The chicken and the egg are the same thing
A while back I wrote about John McWhorter's view that language does not shape thought and my begrudging disagreement with him: "People who have a grasp of their language beyond that of the layperson must understand things different. So too, different cultures, predicated partially on language, must have some vital, if small, differences."
Now I read Lera Boroditsky's essay (originally printed in Scientific American in February 2011), "How Language Shapes Thought." Intriguingly near the end: "Teaching people new color words, for instance, changes their ability to discriminate colors. And teaching people a new way of talking about time gives them a new way of thinking about it." And: "What researchers have been calling "thinking" this whole time actually appears to be a collection of both linguistic and nonlinguistic processes. As a result, there may not be a lot of adult human thinking where language does not play a role." (28) Though the nonlinguistic processes seems like a fairly large hole, the argument goes back to language = culture, according to Boroditsky.
In (re)thinking about the children from different cultures (or subcultures) who are culturally more or less aware of the shapes of these toys might it not be more about the language used in these subcultures about toys than the number of physical objects each socio-economic group owns (McWhorter's argument being that black kids from Harlem and middle-class white kids from NYC don't speak vastly different languages -- they speak English)? Isn't it perhaps possible that there is different linguistic emphasis being placed on "toys"?
If nothing else, it is fascinating to think that there is still such disagreement over the issue.
--
Boroditsky, Lera. "How Language Shapes Thought." Annual Editions: Anthropology 12/13. Edited by Elvio Angeloni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012.
Possum living
"The Old Fool likes to go around saying he can't decide what he wants to be when he grows up. But truthfully, not having to make decisions is one of the great luxuries of life--right up there with not having to go to work." (19)
--
Freed, Dolly. Possum Living: How to Live Well without a Job and with (Almost) No Money.
Friendly, ain’t she
In the High Empire of Roman rule:
"For those who subscribed to the liberal ideal, friendship rather than passion epitomized the desired qualities of reciprocity and inward freedom. Love is slavery, but friendship is freedom and equality. This despite the fact that in reality the word 'friendship' often (though not always) meant 'clientage.' Did people really have more friends then than they do now? I don't know. But friendship was talked about far more often than we talk about it today. Frequently, though, a culture speaks not of what really exists but of imaginary solutions to its real contradictions. (The Japanese do not commit suicide more often than Westerners, but they talk about it much more.)" (185)
---
Interesting that 1) our Western culture, which framework is still solidly set in Roman ideals, would be much more interested in passion than friendship as a means to freedom and 2) maybe the Roman's were too (that is, the whole brilliant idea of friendship rather than passion being the driving force behind happiness or at least a general Roman goal is largely debunked by the last two sentences of the paragraph). Still the idea is an interesting one as cultural values vacillate.
---
A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium. Vol. 1. Paul Veyne, ed.
The culture of imprisonment
With typical aplomb, Adam Gopnik explores the problem of our booming (read: privatized) industrial-prison complex. Though elegantly stated, Gopnik's argument is nothing new. It's good to see it discussed openly in a renowned national magazine. And I say it's nothing new as part of my disgust with the culture of imprisonment and our general nonchalance about the whole affair rather than as a statement about the quality of the article (Gopnik is one of my favorite writers). It is, and I agree with him here, the biggest challenge facing the United States at the moment. Anyone could be arrested for nearly anything on the whim of a police officer or sheriff and have to spend the night in jail (if they don't get convicted of some obscure and/or obscene offence). When a society's police assumes guilt, that society is indeed, Kafkaesquely, always already guilty. What has to change before people understand this injustice? Why, if it is nothing new, has it not changed? These are deep-seated values that often take the form of economic argument (e.g.: police force in force means jobs for lots of Americans and if they're not arresting people, so the flawed logic goes, they're not doing their job). They need to be overturned so that we're not left behind morally, intellectually and, ultimately, I believe, economically.
None of this is to say that the SAPD, for example, is a ruthless band of people; as a matter of fact I have had nothing but good experiences with the police here in San Antonio. I just think, much like a misguided war posited on a flawed argument, which has nothing to do with the brave men and women who serve our country, that the general cultural acceptance of such incarceration must change.
---
"No more chilling document exists in recent American life than the 2005 annual report of the biggest of these firms, the Corrections Corporation of America. Here the company (which spends millions lobbying legislators) is obliged to caution its investors about the risk that somehow, somewhere, someone might turn off the spigot of convicted men:
Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new
contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. . . . The demand for
our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts,
leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain
activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with
respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of
persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional
facilities to house them."
---
Gopnik, Adam. "The Caging of America." The New Yorker, January 30, 2012. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all (accessed February 3, 2012).
Privacy and persecution
"The American Library Association points out, 'Privacy is essential to the exercise of free speech, free thought, and free association.' According to ALA, when people are concerned that their reading habits may be shared with others or used against them, they may limit their search for information. Their fear of judgment could restrict what they are willing to read. Therefore, the loss of privacy is also the loss of freedom."
But when you equate privacy with freedom of speech aren't you already inherently persecuted (or fearing persecution)? Freedom of speech means you can say what you want, presumably in public, rather than in your closet all by yourself. It means that you can read what you want even if Big Brother doesn't like it. While this is perhaps an ideal, it also the founding ideal of the US Constitution. ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.") It is why people use Goodreads: they believe in their right to free speech, liberty, tranquility and general welfare (as well as, of course, community).
(This questions of privacy also brings up interesting questions about the idea of privacy in our culture and time as opposed to say Greek antiquity. We are a very private people from bedroom to bathroom to study.)
Still any bureaucracy is laden with illogical moral values that impinge upon this (and other) logical human rights. The justice system is a Juggernaut powered by it's own sense of law founded in survival and erratic human values, as is our (and every other) government. Ultimately the only thing that can change this is a general groundswell of logic and human decency so read and share what you're reading and do more than survive; change the world.
---
"E-Reader May Be Invading Your Privacy" by Marissa Cuillo.
How we are strung along
"That was the funeral of Hector." (Trans. W.H.D. Rouse)
"And peaceful slept the might Hector's shade." (Trans. Alexander Pope)
"Thus, then, did they celebrate the funeral of Hector tamer of horses." (Trans. Samuel Butler)
"Such were the rites to glorious Hector paid." (Trans. The Earl of Derby)
"Thus held they the funeral for Hector tamer of horses." (Trans. Lang, Leaf, Myers)
"Such burial the illustrious Hector found." (Trans. William Cowper)
---
So ends The Illiad. I haven't spoiled anything, mind you. It was his destiny from the beginning. Still it is an ironic end in many ways. Understated and genuine (life and death do matter) as opposed to most of the epic drenched in blood and gore and filled with pompous windbags both mortal and immortal. Though ironic, it is fitting that the story ends with Hector, fully human. The gods are just as liable to squabble and fight. Indeed even more so than humans, who at least occasionally see the error of their ways (see the moving encounter between King Priam and Achillês near the end). The gods, on the other hand, are driven only by conceit, fear, jealousy and anger. It is their meddling and their inability to empathize that is most of the cause of all the death and suffering the mortal men and women of The Illiad must endure.
And so it is that Homer records the glorious (mis)deeds of humans and gods, tongue firmly in cheek.
---
Other quotes that I think show the self-consciousness of Homer and the absurdity of the events so drawn out:
"They were like a pack of ravening wovles ready for the hunt. How the savage beasts bring down a great antlered stag in the mountains and tear him to pieces with blood-dripping jaws! -- then off goest he whole pack to a brook, and they lap up the clear surface-water with long, thin tongues, belching out clots of gore." (230)
How this simile goes from apt to long-winded to absurd to terrifying (long, thin tongues, belching out clots of gore!).
"At last he [Zeus] thought it best that Patroclos should kill yet more, and drive Hector back to the city walls." (240)
But why? Ours is not to know the reasons of gods.
"As he [Antilochos] ws getting ready Nestor took the opportunity to give him some advice (although he was quite able to do without it)..." (332)
What a brilliant author's aside. Here is the true Homer revealed.
---
Homer. The Illiad. Translated by W.H.D. Rouse. New York: Signet Classics, 1937.
You can’t swing a [dead] cat without hitting some cash
Jake Adelstein is a journalist who writes about the yakuza. The essay is as much about his flamboyant personality and life. Excellent read.
---
On how the yakuza used to extort banks in the ninteen-eighties:
"'Sometimes we'd send three guys with cats, and they would twirl the cats around by the tail in front of the bank,' one [retired yakuza] said, with Adelstein translating. 'They'd do that until the bank finally gave them a loan.'"
Of course the bank never saw the money again. But then again swinging cat chorus was gone, too.
---
Hessler, Peter. "All Due Respect." The New Yorker 9 January 12, 50 - 50. Link [abstract].
Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition
"The values of tolerance are one of the most difficult lessons to impart, not because people are naturally cruel but because power is naturally fearful. We're slow learners."(75)
Incredibly slow learners. And, as Adam Gopnik implies here, not just within our lifetime. It seems that we have to almost start over every generation. We have no memory as a community. That makes us unusually adept at learning very slowly.
"That for a moment or two the humanists seem to have it--that we don't really expect the Inquisition to barge into our living rooms--is a fragile triumph of a painful, difficult, ongoing education in Enlightenment values." (75)
Playing devil's advocate: With liberties being infringed by an overzealous government (e.g. the Patriot Act) and the Christian right frighteningly, inexorably on the stubborn rise (with all that rigid, holier-than-thou morality), who doesn't fear the Inquisition barging into their living rooms (the question here, I suppose, is who are "we" in the quote above?). Also consider that, as suggested by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the Enlightenment allowed for the Holocaust, the greatest Inquisition of all. When lives are reduced to abstractions, as Gopnik points out, it is easy to kill. Something to think more about.
---
Gopnik, Adam. "Inquiring Minds." The New Yorker, 16 January 2012, 70-75. Link [abstract].
Short Reads 2012
A list of essays, short stories and other short works read in 2012-- a running tab:
- "Smaller Publishing Houses Provide for a Rich, Diverse Literary Landscape" by Gerry LaFemina. Highbrow Magazine 9FEB12 (2/18/12)
- "The Boy who Was like a 'Flower'" by Anthony Shadid (during the first part of the Iraq war, a child is killed). The Pulitzer Prizes (reprint from The Washington Post 31MAR03) (2/17/12)
- "How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy" by Kathleen McAuliffe (Toxoplasma gondii -- the parasitic microbe that reproduces in cats -- and how it affects the brain). The Atlantic MAR12 (2/16/12)
- "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner ("The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease"). American Anthropologist JUN56 (reproduced @ Michigan State University website) (2/15/12)
- "How Language Shapes Thought" by LeraBoroditsky [preview] (argument for the idea that language does shape thought). Scientific American (reprinted in Annual Editions: Anthropology 12/13) FEB11 (2/15/12)
- "Underage sex trafficking is everywhere local law enforcement looks, but will their budgets hold out?" by Michael Barajas. SA Current 8FEB12 (2/8/12)
- "Working Titles" by Leslie T. Chang (fiction in China is all about getting ahead in the workplace). The New Yorker 6FEB12 (2/7/12)
- "A Homepage for Philosophy" by Liam Julian (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy considered). Humanities (NEH) JAN/FEB12 (2/4/12)
- "The Caging of America" by Adam Gopnik (American's are being incarcerated at astounding rates). The New Yorker 30JAN12 (2/3/12)
- "Fragmentary: Writing in a Digital Age" by Guy Patrick Cunningham (the fragmentary nature of reading online and how writing can understand that process on the creative end -- Shields' Reality Hunger & Tupitsyn's Laconia). The Millions 24JAN12 (1/27/12)
- "How Abstract Expressionism Makes for Great Basketball" by Ryan Sachetta. SA Current 25JAN12 (1/26/12)
- "Texas Soon Awash in Craft-Beer Suds" by Roy Bragg (the rising tide of Texas breweries). MySA 19JAN12 (1/20/12)
- "Has Microsoft Word Affected the Way We Work?" by John Naughton (the way tools affect our creative potential or not). The Observer 14JAN12 (1/20/12)
- Mark Rothko: Painted in Blood by Jeffrey A. Kottler (the focus here is on Rothko's troubled life and it's relationship with his creativity; he was an outsider who's success created more problems than it solved). Chapter Four in Divine Madness: Ten Stories of Creative Struggle by Kottler 2006 (1/18/12)
- "China's War against Harry Potter" by Stephen M. Walt (China demands a culture machine but will fail). Foreign Policy 4JAN12 (1/14/12)
- "E-Reader May Be Invading Your Privacy" by Marissa Ciullo (does the information stored about your reading habits compromise your privacy or even your right to free speech?). OxfordPatch 9JAN12 (1/13/12)
- "Creative Writing" by Etgar Keret. The New Yorker 2JAN12 (1/11/12)
- "Law of Escape" by Andreu Martin. Barcelona Noir, Akashic Books 2011 (1/10/12)
- "All Due Respect" by Peter Hessler (journalist Jake Adelstein and his reporting on the yakuza). The New Yorker 9JAN12 (1/9/12)
- "Inquiring Minds" by Adam Gopnik (the Spanish Inquisition revisited). The New Yorker 16JAN12 (1/9/12)
- "Happy Queue Year" by Ryan Sachetta (reviews of art documentaries). Glasstire 9JAN12 (1/9/12)
- "The Future of History" by Francis Fukuyama [abstract] (liberal politics needs to reinvent itself). Foreign Affairs JAN/FEB12 (1/8/12)
- "The Mosque on the Square" by Peter Hessler [abstract] (two weeks in the [continuing] Egyptian revolution). The New Yorker 19DEC11 (1/5/12)
- "Time to Attack Iran" by Matthew Kroenig [abstract] (arguments for strikes against Iran's nuclear sites). Foreign Affairs JAN/FEB12 (1/5/12)
- "Books that Are Never Done Being Written" by Nicholas Carr (how movable type will change the "permanence" of books). WSJ 31DEC11 (1/4/12)
- "You Say You Want a Devolution?" by Kurt Andersen (why fashion has become so stagnant). Vanity Fair JAN12 (1/3/12)
Reading 2011
The books I read in 2011. A fairly varied list, though I have found myself reading more nonfiction lately (a trend in which I have become a number). All told a fairly paltry sum.
1. half of The Calculus Diaries by Jennifer Ouellette ***
2. Gilded Latten Bones by Glen Cook ****
3. Lint by Chris Ware *****
4. Weathercraft by Jim Woodring ****
5. The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix *****
6. Topology of a Phantom City by Alain Robbe-Grillet *****
7. I Is an Other by James Geary ****
8. The City & the City [Kindle] by China Mieville ***
9. Swan Dive [Kindle] by Michael Burke ****
10. Music of the Spheres[Kindle] by Michael Burke ****
11. Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution by Holly Tucker ***(*)
12. A Game of Thrones [Kindle] by George R.R. Martin ****
13. The Egyptologist [Kindle] by Arthur Phillips ****
14. The Text of Shelley's Death by Alan Halsey *****
15. Noir by Robert Coover *****
16. Coming through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje *****
17. Anticipated Results by Dennis E. Bolen *****
18. Netsuke by Rikki Ducornet *****
19. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson ****
20. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain *****
21. What Language Is (And What It Isn't and What It Could Be) by John McWhorter *****
22. Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris by David King ***(*)
23. War Wounds by Jacques Leslie ****
24. Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield *****
25. World War Z by Max Brooks ****
26. The Sea: A Cultural History by John Mack *****†
27. El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo *****
28. The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø ***
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- The chicken and the egg are the same thing « Dead Rats Press on Chicken or the Egg or an Omelet
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