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

Here or Nowhere

The title is from Horace's Epistulae (1.17). It is a contested poem - Fraenkel thought it entirely ought of character for Horace, calling it "upsetting". It is definitely jolting; perhaps it is better to avoid any final conclusions. What I will share here is my understanding of it in recent times.
There are so many things I like about this poem, not least how it begins by the offering of teaching from one who yet "has much to learn". I like how this can be seen to compliment Seneca's disendo discimus - and other approaches to pedagogy that I am writing about in my book.
What is so shocking about the poem is that Horace criticises Diogenes' refusal to interact with the rich as being a form of excess: showing Aristippus as superior, for he can wear rags, as does Diogenes, albeit if circumstance requires, but he can also wear fine garb and eat fine meals. So the poem can be seen to promote parasitism (dining at the expense of the rich) over genuine friendship as the nature of the relations in this poem that are advised are of a purely worldly nature.
Stephanie McCarter's very enjoyable Horace Between Freedom and Slavery suggests that Horace in some of these epistles is the concept of the Aristotelian golden mean, which she writes goes

back to Hesiod. Wilson defines the term as 'the area between too much and too little' and as the 'opposite of excess' ... Aristippus has captured both the adaptability and the moderation that ought to be exercised in every situation.

In 1.17, "Aristippus offers a way of accommodating one's longings for public life and friendship with the great without sacrificing one's independence or consistency of character." This reminds me of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, where the Flyte mother discusses how wealth is not incompatible with the sacred (112-113).

I will be discussing this passage and these citations in my book. But what I want to write about here is the tension between friendship with the great/all the people who one can find in the world and contemplative withdrawal (the critics who do not like 1.17 feel Horace's allegiance to lie exclusively in the latter). Is Horace being sarcastic in the second part of this epistle as some say? Attacking the pursuit of profit? Or is amicitia with great men a test of virtue and modesty?
These are questions that are most relatable, and may represent tension felt from adolescence onwards: does one have a sarcastic relation to the world made by les gens du monde - and so is it the life well-lived to withdraw entirely? Or is it not necessary, foremost for oneself, one's own well-being, to be part of this potentially superficial world? To enter it, it is suggested, is a test.
The phrase "here or nowhere", where it appears in the epistle, becomes a symbol of the acceptance of the validity of participation. Because of this, I use it as my chat app motto: it is the admission that an outer face - while exposed to intricate traps (that even Diogenes could fall into, with his performance art exaggerations performed publicly) - is necessary for the holistic life.
This corresponds with Emerson's thought in "Self Reliance": "It is easy in the world to live after the  world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst  of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
It can be seen that this tension is a timeless concern, but its implications and the shape of the trials associated with worldly life in this time in history are (as always) particular and do need especial thought and discernment (to say the least).
This is a tension that I have tried to bring forth (cf. maieutics) in my classes, in one way or another, over the years. Admission of whatever the topics of the moment are is integral to my courses, which are therefore always changing (they also change to attempt to cater to students' needs). But these aspects of the course are never the whole course, just a part of it.
And to that end, some of the links in this week's B/Logrolling section will likely end up being addressed in class (I am still finalising the syllabus).

B/Logrolling

A Letter From Hong Kong: I admit that from my distance, I did not immediately understand all of the angles of this situation, and this short piece is the best that I have seen. This passage in particular gives pause for thought:

Nor, sadly, can Hong Kong youth expect solidarity from the most militant of Western university students and faculty. They lost their taste for freedom years ago. Israel is apparently a bigger offense to their sensibilities than Communist China (or Iran). In all significant respects, these Westerners are the opposite of the young people I know. While Hong Kong students detest Communism, many of their Western counterparts embrace Marxism. While Western post-colonialists deride Western civilization, Hong Kongers wish they could have more of it. When Hong Kong students talk of a safe-space they mean a shelter from tear-gas and rubber bullets, not a refuge from offensive words. A trigger warning is not a professor’s presage of a painting by Goya; it is the sound of a revolver shot discharged skywards in the Causeway Bay night.

The site of Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants, with links to other articles he has written

Privacy is Power by Carissa Véliz (edited by Nigel Warburton - I am quickly becoming a fan, though have followed him for quite some time as he produces Philosophy Bytes, which has had quite a few good programs, some of which, back in the day, I used in my classes)

Who I'd like to have over at a dinner party (I have not introduced the concept for this section of B/Logrolling very well: what I mean to do here is to introduce 'content producers' [for lack of better name] whose sites are not on my static, standalone B/Logroll page):
Tim Hurst, host of WFMU's Techtonic podcast

Brush

Real and Fake

I had no idea about just what kind of things are being copied these days - nor about the volume of fakes circling the world in shipping containers. Learning of this reminded me of a Deleuze and Krauss passage, which I reread to find just how accurately it foreshadowed this glut of 'simulacra' clogging the ocean. Of course, they were writing to 'overthrow Plato'. But my latest approach to this theory has been to see it as sci-fi: recognising a present trend and then exaggerating it to paint that picture of what would happen if things keep going - unobstructed - along their course: theory is, then, if I may be permitted a reductionist stroke, like an oversized 1980s photograph that has been blown up (not thinking of Cortázar). Remember the novelty? A zooming in, a distortion through the oversized. Us, but not us.
Anyway, here is the passage - first with the definition of "copy" vs. "simulacrum", then the passage itself. Does it not remind you of the profusion of fakes?
After that, this week's links.

Copies are secondhand possessors, well-grounded claimants, authorized by resemblance. Simulacra are like false claimants, built on a dissimilitude, implying a perversion, an essential turning away. It is in this sense that Plato divides the domain of the image-idols in two: on the one hand the iconic copies (likenesses), on the other the phantasmatic simulacra (semblances). (...)
In the overthrow of Platonism (...) The nonhierarchical work is a condensation of coexistences, a simultaneity of events. It is the triumph of the false claimant. (...) But the false claimant cannot be said to be false in relation to a supposedly true model, any more than simulation can be termed an appearance, an illusion. Simulation is the phantasm itself, that is, the effect of the operations of the simulacrum as machinery, Dionysiac machine. It is a matter of the false as power, Pseudos, in Nietzsche's sense when he speaks of the highest power of the false. The simulacrum, in rising to the surface, causes the Same and the Like, the model and the copy, to fall under the power of the false (phantasm). It renders the notion of hierarchy impossible in relation to the idea of the order of participation, the fixity of distribution, and the determination of value. It sets up the world of nomadic distributions and consecrated anarchy. Far from being a new foundation, it swallows up all foundations, it assures a universal collapse, but as a positive and joyous event, as de-founding (effondement).
Deleuze, Gilles and Rosalind Krauss. "Plato and the Simulacrum." October, Vol. 27 (Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56

Compare the passage with: Les nouveaux mercenaires du faux - Documentaire: Les faussaires ne se contentent plus d'imiter les sacs ou les polos de marque. Ils ont infiltré l'agroalimentaire avec des mayonnaises, des sodas ou des plats cuisinés d'origine douteuse. (The blurb doesn't quite capture the craziness of the overflowing of fakes it shows.)

B/Logrolling:

Two more documentaries, the first on Linky: Des milliers de Français refusent l’arrivée de ce nouveau compteur dans leur foyer, et certains affirment même vivre un enfer depuis son installation. Tous craignent que cet appareil "intelligent" ne collecte toutes leurs données personnelles… (A more interesting point, only brought up in passing, is how the electricity infrastructure was built before we all started to use the internet and plug in dozens of 'extra' gadgets.)

The second on "anti-consos": Les « décroissants » : consommer moins pour vivre mieux  Les sociologues les appellent les « décroissants », en France ils sont de plus en plus nombreux à refuser de consommer toujours plus. Ils refusent la spirale de la société de consommation.

For Wittgenstein, Philosophy Had to Be as Complicated as the Knots it Unties Making Sense of Nonsense, From Bertrand Russell to the Existentialists

The American Aristotle Charles Sanders Peirce was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician and scientist. His polymathic work should be better known 

I also wanted to write about Jeremy Brett's onstage poise and gesture, perfected in Sherlock Holmes. The way he moves is like measured dancing. How you would dance if you were not actually dancing but wanted to use your body for expression. Of course, this is taught in drama, but Brett worked on his style for decades, as suggested by this early musical, The Merry Widow (what a voice he has!) His individual flair is so far removed from today's normcore: I hear that Smoky the Bear may get a new motto (from "Only you can prevent wildfires" to something with a collective "we").

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.

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.

"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers"

I recently watched the televised version of J. B. Priestley's Summer Day's Dream, starring John Gielgud, which was thoroughly enjoyable both as a piece and for its performance. It is an example of art that remains timely long after the time of its production. For example, it speaks to the temptations of materialism and the problems of vested interests that attempt to bury the good life:
"It all ends in other people's confusion and  misery in a hopeless muddle of values. If you want to throw your life away for the sake of plastic ash-trays, that's your affair" (1). "You cant go shopping for a good life. You have to live it." (2) This is difficult because, "There is an old tried pattern, a faded map offering some chance of happiness, and still they pay men to rule thick hues across it." (3)

The play reminded me a lot of Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us" - and even addresses the problem of poetry.
Stephen: There was a time when I  didn't care for [poetry].
Rosalie: What was wrong with you?
Stephen: I think I was ill. Most of us were. But l didn't know it.
Rosalie: But now you're all right.
Stephen: Yes — except that I'm very old.
If we feel that we, too, are too old, we ought to abide by Rosalie's diagnosis, that it is possible for "something lost and innocent" to be about us, "like a sort of old baby puzzled but still hopeful". (4)

But ultimately the point of the film is in the 'poetry'; whether one sees this "late and soon", whether one can see release to the "getting and spending" Wordsworth warned of, whether one has the vision to see through the hopeless vision of the hopeless muddle of values in order to attain the timeless poetry of the good life ("For what can there be above the man who rises above fortune?" asks Seneca, who then cites "the cry of the greatest poets" for us to "live right now ... 'If you don't seize the day, it slips away'" [5]). Lest you think I am reading classical studies into the play, compare what are perhaps the most famous lines of the play with lines by Seneca:
Stephen: Take it easy. I spent more than half my life,  when I ought to have been enjoying myself, arguing and planning and  running round like a maniac, all to sell a lot of things to people I  didn’t know so that I could buy a lot of things I never had time to use.  Sheer lunacy. And it took nothing less than an atom bomb to blow me out of it. (6)
Seneca: "Calculate how much of your time has been taken up by a moneylender,  how much by a mistress, how much by a patron, how much by a client, how much in arguing with your wife, in punishing your slaves, in  running about the city on social duties. Add to your calculations the  illnesses that we've inflicted on ourselves, and also the time that has  lain idle: you'll see that you've fewer years than you count. Look back and recall when you were ever sure of your purpose; how few days turned out as you'd intended; when you were ever at your own disposal; when your face showed its own expression; when your mind was free from disturbance; what accomplishment you can claim in such a long life; how many have plundered your existence without your being aware of what you were losing; how much time has been  lost to groundless anguish, foolish pleasure, greedy desire, the charms  of society; how little is left to you from your own store of time. You'll  come to realize that you're dying before your time." (7)

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.

Everybody Goes to Them

The titular phrase is lifted from Trollope's The Way We Live Now, with its tales of illusory, new global empires, where a decadent world is infiltrated by a worse economy. What's the title got to do with that? Everybody goes to this pernicious economy. (NB. Spoilers ahead.)
As I was rereading the novel this time round, I was especially struck by the two main currents of where this new, empty world came up against classical references. These also make an interesting contrast against two "currencies" of the internet: "the use of abandoned shells" and the oldie-but-goodie "attention commons" (everyone goes to, ahem clicks on, them).
One assumes that no one wants an illusion covering over not-being-better-off. Before I analyse that deficit, I will present the classical retorts to it, as presented in The Way We Live Now.
The first and most obvious of classical references are the explicit comparisons Trollope makes between the head of the illusory empire, Melmotte, and ancient Rome. Not only did Melmotte's demise involve a toga, but the tragic role this garment was to play was presaged: when the most stable and traditional character of them all, Roger, says: "In Rome they were worshipping just such men as this Melmotte. Do you remember the man who sat upon the seats of the knights and scoured the Via Sacra with his toga, though he had been scourged from pillar to post for his villainies? I always think of that man when I hear Melmotte's name mentioned. Hoc, hoc tribuno militum!" (Citing Horace Epode 4.20: that man?! that man?! for officer!!)

The second is part of my favourite passage of the book, and which happens to include the above presage. It is an exchange between Roger and a Bishop, with the latter saying that from his pulpit-perspective, humanity is not degenerating and that Horace, who took such a view, privileged what he saw in front of him over the bigger picture. Roger argues that Horace lived during the decline of Rome, and the Bishop observes that Christ was soon to be born. Then, Roger censures the Romans and Melmotte (quoted above), and the Bishop asks if Roger is certain his accusations are well founded:

"I think I know that they are deserved."
"That is hardly doing to others as you would be done by. If the man is what you say, he will surely be found out at last, and the day of his punishment will come. Your friend in the ode probably had a bad time of it, in spite of his farms and his horses. The world perhaps is managed more justly than you think, Mr Carbury."
"My Lord, I believe you're a Radical at heart," said Roger, as he took his leave.

The Bishop's comment reminds me of Emerson's remark in "Gifts": "it is better to leave to others the office of punishing ... I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies".

But perhaps some readers are confused at my calling this second Trollope excerpt "classical" - here, I draw on the fact that ancient Rome and Greece contributed as much to the history of English literature as Christianity. Take this as you will. But you may also take it with the Emerson. So, returning to the main point, from "classicism" (as I define it), there is both a pessimistic view and a more optimistic one, and - spoiler alert - we find Roger, strangely, despite his 'principles', "happy" at the end of the novel, so the hardline against the mainstream ("everybody's doing it") is softened: the world is perhaps more just, after all, and the decadent, hollow economy can cede gems through decisions to change how we face things.
Speaking of 'hollow' in today's world, we might cite "abandoned shells", a phrase George W.S. Trow coined to describe how people turn to hollowed-out symbols of yesteryear as value symbols, because in the overload of information, markers are needed to select out "winners". The shells are hollow because the public has undermined the role played by editors. I read about it here.
This concept is related to "The tragedy of the Attention Commons", which brings us back to Trollope's ancient Roman portents. The phrase is taken from a Ribbon Farm article by Venkatesh Rao on a solution to this tragedy, "the web of intent". Here's a takeaway phrase that I am sure Roger and the Bishop would approve of: "Information work is still largely manual labor.  The Web of Intent is a roll-up-your-sleeves, grungy, grease-stained “fix-it” vision."
Does anyone want to fix the everyone's-doing-it empty shell? She asked, as she wrote her long-form post for her most-miniature corner of the internet.

Brush: Ewansim via DeviantArt; magazine in background Marie Claire Maison.

Global Amnesia vs. Goethean Relevations

The blog Laudator Temporis Acti cited a few lines from Euripides today in a post entitled: "Transient Global Amnesia". The lines read: "What place did I leave to get here? How did I arrive?/ I cannot remember: my former state of mind has left me." I had written of my own experience of such on my other blog - but the lines reveal the state to be a predicament.
I am still busy, with troubled heart, working my way out of it - and coincidentally today read a beautiful explanation of the phrase τετιημένος ἦτορ, troubled in the heart at Sententiae Antiquae: To be troubled in the heart is essentially to be "occupied with [one's] own thoughts, living in an internal dream rather than engaging in the outside world".
The dreaming is prompted by being faced by a dreaded, constrictive future. The S.A. post ends with a suggestion of the way out from this: a heart that "grows" through "listening to the speech of other men". What speech of other men can cure the effects of global amnesia?
Firstly, it should be pointed out that not all global amnesia is self-inflicted. What of the lives of what I could call "hybrid babies" (taking the Bakhtinian word): those whose earliest and formative years were not steeped in the local? If transient globality is amenesia, what is remembering to one who never "left" to forget in the first place? Finally, what is the local to one who seeks to be a "citizen of the world"?
We know that Goethe, to some extent, popularized such concepts in more modern times. For example, in his Eckermann conversations in which he famously spoke of his idea of world literature, he said: "poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men." The poet is to present, "something higher and better" in a manner intelligible to a place and time (thence, Shakespeare "makes his Romans Englishmen"). There is no superficial adventurism here (we remember, "adventure" was scorned even by Barthes in his essay on "Neither ... Nor Criticism"). Goethe explicitly says the point is not to seek "unheard-of adventures" but to masterfully re-present the wisdom of the ancients. Western cultures should draw on ancient Western wisdom. This is an answer to "global amnesia".

This is also the alethia of "saying" something that "means" (I am quoting Gadamer): saying something that "serves to clarify something". The task of the modern hybrid person is to find such meaning, and I argue that the hybrid person has more at stake to find such meaning, because that meaning is the only home they will ever have. That person knows, too, like what Gadamer via Heidegger, says: "there can never be a total recovery of meaning" (emphasis added). But this is no modern idea! Hadot has done marvelous work in The Veil of Isis tracing the idea that some knowledge will always be concealed existed in various guises from antiquity until quite recently. Hybrid people feel their incompleteness: it is their τετιημένος ἦτορ. Hopefully, though, they find counsel in "the speech of other men" and, like Goethe encouraged, craft something new and "make something of a simple subject". Incidentally, I once blogged of the work of another graduate from one of my boarding schools who made something unique: Mrinalni Sarabhai, who made her culture intelligible to other cultures through dance. One wonders if she understood the needs of the foreign audience through her own early uprooting to that foreign culture, during formative years...

Book in background: Boucher's 1,000 Years of Fashion. Brush: Ewansim via DeviantART.

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.

Not Fool's Gold

Thomas Hardy gives a twist to what is meant by a liberal education in his description of Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles: "Almost at a leap, Tess thus changed ... to a complex woman. Symbols of reflectiveness passed into her face ... Her eyes grew ... more eloquent ... her soul that of a woman whom the turbulent experiences of the last year or two had quite failed to demoralize. But for the world's opinion those experiences would have been simply a liberal education." The education thus affords a straying if also an implied return to golden rules. Heeding the golden rules is difficult because their truth cannot be felt, and is implicitly easy to stray from: "'By experience,' says Roger Ascham, 'we find out a short way by a long wandering.' ... But it had not  been in Tess's power—nor is it in anybody's power—to feel the whole truth of golden opinions while it is possible to profit by them. She—and how many more—might have ironically said to God with St. Augustine: 'Thou hast counselled a better course than Thou hast permitted.'" Where education implies a striving towards ideals, liberal education allows for the (unnecessarily) prolonged empiricism of mistakes made by a sensitive soul (Tess is not just any literary character).
The passage reminded me of Vico's Heroic Mind, where university is described as the cure for students depraved by original sin, ailing in mind and soul to perfect their better nature. In this classical education, poetry is to "calm the uncontrolled turbulence of the imagination", taught alongside, for example, geometry, taught to "hold in check innate errors". Poetry is read for its representations of ideal types, wherein even the wicked, "is most beautiful, because always self-consistent, always true to itself, harmonious in all its parts." By contrast, men in real life fall short, as they are not consistent and do not cohere. Poetry is curative by sharply delineating "the pure ideal type". By comparing a difficult boss to the evil ideal, one might realise the boss's potential for good and set to work to find ways to showcase those aspects. By addressing golden rules even when showing some practical difficulties of practicing what is preached, medicine may be had for the incoherence of lives through lengthy explanation and analysis.
For example, through the character of Tess's suitor, we see how what looks new, "the ache of modernism" is but a new definition of something timeless: "advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition-a more accurate expression, by words in logy and ism, of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries." The novel shows in so many ways how easy it is to get carried away: by sensations, zeitgeist.

Hardy's novel, actually, I really only want to think of the first part, is very much about how much or whether or not one can shake off even the sensation of guilt, which like other sensations roughly guides the actions and makes an incoherent mess of things.
Adding to the problem of self-mastery, by which one can learn to manage sensations, is interference by society which may insidiously stunt this learning. In Hardy's novel, it is suggested that one can even be blinded by university. Through the character of Angel, who was not Cambridge-educated like his brothers, we see its failings (though I think that implicitly we also see its success in that it was Angel who made such tragic life decisions). University produces cogs in machinery, to the church or to academia, and not the well-rounded "hero" Vico describes, who knows physics as well as metaphysics; logic as well as poetry. The university-educated brothers, "whatever their advantages by comparison with [Angel], neither saw nor set forth life as it was really lived." And in this novel, life as it is really lived is a life of mistakes.
It would seem that but few people have the strength of character to accept their mistakes and also to stand up to those who deny the legitimacy of the 'prodigal' education. It is accidental that 'prodigy' sounds so close to 'prodigal', but to play off those words, where the prodigal wastes, the prodigy makes into signs and omens, possibly through the root of aio, I say. Taking this verbal happenstance further, the true liberal education is in part narrative and very much in need of special interpretation because the character is no longer that of the ideal, but is not wasted, being one seeking the ideal, seeking to be filled in by it as much as possible given depravity. It may be that for many fool's gold is hypocritical adoption of golden precepts that does not allow for their difficult and profundity. This is not true of everyone, and certainly not true of anyone at all times, because features like the good if philippic nature of Reverend James Clare must also be explained. If gold is the timeless lessons that keep one safe, fool's gold is the ism and logy of those sensations that can't just be resolved by the mechanical rotations of newness masking through newness the various forms of mistakes and sacrifice, so unfortunately fashionable in their many guises throughout the ages.

Magazine in background: Marie Claire Idees. 
Brush: Ewansim tape at DeviantART.

Calling It, Not!

Tacitus begins his Annals with the remark that, "fine intellects" were "scared away" by "growing sycophancy" (gliscente adulatione). The Latin word conjures the servile movements of the dog, in other words something that man is not. The English word stems from a harsher Greek meaning, "false accuser, slanderer." In other words, again something that is not. Posturing, lies. The fine intellect retreats where words lose currency, which is precisely the stimulus for other intellects prepared to trade semblances and passing desires, flourishing in chaos where there is no stability on which to meaning may be built. C.S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, calls this the difference between propaganda and propagation.
The book contains an appendix in which the "objective truths" shared by various cultures and religions are collected in categories entitled, "The Law of Justice," for example, with subcategories, Sexual Justice, Honesty, Justice in Court, &C., or "The Law of Mercy." These laws correspond to the objective truths or values he calls the Tao, by way of shorthand - which is reminiscent of Robert Neville's "parallel sensitivities." Neither claim the cultures they are considering are the same, but argue that there are very real correspondences in man's experience or understanding of life. Lewis writes that the Tao is wrongly being put on trial by Conditioners who seek to condition mankind to ostensibly conquer nature but in actuality to make man into a raw material not to be controlled by man himself but to be controlled by nature, i.e. the appetite that is characteristic of nature.
In contrast to this is the Tao according to which values are preferred to impulses. It is like a tree "branching out ... into ever new beauties ... of application" and is in this way the Tao is something "in which to participate ... to be truly human". It is passed down from generation to generation, a measure that man can seek to live up to. It is clear in this system what man means, but Lewis writes about the modern attempt to judge these values from without, though these values can never be understood if they are to be asked for their "credentials" - they are but premises. Criticism has its place, but from within, by those living the Tao: otherwise, what looks like criticism is actually just hostility, because without participation in the Tao, there is no way to know what it is. Lewis calls the difference in criticism organic (i.e., from within) vs. surgical (i.e., from without). His criticism of the 'outside' critics' attempts to build a new system remind me of Gadamer's thorough critique of the impossibility of the objective viewpoint when applied to humanity in Truth and Method. There is no such thing as a constructed conscience; man is a subject - Lewis writes of the Tao.

The Tao is implicit even in that which is used to attack it (idealism is a fragment of the Tao "swollen to madness"), just as truth-seeking was part of science before the leading spirit of the same became to "subdue reality to the wishes of man". Man may have gained power in the plane or wireless, but he also became a target of both bombs and propaganda. He became a target due to lack of consideration of value. "When we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgement of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity."
Indeed, it is easier to play the sycophant than to be that stick in the mud who continuously stops to ask questions and reevaluate the values inherent in a situation. Yet it is precisely where humans share similar abstract orientations that stability affords the construction of meaning. Man in this instance is not abstracted (he is the Tao tree, branching out in new beauties of application) but shares an abstract vision, such as general orientation for what it means to be "good".
If there is no agreement on that, then we cannot speak of "good" workers in the workplace; the concept became redundant and is replaced by an insidious shifting landscape suited to adolatio, but this means that those getting by may not be just - or qualified for their jobs, and shoddy work will eventually emerge. I read something similar in a National Review Online article that considers the Confucian 正名, the concept of the rectification of names: "If language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success." And, "the demand for justice is first and foremost a demand that words and reality come back into alignment". Here is the misalignment as described by Lewis: "Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker's van: peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers."
In other words, the abstract space for growth shrinks; and within this deformed network of tsantsas, "virtue has become integration and diligence dynamism". It is an interesting claim: there is nothing wrong with integration, per se; the problem arises because it has been substituted for something it is not. The sycophant is not, in the essence of being, a dog.

Book in background: Amy Butler's Midwest Modern. Brush: Lauren Harrison.