This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

"Overman would be proud," I mumbled to myself after hearing the second Elvis song in a row at 8:05 yesterday morning.

Yup, he would be ecstatic that if there was one thing carried over from my high school education, that I could recall Elvis Presley’s birthday with minimal prompting would be it. So I thought about Elvis, quite a bit, in fact. He was hard to escape yesterday, his music on the agency’s sound system all day. I think I may have been growing a bouffant hairdo during this barrage on my sanity.

I also found myself considering Michael Jackson and the similarities between the two. The wealth, the development of alternative realities, the loss of their essence, before dying, in unforeseen, unrespectable drug-induced manners. Ah, the drugs, a symptom I think of the whole loss of reality bit. A way to be in outer space, isolated, and not have to come back down.

I saw a really great PBS program this week- 6 hours of "This Emotional Life", with the net result being: Human Relationships Are THE Most Important variable in mental health and well-being. Elvis and MJ lost this. Their wealth and fame separated themselves out. They became obsessed with themselves, building their realities, suspicious of the intentions of others, partially out of real concerns. Other people want what wealthy people have.

Then a chilling thought occurred to me. Elvis and MJ are a pair of the most recognizable symbols of America to the world. Nay, it is worse, they are icons because they represent America to the world. America is the wealthy, build our own reality rock star whose fame keeps us from being truly aware of the rest of the worlds problems. this has partially been fed by the world’s grandiose view of us.

But now, I really hope at some point soon we develop a grounding, a reconnection, before we end up dried up and deceased of our own over-consumption. The analogy really goes deeper, because there are so many countries/companies willing to continue to to give us our prescription and illicit drugs as long as they can be hangers-on. These were my thoughts on Elvis Presley’s Birthday.

I heard someone say he would have been seventy-five this week.

Click to go to article. It’s an interesting read.

Here’s the link…

This is from a series I am doing on animal/human territory collisions. Somewhat related to my painting Apex. This is a parking lot near the Eau Claire mall where I saw a fox darting between two SUVs that inspired this painting of a trio of foxes. There should be two more to come, but right now I am very busy painting muslims.

From 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

‘Twould not be you, Niagara – nor you, ye limitless prairies – nor your huge

rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite – nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops

ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones – nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes – nor

Mississippi’s stream:

This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name – the still small

voice vibrating – America’s choosing day…

Maybe I am adding flames to the fire, but the amount any of us writes to the federal government is going to get a whole lot bigger because of previous Republican leadership, instead of just getting a little bigger like it might have. The truth is social security worked and the only reason we questioned it is because people wanted to be taking cruises and living in huge mansions on Caribbean islands when they retired instead of living modestly. I reiterate my arguments from during the previous election against privatization. We are basically financing a war rooted in energy issues on money from China. What’s more immoral than that? We consume more than a ¼ of the world’s oil.

McCain wants to talk about more war for God’s sake. And if we question that we aren’t being patriotic. When will this crap end? I watched the Republican National Convention and it amounted to a worship of war. We’ve already crossed the Rubicon that Wright talks about in Nonzero that the Roman Empire crossed when their society was hollowed out because all the production was based outside of their country on the backs of workers that had no citizens rights (basically modern slavery), but were building the empire. The military was stretched too thin and the leadership imploded. Sound familiar? I also can’t believe that twice in formal forums, McCain has accused Russia of being “energy greedy” and “trying to rebuild their empire”. Not that I agree at all with Russia’s treatment of Georgian territories and people, but the hypocrisy is so obvious it staggers the imagination. We, like the British, must undergo de-colonization pangs or pay the price.

For Christians at least, I believe Christ addresses the “I earned it” issue in the parable of the workers coming to work at different times of day, but all getting the same pay. A sense of justice is the last barrier to grace. Our entire country was built on the back of slain natives and slave foreigners in less than two hundred years, and though that doesn’t mean people today don’t work hard, we should remember this before we tout some kind of work ethic.

The writer Defoe once argued that a man will be civil until his life and the life of his loved ones depend on being uncivil. I don’t know if this is true or not, but if it is, can we really defend our lifestyle to the rest of the world? I’m going to post more Ruskin here. If you read this carefully, he touches on Defoe’s quote and also here, and later in the essay, he defeats the “I earned it” mentality. He also hits the population question, the “homeless are lazy” argument, and the idea of fair trade. And in this quote we see how very related these all are.

“In all the ranges of human thought I know none so melancholy as the speculations of political economists on the population question. It is proposed to better the condition of the labourer by giving him higher wages. ‘Nay’ says the economist, – ‘if you raise his wages, he will either people down to the same point of misery at which you found him, or drink your wages away.’ He will. I know it. Who gave him this will? Suppose it were your own son of whom you spoke, declaring to me that you dared not take him into your firm, nor even give him his just labourer’s wages, because if you did he would die of drunkenness, and leave half a score of children to the parish. ‘Who gave your son these dispositions?’ – I should enquire. Has he them by inheritance or by education? By one or other they must come; and as in him, so also in the poor. Either these poor are of a race essentially different from ours, and unredeemable (which, however often implied, I have heard none yet openly say), or else by such care as we ourselves have received, we may make them continent and sober as ourselves – wise and dispassionate as we are – models arduous of imitation. ‘But’ it is answered, ‘they cannot receive education.’ Why not? That is precisely the point at issue. Charitable persons suppose the worst fault of the rich is to refuse the people meat; and the people cry for their meat, kept back by fraud from the Lord of Multitudes. Alas! It is not meat of which the refusal is the cruelest, or to which the claim is validest. The life is more than the meat. The rich not only refuse food to the poor; they refuse wisdom; they refuse virtue; they refuse salvation… “
John Ruskin

“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception, but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is keeping with this insight…The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are “still” possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge—unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.”
Walter Benjamin

So finally, for the spiritual among us I have this from one of my favorite spiritual writers on the concept of entitlement and the Lord’s Prayer:

“…And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…”

At the moment of saying these words we must have already remitted everything that is owing to us. This not only includes reparation for any wrongs we think we have suffered, but also gratitude for the good we think we have done, and it applies in a quite general way to all we expect from people and things, to all we consider as our due and without which we should feel our lives to have been frustrated.

All these are the rights that we think the past has given us over the future.

First there is a right to a certain permanence. When we have enjoyed something for a long time, we think that it is ours and that we are entitled to expect fate to let us go on enjoying it.

Then there is the right to a compensation for every effort whatever its nature, be it work, suffering, or desire. Every time that we put forth some effort and the equivalent of this effort does not come back to us in the form of some visible fruit, we have a sense of false balance and emptiness which makes us think that we have been cheated. The effort of suffering from some offense causes us to expect the punishment or apologies of the offender, the effort of doing good makes us expect the gratitude of the person we have helped, but these are only particular cases of a universal law of the soul.

Every time we give anything out we have an absolute need that at least the equivalents should come into us, and because we need this we think that we have a right to it. Our debtors comprise all beings and all things; they are the entire universe. We think we have claims everywhere. In every claim we think we possess there is always the idea of an imaginary claim of the past on the future. That is the claim we have to renounce.

. . . In renouncing at one stroke all the fruits of the past without exception, we can ask of God that our sins may not bear their miserable fruits of evil and terror. So long as we cling to the past, God himself cannot stop this horrible fruiting. We cannot hold onto the past without retaining our crimes, for we are unaware of what is most essentially bad in us. . . ”

Simone Weil

I heard Bill O’Reilly talking the other night and accusing Obama of wanting to do wealth redistribution. This got me thinking: “this is something people think of as negative because it means taking something hard-earned from those who have toiled to earn it and giving it to those whose actions have done nothing to make it.”

Then, my thoughts drifted to a few events, one from Policy class and two more recently occurring at family reunions. First of all, the statistic that something like 97 percent of the wealth is controlled by three percent of the population. The others are a game of Risk with my cousins, and a conversation with Mandy about her family.

As we know the divide of the uber-wealthy and the lower classes is growing. The amount of wealth is continuing to be governed by a smaller percentage of the population. This is fact. This is inevitable if you have read much on behavioral economics. I recommend the “logic of Life” as a book to illustrate this point.

This became clear to me as I found myself on side of a losing campaign in Risk, a game I had not played since young. At one point I decided to hole up in Australia, after spreading too thin and being conquered elsewhere. I thought, ” at least I can defend the bottle neck here in the south pacific by putting all my new resources into the defense of the one country blocking my cousin’s way to world domination. The fallacy that I quickly discovered is that if you had captured continents you amassed more armies because you had more resources, same too for just having sheer numbers of already existing armies. In essence, if you already had wealth, you could make so much more. So there is a tipping point there where defeat is inevitable, no matter how great your geographical advantage. I realized that the percentages were about the same as those discussed previously in policy class, my cousin owned about 95 percent of the board and defeat began to unfold at an exponential rate.

We attended a wedding this last weekend of one of Mandy’s cousins. Their family clearly had some financial advantages over what we have had. Mandy’s cousin and her husband decided for example to rent the condo just purchased to add to their income. Again, having the resources to make more.

So, why wouldn’t the republican stance of lower taxes be better? Because, in this system, the rich get richer and bigger breaks and eventually have control over about everything they accuse the democrats of wanting to give to government. At least in government, we may have a little more influence about whether the money is spent on the common good vs. being spent solely on corporate interests. I think Obama may be right in raising taxes higher on those who can afford to pay more, but in this system where wealth and power are synonymous, it may take an occasional redistribution to keep the Risk scenario from unfolding. After all, unless you quit in the middle, the end game for risk is inevitably the same, one winner and everyone else loses. cheers. vote Obama:)

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

There isn’t too much new there, but it offers a good overview of some of the ideas of Moral Psychology and relates them to issues of the environment at the end.

I’m glad that he brings up Peter Singer’s idea of the expanding circle of reciprocal trust and action. He once again dismisses religion by saying that Plato did away with it 2,400 years ago, which again, seems a bit odd, but the article has a lot of good info.

It does seem funny that these guys keep insisting that “love thy neighbor as thy self” is the ultimate moral concept, but keep dismissing religion. Oh well.

Here’s the link if you guys get a chance. It’s about eight pages; so probably takes about fifteen minutes to read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

I just finished The Dream Life of Shukhanov by Olga Grushin. It was a terribly engaging book that takes place in real time over three or four days, but covers in flashbacks much of the life of a Soviet artist/critic. There are several narrative techniques that are interesting, such as the way the book flows from third person narration to first. But I guess the most valuable part of the book to me was what it said about living with the choices we make, the life we live, and the art we do and don’t make. It reminded me a bit of Ishiguro’s novels in that it begins to blur the main character Sukhanov’s past with his present in an effort to reconcile the two lives he has led in a manner that is almost surreal.

What does the Jesus Year hold for you, and what do you make of this idea generally, and in terms of your own lives?

For me, I’m interested in finding larger struggles beyond myself, and maybe that’s ultimately what one can do that lives up to, in part, the example of Jesus. And yet. Here, this year, I’ve been given everything–a good life, companionship, good work, and even a more flexible schedule so that I can teach this fall (something I’ve wanted for a long time) and so that I can write (something I’ve always wanted). Why does this still seem like it falls short? Why are my struggles still primarily with myself? Is this part of the experience of being 33, as a sort of crossroads year? A year in which I know many of my peers are far more successful in terms of what the culture says is successful? Why is it that I still can’t eat right, exercise right, balance my life? Maybe the Jesus Year is the year we are supposed to compare ourselves to Jesus, yes, but really what we do is compare ourselves to everyone else?

But more generally, does this stage of life have any common or universal traits among the culture at large? Are most people already married? already married and divorced? having children? getting higher promotions? running for office? changing jobs? moving? taking up some cause?

I thought you would all be interested in this, seeing as, for a little while longer, at least, we’re all 33, our high school and college classmates are, most of them, 33, and I suspect several of our friends, cousins, and others around us are 33. And we haven’t had a larger question posed lately, so it seems like a good time. Any thoughts?

I definitely admonish people to do what Shotts apparently had to do with the HP books and persevere through lengthy exposition (except in this case we can’t say Wright could have used a good editor, because apparently he is one). At times Wright will seem to be completely self-indulging in his hypothetical arguments, but keep reading – it all comes around. I feel that early in the book I could have skipped large sections, though I’m glad I didn’t.

I would like to thank J.E. for his recommendation, it has given me new insight into life (somewhat like Peters’ NVC recommendation). And I feel I do understand some of the formative influences on J.E.’s outlook and this makes me happy, as well as Peters’. And I have thoroughly enjoyed the recommendations from Shotts as well.

There is so much in the book that I can’t really respond to everything it covers (it kind of covers everything), but I am in primary agreement with most of Wright’s assertions, though that may be a misleading statement without qualifications. He is a generous mind, an attribute I would also ascribe to Stephen J Gould.

What I find extremely funny is that, in making his argument, Wright often brings up many of the exact issues we covered on the blog discussion, right down to actually comparing the characters of Mother Teresa and Donald Trump which I brought up in the earlier discussion with Peters. Wright also has a section in the back that specifically addresses the example of a soldier falling on a grenade which was also raised.

Both books do support the idea that humans are basically selfish (which is what Liz said, but I couldn’t discern if this was meant in a hopeless sense or a self-awareness sense), as well as self-serving, though not necessarily that everything we do we do to serve our own needs. Both books also encourage individuals to be conscious of this and why we are primarily self-serving, in order to resist this reality.

I would love to discuss the book further, but the blog, sadly, will simply not suffice for the depth of conversation needed. If you want to call me sometime, J.E., I’d love to chat with you about it or anyone else that reads it. I would say that if you were to reread the last eighty pages, from page 313 on to the end, you would see that with the Berger and Weil quotes I posted earlier we were never as far apart as was felt (at least as far apart as was felt by me at the time, if not you). You used the word freewill in a recent blog and this would make for an interesting discussion too.

My question for Toby is… “Got a recommendation?”

I recently read an article which talked about Rowling’s insistence that the themes and narrative arcs in the story are the product of a deeply felt Christianity. I felt that that was evident with this story more than the other stories that have made it to screen, for sure, but perhaps that is due to the escalting nature of the stories and good and evil. Her books, of course, took a beating from the right in this country, and I am amazed that Rowling managed to keep her Christianity basically a secret for all that time she was lambasted. She is quoted in the article as saying she felt that to state that Christianity undergirded the books was to give away the ending. In some ways I feel guilty for not having read the rest of the series (I thought at the time I finished the third book, years ago, that this series was never going to end and I wasn’t interested in reading the same thing over and over. I also read the first three books of the Series of Unfortunate Events). I do, as Shotts suggested, hope to enjoy them with my children some day, along with the Tolkien books and many others. Eliot has been learning some words with flash cards.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the film (which wouldn’t have been new to any of you readers of the series) was HP’s discovery of his father’s teasing and bullying of Snape. It is jolting and changing, that moment when you realize your parents are not right about everything and perhaps downright wrong about some things. I also read the NY Times article and found it interesting that Hitchens complains about the HP series’ avoidance of Christianity and then encourages readers to “graduate” to the Pullman trilogy.

There was an advertisement for the Golden Compass at the beginning of the film for which New Line cinema appears to have pulled out all the stops. I would strongly urge that anyone who plans to go see the movie (which I assume is all of the Hollow Men) should first read the entire trilogy, not necessarily as a recommendation from me, but because my guess from the preview is that they have toned down much of the philisophical content. And you certainly won’t get the Milton and biblical literary references from the film. It might make good discussion material; since in the very first scene of the book, Pullman deliberately decided to have a girl coming OUT of a wardrobe.

This may be a funny way to end this post, switching topics, but I’m curious as to how the HM would respond to this quote by Wright from the Moral Animal…

“Friends engage in mutual inflation. Being a person’s true friend means endorsing the untruths he holds dearest…it may be that the hallmark of the strongest, longest friendships is the depth of the shared bias; the best friends are the ones who see each other least clearly.”