Fatalism and determinism have, after all, imagination enough to despair of possibility, possibility enough to discover the impossibility. Petty bourgeois vulgarity placates itself in the common place, in despair as much when things go well as when they go badly...Petty bourgeois vulgarity lacks possibility as an awakener from spiritlessness. For the petty bourgeois thinks he is in control of possibility, has lured this tremendous elasticity into the snare, or madhouse, of probabilities, thinks he holds it prisoner. He carries possibility about captive in the cage of probability, shows it off, fancies himself the master, does not see that in the very act of doing so he has made himself captive as a slave to spiritlessness and is the meanest of all.

 -Kierkegaard under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus from This Sickness unto Death

Grand Canyon - just pictures I took and want you to enjoy

"Into the wild" -the true story of the adventures of Chris McCandless

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
I just found out about this story recently, in typical fashion, about 20 years after it happened. Well, to my credit, less time has passed since the book and then the movie were created. I may comment more on this later, but I wanted to post this because I feel it is a remarkable story.

Boycott Amazon

Took all links to amazon off of my blog after they dumped the wikileaks website. I can't say that I'm familiar with the background of wikileaks or what they are doing. However, the charges against it's founder coming out right after he supposedly has a leak involving a big bank are really more than I care to bare at this point.

Freedom vs Destiny

It seems to me that some of us are more guided by a mode of living that is more geared to destiny or fate than freedom. What is the connection between the narrative sense, having a coherent history, and fate vs living moment-to-moment, making "free" decisions, but only in an ahistorical almost dream like state of freedom? This type of freedom seems analagous with me to spirit. And a quote comes to mind, probably Kierkegaard, out of nowhere, "anxiety (or freedom?) is a qualification of a dreaming spirit..." I'll have to search through my quotes on the blog to find the exact words on that, but it will be well worth it in this context and considering how fortuitously this quote popped into my head.

If the goal of life is to refine us, to test us, then you may see how unsubstantial are these free moments of decision, so light and airy, so devoid of matter and of bodies, of the corporeal, yes, indeed the ethereal moments of decision, vision blurred as if in a dream, not even the visual field having a concrete anchor. It feels foregin to have decisions made in such a "lightweight" manner - yet this is what freedom (of decision making) in an existential sense conjurs up inside me. The choices that matter. The choices that define us, where we pick one side or the other - indeed, the either/or of Kierkegaard perhaps?

Some of us may have had cookie-cutter, Normal Rockwell histories and rational lives that make sense. Others of us will be dreaming travelers, but they will be free. Those with histories will be good story tellers and the dreamers will be poets and philosophers.

I had a dream the other night that effected me, as amazing as dreams can be. In between the chaos and the bizarre setting of a grocery store near where I grew up and frequented often, as I jostled elbows at a table for some bizarre reason with lawyers, I stood up and told them "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." I haven't read my Bible in a year or more. I also sensed the sadness of aging and the passing of time. I am getting older, my parents are getting older. Those childhood experiences every day acquire more dust, become less relevant, less relatable. People move out of neighborhoods. But the memories remain and float around in warm cheery little voids in our imaginations, where the candle still burns eternally. Freedom is a qualification of dreaming spirit.

I am absolutely of the mind that the experiences we live, and I mean the good ones, the love that we experience, live on in a real and meaningful way. It is and always will be connected with us, even after we leave this world and those neighborhoods behind.

[update] 12/9/11, found the quote:

"Anxiety is a qualification of dreaming spirit, and as such it has its place in psychology. Awake, the difference between myself and my other is posited; sleeping it is suspended; dreaming, it is an intimated nothing. The actuality of the spirit constantly shows itself as a form that tempts its possibility but disappears as soon as it seeks to grasp for it, and it is a nothing that can only bring anxiety. More it cannot do as long as it merely shows itself. The concept of anxiety...is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite, whereas anxiety is freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility. Fore this reason, anxiety is not found in the beast, precisely because by nature the beast is not qualified as spirit." -Soren Kierkegaard under pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis The Concept of Anxiety

and another

"Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity but in itself. If sin has come into the world by necessity (which is a contradiction) there can be no anxiety. Nor can there be any anxiety if sin came into the world by an act of an abstract liberum arbitrium." -Soren Kierkegaard under pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis The Concept of Anxiety

Profiling and stereotypes

These days it seems like the entire legislative and political processes have gone stark-raving mad. The same voters, I assume, that elected Bush Jr to a second term elected Obama and wait for change, only to get bad changes. The middle class continues to have to struggle to even get unemployment benefit extensions approved, while savers are punished with rising inflation due to government printing and bailouts to big bank cronies. Nothing "changed" on that front.

Once again, I digress. Today's topic is "profiling." It is a constant buzz-word, as constant issue is taken with various forms of "profiling" by groups from the hispanic community related to anti-illegal immigration to muslim/arab/middle eastern profiling at the TSA.

Guess what, we are all profiled and profile on a constant basis. When you get ID'd to buy cigarettes or alcohol, you have just been profiled. Some clerk at the counter is forming a subjective picture of what you "look like" and making certain assumptions as to your age. This is just one small, quite everyday example, of how profiling occurs everywhere already.

Granted, to live in a society we give up certain rights willingly. We agree to produce identification to the police when requested. People typically understand that the greater good requires their compliance. Except, it would seem, when really IMPORTANT issues like terrorism, rather than underage smoking, necessitates the profiling.

If you want to know my opinion, if you are in the USA, you implicitly agree to abide by the laws, assuming that the law is reasonable and just (perhaps there are better, more to the point terms than "reasonable and just" but I don't have the time to figure them out). I add this caveat to allow for the possibility of conscientous objections or civil disobedience should the law of the land become corrupted and unjust. However, removing one's shoes or burkah at the airport, even having to undergo a more thorough airport screening due to being "profiled" as being of middle eastern or arabic descent, to me is eminently reasonable in a post 9/11 world.

Granted, the anti-illegal immigration profiling fears are a bit more complex. I would guess we can thank our legislators for the fine mess we find ourselves in after decades of looking the other way to illegal immigration.

My main point is that profiling happens daily in many different ways, and I think that people in society generally are ok with it, as long as they understand that they are complying with requirements for the greater good of society (ie safety from terrorism). It is a delicate issue, and those doing the "profiling" need to be well trained and to know the reasons they are doing whatever it is they are doing, and the extent of what they need to know and are authorized to do. Profiling should never give anyone a blank check to violate a person's constitutional rights, but needs to be very specific. Whoever is doing the profiling also needs to be aware of their personal biases. In fact, in the case of security work, this is absolutely something they need to be aware of, lest the would be villans play the security forces for their very own stereotypes.

Forgive me if I am fed up with the constant debate and whining over vital measures for national security, while at the same time government aims to dig its hands even deeper into your life, from charging higher premiums to uninsured smokers, to requiring you to have health insurance, these are definitely topics for other posts. You shouldn't be upset about securing the borders or profiling at the airport. These are matters of national security. You should worry about laws that would require you to eat a certain diet, not smoke, wear your seatbelt, have health insurance, in short, make every decision you make a matter of government, and probably tax it to further divide the uber-rich from the poor, or to make Goldman Sachs quarterly profit tick up another few percent over analyst estimates.

The title of this post should have been back-assward, as that is quite what I think of the voting public.

The Great American Novel: Life and the Art of Novel Writing

There is no doubt a preoccupation, a fantasy, if you will, among certain of us to write, for once and for eternity, "the great American novel."

What would it say? This has been a great and remarkable country, with a vast array of attractions - throughout Its history. The great American novel need not be a historical document. History is loosely assembled around facts, yes there is inherent ideology - history is written by the victor. However, I think we do have a sense, in the US, that our history is written relatively truthfully. There is at least an implicit idea of progress that we nurture in our republic, however distorted this concept of "progress" has become. I will not take the time here to delve into the convoluted concepts that qualify under the heading "progress" at this time and date - in the two-thousandth and tenth year of our Lord.

The great American novel is really more about the lyrical, the poetical, the personal viewpoint, taking into consideration, in due measure, the external realities of the time. Who is our character and how does he/she relate to the "blooming, buzzing" confusion of the streets? The streets that so typify their times? Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Even, on another level, Catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger. The narrator deeply within the psyche of the main character.

Rather, back to the point of this post, and that is - perhaps the preoccupation, the interest that the idea of writing the great American novel holds for us, is in simply wanting to be heard, to be understood, to be remembered, to be valued. (Perhaps with all this progress thus far we've lost something).

To be seen under and within the light (of truth), one could say being seen as God sees us, one could further water this down and plead, at last, to be seen as the unique species that is human being (Humanistic). To be seen, to be heard, to have you listen to us air our major grievances, our greatest outrages, our most outlandish dreams, to join us in our most cherished reveries - the story of falling in love, the specific individual vision of heartbreak, the specific revelation of the universal.

And so we want to show you these things, have you walk a mile in our shoes, the great lesson of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

We will not all write the great American novel. This simply is not a feasible possibility. Some of us must merely live our lives. Perhaps we become scholars in the art of living. The more honorable among us will take on philosophy - "The love of wisdom," and the rest, those who worship at the feet of mammon, will take on persuasion, the art of rhetoric. They will be Machiavellian, and they will be good candidates, most of them, for middle management, with a 5:1 shot at upward mobility.

We journey through this life, as busy assembling meaning (the philosophers among us) as life is in refining our natures. The great wash-board of life. Refined by fire. Born out of suffering is strength, yes, but also weariness and weakness, rust. In the end, the years wear down the best among us. And for the best among us, those who tower over us in the bright shining strength of their characters, in the radiant glory of their God-given true natures, those who seek to walk with God, to be known, indeed as the friend of God, in the splendor'd countenance of Moses descending the mountain, these Abrahams amongst us also to will perish.

And whether they perish and are gathered to their peoples with crying in the streets, or in relative obscurity, alone in some candle-lit room, I feel that heaven cries out for them, the skies open in a deluge upon us mere mortals, pelting our heads to chastise us for our weakness.

But again, back to the point. The desire to write the great American novel. Is it not a desire to be heard, to be known, to be remembered in our innermost detail, and to convey this knowledge to others? To be known in the matrix of our times - our culture, our friends and family, those who loved us and those we loved? To let the world know the things we hated and the things we loved?

We spend most of our lives these days running through a "Rube Goldberg" machine of the Monday-Friday workweek, only to get to the weekend to try to once again ignite our passion, to jumpstart the flatlined dream that we once knew and clung to so tightly, so dearly, in our youth. To assemble once again, the crew, to "get the band back together."

But if we must lie somnolent, supine, and let the sweat grow beads on our brows, toss and turn in an empty room, in our four-walled worlds, trapped in a prison of our own device, then I suppose, we can hold out the last hope of writing the great American novel. Forgive me the sarcasm, but even if we pass away into obscurity, or should I say through obscurity, grow older, and lose our "matrix" of friends and associates, we still are known to God.

Even if I forget where I was going, become distracted from who I once was, as I pass through possibility to actuality, from actuality to obscurity. When the sun sets on our role models, on those we look up to, these things, these memories, these intentions of mine must not fade away and pass into the void.

Under the starry skies tonight I looked up and wondered if there might yet be hope for all of us sinners with the silver sprouting signs of wisdom on our crowns and songs still left in our hearts...

"The Mad Bomber"

I bought this book, Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist, by James A Brussel, M.D. after reading an article a friend passed to me from the New York Times.

The article in the NYTimes, by Malcolmb Gladwell, viewable here speaks about the origins of criminal profiling, and questions it's reliability. Of course, this cold-reading can get out of hand. Comments can be ambiguous, "You are typically introverted but can rise to the occasion when necessary." I wouldn't expect any profile worth a damn to give into that cheap television psychic mumbo-jumbo, however.

The first story in the book, and the story that the NYtimes article speaks of is about a man named George Metesky who was the "Mad Bomber." Over a period of some 16 years he planted pipe bombs around New York City, many of them exploding in places like phone booths and inside the bottom of movie seats. A frustrated police investigator reaches out to Psychiatrist James Brussel for help. He stunningly comes up with what would appear to be several succinct and amazing predictions/profile of the criminal. Including that when he is caught he will be wearing a double breasted suit...buttoned.

The book mentions Metesky's address as "17 4th Street, Waterbury, CT." It's amazing what you can pull up these days with map sites like Bing and Google. While there is no street view available of the Mad Bombers house, there are satellite views (click on bird's eye view on the bing search), and a mouse over on Zillow likely confirms this is the place, as it states "built in 1924."

So, for roughly $184,000 you could technically buy the house and give tours to tourists, assuming of course, it was for sale.

Zillow link

Bing map of 17 4th St, Waterbury,CT

Wikepdia entry for George Metesky

There also seems to be quite a bit of information on this case obtained by a google search, FYI.

Hunter S. Thompson

"It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die... all we know for sure is that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix--a clean well-lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except for the ones who know in their hearts what is missing...And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con Dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get..."

Thompson, Hunter S. Author's Note. Generation of Swine,Gonzo Papers
Volume 2, Tales of Shame and Degredation in the '80's.
By Thompson. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 11. Print.

No words needed

Obama's healthcare address

I am watching the President's address on healthcare reform. As usual, the President gives a good speech, and the first half hour or so contains little to complain about. Anecdotes about insurance companies who (and they do) cut people's coverage off when they get diagnosed with cancer, deny people because of pre-existing conditions etc.. These stories speak for themselves, and the President does have a point when he says that there is no place for behavior like this in the USA. When you think of the kind of money that gets thrown around in this country, the size of executive bonuses, it's hard to dispute this point. It's hard to rationalize a woman with breast cancer being cut off insurance and having to haggle to get it back while the cancer spreads. It's hard to rationalize an insurance companies motive to "cherry-pick" it's customers, to actuarialize people like figures on a table, to better their bottom line, to show wall street that they were more profitable than the previous quarter. It's hard to rationalize the kids that die because they did not have access to medical care for dental problems (this also happens).

At any rate, I'm a good bit through the speech and my only major CONCERNS about this are as follows:

1. Will this whet the appetite for a socialistic minded administration to decide to make other things 'mandatory?' Healthcare coverage becoming mandatory like car insurance? Well if you don't want car insurance then don't buy a car, but if you don't want health insurance...then what? What's next? Will the administration come out and say that guns are bad and kill people and we all have to pay so let's suspend your constitutional right to bear arms? In other words, don't tread on our freedoms!

2. On a related note, what gives the government the right to dictate to insurance companies what they will do? They must cover people with pre-existing conditions, no annual or lifetime caps, must cover preventative care (makes sense though) etc.. I know the insurance industry is highly regulated anyway, and there is obviously a place for government to regulate, as I don't believe unbridled capitalism usually generates proper ethics (look at how globalization has caused a race for the bottom in wages and living standards, jobs go to China where working conditions for the employees are wretched)...but what effect will this have on business? How do we know that this won't reduce insurance companies, and limit the options? How do we know if a non-profit insurance company can run well? If it can, why don't we have any number of them?

One thing is for sure: We tend to get the best results when people act in their own best interest. As shocking as this seems, think about how likely you are to get what is true, what is fair, from a haystack of bureaucrats, some of them peeking their heads out of someones pocket? If you doubt this, look at how our government let the financial industry rape the taxpayer, and how the CEOs of so many companies collect million dollar payouts while their companies lose money (not to mention ruin this country, cause unemployment, general misery, suicides, abuse etc).

The Horatio Alger Myth

The Horatio Alger Myth (also mentions references in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger_myth
"In Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Horatio Alger is mentioned as what could be interpreted as a guide for the protagonist: "How would Horatio Alger handle this situation?" (70). The novel itself is focused around a week-long attempt to discover the American Dream through drugs, degeneracy, and honest curiosity. Thompson references Alger in other scenes, but is most profoundly referenced in the very last sentence of the novel: "I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger ... a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident."

Hopefully Thompson visualizes himself as a reincarnation of Horatio Alger due to the fact that in the novel he is in a drug induced manic frenzy. I prefer Miller's comment, below, from his book Moloch. The quoted phrase is in reference to a request by one of his bosses at Western Union requesting he write a Horatio Alger novel about the lowly Western Union Messengers Miller hired and fired at his job there.

Every day now the Horatio Alger myth grows more ironic. Or at least the way the myth is taken - in terms of the American Dream.



Reference from Henry Miller:
http://cosmotc.blogspot.com/search?q=horatio+alger
I will give you Horatio Alger, as he looks the day after the Apocalypse, when all the stink has cleared away”


Horatio Alger Wikipedia Entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger,_Jr.

What's up

I'm surprised I remembered how to log in here. See you in San Diego, suckers!

The Art of Seduction and the Welfare State

Strange bedfellows?

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051409/content/01125109.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051809/content/01125106.guest.html

~The "Low Art of Political Seduction," and Obama as a master of it.

Rush does a good job on these. I had no idea, never having paid any mind to him. My own commentary to follow soon...

Mourning the loss of the personal narrative sense

I discovered to my dismay several voluminous and expensive Kierkegaard volumes coming to press from Princeton University Press. I saw them while browsing on sites like Amazon - a truly bad habit. (See link Here for amazon search).

So much of Kierkegaard's perspective centers on his breaking off his engagement. He is no doubt subjective and inward in the extreme.

Sometimes this vast, endless array of knowledge to be gained seems like an undo burden, a stress, the placing of a claim or a burden on existence. Almost a hamster wheel, but not quite circular - instead like following an infinite string all over the earth. So when you read someone like Kierkegaard, or for that matter, Henry Miller, the ultimate aesthete, you travel everywhere, and the writing never seems to end. You never have enough, always one more page to read, just one more book.

One can tolerate only so much possibility, potential - take your education from it as you can, but actuality beckons. But the mind has a hunger of its own and tires much more slowly than the feet, and occasionally refuses to be turned off. Even in dreams the mind walks countless miles.

Following the string, at least it is a pathway, restricted to the linear, even if infinite. It is more reassuring than the forever expanding, the dissipated. But it can lack the mystery, the condensation of narrative, of profluence. Stop to smell the roses, for Pete's sake. The simpler structure of fiction and possibly of life with a smaller axis to revolve around. When life was simpler.

Hang a sign on the door that says "Gone fishing," and listen to some Howlin' Wolf.

Updates

I have done some more updating on my Recommended Reading List

It is still very much a work in progress, as I have to add many more books that I have already read, and intend to include on the list, particularly quite a few by Rollo May.

Either-Or

In my Kierkegaard studies I have recently gone back through books of his I have read to re-read the introductions in the light of having some grasp of the material. One book I think I will have to revisit, the first book of kierkegaards I ever picked up (but was woefully unprepared for at the time) is Either/Or. Kierkegaard, or his pseudonymous writer, rather, presents two ways of being, the aesthetic and the ethical. Indeed, what a challenge we are confronted with, what choices. And no one distills it down like Kierkegaard, with his intense inwardness and appreciation for subjective experience.

Hangovers with Hegel

I woke up this morning with a hangover, and decided to continue reading my book on the philosopher, Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831)

Hegel definitely put together a voluminous master system. And of course, there is danger behind such attempts at being all-encompassing. Marx picked up and used his philosophy.

Hegel was a German philosopher in the tradition of Idealism. The mind is the only reality. It's opposite would be materialism, matter is the only reality. I don't quite understand how Marxism involves materialism when Hegel is an idealist.

I am generally against anything that further divorces the unity of mind and body, even against dualism. Hegel is definitely of value and interesting, however, and probably serves to counterbalance materialism.

My favorite parts are from the Phenomenology of mind (or spirit depending on translation). There are references to the "universal mind," reminiscent of the lyrics of the doors song, which makes me think Morrison read Hegel. During Hegel's journey tracing the history of consciousness, he finds that individual minds must realize they are part of the universal mind, and are not free insofar as they are dominated by desire and other coercion. This was reminiscent of William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) and the doors of perception. "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

My reading and commenting on Hegel is not to say that I am particularly aligned with his beliefs or ideas. In fact, the only reason I am even reading Hegel is to understand Kierkegaard's frequent references to him.

One potentially positive product of Hegel's thought would be the idea that people, or at least minds, are intimately connected. Which reminds me of Heidegger's being-with-others, and would seem to lead to corollaries with modern new age ideas of intention and visualization. But far from being mystical, Hegel is touting the virtues of reason.

On an interesting and related note, through watching Ken Burn's PBS special on the Brooklyn Bridge (completed in 1883 can you believe it?) I learned that Roebling, the German born designer of the bridge, "...studied under famous German philosopher George Hegel. Roebling became Hegel's protege, and completed a 2000 page treatise on his concept of the universe."
quote from Wikipedia entry on John Roebling.

The Illuminati and Simon Says

Simon says, "X is not for everyone."

Simon says:

• Home ownership is NFE
• College is NFE

Simon is entrenched and at the top of the hill. Simon's main job is to play king of the hill. Simon is the have vs the have-nots. Easy to stay on top with a large bankroll. You can survive the draw down and volatility and pay for utility bills and vacations by making 5% yields on your money.

Subprime clients and liar loans played a part in the crisis. Like putting unattended children before a bowl of candy. But the banks were entirely complicit. They took their fees and sold the mortgages off to Fannie and Freddie who were quasi-governmental entities. No need to worry about those bad loans once they are out of your pipeline. When the cat's away the mice will play. SEC is a joke. Likewise Fed, Treasury. No governmental regulation of the securitization of mortgages. Ratings companies not doing their jobs either.

The government may have had no business saying home ownership is for everyone, but Simon, you are showing your bare-naked ass when you proclaim things to be not for everyone.

The worker is worth his keep. And that includes putting the kids through school to get a better life, and keeping a roof over his family's head. A roof that isn't subject to rent increases, fraudulent keeping of deposit money, and the prospect of being homeless within 15-30 days, should the volatility (in employment, investments, costs) be too large for the meager bankroll of those of modest means.

Anxiety, fulfillment

Away from anxiety and towards fulfillment--

Is anxiety freedom, and fulfillment destiny?
Or do we work out our fulfillment in "fear and trembling?"

All fulfillment is teleological and presupposes meaning.

_______________________________________

"This then is the formula which describes the states of the self when despair is completely eradicated: In relating to itself and in wanting to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that established it."

~Kierkegaard "The Sickness Unto Death"

"Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity but in itself..."

~Kierkegaard "The Concept of Anxiety" aka The Concept of Dread