David Maddock

Fajron Sentas Mi Interne, by Ulrich Matthias (A Review)

2023-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

This short novel is a coming of age story about an abused, alienated young man who attempts to find human connection through learning Esperanto and joining the Esperanto cultural movement. It was well-written, but alas, I am really too old these days to identify with the protagonist.

One aspect I appreciated: Manfred, starved of quality relationships, joins the Esperanto community because of its avowed emphasis on fostering intercommunication. He reasonably expects that here he will finally find people who will accept him and see him as worthy of intimacy. However, despite a few fleeting cases, by the end of the book he remains dejected and alone. The ideology on which he’d pinned his hopes had failed him. It’s a bummer ending for sure, but surprising given the movement’s propaganda.

The book has heavy confessional biography vibes so, lest you worry about Mr. Matthias’ mental health, know that he is apparently happily married to another Esperantist as of 2000 and is still prominent in the movement.

Suicide of the West, by James Burnham (A Review)

2022-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

Burnham’s dissection of liberal ideology is spot-on. However, his analysis of particular foreign and domestic policy is not so great, though this only constitutes maybe a third of the book and is not particularly important to his description of liberal ideology. The latter often makes good points in regard to liberal failings, but then asserts common conservative talking points on specific issues without the same level of rigor as applied to liberalism. This is much to his detriment and gives his would-be critics easy ammunition. I rather wish he had refrained, but 14 chapters in he clearly felt himself on a roll. So it goes.

On the whole, I think Burnham gives liberalism a little too much credit insofar as (I believe) it is more a symptom of the decline of Western hegemony than its primary cause. The Fourth Turning and Dalio’s Principles For Dealing With the Changing World Order fill in more of this picture from different perspectives. Nevertheless, a society can decline slowly or quickly. Burnham identifies and accurately characterizes a key component which, at its worst, has accelerated decline.

(For what it’s worth, I am neither a liberal nor a conservative; I am a crazy anarchist.)

A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe (A Review)

2020-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

A week or so ago I read Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year which is based on his uncle’s journal of the Black Plague in London in 1665. Yes, this was morbid and Yes, comparing it with present circumstances too closely is obviously hyperbolic. Yet, here are some things I found relevant:

Leaders knew about the plague in Holland in late ‘64 but didn’t prepare.
London operated as normal for weeks while numbers affected were small and manageable.
Safest to leave affected areas early for the country if you could afford it.
Infected people without symptoms were the cause of the spread because they did not social distance, self-quarantine, wear masks, etc. (This was also true once the plague got bad and people became apathetic.)
Extreme forced quarantines were hard to enforce and probably encouraged people to flee and thereby spread it more, particularly the asymptomatic ones.
Lots of misinformation peddled by quacks and charlatans, but also by community leaders.
Provisions were attainable so stockpiling was not “necessary,” but required interacting with people which often caused infection so those who stockpiled were better off.
Absolute heroic acts of kindness by many nurses and clergy to care for the sick, many of whom died themselves. Clergy who fled ruined their reputations and were run out of town if they returned afterwards.
Lots of unemployment which was handled well by private and gov’t charity during the crisis but stopped quickly once the disease receded. This caused a lot of extreme poverty in the immediate economic aftermath.
The infected had a good chance of survival if they had a bed in a pest-house, but once those got overwhelmed the death toll ballooned.
Once it was clear the plague was on the decline, people stopped preventative measures too early and it flared up again, causing the crisis to last longer and killing people who had protected themselves for months.

Digital Cash, by Finn Brunton (A Review)

2020-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

As this book unfolds, Brunton’s tone becomes increasingly filled with smug disdain for his subject until ultimately he is revealed to have been writing in bad faith. As with most effective strawman attacks, his narrative is built on kernels of truth that are amplified and distorted to serve the pre-determined conclusion. He avoids applying his own critical apparatus to the institutions and “cosmograms” of the status quo that his subject is fighting against.

He is fond of using the polemical trick of smearing a character with an irrelevant, unsubstantiated or misleading aside before describing their ideas in order to predispose the reader against them. He abuses all free-market or Austrian thinkers in this way including Hayek (supported Pinochet), Rothbard (“one-note ideologue, racist”), Mises (whose work is “eccentric, convoluted” and “a fantasy”), Milton Friedman (“responsible for some of the most extreme free market policies ever enacted” and also Pinochet apologist) to point out a few. (He associates “free market” with “fantasy” many times as well.) It would be like responding to Bernie Sanders’ critique of crony capitalism by saying “Sanders loved communist Russia, Castro, Chavez and many other terrible totalitarian regimes and therefore his critique is wrong.” Sanders liked all of those people, but that doesn’t mean crony capitalism doesn’t suck.

There is some value in Brunton’s collection and presentation of earlier attempts at creating alternative currencies and the precursor communities like the Extropians and cypherpunks, because there simply aren’t that many such books. However, one must take his interpretations with skepticism and use the book mainly as a guide to discover primary sources. Read the arguments these people made directly and come to your own conclusions about their validity.

Mythgard Movie Club, The Fifth Element

2019-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

My appearance on the Mythgard Movie Club episode featuring The Fifth Element.

The Composite Nature of Andreas

2019-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Today I officially became a published Anglo-Saxon scholar! An expanded version of my Master’s thesis was published in a special issue of Humanities focusing on philology.

Abstract

Scholars of the Old English poem Andreas have long debated its dating and authorship, as the poem shares affinities both with Beowulf and the signed poems of Cynewulf. Although this debate hinges on poetic style and other internal evidence, the stylistic uniformity of Andreas has not been suitably demonstrated. This paper investigates this question by examining the distribution of oral-formulaic data within the poem, which is then correlated to word frequency and orthographic profiles generated with lexomic techniques. The analysis identifies an earlier version of the poem, which has been expanded by a later poet.

Full Text

Mythgard Movie Club, Captive State

2019-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

My appearance on the Mythgard Movie Club episode featuring Captive State.

Mythgard Movie Club, Night of the Living Dead

2018-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

My appearance as a panelist on the Mythgard Movie Club episode on the Night of the Living Dead.

Chapter 1—My substitute for pistol and ball

2018-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

I adore this passage of the first chapter wherein Ishmael explains to us why he decided to go to sea. It resonates with me on several levels. First, I’ve worked as a software engineer in the hydrographic survey industry for the past dozen years and, believe me, nothing refreshes the mind dizzy from staring at computer screens for months than a beautiful summer day on the water doing field tests. Second, I can relate to the frame of mind Ishmael describes; I get such moods myself. For me, one antidote is to lose myself in books—reading them, cataloging them, browsing a bookstore or library stacks. Third, I’ll soon be setting sail on my own adventure into a new industry which is at least partly motivated by a desire to regain the upper hand of my hypos. It took a friend to point out this obvious fact to me.

Still, Ishmael asserts that there is something special about water in this. I can’t say I disagree. After all, I spent a lot of money to buy a second house in another state three hours away in order to sit on the porch and look at a lake. “Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.” But what do we contemplate according to Ishmael?—“the ungraspable phantom of life.” In other words, the basic argument underlying this soliloquy is that humans have an innate need to ponder the meaning of life by peering into the void. But like Narcissus, what we see reflected in that nameless expanse is ourselves. The “overwhelming idea of the great whale himself” is that void made manifest.

This passage also introduces many themes and motifs which will be explored throughout the novel—life as a play and man as actor, commerce and its effects on man and the environment, freewill and slavery. But the overwhelming concern is how one finds meaning in existence and the proper response to whatever one finds.

Surely all this is not without meaning.

We shall see, Ishmael.

Etymology and Extracts: An Overview

2018-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

“Call me Ishmael.” is one of the most iconic and well-known first sentences in English letters. And it is a lie.

Chapter 1 is a beautiful piece of writing and an evocative introduction to our narrator, but the true first line of Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale is:

The Pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now.

For the book begins not at Chapter 1, but with a short explication of the etymology of the word “whale” and a compilation of excerpts from other works that mention whales as prepared by a “pale usher” and “sub-sub-librarian.” Most readers, if they read them at all, don’t put much thought into the significance of these sections. The few that do might simply conclude that Melville is trying to situate his book within a grand or epic scope. While that may be true, I think there is more going on here.

The excerpts include bits and pieces from the King James Bible, Shakespeare, Latin classics, political treatises and legal texts, historical works, travelogues, folk songs and poetry. The only common thread at all is the mention of whales. Can it be that the point of all this is simply to observe that humans have noted the existence of whales throughout history?! Big deal!

Taking these sections seriously as part of the narrative means recognizing that they add an additional layer to the story. Each section has a short preamble explaining how its contents came to be. Are these in the voice of Ishmael, Melville, or someone else? However you answer, simply asking that question has the effect of imbuing the text with a “meta-ness” akin to that provided by J.R.R. Tolkien’s conceit of the Red Book of Westmarch for The Lord of the Rings. It tells the reader that in the universe of Moby-Dick, the narrative has had the effect on prior readers of pushing them to search their inherited stock of cultural wisdom for a coherent significance behind its symbols. But why? What is it about what we are about to read that evokes this feeling?

We are told that the Pale Usher “loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.” The poor Sub-Sub who compiled the extracts to be “entertaining” will nevertheless “forever go thankless” for his efforts. Like the dust that collects on the Usher’s old grammars, the extracts collect on the pages of this narrative to remind the reader not only of his mortality but of the futility of the effort to extract significance from the accumulated attempts to understand a thing. “Give it up, Sub-Subs!”

That is the mindset Melville wants the reader to have as he embarks.

A Year of Melville

2018-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve joked with a friend that if I were to ever seriously maintain a blog I would call it Loomings and fill it with rantings about one of my favorite books, Moby-Dick.

Well, today he pointed me to this interesting article with the following jibe:

If you are ever gonna start a Loomings blog, today is that day [ed. August 1st being Melville’s birthday]. In fact…if you want to do it right, you should start it as a daily blog and blog the next year until his 200th b-day.

I laughed, but goddamn him the idea has me intrigued! The sense of artificial urgency implied by those nice round numbers is keeping the wheels in my head turning. As it happens, I’ve recently made some life changes which will afford me some time to kill every day commuting by train anyway.

Now, if I were to do such a thing, what might the schedule look like? With 135 chapters (plus epilogue), one would have to average 2-3 chapters per week to cover the whole novel in a year. I would also like to take a closer look at the etymologies and extracts which I think few readers pay much attention to. There are 94 such items which implies a pace of 1-2 extracts per week. There is more than enough content here to fill a year of daily posts without even casting around for original ideas or timely news items…

Mythmoot V: The Composite Nature of Andreas video

2018-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

The nicely edited version of my Mythmoot talk is online.

Slides are here.

Mythgard Movie Club, Solo: A Star Wars Story

2018-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

My appearance as a panelist on the Mythgard Movie Club, episode 6 about Solo: A Star Wars Story.

John Perry Barlow Tribute

2018-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

John Perry Barlow passed this week. Most here probably know him as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, if they know of him at all.

I discovered him when I was in high school as a staunch defender of freedom on the internet. This short piece inspired me then and still does today. If you value the beautiful, transcendent anarchy that is the internet, then you owe a debt to Barlow for his tireless work defending it.

Barlow admonished those afraid of that anarchy: “You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits.”

Mythgard Movie Club, The Last Jedi

2018-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

My appearance on the Mythgard Movie Club episode featuring The Last Jedi.

Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis (A Review)

2017-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

This summer my wife and I took a cruise through Greece. When I travel I try to read quality books from the place I’m visiting to try to get a feel for the culture and its mindset. As is my wont, I bought some Greek books including Kazantzakis’ famous novel Zorba the Greek.

The novel follows the experiences of an idealistic intellectual as he moves to rural Crete to re-open a lignite mine with the help of an eccentric older man–the eponymous Zorba–who he meets in Piraeus on the way. Zorba is a “salt of the earth” type, an everyday philosopher king who makes it his mission to impart his hedonistic world view to our narrator. The plot of the lignite mine is little more than a backdrop for a series of philosophical discussions between the two men and vignettes of their interaction with the local rustics.

Although written earlier and through a different cultural lens, the book reminded me very much of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Both books glorify a certain disregard for traditional social responsibilities, idealize male relationships to a point bordering on homoeroticism, and dehumanize the feminine. But whereas On the Road is grounded in an ethos of American individualism, Zorba is mired in a Mediterranean nonchalance that I couldn’t help but find distasteful.

Now, I consider myself a lazy man, but my laziness is born out of a conviction that my actions matter and that therefore must not be wasted on undesirable activity. The Mediterranean view from which I recoil feels like the opposite: a fundamental belief that individual action is unimportant.

That said, Kazantzakis’ writing, which I enjoyed immensely even in English translation, is evocative of the Greek islands as a place with a rich, if flawed, cultural memory.

Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto, by Geoffrey Sutton (A Review)

2017-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

Years ago I stumbled upon the existence of Esperanto, an auxiliary language invented in the late 1880s to facilitate international communication. I was intrigued by its large body of original literature and tried to find out more. Upon seeing the size of this tome (and its price tag), I had to question just how curious about Esperanto I was. Lucky for me I took the plunge. Even luckier for you, Mondial now also sells an ebook version through Google Books at a huge discount. I’ve bought that too because it’s just that good.

Perhaps it’s a little ironic that the best reference on Esperanto literature is written in English, but I’m glad this is the case because it makes the topic accessible to those who don’t know Esperanto. For newcomers to the language, the typical ‘sales pitch’ focuses on ideological arguments like fostering international understanding, world peace, meeting new people, etc. a.k.a. the “internal idea.” Now, this may have been useful 100 years ago when it was created, but no more. In my opinion, there are two compelling reasons to learn Esperanto: First, to access its original literature which is largely untranslated into major languages. Second, to access literatures of smaller languages which are largely untranslated into major languages, but are very well represented in Esperanto. In these two areas, Esperanto is a veritable gold mine.

Now, here’s how you read this thing. First, if you are very new to Esperanto, jump down to Claude Piron’s section on the creative capabilities of the language. Second, read all the introductory material. Third, read the introductory section to each of the five literary periods. Lastly, read the sections on major authors and those writers who sounded interesting to you from what you’ve already learned. I would recommend starting with the ones Sutton mentions on page 18. Note that you can accomplish most of the above reading for free with the Google Preview feature. After the above (which probably amounts to 100 pages or so), you’ll be well-equipped to delve into the wonders of Esperanto literature. But, you’ll find yourself coming back to Sutton often to check up on a new writer you discovered, or to just open up to a random page, pick a name, and start reading.

Amuziĝu!

The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine (A Review)

2017-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

My parents were pastors so I grew up in a very religious household. Although I liked the scholarly nature of bible study, religious belief has never sat well with me. Although my early adulthood was just as steeped in Christian practices–my first two years of college were spent at a Christian school and I worked for five years in IT for the church–I became more and more aware of and confident in my agnostic intuitions and conclusions. It was at this time in my life when I began to seek out avowedly atheistic literature and Tom Paine’s The Age of Reason really resonated with me.

This book is not for people incapable of appreciating nuance. This statement is a somewhat contradictory assertion because Paine is not subtle. He pulls no punches in his critique of revealed religion. The nuance comes into play when you realize that Paine is a deist, not an atheist. At the base of his critique is not an unilateral rejection of the existence of God, but rather the conclusion that the scriptures of Judeo-Christian religion are seriously deficient and not divinely inspired.

I find his argument compelling and his approach of using the Bible as evidence against itself ingenious. However, I have three minor criticisms which I do not propose as a refutation. First, his rhetoric is too inflammatory. He makes it too easy for opponents to dismiss his argument by ignoring its substance and playing the victim to his barbs, just as moderns do today with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al. Hence my initial invocation of nuance.

Second, the work is uneven. Part 1 suffers from a lack of direct citation of the Bible which is supplied in Part 2. The reason for this is historical–the upheaval of the French Revolution pushed Paine to hurry its composition and publication. This makes Paine sound less evidence-based in Part 1 than he actually is and allows readers to sidestep the meat of his critique contained in Part 2. Sadly, The Age of Reason is often published with only Part 1–as it is in Penguin Classics’ Thomas Paine Reader. (I own that book and had to go out of my way to find a complete edition. Thanks Dover Publications!) It’s hard to blame Paine though since he wrote Part 1 during the Reign of Terror while fearing for his life, having no access to a Bible, and was arrested shortly after having written it. Keep in mind that while this work might seem atheistic today, at the time he was writing against the atheism of the French Revolution. It seems Paine was able to make enemies of both the atheistic revolutionaries and pious Christians simultaneously. A truly badass move.

Third, he makes some minor mistakes in his Biblical criticism. For example, Paine refers to all four gospel writers as being of the twelve disciples when in fact two (Mark & Luke) are only claimed to be friends of apostles. This isn’t important to Paine’s thesis since what Paine is attacking is their apostolic authority, which does apply to all four. It is unclear to me whether this is due to his own ignorance, the state of Biblical scholarship at the time, or some combination thereof (surely the former in the above example). These mistakes don’t invalidate his argument, but like my # 1 criticism, it gives opponents irrelevant things to point at while avoiding Paine’s larger points.

Although his rhetoric is often harsh, it is not mere mockery. In fact, his approach takes seriously the claims of divine revelation. He frames his case in the terms dictated by proponents of revealed religion. He points out passages that are contradictory or morally dubious not solely to mock them, but as evidence against the claim of divine origin. Many of these are addressed in one way or another in modern scholarship by source or textual critics. His interpretation of the book of Jonah as a meta-commentary on prophetic literature is an insightful one and shows that he’s not just anomaly hunting for sport.

The basis for Paine’s deism is natural theology which was a very defensible position in his day. In the 200 years since I think even this rather benign belief has become untenable. The problem of suffering has always been a thorn in the side of theism, but even more so with the advent of evolution since we are now aware just how necessary (and paradoxically pointless) suffering has been to the “creation” of life. This is why I am not a deist, although I am sympathetic to it.

The Loom of Language, by Frederick Bodmer (A Review)

2017-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

The first half of the 20^th century was a heady time for language learning and study. The field of philology (now commonly called historical linguistics) was at its zenith. Much of the evolution of the Proto-Indo European language family had been worked out. The hope that a world-wide auxiliary language, such as Esperanto, would be adopted internationally had not yet been utterly dashed by the two World Wars.

In this milieu, Frederick Bodmer published The Loom of Language, an erudite guide on how to study multiple languages efficiently. Bodmer was a professor of philology at MIT during this time. He was succeeded there in 1955 by Noam Chomsky, whose revolutionary ideas were responsible as much as anything for changing philology into what we think of as modern linguistics.

The book was edited by Bodmer’s friend Lancelot Hogben, a zoologist turned popular science writer and inventor of the auxiliary language Interglossa, and was part of a series of books entitled Primers for the Age of Plenty that also included volumes on mathematics, general science, and history. The science and history books are long out of print, but the mathematics book, Mathematics for the Million, remains available. (I, of course, own a copy and will review it eventually…)

There is so much great information in here that it requires repeat readings over several years, especially Part II. Consider this book a meta-manual for learning how to learn languages.

It is divided into four parts. Part I is a “natural history” of language. Part II covers the “hybrid heritage” of English as a language which straddles the Germanic and Romance branches of the Indo-European language tree. Part III covers language problems and planning movements. Part IV is a “language museum” of comparative vocabulary tables.

The most fascinating feature of this book is how it frames being a native English speaker as a positive, not a negative. While speaking English might be a disincentive to learn other languages, it can also be a great base to learn from due to its hybrid Germanic/Romantic vocabulary. As such, the book covers Swedish, Danish, Dutch, and German in the Teutonic track and French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian in the Romance track, not to mention plenty of discussion of parent languages like Latin and Old English.

The Loom of Language shares much information and spirit with The Seven Sieves. The latter is also very good, but Loom is more comprehensive and easier to find. There is even a scanned copy available on Archive.org.

As I said above, Part II is a treasure trove. Bodmer distills everything a student needs to know about sound correspondences, etc. to make connections across the outlined languages and accelerate learning. The only annoyance is that the huge tables in Part IV aren’t available online somewhere as spreadsheets (the book is almost a century old after all) so one could import them into a spaced repetition system like Anki for efficient learning. I typed these out as Google spreadsheets for my own use. I’ve made them available here: Romance Word List, Germanic Word List, and the Greek Roots List from the language museum. Importing into Anki or suchlike is pretty easy.

With the growth of the “polyglot” trend online, resources that purport to teach you how to learn languages quickly are increasingly common. Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis and Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner are two notable examples. However, few of these modern books come close to the rigor of Bodmer’s tome.

Defending the Undefendable, by Walter Block (A Review)

2017-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

I’m familiar with Walter Block from Mises Institute-sponsored lectures on their YouTube channel. I like him and agree with many of his arguments, which makes negatively reviewing this book something of an unpleasant chore.

For starters, the tone of this book reinforces every libertarian stereotype out there: brash, pedantically argumentative, overly-theoretical, and absolutist. Personally, I like these traits in people, but they are wholly counter-productive in the kind of “apology” literature that this book purports to be. Even when you agree with Block, he makes you want to argue the minutiae with him.

Second, he conflates a pragmatic legal argument with a moral argument. There is no need to define pimps, drug pushers, etc. as “heroes” to defend the legality of these actions and in fact attempting this alienates folks who agree on pragmatic grounds.

If Block insists on making the pedantic, semantically-narrow “moral hero” case, he should have done it at the end of the book in a dedicated chapter after he had done his best with the pragmatic approach. Ideally, he would have done so in an entirely separate book.

Third, he is overly reliant on deductive, a priori reasoning, occasionally making unsubstantiated assertions that he could easily back up with facts and figures but doesn’t bother.

Fourth, some of his arguments are just plain idiotic. I offer up the chapter defending litterbugs as exemplary. Block makes compelling arguments too, but his strongest ones can be found in other books that are not as incendiary and are therefore more likely to convince, like Economics in One Lesson.

Finally, the tone and word choice in some cases sounds vaguely racist to modern ears, despite the fact that he’s trying to make pro-minority arguments at the time. I’m willing to chalk this up to the fact that the book was originally written in 1976.

Regrettably, I can only recommend this book to Block’s ideological cohorts because he fails to frame his argument in a way that will actually convince people who are not already likely to agree.

Download the pdf for free from the Mises Institute.

Wheelock's Latin (7th edition), by Wheelock & LaFleur (A Review)

2017-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

I studied Latin formally for two semesters during my Masters program using the famous textbook Wheelock’s Latin. This textbook is the standard throughout universities in the US. But, I had studied Latin before on my own using various other methods. What follows is a summary of my thoughts on Wheelock and Latin pedagogy in general.

If Wheelock’s Latin were a basketball player, it’d be great at making foul shots, but utterly unable to dribble.

The good: Wheelock does a good job of teaching you Latin grammar.

The bad: it does a good job teaching you Latin grammar–and nothing else. This book teaches you to “read” Latin sentences like algebraic equations–break a contextless sentence into its component parts and solve for the subject, verb, etc. This approach goes against everything we know about how the brain acquires language.

When it does offer reading passages with some context, many are epigrams or poetry which feature tricky syntax. Not until you’ve completed the entire 40 chapters of grammar do you encounter more than one paragraph of contiguous, simple Latin prose. Each chapter ends with a rambling page or two about some ancient Latin graffiti–pages and pages wasted on what amounts to a few sentences that could have been dedicated to useful, graded reading passages. It also tries to insert as much unadapted Latin as possible, as early as possible. Because, you know, new Latin students should cut their teeth on Cicero just as ESL students do with Shakespeare…

Considering that the main thing one can do with Latin is read in it, any course intended for beginners should be focused on developing reading proficiency, but this is not the aim of this book. Wheelock teaches you to translate Latin into English with the aid of a dictionary. If that’s all you want, Wheelock is for you. If your goal is to have read at least one simple book–or even a short story–in Latin after a year of study, then this is not the book for you.

It’s not that this book is horrible, it is not. However, I think the approach is all wrong for “a book which provides both the roots and at least some literary fruits of a sound Latin experience for those who will have only a year or so of Latin in their entire educational career” (Preface). With this goal in mind, labeling the various uses of the ablative or subjunctive clause types would not be high on my list of importance. Ernest Blum outlines the why and how of a program that would address the scenario Wheelock intended to with his book.

Instead, I’d recommend Orberg’s Lingua Latina. It is written entirely in Latin (including grammar instruction) so you are reading from day 1 and naturally develop a feel for Latin word order, etc. It sounds like an all Latin text would be hard to use, but the author is very clever in how he puts everything together. The lessons form a continuous, and often humorous, narrative which is fun to read and re-read.

I’ve completed both courses and Lingua Latina is better by far. That said, Wheelock would be a good grammar review after completing Orberg.

The Reading Latin course by Cambridge University Press also looks very good but I haven’t done it (yet) so I can’t recommend it. I’d describe it as a middle ground between the Orberg and Wheelock methods.

The Discarded Image, by C.S. Lewis (A Review)

2017-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

A few general comments and then I will expound at length about my quibbles. First, this book is a phenomenal introduction to what Lewis calls the “Medieval Model”–the medieval world view. This should really be required reading before embarking on any study of the literature or history of that period.

Okay, now on to my quibbles. This book is not Christian apology dammit. It is really annoying to find this shelved in the religion section when it is more appropriately placed with literary criticism, philosophy, or history. Also, the latest Canto Classics cover makes no sense at all. Work gloves?! What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Finally, I have a lot to say about epistemology which is only tangentially related to the book’s content, although I think it has a lot to do with Lewis himself and the Inklings:

While Lewis does a fantastic job explaining the Model and dispelling common misconceptions about it, he occasionally takes his defense too far. Although he never explicitly does so, Lewis comes very close to asserting that different models that can explain the same phenomena (ie. have comparable explanatory power) are necessarily equivalent. This is a well-meaning but misguided approach, and if applied rigorously (as it regularly is in religious apologetics) often perverse. Occam’s Razor is one way to differentiate such models (ie. simpler is better). Lewis mentions Occam’s Razor early in the book and then fails utterly to apply it. Another way is by empirical verification. A third is by how much predictive power the model has. The model which replaced the Medieval Model is superior in all these criteria. Not only does Lewis not address these, he claims all models come before their evidence and that whatever the prevailing model is, evidence will be found to support it. This too is problematic because some models are demonstrably better at encouraging investigation into their validity than others. A model which eschews Occam and honors uninformed authority will accrete all manner of superfluity relative to one which honors Occam, for example. A model which makes testable predictions encourages its own verification more than one which depends on post-hoc rationalization of phenomena or arbitrary divine interventions. From this vantage point, it is obvious why Lewis yearns to draw the false equivalence and I praise him for keeping it to a minimum.

The false equivalence is also strange from Lewis’ own point of view. He (and Tolkien) talked a lot about True Myth. For them, Christianity is a myth that actually happened and all other myths were true insofar that they point to the Christian myth. In his own terms, the best myth was the one he thought was true. If we applied his mythological reasoning to the aforementioned models, we would have to conclude that the model which was most true was better. Other models were good insofar as they point to truth. This is all fine and dandy when one sticks to the mythological, but what happens when myths and their models must seriously compete on the basis of more than just their explanatory power? Lewis is not so eager to go there. And we all know why.

Humanism and the Mythic

2017-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

On the heels of my review of C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image and the concept of “True Myth” which I mentioned there, I’ve decided to post something I wrote a while back about secular humanism and myth. I doubt this will find much of an audience, but here it is anyway…

(There is a terminology problem that I am choosing to overlook: secularism, humanism, atheism, “science,” skepticism, materialism, etc.– these are related things, but not synonyms.)

There is a common view that secular humanism is not, and possibly cannot be, mythic or transcendent. I reject this on so many grounds, but I want to highlight one that I think is most convincing to fans of speculative fiction. Namely, that a focus on “objective reality” and empiricism is at odds with the mythic. The Inklings themselves, especially Lewis and Tolkien, expressed this view regularly and yet it is refuted on their own terms. Both of these writers talked at length about True Myth. What these men praised most about myth was that they believed it was true. This idea was the heart of Tolkien’s faith and is what converted CS Lewis, so I find it strange that critics of secular humanism poo-poo it on the basis that it can’t be mythic. If Christianity can be both true and mythic there is no reason why secular humanism can’t also be both true and mythic.

Since both these men found the mythic in all sorts of stories and beliefs in which they did not believe themselves, it seems clear to me that they saw “truthiness” and “mythicness” as at least partially independent variables. I would argue that for Tolkien at least, the mythic sprung from the Truth not the other way around. Although the story of CSL’s conversion is the reverse–he came to Truth through myth–I don’t think he would claim post-conversion that the truth claims of Christianity were false. In fact, his whole dissatisfaction with atheism stemmed from his myopic opinion of it as unmythic. From a secular perspective, CSL’s conversion is a tragic loss; he could’ve been a superlative mythic secular humanist under different circumstances. Like Tolkien and Lewis I believe that truth can be mythic, I simply disagree with them about what exactly is true!

In On Fairy-Stories Tolkien wrote that faerie (and myth more generally) offers the reader “recovery, escape, and consolation.” There is nothing about the truth of the secular humanist that rejects these qualities. On the contrary, secular humanism provides forms of recovery, escape, and consolation that are wholly unavailable through various theisms. Let me name a few: escape from the all-seeing eye of an omniscient deity, escape from eternal punishment for a temporal or inherited sin, recovery of our past suppressed by “divine” revelation, recovery of confidence in our own individual reasoning power, consolation that our successes belong to us as much as our failings, consolation in knowing that we choose our own meaning. I could go on.

Here are some True Myths of secular humanism: the interconnectedness of all life as revealed by evolutionary theory, the weirdness of quantum physics, the unfathomable size of the universe, the strange and beautiful cosmos as revealed by astronomy, the spontaneous order of economic exchange and political freedom, the amazing advance of medicine. All these and more exist thanks to secular humanism–either explicitly or as an underlying methodological assumption (in most cases humanity had to reject divine explanations to even get started)–and are thick with mythic potency. If it all seems mundane, it is because secular humanism has truly delivered the mythic goods. All the mythic hopes and prayers of the ages didn’t stop untold millions from dying of smallpox.

Tolkien argues that eucatastrophe–the “hope unlooked-for”–is “[the denial of] (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat.” I assert that he holds himself hostage to a “final defeat” that does not exist, fools himself that the hope is unlooked-for, and is mistaken about its source. Any individual death is neither universal nor final and to assert a horrible cosmic end is certain is to presume too much. Tolkien was right to praise the act of “fighting the long defeat” because it is our own actions which make hope, not God’s. On the contrary, believing that hope is independent of human action is a disincentive to act. If your hope rests in an entity independent of this world, you have no other choice than to look for it to show up. Eucatastrophe should be mundane in a theist world. Only under the random, indifferent universe of secular humanism can eucatastrophe be truly unlooked-for. The real problem for the theist is justifying God’s withholding of temporal hope and the existence of dyscatastrophe. Secular humanism has none of these problems (in what sense is the heat death of the universe a defeat?) and all the benefits. We need only to manifest eucatastrophe through our own actions.

Plato at the Googleplex, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (A Review)

2017-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Goldstein is trying to do three distinct things here. First, a general introduction to Plato. Second, a series of pastiche dialogues where her incarnation of Plato interacts with moderns. Third, a defense of philosophy as a discipline from modern scientist critics (mainly represented by Lawrence Krauss in the book). She does a serviceable job on all three, however I was not a huge fan of the conflation of them.

By far, the most engaging sections of the book are the nouveau dialogues. Plato encounters a Google programmer, thinly veiled versions of Amy Chua and Bill O’Reilly, an advice columnist, and neuroscientists. I can see why these were interleaved with explanatory chapters that get the reader up to speed on the relevant broad strokes of Greek philosophy beforehand. You simply can’t expect a modern reader to come prepared with that anymore.

However, this left little room for a decent defense of philosophy. The arguments relating to that position felt perfunctory and ill-addressed. Sometimes the dialogues were a fruitful refutation; at other times, they appear to justify the criticism that philosophy hasn’t made progress. While she covers how and why science depends or otherwise presupposes Platonism, she does not adequately address how Platonic thought has been used as a crutch by various theisms, pseudosciences, and political ideologies past and present. Perhaps this is “why philosophy won’t go away,” but it doesn’t speak to why philosophy shouldn’t go away–which is what I take her position to actually be. She didn’t really sell me on the latter–and I really wanted to be sold to…

Regarding the Audible audiobook narrated by Dennis Holland: Holland is a great voice talent. He does the dialogues very well. However, the mispronunciations were so annoying. Thales doesn’t rhyme with “tails.” The butchering of the Greek was the worst though and it was rampant. I blame the producers, not the voice talent. This is akin to a print book with misspellings everywhere. It doesn’t take that long to get reasonably close and when recording a book on Greek philosophy you should have acquainted yourself with the pronunciation of all the names you will be saying over and over.

How to Talk to Me About Religion

2017-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Of course, you’re free to talk about religion however you want. But, if you want to do it with me here are six tips that will insure it will be a pleasant experience for both of us.

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. — Ecc. 1:18

1. Your inner experience is not relevant

For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? — 1 Cor. 2:11

Your inner experience tells you X. My inner experience tells me Y. We are now at an impasse. How passionate you feel about X does not convince me; my passion about Y is equal to yours.

2. Truth is not a feeling

If something is true, it is true whether or not you believe it. If God exists, he exists in spite of atheists. If he does not exist, he does not exist in spite of your feeling that he does. “Feeling his presence” is just that, your feeling; see #1.

3. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

The simple believe everything, but the clever consider their steps. — Prov. 14:15

The more interventionist your version of God is, the better your evidence should be. The deistic God is easier to argue for than a God who intervenes in human affairs, contradicts physics and other scientific and historic evidence, performs miracles, etc. Don’t confuse arguments for the former with arguments for the latter. The more your God does, the more hard evidence you need to provide. When I know you believe in the typical interventionist God of Protestant Christianity, don’t pretend you are a Unitarian or a deist. If God exists, he’s more likely a Unitarian or a deist than a Lutheran or a Mormon. Why? Because the former make fewer absurd claims about him.

It helps if you demonstrate good critical thinking skills in other areas of life by, for instance, seeing through quack medicine, urban legends, and not remaining blithely ignorant of vast stores of scientific evidence relevant to your truth claims. If I see gaping holes in your judgment on the dangers of GMO food, for instance, why would I expect your judgment on a much more difficult metaphysical question to be any more reliable? (See the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 on this point.)

4. Be as open to accepting my view as you expect me to be to yours

The one who first states a case seems right, until the other comes and cross-examines. — Prov. 18:17

I have no particular desire to de-convert you, but unless you are willing to consider the possibility that I am, in fact, correct I am not interested in discussing religion with you. Like you, I’m pretty confident that I am right. I’m not a “seeker” or waiting around for God to “reveal himself” to me. This is not the way knowledge works. Even a cursory acquaintance with history shows how misguided divine revelation has been as a means to attain real, verifiable truths. Plenty of other people have a sincere belief that their divine revelation (which conflicts with yours) is the truth. On what grounds are they wrong and you are right? (Keep # 1-3 in mind as you answer.)

The way I see it practiced, most religious thought is a dishonest form of retroactive continuity (“ret-con”). That is, on any given topic you start with an answer (eg. Jesus) then you work backward from that answer to find a way to derive it from the existing assertions that you’ve already claimed are divinely revealed. In this way, a religious tradition is able to avoid ever being refuted. (For example, Judaism wasn’t wrong about God, it was “fulfilled” by Jesus.) Whenever humanity acquires real knowledge (from exploration, philosophical or scientific inquiry, etc.) it can go back and revise obsolete divine revelations in light of the new information. This kind of “revision” of religious theory is very different from how scientific theories change over time. Reinterpreting things as metaphorical or symbolic what were once claimed literal is a tell-tale sign of this strategy. No one would take seriously a scientist or historian who tried this. In the 19th century, some scientists thought they saw canals on Mars. When this was eventually shown not to be so, they didn’t reinterpret the canal theory as a metaphor for the interaction of sub-atomic particles and proclaim Percival Lowell a misunderstood prophet of quantum electrodynamics. The notion was simply discarded as an explanation that didn’t pan out and lives on only in science-fiction.

5. Be informed about your own religion

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. — Hos. 4:6

Judeo-Christian religions are heavily text-based. I expect you to have read and studied yours well. The longer you’ve been a believer, the better the command of their contents I demand you have. I will cite chapter and verse and I expect the same. If you cite a passage in support of a claim, I expect you to know and explain a passage elsewhere that contradicts it. The Bible is not a book, it is a collection of books written by different people in different places at different times with different conceptions of God. Sometimes they were actively disagreeing (eg. when Matthew and Luke revise Mark). Some things therein might be simply wrong. If you want to assert flat-out that there are no errors in the Bible or that all its books are trying to say the same thing, you have an uphill battle ahead of you. (This approach to Biblical interpretation smacks of ret-conning to me; See #4, paragraph 2.)

If you believe something that is not supported by the Bible or the doctrines of the religion you purport to follow, then admit what you are doing: inventing your own religion. I don’t have a problem with this, but realize that in so doing you are actually rejecting the very thing you are trying to justify. A divine revelation that needs to be periodically revised by subsequent revelations and/or re-interpreted by Man isn’t much of a revelation in the first place nor is it therefore the objective foundation of wisdom it is claimed to be.

The relevant events in your religion happened at certain times and places in certain cultures. Are you well acquainted with such context? Are you familiar with the scholarly consensus on the key aspects of your sacred texts and their history? Not just from fundamentalist scholars with whom you agree, but the wider community of scholarship including secular scholars. Because I am. I am usually in the process of reading such a book at all times. If I have more information on the subject than you, what do you expect to say that I will find worth considering?

6. I’ve read your books, have you read mine?

If one gives answer before hearing, it is folly and shame. — Prov. 18:13

I have studied the Bible and its history closely. I have fully participated in the religious tradition and culture of my upbringing. I have attended a Christian college, studied Koine Greek, and sought to learn the bulk of what is taught at any decent seminary. I have tried to see the issues from all sides, not just the one I was indoctrinated into, and my study has reflected this. In short, I have invested literally years of my life into the earnest investigation of the world view I inherited. Not just doing devotions and attending church—investigating with dedication the basis for my truth claims. You better be able to say the same. Have you read or studied any view that contradicts your own in any depth whatever?

What’s more, can you say the same about my books? If you know me, you know I value books very highly. I’ve read the books you value. (There are 66 in the Bible alone.) Can you even name a few books I value highly? If so, did you bother to read any? I named my first-born son after an author important to me. Have you read anything Ralph Waldo Emerson ever wrote? I’ve put in the work to understand your view and I’ve earned the right to comment on it. Can you say the same to me?

To this end, below are some suggestions of books that I can say fairly represent my thoughts on various things, grouped roughly in the genres that one finds in the Bible. Some of these are my personal favorites (marked with *), some are just good summaries. I look forward to having a truly reciprocal dialogue with you but I won’t come to you. You can come to me, and bring these six tips with you.

A suggested reading (and viewing) list

Bible: Secular OT Intro (Yale)‡; The New Testament, Ehrman; The Age of Reason, Paine
Origins, Pre-History: The Greatest Show on Earth, Dawkins; *Cosmos, Sagan‡; A Universe from Nothing, Krauss
Law: *Civil Disobedience, Thoreau; The Law, Bastiat; Free to Choose, Friedman‡
Wisdom: *The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Feynman‡; The Believing Brain, Shermer
Poetry: Leaves of Grass (1st edition)](http://amzn.to/2n9H7h7), Whitman; [The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
Prophecy: The Rational Optimist, Ridley; Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt; *Pale Blue Dot, Sagan
Epistle: Letter to a Christian Nation, Harris; Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell
Gospel:† *God’s Problem, Ehrman; Godless, Barker; Hope After Faith, DeWitt

† I’ve taken the liberty of using the term “gospel” in this context to denote narratives away from religion.

‡ Denotes video.

A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass (An Interpretation)

2017-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

In my last post I reviewed Gertrude Stein’s poetry collection, Tender Buttons. It is a collection of prose poems about mundane objects, but described in very obtuse ways. It is split into three sections: Objects, Food, and Rooms.

In this post, I want to do a close reading of the first poem in the book, “A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass,” to show what Stein is trying to do in this little book which I’ve dubbed “pointer hell.” Here is the text of the poem (which is now public domain by the way):

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

Whoa. If you’re anything like me, the first time you read that it sounded like word salad. But can we extract any meaning at all from it?

A carafe, that is a blind glass. Let’s start with the title and imagine this poem is the poetic equivalent of a still life piece of art. “A carafe” is pretty straightforward, that’s the object the poem is about, but what is a blind glass? Well, carafes are often made of glass and are like glasses which hold liquid. Perhaps it is “blind” because it is not transparent or it is filled with dark liquid, thus it cannot be seen though; it is “blind.” It is a kind of thing that is made in glass. It is a cousin because it is like a drinking glass, but different.

It is a spectacle because we are looking at the thing, but perhaps also because it is like the lens of a pair of eyeglasses (aka. spectacles). Light can pass through it and be distorted. But, it is nothing strange, just a regular old carafe.

Red wine inside the carafe could be the single hurt color. “Hurt” because it looks like blood or a purple bruise. The carafe is an arrangement in the sense that it was put there in a certain way.

Ok, here is where it gets really trippy: in a system to pointing. WTF?

Remember, this is a poem not a photograph like the one I’ve included above. This carafe the poem is discussing exists only in our mind’s eye. It was conjured up there by a series of words, by language. Language is the system that uses symbols to point at things and this carafe has been arranged within it to demonstrate the nature of language.

All this and not ordinary. When pondering the carafe in this way makes you notice the deeper nature of language it takes on all this meaning and thus is no longer just an ordinary object.

Not unordered in not resembling. When you see the object in this new way it seems different. It no longer “resembles” itself, but yet it still has order and meaning to it. Likewise, the poem might use words and syntax in an unconventional way, but this is not to say that they have no intended meaning behind them.

The difference is spreading. When you see the lesson of the poem, you start to notice it more… like the feeling you get by saying a common word over and over until it sounds foreign and weird. That feeling spreads throughout this collection like the refracted and distorted light through a blind glass, that is a carafe.

A Beautiful, Pointer Hell: Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein (A Review)

2017-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

I can’t blame anyone for hating this book and its pretension. Stein was down with the whole “meta” hipster, overly self-aware, pseudo-intellectual, ironically un-ironic mentality way before it was cool. Perhaps it is even fair to describe this book and the sort of art it represents as dead-end, navel-gazing, mental masturbation. 99% of this kind of thing is utter garbage and not worth your time. Tender Buttons is that other 1%.

Stein treads the line between sense and nonsense so delicately here that an earnest close reading gives you the vague sense that the meaning is just out of reach and if only your arm was a fraction longer you could get a grasp onto something tangible. Like a weak swimmer caught up by flood waters, you struggle to grab onto mossy rocks or slimy roots. Your leg smashes against something solid underwater, but you can’t see what. Gasping for air you are as likely as not to get a mouthful of water. A bloated indistinct carcass floats by, followed by what is likely a human turd. Eventually this feeling ends because either you read the last page or you’ve given up on the assumption that meaning exists in this book and stopped reading.

As a computer programmer, the best way I can describe this book is as what we call “pointer hell.” This is when a computer program’s collection of memory and pointers into that memory get all jumbled up and whatnot. Things get confusing fast, then your computer crashes.

This is what Stein is doing with language. You see, words are merely pointers to things, not the things themselves. And sometimes, words are pointers to other words which are pointers to things. And so on. Stein drains words of their typical meanings and associations, reassigns them according to her whims (some detectable, some not), and meditates on the resulting “arrangement in a system to pointing.”

I get whiffs of commentary on sex, societal norms, and the patriarchy herein, helped along no doubt by my existing knowledge of Stein’s biography, but the overarching theme of Tender Buttons is the meaning of reference itself and how one can go about speaking of the nature of reference using the tools of reference. “[T]ranslate more than translate the authority, show the choice.”

Read this book at Project Gutenberg. See original page scans of the first edition at Archive.org. If you’re looking for a physical copy, I recommend the Dover Publications edition.

In a follow-up post, I will discuss the first poem in this collection, “A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass.”

Nothing Gold Can Stay

2017-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

In this frosty winter weather I keep thinking back to last autumn when I visited Robert Frost’s house in Franconia, New Hampshire. The colorful trees wrapped you in warm reds and yellows. All was quiet and peaceful.

While he lived in this house, he wrote some of his most famous poems, including “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Fire and Ice.” These were included in a collection entitled New Hampshire published in 1923, which is probably what earned him the Nobel Prize the following year. But, the poem that keeps coming to my mind these days is “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Indeed, Mr. Frost. Indeed.

My All-Time Top 5 Books

2017-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Here are my personal top 5 favorite books in the order in which I discovered them.

1. Walden, Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

I discovered him in high school along with Ralph Waldo Emerson (after whom I named one of my kids). Both of these guys blew my mind then and still do. Of everything Transcendental I’ve read, Walden is the most accessible and practical and appeals to both my intellectual and emotional side. Someday I will write an essay entitled “Why I Am Not a Transcendentalist,” but I still derive much meaning and pleasure from their writings and lives.

2. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

I also discovered Tolkien in high school through The Hobbit. If it wasn’t for Lord of the Rings, then that book would be at this spot. The scope of Rings is so grand that it is not only an immersive masterpiece of fiction, but offers insight into so many areas of life: political philosophy, ethics, linguistics, literary theory, etc.

3. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!

Whenever I read that I want to stand up and shout “Yes! YES!” like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School. I should be memorizing passages of this book like Bible verses. To put it anachronistically, this is the atheistic, seafaring American Lord of the Rings written 100 years earlier. Like Ishmael:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

4. Leaves of Grass (1st Ed.), Walt Whitman

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

I specify the 1st edition because it is a single, unified work dating from the outset of Whitman’s career. More common is the “Deathbed” edition from the end of his life which is quite different (ie. more discursive and diluted). It was inspired by an essay of Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s and Whitman sent him a copy when it was first published. I love Whitman’s celebration of personal experience and individualism.

5. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.

Elizabeth Bennet is the best character in all of English literature. You know that “what if” game where you imagine dinner with a favorite fictional character, historical figure, etc.? Mine would be having ice cream in the park with Lizzie and making fun of people who walk by. I love Lizzie Bennet. Don’t tell my wife.

This book is flawless. The characters are the realest real people ever to be not really real. The plot is more or less cliche (at least to moderns who have lived in this novel’s wake), but the characters are so fully formed and the writing is so good that you believe that these characters are making their own actual choices and are not mere puppets in the hands of the writer with an agenda. Instead, these are real people who just so happened to live this perfectly cliched life.

What Dragonlance does better than Tolkien

2016-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

I was a Dragonlance fan as a kid well before I had even heard of Tolkien. While I appreciate Tolkien as an adult, even thinking back today I believe I would’ve still preferred Dragonlance in middle school. It is simply less pretentious. I have started re-reading the Chronicles trilogy (I’m into Dragons of Winter Night at the moment) and am aware how terrible the writing is. However, at the same time I am noticing that sometimes Dragonlance does something better than Tolkien.

The Dragonlance universe is a huge ripoff of Middle-Earth and many of its books are poorly written. Tolkien’s creation is vastly superior in a thousand ways. Let’s just get that out of the way up front. However, there are a handful of cases where Dragonlance outshines the master. Let me discuss a few:

1. The Portrayal of Magic

Tolkien’s magic is ill-defined, unhistorical, and hampered by his somber Christian piety. Dragonlance does it better. Its magic bears some resemblance to what real folk magic was actually like. It is a craft that human (or equivalent) beings practice to assert control over aspects of life they typically cannot control.

2. Paganism

Tolkien does us a disservice by co-opting much of the culture of pre-Christian Northern Europe and whitewashing their paganism. He tries to have his cake and eat it too by largely omitting religion while claiming his work is deeply orthodox Christian. I love the guy, but that is bullshit. Pre-historical England was pagan; Faerie tradition is fundamentally pagan. His monotheistic kludge sucks. Dragonlance does it better. It has a pantheon of gods. Clerics are assisted by them through prayers. The gods contend with each other. The magical system is related to pantheon.

3. More extensible

In A Secret Vice, Tolkien complained that artificial languages can suffer from “too many successive cooks”–a problem that I suspect he would also warn against in regards to large world-building projects. Certainly, Dragonlance has suffered this malady at times. However, Middle-Earth suffers from the opposite fate–no successive cooks. We are stuck retelling the same stories and digging up minutiae in Tolkien’s manuscripts. Lord of the Rings Online offers some hope in this area, but it is still rooted firmly in the existing narratives and is not the same medium. The canon is stagnant. To me, Middle-Earth has little hope of growing beyond what Tolkien gave us. Dragonlance does it better. Because it is not inextricably tied to its creators, it has expanded well beyond the period of the War of the Lance (to both past and future ages). The “open canon” model has its flaws, but navel-gazing pedantry isn’t one of them.

Saving the Appearances, by Owen Barfield (A Review)

2015-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you answer with a resounding “No!” then Barfield is your man. In fact, his first chapter is a restatement of this very cliche: he asserts that a rainbow only “exists” if it is being perceived by a conscious being.

He goes on to develop his idea of the evolution of consciousness, which goes something like this:

“reality” (whatever that is…) must be perceived in some way by a consciousness (when it is not, he calls it the “unrepresented” and, like Wittgenstein, passes over it in silence)
therefore, reality depends (partly?) on our consciousness (we create “representations” and “appearances” in our mind)
when we recognize this, we “participate”; when we don’t, the appearances become “idols”
history is the story of man “originally participating,” but over time his appearances become idols as he strengthens the me/other divide of what he perceives (his evidence, such as it is, is covered more fully in his prior two books History in English Words and Poetic Diction)
we need to recover this awareness of the connection of our consciousness to creating reality and participate again in full awareness (“final participation”)
Christ’s incarnation is a special event which heralds this transition

If you think the above is a clever bit of psychologizing but seriously flawed as a metaphysical theory, well Barfield says that’s just because you are an idolator. You are in thrall to the idols of the scientific revolution, which has destroyed participation altogether and offered nothing in return.

Barfield claims at the outset that “this is not a book about metaphysics” and then goes on to base his entire thesis on a dodgy metaphysics, having disposed himself of the necessity to justify his metaphysical assumptions. Let us grant him his entire system without the underlying metaphysics. Now ask, “why is participation better? What if a ~~falling tree~~ rainbow does make a ~~sound~~ sight?” In that case, non-participation is entirely valid, possibly superior.

There is a lot more I could critique (especially his attacks on science), but I will leave that for another day. I’ve already made some relevant points in my reviews of Poetic Diction and CSL’s The Discarded Image (the latter cites this book).

Nevertheless, this is a fascinating, challenging and stimulating book. Highly recommended for Inklings fans, theology nerds, and Christians duped by Deepak Chopra.

Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis (A Review)

2015-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

You know how Atlas Shrugged is basically an excuse to write the long-ass philosophical speeches by d’Anconia and Galt? That’s rather the case here. I think Lewis does a good job of imagining how the temptation of Eve might’ve actually gone down if, you know, it had actually ever happened, which it did not.

A friend of mine considers the Space Trilogy in the tradition of Verne/Wells-style sci-fi and I think he is certainly right. Still, I feel vaguely uneasy about using the word ‘science’ to describe them because they are based so fundamentally on Lewis’ religion as to be almost un-science-fiction.

Many Dimensions, by Charles Williams (A Review)

2015-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Having already read the two Charles Williams books that bracket Many Dimensions chronologically – War in Heaven and The Place of the Lion – I can see how this book sits along a continuum between them in terms of their ideas and the quality of the writing. As such, I rate Dimensions as a solid 3.5 stars. The Stone of Suleiman is a more coherent plot device than his Graal but still suffers from some consistency problems due to its physical nature that Williams’ avoids entirely in Lion by discarding the notion of a holy object altogether.

Many Dimensions is a misleading title. Despite a few musings about what is now known as the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, this novel isn’t about many dimensions at all. Instead, it is concerned with the four dimensions we all are aware of–space and time–and what the Law (capital L) that governs them is truly like. We might refer to this as the “Law of Nature,” but (for reasons I will discuss below) Williams prefers the term “Organic Law.” What exactly he means by this is often unclear, but it quickly transcends the legal context in which it is introduced (a main character is a judge who is writing a book on the evolution of human law over time) to apply to the metaphysical questions raised by the Stone.

Organic Law and the Stone

Here’s what we can glean from the text about Organic Law:

“[L]aw as a growing and developing habit of the human mind, with its corollary of the distinction between organic consciousness expressed in law and inorganic rules imposed from without” (42).

“[H]e defined law provisionally as ‘the formal expression of communal self-knowledge’ and had an excursus comparing the variations in law with the variations in poetic diction from age to age” (152)

“Arglay said […] the law of cause and effect isn’t really understood. Since whatever you do is bound to be justified, justification is produced.” (153)

[citing Bracton] “where the will rules and not the law is no king” (214) … “What did you do if you had decided to believe in God? […] you gave up your will to His.” (215)

[describing Arglay’s work] “attempting to formulate once more by the intellect the actions of men” (254)

The idea of legal norms being determined by the “poetic diction” of their age is a notion that appears to be borrowed from Owen Barfield’s books History in English Words and Poetic Diction. Both were published prior to Dimensions (1926 and 1928 respectively) and also introduce some of Barfield’s ideas about the evolution of consciousness that are fully fleshed out in his later work Saving the Appearances (1957). (I have only read History so far and so my understanding of Barfield’s later ideas may be incomplete or inaccurate.) In History, Barfield argues that the transition from organic to inorganic (ie. derived from consciousness or not) can be seen in the language used to describe the concept of the “laws of Nature.”

The ‘laws of Nature’ were conceived of by those who first spoke of them as present commands of God. It is noticeable that we still speak of Nature ‘obeying’ these laws, though we really think of them now rather as abstract principles–logical deductions of our own which we have arrived at by observation and experiment. (148-149)

For Barfield, this idea began as an organic one–the laws sprung from God’s will–and even the modern “inorganic” version is nevertheless an organic product of modern human minds. Barfield’s formulation begs the question: which is the cause and which is the effect? Did inorganic physical laws give rise to consciousness or does organic consciousness give rise to inorganic physical laws?

Regardless of whether the borrowing is intentional or accidental, Williams beats Barfield to the punchline with this book. In the world of Many Dimensions, the existence of the Stone demonstrates that consciousness governs Nature. The Stone itself contradicts physical law and these powers can be controlled by the will of its possessor. It is also shown to have a will of its own to which the truly pious should fully submit themselves.

Organic Law and Economics

As a formulation of “the actions of men” Organic Law is also an attempt at economics–the discipline that economist Ludwig von Mises called a science of human action. In this light, the idea that economic law changes over time depending on the varying self-knowledge of the human participants is a Marxist view that Mises rejected as incoherent. Mises argued that the premise that man employs means to the fulfillment of definite ends within the constraints of finite resources remains true.

However, Williams’ world contains the Stone of Suleimann–a source of infinite means. In Misesian terms it cannot be an economic good because it is not scarce: the Stone can be infinitely replicated. Nevertheless, all the business men in Williams’ story fail to realize these economic implications. (Perhaps they are all Keynesians!) The most foolish (Montague) expect to turn the Stone into a commodity to be sold. The less foolish (Sheldrake, et al) yet persist in thinking its use could be limited. The Stone is the ultimate example of Shumpeter’s creative destruction. It threatens not only to overturn the economic status quo as Sheldrake fears, but economics itself. A world in which everyone possesses a Stone has no limits of space or time or subjective valuation (since everyone can read minds) or possibly even material resources (it is unclear how much control over inanimate matter one has). Williams invites us to imagine a world in which human action would become impossible if Barfield’s premises are correct, but fails to conclude that they must therefore be wrong. Instead, Williams prefers the ridiculous scenario of a material world governed by consciousness that requires an abject disavowal of one’s consciousness. This conclusion would be enough to make me think that Williams was not intending to comment on economics if not for the disproportionate amount of time he spends discussing the economic implications of the Stone’s use.

I have to conclude that Williams simply had an overly narrow view of economic thought as greedy and materialistic. To be fair, many people think this. Sadly this is wrong. Economics is built on voluntary trade for mutual benefit and there is only one character who understands this: the Mayor of Rich. Knowing the healing powers of the Stone (which make no sense, by the way) which can be used without diminishing anyone in the process, he sees the moral imperative to use it to heal people. Williams tries to claim this use is morally equivalent to creative destruction but this is false; an unemployed union truck driver can find a new job in a non-travel industry if the Stone proliferates, but a blind man has no recourse to sight otherwise. Furthermore, any physical damage done by the creative destruction wrought by the Stone could immediately be healed by the Stone. Williams offers no cogent defense for denying the Stone to people it could heal. That is simply not something the “good guys” are the slightest bit concerned about. They are too busy worrying over the supposed blasphemy of dividing a Unity which upon division remains a Unity regardless to care about cancer patients. The only answer for the suffering that Williams has is that they should just resign themselves to being screwed over by the Unity. It is 1,000x more obscene to hoard the means to alleviate suffering on the grounds of piety.

As an ironic demonstration of why Barfieldian ideas and their theological implications are an attractive just-so story that is nevertheless wrong, this book really nails it. Unfortunately though, Williams is deadly serious.

More on Williams’ Witchcraft book

2015-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Sorina over at The Oddest Inkling tweeted a link to a great review of Charles Williams’ Witchcraft over at the Vintage Novels blog. I read and reviewed the book in May, but Vintage Novels’ review prompted me to further explain my reaction to the book which I’ve copied here for my own future reference.

I read Witchcraft back in May and while I appreciated Williams’ treatment of the subject, I found the case made for the existence of a continuous, coherent occult tradition extremely flimsy.

The early section on pre-Christian paganism and folk belief was solid as were the historically late sections on de Rais and La Voisin, but the threads connecting these are extremely tenuous and better explained as pious inventions that were emulated by psychopaths and hucksters rather than the other way around.

I found Williams’ credulity eye-rolling and ironic because it is the same credulity that the pious had throughout the period Williams discusses. That credulity imagined into existence the very thing it wanted to not exist–not just in the figures of one or two actual moral monsters like de Rais who took inspiration for their crimes from the lore built up over the centuries by believers, but in the undisputed fact that the vast majority of moral monsters documented in this book were people who killed and tortured in the name of anti-witchcraft belief.

While the comparison with modern witchhunts regarding sexual abuse is an apt one, it should be noted that the existence of deviant sexual behavior does not require an elaborate occult religious tradition (what Williams calls Goetia), the evidence for which is effectively non-existent. What is documented here is a religious tradition that builds up an elaborate occult mythology over time through legitimized trumped-up accusations and theological speculations. It is a bizarre reaction to remain credulous while reading case after case of people getting tortured and killed over extremely unlikely witchcraft practice only to get to de Rais hundreds of years later and point and shout “See! It IS real!”

It is not clear that witchcraft was a “great evil” that the Church had to address, although I concur that the Church did indeed make “grievous mistakes.” Among those mistakes is inadvertently inventing witchcraft and killing a whole lot of people over it. And it didn’t stop at Salem as Williams does–many lives were ruined in the 1980s and 90s “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic.

Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics, by C.S. Lewis (A Review)

2015-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

I quite enjoyed reading this little collection of early poems, although the poetry is merely decent bordering on bad. For instance, he uses the forced “the XXX green” (where XXX is a noun of something from Nature) about 10 times to end a rhyming line. Here’s the most cringe-worthy abuse of syntax: “His eyes stared into the eyes of me / And he kissed my hands of his courtesy.” The eyes of me, LOL.

There are some good passages though too. Here’s my favorite:

I lost my way in the pale starlight
And saw our planet, far and small,
Through endless depths of nothing fall
A lonely pin-prick spark of light,
Upon the wide, enfolding night,
With leagues on leagues of stars above it,
And powdered dust of stars below–

I like this passage because it reminds me to take CSL’s atheism at his word. CSL addresses God so many times in this work that one begins to suspect that he’s more theist than he cares to admit to himself. If you don’t believe God exists, then you shouldn’t be mad at him for being evil and cruel because he can’t be evil or cruel if he is non-existent. My interpretation is that at this stage of his life he is atheist intellectually, but theist emotionally. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. Nevertheless, it would be uncharitable to simply dismiss the young CSL as “not a real atheist,” as much as I would like to based on many of the confused ideas herein.

That’s the weirdest thing about this whole collection. It is coming on the heels of the horrors of the Great War, and yet Lewis blames a non-existent God for the cruel world rather than the humans who have demonstrably screwed it up. Likewise, he ascribes Beauty and value to “the escape” of his mythological contemplations but does not thereby acknowledge that this too is from Man if his premise of atheism is correct. If the young Lewis was confused about theism he was equally confused about atheism.

This collection is very much worth reading for Inklings fans. It provides first-hand insight into the musings of the atheist C.S. Lewis and the three-stage argument of the lyric cycle–from The Prison House of materialism to The Escape of faerie–is a fascinating early glimpse at the more mature ideas of the Inklings crew.

The ancient songs they wither as the grass
And waste as doth a garment waxen old,
All poets have been fools who thought to mould
A monument more durable than brass.

Archive.org has a scan of the book. You can find various HTML or ebook editions online, but the poetry formatting is generally crap.

Outlines of Romantic Theology, by Charles Williams (A Review)

2015-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

After reading several fiction works of Charles Williams that are clearly informed by his Romantic Theology (I’m thinking particularly of Shadows of Ecstasy and The Greater Trumps, but it can be detected in the love interest subplots of The Place Of The Lion and Many Dimensions and probably others), I determined to get this one under my belt for insight into exactly what he means by the mystical trappings of the romantic relationships portrayed in his novels.

It is tough and tedious reading, but has the benefit of being a relatively straight-forward explanation of the idea (for Williams standards at least). His summation reads:

The principles of Romantic Theology can be reduced to a single formula: which is, the identification of love with Jesus Christ, and of marriage with His life. This again may be reduced to a single word — Immanuel. Everything else is modification and illustration of this.

Oh! It is so clear now! :-D Let me unpack this… Immanuel means “God with us” in Hebrew, which Christians associate with Jesus, thanks to Matthew 1:23. So Williams is saying here that romantic love manifests Christ in some literal way and that the progression and development of that love mirrors his life. The Oddest Inkling blog does a great job explaining this further. Go there for the quick summary. I’ll discuss below my thoughts on the Theology.

If you are familiar with Christian theology (what are you doing here if you are not?!), then you notice he is alluding to the Incarnation above. He goes on:

To students who do not accept the doctrine of the Incarnation, the suggestions made will probably appear fanciful; it is at any rate certain, as a compensation, that to no Christian can they appear as anything but natural and probable, even if in the end they should have to be, for one cause or another, rejected.

I can’t speak for those who do accept the Incarnation (I do not), however I can confirm that it certainly appears fanciful to me. In fact, the whole theology appears like Christian post-hoc justification for non-Christian ideas on romantic love. Williams acknowledges that the Church has had an unsure relationship with romantic and sexual love since its inception.

In my opinion, this goes all the way back to Jesus himself. I am not implying that Jesus’ teachings were sexually repressive and whatnot; rather, I believe he was an apocalyptic prophet who was not concerned with long-term, earthly things. The Pauline writings carry this torch as well–see 1 Corinthians 7 on this point. Now there is a man setting down a convenient heuristic for the short-term–sex in marriage for the purpose of otherwise maintaining self control for those who would fail at celibacy. That’s a policy on sex that cares not at all for the long-term survival of the species. It was only after the disappointment of failed apocalypticism that the early Church began to look more kindly at marriage. Matrimony as a sacrament is a rather late development in Christianity. For that reason, Williams’ assertion that Romantic Theology is “natural and probable” is unfounded.

Williams does mean Love=Christ quite literally. Here’s some pull quotes about sexual intercourse to give you the flavor:

Intercourse between man and woman is, or at least is capable of being, in a remote but real sense, a symbol of the Crucifixion. There is no other human experience, except Death, which so enters into the life of the body; there is no other human experience which so binds the body to another being. […]

In that intercourse which is usually referred to as the consummation of marriage the presence of Love, that is, of Christ, is sacramentally imparted by each to the other. If this act is not capable of being a sacrament, then it is difficult to see in what way marriage itself is more sacramental than any other occupation; and its inclusion in that group of rites which have the Eucharist as their crown is undeserved.

Putting the creepiness of a ménage à trois with Jesus aside, he does have a fair point about Christianity here. Whether sexual repression is a flaw of Christianity (my view) or an unfortunate theological misunderstanding (Williams’ view), Williams is right to point out the importance of sex to the human experience and its power to create intimacy between individuals. But then, his theology does not strike me as particularly useful for cultivating intimacy and shared spiritual fulfillment with your partner. On the contrary, it seems to me more useful for extracting meaning from an otherwise dissatisfying relationship.

…which brings me to my feminist problems with the Theology. In theory the principles are applied both ways, but when he shows them in practice they are not. The women in his novels are simultaneously idealized as symbols of Christ and used as objects of veneration or as means for spiritual fulfillment. What’s more, these ideas are paired with his “submitted saint” trope wherein these women give themselves up to being used. It is a one-two punch that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Still, reverse the gender roles and I would reject this again. Self-immolation is not a virtue and all the mythologizing does not foster a healthy respect of your partner as an individual. If you are thinking about the Crucifixion while having sex with your spouse, I humbly submit to you that you are doing it wrong. Williams’ ideas on romantic love may not be perverted, but they are perverse.

Witchcraft, by Charles Williams (A Review)

2015-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

This succeeds as a sober but readable history of the phenomenon of witchcraft hysteria. Williams traces the development of the Christian ideas of the phenomenon as a reaction against paganism, folk medicine, and proto-scientific thinking while adopting a conscious agnosticism as to the existence of witches as defined by these ideas. Despite acknowledging the lack of evidence and all the other caveats one might consider, Williams ultimately concludes that where there is smoke there is fire. Two cases he offers as most representative are Gilles de Rais and La Voisin. Insofar as these are not rank hyperbole, they show very little of a real tradition of witchcraft. If anything, they show an attempt by the mentally unstable to live up to an invented mythos–the 80s death metal of the Middle Ages.

What the book shows is a systematic building up of bullshit that feeds on itself in the same way that stories of alien abductions do today. Only someone like Charles “I Want to Believe” Williams could take such a reasoned look at the evidence and conclude that the likelihood of the existence of real witchcraft was ever probable. He concludes:

If ever the image of the Way of Perversion of Images came into common human sight, outside the Rites of the Way, it was before the crowds of serious Christians who watched a child, at the instance of pious and intelligent men, scourged three times round the stake where its mother was burned.

Indeed! And we actually have copious evidence that this actually did happen. There is no doubt about that point.

George Soros May Face a Monster Tax Bill

2015-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

It is hard not to feel a little bit gleeful when the tax hypocrisy of guys like Soros is exposed. Don’t get me wrong, I support tax avoidance that does not break the law. Criticizing the rich for legally avoiding taxes is the political left’s slut-shaming equivalent. That said, rich guys who shed crocodile tears over the supposed injustice of their low tax rates while simultaneously going out of their way to exploit it are assholes.

Giving away your fortune at the end of your life is not the same as having paid high taxes all your life. It is not atonement; it is self-refutation. If you believe in high taxes, then pay high taxes.

“But doing that only makes sense if all rich people do it,” says the apologist. Such apologists are usually not rich and not economically aware. These men know better. They know the opportunity cost of paying now exceeds the value of the goods & services the government would provide with their tax revenue. Otherwise, it would make sense for them to pay extra tax unilaterally and demonstrate it.

The implication then is that the value of the goods & services would be higher per dollar of tax with a greater total sum of tax revenue, but is this a reasonable assumption? No! More money doesn’t suddenly make the government more eager to be efficient. In fact, the law of marginal utility tells us that the value to the government of each additional tax dollar is necessarily less, not more. Is there some new service that can only be implemented with a minimum amount of tax that exceeds current revenue? Not likely, since the government has no qualms running a monstrous deficit already.

No, even now these guys believe that they can put their money to better use via private charity than through those services funded by taxes. And you know what? They are right! Their laments over lenient tax law only make sense if they also harbor the opinion that they are morally superior to others who they must believe manage their fortunes so poorly as to provide less value to society than infamously inefficient tax-funded goods and services do. Maybe they are also right in that regard. Or maybe they are being elitist pricks.

Typology and Tolkien

2015-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

In a prior post I alluded to a question I asked in a class on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien that the instructor dodged because it was religious in nature. The instructor encouraged us to view the themes and motifs that recur in Tolkien’s work over time in typological terms. My question was:

Much typology in the New Testament is “reverse engineered” from the OT by its authors (if you will excuse the term). In your examples, most seemed ascribed either to intention of a character (eg. Aragorn) or just generally from Tolkien himself in narration (eg. Theoden’s ride). How much of his use of typology might we attribute to the meta-framework? In other words, did Tolkien intend this to be the result of Bilbo, Frodo, and scribes of Gondor in the 4th age re-interpreting and harmonizing old lore and new history like the gospel writers did?

While he was okay having a generally theological discussion about the concept of typology, he was not okay with discussing the idea that typologic parallels exist because later authors consciously borrow from older authors. The former has a religious component; the latter does not. As an atheist, I am expected to have a civil discussion of the former, but apparently the latter is off limits because the lack of supernaturalism might offend a theist? I think this difference is of critical importance if we want to apply the concept of typology to Tolkien’s writings, but he “didn’t want to get into that” for reasons left unstated.

In Christian terms, typology refers to events in the Old Testament being “types” that are foreshadowings of events in the New Testament. For example, Jonah being swallowed and spit up by a fish is akin to Jesus’ resurrection. There are a million examples. They are the sort of thing that is easy to find in hindsight with a sympathetic eye. As I recall, I first learned the term in Bible college in discussion of the protoevangelium—a passage in Genesis that supposedly refers to Jesus. I remember thinking (and still think) that this crock of shit is a great litmus test for gullibility. If you find the argument convincing, then you are a credulous fool.

These foreshadowings are portrayed by believers as great proofs of divine manipulation in history, evidence of fulfilled prophecy. Rarely do they rise beyond the level of mildly interesting coincidence and when they do it is obvious that the later writer is ripping off a well-known text. It should come as no surprise to us that the author of Matthew portrays Jesus as a new Moses, nor does it require some profound theological explanation.

The origin of the typological phenomena bears directly on the question of eucatastrophe in Tolkien’s writings—a concept he develops at length in On Fairy-Stories. We know that Tolkien was a Christian and anachronistically read the resurrection into all kinds of myths—he explicitly says so in the epilogue of On Fairy-Stories. It is ironic that he defines eucatastophe as “a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur” and yet we manage to find it recurring enough to create a term for it and reinterpret an entire corpus of religious texts as mere typological signposts to Jesus. But I digress… The implication here is that typological parallels between Silmarillion events and Hobbit/LoTR events can be interpreted as pointers to a divine plan culminating in a Middle Earth Jesus that hadn’t arrived yet.

However, Tolkien was also a rabid creator of frame stories. We have a whole meta-scribal history of the Red Book of Westmarch to consider, not to mention the conceits of the handing down of the Quenta Silmarillion, actual manuscript history of the Book of Lost Tales, or time traveling ideas explored in The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers. There is plenty of room here to imagine that the “received” texts Tolkien published were elaborated by Middle Earth scribes over the generations, the events and storytelling shaped by lore the scribes themselves received. Rather than being of divine origin, the typology is due to Middle Earth scribal practices and authorial license, in the same way that Matthew’s Old Testament allusions are due to him intentionally alluding to the Old Testament.

Anyway, both explanations have some explanatory power given what we know about Tolkien. Both are likely to have some element of truth to them. However, in either case—and in any discussion of the phenomena of typology—the question of what is the generating force of the phenomena in the secondary world has important implications that should not be overlooked.

When a teacher plays 'gotcha': A case study with an Easter theme

2015-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

I recently tried re-reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in Spanish. I couldn’t make it past chapter three because I got bored and was too aware that the plot suffers the deeper one reads. However, reading the first two chapters in a foreign language reminded me just how fantastic those two chapters are. (Re-reading something in a different language is as close as you can get to the experience of reading something for the first time.)

Anyway, this reminded me of an incident a few years ago in a class I took online that included this book on the syllabus. And since today is Easter—the holiday commemorating the event that this book allegorizes—this is a doubly appropriate time to share it.

After the course lecture on Wardrobe we had the opportunity to send in questions and comments which might be addressed in the final wrap-up lecture. I sent in the following:

Why a table and not a totem pole? Beyond being a convenient landmark for meetups, the table seems to have no special utility to Narnians. Yet it is a curiously convenient object for performing sacrifices. When it breaks it reminds us of the temple veil from the New Testament story which explicitly was being used for sacrifices in Jesus’ day. Why does Narnia have a conspicuous ancient sacrificial altar out in a field somewhere that no one sacrifices on? If this is supposed to imply the “Deeper Magic” is fated, why no foreshadowing within the Narnian world? This strikes me as a glaring signpost that CSL is more concerned with message over story.

This is in regards to the stone table on which Aslan is sacrificed by the White Witch. It has always annoyed me how contrived this whole aspect of the book is. It reeks of wholesale transplantation of Christian theology. In class, the prior lecture had discussed the degree to which CSL consciously borrowed from Christianity. One relevant datum was CSL’s description of the genesis of the idea in Of Other Worlds, wherein he says that the story began with a mental picture of the faun holding an umbrella, “then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it.” Notice what is missing from CSL’s explanation: a stone table. Incidentally, in my opinion the best part of the book is that original bit derived from his mental picture–before he began consciously tinkering with it…

So anyway, the lecturer did use my question in class. He explained that there were several similar questions and he had chosen mine as representative. Then he spent several minutes good-naturedly chastizing me for overlooking a single relevant passage in Chapter 13. When the White Witch decides to sacrifice Edmund she says:

“I would like to have done it on the Stone Table itself,” said the Witch. “That is the proper place. That is where it had always been done before.”

I felt quite embarrassed by this because he was nominally correct. I had overlooked this passage. On the other hand, his long-winded response did not address the substance of my comment. Did these throw-away lines really adequately rebut the assertion that the Stone Table was not logically integrated into the Narnian mythos? I thought (and still think) not. I also felt (perhaps unfairly to him) that he had cherry-picked my version of the question because of this noted flaw. Otherwise, he might have addressed the substance rather than the technicality.

At any rate, because of the nature of the online interface (the instructor is broadcasting video & audio, but students can only type text directly to the instructor who may or may not notice), I did not feel capable to respond. In a typical classroom, it would be easy for me to interrupt and clarify or amend my question as necessary to facilitate real dialog. Instead, I felt that I had blundered into a rhetorical trap, without ability to confute, and with the knowledge that the poor presentation of my view would be disseminated indefinitely. Obviously, this bothered me so much that I still think about it three years later.

[Update: It has been pointed out to me that the above is poorly stated. My intent was not to ascribe intention but to explain how I felt from my point of view—a distinction I obviously failed to communicate. Certainly the lecturer deserves not only the benefit of the doubt on this point, but my explicit statement that in my experience he is not the sort of person who would intentionally make a student feel that way, which is why this post has now been edited to remove identifying information.]

That is where it had always been done before.

Contrary to the lecturer’s contention, this little passage solves nothing at all. Granted, it does contradict my snark that the Stone Table was unused–we learn that it has been used to sacrifice traitors before. Ok, so what? It explains nothing while heaping on loads of additional questions. Go ahead and transfer all of my comments in regards to Edmund’s/Aslan’s sacrifice to the earlier (unknown) sacrificial victims. Who were those victims? Why didn’t Aslan save them like he did Edmund? Why have a convoluted “traitor clause” as the world’s foundational law? None of this is explained here or in the creation myth in The Magician’s Nephew.

In fact, there are no satifying answers to these questions because CSL borrowed these ideas wholesale from Christianity where people have been dissatisfied with the proposed solutions since Jesus’ death. Why would the Emperor Beyond the Sea make such a dumbass law? Why intervene now for Edmund and not earlier for the poor bastards already sacrificed? The story only makes any sense if you already know the Christian dogma and don’t ask the questions you know you shouldn’t ask in Sunday school.

If he thought my question was out of bounds because it touched on religious themes (odd for a CSL course, but understandable), then he should have just said that (which he did on a different occasion which I might blog about another time). If it was in-bounds, then I think my point was unfairly dodged.

Engineering and the liberal arts

2015-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

How can I make my future engineering education more well rounded, with regards to the liberal arts?

Why should it be? An engineering education should teach you engineering. The whole point of primary and secondary school is to lay down a liberal arts base that you can build on yourself for the rest of your life. You can take it from here. If a future humanities major asked me how to make their education more scientifically well rounded, I’d give them the same advice. (Consider yourself lucky. It is harder to self-study university-level science or math than it is literature, philosophy, or history, although it is certainly possible.) The roundedness of your education is your own personal responsibility and depends on how much you polish the edges on your own time.

Check out the book “How to Read a Book,” by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. It is a handy guide to doing this. It has an appendix with a decent reading list. Pick something and start reading.

AARP outclasses Rolling Stone on Bob Dylan

2015-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

A Facebook friend liked this article from Rolling Stone which reports on this AARP interview with Bob Dylan. The Stone lede caught my eye because it focused on something economically naive that Dylan said. Well, surprise surprise, Stone is terrible at journalism.

The economic comments are off-the-cuff and come at the bottom of the last page of an interview entirely devoted to music. Even Dylan expresses how much he enjoyed the interview because it focused on music:

I found the questions really interesting. The last time I did an interview, the guy wanted to know about everything except the music. People have been doing that to me since the ’60s — they ask questions like they would ask a medical doctor or a psychiatrist or a professor or a politician. Why? Why are you asking me these things?

So… the supposedly premier music publication entirely ignores everything said about music to report on the economically illiterate thing the celebrity blurted out in passing. That is idiotic. Apparently, AARP The Magazine is now the go-to publication for real music journalism.

Bob Dylan is a musical genius. I care a lot about what he says about music. However, his opinion on economic development in urban areas means nothing to me. It is especially sad when I happen to hear it and realize how lazily considered it is. Rolling Stone reports this as if he’s worth listening to on the matter and he clearly isn’t.

For the record, Dylan is correct when he says that it is private industry, not government, that creates jobs. However, he is wrong when he criticizes “big billionaires” for failing to do it. Government policies make doing so economically unviable. Why criticize one and excuse the other?

Dylan again:

We see crime and inner cities exploding with people who have nothing to do, turning to drink and drugs. They could all have work created for them by all these hotshot billionaires. […] There are good people there, but they’ve been oppressed by lack of work. Those people can all be working at something.

I agree, so how about we stop pretending the lack of work is all the fault of greedy businessmen? “Work created for them”–what patronizing drivel stuck in the 1920’s. Secondly, let’s not forget that instead of “turning to drink and drugs” they can turn to all sorts of positive actions that don’t require bailouts from greedy rich people, like self-education, locally-organized civic groups, neighborhood watch, etc.

Poetic Diction, by Owen Barfield (A Review)

2015-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

This is a difficult book to review. Its arguments are complex, broad in scope and application, and ironically reductive. On the face of it, it is a meditation on a line from Emerson–“Language is fossil poetry” (from “The Poet”)–that is taken so far to the extreme that it breaks.

Most of what I have to say is criticism of Barfield which might give the impression that I hated the book. In fact, I quite liked it. The ideas have great appeal. The real shame is that he overreaches so far that I can no longer agree with him. In a way it is like empathizing with a grieving father who advocates revenge killing the accused murderer of his child. I understand the emotions, but he’s just taken things too far.

Well, let me take a step back. Do you remember the theme song to The Facts of Life? Sing it with me:

You take the good, you take the bad,
You take ‘em both and there you have,
The Facts of Life.
[…]
When the world never seems
To be living up to your dreams
And suddenly you’re finding out
The Facts of Life are all about you.

I feel this song sums up Poetic Diction pretty well, but perhaps this statement requires some explanation…

Barfield’s big idea is that if “language is fossil poetry,” then working our way back into linguistic time, language should get intrinsically more and more poetic until finally we hit the bedrock of language where all human linguistic experience is ultimate poetry. What’s more, this _ur-_poetry is supposedly a “truer” state of understanding of the universe than the cult of modern empiricism offers.

The Facts of Life

The first problem is that these are two distinct claims. Claim #1: older language is more intrinsically poetic. Claim #2: the more poetic language is a more accurate representation of the universe than the modern prosaic language. Barfield gives some evidence of #1 and thinks he’s proved #2. This is little more than a textbook example of the kind of chronological snobbery that Barfield accused scientism of. The only way to infer the truth of #2 from #1 is to assume a priori that older is better.

The second problem is Barfield’s oblique re-statement of William Paley’s watchmaker argument from Natural Theology. Anyone who is familiar with the teleological argument against evolution by natural selection can see that Barfield’s arguments here are a close cousin in the linguistic domain. Compare Barfield’s descriptions of how poetic language degenerates over time to creationists assertions of genetic degeneration.

Applying Barfield’s logic to the actual fossil record (rather than the linguistic fossil record), we would expect the essence of life (to keep the “essence” tangible, let’s call it DNA shall we…) to get more and more potent as you move back in time until we arrive at the earliest organisms that are the quintessence of life. In fact, we know that the truth is entirely the opposite. DNA began simple and evolved non-random adaptations from random mutations over obscene timescales.

Whenever Barfield bumps up against such things he falls back on the claim that changes in consciousness drive changes in the perception of evidence. This is an incredibly lazy dismissal of empiricism. He really can’t decide if he is a subjectivist or Platonic objectivist. He asserts either whenever it gives him the strongest argument against science.

He takes the good, and leaves the bad

The bulk of Barfield’s evidence comes from two sources: internal reflection and historical linguistics. He rightly discusses poetry in terms of “a felt change in consciousness” that is accessible to us only through internal reflection. However, he does not allow for changes of consciousness that work both ways. If moving from prosaic to metaphoric thinking causes such a change that has value, is not the change caused by moving from metaphoric to prosaic also valuable? Would this not also qualify as poetic in Barfield’s own system?

He also plays fast and loose with linguistics. His evidence of linguistic change is almost entirely predicated on the evolution of the Indo-European languages which is largely the story of transition from synthetic to isolating languages. But as I understand it, that is by no means the only direction of language change and is by no means a one-way street. He cites Chinese as being further along this path of degeneration from the poetic ideal, but yet this entirely contradicts his thesis. If his view of the interaction of language and consciousness were true, then the Chinese culture should be the epitome of scientism and it is not. His conception of poetry presupposes a strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which is now out of favor.

At best, the linguistic evidence is inconclusive–especially considering that anatomically modern humans have existed for ~200,000 years but our linguistic evidence is only about ~6,000 years old. The oldest languages we can point to are unlikely to be truly early languages at all. It occurs to me now that the Biblical creationist chronology begins around 6,000 years ago too. Coincidence?

When the world never seems to be living up to your dreams

…assert the Facts of Life are all about your internal experience of poetry.

Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, by Jim Steinmeyer (A Review)

2015-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

You have to know a bit about Charles Fort and his work before reading this biography (otherwise there’s little reason to bother doing so), but it is a very well done account of his life and writings. For starters, Steinmeyer is generally skeptical of Fort’s claims, but not an ass about it. As he put it in this interview:

I tend to be skeptical, but I don’t consider myself a “debunker,” and maybe that’s why I appreciated Fort’s work, even if I didn’t always accept the phenomena.

The book is about Fort not Fortean phenomena–although Fort’s biography goes a long way toward explaining how Fort developed his particular approach.

Steinmeyer has dug up a lot of detail about Fort’s life and work (published and unpublished) from his short story days to early attempts at book-length “crank” theories, through to the four primary works that are still in print today (which Steinmeyer also edited–The Collected Works of Charles Fort.)

You will also learn a fair amount about the novelist Theodore Dreiser, who was Fort’s patron and advocate, in the process. H.L. Mencken and Benjamin De Casseres also make regular cameos. These three figures typify the ways one might interpret and appreciate (or not) Fort’s work: through the eyes of a credulous enthusiast (Dreiser), a scornful skeptic (Mencken), or as willfully agnostic satire (De Casseres). I myself straddle the Mencken/De Casseres borderline.

Fort’s work fits into a broader pseudo-scientific, Spiritualist movement of the time where the occult, theosophy, seances, and circus freak shows were popular and names like P.T. Barnum, Robert Ripley, and Harry Houdini became well-known. Steinmeyer touches on this cultural phenomenon a little bit, but I am keen to find a broader study of this from the same point of view Steinmeyer takes with Fort. Nevertheless, this book is a fascinating piece of the historical puzzle that outlines the development of the modern paranormal community and its skeptical antithesis.

College for Grown-Ups

2014-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Having gone to college as a grown-up, I have something to say in response to this well-meaning article.

“The source of these problems is baked into the current organization of residential higher education.”

…which has been propped up by government subsidy for decades.

“If we were starting from zero, we probably wouldn’t design colleges as age-segregated playgrounds in which teenagers and very young adults are given free rein to spend their time more or less as they choose.”

The problem is that the proverbial We shouldn’t be designing anything. College is expensive and age-segregated because bad policy has made the higher education market unresponsive to the price mechanism and caused obscene amounts of money to be wasted.

“While innovators continue to imagine more flexible forms of college, traditionalists might champion two proven models: community colleges […] and the G.I. Bill”

These traditionalists are deluded fools. Tuition prices will come down when we stop dumping money on colleges by the truckload. If community colleges are the answer then they will beat out other options in the marketplace, no heavy-handed “championing” needed…

The vast majority of college undergrad learning can be done for pennies. This is not a new internet phenomenon. $50 and a trip to the used book store or a walk down to the public library gets you access to all the textbooks and materials you need to learn just about anything you can learn at a liberal arts college. Not self-motivated? Start a study group. If the only way you can motivate yourself to learn is by borrowing tons of money to pay someone to “force” you to do it, then you probably shouldn’t be going to college in the first place. Go get that retail or secretarial job now that you will inevitably end up in later anyway. That’s keeping it real.

Most people leave college and end up in a job that has nothing to do with their degree. Put another way, many jobs shouldn’t require a degree or could use skill-based competency exams instead. If we didn’t throw tuition money at ambivalent kids, many could enter the labor market directly instead. There’s no shame in this route, or wouldn’t be if we hadn’t engineered the educational system to be a marker of class.

On the flip side, I’ve seen kids with a Computer Science degree who can’t program themselves out of a paper bag. What on earth were they doing for 4 years?! Give me the competent kid with no degree any day–except employers can’t find those people because they are drowned out by the noise of thousands of pretenders waving a useless piece of paper that we bought for them.

The “intangibles” of the college experience can be had for the cost of your own free time and a library card. The job-training aspect (and high-level academic training, which is simply another form of job-training), will be vastly cheaper when colleges have the incentives to make it so and consumers aren’t paid to demand a product they don’t actually want.

Chronological Snobbery, A Rebuttal

2014-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

There is a common charge leveled against moderns, especially scientists and their ilk, by the Inklings and often repeated with glee by their fans and acolytes today. I was reminded of this yet again when catching up on the Mythgard Academy lectures on The Book of Lost Tales, Part I (See Week 7). The accusation is that modern people are commonly afflicted with chronological snobbery, the flawed condition of believing that “intellectually, humanity languished for countless generations in the most childish errors on all sorts of crucial subjects, until it was redeemed by some simple scientific dictum of the last century” (Barfield). I don’t dispute that this phenomenon exists nor that it should not be criticized when found. However, the concept as formulated and regurgitated is ironically chronologically snobbish itself. Allow me to explain.

First, it fails to engage its opponents in a charitable manner by willfully overlooking the distinction between “childish errors” and legitimate ignorance. Some (most?) people accused of this crime are not trying to call pre-modern people stupid. Rather, they are simply acknowledging that those people were ignorant of relevant information. Sometimes the information was out of their ability to acquire due to lack of technology, locale, etc. Obviously we can’t hold those factors against them. However, in other cases they certainly could have found the information and failed to do so because of their false premises. The latter case is a legitimate intellectual failing and we are justified in criticizing them for it.

Second, it fails to condemn inverse snobberies that the Inklings flirt with. By applying the same criteria in reverse we can also determine that thinking pre-moderns are great just because they are old is an equal sin. So too is thinking modernity is crap just because it is new. I would be just as uncharitable to accuse the Inklings of loving everything old and hating everything modern without qualification, but if you can’t see where I’m coming from on this point then I think you might need to see an opthamologist. Suffice it to say, the proverbial knife cuts both ways.

Third, it fails to recognize how pervasive this “inverse chronological snobbery” is in modern society. Nothing demonstrates this better than the popularity of so-called alternative medicine. Modern people love to believe stuff that absolutely is childish error precisely because it is traditional. (By the way, Owen Barfield was into some pretty wacky ideas in this vein.)

Allow me to offer a more controversial example: revealed religion. Appeals to antiquity as a basis for their truth claims are a mainstay from time immemorial (ha, I crack me up!). As Paine puts it in The Age of Reason:

[T]he thing so revealed […] is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells;

Antiquity is a common criterion offered by proponents of revealed religions. Why did early Christians debate the canonicity of Revelation? Why do non-Mormon Christians reject the Book of Mormon? Antiquity is a factor.

Furthermore, pre-moderns themselves loved appeals to antiquity. The older the better, as far as they were concerned. And this bias undoubtably did cause them needlessly to “languish for countless generations”–Galenic medicine anyone?! How is this not chronological snobbery?!

If pre-modern peoples were just as intelligent as moderns (and they certainly were), then they should be held to the same standards of intellectual rigor that we expect of moderns, given the information, technology, and methodology that was available at the time. While moderns should not assume they are superior to pre-moderns unduly, we ignore the cases where modernity is demonstrably less wrong at our peril. Furthermore, moderns who have the benefit of better information, technologies, etc. and yet adhere to outmoded ideas are rightly criticized. This is especially true for ideas that are intractably irrefutable in an objective sense, but have become increasingly unlikely in a subjective sense. It is this type of modern who fails most intellectually and I humbly submit to you that the Inklings’ flanks are exposed on this front.

On Lazy Criticism

2014-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

The latest target of faux outrage is this video depicting “street harassment.” A woman walks the streets of NYC for 10 hours and records the unsolicited attention of the men she passes. It claims “100+ incidents of verbal street harassment” occurred over that time (a rate of one every six minutes). I believe the video shows only a subset (I didn’t count) and presumably the most egregious ones at that.

One can question how representative this is or where to draw the line on what qualifies as “harassment” versus general “asshole-ry,” but for the most part the criticism I’ve seen has argued against points this group does not appear to be making. These critics are intellectually lazy.

For starters, the video is almost entirely focused on raising awareness. It simply depicts what happened. It makes no blanket statements about all men being harassers nor does it claim men enjoy street “privileges,” as this Funny or Die parody does.

While humorous, the above parody (and plenty of not-funny critiques that mirror its sentiment) doesn’t actually address the substantive point of the video. Unless you deny that this is a legitimate issue for women (and I don’t think any honest man could), quibbling about the amplitude is misguided. There are plenty of relatively rare occurrences that are worth pointing out and calling bullshit on–and I don’t even buy that it is rare. (Note that I have to say this during a time when the chatter about Ebola in the US is incessant.)

Would a rigorous experiment have made a male-centered control video? Yes. If you think the depiction is not a gender-specific phenomenon, then by all means prove it with a real male-centered version. I’m eager to see the count of catcalls aimed at men.

The video does not call for new legislation as far as I can tell. In fact, the sponsoring website, Hollaback!, focuses very heavily on personal action over vague political statements. They encourage being vocal about your disapproval of this behavior, primarily through an app where you can document things as they happen.

What is there to criticize about that if you ascribe to libertarian ideas of freedom? These women are free to state their case, they are free to take video, and they are appealing to effect a change in behavior through the direct actions of individuals. Plenty of male libertarians would love this idea if it was documenting problems with the police state, such as inappropriate traffic stops and the like. How is this any different?

“But what’s to be done?!” The conversation eventually comes down to this with a well-meaning critic. Hollaback addresses this very clearly if they would have taken five minutes to look instead of rushing to half-ass, knee-jerk critique. Do they ask you to vote Democrat? Read The Feminine Mystique? remind hetero- white men of their privilege? No, they ask you to be a better bystander. THE HORROR! THE HUBRIS!

On Thomas Aquinas and an essentially ordered universe

2014-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

Tom Woods discussed Aquinas on his show yesterday, specifically Aquinas’ approach to the argument of a prime mover. Now, I am no expert in Aquinas or the scholarship on his thought so I have no idea how accurately Woods explains it, but I have some issues with the argument as presented. (By the way, I agree with his comments about being an informed and thoughtful critic though. Granted, it is hard to be suitably informed about everything and many things worth criticizing are not worth being informed about. Consider this a good faith attempt, if you’ll pardon the pun.) You may want to listen to the show (link above) as this is going to get rather complicated.

Woods is very insistent that critics of Aquinas are misunderstanding his argument. Woods emphatically asserts that Aquinas’ argument does not apply temporally. That is, Aquinas’ point is not that all causes are traced back to God, who was the first cause (in time), but rather that Aquinas is making a non-temporal claim about “potentialities and actualities” in the current moment. Critical to this distinction is the notion of “accidentally ordered series” and “essentially ordered series.” I’m not going to repeat all the fleshing out of these terms here. If you don’t know what those are, listen to his show.

Anyway, there seems to me to be some serious problems in this distinction. According to Woods, an essentially ordered series is one in which all the parts of the chain occur simultaneously such that the later actualities in the chain are entirely dependent on the first actuality. Aquinas’ example is a person pushing a rock with a stick–take away the person and the stick doesn’t act alone. God is supposedly one such actuality.

My first problem is that this is not an example of non-temporality. These things do not happen simultaneously. To think they do is simply an error of scale–we can’t perceive time with such precision to observe it with our eyes, but if we could zoom in (or out) sufficiently we would see this is true. As we know from relativity, space and time are the same thing so any actuality that occurs in space must necessarily occur in time–any ordered series must be temporal. Therefore, Aquinas’ argument absolutely does entail the claim that all causes can ultimately be traced back in time to God, the first cause of creation. The existence of a non-temporal series has not been shown. (For contrast, the moment of the creation of space-time could result from an accidentally ordered series–google multiverse.)

We know the fastest any information can travel is the speed of light. Consider that some starlight we can see in the sky now is from stars that have already died. If we could scale out far enough, it would look like the starlight had no prime mover since the star is now gone. In other words, it would look just like an accidentally ordered series. Since all series in our universe must be temporal (if the series is not temporal then it is not in our universe and therefore irrelevant), the existence of an essentially ordered series does not imply the eternal nature of the first actualizer of the series. (Also note that inferring the former existence of a source star is not the same as inferring an “essential” prime mover.)

Now consider Woods’ example of an accidentally ordered series: that of sons and fathers–whether a son becomes a father does not depend on the grand-father. This claim is merely obfuscated by complexity. In fact, it is entirely possible that the choice to have kids is entirely dependent on prior actualities and that it only seems accidental because of the sheer number of actualities involved. It is possible that, like temporality, complexity can make a series appear one way when it is the other.

I should note that we have also observed the reverse case–accidentally ordered series that look like essentially ordered ones. I’m speaking, of course, about activity at the level of quantum mechanics. At that scale, any given actuality appears accidental–it is only the aggregate of many, many quantum effects that make things appear essentially ordered at the scale we perceive.

So, what can we say at this point? Well, it seems the distinction of Aquinas (one of the better arguments in support of theism) is “actually” meaningless. There appears to be no way to distinguish between the two. If the universe is accidentally ordered, then God need not exist. If the universe is essentially ordered, then God still may not exist (and free will might be an illusion). I suppose there is also the possibility that the universe is partially essential actualities and accidental ones, but to claim this is to give up the notion that God is omnipotent since he would have no control over the accidentally ordered series. That would not bode well for theologies that really exist in the world (vs. theoretical ones theists imagine for argument’s sake) and so I dismiss it without further comment.

We conclude then that God might or might not exist. There is no real knowledge to be found here. The only appropriate response to this long chain of reasoning is skeptical agnosticism. Color me unimpressed. Atheists, deists, and agnostics can now shake hands and go their separate ways–their views are all equivalent at this level of discourse. Other kinds of theists however cannot. They’ve decided to inject complexity where it is not necessary and assume the burden of explaining it since there are all sorts of phenomena that appear accidental upon the closest inspection we are capable of making but in their view would be deeply, profoundly intended. There is nothing here on which to build such hubris.

The Qur'an: A User's Guide, by Farid Esack (A Review)

2014-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

As short introductions to a religion written by one of its believers go, this one is pretty good. Esack lays out various views of the Qur’an and Islam more generally, not just the one he favors. Of course, he’s not entirely objective and doesn’t claim to be. In fact, he readily admits the opposite and asserts further that everyone brings their own biases to a text. As such, fundamentalists and non-muslim scholars and critics all receive jabs from Esack one way or another.

That said, I think he is overly critical of scholars who study the Qur’an from a non-confessional, literary perspective. He begins by dubbing them “voyeurs” in the introduction and at every point they are discussed in a negative light. But at least he engages with them in a serious and respectful manner, which is more than one can say for the Muslim world in general. (The vast majority of Muslims are presumably reasonable, peaceful people but they are not a political or religious force that matters, sadly.)

Case in point, while he does vaguely state that sex with women slaves and other bullshit might not be a great thing regardless of Qur’anic endorsement, he does not take the next step to openly condemn Muslims who use these passages to justify their repression of women, etc. Presumably because some of those folks are not above killing his ass. However, he’s more than willing to talk about how misguided scholars can be with their insistence on actual literary evidence. Several such scholars publish under a pseudonym precisely because they fear violence. Does Esack acknowledge this fact? No. (See Christoph Luxenberg and Ibn Warraq.) Compare this state of affairs with secular scholars of Jewish and Christian traditions. Saying that “this approach [..] has not been welcomed [by Muslims]” (p. 9) has got to be the understatement of the decade.

But like I said, given that stating the wrong opinions can get you killed for apostasy, I can’t really fault the guy too much for hedging. At least I know where to look for the real scholarship now.

It is also fascinating to look at theological battles in which you don’t buy either side. You realize how dumb theology is as a mode of inquiry. Argue about the theological subtleties of the “begotten not created” nature of the Qur’an until the cows come home and it doesn’t become any less pointless an argument in my eyes. You’re all wrong; it’s just a book written by fallible humans, just like the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Bhagavad Gita, Moby-Dick, US Constitution, or anything else I could name. (Of the above, Moby-Dick is most likely to be divinely inspired as far as I’m concerned.)

A Rant about 90s Music

2014-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

Note: This was extracted from a Facebook conversation with several college friends.

Honestly, I didn’t initially weigh in because I realize how atrophied my musical tastes have become and I weep for my old-fogie-ness! :-) I haven’t given the past decade a fair hearing. Do I think James is right in the assessment that the 90s had higher musical highs than that of the following decades? Yes. While there was plenty of crap grunge, the best of the modern era (dominated by indies) are largely throwbacks to 90s innovations. There is no post-90s equivalent to grunge–a significant shift in music style that resonates with an entire generation of people and influences all of pop music for years to come.

On 90s bands mentioned: First, as one who wore out his copy of Sixteen Stone back in the day, I have to say Bush has not aged well. Nostalgically fun to listen to now, but they are terrible: entirely derivative and lyrically incoherent. However, I always considered Live to be a forgettable 90s act, but Throwing Copper holds up very well. Rage Against the Machine is just clumsy, politically-stunted Beastie Boys. Pass. I saw a Chris Cornell solo show last year, and while I loved it I can’t help but admit that he too has devolved into yuppy nostalgic self-love. It was sad. The great bands of the 90s (in terms of their popularity & influence at the time and lasting impact on musical culture) are, in my opinion:

Nirvana
Pearl Jam
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Beastie Boys
Dave Matthews Band
REM
Nine Inch Nails
Radiohead

The best modern music I’ve found is hiding in niches that still cater to one or both of the following old-school ideas:

the album as a unified piece of art, or
the primacy of live performance.

Some post-90s stuff I’d call great (but not height-of-the-90s great) pretty much fall into #1. I agree on Mumford & Son, Iron & Wine, The Killers. I’d contest the implied Vampire Weekend denigration–their first album is very good and has something to say musically which is more than you can say about most bands. I’d add Death Cab For Cutie, The Format (Dog Problems), Okkervil River (The Stage Names), Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes. All good stuff, but great? No. To be great you have to dominate and none of this does that. Today’s good stuff carries on a line of tradition from one of the aforementioned great 90s bands.

So if we’re stuck in a lull of good-but-not-great music, what do I think the next great revival in pop music will look like? I think it will be an overthrow of the current hyper-self-aware irony that pervades everything. Rock music in the 80s became so excessively self-aware that it crumbled under the weight of its own hair. Grunge reset that with a return to genuine expression. Now, those tropes that resonated in the 90s are overused to the point of self-parody (cough Nickelback cough). Pop music now resembes the poetry of the early 1900s–“moderns” like Ezra Pound & Gertrude Stein, et al. They did this really obscure or ironic stuff (mostly garbage) that ultimately led to a big fat dead end. It was the Beats like Kerouac, Burroughs, and Gingsberg that revitalized poetic expression by striving for genuine honest expression rather than navel-gazing.

My Secret Vice

2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Note: This was first published in the Signum University newsletter

Hello, my name is Dave and I am a language dilettante. Phew, that felt good to confess. Over the past five years I’ve dabbled in Classical Greek, Latin, Esperanto, Italian, Irish, Spanish and Welsh—spending an average of an hour a day on language study over that time. (Yes, I keep a spreadsheet…)

I travel internationally a lot for work—and pleasure—and I can’t help collecting a few linguistic souvenirs, and not-a-few books, on the way. For me, learning a bit of the local language is as necessary as hitting all the tourist spots. And there is no better place for the budding language tourist than at Signum University. What follows is a brief travelogue of this summer’s jaunt through Europe with my family as viewed through a Mythgard lens.

Iceland

Our first stop was Reykjavik, Iceland. The stunningly beautiful scenery re-invigorated my memory of the Norse stories we read in The Great Tales: Tolkien and the Epic and in Philology Through Tolkien. What I learned in the latter class about historical sound changes from Old Norse to Modern English helped me to understand some of the Icelandic around me. (Although the hotel clerks thought my pronunciation was hilarious.) We visited Geysir, the hot spring which gave us the English word geyser, and Þingvellir where the Althing met and the law was recited in medieval times. I could envision the scene just as Prof. Shippey had described it in class. Had Tolkien ever visited Iceland he would have mourned the dearth of trees, most of them cut down long ago.

Luggage space was tight, but I came away with three Icelandic books: Hobbitinn, the Icelandic translation of The Hobbit; Njal’s Saga in modern Icelandic; and Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) by 1955 Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness.

Spain

After a brief pause in England, we flew to southern Spain. Thanks to the two-semester Latin course with Profs. Walsh and Leibiger, I had a great foundation on which to build my Spanish, not to mention the pleasure of being able to read countless Latin inscriptions and the like found in almost every museum. After a few months of Spanish study I can carry on conversations, order my caña y tapas, and share a joke with the bartender about whether 200 serrano hams suspended from his ceiling qualifies as bastante jamón, all in Spanish.

On our first day in the village I had a pleasant but very confusing conversation with an elderly neighbor. “My Spanish comprehension is terrible,” I thought until another neighbor explained that the poor woman had dementia! My favorite tapas _was fresh rabbit—that’s _conejo in Spanish. So good! I feel like Sam Gamgee pining over some coneys just thinking about it. I can’t wait to continue my studies in Prof. Isaac Juan Tomás’ course.

Lessons learned in “Philology” also helped me appreciate the fascinating linguistic history in Granada. This area of the country was controlled by Islamic Moors for hundreds of years. The resulting mix of language, culture, and myth is not unlike that of England after the Norman Conquest. Ironically, the book of Moorish legends sold in every shop in Granada is written by an American author: Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra. Sometimes you travel the world to discover your own country.

Spanish novels are easy to find in US bookstores, but non-fiction, especially popular science, is not. I bought some Asimov, several history books, and a collection of poetry by Federico García Lorca.

Wales

The final leg of our vacation took us through Wales. In my ignorance, I expected Wales to be largely indistinguishable from England. Not so! When you cross Offa’s Dyke into North Wales, Welsh comes alive all around you from the bilingual road signs to overheard conversations. I experienced the same attraction to it that Tolkien describes in his essay “English and Welsh”—with its bewildering spelling and breathy lateral l’s, which sound similar to one of the consonants in Icelandic. How pleased I was with myself for realizing the building labeled pysgod was a fish & chips shop because pysgod was cognate with the Latin word piscis!

It seems every village has ruins of a castle somewhere. You feel that you are standing within the physical remains of the Arthurian myth the Inklings found so compelling. Nothing tops off a long day of castle investigation like some delicious Cwrw Blasus (tasty beer, the name of an actual local brewery). Alas, I just missed an exhibition of the Hengwrt Chaucer, the earliest surviving manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, on display at the National Library in Aberystwyth.

However, I did find an amazing second-hand bookshop where I bought two volumes in Middle Welsh including Owein, a Welsh version of the tale better known from Chrétien de Troyes’ Ywain. The scholarly introduction makes a convincing argument about the independence of the Welsh version from the Old French that I never would have followed before my philological classes at Mythgard.

As a Mythgard student I’ve learned that Tolkien believed language is inextricably entwined with its mythology. As a language tourist I’ve come to realize that both are also shaped by the places and communities in which they developed. Visiting these places has deepened my appreciation for their language and myth and the literature and language classes I’ve taken at Signum have equipped me to make the most of every travel opportunities.

A Eulogy for my Grandfather

2014-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

When I was growing up, to me Gramp was not so much a regular person as he was a virile, indomitable presence. He was the man with a thousand guns and a woodworking shop; a man who hunted and fished and did other masculine outdoorsy stuff. (Now that I think about it, I never actually saw him do most of these things but nevertheless I was convinced he was a master of them.) He was a man who would hand his young grandson an ax and expect him capable of splitting firewood; a man who needed said firewood moved from one pile to another pile for no discernible reason. In other words, to my childish mind Gramp was a man who could do things, manly things. The sort of things that demonstrate Man’s control over Nature.

I find this Romantic conception of the “outdoorsman” very appealing, at least in theory (I’ve always preferred theory to actual practice), and Gramp was the embodiment of this idea for me. What’s more, he’d carved up his own little piece of nature for himself: Parker Country. This too was important to me as a kid because I moved around a lot, but this place was a fixed, physical point. The unchanging, unmoving root where all the diverse branches of family met. Just as Gram provided a sense of family connectedness in Time with her limitless knowledge of the goings-on of the extended family, Gramp provided a sense of connectedness in Place. Not only a place to connect with family and friends, but a place where you could connect with nature and with yourself. Even if you couldn’t visit, the knowledge that the place existed meant a lot. For much of my life it didn’t occur to me that Gramp appreciated this aspect of Parker Country or that he had intentionally tried to provide this for his family, but of course he did.

I first realized this 15 years ago, when I brought Charlene up to Camp with the intention to propose to her at the top of Buck Mountain. It was hunting season and Gramp insisted that we wear bright orange jackets which looked ridiculous. He was so happy for us. I think it meant a lot to him that I wanted to propose here and that he got to be part of it. That weekend we got to chatting about the hunting season. At that time he would still ride out on the trails with the 4-wheeler and I asked him if he ever hunted anymore. I can still remember the look on his face when he said, “No, I just like to watch the deer now.”

It was the first time I looked at Gramp as a regular person and not a stereotype. He was a man who had a profound appreciation for the beauty of nature. It was a side of him I never stopped to consider before, a side that was easily overlooked. He had a bit of the poet in him, however hidden by the gruff demeanor. So I don’t think it out of place that he reminds me of the concluding lines from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. I like to imagine that if that poetic side of my grandfather could write a message to us all, it would sound like this:

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

If there is one place we can search and always find Grampa, it is here in this place.

On privilege

2014-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Note: This was written in response to this article in The Atlantic.

I’m wary of people eager to opine about “privilege.” (But of course I would be, wouldn’t I?, being a white male…) By her logic, she should learn to write in a different language because English writers are extremely privileged.

Yet granting the premise, I’m skeptical that the solution is for white dudes to “use [their] privilege to humanize and valorize everyone, instead of just [themselves].” This might work occasionally (eg. Joss Whedon), but more likely it would be seen as abusing their privilege and misappropriating the oppressed (or simply getting it wrong). There’s an odious paternalism behind this notion.

Consider blues music. Not a day goes by where The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, et al aren’t criticized for stealing from the musical tradition of an oppressed people. It is unclear what, if any, this did to advance the future of African-American music embodied in R&B, hip-hop, and rap. With Jimi Hendrix a notable early exception, African-American artists and audiences have largely ignored the rock genre. Certainly, the intent of the appropriation was to cater to a privileged audience not a marginalized one. Yet, this is precisely the sort of misappropriation that this author would condemn! Whether white appropriation advanced the development of black music is unclear (IMO, not much), but if it did it was incidental. The tradition had to develop on its own terms, speaking to its own audience, and the privileged have no difficulty finding value in it in droves.

I think we do need more diverse voices, but the solution is never going to be the privileged writing what they don’t know (or worse, their self-flagellation as penance for inherited sins). Marginalized people need to write what they know. If they do it well, either:

they will build an audience with other disenfranchised people or
just as the marginalized have found value in the literature of their oppressors, so will the privileged find value in theirs.

If her description of the situation is accurate, there should be a vast audience out there craving to read something not about a white male. Give it to them.

The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius (A Review)

2014-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

I’m told that medievals thought Boethius was the man. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis also apparently thought his argumentation was compelling. Then I started a class on Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde which is steeped in Boethian thought. So, after years of hearing how great this guy was I finally decided that I had to read this book. How disappointing. It is little more than a case study in the perils of motivated reasoning.

The book addresses four related metaphysical problems: why bad things happen to good people, what happiness is, good vs. bad fortune, and the question of free will and God’s foreknowledge. The problems I had with the book are variations of the following fallacy: assume some complex idea is true a priori (eg. God exists, is good, etc.), redefine the problem in terms that you’ve already assumed true, then voila! the resulting conclusions just happen to make the guy awaiting death feel better about getting screwed over by life. The more you want to believe something because it makes you feel good the more you should doubt it.

While I’m not wholly antagonistic to philosophical realism per se, I am aggravated by the reticence Neoplatonists and other sympathizers have to revisit their premises and the ease with which their universal forms accrete bullshit. Yes, I do wear my Methodological Nominalist badge to cocktail parties.

Ultimately, I am glad I read this for the insight into medieval and Christian philosophy it brings. However, it was at the cost of losing some respect for the judgment of people who are convinced by Boethius’ arguments.

The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav (A Review)

2014-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

[The] history of science in general often has been the story of scientists vigorously fighting an onslaught of new ideas. This is because it is difficult to relinquish the sense of security that comes from a long and rewarding acquaintance with a particular world view. (p. 191)

…criticizes the guy promoting eastern mysticism which, by his own admission, hasn’t changed much since the 2nd c. AD (p. 312). Good thing he doesn’t have the character flaw of feeling safe in a particular world view, unlike those foolish scientists who are always grappling with new ideas… What a crock of shit.

At first I thought the whole “quantum weirdness is, like, totally Zen, man” attitude was just the eccentric conceit of an aged hippy physics enthusiast. Turns out, that it is his entire argument. He misses no opportunity to claim that quantum mechanics and Buddhism are talking about the same thing because occasionally they seem vaguely similar. The book is divided into twelve chapters–all numbered chapter one–across six parts–all numbered part one. This gives you an idea of what passes for profundity here. I should have guessed as much since the book was published under Bantam’s “New Age” label, but the positive quote from Martin Gardner on the back made me hope it transcended the label. In hindsight, I suspect this quote was taken out of context and/or Gardner regretted making it.

While large chunks of the book are pretty good explanations of various concepts in physics, it is fatally marred by horrible pseudo-scientific nonsense and faulty reasoning. To give you one example, he cites quantum entanglement as evidence for telepathy. Yet, even granting every point he makes this explanation utterly fails. First, it has been shown that such quantum effects cannot be controlled. He buries this fact in a footnote (p. 296) and yet implies throughout the book that quantum mechanics says we can control reality with our consciousness. Even ignoring this fatal flaw, entanglement is a link between specific particles. In order for two minds to communicate this way, linked particles would have to inhabit the two specific minds that wish to communicate in exactly the correct place of the brain, etc. This happenstance is so unlikely as to never occur and if it did it would be detectable by rigorous experiment. Certainly it doesn’t explain psychics who claim to be able to read many minds yet fail under rigorous experiment and suchlike supernatural claims.

I award two stars, which is frankly over-generous to the book as a unity, on the grounds that I did enjoy some of the pure physics exposition. I debated even putting this on my ‘science’ shelf in Goodreads because at its heart it is anti-science in the same way that CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy is un-science-fiction. By the way, the book was recommended to me by the Baha’i gentleman I mentioned in a prior review.

The Baha'i Faith: An Introduction, by Gloria Faizi (A Review)

2014-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

I first heard about the Baha’i Faith through my experience with Esperanto. (The two have some ideological overlap and Baha’is believe in a coming universal language, hence many have learned Esperanto.) However, I picked up this little book because I met a Baha’i at a dinner party and wanted to know a bit about it. At just over 100 pages with equal parts exposition and selections from their founding writings, it was exactly what I was looking for. It is divided into three parts. Part One tells the history of the Faith. Part Two explains its primary tenets. Part Three describes how its institutions operate.

Now, regarding the Faith itself: meh. While I readily acknowledge that the doctrines of this religion are an improvement in some ways over other religions, it has some serious problems. The primary idea of the Baha’i Faith is that all major religious traditions contain true divine revelation and any disharmony between them results from two possibilities. Either (1) the invalid tenet was applicable only for that time and place or (2) it is due to human error. Each “dispensation” of divine revelation supposedly exhibits tell-tale signs which enable one to identify frauds.

There’s a lot I could say about the problems with this view, but I don’t think it is quite fair to critique a world view based on a tiny introduction. If I ever read on (which I probably won’t), the key texts are The Book of Certitude and Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah. Which reminds me, the English translations of these works (made in the 1930’s by the 3rd Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi) are done in the style of the King James Bible. This is ridiculous, annoying, and pretentious.

The Riverside Chaucer

2014-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

What follows is a review of this book itself, not its contents. Chaucer rules; this book sucks. Here’s why:

Let me state at the outset that I am not an anti-capitalist. Quite the contrary. I think free markets are awesome, unfairly denigrated, and usually blamed for things that are actually the result of unfree markets. This book is a classic case.

This book is a chore in every sense: to buy, to carry, to read, to cite. No consumer would choose this book of their own free will. For the cost, you could buy Chaucer’s works as a multi-volume set instead (think Norton Critical Editions). This solution would be more pleasurable to read and less likely to give you a hernia. It is also a pain to cite from Riverside when you want to delineate various works, critical introductions, etc. “But Dave,” you say, “its a one-volume authoritative edition!” So. What possible reason is there for forcing everything between two covers? Price? Since when do colleges care about the cost of textbooks? Convenience? What about this book is convenient? No, this book screams “I don’t give a crap about the reader. You’re gonna buy this big-ass book and you’re gonna like it. You will never read this book after college anyway so who cares. This form is convenient and functional for the institutions and our convenience matters more than yours.”

If consumers [students] had any say in the textbook market, this garbage would not exist. It is only because of the ridiculous hegemony of our system of higher learning that such affronts to good taste exist. Design by committee blows.

Thoughts on great books

2014-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

“In a recent piece about the Manual for Civilization […] I lamented the fact that Stewart Brand’s 76-book contribution to the Manual contained only one and a half books authored by a woman. […] In grappling with the challenge, I faced a disquieting and inevitable realization: The predicament of diversity is like a Russian nesting doll.” – Brain Pickings

I love book lists, especially the “great books” variety which attempt to amass a representative sample of Western intellectual culture that can be realistically read over the course of a single lifetime. One of the most common and most annoying criticisms of these endeavors, exemplified by the above quote (which is not a particularly egregious example, it just happens to be the most recent I’ve read), are that they are insufficiently diverse.

The fact is that the vast majority of our most important works were written by men, and by white (a racial term that is anachronistic in many ways) men at that. This might be a sub-optimal state of affairs, but it is inescapable. Packing such a list with women and non-whites because they have different genitals or skin color is as bad as excluding them on the same criteria.

As the above article almost realizes, when you start building your list based on arbitrary gender, racial, and socio-economic quotas, the quality and historical importance of the selections becomes a secondary factor–to the detriment of the collection. If books by women or minorities are better works of art, more historically important, etc. then by all means they should knock out their male competitors, but show them the courtesy of basing our decision on the quality of their content. That means no bonus points awarded for missing a penis.

The Wood Beyond the World, by William Morris (A Review)

2014-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

I am convinced that all ratings of this book are inflated by at least one star because people know going in that Morris was a key figure in the development of modern fantasy and an important influence on Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Granted, there are several of good ideas here which are utilized much more effectively by Morris’ intellectual heirs–archaism, medieval revival, appropriation of myth, etc. However, these are not deftly applied here. This book simply cannot stand on its own without the post-hoc crutch of superior derivative art. The plot is plodding and disjointed–rampant with loose ends, coincidence, and characters devoid of plausible motivation.

Walter’s unhappy marriage and the tedious love triangles practically beg a modern reader to draw parallels with Morris’ own unhappy marriage and the blatant affair between his wife and the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From this angle, the story doesn’t feel romantically hopeful or even cathartic, just desperate and pathetic.

One redeeming feature is that my copy is a facsimile of the Kelmscott Press edition. Kelmscott Press was a Morris venture for reviving old-school bookmaking. Originals must be truly gorgeous works of art. This certainly adds to the effect Morris is going for in the narrative.

The Wood Beyond the World is only worth reading today as a scholarly exercise. If you want medieval romance, read actual medieval romances. If you want quality fantasy, read the authors he inspired.

Case Closed, by Gerald Posner (A Review)

2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been interested in the JFK assassination since the 90s, probably due in large part to the Oliver Stone movie. (Indirectly. I was pro-conspiracy before actually seeing the film.) I’d read Jim Marrs’ Crossfire, Fletcher Prouty’s JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, Murder in Dealey Plaza, and others. None of the various conspiracy stories seemed quite right, but it seemed to me that there was enough oddities to the official story that “where there’s smoke there’s fire,” as the saying goes.

Marrs’ book in particular had so much detail that impressed me at the time. Many years later, I discovered to my dismay that Marrs also had similar books about aliens and other crazy conspiracies–Rule by Secrecy and Alien Agenda–which made me begin to question my earlier estimation of the quality of his research in Crossfire.

With the assassination 50th anniversary media blitz, I decided to actually read a book which supported the “lone gunman” view. Case Closed was recommended to me by skeptic Kenneth Feder, one of my professors in college. Posner didn’t disappoint. Not only is the book very well-written and engaging, he covers many of the issues which caused me to lean pro-conspiracy all these years. He does an admirable job explaining, without defending, the missteps and obfuscations of the FBI, CIA, etc. while clearing up a lot of misinformation masquerading as evidence of conspiracy.

In one passage that stuck with me, an interviewee stated that the assassination has become almost a religious experience, complete with relics, sacred texts, and a holy site that people pilgrimage to. I think this comparison is more accurate than he perhaps realized. I’d add that the conspiracy narrative also has a heavy dose of mythic power that resonates with people in the same way that religion does. It is truly an American myth–and with an extremely well-documented event. Can you imagine how easily such myths would overwhelm the truth in history where they cannot be debunked by surviving evidence?

So yes, I now think Oswald acted alone. The government wasn’t co-opted by an evil conspiracy, it was just a bureaucratic rat’s nest of petty infighting and incompetence. sigh

La Hobito

2013-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

I read from Ĉapitro XIX of La Hobito (the Esperanto translation of The Hobbit) for the languages segment of the upcoming Mythgard Institute Webathon on Sept. 22, 2013. Tune in to the live stream on the 22nd (link below) for 12 hours of Tolkien and fantasy literature goodness from the students of the Mythgard Institute and Signum University.

Anni kaj Montmartre de Raymond Schwartz

2013-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

I discuss Raymond Schwartz’s Esperanto novella Anni kaj Montmartre and read a few of his poems.

Update to In It For the Literature

2013-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Note: This was originally posted in the How to Learn Any Language forum

Well, it’s been almost three years since I wrote the above. I don’t post much on HTLAL anymore. Instead, the time I was spending here learning how to learn languages I now use for actually learning them. ;-) But I’m proud that I’ve earned more votes on the site than I have number of posts. Hopefully that means I’ve given back a little of the wisdom I’ve acquired here.

Here’s some of what I’ve accomplished since I began back on 2010 as a monolingual American:

Developed a reading proficiency in my top three languages: Greek, Latin, and Esperanto.

Greek: I’ve read the entire gospel of John and various excerpts from the New Testament, Septuagint, and several classical authors in Greek. I feel pretty comfortable now reading from the GNT, partly because I’m familiar with the contents so new vocab isn’t much of a hurdle.

Esperanto: I’ve read about a dozen books in Esperanto, half of which have been “native” books–that is, not didactic content, but intended for a fluent audience. Efforts to find a community of speakers nearby were unsuccessful, but I know I could activate this language pretty quickly given an immersion situation. Maybe someday I’ll attend a congress… Otherwise I don’t spend any time “studying” Esperanto, just reading in it for enjoyment when I get the urge.

Latin: The last year and a half I’ve spent on Latin. I took a two semester course using Wheelock, worked through Lingua Latina I, and have read some neo-Latin readers. Last summer I took a huge vacation in Italy and it was fun to use my Latin to read inscriptions, manuscript pages on display in museums, etc.

Italian: In preparation for the trip I also worked on some Italian, which was fun to use. I consider myself at tourist/simple-conversation level. Going forward, this will be my first attempt to attain a “traditional” level of fluency in a modern language, which is a very different goal than I had in the above three.

So, here’s the plan for the next 5 years:

Primary Goal: start tackling living languages, roughly following ProfArguelles’ outline for Spanish French Italian German, though swapping the order of Spanish and Italian. (1 hr daily min.)

Secondary Goal: continue to improve my Latin by “swimming back to it through the centuries” (30m daily min.)

Tertiary Goals: take a class on Philology (already lined up). Basic reading abilities in Old English and biblical Hebrew. (occasional)

A Call for Football Advice

2012-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

A personal goal of mine is to cultivate a knowledge and appreciation of sport. I think my general disinterest in sport stems from not really giving it a fair shake. It is unfair to criticize people for not sharing my interests while I do not share theirs. To that end, at the start of each season I tell myself I will follow a team through the entire season and I never do. Often, I watch a few games, get bored and quit. Partly, this is due to laziness and annoying blackout restrictions, etc. which seem primarily designed to inconvenience me. However, it is also due to my indifference about which team to support. This is where you guys come in.

First, I like to watch/listen on my schedule, not live. Hence, I need recorded games access, preferably online (ipad support is a plus). Anyone use NFL Game Rewind? Got better suggestions?

Second. Unless I want to spend extra money, it seems I must pick a team to follow. The system is not conducive to neutral viewers. As my sports-loving friends, I am seeking your advice about which team to support. As a nerd, what will keep me interested is statistics and solid strategy/coaching. I could give a rat’s ass about star appeal. In fact, that’d probably be a negative (though watching a crap team lose every week isn’t fun either). I have several obvious possible candidates:

Bills. Reason: Lived in Upstate NY. Also, my current boss’s team…
Giants/Jets. Reason: proximity.
Patriots. Reason: proximity. (Still, Brady is super-annoying; 2nd only to Tim Tebow.)
Steelers. Reason: Since my Dad’s in PA, he follows them.
Dolphins. Reason: I liked Dan Marino as a kid.

(Basically, AFC East Division, plus a few.)

All of the above have pros (share interests with friends & family) & cons (not least of which is the obvious bandwagon consideration).

What are your thoughts? Is this a good way to go about it?

Note: This kicked off a lively discussion on Facebook.

Viktimoj de Julio Baghy

2011-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

I review Julio Baghy’s novel Viktimoj based on his experiences in a Siberian POW camp during World War I. Originally written in Esperanto, it is considered a classic of Esperanto literature.

Translations into Esperanto

2011-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Smaller national languages are better represented in Esperanto than in English. Also, I show off some of my Esperanto books.

Learning Esperanto for the literature

2011-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

I discuss why I decided to learn Esperanto–for its interesting body of original literature.

Darwin on Trial, by Phillip Johnson (A Review)

2010-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

I was reminded about this book the other day as I was listening to a UCSD Anthropology podcast. As a child I was taught the typical anti-evolution Christian ideology. I’ve always been one to do my own research and make up my own mind about things. I finally got around to evolution in college where I minored in anthropology and learned of the ridiculously large body of evidence for this “just a theory”. To be fair, I read this book to get a reasoned opinion from the anti-evolution camp.

Reading this book made me realize just how baseless these arguments are. In that sense, I’d like to rate it higher, however I fear such a rating would be misconstrued. I think that most people who read this book already have an unrational bias against evolution and little-to-no real knowledge of the actual evidence. For those people, I can see how this book might reinforce their ideology. For that, I want to give it negative 5 stars.

Some advice for living: learn some critical thinking skills then apply them to your beliefs. If you’re right, they’ll stand up to actual scrutiny. If you’re wrong, be an adult and admit it. In my experience, those most sure about their opinions are those who regurgitate crap they’ve taken on someone else’s authority.

This review was originally posted on Goodreads. In response to a comment on book recommendations I wrote the following:

My recommendations will be a little idiosyncratic since I will only recommend things I’ve personally read, but here it goes.

I learned the bulk from my college textbooks (and classes), which while effective, are perhaps not the most compelling reading. My memory is a decade old now, but I think the main text was Biological Anthropology by Michael Park. There’s probably better ones.

As for books written for a popular audience, the clearest and most comprehensive case I’ve read is The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins. However, the problem with recommending this book is that Dawkins is notorious and can be a turn off. Why Evolution is True and Beak of the Finch are also good (though I’ve only skimmed these–who wants to read the same book 5 times?). I’ve also learned a lot from Stephen Jay Gould’s books.

But honestly, I would recommend reading Origin of Species itself in addition to something like the above. (Or at least the first half and final chapter.) While it doesn’t contain all the latest evidence, Darwin is very persuasive in his own right and does address many of the criticisms people are still using against him. It is telling to see what he said 150+ years ago and how discovery has borne him out. Also, it makes you realize how tone-deaf his opponents have been.

Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language, by David Richardson

2010-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

I didn’t realize it fully at the time, but the reader in the second half of this book is top-notch. Of course, Zamenhof’s few original poems are there, but you also get readings from his letters about creating the language, and a short biographical piece. There are running serials of correspondence and travel logs which is decent reading. Among the last of the selections are William Auld’s poem Ebrio and excerpts from Baghy’s Sur Sanga Tero and Tibor Sekelj’s book about his travels in the Amazon–all of which were originally composed in Esperanto.

My two textbook recommendations for new learners would be this book and the now out-of-print 3rd edition of Teach Yourself Esperanto. From these you can go straight into real Esperanto literature.

In It For the Literature

2010-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

Note: This was originally posted in the How to Learn Any Language forum

Hello all. Since I’ve stuck with my language studies long enough to know it’s not a passing fad (4 months so far), I thought it might be nice to put together a member profile. I’ve always been an introverted bookworm and autodidact. The past 5 years or so have been a self-learner’s dream as universities have posted so much great audio and video lecture material. But since much of it is of the “freshman survey” variety, it occurred to me that I’d studied the equivalent of a couple bachelor’s degrees this way. At the same time, I got a job which required a lot of international travel and really became aware of how ignorant I am of other cultures (though I consider myself well above the average American in that department). It hit me that languages are this vast uncharted territory for me that, while worth learning for their own sake, provide direct access to the best that other cultures have to offer. So, as this post’s title says, my interest in other languages is as a means to access the literature of cultures of which I am ignorant as well as to deepen my knowledge of those of which I am familiar.

The most intriguing post I’ve read on HTLAL is this one by Dr. Arguelles wherein he describes his “ideal well-educated” person. This is exactly the approach I’ve taken to my own (non-language) studies.

ProfArguelles wrote: In general, I think that well-educated individuals in my ideal world should know a) the classical language(s) of their own civilization, b) the major living languages of their broader culture, c) the international language (English) if this is not one of these or a semi-exotic if it is, and d) one exotic language of their own choosing.

This sounds daunting, but here he crunches the numbers and it certainly does seem like a reasonable lifetime goal for me. Taking his criteria as a baseline, I’d like to have some competence in (roughly ordered by interest):

Greek (Ancient)
Latin
Esperanto
French
Italian
Old/Mid. English
German
Russian
Hebrew
Spanish
Chinese

Notice that practicality isn’t an important factor for me. ;-) I’m 4 months into Greek, a month into Esperanto, and loving it.

Finally, a big thanks to all on HTLAL. I’ve picked up so much great information on how to go about my studies and reading about other’s success is a real inspiration.

What 10 books have you read that will always be with you?

2009-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

What 10 books have you read that will always be with you?

These are ordered by the time in my life I read them (roughly speaking).

1. The Neverending Story - Michael Ende

Ok, I’m cheating a little here because the movie is what most affected me. In kindergarden we watched the Challenger launch on TV. When it exploded, the teachers promptly put on this movie instead and I was enraptured and a little scared by the world Bastian discovers in an antique bookstore. The resulting mix of emotions has been with me ever since, and if I was psychoanalyzing myself, was probably the germination of my used bookstore fetish.

2. Juvenile astronomy books, circa 1985

I wish I had a specific title to cite here. When in grade school I voraciously read anything relating to space. What child of the 80’s didn’t want to be an astronaut?

3. Walden - Henry David Thoreau

A man goes to live by himself in the woods–a plan I can get behind. I was a big fan of the Transcendentalists in high school. This pick was a toss up between Emerson and Thoreau. I picked the master of the pithy quip.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

4. Animal Farm - George Orwell

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Orwell distills the flaws with the socialist conception of equality and its ramifications into a potent and accessible allegory.

5. Collected Poems - Dylan Thomas

In Freshman Composition at Roberts Wesleyan College I wrote a paper titled “A Refusal to Mourn the Death of Pioneers”–an homage to Thomas, Ende, and the Challenger. I wish I kept a copy. Thomas’ poetry is at once broken and triumphant with the rhythm of a lullaby.

6. The Divine Comedy - Dante

I’ve read Dante’s masterpiece three times in three different English translations. The unintended lesson I learned? Hell is more interesting than Paradise.

7. Nausea - Jean Paul Sartre

I am stuck in my own head. Others are stuck in their own heads. Humans are fundamentally incapable of making a complete connection with another human or any other object in existence and as a consequence are utterly alone. So goes the thought process of the eight-year-old David Maddock. Fast forward to adolescence and I found a friend in Sartre.

8. Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt

This was one of several books that helped me clarify my thoughts on society and economics and allow me to identify myself as a classical liberal. Heck, I’m a borderline anarcho-capitalist.

9. How to Make Money in Stocks - William J. O’Neil

There’s a lot of snake-oil finance gurus out there. Some would even criticize O’Neil for being one of them. (He publishes the stock-centric newspaper Investor’s Business Daily.) Following my conscious adoption of classical liberalism, I decided to become financially responsible. I read a lot of personal finance and investing books; the majority are garbage. What I loved about O’Neil’s book is that he took a very programmatic approach to stocks. In the 60’s he built a method of stock speculation around a kind of proto-data mining–he built a database of stock data and identified common characteristics in stocks prior to big uptrends.

10. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture - Bart Ehrman

I read several of Ehrman’s more popular books before taking on this scholarly one. It has been my experience that people who hold very strong opinions often know very little about the subject to which the opinion relates. Of course, for me those opinions tended to be religious ones. Regarding the study of the New Testament, what believers have to say about it is often wildly different that what scholars do. Most of us don’t really consider that what we call “the Bible” is a conflagration of many, many manuscripts which do not all agree on what the text is. This book is a compelling critique of such manuscript differences and how some of them are a result of scribal changes in opposition to various ideas in the early Christian movement which have come to be considered “heretical”.

I also much enjoyed his Teaching Company lecture series on the New Testament. Rarely do we even consider the fact that the authors of the New Testament (and Old too for that matter) were not all trying to say the same thing–in fact, were explicitly trying to say different things (as in Matthew and Luke’s revisions of Mark).

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and David Gibbons (A Review)

2009-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

This work has been greatly overrated. Sure, in the world of comic books, this is absolutely the best one I’ve ever read. (For some context, I collected comics in middle school. I liked the X-Men and Spiderman series in particular.) It is absolutely fair to assert that this is an important work of art for the genre, etc. However, this is not a great novel–at best it’s a decent one.

The writing, by which I mean the words printed on the pages, is unremarkable and suffers from a goofy tone that is indigenous to comic books. Dialog is frequently formulaic and unrealistic. For instance, a bad guy in a prison calls someone a “loony toon”. Generally, one would assume this is a limitation of the medium given the typical audience of comic books, but also included in this series is mass murder, rape, sex, nudity, impotence, and mild cursing (hell, bitch, asshole, etc.). This is just one example, but there is a lot of such dialogue.

However, there is a lot the book gets right. The writing, by which I mean plot and character development, is great–fantastic for a comic. Watchmen’s world deals with real issues that would result from a host of masked heroes prowling the streets. The heroes too (insofar as any are heroes), deal with real personal problems resulting from such a life.

Bottom line: if you like comics anyway, you will love this book. If not and a friend who does recommended it to you as a quality piece of art, you will finish it wondering what the fuss was about.

The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka (A Review)

2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Note: This old review of Kafka is my most liked review on Goodreads.

I suspect interpreting Kafka says more about the reader than the author so here’s some insight into my psyche:

Gregor’s family are losers. Gregor takes over the “bread winner” position after his father’s business fails and provides enough money for the family to live as well as help to pay down the large debt his father’s business incurred. The rest of them are fine to let him and sit on their asses. Gregor’s father is perfectly healthy, but is happy to mooch too. Then, we find out that his father has been squirreling away Gregor’s money on the side to boot.

Gregor works for five years in this manner, never missing a day of work, and the first day he is ill they are jerks. Yet, when the vermin dies and they are employed, they all sit down quick to write letters of excuse for themselves. When the vermin’s alive it’s an excuse to not leave the house; when he dies they can’t work.

They deplore the fact that the vermin cannot understand them despite evidence to the contrary when he hears them talk and follows their instructions (eg. to get back in the room, etc.). Furthermore, they make no effort to communicate with him. I’d like to think if a loved one turned into an insect and I decided to keep them alive in a bedroom of my house, I would get around to trying the blatantly obvious “Hiss one for yes, two for no” routine.

In short, f—— you Gregor’s family. You suck.

Finite and Infinite Games, by James Carse (A Review)

2008-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Carse is a whore for needless semantic paradox. The first 20 pages are an interesting description of a rather artificial and naive world view of life as a set of games–some which must end and some which must forever continue. The remainder of the book is a tedious exposition of examples wherein Carse blithely redefines words to force various concepts into his dualistic model.

Fly, Robin

2008-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Can I tread water a little longer
Holding these things above my head?
I can drift ‘til the tide gets stronger
And let it pull me back to land.
So, I’ll just kick my feet.

I can feel the warm salt water
As it dries upon my face.
Crystalizing, compromising.
How do they justify this place?
How?

Fly, Robin, fly.
Yours is the sky
But you must take it,
No one else can claim it for you.

You say you long to scale a mountain
But the peak can seem so far.
Turn around see where you come from.
The air is getting thin right where you are.
Have you looked behind?

What can I say so you believe me?
What do I do to make you see?
The more you carry the slower the climb
So drop those stones and make it in half the time.

Fly, Robin, fly.
Yours is the sky
But you must take it,
No one else can claim it but you.

Me without You

2007-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

Not used to sleeping alone.
It gets so hard to close my eyes in the dark.
When I know your gone…
I feel your pillow next to me
Try to believe it’s you enough to dream.

Every morning I wake up alone.
I try instead to pull myself out of bed.
When I know your gone…
The distance between you and me
Grows far beyond a point that I can see.

Not used to being alone.
You look the same, but there’s dust on the frame
Since you’ve been gone.
Our wedding photos on the wall
Are memories too painful to recall.

Class Mentality

2006-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Social class is not a function of net worth, race, or religion. It is one of mentality. Let me explain.

For the past two years my family has lived in a small, two bedroom apartment about two miles from the campus of the university my wife and I attend. It is not our ideal living conditions, but we make do. Most residents are either college students or “blue collar” folks. There is also a number of people with physical disabilities due to the nearby school for the deaf. The management does a pretty good job of keeping up on any maintenance, snow removal, etc. The area is certainly no ghetto and yet I am struck by the apparent number of residents who seem to believe that it is.

In the past year I’ve seen:

condoms inflated like balloons and tied to the support beams of the front door canopy
trash abandoned in the hallway (this happens about twice a month)
empty (or partially so) beer cans and bottles strewn on the lawn and parking lot, often broken if glass
used gum stuck to the walls, carpet, and ceilings of the hallways
last year someone actually opened our unlocked apartment door (while I was home) and threw some rotton apples inside (I’m assuming kids, but I don’t leave the door unlocked anymore)
abandoned spills (and messes of all kinds, including vomit) in common areas
broken beer bottles thrown into the swimming pool (necessitating its closure and drainage)
graffiti on walls and doors

and countless other disgusting things that display a lack of any regard for the property, other residents, and frankly themselves. This Saturday someone, for apparently no reason, tore down the suspended ceiling in our hallway. Last summer, a resident who lives on the floor above us described his July 4th festivities to me in between gleeful giggles of self-satisfaction. He got drunk and shot fireworks at other inebriated barbecuers until they fought him. He’s a 40 year old car salesman with a 10 year old step-daughter.

In an Urban Archaeology class I alluded to before we discussed an archaeological study of Lowell, MA. (See Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses of Lowell, Massachusetts.) Lowell was a planned city built by capitalists around textile mills. Since it was from a Marxist viewpoint, the study discussed how the landscape was a representation of the power of the owners over the workers. In particular, much was made of backyards. My professor ranted about how the tenement buildings had nicely manicured front lawns, but the backyards were essentially trash heaps where residents would dump stuff. Since they weren’t overtly visible, the management wouldn’t clean it (or force them to). According to him, this showed how management mistreated the workers.

My apartment experience has given me a different view: some of the tenement residents were disgusting pigs. The tenement occupants didn’t care about the quality of the backyards because it wasn’t their property. Many of these folks had (and have today) a “low class mentality” and don’t mind living like swine.

I find such deconstructionist treatments interesting more for what they reveal about the deconstructor than the subject. For instance, if the leftist archaeologists had found the backyards as neatly manicured as the fronts, they would have used it as evidence that the managers insisted to exercise control over even this portion of the worker’s environment. Apparently, those deemed “in power” are responsible for their actions, but the “oppressed” are free to uncritically wallow in their own shit.

Socialism and social norms

2006-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

As I explained in a previous post, I think that libertarian politics should be strictly utilitarian (maximizing individual freedom) and that such a characterization is not inconsistent with cooperative action. The difference is in conscious choice.

Most socialists would assert that social programs such as welfare must be implemented by a government which compels compliance through taxes and other coercion. This argument doesn’t make a lot of sense for democratic socialists. If the government program must be favored by a democratic majority to be implemented, then why wouldn’t the majority in favor of the program be willing to contribute without the threat of government force? The whole point of a government program over a private one is to force the minority opposed to the program to fund it.

What socialists fail to accept is a revolution of society through an evolution of social norms rather than via Mao’s “barrel of a gun.” I had a Marxist archaeology professor who loved to describe a supposed extinct egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers. In this society, the best hunter of the group would become the de facto leader, but its social norms dictated that the greatest respect was afforded to those who gave away the most. That is, the best hunter would be the last to eat. What he failed to realize is that the hunter’s actions were only influenced by the norms of his society, not dictated.

I have no qualm with charitable action and even feel a Kantian duty to perform it, but if we as a society want to encourage such behavior we must do so by affecting change of social norms. Be charitable yourself and publicly shame those you feel are exploitative. If you want someone to feel a duty toward his fellow man robbing him usually doesn’t work. Government programs discourage personal duty toward mankind because it provides a means to disclaim responsibility.

Deontological or Utilitarian?

2006-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Something I’ve been mulling over for a few months is whether libertarianism is deontological or utilitarian.

On the one hand, libertarianism can be seen as “freedom maximization.” That is, it seems to propose a sort of rule utilitarianism whereby individuals are free to do anything as long as their action does not initiate harm against another individual (or by extension, his property). I prefer this interpretation. However, though any libertarian would agree with the above, in practice many are not consistent with this view. In my experience, libertarians are eager to uphold an individual’s right to be stupid (vices are not crimes…), but are critical when someone makes what they consider socialistic choices. They confuse free cooperation with forced government conformity.

I think this criticism stems from a deontological view of libertarianism that is a jumble of Objectivism, social darwinism, and efficient market theory. The outlook is that since the market is efficient and we should be free to act in that market, then the correct actions each person should be taking are those which maximize his own exploitation of that market. The syllogism makes a certain amount of intuitive sense, but is faulty because it eliminates the freedom people should have in such a society to act irrationally or self-destructive if they want.

In my opinion, the deontological strain of libertarianism can be dangerous because it tends to justify inequality when it seems to be a result of market forces. Further, it requires all participants to adhere to the same ideology by presupposing that such an ethical system is already some kind of mystical truth that is somehow exempt from the requirement of “proof by market optimization.”

This is why the Libertarian Party is the “party of principle” instead of a party of significance in national politics.

Not under law but under grace...

2006-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

A common idea in Christianity is that it is superior to Judaism because christians are “not under law but under grace.” That is, the Judaic law was oppressive and impossible to follow. Jesus rescued us from such dogmatic oppression.

This view is a bunch of crap. The fact is that the vast majority of rules were not hard to keep–keep a diet, take one day off a week, etc. However, Christian doctrine is more oppressive in my view because it does not simply seek to regulate behavior, rather, it requires regulation of the internal state of the person. If you thought it was impossible to follow the Judaic law (or even the more restrictive pharisaic interpretations), try controlling your thoughts and feelings.

Cell, by Stephen King (A Review)

2006-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Last month I read Stephen King’s Cell. I had been looking forward to its release since reading an excerpt on Amazon in September. I quite enjoyed the book despite its derivative nature (think a less-grandiose hybrid of The Stand and Romero’s Dead movies). Of course, I’ve always been a sucker for apocalyptic plots.

King was obviously aware of the danger of rehashing old material, so he keeps the scope tightly centered on the experiences of a father trying to reunite with his son. It keeps the book distinct from its superior conceptual heritage. While this approach was certainly the best, I wouldn’t have minded if he had digressed a bit–all the more fuel for my apocalyptic King fetish. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the characters terribly compelling either–the featured father/son theme was reminiscent of Pet Semetary. The themes addressed in Cell (dangers of technology, the nature of father/son relationships, a parent’s fear of failure) have been explored in more depth by King in previous work and Cell adds nothing new to the mix.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story, but was disappointed that King didn’t have anything new to say here.

Literal interpretations of Genesis

2006-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

I had a bit of an epiphany recently regarding the Genesis account of creation and its commonly-held view of man’s “special creation” by God. In discussions with evolution-haters (i.e., Christians who believe in a Genesis-esque creation), their biggest problem with evolution seems to be that it invalidates the Bible’s claim that man was specially created by God. It is a nice argument, but one must look at this from a new perspective–is Genesis consistent with the idea that man was created ‘special.’ I purport that this is not necessarily so.

First, the common view among evolution unbelievers is that man was made perfect before the fall. If this is meant to be literally so, then please answer this question: If God created man perfect, he would have been perfectly made prior to Eve’s creation, and yet Adam was created with male sex organs. Is it not ridiculous for God to create a single being with sex organs to procreate with the opposite sex which was not intended to be created in the first place! Recall, Eve was created because Adam was ‘lonely,’ it stands to reason that if Adam was not lonely then Eve would not have been created. If Eve was not created, then Adam’s testes were created without purpose.

Second, Cain was banished to a place called Nod, was scared that someone out there would kill him, and later had a wife. These suggest that other people existed in other places. If people existed in other places, then they were created by God, but not ‘specially’ as they are not descendants of Adam. It seems to me that the ‘special’ creation dogma makes more sense as a precursor to the ideology of Jews being God’s chosen people–a common theme throughout the Old Testament.

I could go on and on with inherent problems with a literalistic view of Genesis and the fundamentalist responses to each one, but my ultimate point is this: why must Genesis be literal when taking it so necessitates a host of complicated justifications when looking at the book figuratively does not have these problems.

The ideology of walking paths

2006-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

I had an interesting conversation with some friends from my statistics class. CCSU campus had a large circular garden area in the middle of the courtyard which annoyingly hinders direct traffic between the student center and most of the buildings. It has a meandering path through it, but I generally walk straight across it, ignoring the path. When they questioned me about it I said that it is designed to assert dominance over the students by subconsciously modifying their behavior. In other words, the courtyard is a symbol of administration’s power over the student. For this reason, I ignore the path. Dan then quipped that I should then walk instead on the highest part of the garden, but I rebuffed him on the grounds that doing so would take me out of my way and I prefer to put utility above social commentary. In fact, the utility is my social commentary.

Stephen King on Land of the Dead

2006-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

In Stephen King’s Entertainment Weekly column, The Pop of King, he discusses Land of the Dead.

[I]n spite of the strangled budgets (maybe even because of them), there are strangely beautiful images in Land of the Dead. I’m thinking of one in particular, where thousands of zombie heads rise from the moon-drenched river surrounding Dennis Hopper’s citadel city.

What I admire most is that this phase of the series is ending almost 40 years later with Romero’s original creative vision intact. In each succeeding film the arena is larger, but the grim bottom line is the same.

Word up, Steve!

What I love best about Romero’s Dead films (yes, they are films, not movies) is the realism of the storylines (once you accept the initial assumption that the dead can come back, of course). The movies are character-driven, not brainless run-for-your-life crap as the horror genre is so often pigeonholed. The plots are compelling and not simply excuses to spill blood.

Also, Romero makes almost no attempt to explain what has caused this phenomenon, which I love because it is not important. The characters have more pressing matters to think about than why.

The over-explanation mistake is made so frequently in movies. Take Independence Day: remember the scene when the president reads the mind of the captive alien through it’s telepathic ability and learns their ultimate plan for Earth? This cheapened the movie a lot. For starters, as a viewer I have already accepted the fact that aliens have attacked Earth, why must I need a reason? Will having one make the alien invasion seem more realistic? No. Instead, I now have to believe in aliens and their conveniently pointless telepathic abilities.

In short, if you’re not down with the Dead and don’t consider yourself squimish, you have an obligation to yourself to watch them–as if you were watching films, not a movies.

Objectivism and complexity theory

2006-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Since Curt started reading Atlas Shrugged, we’ve had several interesting conversations on objectivism and existentialism. As I ponder, my mind keeps coming back to the application of objectivist philosophy. In particular, computability theory and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

First, humans are bounded by space and time in their thinking process just like a computer. Deriving a sound, rational reason for every action taken is physically impossible. Though it is a rational action to recognize such and employ the use of heuristics in making decisions, this has important implications in a philosophy based on objective reality. If I fail to search the entire solution space for the correct, objective action, I cannot be sure I am making the rational decision. Further, how can I rationally choose a suitable heuristic? Sticking to a pre-learned moral code would be an obvious choice, but this does not jive with Objectivism. Rand offers the fall-back heuristic of rational self-interest, but I’m still not clear exactly how this idea follows from her axioms.

If all that wasn’t difficult enough, Gödel showed that any sufficiently broad mathematical system (which rational logic certainly is) must necessarily have unknowable truths. That is, there are situations when an objective, rational truth may exist, but there is no way to discover it. In Objectivism there must necessarily be instances where we are incapable of knowing the rational truth; it is impossible to be completely objective.

Hedging personal expenses

2004-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

It can be a pain in the ass to be a farmer. I know this because I’ve read Grapes of Wrath and seen lots of movies. The bank is always trying to take your land. You need tons of stuff to run your farm–fertilizer, seed, equipment, feed, labor–but you can’t pay for it until you can earn some money from the harvest. Even worse, prices of the commodities you produce may be in the toilet when it comes time for you to sell at the market and you may not earn back enough to pay your expenses. What’s a poor farmer to do? Hedge. He arranges contracts with buyers to sell at specific prices. He buys options for the feed he needs at known prices.

Why don’t most people approach their personal finances like a business? For the farmer, locking in reasonable prices for his goods keeps his farm afloat. For the average individual, there are times when it may be prudent to consider an investment as a hedge against rising prices on a commodity you must buy. I think particularly of gas prices. (Note: I don’t mean you should consider options or futures trading.)

The past few years have been crazy for gas prices and I’ve heard many people complaining about the increased chunk price hikes have taken out of their wallet. At the same time, they complain that the oil companies have been posting huge profits. What these people fail to realize is that they can be recovering much of that cost in the form of dividend and capital gains for holding stock in those same oil companies.

For instance, since the start of 2006 shares of Exxon/Mobil have appreciated 32% (not counting dividends). If price increases required you to drop on average an additional $20 a month on gas (for a total of $240 for the year) you could have recovered that expense by only owning about 12 shares of Exxon for the year.

So what am I supposed to do, like, click it?

2004-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday I got the stupidest computer question ever in my career in information technology. The conversation went something like this:

Tool: Hi Dave, I can’t find [some resource] on the intranet, can you tell me how to access it?

Me: I’ll send you an email with a link to it.

Tool:(considering pause) So what am I supposed to do, like, click it?

Me:(exasperated pause) Yes. You click it.

Can someone tell me what other options you can possibly have with a modern computer? Stare at it, use the Force on it, print it out and make a pirate hat from it?