When last I was rambling, I was thinking about folks' resistance to explore their minds for reasons justifying the things they believe. Bracketing aside mundane laziness, I speculate that maybe it's because of timidity, or perhaps it's because of excessive confidence in one's own prima facie intuitions.
To the latter, I'm reminded of a fantastic line from Hobbes' "Leviathan" (there are so many good lines in that book!): "For such is the nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves; for they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that every man is contented with his share."
In these cases, the harsh pill the student has to learn how to swallow - and sometimes in conversation after an assignment has been graded, I've worked with the resistance to take this bitter medicine - is that their thumbs up or thumbs down is not good enough. "I'm sorry, but in order for that kind of "argument" to pass muster, I have to assume you're some kind of expert on the subject such that your intuitions as such are stand-alone reasons. But even if you WERE a philosophical expert, your intuitions alone would not be sufficient. You have to go deeper."
Now maybe this thinking exercise getting somewhere. For I think part of the difficulty is that it's just >hard< to work through the justification for our thoughts and intuitions. I think it's true the adage that there's nothing so ridiculous that some philosopher hasn't said it, and in that vein I think that many people approach the subject - or process or whatever it is you want to call "philosophy" - as though it's a matter of saying any old thing, and that's good enough. But of course that's not good enough. For any crazy-sounding thing a philosopher has said or written, that comes with a retinue of reasons which - ta da! - are the argument for that crazy position. So it goes, too, for the "it agrees with me/doesn't." There are some folks who take deep umbrage at their say-so not being good enough.
At bottom, though, I wonder if the timid writer who thinks there's nothing left to say, and the one confident in her intuitions, actually share a common core? The core element I have in mind is fear: fear that there is nothing there, an abyss, no reasons, no justification, no anything. The timid soul worries about it more immediately, whereas perhaps the other masks that fear behind an unreflective confidence?
Ah, but you see, to my mind at least - and I don't think I'm bizarre in thinking this - exploring that worrisome place is where the philosophy can really get started. There is not nothing there behind the intuition, but it is true that maybe what you find is not as veritable or as convincing as one would like to think. But we are all improved, I believe, by confronting that space and seeing it for what it is. And if our reasonable space is not as we would prefer, then it's incumbent upon us make it better. Not muffle it or ignore it or bewail its insufficiency.
Why do you believe X? What is its source? Your parents? Your church? Your teachers? Fox "news"? The Daily Show? The internet? What are the merits of the source? What is their track record? Was the belief beaten into your head, or did it come with a justification? What was the justification? Is it any good? What now?
It is a far better thing to fumble inelegantly through these questions, and be prepared to subject the answers to critique, than to rest contended on beliefs where one never questions why they're held. Hmm. Is that proposition an intuition of my own? No, I've got my reasons, but the idea is noted down as bloggedy-note topic to pursue another time.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Fearsome mindfulness, part the first
It's the time of year in the college teaching market when job announcements start sprouting for the next academic year. Reading over their teaching requirements reminds me of being up there in the classroom, and for whatever reason this morning I recall one of the more difficult things to accomplish in the philosophy classroom. Particularly in the intro philosophy classroom.
In those places, there are a great many young minds being introduced to formulating a meritable argument for the very first time. Of course, by 'argument' here I don't mean shouting and screaming, or all-capping and multiple exclamation-pointing. Everyone knows how to do that already.
The assignments I'd give would usually have two primary elements: first, that the writer shows that (a) he or she can recognize an argument given by another author, and (b) that he or she understands it by putting it into their own words. Second, that the student shows a basic mastery of argumentative principles by defending or rejecting the point of view previously discussed.
I don't know if you'd believe how often I'd get the defense: "X's point of view is right because it agrees with what I believe," and the rejection, "X's point of view is wrong because it goes against what I believe."
Le sigh. Seeing it show up repeatedly breaks a thinking person's heart. And regrettably, although I won't take the time to explore it here, I think it's like a small mirror reflecting the level of public debate and discourse that is prevalent in our culture. I'm thinking things like Mr. Limbaugh's "ditto-heads" and folks hollering "you're wrong because you don't think like I do."
Most unsatisfactory. But how to counter it? That is the difficult thing.
An instructor can spend hours going over how to connect ideas up together in a logical fashion, how to recognize cogency, and basic but easy-to-slip-into fallacies to avoid. Encouraging the student to actually employ those tools is another matter altogether. It's the ol' leading a horse to water thing.
So I try to parse it down to motivation: what is so compelling about the "it agrees/disagrees with what I believe already," such that it shows up so often? If I can but figure out how that works, then perhaps I can short-circuit the process and try and re-route the thinking strategy.
A straightforward motivation is that it's easy, and here I'm thinking especially about the ever-recurring-paper-written-the-night-before-it's-due. We've all been there. And from a teacher's point of view, these essays are often, but not always, detectable by a variety of symptoms, this being one of them. It's 3 in the morning, you're tired, it has all the appearance of a reason, there - done! But these kinds of essays typically have other factors working against them - such as extensive copy/pastes from the internet - so the presence of the "it agrees with me/doesn't agree" is usually the least of its problems.
I'm considering more the kind of written work that evidences the occurrence of thoughts. What is going on in the student's mind, that she (or he - I'm gonna drop the disjunction now) is seemingly incapable of scouring up her own independent reasons?
The best I've come up with is the following. One one hand, maybe the writer thinks that the author she's covering has said everything brilliant that exists in defense of the argument at hand, such that her intuitive agreement (or disagreement) is all she has left? Alternatively, perhaps the writer takes her own confidence in her intuitions as the sine qua non for her intuitions' strength? These are two different vectors, and I'll talk about how I analyze them anon.
In those places, there are a great many young minds being introduced to formulating a meritable argument for the very first time. Of course, by 'argument' here I don't mean shouting and screaming, or all-capping and multiple exclamation-pointing. Everyone knows how to do that already.
The assignments I'd give would usually have two primary elements: first, that the writer shows that (a) he or she can recognize an argument given by another author, and (b) that he or she understands it by putting it into their own words. Second, that the student shows a basic mastery of argumentative principles by defending or rejecting the point of view previously discussed.
I don't know if you'd believe how often I'd get the defense: "X's point of view is right because it agrees with what I believe," and the rejection, "X's point of view is wrong because it goes against what I believe."
Le sigh. Seeing it show up repeatedly breaks a thinking person's heart. And regrettably, although I won't take the time to explore it here, I think it's like a small mirror reflecting the level of public debate and discourse that is prevalent in our culture. I'm thinking things like Mr. Limbaugh's "ditto-heads" and folks hollering "you're wrong because you don't think like I do."
Most unsatisfactory. But how to counter it? That is the difficult thing.
An instructor can spend hours going over how to connect ideas up together in a logical fashion, how to recognize cogency, and basic but easy-to-slip-into fallacies to avoid. Encouraging the student to actually employ those tools is another matter altogether. It's the ol' leading a horse to water thing.
So I try to parse it down to motivation: what is so compelling about the "it agrees/disagrees with what I believe already," such that it shows up so often? If I can but figure out how that works, then perhaps I can short-circuit the process and try and re-route the thinking strategy.
A straightforward motivation is that it's easy, and here I'm thinking especially about the ever-recurring-paper-written-the-night-before-it's-due. We've all been there. And from a teacher's point of view, these essays are often, but not always, detectable by a variety of symptoms, this being one of them. It's 3 in the morning, you're tired, it has all the appearance of a reason, there - done! But these kinds of essays typically have other factors working against them - such as extensive copy/pastes from the internet - so the presence of the "it agrees with me/doesn't agree" is usually the least of its problems.
I'm considering more the kind of written work that evidences the occurrence of thoughts. What is going on in the student's mind, that she (or he - I'm gonna drop the disjunction now) is seemingly incapable of scouring up her own independent reasons?
The best I've come up with is the following. One one hand, maybe the writer thinks that the author she's covering has said everything brilliant that exists in defense of the argument at hand, such that her intuitive agreement (or disagreement) is all she has left? Alternatively, perhaps the writer takes her own confidence in her intuitions as the sine qua non for her intuitions' strength? These are two different vectors, and I'll talk about how I analyze them anon.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Me and ANTM: WTF?
I guess I'm thankful for all the folks who, when they hear I've got a thing for watching ANTM, they sound a bit shocked. I wouldn't think I'd be the kind of person to watch it, either. But for goodness' sake, as Dan commented to something I wrote earlier, if I'm home when there's a marathon series of re-runs on a weekend afternoon, I'll happily let it play while I'm doing whatever else, and take breaks to (re)watch it here and there.
But good lord, why? Thusly I have my morning write and see what happens as I put words down.
Firstly, I'll point out the parts I'll readily mute or walk away from: the great moments of truth that Tyra pronounces, and the idiotic junior high school level of drama among the girls. But hey, it's Tyra's show, and from what I've read she had to fight hard to get it off the ground and now it's become sweepingly popular all over the place, so if she wants to stand up and be all-knowing, then you go, girl. And for the drama, meh. Maybe I'll endure all these elements on the first view, but they certainly aren't worth repeating.
That means there's a good 50% - maybe as much as 70%? - of the show that I usually tune out. Works out really well, then, as something to have playing as I clean, because going elsewhere in the house for half an hour means I'm not missing anything.
So what's the hook, then?
I think part of it, is in learning about the technique involved in doing a fancy, modelley photo shoot. What's involved in translating an abstract concept into an attractive or interesting visual form? For all I usually see is the end result, and it's kinda cool to see what it takes to get there. That's in keeping with other things I like to watch, like "How It's Made," and "Dirty Jobs," "Project Runway" - I like getting seeing what happens behind finished products.
I >would< say, to agree with another woman who I know watches the show whose intelligence I respect, to learn more about what to keep in mind when in front of the camera to make a pretty picture. And she has very good reasons for finding that information useful. And I enjoy this aspect as well - about how the camera perceives big and small (such as, even if you don't have a big feet, if that's the closest thing to the lens, you're gonna wind up looking as though your feet are bigger than your head). About the use of light and angles. It's kinda cool.
But unlike the friend of whom I speak above, I'm not really much - I dunno, either able or inclined - to put that information to work for me. It's always a surprise when a picture of me gets taken, where I don't look like I'm being shocked. Maybe if I practiced and took a bazillion pictures of myself I'd finally realize THAT'S what I need to do in order to not give myself a double chin, or THIS is how to look at the camera so I'm not all bug-eyed. But I don't have the patience. So, I'm not watching it in order for me to learn how to get the camera to love me.
I think another big part of the interest in watching it, is that for sure I was never the pretty girl when I was these kids' age, and it's interesting to see a sort of day-in-the-life of what it is like to be that girl. I know the scenarios are to some extent scripted or directed. But it manages to capture my voyeuristic curiosity all the same.
I think another draw, is seeing for however pretty these young women are, that it's not straightforward to get a good picture. It was earlier in the series, I believe, that they'd show more of how things looked before and after touch-ups and photoshop (this probably goes to getting an insight to behind-the-scenes techniques mentioned before). But also, it is interesting to see that sometimes for the shoots, for the TV camera the ladies look plain freaky with the hair and makeup, but for the photo, it works. Which goes to suggest the (maybe?) interesting point, that for whatever it is that counts for pretty or beauty, it's not always something that is copied straight up from the World, to film or pixels, to the eye.
And finally, I guess perhaps because there is something to the show that is so polar opposite to me, I am like a magnet attracted. In the main, for this show, success revolves around what one wears, and one's hair, and spending countless hours in front of a mirror. But it's curious - there are a plethora of other shows similarly diametrically opposed to my outlook, such as "Real Housewives" and "Bad Girls' Club" to name a few. I've watched an episode or two of these, just to see what they're about. I'm positively repelled. Maybe its because, at least in my imagination, I conceive that the product that often is used for judging for ANTM, is some kind of attempt to reach the level of art, that puts it above them in my mind.
But good lord, why? Thusly I have my morning write and see what happens as I put words down.
Firstly, I'll point out the parts I'll readily mute or walk away from: the great moments of truth that Tyra pronounces, and the idiotic junior high school level of drama among the girls. But hey, it's Tyra's show, and from what I've read she had to fight hard to get it off the ground and now it's become sweepingly popular all over the place, so if she wants to stand up and be all-knowing, then you go, girl. And for the drama, meh. Maybe I'll endure all these elements on the first view, but they certainly aren't worth repeating.
That means there's a good 50% - maybe as much as 70%? - of the show that I usually tune out. Works out really well, then, as something to have playing as I clean, because going elsewhere in the house for half an hour means I'm not missing anything.
So what's the hook, then?
I think part of it, is in learning about the technique involved in doing a fancy, modelley photo shoot. What's involved in translating an abstract concept into an attractive or interesting visual form? For all I usually see is the end result, and it's kinda cool to see what it takes to get there. That's in keeping with other things I like to watch, like "How It's Made," and "Dirty Jobs," "Project Runway" - I like getting seeing what happens behind finished products.
I >would< say, to agree with another woman who I know watches the show whose intelligence I respect, to learn more about what to keep in mind when in front of the camera to make a pretty picture. And she has very good reasons for finding that information useful. And I enjoy this aspect as well - about how the camera perceives big and small (such as, even if you don't have a big feet, if that's the closest thing to the lens, you're gonna wind up looking as though your feet are bigger than your head). About the use of light and angles. It's kinda cool.
But unlike the friend of whom I speak above, I'm not really much - I dunno, either able or inclined - to put that information to work for me. It's always a surprise when a picture of me gets taken, where I don't look like I'm being shocked. Maybe if I practiced and took a bazillion pictures of myself I'd finally realize THAT'S what I need to do in order to not give myself a double chin, or THIS is how to look at the camera so I'm not all bug-eyed. But I don't have the patience. So, I'm not watching it in order for me to learn how to get the camera to love me.
I think another big part of the interest in watching it, is that for sure I was never the pretty girl when I was these kids' age, and it's interesting to see a sort of day-in-the-life of what it is like to be that girl. I know the scenarios are to some extent scripted or directed. But it manages to capture my voyeuristic curiosity all the same.
I think another draw, is seeing for however pretty these young women are, that it's not straightforward to get a good picture. It was earlier in the series, I believe, that they'd show more of how things looked before and after touch-ups and photoshop (this probably goes to getting an insight to behind-the-scenes techniques mentioned before). But also, it is interesting to see that sometimes for the shoots, for the TV camera the ladies look plain freaky with the hair and makeup, but for the photo, it works. Which goes to suggest the (maybe?) interesting point, that for whatever it is that counts for pretty or beauty, it's not always something that is copied straight up from the World, to film or pixels, to the eye.
And finally, I guess perhaps because there is something to the show that is so polar opposite to me, I am like a magnet attracted. In the main, for this show, success revolves around what one wears, and one's hair, and spending countless hours in front of a mirror. But it's curious - there are a plethora of other shows similarly diametrically opposed to my outlook, such as "Real Housewives" and "Bad Girls' Club" to name a few. I've watched an episode or two of these, just to see what they're about. I'm positively repelled. Maybe its because, at least in my imagination, I conceive that the product that often is used for judging for ANTM, is some kind of attempt to reach the level of art, that puts it above them in my mind.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Vampires don't sparkle!
I enjoy writings that bash "Twilight" because its rabid fan base is a sad testimony to an apparently low IQ rampant among readers (but bless them, there at least ARE people reading). But it's not all disdain; I'm sorry for the die-hards' lack of luster and sizzle in their lived experiences, such that this dreck that passes for a story so successfully captures their imaginations.
I ran across the comment "vampires don't sparkle!" earlier this morning, and it recalled other times I've seen the assertion posted, sometimes with lengthy elaboration (because it tends to come up in the midst of "Twilight"-bashing). Without pretending to intuit the mind of any person who holds to the truth of that assertion, I just have to wonder: is this any kind of real critique? And, believe it or not, I'm going to take a few moments out of my morning to stand in Ms. Meyer's defense, and support the oh-so-shiney-ones.
Well, I guess I should start out by saying I don't think anyone who makes the "vampires don't sparkle!" observation, and holding it to be true, is making it from the point of view that there >really< are vampires, such that as a possibly abbreviated but kind of real critique, it's not "real" in the sense that there is some Truth about how Real Vampires are. Yanno? Rather, I conceive it's an assertion drawn from a background in the folklore. It's as, if someone were to represent a unicorn with 2 horns, the response "unicorns don't have two horns!" doesn't mean one believes that unicorns really exist. Not that there aren't people on the fringe who believe they really are vampires, or that vampires really do exist. I'm talking within 3 standard deviations here. Okay, that being said.
I've been a sort of a gothy-vampire fan from way back in the days of kid-dom watching reruns of "Dark Shadows." Not a HUGE fan. I haven't read much of the literature. Just some of Anne Rice's novels, until I couldn't stand seeing the word 'preternatural' one more time - which means I think I made it through maybe 2 books. And, in the satisfaction of a morbid perverted sense of curiosity, the Twilight series which, although ridiculous in terms of page length, is quite short in terms of time needed to scan.
I think I've been more drawn to visual representations, so when I googled up "vampires film tv" and got a run-down of different productions, I was a little surprised to see how long my viewing list is:
Nosferatu
Blade 1-3
Buffy (some)
Lost Boys
Dark Shadows
Dracula
The Munsters
Interview/Queen of the Damned
Bram Stokers Dracula
30 Days of Night
Van Helsing
True Blood (some)
There might be things I missed, like something with Boris Karloff in the cast. But to the point, there are, all throughout these media, places where someone might go "vampires don't X!": vampires aren't attractive! vampires don't have a guilty conscience! vampires don't have cool, orgiastic rave-like parties! And so on. I mean, have you seen the vampire in Nosferatu? Sure don't want to dance with that guy.
I don't pretend to be familiar or chattable with the psychological archetypes or repressed fantasies or suppressed fears that vampire lore is spun out to vent or satisfy. I just, for whatever superficial reason, enjoy it - in its creepy manifestations because it's scary, or in its sexy portrays because it's, well, hot. Unfortunately, the Twilight series is a huge fail on both those grounds, but whatever.
But what seems to be a constant across the different representations I've encountered, is that people take artistic liberties with how the vampire is portrayed. Maybe, at a very glancing level of analysis, the only thing that runs constant across them is that they all drink blood. And Ms. Meyer took the liberty of introducing, for whatever the fuck reason, that they sparkle in sunlight. And maybe other liberties too, I don't know, I'm not that committed to the what and how of vampire portrayal. I say: let a thousand flowers bloom. Let there be sparkley vampires. Why the hell not!
I ran across the comment "vampires don't sparkle!" earlier this morning, and it recalled other times I've seen the assertion posted, sometimes with lengthy elaboration (because it tends to come up in the midst of "Twilight"-bashing). Without pretending to intuit the mind of any person who holds to the truth of that assertion, I just have to wonder: is this any kind of real critique? And, believe it or not, I'm going to take a few moments out of my morning to stand in Ms. Meyer's defense, and support the oh-so-shiney-ones.
Well, I guess I should start out by saying I don't think anyone who makes the "vampires don't sparkle!" observation, and holding it to be true, is making it from the point of view that there >really< are vampires, such that as a possibly abbreviated but kind of real critique, it's not "real" in the sense that there is some Truth about how Real Vampires are. Yanno? Rather, I conceive it's an assertion drawn from a background in the folklore. It's as, if someone were to represent a unicorn with 2 horns, the response "unicorns don't have two horns!" doesn't mean one believes that unicorns really exist. Not that there aren't people on the fringe who believe they really are vampires, or that vampires really do exist. I'm talking within 3 standard deviations here. Okay, that being said.
I've been a sort of a gothy-vampire fan from way back in the days of kid-dom watching reruns of "Dark Shadows." Not a HUGE fan. I haven't read much of the literature. Just some of Anne Rice's novels, until I couldn't stand seeing the word 'preternatural' one more time - which means I think I made it through maybe 2 books. And, in the satisfaction of a morbid perverted sense of curiosity, the Twilight series which, although ridiculous in terms of page length, is quite short in terms of time needed to scan.
I think I've been more drawn to visual representations, so when I googled up "vampires film tv" and got a run-down of different productions, I was a little surprised to see how long my viewing list is:
Nosferatu
Blade 1-3
Buffy (some)
Lost Boys
Dark Shadows
Dracula
The Munsters
Interview/Queen of the Damned
Bram Stokers Dracula
30 Days of Night
Van Helsing
True Blood (some)
There might be things I missed, like something with Boris Karloff in the cast. But to the point, there are, all throughout these media, places where someone might go "vampires don't X!": vampires aren't attractive! vampires don't have a guilty conscience! vampires don't have cool, orgiastic rave-like parties! And so on. I mean, have you seen the vampire in Nosferatu? Sure don't want to dance with that guy.
I don't pretend to be familiar or chattable with the psychological archetypes or repressed fantasies or suppressed fears that vampire lore is spun out to vent or satisfy. I just, for whatever superficial reason, enjoy it - in its creepy manifestations because it's scary, or in its sexy portrays because it's, well, hot. Unfortunately, the Twilight series is a huge fail on both those grounds, but whatever.
But what seems to be a constant across the different representations I've encountered, is that people take artistic liberties with how the vampire is portrayed. Maybe, at a very glancing level of analysis, the only thing that runs constant across them is that they all drink blood. And Ms. Meyer took the liberty of introducing, for whatever the fuck reason, that they sparkle in sunlight. And maybe other liberties too, I don't know, I'm not that committed to the what and how of vampire portrayal. I say: let a thousand flowers bloom. Let there be sparkley vampires. Why the hell not!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Thanks, I needed that!
It's been a kind of peculiar set of days lately. You know how you can have days where every sensation comes to you brimming over with hope and possibility and beauty. And then there are days where things are, well, not. The sort of days where everything is just what it is. No pointing outward to something meaningful. Nothing insanely weird or captivating.
A series of these, and it threatens to induce a bovine-like mentality, that if left unchecked could conceivably lead a person to afternoons in front of the TV during the times of day when the commercials are targeted to the unemployed or terminally ill. And a person watches the trainwrecks unfold on "Jerry Springer" or whatever the hell idiotic programming is on, I imagine, because those people on the screen at least have a spark, they are animated. Even though it's about something nuts, like, a guy's cousin who swore she loved him but then ran off with his best friend.
I digress somewhat. More to the point, that sensation of life being a series of going-through-the-motions: that's the kind everyday darkness I confront as personally embattling. As a good existentialist, I acknowledge that there isn't any ultimate meaning and magic to it all, but I also can, and do, affirm that we can create our own sense of it through how we consciously choose to engage. But sometimes, it's simply difficult. The world seems to be deliberately resistant to being perceived as hopeful or promising, and trying to find a way to perceive it so through a tidal wave of mundanity is simply tiring. It would be so easy to succumb to it and become just another thing, acting and reacting to what's going on around, without reflection or passion or hope or love.
I think there's something about these feelings that are key. Because the conscious choice part is only part. Choosing something, and feeling something are two different things. My moment viewing the aftereffects of the tragic accident yesterday took me to chose to see life in all its everydayness as precious and fragile. But I didn't feel it; the day still felt mundane and uninspired. Maybe it's partly due to being in the middle of a couple of projects, where the onus of effort is on doing a bunch of bookish and electronic leg-work, and that can get to feeling like being in a limbo-like state.
But what joy. Even in the midst of typing this note an event happened, the drama of which I'll spare any reader save that nothing life-threatening is involved, that has thrown the preciousness of everyday mundane experience into sharp relief.
On, however, a more exuberant note, I have a clip from a column by one of my most favoritest writers that I'll share here below. Thanks, Mark Morford! I needed to hear that from a voice outside my own head. You rock:
[...]
Or maybe not. I prefer to think of these fine denizens of dumb as the darker, skankier parts of our individual consciousness, the red flags of the soul. Should we not be grateful they exist? That they are here to remind us to be ever vigilant and wary? Hell yes we should.
After all, the Fred Phelps, the Glenn Becks, the Terry Jones of the world are but our basest natures made manifest, the bleakest, most paranoid, lazily ignorant parts of each and every one of us. Deny it at your peril. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "the bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion." He should know.
These wretched little demons, they are eternal. They have always been here. And they exist to deliver but one message: If you're not conscious, if you don't pay attention, if you don't fill your cup to brimming every single day with laughter and paradox, love and possibility, if you don't deeply appreciate the madhouse irony of this completely gorgeous, impossibly ruthless human experiment, well, they will but fester like a sore on your big toe, and you'll no longer be able to dance.
###
Let us dance, then!
A series of these, and it threatens to induce a bovine-like mentality, that if left unchecked could conceivably lead a person to afternoons in front of the TV during the times of day when the commercials are targeted to the unemployed or terminally ill. And a person watches the trainwrecks unfold on "Jerry Springer" or whatever the hell idiotic programming is on, I imagine, because those people on the screen at least have a spark, they are animated. Even though it's about something nuts, like, a guy's cousin who swore she loved him but then ran off with his best friend.
I digress somewhat. More to the point, that sensation of life being a series of going-through-the-motions: that's the kind everyday darkness I confront as personally embattling. As a good existentialist, I acknowledge that there isn't any ultimate meaning and magic to it all, but I also can, and do, affirm that we can create our own sense of it through how we consciously choose to engage. But sometimes, it's simply difficult. The world seems to be deliberately resistant to being perceived as hopeful or promising, and trying to find a way to perceive it so through a tidal wave of mundanity is simply tiring. It would be so easy to succumb to it and become just another thing, acting and reacting to what's going on around, without reflection or passion or hope or love.
I think there's something about these feelings that are key. Because the conscious choice part is only part. Choosing something, and feeling something are two different things. My moment viewing the aftereffects of the tragic accident yesterday took me to chose to see life in all its everydayness as precious and fragile. But I didn't feel it; the day still felt mundane and uninspired. Maybe it's partly due to being in the middle of a couple of projects, where the onus of effort is on doing a bunch of bookish and electronic leg-work, and that can get to feeling like being in a limbo-like state.
But what joy. Even in the midst of typing this note an event happened, the drama of which I'll spare any reader save that nothing life-threatening is involved, that has thrown the preciousness of everyday mundane experience into sharp relief.
On, however, a more exuberant note, I have a clip from a column by one of my most favoritest writers that I'll share here below. Thanks, Mark Morford! I needed to hear that from a voice outside my own head. You rock:
[...]
Or maybe not. I prefer to think of these fine denizens of dumb as the darker, skankier parts of our individual consciousness, the red flags of the soul. Should we not be grateful they exist? That they are here to remind us to be ever vigilant and wary? Hell yes we should.
After all, the Fred Phelps, the Glenn Becks, the Terry Jones of the world are but our basest natures made manifest, the bleakest, most paranoid, lazily ignorant parts of each and every one of us. Deny it at your peril. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "the bitterest contradictions and the deadliest conflicts of the world are carried on in every individual breast capable of feeling and passion." He should know.
These wretched little demons, they are eternal. They have always been here. And they exist to deliver but one message: If you're not conscious, if you don't pay attention, if you don't fill your cup to brimming every single day with laughter and paradox, love and possibility, if you don't deeply appreciate the madhouse irony of this completely gorgeous, impossibly ruthless human experiment, well, they will but fester like a sore on your big toe, and you'll no longer be able to dance.
###
Let us dance, then!
Monday, September 6, 2010
Sonic Drive-In: never again. You suck.
Maybe I should actually be grateful that the last fast-food hamburger joint holdout has now been scratched off my list.
Sonic has, in my book, maintained staying power because as far as the fast-food delicacies go, in any state I've consumed one of their burgers, it's tasted as though it was freshly prepared. Hot meat. Cold veggies. Doesn't bear marks of heat-lamp effects. They make their shakes with real ice cream. If you don't have the time or inclination for a gourmet burger sort of experience, Sonic for me has filled the bill.
And I was in just a mood for a fast-food burger experience; I think it's been nearly a year since my last one, so I think I'm allowed. So yesterday in the hunger that's triggered after several hours of music rehearsal, I made a U-ey on 152, near 101 around Gilroy, to catch the Sonic there. Oh boy! Cheeseburger and onion rings! Yum! I don't know the last time I ate an onion ring!
Big geek that I am, I was listening to a Minstrel CD in the car when the roller-skating delivery girl came up, and we chatted a few moments on how much she liked the tunes I had playing. Everything was all good. I fetched a piping hot crispy onion ring from the bag on the way through the exit.
And all I could taste was: sweet.
WTF?
I know that onions sweeten up when they're fried into an onion ring - that's what, for me, makes them yum. But this was SWEET-sweet, like maple syrup sweet.
I put the ring (minus the one bite) back in the bag. I'll do the hamburger first and return; maybe in my starved state, the taste buds were off.
The burger was fine. OK, let's try this onion ring thing again. Finished off the one I had started earlier.
Still sweet.
Maybe that was a dud? I took another onion ring out and ate it.
Still can't get the idea of maple syrup out of my head.
Then, in a moment of pure stubbornness, thinking that they seriously couldn't all taste so gross, I took a bite out of a third. Go ahead, call me crazy. You know you want to, and I know the definition that I was embodying then and there (a definition I often see attributed to David Hume, that I've not happened to come across in his text and somehow kinda doubt, attribution-wise).
Yup; the epiphany of grossness. But why? Who the hell needs an onion ring to taste like a General Mills breakfast cereal?
I had a bag of pretzels in the passenger seat, and I must have consumed half the bag on the rest of the way home, working to get the taste out of my mouth (well, that and I love pretzels anyway). It took nearly 45 minutes before the edge of the sweetness wore off. Which means that whatever the fuck disgustingness they put into their batter, it wasn't only an ingredient that hit the sweet spots on the tongue, it was a vicious substance that stuck there.
Gah! Never again. Thanks a lot, Sonic.
Sonic has, in my book, maintained staying power because as far as the fast-food delicacies go, in any state I've consumed one of their burgers, it's tasted as though it was freshly prepared. Hot meat. Cold veggies. Doesn't bear marks of heat-lamp effects. They make their shakes with real ice cream. If you don't have the time or inclination for a gourmet burger sort of experience, Sonic for me has filled the bill.
And I was in just a mood for a fast-food burger experience; I think it's been nearly a year since my last one, so I think I'm allowed. So yesterday in the hunger that's triggered after several hours of music rehearsal, I made a U-ey on 152, near 101 around Gilroy, to catch the Sonic there. Oh boy! Cheeseburger and onion rings! Yum! I don't know the last time I ate an onion ring!
Big geek that I am, I was listening to a Minstrel CD in the car when the roller-skating delivery girl came up, and we chatted a few moments on how much she liked the tunes I had playing. Everything was all good. I fetched a piping hot crispy onion ring from the bag on the way through the exit.
And all I could taste was: sweet.
WTF?
I know that onions sweeten up when they're fried into an onion ring - that's what, for me, makes them yum. But this was SWEET-sweet, like maple syrup sweet.
I put the ring (minus the one bite) back in the bag. I'll do the hamburger first and return; maybe in my starved state, the taste buds were off.
The burger was fine. OK, let's try this onion ring thing again. Finished off the one I had started earlier.
Still sweet.
Maybe that was a dud? I took another onion ring out and ate it.
Still can't get the idea of maple syrup out of my head.
Then, in a moment of pure stubbornness, thinking that they seriously couldn't all taste so gross, I took a bite out of a third. Go ahead, call me crazy. You know you want to, and I know the definition that I was embodying then and there (a definition I often see attributed to David Hume, that I've not happened to come across in his text and somehow kinda doubt, attribution-wise).
Yup; the epiphany of grossness. But why? Who the hell needs an onion ring to taste like a General Mills breakfast cereal?
I had a bag of pretzels in the passenger seat, and I must have consumed half the bag on the rest of the way home, working to get the taste out of my mouth (well, that and I love pretzels anyway). It took nearly 45 minutes before the edge of the sweetness wore off. Which means that whatever the fuck disgustingness they put into their batter, it wasn't only an ingredient that hit the sweet spots on the tongue, it was a vicious substance that stuck there.
Gah! Never again. Thanks a lot, Sonic.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Dispositional properties
It's a subject I've been seeing come up frequently in the literature I'm reading here of late. Por que, you ask? It's because I'm working up my intellectual chops to write kinda Heideggarianly about technology and astronomy.
Some of the work I've got before me currently involves the way information about the environment comes to be perceived by conscious creatures such as ourselves, either via our senses in direct observation, or as mediated by the technologies we use.
Dispositional properties are interesting in the sense (or, at least in one sense) that it makes perfect sense to talk about them existing even while the quality in question is not actualized. That might sound a little confusing, so let me refer to a common example: fragility.
It makes perfect sense to say this wine glass here IS fragile. But what does that mean? You might be tempted to answer: the glass's being fragile means it's breakable. But breakable is another dispositional property - the glass has the >capacity< or the ability to be broken, and saying it is break-able doesn't mean it has to actually BE broken. If it is broken, then its moment of fragility has kinda already passed, you know?
So for fragility: to say the glass IS fragile means that the glass >would< break WERE certain conditions met that don't actually obtain (e.g., that it would make forceful contact with a hard surface, were a dart be thrown at it, that it would be dropped, that it would be exposed to a person singing a note at just the right frequency, etc.). So talking about dispositional properties is interesting in one sense because it invokes subjunctive vocabulary, and questions about how to clearly work that out.
Back in the day when I was a phil science grad student, I read a mind-numbing quantity of logic-chopping analytic work which focused - as this brand of intellectualizing tends to do - on how to construct the right kinds of sentences capturing the truth about dispositional properties, either in symbolic logic or in everyday language. So for fragility, for instance, the analysis might go something like:
X is fragile {realizing condition 1} or {realizing condition 2} or {realizing condition 3} (and so on)
I know: exciting, right? And that's just the beginning of the fun. Because after someone might suggest up a way of parsing out such a schemata, the critical response begins: either about the content (such as, that the realizing conditions are insufficient), or about the logical form (say, shortcomings of using a string of disjunctions - I'll just leave that at that).
Nowadays I find it much more interesting to think about the metaphysics of dispositional properties - in what kind of space to they exist, if their very mode of being means that they (actually) exist in a potential state. What a peculiar sounding sort of existence! Scientists touch on something of this, on the topic of potential energy and kinetic energy. But don't let the fact that they have mathematics to describe the transformation from potential to kinetic imbue you with a sense that the mathematics gives an answer to their metaphysical strangeness.
How on earth does all that tie in with the perception of information from the environment? I'll sketch that out, as I am understanding it currently.
There is one way of thinking about information, or content, about the environment that goes: there is no information out there in the world in any rich, significant sense of the word. The information, or content, is supplied by conscious, perceiving creatures who receive sensory stimuli, and then process that stimuli through some kind of mental activity (relatively coarse or refined, depending on the creature). That processing is what adds the content or information. Content or information is a cognitive, or mental phenomenon - thus its occurrence must come as an addition by cognitive creatures. It cannot exist in a purely inert, unconscious, materialistic space - which contains all the non-mental stuff of the universe.
An alternative view I'm looking at now rejects the outlook in the paragraph above. It holds that the natural world is information-rich, and when we perceive the world, we perceive it with the information it provides. This information, on at least some accounts, exists in a dispositional state (aha! there's the tie-in, at last). It exists in a potential state, ready to be actualized upon the existence of a creature with a constitution to detect and make use of it.
Thus, to take a fairly primitive example, consider the quality or property of being edible. A thing's being edible is not a quality that is projected from a conscious creature onto the environment. Instead, being edible is a potential or latent quality in things themselves that, were a creature existing with a digestive system suitable to ingesting it, the quality would become manifest.
It's an interesting way to think about information in the universe, and it's a real joy to read about it in ways that do not turn the text into a logic book. Let's see what happens with this...
Some of the work I've got before me currently involves the way information about the environment comes to be perceived by conscious creatures such as ourselves, either via our senses in direct observation, or as mediated by the technologies we use.
Dispositional properties are interesting in the sense (or, at least in one sense) that it makes perfect sense to talk about them existing even while the quality in question is not actualized. That might sound a little confusing, so let me refer to a common example: fragility.
It makes perfect sense to say this wine glass here IS fragile. But what does that mean? You might be tempted to answer: the glass's being fragile means it's breakable. But breakable is another dispositional property - the glass has the >capacity< or the ability to be broken, and saying it is break-able doesn't mean it has to actually BE broken. If it is broken, then its moment of fragility has kinda already passed, you know?
So for fragility: to say the glass IS fragile means that the glass >would< break WERE certain conditions met that don't actually obtain (e.g., that it would make forceful contact with a hard surface, were a dart be thrown at it, that it would be dropped, that it would be exposed to a person singing a note at just the right frequency, etc.). So talking about dispositional properties is interesting in one sense because it invokes subjunctive vocabulary, and questions about how to clearly work that out.
Back in the day when I was a phil science grad student, I read a mind-numbing quantity of logic-chopping analytic work which focused - as this brand of intellectualizing tends to do - on how to construct the right kinds of sentences capturing the truth about dispositional properties, either in symbolic logic or in everyday language. So for fragility, for instance, the analysis might go something like:
X is fragile
I know: exciting, right? And that's just the beginning of the fun. Because after someone might suggest up a way of parsing out such a schemata, the critical response begins: either about the content (such as, that the realizing conditions are insufficient), or about the logical form (say, shortcomings of using a string of disjunctions - I'll just leave that at that).
Nowadays I find it much more interesting to think about the metaphysics of dispositional properties - in what kind of space to they exist, if their very mode of being means that they (actually) exist in a potential state. What a peculiar sounding sort of existence! Scientists touch on something of this, on the topic of potential energy and kinetic energy. But don't let the fact that they have mathematics to describe the transformation from potential to kinetic imbue you with a sense that the mathematics gives an answer to their metaphysical strangeness.
How on earth does all that tie in with the perception of information from the environment? I'll sketch that out, as I am understanding it currently.
There is one way of thinking about information, or content, about the environment that goes: there is no information out there in the world in any rich, significant sense of the word. The information, or content, is supplied by conscious, perceiving creatures who receive sensory stimuli, and then process that stimuli through some kind of mental activity (relatively coarse or refined, depending on the creature). That processing is what adds the content or information. Content or information is a cognitive, or mental phenomenon - thus its occurrence must come as an addition by cognitive creatures. It cannot exist in a purely inert, unconscious, materialistic space - which contains all the non-mental stuff of the universe.
An alternative view I'm looking at now rejects the outlook in the paragraph above. It holds that the natural world is information-rich, and when we perceive the world, we perceive it with the information it provides. This information, on at least some accounts, exists in a dispositional state (aha! there's the tie-in, at last). It exists in a potential state, ready to be actualized upon the existence of a creature with a constitution to detect and make use of it.
Thus, to take a fairly primitive example, consider the quality or property of being edible. A thing's being edible is not a quality that is projected from a conscious creature onto the environment. Instead, being edible is a potential or latent quality in things themselves that, were a creature existing with a digestive system suitable to ingesting it, the quality would become manifest.
It's an interesting way to think about information in the universe, and it's a real joy to read about it in ways that do not turn the text into a logic book. Let's see what happens with this...
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
New term butterflies
If you don't, or never did, experience some form of disequilibrium before the start of a school term, especially college, I call you lucky. At the start of every college semester, I have always dealt with jitteriness in some form or other, and for me it meant riding the beast until it worked itself out. Not always pleasant, but it wasn't ever fatal, either.
When I was an undergraduate student, I think I'd be wide-awake for mostly happy reasons. A thrill of uncertainty: would this or that class be as good as I hoped? Would the subject matter be harder than I expected? Where would my mind and imagination get to be taken on an adventure? Would any of my teachers hold the kinds of high expectations that would require me to study furiously for a month in order to pass their exams like that one really awesome but totally sadistic constitutional law professor?
When I turned into a grad student the situation, appropriately enough, became more complicated. I think my very first grad school semester nerves were basically benign, maybe a slightly heightened form of undergrad nerves, for I then had No Idea What I Was Getting Myself Into. New school, new location, new teachers, new peeps. But what an adventure - whoopee!
But two things made matters more complicated in grad school.
One was the massively increased standards of performance, and massively more difficult course work. Naturally I vaguely expected things to be harder, but I was utterly a priori unprepared for just what that meant. Grad school - at least, the ones I attended - is to undergrad ... well, I'd say like night to day but I don't even know if that's a right comparison. I don't know that there's an adequate way to phrase out the comparison. It didn't just rock my boat; it flipped the boat overboard and threw me out. However hard I worked as an undergrad was nothing - I mean, NOTHING - compared to what I needed to do just to tread water in grad school.
It wasn't enough to peruse over the material before the start of classes. The classes begun expecting you to be familiar with that, and much more besides. I'd go to the library and check out all kinds of secondary material, and read, read, read. And it never seemed to be enough. Thence started, like clockwork, at the beginning of each and every grad school term The Pattern.
First: manically prepare before the start of classes. Second: experience the first week of classes where I'd invariably feel completely in over my head, utterly out of my element, like my teachers were talking an entirely different language. Third: a VERY unpleasant 2 or 3-day period where I'd lock myself in my apartment and have a mini-meltdown. I'd sob at the sensation of being completely insufficient. I was torn apart by feeling both so eminently fortunate to be in whatever fantastic space I was - the institution, the awesome teachers, the great location - while simultaneously being certain that I had gotten there by some gigantic cosmic mistake because I was clearly the biggest dumbass on campus and I must have fooled someone real good to have tricked the powers that be to let me in.
Then classes would start again I'd hitch myself up, and get back to it. and it would turn out all good. I don't know WHY on earth, for as long as I was taking graduate-level classes, I'd have my mini-nervous-breakdowns. But I did. But I didn't let them have me. i mean, I let them run their course, and although I wouldn't have used the language then, was present to them. However I was processing it, it seemed better to let it out, to let it go, than to repress it or bottle it up or try and ignore it. And I think I managed to keep confidence in the small voice in the back of my mind that all the while calmly and quietly maintained that of course I was good enough, that my being where I was wasn't a huge mistake, so that after my psychic flu ran its course, I had something positive left there to work from.
If that weren't enough, a second thing complicating grad school was starting in on the extraordinarily difficult task of learning how to teach, when the opportunity presented itself while being a teaching assistant. That was a whole new bag of challenges and, sometimes, horrors. Grading - oh my god - who knew how difficult that was? Standing up and talking in front of a classroom - who knew how nerve racking that was? All my teachers had made it look so easy! Ha!
The nervousness with teaching paled in comparison to the angst I had about classes when I was a grad student. But it returned to the forefront after I gathered up all the sheepskins I could and it was time to take the training wheels off and go at it on my own. Yay! More insomnia the night before the start of classes.
Of course there is usually excitement. A new semester! New sets of students! Maybe a brand-spanking new course to teach! New adventures!
But then too there were worries. Would I walk in on the first day and get hit with stage fright (yes, I always did) - and if so, would I manage to work through it (yes, I did)? What if I got a challenging class - did I have enough tricks in my arsenal to charge it back to life? Did I prep enough? For believe me, for any teacher worth his or her salt, for any single thing assigned to a student to read and evaluate, the teacher has read 10 or 20 things more, for insight, for seeing the material from a different angle, to have background, to have tools to try and explain a difficult idea more clearly to a confused audience. Did I arrange my syllabus fairly? is the workload too high? Should I have put more things on reserve? Did I give enough assignments? Did I leave myself room in there to have a some semblance of a life without becoming utterly submerged in grading and prep? Would, in spite of everything I tried to do to make the challenging material interesting and relevant and my standards and grading fair, I be stigmatized as tyrannical or uncompromising or incompetent? Do I have enough clothes so that it doesn't look like I'm wearing the same thing every day? Damn, I should have gotten that cool pair of shoes. .... and so on.
So there you have it. Maybe I am a little weird for always having pre-semester nerves, but I don't think I'm especially weirder than the average bear for it. Just as long as the nerves don't have you, it's all good.
When I was an undergraduate student, I think I'd be wide-awake for mostly happy reasons. A thrill of uncertainty: would this or that class be as good as I hoped? Would the subject matter be harder than I expected? Where would my mind and imagination get to be taken on an adventure? Would any of my teachers hold the kinds of high expectations that would require me to study furiously for a month in order to pass their exams like that one really awesome but totally sadistic constitutional law professor?
When I turned into a grad student the situation, appropriately enough, became more complicated. I think my very first grad school semester nerves were basically benign, maybe a slightly heightened form of undergrad nerves, for I then had No Idea What I Was Getting Myself Into. New school, new location, new teachers, new peeps. But what an adventure - whoopee!
But two things made matters more complicated in grad school.
One was the massively increased standards of performance, and massively more difficult course work. Naturally I vaguely expected things to be harder, but I was utterly a priori unprepared for just what that meant. Grad school - at least, the ones I attended - is to undergrad ... well, I'd say like night to day but I don't even know if that's a right comparison. I don't know that there's an adequate way to phrase out the comparison. It didn't just rock my boat; it flipped the boat overboard and threw me out. However hard I worked as an undergrad was nothing - I mean, NOTHING - compared to what I needed to do just to tread water in grad school.
It wasn't enough to peruse over the material before the start of classes. The classes begun expecting you to be familiar with that, and much more besides. I'd go to the library and check out all kinds of secondary material, and read, read, read. And it never seemed to be enough. Thence started, like clockwork, at the beginning of each and every grad school term The Pattern.
First: manically prepare before the start of classes. Second: experience the first week of classes where I'd invariably feel completely in over my head, utterly out of my element, like my teachers were talking an entirely different language. Third: a VERY unpleasant 2 or 3-day period where I'd lock myself in my apartment and have a mini-meltdown. I'd sob at the sensation of being completely insufficient. I was torn apart by feeling both so eminently fortunate to be in whatever fantastic space I was - the institution, the awesome teachers, the great location - while simultaneously being certain that I had gotten there by some gigantic cosmic mistake because I was clearly the biggest dumbass on campus and I must have fooled someone real good to have tricked the powers that be to let me in.
Then classes would start again I'd hitch myself up, and get back to it. and it would turn out all good. I don't know WHY on earth, for as long as I was taking graduate-level classes, I'd have my mini-nervous-breakdowns. But I did. But I didn't let them have me. i mean, I let them run their course, and although I wouldn't have used the language then, was present to them. However I was processing it, it seemed better to let it out, to let it go, than to repress it or bottle it up or try and ignore it. And I think I managed to keep confidence in the small voice in the back of my mind that all the while calmly and quietly maintained that of course I was good enough, that my being where I was wasn't a huge mistake, so that after my psychic flu ran its course, I had something positive left there to work from.
If that weren't enough, a second thing complicating grad school was starting in on the extraordinarily difficult task of learning how to teach, when the opportunity presented itself while being a teaching assistant. That was a whole new bag of challenges and, sometimes, horrors. Grading - oh my god - who knew how difficult that was? Standing up and talking in front of a classroom - who knew how nerve racking that was? All my teachers had made it look so easy! Ha!
The nervousness with teaching paled in comparison to the angst I had about classes when I was a grad student. But it returned to the forefront after I gathered up all the sheepskins I could and it was time to take the training wheels off and go at it on my own. Yay! More insomnia the night before the start of classes.
Of course there is usually excitement. A new semester! New sets of students! Maybe a brand-spanking new course to teach! New adventures!
But then too there were worries. Would I walk in on the first day and get hit with stage fright (yes, I always did) - and if so, would I manage to work through it (yes, I did)? What if I got a challenging class - did I have enough tricks in my arsenal to charge it back to life? Did I prep enough? For believe me, for any teacher worth his or her salt, for any single thing assigned to a student to read and evaluate, the teacher has read 10 or 20 things more, for insight, for seeing the material from a different angle, to have background, to have tools to try and explain a difficult idea more clearly to a confused audience. Did I arrange my syllabus fairly? is the workload too high? Should I have put more things on reserve? Did I give enough assignments? Did I leave myself room in there to have a some semblance of a life without becoming utterly submerged in grading and prep? Would, in spite of everything I tried to do to make the challenging material interesting and relevant and my standards and grading fair, I be stigmatized as tyrannical or uncompromising or incompetent? Do I have enough clothes so that it doesn't look like I'm wearing the same thing every day? Damn, I should have gotten that cool pair of shoes. .... and so on.
So there you have it. Maybe I am a little weird for always having pre-semester nerves, but I don't think I'm especially weirder than the average bear for it. Just as long as the nerves don't have you, it's all good.
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