If you have read many of my posts you will have noticed that I don't have much to say about current events. However, I came across this article about dissension within the PEN American Center and thought it might be worth a comment. Several members of this group of predominantly American writers, editors and translators have signed a letter denouncing PEN's decision to give an award to Charlie Hebdo. Apparently, though they support free speech, they feel that the publications of Charlie Hebdo are anti-Islamic and offensive to a marginalized group of people and therefore are not worthy of an award.
It is unfortunate that some outraged Muslims in France killed several of the staff at Charlie Hebdo, but it seems to me that the protesters at PEN are injecting naive political correctness into their thinking about free speech. When speech is restricted for any reason, it is no longer free, and that's all there is to it. Their position seems to be something along the lines of "We strongly support free speech as long as no one's feelings get hurt." This is an astoundingly obtuse way to look at the world, and, unsurprisingly, consistent with some of my earlier posts, several of the signatories are regular contributors to the NYRB.
Fortunately there are other people at PEN who still have their wits about them. Louis Begley said "Well, look, I think that Charlie Hebdo cartoons are vulgar and very often stupid. That is not, however, a reason for assassinating the staff of the magazine. To recognize the fact that they died in the cause of free speech is perfectly appropriate. Would I have chosen Charlie Hebdo to receive this award? Probably not. But that's neither here nor there. This decision strikes me as legitimate." Salman Rushdie more firmly said "If PEN as a free speech organization can't defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name."
For me, free speech is one of the most important elements of a democracy, with the proviso that democracy itself is a defective idea with many inherent limitations. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wasn't written for fun or fashion. The rationale is that whenever citizens are denied the right to express their views publicly, no matter how offensive or just plain wrong they may be, the door is opened to authoritarian forces such as monarchs, churches or dictators to engage in the anti-democratic control of public discourse. Suppression of free speech is a key ingredient to every oppressive regime that has ever existed. Even the suggestion that a distinction must be made between "good" free speech and "bad" free speech, as the protesters at PEN have done, represents a fundamental violation and misunderstanding of the concept.
Political correctness, as evidenced in this instance, is a form of thought control that attempts to impose itself on others. Looking sociologically at the contemporary scene in the U.S., there are two primary schools of thought. In the media one encounters either the "conservative" viewpoint, which is generally a stand-in for corporate interests and capitalism, or the "liberal" viewpoint, which generally concerns itself with fairness and justice. Although my position is primarily that of an anti-capitalist, I often find the liberal camp problematic. In my view, the capitalists overemphasize self-interest and the liberals overemphasize religion. At the extreme end of liberalism, political correctness manifests itself as a form of inflexible dogma that looks theological and in some ways isn't much better than Fox News. At the heart of many liberal positions is the unexamined adherence to something that closely resembles Christian principles, now expanded to include "compassion," which has a trendier Buddhist ring to it but is of little substantive difference as used in the vernacular.
If I were PEN, I would not give awards to organizations or individuals in recognition of their exhibition of free speech. Free speech is a concept, and they might do better to explain what it means and how important it is, particularly as in this instance some of their own members don't seem to understand what it is. Charlie Hebdo may or may not be an appropriate example of the exercise of free speech, but the particulars of what they said are almost irrelevant. Why doesn't PEN just write an essay on the importance of free speech?
I must also point out that the existence of this blog is an exercise in free speech. It makes a difference to me that I can write exactly what I please without an editor or moderator stepping in and imposing his agenda on me. As it happens, I choose to exercise a degree of decorum so as not to upset some of my readers. For example, even though I know that some of them have religious views that I consider ridiculous, I don't see any reason to assault their views in an offensive or insulting manner. However, that is simply my personal preference, and in an atmosphere of free speech I can be as offensive or inoffensive as I like.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Human Instincts
One of the things that I've noticed for a long time is how people deal with their instincts. This is a complex topic that I can hardly explain in a blog post, but I still think it's worth discussing. Thinking about it can tell you a lot about how unspoken stresses can play out in individuals and how society is organized to deal with them.
Looking back, I felt something was wrong when I was growing up, though I couldn't put my finger on it until much later. Before college I lived entirely in suburban towns, and my exposure to natural environments was limited. I spent little time in rural areas and never experienced a wilderness. Unbeknownst to me, it wore on me that I did not belong to the Boy Scouts and didn't go away to camp during the summer as some of my friends and acquaintances did. I recall endless boring summers living in a paved neighborhood with little to do outside. The monotony was broken somewhat by the nearby swimming pool, but that never felt adequate. My family took few vacations - only three in total from 1957 onward - and by the end of high school I was ready to escape to a new location for reasons beyond my dislike of family dysfunctionality. My college was located in a rural town where it was possible to walk out into the country or the woods, which became my first experience of being alone in the outdoors. That is when I developed a taste for natural environments.
I now think that my appreciation of the outdoors is something instinctive over which I have little control. Despite not having grown up hunting and fishing, the way many rural people do, I probably would have preferred that if it had been an option. I am not unique in this, and urban planners have long recognized, for example, that cities need green areas. Thus large parks such as Central Park in Manhattan were constructed in the nineteenth century and early highways near New York City were intentionally made scenic. Throughout my adult life I've had contact with both rural and urban people, and the differences have always intrigued me. Rural life comes closer than city dwelling to the lives of our ancestors. In this sense, cities breed a certain dissatisfaction. Consequently, as the population has increased, those with the resources have tended to move out to the suburbs, which offer a rough facsimile of a natural environment. Even so, there are resolute city dwellers, and cities have attributes that satisfy some instincts. There is a certain security and feeling of safety in cities that may relate to being in a group and that at some level may be similar to being huddled in a cave with one's clan.
Other instincts are so integral to our lives that we take them for granted without much thought. Among those is the instinct to eat and enjoy food. I have always noticed the effect of food and alcohol at social events. If you don't offer any, not many people will show up, but if you offer both, be prepared for a crowded and boisterous party. Fortunately in the developed world there is an overabundance of food and the problems associated with it have more to do with obesity than with starvation. Food surpluses have led to a different problem, overpopulation, in developing countries, which I won't discuss now.
Sexual instincts are as strong as any other, and they play a more problematic role. Going through puberty is an enormous personal shock when it occurs. At the time you may not understand what is happening, but if you ever have children yourself you have the opportunity to observe firsthand its powerful effects. In the matter of a few months those cute, docile little creatures may be transformed by hormones into uncontrollable monsters. A chaotic, often unconscious mate selection process ensues, with parents and society scrambling to channel it as best they can. It is difficult to know the full extent to which adult male behavior is concerned with attracting females, but my impression is that it is significant. Not being an ambitious person myself, it has never made much sense to me that so many men are obsessed with becoming or appearing wealthy or with attaining positions of leadership. Because it is possible to live a good life without those elements, I am inclined to associate that kind of behavior with an instinctive attempt to attract the opposite sex. A similar process can be seen in women, who are often obsessed with their physical appearance. Women also influence male behavior by signaling what kinds of things will impress them the most about men: money and power are often high on the list. One of the big mistakes of the feminist movement in the U.S. was that it ignored most of the biological motivation behind male dominance, encouraging many women to be successful in positions that they might never find satisfying. Society is interwoven with the process and steps in to minimize the potential damages caused by rivalry and infidelity, with limited success. The expectation here is that there will be one husband and one wife, till death do us part, and this is not necessarily a feasible strategy for maintaining order. Both husbands and wives have had roving eyes since the dawn of mankind, and when people only lived to age thirty, fifty-year marriages rarely occurred.
Another major instinct is the will to live, and this is in the process of adapting to new options that have been created by medical technology. In the past you just got sick or old or had an accident and died, but now your life may be extended by several years. It is conceivable that we may soon be able to become immortal. Such a change would be a radical discontinuity from our biological past, and I'm not sure that it will be possible for us to understand it as mortal organisms. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are about being born, reproducing and dying. If you take the dying out of the equation, living takes on a new, unrecognizable meaning.
Looking back, I felt something was wrong when I was growing up, though I couldn't put my finger on it until much later. Before college I lived entirely in suburban towns, and my exposure to natural environments was limited. I spent little time in rural areas and never experienced a wilderness. Unbeknownst to me, it wore on me that I did not belong to the Boy Scouts and didn't go away to camp during the summer as some of my friends and acquaintances did. I recall endless boring summers living in a paved neighborhood with little to do outside. The monotony was broken somewhat by the nearby swimming pool, but that never felt adequate. My family took few vacations - only three in total from 1957 onward - and by the end of high school I was ready to escape to a new location for reasons beyond my dislike of family dysfunctionality. My college was located in a rural town where it was possible to walk out into the country or the woods, which became my first experience of being alone in the outdoors. That is when I developed a taste for natural environments.
I now think that my appreciation of the outdoors is something instinctive over which I have little control. Despite not having grown up hunting and fishing, the way many rural people do, I probably would have preferred that if it had been an option. I am not unique in this, and urban planners have long recognized, for example, that cities need green areas. Thus large parks such as Central Park in Manhattan were constructed in the nineteenth century and early highways near New York City were intentionally made scenic. Throughout my adult life I've had contact with both rural and urban people, and the differences have always intrigued me. Rural life comes closer than city dwelling to the lives of our ancestors. In this sense, cities breed a certain dissatisfaction. Consequently, as the population has increased, those with the resources have tended to move out to the suburbs, which offer a rough facsimile of a natural environment. Even so, there are resolute city dwellers, and cities have attributes that satisfy some instincts. There is a certain security and feeling of safety in cities that may relate to being in a group and that at some level may be similar to being huddled in a cave with one's clan.
Other instincts are so integral to our lives that we take them for granted without much thought. Among those is the instinct to eat and enjoy food. I have always noticed the effect of food and alcohol at social events. If you don't offer any, not many people will show up, but if you offer both, be prepared for a crowded and boisterous party. Fortunately in the developed world there is an overabundance of food and the problems associated with it have more to do with obesity than with starvation. Food surpluses have led to a different problem, overpopulation, in developing countries, which I won't discuss now.
Sexual instincts are as strong as any other, and they play a more problematic role. Going through puberty is an enormous personal shock when it occurs. At the time you may not understand what is happening, but if you ever have children yourself you have the opportunity to observe firsthand its powerful effects. In the matter of a few months those cute, docile little creatures may be transformed by hormones into uncontrollable monsters. A chaotic, often unconscious mate selection process ensues, with parents and society scrambling to channel it as best they can. It is difficult to know the full extent to which adult male behavior is concerned with attracting females, but my impression is that it is significant. Not being an ambitious person myself, it has never made much sense to me that so many men are obsessed with becoming or appearing wealthy or with attaining positions of leadership. Because it is possible to live a good life without those elements, I am inclined to associate that kind of behavior with an instinctive attempt to attract the opposite sex. A similar process can be seen in women, who are often obsessed with their physical appearance. Women also influence male behavior by signaling what kinds of things will impress them the most about men: money and power are often high on the list. One of the big mistakes of the feminist movement in the U.S. was that it ignored most of the biological motivation behind male dominance, encouraging many women to be successful in positions that they might never find satisfying. Society is interwoven with the process and steps in to minimize the potential damages caused by rivalry and infidelity, with limited success. The expectation here is that there will be one husband and one wife, till death do us part, and this is not necessarily a feasible strategy for maintaining order. Both husbands and wives have had roving eyes since the dawn of mankind, and when people only lived to age thirty, fifty-year marriages rarely occurred.
Another major instinct is the will to live, and this is in the process of adapting to new options that have been created by medical technology. In the past you just got sick or old or had an accident and died, but now your life may be extended by several years. It is conceivable that we may soon be able to become immortal. Such a change would be a radical discontinuity from our biological past, and I'm not sure that it will be possible for us to understand it as mortal organisms. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are about being born, reproducing and dying. If you take the dying out of the equation, living takes on a new, unrecognizable meaning.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Intelligence
When I was growing up I was not particularly well adjusted academically. Unlike some of my friends, whose parents closely monitored their preparation for college and pushed them to get into the high school honors program or sent them to private schools, my parents had little awareness of the importance of academics. They didn't help us with our homework, barely looked at our report cards and were not involved with my college applications. Neither of them ever set foot on the campus of the college that I subsequently attended. There were few episodes at home of academic relevance that I can recall. My mother liked art and took us to the museums in Manhattan, and this instilled in me an early interest in paintings. She listened to classical music, which made it easier for me to appreciate later on. My father brought home a small telescope and gave me a microscope for my birthday, but we never discussed them and I never used them much. We had a lot of cats at the time, and I caught a flea, which I put on a slide for viewing under the microscope. Other than in science, in which I somehow managed to skip a grade, I think I was stunted academically, mainly because my parents never read to us or encouraged reading. It is also possible that I had inherently greater difficulty reading than my peers for other reasons. In any case, I read very little up until eleventh grade, when the assignments in English classes began to become more demanding.
In college I did better than most, but not exceptionally well. I gradually shifted from a slight academic inferiority complex to a feeling that I might actually be a good student. Most of the students at the small liberal arts college that I attended did not seem particularly intelligent to me. They were predominantly from the upper middle class and were conforming to parental and social pressures in an unimaginative way. Over a period of years I took an interest in the nature of intelligence and its relationship to academia. During my spare time while living in Dixon, Illinois in the late 1980's, before I began in earnest the project of reading literature, I set out to see whether I could qualify for membership to Mensa, which I soon did. I belonged to Mensa for a few years and found that the members seemed smart, but on the whole there wasn't much point to the organization and I quit.
My misunderstanding of how the academic system worked turned out to be a handicap. I didn't realize until it was too late that high performance in school is directly related to the amount of effort expended. This faulty interpretation arose in part from the fact that standardized tests were presented to us by the school as something for which you could not prepare, i.e., they reflect your innate IQ, which can't be changed. I eventually decided on my own that this was nonsense, and part of my motivation to join Mensa, which I would not have qualified to join when I was in high school, was to show that I could raise my IQ, and I succeeded.
During this period I was reading up on intelligence and came across a couple of books written by Robert Sternberg, who was then a psychology professor at Yale. While, like many psychologists (Freud, Jung, Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, for example), Sternberg does not have a convincingly scientific approach, his triarchic theory of intelligence addressed some of the issues that I had been thinking about. In The Triarchic Mind, Sternberg sums up three different types of intelligence by describing three different kinds of graduate students. The first type is analytical, with high test scores and excellent capabilities with respect to academic skills. The second type has a spotty academic record and a lower IQ, but is creative and has a special ability to come up with novel ideas. The third type is neither analytical nor creative to the same degree as the others, but has a unique ability to focus on a situation and make practical decisions in order to get ahead. I had noticed these kinds of people myself and thought that Sternberg's model, though not particularly penetrating or profound, had some explanatory value.
After bouncing around this theory in my brain for many years and observing people, I tend to think that true intelligence involves each of the three aspects and a deficiency in one area can be a disadvantage. In particular, I believe that academia is fraught with problems because of its dominant population of analytical people who were good students but are uncreative and lacking in common sense. There are many academics who resemble George Eliot's Edward Casaubon: they persistently pursue ideas that have no basis in reality only because that is what they were taught. They spend years unimaginatively refining their work in what is often a complete waste of time. College campuses become alternate realities where students and faculty can feast on the delusional ideas of their choice. This can currently be seen in the campus hysteria about protecting women from rape, and is why political correctness seems to thrive at colleges and universities more than in other places. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these are not necessarily smart people, and those of them who venture out into the world often fail. Over the years I have read several journals that were written by and for academics, and I can never shake the feeling that they are engaging in a directionless, inexhaustible form of light amusement. As I have said, American intellectuals as a group have had little of value to contribute to the public good. They seem not to be there when, in theory, they are most needed.
Those who are creative but not analytical or practical may turn out to be starving artists, a group with which I have had little contact. Creativity alone does not offer much of a basis for a life, and I'm not sure it even makes sense to think of a person whose only characteristic is creativity. As a matter of preference, I'm a fan of divergent thinking, but in order to exercise that faculty one needs a minimal context. I like trying to think creatively about the world, whereas creativity is more readily associated with the arts. As I've said, creativity doesn't mix well with academia, which is better suited to formulas and canonical works.
Practical intelligence is what one encounters most often in the U.S., because it has melded so well with capitalism. Until recently you haven't needed to be analytical or creative to succeed here. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are two of the wealthiest men in the world, and though their analytical faculties are probably well developed, they are not intellectuals and certainly are not paragons of creativity. At the other end of the spectrum of practical people there is a full roster of unsavory characters who made out like bandits, often literally. I am reminded of the apocryphal answer by Willie Sutton to the question "Why do you rob banks?": "Because that's where the money is." This is the kind of thinking that has made America home to Jesse James, Charles Ponzi, Al Capone, John Dillinger, John Gotti, Enron and Bernie Madoff. In the more mundane business world that I experienced, the companies that I worked for did fine without much analysis or creativity, and the emphasis was usually on expediency. You can get by quite well in business without much intellect or imagination as long as you have a practical sense.
This emphasis on practicality, which led to the accommodation of commerce in the U.S., has had a positive impact with respect to economic development, but there has been a price paid for it. The cost is seen in what I have come to recognize as mediocrity in the arts, anti-intellectualism and a pervasive atmosphere of philistinism. The philistinism runs so deep that everyone now takes it for granted, and many do not even realize that there are better alternatives. No one is surprised when businessmen, politicians or professional athletes are exposed as crooks or cheats. A large number of people could reasonably conclude that their employers and political representatives don't care at all about their well-being. A cautious person might sensibly walk out of his front door every day prepared to confront an army of con men, liars and opportunists. Pollyannas, who are in denial of all this, can be just as dangerous these days. True human intelligence, I think, entails understanding this morass and coming up with a strategy for dealing with it effectively. Artificial intelligence may be a different story.
In college I did better than most, but not exceptionally well. I gradually shifted from a slight academic inferiority complex to a feeling that I might actually be a good student. Most of the students at the small liberal arts college that I attended did not seem particularly intelligent to me. They were predominantly from the upper middle class and were conforming to parental and social pressures in an unimaginative way. Over a period of years I took an interest in the nature of intelligence and its relationship to academia. During my spare time while living in Dixon, Illinois in the late 1980's, before I began in earnest the project of reading literature, I set out to see whether I could qualify for membership to Mensa, which I soon did. I belonged to Mensa for a few years and found that the members seemed smart, but on the whole there wasn't much point to the organization and I quit.
My misunderstanding of how the academic system worked turned out to be a handicap. I didn't realize until it was too late that high performance in school is directly related to the amount of effort expended. This faulty interpretation arose in part from the fact that standardized tests were presented to us by the school as something for which you could not prepare, i.e., they reflect your innate IQ, which can't be changed. I eventually decided on my own that this was nonsense, and part of my motivation to join Mensa, which I would not have qualified to join when I was in high school, was to show that I could raise my IQ, and I succeeded.
During this period I was reading up on intelligence and came across a couple of books written by Robert Sternberg, who was then a psychology professor at Yale. While, like many psychologists (Freud, Jung, Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, for example), Sternberg does not have a convincingly scientific approach, his triarchic theory of intelligence addressed some of the issues that I had been thinking about. In The Triarchic Mind, Sternberg sums up three different types of intelligence by describing three different kinds of graduate students. The first type is analytical, with high test scores and excellent capabilities with respect to academic skills. The second type has a spotty academic record and a lower IQ, but is creative and has a special ability to come up with novel ideas. The third type is neither analytical nor creative to the same degree as the others, but has a unique ability to focus on a situation and make practical decisions in order to get ahead. I had noticed these kinds of people myself and thought that Sternberg's model, though not particularly penetrating or profound, had some explanatory value.
After bouncing around this theory in my brain for many years and observing people, I tend to think that true intelligence involves each of the three aspects and a deficiency in one area can be a disadvantage. In particular, I believe that academia is fraught with problems because of its dominant population of analytical people who were good students but are uncreative and lacking in common sense. There are many academics who resemble George Eliot's Edward Casaubon: they persistently pursue ideas that have no basis in reality only because that is what they were taught. They spend years unimaginatively refining their work in what is often a complete waste of time. College campuses become alternate realities where students and faculty can feast on the delusional ideas of their choice. This can currently be seen in the campus hysteria about protecting women from rape, and is why political correctness seems to thrive at colleges and universities more than in other places. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these are not necessarily smart people, and those of them who venture out into the world often fail. Over the years I have read several journals that were written by and for academics, and I can never shake the feeling that they are engaging in a directionless, inexhaustible form of light amusement. As I have said, American intellectuals as a group have had little of value to contribute to the public good. They seem not to be there when, in theory, they are most needed.
Those who are creative but not analytical or practical may turn out to be starving artists, a group with which I have had little contact. Creativity alone does not offer much of a basis for a life, and I'm not sure it even makes sense to think of a person whose only characteristic is creativity. As a matter of preference, I'm a fan of divergent thinking, but in order to exercise that faculty one needs a minimal context. I like trying to think creatively about the world, whereas creativity is more readily associated with the arts. As I've said, creativity doesn't mix well with academia, which is better suited to formulas and canonical works.
Practical intelligence is what one encounters most often in the U.S., because it has melded so well with capitalism. Until recently you haven't needed to be analytical or creative to succeed here. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are two of the wealthiest men in the world, and though their analytical faculties are probably well developed, they are not intellectuals and certainly are not paragons of creativity. At the other end of the spectrum of practical people there is a full roster of unsavory characters who made out like bandits, often literally. I am reminded of the apocryphal answer by Willie Sutton to the question "Why do you rob banks?": "Because that's where the money is." This is the kind of thinking that has made America home to Jesse James, Charles Ponzi, Al Capone, John Dillinger, John Gotti, Enron and Bernie Madoff. In the more mundane business world that I experienced, the companies that I worked for did fine without much analysis or creativity, and the emphasis was usually on expediency. You can get by quite well in business without much intellect or imagination as long as you have a practical sense.
This emphasis on practicality, which led to the accommodation of commerce in the U.S., has had a positive impact with respect to economic development, but there has been a price paid for it. The cost is seen in what I have come to recognize as mediocrity in the arts, anti-intellectualism and a pervasive atmosphere of philistinism. The philistinism runs so deep that everyone now takes it for granted, and many do not even realize that there are better alternatives. No one is surprised when businessmen, politicians or professional athletes are exposed as crooks or cheats. A large number of people could reasonably conclude that their employers and political representatives don't care at all about their well-being. A cautious person might sensibly walk out of his front door every day prepared to confront an army of con men, liars and opportunists. Pollyannas, who are in denial of all this, can be just as dangerous these days. True human intelligence, I think, entails understanding this morass and coming up with a strategy for dealing with it effectively. Artificial intelligence may be a different story.
Monday, April 13, 2015
The Armenian Genocide
I am watching with interest public reactions to the one-hundredth anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Starting on April 24, 1915, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Turkey were arrested and subsequently executed at the inception of what became its largest campaign. Yesterday, Pope Francis became the first pope to describe those events using the term "genocide," predictably setting off a diplomatic uproar in Turkey, which has fabricated its own version of history. Although Turkey was still part of the Ottoman Empire at the time, the evidence clearly points to a deliberate plan for ethnic cleansing. A cover-up was supported by Mustafa Kemal, the George Washington of Turkey, after Turkey was founded in 1923, and that version of history has never been questioned by most Turks.
Many Armenian-Americans are observing closely to see whether Barack Obama will officially come out on this. In 2008, during his first campaign for the presidency, he said "I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence." However, Obama has been reluctant to use the word "genocide" in reference to Turkey since he became president. Turkey is a key ally in the Middle East and would be outraged, causing strategic repercussions in the area. Furthermore, Turkey has spent millions of dollars lobbying in Washington against a resolution in the House of Representatives that would officially label the event as genocide.
I don't have much at stake in this personally, though I am partly Armenian. My mother was 3/4 Armenian but did not have exposure to Armenian culture and considered herself Greek. She married an Englishman, making me 3/8 Armenian. I never thought of myself as ethnic at all when I was growing up, though it must be said that my physical appearance is somewhat Armenian and may have prejudiced some people against me over the course of my life. However, any prejudice would have been based primarily on appearance and not on any cultural associations. My mother's mother's father escaped an Armenian massacre in Turkey in the late nineteenth century and was already established in Athens by 1915. He came to dislike Armenians and wanted to disassociate himself from them; his wife was French/German. My mother's father's family was still living in Turkey just before the 1915 genocide, but they were tipped off and had time to sell their belongings and make their way to Athens via Bulgaria before the genocide reached them.
The situation is different for those cousins of mine who still live in Athens. They were Armenian on both sides, making them 7/8 Armenian. Here is my cousin Philip's account of what happened to their grandparents on their father's side: Krikor Boghossian's father [Philip's grandfather] was slaughtered by the Turks and his brother barely survived, being beaten up and tortured, before fleeing to Greece. My father arrived as a newborn baby with his mother in France in 1922 or 1923, but his mother soon went insane and died. He was raised in an orphanage close to Bordeaux, where he was found by his uncle, who brought him to Greece in 1938 (it seems that at that time Armenians traveled around Europe visiting orphanages, in an effort to assist reunifications of Armenian families; hence the word of my father's existence in France reached his uncle). Understandably, both of my Greek cousins are quite anti-Turkish. My other cousin, Isabelle, actively participates in the local Armenian culture.
In recent years I have done a little reading on the genocide. In particular I found Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide, by Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, quite affecting. The Armenians were suddenly deported from wherever they lived and forced to walk in caravans:
When the caravans reached the city limits, the men were often separated from the groups; gendarmes tied their hands and escorted them away from their families. Wives and children heard shots ring out, and then the gendarmes returned alone, forcing the remnant to resume their journey. (This was a typical scenario, although in some deportation groups men were allowed to remain with the caravan.)
The remaining deportees were marched in circuitous routes, through mountain passes and away from population centers. The destination for many caravans was Aleppo and, beyond that, the deserts of Syria–especially towns such as Der-Zor. But the more fundamental goal of the deportations appeared to be death through attrition. Turks were not allowed to assist deportees, on pain of imprisonment. And gendarmes were often sadistic, for example, refusing deportees access to water.
The actual butchering of deportees was often left to members of "Special Organizations." Created by an order of the Ministry of Justice and the Interior, these units were made up of criminals and murderers who had been released from prison in the Ottoman Empire. Morally suited to the task, they were led by officers of the Ottoman War Academy. Two nationalistic physicians, Drs. Nazim and Shakir, played a key role in organizing these killer units of chété, as they were called. Although these groups at first fought against Russians in the Caucuses, the Turks found a better use for them in massacring caravans of Armenian deportees. These men were heartless, butchering deportees in ravines and on narrow mountain passes, raping women and stealing what few possessions they still carried. Kurdish tribal groups were similarly encouraged to raid caravans. The gendarmes who were supposed to "protect" the caravans either disappeared during these attacks or joined in the assault.
In addition to Drs. Nazim and Shakir, other physicians were involved in the genocide. For example, Dr. Ali Saib was accused in postwar trials of having poisoned and gassed infants and children. Numan Pasha, also a physician, was accused of having poisoned sick Armenians in Erzerum, Sivas, and Erzinjan. Tevfik Rushdu, a brother-in-law of Dr. Nazim, had been responsible for disposing of bodies by putting them in wells and covering them with lime and soil.
As deportees continued on their enforced march, they began to encounter remnants of earlier caravans–the rotting bodies of deportees who had died of exhaustion were now littering the roadways. By this time, some caravan members were naked as a result of continual raids; others were walking skeletons. Survivors ate grass that grew along the roadside or picked grains out of animal manure. Many had dysentery or typhus. Their hair was filled with lice and they scarcely appeared human.
Caravans that had started out with thousands arrived at Aleppo with hundreds, or even less. Deportation was a very effective method of genocide, although there is a great controversy about how many died. Armenians calculate that 1.5 million perished between 1915 and 1923. Some scholars believe the number was lower, perhaps as few as eight hundred thousand. Much of the discussion centers on the size of the Armenian population in Turkey at the time and whether to consider the period from 1894 to 1923 or the narrower time frame of 1915-16. An accurate generalization, however, is that approximately half of the Armenian population of Turkey died as a direct result of the genocide. Worldwide, one-third of the total population of Armenians died. Surviving Armenians included the several hundred thousand who were living in Constantinople and Smyrna who were not deported, children who were adopted into Turkish or Kurdish homes, perhaps three hundred thousand Armenians who escaped across the Russian border, and the pathetic remnant that survived months of deportation.
One startling aspect of this genocide is that it was specifically directed at Christians, yet British and American authorities, who were well aware of what was going on, did nothing to stop it. Records of the atrocities appear in a report prepared by the British historian Arnold Toynbee and in U.S. State Department reports. Many of the anecdotal records from survivors and other witnesses are even more gruesome than what I've included here. Since the deportations occurred during World War I, resources may not have been available to address the genocide. Even so, I find it appalling that, because we have so few allies in the Middle East, Turkey has been able to get off scot-free for a century. While the Armenian genocide was not the largest in history, it served as a model for Adolf Hitler and could be used so again. We'll see whether Obama rises to the occasion and uses the "g" word later this month: if he doesn't he will sink even lower in my estimation.
Many Armenian-Americans are observing closely to see whether Barack Obama will officially come out on this. In 2008, during his first campaign for the presidency, he said "I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence." However, Obama has been reluctant to use the word "genocide" in reference to Turkey since he became president. Turkey is a key ally in the Middle East and would be outraged, causing strategic repercussions in the area. Furthermore, Turkey has spent millions of dollars lobbying in Washington against a resolution in the House of Representatives that would officially label the event as genocide.
I don't have much at stake in this personally, though I am partly Armenian. My mother was 3/4 Armenian but did not have exposure to Armenian culture and considered herself Greek. She married an Englishman, making me 3/8 Armenian. I never thought of myself as ethnic at all when I was growing up, though it must be said that my physical appearance is somewhat Armenian and may have prejudiced some people against me over the course of my life. However, any prejudice would have been based primarily on appearance and not on any cultural associations. My mother's mother's father escaped an Armenian massacre in Turkey in the late nineteenth century and was already established in Athens by 1915. He came to dislike Armenians and wanted to disassociate himself from them; his wife was French/German. My mother's father's family was still living in Turkey just before the 1915 genocide, but they were tipped off and had time to sell their belongings and make their way to Athens via Bulgaria before the genocide reached them.
The situation is different for those cousins of mine who still live in Athens. They were Armenian on both sides, making them 7/8 Armenian. Here is my cousin Philip's account of what happened to their grandparents on their father's side: Krikor Boghossian's father [Philip's grandfather] was slaughtered by the Turks and his brother barely survived, being beaten up and tortured, before fleeing to Greece. My father arrived as a newborn baby with his mother in France in 1922 or 1923, but his mother soon went insane and died. He was raised in an orphanage close to Bordeaux, where he was found by his uncle, who brought him to Greece in 1938 (it seems that at that time Armenians traveled around Europe visiting orphanages, in an effort to assist reunifications of Armenian families; hence the word of my father's existence in France reached his uncle). Understandably, both of my Greek cousins are quite anti-Turkish. My other cousin, Isabelle, actively participates in the local Armenian culture.
In recent years I have done a little reading on the genocide. In particular I found Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide, by Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, quite affecting. The Armenians were suddenly deported from wherever they lived and forced to walk in caravans:
When the caravans reached the city limits, the men were often separated from the groups; gendarmes tied their hands and escorted them away from their families. Wives and children heard shots ring out, and then the gendarmes returned alone, forcing the remnant to resume their journey. (This was a typical scenario, although in some deportation groups men were allowed to remain with the caravan.)
The remaining deportees were marched in circuitous routes, through mountain passes and away from population centers. The destination for many caravans was Aleppo and, beyond that, the deserts of Syria–especially towns such as Der-Zor. But the more fundamental goal of the deportations appeared to be death through attrition. Turks were not allowed to assist deportees, on pain of imprisonment. And gendarmes were often sadistic, for example, refusing deportees access to water.
The actual butchering of deportees was often left to members of "Special Organizations." Created by an order of the Ministry of Justice and the Interior, these units were made up of criminals and murderers who had been released from prison in the Ottoman Empire. Morally suited to the task, they were led by officers of the Ottoman War Academy. Two nationalistic physicians, Drs. Nazim and Shakir, played a key role in organizing these killer units of chété, as they were called. Although these groups at first fought against Russians in the Caucuses, the Turks found a better use for them in massacring caravans of Armenian deportees. These men were heartless, butchering deportees in ravines and on narrow mountain passes, raping women and stealing what few possessions they still carried. Kurdish tribal groups were similarly encouraged to raid caravans. The gendarmes who were supposed to "protect" the caravans either disappeared during these attacks or joined in the assault.
In addition to Drs. Nazim and Shakir, other physicians were involved in the genocide. For example, Dr. Ali Saib was accused in postwar trials of having poisoned and gassed infants and children. Numan Pasha, also a physician, was accused of having poisoned sick Armenians in Erzerum, Sivas, and Erzinjan. Tevfik Rushdu, a brother-in-law of Dr. Nazim, had been responsible for disposing of bodies by putting them in wells and covering them with lime and soil.
As deportees continued on their enforced march, they began to encounter remnants of earlier caravans–the rotting bodies of deportees who had died of exhaustion were now littering the roadways. By this time, some caravan members were naked as a result of continual raids; others were walking skeletons. Survivors ate grass that grew along the roadside or picked grains out of animal manure. Many had dysentery or typhus. Their hair was filled with lice and they scarcely appeared human.
Caravans that had started out with thousands arrived at Aleppo with hundreds, or even less. Deportation was a very effective method of genocide, although there is a great controversy about how many died. Armenians calculate that 1.5 million perished between 1915 and 1923. Some scholars believe the number was lower, perhaps as few as eight hundred thousand. Much of the discussion centers on the size of the Armenian population in Turkey at the time and whether to consider the period from 1894 to 1923 or the narrower time frame of 1915-16. An accurate generalization, however, is that approximately half of the Armenian population of Turkey died as a direct result of the genocide. Worldwide, one-third of the total population of Armenians died. Surviving Armenians included the several hundred thousand who were living in Constantinople and Smyrna who were not deported, children who were adopted into Turkish or Kurdish homes, perhaps three hundred thousand Armenians who escaped across the Russian border, and the pathetic remnant that survived months of deportation.
One startling aspect of this genocide is that it was specifically directed at Christians, yet British and American authorities, who were well aware of what was going on, did nothing to stop it. Records of the atrocities appear in a report prepared by the British historian Arnold Toynbee and in U.S. State Department reports. Many of the anecdotal records from survivors and other witnesses are even more gruesome than what I've included here. Since the deportations occurred during World War I, resources may not have been available to address the genocide. Even so, I find it appalling that, because we have so few allies in the Middle East, Turkey has been able to get off scot-free for a century. While the Armenian genocide was not the largest in history, it served as a model for Adolf Hitler and could be used so again. We'll see whether Obama rises to the occasion and uses the "g" word later this month: if he doesn't he will sink even lower in my estimation.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Hermitry Sans Misanthropy
I've returned from another trip to Missouri, which perhaps will be my last. This time was more madcap than usual, with an assortment of misadventures. Greg was suffering from shingles and had been bedridden before I arrived but managed to revive himself enough to participate in activities. On the way to cut and remove trees that had fallen on the barbed wire fence surrounding the farm, Greg's new tractor got stuck in two feet of mud that had formed after a heavy rain the previous day. Not long after Greg was towed out by another tractor, Greg's son-in-law's pickup truck also got stuck in the mud and had to be pulled out. Anne, who went to Grubville once years ago, did not accompany me this time; she aptly refers to it as "Mudville."
The crowning fiasco occurred the next day, when four of us decided to take a paddle-wheel boat on a tour of the lake. It was a small, plastic, air-filled boat probably designed for teenagers, but in this case there were three overweight adult passengers plus me. With great effort and very slow progress we made our way down to the opposite end of the lake, where we could see a beaver dam and a few turtles sitting on rocks. About halfway back, Donny, the school bus driver visiting from Tennessee, informed us that we were taking on water at his end of the boat. Before long, the well in the boat where Donny had been sitting filled with water, the boat tilted backward and Donny fell into the lake. He floundered there for a minute before I could grab his hand, and shortly after that the entire boat flipped over and all of us were thrown into the lake. We were in over our heads, and I helped tow the boat to the shore, where two walked back in the water and two walked back on land. There were no injuries, but Donny seemed shaken up for the rest of his visit.
The following day the door opener to my rental car, which had been in my pocket when I fell into the lake, stopped working. My rental car from the airport was a new VW Beetle and had no keyholes visible on the exterior. I removed the battery cover and dried out the opener with a hair drier to no avail. As the hour of my plane departure approached I called Hertz and was informed that there is a keyhole hidden under a piece of removable plastic next to the handle on the driver's side, and sure enough there was. I made it on time to the airport without incident.
Other parts of the visit were more enjoyable. Donny had come with David, a friend of Greg's sister. David is a cattle rancher from Jackson, Tennessee and has a good sense of humor. As a gift, he brought two donkeys, which his father had been trying to get rid of. We sat next to his truck and trailer and listened to country music. I tried moonshine for the first time, and it wasn't bad at all, though not fine liquor by any stretch. Greg's neighbor, Mike, stopped by, and he likes to talk. Mike is a good example of the complexity that can reside in a person. He is a retired pipe fitter, usually carries a pistol in a holster and likes to hunt. Many would assume that, living in rural Missouri, he must be an NRA member and a conservative Republican, but they would be wrong. Mike used to be a pot dealer and still smokes it. He likes Elizabeth Warren and hates Dick Cheney. If you look beyond stereotypes, this country is far more complex than it seems, particularly if you rely on the news media for information. David and Mike's wives were a nice change from the starchy Yankee wives of Vermont. They exude a Southern warmth that doesn't make it this far north. I have to give the South a few concessions after all. We also managed to get in a game of croquet, which used to be a tradition.
Most of Greg's family was assembled, and he has been the patriarch since his father died. As mentioned in an earlier post, they're an unusual group. Over the years I have come to like them individually, even though we have little in common. I had hoped that more friends from college would be there this year but they weren't. One died recently, and the only one who showed up is a regular, Greg's closest friend.
Thinking about all this for a few days, I've decided that, rationally speaking, there isn't much reason for me to keep up with these people anymore. On the whole they are less thoughtful than I am and incapable of engaging in the kinds of discussion that I appreciate. They are interested in me to some extent while I'm there but do not think much about me or anything that I've said while I'm away. They are unlikely to visit me in the future. From my point of view many of their habits are ones that I tired of decades ago. I don't care about March Madness or sports at all. I have broader interests than they do and would not make many of the choices they made. Those who were in a loose sense friends during college have drifted off permanently. The same happened much earlier with high school friends. The prevailing judgment I have is that neither I nor they would benefit much from future contact.
You will have gathered from many of my posts that I have some of the characteristics of a hermit. To me this is perfectly acceptable, and, for the sake of clarity, I think a distinction must be made between being a hermit and being a misanthrope. Although I prefer being alone, I actually like and am interested in people. Sometimes it even seems that a minor paradox exists in that I like people more than they like me. However, I have to admit that they wear on me quickly, and I must soon be on my way.
The crowning fiasco occurred the next day, when four of us decided to take a paddle-wheel boat on a tour of the lake. It was a small, plastic, air-filled boat probably designed for teenagers, but in this case there were three overweight adult passengers plus me. With great effort and very slow progress we made our way down to the opposite end of the lake, where we could see a beaver dam and a few turtles sitting on rocks. About halfway back, Donny, the school bus driver visiting from Tennessee, informed us that we were taking on water at his end of the boat. Before long, the well in the boat where Donny had been sitting filled with water, the boat tilted backward and Donny fell into the lake. He floundered there for a minute before I could grab his hand, and shortly after that the entire boat flipped over and all of us were thrown into the lake. We were in over our heads, and I helped tow the boat to the shore, where two walked back in the water and two walked back on land. There were no injuries, but Donny seemed shaken up for the rest of his visit.
The following day the door opener to my rental car, which had been in my pocket when I fell into the lake, stopped working. My rental car from the airport was a new VW Beetle and had no keyholes visible on the exterior. I removed the battery cover and dried out the opener with a hair drier to no avail. As the hour of my plane departure approached I called Hertz and was informed that there is a keyhole hidden under a piece of removable plastic next to the handle on the driver's side, and sure enough there was. I made it on time to the airport without incident.
Other parts of the visit were more enjoyable. Donny had come with David, a friend of Greg's sister. David is a cattle rancher from Jackson, Tennessee and has a good sense of humor. As a gift, he brought two donkeys, which his father had been trying to get rid of. We sat next to his truck and trailer and listened to country music. I tried moonshine for the first time, and it wasn't bad at all, though not fine liquor by any stretch. Greg's neighbor, Mike, stopped by, and he likes to talk. Mike is a good example of the complexity that can reside in a person. He is a retired pipe fitter, usually carries a pistol in a holster and likes to hunt. Many would assume that, living in rural Missouri, he must be an NRA member and a conservative Republican, but they would be wrong. Mike used to be a pot dealer and still smokes it. He likes Elizabeth Warren and hates Dick Cheney. If you look beyond stereotypes, this country is far more complex than it seems, particularly if you rely on the news media for information. David and Mike's wives were a nice change from the starchy Yankee wives of Vermont. They exude a Southern warmth that doesn't make it this far north. I have to give the South a few concessions after all. We also managed to get in a game of croquet, which used to be a tradition.
Most of Greg's family was assembled, and he has been the patriarch since his father died. As mentioned in an earlier post, they're an unusual group. Over the years I have come to like them individually, even though we have little in common. I had hoped that more friends from college would be there this year but they weren't. One died recently, and the only one who showed up is a regular, Greg's closest friend.
Thinking about all this for a few days, I've decided that, rationally speaking, there isn't much reason for me to keep up with these people anymore. On the whole they are less thoughtful than I am and incapable of engaging in the kinds of discussion that I appreciate. They are interested in me to some extent while I'm there but do not think much about me or anything that I've said while I'm away. They are unlikely to visit me in the future. From my point of view many of their habits are ones that I tired of decades ago. I don't care about March Madness or sports at all. I have broader interests than they do and would not make many of the choices they made. Those who were in a loose sense friends during college have drifted off permanently. The same happened much earlier with high school friends. The prevailing judgment I have is that neither I nor they would benefit much from future contact.
You will have gathered from many of my posts that I have some of the characteristics of a hermit. To me this is perfectly acceptable, and, for the sake of clarity, I think a distinction must be made between being a hermit and being a misanthrope. Although I prefer being alone, I actually like and am interested in people. Sometimes it even seems that a minor paradox exists in that I like people more than they like me. However, I have to admit that they wear on me quickly, and I must soon be on my way.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Skepticism
I have always had a somewhat anti-authoritarian, divergent way of thinking about a variety of subjects. In graduate school I was chastised by a professor for ridiculing some of Aristotle's views in a paper I wrote. Although I didn't study much science or pursue it as a career, I have preserved a level of scientific skepticism throughout my life. For this reason I was delighted to see that Steven Weinberg, the theoretical physicist, also exhibits a healthy skepticism regarding the works of Plato and Aristotle. Within the context of the history of science, he views them as poets rather than as scientists or mathematicians. He sees them as elitists who thought that experimentation and the verification of theories were beneath them. In particular, regarding Aristotle's theory of planetary motion, Weinberg says "We would have to conclude that on his own terms, in working on a problem that interested him, he was being careless or stupid." Weinberg finds the Hellenistic period centered in Alexandria far more productive than the earlier period in Athens, though he admires Plato's writing style.
You will have noticed from some of my previous posts that I frequently question conventional wisdom in a range of topics. For example, I recently brought into doubt Lincoln's competence as president, and I haven't offered much praise for the American literary, academic and intellectual communities. It will also have become apparent that I'm not a fan of capitalism or democracy. American popular culture is hardly even worth discussing.
Over the last year or so I made an effort to reassess my skepticism regarding academic philosophy and concluded that nearly all of it is arbitrary bunk. I see this problem, like many others, mainly in terms of the inherent limitations of human beings. Once a body of work is established in written form and a community of scholars has assembled to discuss it, that work may become immortalized through ritual processes that willfully overlook its inherent lack of significance. A body of work may become a de facto religious text and the focal point of one academic cult or another. This pattern can be seen in the early evolution of modern universities, which began as theological institutions with no special interest in objective analysis. Philosophy used to be called natural philosophy, which included science, but the sciences began to break off from pure philosophy in the nineteenth century, and much of what now remains in philosophy departments, I think, is detritus from accumulated theological reasoning. It is obvious to me that many philosophical questions are best answered by reframing old philosophical concepts in the context of the ongoing scientific study of man, but that idea may be identified as heresy within philosophy departments. Philosophy, like many fields in the humanities, seems to have drifted off into a netherworld run by sentimental adult hobbyists.
In my opinion, much of what passes for normal within academic and commercial environments effectuates an unrecognized injustice to both science and art. For many people science is no fun, because, besides being difficult to learn, it shatters their illusions. In both the humanities and commercial culture, people gladly seek refuge from the hard and potentially disturbing facts of science. They would rather not know that their entire lives are insignificant episodes within the biological froth that has been roiling over the surface of the earth for billions of years. As a fellow human being I have some sympathy for them, yet my conclusion is still that people ought to grow up sooner or later. The corruption of art operates a little differently from that of science. In the case of art, I don't think that good art requires much explanation. Thus, I don't adorn my quotations from Emily Dickinson, Denise Levertov or Patrick Chamoiseau with superfluous comments stating what's good about them. Ideally a genuine work of art speaks for itself. In my view, the academic experts who take it upon themselves to explain to us what is good about a work of art are often the least qualified to describe the ineffable characteristics which are effortlessly recognized by those who are aesthetically aware. If you will pardon my use of a somewhat unfair cliché, those who can't do teach; in this context they teach philosophy, art history, creative writing, poetry, literature and quite a few other subjects. On the commercial end of scientific and artistic marginalization and degradation, one need only recognize that money tends to distort people's motives when their true goal becomes that of selling a product or service.
You will have noticed from some of my previous posts that I frequently question conventional wisdom in a range of topics. For example, I recently brought into doubt Lincoln's competence as president, and I haven't offered much praise for the American literary, academic and intellectual communities. It will also have become apparent that I'm not a fan of capitalism or democracy. American popular culture is hardly even worth discussing.
Over the last year or so I made an effort to reassess my skepticism regarding academic philosophy and concluded that nearly all of it is arbitrary bunk. I see this problem, like many others, mainly in terms of the inherent limitations of human beings. Once a body of work is established in written form and a community of scholars has assembled to discuss it, that work may become immortalized through ritual processes that willfully overlook its inherent lack of significance. A body of work may become a de facto religious text and the focal point of one academic cult or another. This pattern can be seen in the early evolution of modern universities, which began as theological institutions with no special interest in objective analysis. Philosophy used to be called natural philosophy, which included science, but the sciences began to break off from pure philosophy in the nineteenth century, and much of what now remains in philosophy departments, I think, is detritus from accumulated theological reasoning. It is obvious to me that many philosophical questions are best answered by reframing old philosophical concepts in the context of the ongoing scientific study of man, but that idea may be identified as heresy within philosophy departments. Philosophy, like many fields in the humanities, seems to have drifted off into a netherworld run by sentimental adult hobbyists.
In my opinion, much of what passes for normal within academic and commercial environments effectuates an unrecognized injustice to both science and art. For many people science is no fun, because, besides being difficult to learn, it shatters their illusions. In both the humanities and commercial culture, people gladly seek refuge from the hard and potentially disturbing facts of science. They would rather not know that their entire lives are insignificant episodes within the biological froth that has been roiling over the surface of the earth for billions of years. As a fellow human being I have some sympathy for them, yet my conclusion is still that people ought to grow up sooner or later. The corruption of art operates a little differently from that of science. In the case of art, I don't think that good art requires much explanation. Thus, I don't adorn my quotations from Emily Dickinson, Denise Levertov or Patrick Chamoiseau with superfluous comments stating what's good about them. Ideally a genuine work of art speaks for itself. In my view, the academic experts who take it upon themselves to explain to us what is good about a work of art are often the least qualified to describe the ineffable characteristics which are effortlessly recognized by those who are aesthetically aware. If you will pardon my use of a somewhat unfair cliché, those who can't do teach; in this context they teach philosophy, art history, creative writing, poetry, literature and quite a few other subjects. On the commercial end of scientific and artistic marginalization and degradation, one need only recognize that money tends to distort people's motives when their true goal becomes that of selling a product or service.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Quote of the Day
It is not that the modern scientist takes a position from the start that there are no supernatural persons. This happens to be my view, but there are good scientists who are seriously religious. Rather, the idea is to see how far one can go without supposing supernatural intervention. Only in this way can we do science, because once one invokes the supernatural, anything can be explained and no explanation can be verified. This is why the "intelligent design" ideology being promoted today is not science–it is the abdication of science.
—Steven Weinberg, from To Explain the World
—Steven Weinberg, from To Explain the World
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Introversion
One of the few worthwhile concepts to be popularized by Carl Jung was that of introversion. I had never thought about it much, but in 1985 when by chance I read Please Understand Me, by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates, I became intrigued. The book discusses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and contains a test that indicated that my type is INTJ. That was somewhat of a surprise to me because the description was fairly accurate and, according to the authors, it is one of the rarer of the sixteen types, hence isn't familiar to the more numerous types. The "I" in INTJ stands for introversion, and thereafter I had a framework for understanding how I'm not the same as most people.
After playing around with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for a few years and applying it to various people I decided that it had limited usefulness, but it does explain some basic personality differences. The most useful part, I find, is the introversion-extroversion scale. Basically, I enjoy being alone and enjoy being around people who also enjoy being alone. This is an important thing to know, especially in the U.S., where extroverts dominate practically everything. They do to such an extent that shy children are often seen as needing therapy or treatment. I suspect that introversion is more common in Europe and Asia, so it may be less likely that introverts will feel out of place there. For most of my life in the U.S. it has seemed to me that introverts are considered defective.
To put this into perspective, I like to think in terms of aptitudes that permit either introverts or extroverts to excel in various fields. Generally speaking, introverts are good at things that require a great deal of concentration over long periods of time, which typically involves solitary activity. I think that this gives introverts an advantage in science and writing. My guess is that Newton, Darwin, Einstein, George Eliot, Flaubert, Dostoevsky and D.H. Lawrence - some of my favorite people - were introverts. Extroverts may do well in some kinds of writing, such as travel writing, journalism or popular fiction. The strong areas for extroverts are ones that involve a lot of contact with people. That would include politicians, business leaders, performers and professional athletes. However, not many people are completely introverted or completely extroverted, which means that these profiles don't necessarily work well in all situations.
Two prominent extroverts are Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. Neither is particularly introspective, and Clinton is probably more intelligent in the conventional sense. What they have in common is a need for approval and to be around a lot of people most of the time. Both are gregarious and able to connect well with people, but Roosevelt is more effective at public speaking. Clinton's weaknesses as a person get him into trouble in office, and the same could have happened to Roosevelt, who lived in a more private era. Whatever intellectual advantage Clinton may have was irrelevant to his presidency, because he is not an original thinker and simply adopts the ideas of those around him. Both Roosevelt and Clinton married opposites - Eleanor and Hillary are introverts - and this led to significant marital problems in both cases. Extroverts can benefit from the thoughtfulness of introverts to round out their decisions, but the two types are not deeply compatible. Introverts sometimes cluster around extroverts, who may have superior leadership skills, although extroverts are occasionally socially inept themselves.
While it seems to be a rarity to have extroverted people seek introverted roles, it is fairly common to find introverts seeking extroverted roles. Especially in the U.S., which is an extrovert paradise, introverts often think they're supposed to be extroverted. Some children are groomed to be social overachievers whether they like it or not. For this reason people like Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett become talk show hosts. People like Richard Nixon and Barack Obama become presidents. Millions of people attempt to become effective public speakers even though they hate it. Most of the time this is harmless, but in many cases the people might be happier if they accepted themselves for what they were.
Particularly bothersome to me is the case of an introvert taking a significant public role that he is not equipped to perform well. It is obvious to me that Barack Obama was not cut out to be president. He was not, is not, and will never be an inspiring public figure, which is perhaps the chief responsibility of the president. Even though I occasionally agree with his policies and reasoning, he has been unable to break out of the straitjacket that the Republicans have put him into because he doesn't know how to win people over. Compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt he is a political dunce of the worst kind. Bill Clinton was probably not a very good president, but people will always prefer him to Obama because they like him. In my opinion, introverts do not belong in the White House. In this vein, I've been thinking about Abraham Lincoln, another introvert. Although he is generally lauded as one of the greatest presidents ever for keeping the country unified and ending slavery, I have come to think that he made a colossal mistake by not allowing the Confederacy to secede from the United States. Part of the dysfunction in Washington to this day can still be attributed to North-South grievances dating from the Civil War. It is by no means obvious that if the Confederacy had become a separate country we would be in a worse condition than we are today. Slavery would probably have ended one way or another by about 1900, the economy of the South would have collapsed, and a war would have been averted. A case can be made that Lincoln had no idea what he was doing and does not deserve praise. The history books preempt the possibility of a thorough analysis, and it is now impossible to know with certainty what the outcome would have been without a Civil War.
There are probably evolutionary reasons for the population to contain a mix of introverts and extroverts. The extroverts are good at creating a sense of group unity, and the introverts are good at figuring out details. Either type can be creative, but I suspect that progress in both the arts and the sciences has been dominated by introverts. Besides the advantages of these kinds of specialization, it is possible that introverts have survived as an element in the gene pool simply because they historically tended to live in small groups and survived when disease afflicted large groups, causing higher mortality rates among extroverts.
I get the impression that there is a genetic component to introversion when I look at my family. My Armenian grandfather was extremely introverted. He was so shy that when his parents arranged his marriage he hid on his wedding night. Later in life he lived in a separate portion of his house, away from the rest of the family. Although my mother seemed social and was not particularly introverted, she didn't mind spending enormous amounts of time alone. Two out of her three children are introverts. I married an introvert, and our children are introverts. Of course, this is only anecdotal, but I suspect that research would bear out that introversion runs in families. As far as I'm concerned, introversion is normal, and no stigma should be attached to it. For one thing, it is not to be confused with timidity, and many people don't understand that there is a difference.
After playing around with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for a few years and applying it to various people I decided that it had limited usefulness, but it does explain some basic personality differences. The most useful part, I find, is the introversion-extroversion scale. Basically, I enjoy being alone and enjoy being around people who also enjoy being alone. This is an important thing to know, especially in the U.S., where extroverts dominate practically everything. They do to such an extent that shy children are often seen as needing therapy or treatment. I suspect that introversion is more common in Europe and Asia, so it may be less likely that introverts will feel out of place there. For most of my life in the U.S. it has seemed to me that introverts are considered defective.
To put this into perspective, I like to think in terms of aptitudes that permit either introverts or extroverts to excel in various fields. Generally speaking, introverts are good at things that require a great deal of concentration over long periods of time, which typically involves solitary activity. I think that this gives introverts an advantage in science and writing. My guess is that Newton, Darwin, Einstein, George Eliot, Flaubert, Dostoevsky and D.H. Lawrence - some of my favorite people - were introverts. Extroverts may do well in some kinds of writing, such as travel writing, journalism or popular fiction. The strong areas for extroverts are ones that involve a lot of contact with people. That would include politicians, business leaders, performers and professional athletes. However, not many people are completely introverted or completely extroverted, which means that these profiles don't necessarily work well in all situations.
Two prominent extroverts are Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. Neither is particularly introspective, and Clinton is probably more intelligent in the conventional sense. What they have in common is a need for approval and to be around a lot of people most of the time. Both are gregarious and able to connect well with people, but Roosevelt is more effective at public speaking. Clinton's weaknesses as a person get him into trouble in office, and the same could have happened to Roosevelt, who lived in a more private era. Whatever intellectual advantage Clinton may have was irrelevant to his presidency, because he is not an original thinker and simply adopts the ideas of those around him. Both Roosevelt and Clinton married opposites - Eleanor and Hillary are introverts - and this led to significant marital problems in both cases. Extroverts can benefit from the thoughtfulness of introverts to round out their decisions, but the two types are not deeply compatible. Introverts sometimes cluster around extroverts, who may have superior leadership skills, although extroverts are occasionally socially inept themselves.
While it seems to be a rarity to have extroverted people seek introverted roles, it is fairly common to find introverts seeking extroverted roles. Especially in the U.S., which is an extrovert paradise, introverts often think they're supposed to be extroverted. Some children are groomed to be social overachievers whether they like it or not. For this reason people like Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett become talk show hosts. People like Richard Nixon and Barack Obama become presidents. Millions of people attempt to become effective public speakers even though they hate it. Most of the time this is harmless, but in many cases the people might be happier if they accepted themselves for what they were.
Particularly bothersome to me is the case of an introvert taking a significant public role that he is not equipped to perform well. It is obvious to me that Barack Obama was not cut out to be president. He was not, is not, and will never be an inspiring public figure, which is perhaps the chief responsibility of the president. Even though I occasionally agree with his policies and reasoning, he has been unable to break out of the straitjacket that the Republicans have put him into because he doesn't know how to win people over. Compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt he is a political dunce of the worst kind. Bill Clinton was probably not a very good president, but people will always prefer him to Obama because they like him. In my opinion, introverts do not belong in the White House. In this vein, I've been thinking about Abraham Lincoln, another introvert. Although he is generally lauded as one of the greatest presidents ever for keeping the country unified and ending slavery, I have come to think that he made a colossal mistake by not allowing the Confederacy to secede from the United States. Part of the dysfunction in Washington to this day can still be attributed to North-South grievances dating from the Civil War. It is by no means obvious that if the Confederacy had become a separate country we would be in a worse condition than we are today. Slavery would probably have ended one way or another by about 1900, the economy of the South would have collapsed, and a war would have been averted. A case can be made that Lincoln had no idea what he was doing and does not deserve praise. The history books preempt the possibility of a thorough analysis, and it is now impossible to know with certainty what the outcome would have been without a Civil War.
There are probably evolutionary reasons for the population to contain a mix of introverts and extroverts. The extroverts are good at creating a sense of group unity, and the introverts are good at figuring out details. Either type can be creative, but I suspect that progress in both the arts and the sciences has been dominated by introverts. Besides the advantages of these kinds of specialization, it is possible that introverts have survived as an element in the gene pool simply because they historically tended to live in small groups and survived when disease afflicted large groups, causing higher mortality rates among extroverts.
I get the impression that there is a genetic component to introversion when I look at my family. My Armenian grandfather was extremely introverted. He was so shy that when his parents arranged his marriage he hid on his wedding night. Later in life he lived in a separate portion of his house, away from the rest of the family. Although my mother seemed social and was not particularly introverted, she didn't mind spending enormous amounts of time alone. Two out of her three children are introverts. I married an introvert, and our children are introverts. Of course, this is only anecdotal, but I suspect that research would bear out that introversion runs in families. As far as I'm concerned, introversion is normal, and no stigma should be attached to it. For one thing, it is not to be confused with timidity, and many people don't understand that there is a difference.
Monday, March 16, 2015
Racism in the U.S.
Upon request, I'm writing about racism in the U.S. This isn't a natural topic for me, since I'm a WASP living in one of the whitest states and have not spent much time around blacks. I probably didn't even see a black person until I was about seven. I'll give you a short rundown of my background and then offer you some of my views on the subject.
The first recognizable racism I heard about directly occurred while I was in college in Indiana. Indiana borders on the South, and was still quite racist in the 1960's. Some of the students at my college were black Africans who were afraid to drive to Bloomington because they were scared of what might happen if their car broke down near Martinsville, where a black woman had been killed in 1968. That murder was not solved until recently. Indiana had been a strong Ku Klux Klan state in the 1920's, and people there were still racists in the 1960's and 1970's. My father-in-law in Richmond, Indiana referred to black men as "boy" and my mother-in-law didn't want her daughter seen in public with one of my friends, who was half black. Blacks were implicitly banned from membership to their country club. I did spend the summer of 1972 in a poor black neighborhood in Ft. Wayne, Indiana living above a liquor store. On that occasion an old gay black wino made an unsuccessful advance on me at the local pool hall and I cashed a bad check while working in the liquor store, infuriating the owner, but that was about it for the experience. I noticed that the blacks were different in Louisville, Kentucky when I lived there from 1985 to 1987; they didn't have as much "attitude" as northern blacks.
The only black I had any exposure to after college was a black executive. At that time the company offered significant incentives to their managers to hire minorities. He was super-ambitious, and I thought he was a jerk because he never cared about anything besides advancing his career. He was the director of the printing plant where I worked, even though he didn't know anything about printing. By the time he was through with it, the plant was shut down and just about everyone, including me, was permanently laid off. Fortunately I was able to find a new job immediately at a different company. A few years later this man, Calvin Butler, left the printing industry for the utilities industry, and he is currently the CEO of Baltimore Gas and Electric. I don't think much of him. Although there is probably some racism, along with sexism, present in corporate life, at the company where I worked with Calvin minorities had a significant advantage if they could talk the talk. I'll never forget the charming Croatian woman named Nadia who could hardly speak English and didn't know anything about printing but got the job anyway.
My daughter lived for four years in a bad black neighborhood in Baltimore near the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, which her husband attended. They got along well enough with their neighbors, but it was a high crime area, complete with murders. We have had numerous discussions about how historical conditions have limited the horizons for blacks. She is more sympathetic than I am, but I see her point. I tend to view racism with respect to blacks from a socio-cultural point of view. Basically, it takes a long time for a culture to reorient itself when it makes a transition from slavery to freedom. The same was true in Martinique, which I just finished reading about in Texaco (one of the best novels I've read in several years, by the way). The blacks and lower classes in Martinique were also living inhuman lives until they were freed in 1848, but the old economy collapsed, and many of them were soon forced to live in shantytowns, which was not much of an improvement.
The problem I have with American blacks is about the same as the problem I have with Americans in general: I don't like their culture. This is a crass country that focuses on consumerism, materialism and spectacle. I don't have much in common with Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Usher, Eminem, Justin Timberlake or Sean Combs. I don't care about professional sports. Race doesn't have anything to do with it.
I suppose the obvious question for blacks in the U.S. relates to what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere. Although this is not exactly a phenomenon that I think about much, I have some ideas. The problem I notice is the disconnect between the message of early civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. probably the greatest orator in American history, and the recognition of current economic reality in 2015. You get the impression from the media that fairy dust was sprinkled on blacks by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and somehow they were all supposed to have become prosperous by now. Everyone is just scratching their head and saying, "Well, I guess it must be racism." Sure, there is still racism, but the lack of prosperity among blacks has more obvious causes related to changes in the economy since 1964. The factory jobs that permitted the middle class to take off economically in the 1950's and 1960's are no longer there.
I first noticed serious distortion in the perceptions among blacks during the O.J. Simpson trial of 1995. Simpson was respected and wealthy and living the good life when he intentionally killed two innocent people for no good reason, but the black community decided that he was a victim of racism, and that was all there was to it. They were delusional then, and they're delusional now. Michael Brown, the Ferguson victim of police brutality, was himself a reckless criminal, though not on the scale of O.J. Simpson. There is probably a certain amount of racism in police profiling, but what do you expect? When you stick a police officer in a neighborhood where most of the crimes are committed by black males, do you think they won't make generalizations that seem like profiling? Is it financially feasible in poor neighborhoods to hire police officers who have advanced training that permits them to perform their jobs according to all of the latest legal interpretations while being fully sensitive to the current issues in a particular community?
What disappoints me is the reaction by the media and black leaders. The media provides a third-grade analysis along the lines of "Are white people still being mean to black people?" The black leaders, Al Sharpton, for instance, stick to the obsolete white guilt narrative that worked well fifty years ago. Leaders like Barack Obama stress education, which, though it worked for him, is unlikely to be much of a solution for most blacks in the future. The real problem, I think, is that capitalism favors the wealthy, and that conditions for minorities can't improve without the forced equalization of the economic system - something far more radical than anyone is willing to discuss.
I think that even though racism may never evaporate, underlying economic problems are the true driving forces in places like Ferguson. Without major changes, the middle class in America isn't going to do as well as it did in the postwar years, and the lower middle class, which includes a lot of blacks, will do even worse. Crime levels will increase in poor neighborhoods whether or not the police have passed the latest political correctness tests. The traditional civil rights approach in these places isn't going to solve anything. The education approach offered by people like Obama won't work either, because without structural changes competition in the workforce will continue to intensify. The model used to be showing up at a factory and being hired for a job. In the future, the model could be getting a Ph.D. in software engineering until competition drives down wages, then getting a Ph.D. in advanced robotics until competition drives down wages there, and so on. A true solution can only come through significant wealth redistribution. By emphasizing education rather than economic restructuring, people like Obama are playing into the hands of corporate interests.
Finally, I should mention that racism in the U.S. isn't confined to blacks. My son-in-law is a Tibetan refugee, and he experiences it all the time. Unfortunately it is part of human nature to reject those who, for whatever reason, are perceived as belonging to a different group.
The first recognizable racism I heard about directly occurred while I was in college in Indiana. Indiana borders on the South, and was still quite racist in the 1960's. Some of the students at my college were black Africans who were afraid to drive to Bloomington because they were scared of what might happen if their car broke down near Martinsville, where a black woman had been killed in 1968. That murder was not solved until recently. Indiana had been a strong Ku Klux Klan state in the 1920's, and people there were still racists in the 1960's and 1970's. My father-in-law in Richmond, Indiana referred to black men as "boy" and my mother-in-law didn't want her daughter seen in public with one of my friends, who was half black. Blacks were implicitly banned from membership to their country club. I did spend the summer of 1972 in a poor black neighborhood in Ft. Wayne, Indiana living above a liquor store. On that occasion an old gay black wino made an unsuccessful advance on me at the local pool hall and I cashed a bad check while working in the liquor store, infuriating the owner, but that was about it for the experience. I noticed that the blacks were different in Louisville, Kentucky when I lived there from 1985 to 1987; they didn't have as much "attitude" as northern blacks.
The only black I had any exposure to after college was a black executive. At that time the company offered significant incentives to their managers to hire minorities. He was super-ambitious, and I thought he was a jerk because he never cared about anything besides advancing his career. He was the director of the printing plant where I worked, even though he didn't know anything about printing. By the time he was through with it, the plant was shut down and just about everyone, including me, was permanently laid off. Fortunately I was able to find a new job immediately at a different company. A few years later this man, Calvin Butler, left the printing industry for the utilities industry, and he is currently the CEO of Baltimore Gas and Electric. I don't think much of him. Although there is probably some racism, along with sexism, present in corporate life, at the company where I worked with Calvin minorities had a significant advantage if they could talk the talk. I'll never forget the charming Croatian woman named Nadia who could hardly speak English and didn't know anything about printing but got the job anyway.
My daughter lived for four years in a bad black neighborhood in Baltimore near the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, which her husband attended. They got along well enough with their neighbors, but it was a high crime area, complete with murders. We have had numerous discussions about how historical conditions have limited the horizons for blacks. She is more sympathetic than I am, but I see her point. I tend to view racism with respect to blacks from a socio-cultural point of view. Basically, it takes a long time for a culture to reorient itself when it makes a transition from slavery to freedom. The same was true in Martinique, which I just finished reading about in Texaco (one of the best novels I've read in several years, by the way). The blacks and lower classes in Martinique were also living inhuman lives until they were freed in 1848, but the old economy collapsed, and many of them were soon forced to live in shantytowns, which was not much of an improvement.
The problem I have with American blacks is about the same as the problem I have with Americans in general: I don't like their culture. This is a crass country that focuses on consumerism, materialism and spectacle. I don't have much in common with Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Usher, Eminem, Justin Timberlake or Sean Combs. I don't care about professional sports. Race doesn't have anything to do with it.
I suppose the obvious question for blacks in the U.S. relates to what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere. Although this is not exactly a phenomenon that I think about much, I have some ideas. The problem I notice is the disconnect between the message of early civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. probably the greatest orator in American history, and the recognition of current economic reality in 2015. You get the impression from the media that fairy dust was sprinkled on blacks by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and somehow they were all supposed to have become prosperous by now. Everyone is just scratching their head and saying, "Well, I guess it must be racism." Sure, there is still racism, but the lack of prosperity among blacks has more obvious causes related to changes in the economy since 1964. The factory jobs that permitted the middle class to take off economically in the 1950's and 1960's are no longer there.
I first noticed serious distortion in the perceptions among blacks during the O.J. Simpson trial of 1995. Simpson was respected and wealthy and living the good life when he intentionally killed two innocent people for no good reason, but the black community decided that he was a victim of racism, and that was all there was to it. They were delusional then, and they're delusional now. Michael Brown, the Ferguson victim of police brutality, was himself a reckless criminal, though not on the scale of O.J. Simpson. There is probably a certain amount of racism in police profiling, but what do you expect? When you stick a police officer in a neighborhood where most of the crimes are committed by black males, do you think they won't make generalizations that seem like profiling? Is it financially feasible in poor neighborhoods to hire police officers who have advanced training that permits them to perform their jobs according to all of the latest legal interpretations while being fully sensitive to the current issues in a particular community?
What disappoints me is the reaction by the media and black leaders. The media provides a third-grade analysis along the lines of "Are white people still being mean to black people?" The black leaders, Al Sharpton, for instance, stick to the obsolete white guilt narrative that worked well fifty years ago. Leaders like Barack Obama stress education, which, though it worked for him, is unlikely to be much of a solution for most blacks in the future. The real problem, I think, is that capitalism favors the wealthy, and that conditions for minorities can't improve without the forced equalization of the economic system - something far more radical than anyone is willing to discuss.
I think that even though racism may never evaporate, underlying economic problems are the true driving forces in places like Ferguson. Without major changes, the middle class in America isn't going to do as well as it did in the postwar years, and the lower middle class, which includes a lot of blacks, will do even worse. Crime levels will increase in poor neighborhoods whether or not the police have passed the latest political correctness tests. The traditional civil rights approach in these places isn't going to solve anything. The education approach offered by people like Obama won't work either, because without structural changes competition in the workforce will continue to intensify. The model used to be showing up at a factory and being hired for a job. In the future, the model could be getting a Ph.D. in software engineering until competition drives down wages, then getting a Ph.D. in advanced robotics until competition drives down wages there, and so on. A true solution can only come through significant wealth redistribution. By emphasizing education rather than economic restructuring, people like Obama are playing into the hands of corporate interests.
Finally, I should mention that racism in the U.S. isn't confined to blacks. My son-in-law is a Tibetan refugee, and he experiences it all the time. Unfortunately it is part of human nature to reject those who, for whatever reason, are perceived as belonging to a different group.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Quote of the Day
The oil tankers had a crew of more or less raucous sailors. These bandits would take advantage of the boat's stopover to go down in City, to see the hookers on the edge of Bois-de-Boulogne. They would spend lots of money, speak seven languages, bear nine afflictions, drink like the Mexicans in the movies, and return to Texaco reduced to ashes by alcohol's embers. Then they would confide in everyone, would describe things encountered throughout the Caribbean. They spoke of galleons stuffed with gold, glassy like jellyfish, which crossed the bows of their tankers stirring up exhalations of bitter algae, roughneck soldier songs, laughs of ladies glimpsed in the bowsprit portholes from which escaped music gay and sad. They spoke of sharks surging in their wake, white and pink like broken coral; their jaws would snap as they had for centuries around slave galleys which had thrown off whole cargos for them, to such point that, poisoned by a rumor about souls, these fish would spell anguish in thirteen African tongues. Nightmares (the drunk sailors would say) haunted this Caribbean Sea which is pensive like a cemetery; abysses latched onto the oil tanks to occupy their steel with a hosannah of millions of people dissolved into a horrible rug which remembered Africa in the submarine nights, a fabric bristling with balls and chains and joining the islands in an alliance of corpses. They spoke of Christopher Columbus at the bow of the Santa Maria which had turned opaline with the glint of age like very old ivory; she was the crystal formed out of the dust of Aztec peoples, Inca peoples, Arawaks, Caribs, the ashes of tongues, skins, bloods, collapsed cultures, out of the dust of that immense killing field spread out among the plantations of the world called New; since eternity, well before he arrived, ghosts were judging the Discoverer now petrified at his bow before an opaque Indies, they were judging him in vain because the Baneful One always escaped them, as if amnestied by irremediable history which he was forced to mutter endlessly...And all that made the tanker sailors more disgusted, more loony, more convulsive, and would contaminate our little nightmares in Texaco; these horrors they evoked while going through our huts, we felt, alas, my dear, that they filled us too.
—Patrick Chamoiseau, from Texaco
—Patrick Chamoiseau, from Texaco
Thursday, March 12, 2015
The False Allure of Commercial Writing
Almost everything that you read was produced in a commercial environment. Even if the intentions of an author are purely personal, artistic or altruistic, chances are there is someone in the infrastructure between the author's keyboard and your eyes who is attempting to make money. This situation dates back to the earliest days of publishing, and now, with technological developments, extends more broadly to "content." At this moment, thousands of companies are scrambling to fill the pages not only of printed publications but of online websites. The demand for all kinds of media has grown dramatically in the last decade, and streaming videos, for example, can hardly be produced fast enough to keep up. This creates challenges for discerning consumers of print and other media.
If I were less self-confident, I might be inclined to confess that many of the complaints that I have about writing amount to excessive pickiness. However, I am not making it up when I say that something that I just read seems like regurgitated filler that some editor squeezed out of a hack writer for a price. As I said in an earlier post, over a period of years I gradually became disgusted with The New Yorker, then The New York Times and then The New York Review of Books. Occasionally one might find something in one of these publications that strikes an intellectual or aesthetic chord, but increasingly that became a rarity for me. On the contrary, clickbait is used everywhere on the Internet and is simply a technological update of former sensational headlines in newspapers. What has been disappointing to me is that even the so-called reputable organizations engage in the same tactics, if only with greater subtlety.
The pattern toward disillusionment that I experience with printed or online publications usually goes something like this: initially the title of an article looks promising; the first paragraph or so looks good; as I delve further into it, a lot of extraneous information begins to emerge, often in the form superfluous name-dropping; and finally there is a vague conclusion that seems to leave you back where you started. The New York Times is ostensibly just a news source, but basic news actually takes up only a small fraction of its space. The rest is really filler designed to bring in additional advertising revenue. I don't think I've ever found any of their long articles satisfactory. The New Yorker attempts more thoughtful, in-depth articles and occasionally succeeds, but I find there such a strong emphasis on fashion, whether in ideas, clothes or writing, that it is difficult to take the magazine seriously on any level.
It took me the longest time to figure out The New York Review of Books, probably because it is less mainstream and its editorial policies are opaque. The NYRB is managed so privately that I have had to make guesses and seek outside sources to get a rough idea of what is going on there, and even then it is still hard to know with much certainty. My current theory is that most of the problems there reside in its editor, Robert Silvers. Although Silvers is highly intelligent, extremely well-read and quite discerning, he has specific expectations of what the publication should be and wields dictatorial control over everything that it encompasses. He is said to be the quintessential micro-manager. The impression I have is that his true vocation is editing the articles of writers and thinkers so as to improve upon them in a manner that suits his aesthetic tastes, even when they are better writers or thinkers than he is. What you end up with is a hodgepodge of academics, literary writers and journalists who are willing to put their writing through the Silvers sieve. The result, I find, is that their articles tend to be blander than they might otherwise be. The long essay format of the NYRB is impressive when you first see it, but it rarely produces ruffled feathers or changed minds. The articles leave one feeling that one has encountered a reasonably wide-ranging account of whatever the topic may be, that it is written competently, but that it serves little purpose beyond providing an overview of what the so-called cognoscenti happen to think about a topic at that given moment. Possibly the problem is that Silvers is too entwined with the status quo to rebel much. Thus, at a time when American literary culture is promoting one mediocre writer after another and holding them to the low standards of academia and the publishing industry, Silvers has advanced the careers of Joyce Carol Oates, Lorrie Moore, Marilynne Robinson, and Francine Prose. To be sure, there may be some entertainment value to be found in the works of these authors and others featured by Silvers, but I have never found any of their articles in the NYRB useful, insightful, provocative or thoughtful. In the end, Silvers is an accomplice to literary mediocrity. Part of Silvers' limitation as an editor must reside in his style, but perhaps a part also resides in his age: he's eighty-five.
The NYRB is not the best example of the point I'm making here, because most of its production seems to follow old-fashioned methods. They produce very few articles per month, and the only change in recent years has been their addition of the NYRblog. That is now looking like an afterthought: they wanted to go trendy to avoid looking like the fuddy-duddies that they are, and then decided that it was too much of a hassle to have a real, interactive blog and accordingly stopped accepting comments. So the NYRB is not as commercial as it might be and its true limitations may relate more to the fact that it is saddled to the preferences of one editor who has vested interests in a network of people and a bygone era that I just don't care about. My guess is that the typical NYRB subscriber is an eighty-year-old retired academic in the humanities.
An alternative to commercial writing is the writing in diaries and blogs. At least there you don't have to worry about the corrosive effects of money even when it remains hard to fathom the motives of the writer. Diaries can't usually be read in real-time, so they are comparatively inaccessible. In theory there could be lots of good blogs, but it might be difficult to find them, given their number. The Internet is already full of dead blogs that people gave up on. The advantage of a blog, like this one, is that the writer has no pressure to fit a specific format or please a wide audience. In my case I am writing about things that interest me and I can tell the truth without worrying about any financial ramifications. No one can fire me. If I get my facts all wrong, I would be delighted to have someone straighten me out, but that hasn't happened so far.
No doubt there are plenty of good books to read that are available, but they are increasingly difficult to find because of all the background noise. The commercial connections of the publications mentioned above make the books reviewed in them somewhat suspect. My conclusion is that nearly everything they have to say about American fiction is an obfuscation, a lie or a manifestation of poor literary judgment. In any case, the bright spot for me is nonfiction. I am less likely to become disgruntled about biographies or science books, because in their case it is easier to determine in advance whether a book is good or not, inasmuch as that depends less on subjective opinion than is the case with fiction. To me it is more than a little ironic that some of today's best science writers are better writers than those who are supposedly the best fiction writers. I actually enjoy reading E.O. Wilson, Freeman Dyson, Steven Weinberg and even Richard Dawkins, because they write well. It is an unsupported myth that fiction writers have a monopoly on good writing. For this reason, the next book on my reading list is To Explain the World, by Steven Weinberg. Science writers and biographers may still have commercial motives - their publishers certainly do - but more often their love for their subject takes precedence over the venality one finds in commercial fiction.
If I were less self-confident, I might be inclined to confess that many of the complaints that I have about writing amount to excessive pickiness. However, I am not making it up when I say that something that I just read seems like regurgitated filler that some editor squeezed out of a hack writer for a price. As I said in an earlier post, over a period of years I gradually became disgusted with The New Yorker, then The New York Times and then The New York Review of Books. Occasionally one might find something in one of these publications that strikes an intellectual or aesthetic chord, but increasingly that became a rarity for me. On the contrary, clickbait is used everywhere on the Internet and is simply a technological update of former sensational headlines in newspapers. What has been disappointing to me is that even the so-called reputable organizations engage in the same tactics, if only with greater subtlety.
The pattern toward disillusionment that I experience with printed or online publications usually goes something like this: initially the title of an article looks promising; the first paragraph or so looks good; as I delve further into it, a lot of extraneous information begins to emerge, often in the form superfluous name-dropping; and finally there is a vague conclusion that seems to leave you back where you started. The New York Times is ostensibly just a news source, but basic news actually takes up only a small fraction of its space. The rest is really filler designed to bring in additional advertising revenue. I don't think I've ever found any of their long articles satisfactory. The New Yorker attempts more thoughtful, in-depth articles and occasionally succeeds, but I find there such a strong emphasis on fashion, whether in ideas, clothes or writing, that it is difficult to take the magazine seriously on any level.
It took me the longest time to figure out The New York Review of Books, probably because it is less mainstream and its editorial policies are opaque. The NYRB is managed so privately that I have had to make guesses and seek outside sources to get a rough idea of what is going on there, and even then it is still hard to know with much certainty. My current theory is that most of the problems there reside in its editor, Robert Silvers. Although Silvers is highly intelligent, extremely well-read and quite discerning, he has specific expectations of what the publication should be and wields dictatorial control over everything that it encompasses. He is said to be the quintessential micro-manager. The impression I have is that his true vocation is editing the articles of writers and thinkers so as to improve upon them in a manner that suits his aesthetic tastes, even when they are better writers or thinkers than he is. What you end up with is a hodgepodge of academics, literary writers and journalists who are willing to put their writing through the Silvers sieve. The result, I find, is that their articles tend to be blander than they might otherwise be. The long essay format of the NYRB is impressive when you first see it, but it rarely produces ruffled feathers or changed minds. The articles leave one feeling that one has encountered a reasonably wide-ranging account of whatever the topic may be, that it is written competently, but that it serves little purpose beyond providing an overview of what the so-called cognoscenti happen to think about a topic at that given moment. Possibly the problem is that Silvers is too entwined with the status quo to rebel much. Thus, at a time when American literary culture is promoting one mediocre writer after another and holding them to the low standards of academia and the publishing industry, Silvers has advanced the careers of Joyce Carol Oates, Lorrie Moore, Marilynne Robinson, and Francine Prose. To be sure, there may be some entertainment value to be found in the works of these authors and others featured by Silvers, but I have never found any of their articles in the NYRB useful, insightful, provocative or thoughtful. In the end, Silvers is an accomplice to literary mediocrity. Part of Silvers' limitation as an editor must reside in his style, but perhaps a part also resides in his age: he's eighty-five.
The NYRB is not the best example of the point I'm making here, because most of its production seems to follow old-fashioned methods. They produce very few articles per month, and the only change in recent years has been their addition of the NYRblog. That is now looking like an afterthought: they wanted to go trendy to avoid looking like the fuddy-duddies that they are, and then decided that it was too much of a hassle to have a real, interactive blog and accordingly stopped accepting comments. So the NYRB is not as commercial as it might be and its true limitations may relate more to the fact that it is saddled to the preferences of one editor who has vested interests in a network of people and a bygone era that I just don't care about. My guess is that the typical NYRB subscriber is an eighty-year-old retired academic in the humanities.
An alternative to commercial writing is the writing in diaries and blogs. At least there you don't have to worry about the corrosive effects of money even when it remains hard to fathom the motives of the writer. Diaries can't usually be read in real-time, so they are comparatively inaccessible. In theory there could be lots of good blogs, but it might be difficult to find them, given their number. The Internet is already full of dead blogs that people gave up on. The advantage of a blog, like this one, is that the writer has no pressure to fit a specific format or please a wide audience. In my case I am writing about things that interest me and I can tell the truth without worrying about any financial ramifications. No one can fire me. If I get my facts all wrong, I would be delighted to have someone straighten me out, but that hasn't happened so far.
No doubt there are plenty of good books to read that are available, but they are increasingly difficult to find because of all the background noise. The commercial connections of the publications mentioned above make the books reviewed in them somewhat suspect. My conclusion is that nearly everything they have to say about American fiction is an obfuscation, a lie or a manifestation of poor literary judgment. In any case, the bright spot for me is nonfiction. I am less likely to become disgruntled about biographies or science books, because in their case it is easier to determine in advance whether a book is good or not, inasmuch as that depends less on subjective opinion than is the case with fiction. To me it is more than a little ironic that some of today's best science writers are better writers than those who are supposedly the best fiction writers. I actually enjoy reading E.O. Wilson, Freeman Dyson, Steven Weinberg and even Richard Dawkins, because they write well. It is an unsupported myth that fiction writers have a monopoly on good writing. For this reason, the next book on my reading list is To Explain the World, by Steven Weinberg. Science writers and biographers may still have commercial motives - their publishers certainly do - but more often their love for their subject takes precedence over the venality one finds in commercial fiction.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Geometry
Our bedroom has a large skylight facing west. You can see out of it while lying in bed, and a couple of times I've tried stargazing with binoculars in bed when I wake up in the middle of the night (which I often do, since I rarely sleep continuously for more than four-hour stretches). In the winter I am able to see the Pleiades setting. Sometimes on a clear winter night the moon shines in through the skylight like a giant floodlight and wakes us up. Fortunately the window has a shade for such occasions. I was thinking about why the moon only shines through the skylight during the winter and realized that it's just a simple problem in geometry and astronomy.
As the solar system was forming 4.6 billion years ago, it took the shape of a rotating disk. All of the planets and the moon still orbit around the sun in approximately the same disk shape, which is the plane formed by the orbit of the earth known by astronomers as the ecliptic. Another important fact is that the axis on which the earth spins is not perpendicular to the ecliptic but is off by about 23.4°. That angle is responsible for our seasons. When the axis is tilted toward the sun in the northern hemisphere, more photons of light from the sun strike the surface of the northern hemisphere than when it is tilted away from the sun, and this causes summer. It is easy to notice the change of the seasons by observing where the sun rises and sets on the horizon every day. At the summer solstice, the sun rises and sets at its northernmost points on the horizon; it is the longest day, and the north gets its greatest daily sun exposure then.
At the winter solstice, the northern hemisphere is angled the farthest away from the sun, and the least amount of sunlight strikes its surface. However, at that place in the orbit the situation with the moon is different. The sun, moon and earth are all on about the same plane year-round. At the winter solstice, while the earth is tilted away from the sun in the north, during the night, if the moon is opposite the sun, the northern hemisphere reaches its maximum tilt toward the moon. Therefore, the moon reaches its maximum distance above the horizon in the north at night at the time of winter solstice, the opposite of the situation with the sun. Since the moon has its own orbit around the earth, it may not be exactly opposite the sun during the winter solstice. Our skylight is situated such that the moon only rises high enough to shine through it during the period near winter solstice. The moon reaches its lowest point above the horizon when it is opposite the sun around summer solstice in the north. However, I should also point out that, if the moon were visible during the day, it would also reach its highest point above the horizon during the summer solstice. Similarly, if the moon were visible during the day on winter solstice, it would also reach its lowest point above the horizon.
I find it interesting that simple geometrical facts like these can have such a large impact on our lives. If the tilt of the earth's axis were 0°, like that of Mercury, we would have no seasons. The evolution of life on the planet might have been completely different from what occurred. If the tilt were 97.8°, like that of Uranus, the seasons would be far more extreme. We would have six months of light followed by six months of darkness. Give or take a few degrees from our current angle, we might not exist at all.
As the solar system was forming 4.6 billion years ago, it took the shape of a rotating disk. All of the planets and the moon still orbit around the sun in approximately the same disk shape, which is the plane formed by the orbit of the earth known by astronomers as the ecliptic. Another important fact is that the axis on which the earth spins is not perpendicular to the ecliptic but is off by about 23.4°. That angle is responsible for our seasons. When the axis is tilted toward the sun in the northern hemisphere, more photons of light from the sun strike the surface of the northern hemisphere than when it is tilted away from the sun, and this causes summer. It is easy to notice the change of the seasons by observing where the sun rises and sets on the horizon every day. At the summer solstice, the sun rises and sets at its northernmost points on the horizon; it is the longest day, and the north gets its greatest daily sun exposure then.
At the winter solstice, the northern hemisphere is angled the farthest away from the sun, and the least amount of sunlight strikes its surface. However, at that place in the orbit the situation with the moon is different. The sun, moon and earth are all on about the same plane year-round. At the winter solstice, while the earth is tilted away from the sun in the north, during the night, if the moon is opposite the sun, the northern hemisphere reaches its maximum tilt toward the moon. Therefore, the moon reaches its maximum distance above the horizon in the north at night at the time of winter solstice, the opposite of the situation with the sun. Since the moon has its own orbit around the earth, it may not be exactly opposite the sun during the winter solstice. Our skylight is situated such that the moon only rises high enough to shine through it during the period near winter solstice. The moon reaches its lowest point above the horizon when it is opposite the sun around summer solstice in the north. However, I should also point out that, if the moon were visible during the day, it would also reach its highest point above the horizon during the summer solstice. Similarly, if the moon were visible during the day on winter solstice, it would also reach its lowest point above the horizon.
I find it interesting that simple geometrical facts like these can have such a large impact on our lives. If the tilt of the earth's axis were 0°, like that of Mercury, we would have no seasons. The evolution of life on the planet might have been completely different from what occurred. If the tilt were 97.8°, like that of Uranus, the seasons would be far more extreme. We would have six months of light followed by six months of darkness. Give or take a few degrees from our current angle, we might not exist at all.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Nationalism
My family created a minor identity crisis for me by moving from England to the U.S. when I was seven. I gradually became Americanized, though somewhat less so than my younger sister, who was only two when we arrived. Later on I realized that I wasn't all that American, and I became interested in England. However, in recent years I've decided that I wouldn't fit in well in England either.
English people are often caricatured as good at administration but not much else compared to other Europeans. There is some truth in this that may even, as some have argued, have a genetic basis, arising from conditions under which the ruling class out-bred the lower classes during periods of disease and famine over the centuries. The success in the governing of Britain goes hand-in-hand with Britain's success during the Industrial Revolution and as a colonial power.
When I was in college I studied Anglo-American philosophy, which, coincidentally, I thought might tie me to my English roots. However, as it turned out, English philosophy confirmed to me the stereotype of small-minded people squabbling over minor details while entirely missing the big picture. I resisted this fact for several years, finally recognized it, and reassessed the situation recently only to come to the same conclusion. Philosophy as an academic subject is given much higher status in the U.K. than it is in the U.S., even when people like me, who have studied it and are now grown adults consider most of it utter nonsense. For better or for worse, Americans are more practical than the British, and academic philosophy here is doomed even as it flourishes in the U.K.
To put England into perspective, I like to recall the early twentieth century, when it had a little artistic and intellectual heyday. Present were Bertrand Russell, G.H. Hardy, G.E. Moore, John Maynard Keynes and the Bloomsbury Group. Russell, Hardy and Keynes were certainly notable intellectuals, but to my way of thinking Moore was a lightweight and a disaster. His best-known work, Principia Ethica, was treated like a Bible by Bloomsbury and became the model for British analytic philosophy. However, the next intelligent person to arrive on the scene, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian, used Moore as an example of how far someone could get in life with "absolutely no intelligence whatever." Although he succeeded Moore in his chair at Cambridge, he treated him like a servant, because he didn't think he was much good for anything else. Regarding Bloomsbury, it has always struck me how nearly all English art is derivative of art produced on the Continent. With the possible exception of Virginia Woolf, I don't think Bloomsbury left behind much memorable work.
English people are often caricatured as good at administration but not much else compared to other Europeans. There is some truth in this that may even, as some have argued, have a genetic basis, arising from conditions under which the ruling class out-bred the lower classes during periods of disease and famine over the centuries. The success in the governing of Britain goes hand-in-hand with Britain's success during the Industrial Revolution and as a colonial power.
When I was in college I studied Anglo-American philosophy, which, coincidentally, I thought might tie me to my English roots. However, as it turned out, English philosophy confirmed to me the stereotype of small-minded people squabbling over minor details while entirely missing the big picture. I resisted this fact for several years, finally recognized it, and reassessed the situation recently only to come to the same conclusion. Philosophy as an academic subject is given much higher status in the U.K. than it is in the U.S., even when people like me, who have studied it and are now grown adults consider most of it utter nonsense. For better or for worse, Americans are more practical than the British, and academic philosophy here is doomed even as it flourishes in the U.K.
To put England into perspective, I like to recall the early twentieth century, when it had a little artistic and intellectual heyday. Present were Bertrand Russell, G.H. Hardy, G.E. Moore, John Maynard Keynes and the Bloomsbury Group. Russell, Hardy and Keynes were certainly notable intellectuals, but to my way of thinking Moore was a lightweight and a disaster. His best-known work, Principia Ethica, was treated like a Bible by Bloomsbury and became the model for British analytic philosophy. However, the next intelligent person to arrive on the scene, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian, used Moore as an example of how far someone could get in life with "absolutely no intelligence whatever." Although he succeeded Moore in his chair at Cambridge, he treated him like a servant, because he didn't think he was much good for anything else. Regarding Bloomsbury, it has always struck me how nearly all English art is derivative of art produced on the Continent. With the possible exception of Virginia Woolf, I don't think Bloomsbury left behind much memorable work.
The topic here is national identity, or having a feeling of belonging to one country rather than another. In my case I have lukewarm feelings about both the U.S. and the U.K. This is mainly the result of having a multinational background. I grew up in the U.S. and was born in the U.K. My mother grew up in Greece, and her father grew up in Turkey. This geographic mobility frees one from prejudices about the virtues of one country over others. One would hope that in time people would come to realize that they have no entitlement to any particular geographic location, that people are essentially the same when you allow for cultural differences, and that we are all citizens of the world. However, there are evolutionary reasons why that transition in outlook will be difficult to make.
I apologize for being a broken record on our evolutionary past, but there is no way to avoid bringing it up if one intends to have a serious discussion about many of the problems currently facing the world. The fact is that we are hunter-gatherers who think tribally. Until recently in human history there was enough room on the planet for people to lead nomadic lives without often coming into conflict with other nomadic groups. The end of the last Ice Age changed everything, making agriculture and civilization possible. The world population has since grown by more than 700 times, nomadic life is generally unfeasible, and national borders restrict free movement. We are all fighting over scarce resources.
One thing we have going for us is our tendency toward eusocial behavior. Theoretically, if we could convince ourselves that we all belong to one big group, all global conflict might cease. However, in the eyes of many, the world is inherently composed of incompatible groups that are bound to remain in conflict. This state has been exacerbated by the history of imperialism and by the ideology of capitalism, which creates winners and losers with the unequal distribution of economic benefits. Moreover, the economically successful countries unrealistically expect that poorer countries will immediately fall into place once they receive the benefits of economic growth. In my view, capitalism is little more than an ideology and has a basis no more fundamental than Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, monarchy, democracy, fascism, communism, socialism or anarchism. It is a system that has been adopted but might just as well be replaced by any of several others simply as a matter of choice. One might call it the religion of money, and it is popular at the moment if only because it forces people to participate in it if they don't want to starve.
Nationalism is a modern expression of tribalism, but it often provides few of the benefits that tribalism once did. When you belonged to a tribe, it was possible to know everyone, and you could count on them in a crisis. If a real crisis such as the fictional one depicted by Cormac McCarthy in The Road were to occur now, you would be completely on your own fending off cannibals, while the president of the U.S. and his friends were living the high life in an exquisitely furnished bunker at an undisclosed location. Furthermore, nations don't trust each other, and this can be dangerous when they are heavily armed. Fortunately the countries in the EU have a semblance of cooperation, but you don't have to dig far to find mistrust, and a true political union is still a long way off. There remain a few powder kegs, with Israel and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, and of course there is the Islamic State.
Over the years, political leaders have taken some positive steps, first with the League of Nations and then the United Nations. The UN is mostly ineffectual at resolving world conflicts because of its voting structure, but over time it, or a successor organization, could theoretically evolve into a true world government. However, with my views on human nature, I do not expect a rational world order to fall into place without many years of contention, if at all. How long, for example, do you think it will take for the Israelis to trust the Iranians and the Palestinians? I'm not holding my breath. This is why, in my fantasy futuristic world, computers and robots will run everything and instantly put a stop to any disruptive activities caused by humans. Imagine, for example, how the Islamic State might be dealt with: an army of robots would move in and kill all of its members within a day or two, and they would never be heard from again. If people still wanted to express their tribal, competitive and destructive instincts, they could do so through less harmful means such as sports. Nationalism has outlived its usefulness, and I wish others discussed this more often. I can only suppose that that would be considered unpatriotic, hence a vocational risk to professional writers.
I apologize for being a broken record on our evolutionary past, but there is no way to avoid bringing it up if one intends to have a serious discussion about many of the problems currently facing the world. The fact is that we are hunter-gatherers who think tribally. Until recently in human history there was enough room on the planet for people to lead nomadic lives without often coming into conflict with other nomadic groups. The end of the last Ice Age changed everything, making agriculture and civilization possible. The world population has since grown by more than 700 times, nomadic life is generally unfeasible, and national borders restrict free movement. We are all fighting over scarce resources.
One thing we have going for us is our tendency toward eusocial behavior. Theoretically, if we could convince ourselves that we all belong to one big group, all global conflict might cease. However, in the eyes of many, the world is inherently composed of incompatible groups that are bound to remain in conflict. This state has been exacerbated by the history of imperialism and by the ideology of capitalism, which creates winners and losers with the unequal distribution of economic benefits. Moreover, the economically successful countries unrealistically expect that poorer countries will immediately fall into place once they receive the benefits of economic growth. In my view, capitalism is little more than an ideology and has a basis no more fundamental than Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, monarchy, democracy, fascism, communism, socialism or anarchism. It is a system that has been adopted but might just as well be replaced by any of several others simply as a matter of choice. One might call it the religion of money, and it is popular at the moment if only because it forces people to participate in it if they don't want to starve.
Nationalism is a modern expression of tribalism, but it often provides few of the benefits that tribalism once did. When you belonged to a tribe, it was possible to know everyone, and you could count on them in a crisis. If a real crisis such as the fictional one depicted by Cormac McCarthy in The Road were to occur now, you would be completely on your own fending off cannibals, while the president of the U.S. and his friends were living the high life in an exquisitely furnished bunker at an undisclosed location. Furthermore, nations don't trust each other, and this can be dangerous when they are heavily armed. Fortunately the countries in the EU have a semblance of cooperation, but you don't have to dig far to find mistrust, and a true political union is still a long way off. There remain a few powder kegs, with Israel and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, and of course there is the Islamic State.
Over the years, political leaders have taken some positive steps, first with the League of Nations and then the United Nations. The UN is mostly ineffectual at resolving world conflicts because of its voting structure, but over time it, or a successor organization, could theoretically evolve into a true world government. However, with my views on human nature, I do not expect a rational world order to fall into place without many years of contention, if at all. How long, for example, do you think it will take for the Israelis to trust the Iranians and the Palestinians? I'm not holding my breath. This is why, in my fantasy futuristic world, computers and robots will run everything and instantly put a stop to any disruptive activities caused by humans. Imagine, for example, how the Islamic State might be dealt with: an army of robots would move in and kill all of its members within a day or two, and they would never be heard from again. If people still wanted to express their tribal, competitive and destructive instincts, they could do so through less harmful means such as sports. Nationalism has outlived its usefulness, and I wish others discussed this more often. I can only suppose that that would be considered unpatriotic, hence a vocational risk to professional writers.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Texaco
I have been reading Texaco, by Patrick Chamoiseau, and it is helping me to define for myself what kinds of fiction I prefer and how to break fiction down into useful categories. This is not the kind of novel that I would normally read, but I am finding it worthwhile nevertheless.
The oldest recorded fiction is epic narrative such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, which were originally oral verse describing real and imagined events in Mycenaean Greece. Early oral poetry served as entertainment and provided a method for recording history. The language is often beautiful, filled with mnemonic tricks to aid in recitation, since there was no written language at the time of its composition. Texaco is written in a similar style, imaginatively recounting the history of Martinique from the last days of slavery up until the late twentieth century, told in the voice of a native woman. I classify The Iliad, The Odyssey and Texaco as fiction that emphasizes storytelling and poetry. Two other elements of fiction, observation and thought, do not play as much of a role here.
The kind of fiction that I prefer tends to emphasize observation and thought. My favorite authors are good observers and good thinkers. Observation was popular at the time of George Eliot, Flaubert and Dostoevsky, and these three were analytical about their characters. They lived at the time when modernity was arriving, and writers had things to say on new subjects that did not have historical precedent. This kind of realism tends to be unpoetic, and even though it must tell stories, that element may fall within the broader purpose of explaining a changing world. Storytelling is still important in much of modern fiction, but the further you get into modernism and postmodernism, the less essential it becomes. As far as I know, poetic writing is almost nonexistent in fiction these days.
Analyzing writers according to these four categories (observation, thought, poetry and storytelling), it becomes fairly easy for me to see which ones I like and why. I don't like Henry James because he has distorted observation, tendentious thought, no poetry and sloppy storytelling. D.H. Lawrence has some observation and thought, a lot of poetry and some storytelling; he is one of my favorites largely because of the poetic aspects of his writings. Proust has a lot of conventional observation, not much notable thought, a lot of poetry and little storytelling; his weakness in analyzing his environment counts against him in my eyes. Kafka is not much of an observer or thinker, but he arguably has a precise poetic style, along with condensed storytelling; I like his writing but don't think he has much of interest to say. Lorrie Moore has feigned observation, very little thought, some poetry, and storytelling that is nonexistent in her short stories and botched in her novels.
Probably the majority of popular writers today emphasize storytelling because it is the quality that is most likely to satisfy large audiences. Those who deviate from strong story lines may target smaller audiences that prefer, or that have been brainwashed into preferring, modern, storyless formats. What stands out to me is the apparent absence of appreciation among American writers for genuinely talented writers like Chamoiseau. Not only does he write better fiction than any contemporary American writer that I'm aware of, but his linguistic skill also makes him an exceptional poet by American standards. I'll close with a few snippets from Texaco that I find quite compelling. Keep in mind that this is translated from French and Creole and may have lost something in the process:
The donkeys moved along on rocky ground, swaying like blackgirls on high heels.
Magnetized by the moon, thousands of minnows deserted the ocean to wriggle up the river. Scintillating waves of them shook the fresh water or washed up on the sand. The other campers raked about with buckets, bags, nets, basins, sheets, or other things. The night was but phosphorescent lightning, milky glow, sparks. The silver commas spurted out of all the containers, jumped around ankles, glued frenzied mirrors everywhere.
His hand bewitched the mandolin's neck, cast a spell on the mandolin's belly, and the strings lent a music, as knotted as rabbit grass, to the beauties of his song.
The women had to face the rest of life, including the duty of finding food for a swarm of little ones, and all without a garden. Each mama, you hear me, had to sow in herself a small plot of cunning, and look after the harvest, ill luck or no.
The oldest recorded fiction is epic narrative such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, which were originally oral verse describing real and imagined events in Mycenaean Greece. Early oral poetry served as entertainment and provided a method for recording history. The language is often beautiful, filled with mnemonic tricks to aid in recitation, since there was no written language at the time of its composition. Texaco is written in a similar style, imaginatively recounting the history of Martinique from the last days of slavery up until the late twentieth century, told in the voice of a native woman. I classify The Iliad, The Odyssey and Texaco as fiction that emphasizes storytelling and poetry. Two other elements of fiction, observation and thought, do not play as much of a role here.
The kind of fiction that I prefer tends to emphasize observation and thought. My favorite authors are good observers and good thinkers. Observation was popular at the time of George Eliot, Flaubert and Dostoevsky, and these three were analytical about their characters. They lived at the time when modernity was arriving, and writers had things to say on new subjects that did not have historical precedent. This kind of realism tends to be unpoetic, and even though it must tell stories, that element may fall within the broader purpose of explaining a changing world. Storytelling is still important in much of modern fiction, but the further you get into modernism and postmodernism, the less essential it becomes. As far as I know, poetic writing is almost nonexistent in fiction these days.
Analyzing writers according to these four categories (observation, thought, poetry and storytelling), it becomes fairly easy for me to see which ones I like and why. I don't like Henry James because he has distorted observation, tendentious thought, no poetry and sloppy storytelling. D.H. Lawrence has some observation and thought, a lot of poetry and some storytelling; he is one of my favorites largely because of the poetic aspects of his writings. Proust has a lot of conventional observation, not much notable thought, a lot of poetry and little storytelling; his weakness in analyzing his environment counts against him in my eyes. Kafka is not much of an observer or thinker, but he arguably has a precise poetic style, along with condensed storytelling; I like his writing but don't think he has much of interest to say. Lorrie Moore has feigned observation, very little thought, some poetry, and storytelling that is nonexistent in her short stories and botched in her novels.
Probably the majority of popular writers today emphasize storytelling because it is the quality that is most likely to satisfy large audiences. Those who deviate from strong story lines may target smaller audiences that prefer, or that have been brainwashed into preferring, modern, storyless formats. What stands out to me is the apparent absence of appreciation among American writers for genuinely talented writers like Chamoiseau. Not only does he write better fiction than any contemporary American writer that I'm aware of, but his linguistic skill also makes him an exceptional poet by American standards. I'll close with a few snippets from Texaco that I find quite compelling. Keep in mind that this is translated from French and Creole and may have lost something in the process:
The donkeys moved along on rocky ground, swaying like blackgirls on high heels.
Magnetized by the moon, thousands of minnows deserted the ocean to wriggle up the river. Scintillating waves of them shook the fresh water or washed up on the sand. The other campers raked about with buckets, bags, nets, basins, sheets, or other things. The night was but phosphorescent lightning, milky glow, sparks. The silver commas spurted out of all the containers, jumped around ankles, glued frenzied mirrors everywhere.
His hand bewitched the mandolin's neck, cast a spell on the mandolin's belly, and the strings lent a music, as knotted as rabbit grass, to the beauties of his song.
The women had to face the rest of life, including the duty of finding food for a swarm of little ones, and all without a garden. Each mama, you hear me, had to sow in herself a small plot of cunning, and look after the harvest, ill luck or no.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Internet Discussion II
Over the last year, most of what little writing I've done has appeared on this blog. Occasionally I've posted comments on other sites, but I've come to prefer posting here because it is more peaceful and I don't get the unsettling sense of looming chaos or confrontation that I often encounter elsewhere. My posting experience goes back almost nine years to mid-2006, during which time I've posted on a wide variety of websites, and I am now inclined to restrict myself to my own. The heavily-moderated sites such as the NYRblog once seemed promising, but the fact of the matter is that most of the articles and comments there were not particularly interesting to me and the time lag between posting, moderation and appearance of the post made the process painfully slow. Moreover, the editorial policies at the NYRB encourage a special kind of pretentiousness, and they have very little going on there that captures my interest, especially since Tony Judt died. In any case, they have now completely stopped accepting comments, which means to me that they don't really care about their readers and probably don't care much about the discussion of ideas either. I am privately hoping for the imminent deaths of Robert Silvers and his publisher.
Since leaving the NYRblog, I've regularly been reading 3 Quarks Daily. This is an improvement over the NYRblog, but it has its own set of limitations. Overall I think their selection of articles from across the web is quite good, but the commenting and discussion there are not noteworthy. On Mondays they feature their own authors, who, in my opinion, are substantially less interesting than those who appear on other days. Several Monday contributors seem to be second- or third-tier academics who are attempting to use the site to advance their careers. S. Abbas Raza, the founding editor, is doing a good job, but there is a disproportional representation on the site of his friends and relatives, which makes it seem insufferably cliquish at times. Very few people comment there regularly, and the regulars each seem to have different agendas that don't complement each other. One commenter regularly attempts to lure readers to his blog with links. Another commenter always presents a formal academic facade and lists references with each post; his avatar is a photo of himself wearing a jacket and tie, as if he were on his way to a job interview. As with all websites, any discussion tends to be weak and uninteresting, often with very little real communication between participants.
Another disappointment I've had has been with The Chronicle of Higher Education website. When I first chanced upon it about a year ago I was impressed. The level of discussion was better than most. The scope of the site is constricted by its focus on academic topics, but the articles are generally of good quality, and the comments, at least initially, seemed above average. However, the site apparently has little or no moderation, and in the course of a year the comments have turned into a free-for-all. The impression I get is that at any given moment there is an enormous pack of Internet hooligans frantically searching for an outlet to vent their frustrations and inform the world of their innate superiority. The presence of shrieking brats on an education-oriented site triggers a serious case of cognitive dissonance in me, and I have no reason to put up with it.
I used to think that it would be possible to construct a widely-read website that had good articles and good comments that were posted in a timely manner. It now looks as if there are forces working against that. Predictably, capitalism, particularly in the U.S., creates products that are compromised in design from their inception when the underlying goal is profit maximization. It is difficult enough to create a website that generates profits, but practically impossible to create a website that appeals only to a few discerning, well-behaved readers and still run a profit. In this general area you have at one end the NYRblog, which has clearly indicated its complete indifference to its web readers, probably because any money spent there is not money well spent, and at the other end you have The Chronicle of Higher Education website, which has caved in to a rowdy mob of web readers rather than make an effort to maintain a minimum standard of quality. I think it would probably be possible to design and manage a very high quality website that had excellent articles and comments, but no one has much incentive to do that because it would most likely lose money.
Therefore, for the time being at least, I intend to confine my writing exclusively to this blog. If you know of or come across a site that you think I might like, please let me know, and I'll take a look. Since I will no longer be posting elsewhere using my Disqus account, which shows this blog address, not many new people will find out about this blog, and it will probably remain very cozy indeed.
Since leaving the NYRblog, I've regularly been reading 3 Quarks Daily. This is an improvement over the NYRblog, but it has its own set of limitations. Overall I think their selection of articles from across the web is quite good, but the commenting and discussion there are not noteworthy. On Mondays they feature their own authors, who, in my opinion, are substantially less interesting than those who appear on other days. Several Monday contributors seem to be second- or third-tier academics who are attempting to use the site to advance their careers. S. Abbas Raza, the founding editor, is doing a good job, but there is a disproportional representation on the site of his friends and relatives, which makes it seem insufferably cliquish at times. Very few people comment there regularly, and the regulars each seem to have different agendas that don't complement each other. One commenter regularly attempts to lure readers to his blog with links. Another commenter always presents a formal academic facade and lists references with each post; his avatar is a photo of himself wearing a jacket and tie, as if he were on his way to a job interview. As with all websites, any discussion tends to be weak and uninteresting, often with very little real communication between participants.
Another disappointment I've had has been with The Chronicle of Higher Education website. When I first chanced upon it about a year ago I was impressed. The level of discussion was better than most. The scope of the site is constricted by its focus on academic topics, but the articles are generally of good quality, and the comments, at least initially, seemed above average. However, the site apparently has little or no moderation, and in the course of a year the comments have turned into a free-for-all. The impression I get is that at any given moment there is an enormous pack of Internet hooligans frantically searching for an outlet to vent their frustrations and inform the world of their innate superiority. The presence of shrieking brats on an education-oriented site triggers a serious case of cognitive dissonance in me, and I have no reason to put up with it.
I used to think that it would be possible to construct a widely-read website that had good articles and good comments that were posted in a timely manner. It now looks as if there are forces working against that. Predictably, capitalism, particularly in the U.S., creates products that are compromised in design from their inception when the underlying goal is profit maximization. It is difficult enough to create a website that generates profits, but practically impossible to create a website that appeals only to a few discerning, well-behaved readers and still run a profit. In this general area you have at one end the NYRblog, which has clearly indicated its complete indifference to its web readers, probably because any money spent there is not money well spent, and at the other end you have The Chronicle of Higher Education website, which has caved in to a rowdy mob of web readers rather than make an effort to maintain a minimum standard of quality. I think it would probably be possible to design and manage a very high quality website that had excellent articles and comments, but no one has much incentive to do that because it would most likely lose money.
Therefore, for the time being at least, I intend to confine my writing exclusively to this blog. If you know of or come across a site that you think I might like, please let me know, and I'll take a look. Since I will no longer be posting elsewhere using my Disqus account, which shows this blog address, not many new people will find out about this blog, and it will probably remain very cozy indeed.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
On Being Old
It's official: I'm old; today I turned 65. Up until recently I didn't think much about age. When you turned 30 you thought of the phrase "never trust anyone over 30" - not exactly words of wisdom. When you turned 40 you thought that was supposed to be a marker for middle age - so what. By 50 you were definitely in middle age and by 60 you were supposedly at or near the end of middle age. But 65 is a little different. That used to be the standard retirement age, and you were expected to die within a few years. I'm already on Medicare and Social Security and now qualify for all of the senior citizen benefits, including discounts and tax breaks. The local newspaper would refer to me as "an elderly man."
My grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles are all dead. At least six people whom I knew in college are already dead. I've started reading obituaries with greater interest. One becomes habituated to death, and it is less disconcerting over time. The worst part of old age may be having to listen to others discuss their ailments and medical procedures ad nauseum. One friend, a lifelong smoker, had cancer, and we got blow-by-blow accounts of his progress for several years, including the misplaced encouragement from his doctors, before the inevitable occurred. An acquaintance died suddenly of a heart attack at age 60, a better way to go. Rest assured that on this blog I will not discuss any illnesses that I develop in the future.
Fortunately I don't yet seem to have any ailments. I weigh less than I did when I was 25 and am probably in better shape. I haven't noticed any cognitive decline. Research shows that if one is not impecunious or sick and enjoys one's life, the later years are the best of all. My inner elitist snob rejoices in no longer having to take orders from cretinous bourgeoisie. Rural Vermont suits me perfectly. I have sufficient resources to pursue hobbies without worrying about destitution. Children and a grandchild provide a basis for interest in and optimism about the future. Whatever additional benefits technology may bring, I don't think I'm interested in immortality.
My grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles are all dead. At least six people whom I knew in college are already dead. I've started reading obituaries with greater interest. One becomes habituated to death, and it is less disconcerting over time. The worst part of old age may be having to listen to others discuss their ailments and medical procedures ad nauseum. One friend, a lifelong smoker, had cancer, and we got blow-by-blow accounts of his progress for several years, including the misplaced encouragement from his doctors, before the inevitable occurred. An acquaintance died suddenly of a heart attack at age 60, a better way to go. Rest assured that on this blog I will not discuss any illnesses that I develop in the future.
Fortunately I don't yet seem to have any ailments. I weigh less than I did when I was 25 and am probably in better shape. I haven't noticed any cognitive decline. Research shows that if one is not impecunious or sick and enjoys one's life, the later years are the best of all. My inner elitist snob rejoices in no longer having to take orders from cretinous bourgeoisie. Rural Vermont suits me perfectly. I have sufficient resources to pursue hobbies without worrying about destitution. Children and a grandchild provide a basis for interest in and optimism about the future. Whatever additional benefits technology may bring, I don't think I'm interested in immortality.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Joseph Battell
Since moving to Middlebury and researching the history of our house, I've become interested in local history. This is a relatively well-documented subject, because most of the settlement did not occur until after the American Revolution, and Middlebury College was founded in 1800, providing an educated population to document whatever transpired. History of the Town of Middlebury, by Samuel Swift, published in 1859, goes into great detail about who lived here and when. Swift interviewed an early settler, Mary Kirby, from Litchfield, Connecticut, who in 1791 had married another settler, Samuel Severance, from Northfield, Massachusetts. Samuel was the elder brother of Enos Severance, who built our house in about 1798 and died in 1842. Three of the four old Severance houses mentioned by Swift are still standing in our neighborhood. Compared to most of the U.S., it is much easier here to get a sense of continuity with the past.
Yesterday we went to hear a talk at Middlebury College about Joseph Battell (1837-1915), a well-known figure in Middlebury history. He was an eccentric character and a good example of the dominant cultural values in America during the Victorian period. Battell was a grandson of Horatio Seymour (1778-1857), an early settler, judge and U.S. Senator, and grew up in Seymour's house, which is a landmark downtown. He attended Middlebury College and while still young inherited a fortune from his father's brother, who had worked in the steel industry. He lived the rest of his life in a manner that might be described as spoiled, marriage-averse, whimsical, fatuous, opinionated, imperious, philanthropic and repressed.
Early on he adopted a detached way of dealing with women. Rather than pursue them, he objectified them first by viewing them at a distance through a telescope and later by taking chaste photographs of them in stiff poses. He never married, and although there is no clear evidence, it would be reasonable to assume that he was a repressed homosexual, not unlike his contemporary, Henry James. In no photograph does he look happy.
Battell had several hobbies. He took an interest in the Morgan horse and is said to have saved the breed when he built the Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge. He was an amateur writer whose first book was so bad that his sister bought all of the unsold copies and burnt them. His most notorious book, called Ellen, or the Whisperings of an Old Pine, involved a Socratic dialogue between a girl and a wise tree in which, among other things, Darwinism and the wave theory of sound are supposedly refuted. Though it didn't help his literary reputation and was universally regarded as unreadable, that didn't stop him from printing a second, deluxe, edition.
In most practical matters Battell fared somewhat better. He decided to host a summer retreat in Ripton, Vermont, near the pass over the Green Mountains. Named after nearby Bread Loaf Mountain, the inn grew into a large, popular hotel that drew people from across the country. In conjunction with the hotel, he purchased thousands of acres of land along the summits of the Green Mountains from Bread Load to Camel's Hump. He also bought the Middlebury newspapers and published the news for many years. As a newspaperman, he used his paper to rant against things that he opposed. He hated cars and printed stories of car accidents from around the world. For a time he managed to block car traffic on the road, now Route 125, to the Bread Loaf Inn. He ran for and was elected to office in the Vermont House and Senate, but was not able to win when he ran for governor.
Battell's legacy is visible today. The Morgan Horse Farm is intact. The commercial building downtown that he built and inhabited, called the Battell Block, is still occupied. The stone bridge over Otter Creek on Main Street that he insisted on building is still in active use. His Bread Loaf property was given to Middlebury College and still hosts the writers' conference that dates back to Robert Frost. For a time, Middlebury College must have had the largest campus in the world with the 30,000 acres it received from Battell. Most of that is now part of the Green Mountain National Forest. He also provided funding for some of the current buildings on the Middlebury campus.
As a Victorian, Battell shared some similarities with another contemporary, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). Although Roosevelt was more specifically raised to be a high achiever and to contribute to the public good, Battell also thought that it was his duty to make lasting contributions to society. Both valued preserving the natural environment, with Battell planting hundreds of thousands of trees in the then-deforested Green Mountains and Roosevelt creating the National Park and National Forest systems. Both were eccentric, but in different ways. Battell was part Luddite and Roosevelt was part imperialist. Another difference was that Roosevelt belonged to a large clan and Battell did not. The realization of Victorian ideals is probably best seen in Theodore Roosevelt's fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose early role model was Theodore.
Yesterday we went to hear a talk at Middlebury College about Joseph Battell (1837-1915), a well-known figure in Middlebury history. He was an eccentric character and a good example of the dominant cultural values in America during the Victorian period. Battell was a grandson of Horatio Seymour (1778-1857), an early settler, judge and U.S. Senator, and grew up in Seymour's house, which is a landmark downtown. He attended Middlebury College and while still young inherited a fortune from his father's brother, who had worked in the steel industry. He lived the rest of his life in a manner that might be described as spoiled, marriage-averse, whimsical, fatuous, opinionated, imperious, philanthropic and repressed.
Early on he adopted a detached way of dealing with women. Rather than pursue them, he objectified them first by viewing them at a distance through a telescope and later by taking chaste photographs of them in stiff poses. He never married, and although there is no clear evidence, it would be reasonable to assume that he was a repressed homosexual, not unlike his contemporary, Henry James. In no photograph does he look happy.
Battell had several hobbies. He took an interest in the Morgan horse and is said to have saved the breed when he built the Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge. He was an amateur writer whose first book was so bad that his sister bought all of the unsold copies and burnt them. His most notorious book, called Ellen, or the Whisperings of an Old Pine, involved a Socratic dialogue between a girl and a wise tree in which, among other things, Darwinism and the wave theory of sound are supposedly refuted. Though it didn't help his literary reputation and was universally regarded as unreadable, that didn't stop him from printing a second, deluxe, edition.
In most practical matters Battell fared somewhat better. He decided to host a summer retreat in Ripton, Vermont, near the pass over the Green Mountains. Named after nearby Bread Loaf Mountain, the inn grew into a large, popular hotel that drew people from across the country. In conjunction with the hotel, he purchased thousands of acres of land along the summits of the Green Mountains from Bread Load to Camel's Hump. He also bought the Middlebury newspapers and published the news for many years. As a newspaperman, he used his paper to rant against things that he opposed. He hated cars and printed stories of car accidents from around the world. For a time he managed to block car traffic on the road, now Route 125, to the Bread Loaf Inn. He ran for and was elected to office in the Vermont House and Senate, but was not able to win when he ran for governor.
Battell's legacy is visible today. The Morgan Horse Farm is intact. The commercial building downtown that he built and inhabited, called the Battell Block, is still occupied. The stone bridge over Otter Creek on Main Street that he insisted on building is still in active use. His Bread Loaf property was given to Middlebury College and still hosts the writers' conference that dates back to Robert Frost. For a time, Middlebury College must have had the largest campus in the world with the 30,000 acres it received from Battell. Most of that is now part of the Green Mountain National Forest. He also provided funding for some of the current buildings on the Middlebury campus.
As a Victorian, Battell shared some similarities with another contemporary, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). Although Roosevelt was more specifically raised to be a high achiever and to contribute to the public good, Battell also thought that it was his duty to make lasting contributions to society. Both valued preserving the natural environment, with Battell planting hundreds of thousands of trees in the then-deforested Green Mountains and Roosevelt creating the National Park and National Forest systems. Both were eccentric, but in different ways. Battell was part Luddite and Roosevelt was part imperialist. Another difference was that Roosevelt belonged to a large clan and Battell did not. The realization of Victorian ideals is probably best seen in Theodore Roosevelt's fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose early role model was Theodore.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Quote of the Day
Last night the [Alfred] Knopfs gave a box party at Carnegie Hall to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a supper later at their city apartment, 400 East 57th Street, in honor of the conductor, Koussevitzky....Willa Cather surprised me by saying that [Mahler's Ninth Symphony] was too much for her, but that she liked the Ravel. The latter was a very cheap piece of trash....
After the concert...we went to [the] Knopf apartment....A lot of miscellaneous introducing. I got but one drink–a small straight Scotch. Dashiell Hammett, the writer of detective stories, came in drunk, and became something of a nuisance. After we left, so Blanche told me today, she had to get rid of him. William Faulkner, the Mississippian, who came in late also got drunk. At 4 A.M. Blanche and Eddie Wasserman decided to take him to a speakeasy to dispose of him. Unfortunately, all the speakeasies in the neighborhood were closed, so they had to haul him to his hotel. He still talked rationally, but his legs had given out, and he couldn't stand up.
—H. L. Mencken, diary entry, November 27, 1931, New York City
After the concert...we went to [the] Knopf apartment....A lot of miscellaneous introducing. I got but one drink–a small straight Scotch. Dashiell Hammett, the writer of detective stories, came in drunk, and became something of a nuisance. After we left, so Blanche told me today, she had to get rid of him. William Faulkner, the Mississippian, who came in late also got drunk. At 4 A.M. Blanche and Eddie Wasserman decided to take him to a speakeasy to dispose of him. Unfortunately, all the speakeasies in the neighborhood were closed, so they had to haul him to his hotel. He still talked rationally, but his legs had given out, and he couldn't stand up.
—H. L. Mencken, diary entry, November 27, 1931, New York City
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Positive Thinking
One reason why this blog won't become popular is that it isn't optimistic enough. Everything from the Bruegel painting, which depicts the downward path of blind men, to the commentary on American culture, which identifies its weaknesses, seems to suggest pessimism. Even though I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist, by contemporary standards it is easy to become labeled a pessimist simply by not being extremely optimistic. People go to websites for their daily fix in order to make themselves feel good, and they won't find accommodation here.
By nature I am a skeptic and tend to analyze enthusiasms more than engage in them. The first optimist I knew was my father, and his failures made me cautious from an early age. First, we had to move to the U.S. because there was "music in the elevators," and then, as his career floundered, there was always a lucrative group insurance policy that he was about to sell that subsequently never materialized. We were going to have televisions on the ceilings and sail to Florida in a private yacht, but we never did. My father, I concluded, wasn't sufficiently realistic. On the opposite end of the spectrum I was exposed to successful optimists in the business world. Larry, the president of the company that I worked for in Dixon, Illinois, never made any negative comments and was quite successful as a manager. People respected him, he made good decisions, the plant did well, and the community benefited. His management style came directly from Dale Carnegie, and the only management training that he offered to his employees was a Dale Carnegie course. I didn't take the course, but later read How to Win Friends and Influence People in a departmental training program at a different company. To Larry's credit he was an effective person who knew how to get things done, and he was usually fair. However, from my point of view, Larry was extremely limited as a person. By conventional standards he was a success: he had an important job, a high salary and multiple homes. But to me he was something like the ninety-pound weakling who didn't want bullies kicking sand in his face and worked out in order to become musclebound and intimidating. His weapon was positive thinking, which allowed him to meet his career goals but did not make him well-rounded. Because most of the managers that I've known have been ineffective, Larry stood out to me. The techniques that he used were not taught in business schools, but, from a practical standpoint, they were more important. He was quite good at motivating those around him, and he did this by consciously eschewing negative statements and infusing subordinates with optimism about their role in the company and the success that would follow. He did not in the least believe in participatory management but was careful not to frame his statements autocratically, which he knew would alienate people. He said "we" instead of "I." This way he got what he wanted out of everyone while maintaining his distance.
American society is saturated with positive thinking, which has a long history tying it to both religion and business through the Puritan work ethic. Other societies encourage optimism, but they rarely institutionalize it the way it has been in the U.S. As a meme, optimism probably has a net beneficial effect on populations from an evolutionary standpoint. Negativity, even when realistic, often fosters passivity and despair. Optimism encourages action, even foolish action. Just as talk of failure can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, talk of success can effectuate it. The problem for someone like me, who lives relatively comfortably and has no material goals, is incorporating myself into such a culture. The American Dream, for example, means nothing to me. I don't care whether or not I become richer. American values, which contain that "hayseed" element mentioned by Kenneth Tynan, may appeal to, say, refugees escaping from crime and poverty in Guatemala, but why would they appeal to me? Oddly they still appeal to many wealthy Americans, which may have to do with the mythology in which they have been immersed. If wealth gives you spiritual gravitas, being richer makes you a better person - or so the thinking goes.
Just as pessimism can produce undesirable results, such as giving up too easily when there are solutions at hand, there are undesirable consequences to optimism. American society seems to have become a cult of optimism that engages in little self-reflection. From the standpoint of those who are poor, unemployed, homeless, etc., optimism makes sense, because there really are things that they can do to make substantial improvements in their lives. But making it a mantra for everyone is a mistake. In the somewhat mindless capitalist system that envelops us, the wealthy typically express their optimism by wasting resources on conspicuous consumption. They build impressive new houses that they don't need and give contributions to politicians who will help make them even richer. Meanwhile the country pollutes the environment, exacerbating global warming. We brazenly offend other countries with our ridiculously distorted worldviews such as American exceptionalism.
Optimism has its place as a positive psychological force that can produce good outcomes and a sense of well-being. But it must always be tempered with reason, because it can easily go awry. Studies have shown that males routinely overestimate their skills, which may be good if they unexpectedly succeed, as did Vincent van Gogh, for example. However, the more powerful a nation, and the more arrogant its citizens, the greater the costs when someone in power fails as a consequence of overestimating his skills. Arguably none of the presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have been up to the task. Did George W. Bush have an adequate understanding of the Middle East when he decided to invade Iraq? Did Dick Fuld know what he was doing when his choices led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and precipitated a global financial crisis?
Even at the street level in the U.S., optimism must be viewed with caution. Will a new strip mall or industrial park really benefit the community? Is a degree in English from an elite university going to lead to a fulfilling life? I often find that the outlooks held by optimistic people are too simplistic. It may be true that you have to start somewhere, but at some point trial and error is no longer appropriate and you had better settle on an attainable path with knowable results. Thought must be given to unintended consequences, an area that usually gets little attention. Optimism lends itself to naïveté, not a flattering characteristic in adults. It can be associated with infantilism and the American culture of youth.
I ask myself where the serious thinkers are. It is hard to imagine that they have much of a presence in government. They rarely show up in the news media. There may be a few of them in academia, but you scarcely hear from them. Certainly there is little evidence of them in the arts and entertainment. In the meantime the optimists are daydreaming or advancing their agendas and no one seems to be minding the store.
By nature I am a skeptic and tend to analyze enthusiasms more than engage in them. The first optimist I knew was my father, and his failures made me cautious from an early age. First, we had to move to the U.S. because there was "music in the elevators," and then, as his career floundered, there was always a lucrative group insurance policy that he was about to sell that subsequently never materialized. We were going to have televisions on the ceilings and sail to Florida in a private yacht, but we never did. My father, I concluded, wasn't sufficiently realistic. On the opposite end of the spectrum I was exposed to successful optimists in the business world. Larry, the president of the company that I worked for in Dixon, Illinois, never made any negative comments and was quite successful as a manager. People respected him, he made good decisions, the plant did well, and the community benefited. His management style came directly from Dale Carnegie, and the only management training that he offered to his employees was a Dale Carnegie course. I didn't take the course, but later read How to Win Friends and Influence People in a departmental training program at a different company. To Larry's credit he was an effective person who knew how to get things done, and he was usually fair. However, from my point of view, Larry was extremely limited as a person. By conventional standards he was a success: he had an important job, a high salary and multiple homes. But to me he was something like the ninety-pound weakling who didn't want bullies kicking sand in his face and worked out in order to become musclebound and intimidating. His weapon was positive thinking, which allowed him to meet his career goals but did not make him well-rounded. Because most of the managers that I've known have been ineffective, Larry stood out to me. The techniques that he used were not taught in business schools, but, from a practical standpoint, they were more important. He was quite good at motivating those around him, and he did this by consciously eschewing negative statements and infusing subordinates with optimism about their role in the company and the success that would follow. He did not in the least believe in participatory management but was careful not to frame his statements autocratically, which he knew would alienate people. He said "we" instead of "I." This way he got what he wanted out of everyone while maintaining his distance.
American society is saturated with positive thinking, which has a long history tying it to both religion and business through the Puritan work ethic. Other societies encourage optimism, but they rarely institutionalize it the way it has been in the U.S. As a meme, optimism probably has a net beneficial effect on populations from an evolutionary standpoint. Negativity, even when realistic, often fosters passivity and despair. Optimism encourages action, even foolish action. Just as talk of failure can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, talk of success can effectuate it. The problem for someone like me, who lives relatively comfortably and has no material goals, is incorporating myself into such a culture. The American Dream, for example, means nothing to me. I don't care whether or not I become richer. American values, which contain that "hayseed" element mentioned by Kenneth Tynan, may appeal to, say, refugees escaping from crime and poverty in Guatemala, but why would they appeal to me? Oddly they still appeal to many wealthy Americans, which may have to do with the mythology in which they have been immersed. If wealth gives you spiritual gravitas, being richer makes you a better person - or so the thinking goes.
Just as pessimism can produce undesirable results, such as giving up too easily when there are solutions at hand, there are undesirable consequences to optimism. American society seems to have become a cult of optimism that engages in little self-reflection. From the standpoint of those who are poor, unemployed, homeless, etc., optimism makes sense, because there really are things that they can do to make substantial improvements in their lives. But making it a mantra for everyone is a mistake. In the somewhat mindless capitalist system that envelops us, the wealthy typically express their optimism by wasting resources on conspicuous consumption. They build impressive new houses that they don't need and give contributions to politicians who will help make them even richer. Meanwhile the country pollutes the environment, exacerbating global warming. We brazenly offend other countries with our ridiculously distorted worldviews such as American exceptionalism.
Optimism has its place as a positive psychological force that can produce good outcomes and a sense of well-being. But it must always be tempered with reason, because it can easily go awry. Studies have shown that males routinely overestimate their skills, which may be good if they unexpectedly succeed, as did Vincent van Gogh, for example. However, the more powerful a nation, and the more arrogant its citizens, the greater the costs when someone in power fails as a consequence of overestimating his skills. Arguably none of the presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have been up to the task. Did George W. Bush have an adequate understanding of the Middle East when he decided to invade Iraq? Did Dick Fuld know what he was doing when his choices led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and precipitated a global financial crisis?
Even at the street level in the U.S., optimism must be viewed with caution. Will a new strip mall or industrial park really benefit the community? Is a degree in English from an elite university going to lead to a fulfilling life? I often find that the outlooks held by optimistic people are too simplistic. It may be true that you have to start somewhere, but at some point trial and error is no longer appropriate and you had better settle on an attainable path with knowable results. Thought must be given to unintended consequences, an area that usually gets little attention. Optimism lends itself to naïveté, not a flattering characteristic in adults. It can be associated with infantilism and the American culture of youth.
I ask myself where the serious thinkers are. It is hard to imagine that they have much of a presence in government. They rarely show up in the news media. There may be a few of them in academia, but you scarcely hear from them. Certainly there is little evidence of them in the arts and entertainment. In the meantime the optimists are daydreaming or advancing their agendas and no one seems to be minding the store.
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