Interlude: The Matrix - Roll, Roll, Roll, Your Blog

Since I stubbornly refuse to add a permanent blogroll to this site, it behooves me, from time to time, to direct attention to the goings-on at some of the other sites that make up my blogospheric neighborhood. So here goes:

In the comments section of Postmodern Papist, Kyle was asked to define the term “postmodern” as he understands it. Kyle modestly directed the reader to the Stanford University philosophy site to which I hereby link again. It is an excellent resource to which I have often been conducted in the past in my wanderings across the universe of directed cognition.

As I was eavesdropping, I went there myself and came across the following citation touting Kierkegaard as a precursor of postmodernism:

Kierkegaard…describes modern society as a network of relations in which individuals are leveled into an abstract phantom known as “the public”. The modern public, in contrast to ancient and medieval communities, is a creation of the press, which is the only instrument capable of holding together the mass of unreal individuals “who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization”. In this sense, society has become a realization of abstract thought, held together by an artificial and all-pervasive medium speaking for everyone and for no one.

Substitute “the blogosphere” for “the press” in the above, and understand how Kierkegaard continues to define our common lot today. (I should not neglect to mention here that Kyle has also made available for your perusal and delight some new art by his wife, Genece. Check it out.)

Speaking of art, over at Disputations, reigning sage and guru, Tom, posted a mysterious cartoon graphic well over a month ago. And then vanished. His loyal readers hope that his dramatic reappearance, with or without more cartoons, is imminent.

While Tom remains on the lam, over at Sex, Politics and Religion, our MC, Civis, has returned from a lengthy sabbatical with this timely post. He solicits your advice.

At Ragged Thots, host Robert A. George continues to have a hell of time keeping his rowdy crew of regulars within the bounds of propriety universally recognized as orthodox by members of a civil society. Go there armed.

Anthony, The Catholic Libertarian, has gotten the most response recently to his post on the antics of everybody’s favorite Hugo Award winner, Senor Chavez. Go there and rip the Venezuelan Pol Pot a new one for Jesus.

On the eve of the Super Bowl, at Politics and Pigskins it’s all pigs and no pols with resident maven, Ed. You can’t tell the swine without a scorecard, folks. But in the spirit of redneck unity, it must be remembered that, before there was “Andy of Mayberry,” there was “What It Was Was Football”.

Keesey claims to be fo’ Sheezy, but I’ve been watching all the debates I didn’t even know that Sheezy was running. This is the place to hang if you’re looking to meet the blonde-all-over, slanty-eyed, slinky, Slav-ette of your dreams. And a quirky topic, or two, or three…

Finally, go here to keep an Ever Vigilant eye on what the hyper-edumacated, hard-right-reactionary set is all a-buzz about, as we are swept by the currents of history inexorably toward the End of Time.

Reflections: Does Action Exhaust Goodness?

Many moons ago, when I was taking a few philosophy courses as an undergraduate, I was bored by the analytic school and sent into a coma-like state by the logical positivists. I wanted to talk about Plato, or else I wanted to talk about Sartre. I still want to talk about Plato.

That said, there is a little corner in my billfold into which I tuck, scribbled on little scraps and ripped-off corners of paper, the titles and library call numbers of books that some other book, or maybe a book review, or a website, has prompted me to want to look into sometime in the hazy future. Yesterday I came across the tiny tatter bearing the title The Sovereignty of Good, by Iris Murdoch. I have no memory of why I noted that title for future reference. Nor could I give you any reason why I went up into the stacks, found the book, and checked it out two days ago. Nonetheless, consider the following excerpt and see if it doesn’t bring a new angle of consideration to the thoughts expressed in my last post. Consider especially the statement “Morality resides at the point of action.”

Does it? I didn’t think so...

From Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, “The Idea of Perfection”:

(Here, Murdoch lays out the worldview, according to theories of analytic philosophy, which she intends to refute)

[Along with others] Wittgenstein has created a void into which neo-Kantianism, existentialism, utilitarianism have made haste to enter. And notice how plausibly the arguments, their prestige enhanced from undoubted success in other fields, seem to support, indeed to impose, the image of personality which I have sketched above.* As the ‘inner life’ is hazy, largely absent, and any way ‘not part of the mechanism’**, it turns out to be logically impossible to take up an idle contemplative attitude to the good. Morality must be action since mental concepts can only be analyzed genetically. Metaphors of movement and not vision seem obviously appropriate. Morality, with the full support of logic, abhors the private. Salvation by works is a conceptual necessity. What I am doing or being is not something private and personal, but is imposed upon me in the sense of being identifiable only via public concepts and objective observers. Self-knowledge is something which shows overtly. Reasons are public reasons, rules are public rules. Reason and rule represent a sort of impersonal tyranny in relation to which however the personal will represents perfect freedom. The machinery is relentless, but until the moment of choice the agent is outside the machinery. Morality resides at the point of action. What I am ‘objectively’ is not under my control; logic and observers decide that. What I am ‘subjectively’ is a foot-loose, solitary, substanceless will. Personality dwindles to a point of pure will.
______________________________________________________________________
* "This ‘man’...is the hero of almost every contemporary novel. ...He says ‘all problems meet in intention’, and he utters in relation to intention the only explicit ‘ought’ in his psychology. We ought to know what we are doing. We should aim at total knowledge of our situation and a clear conceptualization of all our possibilities. Thought and intention must be directed towards definite overt issues or else they are merely day-dream. ...Mental life is, and logically must be, a shadow of life in public. Our personal being is the movement of our overtly choosing will [which is] separated from belief so that the authority of reason, which manufactures belief, may be entire and so that responsibility for action may be entire as well. My responsibility is a function of my knowledge (which tries to be wholly impersonal) and my will (which is wholly personal). Morality is a matter of thinking clearly and then proceeding to outward dealings with other men."

** "Actions are, roughly, instances of moving things about in the public world. Nothing counts as an act unless it is a ‘bringing about of a recognizable change in the world’."

Reflections: Thought Exercise

Here is a little mental exercise which may provide some insights into the relationship between Truth and Freedom:

First, consider the epistemological implications of Rebecca Goldstein’s statement concerning the quintessence of Spinoza’s philosophy [the following excerpts are from Goldstein’s book, Betraying Spinoza]:

Reality is ontologically enriched logic.

How does what we are—the conditions of our existence—relate to what we can know?

Next, consider the following excerpt from a letter written by Spinoza in response to the letter of a former tutee, who has converted to Catholicism and subsequently written to Spinoza, condemning Spinoza’s system of thought:

If you ask me in what way I know [that I understand the true philosophy], I answer: In the same way as you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles: that this is sufficient, will be denied by no one whose brain is sound, and who does not go dreaming of evil spirits inspiring us with false ideas like the true. For the truth is the index of itself and of what is false.

As explained by Goldstein:

Spinoza is claiming here that since he has relied on nothing but a priori reason to deduce his system, just a mathematics relies on nothing but a priori reason, his conclusions (granted that his deductions are valid) enjoy precisely the same degree of certitude as mathematics. His conclusions, just as those of mathematics, must be necessary truths, those which could not possibly have been otherwise.

Now consider the following statements of D-503, the thoroughly conditioned and indoctrinated narrator/protagonist of Eugene Zamiatin’s fictional dystopia, the United State, in the novel, WE:

The ancient god created ancient man, i.e., the man capable of mistakes; ergo, the ancient god himself made a mistake. The multiplication table is more wise and more absolute than the ancient god, for the multiplication table never (do you understand – never) makes mistakes! There are no more fortunate and happy people than those who live according to the correct, eternal laws of the multiplication table. No hesitation! No errors! There is but one truth, and there is but one path to it; and that truth is: four, and that path is: two times two. Would it not seem preposterous for these happily multiplied twos suddenly to begin thinking of some foolish kind of freedom? – i.e., …of a mistake?

Exercise:

Both Spinoza’s philosophy and the totalitarian doctrine of the United State claim to provide man—in direct opposition to religion—with his only hope of salvation. With this in mind,

1) Compare and contrast the relationship between Spinoza’s philosophy and the totalitarian doctrine of the United State, as expounded in Zamiatin’s novel.

2) If Spinoza’s philosophy cannot be shown to be fundamentally in error, what is the relationship between intellectual freedom and Objective Truth? Does the latter negate the former?

3) Consider the question: If, as is implied by the above, what we normally mean by “freedom” is a logical impossibility, what, then, are the implications for our concept of “free will”?

4) Is political “freedom” actually—if paradoxically—bondage to imaginative error and avoidable contingency?

Readings: ...And One More for the Road

After Thursday's trip to the swamp, I feel the need for an intellectual shower bath. I don't mean to discourage further discussion of my political rant, but I want also to get back to "home base," as it were.

On my Christmas gift wish list this year was On the Road: the Original Scroll, published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac's seminal novel of the Beat Generation. This edition presents the novel as it was originally typed-out, in the space of a few long days and nights, on a roll of taped-together sheets of tracing paper, 120-feet long. This new edition publishes for the first time Kerouac's manuscript, minus the good services of the editors of the version that was eventually released to the public in 1957. As spontaneity is one of the key philosophical tenets of Kerouac's artistic m.o., the Original Scroll is a book I am very keen to experience first-hand.

Unfortunately, my request was misunderstood, and I found the 50th Anniversary hardcover re-release of the edited version under the tree instead. While that is a nice book to have, I still wanted the Original Scroll--so I bought it this past week with some cash I had received for my recent birthday.

There is an introduction, written by the book's editor, Howard Cunnell, which nicely sums up what I believe to be most important in Kerouac's body of work:

Long before his readings in Buddhism Kerouac was intuitively attempting to reconcile a worldview that saw his lived experience both as one made painfully meaningless by his hard-wired knowledge of mortality and as one to be celebrated in every detail and at every moment precisely because, as he writes in Visions of Cody, we are soon "all going to die." Kerouac escapes this encircling loss in the act of writing. To say what happened. To get it down before it is lost. To make mythology from your life and from the lives of your friends. This urgency pushes Kerouac to strip his writing of "made-up" stories. Life's impermanence and the inevitability of suffering inform and motivate Kerouac's heightened sensitivity and responsiveness to the phenomenal world. What Allen Ginsberg called his "open heart" and Kerouac himself described as being "submissive to everything, open, listening" results in a body of fiction in which the representation of the magical nature of entrancing and life-affirming fleeting detail is the outstanding feature.

Kerouac was about living in the moment. He was about being awake(!).

I am also reading the novel WE by Russian author, Eugene Zamiatin. As the synopsis on the book's cover states, WE is: "Recognized as the inspiration for George Orwell's famous 1984." The synopsis goes on to state, WE tells the story of the minutely organized United State, where all citizens are not individuals but only he-Numbers and she-Numbers existing in identical glass apartments with every action regulated by the "Table of Hours." It is a community dedicated to the proposition that freedom and happiness are incompatible; that most men believe their freedom to be more than fair exchange for a high level of materialistic happiness.

It's kind of a prescient critique of the Bush administration's neocon philosophy.

These two books represent opposite poles. It is going to be interesting to read them simultaneously.

Interlude: BOYCOTT !!

I’m going to let the Rodak Riffs Express miss the curve, jump the tracks, and roll down the embankment into that miasmic swamp called Politics. Sometimes it's called the Slough of Despond, but for now we’ll keep it simple and call it Politics.

When I got home from work today, there was an envelope in my mailbox with my name and address on the front of it and the return address of the Democratic National Committee on the back. Inside was a questionnaire, and a letter signed by Howard Dean, M.D. I guess I’m supposed to be flattered. Not only do they want to know my MasterCard number, but they also want my advice. Well, listen--here’s my advice, Democrats:

GO FUCK YOURSELF!

I’ve seen enough, already. Hillary Clinton has put me right into the Saul of Tarsus School of Feminism. I’m fully matriculated. Shut yer damn’ trap, kick off them sensible shoes, get yer lard ass out into the kitchen, and bake me some friggin’ cookies, bitch!

As for that political genius, Slick Willie, he’s cashed in his last chip at my table. I held my nose and forgave him for NAFTA. I gave him a pass on Monica. She did snap her thong at him, after all. She did brag about “earning her presidential knee pads.” And she didn’t get the “DNA” cleaned off that blue dress. Sure, he was “weak,” but she was no victim. I thought it was pretty cool when WJC blew his sax on Arsenio, too. Shit, I was easy. All of that said, in the words of the old R&B standard, “I used to love you, but it’s all over now.”

Clinton still has it. He’s still smart. He still knows what it takes to win. But now I’ve drifted—nay, leapt!--over into the camp of the Clinton haters. They’ve been telling me all along that the man was evil. And now I see it. He’s evil. Bill Clinton, “the first black president," has shown himself willing to ride back into the White House perched on the sturdy flanks of his blue-ribbon mare by making a friggin’ pickaninny out of Barack Obama.

Clinton’s seductive rhetoric of disinformation is designed to split the Democratic Party along racial lines--and it’s working. It’s the political war of all against all: Whites vs. Blacks vs. Hispanics. The Clintons are appealing to the very worst aspects of the American character. They are doing it as surely and as shamelessly as any crypto-fascist Republican campaign strategist ever did it before--and I’ve fucking well had it.

I take the Republican field of candidates as a personal insult. The Democrats make me ashamed. Talk about fear and loathing on the campaign trail!

I’m calling for a boycott of the 2008 presidential election. Only a 5% turn-out of eligible voters will ever show these corrupt, amoral bastards that we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more!

If you must go to the polls, vote only for your local candidates and issues. Leave the national portion of your ballot blank. You’ll feel better about yourself in the morning. Trust me.

Readings: Quote du Jour

Reality is ontologically enriched logic.

~ Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza

Religion: American Babylon

Yesterday I again picked up the Chris Hedges book, American Fascists, about which I wrote a couple of weeks ago, and began reading at the chapter entitled “The New Class.” In this chapter, Hedges tells of a visit to The National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim, California. As an exemplar of the “new class” of the chapter’s title, he writes about his encounter with a woman who shall remain nameless here. This paragon is an entrepreneur, running her own company; the author of several self-improvement titles; and a regular guest on such Christian talk shows as Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. Hedges also mentions several other women, each of whom combines a form of evangelical Christianity with media celebrity, in a corporate context:

The women, minor celebrities in the world of Christian broadcasting, capture the strange fusion between this new, flamboyant gospel of prosperity and America’s celebrity-driven culture. …Wealth, fame and power are manifestations of God’s work, proof that God has a plan and design for believers. (American Fascists, pp.132-133)

The long excerpt which follows encapsulates the core of what I believe to be the great danger facing this nation—American Babylon--and the rest of the world, in the immediate future, and once again describes the symptoms of what I have diagnosed as the cognitive dissonance of the American far-right polity:

This is the apotheosis of capitalism, the divine sanction of the free market, of unhindered profit and the most rapacious cruelties of globalization. Corporations, rapidly turning America into an oligarchy, have little interest in Christian ethics, or anybody’s ethics. They know what they have to do, as the titans of the industry remind us, for their stockholders. They are content to increase profit at the expense of those who demand fair wages, health benefits, safe working conditions and pensions. This new oligarchic class is creating a global marketplace where all workers, to compete, will have to become like workers in dictatorships such as China: denied rights, their wages dictated to them by the state, and forbidden from organizing or striking. America once attempted to pull workers abroad up to American levels, to foster the building of foreign labor unions, to challenge the abuse of workers in factories that flood the American market with cheap goods. [Note: I think that Hedges is giving America the benefit of the doubt with those contentions!] But this new class seeks to reduce the American working class to the levels of this global serfdom. [Note: The Road to Serfdom redefined!] After all, anything that drains corporate coffers is a loss of freedom – the God-given American freedom to exploit other human beings to make money. The marriage of this gospel of prosperity with raw, global capitalism, and the flaunting of the wealth and privilege it brings, are supposedly blessed and championed by Jesus Christ. Compassion is relegated to private, individual acts of charity or left to churches. The callousness of the ideology, the notion that it in any way reflects the message of the gospels, which were preoccupied with the poor and the outcasts, illustrates how the new class has twisted Christian scripture to serve America’s god of capitalism and discredited the Enlightenment values we once prized. (Ibid., pp.133-134)

Anti-Christ: I have seen the Oligarch and his name is Legion:

A man and a woman
Are two.
A man and a woman and an oligarch
Are legion.

And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:
~ Rev.18:11