Salvete, qui legantes sint -
My sons have been talking of this "new feller", Professor Jordan Peterson, and the HUGE splash he has been making in the cyber-world. From what I have gaathered so far, he's made of equal parts Joseph Campbell, Karl Jung, and Dr. Laura Schlesinger. I have yet to read his materials.
But the online response to his teaching and exhortations has been, as I said, HUGE. He's become an overnight Absurdity cure, apparently. So tonight I will begin his book, "12 Rules: an Antidote to Chaos". If indeed it's aimed at the problem of life in the modern world, it is ipso facto of interest.
Controversy surrounds him - so I make no pronouncements yet. Would it matter if I did so, prematurely? Not to the world, but to me - yes! Defective as I am, I still need to try to be fair and accurate.
I have read a critique of him published recently by another author I need to read - one Pankaj Mishra, author of "Age of Anger", his book about the general return to authoritarianism and violent nationalism and so on world-wide. Mishra's topic seems critical to me, watching from the sidelines as the world's bedbugs - Neo-Nazis, Tea Party-ists, and others of dubious intent - have come to the fore over the last decade or so.
More to come. Valete.
Showing posts with label living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2018
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Thick, the Clouds
Bene --
Coming back from depression. Again.
It's always a question of "How" for me - some people may well have a facility of pluck or discipline or grit that allows them to throw a stern, guiding hand over their individual selves and steer this way or that, independent of their emotions - and despite having tried feebly over the years to nurture such a facility in my Self - I lack such a power. I only encounter something like it in the depths of depression, something that says, "No, all the rhymes and platitudes of others fail; I have the choice, to try to live or to take myself away." And thereafter I only arise from those depths by accepting my weaknesses and nursing myself with positives - I live, I breathe, I am not among the worst off, I grow old but am still able to get by, I enjoy little but can still enjoy nonetheless. So the first is somewhat on the order of the Existential, but the second is decidedly Epicurean! And then, in my silly & superficial profession, I style myself Stoic: taking as a base that there is ultimately one universe, that some to-us-more-or-less-magical basis informs it, that causation exists and eliminates mere chaos, that the order of things cares not a fig for human lives or frailties, and so on.
Reason, if at the base of things, is something we discover and apply, as best we can. But being human, it is not the Reason of the Cosmos that I cultivate, but that of a human being -- social, individual, and imperfect like all palpable things.
Valete.
Coming back from depression. Again.
It's always a question of "How" for me - some people may well have a facility of pluck or discipline or grit that allows them to throw a stern, guiding hand over their individual selves and steer this way or that, independent of their emotions - and despite having tried feebly over the years to nurture such a facility in my Self - I lack such a power. I only encounter something like it in the depths of depression, something that says, "No, all the rhymes and platitudes of others fail; I have the choice, to try to live or to take myself away." And thereafter I only arise from those depths by accepting my weaknesses and nursing myself with positives - I live, I breathe, I am not among the worst off, I grow old but am still able to get by, I enjoy little but can still enjoy nonetheless. So the first is somewhat on the order of the Existential, but the second is decidedly Epicurean! And then, in my silly & superficial profession, I style myself Stoic: taking as a base that there is ultimately one universe, that some to-us-more-or-less-magical basis informs it, that causation exists and eliminates mere chaos, that the order of things cares not a fig for human lives or frailties, and so on.
Reason, if at the base of things, is something we discover and apply, as best we can. But being human, it is not the Reason of the Cosmos that I cultivate, but that of a human being -- social, individual, and imperfect like all palpable things.
Valete.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Feet Slipping on the Rocks
Salvete, qui legant -
How many of us recall being in water up to our necks and trying to find toe-purchase atop slimy, mossy lake stones? That seems an apt metaphor for my mental and moral state just now. Trying to get a grip, as it were.
My life is not that of a gung-ho hot-shot nor even that of a giddy, myopic gas-bag. My firmament in life is a slippery rock of absurdity - being myself too-much-that and not-enough-this, and so on. The world of youthful competition and 24/7 performance-merit passed me by long ago, and it is one part of human nature with which I've never identified, except in fantasy. I've worked in my life - mostly for attorneys and their ilk, piddly stuff, but for people who DO live in the 24/7 giddiness - and seen them from a distance, occasionally felt the breeze of accomplishment myself.
But it's not me; that stuff is not forthcoming. I remain out-of-it, strange, aside, "oddly conventional", and so on. I balance atop the rock, liquid mossy, but that's as much as I can manage, it seems.
So it is from this perpetual perspective of anomy that I face society's daily push-and-shove, and in particular these days the lightning and thunder spectacle of a Presidential election. A decade ago I stopped asking "Why?" and accepted that people have their bestial norms and must act according to them: a need to find enemies, a need to blame others, an inability to understand strangers, and (for oh-so-many) those very plain internal maps to winning, exploitation, and abuse of the "other". This is nature; this is sadness for me, gaiety for them.
There are a few lights in the dreariness: the Symbolic Sun (Invictus so far, if not truly immortal), friends, material fortune (to have a job, income, a home), and especially the boon of simple love, of wife and kids at home.
So I'm still here. Still trying to breathe and balance near the banks of Chaos River.
Valete.
P.S. Yeah, post-commute-blues, feeling sorry for myself. But this did help re-center me, and - as Jackie Gleason used to say - "Awaaay we go!"
How many of us recall being in water up to our necks and trying to find toe-purchase atop slimy, mossy lake stones? That seems an apt metaphor for my mental and moral state just now. Trying to get a grip, as it were.
My life is not that of a gung-ho hot-shot nor even that of a giddy, myopic gas-bag. My firmament in life is a slippery rock of absurdity - being myself too-much-that and not-enough-this, and so on. The world of youthful competition and 24/7 performance-merit passed me by long ago, and it is one part of human nature with which I've never identified, except in fantasy. I've worked in my life - mostly for attorneys and their ilk, piddly stuff, but for people who DO live in the 24/7 giddiness - and seen them from a distance, occasionally felt the breeze of accomplishment myself.
But it's not me; that stuff is not forthcoming. I remain out-of-it, strange, aside, "oddly conventional", and so on. I balance atop the rock, liquid mossy, but that's as much as I can manage, it seems.
So it is from this perpetual perspective of anomy that I face society's daily push-and-shove, and in particular these days the lightning and thunder spectacle of a Presidential election. A decade ago I stopped asking "Why?" and accepted that people have their bestial norms and must act according to them: a need to find enemies, a need to blame others, an inability to understand strangers, and (for oh-so-many) those very plain internal maps to winning, exploitation, and abuse of the "other". This is nature; this is sadness for me, gaiety for them.
There are a few lights in the dreariness: the Symbolic Sun (Invictus so far, if not truly immortal), friends, material fortune (to have a job, income, a home), and especially the boon of simple love, of wife and kids at home.
So I'm still here. Still trying to breathe and balance near the banks of Chaos River.
Valete.
P.S. Yeah, post-commute-blues, feeling sorry for myself. But this did help re-center me, and - as Jackie Gleason used to say - "Awaaay we go!"
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Some More about God and Men
From an earlier note, a week or so ago, that I made to myself. Why I need to try to figure out all these metaphysical maybe's is attributable to Human Nature, and to the subject matter of my studies this term.
Epicurus* asked:
God exists as something real – the micro-, macro- and astro-scopic Universe itself – huge, infinitely complex, beyond men’s ability to control or comprehend. This is "the Creation", whether it was something created or remains perpetual or whatever its ultimate nature may prove to be. This God can be seen, analyzed, and learned from. Whether it is, as the Stoics claimed, a"providential" one depends on your definition of 'providential', and then upon your experience and your bent in life.
God also exists – subsists, perhaps? – as a feeling, as the experiences of thinking and of conscience – whether these come from the otherwise fanciful pneuma deduced by the Stoics, or from some sort of organic neural feedback, or from whatever. We (at least most of us) carry these and participate in them, and we get the feeling that – well – there's something going on that’s not just material. We can call it soul, pneuma, Daimon, Guardian Angel, Christ-in-us, Reason, moral sense, or even numina that lace the land about us. This God cannot be seen, cannot be proven to be material, remains both hard to pin down but also remains self-evident to us.
Whether you claim a Single God (combining all divine attributes), or Two Gods (as I have crudely laid out above), or Three Gods (as in the Christian Trinity, united as One), or a full Pantheon (as in the many and endlessly various Pagan traditions), what we do know is that we are, for the most part, dealing with an Idea whose manifestation is both our whole physical world – the "works" of God – and also our own inner selves. But there’s no other hard evidence, just "hearsay", as Thomas Paine put it. And this evidence that we do have available – that we and the world ARE -- does not have a simple, intelligible signature that quiets all controversy. It is much more complex than that.
The only honest notion about God or the Gods, I am convinced, is the Agnostic One – as in, "I don’t know, but I think … !" The actions of worship (on one hand) and reasoning (on the other) are both indications of God, in us, at work.
===========================
* The only authority for this being Epicurus's argument is Lactantius, the only ancient source to quote it. He may have been wrong about having Epicure as the author; in fact, Epicurus's notions of the Gods seem to run counter to the notions inherent in the quote.
Epicurus* asked:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not all-powerful.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
God also exists – subsists, perhaps? – as a feeling, as the experiences of thinking and of conscience – whether these come from the otherwise fanciful pneuma deduced by the Stoics, or from some sort of organic neural feedback, or from whatever. We (at least most of us) carry these and participate in them, and we get the feeling that – well – there's something going on that’s not just material. We can call it soul, pneuma, Daimon, Guardian Angel, Christ-in-us, Reason, moral sense, or even numina that lace the land about us. This God cannot be seen, cannot be proven to be material, remains both hard to pin down but also remains self-evident to us.
Whether you claim a Single God (combining all divine attributes), or Two Gods (as I have crudely laid out above), or Three Gods (as in the Christian Trinity, united as One), or a full Pantheon (as in the many and endlessly various Pagan traditions), what we do know is that we are, for the most part, dealing with an Idea whose manifestation is both our whole physical world – the "works" of God – and also our own inner selves. But there’s no other hard evidence, just "hearsay", as Thomas Paine put it. And this evidence that we do have available – that we and the world ARE -- does not have a simple, intelligible signature that quiets all controversy. It is much more complex than that.
The only honest notion about God or the Gods, I am convinced, is the Agnostic One – as in, "I don’t know, but I think … !" The actions of worship (on one hand) and reasoning (on the other) are both indications of God, in us, at work.
===========================
* The only authority for this being Epicurus's argument is Lactantius, the only ancient source to quote it. He may have been wrong about having Epicure as the author; in fact, Epicurus's notions of the Gods seem to run counter to the notions inherent in the quote.
Writer Os Guinness
Salvete, qui legentes -
(My Latin is so much bullshit! I'm enamoured of it but am so ill-studied. But that is quite beside the point today....)
I want to mention a very good author, one whom I hold in respect -- while also, at times, arguing with in my lonesome journal: Os Guinness, a man of reason and responsibility, a Christian writer who can bridge the gap (at least for me) between what is decent in the moral (and so, intellectual and political) stances of the American Left and Right. It probably helps that he's not from around these parts to begin with.
Amazon's bio of him lists this:
First,
Valete.
(My Latin is so much bullshit! I'm enamoured of it but am so ill-studied. But that is quite beside the point today....)
I want to mention a very good author, one whom I hold in respect -- while also, at times, arguing with in my lonesome journal: Os Guinness, a man of reason and responsibility, a Christian writer who can bridge the gap (at least for me) between what is decent in the moral (and so, intellectual and political) stances of the American Left and Right. It probably helps that he's not from around these parts to begin with.
Amazon's bio of him lists this:
- OS GUINNESS (DPhil, Oxford University) is an author and social critic. Born in China, he was educated in England at the Universities of London and Oxford. He moved to the United States in 1984....
First,
- The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It
- Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror .
Valete.
Metaphysics from Iohannes
Salve, si aliquis has legit !
I am, as affiliations go, a Stoic -- at least, these days. Have been since 2006, a decade or so. I'm currently taking a course from the College of Stoic Philosophers (not accredited, I don't believe) whose classes are done over the Internet, are affordable, and are not bound up in the toils of professional academia. Professional philosophers may sniff at this College (collection of colleagues) but it fulfills a purpose that the unaffordable and scholarly-professional schools do not address -- common people living their lives.
Enough about the College. I'm grateful they've been around. But I'm currently finishing up a quarter in which we've read on Stoic Physics, which -- for the Stoics -- was also Stoic Theology. We're at the last section, and the subject is Piety.
Looking over Erik the Scholarch's summation for this quarter, I find myself agreeing with most everything. The one area where I can't agree with Erik and my mentor, Chris, is that of the Stoic God's Providence. The Stoics had an interesting idea of God and of Providence: They argued that while most of the universe is a system of causes (not a chain, not a domino effect), men are set apart, a section in them reserved for a minor sort of divine intelligence (all the universe being infused to greater or lesser degrees with a Cosmic Intelligence that orders things and creates movement and animation and consciousness). What this does is set men (ie, people, humans, of both genders) apart as having a say-so in their own fates. Fate rules all, and yet not finally, because men generally have the power to think and choose. (Rather like Christianity, isn't it? I'm sure there are endless parallels in other religions, too.)
Where I part with Erik's and Chris's theistic notions is largely in this notion of Providence. What does it mean? I agree that God (as Universal Nature and as the divine Pneuma that pervades it) has provided for men and their survival as a species. But I argue that that is about as far as it goes. Erik and Chris might agree, but we part on the definition of Providence. If the Stoic God (the divine Intelligence innate in the cosmos) were fully provident, we humans would have had a better nature to begin with; we would not be such a miserable, splintered, hostile, dissatisfied and ape-like species. Erik's Providence goes only so far -- which is fine, actually, for Stoicism quite properly looks askance at most notions of Absolute Purity and Infinite this-and-that. We have no Types, no Perfect God, no Perfect Other World; there is only what was, what is, and what comes to be.
But then Erik quotes this, from our old drill instructor, Epictetus:
"For if we had any understanding, ought we not, both in public and in private, incessantly to sing and praise the Deity, and rehearse his benefits?"
Well, yes and no. We might, because we are small and insignificant, and incapable of the kind and degree of creation that Epictetus would have us thank God for. But a question arises: What's the purpose of this incessant praise? Wasn't God doing what he is supposed to, that is, providing? Moreover, isn't that Providence limited? Yes, he's given us a bit for each, in terms of Intelligence, with which to affect Fate on our own; he's sort of 'deputized' us as Junior Gods, you might say. But again, isn't that now our job, to be intelligent, to be good, to be so at the same time that we're being the particular kind of beasts that we (quite demonstrably) are? God does his bit, and we do ours -- and that's the ticket. God deserves praise only insofar as the entire World deserves praise, and most of the world is, to the Stoic, necessarily a thing Indifferent -- a world "not up to us" to control. Moreover, indifference is the Stoic God's personal relation with us -- he's absent, except (again) as Universal Nature and as Our Individual Natures.
Is this a big deal? No, except that I can't join the Chorus of Theistic Stoics singing, "Praise God for this wonderful life!" when, no, it's not wonderful, but mixed and problematic. Men and Women, Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Muslims? War, serial killers, torture, disease, tooth-and-claw? This may be a providence, a gift of animation, but it cannot be called "a wonderful life".
"Thank you for the loan, God; I'll try to take care of it as I ought to, this Life, before you get it back from me." I think that sums up the relationship quite well, "incessant praise" aside. If you want God, read Thomas Paine and Camus and you will have a good beginning. Stoicism is to be praised, I think, for putting all that -- earthly experience -- into perspective without resorting to either inflation of the Human Ego past its proper degree, or erecting Idols and demanding sacrificial victims, or simply sugar-coating the whole mess and ignoring evil. Tie your shoelaces and save the drowning, as Thoreau advised; there's no need to get absurd in response to reality's absurdities.
Vale, et aude sapere.
I am, as affiliations go, a Stoic -- at least, these days. Have been since 2006, a decade or so. I'm currently taking a course from the College of Stoic Philosophers (not accredited, I don't believe) whose classes are done over the Internet, are affordable, and are not bound up in the toils of professional academia. Professional philosophers may sniff at this College (collection of colleagues) but it fulfills a purpose that the unaffordable and scholarly-professional schools do not address -- common people living their lives.
Enough about the College. I'm grateful they've been around. But I'm currently finishing up a quarter in which we've read on Stoic Physics, which -- for the Stoics -- was also Stoic Theology. We're at the last section, and the subject is Piety.
Looking over Erik the Scholarch's summation for this quarter, I find myself agreeing with most everything. The one area where I can't agree with Erik and my mentor, Chris, is that of the Stoic God's Providence. The Stoics had an interesting idea of God and of Providence: They argued that while most of the universe is a system of causes (not a chain, not a domino effect), men are set apart, a section in them reserved for a minor sort of divine intelligence (all the universe being infused to greater or lesser degrees with a Cosmic Intelligence that orders things and creates movement and animation and consciousness). What this does is set men (ie, people, humans, of both genders) apart as having a say-so in their own fates. Fate rules all, and yet not finally, because men generally have the power to think and choose. (Rather like Christianity, isn't it? I'm sure there are endless parallels in other religions, too.)
Where I part with Erik's and Chris's theistic notions is largely in this notion of Providence. What does it mean? I agree that God (as Universal Nature and as the divine Pneuma that pervades it) has provided for men and their survival as a species. But I argue that that is about as far as it goes. Erik and Chris might agree, but we part on the definition of Providence. If the Stoic God (the divine Intelligence innate in the cosmos) were fully provident, we humans would have had a better nature to begin with; we would not be such a miserable, splintered, hostile, dissatisfied and ape-like species. Erik's Providence goes only so far -- which is fine, actually, for Stoicism quite properly looks askance at most notions of Absolute Purity and Infinite this-and-that. We have no Types, no Perfect God, no Perfect Other World; there is only what was, what is, and what comes to be.
But then Erik quotes this, from our old drill instructor, Epictetus:
"For if we had any understanding, ought we not, both in public and in private, incessantly to sing and praise the Deity, and rehearse his benefits?"
Well, yes and no. We might, because we are small and insignificant, and incapable of the kind and degree of creation that Epictetus would have us thank God for. But a question arises: What's the purpose of this incessant praise? Wasn't God doing what he is supposed to, that is, providing? Moreover, isn't that Providence limited? Yes, he's given us a bit for each, in terms of Intelligence, with which to affect Fate on our own; he's sort of 'deputized' us as Junior Gods, you might say. But again, isn't that now our job, to be intelligent, to be good, to be so at the same time that we're being the particular kind of beasts that we (quite demonstrably) are? God does his bit, and we do ours -- and that's the ticket. God deserves praise only insofar as the entire World deserves praise, and most of the world is, to the Stoic, necessarily a thing Indifferent -- a world "not up to us" to control. Moreover, indifference is the Stoic God's personal relation with us -- he's absent, except (again) as Universal Nature and as Our Individual Natures.
Is this a big deal? No, except that I can't join the Chorus of Theistic Stoics singing, "Praise God for this wonderful life!" when, no, it's not wonderful, but mixed and problematic. Men and Women, Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Muslims? War, serial killers, torture, disease, tooth-and-claw? This may be a providence, a gift of animation, but it cannot be called "a wonderful life".
"Thank you for the loan, God; I'll try to take care of it as I ought to, this Life, before you get it back from me." I think that sums up the relationship quite well, "incessant praise" aside. If you want God, read Thomas Paine and Camus and you will have a good beginning. Stoicism is to be praised, I think, for putting all that -- earthly experience -- into perspective without resorting to either inflation of the Human Ego past its proper degree, or erecting Idols and demanding sacrificial victims, or simply sugar-coating the whole mess and ignoring evil. Tie your shoelaces and save the drowning, as Thoreau advised; there's no need to get absurd in response to reality's absurdities.
Vale, et aude sapere.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Friday Blues: Not Too Unusual
Salvete qui legentes êstis -
Sometimes Friday is graced, not with Venus or Friya or Frigg, but with the proximity of freedom. Not true freedom, for that is rare and has to do more with ability and virtue than with a lack of fetters, but the relative freedom of the coming weekend, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, closing in a kind of eclipse on Sunday evening.
But sometimes Friday is simply Fatigue-Day, Down-Day, Out-of-It-Day. So today for me. I am in a down cycle, emotionally, and trying to find fresh sources of oxygen (as it were). What is to hand?
First - Only what is "up to me", what I can do and control or affect. This includes my mood, but not all of it, not my body or my neurology or my complement of good sleep. Those things I can affect, but not command. Even my state of mind, available to suggestion and even command from the "ruling faculty", can be an obstacle and a pitfall.
But here memory is important, and an internal vigilance:
Omnibus, valete bene.
Sometimes Friday is graced, not with Venus or Friya or Frigg, but with the proximity of freedom. Not true freedom, for that is rare and has to do more with ability and virtue than with a lack of fetters, but the relative freedom of the coming weekend, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, closing in a kind of eclipse on Sunday evening.
But sometimes Friday is simply Fatigue-Day, Down-Day, Out-of-It-Day. So today for me. I am in a down cycle, emotionally, and trying to find fresh sources of oxygen (as it were). What is to hand?
First - Only what is "up to me", what I can do and control or affect. This includes my mood, but not all of it, not my body or my neurology or my complement of good sleep. Those things I can affect, but not command. Even my state of mind, available to suggestion and even command from the "ruling faculty", can be an obstacle and a pitfall.
But here memory is important, and an internal vigilance:
- To recall that your emotions and mood are susceptible to your Reason, that Reason is our gift from the Gods or from the Creation, that Great Source of Turmoil, with which to deal with its debris on earth.
- I can keep a mental eye open for the self-defeating, the undeservedly-self-castigating, the either-or-despairing, and other fallacious tricks of the mind that -- quite automatically, in my case -- cripple my little self and urge it to self-destruction.
- I can patch up what I can in the outside world -- whether at work, with my co-workers, with my family, with my friends and acquaintances, with problems financial -- patch things up with whatever I have of good humor and sensitivity and diligence.
- I can above all watch out for Fear, for the Habit of Dread that infects me and my family, and recognize its imprimatur on my thoughts, on my disposition, on my judgments, and pull myself back when I lean too far into it, or reverse my opinion when I see its fell influence on an opinion.
- I can look to the 'Engine Room' -- fuel supply, body status, metabolism -- and, quite literally, feed myself with an eye to decent fueling, decent material and nutritional input. I can even improve the 'Guest Quarters' upstairs with a bit of fun food or a glass of wine, some luxury for the weary fool.
- And, in terms of what's up to me, I can cut myself a little slack, remember that I'm just a beastie trying to emulate the Gods, a mortal, "only human" as Robocop once said, a multicelled macro-animal gifted with Reason, and that the world is -- above all -- IM-perfect, not made okay, not made safe or good or complete or glorious, but rather dirty and dangerous, uncaring and paltry: as a termite with some Divinity in him, I can rebel against defeat and decline and dismay.
Omnibus, valete bene.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Some Movement (re prior blog entry, 'Stereotypes')
Salvete, qui legentes --
Just after I'd posted the blog entry 'Stereotypes' the other day, the news came out that the attack in San Bernardino was indeed politically and religiously motivated -- although strangely targeted. It's apparently the same old Wahhabist anti-Western violence, this time on a more modest suburban scale. (Guns furnished, gladly, by the membership of the NRA. That's another and potentially salutary group, apparently currently composed of nincompoops, that needs to wake up -- but that'll be a different story.)
The news-worthier part of the story is this: that American Muslims are raising money to give help the families of the victims of that attack. Here's a link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-muslim-fundraise-20151208-story.html , and to the organization: http://www.celebratemercy.com/ . The fund itself is called "Muslims United for San Bernardino"; they acknowledge that donations of money will not correct the evil done or ameliorate the suffering of the survivors, "but we do hope to lessen their burden in some way." God knows, there will be funeral expenses and more such petty miseries. But what is news-worthy is this: American Muslims are human, and despite their particulars many of them have simple human sympathy for the victims and their devastated friends and families.
“Since 9/11, we’ve felt we need to come out of our cocoons,” said Shaykh Mohammed Faqih of the Islamic Institute of Orange County [ https://www.facebook.com/m.ibnfaqih/info/?tab=page_info ]. “We’re as American as anyone else … but if society is not feeling it, it means I’m not doing enough.” Again, Sheik Faqih is of a younger and American-grown generation of Muslims, but by God! he's got the right attitude. He is connected with a religious organization called the AlMaghrib Institute [ http://almaghrib.org/ ].
Dr. Faisal Qazi, the Southern Californian neurosurgeon who initiated the fund for the families, has several interesting things to say. "The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society. What you’re seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in whatever transpires in society.”
Some Muslims do speak out against the violence, despite those voices sounding weak. But they are there, nonetheless. For example, see www.m-a-t.org/ , a Canadian Muslim organization that speaks against it, albeit with a conservatively religious voice. Across the pond in the UK, there is a yearly "UK Arbaeen Procession" which is a Muslim-organized multi-faith march for "unity and friendship between people of all ages and cultures" [ http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hundreds-muslims-marching-against-terrorism-6977099 ].
Better still, to me, is www.freemuslims.org , a group proud to be an American-Muslim organization "willing to attack extremism and terrorism unambiguously." They acknowledge that too many Muslim-American authority figures are not so willing and some are indeed sympathetic to terrorist aims. This adds a note of realism to their stance, that they admit that people in Muslim-American communities have divergent opinions on the crisis. "Free Muslims will challenge these beliefs and target the sympathetic support given to terrorists by Muslims", says their 'About Us' blurb on their website (above).
All in all, this gives me hope. American Muslims may finally be waking up, especially the younger of them. Now, could some of these sympathetic organizations actually be concealing terrorist supporters? Sure, it's possible. But in what part of human history has there not been angry people? The Republican Party is made of little else, it sometimes seems. There have been more peaceful times, certainly. But think about it: the USA and her republic have survived the Depression, World War II's Nazi Bund, urban riots in the 60's, and (of course) the September 11 attack. Even if -- okay, when -- there is more terrorist bloodshed here at home, still the republic, the American way of life, will survive. It's too good to be thrown away. And I think a lot of American Muslims would say the same.
Bene valete.
Just after I'd posted the blog entry 'Stereotypes' the other day, the news came out that the attack in San Bernardino was indeed politically and religiously motivated -- although strangely targeted. It's apparently the same old Wahhabist anti-Western violence, this time on a more modest suburban scale. (Guns furnished, gladly, by the membership of the NRA. That's another and potentially salutary group, apparently currently composed of nincompoops, that needs to wake up -- but that'll be a different story.)
The news-worthier part of the story is this: that American Muslims are raising money to give help the families of the victims of that attack. Here's a link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-muslim-fundraise-20151208-story.html , and to the organization: http://www.celebratemercy.com/ . The fund itself is called "Muslims United for San Bernardino"; they acknowledge that donations of money will not correct the evil done or ameliorate the suffering of the survivors, "but we do hope to lessen their burden in some way." God knows, there will be funeral expenses and more such petty miseries. But what is news-worthy is this: American Muslims are human, and despite their particulars many of them have simple human sympathy for the victims and their devastated friends and families.
“Since 9/11, we’ve felt we need to come out of our cocoons,” said Shaykh Mohammed Faqih of the Islamic Institute of Orange County [ https://www.facebook.com/m.ibnfaqih/info/?tab=page_info ]. “We’re as American as anyone else … but if society is not feeling it, it means I’m not doing enough.” Again, Sheik Faqih is of a younger and American-grown generation of Muslims, but by God! he's got the right attitude. He is connected with a religious organization called the AlMaghrib Institute [ http://almaghrib.org/ ].
Dr. Faisal Qazi, the Southern Californian neurosurgeon who initiated the fund for the families, has several interesting things to say. "The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society. What you’re seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in whatever transpires in society.”
Some Muslims do speak out against the violence, despite those voices sounding weak. But they are there, nonetheless. For example, see www.m-a-t.org/ , a Canadian Muslim organization that speaks against it, albeit with a conservatively religious voice. Across the pond in the UK, there is a yearly "UK Arbaeen Procession" which is a Muslim-organized multi-faith march for "unity and friendship between people of all ages and cultures" [ http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hundreds-muslims-marching-against-terrorism-6977099 ].
Better still, to me, is www.freemuslims.org , a group proud to be an American-Muslim organization "willing to attack extremism and terrorism unambiguously." They acknowledge that too many Muslim-American authority figures are not so willing and some are indeed sympathetic to terrorist aims. This adds a note of realism to their stance, that they admit that people in Muslim-American communities have divergent opinions on the crisis. "Free Muslims will challenge these beliefs and target the sympathetic support given to terrorists by Muslims", says their 'About Us' blurb on their website (above).
All in all, this gives me hope. American Muslims may finally be waking up, especially the younger of them. Now, could some of these sympathetic organizations actually be concealing terrorist supporters? Sure, it's possible. But in what part of human history has there not been angry people? The Republican Party is made of little else, it sometimes seems. There have been more peaceful times, certainly. But think about it: the USA and her republic have survived the Depression, World War II's Nazi Bund, urban riots in the 60's, and (of course) the September 11 attack. Even if -- okay, when -- there is more terrorist bloodshed here at home, still the republic, the American way of life, will survive. It's too good to be thrown away. And I think a lot of American Muslims would say the same.
Bene valete.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Ah, Give Me the Cold War ...
In the 1960s, poised beneath the uncertain nuclear stalemate between the USA and USSR, there continued to be hope for universal peace -- the hoped-for product of World War II. The First World War's "never again!" notion had gone to hell with the rise of Bolshevism, the world-wide Depression, and the subsequent rise of Fascism in various formats the world over. World War II made a monstrous desert of much of the earth and a pause ensued -- a hostile one, which began to be amended in the 60s and 70s.
At my age, I long for the age of nuclear standoff, when there was still a hope in Hell that Russians and Americans might figure out how to get along. I have to remind myself that to be fond of such a time is to be unfair to those who had suffered in the Gulag and otherwise behind the Iron Curtain. Still, what fond hopes.
But this is life, and friction governs. Universally, the molecules and animals are all itchy and will not be patient, fair or just. Reason goes far to make weapons, only a small way to create peace. Mao Tse-Tung (the fat old spider) ran China into the ground; Pol Pot arose in Cambodia to patriotically murder and destroy his own people; old Russian fascism (Bolshevism, Stalinism, etc.) got its comeuppance in Afghanistan (little did Americans supporting Muslim resistance realize who they were abetting in their covert operations). No, not freedom but new fascisms reveal themselves everywhere, and nowhere so well as in their various forms in the Middle East. Even Israel, child of Jews, a whole people homeless and abused for centuries, succumbed to the Rule of Brutality, and in defending itself became a conqueror and colonizer of others' lands, aping the success of their own Nazi persecutors and the bile and xenophobia of their racist Arab opponents.
What a world.
At my age, I long for the age of nuclear standoff, when there was still a hope in Hell that Russians and Americans might figure out how to get along. I have to remind myself that to be fond of such a time is to be unfair to those who had suffered in the Gulag and otherwise behind the Iron Curtain. Still, what fond hopes.
But this is life, and friction governs. Universally, the molecules and animals are all itchy and will not be patient, fair or just. Reason goes far to make weapons, only a small way to create peace. Mao Tse-Tung (the fat old spider) ran China into the ground; Pol Pot arose in Cambodia to patriotically murder and destroy his own people; old Russian fascism (Bolshevism, Stalinism, etc.) got its comeuppance in Afghanistan (little did Americans supporting Muslim resistance realize who they were abetting in their covert operations). No, not freedom but new fascisms reveal themselves everywhere, and nowhere so well as in their various forms in the Middle East. Even Israel, child of Jews, a whole people homeless and abused for centuries, succumbed to the Rule of Brutality, and in defending itself became a conqueror and colonizer of others' lands, aping the success of their own Nazi persecutors and the bile and xenophobia of their racist Arab opponents.
What a world.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Contrary Old Nature Consuming Me
Salvete, quicumque legātis -
The one thing we know the Universe likes is friction. Collisions, mutations, heat, stress, movement of life, consumption of life by life - it seems to me the broad essential link is movement and conflict, whether it's at the sub-microscopic levels of nuclear particles, or among the rude little multicellular animals in a scummy pool, or between technologically endowed nations or movements throwing terror at each other, or in the collisions of asteroids, or in the super-nuclear super-heating of ineffably massive stars. Even light, as a body, collides and warms.
Speaking of mutation: According to my doctors, I've been visited by a nasty variety of it - squamous cell cancer. I have just turned 60 and now - bang - Nature plays the cancer card. More to come in terms of medical imaging and medical guesswork and treatment. The timing, of course, is less than ideal. A very bad way to begin Lunar New Year.
Once again - just as when I went to pieces in 2006, and then when someone near and dear to us ruined our finances that same year - events are crowding us out. My kids are still trying to find their niches in the new Republican slave economy, trying to become self-sufficient! I'm not expecting, at this point, that I will ever see my grandchildren. My 85-year-old mother (God keep her!) will quite possibly outlast me!
Still, what can you do? Death will come; it will take each down to dissolution. I have no particular fear of death, but I do have a lurking horror of the pain and suffering that may precede it. The final suffering will most likely be horribly intense and lonely, but I shan't dwell on that. That's all in the future, and beyond my control. (After all, I can hardly conjure up my death throes and tell them, "No; not that way! I won't have it!")
What is, after all, our one sure goal in life? Not conscious, not chosen, but entirely assured? Our death. Each man's arc of life ends up there, sooner or later, but assuredly. It's as natural as our facility of movement, our impulses, as universal as germination and birth.
The one thing we know the Universe likes is friction. Collisions, mutations, heat, stress, movement of life, consumption of life by life - it seems to me the broad essential link is movement and conflict, whether it's at the sub-microscopic levels of nuclear particles, or among the rude little multicellular animals in a scummy pool, or between technologically endowed nations or movements throwing terror at each other, or in the collisions of asteroids, or in the super-nuclear super-heating of ineffably massive stars. Even light, as a body, collides and warms.
Speaking of mutation: According to my doctors, I've been visited by a nasty variety of it - squamous cell cancer. I have just turned 60 and now - bang - Nature plays the cancer card. More to come in terms of medical imaging and medical guesswork and treatment. The timing, of course, is less than ideal. A very bad way to begin Lunar New Year.
Once again - just as when I went to pieces in 2006, and then when someone near and dear to us ruined our finances that same year - events are crowding us out. My kids are still trying to find their niches in the new Republican slave economy, trying to become self-sufficient! I'm not expecting, at this point, that I will ever see my grandchildren. My 85-year-old mother (God keep her!) will quite possibly outlast me!
Still, what can you do? Death will come; it will take each down to dissolution. I have no particular fear of death, but I do have a lurking horror of the pain and suffering that may precede it. The final suffering will most likely be horribly intense and lonely, but I shan't dwell on that. That's all in the future, and beyond my control. (After all, I can hardly conjure up my death throes and tell them, "No; not that way! I won't have it!")
What is, after all, our one sure goal in life? Not conscious, not chosen, but entirely assured? Our death. Each man's arc of life ends up there, sooner or later, but assuredly. It's as natural as our facility of movement, our impulses, as universal as germination and birth.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Couple of Quotes
A couple of quotes from browsing today:
This quote is one that we should all bear in mind - especially 'believers' who have not yet gone hardcore. This is what we're seeing (along with a bloody sort of political theatre) with ISIS/ISIL in Iraq:
"... religious violence seldom limits itself to one target and expands to reach the maximum number of available victims."
(from 'The First Victims of the First Crusade', Feb 13, 2015 - by Susan Jacoby (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/opinion/sunday/the-first-victims-of-the-first-crusade.html
On other topics, from Orson Welles:
"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
And another:
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
Valete.
This quote is one that we should all bear in mind - especially 'believers' who have not yet gone hardcore. This is what we're seeing (along with a bloody sort of political theatre) with ISIS/ISIL in Iraq:
"... religious violence seldom limits itself to one target and expands to reach the maximum number of available victims."
(from 'The First Victims of the First Crusade', Feb 13, 2015 - by Susan Jacoby (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/opinion/sunday/the-first-victims-of-the-first-crusade.html
On other topics, from Orson Welles:
"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
And another:
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
Valete.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Felix est quem ....
Participating in our present age's revival of Stoicism, I have often had occasion to ask myself: How in the world can I, arguably an abject slave of pleasure and indolence, a rattle-headed, timid, and puerile old do-nothing, how can I of all people call myself a Stoic? For many is the time that my own native scrupulousness has argued that I was a hypocrite to do so while I remained so full of petty defects and so short on decisive willpower; and many is the time that I've been tempted to just jump ship and go native, to simply devote myself to whatever overpowering pleasure I can find.
Well, I haven't jumped ship. In fact, you might say that I'm still aboard, swabbing the deck. I haven't given up because I remember (a) that Nature is anything but simple, anything but black and white - that almost nothing is perfect or absolute; (b) that half a man is better than none, and an educated half-a-man may well be better still; and (c) that God has given me a certain problem to work on (i.e., myself), unknown to others, and that therein I have my work cut out for me.
And there's another rationalization that I think has substantial weight to it: (d) that "Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum" (which I read as: "Happy is he whom other people's dangers make cautious"). In other words, why not improve oneself? Moreover, even if I am not living a Cynic's life, homeless on the street, even if am neither Saintly nor Sagely, even if I cannot BE perfect, I can at least participate in the transmission of this most useful philosophy and way of life. Helping others to learn and understand how to live, in the course of living my own transient, microscopic little life, this benefits them, myself, and the world at large.
We are all aliens and strangers, and each comprises a little hidden world of his or her own. If we recuse absolutism and fanaticism and set about living decent lives, in toleration if not in real harmony, then the good of one can rub off on the good of another. In fact, the more that people are decent -- or better yet, virtuous -- the more lives and souls can be spared violence or the guilt of violence. Apply your Stoicism, apply your virtues, and try to live well. It's what we're meant to do.
Well, I haven't jumped ship. In fact, you might say that I'm still aboard, swabbing the deck. I haven't given up because I remember (a) that Nature is anything but simple, anything but black and white - that almost nothing is perfect or absolute; (b) that half a man is better than none, and an educated half-a-man may well be better still; and (c) that God has given me a certain problem to work on (i.e., myself), unknown to others, and that therein I have my work cut out for me.
And there's another rationalization that I think has substantial weight to it: (d) that "Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum" (which I read as: "Happy is he whom other people's dangers make cautious"). In other words, why not improve oneself? Moreover, even if I am not living a Cynic's life, homeless on the street, even if am neither Saintly nor Sagely, even if I cannot BE perfect, I can at least participate in the transmission of this most useful philosophy and way of life. Helping others to learn and understand how to live, in the course of living my own transient, microscopic little life, this benefits them, myself, and the world at large.
We are all aliens and strangers, and each comprises a little hidden world of his or her own. If we recuse absolutism and fanaticism and set about living decent lives, in toleration if not in real harmony, then the good of one can rub off on the good of another. In fact, the more that people are decent -- or better yet, virtuous -- the more lives and souls can be spared violence or the guilt of violence. Apply your Stoicism, apply your virtues, and try to live well. It's what we're meant to do.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Sharing a Blogger’s Resentment, Worry and Despair – and My Comments (Which I Think are Worthwhile)
I just finished posting a long, long comment on a fellow blogger’s site (his site is well-named as “Help, They Want Me to Socialize!”).
He was worrying about his future, and so much of what he was rehearsing was exactly the kinds of things that I’ve had to cope with and only slowly learned to understand over 59 years of less-than-ideal life. In any event, I see my comment as a sort of manifesto or wake-up-call for people with depression, and am sharing it here.
You can follow this link to the site and my comments:
He was worrying about his future, and so much of what he was rehearsing was exactly the kinds of things that I’ve had to cope with and only slowly learned to understand over 59 years of less-than-ideal life. In any event, I see my comment as a sort of manifesto or wake-up-call for people with depression, and am sharing it here.
You can follow this link to the site and my comments:
Monday, April 7, 2014
The Fudged Edges of Office Work Information
Petty rant: about Normal People, office management, and the craziness that mid-managers arrive at:
Long ago I learned that while it was a heinous sin at work to be inaccurate on your timesheet, it was even worse to be accurate. "Oh, my God!" the accounting poeple used to say - "I don't care if you were in at 8:01 or at 7:56! Just put 8 am, for God's sake! We can't handle your fractions!" So a timesheet it turned out was NOT a record of time spent at work, but rather a fiction of a sort useful as paper justification for a payroll system.
And, well, I just had another such moment - some 38 years or so later - but about a "Travel Schedule Notice" system. It's the automated way my company keeps track of whether employees and domini are in their prime offices or not. But - once again - I have been operating under a misapprehension, thinking that the Notices were relevant to our whereabouts and out-of-office status. Nope, that's not it, apparently. I just confounded my poor supervisor, leaving him flummoxed and at a loss, because I posted - in simple honesty - that I'd PROBABLY be out tomorrow at Jury Duty.
He told me that that was wrong; I was out of line. He couldn't believe that I would actually say I was going to be out if I thought - merely expected - to be out. Keeping people informed did not extend to actually telling about something.
Once again, here was a system with some ulterior purpose that I had thwarted. And I'm not exactly sure what it was. Apparently, if there's ANY conditionality to the absence-to-be (in this case, the condition was if, after checking the night before as to whether my Group will in fact be called to the Hall of Justice, they will have said yea or nay, something I have no control over but will certainly keep me away from work in the case of a "yea") then we have to treat it as a non-possibility until the actual day of Jury Duty, when we'll treat it either as nothing (I go to work, I'm not needed for Duty) or as a sudden case of an illness (I planned to come to work - even though I knew I might well not - but I can't come to work, I'm out with a case of Jury Duty). Despite that fact that I've been forewarned AND WAS REQUIRED to forewarn my company that I had a Jury Duty date coming up.
I will commit this caveat to my work-notes on Jury Duty (notes already needed because of the whole confusing and explicitly conditional business of Jury Duty):
Not a big deal, but it's more of that "You had better do this!!!" followed, once you've done your bit, by unexpected bursts of "Don't do that!!!" Such as: "Work hard all the time, don't steal time from your employer!" followed by "My God, don't overwork yourself!" Or: "Take your vacation, it's yours, it's healthy - be sure to take it!" followed by "I don't know - you've been using a lot of vacation time lately; this is not going to look good on your record..."
In other words, any publishing of info on one's future work whereabouts is subject to a 95-percent-sure rule: If you're not 95% sure that X is happening, then ignore the indications that it is going to happen and treat the outcome as an unexpected case of food poisoning - sudden, pertinent, immutable, decisive. Conditional futures have no place in informing co-workers - at least, not in the formal systems.
Okay. We'll try that. And I expect that all organizations tend to be crazy, once organized - ideological party, church hierarchy, group of friends, modern business - it'll always be whacked and out of order.... And not a big deal, in any event.
Long ago I learned that while it was a heinous sin at work to be inaccurate on your timesheet, it was even worse to be accurate. "Oh, my God!" the accounting poeple used to say - "I don't care if you were in at 8:01 or at 7:56! Just put 8 am, for God's sake! We can't handle your fractions!" So a timesheet it turned out was NOT a record of time spent at work, but rather a fiction of a sort useful as paper justification for a payroll system.
And, well, I just had another such moment - some 38 years or so later - but about a "Travel Schedule Notice" system. It's the automated way my company keeps track of whether employees and domini are in their prime offices or not. But - once again - I have been operating under a misapprehension, thinking that the Notices were relevant to our whereabouts and out-of-office status. Nope, that's not it, apparently. I just confounded my poor supervisor, leaving him flummoxed and at a loss, because I posted - in simple honesty - that I'd PROBABLY be out tomorrow at Jury Duty.
He told me that that was wrong; I was out of line. He couldn't believe that I would actually say I was going to be out if I thought - merely expected - to be out. Keeping people informed did not extend to actually telling about something.
Once again, here was a system with some ulterior purpose that I had thwarted. And I'm not exactly sure what it was. Apparently, if there's ANY conditionality to the absence-to-be (in this case, the condition was if, after checking the night before as to whether my Group will in fact be called to the Hall of Justice, they will have said yea or nay, something I have no control over but will certainly keep me away from work in the case of a "yea") then we have to treat it as a non-possibility until the actual day of Jury Duty, when we'll treat it either as nothing (I go to work, I'm not needed for Duty) or as a sudden case of an illness (I planned to come to work - even though I knew I might well not - but I can't come to work, I'm out with a case of Jury Duty). Despite that fact that I've been forewarned AND WAS REQUIRED to forewarn my company that I had a Jury Duty date coming up.
I will commit this caveat to my work-notes on Jury Duty (notes already needed because of the whole confusing and explicitly conditional business of Jury Duty):
JURY DUTY REMAINS A NON-EVENT DESPITE FOREKNOWLEDGE UNTIL YOU ARE DEFINITELY CALLED - AT THAT POINT YOU MUST INFORM YOUR SUPERIOR THAT YOU HAVE A BAD CASE OF THE "JURY DUTY" AND CAN'T COME TO WORK ON TIME THE NEXT DAY.Sheesh. Apparently, the Notices we send using this system do not amount to notices of information, but amount to official declarations of intent that have the weight of fact, despite being merely predictions or plans. Phew.
Not a big deal, but it's more of that "You had better do this!!!" followed, once you've done your bit, by unexpected bursts of "Don't do that!!!" Such as: "Work hard all the time, don't steal time from your employer!" followed by "My God, don't overwork yourself!" Or: "Take your vacation, it's yours, it's healthy - be sure to take it!" followed by "I don't know - you've been using a lot of vacation time lately; this is not going to look good on your record..."
In other words, any publishing of info on one's future work whereabouts is subject to a 95-percent-sure rule: If you're not 95% sure that X is happening, then ignore the indications that it is going to happen and treat the outcome as an unexpected case of food poisoning - sudden, pertinent, immutable, decisive. Conditional futures have no place in informing co-workers - at least, not in the formal systems.
Okay. We'll try that. And I expect that all organizations tend to be crazy, once organized - ideological party, church hierarchy, group of friends, modern business - it'll always be whacked and out of order.... And not a big deal, in any event.
Friday, March 21, 2014
OUTBURST
I know, I know. I'm relatively feeble; I'm too sensitive, and not too sharp.
AND - worst of all! - I'm spoiled; I've "had it too easy". That is all I ever hear from Right-wingers, Left-wingers, hot-shots, malcontents, as well as my OWN conscience.
"You're not extreme! You're not courageous!"
But I am near 60 years old and NOT likely to improve a whole lot in this area.
Besides, I'm one hundred percent MORE courageous and able to get by than I was at age 16 or 20. That counts, even if it doesn't make me into a war hero or a brilliant, hard-nosed academic.
Just needed to say that.
And also: Down with Hitler, up with Léon Blum! Atque etiam Carthago retinenda est....
AND - worst of all! - I'm spoiled; I've "had it too easy". That is all I ever hear from Right-wingers, Left-wingers, hot-shots, malcontents, as well as my OWN conscience.
"You're not extreme! You're not courageous!"
But I am near 60 years old and NOT likely to improve a whole lot in this area.
Besides, I'm one hundred percent MORE courageous and able to get by than I was at age 16 or 20. That counts, even if it doesn't make me into a war hero or a brilliant, hard-nosed academic.
Just needed to say that.
And also: Down with Hitler, up with Léon Blum! Atque etiam Carthago retinenda est....
Thursday, March 6, 2014
"The Muse: Love Profaned..." [Very good blog-entry by Mike Hoffman, March 28, 2013]
Mike Hoffman, March 28, 2013:
The Muse: Love Profaned...: There are dangers inherent in living in the Technosphere. Right now, the Technosphere involves three things: people (you), Money and Machin...
The Muse: Love Profaned...: There are dangers inherent in living in the Technosphere. Right now, the Technosphere involves three things: people (you), Money and Machin...
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