Isolation and connection

We are thrown into the world with no rhyme or reason, say Martin Heidegger (Being and Time) and the existentialists. Presumably, this arbitrary and inscrutable “thrownness” is a big source of the anxiety and isolation that condition our existence. Gloomy lot, these existentialists.

But is there an antidote to the gloom? If so, maybe it comes from hippie philosopher par excellence, Alan Watts. The idea that we “come into the world” as “isolated egos .. who confront an external world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange” — all of that is a hallucination, says Watts. And we can dissolve the hallucination with one simple fact: “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree” (The Book).

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Food for thought from Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke on the prodigal son  (Luke 15:11–32):

“We don’t know whether he stayed there; we only know that he came back.”

(To paraphrase my previous post, Rilke’s remark is actually more suggestive than propositional, a good tool for the creative reader/writer to run with.)

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Postmodernism and politics

I recently read Mary Klages’s Literary Theory, a great introduction to one of the hottest academic topics of the past few decades. Klages does a good job explaining the modernism/humanism of the 20th-century, the push-off point for postmodernism, which itself emerged largely after 1980, and of explaining the main theorists of postmodernism (Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, and those who came in their wake). When she started assigning political values to these theories, though, I’m not so sure.

Her link of (pre-postmodern) modernity to Enlightenment thinking (i.e., using reason as a primary tool to establish order and to determine universal principles) is clear and convincing. But let me quote one paragraph at length (a postmodern critique of modernity) because I think it encapsulates one of the key problems with postmodernist discourse.

Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as ‘disorder,” which might disrupt order. Thus, modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between ‘order’ and ‘disorder,’ so that they can assert to superiority of ‘order.’ But to do this, they have to have things that represent ‘disorder’ — modern societies thus continually have to create/construct ‘disorder.’ In Western culture, this disorder becomes ‘the other’ — defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational (etc.) becomes part of ‘disorder,’ and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society. (p. 168)

The paragraph begins harmlessly enough. Modernity privileges order and rationality as things that make for a better society. Point well-taken. But then, in a move that I suspect is common in postmodernist writing (my readers can weigh in here), Klages rather quickly gets on a slippery slope toward sweeping generalizations. First, the baby steps into unproven generalization, as believing in an orderly society is conflated with a more pathological obsession with “ever-increasing levels of order.” And then to the claim that “modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as ‘disorder.'” It is rhetorical snowballing into more and more sweeping generalizations without evidence. My own life in US ‘modern society,’ from classrooms to blues clubs, sometimes aligning with and sometimes breaking with community standards and laws, leads me to think that yes, some value is placed on order, but the rest of the passage seems basically a fictional flight into generalization. It’s a bit like Ayn Rand’s critique of compassion (e.g., in Ellsworth Toohey), wherein she argues that if we consider compassion a virtue, then we must wish others to suffer so we can express that virtue. Of course, this is nonsense. Of course, I can feel compassion for my daughter when she is sick without “wishing” her to be sick. Likewise, one can value order without sinking into the pathological rigmarole of continually constructing disorder.

The paragraph concludes with a breathtaking leap of logic — a society that values order and reason, through the paragraph’s slippery slope of “thus” and “thus,” is doomed to end up trying to eliminate anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, etc. Not only is it a leap in logic, but also seems empirically false. Enlightenment-based societies, with their core tenet of reason-based universal rights that apply irrespective of one’s identity group, seem to fare better at inclusiveness and multiculturalism than the non-Enlightenment, tribal societies that don’t share that core tenet.

This leads me to question another of Klages’s assumptions (though I think she presents it as an inference rather than as an assumption) that I think is probably widespread in postmodernist circles. She allows that both modernism/humanism and postmodernism might have diverse political uses (good), but that “the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to be associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups” (175).

This assumption that anyone critical of postmodernism is probably conservative seems false to me. It seems more accurate, or at least equally accurate, to say that the Enlightenment view of equal rights based on rational principles that apply to all, regardless of race, gender, etc.; the confidence in scientific inquiry to approach more universal truths by a scientific method that tends over time to eliminate tribal bias — these are still the tenets of a liberal world view. The pre-postmodern conservatives resisted these ideas in favor of racist/tribal/religious world views. And postmodernists, by attacking the “totalizing” tenets (universal rights discoverable through reason, universal truths discoverable through science) of Enlightenment thinking, seem a throwback to pre-Enlightenment tribal thinking — conservatism on steroids if you will.

So if I resist a movement that sorts people into identity groups and denies the “totalizing” claims of the Enlightenment (per scientific method and universal human rights), does that, as Klages and the postmodernists suggest, make me a conservative? I don’t think it does. I don’t think their conclusion here follows from the premise. But I am not an expert in postmodernism, so I’m open to clarifications (or amens or corrections or ad hominem attacks or what-have-you) from any readers who may have given more thought to, or thought differently about, these matters.

P.S. To shift the context slightly, I’m reminded of a question that came up on Twitter per what the difference might be between a “liberal social justice” platform and a “woke social justice” platform. A tweeter named Tim Urban (whom I don’t otherwise know but has a lot of followers) had the following to say, and I wonder what readers might think about (1) the accuracy of Urban’s list (he’s obviously more polemical than I), and (2) whether postmodernism aligns with “woke,” whereas Enlightenment humanism aligns with the “liberal” social justice side:

LIBERAL SOCIAL JUSTICE : WOKE SOCIAL JUSTICE ::

Pro free speech : anti free speech
Achieves goals using persuasion : achieves goals using coercion
Interested in dissent : tries to punish dissenters
Wide and diverse : narrow and conformist
Thinks America should be improved : thinks America is fundamentally evil
Treats issues as nuanced : treats issues as black and white
Treats people as individuals : treats people as monolithic groups
Strives for unity : strives for division
Fosters compassion : fosters resentment
Truth matters most : activist goals matter more than truth
Thinks liberalism is good : thinks liberalism is the problem
Historically effective at making positive change for disadvantaged people : historically ineffective at making positive change for disadvantaged people

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

New Orleans: A Writer’s City

Review of New Orleans: A Writer’s City, T. R. Johnson (Cambridge UP, 2023)
by Gary Gautier

A massive archeological dig through the local history of a mysterious and fascinating city so rich in cultural textures that the surprises keep coming. More than just a good narrative history, Johnson’s book is a chock-full reference archive for students of literary history — not just the many writers, from world-class literati to dive bar poets, who crossed paths in these neighborhoods like ships in the night, but also the musicians and artists and cultural forces that added the juice to the narratives. With the historical flow punctuated by granular details and quick bits of literary analysis, you see not just books and writers, but the soil from which they sprung — the pain and nuance and rough joys driven by local circumstance, the addictions and excess and freewheeling play of identities – all the chaotic vanity fair of life that New Orleans offers to its long line of home-bred writers and smitten transients.

For the scholar, all this is perfect, and Johnson’s command of his material is nothing if not scholarly, but for the lay reader it may seem at times bogged down in minutiae, a kind of Old Testament overload of names and references. And the addition of music history as context is good, but to some it will seem digressive, an end in itself – understandable since Johnson, besides being a professor of English at Tulane University, hosts a jazz show on New Orleans’ local WWOZ radio. Between the moments of full engagement, there are moments where the reading seems laborious. So be it. The mass of accumulated value is worth it.

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

And now a word from Carlos Santana

Mexican hippie favorite son and Woodstock icon, Carlos Santana, says everything you need to know about the hippie world view in 30 seconds:

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Bestselling musical artists of all time

Here are Wikipedia’s bestselling musical artists of all time (top 5). Interesting to note that the band with the all-time most sales had a much shorter active period than the others.

* * * Click covers for more links * * *

      

Zeno’s paradox revisited

Sitting in Tokyo over an innocent bowl of sake, my philosopher friend from London brought up Zeno’s paradox. Damn philosophers. Always something. He knows more about ancient Greek philosophy than I do, but let me have a go at it from the poet’s side of the field.

Space

I guess Zeno’s paradox (5^th century BC) comes in various forms, but I think of it in terms of space. Paradoxically, mathematically, motion is impossible. To move from point A to point B, we have to cross midpoint C. But to move from point A to midpoint C, we have to cross midpoint D. Etc. But since simple geometry tells us that there are an infinite number of points between any two points, we can never get to the nearest midpoint.

Or forget about midpoints. In order to move we must cross an adjacent point. But there are an infinite number of points between us and any adjacent point. In today’s computer programming lingo, we’d have to execute an infinite number of tasks before reaching the adjacent point, which is impossible.

There are only two conclusions I can draw from the paradox. Either it shows us that motion is truly impossible or it shows us the limits of logic – that logic can solve a lot of local problems but there are points at which it fails as a conduit of knowledge and results in an absurdity.

Time

My tipsy interlocutor pointed out that the paradox works along a time axis as well. The idea of a linear flow of time is equally impossible, as we’d have to move past the adjacent moment, which is impossible. However, conceptualizing it along a time axis opened a different tangent of thought for me.

My more devoted readers will note that I’ve looked at the following William Faulkner quote HERE as a way of theorizing time:

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (Requiem for a Nun, 1951).

Pondering the Faulkner quote led me to consider that our conventional way of looking at time – with the past as a thread disappearing into some distant place that no longer exists – is actually counterintuitive. Doesn’t it make more sense to see the past as something very much still with us, but at a depth, providing the real-time substructure of the present, just as the rings of a tree do not disappear as years go by but rather continue to provide the real-time substructure of the tree? In the same way, the “past” is not gone, but is right here, at a depth, providing in real time all the folds and substructure without which the present would collapse.

So if Zeno’s paradox suggests that we cannot move along a linear path of time, does the tree ring model of time show us a way out of the paradox? On the one hand, it seems to do so, as it shows we can conceptualize the manifold of time without requiring a linear flow. On the other hand, we still need some kind of wiggle room, as time, though not extending backward into some now-absent past, does recede to the center (of the tree) or the depth (on which the present stands). Would Zeno be able to grant us so much without giving up his precious paradox? To untie this further knot in the fabric, we need a to add a third category to space and time. And here it comes …

Imagination

Kant, in the Critique of Judgment (1790), speaks of the dynamical and mathematical sublime, and makes a rigorous case for the power of human reason as the sublime human faculty. In the mathematical sublime, for example, we might look up on a starry night and imagine how many stars are up there. The imagination, however, can only stretch so far and is overwhelmed by the sheer numbers in the scenario at hand. Reason, however, can step in and calculate numbers beyond what the imagination can fathom (estimating that there are something like 10²⁴ stars in the universe). It is reason that inspires the highest awe in Kant.

Now let’s use Zeno to turn Kant on his head. Reason leads you down the rabbit hole of Zeno’s paradox, and there you get stuck. No motion. But where reason folds into absurdity, imagination steps in and liberates us. We imagine ourselves in motion. We imagine ourselves moving through time. And if reason can’t back that up, that’s reason’s problem. And if the flow of our experience into the future is an imagined flow, so much the better. Without imagination, perhaps Zeno’s paradox would hold. Reason is trapped in what is; and what is, is fixed. The world as a static object of knowledge. But imagination is the one faculty that allows us to project and manifest all manner of possible futures. Imagination creates destiny, and imagination is what moves us toward that destiny.

So philosophers and scientists, keep up the good work but go to the back of the bus. Poets, artists, and mythmakers, move forward.

“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon” (Patti Smith)

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination encircles the world” (Albert Einstein)

“Artists are here to disturb the peace” (James Baldwin)

Now for my real poetry, click the book cover below.

mountain lantern light
breaking through bamboo and ice
a thousand angels

* * * Click covers for more links * * *

       

 

 

A musical digression

Anyone who reads this blog knows I travel a lot. Nine countries so far this year, five of them via hitchhiking. It came up the other day – how people often get rooted to a place, how they come to feel trapped in a place, even though – or partly because – they love it. Fine line between rooted and trapped. I don’t have the answer. But since the conversation turned to music, I’ll ramble through a musical tangent.

First and most obviously, we thought of the Eagles song, “Hotel California,” with the title as a thinly veiled metaphor for California itself. When you’re out in the desert looking for relief, it’s a place of glamour and glitz that pulls you in. Lovely women and sweet summer sweat, pretty boys and pink champagne. You think it will satisfy all your desires. When you finally realize that the place “can’t kill the beast” of desire, that it’s a surreal dream with a dark underbelly, it’s too late. You are a prisoner of your own lifestyle, unable to escape.

For a great outlaw country expression of trying to escape that Golden State metropolis, see “L.A. freeway”  by Guy Clark, who hung around Austin a lot when I lived and worked in the music clubs there during the Stevie Ray Vaughan era. Jerry Jeff Walker (who would also pop into our Austin music clubs back then) recorded the Guy Clark song HERE on his self-titled album before Clark released it himself.

And now back to the Eagles song. Here’s the last verse.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man
“We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave”

Let me arbitrarily use that to segue to this fantastic live version of “Can’t Find My Way Home,” with Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood joining back up on stage, along with some next-generation stars like Derek Trucks, many years after they released the song on the Blind Faith album. At the 10-second mark, when Clapton taps the button with his foot, those of us who have been around a while go on alert for the signature sound of Clapton’s guitar (which comes at the 20-second mark) 😊

So if like Clapton and Winwood you can’t find your way home, if you just can’t shake that “warm smell of colitas” that has befuddled Eagles listeners for decades, just sit back and watch the best ever pop culture appropriation of “Hotel California” in this scene from “The Big Lebowkski”.

Works Cited

Hotel California, The Eagles
L.A. Freeway, Guy Clark
Voodoo Chile, Stevie Ray Vaughan
L.A. Freeway, Jerry Jeff Walker
Can’t Find My Way Home, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood
Hotel California soundtrack scene in The Big Lebowski (dir. Coen Brothers)

Product Links (click image for link)

       

 

 

 

 

 

* * * Click covers for more links * * *

      

On this day in 2016

On this day in 2016, we lost Leon Russell. (Click images for songs.)

        

* * * Click covers for links * * *

      

From Kant to Chomsky (with a plug for Fr–d)

h/t Matt McManus on Noam Chomsky’s Theory of Human Nature (04/16/20), from which much of this is taken

Descartes famously argued that all our empirical knowledge may be an illusion, so it can never provide a basis for absolute certainty. By contrast, we can be certain that we are thinking (“I think, therefore I am”), and so glean some certainty about the nature of cognition.

Kant goes a step further. True, all empirical knowledge may be an illusion, but there is a universal structure to the human mind by which we all perceive the empirical world in more or less the same way. E.g., all human beings see the world in terms of space and time. And since we see the world in the same way, we can gain knowledge that would be accepted by anyone. However, this doesn’t mean we gain knowledge of the world “in itself.” Our knowledge is only of the world as it appears to those structures of the mind (what Kant calls the “phenomenal world”). The world of actual things may or may not match the phenomena we experience, but we’ll never know.

Chomsky applies this toggle from empiricism to Kant to linguistics. McManus mentions how Chomsky’s linguistic theory (beginning in the late 1950s) pushed against such behaviorists as B. F. Skinner. Skinner and the behaviorists assume, like the old empiricists, that the mind is initially a blank slate, and only learns things like language from the experience of being taught. To Chomsky, this behaviorist/empiricist approach falters if we look at language acquisition. If we accept the blank slate premise, he argued, it leads to the conclusion that if one left a rock, a tomato and a baby with a family in London each of them would be equally likely to learn English, since each of them would experience being exposed to that language. The reason that a baby can pick up a language—even several languages—very quickly is that her mind is a priori capable of learning a human dialect. This language faculty also explains why human languages have many deep similarities. Not only do we largely perceive the world in the same way, as Kant points out, but our language faculty generates universal grammars, and much of Chomsky’s linguistic theory is about unraveling those universal grammars.

As with Kant’s theory, this position implies an upside and a downside. The upside is that human beings are capable of understanding one another, and even translating their various languages between each other. The downside is that we are still operating exclusively in the phenomenal world, as our mutual understanding, including cross-cultural communication, is based on the universal structures of how our minds process the world, not on any direct experience of the world “out there.”

I will go the extra step here and align Chomsky in this way with Freud. (As my loyal readers know, I am always eager to shore up Freud’s place in the history of ideas over and against his pitiful detractors, albeit with an occasional concession to those detractors.) What Chomsky rejects in the field of linguistics, Freud rejects in the field of psychology. The behaviorists shunned Freudian psychoanalysis, shunned talking about the internal structure of the mind as if there were something in there anterior to our experience of the world. As in Chomsky the mind has an a priori structure that facilitates language acquisition, so in Freud the mind has an a priori structure that facilitates similarities in development of the psyche across human populations. Whether you see that structure in terms of primitive drives along with mechanisms that develop to inhibit those drives, or as a gradient structure moving from the conscious mind down deeper and deeper into unconscious layers of motivation, Freud’s psychology and Chomsky’s linguistics both defy the “blank slate” theory by positing some internal structure, something intrinsic about the human mind, what Kant might call subjective universals that shape how humans process the world, irrespective of the range of individual human experiences.

In neither Freud’s case nor Chomsky’s, it seems to me, does this leave us with an either/or dilemma. Chomsky’s theory might well elucidate the universal grammars that provide the a priori capacity for language acquisition without demeaning the contribution of behaviorist methods on the other side. Likewise, behaviorist psychology might well provide a stimulus-response model that works quite well as a mechanical operation for changing behaviors, but I see no reason (other than that academics must endlessly produce us vs them models and show the superiority of their side over the other as a way of securing tenure) that this should preclude psychoanalytic investigations of the internal structures of the mind that might underwrite human possibilities, human creativity, and human pathways of dysfunction more generally.

* * * Click covers for links * * *