By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
- George Carlin
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Stupidity
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
- George Carlin
Our species
If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
- George Carlin
Friday, 20 June 2008
Colmar and Pithara - A Study in Difference and Sameness
You know, I was looking at the photo's of Colmar, the medieval town in Northern France (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=colmar,+france&ie=UTF8&ll=48.080679,7.359972&spn=2.429462,4.707642&z=8 - just south of Strasbourg and north of Basel) and I was immediately struck by how it would be to live there - what it would be like.
Firstly, because it appears to be so different from living in
Secondly, by the beauty (old-worldly, etc, etc) of the buildings, and the way that they are all put together - cobble-stone streets and small shops, and three story height and nothing more - etc etc.
What is it like to live in a place where one has to participate in the place in a certain manner - walking and riding, rather than driving. And arranging lifestyle in that manner. A closer and more intimate way of living, rather than driving quickly from one place to another, parking, doing one's business, and then driving back again. More connected to what is around one - rather than the inside of a car.
I was struck by this because of the recent move to inner city living rather than purely suburban living - with the consequent change in behavioural patterns relating to travel and transport and connection to the rest of the community. This was a GOOD move - and I can see how it may relate to living in a place such as
But the thing that I REALLY wanted to write about was the fact that medieval towns like Colmar have not only survived, but are vibrant and a part of the whole living in Europe experience - and are maintained as such, as part of the lifestyle of the place - rather than simply being pulled down and destroyed, or left to rot.
There are a whole range of similar towns etc in
The houses, the streets, the idiosyncracies which make the place so interesting.
It struck me that we have little towns in WA that have a certain element of the same character. They have their own ambience, their own idiosyncracies, which lend a unique style to the experience of being in that town.
Except that most of the towns like that in WA are really slowly deteriorating into a state of decrepitude. There are some that are surviving, but losing their individual character as they move forward into survival - they are simply small versions of a larger urban and suburban sprawl (a la the American model). The really little towns are struggling. There is no real equivalent to
And, to me, that is a real loss - since the little WA towns have their own character, so different from elsewhere in the world, which provides a unique lens on the experience of human habitation - a uniqueness which offers something to the whole vitality of life on earth - which will gradually fade away (in a manner in which medieval towns in Europe have not really faded away).
A touch of sadness at this realisation - heightened by an awareness that there is little which can be done about the situation.
A minor example of such a situation would be Pithara, where I grew up.
This Picasa album - http://picasaweb.google.com/sutherlandswa/20071013Pithara - has some snapshots taken during its centenary celebrations on 13 October 2007 - note the huge difference in age between Pithara and
Is there any beauty in the snapshots of Pithara, its buildings and locations?
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Cemeteries Of London - Coldplay
Cemeteries Of
- Coldplay
At night they would go walking ‘till the breaking of the day,
The morning is for sleeping…
Through the dark streets they go searching to see God in their own way,
Save the nighttime for your weeping…
Your weeping…
Singing la lalalalala la lé…
And the night over
So we rode down to the river where the toiling ghosts spring,
For their curses to be broken…
We’d go underneath the arches where the witches are in the saying,
There are ghost towns in the ocean…
The ocean…
Singing la lalalalala la lé…
And the night over
God is in the houses and God is in my head… and all the cemeteries in
I see God come in my garden, but I don’t know what he said,
For my heart it wasn’t open…
Not open…
Singing la lalalalala la lé…
And the night over
Singing la lalalalala la lé…
There’s no light over
http://www.metrolyrics.com
http://teanaelf.com/cemeteries
CHORDS & LYRICS
some lyrics may be incorrect
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
Verse 1:
----D--------------------Dm---
At night they would go walking til the
--C-------------Dm
breaking of the day
-----Dm
the morning is for sleeping
-------------D----------------
through the dark streets they go searching
--------C---------------Dm
to see god in their own way
------------Dm
save the nighttime for your weeping
------Dm
your weeping
Chorus:
______________________________
--------Dm----------C------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah
---------Bb--------Am-------Dm
And the night over London Lay
Verse 3:
______________________________
------Dm-----------------F----
So we rode down to the river where the
---Am------------Dm
toiling ghosts spring
-----------Dm-----------F--Am
For their curses to be broken
------Dm---------------F------
We go underneath the arches where
------Am--------------Dm
the witches are in, saying
-----------Dm-----------------
There are ghost towns in the ocean
------Dm
the ocean
Chorus:
______________________________
---------Dm----------C------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah
---------Bb--------Am------Dm
And the night over London lay
Verse 3:
______________________________
Dm--------------F---------Am--
God is in the houses and god is in my head
--------Dm-------------F----Am
All the cemeteries in London
---------Dm------------F------
I see god come in my garden but i don't
--------------Dm
know what he said
--------Dm-------------F--Am
For my heart it wasn't open
-----Dm
Not open
Chorus:
______________________________
--------Dm---------C-------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah
---------Bb--------Am-------Dm
And the night over London Lay
--------Dm---------C-------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah
------------Bb---------Am----
There's no light over London today
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.
The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.
-
Monday, 16 June 2008
trying to delve through what is happening now to discern the bigger picture and longer term aspects of being amongst the happenings
We do seem to be living through a period of turbulence - I am sure of it.
The most interesting thing is that everyone goes about their daily lives, living as best they can, as if nothing will be that different tomorrow.
We probably all know that it is probably going to be different tomorrow, and maybe we think we should do something, except that the momentum of daily life means that one simply keeps going, and the directional changes are minute (yet felt over the long term). Rather like the massive aircraft carrier or cruise ship. Indeed, the prevailing metaphor for many people would be that we are on a massive cruise ship (the whole earth), cruising along in luxury, or at least, relative comfort, not quite knowing where the cruise ship is really going and not really having any control over where it goes - apart from where it theoretically has said it is going (when we signed up and paid our money). Now, let's not try to push the metaphor too much, but ...
In some ways, it is a little like being human overall. We all know we are going to die. Some of us are confronted with it sooner rather than later. But we continue to live our life as we have made it, or was we think we want it, rather than radically change everything, simply because death sits on our shoulder. Maybe it is BECAUSE death sits on our shoulder that we continue to live our life as we want it, or as best we think we can. We all know that death is certain and immutable - so, just live.
So, maybe, it is almost the same in relation to the mega-events of the world at the moment, a dispersed reflection of the micro-world of each individual. Our own death far outweighs the imperative of any other "death" (of others, of the world as a whole), and any other "deaths" are reflective of our own death, thus, in the face of such a certainty, we live our lives as best we can and want.
Which is not to say that things don't change.
As I said, it is as best we can and want.
Sometimes as best we can is hard and horrid.
Hence some of the stories which people are now starting to recount - about how life is returning to a hard way - like it used to be before.
And hence, the fear that one has for one's loved ones. How hard will it be for them? What can one do to help them?
Who knows - sometimes lots, sometimes nothing - sometimes it is simply thinking of them and nothing more to be done. Who knows.
Mind you, little things do happen - as you have said - and the evolution of humanity continues - as much as it ever has.
All the writing of all the doomsayers (or even people simply "reporting") tends to disregard the pure adaptability of humanity. Why are there so many of us - because we can adapt relatively well - maybe better than anything else apart from certain bacteria and other such "creatures" (actually, lots of things - but they are all rather different from our mammalian structure).
So, lots of adaptations will lead to a new world - no doubt about that.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Jean-François Lyotard: Introduction to The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/pm/lyotard-introd.htm
Jean-François Lyotard: Introduction to The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
The object of this study is the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. I have decided to use the word postmodern to describe that condition. The word is in current use on the American continent among sociologists and critics; it designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts. The present study will place these transformations in the context of the crisis of narratives.
Science has always been in conflict with narratives. Judged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables. But to the extent that science does not restrict itself to stating useful regularities and seeks the truth, it is obliged to legitimate the rules of its own game. It then produces a discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse called philosophy. I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth. For example, the rule of consensus between the sender and addressee of a statement with truth-value is deemed acceptable if it is cast in terms of a possible unanimity between rational minds: this is the Enlightenment narrative, in which the hero of knowledge works toward a good ethico-political end -- universal peace. As can be seen from this example, if a metanarrative implying a philosophy of history is used to legitimate knowledge, questions are raised concerning the validity of the institutions governing the social bond: these must be legitimated as well. Thus justice is consigned to the grand narrative in the same way as truth.
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements--narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Conveyed within each cloud are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind. Each of us lives at the inter section of many of these. However, we do not necessarily establish stable language combinations, and the properties of the ones we do establish are not necessarily communicable.
Thus the society of the future falls less within the province of a Newtonian anthropology (such as structuralism or systems theory) than a pragmatics of language particles. There are many different language games a heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise to institutions in patches-local determinism.
The decision makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to input/output matrices, following a logic which implies that their elements are commensurable and that the whole is determinable. They allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on its optimizing the system's performance -- efficiency. The application of this criterion to all of our games necessarily entails a certain level of terror, whether soft or hard: be operational (that is, commensurable) or disappear.
The logic of maximum performance is no doubt inconsistent in many ways, particularly with respect to contradiction in the socioeconomic field: it demands both less work (to lower production costs) and more (to lessen the social burden of the idle population). But our incredulity is now such that we no longer expect salvation to rise from these inconsistencies, as did Marx.
Still, the postmodern condition is as much a stranger to disenchantment as it is to the blind positivist of delegitimation. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? The operativity criterion is technological; it has no relevance for judging what is true or just. Is legitimacy to be found in consensus obtained through discussion, as Jurgen Habermas thinks? Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And invention is always born of dissension. Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy.
Here is the question: is a legitimation of the social bond, a just society, feasible in terms of a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity? What would such a paradox be?
The text that follows is an occasional one. It is a report on knowledge in the most highly developed societies and was presented to the Conseil des Universities of the government of Quebec at the request of its president. I would like to thank him for his kindness in allowing its publication.
It remains to be raid that the author of the report is a philosopher, not an expert. The latter knows what he knows and what he does not know: the former does not. One concludes, the other questions -two very different language games. I combine them here with the result that neither quite succeeds.
The philosopher at least can console himself with the thought that the formal and pragmatic analysis of certain philosophical and ethico-political discourses of legitimation, which underlies the report, will subsequently see the light of day. The report will have served to introduce that analysis from a somewhat sociologizing slant, one that truncates but at the same time situates it.
Such as it is, I dedicate this report to the Institut Polytechnique de Philosophie of the Universite de Paris VIII (Vincennes)--at this very postmodern moment that finds the University nearing what may be its end, while the Institute may just be beginning.
Also see http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/pm/
Jean-François Lyotard: Introduction to The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
The object of this study is the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. I have decided to use the word postmodern to describe that condition. The word is in current use on the American continent among sociologists and critics; it designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts. The present study will place these transformations in the context of the crisis of narratives.
Science has always been in conflict with narratives. Judged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables. But to the extent that science does not restrict itself to stating useful regularities and seeks the truth, it is obliged to legitimate the rules of its own game. It then produces a discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse called philosophy. I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth. For example, the rule of consensus between the sender and addressee of a statement with truth-value is deemed acceptable if it is cast in terms of a possible unanimity between rational minds: this is the Enlightenment narrative, in which the hero of knowledge works toward a good ethico-political end -- universal peace. As can be seen from this example, if a metanarrative implying a philosophy of history is used to legitimate knowledge, questions are raised concerning the validity of the institutions governing the social bond: these must be legitimated as well. Thus justice is consigned to the grand narrative in the same way as truth.
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements--narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Conveyed within each cloud are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind. Each of us lives at the inter section of many of these. However, we do not necessarily establish stable language combinations, and the properties of the ones we do establish are not necessarily communicable.
Thus the society of the future falls less within the province of a Newtonian anthropology (such as structuralism or systems theory) than a pragmatics of language particles. There are many different language games a heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise to institutions in patches-local determinism.
The decision makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to input/output matrices, following a logic which implies that their elements are commensurable and that the whole is determinable. They allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on its optimizing the system's performance -- efficiency. The application of this criterion to all of our games necessarily entails a certain level of terror, whether soft or hard: be operational (that is, commensurable) or disappear.
The logic of maximum performance is no doubt inconsistent in many ways, particularly with respect to contradiction in the socioeconomic field: it demands both less work (to lower production costs) and more (to lessen the social burden of the idle population). But our incredulity is now such that we no longer expect salvation to rise from these inconsistencies, as did Marx.
Still, the postmodern condition is as much a stranger to disenchantment as it is to the blind positivist of delegitimation. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? The operativity criterion is technological; it has no relevance for judging what is true or just. Is legitimacy to be found in consensus obtained through discussion, as Jurgen Habermas thinks? Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And invention is always born of dissension. Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy.
Here is the question: is a legitimation of the social bond, a just society, feasible in terms of a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity? What would such a paradox be?
The text that follows is an occasional one. It is a report on knowledge in the most highly developed societies and was presented to the Conseil des Universities of the government of Quebec at the request of its president. I would like to thank him for his kindness in allowing its publication.
It remains to be raid that the author of the report is a philosopher, not an expert. The latter knows what he knows and what he does not know: the former does not. One concludes, the other questions -two very different language games. I combine them here with the result that neither quite succeeds.
The philosopher at least can console himself with the thought that the formal and pragmatic analysis of certain philosophical and ethico-political discourses of legitimation, which underlies the report, will subsequently see the light of day. The report will have served to introduce that analysis from a somewhat sociologizing slant, one that truncates but at the same time situates it.
Such as it is, I dedicate this report to the Institut Polytechnique de Philosophie of the Universite de Paris VIII (Vincennes)--at this very postmodern moment that finds the University nearing what may be its end, while the Institute may just be beginning.
Also see http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/pm/
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