To be wise...

"To be wise, however, soberly to anticipate what might lie in store, was truly no easy task, for it was as if some vital yet undetectable modification had taken place in the eternally stable composition of the air, in the very remoteness of that hitherto faultless mechanism or unnamed principle - which, it is often remarked, makes the world go round and of which the most imposing evidence is the sheer phenomenon of the world's existence - which had suddenly lost some of its power, and it was because of this that the troubling knowledge of the probability of danger was in fact less unbearable than the common senses of foreboding that soon anything at all might happen and that this anything - the law governing its likelihood becoming apparent in the process of disintegration - was leading to greater anxiety than the thought of any personal misfortune, thereby increasingly depriving people of the possibility of coolly appraising the facts." - Laszlo Krasznarorkai

Time for Some Good News...

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It's the middle of summer for heaven's sake! I'm getting desperate for a happy headline...

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before...

Something happened at a theater in Colorado. This wasn't the first time...Repeat atrocity in a new venue. At first glance, the suspect seemed too calm and intelligent to have committed such a heinous crime as this; it was hard to place him as "just another" cold-blooded killer or deranged lunatic,  but on the other hand, he fit the profile, that dreaded profile, of a quiet, subdued, loner that no one really knew, a guy whose life was coming unglued in his early 20s, a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode.  Yet still one has to wonder: how does a guy who graduates from college with highest honors in neuro-science come to this? How does a person endowed with superior intellectual gifts, who at one time was in possession of a conscience and a high degree of self-restraint, even a reputation for wit - an actual sense of humor - which would suggest some semblance of joie de vivre, get lost in a fantasy world to such a degree that he ends up identifying with an arch villain, and then enters a theater to mow down other young people who would most likely tend to be on his wavelength, who would be most sympathetic to his plight? And so it remains a mystery why and how so many young caucasian males seem to fall into this trap - assuming as I do that they don't begin life this way - only to end up ruining their own lives, while trashing the lives of others at random for no discernible reason. He apparently had lost the capacity to see outside himself....And the victims? We have their faces, their stories to remind us that something is deeply amiss in Gotham, in the heartland, in the rest of America...

Home is Your Dwelling Place...

The Socratic Fool

Once upon a time there was a Socratic fool who went around the marketplace conversing with various people, asking them about their most cherished beliefs and annoying most of them as he went. The problem with this fool was his stubborn resistance to the wisdom that others tried to impart to him.  People, typically old and established types, would go on and on, explaining in depth their prodigious knowledge and expertise on a particular topic (usually one associated with money-making or a respectable career-choice), sharing the wisdom that they had accumulated over a lifetime and offering up as well a smattering of "truths" and "life-lessons" that were as plain as day. Perhaps on occassion the conversation would shift into a discussion of justice or the meaning of piety or the essence of courage or the optimum social order. And when the fool pressed for definitions and clarifications, the old men would hand them out somewhat flippantly as if they were beside the point. But as they did so, the fool typically sat silent, scratching his nose and crunching his face up into a skeptical grimace. "What's the matter," they would say. "Can't you see that what I'm telling you is true? Why are you looking at me that way? Are you dense or something???." The fool would then reply: "Do you think that what you're telling me is so true because you have studied the subject in depth or because there are no contrary opinions that contradict your testimony or is it because your opinion is most familiar to yourself and therefore you have become comfortable and complacent with it such that any other point of view would seem too exotic and foreign to your own tastes." Usually, when the fool reached this juncture in the conversation, the other person, brimming with anger and discontent, would yell back at him: "So... my wisdom is not good enough for you - eh? So I can't provide you with adequate definitions?  Okay, why don't you give me some real answers then! Can you do that - FOOL? But the fool only smiled and said in his irritatingly slow drawl: "I have no answers to replace your answers. I have only my paltry knowledge that I am ignorant of those things which you claim to be quite sure of..." "Oh!" replied the other person haughtily, "so what you have to offer is mere ignorance and absence of knowledge. Your wisdom is the wisdom of the empty set. Thanks a lot fool! That's very helpful. Now we can rest content with NO ANSWERS and nothing to live by. Now we can teach the younger generation to be skeptical and non-committal, adopting surly, snarky postures so that they too can end up nay-saying everything that the older generation has to offer while affirming NOTHING themselves!" "Perhaps you have misunderstood," said the fool. "It is not ignorance as such that I offer to my fellow interlocutors. It is knowledge of such ignorance. We humans understand ourselves only by knowing the limits of our knowledge. Is that so wrong?" "Yes, it's very wrong," the  old man would reply. "What you're doing is very wrong. Because you show our opinions to be very provisional and dispensable - relevant for a day perhaps, for this time and place, but otherwise obsolete. Your words are like dynamite in the marketplace. Once people get exposed to your decadence nothing will remain sacred. We will turn into a bunch of ironists and aesthetes who don't take ourselves seriously at all - who speak only for the sake of amusing ourselves and others! Is that what you want?" The fool thought to himself. Hmmm. The original Socrates was trying to inject logic and rigor into the conversation, but this old man seems to make a good point. What has Socratic logic wrought over the course of many centuries? And what is the alternative? Enlightenment was exciting in the beginning...But what happens after everything has already been critiqued ahead of time?

The Melancholy of Resistance

This is the title of a dazzlingly surreal novel by Hungarian Laszlo Krasznahorkai about the mysterious events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. There is also a movie based on the book entitled: Werkemeister's Harmonies. Haven't seen it yet... 

Recent Conversations with Fate

Me: "And so, Fate, as I was saying just a moment ago, I've decided to go ahead with my decision."

Fate: "Well, if you're sure about it, then I suppose there's nothing I can do to change your mind..."

Me: "What? You want to change my mind all of a sudden? I thought we were both good to go on this."

Fate: "Don't let me stop you, my friend. What's done is done."

Me: "It's not too late. I haven't done anything yet. I've merely decided."

Fate: "Okay then. That in itself is a victory of sorts."

Me: "Are you mocking me again?"

Fate: "Not in the least..."

Me: "Well - I thought we were working together on this project. Basically, I'm simply trying to unravel your most recent bit of cryptic advice."

Fate: "Am I so hard to understand? And besides, do you really need to consult with me to see clearly what options remain available."

Me: "Of course I need your help. I have a tendency to overlook certain possibilities."

Fate: "Additional options...More to choose from...More to get confused by perhaps."

Me: "But your job would simply be to point me toward the right option..."

Fate: "And wouldn't I be cheating you out of a certain type of experience if I did just that?"

Me: "Oh I see. You want me to feel the excruciating weight of confusion, panic, uncertainty..."

Fate: "No. I simply don't want you to feel forced into something that doesn't feel right to you."

Me: "Well I've got news for you Mr. F. I'm getting sick and tired of your non-directive therapy. Just tell me what to do. Just give me some answers."

Fate: "Sorry that's above me pay-grade. The person you really want to speak with about that is named..."

Me: "Stop right there. Look now. I'll talk to whomever want to talk to me. But right now we're having a conversation and once again, it seems, we've hit a brick wall...which leads me to suspect that you really do want me to fail. You'd like nothing more. It's entertainment for you and your ilk. I'm like some bug, some plaything that you taunt for your own amusement - which, if you ask me, is really twisted."

Fate (smiling): "I've afraid you're getting the wrong idea. This little conversation of ours may be strange or a trifle unusual, but that doesn't make it bad. Despite these little circumlocutions we seem to keep falling into, I actually think we're making progress."

Me: "Do you get what I've been trying to say for the past 10 minutes? I don't want a pile of needless options. I'm looking for the one option that I MUST embrace. And up until just 10 seconds ago I thought that I had found it."

Fate: "Until I..."

Me: "Until you..."

Fate: "What?"

Me: "You're causing problems. It would be easier to just treat everything you've said as mere random verbiage."

Fate: "Fine. Go ahead and insult me."

Me: "You see... I really don't have to do this. It's just that it represents something entirely new for me, a major switch, a new path, a new enterprise."

Fate: "Fine. Then it's decided."

Me: "Or else...I could just go back to my old life...my old dreary life...where I refuse to venture out into the unknown forest with my pack of bread crumbs and a compass on my cell phone..."

Fate: "You know what. Your persistence has paid off. I'm going to give you a final answer."

Me: "About as clear as the Oracle at Delphi I bet..."

Fate: "You should not go back to your old life."

Me: "Really? So you agree that I'm doing the right thing...[pause]...or do you mean that I should repudiate every aspect of my former persona and begin again from scratch as if it were the year zero? Is that what you mean."

Fate: "Just what I said before. Do not go back to where you were before."

Me: "But that would be impossible. You can't step into the same river twice..."

Fate: "Exactly my point. Embrace the new. It may look the same, but it's not..."