Al Gore got the Nobel Prize for good intentions. All the people complaining about the fact that his documentary played fast and loose with the facts are missing the point of what the Nobel Peace Prize is about. It's not about actually bringing about peace, it's about having good intentions. Or appearing to have good intentions -- at the moment when the prize is given out. How else to explain Yasir Arafat's prize, which, if we used the same criteria for the Nobel as we do for the Olympics, should have had his prize stripped from him when he refused to accept everything he was asking for from Israel (oh, except for the one last thing he came up with precisely to undermine the agreement). And Gore too has done nothing for peace. He hasn't worked against it like Arafat has done, true, but his work ha done and will do nothing for peace.
In fact, there is good evidence that his intended solutions will in fact make the world a more dangerous place insofar as his socialist solutions will make people around the world worst off. Fewer people die in free countries with free markets, and between free countries with free markets. We have wars when we have dictatorships, socialisms of various forms (especially in their extreme forms, like Fascism and Communism), and the cutting off of trade with countries. And then we could get into the terrible track record of socilaist countries vs. free market countries. One could point to the fact that there is less polution in countries with much lower standards of living -- but the fact of the matter is that in those countries, the standards of lving are low, the death rate high, and the pollution closer to the ground so to speak. Cuba still drives gas-guzzlers from the 50s and 60s, while in the U.S. we drive hybrids (yes, we also drive SUVs, but there is at least the option in the U.S. to buy a hybrid).
The biggest dangers in the world come from countries that are either socialist, are moving toward socialism, or are emerging from socialism into mercantilism. China fits into the latter category. We can only hope she becomes a full-fleged free market soon, or else there is a good chance we will see a war as China attempts to seize the oil resevers she needs to continue gorwing. The Chinese government still does not quite get how one creates sustained and sustainable growth.
It should bother us, then, that there are those who wish to move us toward these very same, dangerous policies that have historically led the world to war. Gore supports exactly the kinds of policies that will put the world in such danger. This is due to his anti-economic thinking. The Nobel Committee has shown that it, too, is anti-economic in thinking. It is this kind of anti-economic thnking that puts the world in great danger of war.
Good intentions are not enough. The Left, if we assume them to be good people, are filled with good intentions. The problem is that almost everything they support makes people poorer, slows down economic growth, and creates the conditions for war. When will we learn this? When will we look at history and finally see this pattern prepeating itself?
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Hillary Comes Clean
Hillary Clinton told the Boston Globe, "I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all." Shouldn't that be a warning to us all?
Gore's Nobel Prize
In an apparent effort to discredit themselves, the Nobel committe just granted Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize. For his support of the latest fad to be used by socialists to justify continued support of failed poliitical and economic policies. (Hillary Clinton has the other one: the children. But that's another post for another time.)
I suppose if there had been an Al Gore in the 70's trying to warm up the earth when all the climatologists were claiming global cooling, he would have won a Nobel Peace Prize then.
And what does global climate change have to do with peace, anyway? I suppose that if he has his way and the internal combustion engine is banned (he said it was more dangerous than nuclear weapons, after all -- so the committee may be on to something if we consider all the prizes given out to those who have been against nuclear weapons), then we won't need the Middle East at all, the U.S. and other countries can withdraw any interest in the region, and we can let the whole place implode in upon itself.
All in all, I don't see how this has anything to do with peace. I don't see any Peace Prize going to someone like Don Beck, whose ideas and work led to the peaceful transition of South Africa after apartheid. No, that was so smooth and successful, a model for the entire world as to what needs to be done to have peace throughout the world, that nobody paid it any attention. So never mind actual success. Let's focus, instead, upon unproven claims by a washed-up politician who has made some pretty bizarre personal claims in the past wo thinks sending us back to the pre-industrial age is probably the only way to save us all (when it has been the industrial age that has made life better and healthier for people around the world). Let us support someone who supports failed social and economic policies simply because he supports them to "save the earth."
The atmosphere is a complex, dynamic system. It has butterfly effects, tipping points, emergent properties, etc. So when people say that they understand what is going on and can make accurate predictions of the future, they are at least wrong, and may even be lying to us. One could go into all the complex feedback loops that affect the atmosphere, including the hydrosphere, the geosphere, and the biosphere, as well as fluctuations in cosmic rays and in the sun's temperature, but I won't do that here. The bottom line, though, is that such systems are unpredictable. They do not work in a linear fashion. And it does not matter what a so-called consensus (I wish people cared enough to look into the actual members of the "consensus" -- they're not mostly atmospheric scientists) says. The pre-Copernican consensus was that the heavens revolved around the Earth. Consensus means nothing in science. Facts do. And there are not enough facts to make any sort of realistic prediction.
This is not to say that there is not warming. There is. And it is not to say that humans aren't contributing. We are. But we do not know that it will result in anything catastrophic long-term. The Gaia hypothesis shows us that the earth system is self-regulating, ensuring continued conditions for the continuation of life on earth. We won't change that. The earth will self-regulate, and temperatures will go down. It may result in a new ice age. But we have, as a species, survived those before. And we know that more ice ages were to come anyway.
I guess the Nobel committee also didn't pay much attention to the British court that said he exaggerated and misrepresented facts in his presentation-turned-movie. I guess if you're lying for the right reasons, that's good enough to get a Nobel Peace Prize. How embarrassing. How shameful.
Al Gore and his ilk, if we are to attribute good intentions to him and not just an attempt to gain demagogic power (or perhaps more than demagogic power), have the false assumption that the world was unchanging before humans came along to change it. This is obvious in their rhetoric, when they complain about "climate change" -- as though the climate had never changed before, and all change in the climate is, therefore, bad. Thus, Al Gore is anti-change, anti-progress. He is, in fact, extremely conservative in the true sense of the term. He's afraid of the passage of time. I do not think that someone who is afraid of change should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. People such as him, who have wanted to prevent change and to bring mankind back to some other age, have been the ones to start the wars in the 20th and 21st century.
I suppose if there had been an Al Gore in the 70's trying to warm up the earth when all the climatologists were claiming global cooling, he would have won a Nobel Peace Prize then.
And what does global climate change have to do with peace, anyway? I suppose that if he has his way and the internal combustion engine is banned (he said it was more dangerous than nuclear weapons, after all -- so the committee may be on to something if we consider all the prizes given out to those who have been against nuclear weapons), then we won't need the Middle East at all, the U.S. and other countries can withdraw any interest in the region, and we can let the whole place implode in upon itself.
All in all, I don't see how this has anything to do with peace. I don't see any Peace Prize going to someone like Don Beck, whose ideas and work led to the peaceful transition of South Africa after apartheid. No, that was so smooth and successful, a model for the entire world as to what needs to be done to have peace throughout the world, that nobody paid it any attention. So never mind actual success. Let's focus, instead, upon unproven claims by a washed-up politician who has made some pretty bizarre personal claims in the past wo thinks sending us back to the pre-industrial age is probably the only way to save us all (when it has been the industrial age that has made life better and healthier for people around the world). Let us support someone who supports failed social and economic policies simply because he supports them to "save the earth."
The atmosphere is a complex, dynamic system. It has butterfly effects, tipping points, emergent properties, etc. So when people say that they understand what is going on and can make accurate predictions of the future, they are at least wrong, and may even be lying to us. One could go into all the complex feedback loops that affect the atmosphere, including the hydrosphere, the geosphere, and the biosphere, as well as fluctuations in cosmic rays and in the sun's temperature, but I won't do that here. The bottom line, though, is that such systems are unpredictable. They do not work in a linear fashion. And it does not matter what a so-called consensus (I wish people cared enough to look into the actual members of the "consensus" -- they're not mostly atmospheric scientists) says. The pre-Copernican consensus was that the heavens revolved around the Earth. Consensus means nothing in science. Facts do. And there are not enough facts to make any sort of realistic prediction.
This is not to say that there is not warming. There is. And it is not to say that humans aren't contributing. We are. But we do not know that it will result in anything catastrophic long-term. The Gaia hypothesis shows us that the earth system is self-regulating, ensuring continued conditions for the continuation of life on earth. We won't change that. The earth will self-regulate, and temperatures will go down. It may result in a new ice age. But we have, as a species, survived those before. And we know that more ice ages were to come anyway.
I guess the Nobel committee also didn't pay much attention to the British court that said he exaggerated and misrepresented facts in his presentation-turned-movie. I guess if you're lying for the right reasons, that's good enough to get a Nobel Peace Prize. How embarrassing. How shameful.
Al Gore and his ilk, if we are to attribute good intentions to him and not just an attempt to gain demagogic power (or perhaps more than demagogic power), have the false assumption that the world was unchanging before humans came along to change it. This is obvious in their rhetoric, when they complain about "climate change" -- as though the climate had never changed before, and all change in the climate is, therefore, bad. Thus, Al Gore is anti-change, anti-progress. He is, in fact, extremely conservative in the true sense of the term. He's afraid of the passage of time. I do not think that someone who is afraid of change should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. People such as him, who have wanted to prevent change and to bring mankind back to some other age, have been the ones to start the wars in the 20th and 21st century.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
A Few Observations on Oil and Alcohol
Basic economics shows that we will never run out of oil. As we use up the supply of oil, the price will go up. This will make it more economical to locate and drill harder-to-reach reserves. Higher oil prices will also result in the creation of alternatives, as it will be worth looking for and developing those alternatives. Over longer periods of time, as oil gets used up and the price of oil goes up in response to supply, less oil will be used, and more alternatives will be created, until we are completely converted to the alternatives -- sometime before we ever use up all the oil. There will eventually be a price where nobody cares to get any of the oil, and what is left will stay there. Thus, we will never, ever run out of oil. It's basic economic principles. There will be alternatives.
The car, for example, is an alternative to the horse. A plane is an alternative to either one. A computer is an alternative to the abacus, to pen and paper, etc. During the bronze age, who would have thought of iron as an alternative? The microwave is an alternative to fire. Petroleum, when whale oil became expensive due to a shørtage of whales, became an alternative. Some of these pre-existed. Some were invented later.
An alternative in the economic sense is not necessarily something that replaces another object exactly. When we run out of oil, it will become more economically feasible to come up with alternatives -- many of which, like so many things in the past -- haven't even been thought of yet.
I have no doubt that it will happen, because it has always happened. Always.
Now one may object that all the alternatives to oil have, so far, been inferior. But just because they have been inferior so far, that doesn't mean they will continue to be. Many falsely assume that the price of oil will remain constant, meaning people will continue to use it as the same rate, until it runs out, and that nobody will have any incentive to find alternatives. But, again, as the price of oil goes up as supply goes down, it will be economically viable to find better alternatives. What we are getting now is government-subsidized alternatives -- so we shouldn't be surprised at what we are getting. Things will change when market pressures create an actual demand for real alternatives. These new ways of doing things won't be done with government -- unless there is the coincidence of creating a bomb whose power source can also be used for energy production (i.e., nuclear power). I'd rather the market find a solution than to have the government bomb its way into one.
And this brings me to government-subsidized alcohol. Is it really a good idea to turn our food into fuel? That just seems like a bad substitute right on the face of it. One could argue that it's also a bad idea to wash cars, since that uses up water we could be drinking, but we need to beware of false analogies. There is much, much, much more water than there is corn. If we wash our cars, it doesn't raise the price of water enough not to drink it. But the rise in the price of corn that has already occured has resulted in problems in Mexico with availability of corn for tortillas, driving up the price of a main staple there -- among some of the poorest people. Further, it has driven up the price of meat, because corn is a food for chicken, pigs, and cows. When the price of feed goes up, the price of meat goes up. This, again, hurts the poor far more than any other group.
So, again, it is incredibly stupid to use food to fuel. And it hurt the poor. But that just means that ethanol is just another thing liberals have latched on to that causes harm to the poor. When your every economic policy harms the poor, one begins to wonder why you want so bad to make their lives worse.
The car, for example, is an alternative to the horse. A plane is an alternative to either one. A computer is an alternative to the abacus, to pen and paper, etc. During the bronze age, who would have thought of iron as an alternative? The microwave is an alternative to fire. Petroleum, when whale oil became expensive due to a shørtage of whales, became an alternative. Some of these pre-existed. Some were invented later.
An alternative in the economic sense is not necessarily something that replaces another object exactly. When we run out of oil, it will become more economically feasible to come up with alternatives -- many of which, like so many things in the past -- haven't even been thought of yet.
I have no doubt that it will happen, because it has always happened. Always.
Now one may object that all the alternatives to oil have, so far, been inferior. But just because they have been inferior so far, that doesn't mean they will continue to be. Many falsely assume that the price of oil will remain constant, meaning people will continue to use it as the same rate, until it runs out, and that nobody will have any incentive to find alternatives. But, again, as the price of oil goes up as supply goes down, it will be economically viable to find better alternatives. What we are getting now is government-subsidized alternatives -- so we shouldn't be surprised at what we are getting. Things will change when market pressures create an actual demand for real alternatives. These new ways of doing things won't be done with government -- unless there is the coincidence of creating a bomb whose power source can also be used for energy production (i.e., nuclear power). I'd rather the market find a solution than to have the government bomb its way into one.
And this brings me to government-subsidized alcohol. Is it really a good idea to turn our food into fuel? That just seems like a bad substitute right on the face of it. One could argue that it's also a bad idea to wash cars, since that uses up water we could be drinking, but we need to beware of false analogies. There is much, much, much more water than there is corn. If we wash our cars, it doesn't raise the price of water enough not to drink it. But the rise in the price of corn that has already occured has resulted in problems in Mexico with availability of corn for tortillas, driving up the price of a main staple there -- among some of the poorest people. Further, it has driven up the price of meat, because corn is a food for chicken, pigs, and cows. When the price of feed goes up, the price of meat goes up. This, again, hurts the poor far more than any other group.
So, again, it is incredibly stupid to use food to fuel. And it hurt the poor. But that just means that ethanol is just another thing liberals have latched on to that causes harm to the poor. When your every economic policy harms the poor, one begins to wonder why you want so bad to make their lives worse.
Turkey, the Armenians, and Congress
There is little doubt in my mind that what happened in Turkey during WWI with the Armenian population is most accurately defined as a genocide. But does it take an act of Congress for something to be a genocide?
The U.S. is woefully short of allies in the Middle East. So why is it that our Congress seems determined to anger one of the few we have. As of today, in apparent response to a bill defining the Armenian genocide as a genocide passing the House Committee on Foreign Affairs 27-21, Turkey has recalled its ambassador. What does Congress think it is going to accomplish by doing this? Why open up an old wound?
Of course, one could argue that the Turkish government is itself being unreasonable about this: what happened in WWI happened under a different government, etc. But it was still Turks who did it, the fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers of those living. If we want to be optomistic about it, perhaps they feel ashamed of what they did, and aren't particularly in the mood to be shamed by the U.S. -- someone they thought was an ally.
To some degree governments have to be pragmatic when dealing with other governments. Why pass a law or resolution whose only purpose seems to be to insult the Turkish government? I suppose Congress wants to estrange another Middle Eastern country -- one who I would guess is showing a lot of restraint regarding the Kurds in Iraq at the present time and who may not feel like they should bother to do so or otherwise help us out in Iraq any more.
The timing of this is suspect. Are those who want us to be defeated in Iraq really this sneaky about undermining our efforts in Iraq? The only reason for this will to defeat is because of who is President. Does anyone really think anything like this, or the arguments that we cannot win in Iraq (whether you like it or not, we are in there now, and we had better decide we're going to win it), will continue if a Democrat is elected?
And BTW, anyone who thinks the Iraqi war will end if a Democrat is elected has not been listening to what most of them have been saying. Clinton has openly said she would not pull the troops out. The only candidate who has said he would withdraw the troops has been a Republican, Ron Paul.
The U.S. is woefully short of allies in the Middle East. So why is it that our Congress seems determined to anger one of the few we have. As of today, in apparent response to a bill defining the Armenian genocide as a genocide passing the House Committee on Foreign Affairs 27-21, Turkey has recalled its ambassador. What does Congress think it is going to accomplish by doing this? Why open up an old wound?
Of course, one could argue that the Turkish government is itself being unreasonable about this: what happened in WWI happened under a different government, etc. But it was still Turks who did it, the fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers of those living. If we want to be optomistic about it, perhaps they feel ashamed of what they did, and aren't particularly in the mood to be shamed by the U.S. -- someone they thought was an ally.
To some degree governments have to be pragmatic when dealing with other governments. Why pass a law or resolution whose only purpose seems to be to insult the Turkish government? I suppose Congress wants to estrange another Middle Eastern country -- one who I would guess is showing a lot of restraint regarding the Kurds in Iraq at the present time and who may not feel like they should bother to do so or otherwise help us out in Iraq any more.
The timing of this is suspect. Are those who want us to be defeated in Iraq really this sneaky about undermining our efforts in Iraq? The only reason for this will to defeat is because of who is President. Does anyone really think anything like this, or the arguments that we cannot win in Iraq (whether you like it or not, we are in there now, and we had better decide we're going to win it), will continue if a Democrat is elected?
And BTW, anyone who thinks the Iraqi war will end if a Democrat is elected has not been listening to what most of them have been saying. Clinton has openly said she would not pull the troops out. The only candidate who has said he would withdraw the troops has been a Republican, Ron Paul.
Cowardice
Why do you suppose it is that Rosie O'Donnell refuses to be interviewed about her new book? Does it have something to do with the outrage she expresses when people ask her the same kinds of questions -- or, let's be honest here, far less paranoid questions -- as she asks people?
I've noticed too that Michael Moore gets all huffy and offended when anyone asks him a substantive question. Toss softball questions, and he's fine. Actually look into what he claims and challenge him on it, and he can't believe the nerve of the interviewer.
People like Rosie and Michael think their crap don't stink, that they are smarter than anyone else (here's proof that you're not, Rosie: 9-11 was not the first time that fire melted steel; how do you think steel gets made? The iron age started several thousand years ago, you know -- and steel is made from iron. I guess I-beams are just mined out of the ground), and that nothing but deference should be given to their every word, when all they are are arrogant, self-serving demagogues.
These two, and others on the far-far-far Left, are nothing but cowards. Stop being so thin-skinned and face the consequences of your statements. If you have a belief worth having, it should be worth defending.
I've noticed too that Michael Moore gets all huffy and offended when anyone asks him a substantive question. Toss softball questions, and he's fine. Actually look into what he claims and challenge him on it, and he can't believe the nerve of the interviewer.
People like Rosie and Michael think their crap don't stink, that they are smarter than anyone else (here's proof that you're not, Rosie: 9-11 was not the first time that fire melted steel; how do you think steel gets made? The iron age started several thousand years ago, you know -- and steel is made from iron. I guess I-beams are just mined out of the ground), and that nothing but deference should be given to their every word, when all they are are arrogant, self-serving demagogues.
These two, and others on the far-far-far Left, are nothing but cowards. Stop being so thin-skinned and face the consequences of your statements. If you have a belief worth having, it should be worth defending.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Free Markets Held the Head of Communism Above Water, and Now This . . .
So, Canada is having to send women to the U.S. to deliver babies because they cannot handle the number of premies being born there. One wonders what would happen to socialized medicine there -- or many other places -- if it weren't for the U.S. health system.
Yes, I know that the U.S. health care system isn't perfect, but 1) it is better than any socialized system, and 2) its fauilures occur precisely where it is and because of the elements that are socialized already. Medicare and Medicaide have driven costs up tremendously -- making for a rather convenient excuse for more government interference to "control costs." When are we ever going to learn that the solution to a problem caused by government isn't more government?
BTW, didn't Castro, when he got sick, send for a doctor from Spain? I guess HE doesn't trust his own health care system to help him get well. I guess as dictator he thinks he deserves much better health care than he provides for his own people.
Yes, I know that the U.S. health care system isn't perfect, but 1) it is better than any socialized system, and 2) its fauilures occur precisely where it is and because of the elements that are socialized already. Medicare and Medicaide have driven costs up tremendously -- making for a rather convenient excuse for more government interference to "control costs." When are we ever going to learn that the solution to a problem caused by government isn't more government?
BTW, didn't Castro, when he got sick, send for a doctor from Spain? I guess HE doesn't trust his own health care system to help him get well. I guess as dictator he thinks he deserves much better health care than he provides for his own people.
Al Gore for Nobel Peace Prize?
If Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace prize for his work promoting his version of the dangers of global warming, it will be consistent with many of the past winners. People are currently objecting to his winning based on the fact that he is a complete hypocrite when it comes to the lifestyle he promotes vs. the lifestyle he actually lives. But then, hypocrisy in a candidate did not prevent the Nobel committee from choosing Yasir Arafat, either. And they gave it to that impostor, Jimmy Carter. None of these three deserve to stand among the likes of MLK, Jr., Mother Theresa, Muhammad Yunis and the Grameen Bank, Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela.
I beg of the Nobel committe: please, please, please don't embarrass yourself by selecting a self-serving hypocrite like Al Gore!
I beg of the Nobel committe: please, please, please don't embarrass yourself by selecting a self-serving hypocrite like Al Gore!
Carter: America Tortures
There are a few people who, when they say something, I assume the opposite to be true. Jimmy Carter is one of those people. I base this upon the fact that every single election he has ever overseen and declared to be fair has been demonstrably filled with corruption and led to the installation of a dictator. His every action in international affairs has been to support dictatorship around the world, especially if it is at the expense of the U.S. So when Carter says he knows that America tortures, I become convinced that we do nothing of the sort.
Jimmy Carter was not only one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history, but he has shown himself to be a terrible human being.
Jimmy Carter does not have the best interests of the U.S. or its people in mind. He is a national embarrassment. I include him in my list of dangerous demagogues whose ideas I find repugnant, including those of Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan. The only difference is that the last two sincerely beleive they are trying to help the U.S. Carter knows he's undermining the country. Dobbs and Buchanan are merely wrong about most things -- Carter is a traitor.
Jimmy Carter was not only one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history, but he has shown himself to be a terrible human being.
Jimmy Carter does not have the best interests of the U.S. or its people in mind. He is a national embarrassment. I include him in my list of dangerous demagogues whose ideas I find repugnant, including those of Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan. The only difference is that the last two sincerely beleive they are trying to help the U.S. Carter knows he's undermining the country. Dobbs and Buchanan are merely wrong about most things -- Carter is a traitor.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Clinton's 5 G's
Guiliani in the debate today reminded us of Clinton's proposal to give $5000 to every child born. When I told my wife this, she looked at me a little puzzled, then suddenly brightened up, saying, "Oh my God! She's trying to get poor people to have more kids!" Does an extra $5000 matter much to either the rich or middle classed? No. Of course not. There will be no change in behavior. But $5000 is a lot of money to a poor person. It's something that would encourage someone who thinks it is a lot of money to have more children.
Now, I know, the $5000 is in a bond, and is for the child. For now. Because how long would it be before someone argued that such children didn't need the money later, but that they needed it now, when they are a child? It would not take long before that money was given to the parents -- and then the scenario laid out above would definitely occur. Do we really need to be encouraging poor people to have more children? Why would Clinton do something like this with such obvious consequences?
Now, who do the Democrats consider to be their constituency and voting based?
You're pretty clever Hillary -- but I'm on to you.
Now, I know, the $5000 is in a bond, and is for the child. For now. Because how long would it be before someone argued that such children didn't need the money later, but that they needed it now, when they are a child? It would not take long before that money was given to the parents -- and then the scenario laid out above would definitely occur. Do we really need to be encouraging poor people to have more children? Why would Clinton do something like this with such obvious consequences?
Now, who do the Democrats consider to be their constituency and voting based?
You're pretty clever Hillary -- but I'm on to you.
Rhetoric, Science, Politics
The headline at Fox News reads: "Two Americans, Briton Win Nobel Prize in Medicine for 'Knockout Mice'"
The headline at CNN, under "latest news" read: "Nobel Price in Medicine Goes to Stem Cell Researchers" (though on the Science page it reads: "Mice gene trio win medicine Nobel").
I could not even find the story on MSNBC.
The research that received the Nobel price had everything to do with a technique in recombinant gene technology, and was only tangentially about stem cells. Which makes me wonder why under CNN's "latest news" the reference was to stem cells and not to "knockout" mice, as did the Fox report. It is a subtle form of rhetoric -- to get the readers who won't bother to read the article to think stem cell research won a Nobel Prize. This is a prime example of the kinds of subtle bias we see in the media -- subtle enough to have "plausible deniability." Unfortunately, the result will likely be many people who don't understand the research talking about stem cells, when that's not what the research was about, fundamentally.
I won't even get into why MSNBC didn't seem to see fit to cover one of the Nobel Prizes at all. I guess great scientific breakthroughs that improve mankind's world aren't on their agenda.
The headline at CNN, under "latest news" read: "Nobel Price in Medicine Goes to Stem Cell Researchers" (though on the Science page it reads: "Mice gene trio win medicine Nobel").
I could not even find the story on MSNBC.
The research that received the Nobel price had everything to do with a technique in recombinant gene technology, and was only tangentially about stem cells. Which makes me wonder why under CNN's "latest news" the reference was to stem cells and not to "knockout" mice, as did the Fox report. It is a subtle form of rhetoric -- to get the readers who won't bother to read the article to think stem cell research won a Nobel Prize. This is a prime example of the kinds of subtle bias we see in the media -- subtle enough to have "plausible deniability." Unfortunately, the result will likely be many people who don't understand the research talking about stem cells, when that's not what the research was about, fundamentally.
I won't even get into why MSNBC didn't seem to see fit to cover one of the Nobel Prizes at all. I guess great scientific breakthroughs that improve mankind's world aren't on their agenda.
The Kingdom of God
Barack Obama recently asked a church audience in South Carolina to help him become “an instrument of God” and join him in creating “a Kingdom right here on Earth."
I do not like such rhetoric coming from either conservatives or liberals. But Obama means this in a different way than do conservatives. With conservatives, it is a question of personal ethics. With liberals like Obama, it is a question of economics. Do not be mistaken: Obama's concerns are materialistic, not spiritual. And we have seen previous attempts to make for a worldly Kingdom of God here on Earth. If he means what he says, he aligns himself with the likes of Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and Chavez in their attempts to create a Heaven on Earth. The implications are troubling: each of these men attempted to in a real sense "finish God's work" which He had poorly done of making the earth and human beings in it. As a Christian, this should be most troubling. What person has the right to assume that God's work on earth is incomplete and that they know how to make heaven on Earth? And for an agnostic or atheist, this should sound at least silly, and at worst dangerous.
But there will be those who buy into his utopian vision. Impatient for Heaven, people want to create it on Earth. And I would venture to guess that their vision in no way matches that of Heaven itself. No, it rather is a vision of their own making. "If I were God, this is how I would formulate the world." And indeed, Obama and others like him are precisely interested in making the world in their own image. And it doesn't matter how good a person someone is, or how moral or ethical, or how well-intentioned (oh, beware of the well-intentioned!). What is at issue is the disconnect these people have with the world. They abide by Marx's dictim that "The point is not to understand the world, but to change it." This is a recipe for disaster. And it has been, repeatedly -- some more egregious than others. No, the point is to understand the world before you understand how you can change it to get the actual outcomes you seek. This, of course, assumes that a politician's intentions are to realize the goals he seeks, and not to merely gain more power for himself.
One last word for those who still think we should try to create Heaven on Earth: we have, as William Blake rightly observes in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." And prior to that, he observes that if when the world is clensed, "the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt." And there is the point, the world appears to us to be finite and corrupt, when it is in fact infinite and holy. If you cannot understand that the world is in fact and already holy -- if you agree with Obama that we can and should try to make "Heaven on Earth" -- then you need to have your doors of perception clensed. To paraphrase Heraclitus: "Men have supposed some things to be unjust, others just, while God sees the world as beautiful and good and just."
I do not like such rhetoric coming from either conservatives or liberals. But Obama means this in a different way than do conservatives. With conservatives, it is a question of personal ethics. With liberals like Obama, it is a question of economics. Do not be mistaken: Obama's concerns are materialistic, not spiritual. And we have seen previous attempts to make for a worldly Kingdom of God here on Earth. If he means what he says, he aligns himself with the likes of Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and Chavez in their attempts to create a Heaven on Earth. The implications are troubling: each of these men attempted to in a real sense "finish God's work" which He had poorly done of making the earth and human beings in it. As a Christian, this should be most troubling. What person has the right to assume that God's work on earth is incomplete and that they know how to make heaven on Earth? And for an agnostic or atheist, this should sound at least silly, and at worst dangerous.
But there will be those who buy into his utopian vision. Impatient for Heaven, people want to create it on Earth. And I would venture to guess that their vision in no way matches that of Heaven itself. No, it rather is a vision of their own making. "If I were God, this is how I would formulate the world." And indeed, Obama and others like him are precisely interested in making the world in their own image. And it doesn't matter how good a person someone is, or how moral or ethical, or how well-intentioned (oh, beware of the well-intentioned!). What is at issue is the disconnect these people have with the world. They abide by Marx's dictim that "The point is not to understand the world, but to change it." This is a recipe for disaster. And it has been, repeatedly -- some more egregious than others. No, the point is to understand the world before you understand how you can change it to get the actual outcomes you seek. This, of course, assumes that a politician's intentions are to realize the goals he seeks, and not to merely gain more power for himself.
One last word for those who still think we should try to create Heaven on Earth: we have, as William Blake rightly observes in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." And prior to that, he observes that if when the world is clensed, "the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt." And there is the point, the world appears to us to be finite and corrupt, when it is in fact infinite and holy. If you cannot understand that the world is in fact and already holy -- if you agree with Obama that we can and should try to make "Heaven on Earth" -- then you need to have your doors of perception clensed. To paraphrase Heraclitus: "Men have supposed some things to be unjust, others just, while God sees the world as beautiful and good and just."
Monday, October 08, 2007
Shutting Down Argument
Isn't it, on the surface at least, odd that liberals in the U.S. are attacking free speech in this country? First, there's political correctness, which is a clear attack on free speech. It also has the effect of not letting anyone know who the real jerks are in society, as they don't speak up as much, or as clearly, as they once used to. The most recent attacks, however, have been on conservative talk show hosts. Sure' there is plenty to disagree with them over, but the most recent attacks have been entirely fabricated. I am, of course, talking about the attacks on O'Reilly and Limbaugh. The first required the more egregious forms of selective editing to literally construct a false accusation. It was downright bizarre -- did Media Matters really think they could get away with what they did, with the current state of information technology and availability? Of course, they also know that many of their target audience will just accept them at their word. They prey on the ignorant. And that should worry us, that they would be willing to misrepresent what someone said to persuade those they know to be ignorant and lazy (too lazy to find out what was really said, at least). Shouldn't that bother you, to know that that is what the people at Media Matters think of you? And then the purposeful misrepresentation of Limbaugh's comments about "fake soldiers," which again had to be taken out of context to be understood the way they were. They had to be taken out of context of his ongoing broadcasts, where it was clear whom he was refering to. And now there are actually attempts to get resolutions passed against Limbaugh and committees set up to monitor his show for "irregularities." I don't know about you, but the government monitoring talk radio for "irregularities" has a very wrong-side-of-the-Iron-Curtain Cold War feel to it.
I said above that it appears, on the surface, odd that liberals in the U.S. are attacking free speech. But in fact, it is not all that odd. They have been doing so for a while now, particularly through political correctness. And we should equally be aware of what it is that they mean by "freedom of speech." If you pay close attention to the way they talk about it, you will see that they do not mean that you should have the freedom to say what is on your mind. They use it more often than not to argue that people should not criticize what they say. To them, freedom of speech is freedom from having what they say criticized by others. That is not what freedom of speech is. It is in fact the freedom to both say what you want, and to criticize what others say. If you cannot criticize what others say, there is no freedom of speech. That is precisely the kind of speech which needs to be protected.
But these protections should only be against the government. It is the government which has no right under the Constitution to prevent anyone from speaking, whether it is directly, through force, or indirectly, through laws like the "Fairness Docrtine." If I don't like what someone says, I don't have to listen to them. If I don't like what a talk show host says, I don't have to tune in, and I don't have to postiively respond to their advertisers. That is my right. But the government does not have the right to prevent anyone from speaking. It does not have the right to shut down any T.V. or radio station for what anyone says on it. It does not have the right to prevent any book from being published. If their ideas are not finding a voice, it is because nobody wants to listen.
And that is the bottom line, isn't it? Why else would you adopt strong-arm bullying tactics? You don't need to force your opposition to stop speaking if you have a stronger argument. When you have to resort to force in face of someone else's argument, that is a tacit admission that your argument is weak to the point of failure. You know you don't have a leg to stand on, so you lash out. This is true if the argument is from the Left or the Right, from conservatives or liberals.
I said above that it appears, on the surface, odd that liberals in the U.S. are attacking free speech. But in fact, it is not all that odd. They have been doing so for a while now, particularly through political correctness. And we should equally be aware of what it is that they mean by "freedom of speech." If you pay close attention to the way they talk about it, you will see that they do not mean that you should have the freedom to say what is on your mind. They use it more often than not to argue that people should not criticize what they say. To them, freedom of speech is freedom from having what they say criticized by others. That is not what freedom of speech is. It is in fact the freedom to both say what you want, and to criticize what others say. If you cannot criticize what others say, there is no freedom of speech. That is precisely the kind of speech which needs to be protected.
But these protections should only be against the government. It is the government which has no right under the Constitution to prevent anyone from speaking, whether it is directly, through force, or indirectly, through laws like the "Fairness Docrtine." If I don't like what someone says, I don't have to listen to them. If I don't like what a talk show host says, I don't have to tune in, and I don't have to postiively respond to their advertisers. That is my right. But the government does not have the right to prevent anyone from speaking. It does not have the right to shut down any T.V. or radio station for what anyone says on it. It does not have the right to prevent any book from being published. If their ideas are not finding a voice, it is because nobody wants to listen.
And that is the bottom line, isn't it? Why else would you adopt strong-arm bullying tactics? You don't need to force your opposition to stop speaking if you have a stronger argument. When you have to resort to force in face of someone else's argument, that is a tacit admission that your argument is weak to the point of failure. You know you don't have a leg to stand on, so you lash out. This is true if the argument is from the Left or the Right, from conservatives or liberals.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Truth in Advertising
This is from Brit Hume's show on Fox News:
"Truth or Consequences
The Washington state Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot stop political candidates from lying in campaign ads. The court ruled five-to-four that a state law aimed at punishing political candidates for false advertising violates free speech rights.
Justice Jim Johnson wrote for the majority — "There can be no doubt that false personal attacks are too common in political campaigns, with wide-ranging detrimental consequences ... However, government censorship ... is not a constitutionally permitted remedy."
But Justice Barbara Madsen called the ruling — "An invitation to lie with impunity." And she added — "It is little wonder that so many view political campaigns with distrust and cynicism." "
It is illegal in this country, and rightly so, for a company to lie in its advertisement. It is not a violation of freedom of speech to prevent a company from making claims about its products that simply are not true of them. It protects the comsumer and creates the kind of transparency needed to have a successful free market.
What, then, could possibly justify this decision? Isn't someone running for office offering a service, and thus advertising his product? And in many ways, couldn't such a candidate potentially be more harmful to more people than a falsely-advertised product?
What seems more likely is that the court isn't at all interested in freedom of speech, but is actually interested in protecting politicians from what they say about a lot of issues. Politicians make all sorts of statements about the economy, social issues, etc. that are demonstrably untrue. What would happen if candidates were made by law to say what is true? How many policies could they support if they had to tell the truth about the policies, and why they are supporting them?
Let us hope that this goes to a higher court, and that the higher court has more sense than this one.
"Truth or Consequences
The Washington state Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot stop political candidates from lying in campaign ads. The court ruled five-to-four that a state law aimed at punishing political candidates for false advertising violates free speech rights.
Justice Jim Johnson wrote for the majority — "There can be no doubt that false personal attacks are too common in political campaigns, with wide-ranging detrimental consequences ... However, government censorship ... is not a constitutionally permitted remedy."
But Justice Barbara Madsen called the ruling — "An invitation to lie with impunity." And she added — "It is little wonder that so many view political campaigns with distrust and cynicism." "
It is illegal in this country, and rightly so, for a company to lie in its advertisement. It is not a violation of freedom of speech to prevent a company from making claims about its products that simply are not true of them. It protects the comsumer and creates the kind of transparency needed to have a successful free market.
What, then, could possibly justify this decision? Isn't someone running for office offering a service, and thus advertising his product? And in many ways, couldn't such a candidate potentially be more harmful to more people than a falsely-advertised product?
What seems more likely is that the court isn't at all interested in freedom of speech, but is actually interested in protecting politicians from what they say about a lot of issues. Politicians make all sorts of statements about the economy, social issues, etc. that are demonstrably untrue. What would happen if candidates were made by law to say what is true? How many policies could they support if they had to tell the truth about the policies, and why they are supporting them?
Let us hope that this goes to a higher court, and that the higher court has more sense than this one.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
A Few Thoughts on Economics
In order to have a living complex system, which means that grows at an exponential rate, you have to have a few attributes. 1) You have to have a sufficient density of entities in the system; 2) they have to be able to interact freely to create rules that allow for complex interactions; 3) there must be a hierarchy of complex subsystems within the system as a whole that are themselves capable of freely creating their own rules of behavior. All of which means that 4) there must be a reduction of top-down control, meaning a reduction of dominance of one particular subsystem in the system as a whole.
An understanding of how one gets the creation of complex systems with emergent properties of behavior (Smith's "Invisible Hand") would go a long way to helping one to understand growth in general, and economic growth in particular.
I've noticed in conversations with people that economic thinking is counter-intuitive, but if you can get the person to actually listen to the explanation, they end up with no choice but to agree with you. We seem to have evolved to understand the world in ways that are counterintuitive to both quantum physics and economics. The former for reasons of dealing with macroscopic reality; the latter for reasons of having evolved in small social groups. Truly economc systems evolved only in the last few thousand years, and we have not had time to evolve to them. Economic systems are complex systems with emergent properties, and we do not always fully understand such systems on an intutitive level. However, people can be educated to understand the nature of complex systems in general, and economic systems in particular -- and that is what we really need to work to do. Precisely because, though correct, economic thinking is counter-intuitive.
An understanding of how one gets the creation of complex systems with emergent properties of behavior (Smith's "Invisible Hand") would go a long way to helping one to understand growth in general, and economic growth in particular.
I've noticed in conversations with people that economic thinking is counter-intuitive, but if you can get the person to actually listen to the explanation, they end up with no choice but to agree with you. We seem to have evolved to understand the world in ways that are counterintuitive to both quantum physics and economics. The former for reasons of dealing with macroscopic reality; the latter for reasons of having evolved in small social groups. Truly economc systems evolved only in the last few thousand years, and we have not had time to evolve to them. Economic systems are complex systems with emergent properties, and we do not always fully understand such systems on an intutitive level. However, people can be educated to understand the nature of complex systems in general, and economic systems in particular -- and that is what we really need to work to do. Precisely because, though correct, economic thinking is counter-intuitive.
Friday, September 21, 2007
The Jena 6
The Jena 6 controversy has nothing to do with race.
Let me repeat that: the Jena 6 controversy (with which I agree with the protestors) has NOTHING to do with race.
What it has to do with is the ongoing criminalization of childhood.
In a world where 5 year old boys can be brought up on sexual harrassment charges for kissing another 5 year old, we should not be surprised that a high school fight amongst teenagers has turned into criminal charges. I will leave aside the fact that anyone who thinks a 5 year old can sexually harrass someone is a sick, twisted pervert who themselves should be put away for obviously being a pedophile (what else is it when you see a five year old sexually?), and focus instead on the fact that we are labeling everything children do as pathological.
If a child can't sit still or pay attention (something they never seem to have a problem with when doing what they want to do), we fill them full of Ritalin. (I will refer you to the South Park episode on Ritalin where they give a completely accurate, time-honored, valid alternative to drugs.)
If two children get into a fight, the parents of the children get sued, the school gets sued, the children are arrested and charges are brought up, etc. There was a time when children would get into a fight over something, and then be over it an hour later, and be the best of friends two hours later. The reason for this is that we are social mammals, and we have to establish our hierarchies. That is done through non-deadly aggressive displays -- including fighting. When we do not allow those hierarchies to naturally establish themselves, the violent feelings escalate and escalate until the violence that does break out can and oftentimes does turn deadly.
I am not saying that there should not be punishments -- just that those punishments should not involve the government, but should instead be taken care of entirely in-school and within the communities. Why do we think it is better to send our children to prison than to spank them? But that is the choice we have made. Because we have interfered with our natural social behaviors, especially the aggressive behaviors that allow us to know our place in the social hierarchy, we have created situations of ever-escalating violence. Because we do not allow for varying levels of punishment, we end up saying that all behaviors are equal, and if all behaviors are equal, then why hold back if you are going to do something wrong? Further, children -- even teenagers -- should not be treated as adults. That is another false equality we are trying to create. Our children are not adults. I know the egalitarians around the world are criging at this, but I will repeat it: our children are not adults. When we treat them as adults, we end up with 12 year olds dressing as adults, 10 year olds having sex, and grown men thinking it is okay to have sex with 5 year olds. We have Kindergarteners brought up on sexual harrassment charges, childhood behavior pathologized so our children can be drugged up and pacified (so we won't have to actually parent), and every little fight turned into "attempted murder."
Indeed, Free the Jena 6!
Let me repeat that: the Jena 6 controversy (with which I agree with the protestors) has NOTHING to do with race.
What it has to do with is the ongoing criminalization of childhood.
In a world where 5 year old boys can be brought up on sexual harrassment charges for kissing another 5 year old, we should not be surprised that a high school fight amongst teenagers has turned into criminal charges. I will leave aside the fact that anyone who thinks a 5 year old can sexually harrass someone is a sick, twisted pervert who themselves should be put away for obviously being a pedophile (what else is it when you see a five year old sexually?), and focus instead on the fact that we are labeling everything children do as pathological.
If a child can't sit still or pay attention (something they never seem to have a problem with when doing what they want to do), we fill them full of Ritalin. (I will refer you to the South Park episode on Ritalin where they give a completely accurate, time-honored, valid alternative to drugs.)
If two children get into a fight, the parents of the children get sued, the school gets sued, the children are arrested and charges are brought up, etc. There was a time when children would get into a fight over something, and then be over it an hour later, and be the best of friends two hours later. The reason for this is that we are social mammals, and we have to establish our hierarchies. That is done through non-deadly aggressive displays -- including fighting. When we do not allow those hierarchies to naturally establish themselves, the violent feelings escalate and escalate until the violence that does break out can and oftentimes does turn deadly.
I am not saying that there should not be punishments -- just that those punishments should not involve the government, but should instead be taken care of entirely in-school and within the communities. Why do we think it is better to send our children to prison than to spank them? But that is the choice we have made. Because we have interfered with our natural social behaviors, especially the aggressive behaviors that allow us to know our place in the social hierarchy, we have created situations of ever-escalating violence. Because we do not allow for varying levels of punishment, we end up saying that all behaviors are equal, and if all behaviors are equal, then why hold back if you are going to do something wrong? Further, children -- even teenagers -- should not be treated as adults. That is another false equality we are trying to create. Our children are not adults. I know the egalitarians around the world are criging at this, but I will repeat it: our children are not adults. When we treat them as adults, we end up with 12 year olds dressing as adults, 10 year olds having sex, and grown men thinking it is okay to have sex with 5 year olds. We have Kindergarteners brought up on sexual harrassment charges, childhood behavior pathologized so our children can be drugged up and pacified (so we won't have to actually parent), and every little fight turned into "attempted murder."
Indeed, Free the Jena 6!
Monday, September 03, 2007
Ingratitude
Why must I be made to fail
Because I fought for your success?
Why should I be made to lose
Because I wanted you to win?
I brought you gifts more precious
Than silver, gold, and rubies
And your response has been to throw
Them in the mud and piss on them.
The ignorant now rule the wise,
The foolish run the show.
Why buy the real when a mirage
Will satisfy the average man
Who’s willing to buy every ruse?
And don’t we know when everything
Is up for sale it’s value that we lose?
Our up is down, our down is up,
And when we miss the mark
All we have to do is yell that it’s not fair –
We’ll expand the bull’s eye too.
We forget that to miss the mark
Is what we once called “sin.”
But don’t you worry – we’ll hold your hand –
You won’t have to learn a thing –
And you’ll be happy not knowing how
You came to shout aloud, “Sieg heil!”
Because I fought for your success?
Why should I be made to lose
Because I wanted you to win?
I brought you gifts more precious
Than silver, gold, and rubies
And your response has been to throw
Them in the mud and piss on them.
The ignorant now rule the wise,
The foolish run the show.
Why buy the real when a mirage
Will satisfy the average man
Who’s willing to buy every ruse?
And don’t we know when everything
Is up for sale it’s value that we lose?
Our up is down, our down is up,
And when we miss the mark
All we have to do is yell that it’s not fair –
We’ll expand the bull’s eye too.
We forget that to miss the mark
Is what we once called “sin.”
But don’t you worry – we’ll hold your hand –
You won’t have to learn a thing –
And you’ll be happy not knowing how
You came to shout aloud, “Sieg heil!”
Friday, August 24, 2007
In the Multiverse
If there are really many universes,
As many physicists now claim, if there
Are infinite universes out there –
Then I exist an infinite number
Of times and places, and so do my wife
And baby daughter. In some, sadly, I
Do not exist; in some, my wife and I,
We never met. And that’s the tragedy.
But out there too my mother also lives
And, living, knows and loves my daughter who,
In my own universe, she’s never seen
And, knowing that, I think on it with joy.
As many physicists now claim, if there
Are infinite universes out there –
Then I exist an infinite number
Of times and places, and so do my wife
And baby daughter. In some, sadly, I
Do not exist; in some, my wife and I,
We never met. And that’s the tragedy.
But out there too my mother also lives
And, living, knows and loves my daughter who,
In my own universe, she’s never seen
And, knowing that, I think on it with joy.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Police Party Hearty
The following article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294076,00.html states that the town was not compromised by the police all being off duty. I would be curious to see what the crime rate was that night. If it was a small enough town, it probably didn't have much if any effect. And while we know that more police on the streets does result in a decrease in crime, has anyone done a study of what happens in the absence of police?
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Harriet Hawkin's "Strange Attractors"
Where to even begin with my admiration of Hawkins’ book? I managed to take nineteen pages of notes from this small book. Is it possible for an author to be completely right about literature? Perhaps not – but for my money, Hawkins comes closest to anyone I have read, particularly in the way she applies chaos theory to analyzing literature. She points out that chaos theory is an excellent way to analyze literature, since “deterministic chaos is the context, the medium we inhabit in everyday life, ubiquitously allowing for, and indeed mandating individuality as well as unpredictability within a physically determined order” (2). Considering this, we can immediately see how chaos theory
helps to explain why, after centuries, certain works maintain their operational fangs and claws and terrible beauty. They are the artistic equivalents of deterministic chaos, and as such evoke chaotic responses, contradictory interpretations, altogether different generic adaptations. Therefore, as in the artistic tradition itself, their complex metaphorical signifiers keep on floating around in the minds of individual readers (and generations) long after the text was first read. (8)
Chaos theory helps explain why certain works have long-term value both within and among cultures. More complex works create more and more ways of seeing the text, breed different interpretations, have people arguing about the text for centuries (sometimes even millennia). Any work that creates a large number of interpretations is, according to this theory, a great work that has lasting value.
Hawkins further shows how complex works create those who attempt to emulate that work – usually in the creation of less complex works. An example she gives is Milton’s Paradise Lost, of which Crichton’s Jurassic Park was a less complex emulation – which itself had a less complex emulation in the movie version. She points out that another one of the ways of knowing a work is a great work of art is to see how many times people try to replicate it. Most of the replicants will be less complex than the original, and will, therefore, just as likely be forgotten. But occasionally, there will come along works of art which go beyond mere emulation to create another highly complex work of art that will itself inspire future emulation.
The above work for older works, but how can we determine if a new work is sufficiently complex enough to fit her definition of a lasting work of value? She does not come right out and way, but she does give several hints. “When a fractal is viewed on any scale, comparably complex details emerge. And comparably complex details likewise emerge in individual lines, books, actions, and characterizations, as well as on the mythic, narrative and temporal scales of a complex nonlinear work” (18). One way of seeing if a work meets this level of complexity is to ask yourself what it would take to write up a set of instructions to have a writer write any given work. A work is complex if the “instructions” on how to write it (as romance publishers give their writers) would be longer than the work produced (13). This brings us back to theory, because one could, in a sense, see literary analysis as an attempt (actually, various attempts by various people) to write parts of the instructions on how to write any given work of literature. Using psychological analysis, for example, one could learn various elements of the psychologies of the characters in the work (let us say, a novel). Marxist analysis could point out the various class concerns the author had in mind. Things like formalism and structuralism could show on a formal and structural level how the novel was constructed. Poststructuralism could point out what the author left out and suggest why. And one could even go back to older theories and see what they have to say about works of literature, since “even as chaos theory calls into question comparatively exclusive [italics hers] critical paradigms, it also allows for a retroactive, retrospective understanding of earlier artistic and critical insights commonly brushed aside as outmoded or as too obvious to need further thought” (19). One could go on and on.
Chaos theory shows both how these all work together to create a set of instructions for the reader to both enter the text, to understand better various elements of it, and for potential writers to understand how and why an author did what they did in a given work. And it also provides its own elements to the instructions. For example, Hawkins points out that the butterfly effect helps explain how “an inadvertent dropping of a handkerchief, or someone else’s otherwise insignificant incapacity to tolerate alcohol ( as in Othello) – can exponentially compound with other effects and give rise to disproportionate impacts” (16). She proposes this in opposition to “linear-minded moralists [who] have sought to charge tragic heroes and heroines with correspondingly [italics hers] great (quid pro quo) crimes, vices, sins and fatal flaws,” pointing out that “as chaos theory demonstrates, and as had long been obvious in ordinary life (as in comic as well as tragic art) very small, morally neutral, individual effects” (16) can, as noted above, result in huge, tragic effects.
Further, the themes and conflicts of a potentially great work of literature must themselves be complex, while “it simultaneously establishes what chaos theorists term nonlinear replications, iterations, self-similarities – that is, regular irregularities, structural correspondences (symmetries) and (asymmetrical) contrasts – between characters and actions” (61). Such a work would also seem to never have satisfactory interpretations, because “In complex works of art, as in the fractal formations of nature, there are interactive effects within interactive effects, and the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. The holistic interaction between components cannot be analytically dissected precisely because analysis requires segregation” (77). One cannot consider a single chapter of the lengthy instructions of a work to be the complete instructions. This in particular puts deconstruction in a delicate position, since it does not acknowledge emergent properties in its analysis of a work’s smallest parts.
In the end, a great work of art is great because it replicates the complexities found in nature. That is the very reason why it satisfies: the various arts “are not literal representations, but [are] metaphorically satisfying because they ‘work like nature’” (83). All the elements found in a work of great art, “iterations, recursions, self-similarities, symmetries and asymmetries [are] operative in the nonlinear systems of nature, in contrast to the regularities and predictabilities of comparatively linear (generically determined) systems and fictions such as formulaic romance novels” (88). The instructions for such formulaic novels can be written up in an area smaller than the novels that are created. The instructions for the creation of even a relatively small work, like Milton’s Paradise Lost, would take up volumes. This is perhaps why it takes so many people longer to enjoy and appreciate great works of literature – but when they do, that is also why “in the long run, the survival of a complex literary “fractal” . . . continuously resonates, on multiple scales – imaginative, aesthetic, intellectual, orderly and disorderly – in the minds and memories of individual readers of successive generations, in very much the same way it continues to resonate in the artistic tradition” (103).
helps to explain why, after centuries, certain works maintain their operational fangs and claws and terrible beauty. They are the artistic equivalents of deterministic chaos, and as such evoke chaotic responses, contradictory interpretations, altogether different generic adaptations. Therefore, as in the artistic tradition itself, their complex metaphorical signifiers keep on floating around in the minds of individual readers (and generations) long after the text was first read. (8)
Chaos theory helps explain why certain works have long-term value both within and among cultures. More complex works create more and more ways of seeing the text, breed different interpretations, have people arguing about the text for centuries (sometimes even millennia). Any work that creates a large number of interpretations is, according to this theory, a great work that has lasting value.
Hawkins further shows how complex works create those who attempt to emulate that work – usually in the creation of less complex works. An example she gives is Milton’s Paradise Lost, of which Crichton’s Jurassic Park was a less complex emulation – which itself had a less complex emulation in the movie version. She points out that another one of the ways of knowing a work is a great work of art is to see how many times people try to replicate it. Most of the replicants will be less complex than the original, and will, therefore, just as likely be forgotten. But occasionally, there will come along works of art which go beyond mere emulation to create another highly complex work of art that will itself inspire future emulation.
The above work for older works, but how can we determine if a new work is sufficiently complex enough to fit her definition of a lasting work of value? She does not come right out and way, but she does give several hints. “When a fractal is viewed on any scale, comparably complex details emerge. And comparably complex details likewise emerge in individual lines, books, actions, and characterizations, as well as on the mythic, narrative and temporal scales of a complex nonlinear work” (18). One way of seeing if a work meets this level of complexity is to ask yourself what it would take to write up a set of instructions to have a writer write any given work. A work is complex if the “instructions” on how to write it (as romance publishers give their writers) would be longer than the work produced (13). This brings us back to theory, because one could, in a sense, see literary analysis as an attempt (actually, various attempts by various people) to write parts of the instructions on how to write any given work of literature. Using psychological analysis, for example, one could learn various elements of the psychologies of the characters in the work (let us say, a novel). Marxist analysis could point out the various class concerns the author had in mind. Things like formalism and structuralism could show on a formal and structural level how the novel was constructed. Poststructuralism could point out what the author left out and suggest why. And one could even go back to older theories and see what they have to say about works of literature, since “even as chaos theory calls into question comparatively exclusive [italics hers] critical paradigms, it also allows for a retroactive, retrospective understanding of earlier artistic and critical insights commonly brushed aside as outmoded or as too obvious to need further thought” (19). One could go on and on.
Chaos theory shows both how these all work together to create a set of instructions for the reader to both enter the text, to understand better various elements of it, and for potential writers to understand how and why an author did what they did in a given work. And it also provides its own elements to the instructions. For example, Hawkins points out that the butterfly effect helps explain how “an inadvertent dropping of a handkerchief, or someone else’s otherwise insignificant incapacity to tolerate alcohol ( as in Othello) – can exponentially compound with other effects and give rise to disproportionate impacts” (16). She proposes this in opposition to “linear-minded moralists [who] have sought to charge tragic heroes and heroines with correspondingly [italics hers] great (quid pro quo) crimes, vices, sins and fatal flaws,” pointing out that “as chaos theory demonstrates, and as had long been obvious in ordinary life (as in comic as well as tragic art) very small, morally neutral, individual effects” (16) can, as noted above, result in huge, tragic effects.
Further, the themes and conflicts of a potentially great work of literature must themselves be complex, while “it simultaneously establishes what chaos theorists term nonlinear replications, iterations, self-similarities – that is, regular irregularities, structural correspondences (symmetries) and (asymmetrical) contrasts – between characters and actions” (61). Such a work would also seem to never have satisfactory interpretations, because “In complex works of art, as in the fractal formations of nature, there are interactive effects within interactive effects, and the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. The holistic interaction between components cannot be analytically dissected precisely because analysis requires segregation” (77). One cannot consider a single chapter of the lengthy instructions of a work to be the complete instructions. This in particular puts deconstruction in a delicate position, since it does not acknowledge emergent properties in its analysis of a work’s smallest parts.
In the end, a great work of art is great because it replicates the complexities found in nature. That is the very reason why it satisfies: the various arts “are not literal representations, but [are] metaphorically satisfying because they ‘work like nature’” (83). All the elements found in a work of great art, “iterations, recursions, self-similarities, symmetries and asymmetries [are] operative in the nonlinear systems of nature, in contrast to the regularities and predictabilities of comparatively linear (generically determined) systems and fictions such as formulaic romance novels” (88). The instructions for such formulaic novels can be written up in an area smaller than the novels that are created. The instructions for the creation of even a relatively small work, like Milton’s Paradise Lost, would take up volumes. This is perhaps why it takes so many people longer to enjoy and appreciate great works of literature – but when they do, that is also why “in the long run, the survival of a complex literary “fractal” . . . continuously resonates, on multiple scales – imaginative, aesthetic, intellectual, orderly and disorderly – in the minds and memories of individual readers of successive generations, in very much the same way it continues to resonate in the artistic tradition” (103).
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Gleick and Prigogine
I read Gleick and Prigogine both with eyes that searched for metaphors that could describe the novel, and found many, especially in Gleick. Mandelbrot's observations regarding noise in a system, creating fractal time, made me realize that narrative, too, was an example of fractal time, the words acting as the "noise" in the "system" of the novel, similar to Cantor dust. This is best seen in a rewording of Gleick's own words:
Mandelbrot saw the Cantor set as a model for the occurrence of errors in an electric transmission line. Engineers saw periods of error-free transmission, mixed with periods when errors would come in bursts. Looked at more closely, the bursts, too, contained error-free periods within them. And so on – it was an example of fractal time (93c).
which I have reworded thus:
I see the Cantor set as a model for the occurrence of words (particular words) in a novel. There are periods where a given word does not appear, mixed with periods when the word does appear, mixed with periods when the word comes in bursts. Looked at more closely, the bursts, too contain periods without that word within them. And so on – it is an example of fractal time within the novel.
These dusts occur on smaller scales, each cluster giving clusters of spaces and clusters. Naturally, in a novel one can only go down so far – to the sentence-level – but one can see the general principle holds. This is what made me think to graph several words to see if any patterns would make themselves apparent – as indeed happened with the word "friend" in my novel manuscript "Hear the Screams of the Butterfly" on the page-level. This graph is what is called a "Poincaré map," which "removes a dimension from an attractor and turns a continuous line into a collection of points" (142). "Such pictures ... [begin] to reveal the fine fractal structure" (144) of the system – in this case, the novel. Thus, we see word distribution in a novel "as a Cantor set arranged in time" (Gleick, 92), where "the degree of irregularity remains constant over different scales. ... the world displays a regular regularity" (Gleick, 98). This suggested to me that meaning in a novel is both emergent and fractaline – as one goes down, one sees ever-smaller elements of meaning – elements that finally stop at the level of words – perhaps. There is also perhaps the level of multiple interpretations of words – especially in context of the emergent properties of the phrase, sentence, paragraph, etc. Going down helps us see the fractal repetitions while going up (looking at the patterns the words make, looking at how they are functioning in a particular sentence, paragraph, scene, etc.) helps us see the emergent levels of meaning. The mere repetition of a word is not enough – it has to repeat in a chaotic pattern to create the strongest levels of meaning. Each word "repeat[s] itself, displaying familiar patterns over time. ... But the repetitions [are] never quite exact. There [is] pattern, with disturbances. An orderly disorder" (15). Thus, although the word "love" is repeated more in my text, the fact that it lacks this kind of periodic behavior 9orderly disorder) while the word "friend" does tells you the word "friend" is a stronger theme-word, having been created through the tensions in the novel. How does this happen? "Information is transmitted back from the small scales to the large... And the channel transmitting the information upward is the strange attractor, magnifying the initial randomness just as the Butterfly Effect magnifies small uncertainties into large-scale weather patterns" (261). This is why the peaks of the word "friend" correspond to major plot points in the text. So we see a novel is a particular type of fractal – it is, indeed, self-similar at lower intervals, but as one goes up, new forms are made, self-similar to what came before, but having emergent properties (meanings). What we therefore see in deconstruction is a concern only with the "infinite coastline" of the novel, to the expense of the emergent meaning of that coastline in delineating the complete form of the novel.
Since the novel is now seen to be both regular and irregular, to be, in essence, fractaline, one could perhaps see Gleick's observation on 100 as a literary judgement: "The degree of irregularity corresponded to the efficiency of the object in taking up space." Is there perhaps a correlation between a novel's degree of irregularity as a fractaline object and our finding that novel aesthetically pleasing (or, at least, long-term survival)? This would be an interesting line of research for someone to pursue. This complexity that a fractal view of the novel illuminates is also another way of judging a novel (or understanding how novels have perhaps been judged in the past) since, as Gleick says, "Simple shapes are inhuman. They fail to resonate with the way nature organizes itself or with the way human perception sees the world" (116-7). Though we have to be careful when we say the word "simple," since "simple systems can do complicated things" (167), as anyone who has read Hemingway knows. Further, "as [a] system becomes chaotic ..., strictly by virtue of its unpredictability, it generates a steady stream of information" (260). This is undoubtedly why we say that both predictable stories and stories that are not retrodictable are bad stories. A chaotic story would be one that is neither predictable, but is certainly retrodictable.
Gleick also states that irregular patterns and infinitely complex shapes have "a quality of self-similarity. Above all, fractal meant self-similar" (103). Further, "self-similarity is symmetry across scale. It implies recursion, pattern inside of pattern," (103) meaning fractals are not determined by scale (107-8). The presence of meaning in a novel is also not determined by its scale. Phonemes have meaning, and so do plots, as well as every level in between. But, like eddies of air are the same as a hurricane, only at different scales, the effect of the higher levels of meaning is as different from phoneme to plot as the effects of an eddy of air are to a hurricane. All the same, an eddy of air can, building on other eddies of air, build into a hurricane over space and time in the same way as phonemes, building on other phonemes, build into a novel over space and time. This is because "each change of scale [brings] new phenomena and new kinds of behavior" (115). Therefore, the existence of meaning applies "without regard to scale" (108) in a novel. It is also natural to say that greater meaning emerges as we go up in scale, since these scales are hierarchical (116). As Gleick points out, "fractal scaling [is] not just common but universal in morphogenesis" (110). And since fractal geometry is "nature's own" (114), and a novel is a part of nature inasmuch as it is a creation by a living organism, we should not be surprised to find that novels have fractal geometry. Further, "A geometrical shape has a scale, a characteristic size. To Mandelbrot, art that satisfies lacks scale, in the sense that it contains important elements at all sizes" (117), meaning a good novel (that satisfies the reader) lacks scale, in the sense that it contains important elements at all sizes, from phonemes to plot.
On the other hand, I did not get nearly as much from Prigogine in regards to opening up new ways of understanding the novel, except in some general ways. I strengthened my belief that to really understand any text, one has to know something about its creation when Prigogine says, "these far-from-equilibrium phenomena illustrate an essential and unexpected property of matter: physics may henceforth describe structures as adapted to outside conditions" (14), with far-from-equilibrium states being those that have strong tension in them (the very definition of a story). He also makes a statement that can easily be used to describe a novel: "One of the most interesting aspects of dissipative structures is their coherence. The system behaves as a whole, as if it were the site of long-range sources. ...the system is structured as though each molecule were "informed" about the overall state of the system" (171), a dissipative system being one that has both structure and disorder in it (143), that is, chaotic. On can see a sentence as having this very structure (Turner, The Culture of Hope). One can, in a sense, see how each "molecule" of the word "friend" is "informed" about the "overall state of the system" of the novel, helping it to cohere and have meaning. Also, Prigogine does away with the postmodern view that nothing new can be created when he says, "living societies continually introduce new ways of exploiting existing resources or of discovering new ones" (193-4). This is further supported by Gleick's statement that "nonlinearity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules" (24), meaning that in the very act of writing a new story or poem, a writer changes the rules of story- or poem-writing. We therefore not only can, but always do create new forms (if you play the game of literature, you necessarily change the rules), which means that postmodernism is fundamentally wrong when it says there are not new voices or styles and therefore all literature (or any art) can do now is collage and montage. We find postmodernism in this position because it falsely believed literary change to be linear, when it is really nonlinear (it feeds back on itself, etc.).
Mandelbrot saw the Cantor set as a model for the occurrence of errors in an electric transmission line. Engineers saw periods of error-free transmission, mixed with periods when errors would come in bursts. Looked at more closely, the bursts, too, contained error-free periods within them. And so on – it was an example of fractal time (93c).
which I have reworded thus:
I see the Cantor set as a model for the occurrence of words (particular words) in a novel. There are periods where a given word does not appear, mixed with periods when the word does appear, mixed with periods when the word comes in bursts. Looked at more closely, the bursts, too contain periods without that word within them. And so on – it is an example of fractal time within the novel.
These dusts occur on smaller scales, each cluster giving clusters of spaces and clusters. Naturally, in a novel one can only go down so far – to the sentence-level – but one can see the general principle holds. This is what made me think to graph several words to see if any patterns would make themselves apparent – as indeed happened with the word "friend" in my novel manuscript "Hear the Screams of the Butterfly" on the page-level. This graph is what is called a "Poincaré map," which "removes a dimension from an attractor and turns a continuous line into a collection of points" (142). "Such pictures ... [begin] to reveal the fine fractal structure" (144) of the system – in this case, the novel. Thus, we see word distribution in a novel "as a Cantor set arranged in time" (Gleick, 92), where "the degree of irregularity remains constant over different scales. ... the world displays a regular regularity" (Gleick, 98). This suggested to me that meaning in a novel is both emergent and fractaline – as one goes down, one sees ever-smaller elements of meaning – elements that finally stop at the level of words – perhaps. There is also perhaps the level of multiple interpretations of words – especially in context of the emergent properties of the phrase, sentence, paragraph, etc. Going down helps us see the fractal repetitions while going up (looking at the patterns the words make, looking at how they are functioning in a particular sentence, paragraph, scene, etc.) helps us see the emergent levels of meaning. The mere repetition of a word is not enough – it has to repeat in a chaotic pattern to create the strongest levels of meaning. Each word "repeat[s] itself, displaying familiar patterns over time. ... But the repetitions [are] never quite exact. There [is] pattern, with disturbances. An orderly disorder" (15). Thus, although the word "love" is repeated more in my text, the fact that it lacks this kind of periodic behavior 9orderly disorder) while the word "friend" does tells you the word "friend" is a stronger theme-word, having been created through the tensions in the novel. How does this happen? "Information is transmitted back from the small scales to the large... And the channel transmitting the information upward is the strange attractor, magnifying the initial randomness just as the Butterfly Effect magnifies small uncertainties into large-scale weather patterns" (261). This is why the peaks of the word "friend" correspond to major plot points in the text. So we see a novel is a particular type of fractal – it is, indeed, self-similar at lower intervals, but as one goes up, new forms are made, self-similar to what came before, but having emergent properties (meanings). What we therefore see in deconstruction is a concern only with the "infinite coastline" of the novel, to the expense of the emergent meaning of that coastline in delineating the complete form of the novel.
Since the novel is now seen to be both regular and irregular, to be, in essence, fractaline, one could perhaps see Gleick's observation on 100 as a literary judgement: "The degree of irregularity corresponded to the efficiency of the object in taking up space." Is there perhaps a correlation between a novel's degree of irregularity as a fractaline object and our finding that novel aesthetically pleasing (or, at least, long-term survival)? This would be an interesting line of research for someone to pursue. This complexity that a fractal view of the novel illuminates is also another way of judging a novel (or understanding how novels have perhaps been judged in the past) since, as Gleick says, "Simple shapes are inhuman. They fail to resonate with the way nature organizes itself or with the way human perception sees the world" (116-7). Though we have to be careful when we say the word "simple," since "simple systems can do complicated things" (167), as anyone who has read Hemingway knows. Further, "as [a] system becomes chaotic ..., strictly by virtue of its unpredictability, it generates a steady stream of information" (260). This is undoubtedly why we say that both predictable stories and stories that are not retrodictable are bad stories. A chaotic story would be one that is neither predictable, but is certainly retrodictable.
Gleick also states that irregular patterns and infinitely complex shapes have "a quality of self-similarity. Above all, fractal meant self-similar" (103). Further, "self-similarity is symmetry across scale. It implies recursion, pattern inside of pattern," (103) meaning fractals are not determined by scale (107-8). The presence of meaning in a novel is also not determined by its scale. Phonemes have meaning, and so do plots, as well as every level in between. But, like eddies of air are the same as a hurricane, only at different scales, the effect of the higher levels of meaning is as different from phoneme to plot as the effects of an eddy of air are to a hurricane. All the same, an eddy of air can, building on other eddies of air, build into a hurricane over space and time in the same way as phonemes, building on other phonemes, build into a novel over space and time. This is because "each change of scale [brings] new phenomena and new kinds of behavior" (115). Therefore, the existence of meaning applies "without regard to scale" (108) in a novel. It is also natural to say that greater meaning emerges as we go up in scale, since these scales are hierarchical (116). As Gleick points out, "fractal scaling [is] not just common but universal in morphogenesis" (110). And since fractal geometry is "nature's own" (114), and a novel is a part of nature inasmuch as it is a creation by a living organism, we should not be surprised to find that novels have fractal geometry. Further, "A geometrical shape has a scale, a characteristic size. To Mandelbrot, art that satisfies lacks scale, in the sense that it contains important elements at all sizes" (117), meaning a good novel (that satisfies the reader) lacks scale, in the sense that it contains important elements at all sizes, from phonemes to plot.
On the other hand, I did not get nearly as much from Prigogine in regards to opening up new ways of understanding the novel, except in some general ways. I strengthened my belief that to really understand any text, one has to know something about its creation when Prigogine says, "these far-from-equilibrium phenomena illustrate an essential and unexpected property of matter: physics may henceforth describe structures as adapted to outside conditions" (14), with far-from-equilibrium states being those that have strong tension in them (the very definition of a story). He also makes a statement that can easily be used to describe a novel: "One of the most interesting aspects of dissipative structures is their coherence. The system behaves as a whole, as if it were the site of long-range sources. ...the system is structured as though each molecule were "informed" about the overall state of the system" (171), a dissipative system being one that has both structure and disorder in it (143), that is, chaotic. On can see a sentence as having this very structure (Turner, The Culture of Hope). One can, in a sense, see how each "molecule" of the word "friend" is "informed" about the "overall state of the system" of the novel, helping it to cohere and have meaning. Also, Prigogine does away with the postmodern view that nothing new can be created when he says, "living societies continually introduce new ways of exploiting existing resources or of discovering new ones" (193-4). This is further supported by Gleick's statement that "nonlinearity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules" (24), meaning that in the very act of writing a new story or poem, a writer changes the rules of story- or poem-writing. We therefore not only can, but always do create new forms (if you play the game of literature, you necessarily change the rules), which means that postmodernism is fundamentally wrong when it says there are not new voices or styles and therefore all literature (or any art) can do now is collage and montage. We find postmodernism in this position because it falsely believed literary change to be linear, when it is really nonlinear (it feeds back on itself, etc.).
Monday, August 13, 2007
On "Time, Order, Chaos"
I found particularly interesting J.T. Fraser's essay wherein he observed that the "Triad Cantor Set; it has a dimension of 0.6309" (7n), which is uncannily close to the Fibonacci ratio of 0.618, the ratio of the simplest kind of fractal. Considering my previous comparison of the distribution of words as being similar to a Cantor Set, it would be interesting to see if one could get the dimensionality of word distribution to see if it would be somewhere near these two numbers. I personally have no idea how one could possibly go about doing this, considering my poor background knowledge of mathematics, but it should be possible. Also, I found his observation that "the hierarchical theory of time recognizes five stable, hierarchically nested integrative levels of nature. By hierarchically nested is meant that each integrative level subsumes the functions and structures of the one or ones beneath it, and each adds to the potentialities of its predecessors certain new degrees of freedom" (10). I found this interesting both from the point of view of understanding how new instincts can arise through the combination of old ones, and from the point of view of understanding how meaning can arise through the various hierarchical levels of the novel, from the phoneme, through the sentence-level, to the plot.
Paul A. Harris' essay on Perec I have found particularly useful in thinking of new ways of teaching my rhetoric class. I recently applied the idea of constraints used in the essay, particularly Perec's refusal to use "e" in one of his novels, in my rhetoric class, making my students write just a paragraph without using an "e", and the results were remarkable. Naturally, the paragraph they wrote without "e" were, for the most part, stilted (there was one exception, where the writer actually wrote a very beautiful passage), but in the essays I had them write afterward, to tell me what they thought of the exercise, all the students said it was a great exercise, that helped them really think about their writing, and they recommended I use that pedagogical technique in my next class I teach. In the case of the novel, the essay shows just how important rules are to creation. And if the arbitrary rules can be important to creating new, interesting styles, just imagine how important the natural rules of language must be.
Argyros says in his essay that evolution is "a process of complexification that incorporates its past as the fine grain of the present" (139). Is this, perhaps, one way of defining one of the parameters of a great novel? Also of interest was the comments on the nature of metaphor as the comparison of higher umwelts with lower umwelts (141). This idea is particularly interesting for writers to think about in their writing, helping them to create more and better (and more interesting) metaphors.
Finally, I found Thomas Weissert's essay on narrative quite interesting, especially in light of the work I am doing on poetics as an instinct (and my tying it to the narrative instinct). Narrative helps us separate what is important out from the noise, and helps us turn noise into meaning. Especially when we engage in ritual. One could even look at the ritual of a story as: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, tragedy ensues; while it is the noise surrounding this ritual that makes this ritual into Romeo and Juliet verses The Sorrows of Young Werther. This is because "we use filtering and preconceived structures to obtain the narrative identity. We use the identity to recognize subsequent changes in the identity and, depending on the level of nature we describe, the changes define the meaning we can attribute to the narrative. The changes come from the background noise that to some degree obscures our view of the repetition of the pattern. So it is from the noise that we ultimately get meaning" (171). Furthermore, this noise "drowns out the possibility of divining meaning precisely, if at all. But without noise there can be no meaning. This noise represents a level of fuzziness beyond which we cannot see" (172). The ritual of boy meets girl, etc. gives information, but it does not give meaning, while each of the specific examples given do carry meaning (though the meaning of each is indeed ambiguous). One could apply this too to such chaotic patterns (noise) in word distribution as I discovered in my own novel, which would show how such word patterns both make my novel more, not less, ambiguous, and simultaneously more meaningful.
Paul A. Harris' essay on Perec I have found particularly useful in thinking of new ways of teaching my rhetoric class. I recently applied the idea of constraints used in the essay, particularly Perec's refusal to use "e" in one of his novels, in my rhetoric class, making my students write just a paragraph without using an "e", and the results were remarkable. Naturally, the paragraph they wrote without "e" were, for the most part, stilted (there was one exception, where the writer actually wrote a very beautiful passage), but in the essays I had them write afterward, to tell me what they thought of the exercise, all the students said it was a great exercise, that helped them really think about their writing, and they recommended I use that pedagogical technique in my next class I teach. In the case of the novel, the essay shows just how important rules are to creation. And if the arbitrary rules can be important to creating new, interesting styles, just imagine how important the natural rules of language must be.
Argyros says in his essay that evolution is "a process of complexification that incorporates its past as the fine grain of the present" (139). Is this, perhaps, one way of defining one of the parameters of a great novel? Also of interest was the comments on the nature of metaphor as the comparison of higher umwelts with lower umwelts (141). This idea is particularly interesting for writers to think about in their writing, helping them to create more and better (and more interesting) metaphors.
Finally, I found Thomas Weissert's essay on narrative quite interesting, especially in light of the work I am doing on poetics as an instinct (and my tying it to the narrative instinct). Narrative helps us separate what is important out from the noise, and helps us turn noise into meaning. Especially when we engage in ritual. One could even look at the ritual of a story as: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, tragedy ensues; while it is the noise surrounding this ritual that makes this ritual into Romeo and Juliet verses The Sorrows of Young Werther. This is because "we use filtering and preconceived structures to obtain the narrative identity. We use the identity to recognize subsequent changes in the identity and, depending on the level of nature we describe, the changes define the meaning we can attribute to the narrative. The changes come from the background noise that to some degree obscures our view of the repetition of the pattern. So it is from the noise that we ultimately get meaning" (171). Furthermore, this noise "drowns out the possibility of divining meaning precisely, if at all. But without noise there can be no meaning. This noise represents a level of fuzziness beyond which we cannot see" (172). The ritual of boy meets girl, etc. gives information, but it does not give meaning, while each of the specific examples given do carry meaning (though the meaning of each is indeed ambiguous). One could apply this too to such chaotic patterns (noise) in word distribution as I discovered in my own novel, which would show how such word patterns both make my novel more, not less, ambiguous, and simultaneously more meaningful.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Zero Sum Games
In a free economy everyone has the opportunity to get better because the economy is a non-zero-sum game. Most people in developing nations would rather be poor in the U.S. than middle classed in their own countries. And it's because the working poor have it better off here than do most people (except the ruling elite, of course) in developing nations. Certainly the U.S. isn't perfect, and it doesn't have as free an economy as it could and should, but its relative freedom allows for a non-zero-sum ecnomy that makes it possible for all boats to rise. I don't particularly care if other boats rise faster, either, as that sort of "fiarness," or egalitarianism, only pushes the economy toward increasing zero-sumness. The point is, in a free economy, I am not hurt in any way, shape, or form if there are others who have more than I do, becaue they are not taking anything from me in a positive sum game. Their wealth does not impoverish me. To complain about someone else's wealth is like complaining about someone else being ethical, as though their being good somehow prevented me from being good. The first attitude resulte din the gulag, and the second attitude resulted in the attacks by the Islamic terrorists. The bottom line is that the belief in a zero-sum world has resulted in a lot of deaths, and will continue to do so until we recognize that the world isn't a zero-sum game, and never has been, and never will be.
Shared Prosperity
Hillary Clinton hs been speaking of "shared propserity" -- not a bad code word for socialism (dare I say what it really is: communism?), wouldn't you say? Well, here's a few rough numbers, to put this into perspective.
Take the money from the Gates Foundation, approximately $100 billion dollars. Divide it by the U.S. population, about 300 million people. Each person would get a whopping . . . $333! I think Bill Gates can do far better things with his money at his foundation than just give it away "fairly".
Or how about if we really go big. If we take all the money from the top one tenth of one percent (0.01%), or the richest 300,000 people, we get $16,800 trillion (these are 2005 numbers) which, when divided by the U.S. population, gives each person $56,00. Not bad, don't you think? Sounds like a wonderful idea, I hear some of you saying. But suppose we did do just this one day -- seized all this money and distributed it evenly? Do you suppose that any of those 300,000 people would be interested in trying to make that kind of money again? Unlikely. And I would guess that most of us are employed by one of those 300,000 people, who would now not be so keen to keep doing what they are doing (that is, providing everyone jobs, places to shop, cheap goods, etc.). How quickly would this kind of idea drive the country into abject poverty?
Now, I know that this is not the kind of idea Hillary Clinton is really in favor of. What I have given you here is a radical kind of thought experiment. But it does make the point that, while it may make people better off in the short term, in the long term, redistributionist policies impoverish us all. Beware of anyone using this kind of rhetoric. "Shared prosperity" will do nothing more than lead to shared impoverishment. But don't worry, the Leftists will at least rule us absolutely by then. (One only hopes my rhetoric here is elevated and not prophetic)
Take the money from the Gates Foundation, approximately $100 billion dollars. Divide it by the U.S. population, about 300 million people. Each person would get a whopping . . . $333! I think Bill Gates can do far better things with his money at his foundation than just give it away "fairly".
Or how about if we really go big. If we take all the money from the top one tenth of one percent (0.01%), or the richest 300,000 people, we get $16,800 trillion (these are 2005 numbers) which, when divided by the U.S. population, gives each person $56,00. Not bad, don't you think? Sounds like a wonderful idea, I hear some of you saying. But suppose we did do just this one day -- seized all this money and distributed it evenly? Do you suppose that any of those 300,000 people would be interested in trying to make that kind of money again? Unlikely. And I would guess that most of us are employed by one of those 300,000 people, who would now not be so keen to keep doing what they are doing (that is, providing everyone jobs, places to shop, cheap goods, etc.). How quickly would this kind of idea drive the country into abject poverty?
Now, I know that this is not the kind of idea Hillary Clinton is really in favor of. What I have given you here is a radical kind of thought experiment. But it does make the point that, while it may make people better off in the short term, in the long term, redistributionist policies impoverish us all. Beware of anyone using this kind of rhetoric. "Shared prosperity" will do nothing more than lead to shared impoverishment. But don't worry, the Leftists will at least rule us absolutely by then. (One only hopes my rhetoric here is elevated and not prophetic)
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Venezuela and Hugo Chavez
I've been generally appalled by everything Hugo Chavez has been doing in Venezuela for a while now. Of course, he's acting just like your typical Leftist -- nationalizing everything in sight, especially the oil industry, and, now, the silencing of media opposition. Quite a clever way of doing it too -- he didn't do it directly, but rather waited for the T.V. station to have to get its license renewed, and then refused. Of course, he is spouting that nonsense about "democractising" the airwaves -- which is only code for controlling it so that only good things come out about him on it.
In the May 2007 edition of The Sun, there is an interview with a Leftist investigative reporter for the BBC, who said of the Venezuela media: "And remember, the Venezuelan media hate Chavez. Unlike ours, their media actively debate politics, and they are against him. But he hasn't shut down the meda." Well, Palast, here it is, the end of May, and that is exactly what we have just seen Chavez do. Of course, should there be any sort of follow-up interview pointing this out, I can guarantee that Palast will figure out some way to defend Chavez, as that is what Leftists are best at doing, defending tyranny.
So, let me tell you what is going to happen next in Venezuela. First, Chavez will figure out some sideways way to eliminate the rest of his vocal opponents. Probably through more direct nationalization of the media. Then, when he has complete control of information inside Venevuela, that is when the killings will begin, as it has under every single Left-wing dictatorship in the world, from the French Revolution to the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, or Cuba. Don't forget that Castro is Chavez's hero.
How many more murders will we have to endure before we understand that every Leftist-control country is NOT an aberation, but a true expression of what they really mean and want -- that they think they have to kill everyone who will not fit into their world view, that to them it is just to kill everyone who stand in the way of creating the perfect, perfectly "just" society? The believe in a justice that is pure, devoid of mercy. If Chavez has shown any mercy, it is just a pose until he gets compelete power and control over the country. And when he shows his true colors . . . Nothing will happen. Those who supported him will pretend it's not happening, or excuse it, and those who were already against him will shrug their shoulders and say, "I told you so." But the latter will be saying it to those who are deaf to hear it.
In the May 2007 edition of The Sun, there is an interview with a Leftist investigative reporter for the BBC, who said of the Venezuela media: "And remember, the Venezuelan media hate Chavez. Unlike ours, their media actively debate politics, and they are against him. But he hasn't shut down the meda." Well, Palast, here it is, the end of May, and that is exactly what we have just seen Chavez do. Of course, should there be any sort of follow-up interview pointing this out, I can guarantee that Palast will figure out some way to defend Chavez, as that is what Leftists are best at doing, defending tyranny.
So, let me tell you what is going to happen next in Venezuela. First, Chavez will figure out some sideways way to eliminate the rest of his vocal opponents. Probably through more direct nationalization of the media. Then, when he has complete control of information inside Venevuela, that is when the killings will begin, as it has under every single Left-wing dictatorship in the world, from the French Revolution to the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, or Cuba. Don't forget that Castro is Chavez's hero.
How many more murders will we have to endure before we understand that every Leftist-control country is NOT an aberation, but a true expression of what they really mean and want -- that they think they have to kill everyone who will not fit into their world view, that to them it is just to kill everyone who stand in the way of creating the perfect, perfectly "just" society? The believe in a justice that is pure, devoid of mercy. If Chavez has shown any mercy, it is just a pose until he gets compelete power and control over the country. And when he shows his true colors . . . Nothing will happen. Those who supported him will pretend it's not happening, or excuse it, and those who were already against him will shrug their shoulders and say, "I told you so." But the latter will be saying it to those who are deaf to hear it.
Friday, May 04, 2007
UN Observers
In response to the genocide in Darfur, the U.N. sent observers. Who stood around and observed the genocide. Prior to the war Israel had with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the U.N. had put in place observers. Who stood around and observed Hezbollah kidnap Israeli soldiers. In response to the genocide in Rwanda, the U.N. sent observers. Who stood around and observed the genocide. Of what use is the U.N. if its response to problems around the world -- particularly genocide -- is to send in U.N. troops to observe, to watch it happen? Is it just to have more witnesses? And for what? The U.N. is not going to bring anyone in Sudan to trial. No one in Rwanda was really held responsible. If the only purpose of the U.N. is to observe one group slaughter another while allowing countries like Syria to be on the Human Rights Council (the only ones who should be allowed on the human rights council are the top dozen countries with the best records of protecting human rights -- and if the U.S. finds itself not allowed on the Council, then we should try to do something about our police, too many of whom increasingly abuse their power), if the U.N. is not going to protect people around the world, what on earth is it for? So we can have governmental corruption at an international scale?
Friday, January 05, 2007
Proposal For A New Check in the Old Checks and Balances
Politicians need to be held responsible for when the passage of a law has negative results. We cannot trust voters to vote the bums out -- it's never My Congressman who is the problem, but the Other Congressmen who are the problem (much like, it's not My School that is not giving children a proper education, it is all the Other Schools that are the problem -- no, it is absolutely YOUR SCHOOL!!! that is the problem, and until we admit that, there will never be true education reform in this country). Further, just because someone passed one law with negative consequences, that doesn't mean that other laws one's politicians passed didn't have positive consequences. Thus, I propose that individual lawmakers be held legally liable for the laws they pass, and the proven negative consequences produced. Thus, if a law is passed that results in an increase in the crime rate, and it can be proven in a court of law, each lawmaker who voted for it will have to pay a fine that makes up for the cost of the law they passed. I would venture to say that having the ability to hold lawmakers responsible this way would make them think twice about passing any law -- unless they had a fair amount of certainty it would have the desired effect(s). Thus, there would be no more of this nonsense about the lawmakers having "good intentions," no matter what the outcome may be. Lawmakers should be interested in good outcome, not good intentions. There is a very subtle form of immorality in supporting good intentions that have bad outcomes (remember what the road to Hell is paved with). I say it is about time our lawmakers were held responsible for their actions -- and not just with the voters, but in courts of law. Of course, I don't expect any lawmaker to ever support anything like this -- that is perhaps what revolutions are for.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Melina Keridwen
My life began anew when you were born --
No, no -- it really happened when I learned
That you would soon be born to us my dear --
It's for you that my life has always burned.
No, no -- it really happened when I learned
That you would soon be born to us my dear --
It's for you that my life has always burned.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Kind of Intelligence Test Results
| Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence |
 You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator. |
Thankful Test Results
| You Are 79% Thankful |
 You are a very thankful person - for both the big and little things in life. Your optimism is powerful. Getting through hard times is fairly easy for you. |
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Interdisciplinarity Essay
Here is a link to an article I wrote on interdisciplinarity published in Time News:
http://www.studyoftime.org/TimesNews/Times_News_06.pdf
http://www.studyoftime.org/TimesNews/Times_News_06.pdf
Friday, October 27, 2006
Telemachus' Lament
The wind that whips across the shining sea
Brings tales of loss and love back home to me.
Brings tales of loss and love back home to me.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Grammars
Here is an interesting article on peptide grammar. I am also incidentally reading a book by Hauser titled "Moral Minds," in which the author argues for a moral deep grammar similar to Chomsky's language deep grammar. I'm not surprised to learn that grammars are older and go deeper than the human mind.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_sc/anti_bacterial_grammar
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_sc/anti_bacterial_grammar
Sunday, October 15, 2006
An Aphorism on American Poverty
You cannot simultaneously have an obesity problem and a proverty problem.
Satire
I made the mistake of reading one of Juvenal's satires. There is so much fodder right now in the world. So much fodder. And it has historically not been good news for a society when the satires begin to get written. So, shall I begin?
And where to begin? I'm almost tempted to just run through each and every Senator and Congress person. Then hit the White House and the SUpreme Court, move on to various states, various social leaders, issues of education -- here I have a lot to work with, since my wife works in a public school, and I work in a charter school. A blessing and a curse all at once. So much to work with, so little time to work.
So much work to do, so little time to work. I need a patron. Then I could do the work I need to do. Anyone out there want to be a patron of the arts? Of philosophy? Of an up-and-coming vicious satire?
I've always thought the doom-sayers were full of it. But I've seen too much of late, I see the wheels of history turning in a way that they have turned before. The barbarians are at the gate, and they are being let in by those so weak they don't want to offend anyone. Even those who claim to be the strongest are weak beyond compare. The most terrifying difference is that the barbarians are also the most educated among us. On 9-11 we were attacked by a cadre of the college-educated. They were not the poorest, they were not the least among us, they were not even desperate -- they were highly educated, highly motivated, and highly religious. This is a religious war. Those who say otherwise are those who have never had religion in their lives, and have no idea what it is even about, who don't think religion has any real effect on peoples' lives. It is these people who will the death of us all. Well, them, and others like them -- people like Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-Il -- who only plan, like the dogs they are, to make cynical use of others' religious fervor.
I've been all over the place -- or have I? The satire seems to have begun a little earlier than I originally thought.
And where to begin? I'm almost tempted to just run through each and every Senator and Congress person. Then hit the White House and the SUpreme Court, move on to various states, various social leaders, issues of education -- here I have a lot to work with, since my wife works in a public school, and I work in a charter school. A blessing and a curse all at once. So much to work with, so little time to work.
So much work to do, so little time to work. I need a patron. Then I could do the work I need to do. Anyone out there want to be a patron of the arts? Of philosophy? Of an up-and-coming vicious satire?
I've always thought the doom-sayers were full of it. But I've seen too much of late, I see the wheels of history turning in a way that they have turned before. The barbarians are at the gate, and they are being let in by those so weak they don't want to offend anyone. Even those who claim to be the strongest are weak beyond compare. The most terrifying difference is that the barbarians are also the most educated among us. On 9-11 we were attacked by a cadre of the college-educated. They were not the poorest, they were not the least among us, they were not even desperate -- they were highly educated, highly motivated, and highly religious. This is a religious war. Those who say otherwise are those who have never had religion in their lives, and have no idea what it is even about, who don't think religion has any real effect on peoples' lives. It is these people who will the death of us all. Well, them, and others like them -- people like Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-Il -- who only plan, like the dogs they are, to make cynical use of others' religious fervor.
I've been all over the place -- or have I? The satire seems to have begun a little earlier than I originally thought.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Bad Eggs
Oftentimes we believe something -- understand what it means in theory -- but don't really know for certain, since we don't have any actual evidence for it. For example, I understand that disruptive students severely harm the educations of their fellow students. If there is but one in the class who will not be quiet, who is rude and disruptive and a showoff and won't sit down and won't do his work, then that prevents his fellow classmates from doing well. I understood this in theory.
I have a 7th grade English class that has a student who is exactly this way (loud, rude, etc.). Recently I have been reading Aesop's fables to teach my students the very basics of storytelling. I read them one, then ask them 1) What happened? 2) Who is the protagonist? 3) Who is the antagonist? 4) What is the setting? 5) What could you learn from this fable? They do the work in class. I have done this several times already. Let me give 1) the statistics for the two days this student was in class, then give 2) the statistics for two days he was suspended.
1) Day 1:
Average grade = 24
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all, out of 24 students) = 14
Average grade without counting zeros = 58
Day 2:
Average grade = 34
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 11
Average grade without counting zeros = 62
2) Day 3:
Average grade = 64
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 6
Average grade without counting zeros = 87
Day 4:
Average grade = 81
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 2
Average grade without counting zeros = 89
That's right, the average grades doubled with the absence of this student. More, this absent student has a friend in my class. Here are his grades, from day 1 to day 4: 42, 10, 100, 90. He went from a 10 one day to a 100 the next day. Am I really to think that he suddenly "got it" within a day? That's not an impossiblity. However, his highly disruptive friend was not there -- and his grades leapt up.
What does this mean? Should be just get rid of some students, count them as a lost cause? Perhaps not -- I'm not quite so pessimistic as that yet. However, this does indicate that one major problem with our schools is the very presence of such students. How to fix it? How does one fix bad parenting? Or poor societal influences? However, we can reintroduce actual discipline to our classes (I have discovered that the only students detentions work on are those who don't get them -- those who do, their own parents don't want them around, and those parents are happy to get rid of them an hour earlier). And we need to have strong discipline from early on. Teach manners, ethics, posture -- things we have abandoned long ago. These will lay the foundation of good behavior later. Will this mean there will be no bad eggs? Of course not. But there will be many, many fewer -- and those we do still have, we can remove from the classrooms more easily and put them in classrooms together, away from the rest of the students, so the rest of the students have a chance to become educated.
I have a 7th grade English class that has a student who is exactly this way (loud, rude, etc.). Recently I have been reading Aesop's fables to teach my students the very basics of storytelling. I read them one, then ask them 1) What happened? 2) Who is the protagonist? 3) Who is the antagonist? 4) What is the setting? 5) What could you learn from this fable? They do the work in class. I have done this several times already. Let me give 1) the statistics for the two days this student was in class, then give 2) the statistics for two days he was suspended.
1) Day 1:
Average grade = 24
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all, out of 24 students) = 14
Average grade without counting zeros = 58
Day 2:
Average grade = 34
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 11
Average grade without counting zeros = 62
2) Day 3:
Average grade = 64
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 6
Average grade without counting zeros = 87
Day 4:
Average grade = 81
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 2
Average grade without counting zeros = 89
That's right, the average grades doubled with the absence of this student. More, this absent student has a friend in my class. Here are his grades, from day 1 to day 4: 42, 10, 100, 90. He went from a 10 one day to a 100 the next day. Am I really to think that he suddenly "got it" within a day? That's not an impossiblity. However, his highly disruptive friend was not there -- and his grades leapt up.
What does this mean? Should be just get rid of some students, count them as a lost cause? Perhaps not -- I'm not quite so pessimistic as that yet. However, this does indicate that one major problem with our schools is the very presence of such students. How to fix it? How does one fix bad parenting? Or poor societal influences? However, we can reintroduce actual discipline to our classes (I have discovered that the only students detentions work on are those who don't get them -- those who do, their own parents don't want them around, and those parents are happy to get rid of them an hour earlier). And we need to have strong discipline from early on. Teach manners, ethics, posture -- things we have abandoned long ago. These will lay the foundation of good behavior later. Will this mean there will be no bad eggs? Of course not. But there will be many, many fewer -- and those we do still have, we can remove from the classrooms more easily and put them in classrooms together, away from the rest of the students, so the rest of the students have a chance to become educated.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Coveting
"In coveting is evil's root" (Chretien de Troyes, "Eric and Enide," Ruth Harwood Cline, tr. line 2935).
I'm reading one of Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian romances, "Eric and Enide," and I ran across the above line. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife or goods." Indeed, without the sin of covetousness, there would be no need for "Thou shalt not steal" nor "Thou shalt not committ adultery." I would venture to guess that there would also be no need for "Thou shalt not murder" either. When one covets what others have, one wants precisely that thing that they have, and not just something like it. Coveting results in theft, adultery, and even murder, as well as resentment, which incidentally gives rise to redistributionary economic and political theories, giving rise to taxation, the welfare state, and the various forms of socialism, especially communism. When one covets, one can even learn to hate the good for being good.
It seems to me that there is a difference between coveting -- wanting precisely what others have -- and . . . what is the word? ambition, perhaps? still, this word seems insuffient -- wanting the kinds of things others have. If one wants the kinds of things others have, one is compelled to work hard to get those things. This attitude is the very basis of capitalism. But if one wants the exact thing someone else has, one is guilty of the sin of covetousness, which leads to theft, adultery, and any number of other sins. We have typically failed to differentiate between these two attitudes toward what others have. That too, it seems to me, is a great sin as well -- for then we cannot tell the difference between good and evil.
I'm reading one of Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian romances, "Eric and Enide," and I ran across the above line. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife or goods." Indeed, without the sin of covetousness, there would be no need for "Thou shalt not steal" nor "Thou shalt not committ adultery." I would venture to guess that there would also be no need for "Thou shalt not murder" either. When one covets what others have, one wants precisely that thing that they have, and not just something like it. Coveting results in theft, adultery, and even murder, as well as resentment, which incidentally gives rise to redistributionary economic and political theories, giving rise to taxation, the welfare state, and the various forms of socialism, especially communism. When one covets, one can even learn to hate the good for being good.
It seems to me that there is a difference between coveting -- wanting precisely what others have -- and . . . what is the word? ambition, perhaps? still, this word seems insuffient -- wanting the kinds of things others have. If one wants the kinds of things others have, one is compelled to work hard to get those things. This attitude is the very basis of capitalism. But if one wants the exact thing someone else has, one is guilty of the sin of covetousness, which leads to theft, adultery, and any number of other sins. We have typically failed to differentiate between these two attitudes toward what others have. That too, it seems to me, is a great sin as well -- for then we cannot tell the difference between good and evil.
The Gift of Education
I don't know why I take it personally, but I do -- students' refusal to do their homework, to study, to listen and learn. Perhaps it is because education is a gift, and I, as a teacher, wish to bestow this gift on my students. Who would not be insulted, offended, hurt if their gifts were turned down and even distained? Imagine ofering a gift of great value to someone and they turned up their nose at it, sneered at it, threw it back in your face? How would you feel? That, indeed, is how I feel when students don't want to learn, don't want to work, disrupt class and talk and refuse to listen when I speak. That is why I take it personally when students won't do everything they can to accept the gift of education I offer. To refuse a gift is a hateful thing indeed. That is why I feel my anger is justified. That is why I take it personally.
Higher Education or Trade School?
One of the major reforms I would encourage in education includes a restructuring of attitudes toward higher education. Not everyone needs to go to college to get an academic education. Many need to go to trade schools or technical colleges. Our high schools need to reflect that reality. In Europe, grade school students take aptitude tests to determine if they go into academics or to a high school to help them learn a trade. I think that would be a good step for the U.S. to take -- though with some ability for the child and parents to choose, of course. The following essay: http://www.johnlocke.org/acrobat/pope_articles/the_overselling_of_higher_education_report.pdf explains the position I support in greater detail. I am fortunate that at the charter school where I teach, there is an honors program that allows me to teach the academic children at a much higher level, meaning they can get a properly classical education, which will truly prepare them for university. The rest of the students, who either will not go to college, or who should be going to a technical school, but will go to college instead (making the mistake the essayist is talking about), should be given an education that will more directly involve the kinds of situations they will actually encounter in work and life. Which could lead me into a discussion of the need for reintroducing ethics (including basic things like manners and good posture) into the schools (starting in pre-K), but that is another posting for another time.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Miscellaneous Education
Not that I spent a lot of time posting on this blog anyway, but ever since I started working at A+ Academy teaching 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grade English, I've found myself with less and less time to do anything other than prepare for classes. And my computer crashing as completely as a computer can seem to crash hasn't helped any. No place to do any work. Not that I have the time anymore.
This is not to say that I'm not enjoying myself teaching. I am teaching The Iliad to my honors 8th grade class and The Odyssey to my honors 9th grade class. I am reading them out loud to my classes because the only version of The Iliad available at the school is this godawful prose translation, and I want my students to get the best translation of it, so they can get closest to what it is like in the Greek. More, I am reading them out loud so my students can experience these works as they were originally experienced (or at least close to that, since I'm not about to sing them, and nobody would want me to). Finally, I am doing it to develop their listening skills. We don't teach our children to listen.
I am also incredulous at the level of ignorance I have had to face. I knew, with experience teaching Freshman composition, that there was almost know knowledge of grammar -- or much of anything, for that matter. But still, I am shocked anew at how little students learn in school. More, I am shocked at how little anyone expects of them. I have honors English students who actually asked me "what's a predicate?" and "what's a subject?" I've decided these children will not leave my class not knowing grammar. I have told them I will give them grammar quizzes at least every week until they all make a hundred. And I am talking about having them pick out the subject, the predicate, the nouns, the articles, the verbs, the adjectives, the adverbs, the direct objects, and the indirect objects -- of simple sentences. My honors students (8,9,10th grades) have done poorly with me, and it is because I am having to teach them about a decade's worth of information that they should have known by now.
But this is nothing compared to 7th grade, where I cannot teach anything at all because I have to get them under control first. I only received these 7th graders a few weeks ago, after 9 were siphoned off from another class. I have had to come up with a set of extremely strict rules, ranging from the complete abolition of speaking in the class unless I call upon them to making them have good posture and have a zero-tolerance policy for not bringing paper and pen to class. I had to give out 5 detentions today for people not bringing back signed copies of the class rules -- that's right, only 4 brought their back, and a few said they had lost theirs. I told them they had better find them, and that they would get detention every day until I received those papers back, signed.
All of which made me realize that if I ran my own charter school, there would be a few things that I would absolutely enforce in the school:
1. A true physical education, centered around gymnastics
2. A requirement for all students to learn good posture
3. A musical education (my best students are all in band)
4. A poetic education, where poetry is the core around which all reading is based. I am sick of having to re-teach the love of poetry after teachers have taught students to hate it.
5. Repetition and memorization -- which, according to both traditional educational theories and modern brain science, is the only way the brain learns anything
6. A language curriculum based on what we have learned from linguistics -- meaning, students will be taught foreign languages when they can learn them, between the ages of 5 and 10.
7. An ethical education, where students are taught to take responsibility for their own actions and not whine over every little thing.
8. A reintroduction of classes such as shop and automechanics, as well as plumbing and electronics, since not every child is an academic or will go to college.
9. A high standard of excellence -- since this is what is lacking in most schools anymore.
The most important thing that needs to be done with schools is the abolition of Rousseau and all his thoughts about everything from education. If there was one person who was completely wrong about everything, it was Rousseau. Even Marx got a few things right. But it is appalling that educational theories exist that are based on the theories of a man who said the best thing that happened in the world was the destruction of the Great Library, since it destroyed so much accumulated knowledge.
This is not to say that I'm not enjoying myself teaching. I am teaching The Iliad to my honors 8th grade class and The Odyssey to my honors 9th grade class. I am reading them out loud to my classes because the only version of The Iliad available at the school is this godawful prose translation, and I want my students to get the best translation of it, so they can get closest to what it is like in the Greek. More, I am reading them out loud so my students can experience these works as they were originally experienced (or at least close to that, since I'm not about to sing them, and nobody would want me to). Finally, I am doing it to develop their listening skills. We don't teach our children to listen.
I am also incredulous at the level of ignorance I have had to face. I knew, with experience teaching Freshman composition, that there was almost know knowledge of grammar -- or much of anything, for that matter. But still, I am shocked anew at how little students learn in school. More, I am shocked at how little anyone expects of them. I have honors English students who actually asked me "what's a predicate?" and "what's a subject?" I've decided these children will not leave my class not knowing grammar. I have told them I will give them grammar quizzes at least every week until they all make a hundred. And I am talking about having them pick out the subject, the predicate, the nouns, the articles, the verbs, the adjectives, the adverbs, the direct objects, and the indirect objects -- of simple sentences. My honors students (8,9,10th grades) have done poorly with me, and it is because I am having to teach them about a decade's worth of information that they should have known by now.
But this is nothing compared to 7th grade, where I cannot teach anything at all because I have to get them under control first. I only received these 7th graders a few weeks ago, after 9 were siphoned off from another class. I have had to come up with a set of extremely strict rules, ranging from the complete abolition of speaking in the class unless I call upon them to making them have good posture and have a zero-tolerance policy for not bringing paper and pen to class. I had to give out 5 detentions today for people not bringing back signed copies of the class rules -- that's right, only 4 brought their back, and a few said they had lost theirs. I told them they had better find them, and that they would get detention every day until I received those papers back, signed.
All of which made me realize that if I ran my own charter school, there would be a few things that I would absolutely enforce in the school:
1. A true physical education, centered around gymnastics
2. A requirement for all students to learn good posture
3. A musical education (my best students are all in band)
4. A poetic education, where poetry is the core around which all reading is based. I am sick of having to re-teach the love of poetry after teachers have taught students to hate it.
5. Repetition and memorization -- which, according to both traditional educational theories and modern brain science, is the only way the brain learns anything
6. A language curriculum based on what we have learned from linguistics -- meaning, students will be taught foreign languages when they can learn them, between the ages of 5 and 10.
7. An ethical education, where students are taught to take responsibility for their own actions and not whine over every little thing.
8. A reintroduction of classes such as shop and automechanics, as well as plumbing and electronics, since not every child is an academic or will go to college.
9. A high standard of excellence -- since this is what is lacking in most schools anymore.
The most important thing that needs to be done with schools is the abolition of Rousseau and all his thoughts about everything from education. If there was one person who was completely wrong about everything, it was Rousseau. Even Marx got a few things right. But it is appalling that educational theories exist that are based on the theories of a man who said the best thing that happened in the world was the destruction of the Great Library, since it destroyed so much accumulated knowledge.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Game Theory and Literature Essay Now Online
My essay has been published. It can be found at: Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts
It is all the fun of game theory combined with the excitement of literature. :-) I, at least, find them fun and exciting, anyway.
It is all the fun of game theory combined with the excitement of literature. :-) I, at least, find them fun and exciting, anyway.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Virtue
David Friedman has an interesting take on virtue that I think is exactly right.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue1.html
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue2.html
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue1.html
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue2.html
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Note from Seth Lloyd
I received a reply from Seth Lloyd regarding the e-mail I sent him (mentioned below). Here was his response:
Dear Dr. Camplin,
Thank you for your email. I won't be able to addressall the questions that you raise, but I can try. I don't think that the square root speedup in Grover's quantum algorithm is related to Kauffman's formula. The square rootin quantum search arises out of the wave nature of quantum mechanics, while that in Kauffman's formula arises from combanitorics, as your detailed discussion indicates. There might be some connection, though. Ask Stuart! I hope that you enjoyed Programming the Universe.Good luck with your inquiries.
Yours,
Seth Lloyd
MIT
I sent the question to Kauffman, with this e-mail. I hope to hear from him.
Dear Dr. Camplin,
Thank you for your email. I won't be able to addressall the questions that you raise, but I can try. I don't think that the square root speedup in Grover's quantum algorithm is related to Kauffman's formula. The square rootin quantum search arises out of the wave nature of quantum mechanics, while that in Kauffman's formula arises from combanitorics, as your detailed discussion indicates. There might be some connection, though. Ask Stuart! I hope that you enjoyed Programming the Universe.Good luck with your inquiries.
Yours,
Seth Lloyd
MIT
I sent the question to Kauffman, with this e-mail. I hope to hear from him.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Game Theory and Literature Essay
August approaches, so soon an essay of mine will be appearing in the following journal: http://www.aber.ac.uk/cla/
Monday, July 24, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Friday, June 30, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Nietzsche and Truth
"Truth" for Nietzsche - the No and the Yes of truth - traced through "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," and beyond to that autobiography of a mind and a body - the two inseparable - that is Ecce Homo. Truth traced to understanding what Nietzsche meant by truth.
The No of truth:
The "senses nowhere lead to truth" (TL, 80) - how can they when our bodies deceive us about our own bodies, masking and thus making us forget about "the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers!" (TL, 80)?
Does truth exist outside of man? No. Truth was invented so we can live together socially (TL, 81). Truth: "a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth" (81).
Are words truth? No. "What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus" (81). The designation of certain sounds to certain objects or, more accurately, concepts, is arbitrary (82), that is: "truth alone" is not "the deciding factor in the genesis of language" (81).
"With words, it is never a question of truth" (82).
"The thing in itself" - a Kantian concept - is this the truth? "The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for" (82). Words, therefore, do not correspond to "the thing in itself," and "the thing in itself" is itself a pointless pursuit - why pursue what, by definition, you cannot know? And what of the "would be"? Does not this "would be" require an "if"? If, perhaps, there were such a thing as "pure truth?" In any case, "pure truth" is something Nietzsche sees as "something not in the least worth striving for" since words do not correspond to pure truth, to "the thing in itself." The "genesis of language" is "not derived from the essence of things" (83).
Why? "We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things – metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities" (83). What is a metaphor? Saying one thing is another. Words, therefore, themselves are metaphors. What are words for? Particulars? No. Words are for concepts. We cannot name each particular, unique object. Therefore, words "correspond in no way to the original entities." More: "a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases" (83). And what is a concept? "We obtain a concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts" (83). Concepts are created in the human mind: "our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things" (83). "Concepts, forms, etc. is based upon" "an equation between things that are unequal" (94). There is no perfect "original model" of things, like leaves "according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted" (83), presumably be a deity – the only thing capable of such weaving, sketching, etc. This is a truth that does not need a god. This is a truth found only in the mind of man. The "essence of things" does not appear "in the empirical world," (86), but only in the mind of man, since artists "reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world" (87). It is we who bring "truth" into existence (87-88), "truth" as "the essence of things."
So, "What then is truth?" (84). What, indeed, is the Yes of truth? Truth is:
A moveable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are not considered as metal and no longer as coins (TL, 84)
That is: "to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors" (84), which means that it "is the duty to lie according to fixed convention" (84). We have forgotten that these are lies, and that is how we have arrived at our "sense of truth" (84). Truth means using things "in the designated manner" (85). Truth, therefore, is mere convention - the way things have been done. Truth, therefore, is not permanent. "New truths" are possible - new truths are merely new ways to do things. But these are all"anthropomorphic truths," which means we have designated concepts with words, and then act surprised when we find something else that fits that category, and so declare the concept we originally created as "truth" (85).
Is all truth anthropomorphic? What about the "true in itself"? Is there something "really and universally valid apart from man" (85)? By forgetting metaphors and being particular – "this sun, this window, this table" – do we come to "truth in itself" (86). Knowing "truth in itself" is knowing the world as a place, not of concepts and forms, but as a place of unique particularities.
So, can we get away from anthropomorphic truths and get at the "true in itself"? "The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive" (88), and the mind "seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally" (89). Indeed, "it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn apart by art" (89). We prefer our anthropomorphic truths to the "true in itself," they create comfort, convince us we are awake. It reflects the regular, the rational - and it is in fact the rational man who wants to use the usual metaphors. But it is the intuitive man, the "liberated intellect" who creates new concepts and shatters (by dividing up) old ones (90). This is the artist, the creator of new metaphors, the creators of untruths, without which "there can be neither society nor culture" (92).
"His nose wrinkled into a prune" creates a new concept – one that includes human noses and prunes – and therefore creates a new truth. It is also a particular – a particular nose, "his," that is associated with this thing, "prune," to make his nose have a particular look – thus making it unique and, therefore, a "truth in itself" as well as a "new truth." The new metaphor creates a new concept (new grouping of objects) that results in a "new truth" in the anthropomorphic sense, while bringing us closer to "truth in itself" by unveiling the particularity of the wrinkled object. How does it do this? Because art admits it is a lie: "Artistic pleasure is the greatest kind of pleasure, because it speaks the truth quite generally in the form of lies" (96), and therefore comes closest to revealing itself as truth. "Art works through deception – yet one which does not deceive us" (96). Why? Because "art treats illusion as illusion; therefore it does not wish to deceive; it is true" (96). "His nose wrinkled into a prune" – an artistic statement, and therefore closer to truth than anything else in this protokoll. Why? "Truth cannot be recognized. Everything which is knowable is illusion. The significance of art as truthful illusion" (97). A redundant statement: "truthful illusion": since truth is identified by Nietzsche as "illusion" (93). Thus art is an "illusionful illusion," and, as such, like love and religion, one of "the truest things in this world" (95).
This then leads us to Ecce Homo, to the autobiography of an intellect. In keeping with the theme of truth, I thought we should see how Nietzsche’s ideas on truth have evolved. A lifetime of philosophizing has passed, and this immoralist, this Anti-Christ, has come to proclaim that "Overthrowing idols (my word for "ideals") – that come closer to being part of my craft (EH, 218, 4). (I give first the pg. of the Kaufmann translation, then the Hollingdale) And what are ideals (idols)? "What is called idol on the title page is simply what has been called truth so far. Twilight of the Idols – that is: the old truth is approaching its end" (EH, 314, 86). He shows the old truths – the anthropomorphic truths – are what have been called "ideals." He reiterates that the world of ideals, what he is now calling the "true world," or what philosophers past have considered the true world, is really the invented world (218, 4), the world invented by man, through concepts. Only Nietzsche’s words have now become stronger: "The lie of the ideal has so far been the curse of reality" (218, 4). And not only this. "Error (-belief in the ideal-) is not blindness, error is cowardice . . . Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity towards oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself . . . I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." (218, 4). So, error is "belief in the ideal," and, not only that, but cowardice as well. Naturally, courage is the opposite of cowardice, meaning courage is disbelief in the ideal. For Nietzsche, only those who do not believe the lie of the ages – truth, ideals, "the thing in itself" – are courageous. He sees this "truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist" who flees from reality" (328, 98). "Cowardice in face or reality" is "cowardice in face of truth" (320, 91). But Nietzsche here, as in "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," refuses to be dogmatic – that has not changed. This is why, despite his saying those who do not believe in ideals have courage, Nietzsche says "I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." Why gloves? He does not want to be soiled by the filth of "ideals." This, despite his acknowledgment that "ideals" had been "the real fatality in my life, the superfluous and stupid in it, something out of which there is no compensation, no counter-reckoning" (241, 25) – ideals have been difficult for Nietzsche himself to rid himself of – they are "the fundamental irrationality of my life" (242, 26). Looking back, Nietzsche realizes that it is difficult to shed ones life of the lies one is raised with. "We all fear truth" (246, 29), undoubtedly because we fear change – and we fear the world unmasked of truth. At best, ideals have been frozen by Nietzsche, if not truly refuted (284, 60). He hopes he has gotten us to see, as he has, that "all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity" (258, 38), while acknowledging that most are not capable of seeing: "‘where you see ideal things, I see – human, alas all too human things!’" (281, 59). Truths remain mobile. There are "my truths" (259, 39), and Zarathustra "creates truth" (307, 76). And if truths can be created, they are impermanent, changeable, "a moving army of metaphors." While the "true in itself" comes "upon every image (metaphor)," while "words and wordchests of all existence spring open to you; all existence here wants to become words" (301, 73) because words, concepts, are more comforting than "truth in itself." Only when we realize that "Nothing that is can be subtracted, nothing is dispensable" will we be able to realize that "precisely by this measure of strength does one approach truth" (272, 50) – again, it is the particular that is the "true in itself," not words, not concepts, which require that something be subtracted in order to be conceptualized, in order to be given a sound tag – that is, a word to represent it. And the more conceptual – the further from reality – something is, while claiming to be truth (unlike art, which admits to being a lie), "Those things which mankind has hitherto pondered seriously are not even realities, merely imaginings, more strictly speaking lies from the bad instincts of the sick, in the profoundest sense injurious natures – all the concepts ‘God,’ ‘soul,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘sin,’ ‘the Beyond,’ ‘truth,’ ‘eternal life’" (256, 36). Why do we do this? "The concept of the "beyond," the "true world" [was] invented in order to devalue the only world there is – in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality" (334, 103). In fact, "Twice, at precisely the moment when with tremendous courage and self-overcoming an honest, an unambiguous, a completely scientific mode of thinking had been attained, the Germans have known how to discover secret paths to the old ‘ideal’, reconciliations between truth and ‘ideal’, at bottom formulas to a right to reject science, for a right to lie" (320, 91). So now science, in addition to art, is a path toward the truth, since the "right to reject science" is seen here as the "right to lie." The "true in itself" now seen as achievable through both art and science, through the breaking apart of the old metaphors and the realization of the particularity of the world, that the world is first perceived, then conceived, and not vice versa. This is now Nietzsche "was the first to discover the truth by being the first to experience lies as lies" (326, 96). This is how Nietzsche can say " – the truth speaks out of me. – But my truth is terrible; for so far one has called lies truth" (326, 96), and he has shown us the lies we live by.
The No of truth:
The "senses nowhere lead to truth" (TL, 80) - how can they when our bodies deceive us about our own bodies, masking and thus making us forget about "the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers!" (TL, 80)?
Does truth exist outside of man? No. Truth was invented so we can live together socially (TL, 81). Truth: "a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth" (81).
Are words truth? No. "What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus" (81). The designation of certain sounds to certain objects or, more accurately, concepts, is arbitrary (82), that is: "truth alone" is not "the deciding factor in the genesis of language" (81).
"With words, it is never a question of truth" (82).
"The thing in itself" - a Kantian concept - is this the truth? "The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for" (82). Words, therefore, do not correspond to "the thing in itself," and "the thing in itself" is itself a pointless pursuit - why pursue what, by definition, you cannot know? And what of the "would be"? Does not this "would be" require an "if"? If, perhaps, there were such a thing as "pure truth?" In any case, "pure truth" is something Nietzsche sees as "something not in the least worth striving for" since words do not correspond to pure truth, to "the thing in itself." The "genesis of language" is "not derived from the essence of things" (83).
Why? "We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things – metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities" (83). What is a metaphor? Saying one thing is another. Words, therefore, themselves are metaphors. What are words for? Particulars? No. Words are for concepts. We cannot name each particular, unique object. Therefore, words "correspond in no way to the original entities." More: "a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases" (83). And what is a concept? "We obtain a concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts" (83). Concepts are created in the human mind: "our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things" (83). "Concepts, forms, etc. is based upon" "an equation between things that are unequal" (94). There is no perfect "original model" of things, like leaves "according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted" (83), presumably be a deity – the only thing capable of such weaving, sketching, etc. This is a truth that does not need a god. This is a truth found only in the mind of man. The "essence of things" does not appear "in the empirical world," (86), but only in the mind of man, since artists "reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world" (87). It is we who bring "truth" into existence (87-88), "truth" as "the essence of things."
So, "What then is truth?" (84). What, indeed, is the Yes of truth? Truth is:
A moveable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are not considered as metal and no longer as coins (TL, 84)
That is: "to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors" (84), which means that it "is the duty to lie according to fixed convention" (84). We have forgotten that these are lies, and that is how we have arrived at our "sense of truth" (84). Truth means using things "in the designated manner" (85). Truth, therefore, is mere convention - the way things have been done. Truth, therefore, is not permanent. "New truths" are possible - new truths are merely new ways to do things. But these are all"anthropomorphic truths," which means we have designated concepts with words, and then act surprised when we find something else that fits that category, and so declare the concept we originally created as "truth" (85).
Is all truth anthropomorphic? What about the "true in itself"? Is there something "really and universally valid apart from man" (85)? By forgetting metaphors and being particular – "this sun, this window, this table" – do we come to "truth in itself" (86). Knowing "truth in itself" is knowing the world as a place, not of concepts and forms, but as a place of unique particularities.
So, can we get away from anthropomorphic truths and get at the "true in itself"? "The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive" (88), and the mind "seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally" (89). Indeed, "it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn apart by art" (89). We prefer our anthropomorphic truths to the "true in itself," they create comfort, convince us we are awake. It reflects the regular, the rational - and it is in fact the rational man who wants to use the usual metaphors. But it is the intuitive man, the "liberated intellect" who creates new concepts and shatters (by dividing up) old ones (90). This is the artist, the creator of new metaphors, the creators of untruths, without which "there can be neither society nor culture" (92).
"His nose wrinkled into a prune" creates a new concept – one that includes human noses and prunes – and therefore creates a new truth. It is also a particular – a particular nose, "his," that is associated with this thing, "prune," to make his nose have a particular look – thus making it unique and, therefore, a "truth in itself" as well as a "new truth." The new metaphor creates a new concept (new grouping of objects) that results in a "new truth" in the anthropomorphic sense, while bringing us closer to "truth in itself" by unveiling the particularity of the wrinkled object. How does it do this? Because art admits it is a lie: "Artistic pleasure is the greatest kind of pleasure, because it speaks the truth quite generally in the form of lies" (96), and therefore comes closest to revealing itself as truth. "Art works through deception – yet one which does not deceive us" (96). Why? Because "art treats illusion as illusion; therefore it does not wish to deceive; it is true" (96). "His nose wrinkled into a prune" – an artistic statement, and therefore closer to truth than anything else in this protokoll. Why? "Truth cannot be recognized. Everything which is knowable is illusion. The significance of art as truthful illusion" (97). A redundant statement: "truthful illusion": since truth is identified by Nietzsche as "illusion" (93). Thus art is an "illusionful illusion," and, as such, like love and religion, one of "the truest things in this world" (95).
This then leads us to Ecce Homo, to the autobiography of an intellect. In keeping with the theme of truth, I thought we should see how Nietzsche’s ideas on truth have evolved. A lifetime of philosophizing has passed, and this immoralist, this Anti-Christ, has come to proclaim that "Overthrowing idols (my word for "ideals") – that come closer to being part of my craft (EH, 218, 4). (I give first the pg. of the Kaufmann translation, then the Hollingdale) And what are ideals (idols)? "What is called idol on the title page is simply what has been called truth so far. Twilight of the Idols – that is: the old truth is approaching its end" (EH, 314, 86). He shows the old truths – the anthropomorphic truths – are what have been called "ideals." He reiterates that the world of ideals, what he is now calling the "true world," or what philosophers past have considered the true world, is really the invented world (218, 4), the world invented by man, through concepts. Only Nietzsche’s words have now become stronger: "The lie of the ideal has so far been the curse of reality" (218, 4). And not only this. "Error (-belief in the ideal-) is not blindness, error is cowardice . . . Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity towards oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself . . . I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." (218, 4). So, error is "belief in the ideal," and, not only that, but cowardice as well. Naturally, courage is the opposite of cowardice, meaning courage is disbelief in the ideal. For Nietzsche, only those who do not believe the lie of the ages – truth, ideals, "the thing in itself" – are courageous. He sees this "truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist" who flees from reality" (328, 98). "Cowardice in face or reality" is "cowardice in face of truth" (320, 91). But Nietzsche here, as in "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," refuses to be dogmatic – that has not changed. This is why, despite his saying those who do not believe in ideals have courage, Nietzsche says "I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." Why gloves? He does not want to be soiled by the filth of "ideals." This, despite his acknowledgment that "ideals" had been "the real fatality in my life, the superfluous and stupid in it, something out of which there is no compensation, no counter-reckoning" (241, 25) – ideals have been difficult for Nietzsche himself to rid himself of – they are "the fundamental irrationality of my life" (242, 26). Looking back, Nietzsche realizes that it is difficult to shed ones life of the lies one is raised with. "We all fear truth" (246, 29), undoubtedly because we fear change – and we fear the world unmasked of truth. At best, ideals have been frozen by Nietzsche, if not truly refuted (284, 60). He hopes he has gotten us to see, as he has, that "all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity" (258, 38), while acknowledging that most are not capable of seeing: "‘where you see ideal things, I see – human, alas all too human things!’" (281, 59). Truths remain mobile. There are "my truths" (259, 39), and Zarathustra "creates truth" (307, 76). And if truths can be created, they are impermanent, changeable, "a moving army of metaphors." While the "true in itself" comes "upon every image (metaphor)," while "words and wordchests of all existence spring open to you; all existence here wants to become words" (301, 73) because words, concepts, are more comforting than "truth in itself." Only when we realize that "Nothing that is can be subtracted, nothing is dispensable" will we be able to realize that "precisely by this measure of strength does one approach truth" (272, 50) – again, it is the particular that is the "true in itself," not words, not concepts, which require that something be subtracted in order to be conceptualized, in order to be given a sound tag – that is, a word to represent it. And the more conceptual – the further from reality – something is, while claiming to be truth (unlike art, which admits to being a lie), "Those things which mankind has hitherto pondered seriously are not even realities, merely imaginings, more strictly speaking lies from the bad instincts of the sick, in the profoundest sense injurious natures – all the concepts ‘God,’ ‘soul,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘sin,’ ‘the Beyond,’ ‘truth,’ ‘eternal life’" (256, 36). Why do we do this? "The concept of the "beyond," the "true world" [was] invented in order to devalue the only world there is – in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality" (334, 103). In fact, "Twice, at precisely the moment when with tremendous courage and self-overcoming an honest, an unambiguous, a completely scientific mode of thinking had been attained, the Germans have known how to discover secret paths to the old ‘ideal’, reconciliations between truth and ‘ideal’, at bottom formulas to a right to reject science, for a right to lie" (320, 91). So now science, in addition to art, is a path toward the truth, since the "right to reject science" is seen here as the "right to lie." The "true in itself" now seen as achievable through both art and science, through the breaking apart of the old metaphors and the realization of the particularity of the world, that the world is first perceived, then conceived, and not vice versa. This is now Nietzsche "was the first to discover the truth by being the first to experience lies as lies" (326, 96). This is how Nietzsche can say " – the truth speaks out of me. – But my truth is terrible; for so far one has called lies truth" (326, 96), and he has shown us the lies we live by.
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