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movies fantasy See: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Having seen the film, now, I'm afraid I have to say that I don't
understand Lord Voldemort's obsession with Harry Potter. But, with this
movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I may at last begin to
see some point to the world's obsession with Harry Potter.
This is the first of the Harry Potter
movies to rise to and above the
level of Chris Columbus's sole masterstroke of genius, Adventures in
Babysitting. How did this happen? Columbus did not direct. Mike Newell directed, not some American master of surface. The texture in this film is just right.
It's the first of the films to sculpt some real emotional depth.
This, despite the fact that it's basically a sports movie. Or, at
least, a contest
movie.
My memory of the earlier movies has it that there were often clear
skies above. In this film, the weather is constantly overcast. This, I take
it, was a deliberate choice. Lots of clouds. And clouded light. A
precursor to darker movies yet, no doubt, for we get that
too-often-quoted line, Difficult times lie ahead, Harry,
near the
very end of the movie. The actors really sell such uninspired lines,
and, while watching, I wasn't at all bothered. The sets are far better
than previous, and the grittier, more terrifying storyline has far more
menacing dangers than previous. The dragon is great. Dumbledore's
fiddling with his wand into and out of his skull, a perfect touch.
Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort is magnificent, as is his make-up/fx.
The new characters are almost all interesting, and the old ones on the
sidelines, including Alan Rickman's Snape and Gary Oldman's
face-in-the-burning-coals, anchor the story's context in the past
movies (most of which, I'm afraid, I've forgotten; for the life of me I
can barely remember more than a scene from the previous Harry Potter
flick).
To say that it's the best of the films is not tantamount to saying that this is a masterpiece for all time. The movie has the feel of a film in the middle of a series. It begins from where we know and takes us aways down the line, promising more. This does not make for the most enjoyable of endings.
Still, this is so much better than most other filmed fantasies, as well as the previous installments in this series, that it's pointless to complain.
As in more than one previous Harry
flick, the title is more an indicator than an expression of theme. The Goblet of Fire
is just one more plot prop, not an apt title to express something deeper. But, the books are titled to appeal to kids, whose ideas of good titles have not advanced after the original Hardy Boys' series — indeed, all indications that everything literary has devolved. But now I step beyond the area of my expertise, for I have not read anything more than the first page of a Harry Potter
book.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 18, 2005 | Netizen permalink | FilmFlam
symphony insects See: Insect Symphony
The symphonic literature contains a few good foxtrots. Hard to believe, but true. I'm partial to John Adams's The Chairman Dances, but that recent work has competition from Kalevi Aho. The second movement of his Insect Symphony (his seventh numbered symphony) is a Foxtrot and Tango of the Butterfly.
Not bad at all. Actually, it is almost tuneful, and the opening, anyway, is a lot of fun. (Repeated listenings and my judgment will likely rise.)
The symphony's first movement is entitled The Tramp, the Parasitic Hymenopter and its Larva.
Like is often the case in Aho's orchestral work, there is great and unusual brass work here.
The third movement focuses on the dung beetle. Like the first movement, it is arresting without exactly lingering in memory.
In movement four Aho's creativity really grabbed my attention. The Grasshoppers
are the subject. The flittery orchestral gyrations are lovely. Not exactly hopping, and not really the humoresque one might expect. But then, in Finland grasshoppers have a special place: elsewhere. They were driven out (ha!) by St. Urho!
Aho pulls out a few stops for the next insect, the ant. Well, ants plural, of course. He titled the movement The Working Music of the Ants and War Marches I and II.
Good stuff. For the person who cares to follow, the music turns out to be surprisingly easy, but not simple-minded — there's lots of things happening to keep the interest up. (This has got to be one of the most low-brow comments on a classy piece of music I've ever made.)
The final movement is not a climax but an enchantment, almost a heartbreaker. The Dayflies and Lullaby for the Dead Dayflies
is the loveliest work I've heard from Aho yet.
The symphony is based on an opera the composer wrote, Insect Life, which was based on a play by Karel and Josef Capek. The opera sounds interesting, though it did not win the competition that Aho composed it for. After all, against Einojuhani Rautavaara and Paavo Heininen, he was up against tough competition; the award and the performance went to Heininen's The Knife. So, seeing that his opera might take years to perform, he set about making a symphony.
Actually, Rautavaara did something similar. I've written about his work, based on the opera Vincent, on Instead of a Blog.
Aho's opera is a satire. I can believe it. Successful? I don't know; haven't heard it. But what about the symphony itself?
Aho also claims that the symphony is satire, or, as he puts it, a satirical musical image of the compartmentalized, ostensibly transient society in which we live — the work tries not only to reflect modern life with comic exaggeration and distortion, but also to say something essential about it. The music is constantly going astray; each new movement begins from a new point of departure. The question also arises: of all the styles or points of departure encountered here, which . . .
Oh, I haven't the heart to continue with this drivel. Does the music go astray? Or merely surprise? Or creatively embrace innovative alternatives? You pick; the composer isn't necessarily correct.
I'm afraid all this talk about the meaning of music is a bit much for me. Does the music sound good?
Yes.
Does it help to categorize it as postmodern? Or a critique of postmodernism?
Not much.
Talk about compartmentalized! Aho wins my Award for Over-Compartmentalization About Music.
Moral of this lesson? Listen. Don't take the words about what you've listened to too seriously.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 19, 2005 | Netizen permalink
music Senate See: Republicans Refuse to Honor Springsteen
New Jersey's senators want to honor Bruce Springsteen, the much-esteemed rocker whose songs inspire (or at least provide ear-worms for) millions. Republicans in that chamber, however, won't go along. How horrible! I'm of two minds about the story:
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 20, 2005 | permalink | ThinkingMatters
philosophy maxims See: Introducing Objectivism
I have friends who admire Ayn Rand. Never much understood this, I guess. But real hard-core Randians hate me. That I do understand. But imagine, if you can, one asking questions rather than attacking me . . .
Q. Ayn Rand could sum up her philosophy while "standing on one foot." Can you?
A. Sure. [lifts left foot off floor] Pursue excellence through balance. This is easier with two feet than one. So, philosopher, resist the temptation to do too much with too little: Learn from the sciences; extend the imagination with the arts. Learn the ways of nature, but do not draw hasty lessons from such study. Try to strike an honest balance with others; when they threaten, or just demand too much, cleverness may have to usurp honesty — but do not get tangled in your own ironies. Stand up to violence, if you can, preferably before being backed into a corner against overwhelming odds. It is often better simply to avoid the violent, and situations that the violent provoke or control; those who misuse language also deserve a cautious eye and a wide berth. Do not fear death, but do not seek it until all honorable options vanish. Try to be cheerful even at the edge of the abyss. When approaching a yellow wood, carry a machete. [lets left foot rest on the floor] Whew.
Q. Ayn Rand did it quicker.
A. So did Hillel: What is hateful to you, do not to another. That is the whole law and all else is explanation.
It is a great gift, concision. But though Hillel may have been right about Mosaic Law, he was obviously wrong about the whole of goodness in man. Even alone a man may struggle to become better, or act to make himself worse. My foot-raised maxims illumine, I hope, a wider course for wisdom. As for Rand, well, I'll ascribe her errors to the very limits set for her: it is hard to summarize a philosophy while standing on one foot.
Q. What's wrong with what she said?
A. Take her first point: Metaphysics: Objective Reality
; nicely stated, succinct. But really, where is the subjective experience of that reality? Surely that belongs, too, in metaphysics! There was a point to existentialism, after all.
Take her second point: Epistemology: Reason.
I'm all for reason. But reason
can be awfully vague, and we do learn some things by intuitive leaps. So reason isn't our only source of knowledge; we, each of us, rely quite a lot on intuition and hunch and even habit. What's the test? Reason alone? No. Reason in public, testing propositions in a variety of contexts. But we should honor the source as well as the test.
With her third point we lurch towards lunacy: Ethics: Self-interest.
That's the whole of ethics? Nonsense. Each of us have many interests in others, and these are important. Focusing only on self-interest blurs the complexity of the social world. The trick is to find ways nurture the interests of all, each including interests in others as well as in their very selves. Egoism is a dead end. So is altruism alone. Herbert Spencer made this very clear in his Data of Ethics. The subject should proceed from his treatment, not Rand's pronouncements.
Finally, take her fourth point: Politics: Capitalism.
Well, capitalism
isn't politics! This is just loose speech — and I say this as a partisan of free markets. Of course, I can translate her notion into my language: the rule of law that supports private property and free markets is the closest we can come to an ideal balancing of often-competing interests. Politics should support that ideal. But still, there are more things in society, things that cause conflict, than the buying and selling of goods and services. Identifying capitalism
as the be-all and end-all of political concern is preciously close to self-parody.
Q. You mentioned Hillel's Silver Rule . . . do you lean towards Judaism more than, say, Christianity?
A. Perhaps; but it is of no greater moment than my leaning to Buddhism instead of Hinduism. I like the literature of Judaism, more than the New Testament, anyway. And Judaism is somewhat broader minded, at least in that a wise man like Hillel could reasonably encapsulate Jewish law down to a simple, honest, and honorable maxim. Jesus' formulation of the Golden Rule — do unto others as you would have them do unto you
— seems marginally less reliable, in that some people want to be treated in goofy, masochistic ways that cannot be universalized; it's easier to universalize negative principles. But the trouble with Christianity, as I see it, is that the Golden Rule is not the summation: the Atonement is; and the Atonement makes the very opposite of sense to me. I do prefer the forgiveness of God as expressed in Jonah to the angry legalism of the deity as expressed in Paul's letter to the Romans. But Job's brook-no-opposition theology is more terrible yet. Thankfully, readers in the Jewish tradition can go to Ecclesiastes and find a more humane voice — though one at variance with Job and Romans.
Q. Some would say that, by making your own judgments against books they claim can only be understood in tandem, you are no better than a Gnostic. But surely you are not a Gnostic . . .
A. I like the term gnosticism
since I am a proponent of enlightenment. Knowldge is possible, though each one of us will always have to be agnostic about things outside our experience and expertise. My objections to the Gnostic movement are pretty obvious, though. Surely, the way of understanding requires that we may freely reject the ancient myths in toto as well as interpret them in radical ways. Gnosticism had too slight a grounding in the natural world, so caught up were gnostics in their own re-evaluations of myth and memory.
Q. With whom, then, do you identify your philosophy? Which school . . . if not Rand, if not Hillel?
A. Not one only. I see affinities to my approach in a sort of conciliation of Epicurean and Aristotelian themes. And really, I find the common sense
approach congenial, too, as started by Reid, carried on through Hamilton and Spencer, and made critical by Peirce. But I see no point in restricting myself to any one school. Even Skepticism had its points — after all, surely nescience will always be a source of some concern (if not outright vexation) for each person. Whether we can be said to float in a sea of nescience dotted with islands of knowledge, or travel a landscape of knowledge bordered by horizons of nescience, I'll leave to another discussion.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 21, 2005 | permalink
white man's government.To say so is political blasphemy, for it violates our fundamental principles of our gospel of liberty. This is man's government, the government of all men alike.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 23, 2005 | permalink
poetry epigram See: The Road Not Taken
A few weeks ago a friend of mine, a teacher and non-blogger, impishly took up the topic of Robert Frost's great poem, The Road Not Taken,
which he said was usually misinterpreted.
At about the same time on the diablogue the same subject was taken up, and the same thesis examined in public.
Like at least one commentator on that blog, I'm afraid that my thinking about that poem has been somewhat derailed by the music of Randall Thompson; Thompson's setting (which I had sung in high school choir; I sang bass, which has a good part) is lovely, modal, moody, and captures the temper of the first verses quite well. The irony later? I'd have to listen again. Anew.
So what's going on in the poem?
First verse: The poet remembers time as a traveller in a wood. He speaks of roads, but these are described as paths, unpaved ways to travel. He looks down one likely path as far as he can, before it bends out of sight. No irony.
Second verse: He took a different path, just as fair,
having, just maybe, a better claim to his attention. Why? Because it was grassy and wanted wear.
So this is our indication that the poet, as traveller, ostensibly approved of off-the-beaten courses of travel (and thus life,
of course).
But next, within the same sentence, we get to a statement that casts this interpretation in somewhat less clear light: Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.
This is the second indication that the two paths were not very different. Not only is this second path, the path taken, just as fair,
it is really about the same.
Third verse: On that morning of choosing, both paths were uncommon paths, for each were blanketed with leaves no step had trodden back.
So, between two paths, or choices, our poet chooses one, leaving the other for another day, adding, though, that he doubted he'd ever really come back, what with the nature of paths taken and all.
Fourth verse: The poet imagines telling this story in the future, with a sigh,
and saying that he took the one less travelled by.
Here he admits to a lie. Both roads he contemplated that morning were off the beaten track; both lacked for travellers. But, in the future, he'll say he took an even less travelled path.
My friend is surely right — as is the blogger on the diablogue. This penultimate thought is usually misinterpreted. This is a poem about making more of choices than they are. It relates a triumph of ex post preference over ex ante indifference (to use the language of economics). The principle here was elaborated by Leon Festinger, in his work on cognitive dissonance, but I forget if the great social psychologist referenced Frost.
I still have not confronted the poem's final thought: And that has made all the difference.
Is it ironic, in that, perhaps, little difference resulted? Or is it a correct statement, in that, though the original choice was one preciously close to indifference, the outcome did matter?
I take it as a different irony. The poet says that he will proclaim that his past choice made a difference, but he knows — well, at least has reason to suspect, as he provided clues carefully placed in the poem to this effect — that he simply doesn't know.
It now appears obvious, though it didn't appear so while singing Randall Thompson's beautiful choral work: this poem is not a heartfelt,
uplifting ode to individualism; it is a sly epigram on cognitive dissonance and its resolution through pious lying.
This poem must vex an Austrian economist, who believes that all choices are made out of preference. But as I figured long ago, and as economist Bryan Caplan explains somewhat differently, we know by introspection that we make some choices out of indifferent selection — simply because a choice must be made, but we lack all capacity to calculate which to prefer — rather than preferential choice. Austrians like Mises and Rothbard accept indifferent selection only in cases of obviously identical goods (like eggs, or steelies, or other fungibles). When things are obviously different, they deem it obvious
that any choice is from preference.
They are wrong.
I think.
I'll deal with criticisms of Caplan's position from modern neo-Austrians, such as Choice and Preference
by Gene Callahan, at a later time.
Somewhere down the road.
It probably won't make much of a difference.
So why do it? Ha! Out of preference. Mine. (To say that some choices are made out of indifference, or near indifference, is not to deny that other choices are made out of preferential choice.)
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 23, 2005 | permalink
Aloysius,in Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum (see: The Study of Counterpoint, Alfred Mann, translator, p. 28)
radio classical music See: Contemporary Classsical
A friend emailed me this morning about a particular program on NPR:
Those of a Nordic mindset, there is some Nordic music on NPR's Performance Today, today. Performance Today comes on when your local npr station schedules it. Ours is now in the morning, yours might be in the evening, so you may be able to catch this program.
At the beginning of the program, Nordic seems to mean the Iceland Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, and Norway's under Previn (!) playing Afternoon of a Faun (!) -- but it is sort of relaxing to hear it on a chilly day. Opens up the pores a bit.
:-)
However, the featured guests are the Finnish Men's Chorus (the YL -- it stands for something Finnish that has a great many letters in it.)
They will do Finlandia in deep bass voices, and some other things. Including, apparently, a Joik, which I gather may be identified as a "Finnish kind of folk singing." LOL
Going out to all you members of the FA um B (Finnish Appreciation Board) out there.
I was interested, of course, especially since I'm helping with the next FinnFest, and, as educated persons would guess upon seeing my name, my ancestry is quite Finn. (I have, as the ol' joke about the fish puts it, Finns on both sides.
)
So I downloaded RealPlayer in hopes of hearing the program (the local community radio station doesn't carry Performance Today). In the course of looking, I found something just as interesting, a live365.com Internet radio station called Contemporary Classical. It seems to play more avant-garde stuff than radioio.com's classical station, my iTunes favorite.
I hooked into the station's stream and heard a magnificent piano concerto by Ligeti. I've long liked Ligeti, and was impressed with this work, too. It's much better than the usual atonal gesturings-about. Not long after I got something Nordic,
too: Erkki-Sven Tüür's Zeitraum. Also very goo. I'd never heard Tüür's work before. And without this station, I likely never would have! For this alone it was worth downloading RealPlayer.
The station allows one to buy the music, too, from the two sources I use: Amazon and iTunes. Very convenient.
By the way, very not avantish
music by David Del Tredici followed Erkki-Sven Tüür, restoring balance to the station's program. Then: Nono; then: a delightful Albright rag; then: Ravel. A lot of people talk about diversity. Contemporary Classical does something (supportive) about it.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 25, 2005 | permalink
cinema economics See: le Nobel du plus grand economist de tous les temps
The construction of Top Ten
lists and similar Greatest
lists are intellectually suspect. Still, we do make them up. And re-make them. I know I do, anyway.
Recently on The Cinematheque I offered for review my Top Ten Films List. It's a rather goofy list in that it's really a My Favorite Films That Could Pass For Great List. Great films that I recognize as somehow great, but nevertheless don't quite stick with me, well, these I snub. On the list. Somehow Citizen Kane didn't make it, for instance. Oh, well. Perhaps I'll place it as Number 11.
My former colleague Jesse Walker and his current colleage Tim Cavanaugh put up far goofier lists, though. I mean, just read them! Mine looks respectable, no? But is mine more entertaining? No.
I have a rule about making such lists. I feel that entries not only must be works that I've watched (or in the case of books, read) more than once, but they must be of the kind that I could in good conscience recommend to other (intelligent, aesthetically inclined) people.
These two real-world tests of preference constrain my list-making activities somewhat. Some favorites of mine are peculiar enough that I rarely recommend them (My New Gun) or I look back upon fondly but don't want to see again (Apocalypse Now). Same goes for literature, too, with a book like David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus rarely getting recommendations from me, no matter how much I enjoyed it, or Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master being something I'll have some trouble getting myself to reread, no matter how great
it seemed while reading.
The problems involved in making such lists remind me of the problems encountered by economists. Economists know good and well that (as the joke puts it) 42 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot,
and that many expressions of value, out of the mouths of human beings, are fanciful, not real-world evaluations as demonstrated in people's actions. Many economists have trouble with the same type of fanciful false objectifications. There exist, today, economists who pretend that value can be expressed cardinally, in numbers like 1, 2, and 7.45663. The lessons of Mises and Hicks and others hasn't quite sunken in: value is ordinal: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
And even that ordinality is often quite difficult to determine.
Making a Greatest
list is just another fanciful and false objectification. But, it turns out, even economists succumb. A French economics magazine asked the living Nobel laureate economists who were the greatest economists of all time. And this (or something like it; I don't read French well) is the result:
I came across this strange list courtesy of Gérard Dréan. I don't know what his list is like, but I — admittedly a non-economist, but one who's probably read more classics of economics than your average economics major — have an easy time with this list. The greatest economist of all time is (let elipses stand for drum roll) . . . Carl Menger.
Other economists, vying on my list for second banana spot, I'll present in alphabetical order:
Other economists, whom I've read with profit but for some reason just don't seem quite great
enough for a number 2 or even 8 spot, include Israel Kirzner, Herbert Davenport, Gustave de Molinari, Ludwig Lachmann, W.H. Hutt, Richard Whately, Friedrich Freiherr von Wieser, Gary Becker, Frank Knight, Frank Fetter, George Stigler, and Thomas Jefferson's favorite economist, Destutt de Tracy. Popularizers from Bastiat through Smart to Rothbard are greatly appreciated by me, too, but their best talents lie in easily explaining what others write about with convolved prose and arcane math.
Adam Smith's greatest and most enduring work is not in economics but philosophy. His Theory of Moral Sentiments makes him one of the great Moral Philosophers. On another of my lists. But more about that later. His Wealth of Nations starts out with a perspective that I find a hornet's nest: the annual labor of a nation. Not a promising or reliable starting point. So I'll end, here, dismissing Smith as a great economist! Ha!
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 27, 2005 | permalink
History means at least four things:
things) that actually happened;
The first and the fourth go naturally together in most common definitions. Historians seek (or so they say) to tell (4) what actually happened (1).
But when we say a person makes history,
we are not usually talking about the making of a historical account. We mean, the person has done something worthy of being recorded.
And this shows that the first meaning is not the real subject of historians' histories. Only a subset of events gets covered. And this depends on values. So there is 1a, the things that happened, and 1b, the things that happened that matter to us.
The things that some people do that make history
fall into two categories, too: the widest set and the narrower set. The things that we do that just happen to matter to others in the future (1b) and the things we do in order to matter to others, some of whom exist in the future and not just the present (2).
I give these acts a separate status because they play so heavily in the writing of history. So much of history is about people who are conscious of history, of making a difference.
And these historically minded historic figures also frequently go the next step, making and keeping records in order to influence future histories, future memory. They go from actors on history's stage to ghostwriters for the eventual historians.
This schema is most clear in what is for me the place to start in teaching history. One period, one string of events. It's not at the beginning of history. It has nothing to do with pre-history.
We know archives and archives of history before the time to which I refer. It's simply one of those periods in ancient times that is so amazing that it demands being made the medias res point for the rest of the tragicomedy of human history.
It's the Amarna Period in Egypt.
Ancient historians made no account of it. The pharaohs of the 18th dynasty after Amenhotep III and before Horemheb existed on no recorded listings of kings. No one was looking for their burial grounds. No one contemplated their importance for events in the Mitanni Empire, for those odd little states further south in the Levant, Israel, or for what happened, later, in Greece. The events that actually happened had left no tracks in memory.
Then a discovery in Egypt, in the late 19th century. In Tell el Amarna, a village near the Nile about halfway between Upper and Lower Egypt, some artifacts were found. Clay tablets and the like. When historians began gathering them up, and discovered their source (they had hit the market before they hit the archaeologists), they found a city, Akhetaten, that had been written out of the records,
a history that had been erased.
It turns out that the history had been erased and then rewritten by a usurping Pharaoh, Horemheb. The lives and reigns of Amenhotep IV (who had renamed himself Akhenaten), Smenkhare, Tutankhaten (renamed Tutankhamen), and Ai, had been chipped away from most of the monuments in plain sight, and the site of Akhenaten's city, Akhetaten, was razed and buried under debris. Abandoned. The period in question hushed up.
Horemheb had acted. And he had conspired to falsify what had happened, so that history would not record the stressful, strange period initiated by the Pharaoh Akhenaten.
It was only millennia later that historians righted his wrong, ammended his attempt to cook the books of history.
This is one reason why I regard the Amarna Period (as it has been called) as the place to start in teaching history. For it is here that we see all four elements of history in clear relief. The things that happened. The things that mattered. The making of records to influence the telling of events. And the corrections, later, for the errors and lies of that making.
The period is still something of a puzzle, so it's a perfect place to begin. It gives students hope of future discovery. It offers student perspective on the ideological component in the making, the contriving, and the accounting of history. It is a perfect focus for nut
history, too &mdashp; a form of history that is quite enjoyable if not exactly trustworthy, the result of speculation outracing evidence. Freud's Moses and Monotheism and Velikovsky's Oedipus and Akhnaton are just two examples of unreliable but fascinating accounts of this period. The sheer amount of nescience combined with the undoubted significance of the revolutions of the Amarna Period make it ripe for speculation, for the nutball theory.
And students love contemplating those very same factors that make for extravagant speculation.
And teachers should enjoy teaching how historians have made their discoveries, and thus recovered at least some important truths from the fictions of a politic liar, Horemheb.
Though the Egyptian artifacts are literally dry — the desert preserves well that which has been dessicated, or never had much water — history itself is far from dry. It is an active, revolutionary subject. As values change, what matters for history changes. Once, the doings of ordinary people hardly mattered to historians. Now, many are only concerned about the data of sociology, the stuff of the everyday.
The Amarna Period is interesting, once again, because its most salient features are the work of Great Men, once again. Akhenaten was indeed a Great Man by the older standard. He may have lost his attempt to revolutionize Egyptian worship and Egyptian art and life, but his attempt surely had repercussions. How far did such repercussions go? Freud believed they went directly into the history of Israel; Velikovsky thought they went circuitously into Greece. Both points are still debatable, no matter how wrong either may be in the particulars of their cases.
Much of world history is still up for grabs.
Which is why when I think of the past, I start with Akhenaten and his attempt to throw down the Old Gods of Egypt and replace it with an abstract, but fervent, worship of the sun disk, the Aten. But it is just as true that many of the grabbings — that of Horemheb, or Freud, or Velikovsky — can be disproved. By evidence. By better theories. There are few contentious areas of history that prove better grounds for training in historical method than this one. Many theories have been falsified. Many speculations have gone under. And yet there is still room for many more speculations, many more conjectures, and much more research.
The sun rises and the sun sets on many a work of man, including the works of man that pretend to be the works of the gods,or work for all time.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 28, 2005 | permalink
libertarianism ideology See: Bringing Back the Lower Case
The convention of referring to libertarians with a capital L when talking about members of the Libertarian Party is not at all out of the ordinary. So an essay entitled Bringing Back the Lower Case,
oddly put in ALL CAPS, and arguing against a certain dogmatic element in libertarian advocacy culture, is by no means radical.
But does it really add to our knowledge? Or wisdom? I think not.
I saw the blog entry praised elsewhere, so I wrote an essay attacking it on Instead of a Blog. My main point is that the use of the word religion
to characterize the dynamics and statics of dogmatism is ill-advised, and the attempt to purge libertarianism of deep and strong evaluative commitments is not only wrong-headed, it's absurd.
Citing an article published in a magazine I once worked for, I note that the idea is hardly new, either.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 29, 2005 | permalink
morality Narnia See: Are you a lion or a witch?
BeliefNet got in on the Narnia hype with an unbearably anti-intellectual approach to morality, a quiz purporting to answer the immortal question, Are you a lion or a witch?
Consider the first question:
Q1. You hear that a friend's in trouble. Your gut reaction is:
1. I'll do what I can, but let's be realistic--I've got a lot of other responsibilities, too
2. Of course I'll help--but can one person really make a difference?
3. Whatever is needed, whatever the sacrifice--I'm there, no questions asked.
4. My friends know my limits--so they're relying on other people aside from me for help.
5. What's the least I can do without destroying the friendship?
First, it asks what your gut reaction
is rather than your considered action. Well, thank you very much. No reason to add deliberation into morals!
It also gives no context. In the case of Narnia's first story, the one now filmed and almost at the box office, most of the moral problems are in a context of momentous crisis. But most of our friends' problems are
not crises like those faced by Lucy, Susan, Edmund and Peter. They are things like I just bounced my rent check and my ex-wife is demanding that I drive two hundred miles to help her clean her house so she doesn't lose custody of the kids.
Momentous? Seemingly, but know that context, and some forms of help would be ruinous. Including the most eager forms of help. Response 1, above, to this crisis
by a friend is, rationally and gut, correct. 2 would be stupid. 3, insane. 4, reasonable also. 5, a bit callous.
If, on the other hand, my friend were in danger of dying, both rational and gut reaction would be closer to 3 than when the problem is a result of vice and stupidity and not, in fact, all that grave.
Question 5 was even more ludicrous:
Q5. A dog is about to be hit by a car. You're standing at the curb. What do you do?
1. Pretend I don't see it and walk away quickly.
2. No time to think: I run and grab the dog, without thinking of my own safety.
3. It may haunt me, but I know I'm not the kind of person who could take that kind of risk.
4. I need a moment to think . . . and I hope that delay doesn't ruin my chances when I snap into action to save the dog.
5. Anything for my own dog . . . for others, I will call for help and move on.
Once again, contexts are dropped. I've had several experiences of this kind. The quiz writers ignore the varying degrees of danger and futility that such situations really present. And hey: if you'd risk your life for a strange dog, then please tell me; I'd love to go walking with you, but behind your back I'd probably try to prevent you from getting anywhere near a voting booth — it sounds like you're a complete and utter nut.
Based on one dog-on-the-street experience of mine, here's a quiz:
Q. A beautiful, healthy German Shepherd crosses the busy street in front of you a few minutes before midnight, and is run over by a car, front and rear wheels. You try to go and get the animal, but before your foot can leave the curb, another car hits it and runs over it, front and rear wheels. You hold up your hand, enter the street and retrieve the dying dog. A crowd of your neighbors gathers at the curb. You ask "does anybody have a knife?" The people look at you as if you were the White Witch. What do you do?
1. Help them try to find a vet, even though you know the situation is hopeless.
2. Take out your own penknife and put the dog out of its misery, the crowd's anger and indignation be damned.
3. Leave the crowd to torture the dog with their feckless kindness.
This is not an Aslan/White Witch problem. For the record, I chose 1, simply because I was not going to rile up a crowd of idiotic city-dwelling do-gooders just to help a dog die a less painful death. Admittedly, by choosing 1 I also chose 3.
The dog did die, of course, with people weeping at curbside. I did not weep that night; anger at human stupidity and moralistic nonsense can dry tears pretty quick.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | November 30, 2005 | permalink | ThinkingMatters
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