yet a brain scan randomly applied to the population, or a microphone at the inner monologue, would most often disclose a litany of regret, resentment, trouble-borrowing at high interest rates, rehearsing for an anticipated disastrous future, entertaining -- throwing a rent party for -- anxiety and distrust.

Unpacking "fear not" means first and foremost, a practiced and eventually successful campaign of self-awareness and intention, clearing out the clutter and dust of worry and smug predictions of disaster.

The stories of Margaret Mayfield and Stephen Morin, and of Ashley Smith and Brian Nichols, illustrate the truth of the message Pope John Paul II has preached for nearly three decades: Fear not.

In our experience here, this is not drooling Pollyanna-ism, cliche, or vague encouragement.  It is as intelligible and as possible as "walk one block east to the convenience store and buy a Coca-Cola." And far more rewarding.

These women knew to love, and knew how to love, and were free to love.  We firmly believe that if fear had gained the upper hand, it would have scuttled their enterprise.  And that it frequently does so for most of us. We are of the minority conviction that fear is not wholesome and natural. It is not realism. It is caricature and deception, a negative invocation against Hope, constraining our creativity and paralyzing our innovative, expansive, effective love and joy.

Kenneth Copeland, Mrs. Mayfield's mentor, is among the more interesting and substantial of the often-scorned public, including television, evangelists. Untutored and unconventional, he has nevertheless harvested and expounded astonishing practical insights via the sola scriptura culture, with, at times, a near-Kabbalistic depth, if you listen v-e-r-y carefully. Although tarred with the Prosperity Gospel label, his priority sermon topic for years has been

"Fear not. No exceptions."

Update: About Ashley Smith's own description of the events, in Peggy Noonan's column, Ann Althouse says

Maybe there are some pros who can feign such things, but I doubt it. It's even hard to imagine anyone telling the story in such beautiful sentences as those in the Smith transcript...

Ann is also gratified, as we were, to discover that Mrs. Smith has the prudence to have a lawyer to represent her and protect her interests.

Brain "Science," Fast and Furious

March 18, 2005

More information about what happens in people's brains around the give-and-take of financial decisions, adding on to the earlier discussion, both courtesy of participants of the Adrants Network.  This one is rougher and less ready, doesn't separate out relevant questions of sexual differences, correlation and caustion, definition of terms, more serious cavils.  Rightly, today's Wall Street Journal says (subscription, thus we quote liberally here), regarding this spate of studies, "user beware." Beware the "the illusion of explanatory depth," in the words of Frank Keil, a Yale University psychology professor.

It seems more and more evident that emotional and conceptual activity activates the brain in sophisticated and multivalent terms, and indeed the entire body-mind, in distinguishable and vivid fashion, and over time may well even shift neural structure and function. In the long term, As A Man Thinks, So Is He would not be a surprise to our accumulated common sense stretching back to the ancestors. In fact, the brain seems to treat thoughts as things:

Sometimes, to be sure, finding "where" solves a longstanding mystery. These have been among neuroimaging's greatest hits. For instance, brain scans show that when people conjure up a mental image (picture a giraffe), the same neuronal apparatus in the visual circuits becomes active as when you see a giraffe in the flesh. There had long been a debate over whether seeing in the mind's eye is really seeing; it is.

Psychology has been slower than some of the more practically-oriented advisory methods to capitalize on this universal access to the entire reality, "one little room, an everywhere," available in full to intention and focus. We remember, somewhere, a haunting anecdote of a Chinese emperor who comforted his homesick armies: "How can they be far when you can think of them?"

The Big Topic at Good&Happy is the connection of virtue to the many components of happiness, so we wonder whether and when there may be studies tracking virtuous activity, varieties of motives, self-control or intentional inhibition, in general the practices thought to form or define virtue.  A huge world of inquiry lies ahead. Many students of the matter seem dazzled by the blinking lights in the brain, having concluded that the phenomenon explains itself, a recurring misunderstanding based not in science, but in scientism, faith-based materialism masquerading as intellectual honesty.

When Broca's brain lights up, it may mean no more than that the subject is engaging his language skills, a phenomenon sometimes equally evident if you just listen.  When the amygdala chatters to the PET and fMRI neuroimaging apparatus, it may be no more esoteric than the red face of rage.

The only use of the science so far is descriptive, including describing the chemistry and electricity of inner states that were hitherto private. Nothing so far is really explanatory. The intrigue arises in making connections, measuring the response to images, matching an image that we know arouses in a certain fashion, with other images' arousal patterns. Usually to sell.  Perhaps later, to control.  Perhaps soon after that, to refashion. Already, we believe we can categorize neural strategies of amateurs and experts:

a chess grandmaster activates the region of the brain that stores memories, such as those of games he has played or studied. But in the brain of a neophyte the activity is over here, in a region that analyzes positions from scratch.

Beware, says Sharon Begley in the WSJ Science Journal, "the enchantment of the cognitive paparazzi." So far they are only one degree of technical proficiency removed from Restoration Drama's eavesdroppers behind the curtain. And may have mischief in mind. Measureable, perhaps, in their own excited amygdalas.

The explanations for such excitement must however be found elsewhere.    

[COLUMN ONE, March 18, 2005
Anatomy of Give and Take
Economic theory goes only so far in explaining why people buy, sell, save or trust. Scientists are looking inside the mind for answers.
By Robert Lee Hotz, LA Times Staff Writer
sometimes the current link disappears...]