Cobb

The Peasantry & That Which Rolls Downhill

A thoughtful reader writes:

Many years ago I read Leon Uris' "Mila 18" about the Warsaw ghetto uprising in WWII. Early in the book there was a conversation between an American journalist and a Jewish Polish army officer. Don't remember a lot of the conversation, but at some point the officer explained to the American about the Jewish situation in Poland. Something to the effect that in Poland the people in power kicked the shit out of the peasants, but the peasants put up with it because they in turn could turn around kick the shit out of the Jews. Needless to say, the Jewish Polish officer did not come to a good end. I've always thought that explanation sounded like a parallel to some of the history of the American south. The poor whites in the South put up with being kicked around by the elites because they could take it out on the poor blacks, never realizing that they really had more in common with the blacks. Does that fit in with your understanding of peasants or am I completely off base?

My aim in pursuing Peasant Theory is to put the context of the American Middle Class into world historical perspective. My observation is that much of it is degenerate in such a way as to contradict itself. I think the values of the American middle class are still pointed in a generally sound direction, but that the efforts made in those directions have been so weak as to undermine those values. For example, I think it is a useful idea for all people to write and voice their opinions online in this marvelous thing called the internet - a truly miraculous invention. But if the quality of that writing is low, and the conveniences made so idiot-proof as to require no thought whatsoever, then the lofty value of disintermediating the old media is undermined. And so instead of using the inheritance of Western Civilization to truly achieve excellence, the plurality of Americans are spending it on the cultural and moral equivalent of barbarism. The end result is that people are not being elevated at all, because to be elevated is to put away uncivilized, course behavior, and we are raising yet another generation of chavs.  

Much of that is to be expected, and I think it is useful and necessary, in order to defend what is most valuable about the principles of a constitutional republic and a market-oriented meritocracy is that people of skill, honor and quality make the appropriate distinctions between themselves and the rest. The idea of America as a classless society is foolish and dangerous. It remains on the brink of losing its essential distinguishing quality which is, as Jefferson put it, aristocracy of merit. 

What does it profit ethnics to play out their melodramatic squabbles in a proper society as Jefferson would have it? Nothing. It's nothing more or less than the endless feuds of villagers. There is no useful quality of Jews beating up Poles beating up Irish beating up Africans beating up Jews. It is exactly as circularly pointless as Rochambeau to the death. 

What is much more important is the character of the elites, because only a certain elite will rule and maintain that society in which the anonymous Pole or African might enjoy the infrastructure that leverages their modest virtues and talents. There is no brotherhood among any men. It is only the projects of the powerful which give righteous and useful employment to the masses that can incent them to put aside their squalid blood feuds. And it is only a proper meritocracy that can guarantee that those who rise above their ghetto beginnings will have anything more than empty platitudes to give back to their communities. 

In a sense, I am judging the extent to which radical Muslims and snobby Euros are correct about America. I want to measure the extent to which the Land of the Free is populated by Amero-trash. I wish to identify that behavior exhibited by Americans that is in fact anti-American. I am under no illusion that simply being here and having some luxuries and protections is equivalent to citizenship. But I am also acutely aware that America did not itself invent those values and disciplines that make life worth living, so I distinguish the life of a Free Man from that of a proper Citizen of the republic. The point being that our ideas about freedom are old, open-source, well known, and it surely would be better to have been a free man in any ancient society than to be a slave today.

If American elites misbehave in such a way that undermines American meritocracy, then the so-called American middle class will erode. Only a fraction of them will possess the character to persevere. I would suggest that by their character in the absence of such a collapse, those who strive to be free men have already distinguished themselves from the American Peasantry.  

Dimensions of Heroism

It has been some time since I read Iron John. I ought to re-read it before I finish this essay, but I'm impatient. 

You see we went to see Green Lantern and we had to decide if he was a better hero than Spiderman. I can't say for sure, but I have some feelings on the subject. Since we've been inundated with comic book movies, we sooner or later have to choose. Courtney brought up the subject, and Chris had the best answer. 

From the movie perspective, the original Spiderman set the standard. But the greater standard is the videogame drama. In that regard, the greatest hero is probably going to have to be Shepherd from the Mass Effect universe. To go into all the reasons why is an essay in itself. Suffice it to say that Halo's Master Chief lacks an heroic arc. He's just the ultimate soldier - he has no weakness to overcome, he's all duty and capability and humble arrogance, a human wrecking ball out exterminating bad guys. 

Green Lantern is a more likeable Thor. Thor has got this ridiculous Puritan streak. We Americans don't like our gods ravenous. Hal Jordan, the human Green Lantern has a fear to overcome, it being fear itself, but the movie didn't do justice to that narrative. I kinda like the ledgend of having the universe split up into 3600 sections, each to be protected by some kinda alien freak allied with the Corps, and of course I dig the idea of the triumph of Will over Fear. I think it was a very appropriate lesson for the younglings. But.

Batman is a better hero than both Green Lantern and Superman because he puts himself more at risk. Spiderman only has to deal with his apathy and small mindedness, but he learned that lesson the hard way in episode one. Keeping a friendship and a girlfriend in episode two was just too cheesy, but it did make for a very good movie. Oh yeah and Harry Potter.. You know, he's still just a kid and as much as anyone can find him admirable does he really scale? I mean from a British author, you'd think he'd compare favorably to Churchill, but you have to say he's still just a kid - what world does Voldemort actually threaten?

So that dimension came into things. Batman doesn't venture beyond Gotham and after all what is the real purpose of being Clark Kent? Maybe he actually has a thing for Jimmy Olsen. Silver Surfer on the other hand, now he has to deal with very large enemies on a planetary scale. 

In the end, Chris and I had to agree that it was Xavier, the head of the X-Men who deserved the honor. He rescued kids, trained them to use their powers for good against a world that doesn't appreciate them, that in fact hates them. In addition he must keep them from the temptations of Magneto. Yep. I think Chris gets it. 

All that said, we pretty much agreed that it would be the most fun to be Ironman. 

Getting Truth's Pants On

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Winston Churchill

I was explaining to Jake the other evening. Explaining to Jake is one of the world's great pleasures. Why? Because Jake gets it. If I have any claim to intelligence, it is only that I am recognized by other people that I find intelligent, and I don't have to wear my sociable skin. That counts for Brinkman and it counts for Ro when I'm talking about systems. It counts for Jimi and it counts for Courtney when I'm talking about people and character. It counts for Benzon and Yllona when I'm talking about music. It counts for my man in Florida when it comes to power and the evil that men do. And it counts for Gerard most of the time when I'm talking Epicurean. But I never get to talk to all of these people enough. I'm spindrift without an institution to gather me mateys and so I drift towards that 20th century sulk, the mind it its garrett.

These days I get weary. But I was explaining to Jake that I don't have an elevator pitch for my Peasant Theory, and I'm not sure I've ever required myself to make it more clear. So tonight's essay is to explain all that and update where I am.

I quit The Barbershop because I kept feeling 2007, and I still do. 2007 was when gas prices went ballistic and I was commuting over 100 miles a day but not really caring because I made that much money. 2007 was when I seriously considered buying a Hummer because it was just that audacious. But then I suddenly stopped wanting to be audacious and actually become sensitive to how much I exhibited various forms of lifestyle bling. It occured to me that it is a sensible thing for a rich man to drive a pickup truck when times are hard for the working man. It is a lesson I learned from observing the Christianity of a man who orders Budweiser in a French restaurant. Even though I prefer to remain a lot cooler than he, I took the lesson to heart. And so when it came to the Barbershop, I realized after a bit, that there were people who needed to advance their career in media more than I needed a cool high profile second life. I didn't really want to half-ass a media spotlight and so I couldn't see myself arguing just for the sake of argument - at least not in the format I was afforded.

But I also realized that I didn't quite care as much, and I had to get back to my own basics.

Peasant Theory came about primarily from the realization that war is always with us. And when you realize that, then you come to appreciate that you ultimately will have to choose sides. Whom do you expect to defend your life, and that of your family in wartime? In lesser degrees we all have that problem. Who cares what you know? So who will defend all the truth you possess? Do you even have a purpose and a reason to get to the truth? Does anybody even care if you know the truth? These are the fundamental questions I think most Americans do not ask themselves because we are cozy enough in a nation without starvation or slavery. But then there was 2007, and I had to start thinking about good reasons to do without. 

So Peasant Theory is about the difference between the free man who knows enough truth to recognize those fragile things upon which his freedom depends and the other man who doesn't think enough about the truth to realize his position in society is completely leveraged. The first man understands the conditions under which his flexibility is compromise, the second man beleives that flexibility is a skill. The second man is a peasant because he is always at someone's service.

Let me get into that for a moment. If you've read much of the writing of people who lived under monarchs, you recognize how obeisance to the feudal hierarchies establish one's station in the lives of yore. You had to believe, of course, that your leige served Truth and God. So to bend one's ways to one's lord was, hopefully to bend toward The Lord of Lords, etc. And this is all the honor afforable. All honor came from living the truth of one's masters. And before the Reformation and the Revolution this was all most of humanity knew. Feudal. 

Today we are largely feudal, because we have a slimy layer of corruption in the Baby Boom Generation and they haven't loosened their grip. So it is no surprise that all American journalists want to be Woodward & Bernstein because all American politicians want to be Nixon and Kennedy and as David Brooks so astutely noted, they're all bush league observers of the Wealthy who get away with everything. So the pols and journos establish the narrative of American life, bullshitting the masses who still tend to believe, unlike more wary Europeans, that their betters are actually running a meritocracy or anything actually resembling an ethical McMansion. 

You can take this as a roundabout way of saying that there is some fraction of Obama's aims that make sense. On the other hand he shouldn't have won because he really had no idea... more on that another time. Having gotten into it for the moment, this is what you should take away. All who follow do not follow truth. Your station in life, borrowing from Neil Simon, isn't all you think it is, American. And that is because you're not as American as you believe yourself to be. That is precisely because you are a follower. You are an urban dweller, skill seller and you buy your clothes off the rack and your food in a box.

--

It wasn't a great disappointment to find that the American Right is full of half-assed reactionaries. It took me only two years to find, love, tolerate and get sick of Hugh Hewitt. But Dennis Prager is as wise as he has ever been, and Dennis Miller is still the man. So when I consider the fact that I probably will not read Mamet nor Breitbart's books, there was a point some time ago when I knew the moment would arrive. I would understand the American Left and the American Right and become disgusted with both, but not in the way that Dawkins' Dorks are self-righteously disgusted with all religions. They can only be that way because they are peasants following Dawkins. Peasants follow and they mark their progress ll the time. Peasants must always have something to prove, which is why they are only half fully human, and why they pay attention to the Kardashians and the Hiltons. The Wealthy get away with everything - they represent our understanding of the power of Will, something peasants do not possess. Peasants possess the power of Want. 

Peasants Want to be like Mike. Peasants Want to get into Harvard. Peasants Want world peace. Peasants Want meritocracy. 

'Power to the people' should hereby be pronounced. Markets to the Peasants. Peasants never get any real power; they wouldn't know what to do with it. Peasants only know how to get what it is they want, such as they are allowed and or encouraged to do so by their superiors. If you are unclear about how this operates, then just stop and listen to the Narrative of American pols and journos. The 'answer' is out there somewhere. And somebody clever will tell you what it is for a small fee, and then you will Want it and you'll find a way to get some small fraction of it (or the designer version if you are an affluent peasant). 

Aside from all that, Peasants don't want any real power anyhow, because that would necessitate killing people. When you understand this, you recognize that you are a peasant because you want your Lord to do your killing for you. Remember what I said? War is always with us. All you get to do is choose sides, or by degrees, choose who will defend all you have come to be with your flexible version of the truth. 

--

So it has been a couple years since I was on the air discovering the hard way how much attaches to the various Peasant cults of Wanting. Nothing seems quite so lame today as Will I Am's "Yes We Can" video. Go ahead. Watch it. I dare you. It's not about what anybody can do, it's all about what peasants want. That's the bottom line.. you have to wait and listen to it, after all the poofy phrases. Hope for change that the peasants will actually get more of what they Want. Peasants always can get what they want, but it's never enough. What never changes is that true power requires that you kill your enemies and frighten your rivals into submission. It's a lesson that peasants stubbornly refuse to learn and that is why all they ever have is hope. Hope that they can get enough so that the wanting goes away. 

 

Can you smell the paradox? I mean all humans desire something. But only peasants organize their Wants and pile them all into one giant Grinchbag of narrative. Or policy, or manifesto or declaration or some other whereas filled gripe with fancy dropcaps. The Wealthy get away with everything and they don't bother to write it down for posterity. 

There are in America, Republican and Democrat cults of Wanting and they keep offering us miniature Lords and Ladies for us to idolize and subsequently serve. They're not doing us any favors. They're all just trying various methods of Acting Presidential without getting caught up in a Gate of some slimy sort. But really that's all peasants want is that endless churn. A peasant cannot stand to be reminded that there are free men out there... so watch your back.

--

So there it is, basically.  It takes a bit of precarious hopping around on one foot to get truth's pants on, because a peasant will run out of the house in a New York minute with the latest new song on their lips. It's a catchy tune not because it is, but because you want it to be. 

Crenshaw Mall

Postwar Architecture.

Kato & The Crazy White Boy

If there was ever a moment that I thought, hmm, maybe Green Hornet starring Seth Rogan might be a good idea. then I'm not as sane as I think I am. It was a stupid idea, and Green Hornet is a stupid movie. I sit here wondering how anything so slapdash can earn money. The good news is, that in the US, it didn't.

Getting 120 million dollars to spit at the ghost of Bruce Lee can only be a bad idea, but that's Hollywood. That's what passes for entertainment.  

American Male Existentials in English Literature

I used to observe that I never met a white man who identified with Bigger Thomas and I never met a black man who identified with Holden Caulfield. But I'm not particularly interested in how American men retrench themselves into racial identies, so I find that identification scheme only as a convenient mnemonic. What's more interesting nowadays, especially given the retarded men of contemporary films, is where our generations (mine and my son's) might find inspiration.

This starts with a personal observation about what kind of man I thought I might be and the points of literature that guided me anywhere. 

When I was trying to make a point, I felt rather strongly about the essay I wrote called Hating Huck. But what I think about that now is that it was important for me to rationalize the entire matter into the context of Tomi Morrison's culture war. I wasn't ever scarred by the books I was forced to read, nor was I particularly hurt by the lack of black male images in film. It seemed to me that Denzel singly sufficed for my generation as Poitier did for his. It wasn't that we didn't know how to *be*, we just wondered what it is we would get an opportunity to *do*. 

I recall a sort of triumph I felt one evening watching an episode of Roots in the common room at the EVK dorm of USC, the hoity white girls' privy. I didn't need to bash a head. But I had read the book a couple years earlier and I knew how it all turned out. Roots was, I suppose, the big deal it had to be for me. I recall being impressed that I read such a large book. It was, at the time, endlessly fascinating. By the time the miniseries was aired, it was all about LeVar and Fiddler, 'My name is Toby' and 'Grits, dummy'. 

Super 8

Super 8 is a movie within a movie about making movies. It's a superb narrative about exactly the imagination of the American filmmaker. In the wit of children who tell the truth and will risk everything to preserve the trust of friendship, is the story of the story that has to be told.

 

King of the Vagabonds

I have decided to return to the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. I have determined that the only reason I really like science fiction is because the kind I really enjoy make me think of history. Historical fiction is my favorite literary form. So perhaps I am now officially an old man.

I don't feel old. I feel slow, and I see no good reason to hurry up, because I know what's on the other side of the mountain. It's another mountain. 

Stephenson's Quicksilver, which I read long ago, is now available in audiobook. So I'm wasting my money on that old mountain. But now that I have a peasant theory, the misadventures of Half Cocked Jack Shaftoe are all the more fascinating. In fact, I think he becomes much more of an archtype in my mind. 

Soetoro?

Who the hell is Barry Soetoro?

Obama’s college transcripts from Occidental College indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript from Occidental College shows that Obama (Barry Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship (scholarship) for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program – an international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government.  Grants are available for U.S. citizens to go abroad and for non-U.S. citizens with no U.S. permanent residence to come to the U.S.  To qualify, for the non-US citizen scholarship to study in the U.S., a student applicant must claim and provide proof of foreign citizenship.

 Oh. Nevermind. 

Flippin' Fathers

The New Literacy

Patrick Clair Motion Design Reel 2010 from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

The new literacy is not literacy at all. It is about being informed about what's changing.

The new literacy is not for you and I. For we grew up in a time when most people believed in meritocracy and progress. We expect that hard work and concentrated thinking will generate benefits that have multiplier effects. We believed that sowing led to reaping. But now we are living at the end of those times, and the value of understanding the natural world is diminishing while the value of understanding the new cultural semiotic swamp that is global literacy is increasing.

In other words, if it's not in Google, it might be worth knowing, but you'll never profit from it.

The new literacy is like the first publication of the Bible. It will threaten the hierarchical Papists, make them defensive. Today's literate Papists are not merely mainstream media, but mainstream education and all the ways that people have come to know what they know during the 20th Century. We forget that the 20th Century invented mass communications, and mass communications has always been propaganda. Now we have alternative propaganda - and we choose which dogfood we eat. Now we decide whose koolaid we drink. 

Let's not forget the origin of drinking the koolaid was Jonestown. There's a need to get a grip on the reality that lies beneath all of the new symbology. I expect that my children will get it. More than any other generation and more than most of their peers, my own children have every cyber advantage. They deeply know the value of real face to face relationships, they cannot be fooled by virtual reality. But there are still masses yet to come.

Through the 80s we used to joke about the price of Levi's jeans in Russia, and in the 90s we saw men in Mogadishu wearing Air Jordans. The masses of people who are moving from the rural areas into cities around the world will next signify their emergence with cell phones and access to the Internet. As false as the status of jeans and sneakers may have seemed to upscale Yanks, it was enough for them. But the sorts of MTVified info-gloop many Americans still are fooled by, say the wit of Tina Fey, the sagacity of Alec Baldwin or the humor of Tracy Morgan, that entire enterprise can become the mental shackles of the next global middle class. It's so appealing. 

America has developed a way to monetize the surplus time, attention and dollars of the Baby Boom. That is what we have created. And to the extent that the 60s showed us the most muscular muscle cars ever, and the 70s and 80s showed us what crap cars we could put up with - the industrial revolution is mostly a done deal for the planet. We are living in that surplus period and settling back to an era of infrastructrual Pinto Pony MPGs. Basic transportation. When the world cannot afford and doesn't look forward to living in the architectural standards of Dubai and the industrial revolution slows down to Pinto quality infrastructure, the quality of life will become less material and more mental. 

I think we in California understand this fairly well. We all have, under the influence of Hollywood and other romantic notions, carved out extra space in our imaginations for meaningless intellectual luxuries. We're attuned to the status that accrues from knowing Bruce Willis' mechanic or Jada Pinkett Smith's hairdresser. Look at the info in the graphic video in this essay. That is intellectual fashion - the fashion of knowing something that is completely beyond our ability to influence (or sometimes even beyond our ability to comprehend), and yet take pride in knowing the narrative. That is the new literacy.

And it's little brother and enabler is the new growing international language of graphics and glyphs. Everybody understands Charlie's bite. And we will all soon understand the new standards of post-industrial light and magic. 

 

Right Here, Right Now. You know it. It's Little Brother. 

Apology to that Gay Brit

I was living in New York City when Richard Branson was in his heyday making Virgin Superstores here in the states. So within a week of its grand opening, I went to the new store in Times Square. Ooh shiny! 

As I wended my way through the brightly colored aisles, I happened into a very helpful individual who issued me a challenge. And as I sit doing overtime work this morning to the sound of a giant collection of Mozart, I am brought to mind of that challenge. You see I was looking for a particular classical song and I couldn't remember it. Well actually I wasn't but at the spur of the moment I thought I'd buy one, and so I was stuck with a mind splinter as he told me that he could name any classical song I could think of. Just hum the tune, he said, and I'll tell you what it is. 

These days, I hear that there's something of an App for that, called Shazam. And this smiling dude kept following me around waiting to engage his wonder twin powers. I was annoyed because I couldn't think, for the life of me, what classical song I might want to buy from this solicitous geek. I couldn't help myself and I couldn't help him. It was a lose, lose situation. A challenge issued that couldnt' be met. 

So lately I think of him as a homo. Someone with a genuine interest in doing me a favor that I can't think of a reason to want. 

Last week, my son, my wonderful son who uses YouTube videos to help him play ragtime music on the piano, asked me about Sonata #11. Except of course he was humming it and I knew it, but I couldn't tell you then it was Mozart or Sonata #11 aka K331 aka the Turkish March. You know it too. Everybody knows it, but doesn't know that they know it. 

I should have done something to meet the Virgin dude halfway, because I was genuinely pleased to have been put on my heels by the request. He was bored as he could be in his shiny hell. As you can guess, the center of gravity was somewhere Kris Kross and Sir Mix-a-Lot. We obviously had that boredom in common, and now there are no more Virgin Superstores. It was an idea that came and went like a tornado sweeping up the goods from those who live in cultural trailer parks. But for whatever enriching value classical music has, there was that. Shazamming oneself at home doesn't compare favorably.

Now we're all in the circle of Mozart love, but how can anyone forget Baby Got Back?

 

Political Spam of the Day

No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While Politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense.

Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?

35 States file lawsuit against the Federal Government

Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.

This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.

This is an idea that we should address.

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.

If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

-- Actually I think there is already something like this...

Black John's Blues

One of these days, hopefully not too soon, we are going to run out of people who knew and worked with Miles Davis personally. Until that time, you should make it your business to seek them out and discover what they have been doing. This man, John Bigham. You can't ignore him. He's got something that you know. Something unsaid. He's from my generation. I feel him like a brother. He plays the guitar upside down. His lyrics are like short declarative sentences that take a tangent off a fat soul. He nails it down without scratching the finish. Not trying to be too fancyfied. Not pretending to be more dirty than ordinary life.

Books & Horses

The old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be. Lead her to water. Will she drink? Horse whipped. Horse thief. Horse trader. Horse of a different color. Dark horse. Stalking horse. 

I'm sitting tall in the saddle, up on my high horse thinking about how I've got this digital thing all figured out. What helps me along is my reading of Charles Stross and other writers who have got much more imagination than those people who make all things digital happen in reality. In 2005, I began reading science fiction again, after a significant haitus of about 20 years. I realized that I had pretty much run out of ideas, and having been out of Silicon Valley for 4 years, I was a bit out of touch. That's not saying much. Silicon Valley is clubby and there aren't *that* many wholly new things despite there being all dimensions of clever. It boils down to a big chunk of middle aged humans trying to make money, using the money other people have used to make money. In other words, if a venture capitalist can understand it, it's probably not good science fiction. Only Steve Jobs can sell magic, but what gets bankrolled is an entirely different species of tech. It all boils down to some forms of consumer electronics & media. And really that's all about delivery, and that's all about the T-Mobile chick, the Sprint man and the Verizon dude duking it out. (The nerds who used to compete with the Alltel dude have been vaporized).

I've got the digital thing figured out in the same way the guy driving a Porsche has the automobile thing figured out. I've got the premium consumer products and I'm savvy. In actual fact, I'm a prosumer. So in things digital, I'm like the guy with the Ruf Porsche, I've got the aftermarket afterburners. But we're here to talk about books and horses because they are both commodities that suffered from automobiles and all things digital. Or have they?

I'm ready to talk about books in the past tense the way I talk about horse sense, but that should be your clue that the idiom has legs. We'll be rid of books in the same way we are rid of horse. They will become expensive luxuries in a new economy of more sophisticated transportation. But is a horse more costly than a car? No. Horses are only expensive luxuries because most of us peasants don't learn anything about them as compared to what we learn about automobiles. We don't know who sells horses to whom or how to inspect one. We know how to kick tires but not how to look a horse in the mouth. So too these things will describe our senses of books a generation hither.

I enjoy listening to audiobooks. It's much slower than reading, but the way I'm living I can get more of it done. My audiobook follows me in my drive to work, my lunchtime, and as a companion to drudgery. Im picking a path for several modes due to the transformative presence of my iPad, which is finally the thing I can call a true personal digital assistant. 

But I wonder if the next generation will use the media or be used by it. A book doesn't want to be read, just like a horse doesn't jump under you and take you somewhere. You have to expend a bit of effort to get into a book or break a horse, but the new media follows you around like latest story about Donald Trump. They are insistent and have been designed to be easier and more comfortable, accesible and ubiquitous. That's the whole point of their invention. 

So I am looking for parallels. How will pan-literacy and information change our society? I think, like the way Protestantism changed Europe. 

 

 

The Soft Luxury of Low Expectations

There is a glaring contradiction in the rhetoric of social equality and I haven't really found a way to express it although I see its manifestations in multiple ways. To put it a blunt way, you cannot have multiculturalism and social equality because the moment you establish a level of acceptable cultured behavior that isn't materially identical, you set up an arbitrary equation of equivalence. 

I want to let that sentence stand on its own so you can consider the implications, because they are also true of class and gender, sexual persuasion and all other categories many Americans have stared at for too long in recent decades. 

Now on the whole, I say this is a luxury because human experience is broad and varied. Which is an acknolwedgement that life isn't fair. I thought about it yesterday in the context of performance. If you ask anyone who claims to be up on their Ps and Qs in the latest social sciences, they will likely be familiar with the term 'stereotype threat'. If you're not, nevermind it. It's basically social flinching. Try this. Stand in fron of your daughter, quickly raise your right hand as if you're drawing back to slap her face. If she flinches, then to a certain degree she is oppressed. IE she knows to expect a slap in the face. This only happens to girls who have been slapped in some way, and it's entirely reasonable for them to flich defensively. But in another way, it is a burden. There is a part of her world that is slowed down by the fact of the tragic experience. And so it goes through all of life. One cannot expect equality when experience dictates otherwise. But we adjust for that by changing expectations. 

Imagine a world in which social class did not exist. I say this is an improper utopia. A classless society forces everyone into the same expectations. If the king is not allowed to curse, moan and whine, then so a pauper could not. If a knight could never flinch from the anticipated battle, neither could the knave. In our society what we should expect is that people may aspire to the class of their choice, indeed class mobility should exist. But then people must take on the expectations of those classes and stick to them.

So this is an argument that is pro-class, and formalist. Let the denizens of Sherwood Forest luxuriate in their laziness. We don't expect anything more from them, nor anything less. Let the high and mighty not sneak off to Vegas to indulge in vulgarities. There is high and low. Acknowledge them, because life isn't fair and experience matters.

BTW, Weiner has outed himself, so put him in his place.  

 

Whose Life Is It Anyhow?

Kevorkian is dead. Jimmy crack corn. I don't care.

But I suppose I would a bit more if I thought that many lives depended on those things that Kevorkian did. In an indirect way, we're all better off because his ethics forced us to think about the nature of things. But directly speaking, I don't miss him. 

There is a lot of that kind of attenuated concern for the elderly, and I think it is natural and appropriate for us to consider the death of the aged as less than tragic. And let us also consider the dead. I mean the billions and billions of humans who are already dead. What do we really care about them? Not much. The last time I thought about the dead billions was when the nutcase said the end of the world was near and that the dead would be raised from their graves. Dead children haunt our dreams. Dead babies wreck our lives. Dead fetuses power political movements for decades. 

So there are a couple of problems, the way I look at it. One is hard edged, the other is squishy. The hard edge question is as it ever was: do human beings have the right to make life and death decisions. Since that one is hard, let it be easy. Yes. OK fine.

The squishy problem is navigating the moral gradient of society's valuation of life. IE it's definition of tragedy. Suicide is immoral to the extent that it is a tragic waste of human life. And so it is by degrees. A heroin addict, aside from their possible predations, is tragic because they are wasting their life away. It is only when we start aggregating the statistics of waste that we get involved in our civil religion and start passing statutes and propositions. We do it for the children. Don't we always?

So I am not so inclined to determine the particular merit of any ethos' stenuous arguments for or against suicide other than their basic consistency and force of conviction. But I do say that the question of the morality of suicide begs the question of who is a proper authority to choose the value of life.

 

The Loss of Truth

Many years ago Michael Heim wrote:

"According to Heidegger, we notice the eclipse of the truth of being occuring already in Plato's metaphysics. Once the truth of being becomes equated with the light of unchanging intelligibility, the nature of truth shifts to the ability of statements to reflect or refer reliably to entities. With the steadiness of propositional truth comes the tendency to relate to being as a type, a form, or an anticipated shape. With being as a steady form, entities gain their reality through their being typified. Already in Plato we see the seeds of the Western drive to standardize things, to find what is dependable and typical in them. Truth as the disclosure process, as the play of revealing/ concealing disappears behind the scene in which the conscious mind grasps bright objects apprehended as clear, unwavering, rational forms. As humans develop the ability to typify and apprehend formal realities, the loss of truth as emergent disclosure goes unnoticed. All is light and form. Nothing hides behind the truth of beings. But this "nothing" finally makes an appearance after the whole world has become a rigid grid of standardized forms and shapes conceived and engineered by humans. As the wasteland grows, we see the devastation of our fully explicit truths. We see that there is, must be, more. The hidden extra cannot be consciously produced. Only by seeing the limits of standardization can we begin to respond to it. We have to realize that each advance in typifying and standardizing things also implies a trade off. When we first reach forward and grasp things, we only see the benefits of our standardization, only the positive side of greater clarity and utility. it is difficult to accept the paradox that not matter how alluring, every gain in fixed intelligibility brings with it a corresponding loss of vivacity. Because we are finite, every gain we make also implies a lost possibility. The loss is especially devastating to those living in the technological world, for here they enjoy everything conveniently at their disposal -- everything that is, except the playful process of discovery itself."

The loss of truth as emergent disclosure. Hmm. It turns out that cyberspace itself has become so large, so full of human creativity, such a part of the way we *see*  that there is no great problem of fixed intelligibility. The fact that the web is full of garbage is, in this way, reassuring.

Nobody ever surfs to the end of the Internet. Nobody ever will. 

 

Clay Shirky's Pizza

I just got a note about the 'debacle' in Afghanistan. I'm not sure that's what it is, but there is one thing that it clearly is not. The US war in Afghanistan is not about gaining territory for our empire. As far as the Ferengi are concerned, we are wasting our time. The Humanitarians may feel we're doing the right thing. The Right is mostly for it, for what I believe to be many irrelevant principles, and the Left is mostly against it based on bad accounting.

But whatever reason we are at war, (Libya? Anyone? Beuller?) there is some kind of benefit to us peasants. That is because that which is in the interest of the United States is in the interests of its people. (Read free men). But first we review an important rule and its corollary.

If the poor and uneducated knew how to work the system, they wouldn't be poor and uneducated.

The corollary to this rule has not been digested to something as pithy but it basically has to do with the notion of enlightened self-interest. People see what's going on - where the money is being made, where the centers of power are, who's who and what's what and they insinuate themselves into the vicinity. Smart people want to get in on the action.

Here in the US, we have a lot of smart people, and lots of them want to get in on the action. But how big does the action have to be? How smart do you have to be? Tough questions. Clay's Pizza is a good way to think about what we in the Jet Age used to call 'critical mass', and now we in the Internet Age call 'network effects'.

Clay's Pizza idea works like this. When you have enough people, it makes perfect sense to do things that make no sense in a smaller population. In NYC it makes perfect sense to sell pizza by the slice. But if you were in a small town, it makes no sense to cook up a cheese pizza before anybody orders one and just hope 8 hungry people walk by. In a small town there's not much action to get in on. So nobody profits from experimental restaurants. In a big metropolis where there's lots of action.. well, there's lots of action.

Now. What could 98,000 American troops in Afghanistan possibly be doing that benefits America? Maybe that's a pizza my small town just isn't ready to eat, but that doesn't make it a debacle. Somebody, at some level of American society is smart enough to figure that out. Could it be the President?

The Definition of Big

Jazz Under the Stars

Featuring Chris Bowen. The best birthday gift is to see your children doing well.

Mamet's Conversion

David Mamet speaks for many. 

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

Apparently, his new book is out. American Thinker has a review. 

I very much like the fact that Mamet sees the difference between conservatism and liberalism as the worldview of the tragic vs the perfectionist. A very good question at the beginning of WWID (which I will explain later in Lorite terms) would be, Do you think people are basically good? A conservative would not say that they are basically evil, nor that they are basically good, but that events and circumstances can conspire to bring out the vile beast in men and that none are exempt. 

This book: The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture. Is what Breitbart and I discussed several weeks ago at USC's book fair. Now it will be free in the wild. Will it strike at the heart of Hollywood and Madison Avenue? One hopes. 

I find it interesting that Mamet has found the same intellectual signposts at roughly the same time as I did. Although I was a light neocon in the early 80s having discovered Sowell, I didn't quite understand all of the implications of proper conservatism.

At any rate, I think this graf best describes...

The book chronicles Mamet's transformation from liberal to conservative, but it also reflects the transformation of liberalism itself, as liberals became "progressives" and shifted ever further to the left, with their "shared truths" increasingly hard to credit in light of lived experience.  Many people became conservatives simply by standing still -- as liberalism moved away.  And it was liberals, in the form of neo-cons, who reinvigorated conservatism and transformed it from what it used to be.  

Right. 

Thanks for the Prayers

Impatience & Wisdom

By the time I finish writing this, it will officially be my fiftieth birthday. I got a card from my aunt. And so I know there is a lot more for me to do.

I took a longer than usual look in the mirror this morning on the last day of my 40s and I recognize that I have accomplished something in my life. That thing, which is elusive and becomes more solid only as I reflect and write it down, has something to do with a kind of impatience with the present. 

When I was 21 and reading Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, a piece of doggerel sprang to life when I thought about my father. Live for tomorrow, today we are dead, a father to his young son once said. The idea became something of a principle and I believed in the future as much as any young man grown up on Heinlein, Bradbury and Asimov could. I saw a future, but not this one. Still, it was real to me, and foreign to the world. I never realized how much I had to make it happen as an exercise of will. I wasn't raised to think of myself in that way. 

I used to believe that integrity was its own reward. I still do, but mostly because I have it and have decided to love that about myself. But a part of me knows better. The part of me that is fearless when not sober. That part of me that is defiant and stubborn and disrespectful. I forgot the word they used to beat it out of me in elementary school, back when I was reading third grade books at the age of five. I didn't ask to be a smartass, I just was and thought everybody wanted to be smart. Smart for me just means spending more time thinking than playing around. Anyone who listens to me speak knows that my brain doesn't work very swiftly, it just knows dark alley shortcuts that most people are afraid to walk down. Isolation is what you get for being a smartass. If you keep it up, you might forget how ordinary people think.  

Nobody ever convinced me that I could do as much as I have done. I thought I would have to be a rebel just to get respect. I thought I would work twice as hard and get half as far. I thought nobody would or could ever understand what I've been through. It turns out that those were the very myths that held me back, and for what is still more than half my life I didn't care what people thought and didn't think I could ever convince people anything, except with science maybe. I was impatient to get on with the future. 

I remember that I never did my homework. I just wanted to know. I didn't want to write a whole bunch on stuff down just to prove I knew. Ask me the question and I'll answer. See? I know. Homework is a waste of time. I could be knowing more. I didn't study, I just needed somebody who actually knew what the hell they were talking about to explain it to me. I get it. I always get it. What I don't get, and never got, is how to keep track of the collective irrationality of what people actually desire. I call it irrationality because I've got a lot of nerve.

So that is where I am today. I've done most of the doing people ever expected me to do. I've been looking to jump ahead and set up a toll plaza on the road everybody is going to figure out they must travel in order to progress.  But I can't reckon that so well. As you get older and more 'set in your ways' you lose the ability to see things from other people's point of view. It doesn't mean that you're unsympathetic, but that it's mentally difficult not to take those dark alley shortcuts that your experience brings. You have to guess and imagine what you would think like if you didn't know what you know.

For that, I just look at my kids. 

So I hope that what I do for them is what the world needs. Other than that I have to read books, and then I hit the wall. There's only so much you can know. A human being becomes something else out of balance by knowing too much. You then need to control too much. Nobody's jokes are funny and you only laugh at the truly perverse. 

What I want is to live in truth, to never have to lie to myself or anyone else. I want to be wise and honorable. That means I have to figure out a way to be gracious in the presence of people who don't know what I know. It means letting other people say what they will say and do what they will do. It means avoiding their implosions and explosions. Maybe I live like an old farmer, because I'm not particularly addicted to power and I haven't schemed enough to get me some. 

When I had my first child, somehow I intuitively knew that I would have to stop being a bohemian social critic. I knew there was a class of books that I had to put down and a new set I needed to start reading. I now have a similar sense that I have to watch my health, prepare for disaster, and say words over the dead. I will work another 15 years, I figure. I will downsize my life. I will render myself into certain perfections of character and behavior. 

I am living in that unimaginable future and I live in the moment, never expecting much more than what is. I consider myself slightly paranoic, preparing to keep a cool head and steady hand in the face of disaster. I take comfort in small blessings knowing that things fall apart. 

Today I was surprised. Somehow the bank made an error and deposited 20x my paycheck in my account. I'm not going to fly to Brazil, but figure out how to correct the mistake. I am becoming less impatient with the ways of the world. Perhaps life itself embodies justice.