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Jun. 19th, 2012
Tweeting the Fall
Jun. 19th, 2012 08:00 amIt’s possible to have a clear attitude toward Twitter if you’re not on it. Few things could appear much worse, to the lurker, glimpser, or guesser, than this scrolling suicide note of Western civilization. Never more than 140 characters at a time? Looks like the human attention span crumbling like a Roman aqueduct. The endless favoriting and retweeting of other people’s tweets? Sounds like a digital circle jerk. Birds were born to make the repetitive, pleasant, meaningless sounds called twittering. Wasn’t the whole thing about us featherless bipeds that we could give connected intelligible sounds a cumulative sense?
-- n+1
They concede there is good news to mix with the collapsing of our civilization, such as the supposed revival of the epigram and aphoristic wit, but is there really a lot of that? Well, if the Internet were strictly for literary and scientific genius, cyberspace would be almost as empty as outer space. The real virtue, I'm sure, is that just about everyone can play. You throw in your two cents, I throw in my two cents, and pretty soon we have change for a dollar! Meanwhile, if you need to, we can imagine that we are the literary diamonds glittering in the wasteland rather than more of the scrolling chaff.
-- n+1
They concede there is good news to mix with the collapsing of our civilization, such as the supposed revival of the epigram and aphoristic wit, but is there really a lot of that? Well, if the Internet were strictly for literary and scientific genius, cyberspace would be almost as empty as outer space. The real virtue, I'm sure, is that just about everyone can play. You throw in your two cents, I throw in my two cents, and pretty soon we have change for a dollar! Meanwhile, if you need to, we can imagine that we are the literary diamonds glittering in the wasteland rather than more of the scrolling chaff.
Tweeting the Fall
Jun. 19th, 2012 08:00 amIt’s possible to have a clear attitude toward Twitter if you’re not on it. Few things could appear much worse, to the lurker, glimpser, or guesser, than this scrolling suicide note of Western civilization. Never more than 140 characters at a time? Looks like the human attention span crumbling like a Roman aqueduct. The endless favoriting and retweeting of other people’s tweets? Sounds like a digital circle jerk. Birds were born to make the repetitive, pleasant, meaningless sounds called twittering. Wasn’t the whole thing about us featherless bipeds that we could give connected intelligible sounds a cumulative sense?
-- n+1
They concede there is good news to mix with the collapsing of our civilization, such as the supposed revival of the epigram and aphoristic wit, but is there really a lot of that? Well, if the Internet were strictly for literary and scientific genius, cyberspace would be almost as empty as outer space. The real virtue, I'm sure, is that just about everyone can play. You throw in your two cents, I throw in my two cents, and pretty soon we have change for a dollar! Meanwhile, if you need to, we can imagine that we are the literary diamonds glittering in the wasteland rather than more of the scrolling chaff.
-- n+1
They concede there is good news to mix with the collapsing of our civilization, such as the supposed revival of the epigram and aphoristic wit, but is there really a lot of that? Well, if the Internet were strictly for literary and scientific genius, cyberspace would be almost as empty as outer space. The real virtue, I'm sure, is that just about everyone can play. You throw in your two cents, I throw in my two cents, and pretty soon we have change for a dollar! Meanwhile, if you need to, we can imagine that we are the literary diamonds glittering in the wasteland rather than more of the scrolling chaff.
The Soul of Thomas Sowell
Jun. 19th, 2012 12:43 pmJordan Michael Smith takes on one of the icons of American conservatism, Thomas Sowell, one of the very few black intellectuals who will carry the right-wing political banner, if not the only black intellectual of any renown. Mr. Smith discusses Sowell's book "A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles":
According to Sowell, American political debates follow two parallel lines tracking distinct visions of human nature. Those on the left have an unconstrained view of man, and those on the right have a constrained view. The unconstrained view holds that humans are perfectible creatures sullied only by their flawed social environments. With the proper education and social support, man can become an altruistic, even Christ-like being. Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the unconstrained thinker par excellence, holding that “men are not naturally enemies” and that the individual “is born free but everywhere is in chains.” Man is inherently rational in this perspective. With proper organization and education, universal peace is attainable, as is the eradication of poverty, violence, and disunion. John Kenneth Galbraith was a recent example of a thinker with an unconstrained view of human nature, according to Sowell.
In contrast, the constrained vision sees man as a beast, held in check by customs, traditions, and coercion. Adam Smith, the Federalist, and, especially, Edmund Burke epitomized the beliefs of the constrained view. Moral and intellectual limitations define the perspective of this outlook, which believes above all in the “general infirmities of human nature,” as Burke put it. War is ineradicable, as are class conflicts, hatred, and evil. The ideas of Friedrich Hayek represent the humility of the constrained view, writes Sowell.
For Sowell, these taxonomies go far in explaining political debates. “Conflicts of visions affect not only such large and enduring issues as economic planning versus laissez-faire, or judicial activism versus judicial restraint, but also such new issues as the most effective modes of Third World development, ‘affirmative action,’ or ‘comparable worth,’” he writes. “In each of these controversies, the assumptions of one vision lead logically to opposite conclusions from those of the other.”
Such is the principled case that Mr. Sowell proudly espouses. Mr. Smith argues that the reality is murkier, and that if you follow the actual positions that Sowell has taken over the years, you would have to look to other factors to account for his politics. For instance, when it came to the recent Iraq war, Mr. Sowell was among the hawks suppoting President George W. Bush's call for a regional democratic transformation, which hardly suggest a constrained vision of man. Interestingly, when our efforts turned into a debacle, Mr. Sowell was willing to change course and started speaking again of the limits of nation-building and the limits of human nature, but this suggests pragmatism more than principle, or as Smith writes, "Sowell does not so much subscribe to a political philosophy as adopt and abandon ideas whenever convenient to do so from a partisan standpoint."
Mr. Smith also raises gay politics to make his point. He brings out Sowell's statement from 2005: “What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.” As Smith counters, “The notion that homosexuality can be spread to those who don’t want it reveals a tremendously malleable view of human nature.”
The point is that the difference between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats is not that liberals are dreamy and Republican conservatives are hardnosed in reality. If you look at the issue of climate change, for instance, who is in hard denial? My own view is perhaps crass, which is thus: if you want to predict where Republicans will be on an issue, you only have to ask what do the millionaires and billionaires want, and that is where they will be. When it comes to social issues, such as gay rights and abortion and race, where it is not clear where the monied interests naturally lie, then we see a more cagey politcs in which Republicans try to secure popular support by providing a politcal home for popular prejudice (so long as it does not impinge on money interests). Perhaps this is a bit reductionist, but, yeah, I think that money goes far in explaining Republican politics, the politics of plutocracy. This is not to say that Democrats do not value wealth, but at least Democrats see other interests as being important too.
According to Sowell, American political debates follow two parallel lines tracking distinct visions of human nature. Those on the left have an unconstrained view of man, and those on the right have a constrained view. The unconstrained view holds that humans are perfectible creatures sullied only by their flawed social environments. With the proper education and social support, man can become an altruistic, even Christ-like being. Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the unconstrained thinker par excellence, holding that “men are not naturally enemies” and that the individual “is born free but everywhere is in chains.” Man is inherently rational in this perspective. With proper organization and education, universal peace is attainable, as is the eradication of poverty, violence, and disunion. John Kenneth Galbraith was a recent example of a thinker with an unconstrained view of human nature, according to Sowell.
In contrast, the constrained vision sees man as a beast, held in check by customs, traditions, and coercion. Adam Smith, the Federalist, and, especially, Edmund Burke epitomized the beliefs of the constrained view. Moral and intellectual limitations define the perspective of this outlook, which believes above all in the “general infirmities of human nature,” as Burke put it. War is ineradicable, as are class conflicts, hatred, and evil. The ideas of Friedrich Hayek represent the humility of the constrained view, writes Sowell.
For Sowell, these taxonomies go far in explaining political debates. “Conflicts of visions affect not only such large and enduring issues as economic planning versus laissez-faire, or judicial activism versus judicial restraint, but also such new issues as the most effective modes of Third World development, ‘affirmative action,’ or ‘comparable worth,’” he writes. “In each of these controversies, the assumptions of one vision lead logically to opposite conclusions from those of the other.”
Such is the principled case that Mr. Sowell proudly espouses. Mr. Smith argues that the reality is murkier, and that if you follow the actual positions that Sowell has taken over the years, you would have to look to other factors to account for his politics. For instance, when it came to the recent Iraq war, Mr. Sowell was among the hawks suppoting President George W. Bush's call for a regional democratic transformation, which hardly suggest a constrained vision of man. Interestingly, when our efforts turned into a debacle, Mr. Sowell was willing to change course and started speaking again of the limits of nation-building and the limits of human nature, but this suggests pragmatism more than principle, or as Smith writes, "Sowell does not so much subscribe to a political philosophy as adopt and abandon ideas whenever convenient to do so from a partisan standpoint."
Mr. Smith also raises gay politics to make his point. He brings out Sowell's statement from 2005: “What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.” As Smith counters, “The notion that homosexuality can be spread to those who don’t want it reveals a tremendously malleable view of human nature.”
The point is that the difference between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats is not that liberals are dreamy and Republican conservatives are hardnosed in reality. If you look at the issue of climate change, for instance, who is in hard denial? My own view is perhaps crass, which is thus: if you want to predict where Republicans will be on an issue, you only have to ask what do the millionaires and billionaires want, and that is where they will be. When it comes to social issues, such as gay rights and abortion and race, where it is not clear where the monied interests naturally lie, then we see a more cagey politcs in which Republicans try to secure popular support by providing a politcal home for popular prejudice (so long as it does not impinge on money interests). Perhaps this is a bit reductionist, but, yeah, I think that money goes far in explaining Republican politics, the politics of plutocracy. This is not to say that Democrats do not value wealth, but at least Democrats see other interests as being important too.
The Soul of Thomas Sowell
Jun. 19th, 2012 12:43 pmJordan Michael Smith takes on one of the icons of American conservatism, Thomas Sowell, one of the very few black intellectuals who will carry the right-wing political banner, if not the only black intellectual of any renown. Mr. Smith discusses Sowell's book "A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles":
According to Sowell, American political debates follow two parallel lines tracking distinct visions of human nature. Those on the left have an unconstrained view of man, and those on the right have a constrained view. The unconstrained view holds that humans are perfectible creatures sullied only by their flawed social environments. With the proper education and social support, man can become an altruistic, even Christ-like being. Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the unconstrained thinker par excellence, holding that “men are not naturally enemies” and that the individual “is born free but everywhere is in chains.” Man is inherently rational in this perspective. With proper organization and education, universal peace is attainable, as is the eradication of poverty, violence, and disunion. John Kenneth Galbraith was a recent example of a thinker with an unconstrained view of human nature, according to Sowell.
In contrast, the constrained vision sees man as a beast, held in check by customs, traditions, and coercion. Adam Smith, the Federalist, and, especially, Edmund Burke epitomized the beliefs of the constrained view. Moral and intellectual limitations define the perspective of this outlook, which believes above all in the “general infirmities of human nature,” as Burke put it. War is ineradicable, as are class conflicts, hatred, and evil. The ideas of Friedrich Hayek represent the humility of the constrained view, writes Sowell.
For Sowell, these taxonomies go far in explaining political debates. “Conflicts of visions affect not only such large and enduring issues as economic planning versus laissez-faire, or judicial activism versus judicial restraint, but also such new issues as the most effective modes of Third World development, ‘affirmative action,’ or ‘comparable worth,’” he writes. “In each of these controversies, the assumptions of one vision lead logically to opposite conclusions from those of the other.”
Such is the principled case that Mr. Sowell proudly espouses. Mr. Smith argues that the reality is murkier, and that if you follow the actual positions that Sowell has taken over the years, you would have to look to other factors to account for his politics. For instance, when it came to the recent Iraq war, Mr. Sowell was among the hawks suppoting President George W. Bush's call for a regional democratic transformation, which hardly suggest a constrained vision of man. Interestingly, when our efforts turned into a debacle, Mr. Sowell was willing to change course and started speaking again of the limits of nation-building and the limits of human nature, but this suggests pragmatism more than principle, or as Smith writes, "Sowell does not so much subscribe to a political philosophy as adopt and abandon ideas whenever convenient to do so from a partisan standpoint."
Mr. Smith also raises gay politics to make his point. He brings out Sowell's statement from 2005: “What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.” As Smith counters, “The notion that homosexuality can be spread to those who don’t want it reveals a tremendously malleable view of human nature.”
The point is that the difference between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats is not that liberals are dreamy and Republican conservatives are hardnosed in reality. If you look at the issue of climate change, for instance, who is in hard denial? My own view is perhaps crass, which is thus: if you want to predict where Republicans will be on an issue, you only have to ask what do the millionaires and billionaires want, and that is where they will be. When it comes to social issues, such as gay rights and abortion and race, where it is not clear where the monied interests naturally lie, then we see a more cagey politcs in which Republicans try to secure popular support by providing a politcal home for popular prejudice (so long as it does not impinge on money interests). Perhaps this is a bit reductionist, but, yeah, I think that money goes far in explaining Republican politics, the politics of plutocracy. This is not to say that Democrats do not value wealth, but at least Democrats see other interests as being important too.
According to Sowell, American political debates follow two parallel lines tracking distinct visions of human nature. Those on the left have an unconstrained view of man, and those on the right have a constrained view. The unconstrained view holds that humans are perfectible creatures sullied only by their flawed social environments. With the proper education and social support, man can become an altruistic, even Christ-like being. Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the unconstrained thinker par excellence, holding that “men are not naturally enemies” and that the individual “is born free but everywhere is in chains.” Man is inherently rational in this perspective. With proper organization and education, universal peace is attainable, as is the eradication of poverty, violence, and disunion. John Kenneth Galbraith was a recent example of a thinker with an unconstrained view of human nature, according to Sowell.
In contrast, the constrained vision sees man as a beast, held in check by customs, traditions, and coercion. Adam Smith, the Federalist, and, especially, Edmund Burke epitomized the beliefs of the constrained view. Moral and intellectual limitations define the perspective of this outlook, which believes above all in the “general infirmities of human nature,” as Burke put it. War is ineradicable, as are class conflicts, hatred, and evil. The ideas of Friedrich Hayek represent the humility of the constrained view, writes Sowell.
For Sowell, these taxonomies go far in explaining political debates. “Conflicts of visions affect not only such large and enduring issues as economic planning versus laissez-faire, or judicial activism versus judicial restraint, but also such new issues as the most effective modes of Third World development, ‘affirmative action,’ or ‘comparable worth,’” he writes. “In each of these controversies, the assumptions of one vision lead logically to opposite conclusions from those of the other.”
Such is the principled case that Mr. Sowell proudly espouses. Mr. Smith argues that the reality is murkier, and that if you follow the actual positions that Sowell has taken over the years, you would have to look to other factors to account for his politics. For instance, when it came to the recent Iraq war, Mr. Sowell was among the hawks suppoting President George W. Bush's call for a regional democratic transformation, which hardly suggest a constrained vision of man. Interestingly, when our efforts turned into a debacle, Mr. Sowell was willing to change course and started speaking again of the limits of nation-building and the limits of human nature, but this suggests pragmatism more than principle, or as Smith writes, "Sowell does not so much subscribe to a political philosophy as adopt and abandon ideas whenever convenient to do so from a partisan standpoint."
Mr. Smith also raises gay politics to make his point. He brings out Sowell's statement from 2005: “What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.” As Smith counters, “The notion that homosexuality can be spread to those who don’t want it reveals a tremendously malleable view of human nature.”
The point is that the difference between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats is not that liberals are dreamy and Republican conservatives are hardnosed in reality. If you look at the issue of climate change, for instance, who is in hard denial? My own view is perhaps crass, which is thus: if you want to predict where Republicans will be on an issue, you only have to ask what do the millionaires and billionaires want, and that is where they will be. When it comes to social issues, such as gay rights and abortion and race, where it is not clear where the monied interests naturally lie, then we see a more cagey politcs in which Republicans try to secure popular support by providing a politcal home for popular prejudice (so long as it does not impinge on money interests). Perhaps this is a bit reductionist, but, yeah, I think that money goes far in explaining Republican politics, the politics of plutocracy. This is not to say that Democrats do not value wealth, but at least Democrats see other interests as being important too.
“And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn’t good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It’s a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It’s picturesque & quaint. And damn it to hell, if I don’t be quiet I’ll never get that Botany done!”
-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals 1950
And thus concludes “First Snow”. It is a pleasant counterpoint to our own first of summer, the beginning of Texas hell.
-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals 1950
And thus concludes “First Snow”. It is a pleasant counterpoint to our own first of summer, the beginning of Texas hell.
“And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn’t good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It’s a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It’s picturesque & quaint. And damn it to hell, if I don’t be quiet I’ll never get that Botany done!”
-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals 1950
And thus concludes “First Snow”. It is a pleasant counterpoint to our own first of summer, the beginning of Texas hell.
-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals 1950
And thus concludes “First Snow”. It is a pleasant counterpoint to our own first of summer, the beginning of Texas hell.