June 1, 2006
Dr. Sanity points to the transcript of a Bernard Lewis talk on the cartoon controversy as not only orchestrated, but nonsensical under the law it invokes. And in service of other masters than just an Arab prophet. Tangling minds is not a holy or lifegiving enterprise.
Update:
Rich expansion of the arguments. Courtesy Relapsed Catholic
Danish cartoons generating the [deliberately scheduled] current crisis were originally part of a Danish newspaper's experiment resulting from an effort to recruit reluctant [ed.: Reluctant, huh?...] illustrators for a book on Mohammed, intended to "create understanding," gentle, multi-culti-toned, education for non-Muslims. The author "hoped Danish children would be in a better position to understand their Muslim counterparts."
Continue reading "Just to be Clear about Islamicist Outrage" »
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...?
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.
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.
March 16, 2005
Drawn back there by a link from a brand-new baby-steps super-senior blogger, we remember that the source of our recent blogging-for-the-brain post is Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide, two physicians in the State of Washington with a particular interest in what they call neurolearning, that is, brain-based learning and education involving learning differences and learning disabilities. Their rich website offers a dense set of references to studies in the neurology of learning.
The first post that caught our attention explains that problem-solving that is Aha! based (which they call "easy"), and that which surfaces after wrestling with a many-faceted problem (which they call "hard"), invoke two very different patterns of brain operation.
The first is, let us say, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple remembering someone from her youth or small village, and applying it by analogy to illuminate character in a mystery that comes to her attention.
The area that lights up is that dreamy area of the right temporal lobe that might access more personal knowledge and experience - or 'autobiographical' memory. It might be that right analogy or metaphor is struck, the pattern is recognized and... Aha! The problem is solved.
The second pattern typically arises in solving elaborate engineering or mathematical problems, those who tackle Fermat's theorems, for instance.
A picture from a mathematical calculating prodigy... requires huge areas of cortex, both sides of the brain, and conscious manipulation of lots of facts, relationship and data. It looks like you might expect for a heavy bit of number crunching.
There is a whiff here of "feminine" and "masculine," landmarks and vectors, the intuitive and the rational, instant grasp and the stamina for digging through irrelevance and ambiguity to a robust outcome. Problem-solving and brainstorming sessions should be assiduously balanced, or weighted for the nature of the problem being addressed, rather simply fitting the proclivities of a leader or consultant. It's probably also valuable to be trained and challenged in whichever type comes less naturally.
And for a blogger who enjoys the kinesthetics of the keyboard and the moving letters on the screen, there's confirmation in another of their observations, that the activity (and perhaps sociability) of computer games can stimulate children reluctant to fulfil writing assignments.
Our professional colleagues agree. Multi-media features would improve most law-office tasks of not-so-briefs or memoranda, lend a spring to the step along the corridor toward the long night of "therefore"s and citations.
February 25, 2005
...well, that's got to sting. Or at least it's supposed to.
But from our vantage, what's so dismissable? Improvisational hair, plentiful cosmetic assistance, independent opinions, provincial accent, theological bricoleur, toughing it out through disgrace and near-extinction, a bit boundary-impaired...Sounds pretty human to us, and no more ridiculous with additional education than a number of folks who, in different circumstances, might be a bit less glib'n'glossy, a little more grating.
Years ago, a columnist wrote in a national newspaper that contempt toward women per se would not have been demolished until a plump woman in ruffles named Arabella could plausibly rise to the executive ranks in a major corporation.
Then, Tammy Faye wisecracks might be funnier, without the sting.
Though Noonan's body language analysis is interesting, given the panache and attention to style that prevails these days.
Via Betsy Newmark.
Three discussions of differing values, "left" to "right" in America, sidestep some semantic confusion as to whether modern-day conservatives are mossy Tories, or ascribe to what, when Burke was writing, might be called "liberalism." What Ever, left, right, blue, red, purple-orange -- sometimes contrast clarifies thought.
Economist Arnold Kling refers to Nobel winner Robert William Fogel's compellingly-titled The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100 : Europe, America, and the Third World for measures of consumption. He notes that in 1875, food/clothing/shelter accounted for 74% of total consumption (including leisure). In 1995, they accounted for just 13%, leaving 87% for leisure/education/health. Is this related to the idea of a rising "happiness index"?
Jonathan Chait in The New Republic says contemporary American conservatives are not really practical, or receptive to evidence. In a Dostoyevskian thought experiment, he concludes that they, imprisoned by first principles, probably wouldn't change their minds if God Himself endorsed evidence to support liberal programs. Chait concludes that liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.
A Wall Street Journal article on the worldview of modern conservatives says:
...while Americans may complain about the daily struggle of their lives, they expect hardship on the path to a better life. It's the old biblical story of wandering in the wilderness in order to find the promised land...
What Americans will not tolerate is pessimism, defeatism and stagnation.
This last goaded one of our literary-form-preoccupied correspondents to a rare excitement.
In the heat of the 2004 election season, she wrote:
This tells us a lot about the stories that move us.
(1) The American Liberal (AL) story is about designing context and improving conditions, removing hardships (poverty, discrimination, oppression, etc.) from the public path, literally cleansing the environment of impediments (Contamination Motif frequently embedded here). Or, more frequent in civic myth, the hero helpfully removes obstacles from the weaker one's path. The melodramatic rescue of the damsel or the child (Lassie or Superman). Or, the children's story where the child finds the fallen infant squirrel and nurses it to health with a dolly's bottle, then has the best pet in the neighborhood and all the kids come to see.
(1-AL) may also introduce excitement by targeting, vanquishing, or unmasking the Bad Magician who is Messing Things Up and creating Bad Conditions for The People. Probably the closest vernacular to this is The Wizard of Oz, which I've always found to be a little bit creepy.
At its best, it's about bonding. Its method is taming stress, removing the need for individual heroism. I think the target feeling tone is tenderness and relief.
(2) The American Conservative (AC) story is about ennobling the struggle through the obstacles toward a morally-harmonious goal. Bonding is subsidiary to the task. It's the Hero's Journey, the willing traveler being initiated and alchemically changed en route by his engagement of the vicissitudes he encounters on the path. It's not about "they ought to provide" a poison-free environment, but about, oneself, taking on the ordering labor of the Augean Stables. To take on his task he must embrace his exceptionalism, face his demons, and put behind him his mother's hearth and the expectation of being taken care of. The target feeling tone is optimism, courage-in-challenge, ingenuity, and a different kind of relief: the fullness and wholesome pride (often shared and reciprocal among comrades) of completion. At least for today.
In this vein, the Hero will empower even the lowliest as his allies. He will bond to achieve the task and the path. But he will not give away his task's resources for some abstract idea of selflessness, except occasionally in the context of chivalry or noblesse oblige to children or the old. He will fight fiercely anyone who steals his provender, even if the bandit claims a noble purpose.
My subjective literary sense is that the Hero (2-AC) straddles and engages the whole range from the mundane to the transcendent; whereas the Helper/Rescuer (1-AL) is bound to one or the other [see i and ii below], often in rapid succession but without a rational link.Significantly, the foundational AL Big Myth of removing obstacles for the purpose of beneficent homeostasis is what arises in the religious context of the Hope for the Consummation of the Redemption of the World. The ancient contention is that the whole creation "groaneth and travaileth," but will be "delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." (St. Paul to the Romans 8:21-22). Satan, bound and burning. The Corrupter destroyed. All conditions green and uncontaminated.
It is not breaking news that a tendency to welfare statism is basically a substitute religious vision. But since the covertly religious narrative to which it jumps prematurely is the End One, the unfolding of the story is debilitated. It sidelines the narrative with something like the New Yorker cartoon of a mathematician. You've probably seen it. A blackboard is covered by abstruse formulae, and in the final brackets you read something like ...y/2 x (a) [and then a miracle happens]. I believe there's a caption, Could you be more specific?
How do you tell that story as a story? It's about a quivering oceanic feeling of hope and bliss and subjective filling-in of the unimaginable specifics. It's about "I have a [unspecified] Plan!" as Candidate Kerry explained. The story of (1-AL) can inhabit only the two discrete levels of the mundane or the archetypal, that is: (i) Anecdotes of "need" and "helping;" or (ii) Thrilling uncompromised pursuit of uncontaminated perfection, method and means of effectuation undetermined at this time.
The question faced by the polity is, what attitudes produce the finer narrative, and a finer experience of life?
She does go on and on.
Instapundit, and a faulty link at The Corner, along with our wide and wild acquaintanceship, brought us to this.
Update: The Conservative Philosopher lobs a compare-&-contrast pitch into this territory under the rubric of authority.
