UX 2020?

We are not only "users" of life. But it is still interesting to view life through the lens of user design (UX), and to think about the design of the spaces we create around us - even where this design leaves empty spaces. (Empty spaces in the Montessori method; empty spaces in the Japanese garden...)
Mostly where I like design is where it involves consideration of others: processing what one thinks one knows to share it. Understanding that sharing is not simply spitting out, but creating an environment for reception.
And to in turn seek out environments where others are sharing. Otherwise "others'" realms of thought and/or activity can seem impassable, opaque, forbidding. What has helped me relate more to the tech bubble that has been late to reach my latter-day place of abode has been to try to listen to what tech workers and designers are saying. Seeking out conscientious contributors.
And indeed, such people are surrounded by environments shaped by lines of inquiry that can overlap one's own (and to what an extent...)
Here is an example of two such figures, Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen, who wrote a post I know will interest you: "How Can We Develop Transformative Tools for Thought". The authors are great names in the tech industry. The paper overlaps so many thinkers I am drawing on in my own work - and I would be so curious to see if this will be true for any of  you, too, from different angles. I am guessing that, if you are stopping by this blog, you are also interested in thought ... and meaning.

Source, by Daniel Oliva Barbero

It would be reductionist to paste any single meaning over tech advancements of recent decades (which are so impressive: without even going into the details, consider the ability to process over 25 billion events in an hour). At the same time, some of the critique offered by Lewis Mumford, remains prescient: "He who does not see the choices in the development of the machine merely betrays his incapacity to observe the cumulative effects." I think that the authors of the article above would agree with this sentiment.
The tool can quickly become reductionist.
I might have lost appreciation of this had I not "gone Linux" this year (Windows is too expensive for my wages/salary). This move also caused me to lose Scrivener, with the coherent draft of my book and so in turn I have plunged into exploring "org mode". Both of these experiences made me feel (as corny as it sounds) like that film about the man who thought his life was a game show until he broke through to the other side. I doubt I fully watched it, but in my memory, a man suddenly walks around in a world of colors he could only have dreamed of before then...
What some people might find to be the decision fatigue of Linux, I suddenly find myself truly engaged with my computer and feel it to be my tool.
It's like how I have a deep need to keep this blog interface the way it is though I am not sure if it translated well to mobile presentations. If it did, what an incredible job the Google engineers and programmers are doing to allow for multiplicity.
My computer is now shaped just how I want it. And org mode! It reminds me of childhood adventures with Apple IIe; its epithet as being the Swiss Army knife of programs is well-deserved. I must admit that I may be breaking my computer as I learn (I have entered terminal - where one enters code - to do things I did not fully understand more than once), I have not had this much fun using a computer since the Apple computer I once battled to get time on. There were games for children to learn programming: I remember one about selling lemonade, or another to make text display and move in desired directions.
Which is a fancy way of saying that unless we are engaging with the processes around us, they are not fully engaging us and we run the strange and converse risk of being used by them.
But of course, many people have said that better, many times before now. The point here will be to conclude by wondering aloud what kind of experiences we are building around us with the tools that we have. I know that I have become a better and more focused person through my experience designing networked learning and developing the STS (science and technology studies) of my quondam dissertation. There are a lot of problems in 2020. But there are also tools. (The girl in the picture below does not know what she is missing by not being taught the code behind the interfaces she is now accustomed to...)

Source, techlicious

Amateur Scholarship

I was initially going to write a very short post pointing out the similarities in two extracts on the 'views of the universe' and the ideal orientation of man's mind within it. It turns out the underlying theme of the dispassionate took on a new dimension, and warranted a longer post, once I looked into the author of one of the extracts cited.
Does that ever happen to you, where you look for something you know you know, but you want to see it in a text, and googling for that knowledge leads you to a brand new source, and by extension, new ideas?
Before embarking on the theme of disinterested scholarship, I will begin with my original topic, which is now an apt preamble.
Behold, after the image, how both the extract by a 17th century Japanese sword-saint on the Way and the extract on Egyptian mythology, specifically about Horus' eye once recovered from its injury by Seth, are founded upon a knowing that surpasses man's knowledge yet is also connected to things that exist/ a physical, material consciousness:

What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in  man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you  can know that which does not exist. That is the void.   People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not  understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment. ... Until you realise the true Way, whether in Buddhism or in common sense, you may think that things are correct and in order. However, if we look at things objectively, from the viewpoint of laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way. Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way. Enact strategy broadly, correctly and openly. Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense and, taking the void as the Way, you will see the Way as void. In the void is virtue, and no evil. via

And:

... Seth is said to “steal or injure” the Wadjat  𓂀, because sensorial and fractioned consciousness (solar vision) inhibits the perception of universals, archetypes, or Ideas which is “lunar vision”. To regain the Lunar Eye or Wedjat   means that one regains a cognitive power, and the power which allows this “recomposition” of the Eye of Horus is Toth. … The loss of the left eye   Wedjat  𓂀 in the Egyptian mythology symbolizes a loss of vision, but more specifically a loss of holistic  or  holy vision   which allows for the reunion or  reconciliation of two  opposites in Unity .… Seth has the eye or vision in his grasp until Horus is able to recover it through the power of Toth . ... We cannot fail to point out how important it is that Toth: the  neter representing God’s Intelligence, is the one that allows for   the reconciliation of the reciprocal powers of Horus and Seth . This is not something that Man can achieve by himself, for as an image of the Supreme Being, the “gods” or neteru are the cosmic functions living in him, and to control them he must return to his innermost Origin and Unity.…In as far as the psychic or mental order of the Eye of Horus, it is demanded that one achieve the equilibrium of vision wherein one does not deny all metaphysical and divine qualities of the universe by an excess of analytical and sensorial (solar) consciousness, nor does one deny the manifest reality of the physical or material consciousness by total holistic idealism (which is excess of lunar consciousness). via

The latter appears (through superficial googling; my apologies if I am wrong) to have been written by an amateur Egyptologist, Christian Irigaray. The text seems to be a chapter in a book - which, considering no apparent professional involvement, betrays that it is a labor of love. The author's internet presence is made up by a series of related papers and an active Goodreads page - so part of the map of the intellectual activity that has gone into the amateur work is visible.
We live in an age of institutional "scholarship" that is obsessed with peer review - a direct outcome of the outmoded organizational principles that rule university, such as its hyper insistance on various forms of quality control (e.g. "publish or perish"; time-sucking administrative obligations; unpaid editing or writing work that is not necessarily related to one's area of expertise or teaching) that stifles the actual jobs that one is officially responsible for. What is more, the quality even despite this quality control is suspect. My experience is that articles in recent decades reveal how comparatively little their authors seem to be reading (where possible, I look for older articles on a subject which often contain a surfeit of sources). So, these institutional systems are not only outmoded but also ineffective.
I write outmoded because in this century's sequel to time and motion management that is  characterized by managers, managers of managers, and consultants, there is actually quite a lot of stellar (popular) work on what kind of leadership and organizational principles work most effectively in the long term. Spoiler: they are not focused on quality control. One model that I have heard mentioned by three independent 'leaders of leaders' (and Harvard's Good Project) stresses the importance of alignment of mission or purpose. The mission is to be negotiated on a local level, the larger mission being clearly connected to each individual's mission.
A labor of love is bound to be connected to a mission. Also: it has the power to be free range. Publish or perish "scholarship" is more likely to resemble the force-fed sickly chick of mass production, caged in, existing on an unnatural schedule.
This is not to say that I do not believe in university. There is a lot to be said in favor of much of the convention behind respective disciplines. Also, universities should be places where expert knowledge keeps getting passed down, so also increases. Also advantageous is being exposed in real life to the people thinking intelligent ideas: one can see how they live, how they move through space and information &c., and that can be another kind of important instruction. Universities are supposed to be disinterested places of learning, so with greater creative, liberal agency. Etc.
But where the writing is forced, how can university education expect to survive?

Coda

We are so quick to discount mythology or lessons from other arts. But, as our author above who may be an amateur scholar pointed out so niftily, Aristotle had rejected Egyptian mythology because, unlike Plato, he had not been educated in it. My elaboration would explicitly state that these sources still convey lessons that could stand to be repeated and internalized by everyone. One such lesson is contained in the passages above: the more accurate understandings are those that are holistic, and good (this latter word is not as problematic as it seems: the sword-saint in another work writes that good reveals itself if one is committed to living according to it; dedication makes up for lack of understanding and knowledge). Vico argued about the importance of both particularly in connection with university education, but how much of university work today upholds these points?

Brushes: link 404s but tape brush by Pfefferminzchen; Horus eye png.

Experiment

Once upon a time, someone said something to me I thought quite shocking: that one could benefit by experimenting in life, to gain a clearer idea of what helps one flourish. I have probably returned to this idea because in conducting the periodical internal housecleaning that it so necessary, I have uncovered quite a bit of lazy thinking - including some that is self-righteous adjacent. So, it would help to start to experiment to find ways to get out of these bad habits. I found some useful ideas in Rich Roll's latest podcast (though have yet to listen to the last half hour). One of the anecdotes recounted reminded me of one I heard a few days ago: the late Serbian Patriarch Pavle had been asked what he thought of Milosevic, and whether he blamed him, etc., to which he responded that such an approach was irrelevant as the true problem lay in each individual. If they were better, the situation would be better, he said.
I was not "better", last week. I recounted to a colleague a deviant statement made by a third colleague who had shared his understanding that university be akin to kindergarten for adults (his view rendering the essay redundant, laughable work). I realised afterwards just how wrong that was of me on so many levels. I recount the specifics here only to show an example of what I consider to provoke a self-righteous response. But here is another response: what if one understands that other people are always, in their minds, doing the best they can? It doesn't make sense to criticise their actions (outside of classrooms - though even correction of students can be done in multiple ways). The question is whether one can navigate around Scylla and Charybdis, accepting them in their present state (for who would want to be blocked the opportunity for later change? So why would one slap a judgement on someone else?) The question is whether we can try to help those around us grow, just as we see we need to grow, and also would like help ourselves. Is this not the pedagogical mission? And if we claim to be teachers/instructors/etc. and are not doing this, are we truly what we claim to be?
Another thing I have noticed is how much fear can build up inside that distorts vision. I am pretty sure that this fear has caused me to act in an uncalled for way from time to time, which is to say that I have caused my own problems.

Brush

Can I try to experiment to live without fear? To inhabit moment to moment and stop worrying?
Can I experiment to try to find my voice and what it is that I have felt for so long now that I need to write? Academic fear is very real: one knows that one's arguments can easily be refuted, that one can never have read all the relevant books... But the very beautiful pragmatic American approach says: cut your losses and begin. Begin to have any chance whatsoever at getting somewhere. And the time is nigh when you can start to riff from idea to idea and know what sources there are behind those ideas.
I will end this post on one idea I am thinking about. It has to do with some of the sources behind the idea that we should all be heard, which I hope this post makes clear that I respect. That said, some of the models for that approach quickly veer off into relativistic cacophony or willful ignorance. For example, one paper, quite prominent in the field of contrastive rhetoric, stresses how "classroom dialogue that underscores difference in rhetoric ... could perpetuate Othering, cultural stereotyping, and unequal relations of power." It is astonishing that it is assumed that equal relations of power is that simple. In fact, this entire post, written by someone who shirks at the idea of lording over others, demonstrates that despite such antipathies, self-righteous impulses can develop and be at once made manifest while remaining latent. What of those who are not self-critical? Does experience not teach that something is always in power, that hierarchy will exist in one way or another? Note that this does not mean to say that attempts at unity are futile; rather, the spirit in which one approaches unity is most pertinent.
This is why the pursuit of large words like truth and equality is to be stressed. Nowhere in Plato will you find a prescription for the achievement of such goals; in fact, Socrates says that he can only pursue truth and never possess it. It is not a complicated idea, this humility. But it is an unpopular one.
While children's books generally present truth and equality as virtues that can be achieved, I would like to point out that as adults, very few live by those precepts. How many adults forgive the person who stole their metaphorical lollipop? Or who confess, in the end, to stealing it in a moment of weakness? Or who live with an open heart?
Indeed, my colleague may have unwittingly been on to something when he equated university with kindergarten because it could truly be asked whether we would all pass the test we put to children. We ask of the child to temper its zeal and to be patient. Etc. Such growth of character is crucial to the prolonged existence of humanity. The experiment here is to find ways to retain the rudimentary lessons of childhood in order to fully be the adult. 

Brush

Meaning

The last post I wrote was ambiguous. I have been thinking about different "publics" and the problem of dialogue. Possibly because of my multicultural background (multi-culti being a word that can have as many negative as positive connotations), I am less interested in arguing and more interested in finding ways forwards for discussion.
My concern is that the devotion to dialogue is not universally shared.
I asked an expert on dialogue what to do if dialogue is not invited and, granted that the question could be construed as being out of place at a conference where the purpose of the paper was to extol the benefits of dialogue, I never got an answer. I am not an expert. And I am only beginning.
I just hope my beginning will not be my end.
Meaning: will I be afforded space in which to speak? Or will I be mowed down - the green, inexperienced grass that I am, immediately?
What is it that I want to say? That dialogue is a balsam, that it is possible to disagree without needing to destroy, that dialogue is like marriage: something for shared good, and because of this, is worth making some concessions to. One example of such would be the patience to listen to what the other side is saying. It can be difficult because sometimes we do not like the way that messages are packaged. But if we let the message wash over us, we may be left with talking points.
But sometimes I wonder if my ideal regarding dialogue is unrealistic.
For example, interacting with one who describes Plato as going off on "bizarre, loopy speculations" could make it difficult to have a conversation about Plato if one has a different understanding of the premise of life that one considers Plato to be exploring. Wondering about how one would come to such a statement (of the "bizarre, loopy") caused me to think that some texts function as a Rorschach test: this is an unformed idea as of yet, but what I mean is that for some, perhaps, interaction with Ideals/Ideas/Infinite (? - I need to figure out what I mean here, basically, deep abstraction) - where it ceases to engage becomes a Rorschach test. By ceasing to engage I mean entering into what I will call the hermeneutic suspension of disbelief. In other words, the entry into the meaning of the text, even where this will require difference from personal meaning.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

While it is interesting how freely some use older works as inspiration for their own work, I am also concerned with the question of the work involved in getting as close to the original contextual meaning of a text as one can. But here is a fun exercise (by which I mean not so fun): try teaching a course in reading comprehension, and seeing how many (especially of the more intelligent!) students will take the time to write an accurate summary of an extract - when this is exactly what you ask for, after teaching strategies to check comprehension.
Maybe I should have highlighted that paragraph somehow, because I think it is actually central to my main point here.
It seems to me that some 'contemporary' work borrows more from the technique of the sophist: refusing to stop long enough at words and ideas to flesh them out, being more inclined to verbal gymnastics where words are in Heraclitian flux. But I mention Heraclitus, and I often wonder how equipped anyone not an expert in him and on pre-Socratics is to understand him. Still, the reason I bring him up is because I like how eloquently this popularizer of change being the only constant that seems to be the underlying component to much thought today also stressed the importance of wariness of opinion. Opinion is another 'problem area' that comes up in class.
Here is another 'fun' class exercise. Invite students to explore their 'opinions' with the qualification that merely stating it is not enough: asking that they support it, and then find a counterargument, and either refute or make a concession. The counterargument happens to be a feature of many business plans - which is to say that this should be a skill that is 'pragmatic enough' to warrant practise, but it is an exercise that is consistently met with resistance, despite how it is packaged.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

On my blog, I have been wont to skirt around certain topics. In real life, because of the nature of my decisions and the early zeal I once demonstrated (ah, zeal, the trait of the puberty that some never grow out of), I am not so concealed. I feel sorry for the zeal, but know that I have been taking the path that I needed to take, that I am growing how I want to, given that this is the only life I am given and I only have a certain amount of time to pursue... I am going to say it... the truth. I find it fascinating how the acceptance of plurality that has emerged from cultural studies (in my opinion through the Boasian cultural relativism - though of course he is criticised for not being relativistic enough today) has come to mean complete denial of the validity of an attempt to pursue truth. I find it so necessary to do so much reading because this is one of those points where dialogue is shut down entirely. 'If you believe in the possibility of truth, you must be a bigot' the reasoning seems to go, 'how backwards you are and not aware of contemporary reality - you must be an enemy of progress.' But if applied to me, I would think such reasoning unfair. Among other things, I am quite a fan of the internet, and think it has renewed a Republic of Letters' type exchange.
I could be asked at this juncture why I care so much about dialogue. Why do I spend so much time reading "verbal gymnastics"? Firstly, I think there are many forms of communication and do not think that everything is to be read in the same way. Nietzsche, for example, may be viewed as a poet of provocation. One need not agree with everything he writes to see value in thought-provoking nuggets.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

Further, as I only intimated yesterday, those of us who entered postgraduate work in recent times will likely demonstrate in the titles of our work - as Perloff noted in her PMLA address -  the markings of the effects of Theory in our work. Until I read that address, I had not fully realised the extent to which my approach is indeed something in between the before and the now. It is a fact that I was instructed to interact with Theory in my dissertation, though I was permitted to deviate. One thing I would like to point out is that while these older Theorists had the advantage of 'having' to read the works that I gave myself the task of reading (e.g. Plato), I do not see this as being the case today. I think pursuit of these texts is becoming a matter of personal choice.
So, this means that there is ever less potential for there being a 'shared language' of exchange. Some will immediately cry: good riddance! How oppressive to learn that Language! To which I would reply (taking a line of thought from Freire) that indeed it does take effort to learn, and time but (again calling on Freire) this does not mean having to deny your 'own langauge'; rather, it is to give you the chance to be bilingual.
My feeling is that while there may actually be a move to shut down bilingualism (whether explicit or not - Freire suggests that this is implicit and internalised, then reproduced), there is also a great need for it, for it is also understood - somewhere, and again, maybe not explicitly - that cross-fertilisation can be a great source of vital ideas that bear fruit.
I think it is very important to rid one's 'real life dialogue' of the banter of negative critique, because this quickly deteriorates into argument. The art is in taking the time to sort through the common areas, and consistently cultivate these.
I do not think I am ready to enter into public discourse fully, because I still need time to figure out where those areas are. All I know is that I do not want to be contributing to the argument: I'd rather give up ideas and tend to a literal garden before doing that.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

Thinking Aloud In Public

This post has been updated: addendum added below.
A fusion of two texts I was reading in the same day gave me the idea that blogging might be considered as 'thinking aloud in public'.
The latter link takes you to an old Scientific American post by Bora Zivkovic, whose belief in the important place of the blog seems sadly idealistic almost ten years later, though noble. Like Tony of Renaissance Mathematicus lore, many of his posts explore the boundaries between science and journalism, like in this post with a wealth of ideas and links. Tony, however, remains an active blogger. My search for Bora's more recent work led me to his website page where he asks: what should I do next? "Blog some more," say I.
I continue to feel inclined to do my bit to fuel the idealism behind the web, which extends to its pedagogical promise, as outlined by the Revisiting the E-Quality in Networked Learning Manifesto. Incidentally, Bora's second post links to a visualisation of the Republic of Letters (as his blog posts gives his historical overview of the exchange of information) and is a wonderful illustration of the kinds of resources that the web makes possible. This in turn links to a 9-year-old Stanford digital humanities initiative which I mention because I found it to still contain some relevant kernels. Note though that many of these pages have changed their addresses and may need some extra googling to find.
But (after my extended absence from my own blog) it is occurring to me that it takes 'extra' work to keep this promise alive. Just like how the manifesto I linked to suggests that networked learning demands "greater professionalism in teaching and support for learning. Grafting on technological advances does nothing to mitigate this need for maturity in formal learning environments."
And I submit this as my reason why the promise of blogging has fallen short: it takes a lot of work - or, more specifically, time, which I seem to have less and less of (needing to read more and more: it just doesn't end). It is a luxury to be able to blog - which by extension leads to the interesting observation that hype rubs off on even bookish types.
But is blogging not a public necessity in some way? Sharing our thoughts in a somewhat visible way, to help each other sharpen our senses?
What I would like to sharpen my senses regarding concerns the question of whether it is possible to be bilingual in Theory and tradition. For many, that is already the wrong question to ask. To which I cite the ongoing popularity (in the public sense) of returning to dig into the classics, sans Theory, to get a taste of ancient Rome or a feel for Dante's Inferno. It is true that there may also be a fair share of inaccurate movies or misattributed quotes - but the introduction of such nonetheless tends to change the discourse, if momentarily and superficially.
Since the 1980's, it has not been required to do the requisite reading to claim some level of proficiency in both Theory and tradition. Among those studying the humanities, unless one has a very specialised field or focus, or attended a very particular college, I am inclined to agree with the statement that postmodernism is likely to be like the air we breathe: at least, bound to have permeated some approach we take. Or maybe this is only true of East Coasters and their equivalents. I am not married to these ideas...
Once upon a time, it was said during my career as an undergraduate, that one could forget about persisting in academe (to say nothing of progressing) if one were to openly pursue anything that smacks of a Christian line of thought. This is purely anecdotal and may or may not have anything to do with me. It does pertain to my question about bilingualism, though. It would hold - if the anecdote is true and assuming that higher ed instructors represent a range of types and also assuming that it is appropriate to equate this line of thought with tradition - that there would likely be some form of bilingualism extant, somewhere. 
When I was 20, I wrote: "[James] Clifford argues that 'a permanent and ironic play of similarities and differences, the foreign and the strange, the here and the elsewhere is ... characteristic of global modernity.' ... I agree with Clifford when he writes that 'Humanism ... still offers grounds for resistance to oppression and a necessary tolerance, compassion and mercy.' It is a noble goal, but so often the search for connectedness not only devolves into a search for similarities but also the eradication of aspects inherent to culture. Hybrids emerge."
It would seem that the answer is that bilingualism is not possible as it is transformative: to follow the line of hermeneutics, once there is an exchange, if it is a genuine exchange, both parties will be changed.
By way of conclusion: What if some texts and exchanges are in fact Rorschach inkblot texts? ADDENDUM: In my next post, I address why this blog was deliberately ambiguous. I am sorry for distressing certain readers.
ps. it is really funny how blogger's spellcheck indicates "blog" and "blogging" as incorrect.

Photo from: Old Hong Kong In Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, with an Introduction by Peter Cunich. 

For purchase at Chung Hwa Book Co.

Featured on HKFP Lens.

Your own people aren't always exactly your own people.

In the past month, in terms of the tough standards I set for myself, I failed at life (out of exhaustion over exponentially-increased teaching duties) in that I allowed myself to be surprised by certain human behaviour.
In one instance, this surprise morphed within me into the enemy of the human being, the feeling of injustice. Intellectually I know that righteous indignation is a dead-end street: called in some languages a "blind corner", which is exactly what I mean here. I don't know that I would be blogging about this quite in this way, had I not come across the sentence I used as the subject here: "Your own people aren't always exactly your own people." It is a fecund sentence for contemplation. One illustration could be of quondam parentals leaving children to choose their own adventure with absolutely no guidance after the first teen year, who later think they have a right to be critical of said children.
But there is another meaning of the quoted sentence that I have been musing over. Another could be related to patriotism. My family has members living all over the world; I have always taken it for granted that one can be both a patriot and a cosmopolite (who can be humble enough to learn from other cultures). To a certain degree (and to be not at all humble for a moment), I also thought that such a generous patriotism was easier for compatriots like myself than for people hailing from other countries (for historical reasons). Compatriots who reach cosmopolite status share a curiosity for esoteric aspects of other cultures and have the intellectual capacity for such appreciation (gaining, for example, expert knowledge of their antiques), and are crowned by a humility, in part stemming from a knowledge of the complexities of the history of their own country...

But today, this approach has come under fire. There is a new kind of patriotism defined in more narrow terms, as if, if one does not comply with these narrow qualifications, one does not love one's country. I can understand that somewhat - it is a kind of reactionism, not unlike my own of righteous indignation mentioned above. But on the other hand, such an approach would warrant if not a fail then a very low grade in not only my class on culture but also my composition class.
To begin with the (advanced) composition class, I set the intellectual exercise that opinions are not academically valid; what is valid is a thesis that has support and is able to articulate and respond to (through rebuttal or concession) viewpoints that challenge one's thesis. In other words, students are welcome to their 'opinions' so long as they can articulate them in terms of viewpoints that might challenge them (yes, this is derived from δόξα). Part of the course is built on cultivating an imagination that can articulate other viewpoints (which I - again not humbly - take to be part of the intellectual legacy of my native land). Similarly, my advanced class on culture demonstrates through examples that a single culture can be paradoxical, and is often comprised of myriad competing world views. This even came up in my intro class: through the example, for instance, of how not all former colonies immediately ratified the Articles of the Confederation. Unity does not necessarily mean unanimity.
How do we respond to scarcity of agreement?
For some, this means that it is no longer a time for the "college games" of dialectics; to them, it means war. Truth can come back another day.

So I ask myself: how do I talk to someone who from the get-go is approaching questions through their agenda? (The new orthodoxy of secularism, or of zealous liberalism, is no more tolerant or different than any religion.) Are you, readers, also wanting to ask me why it's a problem to approach life through an agenda? When I tried, with my interlocutors of late, to explain the complexities of statecraft and the importance of grappling - as contradictory as it may seem - with even abstract ideas like 'truth' in the practical business of statesmanship, if I dared call on Plato, my interlocutors' eyes would glaze over. Which I know from teaching means I need to change my approach. So, in answer to my question of how to talk with agenda-driven interlocutors, reason is not the way. Or, one must learn to package reason differently.
Since yesterday, every time I think about this, I am left with an anecdote from Rumer Godden's autobiography, A House With Four Rooms, with which I shall close this blog post. She writes of how back in the day, authors would often receive requests for an autograph and/or signed photograph. She explains that before she knew better to respond only to those who sent return postage, she would oblige at least the many signature requests though the postage was costly (obliging the photograph requests would have been far too costly). "I had a letter from America with the usual request, sent an autograph and a little later" she writes, "had a second letter; 'Thank you for your autograph. We have had your handwriting analysed. You are mean, petty, selfish and greedy.'"

What Is My Problem? (... with teaching extracts)

This post has been updated. In teaching, I struggle with which texts to assign: more fruitful, complex texts (like speeches by Cicero or Demosthenes, or Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator") can lead to drops in attendance and participation, but less dense ones (like select think pieces from, say, The Atlantic or The Millions) seem to reinforce the common view held by 20-year-olds that they pretty much know it all. It is a problem when students do not participate because if they bring nothing to the conversation, there is nothing to tie the material to, to make it relevant. Some years, I almost exclusively use excerpts from the more complex texts - if only inclusive of a few non-sugar coated ones, but I maintain that this method is rife with dangers, which may or may not have been indirectly apparent in my last post, which drew only on excerpts.
To use an excerpt is to take on the responsibility of filling in the context of what the excerpt was cut out of. This not only includes explaining parts of the text that surrounded the excerpt, but also explicating related schools of thought, historical details and precedents, specific references, etc. This is particularly challenging where it cannot be assumed that there is a shared 'cultural language' to begin with - which means that I might not know how important it is to emphasise certain points, or might not remember to point things out that I take for granted.
It may be because of these problems that I am increasingly interested in "the rudimentary" - and doubtful of whether I have a sound enough mastery of the basics: to use an example mentioned above, I might forget to explain points I have long assimilated and internalised.
There is also the problem of what "knowledge" is - for example, how can one claim to know a book when second, third readings bring elucidation of ideas one failed to see or retain the first time? Or, when further readings bring entirely new meaning? Such basic and common experiences are further warnings of the inadequacy of the outline.
Since initially publishing this post, it became clearer that perhaps the ultimate problem is that, as the late and great D. G. Myers wrote, "nothing is considered essential knowledge" in academe today; he wrote that he could not expect "any common background knowledge, not even in English majors". Among the enlightening comments to that post, is a link to another blog post, which presents a brief, invaluable exploration of the history of the "fragmentation of the curriculum". The author cites Barzun's scepticism of the trend to shop for majors, and Santayana's lament that "in the Harvard of my day we had heard a little of everything, and nobody really knew his Latin or knew his Bible."

 

In Auerbach's his famous essay on "Philology and 'Weltliteratur'", he describes the problem of achieving "synthesis" - which, I might add, is similar to the outline, or summary, in its concern for a vision of the whole. Synthesis is difficult because of the problem of the uncertainty of what is truly known of the past, as well as the challenges of grasping "the conditions under which ... literature developed", which includes religion, philosophy, politics, etc. He explains the "problematic and the ordering categories" of literature by writing: "Most of them are too abstract and ambiguous, and frequently they have too private a slant. They confirm a temptation to which neophytes (and acolytes) are frequently inclined to submit: the desire to master a great mass of material through the introduction of hypostasized, abstract concepts of order".
The pitfalls of abstracted overviews is, as suggested above, no new concern. I think it is also reflected in the phrase non multa legere sed multum, which I will poorly render as: read not many but much. If the meaning of this phrase is not immediately apparent, I think it is rather well illustrated by the reading habits of A. W. Verall (in the foreword to his Collected Literary Essays: Classical and Modern, eds. M. A. Bayfield and J. D. Duff):

"For mere information he did not care overmuch, he preferred multum legere potius quam multa. What he asked for from serious books was nutriment, and this he got better (if I may pursue the horrid metaphor) by repeated mastication than by the hasty omnivorous feeding which makes assimilation impossible."

There are no shortcuts in learning or teaching. That is, if we care about knowledge and learning.
To return to my initial ramblings in this post: "select think pieces" offer immediate relevance to students, the familiar, the contemporary. This is important if one wishes to reach a potential audience at the crossroads between what listeners can actually apply on their journey beginning from where they are at present and more distant horizons. This crossroads represents part of the mystery of learning, as its coordinates will always be moving where there is thought.
Horizons to be striven towards can be afforded through rich history and rhetoric. I was about to add theory to that list, but after having tried to teach it alongside the former two, I cannot claim that it is as rich. Even theorists reach towards Plato, or Homer... Distant contextual horizons are important, but so is where we are standing, in more practical and immediate terms.
So the problem is how to encourage an orientation towards horizons, for students to embark on their own Odysseys. One hopes the journeys are informed, for what use is travel in the wilderness if one knows nothing of the elements or navigation (important even today). Teaching navigation through overview-courses based on extracts seems reasonable because extracts are short but deep enough to encourage star gazing and the connection to greater coordinates. But teaching via extracts is also riddled with problems. That's my problem.
And why I feel the burden of bussardes - I sometimes feel the fear of being a bussard myself (one responsible for teaching!), even though that fear is more a fallacy than a reasonable assessment. Such reactionary thinking on my part stems from my lacking proper mentors, and critical stance towards the status quo. I will illustrate what I mean by this.
In teaching composition, I found I was dissatisfied with the handbooks, readers, etc., on the topic and found I had to compile my own selection of instruction from various sources (for example, to describe essays, as so many "college handbooks" do, as "narrative", "descriptive", etc. is ridiculous, as most good essays combine these "types"; by contrast, teaching composition via rhetoric, where those same "types" are assembled under "invention" is far more constructive). But this very illustration reveals my problem: I do not have a degree in the classics: can I be sure that my occasional ("excerpted") references to classical oratory are accurate? One needs to be guided in such things by specialists. I of course make an attempt to research into what I teach, and should add that I truly enjoy the opportunity of taking a broad approach that is perhaps characteristic of a "core" approach to the humanities, but I am just trying to articulate here what I think are some of the problems of this approach.

Photo of a bee-eater, not a bussard. 

Brush: misprinted type.

Neither Catechism Nor Multiplication Table

The title is from A. E. Housman's "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", in which Housman explains that textual criticism is more like an art than a science. Where scientists or doctors can test their theories with experiments or by noting visible effects, "the discovery merely of better and older MSS. than were previously known to us is not equally decisive". He proceeds to give specific examples of the dangerously arbitrary categorisations that are made about the quality of manuscripts, explaining that were such generalisations to be stated in concrete terms, the arbitrariness would be spotted immediately, no less by butchers and grocers, who are comparatively more thoughtful than arbitrary textual critics - as they "depend on their brains for bread". His jokes aside, Housman suggests that the way out of this mess is to "collect and compare" individual readings, and "not to ride easily off on ... false and ridiculous generalisation[s]". In other words, thoughtful textual criticism essentially works on a text-by-text basis (though this feeds back into the bigger picture, to create a more accurate general understanding) [1]. Readers of this blog, or blogs like it, may already be thinking of how much this approach resembles Auerbach's, in Mimesis.
Thus, even once philology ceases to be primarily interested in manuscripts, and becomes concerned with different sorts of comparison - let us call it "the historical experience", a "true philological" approach may be defined as an art: involving both an appreciation of rules as well as the readiness to descend into the complexities of myriad particularities, collecting and comparing. Housman writes that a nascent flair for this art is desirable - and we may note that Auerbach was praised for possessing just such a gift. Also important, however, is the habit of thought, which, while no substitute for an aptitude for textual criticism, can minimise error, Housman writes.

This approach is not a science. To illustrate, Housman considers rules vs. examples, methodically arguing that it is the weight of what appear to be exceptions to rules, and not their number, that must, on a case-by-case basis, be "ascertained by classification and scrutiny". It cannot be a science, because its subject matter is the product of the fallible (not hard-and-fast) human being:

It deals with a matter not rigid and constant, like lines and numbers, but fluid and variable; namely the frailties and aberrations of the human mind, and of its insubordinate servants, the human fingers. It therefore is not susceptible of hard-and-fast rules. It would be much easier if it were; and that is why people try to pretend that it is, or at least behave as if they thought so. Of course you can have hard-and-fast rules if you like, but then you will have false rules, and they will lead you wrong; because their simplicity will render them inapplicable to problems which are not simple, but complicated by the play of personality.

This is the lesson of what the humanities, as opposed to the sciences, can share. We are to remember human fallibility, and appreciate that science is not the best tool for more accurate understandings of things human. Of course, this is not just the idea of the philologist - although it is fascinating to me that it is possibility the influence of the philologist (Auerbach) that shaped Gadamer's philosophical magnum opus Truth and Method, for making this very point (we remember, too, that he briefly opined in the book that he had not written it sooner to argue against false objectivism in a timely fashion). This idea of the trickiness and case-by-case discernment of the human experience is part of Plato's Socratic elenctic questioning, dialectics.

To shorthand a conclusion to this post, I will refer yet again to how Jowett describes Plato's Phaedrus as a "picture, not a system". What is more, he notes that Plato "works freely" in his writing, meaning, "which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always be determined". Science is not appropriate here: knowledge is reached through "many preparations and oppositions, both of the characters of men and aspects of truth, especially of the popular and philosophical aspect; and after many interruptions and detentions ... we arrive at ... knowledge. This is an aspect of truth which was always lost almost as soon as it was found, and yet has to be recovered by everyone for himself who would pass the limits of proverbial and popular philosophy," Jowett writes.
Finally, as an educator in today's world, I would like to point out the ubiquity of the popular - with its watered-down platitudes, laid down like (psuedo-) scientific law, like: do what it takes to get where you want, which is hardly an ideal civic ethics. In contrast to this, is Auerbach's retort to accusations that he was not methodical enough in Mimesis, and bogged down in too many particularities to be appropriately scientifically philological: "If it had been possible, I would have avoided all general terms and instead suggested ideas to the reader by the mere presentation of a sequence of passages".
Neither catechism nor multiplication table, textual analysis requires engagement of the individual in a case-by-case evaluative dialectics if one cares even the slightest about the truth of the matter (and has a flair for it: cf. can discernment be taught?)

Book in background: Boucher's 20,000 Years of Fashion. Brush: Ewansim via Deviantart.

[1] cf., "The MSS. are the material upon which we base our rule, and then, when we have got our rule, we turn round upon the MSS. and say that the rule, based upon them, convicts them of error. We are thus working in a circle, that is a fact which there is no denying; but, as Lachmann says, the task of the critic is just this, to tread that circle deftly and warily; and that is precisely what elevates the critic's business above mere mechanical labour."
Post Script: at some point, I will need to change the labels of these posts. In preparation of that, and to that end, for my convenience, I am linking here to all posts I was able to find that mention Gadamer's Truth and Method: experience-experiment; interiority-nonsense; facts-of-fiction; hands-of-tongue; beyond-myth.

Brazen Giant with Conquering Limbs

The title is from Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus", which was excerpted in Knopf's poem-a-day series in a passage from Esther Schor's Emma Lazarus. The passage reminds us of the initial mockery that greeted the monumental Liberty Enlightening the World, which bears in its title and land of origin the French ties to the New World. I think these ties highlight the problem behind contemporary claims to "world citizenship", which are levelling in their shared, "enlightened" philosophy.
While it appears that civilization has reached a philosophical ideal, I would argue: not so fast. Auerbach, in "Philology and Weltliteratur" explains a point that extends beyond literature, and which I will paraphrase for this larger context: the point of being a "world" citizen ceases to be "at once realized and destroyed" once this "world" is a standardized world that speaks a single literary language.
I got the impetus to write this post, which has been a long time coming (and will likely spill into further posts), after reading a post on this topic by a blogger I really admire. The post is nominally called "The Man from Nowhere" - but this formulation is a riposte to the Theresa May comment that, "If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere." It is important to clarify the provocation behind the post, because I am sure many will therefore question why I am taking issue with it. But I do have a point of contention: namely, world citizenship, in my understanding and experience, is less something that can be claimed than it is aspirational - read: ideal. Once it is claimed, it is levelled, beneath a "brazen giant with conquering limbs".
Tension and disagreement must remain: this is a prerequisite for "fruitful discourse", which is to be differentiated from "imposed uniformity" (I use Auerbach's terms). Plutarch's Socrates says he is a citizen of the world, wherein world is defined as comprising universal truths; but knowing Socrates' view on the attainment of truth, we should be wary of the implications of this affiliation.

It is no accident that the post on the topic of world citizenry that I took issue with was posted by a scientist (specifically, a historian of science).
Christopher Prendergast, in "The World Republic of Letters" explains that the enlightened 17th and 18th century "literary republic" - which, I'll add, often stands as the ideal of world citizenry called on to this day - comprised scientists and philosophers, and not writers and poets, which, I need to emphasize, is critical to recognize. Jebb, for example, writes in "Humanism in Education" : "there is a danger lest analogies drawn from studies conversant with different material should be pushed too far, and what is called the scientific spirit should cease to be duly tempered by aesthetic and literary judgement". Prendergast also emphasizes that these scientists of the "literary republic" were engaging in scientific dialogue, in which national characteristics were irrelevant.
That said, I don't think that co-mmunication can be possible without the existence of universals, which are what sentient human beings aspire towards. But expecting that they are a birth right or something some of us can call on from our global family legacy is presumptuous. From a cultural perspective, even natives can feel alienated from fellow natives; even those who ostensibly share the same universal beliefs can feel alienated through the manifestation of those beliefs.
It is important to distinguish ideals from reality; it is important to distinguish the universal from the standardized lest we are to be conquered by giants of our own making.

Brush: Misprinted Type.

"Utopia and an Accident"

This post was updated on 1/3/2017.
Sometimes, the mind needs a holiday - especially from all it is conditioned to think and expect. Such a holiday was the effect of happening on an artist's website this evening, purely "by accident". (I was googling the phrase "poetry does not lead to" - interesting exercise, but perhaps best saved for another post.) The installment on the artist's website I was led to on my search seeks "a sculptural excuse where poetry does not lead to evident facts".
What caught my attention were two things: the title of the installment: "The New Sincerity", and the phrase describing the work: "intersection between utopia and an accident or improvised event".
And here is where my mind went: the title makes sense because while sincerity is timeless, it must be forged anew given the ever-changing customs and now technologies mediating it. My second idea was about how the tension in the juxtaposition between utopia and accident/improvisation is almost like a riddle.
It reminded me of my favourite passage by H. Randall about Plato's utopia (in "Plato's Treatment of the Good Life and His Criticism of the Spartican Ideal"), where he explains how utopia is to be understood: as a general direction, not a final destination:

There is the constant temptation to live in the vision, rather than by the vision: to want to go to Heaven, like the Christians, or to bring Heaven here to America like the moderns, instead of living well a human life with vision. There is the temptation to demand perfection, and to condemn all existence because it falls short of what it might be, as it naturally must, instead of using the vision of perfection to discriminate between what is better and what is worse in our relatively and inevitably imperfect world... This, it may be, is the truth that lies behind Plato's ironical warning that the effect of poets is often bad: because men are apt to be too stupid to realise that they are poets, and to take them literally, instead of seriously.

The artist, Belén Rodriguez Gonzales, from the video summing up her work, seems to demonstrate, through things, this problem between projected grids and a geographical, cosmological freeplay of motion: winds, the effects of the sea, the shining of the sun... Despite the grids (or, the "literal"), there is a lot of apparent "potential for vision" for one who is looking. The challenge of life is to learn how to make something of the "natural musts" without losing poetic vision.
Speaking of the poetic, I had been uncertain about what Belén meant by the phrase "a sculptural excuse where poetry does not lead to evident facts", and have since had the great pleasure of corresponding with her in order to clarify. I admit that I had initially understood it to be deliberately opaque in the language of much post-formalist art, but could not have been farther from the truth. Her art is, in part, a response to the overload of art that fades once the joke is over.
Belén's art is like the poeisis that Huizinga describes in Homo Ludens: it is not bound by the ties of the everyday and is inaccessible to the drill of the rational mind. In other words, it is ethereal and elusive, to be grasped at and pondered over, and, in that process, to become transformed (which is the result of all good dialectics).
Huizinga writes:

Poeisis, in fact, is a play-function. It proceeds within the play-ground of the mind, in a world of its own which the mind creates for it. There things have a very different physiognomy from the one they wear in ‘ordinary life’, and are bound by ties other than those of logic and causality. If a serious statement be defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child’s soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man’s wisdom for the child’s. 

I like the playfulness, general selection of ideas, and broader implication of Belén's art: it's one holiday for the mind. And if there's a moral to the story of this post, it's that chance can afford a scrap that can be turned into magical good fortune by one who is looking.

Brush: Misprinted Type.

Human Life in its Genuine Colours

Plutarch (in Consolatio ad Apollonium) quotes Pindar's "Man is but a shadow's dream" to comment: "He used an artificial and very perspicuous hyperbole to draw human life in its genuine colors; for what is weaker than a shadow? Or what words can be found out whereby to express a shadow's dream?" His point is that we are born into corruption and inconstancy - and so, knowing that, are to defend ourselves "against the casualties of life". Which reminds me of Seneca's counsel that we do not die because we're sick, but because we're alive. And that all sounds rather grey - but again, this grey is the remedy, in Plutarch. Knowing we are a shadow's dream is our inoculation.
For a series of years now, I feel like I have been doing a study in this grey, but suddenly have an inkling that I am on the verge of some kind of peripeteia (though admit this may be but a sensation). Still, this hope (which Plutarch also writes of) has brought colours to my palette - and through this relief,* the greys have become even more beautiful to me, my own memento mori.
This week on The Getty Iris blog, an artist wrote of how Diebenkorn "spoke about the difficulty of making a gray painting—how hard it is to make something meaningful and able to connect when one of the fundamental elements of painting—color—is not present or is reduced."

The very day I read that, I went out for a run and found that very grey (do follow the link to see the grey Matisse paintings referenced for comparison) - and wondered how hard it would be to make a painting of that, rather wondered, because isn't El Greco's "View of Toledo" and Turner (e.g. "Snow Storm") largely based on grey? When searching for the latter painting, I found it was included in a getty exhibit entitled, "Set Free" - which perfectly suits my interpretation of grey.
If human life in its genuine colours is but a shadow's dream, to become set free from that is to embrace the Senecan adage, and from there, add all the colours, knowing they are fleeting gifts. That's kind of what Diebenkorn's "Ocean City" manifests visually: the colours relegated to the edges; present, if minimal.

And sometimes [Diebenkorn] just needed to think out loud, and he’d talk about painting as a discipline, about having a work ethic, and about not being complacent with either success or failure and how they were both valuable lessons if you paid attention.

Grey is a valuable lesson. Harder to work with - but, as Turner shows, not impossible. What is more, it seems that the only way to find "freedom" in this grey is to accept one's own lot in life, whatever this may be. To accept, as Dienenkorn is described to have accepted, that life is work. Again, to quote Plutarch (quoting Socrates), our own lot is easier for us to carry anyway, so we might as well accept it:

And here that opinion of Socrates comes in very pertinently, who thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. 

Interestingly, that Socrates anecdote is rather similar to one told in an Eastern tradition about a man who complained the cross he was carrying was too heavy, so an angel brought him to a room full of crosses and said: set yours down, and pick any here in its place. When the man had chosen one he found light enough to carry, the angel said: that was the one you had been carrying to begin with.
*Nb. I am fascinated by the various manifestations of relief, and wrote about its etymology in an earlier post.

What do you expect?

It is fascinating how one can pore over a text attempting to be prescient of as many layers of meaning and contextual references as possible, and remain impervious to this same level of attention to complexity in life: for example, failing to double-check whether one has correctly understood the context, different to one's own. We could say that in life there are three coordinates to consider: the relationship of one culture to another, the relationship of culture to the individual, and the individual's relationship to another individual. There are no exams to test this comprehension, though it seems to me these were Humanistic concerns, still implied in the word "university."
Sometimes I think that there is such a thing as willful mis-comprehension, perpetuated - and isn't this interesting - by volumes of prose.
The concern about the truthfulness of writing, and whether the ability to read volume after volume produces wisdom, is addressed in the Phaedrus. Plato's Socrates is as concerned with good speaking as with good writing, which is to say that in Plato's Socratic dialogues, there is an emphasis on truth in all contexts, not just the truths uncovered by close reading.
Similarly, I imagine that in the Humanist architectural mnemonics (some call the method of loci), alongside rooms of facts about various subject matter, there were also rooms devoted to ethics and how this informs action and the pursuit of truth. This is implied in Vico's speech to university students, entitled "The Heroic Mind", whereine heroic echoes back to the Greek concepts of paideia or kalos kagathos.
But writing in this way implies that knowledge, truth, or wisdom is something that can be had or held: a territory to be appropriated by the palace in the mind. Plato's Socrates, on the other hand, is always reluctant to claim any final understanding. A more quality knowing then is - a not knowing? An approximation?
There are some who are trenchant that their work is flawless, whereas another view would be to consider work as more or less studied. Some work may be more accurate, but other work may provide inspired solutions. What is "flawless" work?

If we are talking about comprehension, I would argue that better work will involve an openness to the possibility of being wrong (hence the importance of double checking).
Perhaps openness is rare because it involves that "uncanniness" that I first thought about when reading a passage in de Chirico's Hebdomeros (that passage with the furniture in the street: something familiar in an unfamiliar context). Heraclitus writes of "expecting the unexpected" - which, the more I think about it, is a rather uncomfortable state of mind: indeterminate, yet not chaotic, because of the implied reception. 
To try to better understand what Heraclitus meant (my associations aside), yet without having spent time with the Greek - so this is an unfinished post, an unfinished idea, I have been reading various translations of fragment 18 where that phrase appears. One translation reads: "If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail."
Another translation reads: "Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find [truth], for it is hard to discover and attain." There is also this: "If you do not hope, you will not win that which is hoped for, since it is unattainable and inaccessible."
On the basis of these sentences, and as a good-enough conclusion to this post, part of the difficulty in understanding life may be in where it fails to conform to our expectations - considering, too, that in our bid to understand, even our understanding of the unexpected may still be influenced by the limits of what we conceive possible.
Some of the work I did over the holidays involved reading about Lacan's definition of psychoses, which is also connected to expectations because psychoses involve projection. So, there's also that. Lots of films being shown, but the possibility, too, of there being something far more behind that screen.

Brush: Misprinted Type.

What do you expect?

It is fascinating how one can pore over a text attempting to be prescient of as many layers of meaning and contextual references as possible, and remain impervious to this same level of attention to complexity in life: for example, failing to double-check whether one has correctly understood the context, different to one's own. We could say that in life there are three coordinates to consider: the relationship of one culture to another, the relationship of culture to the individual, and the individual's relationship to another individual. There are no exams to test this comprehension, though it seems to me these were Humanistic concerns, still implied in the word "university."
Sometimes I think that there is such a thing as willful mis-comprehension, perpetuated - and isn't this interesting - by volumes of prose.
The concern about the truthfulness of writing, and whether the ability to read volume after volume produces wisdom, is addressed in the Phaedrus. Plato's Socrates is as concerned with good speaking as with good writing, which is to say that in Plato's Socratic dialogues, there is an emphasis on truth in all contexts, not just the truths uncovered by close reading.
Similarly, I imagine that in the Humanist architectural mnemonics (some call the method of loci), alongside rooms of facts about various subject matter, there were also rooms devoted to ethics and how this informs action and the pursuit of truth. This is implied in Vico's speech to university students, entitled "The Heroic Mind", whereine heroic echoes back to the Greek concepts of paideia or kalos kagathos.
But writing in this way implies that knowledge, truth, or wisdom is something that can be had or held: a territory to be appropriated by the palace in the mind. Plato's Socrates, on the other hand, is always reluctant to claim any final understanding. A more quality knowing then is - a not knowing? An approximation?
There are some who are trenchant that their work is flawless, whereas another view would be to consider work as more or less studied. Some work may be more accurate, but other work may provide inspired solutions. What is "flawless" work?

If we are talking about comprehension, I would argue that better work will involve an openness to the possibility of being wrong (hence the importance of double checking).
Perhaps openness is rare because it involves that "uncanniness" that I first thought about when reading a passage in de Chirico's Hebdomeros (that passage with the furniture in the street: something familiar in an unfamiliar context). Heraclitus writes of "expecting the unexpected" - which, the more I think about it, is a rather uncomfortable state of mind: indeterminate, yet not chaotic, because of the implied reception. 
To try to better understand what Heraclitus meant (my associations aside), yet without having spent time with the Greek - so this is an unfinished post, an unfinished idea, I have been reading various translations of fragment 18 where that phrase appears. One translation reads: "If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail."
Another translation reads: "Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find [truth], for it is hard to discover and attain." There is also this: "If you do not hope, you will not win that which is hoped for, since it is unattainable and inaccessible."
On the basis of these sentences, and as a good-enough conclusion to this post, part of the difficulty in understanding life may be in where it fails to conform to our expectations - considering, too, that in our bid to understand, even our understanding of the unexpected may still be influenced by the limits of what we conceive possible.
Some of the work I did over the holidays involved reading about Lacan's definition of psychoses, which is also connected to expectations because psychoses involve projection. So, there's also that. Lots of films being shown, but the possibility, too, of there being something far more behind that screen.

Brush: Misprinted Type.