It's probably some part of human nature that nobody likes the kid who raises his hand all the time. Although, I think that's also an American thing. We're a competitive culture in a good old boy-slap you on the back-take your money-praise Jesus kind of way. And we're a pretty individualistic culture too. So, the raised hand is a big old "look at me, I'm smart" kind of gesture and people get mad when someone else is the center of attention.
So, that leads to the problem of having some sort of an intellectual discussion or conversation without being precious. Because one theory holds that people only bother being intellectual at all as some sort of maladaptive mating strategy. Picture tweady looking guy at a cocktail party talking about his research into the meta structure of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And I think it is really a legitimate question to wonder why anyone should bother being an intellectual at all. It certainly isn't the hedonistic choice. And no matter how smart you're born, it does take some effort to read a few books, talk to a few people, and spin a few theories. So why do all this just to make people angry at you for having something to say?
Of course you could argue that it does not necessarily follow that if you know something you have to raise your hand and tell people about it. That's more than likely a question of personality and many intellectuals are quite shy people. But people who don't share their thoughts start thinking ever weirder things. So, it may be necessary for the mental health of these (often) shy people to talk about things and therefore to do the adult equivalent of hand raising.
My current theory on this is that if you're going to say anything at all you have to constantly court preciousness and that's just inevitable. There are ways to balance this out. So here are my top five suggestions for unprecious intellectualizing.
(1) invent new words
(2) swear liberally i.e. that fucking Pynchon
(3) take up a physically dangerous hobby i.e. bullriding
(4) drink democratic drinks i.e. beer
(5) spell things wrong (I'm actually a natural at this)
But sometimes you just have to be precious and that's life. We can't all be cool all the time.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Art
When I was in college, we had a group of skinny white boy literature majors. They looked like they might do heroin and they certainly never went out during sunlight hours. One professor nicknamed them the po-mo boys. Sort of like the Peep o' Day Boys I suppose...I think that would have been a cleverer name for them.
Anyways, the one question we all obsessed about in an earnest sort of way was the nature of Art. Except the po-mo boys. They just lounged about looking ethereal and jaded all at the same time. I suppose they were being Art. We were a pretty conservative college and our professors encouraged us to engage with "age-old questions" and encouraged us to believe that long and deep thought on things like the nature of Art would make us wise.
So my thinking on Art evolved to point where I decided that Art required an audience. By that I mean that Art is a form of communication and an artist creates in the hope that someday somewhere someone will get what the artist has said or meant. But then there are a whole bunch of pathways you can take from that idea that I don't have time for today. Isak Dineson and Billy Collins both play with that idea in different ways. Of course Shakespeare's the Tempest is about that. In the visual arts, the Dutch artists seem to enjoy joking on the subject. Music is a bit trickier considering that most people experience it as a soundtrack to other events rather than something you sit and listen too. I suppose Rock is a democratic art form and musicians don't mind that they create art for people to hum along to rather than contemplate.
And then there are blogs. I'm not sure if a blog can be a work of art. The nice and yet terrifying thing about comments is that you can get feedback that lets you know whether people are getting it or not. And maybe Art is not a personal thing. Maybe it's more about yelling out into the cosmos than the audience. Or maybe the audience needs to be an abstract thing in the artist's mind.
Thinking and creating art are two different things. So maybe blogs (at any rate this blog) are too analytical. Maybe art needs a little mystery. Maybe the reason I think that po-mo boys were creating art with their lives is that they were silent.
Anyways, the one question we all obsessed about in an earnest sort of way was the nature of Art. Except the po-mo boys. They just lounged about looking ethereal and jaded all at the same time. I suppose they were being Art. We were a pretty conservative college and our professors encouraged us to engage with "age-old questions" and encouraged us to believe that long and deep thought on things like the nature of Art would make us wise.
So my thinking on Art evolved to point where I decided that Art required an audience. By that I mean that Art is a form of communication and an artist creates in the hope that someday somewhere someone will get what the artist has said or meant. But then there are a whole bunch of pathways you can take from that idea that I don't have time for today. Isak Dineson and Billy Collins both play with that idea in different ways. Of course Shakespeare's the Tempest is about that. In the visual arts, the Dutch artists seem to enjoy joking on the subject. Music is a bit trickier considering that most people experience it as a soundtrack to other events rather than something you sit and listen too. I suppose Rock is a democratic art form and musicians don't mind that they create art for people to hum along to rather than contemplate.
And then there are blogs. I'm not sure if a blog can be a work of art. The nice and yet terrifying thing about comments is that you can get feedback that lets you know whether people are getting it or not. And maybe Art is not a personal thing. Maybe it's more about yelling out into the cosmos than the audience. Or maybe the audience needs to be an abstract thing in the artist's mind.
Thinking and creating art are two different things. So maybe blogs (at any rate this blog) are too analytical. Maybe art needs a little mystery. Maybe the reason I think that po-mo boys were creating art with their lives is that they were silent.
Working out while sick
Did you know that if you work out when you have a cold you don't really sweat? Freaky..
Some thoughts on Jesus
Anne Lamot had a really good column on salon.com about the problem of reconciling faith with Republicans. Her position was that you shouldn't even try. Jesus was just so clearly not on the side of the rich and powerful and bigoted that you have to believe that anyone who worships that kind of God has it wrong.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Baconian Induction
When I was writing my thesis, my reader pointed out that I never seemed to want to come to a conclusion. He also pointed out that I was working from evidence to theory rather than from theory to evidence. Interestingly, my introduction proposes one theory and my conclusion addresses an entirely different theory. Horribly inconsistent, but great fun.
It struck me recently that a blog may be a good way to do that. It's particularly interesting in the context of those group blogs where people can feed off of each other.
It struck me recently that a blog may be a good way to do that. It's particularly interesting in the context of those group blogs where people can feed off of each other.
I've been reading a lot of books about economics lately. The Coming Generational Storm, "Manias, Panics and Crashes," One Market Under God, The Fragile Middle Class, The Consumer's Republic...
It's hard to tell what people do with their time actually aside from work and shop. I suppose what I like about these books is that they explain so much of what we do with our time. It's only when you're a student that you won't be caught up in the endless cycle of getting and giving up money.
One of my pet peeves with contemporary fiction is that the characters don't think about ordinary things. They have no credit card bills. They don't worry about how to feed their families. They don't stick with boring jobs because they have kids. They get divorced only for meaningful reasons rather than because they're fighting over the bills.
Which is maybe part of the American unwillingness to deal with class. Fictional characters live in a classless workless world.
Anyways, I think I'm about done with this economics jag for now. I've read everything good I can find, unless anybody has any suggestions?
It's hard to tell what people do with their time actually aside from work and shop. I suppose what I like about these books is that they explain so much of what we do with our time. It's only when you're a student that you won't be caught up in the endless cycle of getting and giving up money.
One of my pet peeves with contemporary fiction is that the characters don't think about ordinary things. They have no credit card bills. They don't worry about how to feed their families. They don't stick with boring jobs because they have kids. They get divorced only for meaningful reasons rather than because they're fighting over the bills.
Which is maybe part of the American unwillingness to deal with class. Fictional characters live in a classless workless world.
Anyways, I think I'm about done with this economics jag for now. I've read everything good I can find, unless anybody has any suggestions?
Friday, April 15, 2005
LA in 5 hours
I flew back and forth to LA today which is a shocking cultural thing, because LA is bleak.
San Francisco has the tenderloin, but the whole of downtown LA appears to involved armed camps of cops. Oh, and the sky is actually brown.
The weirdest thing to me is that people who live there don't even think about it. Theoretically a child could live and die in LA and never know that the sky isn't meant to be that color and that there are places in the world where buildings aren't armed bunkers.
The funny part was I tried to catch a cab from downtown to the airport. People were looking at me like I was crazy. I finally had to call on my cell phone.
너무 이상해요.
San Francisco has the tenderloin, but the whole of downtown LA appears to involved armed camps of cops. Oh, and the sky is actually brown.
The weirdest thing to me is that people who live there don't even think about it. Theoretically a child could live and die in LA and never know that the sky isn't meant to be that color and that there are places in the world where buildings aren't armed bunkers.
The funny part was I tried to catch a cab from downtown to the airport. People were looking at me like I was crazy. I finally had to call on my cell phone.
너무 이상해요.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Where have all the editors gone?
I suppose it's kind of ironic coming from a blogger, but I've been interested in the concept of authors and their readers for a while.
It seems that for a lot of very bad writers, writing is a self-involved activity. I've edited my fair share of essays (and one pornographic science fiction novel). With a bad writer, you have to spend a lot of time saying things like, "I totally see where you're coming from, but you might want to try a transition..." or "I'm not sure if your readers are going to get where this tribe of big breasted amazonian women came from..." With a very bad writer, you have to actually beat the concept of a reader into the writers head. It's not that very bad writers don't have a concept of a reader--its an unrealistic concept. They picture their readers as people who get them in every way and who won't demand petty things like editing, character development, and transitions. It's the reader as alter-ego for the author.
One of my favorite contemporary authors is Billy Collins who is fairly obsessed with the reader in his poetry. An interesting interview from Powell's is available here. He gets dinged by the critics for being accessible. (and probably for accepting a poet laureate appointment from GW) I'm not sure how I feel about the poet laureate thing, but I do think that if something is fun to read it is more likely to be great literature and not less likely. If your contemporaries can't understand you, I don't think there's much hope of standing the test of time.
To me, if you are an author, the central question is who are you an author for? If it's not about talking to yourself, then you have to think about, struggle with, and take into account your readers in some fashion. I suppose that's pretty old fashioned and not all that radical but it's amazing how many books get published that are just a slog to get through. It makes me wonder if authors have editors any more. Or maybe the authors just have too much power and the editors aren't allowed to really edit. It's a puzzle.
It seems that for a lot of very bad writers, writing is a self-involved activity. I've edited my fair share of essays (and one pornographic science fiction novel). With a bad writer, you have to spend a lot of time saying things like, "I totally see where you're coming from, but you might want to try a transition..." or "I'm not sure if your readers are going to get where this tribe of big breasted amazonian women came from..." With a very bad writer, you have to actually beat the concept of a reader into the writers head. It's not that very bad writers don't have a concept of a reader--its an unrealistic concept. They picture their readers as people who get them in every way and who won't demand petty things like editing, character development, and transitions. It's the reader as alter-ego for the author.
One of my favorite contemporary authors is Billy Collins who is fairly obsessed with the reader in his poetry. An interesting interview from Powell's is available here. He gets dinged by the critics for being accessible. (and probably for accepting a poet laureate appointment from GW) I'm not sure how I feel about the poet laureate thing, but I do think that if something is fun to read it is more likely to be great literature and not less likely. If your contemporaries can't understand you, I don't think there's much hope of standing the test of time.
To me, if you are an author, the central question is who are you an author for? If it's not about talking to yourself, then you have to think about, struggle with, and take into account your readers in some fashion. I suppose that's pretty old fashioned and not all that radical but it's amazing how many books get published that are just a slog to get through. It makes me wonder if authors have editors any more. Or maybe the authors just have too much power and the editors aren't allowed to really edit. It's a puzzle.
Friday, April 08, 2005
The South Sea Bubble
The south sea company sold the government's debt. It didn't sell the debt at a discount. It sold the debt for more money than was owed and used various schemes to support its stock price.
It reminds me a bit of Enron which booked profits that it made trading with itself.
Now if I could just figure out a way to sell stock in my student loans....
It reminds me a bit of Enron which booked profits that it made trading with itself.
Now if I could just figure out a way to sell stock in my student loans....
Monday, April 04, 2005
On Originality
I had a professor in Dublin who cribbed an entire lecture from a New Yorker article.
The law of course is entirely about borrowing from some other source. Original does not describe most winning legal arguments.
I went to my high school reunion recently and was not surprised by one single person.
But today as I was walking down the street I saw a blue man. He was wearing a blue out fit and had blue make-up on. As I was dodging him in an effort to avoid getting blue make-up on me, I thought "that's original." And then I started to wonder if maybe he escaped from the troop of blue people in the TV commercial.
When I was growing up, there was a naked student at Berkeley. He went to classes naked and strolled around naked and all that. Then, apparently he made some naked friends and they formed a sort of naked posse. Then they started to feel brave and they would apparently heckle the clothed people.
And so it goes.....
The law of course is entirely about borrowing from some other source. Original does not describe most winning legal arguments.
I went to my high school reunion recently and was not surprised by one single person.
But today as I was walking down the street I saw a blue man. He was wearing a blue out fit and had blue make-up on. As I was dodging him in an effort to avoid getting blue make-up on me, I thought "that's original." And then I started to wonder if maybe he escaped from the troop of blue people in the TV commercial.
When I was growing up, there was a naked student at Berkeley. He went to classes naked and strolled around naked and all that. Then, apparently he made some naked friends and they formed a sort of naked posse. Then they started to feel brave and they would apparently heckle the clothed people.
And so it goes.....
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Arguing From History
One of the worst reasons to study history is because you don't want to repeat it. You can't step in the same river twice and history doesn't actually repeat itself. There are themes. In general, religious extremism leads to barbarism, death and destruction. But then there are exceptions. The Quakers are plenty extreme and they've gone the opposite route. In general, hedonists don't accomplish much. But, there are whole lot of authors, artists and poets who accomplished things precisely by being hedonists.
The best thing you can get from history is a sense of human possibility and the wonderful way that life will confound any theory. History teaches subtlety. But history makes a poor basis for any argument--maybe because it is subtle. And interestingly, arguments from history seem to be used to justify holding women back more than any other group.
Picture a florid sort of guy clearing his throat. ahem ahem. Since time immemorial, women have taken care of children, men have had affairs, and women have never been any good at science. Just look at history.
And then how do you argue against that? The only real argument is that history is not determinative and history is not that simple. But that's not an argument that's easy to explain--especially to people who apparently haven't gotten much from their reading of history.
The best thing you can get from history is a sense of human possibility and the wonderful way that life will confound any theory. History teaches subtlety. But history makes a poor basis for any argument--maybe because it is subtle. And interestingly, arguments from history seem to be used to justify holding women back more than any other group.
Picture a florid sort of guy clearing his throat. ahem ahem. Since time immemorial, women have taken care of children, men have had affairs, and women have never been any good at science. Just look at history.
And then how do you argue against that? The only real argument is that history is not determinative and history is not that simple. But that's not an argument that's easy to explain--especially to people who apparently haven't gotten much from their reading of history.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Truth and Freedom
The thing that rankles so much about being lied to is that for a moment (or for eternity) you are trapped in someone else's reality.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Social Security Crisis, and the No Child Left Behind Act are how we know that we're living in George W. Bush's reality. Apparently, a majority of the country is also living in a world full of lies and apparently a majority of the country believes those lies. And this makes us a nation of slaves. Because you are not free to act and make choices and be a true citizen if you have no real information and no real choices.
Because waking up one day and realizing that you've been lied to is about one of the worst feelings around, many victims of lies will invest in the lies themselves and continue believing as long as possible.
My theory is that many people are afraid of freedom and this sometimes transfers to a fear of the truth. When confronted with opposing versions of reality, why not pick the most comfortable? Why not pick the one that'll make it easy to sleep at night? Who really wants to be responsible anyways?
It is a tragic irony that the grand old party, the party of Lincoln, the party of personal responsibility is selling a pack of lies to the American people and enslaving them for generations.
To paraphrase the sex pistols-- There's no future in America's dreaming.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Social Security Crisis, and the No Child Left Behind Act are how we know that we're living in George W. Bush's reality. Apparently, a majority of the country is also living in a world full of lies and apparently a majority of the country believes those lies. And this makes us a nation of slaves. Because you are not free to act and make choices and be a true citizen if you have no real information and no real choices.
Because waking up one day and realizing that you've been lied to is about one of the worst feelings around, many victims of lies will invest in the lies themselves and continue believing as long as possible.
My theory is that many people are afraid of freedom and this sometimes transfers to a fear of the truth. When confronted with opposing versions of reality, why not pick the most comfortable? Why not pick the one that'll make it easy to sleep at night? Who really wants to be responsible anyways?
It is a tragic irony that the grand old party, the party of Lincoln, the party of personal responsibility is selling a pack of lies to the American people and enslaving them for generations.
To paraphrase the sex pistols-- There's no future in America's dreaming.
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