Hume on Henry IV and V (and Notes)

From Hume's History of England

Shakespeare also condenses Henry IV and Henry V together, making both parts of Henry IV really about Henry V's journey to maturity -- this time taking a great deal of liberties with the facts, moreso than in Richard II.  

Henry IV 

As a usurper, Henry IV could never expect much stability in his reign -- an "unruly aristocracy" indeed.

Henry, in his very first parliament, had reason to see the danger attending that station which he had assumed, and the obstacles which he would meet with in governing an unruly aristocracy, always divided by faction, and at present inflamed with the resentments consequent on such recent convulsions. The peers, on their assembling, broke out into violent animosities against each other; forty gauntlets, the pledges of furious battle, were thrown on the floor of the house by noblemen who gave mutual challenges; and “liar” and “traitor” resounded from all quarters. The king had so much authority with these doughty champions, as to prevent all the combats which they threatened; but he was not able to bring them to a proper composure, or to an amicable disposition towards each other.

More religion talk -- he might have had different private principles, but looked to Church support to bolster his reign

While a subject, he [Henry IV] was believed to have strongly imbibed all the principles of his father, the duke of Lancaster, and to have adopted the prejudices which the Lollards inspired against the abuses of the established church: but finding, himself possessed of the throne by so precarious a title, he thought superstition a necessary implement of public authority; and he resolved, by every expedient, to pay court to the clergy. There were hitherto no penal laws enacted against heresy; an indulgence which had proceeded, not from a spirit of toleration in the Romish church, but from the ignorance and simplicity of the people, which had rendered them unfit either for starting or receiving any new or curious doctrines, and which needed not to be restrained by rigorous penalties. But when the learning and genius of Wickliffe had once broken, in some measure, the fetters of prejudice, the ecclesiastics called aloud for the punishment of his disciples; and the king, who was very little scrupulous in his conduct, was easily induced to sacrifice his principles to his interest, and to acquire the favor of the church by that most effectual method, the gratifying of their vengeance against opponents. He engaged the parliament to pass a law for that purpose: it was enacted, that when any heretic, who relapsed, or refused to abjure his opinions, was delivered over to the secular arm by the bishop or his commissaries, he should be committed to the flames by the civil magistrate before the whole people.

He even had to look toward the House of Commons to try to cobble together legitimacy.  (This may be too big of a quote to pull, but the history of Parliamentarianism is a pet interest of mine). 

During the greater part of this reign, the king was obliged to court popularity; and the house of commons, sensible of their own importance, began to assume powers which had not usually been exercised by their predecessors. In the first year of Henry, they procured a law, that no judge, in concurring with any iniquitous measure, should be excused by pleading the orders of the king, or even the danger of his own life from the menaces of the sovereign.  In the second year, they insisted on maintaining the practice of not granting any supply before they received an answer to their petitions, which was a tacit manner of bargaining with the prince. In the fifth year, they desired the king to remove from his household four persons who had displeased them, among whom was his own confessor, and Henry, though he told them that he knew of no offence which these men had committed, yet, in order to gratify them, complied with their request.  In the sixth year, they voted the king supplies, but appointed treasurers of their own, to see the money disbursed for the purposes intended, and required them to deliver in their accounts to the house.  In the eighth year, they proposed, for the regulation of the government and household, thirty important articles, which were all agreed to; and they even obliged all the members of council, all the judges, and all the officers of the household, to swear to the observance of them. The abridger of the records remarks the unusual liberties taken by the speaker and the house during this period.  But the great authority of the commons was but a temporary advantage, arising from the present situation. In a subsequent parliament, when the speaker made his customary application to the throne for liberty of speech, the king, having now overcome all his domestic difficulties, plainly told him that he would have no novelties introduced, and would enjoy his prerogatives. But on the whole, the limitations of the government seem to have been more sensibly felt, and more carefully maintained, by Henry than by any of his predecessors.

Henry V

He drastically out-conquered what could be absorbed.  The texture of legitimacy in these times is well illustrated in this passage. 

Such was the tenor of this famous treaty; a treaty which, as nothing but the most violent animosity could dictate it, so nothing but the power of the sword could carry into execution. It is hard to say whether its consequences, had it taken effect, would have proved more pernicious to England or to France. It must have reduced the former kingdom to the rank of a province: it would have entirely disjointed the succession of the latter, and have brought on the destruction of every descendant of the royal family; as the houses of Orleans, Anjou, Alençon, Brittany, Bourbon, and of Burgundy itself, whose titles were preferable to that of the English princes, would on that account have been exposed to perpetual jealousy and persecution from the sovereign. There was even a palpable deficiency in Henry’s claim, which no art could palliate. For, besides the insuperable objections to which Edward III.‘s pretensions were exposed, he was not heir to that monarch: if female succession were admitted, the right had devolved on the house of Mortimer: allowing that Richard II. was a tyrant, and that Henry IV.‘s merits in deposing him were so great towards the English, as to justify that nation in placing him on the throne, Richard had nowise offended France, and his rival had merited nothing of that kingdom: it could not possibly be pretended, that the crown of France was become an appendage to that of England; and that a prince, who by any means got possession of the latter, was, without further question, entitled to the former. So that, on the whole, it must be allowed that Henry’s claim to France was, if possible, still more unintelligible than the title by which his father had mounted the throne of England.

Parliament did not want to fully financially support this project. 

The authority which naturally attends success, procured from the English parliament a subsidy of a fifteenth; but, if we may judge by the scantiness of the supply, the nation was nowise sanguine on their king’s victories; and in proportion as the prospect of their union with France became nearer, they began to open their eyes, and to see the dangerous consequences with which that event must necessarily be attended. It was fortunate for Henry that he had other resources, besides pecuniary supplies from his native subjects.

Hume on Richard II (and notes)

From Hume's History of England

It started well enough . . . 

THE parliament which was summoned soon after the king’s accession, was both elected and assembled in tranquillity; and the great change, from a sovereign of consummate wisdom and experience to a boy of eleven years of age, was not immediately felt by the people. The habits of order and obedience which the barons had been taught, during the long reign of Edward, still influenced them; and the authority of the king’s three uncles, the dukes of Lancaster, York, and Glocester, sufficed to repress, for a time, the turbulent spirit to which that order, in a weak reign, was so often subject. The dangerous ambition, too, of these princes themselves was checked, by the plain and undeniable title of Richard, by the declaration of it made in parliament, and by the affectionate regard which the people bore to the memory of his father, and which was naturally transferred to the young sovereign upon the throne. The different characters, also, of these three princes rendered them a counterpoise to each other; and it was natural to expect, that any dangerous designs which might be formed by one brother, would meet with opposition from the others

The House of Commons exerting itself (which was still new at the time): 

But as Edward, though he had fixed the succession to the crown, had taken no care to establish a plan of government during the minority of his grandson, it behoved the parliament to supply this defect; and the house of commons distinguished themselves by taking the lead on the occasion. This house, which had been rising to consideration during the whole course of the late reign, naturally received an accession of power during the minority; and as it was now becoming a scene of business, the members chose for the first time a speaker, who might preserve order in their debates, and maintain those forms which are requisite in all numerous assembles. . . they were still too sensible of their great inferiority to assume at first any immediate share in the administration of government, or the care of the king’s person. They were content to apply by petition to the lords for that purpose, and desire them both to appoint a council of nine, who might direct the public business, and to choose men of virtuous life and conversation, who might inspect the conduct and education of the young prince. 

Still dealing with the Barons as perpetrators of great injustice upon the land:

The commons, as they acquired more courage, ventured to proceed a step farther in their applications. They presented a petition, in which they prayed the king to check the prevailing custom among the barons of forming illegal confederacies, and supporting each other, as well as men of inferior rank, in the violations of law and justice. They received from the throne a general and an obliging answer to this petition: but another part of their application, that all the great officers should, during the king’s minority, be appointed by parliament, which seemed to require the concurrence of the commons, as well as that of the upper house, in the nomination, was not complied with: the lords alone assumed the power of appointing these officers. The commons tacitly acquiesced in the choice; and thought that, for, the present, they themselves had proceeded a sufficient length, if they but advanced their pretensions, though rejected, of interposing in these more important matters of state.

The times, they were a' changing, and one John Ball.

The faint dawn of the arts and of good government in that age, had excited the minds of the populace, in different states of Europe, to wish for a better condition, and to murmur against those chains which the laws enacted by the haughty nobility and gentry, had so long imposed upon them. The commotions of the people in Flanders, the mutiny of the peasants in France, were the natural effects of this growing spirit of independence; and the report of these events being brought into England, where personal slavery, as we learn from Froissard,[*] was more general than in any other country in Europe, had prepared the minds of the multitude for an insurrection. One John Ball, also, a seditious preacher, who affected low popularity, went about the country and inculcated on his audience the principles of the first origin of mankind from one common stock, their equal right to liberty and to all the goods of nature, the tyranny of artificial distinctions, and the abuses which had arisen from the degradation of the more considerable part of the species, and the aggrandizement of a few insolent rulers.[**] These doctrines, so agreeable to the populace, and so conformable to the ideas of primitive equality which are engraven in the hearts of all men, were greedily received by the multitude, and scattered the sparks of that sedition which the present tax raised into a conflagration.

Well that John Ball thing didn't go too well.  

To read an account of Richard II's fall that seems to hold up surprising well historically, check out Shakespeare's play.  For his part, Hume uses this moment in history to compare favorably with his era of constitutional monarchy.  

. . . All the circumstances of this event, compared to those which attended the late revolution in 1688, show the difference between a great and civilized nation, deliberately vindicating its established privileges, and a turbulent and barbarous aristocracy, plunging headlong from the extremes of one faction into those of another. This noble freedom of the bishop of Carlisle, instead of being applauded, was not so much as tolerated: he was immediately arrested by order of the duke of Lancaster, and sent a prisoner to the abbey of St. Albans. No further debate was attempted: thirty-three long articles of charge were, in one meeting, voted against Richard; and voted unanimously by the same peers and prelates who, a little before, had voluntarily and unanimously authorized those very acts of violence of which they now complained. 

More on England moving away from the Catholic church generations before the reformation.  

. . . There was a sensible decay of ecclesiastical authority during this period. The disgust which the laity had received from the numerous usurpations both of the court of Rome and of their own clergy, had very much weaned the kingdom from superstition; and strong symptoms appeared, from time to time, of a general desire to shake off the bondage of the Romish church. In the committee of eighteen, to whom Richard’s last parliament delegated their whole power, there is not the name of one ecclesiastic to be found; a neglect which is almost without example, while the Catholic religion subsisted in England. 

A marvelous passage on the type anarchy that existed under the Barons: 

This preamble contains a true picture of the state of the kingdom. The laws had been so feebly executed, even during the long, active, and vigilant reign of Edward III., that no subject could trust to their protection. Men openly associated themselves, under the patronage of some great baron, for their mutual defence. They wore public badges, by which their confederacy was distinguished. They supported each other in all quarrels, iniquities, extortions, murders, robberies, and other crimes. Their chief was more their sovereign than the king himself; and their own band was more connected with them than their country. Hence the perpetual turbulence, disorders, factions, and civil wars of those times: hence the small regard paid to a character, or the opinion of the public: hence the large discretionary prerogatives of the crown, and the danger which might have ensued from the too great limitation of them. If the king had possessed no arbitrary powers, while all the nobles assumed and exercised them, there must have ensued an absolute anarchy in the state.

I am still in the quiet game

If you came here because you are still in an ongoing game: Congrats for Still Being In!  Don't give up, keep playing. . . Don't be fooled by any rewards promised to the winner, either.  Peace and quiet is it's own reward.  When we play the Quiet Game, we all win. 

If you're a kid, I don't know if there is all that much on this website for you.  I never thought about it before, but I guess this really site is for grown-ups, and in many ways too serious.  My advice is to stay creative and realize noise is often a bigger enemy to creativity than quiet.  

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Explanation:

It appears that the internet search "I am still in the quiet game" does not yield any results.   I thought -- shucks, why can't I fill that gap?  

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This is a Mr. 14-19-28-47-61 project. 

Hume and Edward III (and Notes)

From Hume's History of England.

There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs, which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III., nor one where the domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that kind of mixed government, which was then established in England. The struggles with regard to the validity and authority of the Great Charter were now over: the king was acknowledged to lie under some limitations: Edward himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by favorites, nor led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing could be more essential to his interests than to keep on good terms with his people: yet, on the whole, it appears that the government at best was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims, or bounded by any certain undisputed rights, which in practice were regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another, the commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth. All these systems of government were opposite and incompatible: each of them prevailed in its turn, as incidents were favorable to it: a great prince rendered the monarchical power predominant; the weakness of a king gave reins to the aristocracy; a superstitious age saw the clergy triumphant; the people, for whom chiefly government was instituted, and who chiefly deserve consideration, were the weakest of the whole. 

In contrast to his father, Edward II, Edward III acquired the skill set necessary to thrive in his position.   His conquests of the French sat the course of that long-standing rivalry.  

An interesting point is that as a conqueror he had to give more concessions to the people -- the feudal system not providing for any efficient means of taxation and supplying forces. 

It is remarked by an elegant historian, that conquerors though usually the bane of bunian kind, proved often, in those feudal limes, the most indulgent of sovereigns: they stood most in need of supplies from their people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit to the necessary impositions, they were obliged to make them some compensation, by equitable laws and popular concessions.

This remark is, in some measure, though imperfectly, justified by the conduct of Edward III. He took no steps of moment without consulting his parliament, and obtaining their approbation, which he afterwards pleaded as a reason for their supporting his measures.  The parliament, therefore, rose into greater consideration during his reign, and acquired more regular authority, than in any former time; and even the house of commons, which, during turbulent and factious periods, was naturally depressed by the greater power of the crown and barons, began to appear of some weight in the constitution.

Implications about the Great Charter (which we, more pretentious than Hume, refer to the Magna Carta) and how legal precedents were looked at during feudalism. 

Edward granted above twenty parliamentary confirmations of the Great Charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of his great indulgence to the people, and his tender regard for their liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims of Edward’s reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if the Great Charter had not been frequently violated, the parliament would never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other purpose, than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular government during those ages, that a statute which had been enacted some years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose, force by time, and needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and tenor.

Edwards III's need gain support (and competence in winning it) even extended to trying to placate the House of Commons -- and one would imagine real issues facing the non-nobility.  And so: 

The nobility were brought to give their promise in parliament, that they would not avow retain, or support any felon or breaker of the law; yet this, engagement, which we may wonder to see exacted from men of their rank, was never regarded by them. The commons make continual complaints of the multitude of robberies, murders, rapes, and other disorders, which, they say, were become numberless in every part of the kingdom, and which they always ascribe to the protection that the criminals received from the great.

So much for chivalry.  The real truth is that barons made use of criminals to destabilize rivals, or even as an extra income source.

Next, Hume offers some commentary about the clergy: 

There were strong reasons, which might discourage the kings of England, in those ages, from bestowing the chief offices of the crown on prelates and other ecclesiastical persons. These men had so intrenched themselves in privileges and immunities, and so openly challenged an exemption from all secular jurisdiction, that no civil penalty could be inflicted on them for any malversation in office; and as even treason itself was declared to be no canonical offence, nor was allowed to be a sufficient reason for deprivation or other spiritual censures, that order of men had insured to themselves an almost total impunity, and were not bound by any political law or statute. But, on the other hand, there were many peculiar causes which favored their promotion. Besides that they possessed almost all the learning of the age, and were best qualified for civil employments, the prelates enjoyed equal dignity with the greatest barons, and gave weight by their personal authority, to the powers intrusted with them; while, at the same time, they did not endanger the crown by accumulating wealth or influence in their families, and were restrained, by the decency of their character, from that open rapine and violence so often practised by the nobles. These motives had induced Edward, as well as many of his predecessors, to intrust the chief departments of government in the hands of ecclesiastics; at the hazard of seeing them disown his authority as soon as it was turned against them.

Speaking of the church, Hume reports that the English already had a growing "anti-Rome" streak even at this early date: 

The laity at this time seem to have been extremely prejudiced against the papal power, and even somewhat against their own clergy, because of their connections with the Roman pontiff. . . Men who talked in this strain, were not far from the reformation: but Edward did not think proper to second all this zeal. Though he passed the statute of provisors, he took little care of its execution; and the parliament made frequent complaints of his negligence on this head.  He was content with having reduced such of the Romish ecclesiastics as possessed revenues in England, to depend entirely upon him by means of that statute.

Interesting aside about "the Flemish," of the time, at which I hit the books (searched Wikipedia) and think Hume means Ghent operating as a city-state: 

As the Flemings were the first people in the northern parts of Europe that cultivated arts and manufactures, the lower ranks of men among them had risen to a degree of opulence unknown elsewhere to those of their station in that barbarous age; had acquired privileges and independence, and began to emerge from that state of vassalage, or rather of slavery, into which the common people had been universally thrown by the feudal institutions. It was probably difficult for them to bring their sovereign and their nobility to conform themselves to the principles of law and civil government, so much neglected in every other country: it was impossible for them to confine themselves within the proper bounds in their opposition and resentment against any instance of tyranny: they had risen in tumults: had insulted the nobles: had chased their earl into France; and delivering themselves over to the guidance of a seditious leader, had been guilty of all that insolence and disorder to which the thoughtless and enraged populace are so much inclined, wherever they are unfortunate enough to be their own masters.

This seems to fit the historical pattern of republic that breaks down into personal rule:

Their present leader was James d’Arteville, a brewer in Ghent,who governed them with a more absolute sway than had ever been assumed by any of their lawful sovereigns: he placed and displaced the magistrates at pleasure: he was accompanied by a guard, who, on the least signal from him, instantly assassinated any man that happened to fall under his displeasure: all the cities of Flanders were full of his spies: and it was immediate death to give him the smallest umbrage: the few nobles who remained in the country, lived in continual terror from his violence: he seized the estates of all those whom he had either banished or murdered; and bestowing part on their wives and children, converted the remainder to his own use.  Such were the first effects that Europe saw of popular violence, after having groaned, during so many ages, under monarchical and aristocratical tyranny.

Hume on Edward II and Notes

As I began my project of brushing up on history, I thought I would begin with the time of the printing press and move forward from there.  I came across Hume's History of England and thought that it seemed like as good of a place to start as any.  The book is split into chapters based on who was the reigning monarch a the time.  With each king I started on, I saw that there was some necessary information to pick on from the reign before -- Henry VII needed to be understood in terms of Richard III, etc -- so I worked backward, scanning the first few paragraphs, until I got to Edward II.  And though I could have been interested in how his father's reign seemed to work out well, it was much more fun to start with a disaster. 

Edward II was a weak king who angered his nobles by placing all of his attention in a series of "favorites."  We are too far back to make any real pronouncement as to whether these were homosexual relationships or closer to what we'd call in the contemporary vernacular "bromances," but in any case the rule the nobles revolted, and his queen, Isabella, succeeded in deposing him and installed his son Edward III as the King with her and one of her own "favorites" (whom it is reported she lived with for a while away from the King) as the regents. 

The way Hume writes makes some things clear about the texture of society in a hereditary monarchy. A particularly interesting bit after the queen had succeeded at usurping her husband: 

But it was impossible that the people, however corrupted by the barbarity of the times, still further inflamed by faction, could forever remain insensible to the voice of nature. Here a wife had first deserted, next invaded, and then dethroned her husband; had made her minor son an instrument in this unnatural treatment of his father; had, by lying pretences, seduced the nation into a rebellion against their sovereign had pushed them into violence and cruelties that had dishonored them: all those circumstances were so odious in themselves, and formed such a complicated scene of guilt, that the least reflection sufficed to open men’s eyes, and make them detest this flagrant infringement of every public and private duty. The suspicions which soon arose of Isabella’s criminal commerce with Mortimer, the proofs which daily broke out of this part of her guilt, increased the general abhorrence against her; and her hypocrisy, in publicly bewailing with tears the king’s unhappy fate was not able to deceive even the most stupid and most prejudiced of her adherents.

Let's give extra attention to that first sentence: 

But it was impossible that the people, however corrupted by the barbarity of the times, still further inflamed by faction, could forever remain insensible to the voice of nature. 

There is so much going on in this one sentence that is worth discussing.  The first is a term worth challenging; when Hume says "the people"  either is making a real mistake in glossing over the reality -- which is entirely possible for the greatest of minds -- or he means something far different than we do by "the people."  The events he is writing about here occurred in the late 1320s.  Again, no printing press.  So, in this context, public opinion is a very small network of people in proportion to the general populace.  But notice how disorderly.  This small band of feudal elites is "inflamed by faction" and as we move through the story of this era, it is clear to see how close to anarchy they can let society move.  So contra the neo-reactionaries, it is not the forms of monarchy that are most important in preventing disorder, but rule of law and the strength of the state.

The story goes on: 

The suspicions which soon arose of Isabella’s criminal commerce with Mortimer, the proofs which daily broke out of this part of her guilt, increased the general abhorrence against her; and her hypocrisy, in publicly bewailing with tears the king’s unhappy fate, was not able to deceive even the most stupid and most prejudiced of her adherents. In proportion as the queen became the object of public hatred the dethroned monarch, who had been the victim of her crimes and her ambition, was regarded with pity, with friendship, with veneration: and men became sensible, that all his misconduct, which faction had so much exaggerated, had been owing to the unavoidable weakness, not to any voluntary depravity, of his character.

After describing the events of a monarch's reign, Hume's book then takes a step back and talks about the character of the monarch as well as what sees as the bigger lessons.  Of Edward II: 

It is not easy to imagine a man more innocent and inoffensive than the unhappy king whose tragical death we have related; nor a prince less fitted for governing that fierce and turbulent people subjected to his authority. He was obliged to devolve on others the weight of government, which he had neither ability nor inclination to bear: the same indolence and want of penetration led him to make choice of ministers and favorites who were not always the best qualified for the trust committed to them: the seditious grandees, pleased with his weakness, yet complaining of it, under pretence of attacking his ministers, insulted his person and invaded his authority: and the impatient populace, mistaking the source of their grievances, threw all the blame upon the king, and increased the public disorders by their faction and violence. It was in vain to look for protection from the laws, whose voice, always feeble in those times, was not heard amidst the din of arms—what could not defend the king, was less able to give shelter to any of the people: the whole machine of government was torn in pieces with fury and violence; and men, instead of regretting the manners of their age, and the form of their constitution, which required the most steady and most skilful hand to conduct them, imputed all errors to the person who had the misfortune to be intrusted with the reins of empire.

On the mistaken belief that only tyrants could expect instability: 

But though such mistakes are natural and almost unavoidable while the events are recent, it is a shameful delusion in modern historians, to imagine that all the ancient princes who were unfortunate in their government, were also tyrannical in their conduct; and that the seditions of the people always proceeded from some invasion of their privileges by the monarch. Even a great and a good king was not in that age secure against faction and rebellion, as appears in the case of Henry II.; but a great king had the best chance, as we learn from the history of the same period, for quelling and subduing them. Compare the reigns and characters of Edward I. and II. The father made several violent attempts against the liberties of the people: his barons opposed him: he was obliged, at least found it prudent, to submit: but as they dreaded his valor and abilities, they were content with reasonable satisfaction, and pushed no farther their advantages against him. The facility and weakness of the son, not his violence, threw every thing into confusion: the laws and government were overturned: an attempt to reinstate them was an unpardonable crime: and no atonement but the deposition and tragical death of the king himself could give those barons contentment. It is easy to see, that a constitution which depended so much on the personal character of the prince, must necessarily, in many of its parts, be a government of will, not of laws. But always to throw, without distinction, the blame of all disorders upon the sovereign would introduce a fatal error in politics, and serve as a perpetual apology for treason and rebellion: as if the turbulence of the great, and madness of the people, were not, equally with the tyranny of princes, evils incident to human society, and no less carefully to be guarded against in every well-regulated constitution.

Since Hume writes of "the turbulence of the great" and "madness of the people" as separate items, he would not fully agree with my note above.  Still, as this is history from the time of a scarcity of records, and nothing existing from the lower orders, both Hume and I are making an inference as to "the people" and how much they influenced during this time.  In any case, it is clear that the turbulence of "the great" is real problem of Edward II's reign.  

Oligarchy is hardly a panacea.  

Round Up #33

Aphorisms/Shorts
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"[Nietzsche] has all the psychological penetration of the great novelists who were his contemporaries, minus the characters (his loneliness was so intense he didn't even have them for company)."  Geoff Dyer.

“There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person."  Alexander Von Humboldt

"Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution."  -- attribution is contested.  Some claim Milton Friedman.  Some a Russian proverb. 

Sure, so many good lines in Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," but here is one that is vastly under-appreciated: 

Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ Of insidious intent

"Ignorance is bliss.  But bliss is boring." Coded message in the show Gravity Falls.

"Where the study of history might seek to discover, explain and understand, possibly to facilitate judgment, our current moment demands decision first, study later (if at all)." William Davies.

"Beauty has been stolen from the people and sold back to them under the concept of luxury."  Kanye West

“To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little…” Roland Barthes

Links and Research
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Great piece on Nietzsche's views of education and how his critiques hold up today.

Now that is an interesting town.

Besançon is the historical capital of watchmaking in France. This has led it to become a center for innovative companies in the fields of microtechnology, micromechanics, and biomedical engineering. . . 

The greenest city in France,[5] it enjoys a quality of life recognized in Europe. Thanks to its rich historical and cultural heritage and its unique architecture, Besançon has been labeled a "Town of Art and History" since 1986 and its fortifications due to Vauban has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008.

Cool blog: The Impractical Cogitator. 

Fun.

And, yes. 

I dig craftsmanship with hand tools.  I'll even tolerate the douchie patrons of the work, if it means that powerful play goes on. 

Samo Burja: not only a better collapse theorist than me, but a better on the other hand optimist, and even scholar of China during the Warring States period. 

It makes perfect sense that "desultory" is used less and less in the language over time.   

Ian Welsh gives some nuggets from an absolute "wow" book.  Here's a humdinger: 

We have been propagandized to view testosterone as related to violence.

Nope.

Oh, it can be. But what testosterone appears to actually be related to is status seeking. If violence and bullying is what a society rewards with status, then yup, testosterone is about violence.

But if hugging and caring for people will get you more status, suddenly high-T individuals are the biggest huggers and carers around. . . And here’s the thing, in hunter-gatherer bands (note the word bands), the high status individuals are caring, wise and slow to anger. The high status caring men also spread their genes around plenty.

In researching how vinegar could disinfect compared to bleach, I came across this gem of an article.  What left me quite bemused was the how defensive the article was, written by someone who had clearly been assaulted and damaged by internet culture.  It makes me chuckle when I think about it.  

Reflecting on Having Written Aphorisms

The great aphorist Nicolás Gómez Dávila -- who liked to go by Don Colacho -- once wrote the following about his work

The reader will not find aphorisms in these pages.
My brief sentences are the dots of color in a pointillist painting.

That is an interesting way to look at aphorism, and I think it holds true for what I have gathered, organized by subject, and shared over these last few weeks.  By working through what I have written, I noticed themes developing.  And for better or worse, the pointilist painting made from these quotes is a good snap shot of my philosophy spanning what (I sure hope) was the darkest time in my life.  

Looking back over my work I see some patterns that reoccur.  One is my fascination with beauty and in particular how it is in tension with what is interesting, so much so in our times that they are often enemies.  Another is looking at the truest part of zeitgeist (in non-election years): people whining about spoilers.  The spoilers thing was and is about living the era of content overload as well as narcissism.  Quotes about these points, along with grappling with the wasteland that is American culture in general, show up in more than one section as I believe different spins support different themes.  

If my plans have any control over the matter, which is a big if, I will be winding down my aphorism habit. In the future, if a short saying comes to me, I'll write it down in a journal and try to find a place to work it to a longer piece further down the line.  After all, it is frustrating that aphorisms have been an art form I have spent this much time with [1]. They subtly push the reader away by forcing them to do all the work in building the context.  An aphorism is a punchline without a set up -- or a set up that is . . .  all of the world, and everything is just too much.  The aphorism demands to be read deeply.  And this is almost inexcusable in a world of content glut -- even if you think your ideas are important, there is an endless supply of content about very least similar ideas that is much easier to consume. 

When I think of the times my mind was changed in big, important ways it is always some long form work.  Also, I don't think incidentally, these works were often read late at night.  It is like how infomercials work [2].  An endless supply of more is more persuasive than even the highest quality piece.

A great, long winded work can have an aphorism in it, that is true, but that is a punchline delivered with the correct set up, or perhaps as a nice piece put at the top of a section.  Like how another Don Colacho quote is coming right up. 

II) 

Writing is the only way to distance oneself from the century in which it was one’s lot to be born.

Don Colacho again.

I have noticed in the aphorists of the modern era a certain love of older books, meaning ones before the invention of the printing press.  This makes sense because those older books reflect a sense of scarcity of text.  Paper was once rare and expensive, to say nothing of the labor costs involved in having someone copy a book by hand.  Thus, one thing you wanted in a book was something you could read over and over, and so aphorisms did well in this environment.  Going even further back, oral traditions relied on a set of sayings, and often the leaders of the community judged cases before them based weighing the implications of different sayings.

To love what is old is to be exposed to the art of aphorism.  It is easy enough to see how that would rub off on a person.  I don't really think the causation runs the other way in most cases other than my own -- and it is an insult if it did.  I wrote aphorisms in the past because my attention span was so poorly developed.  I think the greats of the art form are classicists.

===

I leave you with a list of better aphorists than I.

===

Marcus Aurelius

Steve Solomon 

Nietzche

Nassim Taleb (read The Bed of Procrustes, then prefer other early work.  Ignore his social media behavior.)

Don Colacho, oh, ¡por supuesto!

===

[1]   But it is an art.  It has stitched my time together in a meaningful way, and has given something for people who loved me to enjoy after I am gone.  Something of where I was is preserved in those sayings, especially when they are put together in pointillism.  

[2] To think that because of the growth of streaming and cord cutting the number of people who know what an infomercial is will only shrink during my lifetime. . . How odd to feel nostalgic for the infomercial.

Aphorisms, Filtered and Organized #4

I have gathered my best aphorisms I have written over the years-- and some by others.  Fitting them into themes has revealed some patterns in my thought that I wouldn't have seen if they weren't put together.  Realize that nearly all of these sayings were written at different times.

The first theme this week is "Meaning Via Agape," where I talk the way we socially construct meaning, especially if we are to live our best lives.  Next I talk about "Finance and Frugality," which are the vital tools necessary to free oneself from the darker forces mentioned in previous installments. Lastly, I finish with "Art and Literature."  Very pleasant pass-times indeed.

==
Meaning Via Agape
==

I had to live through the deconstruction of simple, unhurried, sacred beauty and all I got were these lousy interesting times.

"It's the thought that counts" is an expression that was almost certainly created within the context of a family, and it only seems to work in that context.  The fact that so many people today spend so little time or attention in the domestic sphere makes the saying seem to ring totally false.

Learning how to set up boundaries with those you help is altruism's better part.

It is not enough to leave t.v. (and anti-social media).  You must have t.v. (and anti-social media) leave you.

”Now that we can do anything, we must do less.” Ruben Anderson

An important difference between a cult and a religion is that a religion works to make other generations both possible and successful in the wider world.

There is enough beauty and wonder to go around.  There cannot be enough results.

Reason operates on the Faith that it has all the information.  (Faith often reasons that it doesn't).

==
Finance and Frugality.
==

One of my biggest financial tips: don’t pay the seem-like-a-normal-person tax.

The revolution will be upcycled . . . and then modular.  Or it won't be much of revolution, now will it?

Inside of consumerism, "sufficient luxury" is an oxymoron.  Outside of consumerism, you can live a meaningful life.

I never get V.I.P. treatment.  But a solid majority of the time I get minimally acceptable treatment.  Globally speaking, this makes me extremely fortunate.

Possible rule to blunt consumerism: after you have secured food, shelter, heating/cooling, only buy things that you will do at least three hours of work with.

Identity is deeper to people than happiness.  Consumerism exploits this by sandblasting our organic, healthy identities, so we are left struggling to try to fashion them on our own.   We try to buy them, which is good for profits in the short-run, but is a source of system-threatening internal contradictions in the long run.

My advocacy of frugality is based on personal freedom and the quality of life, not signaling.  The help to the environment is a bonus.

==
Art and Literature
==

If “show me, don’t tell me” was always correct writing advice, then Shakespeare would never have had asides. And Hamlet would have never said “to be, or not to be;" he just would have done. . . or not.

The literati: by pretending to have read everything, they ended up not reading anything. And now they don't even pretend to read.

As Hume lifted Kant from his dogmatic slumbers, Captain Beefheart lifted me from my slumbers of normality. And so far, the results have been lasting.

"History is an art, like the other sciences" Veronica Wedgood.

If living around beautiful old works is so edifying, if walkable towns so important, if there is a certain ineffable dolce vita to all things Italian, why did they invent fascism?

If the spoilers alone were enough to ruin something you were going to watch, then it wasn't worth watching.

In these debauched times, the ability to read an unassigned book is potent signal of the tenderness, openness, and meta-cognition that is necessary (but not sufficient) to understand anything important.

To put a positive spin on the last quote, the test wouldn't work so well if our times weren't so debauched.

If you can see through G.K. Chesterton's work to know where he is engaging in sophistry and where he is being brilliant, then you are well on your way to fruitful explorations of the world.

Aphorisms, Filtered and Organized #3

I have gathered my best aphorisms I have written over the years-- and some by others.  Fitting them into themes has revealed some patterns in my thought that I wouldn't have seen if they weren't put together.  Realize that nearly all of these sayings were written at different times.

The topics this week are "Culture," "These Damn Kids," and "Living Meaningfully." I know I stated last week that this would get to some solutions, but I must admit that the first two sections continue with our problems first.  Such is the price of choosing to read the writings of a pessimist.

==
Culture
==

The American Ideal is someone who looks extremely fit, but who works constantly at a job where they sit (a seat of power, as it were).

At what point do you start adapting to a new reality, instead of just fashionably whining?  I'm asking for a country I know of.

". . . in narcissism believing something is preferable to doing something because the former is about you and the latter is about everyone else." from The Last Psychiatrist

I'm sick of hating narcissists.  When you do that in America, you almost run out of people.

People care so little about the truth, that any time anyone but those of the most demonstrably heroic bents says they are pursuing it, you should immediately start looking for what their real motivation is.

It would seem most successful entrepreneurs are people who don't think the rules apply to them and then in fact that assumption turns out to be right long enough to build enough capital to either eventually comply with or change the rules.

I've never met someone who appreciated, or even kept, a participation trophy.  Kids don't ask for them.  Kids aren't in charge of the situation. They're not for the kids.  They're for the parents, you idiots.

The Trump victory was white people's OJ verdict.

Americans are trained to show their taste by complaining, especially about what they lack.  If you say something is good enough to an standard American, prepare for an intense argument.

Privilege is too often confused for competence, even when you adjust for the fact that competence over the long run can lead to privileges.

. . .even IF I grant (for arguments sake) that competence is necessary for privilege in modern society, it is not sufficient.

I hate to break it to you, but you can't syllogism your way to a better society.  Especially if you're not willing to start with some ethical premises against narcissism or being self-centered.

The short run is the only run Americans care about anymore.

 ". . . I suspect that this is a badly run prison world, like on Hogan's Heroes . . ." Ran Prieur

I actually think there are many business books that are well-researched and have important things to offer, however in the interest of truth they should open with this disclaimer: "the vast majority organizations will not be able to get through the incentive-traps of their own office politics to correctly do any of this, but . . . "

America: worry about everything while making sure you don't care about anything.

The way the ideas of Buddhism spread through the West was basically self-help for affluent people.

"Why bother explaining if the audience always sees it as a starting point for a win-lose debate rather than an opportunity to learn?" Jacob Lund Fisker.

==
These Damn Kids
==

Nihilism isn't quite the panacea you kids seem to think it is.

Kids love to see themselves.  They are such narcissists.  But, then, they should want to see themselves.  That is the illusion that makes life, along with it identity and the powerful play, even possible.

The way nature shows defiance is beautiful: it "defies expectations." The defiance also seems to give boundless energy.  But when some human-type-person who is obsessed with hierarchy shows defiance, is there anything more ugly? Is there anything more sapping of everyone's energy?

We have a generation that nearly universally self-reports mental illnesses and then turns around and uses the fact that some guy, somewhere, went off on avocado toast to insulate themselves from all criticism.

"Of course there is still hope. . . because I'm special.  I'll figure out a way for the powerful to listen to me.  . . . They'll be ashamed of themselves, just like my other servants who clean up my messes."

"Even the class in the Dead Poet's Society was in rows." My wife.


==
Living Meaningfully
==

A reminder: "If you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember. " -- Joshua Foer

The real challenge of awareness isn't changing who you are ranting about, but to change how you live.

The dao is real.  In fact, the dao is realer than we are, and that's our real problem in explaining it.

I think it is reasonable to spend most of time thinking about what will, with over 99% certainty be what happens in your life.  If you follow the news, on the other hand, you are spending your time thinking about people and experiences that are less than 1% extremes, whether mental illness, violent tendencies, wealth, looks or luck. It's an absolute waste of time that sneaks up on you and confuses your perspective on the one life you (with over 99% certainty) are to live.

Competition is good for the brain.  Domination is terrible for the brain, let alone the soul.

In these times, I think it is more important to find what is beautiful than to think about what is important.

Many of those with an avid interest in collapse don't seem to understand that there is more to life than whatever ends up killing you.

"Live and love sincerely and vividly. Abstractions don't precede embodiment, they follow it."  Nathan Spears

I believe in giving away a lot of value. But more importantly, I believe in filtering out a lot of non-value.

We are all historians. We are all crafters of space. We are all psychologists.  We are all nutritionist.  We are all currency traders.  Doing any or all of these 100% according to the defaults around us is still a decision, often a very bad one.

(Realized after a beautiful walk. . .) I have a theory that depression, or at least melancholy, primes us for feelings of euphoria.

We can be very precise only about things that have almost no meaning.

"Anxiety is paying interest on pain, but if you catch it in time, you only have to pay the principal." Ran Prieur

"The only thing worse than having a crisis is not having a crisis." Lou Kemp from Samsdat.  Slightly tweak that to:

The only thing worse than having a crisis is never having a crisis. . .   And I just realized that is close to "If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake."  --Frank Wilczek.

“I want to fit in” inevitably means “ I want to be a stereotype.”

I’m certainly not a genius, I just lean into being a world-class eccentric.

"The function of propaganda is not to tell us what to think but to sink us deeper in what we already thoughtlessly believe"  Ran Prieur.

I love bad decisions; I could watch them all day.

What if happiness meant being the kind of person who overreacts to seeing spoilers?

Being a relatively smart person hasn't yielded too many benefits in my life, but here is one: I have the cognitive skills and the memory to keep track of when people are thoughtful and careful with language to some people and not to others.  This tells me the real story of their soul.

Aphorisms, Filtered and Organized #2

I have gathered my best aphorisms I have written over the years along with a few from others.  Fitting them into themes has revealed some patterns in my thought that I wouldn't have seen if they weren't put together.  Realize that nearly all of these sayings were written at different times.

These week's selection flow from progress to tradition to a wider look at American politics.  After that, there are a few odd ideas that will serve as an intermission when this these quotes are a section of my book.  The picture these quotes paint is pretty dark.  Look for some rays of hope the next two weeks.

==
The Cult of Progress and The Techno-Future
==

The trans-humanist plan: to transcend the meat-space.  What's their back-up plan?  To do it better.

If you met my 83 year-old Grandma you wouldn't be saying 100 is the new 80. Rather, the new selection bias is the old selection bias.

(Note/update: none of my grandparents lived past 85).

You probably need AI to enforce rules against AI.

I am disgusted with the 21st century. It puts the worst of humanity in your face at all times. I try to spend as little time as possible in it.

Detroit is already here; it's just not evenly distributed yet.

When our country puts kids in cages, it invokes images of the holocaust, a horrible past.  When we use killer robots in the sky to kill kids, it is part of the future, a disruptive future.  No wonder progressives can accept the latter.

Conjecture: if drone technology hits the point that the state and property are incontestable then the incentive for bullshit jobs will go away.  As dangerous as it is for the 99%, that might need to be the order it needs to happen.

Space travel isn't going to be colonization.  It is going to be white flight.

"Unable to achieve what it desires, 'progress' christens what it achieves desire."  -- Don Colacho.  This is great an explanation for neo-mania.

You are overhead for the technosphere.  Prepare to be more human or prepare to be liquidated. Actually, prepare for both.

AI will have a much easier time mastering clickbait headlines and tweets than long-form essays, to any level of human intelligence.  Perhaps it already has, and we're just not going to be told.

(Related). There won't ever be a need for AI to master the long-form essay.  The blood of the immature can always be stirred short-form (ergo keep it all short form AND keep them all immature!).  Furthermore, the retirement-center bots will be able to make do with small-talk.

"The only true and effective 'operator's manual for spaceship earth' is not a book that any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures."  Wendell Berry.

My current understanding is that solar power is good tactically, but poor strategically.

Isn't that what Padmé said?:
"So this is how liberty dies . . . with robots everywhere."  *Glares at a droid.*

The real curse of living in interesting times is watching people try to win iteration after iteration of a negative sum game.

==
American "Tradition"
==

"Even our age may seem great when the worst of us are forgotten" Will Durant

I would consider defending the American Way of Life after World War II, but there isn't one.

Why has virtually all conservatism become a project in personal vanity?  It's the logic of profit that surrounds our culture.  It's impossible for nearly anyone to imagine investing in something that might cost them more than they receive.  And the conservatives feel their best return on investment is to set back and proclaim.

Only artificial things can get as clean as most conservatives want.

. .  Corollary: this is especially true of histories.

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."  Gustav Mahler

You know what?  Let's forget about the abstraction of "America."  Let's make the conversation at family meals great again.

When the American project is over, those with a conservative temperament (low openness, high disgust at disorder) will simply find another story for why the then-dominate groups deserve more.

"It's so much easier to blame the grownups than to be one." Ursula LeGuin

"Fear is seldom wise and never kind." Ibid.

Most of the developed world has worked to make the lives of families better.  In the U.S. we marketed "family values" and then called it a day.

Traditionalism in America has nothing to do with tradition.

==
American Politics
==

My fellow Americans love a good story, love a good image, but will neglect the supporting realities . . . till the end.

You are not asked daily to participate in democracy. You choose to freak out about things you can't control. This is not the same thing, and you need to learn the difference.  However, you do make daily decisions about consumption and production.  We should think about those more.

The argument that it was better to build a school than a prison might have been true once.  But now, in order to pay for the care of the richest generation in human history, we will soon have money for neither.

"The apparency: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. The actuality: If you even think there's a solution, you're part of the problem." Steve Solomon

While a Matrix metaphor might work for the masses, it is better to think of the elites in the U.S. as lotus eaters.  They are too doped up on greed to make any moves.  Alas, they've also locked the doors to the cockpit and are the only ones who can steer.

These Americans trading liberty for convenience don't realize that if they keep it up they'll soon have neither.  (Thanks to Benny Franklin for this).

The real cruelty of America to its young is not that it is denying them the American Dream.  It is denying them the Human Dream of starting a family that they can keep healthy and free from deprivation.  This is unsustainable.  If it is the first unsustainable thing to pop, then that will be for the good.  If it is toward the last, there will be no American society.

Is it really that difficult to understand that a tax cut when the budget isn't balanced is simply free money for rich people?

Liberals prefer to be liberal with other people's money, and conservatives prefer to be conservative with other people's morals. . .  Oh, I'm now an old man, fighting last generation's war. Now right-wingers also prefer to be right-wing with other people's money and leftists prefer to signal leftism about other people's morals.

When neither side engages in good faith, any instance of being correct is purely coincidental.

When the political class has shown a complete, stark, sociopathic disregard for 80 percent of the population -- what is another 19 (or 19.9) percent?

"Liberty is not the fruit of order alone; it is the fruit of mutual concessions between order and disorder." Don Colacho.  I despair of this ever being widely (enough) understood.

Sorry, friends, the Left is a Granfallon.  My real Karass is those who get to the root of things (radical, I know).  Prep and survive, but not like a Prepper or Survivalist.

It's sad to see how many Americans think they have nothing to lose.  What is more sad is how wrong they are. 

Rank and file Republican voters think everything is a conspiracy, and then vote in such a way as to conspiracies happen.  As of recently, Democrats do it too, but with different conspiracies.

I have not lost the ability to dream; I have lost the ability to pretend that other people will follow any of my dreams.

" . . . the real difficulty of democracy is not that voters are unworthy, but that their vote is generally the least worthy thing about them."  C.K. Chesterton

==
Miscellaneous Ideas -- an Intermission
==

Self driving cars could be called auto-automobiles.  I'd also accept them being called "autobots."

I propose that we have 73 Five-Day Weeks (73*5 = 365).  We could call the leap year day "Leap Day" and then all of our days of the week would line up every year.

Probably the best idea, as measured by possible utility to the human race, I've had in months.  But, alas, oh alack! -- such it is the nature of ideas that they need fertile ground to grow.  I will never get this idea out the general public to adopt:  Get rid of the free throws in basketball; instead, every second foul place the player in a penalty box for 1 minute of game play.

You fail to get warmth from 100% of fires you don’t start.

Aphorisms, Filtered and Organized #1

I have gathered my best aphorisms I have written over the years-- and some by others.  Fitting them into themes has revealed some patterns in my thought that I wouldn't have seen if they weren't put together.  

 The three themes for this week are "On Interest," "On the Internet" and "Humility/ Model Recalibration."  I was not aware just how much I had thought about the internet, but see the first two sections as statements of the problem and the third section as working toward solutions.

==
On Interest
==

Interesting is easier to hack than beautiful.  Hence, prioritize the beautiful over the interesting . . . especially in interesting times.

More important than being interested is working on good projects.  With a project in focus interesting things come to you and find a more harmonious, joyful place in your life.

"Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting?" David Foster Wallace.

Interesting: you have to watch for the danger of anti-social media most when it is truly interesting.

==
On the Internet
==

The old internet was the greatest tool for life's conventional warfare.  Internet 2.0 -- or whatever marketing label you want to give it -- is guerrilla warfare against the human psyche.

How sad it must be to live on such a poor information diet, and with so little self control, that you think it is the job of other people to prevent you from seeing spoilers.

Life is so much more interesting when you are learning new things.  Contrast this with Silicon Valley's internet, where you are told that what you are going to like is exactly like something you have enjoyed before.  

(Note.  I am to understand the titans of the Valley don't fall for this trap, and don't let their children use their products, but that is deeply instructive. . . in more ways than one).

I'm bringing "web surfing" back.  Most people don't surf anymore; they are herded.

I know modernity's whole shtick is efficiency.  But always ask "efficient at what?."  Anti-social media does not efficiently give you information; rather, it efficiently kills time.

Why less anti-social media? Simple: more living, less arguing.

It is odd how the incentives of anti-social media have turned the pragmatists into absolutists about their pragmatism. If really pragmatists, then time to start building a coalition. If instead you are just signaling for likes, then by all means, continue. . .

We just accept at the level of truism that the internet contains "the sum total of all information," but if this is true why do most of the best blogs consistently import knowledge from books into the internet?

Anti-social media platforms which allow only upvotes are the ultimate fool's paradise.

"We used to have to talk to other humans if we wanted to join a cult." comment on a Reddit thread by user named 77096.

Complaining on the internet for an hour is easier than spending that same hour working on a problem. The benefits of the complaining are immediate and almost guaranteed. This reinforces complaining over doing. Now, repeat that across our species over billions, if not trillions, of total hours . . .

Anyone who thinks their best thinking happens on Twitter, misunderstands both the medium of Twitter, as well as thought.

In the age of the printing press,  anonymity was a way to avoid the hectoring of the outside world and achieve authenticity.  In the internet age, anonymity is a way to join in the hectoring and with it the pan-societal effort to make sure no can be authentic anywhere.

Netflix: because you watched a documentary based on research and facts, you'd probably love to watch ten documentaries of nothing but conspiracy theory.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Twitter.

What I really mean:
I have seen the worst souls of my generation destroyed by Twitter.  . . Well, damaged further.

==
Humility/ Model Recalibration
==

I'm only interested in listening to people who listen to other people.

We live in a society that thinks it has no time for politeness markers, but then wonders why everyone is angry at each other.

I'm not sure of much, but someone as sure as you is probably wrong.

They say they have no Faith, but then talk like True Believers about every opinion they state.  I know what they really worship.

As productive as it can be to ask "why are things bad," it is often more worthwhile to ponder "why aren't things much, much worse already?"

Be very suspicious of any take-down that assumes each and every thing someone else states is always wrong.  You are not witnessing truth-finding, but rather branding.

Contempt brain is stupid brain.

Of all the lessons to teach a Harvard or Oxford grad, the hardest seems to be a non sequitur.  Particularly about where one went to college.

To be on record saying there is nothing worthwhile in world literature is to admit to being too ignorant or too stupid to pattern-match whole classes of human knowledge.

I can be convinced that gambling for amusement is immoral, but the ability to make a bet needs to be on the table as a tool to deal with blowhards.

The only thing we have to fear is confidence itself.

Back up of my father's obiturary

 I'm surprised I haven't made a copy of it before.  Maybe it just hurt too much before now. 

===

Max Alan Huddleston was born July 11, 1957 to Virginia and Max Leroy Huddleston in Norman, Oklahoma. To avoid confusion with his father, he went by Alan or "Al."

Alan was dedicated to his family and his neighborhood, with a special gift for making children laugh. He worked a wide variety of jobs, including running several small businesses, managing restaurants, working in apartments, and working briefly as a professional magician. Though often shy in crowds, he was always a character at work who found ways to make jokes and brighten people's day.

He is survived by his wife Alison, his mother, his brother Ray and wife Connie, as well as his son Keith and wife Beth. He was preceded in death last year by his father.

Memorial services are scheduled for 2:00 p.m., Friday, August 28, 2015, at the Primrose Funeral Home Chapel, with Chaplain Harry Smith officiating.

If desired, memorial donations may be made to the Cancer Research Institute.

Round Up #32

Aphorisms/Shorts
===

If you can see through G.K. Chesterton's work to know where he is engaging in sophistry, and where he is being brilliant, then you are well on your way to fruitful explorations of the world.

"To know solves only subordinate problems, but learning protects against tedium." Don Colacho.  Now that's a manifesto, right there.

 "Hemmed in by language and horizons of time and space, reading is always a stylising of past reality."  John Keane

Anton Chekhov wrote in a letter:  "I have peasant blood flowing in my veins, and I’m not the one to be impressed with peasant virtues . . . Tolstoy’s moral philosophy has ceased to move me . . . Prudence and justice tell me there is more love for mankind in electricity and steam than in chastity and abstention from meat.”

If glass were invented today, it would be hailed as this amazing technology that could be 3D printed using . . . sand itself!  What a disruptive technology!  Let's get some start ups going, and bid up their price to earnings somewhere between 800 and infinity (which would be the case if they had no earnings -- because who needs earnings when you are dIsRupTIve !?!) 

Links/research
===

I've been getting into mechanical toys again.  This has lead me to the marvelous Paul Spooner -- one, and two videos.  How is this for an artistic statement? 

As well as all the cars, clocks and other machines that make our lives efficient and comfortable, there are quite a lot of machines that have no practical use at all. Machines that are the antithesis of practicality, made by artists who have no interest in efficiency or comfort. They often make machines that express their anger about the dehumanising mechanisation of war, policing, bureaucracy or about the increasing distance between people who seem always to be on the phone but seldom talking to those next to them.

My machines are even more useless than those because I’m not even angry, having led an easy life in a beautiful country doing pretty much as I please all day. I make machines about things I find funny or absurd, hoping that others will feel the same. Even if I am a little annoyed when I start making something, the feeling has usually worn off by the time I’ve finished.

Video compiling David Lynch arguing that habits and routines free him to be creative. 

From the book Range by David Epstein

The main conclusion of work that took years of studying scientists and engineers, all of whom were regarded by peers as true technical experts, was that those who did not make a creative contribution to their field lacked aesthetic interests outside their narrow area (33)

I found the Intelligence Squared YouTube channel.  Seems good to give content to listen to while I do chores.

I don't know if this is a rabbit hole I want to go down, but there are claims to co-ops handled the last global financial crisis better than traditional for-profit companies.

. . . Lead to list of worker cooperatives, which lead to this line, which I found amusing "Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse is a radical infoshop . . ."  (It's worth saying that when it comes to anarchist stuff I am such a MOP.  It's not my thing, but I find it interesting to look at).

Discussion on Discussion on Dualism

 An astute reader emailed in response to Discussion on Non-Dualism and wrote 

My general impression is that "non-dualism" can tend to make a fetish of dualism, rather than leaving it behind. 

This was my reply: 

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Dualism certainly should be left behind rather than rebelled against.  It's not even a great term for what it is describing.  I just use it sometimes because it is the best index to other thinkers who have written on the subject.  (So, as much as I knock labels, I have to admit they are useful -- necessary -- for finding more of what you are looking for). 

Instead of dualism and its Two, I like to think of the spots where separations of all types break down (seep into one another?).  My favorite piece where I show the dance of not being separated is Van Gogh Flow, although I don't mind my little diddy about my cat either.   If the formulation didn't get bogged down in political overtones that I don't want, I would adopt the label "non-separatism."  But that's really not going to work.  

Keep in mind it was "filthy jeeper" who was the monist.  If I am a monist, I am certainly not the fun type with woo-woo rays -- just materiality all the way down, with emergent properties playing the role of making it appear something else is going on.  

But to me, every time I look at what works in the art of living, it seems clear that you have to live in the emergent and let the substrate be what it is.  Maybe poke at the substrate every now and then for amusement, but it is not really Truer (other than holding in more cases globally speaking), and it is certainly not more useful.

A Theology of Compassion

This started its life here on Reddit.  Lightly edited.  The beginning of the thread is backed-up here.

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I'm monist, in a sense - it's the cosmic background radiation of my practice, but while I'm here in this flesh bundle, there's really no reason to think much about it. I can thoroughly explore that kind of oneness after I'm dead.

Oh, I really like that. I think that a defense of compassion follows from that as a premise.

I) From the Mountaintop

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Up at the tip-top of the great tall mountain of spirit it is cold, icy. There is an austere beauty of pure pattern, harmony, purest flow. As you said, we can contemplate that forever when we are dead, if that death means a transport to that place. Hinduism and Buddhism posits there are many more impediments to breaking the cycle of rebirth, while mainline Christianity and Islam are more committed to selves that stay separate forever and get their final, total judgement from Sky God.

To switch conceptualizations. Alan Watts expressed the pantheist concept in The Book by talking about two types of games: 1) hide-and-go-seek and 2) cards. As to hide-and-go-seek, basically, the One consciousness shattered itself into pieces to make for games. And once you fully realize (I mean fully realize) you the One. . . you win!  But card games are another matter. If you think about it, virtually every card game is about putting the cards back in order. To make it a game worth playing, however, the cards have to be first disordered. And for the sake of variety, they have to re-disordered each round of play. Ergo, no disorder, no game.

In a sense that would make our lives unreal, and from the very top of the mountain nothing would matter -- even nuclear blasts, the Holocaust, eco-cide).  It was all just a game.

But while you are in the middle of a game, why wouldn't you play?

II) A Western Detour

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I rather like Watt's explanation, but the West approaches it all completely differently. Imperfection, rather than the heart of a game, is either the source of sin or a sin in itself. This is seen in the Platonic ideal of forms and the garbling of them that is our world. The implication is that our plane is filth. Further down the line, Gnosticism holds that evil forces created this plane.

I hereby present another heterodox idea (I'm not claiming I'm the first person to come up with it, just that I don't know of having ever heard it before): perhaps the forces of creation and consciousness aren't even the same. It's only when sufficiently complex enough brains come along processing sufficiently complex patterns that consciousness comes to possess the being.

But the mainline Western faith is that this life is a test for a prize. And as we moved through modernity, the more the test questions narrowed to in-group signaling and virtually nothing else. Absent that very last turn, the Western detour is not a bad way to defend compassion -- the Authoritarian God said have compassion, and that's that.

Failing that, the argument could be that we are so low compared to the divine that we are equal -- only Grace can give us any relief from our unworthiness.

This equality under God concept is highly underrated, and without it Liberalism has a very difficult time defending itself.

III) to the Daodejing, book 1

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While the daodejing famously starts by starts by showing how labels don't work (thus Good is perceived pre-verbally, if not pre-cognitively ), I think the next passage profound enough to change a life:

Truly, "rid of desire, one can perceive the Wondrous." With desire, one can perceive only outcomes.

I don't find the Daodejing prescriptive as much as descriptive. But what it is describing here is of the utmost importance. The human body/brain apparatus is very prone to cogitate on social standing. When this happens, it crowds out all other virtues. Only by silencing that monkey brain, even if for a bit, do you get to wonder.

Why the hell is wonder important? Well, for one thing it is the source of every creation that is not hyper-specialized and derivative. That's not to say you can't make some really good weapons that way, but even if all you care about is weapons, the better ones will eventually be made as a by-product of someone's wonder. Wonder is the golden goose.

Wonder has another attribute -- it is inexhaustible, self-generating. There is always enough to go around. Every artist and creator, both through the text of their work and through their life gives extra texture to reality that can be explored while doing virtually no harm to rest of the world. To a greater extent, each segment of land is itself layered through with beauty on level after level. (And even the ugly spots are worth a gander -- they teach us to perceive time). Fractal. Reflective. Patterns ever widening, deepening. . .  Whoa.

In "outcome world" this very inexhaustibly is a weakness -- if you have unlimited supply, you can't be paid by any level of demand, you see -- but once you let a crack of wonder in to the eye of the beholder, the argument in its favor is apparent. Which makes it sad that there are people who intuit this weakness in hierarchy and thus do whatever they can to thwart the forces of dao.

I recently saw an old post where Ran Prieur quoted Cynthia Ozick:

Heaven is for those who have already been there.

I cannot teach the pre-cognitive bliss of the dao. I can only connect to experiences of people who have experienced it, and explain why it is worth defending. I would also go here to this understanding to try to make the case for all lives having worth.

Hilariously, I am told that Ayn Rand made an argument like this: one of her super-men wanted to kill someone because, you know, a lesser being was in the way, but then he noticed this lesser being had a clean shirt. This showed that the lesser being at least had ability to value something. So no, no right to kill. (Probably Atlas Shrugged -- but I'm not tracking it down).

This is a Kantian, weak sauce version of the argument; rather, the compassionate mode of being does tend to stick better when it comes from a spiritual experience.

IV) to the Gita

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The Gita is really easy to mis-read. I think it is second to Nietzsche in terms of the most dangerously mis-read work of all time  [Update: I have no idea how the Bible didn't come to mind when I wrote that sentence.  I leave the sentence as an exercise in humility].  In The Gita, a warrior has realized the truth of hide-and-go-seek and that none . . . of this . . . matters. An avatar of God (actually, I think it's an avatar of an avatar -- but even this gets interpreted in a lot of ways) comes to our warrior with the gist of "Oh, so you think that by doing nothing, you're going to be blameless?" And proceeds to build arguments against non-action and to argue that action which, if performed without attachment and desire, is just as holy. Wikipedia says of this theology

right work done well is a form of prayer

This forms basically all of my understanding of dharma. (It should be pointed out that I am more of a breadth than depth person, so I could be missing a lot).

It is because we are still in the middle of a game that values appear to us. I do believe there is some connection here to your "right relationship" concept. Pulling a quote for the OP blog post

Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships.

Enemies/scapegoats are for the "results only" crowd. When things are going well, they will worship the winners under the current paradigm. When things are going badly, their instinct is to find a comfort ritual grounded in that very hierarchy they love. I find it to be an ugly way to play the existence game and one that does little to maximize the high score for everyone.  But, then, I'm not an asshole.

V) I guess that's an essay.

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I would also be very interested to read your thoughts in essay form, for what it's worth!

Oh, I think this is it. I spent all morning on this and will count it as a one of my long pieces for the week. With your permission, I would like to reprint your side of the discussion on my blog as well, and eventually in the custom-print book I one day plan on paying to have made so I can give out as presents. I have a few friends that will enjoy it. To family I see giving the gift going like this: "Oh, you wanted something store bought. . . Too bad! I made it myself!" as it then sits on their shelf, unread forever.