Closing of the American Mind, Part 2: Cultural Relatvisim
Openness. Or as our current professors call it, "Diversity." The supposition is that, from the early 20th century, after the onset of WWI, it was clear that the belief in Western philosophy and religion was illogical. People with the vehement belief in nationalism and Christianity had caused the deaths of millions of people. Further, and you see this in US History books quite often now, that since Christians' desire to spread their religion was more often an excuse to find riches, power, and the conquering of other cultures and enslavement of them, it is much easier to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thus, a denial of Christianity as a whole is a break from the actions of our ancestors. The climax of this movement was Nietzsche's quote that "God is dead." He did this not out of a prideful acceptance of atheism, but out of a logical use of reasoning that, if the beliefs of a benign God were to result in enslavement and war, then those beliefs were better off to be rejected. But leaving the belief system of mankind in a bottomless void, something had to fill in the hole. That, as liberal arts colleges have found, is a round education in "diversity." In other words, a teaching of students about other cultures, their beliefs, their virtues and their gods. While this is not wrong in itself, a lecture which brings up the comparative beliefs of another culture cannot be analyzed without something to believe in originally. Thus when, for instance, we look at the actions of the Aztec chiefs, or of Nazi Germany, we have to look at it through the idea that what they did was neither right nor wrong. Of course, I have used the extremes in this sense, as Bloom talked about with his students. Whenever he asked, "Give me an example of someone who is evil," almost without fail, the class brought up Hitler almost immediately. But the same cannot be said of asking who is a hero, or good. It is much harder to come up with someone who fits the virtues of a society who believes in none. Cultural Relativism is now the lion who slouches toward Bethlehem, ready to devour.
When we look at Cultural Relativism, we see a world where the impetus behind "good" and "evil," "right" and "wrong" is erased. There is no meaning in these words, especially in today's world of 24 hour news, constant analysis of the motives behind any crime, investigations into past histories, acceptance of other cultures, no matter how they reflect on the moral beliefs of the person doing the reflection. To look at the phenomenon of relativism, we have to examine the word cultural. When we think of modern culture, we need look no further than the commercials following every round on The Price is Right. Constant messages from lawyers, determined to get the maximum settlement from insurance companies, or free medical care for those countless people who are on Medicare. Then we switch to Let's Make a Deal or American Idol, and find that for the most part, it's not the winners that entertain us, but the losers. The ones that are voted out, or Zonked. We have resorted to being a society of victims, rather than a society where heroes are revered. Even those who are considered heroes, like Scully, become side show oddities who are put on a pedestal and soon forgotten, with their books going to the bargain rack and the made-for-TV movies lost in the annals of film storage buildings. But the losers, they grace the images plastered on our walls, fill our airwaves and waste hours of our lives on gossip and triviality. People flock to hear the filth that spews from Charlie Sheen, who at the end, blames his troubles on his childhood, on his father, on anything else possible except his own failures. Such a time is this, that we live and work to fill our spare time with uselessness. I would much rather live in the 1800's, where people went rather to lectures by Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or prior years where the preachers filled the auditoriums with passionate speeches, with fire and brimstone and emotion.
Now, there is no God to worship, no heroes to admire, no philosophers to debate and no questions to ponder. Now, you are okay, and I am okay. That's all that matters. Why attain the status of true happiness, of contentment and self-actualization when it's perfectly acceptable just to be "okay?" The university trains everyone with an "equal" education, and are satisfied if those giving them money acquire a degree in business or nursing or, ironically, education, without having a sound foundation in the questions of life. The churches accept everyone, and the chambers are filled with preachers that say, "It's okay if you do this or that sin, God loves you anyway." And while that's true, there is no fervor in trying to be closer to God, to being closer to the good that Aristotle talked about in his writings. And the government has embraced the idea that everyone is "created equal," and that everyone has the "right" to "happiness." Of course, this is the happiness attained by letting the government take care of everything for you, for achieving entitlements that bring only mediocrity to the citizens, without any hard work or satisfaction in becoming a productive member of society. It is a shame that no one can rise up from their cave wall and stride confidently into the sunlight. I talked before about a statue made in the country of Senegal, see here, and about the gloriousness of the statue looking out over the Atlantic. I hope that one day a man may attain the same stature that the figures have standing over the capital city. I see no one now that can do it.
Thus we return to "Openness," the center belief of universities in the modern era. By treating everyone equally, all cultures, beliefs, religions, we have created parity in the world of human thought. It's easy to see how this effects football, for instance. You wind up with too many teams that are 8-8, and are, truthfully, very boring. And if everyone is equal, there is no way to compare one culture with another, no beliefs to hold as superior to another, to ideas to ascend to. Thus the modern thought process have done in under a century what past inquisitions, tyrants, political movements, and kings have tried to do for eons. They have weakened the idea of Christianity and other western thoughts, not by extinguishing them, but by accepting all beliefs throughout the world. If everyone is okay, then there's no need to believe in anything. So believe in something. Worship a God, strive for the goals that will make you better than everyone else. Leave that cave and stand in the sunlight. The real world is so much brighter than the dim bulbs reflecting off the screens.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Closing of the American Mind: Teachers and the Cave
Closing of the American Mind, Part 1.
It's like seeing strands of thought, floating up from the pages like a cobra being enticed from his basket with a tune. These strands weave and spin themselves together, along with ones already present, to create new webs. Yes, that's a good metaphor, webs, just as the spider that spins them together to glisten in the sunlit dew. Spin one thread, and tie it to the center, and tie it to the circumference of the web with like strands, until the web is complete, except for this, it never is.
I wish to record the strands coming from this book, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, because so many lines in the book come out as strands of thought and connect to other ones in my head. Ones that must be tied together in words. And this is, after all, what this blog is all about. The number at the start of each section corresponds with the number I have in the book (makes it easier for me to reference it), along with the quote, and then my thoughts. It'll make it less rambly. Hope this works.
But enough cynicism. I thought that teaching would be about me imparting the knowledge which I had accumulated to the minds of the students I had in front of me. Turns out, it's the accumulation of knowledge that I am interested in, not the teaching of it. I am, as Jung would say, an Introvert. My locus is inside myself. I draw energy from the connection my brain makes from within. I've always told my fellow workers, after I've told a particularly bad joke, that as long as it makes me laugh, I don't care. Because while I entertain the people that I am around, I do it because it make me feel good. I learn and process information, I write these blogs, because I want to learn and to amass knowledge. I want to be, in some respects, much like Faust, although without the whole making a deal with the devil thing. And the more I learn, the more connections I make between thinkers and writers and life, the further I will be along the road to understanding how the world works. And I write those things in this blog for those who would like to see what conclusions I've drawn. I've said from the beginning that I really don't care who reads them. It is your choice. It sounds so selfish, to hold knowledge inside, and you'd be right. But it is man's desire to re-enter the cave and plead and beg his peers to come outside, no matter how much they will ignore him. Teaching, as Allan Bloom talks about later, is something that a philosopher must do in order to achieve the satisfaction in reaching those conclusions. It is the climax of the process.
The problem is that education has become less about the speaking to the soul of students and more about teaching to the CRCT test so that the school can receive increased funding. Or, if you talk about college, and Bloom mentions this later, that the training of students into fields that are monetarily successful far outshines any need to enhance the human mind or reach into the soul and turn on that spark that ignites the desire for learning. It is done by the direct need for rewards, money, fame, power, and less by a need to further their own knowledge. As I said before, only about 5% get to that stage. And those of us who reach that point are destined to stay at college forever (either as student or professor) or stuck in menial jobs, scanning groceries and making subs at Subway. The absolute rarity is that philosopher that can apply his learning, mold the world into something wonderful, become the producers, the makers of mankind.
(I thought of this song as I was writing the last paragraph.)
***
So this is how this'll go, and I'll post some along, so that eventually I'll have done the whole book.
It's like seeing strands of thought, floating up from the pages like a cobra being enticed from his basket with a tune. These strands weave and spin themselves together, along with ones already present, to create new webs. Yes, that's a good metaphor, webs, just as the spider that spins them together to glisten in the sunlit dew. Spin one thread, and tie it to the center, and tie it to the circumference of the web with like strands, until the web is complete, except for this, it never is.
I wish to record the strands coming from this book, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, because so many lines in the book come out as strands of thought and connect to other ones in my head. Ones that must be tied together in words. And this is, after all, what this blog is all about. The number at the start of each section corresponds with the number I have in the book (makes it easier for me to reference it), along with the quote, and then my thoughts. It'll make it less rambly. Hope this works.
1. Teaching can be a threat to philosophy because philosophizing is a solitary quest, and he who pursues it must never look to an audience. (20)Let's go back into Plato's cave for a second. Say the philosopher, the man with new knowledge, a new outlook on life because he's gone outside and seen the world, goes back in and realizes that his peers don't want to listen to him. They don't want to learn. They're too busy watching Jersey Shore on the cave wall. Should you even want to try and reach those students who simply don't care about knowledge or forwarding the human race, but rather would be entertained by those who would create those images? I learned long ago that, even in the 8th grade classes I taught, there are only a handful, probably 5%, that would be interested in leaving the cave.
But enough cynicism. I thought that teaching would be about me imparting the knowledge which I had accumulated to the minds of the students I had in front of me. Turns out, it's the accumulation of knowledge that I am interested in, not the teaching of it. I am, as Jung would say, an Introvert. My locus is inside myself. I draw energy from the connection my brain makes from within. I've always told my fellow workers, after I've told a particularly bad joke, that as long as it makes me laugh, I don't care. Because while I entertain the people that I am around, I do it because it make me feel good. I learn and process information, I write these blogs, because I want to learn and to amass knowledge. I want to be, in some respects, much like Faust, although without the whole making a deal with the devil thing. And the more I learn, the more connections I make between thinkers and writers and life, the further I will be along the road to understanding how the world works. And I write those things in this blog for those who would like to see what conclusions I've drawn. I've said from the beginning that I really don't care who reads them. It is your choice. It sounds so selfish, to hold knowledge inside, and you'd be right. But it is man's desire to re-enter the cave and plead and beg his peers to come outside, no matter how much they will ignore him. Teaching, as Allan Bloom talks about later, is something that a philosopher must do in order to achieve the satisfaction in reaching those conclusions. It is the climax of the process.
2. There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech. The soul, so the teacher must think, may at the onset of education require extrinsic rewards and punishments to motivate its activity; but in the end that activity is its own reward and is self-sufficient. (20)
The problem is that education has become less about the speaking to the soul of students and more about teaching to the CRCT test so that the school can receive increased funding. Or, if you talk about college, and Bloom mentions this later, that the training of students into fields that are monetarily successful far outshines any need to enhance the human mind or reach into the soul and turn on that spark that ignites the desire for learning. It is done by the direct need for rewards, money, fame, power, and less by a need to further their own knowledge. As I said before, only about 5% get to that stage. And those of us who reach that point are destined to stay at college forever (either as student or professor) or stuck in menial jobs, scanning groceries and making subs at Subway. The absolute rarity is that philosopher that can apply his learning, mold the world into something wonderful, become the producers, the makers of mankind.
(I thought of this song as I was writing the last paragraph.)
***
So this is how this'll go, and I'll post some along, so that eventually I'll have done the whole book.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Dylan in December, W00T?
Let's take a ride on the magical tour that is Earth, on the giant database that is collecting up information to tell someone far in the future that the answer to the universe is "42." There's nothing on this planet that is not just now being viewed on Youtube (well, except for all the stuff you can't watch on Youtube, but there'll be other sites for that.) Do a search for Bob Dylan's Dream (just click on the link), and find any of the amateur covers of this great Dylan song (which was best sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary on the Album 1700 release). Yes, lots of bad singers putting their voices on Youtube. Same reason you have scores of people on American Idol singing horribly. Because they don't know they sing horribly. It's amazing how the mind can only interpret an action as being superb, but when it's actually horrid to anyone else.
Specifically, I find it amusing how most of the covers are people trying to sound like Bob Dylan. It's accepted that Dylan doesn't have a great singing voice, and yet there are people that want to imitate him. When I sing Bob Dylan's songs in the car, of course I sound like him. You open the throat, the nose, and growl it out through the nasal cavities. But I'm not going to let the rest of the world hear it. It's the same when I sing, for instance, Miley Cyrus' "The Climb." Sure, I sound like a girl, but I'm not going to let anyone else hear it. It's an emulation of the words, the emotion, that the song portrays and evokes. It has nothing to do with me performing it for anyone. That serves no purpose. Like I've said before, see here, I'm selfish. I sing for me, and not for money or popularity or to look stupid or whatever. I sing in my voice only in my car, or in empty staircases, or in my room. Sure I can sing like Dylan, or Miley Cyrus, or Frank Sinatra, etc... but it's just an imitation. And sometimes an imitation is what is best, as they can evoke the best images and emotions with their style. That's what Bob Dylan does with his poetry and his style of singing. And if others take his songs and do just as good a job, then that's wonderful, too. But don't expect me to add my renditions to Youtube like so many other lemmings. I don't want to.
***
I bring up Dylan because we've been listening to an excellent CD over the speakers at work. The Decemberists (a group I've never heard of prior to now), and their album The King is Dead. Think of it as Alternative Dylan, or what he would have sounded like had he been thrown into R.E.M. (which, not surprisingly, one of the REM guitarists plays on several of the tracks). Their older works are darker, with more of an electronic edge, but this one, they take on folk and bluegrass and add their own twist to it. Bold lyrics, ones to be painted in the bold color markers they discontinued from Crayola. The strongest tracks are the Hymns, one to January, one to June, with battling wrens, creeping jasmine vines, and words like "panoply" and "ambling" which are such treasures to roll off the tongue. I'll add the Youtube video of them singing the latter on NPR. A note, the lead singer, Colin Maloy, looks exactly like my dad did, except my dad couldn't sing a note.
***
A quick shout out to a company that has solved one of my problems in buying t-shirts. Namely, that I never can find ones I like. They're all the same at the stores, and while the ones at Hot Topic are really cool, they're expensive. So Martin posted this link to his Facebook page, W00T Shirts sells one shirt a day at $10, a different one each day, picked out from professional graphic designers or amateurs picked by those that have bought shirts from them (the "community"), and then the ones that sell the best go into rotation at $15 a piece. Very unique ideas, and an awesome way for graphic designers to get their work out to the public and earn money at the same time. And the way they use Facebook and other social media is a prime example of the new successful businesses that use the media correctly. I guess it's annoying that they were bought out and are now a subsidiary of Amazon.com now, but that's how the Internet (and most business) works. So go look at their t-shirts... great stuff, and a great marketing scheme.
Specifically, I find it amusing how most of the covers are people trying to sound like Bob Dylan. It's accepted that Dylan doesn't have a great singing voice, and yet there are people that want to imitate him. When I sing Bob Dylan's songs in the car, of course I sound like him. You open the throat, the nose, and growl it out through the nasal cavities. But I'm not going to let the rest of the world hear it. It's the same when I sing, for instance, Miley Cyrus' "The Climb." Sure, I sound like a girl, but I'm not going to let anyone else hear it. It's an emulation of the words, the emotion, that the song portrays and evokes. It has nothing to do with me performing it for anyone. That serves no purpose. Like I've said before, see here, I'm selfish. I sing for me, and not for money or popularity or to look stupid or whatever. I sing in my voice only in my car, or in empty staircases, or in my room. Sure I can sing like Dylan, or Miley Cyrus, or Frank Sinatra, etc... but it's just an imitation. And sometimes an imitation is what is best, as they can evoke the best images and emotions with their style. That's what Bob Dylan does with his poetry and his style of singing. And if others take his songs and do just as good a job, then that's wonderful, too. But don't expect me to add my renditions to Youtube like so many other lemmings. I don't want to.
***
I bring up Dylan because we've been listening to an excellent CD over the speakers at work. The Decemberists (a group I've never heard of prior to now), and their album The King is Dead. Think of it as Alternative Dylan, or what he would have sounded like had he been thrown into R.E.M. (which, not surprisingly, one of the REM guitarists plays on several of the tracks). Their older works are darker, with more of an electronic edge, but this one, they take on folk and bluegrass and add their own twist to it. Bold lyrics, ones to be painted in the bold color markers they discontinued from Crayola. The strongest tracks are the Hymns, one to January, one to June, with battling wrens, creeping jasmine vines, and words like "panoply" and "ambling" which are such treasures to roll off the tongue. I'll add the Youtube video of them singing the latter on NPR. A note, the lead singer, Colin Maloy, looks exactly like my dad did, except my dad couldn't sing a note.
***
A quick shout out to a company that has solved one of my problems in buying t-shirts. Namely, that I never can find ones I like. They're all the same at the stores, and while the ones at Hot Topic are really cool, they're expensive. So Martin posted this link to his Facebook page, W00T Shirts sells one shirt a day at $10, a different one each day, picked out from professional graphic designers or amateurs picked by those that have bought shirts from them (the "community"), and then the ones that sell the best go into rotation at $15 a piece. Very unique ideas, and an awesome way for graphic designers to get their work out to the public and earn money at the same time. And the way they use Facebook and other social media is a prime example of the new successful businesses that use the media correctly. I guess it's annoying that they were bought out and are now a subsidiary of Amazon.com now, but that's how the Internet (and most business) works. So go look at their t-shirts... great stuff, and a great marketing scheme.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
A Blockbuster Eulogy
So I'm walking out of Ingles, groceries in hand, and I look up and see a dimly lit sign on the store across the street. Store Closing, it says. Right over the last Blockbuster in Conyers. So as far as I know, there will be no more movie rental businesses of any kind in my home town. It was like a sample, a taste of that really expensive imported cheese at Publix. When you're a kid and you don't have any money (at least not $50 for a video game) but the local Blockbuster finally has a copy of Zelda II in stock and so you rent it for like a week at Christmas, but you can never get past the boulder because you can't find the magical hammer... Or your dad renting The Hobbit at the Kroger so you can watch it, even though you sleep through half of it because it was so boring (only to later read the book and it change your life...). There's something to be said about going out, physically traveling to a place and renting a movie, as it's nothing you can keep, so you have to watch it in the days you have it. That'll get rid of ADD procrastination.
Of course Blockbuster closing is a sign of the times... it's the digitalization of the world. Videos, Music, Books, everything being electronically transferred into 1's and 0's. Binary code. All so that we can sit at home (or, now, at the local Starbucks) and download our heart's wishes. There is no eagerly waiting for the latest Playstation 3 game, as once it is released, it can be downloaded ad nauseum to the console. There's no opening of the box, leafing through the instruction booklet on the way home, or flipping through the latest Nintendo Power hoping for a clue. It can all be downloaded or looked up. As I said before, it amazed me when, at 10am on Christmas morning, the most looked up thing on Yahoo! was "Video Game Cheats." It didn't even take them but a few hours and they wanted to cheat on their games. But I digress.
It's part of a greater change, maybe brought on by gas prices, but more likely by just the convenience of getting everything ordered online through Amazon, or any of the other online stores. There's no need to go to Best Buy to look at Large Screen TV's.... just go buy one with flexpays on hsn.com. You have to get groceries, your drugs, and going out to eat for food...and that's it. The only reason Malls exist now is to have someplace to send the kids so that parents might have an hour or two of peace and quiet. And I should know, as I work in one.
How I felt when I looked at the closing sign at Blockbuster... a little sad, but with more indifference... when the FYI, Turtles music store closed in Conyers, they offered all their used and new CD's at half price. I didn't buy any of them...why bother when you can get them downloaded as MP3s from the Internet? So I went home and took out my Blockbuster Card that I still had in my wallet (next to my Library Card which had seen even less usage), and I put it in my junk drawer, where all expired cards go to die. And it's not like I even watch movies anyway... my ADD is too bad for that, unless I'm in a theatre. You know Where the Wild Things Are, which I still rave about... I have the DVD and the Blu Ray, but I've never watched either. I bought quite a few DVD's from Blockbuster when they had their sales, but 90% have never even been looked at. But I suppose when we all lose our jobs and have to be put on the waiting list for working at Walmart (which will be the only thing left open), at least I'll have something to distract me. Or books, or video games. All of which I can easily download from my computer and store, like a squirrel storing his nuts for the winter.
Of course Blockbuster closing is a sign of the times... it's the digitalization of the world. Videos, Music, Books, everything being electronically transferred into 1's and 0's. Binary code. All so that we can sit at home (or, now, at the local Starbucks) and download our heart's wishes. There is no eagerly waiting for the latest Playstation 3 game, as once it is released, it can be downloaded ad nauseum to the console. There's no opening of the box, leafing through the instruction booklet on the way home, or flipping through the latest Nintendo Power hoping for a clue. It can all be downloaded or looked up. As I said before, it amazed me when, at 10am on Christmas morning, the most looked up thing on Yahoo! was "Video Game Cheats." It didn't even take them but a few hours and they wanted to cheat on their games. But I digress.
It's part of a greater change, maybe brought on by gas prices, but more likely by just the convenience of getting everything ordered online through Amazon, or any of the other online stores. There's no need to go to Best Buy to look at Large Screen TV's.... just go buy one with flexpays on hsn.com. You have to get groceries, your drugs, and going out to eat for food...and that's it. The only reason Malls exist now is to have someplace to send the kids so that parents might have an hour or two of peace and quiet. And I should know, as I work in one.
How I felt when I looked at the closing sign at Blockbuster... a little sad, but with more indifference... when the FYI, Turtles music store closed in Conyers, they offered all their used and new CD's at half price. I didn't buy any of them...why bother when you can get them downloaded as MP3s from the Internet? So I went home and took out my Blockbuster Card that I still had in my wallet (next to my Library Card which had seen even less usage), and I put it in my junk drawer, where all expired cards go to die. And it's not like I even watch movies anyway... my ADD is too bad for that, unless I'm in a theatre. You know Where the Wild Things Are, which I still rave about... I have the DVD and the Blu Ray, but I've never watched either. I bought quite a few DVD's from Blockbuster when they had their sales, but 90% have never even been looked at. But I suppose when we all lose our jobs and have to be put on the waiting list for working at Walmart (which will be the only thing left open), at least I'll have something to distract me. Or books, or video games. All of which I can easily download from my computer and store, like a squirrel storing his nuts for the winter.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Mouse in the Cave (Plato Blog Pt.2)
Pleasure, the inevitable by-product of our civilization...A new world, whose only preoccupation will be, how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want. ~Inspector Shrink, from Monkees' Head.
Our only preoccupation will be how to amuse ourselves. That certainly fits, whether we use Huxley's Brave New World or Neil Postman's philosophies. I think it's quite clear that Inspector Shrink's quote is quite correct. There are two types of people in this world, people who consume entertainment, and those that support them. We have lost our ability to produce anything, for the most part. Some specialization still takes place, the scientists who develop the small microchips in our cell phones, or the antibiotics that cure us from disease. We make those things. But put me in front of a rod of molten metal and tell me to make a screw out of it, and I'm dumbfounded. Certainly, those things are made by robots now anyway. That way we don't have to get our hands dirty and can spend more time talking about last night's American Idol. I certainly do appreciate the many pieces of machinery that makes my life easier, but I say this with the full knowledge that I am not using that time to forward the progress of man, to payback the makers of society with anything substantial with the time I have saved. No, I am using it finding things on the Internet, or watching the same reruns on TV over and over again. I would argue that the vast majority of time American's spend on this Earth is used pursuing ways to amuse ourselves, or working so that we may have the money to take on that pursuit.
A prime example of this in action, squeezed down to 11 minutes for our inspection, is the Phineas & Ferb episode "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister." Take a moment to watch it on Youtube. Okay, Candace is obsessed with going to the Midsummer Carnival to enter the auditioning for "Flawless Girl" cosmetics. Along the way she runs into Mr. Odda, who is the host of the Oddball show. As she realizes, both of these companies make money on taking advantage of the insecurities of today's youth. One by showing off the aberrant objects of the world to make normal people feel better ("at least I'm not like that,") while the other uses modern communication to project an image of perfection, that which can only be attained by purchasing cosmetics from their company.
On the way, Candace stops to ridicule her brothers, Phineas and Ferb, who are trying to help a friend grow a giant watermelon (at the expense of hanging up the shame curtains). In this sense, the brothers, using their chemistry lab, are the producers, the makers, as Ayn Rand would put it, of this world, while their older sister ridicules them, until she needs their growth elixir for her own superficial needs.
This seems to be the case in reality, as well. A recent Facebook status by one of my friends describes complex mathematical calculations he took in order to plant a tree that would provide the correct amount of shade for the house, the garden, etc... For which he was called a geek, a dork, etc... However, if calculations such as this is not done, the shade can kill gardens, and not enough shade can bring sunlight in on a home and cost hundreds in electricity bills. The thought processes behind planting a tree, the science behind it, is the antithesis to the people controlling the images in the caves. For producing, or thinking, saves money, creates time saving efforts that has nothing to do with entertainment. This is the free man living his own life outside the cave, and for which the self-absorbed inside of it are insanely jealous.
Back to Phineas & Ferb for a minute, the other character in the program who consistently builds machines for himself (usually for superficial reasons, which is a paradox to my theory), is Dr. Doofenshmirtz, the evil scientist. His creations are as awe inspiring as P&F's inventions, but his are supposedly used for world (okay, Tri-State Area) domination. However, the boys' also have a hint of wrongness to them, as Candice is always trying to get them into trouble, as if by them creating a portal to Mars, they are doing something wrong against society, or at least Mom's rules. It's amazing how the inventors and thinkers of the shows on the Disney Channel are ridiculed or stereotyped as wrong or evil. Stewie is done the same way in Family Guy. Those that think are anti-social, awkward, even evil, and those that are rich are so through no thought of their own. They are stupid, without morals, and always anti-environmental. It's also interesting that the majority of shows on the Disney Channel, the main characters are head actors(tresses) in bands, on television shows, in fixtures of entertainment for teenagers everywhere. Hannah Montana, for instance. Or Icarly's crew on Nick.
In short, those that create or support entertainment are lauded, and those who produce non-entertaining things, or those that impede entertainment, are ridiculed. All this from children's television. How much of this is internalized and brought into adult culture? Where scientists and thinkers are ridiculed and branded as anti-social or perhaps even evil (or sent off to Iceland as in Brave New World), while entertainers and those that contribute nothing substantial to mankind are lauded as role-models and heroes. Would that the construction workers working high upon the Brooklyn bridge get as much praise as Kobe Bryant playing an hour of ball and getting thousands of dollars. I would rather be the worker, standing on the apex of the bridge, looking out over the ocean and seeing the sun rise upon New York City, and know that below him is a structure that he helped to build, to form with his own hands, than to entertain the masses endless staring at the glowing flames, the images from the screens, the television and the computer, the shadows on the walls.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Plato, The Monkees, and Jumping Dandruff
"The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want" ~Inspector Shrink, from The Monkees Head
If Bill and Ted ever stop by my house in their phone booth, I need to borrow it and bring Plato back to the present and, given my advanced knowledge of Ancient Greek, the conversations we would have.... He would be amazed, I think, with our houses, with the lights and electricity, air-conditioning, all the comforts we have. But I think, after looking at our lives, he would conclude that we haven't progressed much since his days at the Academy, where he would argue with his students and reveal truths about mankind. Specifically, the passage in The Republic, where he creates the analogy of "The Cave."
Imagine Plato sitting in the town square, trying to engage his students in a conversation. Amongst the idyllic manufactured town park, the planted trees, the statues of the local hero, the ancient philosopher sits unable to carry on a lesson in metaphysics, because someone is sitting in their polished crimson sports car blaring music, the female accountant is talking on her cell phone about plans for tonight, the electronics store is showing the football game on the new 50 inch flat screen in the store window. Then there's the kids walking behind their mother, but who often bump into things because they have their heads buried in the latest Pokemon game on their Nintendo DS. But of course, Plato doesn't know all this... all he sees are lights and sounds and images being projected on the walls. For that's what we have, our own walls, projecting unreal images onto themselves and into our minds. We live, unchained, seeing the images that others wish us to see, on the wall.
What Plato doesn't realize is that the metaphor that he used is correct, but incomplete. Seeing the reality of things, the "forms" outside the cave, the man comes back in, tries to tell his friends about the outside world. And it's not that they don't believe him, they simply find it boring. There's so many other wonderful things going on in the images, who cares about the sunlight and the flower and the perfect chair. It's all about the images. So, the man realizes that he now is free, and that he can now take advantage of his knowledge. He goes up to where the images are made, kills the people controlling the fire, and makes his own images. Further, he allows those watching to determine what images they see, as long as they pay him a monthly fee. In the cave then, there are two kinds of people, those that produce the entertainment, and those that consume it.
***
A break to tie in the quote at the top. While looking for the exact wording of the quote above, I chanced upon IMDB's page on the Monkees' movie Head, which had a page of quotes. Among which was the follow up of Peter Tork's conversation with the philosopher in the sauna. The swami is included on the Head soundtrack, but Peter's communicating this to his fellow band mates (which is overlooked just as the man in the cave's communication was), is left out. Here that quote is in it's entirety:
It further solidifies Peter Tork as the wise fool, the Rousseau-ian Noble Savage, as it were. He becomes the free man, the one who has looked outside of the cave, or, as the Monkees have deemed it, the world in which the band was manufactured, created, and manipulated, and has come back into that world to tell his band mates how they may become free. Of course, much as the metaphor ends for Plato, the Monkees realize they can never be free at all. They are trapped as characters, as images on the wall. And in real life, the characters of Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and others, become those they portrayed on Television. As Tork said in the boxing ring, "I'm the dummy. I'm always the dummy." Moving on...
The entire quote from the inspector is:
After this, the Monkees are taken into a scene where they are dressed in white, and are encouraged to jump up and down in what looks like hair. They are dandruff you see, for a shampoo commercial. I wonder what Plato's opinions would be on the suppositions made by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. A government that not only provides justice and peace, but controls it's subjects through the pleasures it seeks. Much like baby Robins following a worm dangling from their mother's mouth. In order to get the entertainment we desire, we would give up our liberties and our freedom and our education all to be happy. The philosopher kings would be exiled, to Iceland, as Mustapha Mond reveals to Helmholtz Watson at the end, and the commoners will all be perfectly happy never to achieve self-awareness, as long as their free supply of drugs and religion-sex is unabated. But we were talking about dandruff...
Because the scene where the Monkees become dandruff is as telling as the rest. Imagine the Three Tenors having to do such exercises just to fulfill a contract. The Monkees must sacrifice their dignity in order to pursue their music. Which brings the money they can use for drugs and other entertainment. They become the amalgamation of society, both consumers and producers of the entertainment they so are addicted to. As viewers of the images on the cave wall, they become puppets for the image makers, as well as images themselves for others watching on other cave walls. There is no freedom here. No sunshine, no perfect forms, only illusion.
***
I guess I need to split this into two posts, because the making, selling, and consuming of entertainment develops into an economy that is quite interesting, and is best laid out in a Phineas & Ferb episode.
If Bill and Ted ever stop by my house in their phone booth, I need to borrow it and bring Plato back to the present and, given my advanced knowledge of Ancient Greek, the conversations we would have.... He would be amazed, I think, with our houses, with the lights and electricity, air-conditioning, all the comforts we have. But I think, after looking at our lives, he would conclude that we haven't progressed much since his days at the Academy, where he would argue with his students and reveal truths about mankind. Specifically, the passage in The Republic, where he creates the analogy of "The Cave."
Imagine Plato sitting in the town square, trying to engage his students in a conversation. Amongst the idyllic manufactured town park, the planted trees, the statues of the local hero, the ancient philosopher sits unable to carry on a lesson in metaphysics, because someone is sitting in their polished crimson sports car blaring music, the female accountant is talking on her cell phone about plans for tonight, the electronics store is showing the football game on the new 50 inch flat screen in the store window. Then there's the kids walking behind their mother, but who often bump into things because they have their heads buried in the latest Pokemon game on their Nintendo DS. But of course, Plato doesn't know all this... all he sees are lights and sounds and images being projected on the walls. For that's what we have, our own walls, projecting unreal images onto themselves and into our minds. We live, unchained, seeing the images that others wish us to see, on the wall.
What Plato doesn't realize is that the metaphor that he used is correct, but incomplete. Seeing the reality of things, the "forms" outside the cave, the man comes back in, tries to tell his friends about the outside world. And it's not that they don't believe him, they simply find it boring. There's so many other wonderful things going on in the images, who cares about the sunlight and the flower and the perfect chair. It's all about the images. So, the man realizes that he now is free, and that he can now take advantage of his knowledge. He goes up to where the images are made, kills the people controlling the fire, and makes his own images. Further, he allows those watching to determine what images they see, as long as they pay him a monthly fee. In the cave then, there are two kinds of people, those that produce the entertainment, and those that consume it.
***
A break to tie in the quote at the top. While looking for the exact wording of the quote above, I chanced upon IMDB's page on the Monkees' movie Head, which had a page of quotes. Among which was the follow up of Peter Tork's conversation with the philosopher in the sauna. The swami is included on the Head soundtrack, but Peter's communicating this to his fellow band mates (which is overlooked just as the man in the cave's communication was), is left out. Here that quote is in it's entirety:
We were talking with the Master regarding the nature of conceptual reality. Psychologically speaking, the human mind, or brain or whatever, is almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the vividly imagined experience. Sound and film and music and radio. Even these manipulative experiences are received more or less directly and uninterpretative by the mind. They are cataloged and recorded and either acted upon directly, or stored in the memory, or both. Now this process, unless we pay it tremendous attention, begins to separate us from the reality of the now. Am I being clear? For we must allow the reality of the now to just happen, as it happens. Observe and act with clarity. For where there is clarity, there is no choice. And were there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?
It further solidifies Peter Tork as the wise fool, the Rousseau-ian Noble Savage, as it were. He becomes the free man, the one who has looked outside of the cave, or, as the Monkees have deemed it, the world in which the band was manufactured, created, and manipulated, and has come back into that world to tell his band mates how they may become free. Of course, much as the metaphor ends for Plato, the Monkees realize they can never be free at all. They are trapped as characters, as images on the wall. And in real life, the characters of Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and others, become those they portrayed on Television. As Tork said in the boxing ring, "I'm the dummy. I'm always the dummy." Moving on...
The entire quote from the inspector is:
Pleasure, the inevitable by-product of our civilization (cut scene of a butcher pounding meat)...A new world, whose only preoccupation will be, how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want.
After this, the Monkees are taken into a scene where they are dressed in white, and are encouraged to jump up and down in what looks like hair. They are dandruff you see, for a shampoo commercial. I wonder what Plato's opinions would be on the suppositions made by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. A government that not only provides justice and peace, but controls it's subjects through the pleasures it seeks. Much like baby Robins following a worm dangling from their mother's mouth. In order to get the entertainment we desire, we would give up our liberties and our freedom and our education all to be happy. The philosopher kings would be exiled, to Iceland, as Mustapha Mond reveals to Helmholtz Watson at the end, and the commoners will all be perfectly happy never to achieve self-awareness, as long as their free supply of drugs and religion-sex is unabated. But we were talking about dandruff...
Because the scene where the Monkees become dandruff is as telling as the rest. Imagine the Three Tenors having to do such exercises just to fulfill a contract. The Monkees must sacrifice their dignity in order to pursue their music. Which brings the money they can use for drugs and other entertainment. They become the amalgamation of society, both consumers and producers of the entertainment they so are addicted to. As viewers of the images on the cave wall, they become puppets for the image makers, as well as images themselves for others watching on other cave walls. There is no freedom here. No sunshine, no perfect forms, only illusion.
***
I guess I need to split this into two posts, because the making, selling, and consuming of entertainment develops into an economy that is quite interesting, and is best laid out in a Phineas & Ferb episode.
Monday, March 7, 2011
The Persistence of Memory of Food
....or what not to get at Arby's.
My family will say that whenever I talk about a vacation I've been on or a place I visited, I will link that memory with food I ate while I'm there. They're quite correct, as there is no other combination of smell, taste, and texture, that will bring up memory responses as quickly as food. If you ask me if I've ever been in an Earthquake, I will happily tell you about the 7.0 Earthquake that hit Bear Lake on the other side of Los Angeles, where we were visiting for the month. Aside from going to Disneyland (which was much more hype and not enough substance, but that's another blog altogether) and seeing the sites of LA and falling asleep on the traffic-clogged interstates (I think it was Jet Lag), I will tell you about the hotel that we stayed in, near the airport, and how, when the Earthquake hit, I saw the pool water move from one side of the pool to the other in unison, as if a teeter-totter were underneath it. And I will tell you about reading C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and how much I enjoyed it. But mostly, I will tell you about the exquisite Danishes they had in the Hotel Lobby for breakfast. Cheese, Cherry...I have had no better Danishes before or since, and no that I Think on it, the sleepiness probably had something to do with blood sugar.
And I can tell you about the Nachoes I had at Mustang Valley Elementary school, of which I have never found their equal, or the homemade salad dressing I put on the Fiestadas when we had them. Fiestadas...mmmmmm.... there were times I sat in the middle of my college classes craving a Fiestada with the veracity of a pregnant woman.
I've talked about other foods in blogs in the past, such as the Hot Ham & Cheese sandwich from Hardees', or the Tripledecker Pizza from Pizza Hut. I will leave these to my other writings.
Why I'm writing this... I went to Arby's to try out their Angus Beef, Bacon and Cheese sandwich, as it is similar to the three cheese sandwich they promoted back in the 1990's. I remember the last time I had that sandwich was in Milledgeville, around 1999, and the flavor was exquisite. This time, however, while the beef was good, I had to hunt to find any cheese, I got two bites of bacon, and the sandwich was much smaller than I remembered. Perhaps this is the lesson to be learned from food, that the memory of the sensual aspects of an object is often times inflated and will only cause an anticlimactic feeling afterward. Very rarely is something as good the tenth time as it is the first. We must continuously be looking for new variety, and savor those memories so that when a certain spark of synapse travels through the brain, igniting a smell or taste or other memory, it will be all the more pleasurable. We cannot recreate the past, only create new memories for what is to come.
My family will say that whenever I talk about a vacation I've been on or a place I visited, I will link that memory with food I ate while I'm there. They're quite correct, as there is no other combination of smell, taste, and texture, that will bring up memory responses as quickly as food. If you ask me if I've ever been in an Earthquake, I will happily tell you about the 7.0 Earthquake that hit Bear Lake on the other side of Los Angeles, where we were visiting for the month. Aside from going to Disneyland (which was much more hype and not enough substance, but that's another blog altogether) and seeing the sites of LA and falling asleep on the traffic-clogged interstates (I think it was Jet Lag), I will tell you about the hotel that we stayed in, near the airport, and how, when the Earthquake hit, I saw the pool water move from one side of the pool to the other in unison, as if a teeter-totter were underneath it. And I will tell you about reading C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and how much I enjoyed it. But mostly, I will tell you about the exquisite Danishes they had in the Hotel Lobby for breakfast. Cheese, Cherry...I have had no better Danishes before or since, and no that I Think on it, the sleepiness probably had something to do with blood sugar.
And I can tell you about the Nachoes I had at Mustang Valley Elementary school, of which I have never found their equal, or the homemade salad dressing I put on the Fiestadas when we had them. Fiestadas...mmmmmm.... there were times I sat in the middle of my college classes craving a Fiestada with the veracity of a pregnant woman.
I've talked about other foods in blogs in the past, such as the Hot Ham & Cheese sandwich from Hardees', or the Tripledecker Pizza from Pizza Hut. I will leave these to my other writings.
Why I'm writing this... I went to Arby's to try out their Angus Beef, Bacon and Cheese sandwich, as it is similar to the three cheese sandwich they promoted back in the 1990's. I remember the last time I had that sandwich was in Milledgeville, around 1999, and the flavor was exquisite. This time, however, while the beef was good, I had to hunt to find any cheese, I got two bites of bacon, and the sandwich was much smaller than I remembered. Perhaps this is the lesson to be learned from food, that the memory of the sensual aspects of an object is often times inflated and will only cause an anticlimactic feeling afterward. Very rarely is something as good the tenth time as it is the first. We must continuously be looking for new variety, and savor those memories so that when a certain spark of synapse travels through the brain, igniting a smell or taste or other memory, it will be all the more pleasurable. We cannot recreate the past, only create new memories for what is to come.
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