Posts
I have noticed that some power-mad people tend to have a certain demeanor closely related to nervousness. The ones I have observed also likely correctly perceive a lack of respect for them due to their being stupid, uneducated, or at the bottom of the pecking order. This is probably a product of their self-centeredness of their concerns and their self-identity as powerful in a group.
These people are capable of functioning in organizations at the lowest level but when they gain power, they tend to abuse their subordinates not for their subordinates mistakes but for their own failings as a "pick-me-up". They get annoyed when people don't make mistakes that they can jump on as a justification. The result is never good for organizational cohesion and morale.
It is understanding those who cannot handle power that is one of the more important lessons when coming up from the bottom. The general idea can be grasped with accounts of other people's life under such people but the lessons are far more firmly grasped when you yourself are under their thumb absolutely powerless.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Drudgery of Art and the Flight of Mathematics
May my team never win a championship!
There is a tendency among academics to deride anything coming from a noted sports university. It has been quipped that it is doubly hard to get an article published if your school has won anything in the college football competitions. This is largely due to the not unreasonable assumption that an institution focused on winning championships will not devote the funds or care and priority to actual research or teaching that is needed to flourish. This is certainly true in some cases where professors have to waste time condoning the antics of stupid athletes allowed in only for their athletics and discarded as useless once they are of no more use in acquiring fame. Certainly they were not there for academics.
The financial drain that is college athletics (ostensibly they are self-supporting but the quality of accounting makes such claims dubious at best and attention is never calculated in any ledgers) puts other priorities such as equipment intensive research in a worse position but more creative fields less reliant on technology can proceed without too much trouble.
One frequently thinks of certain fields as being creative an others as simply needing persistence and discipline. That is true to some extent but in a way that is less likely to be thought of. Mathematics requires considerable persistence and discipline at the beginning but eventually becomes extremely reliant on the imagination of the mathematician to understand the varied relationships. Mathematics beyond the undergraduate level is an essentially creative field to the point where leading mathematicians can no longer do basic arithmetic without thought.
Art is traditionally considered a creative field but artists begin with ideas but then must devote much effort to finding taboos that have not been broken or ideas that have not been expressed and find their opening there. The actual disciplined approach of learning how to draw or use whatever medium is gone. Artists from former Communist countries now find work doing the portraits that American artists can't do as they never learned the technique. Instead of having much to work with allowing their imagination translate unto a medium, artists now have to find a message that is shocking or taboo enough (or incomprehensible enough) presented with the chicanery Barnum would envy. The "creative" process of art is thus turned into a tedious search for the as yet unbroken taboos (an ever diminishing supply) that will not get the artist killed or condemned but praised as a brave spirit among men who have never faced anything more dangerous than a ticket taker.
Creativity resides in different places than imagined and one can only marvel at the evolutions of such "creative" fields that turn them into turgid bastions of ideological rigidity that makes me long for the joys of Zhadnovschina.
Note: I do not really long for Zhdanov's return but art then was a good bit less political than it is here in 2009 and in America.
There is a tendency among academics to deride anything coming from a noted sports university. It has been quipped that it is doubly hard to get an article published if your school has won anything in the college football competitions. This is largely due to the not unreasonable assumption that an institution focused on winning championships will not devote the funds or care and priority to actual research or teaching that is needed to flourish. This is certainly true in some cases where professors have to waste time condoning the antics of stupid athletes allowed in only for their athletics and discarded as useless once they are of no more use in acquiring fame. Certainly they were not there for academics.
The financial drain that is college athletics (ostensibly they are self-supporting but the quality of accounting makes such claims dubious at best and attention is never calculated in any ledgers) puts other priorities such as equipment intensive research in a worse position but more creative fields less reliant on technology can proceed without too much trouble.
One frequently thinks of certain fields as being creative an others as simply needing persistence and discipline. That is true to some extent but in a way that is less likely to be thought of. Mathematics requires considerable persistence and discipline at the beginning but eventually becomes extremely reliant on the imagination of the mathematician to understand the varied relationships. Mathematics beyond the undergraduate level is an essentially creative field to the point where leading mathematicians can no longer do basic arithmetic without thought.
Art is traditionally considered a creative field but artists begin with ideas but then must devote much effort to finding taboos that have not been broken or ideas that have not been expressed and find their opening there. The actual disciplined approach of learning how to draw or use whatever medium is gone. Artists from former Communist countries now find work doing the portraits that American artists can't do as they never learned the technique. Instead of having much to work with allowing their imagination translate unto a medium, artists now have to find a message that is shocking or taboo enough (or incomprehensible enough) presented with the chicanery Barnum would envy. The "creative" process of art is thus turned into a tedious search for the as yet unbroken taboos (an ever diminishing supply) that will not get the artist killed or condemned but praised as a brave spirit among men who have never faced anything more dangerous than a ticket taker.
Creativity resides in different places than imagined and one can only marvel at the evolutions of such "creative" fields that turn them into turgid bastions of ideological rigidity that makes me long for the joys of Zhadnovschina.
Note: I do not really long for Zhdanov's return but art then was a good bit less political than it is here in 2009 and in America.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Watch What You Eat
Someone has remarked that Green parties are as watermelons. Green on the outside but red on the inside. I would note that when they spoil, they go black.
That is to say they become totalitarian not just in the Communist or Marxist sense but also they adopt some racial ideas that would get them labeled as Nazi had they not been members of the Left.
That is to say they become totalitarian not just in the Communist or Marxist sense but also they adopt some racial ideas that would get them labeled as Nazi had they not been members of the Left.
Monday, January 12, 2009
What One Sees
The myths a people tell are of great interest to anyone seeking to understand them. The same can be said of their symbols. Both build on an unspoken set of common ideas and history to give them their emotional power. Few would look in awe at Massadah if one did not understand the degree to which Roman Pagan rule offended the religious ideas of the ancient Jews and the glory attached to those who fight to the death.
The dusty chains of ancient slaving ports off the coast of Africa evoke powerful emotions among most non- African Blacks because it their culture and frequently their ancestors who were brought out of Africa as slaves. It is in that memory of their own slavery that they look upon such chains with horror. It is their interest in their own pasts or memories that drives one perception of History. Surely the slave routes overland were far more horrific than those by sea but so few survived and reproduced after the land treks that no Black culture was formed by them to lament their suffering.
So in seeing the symbol of such maritime shackles, one can see an image of the past and into the preoccupations of a group. The same can be said of Americans in general. The Western movie featuring one lone hero (or more recently the term protagonist removes any concept of the star being a good person) against the forces of either corruption or a staid order. The theme of the individual shaping society and being beyond its reach is a popular one in American culture. The theme of the "hip" young or tough people shaking up a conformist society is one that almost echoes the image of the American revolution fighting the Monarchist order.
While such an image is grossly misrepresentative, there is some justification by such an image for the individualist approach taken by some people. This is rarely if ever a conscious decision or idea but simply one of the many ideas that are beneath conscious thought that yet shape our judgements. Other societies that have less individualist myths tended to celebrate larger groups of protagonists in their myths and films. The complexity of keeping track of all of the characters in Anna Karenina is daunting while the difficulty in doing so for the latest thriller off the airport bookshelves is not even a task.
The focus of many other myths is the community or the group. In Anglo-American tradition, it is usually the individual. This is by no means an absolute standard as there are variations. One sees a definite focus on the individual in the Odyssey by supposedly the same author as the more social Iliad. Blinding the Cyclops thus carries great symbolism to those who know the myth.
It is also easy to take the reading of a mind through symbols too rigidly. Some read into the symbols on US dollar bills signs of a secret conspiracy noting the eye and pyramid. What a better understanding of history would have told them was that the growing popularity of "Ancient" and "Mystical" orders usually only a few decades old flourished who made up their supposedly passed down ancient secrets. The most popular was the Masons.
They made up most most of their symbols and appropriated others from less than classical times. The pyramid with eye was one of the symbols they made up. How did it pass to the US dollar? It comes from the popularity of such societies in both Europe and America among the more radical minded people. Masons in Europe were generally very anti-clerical and the Catholic (and other ) Churches tried to crush the radical organizations. This hostility is one of the key origins of the hostility many people simply inherited towards the Masons. In America, the organizations were lightly less antagonistic towards the Church but they were still the meeting houses of radical social reformers.
Such men are naturally attracted to revolutions and the American revolution was no exception although Masonic lodges were split on the subject. Leading members of the more radical wing of the American Revolution were Masons and they decided to adorn their new country with their symbols. Their influence pretty much stopped there as their other goals were quite overt but opposed by a strong faction of opponents who did not like the socially transformative plans of Jefferson et al.
So in looking at such a symbol of America as its currency, once can take the magnifying glass of history and see the political struggles of so long ago. That streak of radicalism and idealism is not gone from American life. While politics may shift frequently, other cultural ideas are more enduring and so the symbols are still clues the minds of their users.
The dusty chains of ancient slaving ports off the coast of Africa evoke powerful emotions among most non- African Blacks because it their culture and frequently their ancestors who were brought out of Africa as slaves. It is in that memory of their own slavery that they look upon such chains with horror. It is their interest in their own pasts or memories that drives one perception of History. Surely the slave routes overland were far more horrific than those by sea but so few survived and reproduced after the land treks that no Black culture was formed by them to lament their suffering.
So in seeing the symbol of such maritime shackles, one can see an image of the past and into the preoccupations of a group. The same can be said of Americans in general. The Western movie featuring one lone hero (or more recently the term protagonist removes any concept of the star being a good person) against the forces of either corruption or a staid order. The theme of the individual shaping society and being beyond its reach is a popular one in American culture. The theme of the "hip" young or tough people shaking up a conformist society is one that almost echoes the image of the American revolution fighting the Monarchist order.
While such an image is grossly misrepresentative, there is some justification by such an image for the individualist approach taken by some people. This is rarely if ever a conscious decision or idea but simply one of the many ideas that are beneath conscious thought that yet shape our judgements. Other societies that have less individualist myths tended to celebrate larger groups of protagonists in their myths and films. The complexity of keeping track of all of the characters in Anna Karenina is daunting while the difficulty in doing so for the latest thriller off the airport bookshelves is not even a task.
The focus of many other myths is the community or the group. In Anglo-American tradition, it is usually the individual. This is by no means an absolute standard as there are variations. One sees a definite focus on the individual in the Odyssey by supposedly the same author as the more social Iliad. Blinding the Cyclops thus carries great symbolism to those who know the myth.
It is also easy to take the reading of a mind through symbols too rigidly. Some read into the symbols on US dollar bills signs of a secret conspiracy noting the eye and pyramid. What a better understanding of history would have told them was that the growing popularity of "Ancient" and "Mystical" orders usually only a few decades old flourished who made up their supposedly passed down ancient secrets. The most popular was the Masons.
They made up most most of their symbols and appropriated others from less than classical times. The pyramid with eye was one of the symbols they made up. How did it pass to the US dollar? It comes from the popularity of such societies in both Europe and America among the more radical minded people. Masons in Europe were generally very anti-clerical and the Catholic (and other ) Churches tried to crush the radical organizations. This hostility is one of the key origins of the hostility many people simply inherited towards the Masons. In America, the organizations were lightly less antagonistic towards the Church but they were still the meeting houses of radical social reformers.
Such men are naturally attracted to revolutions and the American revolution was no exception although Masonic lodges were split on the subject. Leading members of the more radical wing of the American Revolution were Masons and they decided to adorn their new country with their symbols. Their influence pretty much stopped there as their other goals were quite overt but opposed by a strong faction of opponents who did not like the socially transformative plans of Jefferson et al.
So in looking at such a symbol of America as its currency, once can take the magnifying glass of history and see the political struggles of so long ago. That streak of radicalism and idealism is not gone from American life. While politics may shift frequently, other cultural ideas are more enduring and so the symbols are still clues the minds of their users.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Grammar and Grimmer
It is perhaps a monument to the evolution of language that a worker at a fastfood restaurant (if it could be considered food or a restaurant) managed to confuse me in asking what I wanted for Breakfast in such a way that it sounded like "rifle". Given the lack of any "ifle" sounds in "Breakfast", that is no mean feat.
I would instead say that it is not a case of favorable evolution of the English language given that the general purpose is to be able to communicate. Some evolution is needed to encapsulate new concepts and simplify the means of transmission. To some extent this can be handled and the new terms and pronunciations assimilated. There however reaches a point where the differences are too great for an ordinary mind and the ability to communicate perishes in a flurry of unknown words.
Over time, languages separate an become new ones. Some look upon this process and see nothing amiss when dialects and variants appear. Admittedly, there is some ability to handle them and languages survive and are sometimes enriched by their dialects. Despite that, the argument that "if the point is understanding, the specifics of spelling and grammar (and to some extent pronunciation) do not matter" is worrying to all but the more complacent.
While languages can survive and others grow and appear, the process is rarely pleasant for those in that process. The suffering of the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the West was softened by educated men knowing Latin and Greek to communicate. In places where such skills were absent, the fall was harsher and the recovery took longer. The eventual growth of Latin into various Latinate languages such as French and Spanish began to divide the educated people from each other. The adoption of national languages instead of Latin did however ease to integration of most common people into civic life whose ignorance of Latin had little impact on their needs.
Languages evolve over time and interaction to the point where one language can split either according to social ties or linguistic ones. These are not always the same as the joys of modern Bosnia show. Serbo-Croatian is/was considered one language with two scripts. Despite some differences between the two, they would have been considered the same had it not been for the recent hostility between the two communities since WWII. Bosniak is now a language supposedly distinct from Croat (they are both written in Latin characters) and are written slightly differently for the sake of differentiation.
The question is if those differences are due to any major differences between the way Muslims (now categorized as Bosniaks) speak or due to dialects that overlap the different groups. Official Bosniak dictionaries contain spelling primarily of one dialect found in parts of Bosnia but is only one of the major dialects in the Former Yugoslavia. One dialect is spoken mainly in what is now Serbia, another in Croatia and southern and eastern parts of Bosnia, and yet another dialect in parts of Bosnia and parts of Serbia. The overlap with the various ethno-religious groups is more scattered than a purely "ethnic" approach would give.
The result is that A Muslim who feels no need to express his identity might speak his dialect and consider it Serbian. Another would speak the same and consider it Bosnian. Yet a third Muslim would speak a different dialect and still consider that Bosnian. The term "language" is thus used where the actual differences are slight.
The more applicable problems ensuing from excessive variety in a language is the near incomprehensibility that one suffers approaching Transylvanian or Swiss German. They are technically considered German but the pronunciation is so distant from most German that in practice Swiss and Transylvanian German speakers have to switch to a more understandable dialect for the sake of a regular German even understanding them.
Slavic eventually was one language and one finds traces of it in the various Slavic languages where there are numerous similarities between Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Ukrainian and Serbo-Croatian (interestingly, Romanian also has many slavic import words and possibly grammar although this is strenuously denied by many). A similar process is taking place in Arabic so that an Arabic speaker from Morocco is essentially incomprehensible for an Iraqi unless a more common dialect is used such as Egyptian Arabic.
The use of Television has substantially eased comprehensibility between dialects either by homogenizing them or by broadcasting both enough that people learn both. One the other hand, the idea that understanding is achieved easily can lead to divergences that begin the process again.
In my view, one can choose a rigorous enforcement of received pronunciation, a rigorous enforcement of spelling, or a clear division between terms. One can still operate with two but not on one. Each then may be considered non-essential and so some conclude that enforcing them is irrelevant given that the common language is usable with just to. The problem is that people cannot decide which two. Many people do not bother with maintaining a common pronunciation having judged already too divergent to enforce or "racist" and oppressive of other cultures using the same language. One cannot then chastise a person for badly mispronouncing "breakfast".
As for spelling, people grow weary of the enforcement of spelling and grammar seeing it as an impediment to quick communication. Misspellings are then seen in messages sent by University professors who see the task of communicating whatever his intent is being unhindered by a need to maintain consistency of spelling. The process simply encourages a division between a formal language and a common language (the lack of which has been one of the more distinctive aspects of English). Already many students have difficulty reading long passages of books using the common terms of a few decades ago and we of today find it requires specialization to read Middle English and Shakespeare's spelling are politely updated for the sake of legibility.
The overlap of terms becomes problematic at points. While this is not the most polite example, it is a very acute one. The term "Ethnic-Cleansing" is frequently used yet rarely defined. Is it, as some use it, mass murder of members of an ethnic group not of a scale to warrant the term genocide and with the intent to intimidate survivors? Is it mass expulsions with the threat of force is people stay? Is it the exclusion from the standard of a society such as the revoking of citizenship? The term has been used in describing the Croatian actions in the Krajina in which people incapable of fleeing were found later with their throats cut even when they were elderly incapable of posing a military or demographic threat to Croatia. Serb mass expulsions of Muslims with the occasional demolition of a house were also called ethnic-cleansing" even when few people actually died. The term has also been applied to the Croatian citizenship laws that revoked Croatian citizenship from non-Croats and thereby made life very difficult for anyone so living in Croatia.
When is the term clarifying? When GEN Rose and several journalists discussed the devastation in Gorazde, they used the term ethnic cleansing. The damaged houses were used by GEN Rose but he used the term with the understanding that it could mean mass murder or intimidation. An article in the Slavic review used the term to describe Croatian citizenship laws. Each use intends to present with clarity but placing each term next to the other does not clarify. Certainly GEN Rose in no way intended to say that the destroyed houses were the result of an administrative process and Mr. Hayden likely did not intend to say that Croatia was destroying Serb houses and killing them in Zagreb (which was taking place but not the consideration of the article). The term is thus too broad to be of use. Instead the terms "mass killings", "intimidation", and "administrative harassment" provide the information and specify what exactly is taking place.
Understanding requires any two of the three but ability to jettison any one inadvertently results in the abandonment of all even if all three are maintained perfectly. All three provide some degree of redundancy that allow some failures in all of the areas but which still allows people to understand each other. In that spirit, I wulod lkie to odrer smoe hsah bonrws peslae.
Understandable? Only if one believes that the mind only pays attention to the first and last letters of a word and one has the patience for anagrams in everyday life.
I would instead say that it is not a case of favorable evolution of the English language given that the general purpose is to be able to communicate. Some evolution is needed to encapsulate new concepts and simplify the means of transmission. To some extent this can be handled and the new terms and pronunciations assimilated. There however reaches a point where the differences are too great for an ordinary mind and the ability to communicate perishes in a flurry of unknown words.
Over time, languages separate an become new ones. Some look upon this process and see nothing amiss when dialects and variants appear. Admittedly, there is some ability to handle them and languages survive and are sometimes enriched by their dialects. Despite that, the argument that "if the point is understanding, the specifics of spelling and grammar (and to some extent pronunciation) do not matter" is worrying to all but the more complacent.
While languages can survive and others grow and appear, the process is rarely pleasant for those in that process. The suffering of the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the West was softened by educated men knowing Latin and Greek to communicate. In places where such skills were absent, the fall was harsher and the recovery took longer. The eventual growth of Latin into various Latinate languages such as French and Spanish began to divide the educated people from each other. The adoption of national languages instead of Latin did however ease to integration of most common people into civic life whose ignorance of Latin had little impact on their needs.
Languages evolve over time and interaction to the point where one language can split either according to social ties or linguistic ones. These are not always the same as the joys of modern Bosnia show. Serbo-Croatian is/was considered one language with two scripts. Despite some differences between the two, they would have been considered the same had it not been for the recent hostility between the two communities since WWII. Bosniak is now a language supposedly distinct from Croat (they are both written in Latin characters) and are written slightly differently for the sake of differentiation.
The question is if those differences are due to any major differences between the way Muslims (now categorized as Bosniaks) speak or due to dialects that overlap the different groups. Official Bosniak dictionaries contain spelling primarily of one dialect found in parts of Bosnia but is only one of the major dialects in the Former Yugoslavia. One dialect is spoken mainly in what is now Serbia, another in Croatia and southern and eastern parts of Bosnia, and yet another dialect in parts of Bosnia and parts of Serbia. The overlap with the various ethno-religious groups is more scattered than a purely "ethnic" approach would give.
The result is that A Muslim who feels no need to express his identity might speak his dialect and consider it Serbian. Another would speak the same and consider it Bosnian. Yet a third Muslim would speak a different dialect and still consider that Bosnian. The term "language" is thus used where the actual differences are slight.
The more applicable problems ensuing from excessive variety in a language is the near incomprehensibility that one suffers approaching Transylvanian or Swiss German. They are technically considered German but the pronunciation is so distant from most German that in practice Swiss and Transylvanian German speakers have to switch to a more understandable dialect for the sake of a regular German even understanding them.
Slavic eventually was one language and one finds traces of it in the various Slavic languages where there are numerous similarities between Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Ukrainian and Serbo-Croatian (interestingly, Romanian also has many slavic import words and possibly grammar although this is strenuously denied by many). A similar process is taking place in Arabic so that an Arabic speaker from Morocco is essentially incomprehensible for an Iraqi unless a more common dialect is used such as Egyptian Arabic.
The use of Television has substantially eased comprehensibility between dialects either by homogenizing them or by broadcasting both enough that people learn both. One the other hand, the idea that understanding is achieved easily can lead to divergences that begin the process again.
In my view, one can choose a rigorous enforcement of received pronunciation, a rigorous enforcement of spelling, or a clear division between terms. One can still operate with two but not on one. Each then may be considered non-essential and so some conclude that enforcing them is irrelevant given that the common language is usable with just to. The problem is that people cannot decide which two. Many people do not bother with maintaining a common pronunciation having judged already too divergent to enforce or "racist" and oppressive of other cultures using the same language. One cannot then chastise a person for badly mispronouncing "breakfast".
As for spelling, people grow weary of the enforcement of spelling and grammar seeing it as an impediment to quick communication. Misspellings are then seen in messages sent by University professors who see the task of communicating whatever his intent is being unhindered by a need to maintain consistency of spelling. The process simply encourages a division between a formal language and a common language (the lack of which has been one of the more distinctive aspects of English). Already many students have difficulty reading long passages of books using the common terms of a few decades ago and we of today find it requires specialization to read Middle English and Shakespeare's spelling are politely updated for the sake of legibility.
The overlap of terms becomes problematic at points. While this is not the most polite example, it is a very acute one. The term "Ethnic-Cleansing" is frequently used yet rarely defined. Is it, as some use it, mass murder of members of an ethnic group not of a scale to warrant the term genocide and with the intent to intimidate survivors? Is it mass expulsions with the threat of force is people stay? Is it the exclusion from the standard of a society such as the revoking of citizenship? The term has been used in describing the Croatian actions in the Krajina in which people incapable of fleeing were found later with their throats cut even when they were elderly incapable of posing a military or demographic threat to Croatia. Serb mass expulsions of Muslims with the occasional demolition of a house were also called ethnic-cleansing" even when few people actually died. The term has also been applied to the Croatian citizenship laws that revoked Croatian citizenship from non-Croats and thereby made life very difficult for anyone so living in Croatia.
When is the term clarifying? When GEN Rose and several journalists discussed the devastation in Gorazde, they used the term ethnic cleansing. The damaged houses were used by GEN Rose but he used the term with the understanding that it could mean mass murder or intimidation. An article in the Slavic review used the term to describe Croatian citizenship laws. Each use intends to present with clarity but placing each term next to the other does not clarify. Certainly GEN Rose in no way intended to say that the destroyed houses were the result of an administrative process and Mr. Hayden likely did not intend to say that Croatia was destroying Serb houses and killing them in Zagreb (which was taking place but not the consideration of the article). The term is thus too broad to be of use. Instead the terms "mass killings", "intimidation", and "administrative harassment" provide the information and specify what exactly is taking place.
Understanding requires any two of the three but ability to jettison any one inadvertently results in the abandonment of all even if all three are maintained perfectly. All three provide some degree of redundancy that allow some failures in all of the areas but which still allows people to understand each other. In that spirit, I wulod lkie to odrer smoe hsah bonrws peslae.
Understandable? Only if one believes that the mind only pays attention to the first and last letters of a word and one has the patience for anagrams in everyday life.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
A Class in Classics
I remember with fondness the learning of the old Greco-Roman myths.
I learned the concept of cauterization of wounds from Hercules fight with the Hydra, whirlpools from Charybdis and Scylla, and the dangers of inspecificity from the tale of King Midas. Such little lessons are the congealed ideas of a long ago time who bring to the modern mind enjoyable settings to timeless lessons.
As I grew, my childhood schooling was far too fragmented to get a classical education (even had the US or French systems even offered them) and that is something I have ever since attempted to remedy. Sadly, little can make up for the lack of learning Thucydides at an early age or Herodotus slightly later. They are enjoyable authors but the rush of life once one has left secondary does not allow much for anything other than work related or pure entertainment in reading.
In all things there will be regret for that which was not done but this is one of the greater sadnesses of my life.
I learned the concept of cauterization of wounds from Hercules fight with the Hydra, whirlpools from Charybdis and Scylla, and the dangers of inspecificity from the tale of King Midas. Such little lessons are the congealed ideas of a long ago time who bring to the modern mind enjoyable settings to timeless lessons.
As I grew, my childhood schooling was far too fragmented to get a classical education (even had the US or French systems even offered them) and that is something I have ever since attempted to remedy. Sadly, little can make up for the lack of learning Thucydides at an early age or Herodotus slightly later. They are enjoyable authors but the rush of life once one has left secondary does not allow much for anything other than work related or pure entertainment in reading.
In all things there will be regret for that which was not done but this is one of the greater sadnesses of my life.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Book Less Seen
One frequently hears the injunction not to judge a book by its cover. Nonetheless, when handling actual books, used bookstore owners frequently do so. The whole romance novel genre has a tendency towards certain types of images on covers and the size and format is what gave rise to the term "pulp fiction".
Thus it is understandable how The Road Less Traveled: A new Psychology of Love (a book on psychology) was stacked with western romance novels in a bookstore in Bucharest, Romania. He likely had no training in Psychology other than that obtained by seeing people every day and the cover depicted a rose. Such covers generally are romance novels in the Western press hence the placement with other such novels.
While their may be depths unseen in an unostentatious cover, frequently the cover actual serves a similar function to the title in that it conditions the expectations of the reader. Few would pick up a copy of a historical work on the Gulags if the cover depicted Mikey Mouse. The actual practice of life is such that people need to simplify and generalize to acheive a moderate efficiency and comfort. Using covers as yet another means of classifying books uses visible traits to correlate with less visible ones (the genre) serves to make the life of the bookstore owner easier.
Thus in that vein, we may judge a book by its cover but be aware that the cover itself says little.
Thus it is understandable how The Road Less Traveled: A new Psychology of Love (a book on psychology) was stacked with western romance novels in a bookstore in Bucharest, Romania. He likely had no training in Psychology other than that obtained by seeing people every day and the cover depicted a rose. Such covers generally are romance novels in the Western press hence the placement with other such novels.
While their may be depths unseen in an unostentatious cover, frequently the cover actual serves a similar function to the title in that it conditions the expectations of the reader. Few would pick up a copy of a historical work on the Gulags if the cover depicted Mikey Mouse. The actual practice of life is such that people need to simplify and generalize to acheive a moderate efficiency and comfort. Using covers as yet another means of classifying books uses visible traits to correlate with less visible ones (the genre) serves to make the life of the bookstore owner easier.
Thus in that vein, we may judge a book by its cover but be aware that the cover itself says little.
Historical Alzheimers
First of all, a joyous Christmas.
I am routinely amazed and irritated by the supposed "best and brightest" of Western society. This is not so much the semi-aristocratic divisions they make but the degree of culture and competence of those making the distinctions.
One easily gets fed up with entire fields when respected people in them make very simple mistakes. James Barber wrote a book in which one example was the refusal of Herbert Hoover to institute welfare policies. This is galling as economic historians have seen that he did institute several such policies as well as those favoring unions and the like. The historians in favor of such policies praise him for his foresight and those opposed revile him for bringing on or aggravating the Great Depression. The only place where one finds the claim that Hoover did not intervene in the economy is in the electoral propaganda of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who tried to present himself as a radical transformer of the economy and society compared to Hoover.
This was not hard to find but nonetheless the claim remains in the most recent version of his textbook that has for many decades been taught in University classes. The simplicity of such a mistake indicates a failure to research properly. Sadly, this is not the only case. In studies of international relations, long papers have been written about the impact of air power on diplomacy but then fail to note major land offensives. A little common sense and memory would have avoided such blunders but they are made by "respected" people who are not questioned on what contradicts common sense and precedent.
I certainly believe that some division between the cultured and educated compared to the less civilized. The cultured core can exert its influence and guide a society and preserve the norms, direction, and preserve ideas and learning beyond daily stresses and collapses. Nonetheless, as education means less and less in the West, the ability to assess such a privileged position is oriented not around contribution to society but around alternatively wealth or ideological objectives.
Gone are the days when a student was expected to learn the classics, the great wars of the Greeks, Romans, and others. Through such studies, an understanding of a complex situation with real human actors and intents is formed. Now, the recipe approach to History results in such normal and human interactions being reduced to a simple formula that almost never captures even the basic situation. The quality of modern Western political discourse when invoking History gives the same effect as seeing The Merchant of Venice reduced to an episode of the Simpsons (worse exists but I have never watched such shows hence the lack of a more apt comparison) with the vocabulary of supposedly educated men being reduced to what most children surpass in primary school.
There are several factors that I can find for now.
The lack of memory is a crippling problem in any analysis. One may compare a situation to WWII. Many people resort to a Munich Analogy but the validity of a comparison also depends on the similarities between the situation and WWII. One notorious example is many describing the 1991-1995 Bosnian war as a relapse of WWII. That is not far from the truth. The suspicions and goals of all three groups evolved primarily from WWII and all three sides invoked images and ideas from WWII in bother their domestic and international propaganda (often taking place in Bosnia but aimed at foreigners). The problem was that the lack of memory (ie. remembering that Croats and Muslims hade predominatly been allied to Nazi Germany and commited a very entheusiastic genocide against Serbs and Jews) meant that the similarities blamed Serbs for being supposedly the revival of Naziism wheras others with a longer attention span remembered the dubiousness of certain claims.
If you cannot remember data, your theories may be perfect but your result will be wrong due to insufficient or false input. Nonetheless, the whole cult of "self-development" and modernism scorn memory. This is also applicable in the small scale. I learned the Pi number at the behest of my father and since first grade have been noted for a good memory and making connections otherwise impossible without a better grasp of multiple things at once. LTGEN Ion Mircea Pacepa was taught to memorize the phone book and as a result could recal events from years ago providing him with valuable information much more easily.
Such a poor memory results in a strengthening of the bias in favor of immediate circomstances. If one has barely learned of the Punic Wars or of Celtic human sacrifice, it is much harder to formulate arguements against Neo-Paganism when they claim Paganism was kinder than Judaism or Christianity. In many cases, people simple buckle out of a lack of information leading to an inability to formulate an arguement.
The blind narcissism is the worst aspect. The human mind naturally endeavors to protect its ego and so subtly misinterpets things in its favor. The direct approach of building self-esteem has resulted in a habit of approaching History as a cookbook (why do I need to study it?) or as a morality play in which they are the hero (the habit of fighting WWII over again in completely unrelated circomstances) and as a result, such things badly distort History. The cult for understanding can also be subborned into "understanding" such peoples as the Indian allies of France in their wars against the British. Such studies simply are sympathetic portrayals that try to hide the massacres such allies commited against British settlers in an attempt to create an image of the author rising above the conflicts of the past. The result is instead a different kind of distortion but even less respectful of the people of the time.
In short, I hate the idiots of the Western intellegentsia. At least the function as a repositiory of ideas is still handled by the status of those who protect such ideas is in the isolated counter-establishment.
I am routinely amazed and irritated by the supposed "best and brightest" of Western society. This is not so much the semi-aristocratic divisions they make but the degree of culture and competence of those making the distinctions.
One easily gets fed up with entire fields when respected people in them make very simple mistakes. James Barber wrote a book in which one example was the refusal of Herbert Hoover to institute welfare policies. This is galling as economic historians have seen that he did institute several such policies as well as those favoring unions and the like. The historians in favor of such policies praise him for his foresight and those opposed revile him for bringing on or aggravating the Great Depression. The only place where one finds the claim that Hoover did not intervene in the economy is in the electoral propaganda of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who tried to present himself as a radical transformer of the economy and society compared to Hoover.
This was not hard to find but nonetheless the claim remains in the most recent version of his textbook that has for many decades been taught in University classes. The simplicity of such a mistake indicates a failure to research properly. Sadly, this is not the only case. In studies of international relations, long papers have been written about the impact of air power on diplomacy but then fail to note major land offensives. A little common sense and memory would have avoided such blunders but they are made by "respected" people who are not questioned on what contradicts common sense and precedent.
I certainly believe that some division between the cultured and educated compared to the less civilized. The cultured core can exert its influence and guide a society and preserve the norms, direction, and preserve ideas and learning beyond daily stresses and collapses. Nonetheless, as education means less and less in the West, the ability to assess such a privileged position is oriented not around contribution to society but around alternatively wealth or ideological objectives.
Gone are the days when a student was expected to learn the classics, the great wars of the Greeks, Romans, and others. Through such studies, an understanding of a complex situation with real human actors and intents is formed. Now, the recipe approach to History results in such normal and human interactions being reduced to a simple formula that almost never captures even the basic situation. The quality of modern Western political discourse when invoking History gives the same effect as seeing The Merchant of Venice reduced to an episode of the Simpsons (worse exists but I have never watched such shows hence the lack of a more apt comparison) with the vocabulary of supposedly educated men being reduced to what most children surpass in primary school.
There are several factors that I can find for now.
The lack of memory is a crippling problem in any analysis. One may compare a situation to WWII. Many people resort to a Munich Analogy but the validity of a comparison also depends on the similarities between the situation and WWII. One notorious example is many describing the 1991-1995 Bosnian war as a relapse of WWII. That is not far from the truth. The suspicions and goals of all three groups evolved primarily from WWII and all three sides invoked images and ideas from WWII in bother their domestic and international propaganda (often taking place in Bosnia but aimed at foreigners). The problem was that the lack of memory (ie. remembering that Croats and Muslims hade predominatly been allied to Nazi Germany and commited a very entheusiastic genocide against Serbs and Jews) meant that the similarities blamed Serbs for being supposedly the revival of Naziism wheras others with a longer attention span remembered the dubiousness of certain claims.
If you cannot remember data, your theories may be perfect but your result will be wrong due to insufficient or false input. Nonetheless, the whole cult of "self-development" and modernism scorn memory. This is also applicable in the small scale. I learned the Pi number at the behest of my father and since first grade have been noted for a good memory and making connections otherwise impossible without a better grasp of multiple things at once. LTGEN Ion Mircea Pacepa was taught to memorize the phone book and as a result could recal events from years ago providing him with valuable information much more easily.
Such a poor memory results in a strengthening of the bias in favor of immediate circomstances. If one has barely learned of the Punic Wars or of Celtic human sacrifice, it is much harder to formulate arguements against Neo-Paganism when they claim Paganism was kinder than Judaism or Christianity. In many cases, people simple buckle out of a lack of information leading to an inability to formulate an arguement.
The blind narcissism is the worst aspect. The human mind naturally endeavors to protect its ego and so subtly misinterpets things in its favor. The direct approach of building self-esteem has resulted in a habit of approaching History as a cookbook (why do I need to study it?) or as a morality play in which they are the hero (the habit of fighting WWII over again in completely unrelated circomstances) and as a result, such things badly distort History. The cult for understanding can also be subborned into "understanding" such peoples as the Indian allies of France in their wars against the British. Such studies simply are sympathetic portrayals that try to hide the massacres such allies commited against British settlers in an attempt to create an image of the author rising above the conflicts of the past. The result is instead a different kind of distortion but even less respectful of the people of the time.
In short, I hate the idiots of the Western intellegentsia. At least the function as a repositiory of ideas is still handled by the status of those who protect such ideas is in the isolated counter-establishment.
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