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

Galla Placidia's Stars

Once upon a time when I went to Ravenna, I did not take a camera. I was lent binoculars and told to not be embarrassed about sitting on the church floors to take time to look at the mosaics. That looking has remained with me in a far more vivid way than anything I have ever photographed. The couple who lent me the binoculars also gave me an old Baedeker, and among other things taught me to be aware of the space around people, the constellation they inhabit - all we bring with us through our being in the world. Are we brittle, soft? Do we seek growth?
People.
I think of people I have known who are near or far, or not on earth at all any more, and realise what a miracle of good will it is for there to be understanding. To shine as a person, this would mean being the ear for someone else, taking the best from them and nurturing it.
Letting go of the rest, remembering it only for potential reference.

B/LOGROLLING

America Has Two Economies And They're Diverging Fast (brookings) article with infographs

YETI makes very good video content (about cowboys, people spending time in the outdoors - always with a thought worth mulling on further, excellently shot and produced), including funny spoofs like this with the memorable line:  "Scooters are the vaping of public transportation."

7 ways to de-escalate office tension (99u) : "The ultimate goal of mediation, after all, isn’t agreement. It’s understanding."

The Death of the Neutral Public Sphere (American Interest):
"The metaphor of a 'marketplace of ideas,' where some sort of rational choice theory means the eventual selection of the best quality information, looks naive in an environment where junk news driven by bots and trolls and other forms of non-transparent amplification floods the web, spreading faster than any byte of truth. (...)
A new approach to social media would need to be able to ignore such immediate financial demands. It would need to work with another set of metrics: Does a piece of content improve trust, and does it generate a constructive conversation? Indeed, how can one move beyond mere content production into a more hybrid approach to foster sustained online and offline engagement?"

On the Slow Build-Up to the American Revolution (lithub):
"As the histories of many modern nations reveal, a people who are terrified, who are continuously anxious about their own security, often demonize their enemies and enter­tain actions that they later come to regret."

Music
More about electronic music this week. Four decades after Jean-Michel Jarre's synthesiser (?! can it be? - also worth noting his fusion of being a performer as much as if not more than being a musician) I think its potential is starting to be discovered. Interesting works seem to be coming from musicians who happen to be classically trained. To wit:
Lena Raine (One Knowing; Celeste: Farewell). I discovered her through Bandcamp explorations and find it fascinating that her music usually accompanies video games (as in the second example). Does that not underline the hunger for experience, some kind of immersive and emotive experience, that people seem to be seeking today?
The DJ and singer "Alison Wonderland" whose show at Red Rocks included live musicians playing over some of her tracks (second half of this podcast).

Blogger I would like to have over to a dinner party (not on my standalone page):  Will Knight, MIT Technology Review's senior editor for AI (link goes to his articles).

I - Thou

Let's invoke Shelley. In his "Defence of Poetry" he wrote that learning how to feel another's pain can aid the imagination to contribute to the greatest moral good (the highest political hope being the abolition of slavery).  
I, you, they, he writes, are mere grammatical markers essentially modifications of one mind, though the practise in seeing such connections is a practise, until it becomes a habit. It "tends to abolish the course of history" - it is timeless, rooted in the unchanging aspects of humanity, in case anyone has forgotten one of the paths to immortality. Time washes away even the imperfection of authors where they fail to reach the perfection of which they write - the failure to allow for such disparity is to lose sight of one's own faults (1921: 57). 
This ability to see beauty in something other, to see its relevance, is such a vital practise. I wrote about such 'relief' a long time ago, here. "Good" poetic writing restores order to the world, based on morals, Shelley writes - that kind of romantic imagining certainly seems distant today. But on the personal level, his sentiment has its relevance.
When one might feel like a carcass being devoured by so many thoughtless vultures, the mind can move away from those gory scenes of selfishness by seeking out other practises of healing, which may not be visible in the present scenes but that can be invoked, if one knows or remembers to call on them.
So the story goes. It has (obviously?) been a rough week in these parts, but I retain awe at the classical (not just Greek, also Chinese) rejuvenating and refreshing practise of returning to the font of literature: how is that not a treasure trove?

She descends from the soapbox, to write this week's

B/Logrolling

Other recipes I have made many times this summer:
Chipotle tahini sauce a great way to snack while avoiding processed foods
To make it from scratch, I make my own hot sauce (grilling tomatoes in the oven to avoid canned ones) - this is such a good hot sauce, it is hard to believe how simple it is to make
Nice and light eggplant parm (read: real eggplant parm, not breaded)

Why I am avoiding processed foods now: Have you ever heard of "cracking"? I hadn't either until I watched this (French) documentary. Wow. The process applies to foods now. The processed foods I ate most regularly were "bio" style. But now that I know about "cracking", and how the protein factor is obtained for those foods, I am making new efforts to home cook almost everything.

Another attack on the humanities. Yet again, a very educated person treats Plato as if Nietzsche had the last word. It is so tiring how trendy it is to submit the classics to reductionist gestures. I could write many pages on this but will make one point here. As if people don't understand what reading is. We are never finished reading the classics because the way we relate to them requires relating anew from the changing present. Yes, we do suspend our judgement to attempt to 'enter' the past, but what the past will mean to us and how we receive it will always be different - this is even true from within the limited scope of a single lifetime.

Speaking of history: Understanding religion in late imperial China from Columbia University's Asia for Educators

Apropos mention of acting (Brett) in last week's post: continued consideration of acting re. the individual vs. collective. To this end: a post on Hall, Fo, and Theatrics of Role and Story though I beg to differ on how method (Stanislavsky's approach to) acting is understood. It is very much an "I-thou" type acting and requires the actor to relate, in every 'beat' of dialogue, with their role. Similarly, through this very 'real' evocation (as the actor is calling up from their memory enough emotional vocabulary to make each 'beat' happen in real time - this is very taxing for the actor, who 'relives' the script every night), the audience is brought within a realm of introspection.
"Class wars" seem to efface this dimension of reality.

Two things I am thinking about how to include more thoughtfully in my classes: ethics and new practical skills (last year, it was a business proposal, this year, I am thinking about SEO...)

Ethics:
Daily ethical questions 
A Framework for Character Education in Schools
Ethical storytelling:
A more thorough primer
Another good link - active version of reference links: Concordia's toolbox; Ethics pdf; the Ethics Guidebook consent framework; resource for ethical practice in digital storytelling
Interested in this for so many reasons. One of which, an educational site with the declared purpose of promoting the "good" (ethical) in education, recently published a post in which backhanded, reductionist comments were made about not one but two cultures (in all of about six or seven words, at that). As always, it is the "circuitous route" that is most likely to include not what we want to hear or what is being said - but what we are not hearing. But once you hear, as Gadamer wrote, you cannot "hear away".

Blogger I'd love to meet at a dinner party (forgot this feature last week!): writes and produces the Canadian blog The Art of Doing Stuff - it was her well-written recent post on blogging that got me thinking about introducing SEO skills to my class this year. (I ought to practise her tips myself, but ... actually, there are advantages to being less visible and to amateurism that continue to suit me.)

What Is A Literary Polis

One of the problems I encountered this year was dealing with the assumption that literacy has been gained if one can comprehend written sentences and use the google search engine. The basis of this assumption lacks self-criticism to the degree that it is considered acceptable to "hate lists" (of the kind that are best internalised if there is to be literacy of genres, further reach of perspective) and demonstrate impatience at being indicated any idea that is not to personal taste. This assumption is not to blame if it has grown unobstructed through university education, and has a degree behind it, supporting, in this way, its existence: ironically, on paper.
But are we literate if we can read a passage and use google? Or are there different levels of literacy - to thus instill in the former assumption a degree of humility?
To follow an Aristotelian line, as put forward rather succinctly by Edith Hall in Aeon, one is to practice clearly and precisely systematic communication of the rudiments of one's ideas which may then be further developed among more advanced 'readers' through specialist, technical language. (This approach was popular in Victorian times: think, for example, of Farraday's lectures.) Following this line, it may be seen that literacy is of course developed beyond an elementary level. It may then be asked just what kind of constellation of ideas one must have to be able to follow - and then create - cartographies of complexity. Literacy in this respect may be seen as something that is never fully mastered (as universes are not mastered by single human minds), but explored with varying degrees of depth.
Hall argues that Aristotle's approach to philosophy was to make the rudiments available to the general public through his exoteric works that would draw on beliefs commonly held by the majority as their starting points. Put in the terms I am discussing here, Aristotle appealed to the public by building on its platitudes to raise the literacy of the polis. One of my pet ideas right now is about how important it is to discuss the role of a literacy that has depth-perception, as it is crucial to society for enabling a temporary distancing from oneself (where one enters into another's argument, for example) as this movement teaches that one is not the centre of the world.
This literacy will be reflected in  self-reflection (following the hermeneutic arc). The more I think about this arc, the more it seems to me bound to pedagogy, or to epistemic fluency: to achieve a high level of literacy seems bound to the ability to understand which requires some conscious knowledge of how things are learnt. So, a higher level of literacy might then require both a knowledge of a given subject and a knowledge of how knowledge is obtained or used.
I think this idea is illustrated in Shannon Cain's definition of literary citizenship (via mhpbooks). It acknowledges listening/reading,  teaching/mentoring/being mentored, and sharing - which speaks to what I wrote above. The latter reminds me of what some call the conundrum of saving a human life vs. a library - what is the more important: life or the learning?
Cain's definition of literary citizenship follows:
•    Read. A lot.
•    Subscribe to literary magazines.
•    Buy books. Review them, and publish the reviews.
•    Teach.
•    Celebrate the achievements of your colleagues. Champion their work.
•    Share your power.
•    Donate to small presses. Volunteer. Join a governing board.
•    Practice humility.
•    In workshop, be patient and kind and truthful.
•    Attend talks and conferences. Listen hard.
•    Mentor a new writer. Be mentored.
•    Be a good friend to other writers. Keep generosity in your heart.

Brush via

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.

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.'"

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.

Beyond Myth?

Jean-François Champollion was the son of a bookseller, who by his teenage years knew Greek and Latin, and some Herbrew, Abraic, Syriac, Chaldean, Chinese, Persian, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Sanskrit. At 16, he presented a paper providing a clue to the Hieroglyphic script, based on his suggestion that Coptic was an ancient Egyptian language.
Literary critic Guy Davenport called Claude Lévi-Strauss "The Champollion of Table Manners" in an essay on the latter's The Origin of Table Manners. Davenport considers Lévi-Strauss, "the most dilligent interpreter of our time", "a reader of riddles and a rediscoverer of the primacy of human behaviour in our knowledge of the world". And the knowledge Davenport focuses on? "'It remains to be seen,' Lévi-Strauss writes at the end of this intricate study of primitive civility, 'whether man's victory over his powerlessness, when carried to a state out of all proportion to the objectives with which he was satisfied during the previous millennia of his history, will not lead back to unreason.' That is, have we moved irrevocably beyond the ethics encoded in archaic myths; and if so, where are we?"
Apparently, a similar point was also raised by Antonio Rosmini in Theodicy, of which I learned from Brandon's summary of a passage about how moral progress is not inevitable, particularly if new generations do not build on what has been learned from preceding ones. Lévi-Strauss' "out of all proportion" here means too much abstraction of concrete, particular expressions of virtue - if I may be permitted to rephrase a summary. If these expressions get lost, they have to be learned all over again, the hard way, by trial and error.
An example of particular messages that may be transmitted are those Davenport says may come to us through the power of myth: "how to marry, how to eat, how to be brave". He posits that when myth loses this power, "it becomes a narrative that does not know how to resolve itself. Everything, says the contemporary novel, comes to a bad end ... We are no wiser than man has ever been about our helplessness in nature. Our fate with love, death, despair, doubt, wealth ... is no different ... it is unanswerable to ask if we have remained human ... Our past is forgotten. We can forget it again."

Human existence is a riddle, which may be encoded in myth. To be beyond myth is to attempt to surpass the need to come to terms with humanity. Gadamer writes about this attempt at transcending conditionedness in Truth and Method, affirming that the focus on subjectivity is a distorting mirror and that history does not belong to us, we belong to it (278, there is no such thing as a point outside history from which the identity of a problem can be conceived). Also, the "overcoming of all prejudices ... will itself prove to be a prejudice." The way around this is to acknowledge one's own particularity, i.e., to know that one has a horizon: learning to look beyond what is close at hand by seeing it better, not by looking away from it (303-4). In a passage that I think beautifully explains the relevance of historical texts, he writes:

When our historical consciousness transposes itself into historical horizons, this does not entail passing into alien world unconnected in any way with our own; instead, they together constitute the one great horizon that moves from within and that, beyond the frontiers of the present, embraces the historical depths of our self-consciousness. ... Our own past and that other past toward which our historical consciousness is directed help to shape this moving horizon out of which human life always lives and which determines it as heritage and tradition.

The emphasis here being on collaboration, as man is always subject - to history. To discount or deny this subjectivity is actually to forget how to speak. To discount the story as Forster did is to deny the answers that are attempted in narrative (he called it primitive: "The more we look at the story, the less we shall find to admire ... Neanderthal man listened to stories…"). Gadamer writes, "It is not that the understanding is subsequently put into words; rather, the way understanding occurs ... is the coming-into-language of the thing itself." (370-1)
Stories and myths are this birth place, and there are myths that are as sophisticated as dialectics.

One anthology of stories on human comport that does not presume to rise above the conditions when it was written, that rather speaks to them, is Valerius Maximus' first century Memorable Deeds and Sayings, which I learned about most through Henry John Walker's introduction to his translation: "It is his very refusal to perform a historical critique of Roman ideals that makes Valerius Maxiimus such a valuable historical source for the worldview of the Romans." Indeed, Walker notes that Maximus does not claim to present an accurate description of the past (which Walker's footnotes reveal) but to provide moral guidance for their inner lives. Walker quotes Maximus' preface: "What person in his right mind would hope that he could record the course of Roman and foreign history, which has been treated by previous writers in an elegant style, and do so either with greater attention to detail or with more striking eloquence?"
We learn from Walker's footnotes that the liberties Maximus takes are quite amusing, for example, he calls Aristotle "thirsting for glory", allowing his "student" Theodectes to publish his work on rhetoric as his own, later revoking this honour - when really, Theodectes was his predecessor, and Aristotle had written a summary of his work, later referring to this summary. Perhaps this is an example of what Walker defines in the beginning as the Roman "fairness" in citing "foreigners" where they were great, yet at the same time, often portraying the same as being boastful, compulsive liars, and corruptly decadent. And as such, a portrait of the Roman world is achieved.
This may demonstrate Gadamer's point of the use of not looking away from - if not looking beyond.

This week I was musing over the number of guidebooks for behaviour that I know of from the ancient world (nb. dilettante that I am). Memorable Deeds and Sayings was one such guidebook, but another that I learned of from Lendering's AHM (which I'd like to plug) is second century Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights. It begins similarly to Maximus' work in its modest claims. In an entertaining passage on the titles of other books, he explains that his is "merely from the time and place of my winter's vigils; I thus fall as far short of all other writers in the dignity too even of my title, as I do in care and in elegance of style." He explains that his work is to furnish "a quick and easy short-cut" and "lead active and alert minds to a desire for independent learning ... or would save those who are already fully occupied with the other duties of life from an ignorance of words and things which is assuredly shameful and boorish."
Indeed, it was once boorish to be without knowledge of tradition.
But as I was typing all these things down, prepared to add to a list of books on behaviour works like the Enchiridion, it occurred to me that all of these books bear a stoic bent. Which may be just coincidence as this list is random and not reflective of a knowledge of the field - but does raise the question of who is concerned with "the riddles of mankind" and the objectives of his quondam ethics (for, ethics are often the part left unsaid in modern narrative: the unsaid being one of the features of modern prose).
What one derides as priggishness another calls the economy of action, according to which freedom, like the horizon around a person, comes with limits, e.g. the concessions a ruler must make to retain power - to return to the message that Champollion deciphered. Though it sounds like an old story, the only reason I can think of why we would find "less to admire" in it the more we look at it is if we were tired of the human experience and horizons; of having a place and speaking from it.

Book in background: Amy Butler's Midwest Modern; 

brush: fall foliage by Creature Comfrots.

Shock Value

Heidegger's words are stinging in my ears: "Everything looks as if it were genuinely understood, genuinely taken hold of, genuinely spoken, though at bottom it is not; or else it does not look so, and yet at bottom it is." He writes in Being and Time (217) about an ambiguity that disempowers us, tempts us into a groundless floating. "Idle talk" and the "public" confuses and distracts us...so it is that we think we know what we do not, and vice versa.
As I think about this, though, I wonder at how much bombast has obscured some souls throughout the ages, warranting several passages even in Longinus' centuries'-old On the Sublime. Leaving aside the wonderful examples he criticises (which remind me of Aristotle's criticism of some verse: to my nescient eye, sometimes this verse has merit - though "vomiting to heaven" does sound "burlesque"), he writes, "Such expressions, and such images, produce an effect of confusion and obscurity, not of energy; and if each separately be examined under the light of criticism, what seemed terrible gradually sinks into absurdity."
Longinus attributes these faults in writing to "the pursuit of novelty in thought". The attempt to "apply this principle to literature" is the cause of success and also failure. Longinus differentiates between "the true and the false sublime". It seems to me that man keeps rewriting such manuals, updated to the latest sophistry, following the novelty factor. An earlier example could be Plato's Euthydemus, which juxtaposes eristics (the practice of refuting any argument) with elenctics (Socratic questions that promote what is today called autonomous learning). Socrates says of those who would criticise the two brothers who demonstrate eristics although these critics would be unable to hold their own in conversation with them that they have "colour rather than truth" (305e). Yet one might observe this same "colour" in the brothers in Euthydemus: they "care not a straw for what they say, but merely fasten on any phrase that turns up" (305a). We remember Heidegger: "Everything looks as if it were genuinely understood". It is not understood but it has colour: it is not the voice of the philosophical initiate who can converse with novelty, even at the expense of looking stupid sometimes (Longinus explains the inevitability of such), to ultimately expose any legerdemain.

Legerdemain means to be sleight of hand, quick to perform a trick. And maybe Plato plays one on us - for the man Socrates criticises at the end for having colour, not truth and for being half-versed in everything and so not well-versed in anything bears the same traits as the two brothers, who he describes in the beginning of this dialogue as "all-round sportsmen" who have acquired "such a faculty ... for wielding words as their weapons and confuting any argument as readily [272b] if it be true as if it be false". Still, Socrates finishes this passage by saying: "However, we ought to be indulgent towards their ambition and not feel annoyed, while still judging them to be what they actually are. For we should be glad of anyone, whoever he may be, who says anything that verges on good sense, and labours steadily [306d] and manfully in its pursuit." Emphasis added: there is to be some criteria, acknowledgment of the existence of the legerdemain.
Gadamer writes, "a sharp distinction needs to be drawn from mere trick and legerdemain. Even in them something is to be understood. It can be conceptualized; it can be imitated. It even tries to be adept and good. ... The dividing line between a work of art and piece of artifice may be quite fluid, and often contemporaries may not know whether the charm of a production is a mere trick or artistic richness."
An illustration of what may require such discernment could be Sokal's Hoax, which I admittedly have only read around, and which seems to be encapsulated in the title of a book Sokal co-wrote after writing a fake paper that was actually published in a journal although it was a satire seeking to expose Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science.

I read scientist Steven Weinberg's assessment and was struck by one passage: "I don't mean to say that this part of Sokal's satire was unjustified. His targets often take positions that seem to me (and I gather to Sokal) to make no sense if there is an objective reality. To put it simply, if scientists are talking about something real, then what they say is either true or false. If it is true, then how can it depend on the social context of the scientist? If it is false, how can it help to liberate us? The choice of scientific question and the method of approach may depend on all sorts of extrascientific influences, but the correct answer when we find it is what it is because that is the way the world is. Nevertheless, it does no good to satirize views that your opponent denies holding."
(How reminiscent this is of the "method" Socrates professes to learn in Euthydemus, where he is instructed to answer to the meaning he conceives in the words even though he cannot tell what he is being asked 295b-.)
The issue at stake, the social and the scientific, is important, particularly because a unity has been claimed, even though not so long ago, C. P. Snow reluctantly assessed there were "two cultures", literature and science, giving many arguments as to their mutual alienation. He concludes by arguing for social truth, which brings us back to Plato's Socrates. Or Heidegger's warning that we understand what we think we do not and vice versa. Where is the trick - we know there will be a school of such: it is illustrated in Plato and Longinus and cautioned against in Heidegger and Gadamer.
We know it will be manifest in the language, and will attempt to say something new and even attempt to astound. Just like any good metaphor, one might add, the trick aspires to be the mistake that sets things right. Or maybe the metaphor is just a mistake!

Longinus, pre-echoing Heidegger, as it were, writes of the importance of loftiness of the soul (viz. "venturesome souls") and cites an example from Plato: "They, therefore, who have no knowledge of wisdom and virtue, whose lives are passed in feasting and similar joys, are borne downwards, as is but natural, and in this region they wander all their lives; but they never lifted up their eyes nor were borne upwards to the true world above". A characteristic of writing that "takes a strong and lasting hold on the memory" is the poetical image which is "designed to astound". Longinus continues: "When we survey the whole circle of life, and see it abounding everywhere in what is elegant, grand, and beautiful, we learn at once what is the true end of man’s being ... he keeps his hommage for what is astounding".
That may be man's promise. But he also warns of the "gorgeous exterior" that is a "mere false and clumsy pageant, which if laid open will be found to conceal nothing but emptiness". Accordingly, this phrase should induce some sort of shock - like the violent encounter of enemy soldiers from which the word "shock" derives. There is value in that which is laboured "steadily and manfully" but the question is to whom the value goes. Maybe, in the strange economy of language, with its legitimate worldly exchange rate, it goes to everyone.

Experience, Experiment

In Truth and Method, Gadamer writes about a "dialectic of experience" which requires an openness to experience, which is in opposition to knowledge. "In experience all dogmatism which proceeds from the soaring desires of the human heart reaches an absolute barrier." The experienced person acquires new openness to new experiences, which does not mean that the experience has ceased and a higher form of knowledge is reached (as per Hegel) but that for the first time, experience really and truly is. What does this "experience" look like? I think a picture of it can be found in Plato's Protagoras, which as a whole - i.e. through the sum of caution, genre, misappropriation, joking refutation and mimicry, and dialectics - shows (to quote Gadamer, on a general point about Plato) "there is no argumentatively adequate criterion by which to distinguish between truly philosophical and sophistic discourse" (i.e., just because something can be disproved does not necessarily exclude its being true). In the Protagoras, Socrates asks Protagoras the famous sophist to speak more concisely and stick to the matter at hand - and satirically goes on to imitate those very traits in a rather funny way (ridiculous specious argument, absurd claims) and as the dialogue unfolds, takes Protagoras' view at the start of the dialogue (and Protagoras, Socrates'). Answers to this unusual drama light up in flashes, suggested, not dogmatic, something is experienced to do with the impasse of words and reason - something I have been feeling of late, which has reduced me to silence.

I. Dramatic Contrasts: Education vs. "Education"
By way of makeshift summary, Protagoras begins with a warning about choosing teachers, for one chooses physical trainers with deliberation, and learning is more consequential than that, the effects of it left on the soul. Socrates goes with his young friend wanting to study under Protagoras to visit the man, and Socrates asks what a student may expect from him: the answer being, to better run affairs (of self, city) and to become better daily. Socrates wonders if it is indeed true that virtue can be taught because some parents fail to make their children better. Protagoras answers in a fable - about Epimetheus and Prometheus, ending with Zeus sending Hermes to end squabbling among men by distributing the civic art equally among men. That men believe virtue can be taught, Protagoras says, is proved by the fact that men get angry when justice is not upheld.
An ensuing discussion examines the "parts" of virtue (justice, temperance, holiness, courage), with the sophist being vague and Socrates pushing for precision (333d). He is met by Protagoras flip-flopping the argument, by maintaining an opposite opinion not necessarily relevant to the conversation (334a). Here, Socrates asks Protagoras to speak in shorter answers (since after all he claims to be an expert on form, 335b); Socrates says he is pressed for time and motions to leave but the audience does not let him.
On resuming the discussion, Protagoras begins not by giving his own thoughts on the matter but by citing a verse by Simonides, which he claims contradicts itself. This stymies Socrates, who involves an audience member in a ridiculous claim (341c) that he retracts and then faux-analyses (342b-) the poem by giving faux-arguments (that Simonides is content with what isn't evil so wouldn't have criticised the poet Pittacus' lines in his poem if what he had written wasn't such a great lie, or, the dogmatic stance that the poet meant there is a difference between being and becoming good - it seems to me this is fooling) longwindedly, with glimmers of truth (e.g. the abstract idea of that being/becoming idea when removed from the context of parody, or the concept that a good man withholds negative comment on things close to him).
This whole thing is ironic, because it is standing on the principle of education, the educated meant to know poetry, yet this knowledge is abused by the contrarian approach taken to it. Socrates then says that they should stop talking about poetry, which is like the flute girls used by common folk at wine parties to cover up for what they do not have to say: and since Socrates and Protagoras are "thorough gentlemen who have had a proper education ... men of culture" (347d-e). Socrates prevails upon Protagoras to speak for himself what he means (and this is where he ends up speaking the opposite to what he meant at the beginning). "Uncover more of your thoughts," Socrates significantly asks (352b).
The question of whether knowledge can govern a man is raised, given the problem of people who know better following their passions and doing harmful things. The problem is also raised that most people, who take the generally held view, would not be able to follow the conversation that ensues between these two interlocutors (e.g. 352b, 354e). I think the culmination is at 356d, where a distinction is drawn between measurement and appearance, which is why it is so significant that men err through a "defect of knowledge" 357b, because so much of what looks like measurement is actually appearance, appearance being acted out in this dialogue.

To end this summary, some lines from Jowett's introduction to the dialogue, which informed my understanding: In Protagoras, "There are dramatic contrasts and interests, threads of philosophy broken and resumed, satirical reflections on mankind, veils thrown over truths which are lightly suggested, and all woven together in a single design, and moving towards one end. ... The opposition between [Protagoras] and Socrates is not the opposition of good and bad, true and false, but of the old art of rhetoric and the new science of interrogation and argument; also of the irony of Socrates and the self-assertion of the Sophists. There is quite as much truth on the side of Protagoras as of Socrates; but the truth of Protagoras is based on common sense and common maxims of morality, while that of Socrates is paradoxical or transcendental, and though full of meaning and insight, hardly intelligible to the rest of mankind. ... to a great extent Protagoras has the best of the argument and represents the better mind of man. ...  The force of argument, therefore, and not Socrates or Protagoras, has won the day.  ... Plato means to say that virtue is not brought to a man, but must be drawn out of him; and cannot be taught by rhetorical discourses or citations from the poets."

II. An Experiment Lending Experience
So it is that this dialogue may be considered the "dialectic of experience" as opposed to knowledge because of the form in which it is presented. Any dogmatism of Protagoras (like of taking opposite stands) reaches the impasse of Socrates' imitation. Imitation is again flipped, the horizon of inquiry flashes, as Socrates proposes he and Protagoras imitate "thorough gentlemen who have a proper education", where, interestingly, Protagoras now imitates Socrates.
But it is not just a dialogue of opposites; not just about how (like Zeno's Eleatic dialectic) things change and become their opposite as one consistently thinks them through, but presents a hermeneutical experience, a happening. Problems with statements are revealed: they hide the horizon of meaning. (I cite Gadamer in this paragraph.)
While something is learned in Protagoras, it is far from dogmatic. It is forwarded that knowledge can be measurement, estimation of what is good, yet it is also forwarded that there is much appearance that leads to error. Can discernment be taught? The dialogue is not explicit so encourages interpretation, which is "necessary when the meaning of the text cannot be immediately understood where one is not prepared to trust what phenomenon is immediately present to us" to quote Gadamer. We are drawn into the dialectic, "the art of forming concepts through working out the common meaning" which is what the sum of Protagoras and Socrates (and all the other speakers in the dialogue present).
In contrast to the shallow analysis of Simonides' poem (it seemed more of a joke than serious to me, though I defer to Jowett who said it is uncertain how much of it is foolery), we are drawn into the experience of the dialogue and to "question the horizon of the question ... must go behind what is said" to arrive at meaning. The search for the meaning of a text, Gadamer writes, the hermeneutical undertaking, differs from reconstructing what an author had in mind (what Protagoras and Socrates did), which is a "limited undertaking".
It is significant that this experience of the process of the attempt to understand comes via dialogue. Gadamer writes of conversation that every conversation presupposes or creates a common language: something must be placed in the center they both share (this is taken to an extreme in Protagoras). In this way, ideas may be exchanged. Like Jowett wrote, the force of the argument, not the interlocutors, "wins the day" - this is because, to quote Gadamer, "in successful conversation they both come under the influence of the truth of the object and thus bound to one another in new community" and are transformed. A conversation is like interpretation because it is a circle closed by the dialectic of question and answer.
In this way, the four square man in Simonides' poem is met by a circle into which we are drawn. An experience of Plato's experiment. I have more to say about all this, in connection with Anne Carson's reading of the dialogue, but I am not sure if I should post more.

Magazine in background: Marie Claire Idees; brush: Ewansim at DeviantART.

 

Marble on Wood

John O'Donohue speaks of, "secret unattached places" beyond "'he does this, she says that'" where there is a "being together beyond professional banter". If it is so hard to get along, perhaps this place can be tendered through humour, because the whole point of this otherness is that it can only be offered and certainly not pushed, because (to interpret O'Donohue) fixed energy quickly becomes bland, "the bland intrusion of a thing which is fascist". Marble on wood: it's cool on warm, shiny on absorbent, a trick I learned from food meant for the imagination as much as for the blood stream (commentary on the phenomenon here deferred).This, in effect, is humour, a phenomenon upon which Edward de Bono is fascinatingly in agreement with Sufism. He writes (Mechanism of the Mind) that stories establish patterns of thought but that jokes, i.e. laughter, allow for new connections to be made in the brain, by taking a different route than normal. He also notes about jokes (I Am Right You Are Wrong) that while they rely on an established story to disrupt, once they have become as familiar as the story, they cease to be funny (I would add, unless the delivery is immaculate). What I am interested in here is in breaking a pattern - without just running away (patterns have a funny way of following a person, anyway).

There are a few lines I am not sure that I understand in Hamlet: "Tis danger when the baser nature comes Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposite". I have removed these lines from context, contemplating images of what they might mean (please do comment/send an email - above left if you might enlighten me). Without wanting to sound trite, I think that part of my job in life is to try to find metaphors to link disparate themes, uncouth clashing. And I suppose that the easiest way to do this is to abstract out, in the same way that many bridges rise up towards the sky: there is an incline. The Hamlet quote implies that other connections can be made that are not so noble, where 'opposite', instead of being seen as an invitation to the imagination, or to humour, is seen as a route to clash. Here I see Athena rise up: only warring when she really must. Otherwise, she uses wisdom. And I am beginning to surprise myself by thinking that an important dimension to wisdom (which I always imagined as curmudgeonly) is humour.
Because wisdom is not a popular attribute among contemporary thinkers, I will cite two thinkers from the past on this subject: John Chrysostom and Rumi. The former was known for "peppering" his sermons with humour, which does not mean that he thought it should be used unreservedly. He notes in Homily XV, On the Priesthood, that "laughter often gives birth to foul discourse" and that humour as "those things that are indifferent" can, if unchecked, lead to trouble, just like luxury, if immoderate, leads to all kinds of extremes. But as one not promoting extremities but Aristotle's golden mean, he sees a place for humour, and used it himself. In Homily XV, Hebrews ix, he writes, "There is no harm in laughter; the harm is when it is beyond measure, and out of season. ... Laughter has been implanted in our soul, that the soul may sometimes be refreshed, not that it may quite be relaxed."
This latter distinction is not something I have experience to write about; rather, I am interested in the point made about refreshment. Release from old patterns, making space for something new: creativity.

As for Rumi, his role in this discussion is made clear by the title of a book by Idries Shah, Special Illumination: The Sufi use of humour (wikipedia). In this book, which I read as far as the Google program would let me, Shah cites Plato, from Laws VII, where the Athenian says, "serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites" (I am reminded of the Hamlet lines). Here, Shah speaks of the "humourless bully", which perhaps describes one's worst workplace nightmare, though, surely, few people are consistent extremes.
An example of one joke in Shah's book is as follows: "An oil-drilling millionaire went to a dentist who said, 'Which tooth do you want me to deal with?' 'Oh,' said the tycoon, 'drill away anywhere, I feel lucky today!'" This, Shah explains, is called putting the situation in another context (and corresponds with the definition of humour by de Bono at the incipit of this post).
What I found in Shah that I did not find elsewhere was the point that some people, who invest too much "capital" in their "exercises" fail to see humour in jokes like the one above. But people are seeking out food like marble on wood...
Tasteful humour ostensibly provides relief and is at the very least a personal offering for another route to be taken.

Brush: Ewansim at DeviantART.

Words Resembling Ambrosia

It was like a dream, for who believes it when in the midst of work a person gets a fever and their computer conks out like a mythical tree from the Ramayana falling away from Hanuman, in Book V, Sundara Kanda. One of the first things one might do might be to seek this song, sung, among others, by Vishaka Hari, who had quit her day job because she wanted to devote herself to carrying the tradition forward. And her telling of Hanuman is to represent him as the epitome of service-and as a great orator; reflect on his speeches, she says, and you do not need to attend courses on communication. It is her telling of the story, though, that can lead us back to it, just as John O'Donohue speaking and reading his poems rekindles a faith in the possibility of making through words.
In Book IV of the Ramayana but in Vishaka Hari's Sundara Kanda is a scene of recognition, where Hanuman recognizes the divine qualities of Rama; recognition itself being a religious concept, I think, but also ancient where ancient means time, if we think of the time and attention given to guests, symbolised in the tesserae hospitalis, the tokens in ancient times that were broken in two, to be reunited as one when the same people or their kin reencountered. Tokens, the first encounter, suggest the importance of preparation for that threshold of recognition. O'Donohue speaks of the importance of how we cross thresholds, whether we are ready, or worthy. Perhaps to work too hard is unworthy, and not an example of what is the motto on his posthumous site: "Each of us is an artist of our days. The greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become."
There is a message about intent of purpose in Sundara Kanda, summarised incredibly by Vishaka Hari when she says that no one needs to enter the crooked, narrow streets at all, but just the highway of Dharma; that to take the crooked street is to get caught. As the soul is pregnant with meaning, we are to grow in order. This is illustrated in the book by Hanuman's "order" of supporting heavenly order: when he is unsure of how to speak to the captured Sita, he begins by praising the Rajarshis, which comply with this purpose. When he enters the palace of Sita's captor, and sees all his wives sleeping, wondering if he has transgressed, he realises that he has not lost sight of his single purpose and his passions had not been stirred by them: "The mind is the motive power of every movement of the senses, whether it be good or evil and mine remains untroubled".

If we wonder how to cross our own seas, as Hanuman does to reach Sita, we learn of his model humility coupled with confidence. Just the former means inefficiency, the latter, conceitedness: this is how he gets things done.
When he loses his calm, at the very end, and sets the city on fire ("In anger one may even slay one's spiritual preceptor" and affront virtuous men), he still-going back to Vishaka Hari's retelling-has a chance to take the Dharmic path, for which it is never too late. Even Ravana, the captor, is given chances, first by Sita, then Hanuman, then Ravana's brother, then the city is burned...
This text brings a cure through colours, too, rather like the colours against the threat of disappearance in death in O'Donohue's Beannacht: "when the ghost of loss gets into you, May a flock of colours, Indigo, red, green, And azure blue Come to awaken in you". In Sundara Kanda the colours appear in the white, rose, purple, blue, yellow, black clouds that Hanuman disappears into and becomes visible out of as he flies to and fro to Sita's place of enslavement.
But it is not a place of enslavement. As Vishaka Hari puts it, and as we learn by reading, Sita could have destroyed the city, but was waiting patiently for Ravana to change. Ravana, who had deceived her by putting on a disguise. Ravanna, who everyone says is versed in the Veda, who is even chanting it when he comes to visit Sita in the Sundara Kanda, but who does not show himself to be intelligent, by committing acts prohibited by the laws of righteousness. It turns out in the end that it was he who was ultimately deceived and not Sita: "Beware of placing thy neck in the noose of death in the form of Sita" his brother counsels; and Hanuman later calls the flames that had been on his tail with which he destroyed the city, "Sita's wrath". How quickly the snare entraps he who sets it: this is worth being remembered, for later.
After Hanuman lost control as he flicked his fiery tail about in a rage, he repents, and as he repents, he "recollects certain auspicious signs". Recollection! He realises fire could not consume the fire of Sita and hears godly voices confirm this. "Such were the words, resembling ambrosia."

Dharma is regained, auspicious signs are recollected through the humility: through courage, intent remains a highway. As for the rhetoric of this singular message, it is like Hanuman in the clouds, at once implicit and hidden and explicit and visible.
It is in part manifest in Hanuman's singularity of purpose, his physical communication across the ocean, and an ever-mindfulness that for the message to be conveyed, he must be ready to adapt to those new circumstances. By association, we might note that in tranlsation, it is so mediocre to just throw words over the seas to their rough equivalents, so much more profitable to weigh them and convert them into their syn of kin, which admittedly requires knowing the local market fluctations as well as one's own. Hanuman notes twice in almost the exact same words: "Undertakings often fail through an incompetent messenger unable to take advantage of time and place, as darkness is overcome by the rising sun; in such cases, whether it concerns the accomplishment or avoidance of any matter, the most widely planned projects do not succeed." This is summed up by the question of intent behind his actions: "How shall the crossing of the ocean not prove to have been useless?" It is not enough to do, one is to do that which is fruitful.
Actions are complex, and clouded, because singularity of purpose requires the right interpretation of signs. After all, this is what ostensibly ensnares Sita, who is protected by her intentions and so also by Dharma, but truly ensnares Ravana.
Observe the difficulties even Hanuman had in recognising Sita, who he had come to save: "Entangled in a mighty web of sorrow, her beauty was veiled like ... a traditional text obscured by dubious interpretation ... Beholding Sita in that pitiable state, Hanuman was perplexed as one whose learning is lost for lack of sustained endeavour and, seeing her without ornaments, he recognised her with difficulty as a text that is wrongly construed. .... She resembled a great reputation that has been lost or a faith that has been disregarded or a mind that has become clouded or a hope destroyed, a future shattered, an order misinterpreted".
There may be such necessary beauty in the trials of what must ultimately fall away: a computer for a time, health through overstrain or oversorrow, even meaning, but what beauty is then gathered up again in the right intent, on the Dharma highway that leads across oceans, effortlessly. Even the fasting Sita who had been led astray is ultimately recognised and restored to be the exalted being that she is, and one with transformative powers.

Magazine in background: Marie Claire Idees.